NOTE: GS(3) Intelligence Briefing is posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. The Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global and Cyberspace. Each issue provides insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. “Words of Power" commentary is also posted on a bi-weekly basis. This commentary explores a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability and spirit. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/
With its unprecedented risks and threats, e.g., global warming, mega slums, failed states, religious extremism, nuclear proliferation, etc., the 21st Century security crisis challenges humanity in many ways. Economic security and environmental security are inextricably intertwined with energy security. National security is unattainable without a global security framework. Economic espionage and cyber crime have a profound impact on globalization, and vice versa. Security and sustainability have become interdependent. We cannot achieve either one without the other. Furthermore, the many challenges of the 21st Century Security Crisis, or as I call it the “Dissonant Convergence,” demand a spiritual response, grounded in those life-affirming qualities of the human spirit that transcend any particular belief system: e.g., compassion, conscience, clarity of mind, acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the oneness of all life. That is why I call my analysis “GS(3) Intelligence,” “GS(3)” stands for Global Security, Sustainability and Spirit.
There is a serious disconnect between reality and public policy in both industrialized and developing nations. It is particularly egregious in the U.S.A. The superpower that should be leading the world is still in denial about global warming, and its misdirected, wrongly premised “war on terrorism” has only aggravated the threat of such attacks throughout the world. This disconnect is largely the result of too little courage, and too much complacency, in the mainstream news media and the political establishment. If the evening news wanted to inform and engage you, instead of sedate and distract you, it would read more like this GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, and less like a corporate infomercial or a government propaganda broadcast. If public policy and corporate strategy were aimed at serving the common good and cultivating opportunity, instead of pandering to suicidally self-absorbed special interests, we would be debating how best to implement the Kyoto Accords and the UN Millennium Goals, instead of arguing over illegal immigration and gay marriage.
Here are highlights from 15 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, which provide insight on important global issues and trends, such as bird flu, global warming, energy security, the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, human rights, economic espionage and cyber crime. Excerpts and links follow below this summary. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
“[Christian Aid] estimates that a "staggering" 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by 2100. Many millions more face death and devastation from climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict…..” (Independent, 5-15-06)
“Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports….Also known as the Mountains of the Moon, the glaciers on Rwenzori were first reported to Europeans by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who said the Nile was supplied by snowcapped mountains at the equator in Africa.” (Associated Press, 5-15-06)
“Behind its mighty facade, Russia’s energy sector, which the Kremlin has used in recent months to bully its neighbors and expand its geopolitical reach, suffers from a decaying infrastructure and a dependence on Western technology and cheap Central Asian energy. Russian exporters are able to ship large quantities of energy to Europe and Asia today only because of its unique relationship to Central Asian oil and gas producers. And the future of this relationship is crucial to understanding the global energy game….” (Eurasianet, 5-16-06)
ASIA PACIFIC
Seoul—a city long synonymous with unchecked urban development, where Parks were more commonly found in the phone book than on the streets—is growing green. Besides the restored Cheonggyecheon, which opened last October, the city has helped plant some 3.3 million trees since 1998 and recently developed Seoul Forest, a $224 million patch of urban woodland comparable to London's Hyde Park. A cutting-edge, clean-running transit system is slowly weaning Seoulites off their auto addiction….(Time Asia, 5-8-08)
Tropical Storm Chanchu pummeled southern China, where it killed at least eight people Thursday to bring its death toll in Asia to 47, flooding scores of homes in an area where officials evacuated almost 1 million people….The United Nations says the incidence of storms in the Western Pacific region rose by about 2 percent from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Last year was particularly heavy, with a record 10 typhoons and tropical storms striking Japan….(Associated Press, 5-18-06)
"Human-to-human transmission in Indonesia is also suggested by the many clusters with 5-10 day gaps between the disease onset date of the index case in additional family members. In addition, the only human sequence that has been made public has a novel cleavage site….(Recombinomics, 5-18-06)
