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Pilot's Eye view: Looking west across Lodge Hill Camp bunkers, RSME Chattenden, Kent
Some classic signs to look for on OS maps, when trying to find MoD related sites
There are some classic signs to look for on OS maps, when trying to find MoD related sites. You might see buildings which are geometrically shaped, like the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and Warship Support Agency (WSA) at Abbey Wood in Bristol.
Some are made easy by actually labelling them "Government Offices" like the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) near Bath, on the site of an old country estate at Ensleigh and also at Fox Hill. Of course, not all "Government Buildings" are "Secret Bases". Many buildings labelled in this way are merely administration offices. Since a major restructuring in April 2007, DPA, WSA and DLO have been known as Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S).
The two Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy centre sites in Cheltenham at Benhall and Oakley don't at first stick out when viewed at 1:50000 scale. View Multimap's aerial photograph of GCHQ Benhall and notice the field just to the west of the main buildings. This is where the brand new GCHQ Doughnut complex has been built.
Following the Doughnut construction at the Benhall site, most of the Oakley site has been demolished and the land has been handed over to a supermarket chain and housing development company. The old parts of the Benhall location have also been cleared and given over to the provision of additional car parking for the Doughnut and for housing development. The remaining GCHQ buildings at Oakley have since been officially known as the GCHQ Harp Hill site, after a nearby road.
Until Summer 2006, if you viewed GCHQ Benhall and GCHQ Oakley at 1:25000, the old facilities suddenly emerged as geometrically shaped buildings and were labelled "Government Offices". These more detailed 1:25000 OS maps have now finally been updated to reflect all of the demolition work and the new GCHQ Doughnut now makes an appearance. In March 2007, the GCHQ Doughnut finally made it to hi-res on Google Earth too. A comparison of aerial photography from different years also reveals that DE&S Fox Hill has now been fully demolished. A similar comparison at DE&S Ensleigh shows that around half of that site has gone.
GCHQ's new research facility hidden in a forest
In January 2007, a proposal for a brand new GCHQ "research and development" installation at the existing Birdlip Radio Station on top of Shab Hill, Gloucestershire, was finally thrown out by Cotswold District Council's planning department after an appeal by GCHQ to the Planning Inspectorate was dismissed. The council wanted to protect the nature of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), of which the residents around Barrow Wake Viewpoint are so doggedly proud.
The planning application had originally been lodged precisely one year earlier in January 2006 and the project involved the erection of additional tall lattice communications towers, including one with a huge "golf ball" radome on top. It would have been identical to the one already installed in a special enclosure on the west side of Birmingham International Airport, but which is merely used for ground radar (seen in a Bird's Eye aerial photo).
Likewise, a quite innocent explanation can be found for an identical tower and radome found hidden in Civiley Wood at Friningham near Detling and Thurnham, close to Maidstone in Kent. Rather than another GCHQ test facility, it is the Met Office's latest doppler effect weather radar officially opened in October 2005.
Admittedly, adding to the intrigue is the curious location just a few hundred yards away from the legendary Cold Blow Lane NATO and WWII ACE High communications facility near Coldblow Farm.
The Birdlip signals station is in a perfect strategic position, in a direct line of sight with the GCHQ Doughnut at Benhall, a few miles away. It has actually been used for various communications purposes since WWII, but the original wartime masts in the surrounding fields have long since gone, leaving only their rusted anchoring points in the ground. Significantly, it is also very close to another relic from World War Two (and indeed the Cold War) – the famous hardened bunker at Ullenwood, a former Anti Aircraft Operations Room (AAOR), Civil Defence Training Centre and Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQ). The planning application had been made on behalf of GCHQ by Cheltenham-based global communications infrastructure consultants Alan Dick and Company Limited.
More recent users of the Shab Hill facility have included the Civil Aviation Authority (Air Traffic Control), National Grid Wireless (mobile network infrastructure providers – now part of Arqiva) and OFCOM (the Government's monitoring watchdog for general communications).
