Public Intelligence Blog

Chuck Spinney

Patrick Cockburn has written a very important essay on Syria in the London Review of Books (attached below).  The essay is aptly titled but has only a few oblique, albeit important, references to Sykes – Picot Agreement, a document some readers may not familiar with.  Let’s begin with a little background.

The Sykes-Picot agreement (it was a secret agreement concocted by two bureaucrats) is one of the most cynical documents in the creation of the modern Middle East.

The Encylopaedia Britannica describes it accurately as follows:

It was a … “secret convention made during World War I (1916) between Great Britain and France, with the assent of imperial Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. The agreement took its name from its negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes

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Stephen E. Arnold

Open Source Security Remains Corporate Concern

Posted: 22 May 2013 06:15 AM PDT

When it comes to enterprise information technology concerns, security is usually at the top of the list. Some say that using open source software leaves an organization more susceptible to security risks, while others argue just the opposite. This very debate continues in the Java World article, “Survey: Control and Security of Corporate Open Source Projects Proves Difficult.”

The article hones in a particular component of the security issue, whether or not an organization utilizes an open source policy. Results were compiled through a survey:

“When the 3,500 survey respondents were asked what are the biggest challenges in their company’s open-source policy, the main reasons listed were ‘no enforcement,’ ‘it slows down development’ and ‘we find out about problems too late in the process.’ When asked who in the organization has primary responsibility for open-source policy and governance, 36 percent ascribed that role to ‘application-development management,’ 14 percent to ‘IT operations,’ 16 percent to legal, 13 percent to an open-source committee or department, 7 percent to security, 7 percent to risk and compliance and 7 percent to ‘other.’”

So of the organizations that do utilize an open source policy, many acknowledge little enforcement paltry oversight. These concerns are real. However, an organization may benefit from a compromise, a value-added open source software option. A solution like LucidWorks is fully packaged and supported; not just free-roaming bits of code to be grabbed from the free web. Users and managers can feel more confident in LucidWorks because it is packaged in a way that is easier for them to understand. Most importantly, LucidWorks has long-term industry support and positive track record.

Emily Rae Aldridge, May 24, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

Michael Scheuer

The Geeks Who Leak

The President calls them a threat to national security. the Internet calls them heroes. A new wave of hacktivists is changing the way we handle secrets.

By Michael Scherer

Time, June 24, 2013, Pg. 22

The 21st century mole demands no payments for his secrets. He sees himself instead as an idealist, a believer in individual sovereignty and freedom from tyranny. Chinese and Russian spooks will not tempt him. Rather, it’s the bits and bytes of an online political philosophy that attract his imagination, a hacker mentality founded on message boards in the 1980s, honed in chat rooms in the ’90s and matured in recent online neighborhoods like Reddit and 4chan. He believes above all that information wants to be free, that privacy is sacred and that he has a responsibility to defend both ideas.

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Neal Rauhauser

Islam’s Doctrinal Divide

Americans were largely ignorant of the Muslim faith prior to 9/11, but in the years since we have at least learned that there are two major branches and that not all Muslims are Arab. I came across this graphic of global Muslim sects in other reading a few days ago and saved it for an opportune moment, not realizing how quickly I would need it.

The geographic display of the divide between Sunni and Shia is a fair match for the count of adherents – about 85% of all Muslims are Sunni. There are several conflicts where the sectarian differences are important. These include:

• Alawite Syrians on the coast, terrified of the coming Sunni majority government
• Majority Shia Bahrain chafing under a Sunni monarchy
• Yemeni Shia fighting to restore the North/South Yemen divide

Click on Image to Enlarge

One bright spot has been NATO relations with the ethnic Hazara minority in Afghanistan. They are clearly visible in the global sects map as a yellow Jafari Shia donut hole in the middle of what is otherwise Hanafi Sunni territory.

Read rest of post with more graphics.

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Michelle Monk

Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism: US Media Blacks Out Story

May 8, 2013 by Joe Martino

The debate over vaccines continues as an Italian court ruled in favor of the Bocca family whose nine-year-old son became autistic after receiving the MMR (Measles/Mumps & Rubella) vaccine. I came across this case and felt it was a good idea to report on this as the vaccine debate has been a hot topic here lately. Although the case concluded in 2012, the information is just as relevant today….

Continue reading here.

It’s worth noting: Vaccines aren’t the only thing that cause autism. A variety of other factors can contribute, including gluten. My mom’s friend’s nephew had autism until he was 4 years old. They went gluten free, and his autism healed completely.  Learn more here: Wheat conspiracy: How it causes 300+ symptoms, diseases & misdiagnoses and the CURE

George Soros

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

George thought you might be interested in the op-ed below published today by Guinean President Alpha Condé. President Condé writes about the struggle to reform business practices in Guinea’s mining sector so all the people of Guinea can benefit from the country’s immense mineral wealth. The op-ed comes in the context of Conde’s participation in this year’s G8 meeting, which is focusing on trade, taxes, and transparency. OSF has been in the forefront of promoting transparency particularly in the governance of natural resources. President Condé is emerging as a champion of these values in Africa. His op-ed is an elegant statement of why the issue is so vital to the continent’s development.