“Experts are frustrated that investigations into a cluster of bird flu infections in Indonesia are moving too slowly, fearing a failure to pin down the source quickly may mean they miss a dangerous mutation of the virus. Seven members of a family in Kubu Simbelang village in north Sumatra were infected with the H5N1 virus and six of them died between May 4 and 12.” (Reuters, 5-19-06)
AMERICAS
Brazilian police say they have shot dead at least 22 more suspected criminals in a crackdown on gang violence that has left more than 150 people dead in the Sao Paulo area. State officials said on Wednesday 93 followers of the Capital First Command gang - know as the PCC – had been killed since the violence erupted….About 40 police officers and four members of the public have been killed in the clashes and 18 inmates have died in prison uprisings blamed on the PCC…. (Al Jazeera, 5-18-06)
Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor…In the US media in the 1980s, the "threat" of tiny Nicaragua was seriously debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being "softened up" for something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the "largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism". (Pilger, Guardian, 5-13-06)
“…the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will unveil two 60-second TV ads focusing on what it calls “global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions.” The ad, which will be aired in more than a dozen cities across the country, is being released just a week before the May 24th opening (in LA and NYC) of Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.” (Think Progress, 5-17-06)
GLOBAL
The pace of decline since 2003, if continued, would see the Arctic totally ice-free in summer within 30 years - though few scientists would stake their reputations on a long-term trend drawn from only three years. Experts at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California think the situation could be even worse. They are about to publish the results of computer simulations that show the current rate of melting, combined with increased access for warmer Pacific water, could make the summertime Arctic ice-free within a decade. (Guardian, 5-15-06)
The developed countries remain the world's largest industrial producers, but the center of gravity has begun to shift towards the developing world. Developing countries account for roughly one-third of global manufactured exports, up from 18% in 1980….The transport sector has seen substantial growth in greenhouse emissions. In developed countries emissions from international aviation have grown twice as fast as overall transport emissions. (Green Biz, 5-06)
The world's oil, gas and mining industries account for nearly two-thirds of all violations of human rights, environmental laws and international labor standards, according to a soon-to-be-released United Nations study. The food and beverages industry is a distant second, followed by apparel, footwear, and the information and communications technology sector. (Inter Press Service, 5-17-06)
By its conservative accounting, a billion people currently live in slums and more than a billion people are informal workers, struggling for survival. They range from street vendors to day laborers to nannies to prostitutes to people who sell their organs [for transplant]….The entire future growth of humanity will occur in cities, overwhelmingly in poor cities, and the majority of it in slums…A Dickensian world of Victorian poverty is being recreated, but on a scale that would have staggered the Victorians….The illusion today, as in the 19th century, is that we can somehow separate ourselves, or wall ourselves off, or take flight from the diseases of the poor….Without minimizing the explosive social contradictions still stored up in the countryside, it's clear that the future of guerrilla warfare, insurrection against the world system, has moved into the city…. (Tom Dispatch, 5-06)
CYBERSPACE
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and process control systems are two common types of industrial control systems that oversee the operations of everything from nuclear power plants to traffic lights. Their need for a combination of physical security and cybersecurity has largely been ignored….(FCW, 5-19-06)
Excerpts from these stories with links to the full texts follow below. Remember, words-of-power.blogspot.com is also a searchable database. It is meant to accelerate, intensify and enrich your online research.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
The poorest people in the world will be the chief victims of the West's failure to tackle global warning, with millions of Africans forecast to die by the end of the century, Christian Aid says…..It estimates that a "staggering" 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by 2100. Many millions more face death and devastation from climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict….In its report, The climate of poverty: facts, fears and hopes, Christian Aid calls on rich countries to fund a switch from fossil fuels to clean energy sources….
The warnings
* 182 million people in sub-Saharan African could die of disease by 2100.
* Average global temperatures could rise by between 1.5C and 6C by 2100; sea levels are set to rise by between 15cm and 95cm.
* The number of people affected by storms and floods has increased from 740 million to 2.5 billion people since the 1970s.
* Up to 3 million people die of malaria each year. Warmer, wetter weather will help the disease to spread.
* Climate change could reduce Africa's crop yields by 10 per cent.