How intriguing it is to discover that one of the mobile network operators already using the Birdlip facility – O2 – has been awarded the Government contract to provide a Ground Based Network Resilience (GBNR) enhancement known as the National Fallback Service (NFS) to Airwave. Airwave is the new encrypted secure digital radio system for all emergency services, which uses Motorola's Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA [PDF, 3MB]) technology. It is part of the Government's Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).
The GBNR / NFS enhancement – due for delivery in Autumn 2007 – was requested after recommendations arising from the various communications failures at the time of the July 2005 London bus and underground tube train bombings. The original Airwave project was commissioned through the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO), which became part of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in April 2007.
O2 Airwave Limited applied to Cotswold Council in June 2006 for the addition of two extra communications dishes and associated control equipment on one of the lattice towers already on site at Birdlip. The initial request was for one 0.3m diameter dish and one 0.6m dish. Curiously, the request was later amended to two dishes both 0.3m in diameter. The O2 Airwave application was successful.
It would seem that GCHQ would legitimately require a connection into Airwave at Birdlip in order to provide the emergency "MACA" role – Military Aid to Civilian Authorities. But was GCHQ's so-called "experimental, testing, research and development" facility at Birdlip going to be wired into the O2 Airwave system for further purposes too?
Do you remember another "experimental" communications site for "research" in the 1990s? It was known as the Capenhurst Tower and the story surrounding that sent political shock waves around the world.
Was their cunning plan at Birdlip scuppered by a brave decision by Cotswold Council? Would GCHQ go to the High Court for a further appeal and risk even more details getting out into the public domain? Would they perhaps consider the famous sites of microwave towers and communications masts at Cleeve Hill and Churchdown Hill both near Cheltenham and at Bredon Hill near Evesham, Worcestershire?
Instead, they found another location – and a different more compliant council. In Summer 2008, GCHQ finally got permission for a pair of towers to be hidden in the Forest of Dean close to the various existing microwave, radio and TV communication towers at Little Dean Walk within Edgehills Plantation, Plump Hill near Mitcheldean.
The GCHQ Edgehills facility comprises a long narrow forest clearing with a northern tower and southern tower, only one of which will have a radome fixed to the top. In April 2010, new aerial photography became available which reveals the GCHQ towers at Edgehills.
In June 2007, Airwave applied to Dartmoor National Park Authority to establish a mast on farmland near Widecombe-in-the-Moor but the Authority resisted until October 2008 when they suddenly pulled out of the appeal process after Airwave presented hundreds of extra pages of evidence just days before the deadline. The planning consultant representing Airwave in their appeal at Widecombe – Ian Waterson of Town Planning Solutions Ltd, Telford – also worked on getting the GCHQ Edgehills project accepted by Forest of Dean Council.
Read the amazingly detailed documents forming all the separate GCHQ and O2 Airwave planning applications at Birdlip, Edgehills and Dartmoor – including correspondence, technical drawings, photos and diagrams – gathered all together here in a new special Secret Bases page (above right).
In Summer 2008, the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper carried a story developed from a letter sent in from an elderly former Forest of Dean District Councillor – also at one time a member of the Royal Signals. He was convinced of a top secret CIA base within the forest and even a sinister underground facility in the area. The news headline screamed, "Has the Pentagon built a secret spy bunker in Gloucestershire?"
Amazingly, the old chap wasn't that far from the truth, even though he'd got carried away with the fine detail. It is obviously the new GCHQ test station at Edgehills he means. As for the bunker, look no further than a huge ultra-secure and ultra-secretive underground computer data server centre at Mitcheldean, on the north side of the Vantage Point Business Village – an industrial estate on the old Rank Xerox factory site.
Rather than CIA, it is run by the global computer services corporation EDS – who just happen to have some very sensitive and lucrative contracts with the UK Government including the MoD, HMRC (formerly Inland Revenue and Customs) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Transport for London's Oyster Card ticketing system is managed through EDS Mitcheldean's servers too. Since 2008, EDS has been owned by that Government contract stalwart Hewlett Packard (HP).
