Saturday, July 31, 2010
Is WikiLeaks Blackmailing the Pentagon?
Is WikiLeaks Blackmailing the Pentagon?
Why are the Power Elite so worried about Wikileaks? Whistlerblowers are the servants of Truth and Justice right? What is in the file labeled "Insurance" that the Pentagon is so worried about? The new Lady GaGa CD? I don't think so...
Friday, July 30, 2010
What Some Bloggers Knew All Along & Many Others Loudly Denied
What Some Bloggers Knew All Along & Many Others Loudly Denied
Or, We Told You So,
Or, Who's Paranoid Now?
Being pp. 19 - 26 of a report by James Kinniburgh & Dorothy Denning, published by the United States Joint Special Operations University Press, Florida, in 2006. Herein posted as a teasing invitation to download the selfsame PDF, or else its Quick View counterpart.
All emphasis – italic, bold, and highlight – thoroughly, completely, and decidedly mine. (For references please consult original PDF). May the Gentle & Observant Reader benefit therefrom.
Blogs and Military Information Strategy
...blogs that serve a small community, or that fill a specific niche may be useful for monitoring and targeting select elements. People may and do serve in more than one social capacity; they may represent a class of community or peer opinion leaders—useful as both targets of influence operations and as vehicles for disseminating strategic communications.
[snip]
In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.
An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.
Any blogs and bloggers serving an IO mission must be coordinated and synchronized with the overall influence effort in time and message. However, they must be prepared to argue and debate with their audience successfully and independently on behalf of the U.S. policy stance. In this sense, bloggers must be able to “circumvent the hierarchy” as blogger George Dafermos put it. This means that they must be trusted implicitly to handle the arguments without forcing them to communicate “solely by means of marketing pitches and press releases.”
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information.
There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media, on all three layers, in support of military deception activities. Given the watchdog functions that many in the blogging community have assumed—not just in the U.S., but also around the world—doing so jeopardizes the entire U.S. information effort. Credibility is the heart and soul of influence operations. In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a wellthought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of exposure. Because of the potential blowback effect, information strategy should avoid planting false information as much as possible.
This brings us to an even more fundamental issue. Because the U.S. military is prohibited from conducting information operations against U.S. persons, it is reluctant to engage in Internet IO operations that might be characterized as PSYOP or deception. Once information is on the Internet, it can reach anyone, including those in the U.S. Thus, while the military offers factual news on the Internet through Public Affairs, it generally stays away from commentary and IO. At least initially, this challenge might be addressed by sticking with accurate, factual information of value to readers. Blogging can support PA and focus on improving communications and building trust with local communities and the public. A blog can be used to solicit and respond to questions and concerns from target populations. In addition, military leaders might offer personal commentary on nonmilitary blogs, with the usual disclaimers.
To use blogs effectively for an information campaign may require a new intelligence tool, one that can monitor and rapidly assess the informational events occurring in a specific portion of the blogosphere and their effects (if any) on the three layers of the local infosphere.
Blogs and Intelligence
Weblog derived intelligence can be considered a subset of both communications intelligence (COMINT) and open-source intelligence (OSINT). We would expect to see it used primarily in support of information operations, although it does offer a broad range of possible applications. It may consist of computer network exploitation (CNE) done in support of integrated PSYOP, PA, PD, MILDEC, and CA/CMO operations. The value of using blogs and blogging in support of a military information strategy depends heavily on the target region’s Internet penetration and regulation (especially censorship). Further, if the number of Internet users is small, it is necessary to determine who is using the capability and why. Again, this very basic information should be collected as a part of the initial intelligence preparation of the environment, but once obtained it becomes a significant part of the baseline assessment for determining the need for, and the value of, conducting blog-based information operations.
If assessment of the information environment indicates the presence of blogging activity, the next step is to look at the bloggers and their audiences, determine the blogs’ functions (per Nardi et al.), and construct a preliminary analysis in terms of the metrics (blog visits and incoming links and references) and indicators of quality and credibility (design, utility, accuracy, and currency) identified earlier.
Questions that must be answered include:
* How large is the blogging community?
* Who are the bloggers? And what are their positions and status within their communities and within the country as a whole (their general public roles and reputations)?
* Who is the target community or audience for each blog?
* Do the blogs address issues of social and political importance to the community they serve?
* What biases are observed in each blog? Do they reinforce or challenge the biases of their audience?
* Do any bloggers invite and engage in free and open interaction with their audience?
