Harvard Business Review | 2:00 PM September 20, 2012
For soldiers in the field, immediate access to — and accurate interpretation of — real-time imagery and intelligence gathered by drones, satellites, or ground-based sensors can be a matter of life and death.
Capitalizing on big data is a high priority for the U.S. military. The rise in unmanned systems and the military's increasing reliance on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technologies have buried today's soldiers and defense professionals under a mountain of information. Since 9/11 alone, the amount of data captured by drones and other surveillance technology has increased a jaw-dropping 1,600%. And this avalanche of data will only increase, since the number of computing devices the Armed Services have in play is expected to double by 2020.
Rising to this challenge, defense companies have made major strides in image processing and analysis. Companies like our own have deployed technologies and software solutions for troops in Afghanistan that help soldiers quickly make sense of imagery and video feeds captured by unmanned systems flying overhead. And we are working on enhancing such technologies to decrease the lag time between gathering and interpreting data.
A special news program showcasing newly-leaked and highly-classified Syrian security documents will be aired by Al Arabiya News Channel, the 24/7 free-to-air news and current affairs newscaster.
These documents were obtained with the assistance of members in the Syrian opposition; which has preferred not to elaborate on how they got hold of them, Al Arabiya said.
The channel said that it has verified and authenticated hundreds of these documents and that it has decided to disclose ones with substantial news value and political relevance.
“The documents will reveal – for the first time – shocking information which includes details about what happened to the Turkish fighter-jet downed by Syria and incidents which reveal the Syrian regime’s role in attempting to shake Jordan’s and Lebanon’s stability,” Al Arabiya said.
The newly leaked documents reveal the Iranian and Russian roles in aiding the Assad regime and the establishment of a joint command force which intervenes in all matters related to the Syrian crisis.
A shocking new Federal Security Service (FSB) report circulating in the Kremlin today alleges that an entire American family that sought Russian protection from the Obama regime was massacred by US intelligence agents within hours of their planned escape from the United States.
According to this report, on 22 September a woman who indentified herself as Kathleen Peterson visited the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Washington D.C. under the pretense of signing up to take a course titled Russian Language Express Course A-1 for beginners set to begin on 26 September whereupon she approached director Yuriy Zaytsev and “slipped into his hand,” while shaking it, an encrypted computer thumb drive covered in a small note that said “please help us we’re in danger.”
Following “standard protocols” for such instances, when Russian officials are approached on American soil by US citizens, this report continues, the note and thumb drive in question were “processed” according to “established procedures” and revealed the plans of Mrs. Peterson, her husband Albert [both pictured 2nd photo left], and their two children, Mathew and Christopher, to leave Washington D.C. on 23 September on a flight to Paris where it was requested they be met by Russian security personal as this family feared their lives were in danger.
Within 24 hours of Mrs. Peterson passing her information to Russian officials, this report says, she, her husband and two children were violently gunned down in their Fairfax County Virginia home on 23 September with this massacre being blamed by US police officials on a murder-suicide plot initiated by her husband, Albert, with at least one Western news source, quoting a source indentified only as “Maggie L.”, stating this tragedy was due to his, Albert’s, fears over Obama being reelected as US President.
According to US news sources, Albert Peterson was a longtime employee of the US defense giant Northrop Grumman until he resigned in 2009, and Kathleen Peterson was employed by the US defense contracting firm Blackbird Technologies located in Herndon, Virginia.
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This FSB report further notes Blackbird Technologies “tracking and tagging” of those US citizens destined to be placed in America’s most feared prisons called Communication Management Units, or CMU’s. These secretive political prisons for “domestic terrorists” radically restricts prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the dreaded “Supermax”, and any other such prison operating in the Western world.
The New York TimesSunday Review, September 22, 2012
IT has been just over 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the last great additions to the world’s list of independent nations. As Russia’s satellite republics staggered onto the global stage, one could be forgiven for thinking that this was it: the end of history, the final major release of static energy in a system now moving very close to equilibrium. A few have joined the club since — Eritrea, East Timor, the former Yugoslavian states, among others — but by the beginning of the 21st century, the world map seemed pretty much complete.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Now, though, we appear on the brink of yet another nation-state baby boom. This time, the new countries will not be the product of a single political change or conflict, as was the post-Soviet proliferation, nor will they be confined to a specific region. If anything, they are linked by a single, undeniable fact: history chews up borders with the same purposeless determination that geology does, as seaside villas slide off eroding coastal cliffs. Here is a map of what could possibly be the world’s newest international borders.
L. Randall Wray and Michael Hudson present at the Modern Money and Public Purpose seminars. L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Michael Hudson Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City), and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET).
This video is an hour and three-quarters long — Wray begins, then Hudson takes over at 43:00 — so I suggest you listen to it over your Sunday morning coffee instead of NPR. (And if you’ve been taking note of all the “tally stick” jokes in the threads lately, I’m guessing this video is where that comes from…)