The EDS Data Centre was embroiled in yet another of those now regular data loss scandals in September 2008 when it was finally admitted that a 500GB portable external hard drive was mislaid in July 2007, whilst being sent from there to another key EDS base within Government Buildings housing DWP at Washington, Tyne and Wear. Unfortunately it contained personal details of over 5000 HMP staff including prison officers. To make matters even worse, the loss was not reported for a full year.
The EDS blunders continued in October 2008. A routine audit reported another portable hard drive – used for around 100,000 Army, Royal Navy and RAF personnel and up to 600,000 Armed Services recruitment records – was missing from yet another supposedly "secure" EDS location on the Bartley Wood Business Park alongside the M3 motorway at Hook near Basingstoke, Hampshire. A later statement made in Parliament revealed that the actual number of potential recruits' details compromised was nearer 1.7 million.
Consider also the EDS Data Centre at Wynyard, Billingham on Teesside, the location of the former Samsung monitor and microwave factory. This former distribution warehouse has been converted to state of the art low energy data processing server halls. Projects running through the building include highly sensitive contracts for DWP, Centrica and the Ministry of Justice. Next door, Cleveland Police's Roads Policing Unit keeps one eye on the perimeter.
While the Hook base is UK HQ of EDS Defence, the Central Stores and Engineering Services Group (ESG) is located at Ashchurch Business Centre near Tewkesbury back in Gloucestershire, next to the M5. That is where military computer systems are designed, developed, assembled and tested. Meanwhile, EDS have yet more "secure" operations based within the HMRC Data Centre in Telford, Shropshire and the DWP's Peel Park Control Centre in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Edward Snowden
Correa on Assange:
'You don't grant asylum to someone because he's nice'
FRANCE 24 English - Published on Apr 12, 2019
https://youtu.be/9r2akjGMV-o Truthful News Media Encourage Open Debate good debate topics
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador
Julian Paul Assange being dragged out of
the Ecuador Embassy on the 11th April 2019 by UK Special Branch Police
Julian Paul Assange on the way to the magistrates court in London after being dragged out of
the Ecuador Embassy on the 11th April 2019 by UK Special Branch Police
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador states that ..." during a meeting Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort ..... had with Lenin Moreno the new president of Ecuador after a week of taking office of the president of Ecuador ...
Lenin Moreno offered to hand over Julian Assange to the United States, in exchange for financial support from the United States .. “ that was something incredable ..” Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador went onto state … “ last year Mike Pence the vice president of the United States visited m country and again Lenin Moreno the new president of Ecuador offered to give Julian Assange to the United States in exchange of receiving financial support from the United States…
"I don't agree with all the things Jullian Assange used to do, but the main point is that his human rights were being violated," Ecuador's former president Rafael Correa tells François Picard after the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder in London. Correa spoke to us from Brussels. Subscribe to France 24 now: http://f24.my/youtubeEN
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http://f24.my/YTliveEN François Picard interviews Rafael Correa, the President of Ecuador at the time that Assange was granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, about the recent arrest of Assange after Ecuador's president withdrew his asylum.
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Category
News & Politics
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador states that during a meeting Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort ..... had with Lenin Moreno the new president of Ecuador after a week of taking office of the president of Ecuador ... offered to hand over Julian Assange to the United States, in exchange for financial support from the United States .. “ that was something incredable ..” Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador went onto state … “ last year Mike Pence the vice president of the United States visited m country and again Lenin Moreno the new president of Ecuador offered to give Julian Assange to the United States in exchange of receiving financial support from the United States… by you want the main factor .. the final factor as behind the expelling of Julian Assange from the Ecuador Embassy .. is that during the election WikiLeaks published a very serious .. a very huge corruption scandal involving the Moreno Family … the new Ecuador president’s family of a secret bank account in in a bank in Panama .. a secret account of the Moreno Family …WikiLeaks published this .. and because of these things …. Moreno took the decision to expel Julian Assange from the Ecuador Foreign Embassy …
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador was then asked … “…if it had been in your tenure as president of Ecuador … that this kind of allegation had been published … while your hosting Julian Assange .. would have you reacted the same way …”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied… “not at all .. we had problems with Julian Assange .., during the last presidential election in the United States I was president of Ecuador …”
The reporter then asked… “you cut off his internet access in October 2016 for a short while …?”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “.. yes … yes … we cut of Julian Assange’s Internet Access for as short time we believed Julian Assange was interfering with the US Presidential Election … we didn’t agree with that … but after that Julian Assange still continued living in the Ecuador Embassy … you can punish .. you can limit the activities of the refugee … but you can not expel Julian Assange, the refugee from the embassy … “..
