Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2676 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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A building system that can shrink the size of hospitals and schools

Holedeck, created by Spanish architects Alarcon + Asociados, offers an alternative. The system allows for all of the unsightly but vital elements of a busy building, from pipes to cables to ventilation ducts, to be incorporated within the floor structure itself. This means that space can be saved: according to the designers’ product website for Holedeck, between a foot to 20 inches can be saved per floor. That’s significant in terms of big buildings. Design site Dezeen analyzed that such calculations could mean that a structure that would normally require six stories could fit within the volume of a five story building if Holedeck were used.

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Vancouver mayor: Cities are ‘most entrepreneurial level of government’

Robertson described that Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, is constrained by land between the North Shore Mountains, the Pacific Ocean and the U.S.-Canadian border. Thus, as the city grows exponentially, that requires some creative thinking about how to sustain that growth without wasting and running out of resources.

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2012/10/112012/10/11

Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Government

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yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Intelligence agencies turn to crowdsourcing

Sharon Weinberger

BBC 10 October 2012

EXTRACTS:

Research firm Applied Research Associates, has just launched a website that invites the public—meaning anyone, anywhere—to sign up and try their hand at intelligence forecasting. The website is part of an effort, sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), to understand the potential benefits of so-called crowdsourcing for predicting future events. Crowdsourcing aims to use the “wisdom of crowds” and was popularised by projects like Wikipedia.

. . . . . . . .

There’s good reason for Iarpa’s interest in finding new ways to collect useful information: the intelligence community has often been blasted for its failure to forecast critical world events, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Arab Spring that swept across North Africa and the Middle East. It was also heavily criticized for its National Intelligence Estimate in 2002, which supported claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Those failures raised larger questions about how the intelligence agencies come up with forecasts, which is usually a deliberative process involving a large number of analysts. The Iarpa project, known officially as Aggregative Contingent Estimation, is looking at whether crowdsourcing can result in more accurate forecasts about future events than those traditional forms of intelligence estimation.

Continue reading “Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)”

2012/10/112012/10/11

Chuck Spinney: TIME Blog on Key Questions That Don’t Get Asked in Presidential Debates

Government, Ineptitude, Military

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Key Questions That Don’t Get Asked in Presidential Debates

By Chuck Spinney | October 11, 2012

For reasons that were quite clear well before the Afghan “surge” began (see here and here), America’s Afghan adventure is now ending without achieving its goals, despite Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s claim Wednesday in Brussels that “significant progress” has been made in the war.

To the contrary, the Taliban have survived the U.S. troop surge with its fangs and shadow governments intact; they have no incentive to negotiate, and they are poised to launch a spring offensive in 2013.

The prospects for a civil life in Afghanistan are likely to become even more remote than they were before we intervened.

Indeed, some experts think the ground work has been laid for a disastrous civil war, perhaps even worse than that which occurred after the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989 with their tail between their legs. Only time will tell how bad things will be, but a recent report by Gilles Dorronsoro for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains quite persuasively why it is now virtually certain that events in Afghanistan will be ugly and murderous.

One would expect a healthy democratic government, one based on the principle of accountability, would be intent on learning from its errors and inclined to seek an understanding of how it got itself into such a mess.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: TIME Blog on Key Questions That Don't Get Asked in Presidential Debates”

2012/10/112012/10/11

Steven Aftergood: Presidential Directive Protecting Intelligence Community Whistleblowers

09 Justice

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Obama Issues Directive on Intelligence Community Whistleblowers

President Obama yesterday issued Presidential Policy Directive 19 on “Protecting Whistleblowers with Access to Classified Information.”

The directive generally prohibits official reprisals against an intelligence community employee who makes a “protected disclosure” concerning unlawful activity or “waste, fraud, and abuse.” It does not authorize disclosure of classified information outside of official channels to the press or the public.

The directive was occasioned by the ongoing failure of Congress to extend the protections of the Whistleblower Protection Act to intelligence community employees.

The new presidential directive, reported today by Joe Davidson in the Washington Post, was welcomed by whistleblower advocacy organizations.

“While this directive is not a panacea, it begins to fill a large void in whistleblower protections and lays the framework for more government accountability where it is sorely needed,” said Angela Canterbury of the Project on Government Oversight. “Because the President directs agencies to create procedures for internal review of claims, we will be very interested in the rulemaking and strength of the due process rights in practice.”

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2012/10/112012/10/11

Berto Jongman: New World Order (Banks) Facing Challenge from New New World Order (BRICS+)

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

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Being read in Europe.

Swiss Study Shows 147 Technocratic “Super Entities” Rule the World

Susanne Posel
Infowars.com
October 10, 2012

bank control — Click on Image to Enlarge

The Swiss Federal Institute (SFI) in Zurich released a study entitled “The Network of Global Corporate Control” that proves a small consortiums of corporations – mainly banks – run the world. A mere 147 corporations which form a “super entity” have control 40% of the world’s wealth; which is the real economy. These mega-corporations are at the center of the global economy. The banks found to be most influential include:

• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• JPMorgan Chase & Co
• Vanguard Group
• UBS
• Deutsche Bank
• Bank of New York Melon Corp
• Morgan Stanley
• Bank of America Corp
• Société Générale

However as the connections to the controlling groups are networked throughout the world, they become the catalyst for global financial collapse.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: New World Order (Banks) Facing Challenge from New New World Order (BRICS+)”

2012/10/112012/10/11

Berto Jongman: Food Security Index & Map 2013

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Earth Intelligence

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Food security in 75% of African countries at high or extreme risk – Maplecroft global index

‘Arab Awakening' countries at increased risk from 2013 food price shocks

10/10/2012

Despite strong economic growth, food security remains an issue of primary importance for Africa, according to a new study by risk analysis company Maplecroft, which classifies 75% of the continent’s countries at ‘high’ or ‘extreme risk.’

food_security_risk_index_2013_map — Click on Image to Enlarge

In the light of recent food price spikes, the findings are especially significant for areas of sub-Saharan Africa where poverty, armed conflict, civil unrest, drought, displacement and poor governance can combine to create conditions where a food crisis may take hold.

Africa accounts for 39 of the 59 most at risk countries in Maplecroft’s Food Security Risk Index and hosts nine of the eleven countries in the ‘extreme risk’ category. These include: Somalia and DR Congo (ranked joint 1st in the index), Burundi (4), Chad (5), Ethiopia (6), Eritrea (7), South Sudan (9), Comoros (10) and Sierra Leone (11). The countries of Haiti (3) and Afghanistan (8) complete the category.

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2012/10/102012/10/10

Mini-Me: Libyan Guards Tell Their Story

Government, Ineptitude

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Huh?

Libya guards speak out on attack that killed U.S. ambassador

Two Libyan militiamen guarding the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi deny aiding the attackers. They say they initially fought back but fled when outnumbered.

By Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles TimesOctober 10, 2012, 7:02 p.m.EXTRACTS:

BENGHAZI, Libya — Face down on a roof inside the besieged American diplomatic compound, gunfire and flames crackling around them, the two young Libyan guards watched as several bearded men crept toward the ambassador's residence with semiautomatic weapons and grenades strapped to their chests.

. . . . . . . . .

But nothing, they say, had prepared them for this. They had practiced for an attack by 10 or 15 people; now there were scores of professional-looking militants who moved methodically and used well-practiced hand signals. To make matters worse on the night of Sept. 11, instead of four militiamen who were supposed to be on guard, there were only two inside the compound.

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