Answering these questions will require appropriate responses from intelligence agencies at all levels. National level agencies are perhaps best suited to conduct comprehensive media, human factors and social network analyses to identify and characterize the prominent and/or influential bloggers within their social networks, and their connections to the larger community of traditional media journalists. These agencies should also examine the frequency with which each blog is referenced in the other media in the target region, and perhaps engage in CNE to study reactions and references in the micro layer. Certain other existing assets, most notably the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) and the Armed Forces Information Service (AFIS), already cull through thousands of broadcast and print news pieces from around the world, based on topic, and could with relative ease look for blog references as well.
The importance of interactivity to a blog’s influence is proportional to the size of the blog’s potential audience. In areas where Internet access is limited to top government officials only, interactivity may be of relatively low importance. In areas where a ruling or elite social class has access, interactivity can be more important. In countries where Internet access is widespread, but free exchange of ideas is limited and/or discouraged, interactivity becomes golden. Again, the application of the general theory and principles must be flexible enough to account for differing political, social, and cultural conditions. Social network analysis and human factors analysis must be combined and correlated to craft specific messages to target specific bloggers and members of their audiences. Combined with a good sociological, psychological and cultural framework for interpreting and predicting attitudes, behaviors, communications and actions, intelligence derived from and/or about blogs can be highly effective in supporting influence and counterinfluence campaigns.
The entrenched inequality that characterizes the blogosphere has some implications for intelligence analysis and assessment. On the positive side, the fact that the most influential blogs generally will be the most authoritative (i.e., have the highest number of links) limits the number of blogs that must be read to glean the key or most widely held perspectives, concerns, attitudes and knowledge that motivate the audience. A survey of only these blogs can provide a rapid method for assessing the effectiveness of other influence operations in much the same way that a Civil Affairs soldier can assess general attitudes and mood by reading the graffiti on the walls. On the down side, in heavily Internetted regions, the tendency toward monopoly that results from systemic self-optimization will result in increasing homeostasis. Authors of top blogs in these environments may become disconnected from the content of their blogs and the concerns of their audience. This is because the needs of maintaining the blog may override the ability of the blogger to survey other blogs, conduct research and maintain interactivity. Because of this tendency, and in areas where only the elites or the government have Internet access, the content of the top blogs may not correlate well with majority concerns/opinions. As always, intelligence drawn from blogs may be invalid without confirmation from other sources.
Analysts working with blog intelligence must have access to the operational disciplines that they support; the closer the better. We recommend the creation of small special operations units with operational authority and integrated intelligence collections and analysis to conduct blog-based operations.
Recently, analysts at the Open Source Center (OSC) under the auspices of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) have been monitoring and following significant foreign blogs and bloggers with the primary goal of exploiting them as sources of intelligence. A February 2006 posting on the organization’s “Blog on Blogs” about Iranian expatriate blogger Hossein Derakhshan (“Hoder”), described him as “one of the most influential Iranian bloggers.” OSC analysts used Traffic (based on Reach and Page Views) from Alexa; Authority (Inbound Blog Links) from Technorati; and frequency of postings from Blog-Pulse. All three sources share the advantage of ready availability, but are limited for reasons discussed earlier.
Besides these and other metrics described earlier, there are other tools that can help the intelligence analyst. BlogPulse’s Conversation Tracker and TalkDigger (www.talkdigger.com), for example, track conversations as they spread through the blogosphere. TouchGraph (www.touchgraph.com) provides a tool for visualizing links among sites.
Blog-Based Operations
To function most effectively, units conducting blog-based operations must be staffed appropriately. Ideally, such units would be drawn from the special operations and intelligence communities, because of their historical experience in and ability to conduct (when tasked) sensitive operations. Linguists and intelligence analysts (preferably analysts who are also linguists), who are commanded or advised by qualified PSYOP or IO officer should form the core of such a unit. These capabilities must be augmented through liaison relationships with the other influence organizations, those responsible for planning and conducting PSYOP, PA, PD, CA/CMO and MILDEC. Because of the unique nature of blog-related intelligence, comprising both open and highly classified sources and producing an output intended for open distribution, a blog operations unit should have solid information, operations, and network security programs in place. It also needs oversight.
In order to act and react efficiently in managing bloggers and blogs, the intelligence specialists and planners who have the knowledge should be the ones running the actual blog. Or, in cases where indigenous bloggers and their blogs have been identified and recruited, the blog operations cell should also house the case officer managing the asset, having done the work to cultivate and recruit him or her. The same metrics used to select a blog can also serve as indirect measures of effectiveness; for example:
* Once blog operations have begun, does the blog attract new inbound links?
* Is there an increase over time in the blog’s ranking via various metrics?
* Through polling and media analysis, can a change in public opinion be correlated with growth in the blog’s indicators?
* What does content analysis of the interaction that occurs with the blogger on the site reveal (change in opinions posted by readers? positive or negative?)
* Do the comments on the blog correlate with public opinion results obtained by polling and/or portrayed in the mainstream media?
