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Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain discussed a political union at a meeting in Riyadh on 13 May. The arrangement under discussion would allow Bahrain to retain its seat at the United Nations, but the two states would merge foreign relations, defense and economic policy, according to press sources. The details have not been released.

Bahrain’s Prime Minister, the Army Chief of Staff and the Foreign Minister – all members of the al-Khalifa royal family — have stated their support for the union.

Comment: The King of Bahrain and the royal family are Sunni Muslims who govern a population of mostly Shiite Muslims. Thus, the news that a union with Saudi Arabia is under discussion has prompted widespread criticism that Saudi Arabia intends to make Bahrain a vassal state so as to keep the Shiites disenfranchised and subjugated.

On the other hand, the limited information in the public domain suggests Bahrain’s administration of internal affairs will not be changed by the union proposal. Bahrain, by itself, is not defensible against an Iranian attack or subversion, but in a union arrangement with Saudi Arabia it would not be alone.

Saudi King Abdallah has warned Iran repeatedly against meddling in Arab affairs. This union is consistent with his policy decision to stop Iranian meddling in Arab countries as well as the spread of Shi’i Islam which the Sunnis consider a heresy.

One advantage of the union would be that it would bypass tricky conditions attached to US foreign military sales. Conditions of the sales include that US military equipment can only be used for defense, cannot be resold without US permission and cannot be used outside the recipient country without US permission. Under a union arrangement, the Saudis would not need to consult the US before sending Saudi forces equipped with US tanks and armored personnel carriers back to Bahrain, unless they chose to.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  It is entirely possible that Saudi Arabia is moving to a whole new level of global diplomacy, information-sharing, military alliances, and economic entanglements (DIME).  Qatar is similar to Bahrain in multiple ways.  Below is a map of the Sunni – Shi’ite spread.  A religious war is brewing, not just Sunni – Shi’ite, but Pentecostals against Islam, Jews against everyone, Catholics in a panic, and so on.  We say it again:  counter-intelligence generally, and religious counter-intelligence specifically, is the ONE 21st Century aspect of the craft of intelligence that must continue to be secret and that must *explode* in the near-term.  Note:  within the eight “tribes” or communities, we include religion and labor organizations within the Civil Society tribe.  The others are academic, commerce, government at all levels, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit.

See Also:

Graphic: Muslim Sunni – Shi’ite Distribution (Global)

2012 PREPRINT AS SUBMITTED: The Craft of Intelligence

DefDog

I often ask folks who the Afghan hates the most. The most common answer, the Russians….that is not true.  It is the British and it is reminded to them in their flag:

The current Afghanistan flag is contained three solid colors such as black, red and green and each color represents a different page in the history of Afghanistan.

The black represents the 19th century era when Afghanistan was occupied and did not have independence. The red color means blood shed and fights for independence and the green means the independence achieved as well as hope and prosperity for the future. This three stripe flag was designed during King Amanullah Khan after he returned from a visit of Europe in 1928.

Also, a couple of articles from NPS…..

2012-05-14 Comparing USSR and US Losses in AF

2012-05-14 Deja Vu 22 Years After USSR Quits US Follows

Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Cash, and Time, Runs Out for Afghanistan’s Wi-Fi City

It was a project that symbolized America’s grand ambitions to rebuild Afghanistan: a DIY Wi-Fi network, free for Afghans to use, powering the aid projects and business ventures of the eastern city of Jalalabad. But now funding for the JLink network has run dry, and like so much of the Afghanistan war, it’s run out of time. Most of Jalalabad is about to go offline.

The sudden collapse of the network is causing local aid workers, entrepreneurs and the entire city to adjust to the prospect of life without a freely available internet. JLink is woven into the fabric of Jalalabad: It took about two years for high-speed internet to become available through JLink in the city’s public hospital, local elementary schools and the women’s dorm at Nangarhar University. After one of JLink’s two satellite connections went dark on May 1, some in the city’s aid community considered it a prelude to a larger international withdrawal from Afghanistan.