The reporter then asked… “… from the reports provided Julian Assange was not the easiest guest to deal with and have living in the Ecuador Embassy for many stated reasons ..”.
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “.. well we have to see .. these seem to be lies … but this is irrelevant … you do not grant asylum to someone who is a human being … he’s nice… or he’s disgusting …. because he’s handsome … he’s fat … no … we granted asylum to Julian Assange’s because his human rights were in danger … and these conditions continue until now … and the fundamental basement principle of the institution of Asylum …. is not to return the refugee to people requiring his … yet … that is exactly what the Ecuadorian Government has now done …. so … it is something incredable .. it is not possible to justify something lake this …”
The reporter then asked… “ the Foreign Policy Magazine in 2016 stated that WikiLeaks had sat on documents published in relation to Russia’s role in the Ukraine …. do you think that WikiLeaks is one sided?..”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “.. perhaps .. I do not care about that … we did not grant Asylum to Julian Assange because WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is doing a good job … he is doing a bad job … or because we like Julian Assange … I don’t know Assange … I have never met Assange … we decided to grant political asylum to Julian Assange inside the international legal framework … because we observed and we realised that Julian Assange’s human rights were in danger … because Julian Assange did not have the opportunity for a fair process in the United States … some people in the United States wanted to pursuit him … to judge him with a law including a penalty … that penalty is against human rights … its against the international convention of human rights …it is for these reasons that we decided to grant Julian Assange political asylum … not because he liked Julian Assange .. not because we agree with him … there are a lot of things that I do not agree with Julian Assange over what Julian Assange used to do … but the main point … the important point was that the Julian Assange’s human rights were in danger … Julian Assange was condemed from the beginning of the government of Lenin Moreno ….”..
The reporter then asked… “ … WikiLeaks data dumps helped sway an American Election on way ….is it something that you think about …?”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “.. yes… yes … of course … for that reason we warned Julian Assange … and he didn’t pay attention and we cut the Internet Service until the US Election had already taken place … and after that we returned the Internet Service to Julian Assange …. you want to punish Julian Assange for that … no no … Julian Assange was under the protection of the Ecuador State …. it was our duty to protect Julian Assange’s basic rights … if you want to punish WikiLeaks … you can sue Wikileaks … you can start some type of legal process against Wikileaks … but I do not know how to relate that to the political asylum of Julian Assange …. what do you mean? …. because of the actions of WikiLeaks you have to expel Julian Assange from the Ecuador Embassy … that doesn’t make sense …”
The reporter then asked… “ .. you don’t think that you were being manipulated by Russia in this case…?”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “..I don’t know … if you know something let me know please ….”..
The reporter then asked… “ … what is your reaction to what Donald Trump said about WikiLeaks and the arrest of Julian Assange….?!”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “… I did not listed to what Donald Trump said about WikiLeaks and the arrest of Julian Assange..”
The reporter then said … “..Donald Trump said WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are not really his thing…”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “.. what reaction can I have … I do not care what Donald Trump says of what he doesn’t say ....”
The reporter then asked … “… where is going to go in Ecuador now with this investigation …. the INA Papers Leak ..?”