Best regards,
Michael Vachon

Alpha Conde

In Guinea we want our resource wealth to work for all the people.

We need G8 support for transparency and good global business governance so that our assets can be used to benefit everyone rather than just a few greedy mining companies and politicians.

In December 2010, I was elected president of Guinea in its first truly open and democratic elections. I said then that I had inherited a country, not a state. Our economy was in ruins, our people among the poorest on the planet and our political system weakened by decades of corruption, dictatorship and misrule.

It needn’t be so. Guinea has vast mineral wealth, the world’s largest reserves of bauxite and some of the highest grade iron ore deposits.

Making these assets work for all our people rather than a few unscrupulous international mining companies and politicians means confronting the deeply ingrained corruption in our politics and business. But uprooting such corruption can be painfully slow, and is often dangerous. After all, vested interests do not welcome challenge.

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Berto Jongman

Digital Grab: Corporate Power Has Seized the Internet

Norman Solomon
Ethical Technology

Posted: Jun 14, 2013

If your daily routine took you from one homegrown organic garden to another, bypassing vast fields choked with pesticides, you might feel pretty good about the current state of agriculture. If your daily routine takes you from one noncommercial progressive website to another, you might feel pretty good about the current state of the Internet. But while mass media have supplied endless raptures about a digital revolution, corporate power has seized the Internet—and the anti-democratic grip is tightening every day.

“Most assessments of the Internet fail to ground it in political economy; they fail to understand the importance of capitalism in shaping and, for lack of a better term, domesticating the Internet,” says Robert W. McChesney in his illuminating new book, Digital Disconnect.

Amazon Page

Plenty of commentators loudly celebrate the Internet. Some are vocal skeptics. “Both camps, with a few exceptions, have a single, deep, and often fatal flaw that severely compromises the value of their work,” McChesney writes. “That flaw, simply put, is ignorance about really existing capitalism and an underappreciation of how capitalism dominates social life. . . . Both camps miss the way capitalism defines our times and sets the terms for understanding not only the Internet, but most everything else of a social nature, including politics, in our society.”

And he adds: “The profit motive, commercialism, public relations, marketing, and advertising — all defining features of contemporary corporate capitalism — are foundational to any assessment of how the Internet has developed and is likely to develop.”

Concerns about the online world often fixate on cutting-edge digital tech. But, as McChesney points out, “the criticism of out-of-control technology is in large part a critique of out-of-control commercialism. The loneliness, alienation, and unhappiness sometimes ascribed to the Internet are also associated with a marketplace gone wild.”

Discourse about the Internet often proceeds as if digital technology has some kind of mind or will of its own. It does not.

For the most part, what has gone terribly wrong in digital realms is not about the technology. I often think of what Herbert Marcuse wrote in his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man: “The traditional notion of the ‘neutrality’ of technology can no longer be maintained. Technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put; the technological society is a system of domination which operates already in the concept and construction of techniques.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Put quite simply, Open Source Everything (OSE) and the Autonomous Internet are the foundations for liberty in a digital world.

See Also:

Autonomous Internet Roadmap

Open Source Everything – List and Book

Jim Fetzer

JFK 50th: The keys to understanding his assassination

On 22 November 2013, the Oswald Innocence Campaign will be hosting the premiere event to commemorate the 50th observance of the JFK assassination. Presenting cutting-edge research on the death of our 35th President that holds the keys to understanding what took place, it will feature some of the best authors on some the most important evidence that clarifies and illuminates that tragic event in Dallas, 50 years ago. 

The research presented will advance extensive, detailed evidence establishing that the assassination of JFK was a “national security event”, which involved crucial elements of the most powerful institutions in the American government, including the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, the FBI and the Secret Service, who conspired with the Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans and Texas oil men to remove JFK from office and replace his policies with those of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

As Ralph Cinque has observed, this November 22nd, the government and the media are going to be going all out with the official lie about JFK–and with extreme prejudice. They are going to pull all the stops to promote the indefensible and long-disproven lie–one more stomach-churning time. What can we do to stand up to this evil pomposity? We can literally stand together–in Santa Barbara. We can come together and evoke the call for JFK truth.  A coup d-etat took place in 1963, and we have been living with the results of it for half a century–with millions of dead across the globe. With the death of John Kennedy, the US became a perpetual warfare state, and we live every day of our lives with the consequenes of that monstrous fact. So, join us on this very special day to find strength in numbers, to make a blip on the national radar and take personal responsibility for disseminating the truth about JFK.