Philip Thornton, West's Failure over Climate Change 'Will Kill 182m Africans,' Independent, 5-15-06
Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports. Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues….A century ago the Rwenzori glaciers were surveyed at 2.5 square miles. The area covered by glaciers halved between 1987 and 2003 and is now down to about 0.4 square mile, the researchers said. They said the glaciers are expected to disappear within the next 20 years if present trends continue. Also known as the Mountains of the Moon, the glaciers on Rwenzori were first reported to Europeans by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who said the Nile was supplied by snowcapped mountains at the equator in Africa.
Glaciers in Africa Expected to Disappear, Associated Press, 5-15-06
Behind its mighty facade, Russia’s energy sector, which the Kremlin has used in recent months to bully its neighbors and expand its geopolitical reach, suffers from a decaying infrastructure and a dependence on Western technology and cheap Central Asian energy. Russian exporters are able to ship large quantities of energy to Europe and Asia today only because of its unique relationship to Central Asian oil and gas producers. And the future of this relationship is crucial to understanding the global energy game….To many outside observers, the Russian energy sector has assumed an aura of a juggernaut….Appearances can be deceptive, however, at least when it comes to Russia’s energy sector. There are numerous signs that Russia is in danger of overextending itself, while dawdling on investing in its energy infrastructure….For now, Central Asian energy is helping Russia mask both current energy problems and future dilemmas….If Central Asian states start pumping oil to China and Azerbaijan, Russia would likely have to use its own production to meet domestic needs. This, in turn, would dash Moscow’s export plans for Europe and Asia….Many political observers believe Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan remain vulnerable to social explosions….If such a scenario occurs, Central Asia’s export ability could be impaired and the major energy players – the United States, EU, Russia and China – would all stand to be big losers.
Stephen Blank, RUSSIA’S ENERGY SECTOR HIDES WEAKNESSES BEHIND POWERFUL FAÇADE, EurasiaNet, 5-16-06
Asia Pacific
Seoul—a city long synonymous with unchecked urban development, where Parks were more commonly found in the phone book than on the streets—is growing green. Besides the restored Cheonggyecheon, which opened last October, the city has helped plant some 3.3 million trees since 1998 and recently developed Seoul Forest, a $224 million patch of urban woodland comparable to London's Hyde Park. A cutting-edge, clean-running transit system is slowly weaning Seoulites off their auto addiction….If this concrete jungle can shift into clean, sustainable urban development, then there's hope that other messy, environmentally challenged Asian cities like Beijing, Bombay and Jakarta can do the same. The South Korean capital's example could be especially instructive for its fellow Asian Tiger Hong Kong, where short-sighted political leadership has allowed the environment to degrade alarmingly. "Seoul is an interesting model in terms of a megacity," says Karl Kim, an urban-planning expert at the University of Hawaii who has traveled back and forth to Korea for the past two decades….Kim Won Bae, a director at the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), a Seoul-based think tank, traces the change back to disasters like the collapse of the shoddily constructed Sampoong department store in 1995, which killed 501 people, and the economic crisis of 1997. "Those events made a lot of people think again about what economic growth was all about," he says….There's also mounting skepticism about the assumption that clean, attractive environs come at the cost of economic performance—a belief still widely held even in advanced Asian cities like Hong Kong. "If we don't place an emphasis on environmental friendliness, not only will citizens leave the city, but foreign investors won't choose Seoul," says Mayor Lee....
BRYAN WALSH, Saving Seoul: Pollution is ruining the quality of life in much of urban Asia. But Seoul's transformation into a greener city proves the tide can still be turned, Time, 5-8-06
Tropical Storm Chanchu pummeled southern China, where it killed at least eight people Thursday to bring its death toll in Asia to 47, flooding scores of homes in an area where officials evacuated almost 1 million people. Chanchu was the most severe typhoon to strike the South China Sea region during the month of May and already was blamed for 37 deaths and the destruction of thousands of homes in the Philippines last weekend….Twenty-seven Vietnamese fishermen, meanwhile, were believed missing after three boats in Chinese waters went down after being swept up in the storm, officials said Thursday….China said it had moved 905,000 people to safety in Guangdong and Fujian provinces just to the north. The storm bypassed the financial center of Hong Kong….The United Nations says the incidence of storms in the Western Pacific region rose by about 2 percent from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Last year was particularly heavy, with a record 10 typhoons and tropical storms striking Japan, leaving nearly 220 people dead or missing _ the largest casualty toll since 1983.