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador then replied … “..this is a huge scandal … there is no escape for Moreno … he’s gonna be in jail soon … and because of that … and because of revenge … Moreno wanted to crush Julian Assange … Moreno wants to crush me … he wants to crush everybody that he hates …. but this is too big a scandal … we discovered his secret bank account … in a tax haven … where Moreno has money laundering … so you should be very worried about that … be very concerned about that … the whole planet must request to open this bank account ….” ..
The Investor Revolution In Pursuing A Sustainability Agenda
FINANCIAL MARKETS
by
Robert G. Eccles
Svetlana Klimenko
FROM THE MAY–JUNE 2019 ISSUE
Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2019/05/the-investor-revolution?ab=hero-main-text
Most corporate leaders understand that businesses have a key role to play in tackling urgent challenges such as climate change. But many of them also believe that pursuing a sustainability agenda runs counter to the wishes of their shareholders. Sure, some heads of large investment firms say they care about sustainability, but in practice, investors, portfolio managers, and sell-side analysts rarely engage corporate executives on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. The impression among business leaders is that ESG just hasn’t gone mainstream in the investment community.
That perception is outdated. We recently interviewed 70 senior executives at 43 global institutional investing firms, including the world’s three biggest asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street) and giant asset owners such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), and the government pension funds of Japan, Sweden, and the Netherlands. We know of no other research effort that involved so many senior leaders at so many of the largest investment firms. We found that ESG was almost universally top of mind for these executives.
Of course, investors have been voicing concerns about sustainability for several decades. But not until recently have they translated their words into action. Most of the investment leaders in our study described meaningful steps their firms are taking to integrate sustainability issues into their investing criteria. It was clear to us that corporate leaders will soon be held accountable by shareholders for ESG performance—if they aren’t already.
“ESG issues have become much more important for us as long-term investors,” Cyrus Taraporevala, president and CEO of State Street Global Advisors, told us, expressing a view echoed in many of our interviews. “We seek to analyze material issues such as climate risk, board quality, or cybersecurity in terms of how they impact financial value in a positive or a negative way. That’s the integrative approach we are increasingly taking for all of our investments.” (Note, Robert Eccles has consulted for State Street and several other institutions named in this article.)
The numbers back up the view that the capital markets are in the midst of a sea change. In 2006, when the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) was launched, 63 investment companies (asset owners, asset managers, and service providers) with $6.5 trillion in assets under management (AUM) signed a commitment to incorporate ESG issues into their investment decisions. By April 2018, the number of signatories had grown to 1,715 and represented $81.7 trillion in AUM. According to a 2018 global survey by FTSE Russell, more than half of global asset owners are currently implementing or evaluating ESG considerations in their investment strategy.
Yet many corporate managers seem to be unaware of this new reality. In a recent survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, U.S. executives underestimated the percentage of their company’s shares held by firms employing sustainable investing strategies. The average estimate was 5%; the actual percentage is more like 25%.
What Is Sustainable Investing?
Sustainable investing encompasses a menu of strategies that can be used in combination. Here are seven common ones:
Negative/exclusionary screening (eliminating companies in industries or countries deemed objectionable )
Norms-based screening (eliminating companies that violate some set of norms, such as the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact)
Positive/best-in-class screening (selecting companies with especially strong ESG performance)
Sustainability-themed investing (such as in a fund focused on access to clean water or renewable energy)
ESG integration (including ESG factors in fundamental analysis)
Active ownership (engaging deeply with portfolio companies)
Impact investing (looking for companies that make a positive impact on an ESG issue while still earning a market return)
A noteworthy example of sustainable investing is the strategy developed by Mats Andersson (a former CEO of AP4), Patrick Bolton (a professor at Columbia), and Frédéric Samama (a cohead of institutional clients coverage at Amundi Asset Management) that enables long-term passive investors to hedge climate risk without sacrificing returns. The strategy is based on building a portfolio of companies that have a carbon footprint 50% smaller than benchmarks and have 50% less exposure to “stranded assets” (such as fossil fuel assets that have become nonperforming or obsolete as a result of legislation, decreased demand, or other factors). This model, outlined in the Financial Analysts Journal article “Hedging Climate Risk,” has been used by AP4, CalSTRS, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and many others. Today some $50 billion in assets are being managed using this strategy.