What you weren’t supposed to ever know

The evidence that substantiates the scenario of the assassination as a national security event is extensive and compelling.  It has generate enormous resistance even within the JFK community, where several of those who will present their findings have been banned in a massive effort to suppress the truth and preserve the illusion that it was an event of a different kind, where the view that “the Mafia did it” or “the Cubans did it” or “the KGB did it” are frequently advanced, but where none of them could have effected the cover-up that was indispensable to convey the false impressions this conference will correct:

*  Lee Harvey Oswald was working for the government when he was framed for the death of JFK

* Photos and films allegedly taken during the assassination were altered to conceal the truth 

* Autopsy photos and X-rays were altered and faked to support a false account of the murder

* LBJ was a pivotal player–perhaps the pivotal player–who brought about the assassination

* George H.W. Bush was not only in Dealey Plaza but took an active role in carrying out the plot

* There were multiple shooters who tied the conspirators together to insure their mutual silence

* They included a Deputy Sheriff, an Air Force expert, an anti-Casto Cuban, a Police Officer and a Mafia shooter 

* LBJ’s personal hit-man, who killed a dozen people for Lyndon, also appears to have been directly involved

* The Mafia could not have extended its reach into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays and photographs

* Anti-Castro Cubans would have been unable to substitute someone else’s brain for that of JFK

* While the KBG had the capability to alter films, it could not have gained access to the Zapruder film

The experts assembled for this unique conference–which will explain how it was done, who was responsible and why, and how it was covered up–have invested decades upon decades of their lives to research on crucial aspects of the case, including the medical, the ballistic, and the film and photographic evidence.  They include the leading authorities on the role of Lyndon Baines Johnson, on the involvement of George H.W. Bush, on the management of the cover-up, on the death of key witnesses intimately related to JFK and by others who personally knew the man accused of killing him.  If you are there, you will understand what went down.

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The Germans have done it. The Japanese are doing it. We remain in the grip of the carbon energy barons.

Japan: The World’s New Star in Solar Power

FORTUNE — Until recently less than 1% of Japan’s electrical power output came from renewables. But following the catastrophe of Fukushima and the power blackouts that followed, Japan has seen an explosion in investment in alternatives. Solar, in particular, in this averagely photon-blessed country, has seen a seismic rise of late and is this year poised to become the world’s largest solar market in volume after China.

According to a report by energy analyst IHS on Japan’s energy mix, Japan’s solar installations jumped by “a stunning 270% (in gigawatts) in the first quarter of 2013.” That means by the end of 2013 there will be enough new solar panels equal to the capacity of seven nuclear reactors. Such massive growth will allow Japan to surpass Germany and become the world’s largest photovoltaics (PV) market in terms of revenue this year.

“Japan is forecast to install $20 billion worth of PV systems in 2013, up 82% from $11 billion in 2012,” IHS said. “In contrast, the global market is set for tepid 4% growth. The strong revenue performance for Japan this year is partly driven by the high solar prices in the country.” Germany still leads with the total number of units and capacity, however, with its 32,192 megawatts. Japan is now closer to the U.S.’s 8,069 megawatts at 7,429 megawatts, according to London-based BNEF.

Read full article.

Dr. Russell Ackoff

Reflections on Intelligence Leaks and Contractors

Dr. Russell Ackoff (P)

Congressmen and others are suggesting that, because it was a contractor who leaked information about NSA’s surveillance activities, that the number of contractors in intelligence should be reduced.  Is it true that reducing contractors will reduce leaks?

Leaks can be measured in several different ways — by number of leaks, importance of the material, by motivation, number of pages, signals versus other types, or weighted toward the present.   Yet in all categories,
contractors have proven to be no more likely to leak compared to direct hires, including especially executives.

That’s not surprising because there is little difference between the two types of employees.  In the latest census of those cleared at the Top Secret level, the employment status could not be determined for over 7% (or 100,000).   Many contractors are former direct hires, and vice versa; a worker might change status without even changing his desk or assignment.   Direct hires and contractors are vetted exactly the same way, except that contractors undergo even longer delays and more inconvenience.   Contractors tend to change assignments more often – that is their main benefit – but the pace of reassignment has quickened among direct hires as well.  Both types tend to remain employed within the intelligence community, often within one or two agencies.

Edward Snowden had been a CIA employee.  He underwent extensive vetting, then extensive training and acculturation prior to stationing overseas.  He was committed to a career in intelligence, as much as any 29-year-old unmarried techie can be said to be committed.   Booz Allen, his employer for 3 months, was a convenient administrative apparatus for positioning him where his computer skills were needed within the NSA universe.

There is no evidence to suggest that contractors are more likely to leak, therefore an increase in the proportion of direct hires would not reduce leaks.  One might claim instead that an overall reduction of the
intelligence workforce would reduce leaks.  There is no evidence to substantiate that claim either, but the larger point is that we are creating a hash out of two separate issues.  There are legitimate questions
about how to shape the intelligence workforce, and leaks have little to do with it.  There are legitimate questions about how to prevent leaks, and shaping the workforce has little to do with it.

The case of Edward Snowden is well worth pondering for what is says about leaks, but not for what is says about contractors.  Leaking is a very big discussion that should not be hijacked by another agenda that needs to stand on its own.  If Congressmen want to reduce contracting, they need to make the case fairly and dispassionately.  This is rarely attempted,  including by the Post, perhaps because it is so much easier to excite
emotions and prejudices against contractors.  Yet contractors are, for the most part, hardly different from direct hires.  They are just doing the job that Congress asked for and paid for.

See Also:

Dr. Russell Ackoff (P) on IC and DoD + Design RECAP