* Does the blog get referenced by the mainstream media in the target country, and with what degree of frequency?
* Do other sources of intelligence confirm these indicators?
*
Like any other influence operation, blog operations must be given time to work. There are no magic bullets. We would suggest quarterly reviews of the blog’s effectiveness along these lines and then adjusting fire to reverse any negative trends and accelerate positive trends.
This fusion of intelligence and operations is the cost of and the requirement for operating in a medium that rewards the efficient distribution of knowledge and information above all other considerations, and is also in the best traditions of the intelligence and special operations communities. Pushing operational authority out to those best equipped to receive, analyze and act in a dynamic information environment maximizes both efficiency and effectiveness. Although a blog-based operations unit could be based either domestically or in theater, the best option is to forward deploy it as a cell, just as we deploy our PSYOP analysts and production and dissemination capabilities. • • • • • •
What I want to know is, is that 'domestically' merely based?
Or, We Told You So,
Or, Who's Paranoid Now?
Being pp. 19 - 26 of a report by James Kinniburgh & Dorothy Denning, published by the United States Joint Special Operations University Press, Florida, in 2006. Herein posted as a teasing invitation to download the selfsame PDF, or else its Quick View counterpart.
All emphasis – italic, bold, and highlight – thoroughly, completely, and decidedly mine. (For references please consult original PDF). May the Gentle & Observant Reader benefit therefrom.
Blogs and Military Information Strategy
...blogs that serve a small community, or that fill a specific niche may be useful for monitoring and targeting select elements. People may and do serve in more than one social capacity; they may represent a class of community or peer opinion leaders—useful as both targets of influence operations and as vehicles for disseminating strategic communications.
[snip]
In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.
An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.
Any blogs and bloggers serving an IO mission must be coordinated and synchronized with the overall influence effort in time and message. However, they must be prepared to argue and debate with their audience successfully and independently on behalf of the U.S. policy stance. In this sense, bloggers must be able to “circumvent the hierarchy” as blogger George Dafermos put it. This means that they must be trusted implicitly to handle the arguments without forcing them to communicate “solely by means of marketing pitches and press releases.”
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information.
There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media, on all three layers, in support of military deception activities. Given the watchdog functions that many in the blogging community have assumed—not just in the U.S., but also around the world—doing so jeopardizes the entire U.S. information effort. Credibility is the heart and soul of influence operations. In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a wellthought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of exposure. Because of the potential blowback effect, information strategy should avoid planting false information as much as possible.
This brings us to an even more fundamental issue. Because the U.S. military is prohibited from conducting information operations against U.S. persons, it is reluctant to engage in Internet IO operations that might be characterized as PSYOP or deception. Once information is on the Internet, it can reach anyone, including those in the U.S. Thus, while the military offers factual news on the Internet through Public Affairs, it generally stays away from commentary and IO. At least initially, this challenge might be addressed by sticking with accurate, factual information of value to readers. Blogging can support PA and focus on improving communications and building trust with local communities and the public. A blog can be used to solicit and respond to questions and concerns from target populations. In addition, military leaders might offer personal commentary on nonmilitary blogs, with the usual disclaimers.
To use blogs effectively for an information campaign may require a new intelligence tool, one that can monitor and rapidly assess the informational events occurring in a specific portion of the blogosphere and their effects (if any) on the three layers of the local infosphere.
Blogs and Intelligence
Weblog derived intelligence can be considered a subset of both communications intelligence (COMINT) and open-source intelligence (OSINT). We would expect to see it used primarily in support of information operations, although it does offer a broad range of possible applications. It may consist of computer network exploitation (CNE) done in support of integrated PSYOP, PA, PD, MILDEC, and CA/CMO operations. The value of using blogs and blogging in support of a military information strategy depends heavily on the target region’s Internet penetration and regulation (especially censorship). Further, if the number of Internet users is small, it is necessary to determine who is using the capability and why. Again, this very basic information should be collected as a part of the initial intelligence preparation of the environment, but once obtained it becomes a significant part of the baseline assessment for determining the need for, and the value of, conducting blog-based information operations.
If assessment of the information environment indicates the presence of blogging activity, the next step is to look at the bloggers and their audiences, determine the blogs’ functions (per Nardi et al.), and construct a preliminary analysis in terms of the metrics (blog visits and incoming links and references) and indicators of quality and credibility (design, utility, accuracy, and currency) identified earlier.
Questions that must be answered include:
* How large is the blogging community?
* Who are the bloggers? And what are their positions and status within their communities and within the country as a whole (their general public roles and reputations)?
* Who is the target community or audience for each blog?
* Do the blogs address issues of social and political importance to the community they serve?
