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At Stratfor, the case is frequently the opposite: Our readers typically are expert in the topics we study and write about, and our task is to provide the already well-informed with further insights. But the question is larger than that.

We co-exist in this ecosystem, but geopolitical intelligence is scarcely part of the journalistic flora and fauna. Our uniqueness creates unique challenges

Instead, let's go to the core dynamic of the media in our age and work back outward through the various layers to what we do in the same virtual space, namely, intelligence.

Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike four years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday's result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout -- Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes.

Those audiences were misinformed.

Of course, none of those media are dead, and neither is blogging. Instead, what's happened is that they've been succeeded by new forms that share some of their characteristics, and these new forms have peeled away all the stories that suit them best.

When all we had was the stage, every performance was a play. When we got films, a great lot of these stories moved to the screen, where they'd always belonged (they'd been squeezed onto a stage because there was no alternative). When TV came along, those stories that were better suited to the small screen were peeled away from the cinema and relocated to the telly. When YouTube came along, it liberated all those stories that wanted to be 3-8 minutes long, not a 22-minute sitcom or a 48-minute drama. And so on.

For me, the great attraction of all this is that preparing material for public consumption forces me to clarify it in my own mind. I don't really know it until I write it. Thus the more media I have at my disposal, the more ways there are for me to work out my own ideas.

he kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.

There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

But how did the campaign get so many people to sign up? By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf.

But while Jennings and his crew were traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by U.S. and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly crossed the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst the Northern soldiers set up an ambush that would let them gun down the Americans and Southerners. What would Jennings do? Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to fire? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." Even if it meant losing the story? Ogletree asked. Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That's purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction."

Jennings was made to feel embarrassed about his natural, decent human impulse. Wallace seemed unembarrassed about feeling no connection to the soldiers in his country's army or considering their deaths before his eyes "simply a story."

Meet the Press, moderated by Tim Russert, is probably the meatiest of these programs. High-powered guests discuss serious topics with Russert, who worked for years in politics, and with veteran reporters. Yet the pressure to keep things lively means that squabbling replaces dialogue.

Of course the young(er) are looking for social changes and a better life.  And I don't doubt that they at least believe themselves to be earnest.  But the media narrative that it is they who are the force behind the acute changes is both wrong and manipulative.

It's manipulative because it is easy. 

Also, it's self-aggrandizing.  This is the folks at Time saying, "hey, man, we get this hip generation."  It makes them think they're young and in touch, ("they even figured out how to use the internet for something other than porn!") and I'd bet 10 piastres every guy working at Time thinks the girl in the bottom right would find them interesting.

By design, terrorist attacks are intended to have a psychological impact far outweighing the physical damage the attack causes. As their name suggests, they are meant to cause terror that amplifies the actual attack. A target population responding to a terrorist attack with panic and hysteria allows the perpetrators to obtain a maximum return on their physical effort.

One way to mitigate the psychological impact of terrorism is to remove the mystique and hype associated with it. The first step in this demystification is recognizing that terrorism is a tactic used by a variety of actors and that it will not go away, something we discussed at length in our first analysis in this series.

Another way to mitigate the impact of terrorism is recognizing that those who conduct terrorist attacks are not some kind of Hollywood superninja commandos who can conjure attacks out of thin air. Terrorist attacks follow a discernable, predictable planning process that can be detected if it is looked for.

What are these candidates hiding from? The Politico story subscribes to the sports metaphor, explaining that the candidates are "running out the clock." If they say nothing, they won't get caught saying anything stupid, the theory goes.

But when politicians beat this sort of a retreat, they're not signaling that they fear the questions but that they fear the answers.

But filter-free media are self-limiting. To begin with, anything that Sarah Palin tweets goes out unfiltered. That's all well and good, but within seconds, the uber-media will suck it up, interpret it, fact-check it, and spit it out, making a mockery of her unfilteredness. Second, because the nonpress media speak primarily to supporters, they simply preach to the converted. To win, candidates must speak to more than the congregation, which requires conventional media exposure. Third, appearing on a friendly soundstage comes at a cost. A Tea Partier speaking on Fox News is just as prone to committing a campaign-debilitating gaffe as one taking a pummeling from aggressive reporters.

China’s covert intelligence capability seems vast mainly because of the country’s huge population and the historic Chinese diaspora that has spread worldwide. Traditionally focused inward, China as an emerging power is determined to compete with more established powers by aiming its intelligence operations at a more global audience. China is driven most of all by the fact that it has abundant resources and a lot of catching up to do.