Typhoon Chanchu kills 47 people; nearly 1 million evacuated in China, Associated Press, 5-18-06
"It is certainly alarming,'' said Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. ``This is the largest H5N1 cluster we have seen. There are obviously important questions that we need answered. But right now it is too early in the investigation to say anything definitive.'' Yesterday, three members of the family said they were feeling sick, with symptoms including headache and cough. H5N1 bird flu symptoms in three additional family members are cause for concern….Six family members have already died and the index case developed symptoms about a week prior to symptoms in family members. The symptoms in the index case were April 27 and all infected family members were at an April 29 barbeque strongly implicating human-to-human transmission. H5N1 infection in three more family members would implicate human-to-human-to- human transmission in multiple family members.
Human-to-human transmission in Indonesia is also suggested by the many clusters with 5-10 day gaps between the disease onset date of the index case in additional family members. In addition, the only human sequence that has been made public has a novel cleavage site. One report has suggested that this novel sequence is found in additional human sequences, as well as a cat, and the swine in the Karo area have H5 antibodies. Since the sequence has not been reported in any poultry isolates, a non-poultry source is implicated However, testing of patients in Indonesia is predicated on exposure to dead or dying poultry, which would underestimate H5N1 from sources other than poultry.
Since there are over 30 confirmed H5N1 cases in Indonesia, it is likely that sequences from many or most of these cases is at a private WHO database. Those sequences should be released immediately.
Three Additional Family Members in Karo With Bird Flu Symptoms, Recombinomics, 5-18-06
Experts are frustrated that investigations into a cluster of bird flu infections in Indonesia are moving too slowly, fearing a failure to pin down the source quickly may mean they miss a dangerous mutation of the virus. Seven members of a family in Kubu Simbelang village in north Sumatra were infected with the H5N1 virus and six of them died between May 4 and 12. But experts and local health authorities have come no closer to finding the culprit. "This case shows surveillance work should intensify. When there are human infections, you have to find the source. It's too slow," said microbiologist Guan Yi…."If it was a pandemic strain, we'd be finished," he said….Bird flu antibodies were detected in pigs raised by the family, but nasal swabs taken from the swine, which all appear healthy, showed nothing. All the other animals tested negative….it is often impossible to determine if human-to-human transmission has occurred since family members are exposed to the same animal and environmental sources as well as to one another….
Tan Ee Lyn, Experts urge Indonesia to pin down bird flu source, Reuters, 5-19-06
Americas
Brazilian police say they have shot dead at least 22 more suspected criminals in a crackdown on gang violence that has left more than 150 people dead in the Sao Paulo area. State officials said on Wednesday 93 followers of the Capital First Command gang - know as the PCC – had been killed since the violence erupted on Friday….Newspapers used headlines such as "On the fifth day, revenge" and "Police respond with a massacre in Sao Paulo" in their reports on the police reaction. About 40 police officers and four members of the public have been killed in the clashes and 18 inmates have died in prison uprisings blamed on the PCC. The gangs launched a series of attacks on police stations, bars and banks in response to the transfers of their members, including leader Marcos "Marcola" Cacho, to a new high security prison. Police said they believed PCC leaders were organising the violence from their cells using mobile phones and shut down transmitters near the prisons.
