The Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) was launched exactly a year ago tomorrow and what a ride it has been! It was on September 26, 2010, that I published the blog post below to begin rallying the first volunteers to the cause.
Phi Beta Iota: This is the most structured harnessing of distributed human intelligence that we know of, and it is especially empowering because of its strong geospatial roots. Now imagine similar forces in being to cover each of the ten high-level threats to humanity from local to global, each of the core policies, with citizen intelligence minutemen tallying true costs for every good and service, and sticking like leeches to every organization, illuminating corruption at every turn.
Right now, people in the USA are essentially getting picked off one or two at a time by social trends, like lack of good health care and lack of good jobs or a basic income leading to stress and various consequences including death (like possibly the recent tragedy down the road from us involving a murder/suicide and which is otherwise just seen as an isolated incident of domestic violance).
All together, that kind of stuff is adding up to millions of US citizens harmed (hundreds of thousands killed from heart disease alone). It even led to the loss of an entire US city (New Orleans during Katrina). And that harm ignores the greater the havoc the USA has caused abroad recently (millions of displaced people in Iraq, etc.) or costs being incurred to pass on to future generations (like Fukushima). Where is our trillion dollar a year defense industry ond defending us from all that? There seems very little most people think they can do about it. It is just ascribed to moral failings of the people involved (like you have no job or no health coverage or a bad marriage purely because you're a bad person), or some economic “wrath of God” (ironically for the USA supposedly being too compassionate perhaps with individual welfare-to-work?), or some weird notion of acceptable Congressional “gridlock”, or something like that.
If “communists” or “space aliens” were doing this to millions of US citizens, denying them access to doctors, ensuring they had no money, destroying their homes and cities, interfering with effective decision making by Congress, what would people in the USA be doing, considering we launched various trillion dollar wars based on 9/11 (where only thousands of people were killed)?
As an, alternative consider this essay by Tim O'Reilly, which relates to the Twirlip Open Governance draft I sent before: 🙂 “Government As a Platform”
“Government 2.0, then, is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level. The hope is that Internet technologies will allow us to rebuild the kind of participatory government envisioned by our nation’s founders, in which, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Joseph Cabell, “every man…feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day.”[1]”
Published on Saturday, September 24, 2011 by Reuters
by Chikako Mogi
TOKYO – Japan found the first case of rice with radioactive materials far exceeding a government-set level for a preliminary test of pre-harvested crop, requiring thorough inspection of the rice to be harvested from the region, the farm ministry said late on Friday.
Politics, Chicago style…..and is there any wonder why people are fed up? The media needs to wake up, in spite of their efforts the Florida Straw Poll returned a victory for someone they consistently overlook…..
September 21, 2011|By Jason Grotto, Tribune reporter
Most city workers spend decades in public service to build up modest pensions. But for former labor leader Dennis Gannon, the keys to securing a public pension were one day on the city payroll and some help from the Daley administration.
And his city pension is more than modest. It's the highest of any retired union leader: $158,000. That's roughly five times greater than what the typical retired city worker receives.
Chris Lynch was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He graduated from Michigan State University and joined the FBI in 1976, his principal qualification for the entry-level job being that he had never been arrested. He worked in the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., becoming a senior counterintelligence analyst, and earned a master's degree in International Relations in 1982. In 1985, he moved to the CIA, where most of his career was spent in counterintelligence in the Directorate of Operations. Now retired, Lynch lives near Washington and enjoys traveling, rediscovering old friends, and chipping away at a sleep deficit accumulated over thirty years.
The C.I. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle follows the author from the mailroom to the locked doors of compartmented “special projects” in Headquarters-level counterintelligence (CI).
In 1976, Chris Lynch joined the Intelligence Division mailroom at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., for three dollars per hour. He soon moved on to the first of many CI “desks,” and was then invited to join a newly-formed analytical unit, becoming responsible for the reporting from a KGB officer being handled “in place.”
Over the years, he became the FBI's “go-to guy” for information on KGB practices and personnel, and was often called upon for a “fresh look” at FBI CI targeting techniques. Moving to the CIA in 1985, Lynch's specialties included detecting hostile control and analysis of CIA operational tradecraft, working on cases that spanned the globe.
He was part of the initial CIA effort to investigate the losses of Soviet sources eventually attributed to the mole Aldrich Ames. His story includes unique details on high-profile CI and counterespionage cases, agents, and officers, including convicted spy Robert P. Hanssen, who was Lynch's supervisor for two years, and the dramatic case of a KGB officer whose cooperation with the FBI was exposed by both Ames and Hanssen.
Readers won't be able to put down this fascinating insider's look at undercover, double agent, and other CI operations at both FBI and CIA Headquarters.
Phi Beta Iota: This appears to be a very fine book, with great potential for those seeking to learn more about the discipline of intelligence and counter-intelligence.