To Western eyes, China’s whole approach to intelligence gathering may seem unsophisticated and risk-averse, particularly when you consider the bureaucratic inefficiencies inherent in the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) administrative structure. But it is an approach that takes a long and wide view, and it is more effective than it may seem at first glance.

Arsenic is an element present in the earth's crust. There would likely be some of it in ground water even without the human activities that traumatize that crust in a variety of ways, but not enough to threaten health. Our various activities that have moved both rocks and water, from mining to drilling wells into aquifers, have resulted in significant mobilization of arsenic from rock into ground water.

Organic arsenic, which is present in foods in very small amounts, is probably non-toxic, and may even be an essential trace element.

Venezuela is in the midst of a severe electricity crisis, with its national electrical grid so stressed that it could, according to the Venezuelan National Electric Corporation (CORPOELEC), be headed for a nationwide system failure within the next two months.

(click here to enlarge image) The center of gravity of Venezuela’s electricity crisis is the Guri dam, which, along with the nearby Francisco Miranda and Antonio Jose de Sucre dams, provides about 70 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Only 37 percent of electricity users have been following rationing plans, according to a recent CORPOELEC study. Questionable government estimates place the reduction of public-sector use at 23 percent and private sector use at 5 percent since 2009.

There is only a short window of time in which any material from the bin Laden compound will hold actionable intelligence — information that will enable U.S. operatives to chase down bin Laden’s associates.

Often, the web of intelligence that leads to a breakthrough like the pinpointing of bin Laden, combined with the intelligence gleaned from a direct action, can have a snowball effect, with multiple hits in quick succession.

Photos taken inside the house indicated that the interior had been pulled apart quickly in search of any possible material of intelligence value. CNN reported May 3 that a U.S. official told them the raid collected 10 hard drives, five computers and more than 100 storage devices such as discs, DVDs and thumb drives. The number of electronic devices is surprising given that bin Laden had no communications links with the outside world and has not produced a propaganda video since 2007.

The foreign policy story of U.S. President Barack Obama's first term could be told through three personalities: former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke.

Because of Gates, Obama did not go "soft" as Democrats are supposedly liable to do. Guantanamo Bay prison remained open, there was no initial rush to the exits in Iraq, a robust campaign of assassinations against al Qaeda proceeded apace, and so forth.

The selection of Bergoglio, who took the name Francis, was a surprise due to his nationality and because he was not discussed as a top candidate by the media in the weeks since the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. 


Because of its Spanish and Portuguese colonial history, Latin America has the highest number of Catholics in the world. An estimated 483 million Catholics live in Latin American countries -- 200 million more than in Europe. Moreover, some 50 million Hispanics live in the United States, most of whom are Catholic.



"China Is Communist in Name Only." Wrong. If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in 21st-century Beijing and managed to avert his eyes from the city's glittering skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of the system he designed nearly a century ago for the victors of the Bolshevik Revolution. One need only look at the party's structure to see how communist -- and Leninist -- China's political system remains.

As in the Soviet Union, the party controls the media through its Propaganda Department, which issues daily directives, both formally on paper and in emails and text messages, and informally over the phone, to the media. The directives set out, often in detail, how news considered sensitive by the party -- such as the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo -- should be handled or whether it should be run at all.

Perhaps most importantly, the party dictates all senior personnel appointments in ministries and companies, universities and the media, through a shadowy and little-known body called the Organization Department. Through the department, the party oversees just about every significant position in every field in the country. Clearly, the Chinese remember Stalin's dictate that the cadres decide everything.

Tellingly, a recent Time magazine cover story has pointed out a marked generational difference in how people view these matters: 70 percent of those age 18 to 34 sampled in a poll said they believed that Snowden “did a good thing” in leaking the news of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.

Hannah Arendt made an observation about what she called “the banality of evil.”

Isn't it strange how Plucky, Democratic Israel goes to such extreme lengths to prevent any media coverage of what they do, any journalistic interference with their propaganda machine, in light of the fact that -- as always -- They Did Absolutely Nothing Wrong?  Is physically blocking the media from covering what happens the act of a government that is in the right?

Recent reports in China’s state media suggest that some banks and state-owned companies are resisting the central government’s attempts to tighten control over the real estate sector. This calls attention to China’s ongoing difficulties in managing the economic recovery and points to internal debates in Beijing over how to best handle newly emergent economic challenges as the global recovery appears to be losing steam.

Most Afghans who live beyond the few urban enclaves in the country do not rely on these institutions in their day-to-day business. In other words, Afghanistan’s financial world has nowhere near as far to fall as the West’s, so even its utter collapse — not just a crisis of confidence in one bank — would not have the same geopolitical magnitude.