JLink is not something the Taliban destroyed. Its impending collapse illustrates what happens when grand ambitions lead to grand achievements that ultimately prove unsustainable — perhaps because they proceeded from unstable, utopian premises. And like the war itself, the group that created JLink is out of time to salvage its project.

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Patrick Meier

Joining the Qatar Foundation to Advance Humanitarian Technology

Big news! I’ll be taking a senior level position at the Qatar Foundation to work on the next generation of humanitarian technology solutions. I’ll be based at the Foundation’s Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and be working alongside some truly amazing minds defining the cutting edge of social and scientific computing, computational linguistics, big data, etc. My role at QCRI will be to leverage the expertise within the Institute, the region and beyond to drive technology solutions for humanitarian and social impact globally—think of it as Computing for Good backed by some serious resources.  I’ll spend just part of the time in Doha. The rest of my time will be based wherever necessary to have the greatest impact. Needless to say, I’m excited!

My mission over the past five years has been to catalyze strategic linkages between the technology and humanitarian space to promote both innovation and change, so this new adventure feels like the perfect next chapter in this exciting adventure. I’ve had the good fortune and distinct honor of working with some truly inspiring and knowledgeable colleagues who have helped me define and pursue my passions over the years. Needless to say, I’ve learned a great deal from these colleagues; knowledge, contacts and partnerships that I plan to fully leverage at the Qatar Foundation.

It really has been an amazing five years. I joined the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) in 2007 to co-found and co-direct the Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning. The purpose of the program was to assess how new technologies were changing the humanitarian space and how these could be deliberately leveraged to yield more significant impact. As part of my time at HHI, I consulted on a number of cutting-edge projects including the UNDP’s Crisis and Risk Mapping Analysis (CRMA) Program in the Sudan. I also leveraged this iRevolution blog extensively to share my findings and learnings with both the humanitarian and technology communities. In addition, I co-authored the UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Report on “New Technologies in Emergen-cies and Conflicts” (PDF).

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Daniel Pinchbeck

The Cosmic Hour: The End of the 5th Sun and the Beginning of Everything

Jill Ettinger and Baza Novic

Like him or not, the divisive David Icke nailed it when he said that the “great transformation” is about “freeing ourselves of the perceptions, rules, regulations and ‘norms’ of the passing energetic era and connecting with the new one.” It seems like everywhere we look this past year we’re seeing evidence of this transformation in events like the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, hundreds of protesters marching from New York City to Washington D.C. to rally against genetically modified foods, and in the number of Evolver Spores and other community-oriented groups sharing important films (like Thrive, DMT The Spirit Molecule, Forks Over Knives), supporting new paradigms in festival culture, alternative economy gift circles, skill shares and crowdfunding initiatives that are spreading across the globe as people open and embrace new ways of connecting, new ways of living.

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Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

Ernest Callenbach’s ECOTOPIA and its prequel ECOTOPIA EMERGING were major books in my developing thinking about how a sustainable society might evolve.  ECOTOPIA, the more famous of the two, provides Callenbach’s overall vision of what might be possible.  ECOTOPIA EMERGING – with far better characterization and more compelling plot – tells the story of how we – in all our diversity – bring that vision about.

Callenbach wrote a number of other books, including A CITIZEN LEGISLATURE (with Michael Phillips), which argues for a randomly selected legislature as an official part of government.  Inspired by Callenbach and other such writers, I explore this idea in one chapter of my forthcoming book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM (North Atlantic Books, Aug 2012).

Ernest Callenbach has had a significant influence in my life.  So I was greatly saddened to hear he died a month ago.  Then I learned that he had left us a message, found in his computer after his death.  I found his “epistle” quite moving, wide-ranging and potent.  So I’m sharing it with you below.

Of course I don’t agree with everything Callenbach says.  For example, I find his partisan framing interferes with the realization of his larger vision, and his dismissal of brainstorming fails to appreciate its proper role – to stimulate creative thinking – which can enrich the work of “groups in which ideas are proposed, critiqued, improved, debated.”  But these are minor objections compared to his deeply concerned but hopeful articulation of our “end of empire” times and his inspiring belief in the capacities of ordinary people to meet the challenges of those times.