* What biases are observed in each blog? Do they reinforce or challenge the biases of their audience?
* Do any bloggers invite and engage in free and open interaction with their audience?
Answering these questions will require appropriate responses from intelligence agencies at all levels. National level agencies are perhaps best suited to conduct comprehensive media, human factors and social network analyses to identify and characterize the prominent and/or influential bloggers within their social networks, and their connections to the larger community of traditional media journalists. These agencies should also examine the frequency with which each blog is referenced in the other media in the target region, and perhaps engage in CNE to study reactions and references in the micro layer. Certain other existing assets, most notably the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) and the Armed Forces Information Service (AFIS), already cull through thousands of broadcast and print news pieces from around the world, based on topic, and could with relative ease look for blog references as well.
The importance of interactivity to a blog’s influence is proportional to the size of the blog’s potential audience. In areas where Internet access is limited to top government officials only, interactivity may be of relatively low importance. In areas where a ruling or elite social class has access, interactivity can be more important. In countries where Internet access is widespread, but free exchange of ideas is limited and/or discouraged, interactivity becomes golden. Again, the application of the general theory and principles must be flexible enough to account for differing political, social, and cultural conditions. Social network analysis and human factors analysis must be combined and correlated to craft specific messages to target specific bloggers and members of their audiences. Combined with a good sociological, psychological and cultural framework for interpreting and predicting attitudes, behaviors, communications and actions, intelligence derived from and/or about blogs can be highly effective in supporting influence and counterinfluence campaigns.
The entrenched inequality that characterizes the blogosphere has some implications for intelligence analysis and assessment. On the positive side, the fact that the most influential blogs generally will be the most authoritative (i.e., have the highest number of links) limits the number of blogs that must be read to glean the key or most widely held perspectives, concerns, attitudes and knowledge that motivate the audience. A survey of only these blogs can provide a rapid method for assessing the effectiveness of other influence operations in much the same way that a Civil Affairs soldier can assess general attitudes and mood by reading the graffiti on the walls. On the down side, in heavily Internetted regions, the tendency toward monopoly that results from systemic self-optimization will result in increasing homeostasis. Authors of top blogs in these environments may become disconnected from the content of their blogs and the concerns of their audience. This is because the needs of maintaining the blog may override the ability of the blogger to survey other blogs, conduct research and maintain interactivity. Because of this tendency, and in areas where only the elites or the government have Internet access, the content of the top blogs may not correlate well with majority concerns/opinions. As always, intelligence drawn from blogs may be invalid without confirmation from other sources.
Analysts working with blog intelligence must have access to the operational disciplines that they support; the closer the better. We recommend the creation of small special operations units with operational authority and integrated intelligence collections and analysis to conduct blog-based operations.
Recently, analysts at the Open Source Center (OSC) under the auspices of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) have been monitoring and following significant foreign blogs and bloggers with the primary goal of exploiting them as sources of intelligence. A February 2006 posting on the organization’s “Blog on Blogs” about Iranian expatriate blogger Hossein Derakhshan (“Hoder”), described him as “one of the most influential Iranian bloggers.” OSC analysts used Traffic (based on Reach and Page Views) from Alexa; Authority (Inbound Blog Links) from Technorati; and frequency of postings from Blog-Pulse. All three sources share the advantage of ready availability, but are limited for reasons discussed earlier.
Besides these and other metrics described earlier, there are other tools that can help the intelligence analyst. BlogPulse’s Conversation Tracker and TalkDigger (www.talkdigger.com), for example, track conversations as they spread through the blogosphere. TouchGraph (www.touchgraph.com) provides a tool for visualizing links among sites.
Blog-Based Operations
To function most effectively, units conducting blog-based operations must be staffed appropriately. Ideally, such units would be drawn from the special operations and intelligence communities, because of their historical experience in and ability to conduct (when tasked) sensitive operations. Linguists and intelligence analysts (preferably analysts who are also linguists), who are commanded or advised by qualified PSYOP or IO officer should form the core of such a unit. These capabilities must be augmented through liaison relationships with the other influence organizations, those responsible for planning and conducting PSYOP, PA, PD, CA/CMO and MILDEC. Because of the unique nature of blog-related intelligence, comprising both open and highly classified sources and producing an output intended for open distribution, a blog operations unit should have solid information, operations, and network security programs in place. It also needs oversight.
In order to act and react efficiently in managing bloggers and blogs, the intelligence specialists and planners who have the knowledge should be the ones running the actual blog. Or, in cases where indigenous bloggers and their blogs have been identified and recruited, the blog operations cell should also house the case officer managing the asset, having done the work to cultivate and recruit him or her. The same metrics used to select a blog can also serve as indirect measures of effectiveness; for example:
* Once blog operations have begun, does the blog attract new inbound links?
