Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2615 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Mobile phones lifting the world’s economies: report

By Joe McKendrick | November 27, 2012

The proliferation and adoption of mobile phones is having a tangible and measurable impact on the growth of many of the world’s national and regional economies. These devices are the lever that is lifting the world.

A new study estimates that a doubling of mobile data use leads to an increase of 0.5 percentage points in the GDP per capita growth rate across selected 14 countries, and that countries with higher level of data usage per 3G connections have seen increases in GDP per capita growth exceeding a percentage point.

These findings come from an assessment just released by the GSM Association and Deloitte, which looked at the incremental benefits of next-generation mobile telephony services, such as 3G technology and mobile data services, and their impact on economic growth. “Mobile services have the potential to impact economic development further through the provision of high-value 3G and 4G data services accessed via smartphones, tablets and dongles that deliver mobile data services to businesses and consumers,” the report states.

The report draws from research of data usage and economic growth across 14 countries provided by Cisco Systems based on their Visual Networking Index (VNI), as well as Deloitte studies on the productivity impact of mobile in 79 countries and the impact of 3G penetration across 96 countries.

Read full article.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Mobile Phones Lifting Global Economy”

2012/11/282012/11/28

SchwartzReport: Growing Food in Desert with Solarized Seawater — AND Stabilizes Sea Level

Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Knowledge, Resilience

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Growing food in the desert: is this the solution to the world's food crisis?

Philipp Saumweber is creating a miracle in the barren Australian outback, growing tonnes of fresh food. So why has he fallen out with the pioneering environmentalist who invented the revolutionary system?

Jonathan Margolis

The Observer, Saturday 24 November 2012

Philipp Saumweber CEO of Sundrop perfect produce — Desert blooms: Philipp Saumweber, the founder and CEO of Sundrop, with a tray of his “perfect” produce. Photograph: Jonathan Margolis for the Observer

The scrubby desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide, is not the kind of countryside you see in Australian tourist brochures. The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead smelting and mining, the coastal landscape is spiked with saltbush that can live on a trickle of brackish seawater seeping up through the arid soil. Poisonous king brown snakes, redback spiders, the odd kangaroo and emu are seen occasionally, flies constantly. When the local landowners who graze a few sheep here get a chance to sell some of this crummy real estate they jump at it, even for bottom dollar, because the only real natural resource in these parts is sunshine.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Growing Food in Desert with Solarized Seawater — AND Stabilizes Sea Level”

2012/11/282012/12/16

2012 Steele for Branson: The Virgin Truth 2.6

Access, BTS (Base Transciever Station), Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Economics/True Cost, Education, Geospatial, Governance, Hardware, Innovation, Knowledge, Money, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Software, Sources (Info/Intel), Spectrum, Transparency

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DOCUMENT (1 Page): Virgin Truth 2.6R

2012/11/272012/11/27

Marcus Aurelius: New York Money Strikes Out at US Defense Budget

Academia, Commerce, Ineptitude, Military

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Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Invite your attention to attached think-piece from one of Washington think tanks. BLUF: Compendium of several approaches to screw over military Services, particularly Army and Marine Corps. Retirees, particularly working age, also targeted. AF, Navy, SOF, cyber favored. Several 3-stars and 4-stars signed on to this thing; not supportive of former colleagues IMHO.

Peter Peterson Strikes Out at US Defense Budget

Phi Beta Iota: The PDF above is actually entitled “A New US Defense Strategy for a New Era.” The following individuals have signed the report: Gordon Adams, Graham Allison, Michael J. Bayer, General B. B. Bell, Richard K. Betts, Barry M. Blechman, Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr., Ambassador Richard Burt, General Games Cartwright, Lieutenant General Daniel W. Christman, Lieutenant General David A. Deptula, Leslie H. Gleb, Jessica T. Mathews, Admiral Bill Owens, and Anne-Marie Slaughter.

2012/11/272012/11/27

Berto Jongman: Cybersummit 2012: CYBERSECURITY: A GLOBAL ASSESSMENT

Autonomous Internet, IO Impotency

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The world is rapidly deploying ever-new applications and services that make use of ICT. As a result, global connectivity and interdependence are not only enablers for everyone who wants to compete, but also a requirement for basic participation in the global economy. The stakes for trust in cyberspace are as high as ever in the history of international relations. This panel provides unique insights into the most critical trends currently underway that affect the safety, stability and security of cybersecurity.

With:

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2012/11/27

Review (Guest): Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Insurgency & Revolution, Stabilization & Reconstruction, War & Face of Battle

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The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
Edited By: Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Routledge, 2012

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ‘counterinsurgency’ (COIN) has enjoyed a revival. The perceived failure of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to a ‘backlash’ principally by advocates of the use of conventional warfare against insurgents, some of whom see COIN as not a ‘manly’ approach to warfare, as well as by Anti-imperialists who see COIN as a means of extending Western imperial power.

Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn’s handbook of insurgency and counterinsurgency gives us an opportunity to survey the state of the art in ‘orthodox’ counterinsurgency thinking. This ‘orthodox’ approach appears to dominate the ‘counterinsurgency industry’ and could be argued to represent an ‘interpretive’ or ‘epistemic’ community. Peter Haas defines an epistemic community as a ‘network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area’. This community tends to share common assumptions and intellectual beliefs and is influential because policy-makers may rely on their expertise.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency”

2012/11/272012/11/27

John McGuire: YouTube (13:30) The Dawn of Open-Source Self-Sovereignty & The Human Element

P2P / Panarchy

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Phi Beta Iota: 13.5 minutes, a cry from the heart of America, useful as a moment of personal self-reflection.

A short video stressing the importance of Self-Evaluation, Identity Reclamation, and becoming an Agent for the Open-Source post-scarcity era. Thanks for your interest and support!