Toll rises in Brazil violence, Al Jazeera, 5-18-06
Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor….His setting-up of misions as a means of bypassing saboteurs in the old, corrupt bureaucracy was typical of the extraordinary political and social imagination that is changing Venezuela peacefully. This is his "Bolivarian revolution", which, at this stage, is not dissimilar to the post-war European social democracies….It is not surprising that Chávez has now won eight elections and referendums in eight years, each time increasing his majority, a world record. He is the most popular head of state in the western hemisphere, probably in the world. That is why he survived, amazingly, a Washington-backed coup in 2002. Mariella and Celedonia and Nora and hundreds of thousands of others came down from the barrios and demanded that the army remain loyal….In the US media in the 1980s, the "threat" of tiny Nicaragua was seriously debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being "softened up" for something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the "largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism". When I said to Chávez that the US historically had had its way in Latin America, he replied: "Yes, and my assassination would come as no surprise. But the empire is in trouble, and the people of Venezuela will resist an attack. We ask only for the support of all true democrats."
John Pilger, Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society: Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him, Guardian, 5-13-06
…the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will unveil two 60-second TV ads focusing on what it calls “global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions.” The ad, which will be aired in more than a dozen cities across the country, is being released just a week before the May 24th opening (in LA and NYC) of Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says Exxon Mobil Corp. is a “major donor” largely as a result of its effort to push that position. CEI also gets funding from other oil companies through the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon documents reveal the company gave $270,000 to CEI in 2004 alone. $180,000 of that was earmarked for “global climate change and global climate change outreach.” Exxon has contributed over $1.6 million to CEI since 1998….For the oil industry, Al Gore’s film exposing the truth is perceived as a threat, and they have no shortage of funds to try to distort it.
Big Oil Launchs Attacks on Al Gore, Think Progress, 5-17-06
Global
Record amounts of the Arctic ocean failed to freeze during the recent winter, new figures show, spelling disaster for wildlife and strengthening concerns that the region is locked into a destructive cycle of irreversible climate change…..The Arctic is rapidly becoming the clearest demonstration of the effects of mankind's impact on the global climate. The temperature is rising twice as fast as the rest of the planet….The pace of decline since 2003, if continued, would see the Arctic totally ice-free in summer within 30 years - though few scientists would stake their reputations on a long-term trend drawn from only three years. Experts at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California think the situation could be even worse. They are about to publish the results of computer simulations that show the current rate of melting, combined with increased access for warmer Pacific water, could make the summertime Arctic ice-free within a decade.
David Adam, Meltdown fear as Arctic ice cover falls to record winter low, Guardian, 5-15-06
Published in May 2006 [by the UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs], Trends in Sustainable Development….
Top trends include the following:
The world is gradually shifting to cleaner forms of energy, but traditional biomass is still widely used in the household sector of some developing regions.
The developed countries remain the world's largest industrial producers, but the center of gravity has begun to shift towards the developing world. Developing countries account for roughly one-third of global manufactured exports, up from 18% in 1980.
The phase-outs of leaded gasoline and CFCs are global success stories but particulate air pollution and SO2 emissions remain high in many developing country cities.
The transport sector has seen substantial growth in greenhouse emissions. In developed countries emissions from international aviation have grown twice as fast as overall transport emissions.
Trends in Sustainable Development (2006), Green Biz, 5-06
The world's oil, gas and mining industries account for nearly two-thirds of all violations of human rights, environmental laws and international labor standards, according to a soon-to-be-released United Nations study. The food and beverages industry is a distant second, followed by apparel, footwear, and the information and communications technology sector. "The extractive industries - oil, gas and mining - also account for most allegations of the worst abuses, up to and including complicity in crimes against humanity," says the interim report titled "Promotion and Protection of Human Rights". A more detailed study is expected to be released later this year. These are typically for acts committed by public and private security forces protecting company assets and property; large-scale corruption; violations of labor rights; and a broad array of abuses in relation to local communities, especially the indigenous peoples….The interim U.N. study, by a team headed by John Ruggie, a special representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was conducted in response to a resolution by the now-defunct U.N. Commission on Human Rights…."The adoption of the Human Rights Norms for Transnational Corporations by the Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights was a step in that direction"….The U.N. study also said there are at least three "distinct drivers" behind the increased attention on transnational corporations. The first is simply the expression of one of the oldest axioms of political life: the successful accumulation of power by one type of social actor will induce efforts by others with different interests or aims to organize countervailing power….The second driver, according to the study, is that some companies have made themselves, and even their entire industries, targets by committing serious harm to human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and other social concerns…A third rationale for engaging the transnational corporate sector is the sheer fact that it has global reach and capacity, and that it is capable of acting at a pace and scale that neither governments nor international agencies can match.