* Is there an increase over time in the blog’s ranking via various metrics?
* Through polling and media analysis, can a change in public opinion be correlated with growth in the blog’s indicators?
* What does content analysis of the interaction that occurs with the blogger on the site reveal (change in opinions posted by readers? positive or negative?)
* Do the comments on the blog correlate with public opinion results obtained by polling and/or portrayed in the mainstream media?
* Does the blog get referenced by the mainstream media in the target country, and with what degree of frequency?
* Do other sources of intelligence confirm these indicators?
*
Like any other influence operation, blog operations must be given time to work. There are no magic bullets. We would suggest quarterly reviews of the blog’s effectiveness along these lines and then adjusting fire to reverse any negative trends and accelerate positive trends.
This fusion of intelligence and operations is the cost of and the requirement for operating in a medium that rewards the efficient distribution of knowledge and information above all other considerations, and is also in the best traditions of the intelligence and special operations communities. Pushing operational authority out to those best equipped to receive, analyze and act in a dynamic information environment maximizes both efficiency and effectiveness. Although a blog-based operations unit could be based either domestically or in theater, the best option is to forward deploy it as a cell, just as we deploy our PSYOP analysts and production and dissemination capabilities. • • • • • •
What I want to know is, is that 'domestically' merely based?
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
BP whistleblower tells it like it is....
It's these interviews with real people and through video posts by people who's lives are directly fucked-over that we get the real info on just what's going on in the Gulf. Imagine if you lived there and you began to see that everything you knew and loved was
going, going, gone and never coming back.... that your government is on the side of the
perpetrators of this catastrophe.... god bless our brothers and sisters on the front lines....
Monday, July 12, 2010
Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event
Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.
251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. [1] Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. [2]
55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).
The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]
Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.
The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.
The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.
Ryskin’s methane extinction theory
Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. [4]
Many geologists concur: "The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide..." [5]
The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.
Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment—it can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters. [6]
All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.
Ground zero: The Gulf Coast
The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.
The media has been kept away from the emergency salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in human history. The federal government has warned them away from the epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each infraction and the possibility of felony arrests.
Why is the press being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating.
Cracks and bulges
Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.
Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.
The fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous flow of methane.
The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.
Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent.
More evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floor—like a ragged wound hundreds of feet long—has been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth.
That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. It’s 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.
Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-that’s about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day.
Most disturbing of all: Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. [7]
Mass death on the water
If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly.
Next, the ocean bottom will collapse, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives.
When the roaring tsunami does arrive it will scrub away all that is left.
A chemical cocktail of poisons
Some environmentalist experts are calling what’s pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach ’a chemical cocktail of poisons.’
Areas of dead zones devoid of oxygen are driving species of fish into foreign waters, killing plankton and other tiny sea life that are the foundation for the entire food chain, and polluting the air with cancer-causing chemicals and poisonous rainfalls.
A report from one observer in South Carolina documents oily residue left behind after a recent thunderstorm. And before the news blackout fully descended the EPA released data that benzene levels in New Orleans had rocketed to 3,000 parts per billion.
Benzene is extremely toxic and even short term exposure can cause agonizing death from cancerous lesions years later.
The people of Louisiana have been exposed for more than two months—and the benzene levels may be much higher now. The EPA measurement was taken in early May. [8]
Doomsday
While some say it can’t happen because the bulk of the methane is frozen into crystalline form, others point out that the underground methane sea is gradually melting from the nearby surging oil that’s estimated to be as hot as 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most experts in the know, however, agree that if the world-changing event does occur it will happen suddenly and within the next 6 months.
So, if events go against Mankind and the bubble bursts in the coming months, Gregory Ryskin may become one of the most famous people in the world. Of course, he won't have long to enjoy his new found fame because very shortly after the methane eruption civilization will collapse.
Perhaps if humanity is very, very lucky, some may find a way to avoid the mass extinction that follows and carry on the human race.
Perhaps.
…………
Sources
[1] The Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.
[2] “The Day The Earth Nearly Died,” BBC Horizon, 2002
[3] Report about the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), which occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years. Large undersea methane caused explosions and mass extinctions.