The first step corporate leaders can take to prepare for this shift in focus is to recognize the forces driving it. Once they understand why investors now care so much about ESG issues, they can make changes within their organizations to maximize long-term value for shareholders.
What’s Driving the Change
Over the past five years or so, investors have become increasingly interested in ESG issues. Six factors are acting as tailwinds for this heightened focus.
The size of investment firms.
The investment industry is highly concentrated. The top five asset managers hold 22.7% of externally managed assets, and the top 10 hold 34%. Large investment firms are now so big that modern portfolio theory—which holds that investors can limit volatility and maximize returns in a portfolio by combining investments from asset classes with varying levels of risk—cannot be used to mitigate system-level risks. A small investment firm might be able to hedge against climate change and other system-level risks by investing in “doom” stocks, such as gold, or in shares of companies that build survival shelters, for example. But firms that have trillions of dollars under management have no hedge against the global economy; in short, they have become too big to let the planet fail. What’s more, large asset owners such as pension funds are forced to take a long-term view because they have long-term liabilities—they must plan to pay out retirements for the next 100 years. As Hiro Mizuno, the chief investment officer of Japan’s $1.6 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund, noted, “We are a classic universal owner with intergenerational responsibilities and thus have an inherently long-term view.”
Financial returns.
Many corporate managers still equate sustainable investing with its predecessor, socially responsible investing (SRI), and believe that adhering to its principles entails sacrificing some financial return in order to make the world a better place. That view is outdated. A study by Harvard Business School’s George Serafeim and colleagues (which included one of us, Eccles) found that companies that developed organizational processes to measure, manage, and communicate performance on ESG issues in the early 1990s outperformed a carefully matched control group over the next 18 years. In a different study, Serafeim and his colleagues demonstrated the positive relationship between high performance on relevant ESG issues and superior financial performance. Evidence from investors corroborates that: A 2017 study by Nordea Equity Research (the largest financial services group in the Nordic region) reported that from 2012 to 2015, the companies with the highest ESG ratings outperformed the lowest-rated firms by as much as 40%. In 2018, Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that firms with a better ESG record than their peers produced higher three-year returns, were more likely to become high-quality stocks, were less likely to have large price declines, and were less likely to go bankrupt. Also in 2018, Amundi Asset Management found that the relative importance of ESG factors varies by region. For European portfolios, governance is particularly important for determining outperformance. For North American portfolios, environmental factors are the most significant.
The key to the new generation of sustainable investing is that it focuses only on “material” ESG issues that impacta firm’s valuation—for example, greenhouse gas emissions are material for an electric utility company but not for a financial services firm; supply chain management is material for an apparel company using low-cost workers in developing countries but not for a pharmaceutical company.
Materiality Matters
Sustainable investing is about materiality. A company that spends vast sums of money trying to address every conceivable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issue will likely see its financial performance suffer; however, companies that focus on material issues tend to outperform those that don’t.
Materiality varies by industry. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has identified the material ESG issues for all 77 industries in its classification system. For example, material issues for companies in food retail and distribution include greenhouse gas emissions, energy management, access and affordability, fair labor practices, and fair marketing and advertising. For internet and media services the list includes energy management, water and wastewater management, data security and customer privacy, diversity and inclusion, and competitive behavior.
A study by Mozaffar Khan, George Serafeim, and Aaron Yoon provides empirical evidence that good performance on material issues contributes to higher financial returns. Most tellingly, the researchers found that whereas firms with good ratings on material sustainability issues significantly outperform firms with poor ratings on those issues, firms with good ratings on immaterial issues do no better than firms with poor ratings on those issues.
Mainstream investors now look for evidence that their portfolio companies are focused on the material ESG issues that matter to financial performance, rather than on some ill-defined commitment to “sustainability.”
