Public Intelligence Blog

Tom Atlee

Consensus: Manipulation or Magic?

Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Greeks Bank Run; Lines Form at ATMs; Nearly $1 Billion Withdrawn in Past Week

Without a government for the last eleven days, and amid mainstream discussion of a Euro Zone exit, the Greek people are realizing that the economic and political system as they know it is rapidly descending into chaos.

With massive jobless rates that have forced many into bartering to survive, and facing credit destruction across the entirety of the country that has led to shortages of critical supplies like life saving medicines, those with any money left at national banks are taking the desperate step of withdrawing as much of their savings as they can from a banking system on its last leg.

This is what it looks like when a populace plagued with uncertainty finally loses trust in the credibility of their country’s leadership and financial system.

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DefDog

The power of OPEN *.  You might think that the media would be doing this, but one would be wrong….they are content to be spoon fed lies, more lies, and damn lies…..it takes the public to pull back the curtain and expose what is really going on….that may be a reason the IC doesn’t like Open Source, it would continually show their inefficiencies…..

Blogger Shines Light on U.S. Shadow War in East Africa

David Axe

WIRED, 15 May 2012

An innocuous-seeming U.S. Air Force press release. A serendipitous satellite image in Google Earth. Snapshots from a photographer on assignment at a Spanish air base. The crash of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber in the United Arab Emirates. These are some of the fragments of information that Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti has assembled to reveal the best picture yet of the Pentagon’s secretive war in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

In a series of blog posts over the past two weeks, Cenciotti has described in unprecedented detail the powerful aerial force helping wage Washington’s hush-hush campaign of air strikes, naval bombardments and commando raids along the western edge of the Indian Ocean, including
terror hot spots Yemen and Somalia. Cenciotti outlined the deployment of eight F-15Es from their home base in Idaho to the international air and naval outpost at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, north of Somalia.

. . . . . . . . .

But arguably the most interesting vessels in the area are also the least flashy. Lewis and Clark-class supply ships, normally used to carry fuel and cargo, have also been used as Afloat Forward Staging Bases — in essence, seaborne military camps for housing Special Forces and launching helicopters and small boats. The ships can be configured with makeshift jails for holding captured pirates and, in theory, terror suspects.

Read full article with many links.

YARC YARC

Scientists: Viruses Could Power Electronics

Tuesday, 15 May 2012, 7:12 PM EDT

(NewsCore) – Scientists have developed a technique to generate power with harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.

The breakthrough could mean that one day, we might be able to charge our cell phones with paper-thin generators that harvest electricity from the vibrations of everyday tasks such as shutting a door or climbing stairs, the scientists said.

“More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics,” said Seung-Wuk Lee, a scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

The device works by harnessing the piezoelectric properties of the M13 bacteriophage, a virus that only attacks bacteria and is benign to people.

Piezoelectricity is electricity resulting from accumulation of a charge in a solid in response to pressure and is the basis for items like electric cigarette lighters and push-start propane barbecues.

“We’re now working on ways to improve on this proof-of-principle demonstration,” Lee added. “Because the tools of biotechnology enable large-scale production of genetically modified viruses, piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future.”

Read more: Berkeley Lab

Who? Who?

This interview overall undoubtedly has misconceptions, self-inflated bravado, gross exaggerations and so forth, but if the last statement he utters is true about people coming to them, even to a significantly lesser degree than he indicates, the world-ruling elites might be quaking ever-so-slightly, but involuntarily, in their boots. And much more so if indeed insiders are giving Anonymous the “keys to the kingdom,” the passwords into it.

Insider tells why Anonymous ‘might well be the most powerful organization on Earth

EXTRACT:

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?

A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody. Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  01  Any system built by humans can be hacked by humans.  02  A system’s security is heavily dependent on the legitimacy of the system owner in the eyes of those using the system.

See Also:

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

Who? Who?

WATCH THIS. 12 year old Canadian girl on banksters and debt

This little girl is simply amazing. She must have some pretty awesome parents. In a concise and clear way she explains the problem of national debt in language that anyone can understand.

VIDEO (5:26) from GodLike Productions

Phi Beta Iota:  Going viral, and rightly so.

See Also:

Matt Taibbi: GRIFTOPIA – RECAP

John Steiner

Why Won’t They Listen? ‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt

REVIEW By WILLIAM SALETANPublished:

NY Times Review of Books, March 23, 2012

You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong.

This isn’t an accusation from the right. It’s a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. In “The ­Righteous Mind,” Haidt seeks to enrich liberalism, and political discourse generally, with a deeper awareness of human nature. Like other psychologists who have ventured into political coaching, such as George Lakoff and Drew Westen, Haidt argues that people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments. But Haidt is looking for more than victory. He’s looking for wisdom. That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about ­manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them.

Haidt seems to delight in mischief. Drawing on ethnography, evolutionary theory and experimental psychology, he sets out to trash the modern faith in reason. In Haidt’s retelling, all the fools, foils and villains of intellectual history are recast as heroes. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who notoriously said reason was fit only to be “the slave of the passions,” was largely correct. E. O. Wilson, the ecologist who was branded a fascist for stressing the biological origins of human behavior, has been vindicated by the study of moral emotions. Even Glaucon, the cynic in Plato’s “Republic” who told Socrates that people would behave ethically only if they thought they were being watched, was “the guy who got it right.”

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Click on Image to Enlarge

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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