[4] Ryskin Theory
Huge combustible clouds produced by methane gas trapped under the seas and explosively released could have killed off the majority of marine life, land animals, and plants at the end of the Permian era—long before the dinosaurs arrived.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
“OPERATE TO FAILURE”: How BP’s MO & The US Addiction To Oil Caused The Catastrophe Of The Millennium
Really, why has it been so difficult to put this GENIE (Oil & Gas) back into the bottle (Macondo Prospect, Gulf of Mexico)? Or at least keep any more of him from coming out?There are many reasons, on many different levels, but let’s start with BP and the culture of corporate superiority that has evolved at this multi-national behemoth since its founding in 1908. We’re talking about the granddaddy here – the Anglo-Persian Oil Company – which was the first to develop the oil and gas reserves discovered in the Middle East. Simply put, when you’re the biggest and the oldest in that neck of the woods, you get used to doing it your way, and ONLY your way.Well, British Petroleum’s way of developing oil and gas throughout their planetary stomping grounds (Planet BP — a BP online, in-house magazine) is known to many insiders and outsiders alike by the catchphrase that goes like this – “OPERATE TO FAILURE”. This British Petroleum modus operandi has been confirmed by former BP employees and contractors, and verified by many insiders, deep contacts and whistleblowers throughout the Oil & Gas Industry. Much of this testimony was received directly by this author in the process of setting up interviews with CBS 60 Minutes, as they complete their production of a followup Gulf Oil Spill segment to the season’s last: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490348n&tag=related;photovideoIt doesn’t take much understanding or knowledge to apprehend the enormity and gravity of the potential consequences of such a standard operating principle in the oil and gas exploration and drilling business. Especially when you’re drilling 5000 feet underwater, and between 22,000 and 32,000 feet (they won’t tell us how deep) through the Earth’s crust and mantle. When you throw in the likes of Transocean and Halliburton into the mix, it’s not a matter of what, or if, or when, the greatest disaster of all time is going to happen. IT’S A MATTER OF JUST HOW CATASTROPHIC IT WILL BE FOR THE ENTIRE PLANET!Incidentally, this piece in no way excuses the US Federal Government for their huge part in this global calamity. They have, in fact, variously acted as enabler, co-dependent and full-time accomplice in the execution of this crime against humanity and the planet, Herself. By its actions and inaction, the US Gov’t (EPA, Departments of Energy, Interior & Homeland Security, US Congress, US Judiciary and the White House) has been identified by many as an indicted co-conspirator in this unprecedented crime against a whole region of the USA. Rather shocking, but true as the evidence which currently exists in the public domain bears out.Back to the GENIE. He’s out in more ways than one and we speak particularly of the raging debate regarding the abiogenic origin of petroleum. Let’s let the real experts tell us the real story about where oil and gas really come from. Highly esteemed Russian researcher, Dmitri Mendeleev, is described as follows by Wikipedia. Perhaps we ought to listen carefully to him.“Mendeleev made other important contributions to chemistry. The Russian chemist and science historian L.A. Tchugayev has characterized him as “a chemist of genius, first-class physicist, a fruitful researcher in the fields of hydrodynamics, meteorology, geology, certain branches of chemical technology (explosives, petroleum, and fuels, for example) and other disciplines adjacent to chemistry and physics, a thorough expert of chemical industry and industry in general, and an original thinker in the field of economy.” Mendeleev was one of the founders, in 1869, of the Russian Chemical Society.”Here’s what Dmitri (credited with the creation of the original Periodic Table of Elements) has to say about the abiogenic source of hydrocarbons in his tract entitled THE ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM:“The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the Earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin.” (D. Mendeleev, 1877){{ref|Mendeleev}}Mendeleev, D., 1877. L’Origine du pétrole. Revue Scientifique, second series, VIII, p. 409–416Following is a very brief history of the Abiogenic Theory of Petroleum, which can be found at the following link:http://tripatlas.com/Abiogenic_petroleum_originHISTORY OF ABIOGENIC THEORY:“The abiogenic petroleum theory was founded upon several old interpretations of geology which stem from early 19th century notions of magmatism (which at the time was attributed to sulfur fires and bitumen burning underground) and of petroleum, which was seen by many to fuel volcanoes. Indeed, Wernerian appreciation of basalts at times saw them as solidified oils or bitumen. While these notions have been disabused, the basic notion that petroleum is associated with magmatism has persisted. The chief proponents of what would become the abiogenic theory were Mendeleev[5] and Berthelot.Russian geologist Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev was the first to propose the modern abiotic theory of petroleum in 1951. He analyzed the geology of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada and concluded that no “source rocks” could form the enormous volume of hydrocarbons (estimated today 1.7 trillions barrels), and that therefore the most plausible explanation is abiotic deep petroleum. However, humic coals have been proposed for the source rocks by Stanton (2005).Although this theory is supported by geologists in Russia and Ukraine, it has recently begun to receive attention in the West, where the biogenic petroleum theory is accepted by the vast majority of petroleum geologists. Kudryavtsev’s work was continued by many Russian researchers — Petr N. Kropotkin, Vladimir B. Porfir’ev, Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Georgi E. Boyko, Georgi I. Voitov, Grygori N. Dolenko, Iona V. Greenberg, Nikolai S. Beskrovny, Victor F. Linetsky and many others.Astrophysicist Thomas Gold 1 was one of the abiogenic theory’s most prominent proponents in recent years in the West, until his death in 2004. Dr. Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation[6][7][8] is perhaps the foremost proponent in the West. The theory receives continued attention in the media as well as in scientific publications.”FOUNDATIONS OF THE HYPOTHESIS:“Within the mantle, carbon may exist as hydrocarbon molecules, chiefly methane, and as elemental carbon, carbon dioxide and carbonates. The abiotic hypothesis is that a full suite of hydrocarbons found in petroleum can be generated in the mantle by abiogenic processes,8 and these hydrocarbons can migrate out of the mantle into the crust until they escape to the surface or are trapped by impermeable strata, forming petroleum reservoirs.Abiogenic theories reject the supposition that certain molecules found within petroleum, known as “biomarkers,” are indicative of the biological origin of petroleum. They contend that some of these molecules could have come from the microbes that the petroleum encounters in its upward migration through the crust, and that some of them are found in meteorites, which have presumably never contacted living material, and that some can be generated by plausible reactions in petroleum abiogenically.Another important exposition on the matter comes from Samar Abbas, Institute of Physics, as well as the Dept. of Physics at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India and his paper entitled:NON-ORGANIC THEORY OF THE GENESIS OF PETROLEUM, which can be found at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9610011v1The following blog presents additional information which invalidates the conventionally held “fossil fuel” hypothesis. After having been artificially propped up for so many years by scientists, academics and especially oil and gas industry geologists, who have known the obvious truth about the source and nature of oil all along, the aforementioned Russian and Ukrainian scientists have debunked it with finality.http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Theory/SustainableOil/The blog below entitled “Abiotic Oil – The Secret of the BP Oil Spill” ought to have gone one step further to point out that all oil is abiotic in nature. And that those deposits found in the more shallow areas of the earth’s crust, where most of the drilling and extraction have been conducted historically, are not any different in nature or source because of their more superficial geological location.The very notion of Peak Oil is also completely upended with this new understanding. However, it is very important that these discoveries do not cloud our vision for the future. Just because Mother Earth’s lifeblood is much more voluminous and readily available than previously thought, does not mean that we have any more license to steal it from Her.Western Civilization, more than ever, must attain a vision of the future which respects Mother Earth with the utmost reverence and awe. Until this posture is assumed by every living thing, She will continue to teach us in so many dramatic and captivating ways.***************** Abiotic Oil – The Secret of the BP Oil Spill *****************“As usual, here is the place where you get the unfettered truth about what’s going on in the world, and today I will pull back the curtains on the BP oil leak and what will go down as one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century – that oil is abiotic – produced inside the Earth and is not simply rotting dinosaurs and old plants (aka “fossil” fuel).The amount of oil seeping into the Gulf of Mexico, at this very moment, emerges from an *ocean* of oil that is almost as large as the Gulf itself! This ocean of oil didn’t appear there because it was a giant fish graveyard. It was not a prehistoric jungle 20 miles high and 500 miles wide. This oil is abiotic oil and is produced by geological actions in the earth itself. Abiotic oil is created by intense pressures on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur. The sort of pressures required to create oil are natural as one gets down a certain depth under the heavy crust and in the upper layers of the mantle. In some ways oil is the natural lubrication system for the crust and the upper layers of the mantle as it shifts and orbits the planet’s core.The best think-tanks have known this for several decades now and have kept it hush hush to keep prices of oil high and help the oil industry. This was necessary because oil companies have huge assets and those assets are put to good use in infrastructure, research and development in more than simple oil production. Capitalism requires that certain commodities be given a value above and beyond the cost of procurement. Now that we have a leak which will not be able to be plugged, it’s time to prepare and explain what exactly is going on with the Deep Horizon well and why it is almost impossible to cap that Genie back in the bottle.
“They’ve Literally Punched A Hole Into Hell: We Need A Crash Alternative Energy Program Now, Assuming We Even Survive”
There is no verbal hyperbole sufficient to express the magnitude of
the environmental catastrophe now known as Deepwater Horizon. It is
nothing short of an Armageddon of Oil. Assuming we even survive this
one, we must immediately mobilize a crash program for truly renewable
alternative energy resources. Despite the gusher of lies we’ve heard trying to minimize the planetary scale disaster now in progress in the Gulf, the terrifying
truth is available for those who will hear it. First they told us the
“leak” was only 1,000 barrels a day, when in fact it is at least 5
times that much. Of course it’s hard to pretend an oil slick the size
of New Jersey isn’t there. And it could easily blow out to 50,000
barrels a day (2,000,000 gallons) in a heartbeat, according to a “not
for public” NOAA emergency report.