His epistle was published as part of an appreciation of Callenbach written by Tom Engelhardt, who worked with Callenbach on a book about friendship.

Echoes of his care will last forever.

Coheartedly,
Tom

============

Excerpted from
Ernest Callenbach, Last Words to an America in Decline
by Tom Engelhardt

Epistle to the Ecotopians
By Ernest Callenbach

[This document was found on the computer of ECOTOPIA author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death.]

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Robert David STEELE Vivas

Press Release

WASHINGTON, April 10, 2012 – The World Bank today announced that it will implement a new Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products, effective July 1, 2012. The new policy builds on recent efforts to increase access to information at the World Bank and to make its research as widely available as possible. As the first phase of this policy, the Bank launched today a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.

The new Open Access policy, which will be rolled out in phases in the coming year, formalizes the Bank’s practice of making research and knowledge freely available online. Now anybody is free to use, re-use and redistribute most of the Bank’s knowledge products and research outputs for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

“Knowledge is power,” World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said. “Making our knowledge widely and readily available will empower others to come up with solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Our new Open Access policy is the natural evolution for a World Bank that is opening up more and more.”

The policy will also apply to Bank research published with third party publishers including the institution’s two journals—World Bank Research Observer (WBRO) and World Bank Economic Review (WBER)—which are published by Oxford University Press, but in accordance with the terms of third party publisher agreements. The Bank will respect publishing embargoes, but expects the amount of time it takes for externally published Bank content to be included in its institutional repository to diminish over time.

Event 21 May 2012 1230-1400 Washington DC

Join us for an Open Discussion: What the Bank’s Open Access Policy Means for Development

Monday, May 21, 2012 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET/16:30 – 18:00 GMT

The World Bank will be adopting an Open Access Policy as of July 1. In addition, the Bank recently launched the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) and became the first major international organization to adopt a set of copyright licenses from Creative Commons. As a result, a wealth of Bank research and knowledge products are now freely available to anyone in the world for use, re-use, and sharing.

• Why is this so significant?
• How can open access contribute to the goal of eliminating poverty?
• How does the new policy impact the Bank’s researchers and authors?
• How will the OKR benefit users of Bank knowledge, in particular those in developing countries?

Join us in person at the World Bank or online for a lively conversation about these and other aspects of open access to research, and its potential for development progress.

See Also:

The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

300 Million Talons...

Is The Food We Eat Killing Us?

Are we digging our own graves with our teeth?  Is the food that we eat every day slowly killing us?  When I was growing up, I just assumed that everything in the grocery store was perfectly safe and perfectly healthy.  I just assumed that the government and the big corporations were watching out for us and that they would never allow something harmful to be sold in the stores.  Boy, was I wrong!  Today, the average American diet is extremely unhealthy.  Most of the foods that we all love to eat are absolutely packed with things that will damage our health.  Many of the ingredients that make our foods “taste good” such as fat, salt and sugar can be extremely damaging in large amounts.  On top of that, most processed foods are absolutely loaded with chemicals and preservatives.  The next time you go to the grocery store, just start turning over packages and read the “ingredients” that are being put into our food.  If you have never done this before, you will be absolutely amazed.  In many of our most common foods there are “ingredients” that I cannot even pronounce.  Sadly, most Americans have no idea that eating a steady diet of these processed foods will likely leave them massively overweight, very sick and much closer to death.

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Eating healthy takes more time, more effort and more money than eating poorly does. Unfortunately, most Americans are content to chow down on foods that are quick to make and that taste good. In particular, Americans are absolutely addicted to foods that are loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. When you start looking at food product labels, you will find that either sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. For example, I was absolutely amazed when I learned that most bread sold in our grocery stores contains high fructose corn syrup. Why in the world would they need to put that into our bread? Today, Americans are consuming far more sugar and high fructose corn syrup than ever before, and this has many health professionals very alarmed.

Read full article.

Marcus Aurelius

British secret agent was al-Qaeda mole who cracked new ‘underpants’ bomb plot

A British undercover agent infiltrated al-Qaeda, volunteered to be a suicide bomber and smuggled out the latest version of the deadly underpants bomb, it can be disclosed.