Thalif Deen, The Scariest Predators in the Corporate Jungle, Inter Press Service, 5-17-06
Davis: Stunningly enough, classical social theory, whether Marx, Weber, or even Cold War modernization theory, none of it anticipated what's happened to the city over the last 30 or 40 years. None of it anticipated the emergence of a huge class, mainly of the young, who live in cities, have no formal connection with the world economy, and no chance of ever having such a connection….Previously, the data was untrustworthy, but the United Nations Habitat has made heroic efforts….By its conservative accounting, a billion people currently live in slums and more than a billion people are informal workers, struggling for survival. They range from street vendors to day laborers to nannies to prostitutes to people who sell their organs [for transplant]. These are staggering figures, even more so since our children and grandchildren will witness the final build-out of the human race. Sometime around 2050 or 2060, the human population will achieve its maximum growth, probably at around 10 to 10.5 billion people….fully 95% of this growth will occur in the cities of the south….The entire future growth of humanity will occur in cities, overwhelmingly in poor cities, and the majority of it in slums….The mega-slums of today were largely created in the 1970s and 80s….A Dickensian world of Victorian poverty is being recreated, but on a scale that would have staggered the Victorians. So, naturally, you wonder whether the preoccupation of the Victorian middle classes with the diseases of the poor isn't returning as well. Their first reaction to epidemics was to move to Hampstead, to flee the city, to try to separate from the poor. Only when it was obvious that cholera was sweeping from the slums into middle-class areas anyway, did you get some investment in minimum sanitation and the public-health infrastructure. The illusion today, as in the 19th century, is that we can somehow separate ourselves, or wall ourselves off, or take flight from the diseases of the poor….
Without minimizing the explosive social contradictions still stored up in the countryside, it's clear that the future of guerrilla warfare, insurrection against the world system, has moved into the city. Nobody has realized this with as much clarity as the Pentagon, or more vigorously tried to grapple with its empirical consequences. Its strategists are way ahead of geopoliticians and traditional foreign-relations types in understanding the significance of a world of slums…
TD: ...and of global warming.
Davis: Yes, because they realize the potential instability it will create and also perhaps imagine advantageous shifts in the balance of power in its wake. What the U.S. has demonstrated in recent years is an extraordinary ability to knock out the hierarchical organization of the modern city, to attack its crucial infrastructures and nodes, to blow up the TV stations, take out the pipelines and bridges. Smart bombs can do that, but simultaneously the Pentagon discovered that this technology isn't applicable to the slum periphery, to the labyrinthine, unmapped, almost unknown parts of the city, which lack hierarchies, lack centralized infrastructures, lack tall buildings. There's really quite an extraordinary military literature trying to address what the Pentagon sees as the most novel terrain of this century, which it now models in the slums of Karachi, Port au Prince, and Baghdad. A lot of this goes back to the experience of Mogadishu [in 1993], which was a big shock to the United States and showed that traditional urban war-fighting methods don't work in the slum city….
Tom Englelhardt Interviews w/ Mike Davis, Part I: Humanity's Ground Zero, Part II: The Imperial City and the City of Slums, TomDispatch.com, 5-06
Cyberspace
The electronic control systems that act as the nervous system for all critical infrastructures are insecure and pose disastrous risks to national security, cybersecurity experts warn. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and process control systems are two common types of industrial control systems that oversee the operations of everything from nuclear power plants to traffic lights. Their need for a combination of physical security and cybersecurity has largely been ignored….
SCADA on thin ice: Industrial control systems pose little-noticed security threat, FCW, 5-19-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/
global warming, climate change,
bird flu, Avian flu, H5N1, geopolitics, terrorism, Peak Oil, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Energy, Sustainable resources, Renewable Resources, Environment Millennium Goals, Alternative Energy