This is not just a leak, it’s a monster underwater oil geyser, under
upwards of 100,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, enough force
to lift 50 tons with your thumb. And unless it is somehow stopped, it
may spell the end of all marine life on the planet. We are not
talking about just one Exxon Valdez size tanker spill, we are talking
about one of largest oil fields ever discovered completely venting
its entire contents into the ocean, thousands and thousands of
tankers. It’s THAT cataclysmic.
But assuming we miraculously dodge the literal end of the world this
one time, we need to finally do what should have been done 20 years
ago, and throw everything we’ve got into a crash program for
alternative renewable energy, and stop burning fossil fuels before
they kill us all.
Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1043.php
And after you submit the action page, please consider picking up one
of the timely “350 ppm or catastrophe” caps from the return page,
emphasizing the urgency of immediately reducing worldwide carbon
dioxide emissions. It is not as if we have not had every warning
already. Or you can get one directly from this page.
350 PPM Or Catastrophe Caps:
http://www.peaceteam.net/message_items.php
It should have been done twenty years ago. Stop all new oil
exploration. Forget about insanely expensive nuclear plants. End
immediately the lunatic military occupations that have cost us
trillions. And put everything we’ve got into an all out push to
develop and bring on line truly renewable alternative energy sources.
The burning of fossil fuels was already slowly killing the planet,
causing inexorable rises in greenhouse gas levels that have done
nothing but accelerate, despite the rampant disinformation campaign
waged by oil industry toadies pretending to be real scientists. Now
unless we find some way to stop the venting of the entire contents of
a gigantic oil field in the Gulf, under 100,000 pounds per square
inch of pressure, we may be looking at the end of all marine life on
this planet. We have literally punched a hole into hell.
Please add whatever personal comments of your own you like, and
emphasize it is time for our politicians to stop serving only oil
company and nuclear lobbyists paying the off to continue to pursue
bad energy policy, but to start doing something to save our country
and our world instead.”
From: www.peacteam.net
the environmental catastrophe now known as Deepwater Horizon. It is
nothing short of an Armageddon of Oil. Assuming we even survive this
one, we must immediately mobilize a crash program for truly renewable
alternative energy resources. Despite the gusher of lies we’ve heard trying to minimize the planetary scale disaster now in progress in the Gulf, the terrifying
truth is available for those who will hear it. First they told us the
“leak” was only 1,000 barrels a day, when in fact it is at least 5
times that much. Of course it’s hard to pretend an oil slick the size
of New Jersey isn’t there. And it could easily blow out to 50,000
barrels a day (2,000,000 gallons) in a heartbeat, according to a “not
for public” NOAA emergency report.
This is not just a leak, it’s a monster underwater oil geyser, under
upwards of 100,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, enough force
to lift 50 tons with your thumb. And unless it is somehow stopped, it
may spell the end of all marine life on the planet. We are not
talking about just one Exxon Valdez size tanker spill, we are talking
about one of largest oil fields ever discovered completely venting
its entire contents into the ocean, thousands and thousands of
tankers. It’s THAT cataclysmic.
But assuming we miraculously dodge the literal end of the world this
one time, we need to finally do what should have been done 20 years
ago, and throw everything we’ve got into a crash program for
alternative renewable energy, and stop burning fossil fuels before
they kill us all.
Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1043.php
And after you submit the action page, please consider picking up one
of the timely “350 ppm or catastrophe” caps from the return page,
emphasizing the urgency of immediately reducing worldwide carbon
dioxide emissions. It is not as if we have not had every warning
already. Or you can get one directly from this page.
350 PPM Or Catastrophe Caps:
http://www.peaceteam.net/message_items.php
It should have been done twenty years ago. Stop all new oil
exploration. Forget about insanely expensive nuclear plants. End
immediately the lunatic military occupations that have cost us
trillions. And put everything we’ve got into an all out push to
develop and bring on line truly renewable alternative energy sources.
The burning of fossil fuels was already slowly killing the planet,
causing inexorable rises in greenhouse gas levels that have done
nothing but accelerate, despite the rampant disinformation campaign
waged by oil industry toadies pretending to be real scientists. Now
unless we find some way to stop the venting of the entire contents of
a gigantic oil field in the Gulf, under 100,000 pounds per square
inch of pressure, we may be looking at the end of all marine life on
this planet. We have literally punched a hole into hell.
Please add whatever personal comments of your own you like, and
emphasize it is time for our politicians to stop serving only oil
company and nuclear lobbyists paying the off to continue to pursue
bad energy policy, but to start doing something to save our country
and our world instead.”
From: www.peacteam.net
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
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