Read full article.

CIA launches inquiry into media leaks over ‘underpants’ double agent

US spy chief James Clapper has ordered an inquiry into leaks to media outlets that exposed how the CIA foiled an al-Qaeda plot using a spy who infiltrated the terror group, officials said Wednesday.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  There are three levels here.  First, it is most likely the leak came from the White House, deliberately, and the IC investigation is mostly for show–and to make the subtle point that their investigation cannot cover the White House (if we had a proper national counterintelligence capability and the FBI had integrity, this would not be happening).  Second, as we found in Central America and elsewhere, the White House runs its own intelligence and covert action operations without regard to the secret intelligence chain of command, and we have no doubt that John Brennan is playing a double game (pun intended).  Third and last, if this is real, and we are inclined to think that it is not, it should be said that the British can be very very good, and the UK has the most target-rich environment on the planet for recruiting penetrations — it also has the most extremist penetrations of legitimate groups.  Just as the Soviets nailed every recruited emigree sent back in after WWII, we suspect that the extremists have a better grip on their own community than the Brits do.  In terms of evaluating the integrity of the British, we remind one and all that they supported the White House on all the lies about Iraq, and even went so low as to plagarize an unclassified paper from the Moneterey Institute of International Relations (MIIR), a desperate move made necessary in their eyes because they had no secret sources and had no real knowledge.  On balance, this smells.

See Also:

DefDog: CIA Claims Double-Agent, New Set of Explosive Underpants

Theophillis Goodyear

According to Wired Magazine:

U.S. Military Officers Taught: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

EXTRACT:

For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.

- – - – - – - – -

I don’t know if this is true, but if so, it’s insane. Most Islamic scholars agree that most of the so called “jihads” issued by fanatical Islamists aren’t legitimate jihads. according to the Quran. But if any group ever invaded the Holy Land—-Mecca or Medina—-that would be a justification for legitimate jihad according to virtually anyone’s interpretation of the Quran. In that case it would be the duty of every Muslim in the world to wage war on the invader. If the invader as the U.S., that would mean that every Muslim in the U.S. would then be at war with the U.S.

Imagine if the Saudi regime was toppled and a Saudi version of the Taliban took over. It could well happen. Then the U.S. and the entire world would be in a precarious situation. It would be foolhardy to attack or invade Saudi Arabia, because—-unless Mecca and Medina were not attacked or invaded, I suppose—-it would force all Muslims, around the world, to wage war against America. The idea of going to war with Islam is one of the stupidest ideas ever invented. Muslims live in virtually every country of the world. Every country in the world would erupt in war within its own borders. The consequences would be disastrous. This document, if it’s authentic, is the best possible gift to Islamist propagandists, because it justifies their greatest fears and suspicions. If it’s true, it’s mind boggling that anyone in the military could be that dumb.

No one could ever win a war with the one billion Muslims that are scattered out across the world. It’s impossible.

Phi Beta Iota:  There is a huge difference between contemplating a war on Islam, and forbidding Islam to undermine one’s own homeland.  Spain came to the same conclusion about both Islam and Jews, hence the Expulsion Edicts.  Both of these religions have deeply subversive aspects and seem to inevitably threaten the integrity of the society, the government, and the private sector of any host nation that permits them to carry on without oversight or restraint.  This is one reason we have been stressing religious counterintelligence for over a decade.  Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, they all have their own agendas, their own ways of conducting espionage and formenting treason, but they are not quite as pernicious.  It’s time we got a grip on religion as a threat to society and the state.

See Also:

Journal: Government Corruption and Inattention; Foreign Influence and Access: Religious Counterintelligence

Journal: Muslim Tide Arousing US Heartland Anger But Loss of Moral Legitimacy Via Israel and Loss of National Intelligence Shackles America

Journal: NIGHTWATCH Extract France & Citizenship

Koko: CIA Bows to Islamic Radicals, with Strong Comment on Need for Religious Counterintelligence

Mini-Me: Agents of Religion – Religion of Agents

Reference: Study of Islamic Theology