Growing demand
Asset owners such as pension funds are increasingly demanding sustainable investing strategies from their asset managers. Mary Jane McQuillen, portfolio manager and head of the ESG investment program at ClearBridge Investments (an active manager with $145 billion in AUM), says that in recent years her firm has seen a marked increase in the number of new inquiries mentioning ESG. What’s driving this growing demand? Not only are sophisticated asset owners aware that sustainable investing improves returns, but many of them, including high-net-worth individuals, are also focused on the nonfinancial outcomes. “Our wealthiest clients want to know their investments are making a difference to make the world a better place,” noted Rina Kupferschmid-Rojas, head of sustainable finance at UBS Group, which has the largest wealth-management business in the world, at $2.4 trillion.
Firms with trillions under management have become too big to let the planet fail.
The demand for ESG investment options is so high that many asset management firms are rushing to pull together new offerings. Sustainable and impact investment at UBS Asset Management has more than tripled since December 2016, with $17 billion in AUM. “We have seen very strong asset growth in our Sustainable and Impact offering,” said Michael Baldinger, the unit’s head, “and client demand has simply accelerated over the past 24 months.”
Asset owners no longer have to be convinced that sustainable investing is important. “We used to have to put a lot of effort into explaining to our colleagues in the broad investment community why ESG is important,” noted Eva Halvarsson, the CEO of Swedish pension fund AP2. “Now the focus is on how we can most effectively capture value from ESG integration.”
An evolving view of fiduciary duty.
A corollary to the mistaken belief that sustainable investing means sacrificing some financial return is the belief that fiduciary duty means focusing only on returns—thereby ignoring ESG factors that can affect them, particularly over time. However, more recent legal opinions and regulatory guidelines make it clear that it is a violation of fiduciary duty not to consider such factors. Although adoption of this new understanding has been slow in the United States, other countries, such as Canada, the UK, and Sweden, are taking steps to redefine the fiduciary duty concept. On November 28, 2018, the Swedish parliament approved major reforms requiring the four main national pension funds to become “exemplary” in the field of sustainable investment. As Will Martindale, head of policy at PRI, bluntly put it to shareholders, “Failing to integrate ESG issues is a failure of fiduciary duty.”
Trickle-down within investment firms.
It is one thing for the CEO or chief investment officer of a major investment firm to espouse sustainable investing and quite another for it to be practiced by the analysts and portfolio managers who make the day-to-day investment decisions. Historically, the ESG group at investment firms was separate from portfolio managers and sector analysts (on both the buy side and the sell side) in much the same way that corporate social responsibility groups were historically separate from business units. Now senior leaders are making sure that ESG analysis is being integrated into the fundamental financial activities carried out by analysts and portfolio managers. The big Dutch pension fund ABP, for example, has a program for full ESG integration across all asset classes. “Responsible investment is central to our investment philosophy,” said Claudia Kruse, the managing director of global responsible investment and governance for APG (ABP’s asset manager). “Portfolio managers are accountable for assessing every investment in the context of risk, return, costs, and ESG. This has been an internal cultural evolution.”
This shift will change the way investors engage with companies—and the way corporate executives view sustainability. The two key conversations—an investment team talking to a company’s CEO and CFO, and the investor’s ESG team members talking to their corporate counterparts—will be fused into one hardheaded conversation about material ESG issues. When it becomes clear that the people who decide whether to buy or sell a company’s stock have internalized ESG into their calculations, the business leaders will be forced to do the same within their companies.
The integration of ESG into financial analysis at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, with $6.1 trillion under management, is illustrative. The firm’s CEO, Larry Fink, has promoted the importance of sustainable investing for several years—but full integration of ESG criteria into the firm’s investment strategies has not happened overnight. Tariq Fancy, the chief investment officer of sustainable investing at BlackRock, equates integrating ESG considerations into traditional financial analysis to an exercise in behavior change. “Some investors are naturally inclined to do it. Others, depending on their asset class, geography, and investment style, take more time to see the investment value,” he says. Fancy’s background is as an investor—not someone from an environmental or social NGO—which gives him credibility in dealing with the investment teams. Given the size of BlackRock, changing investor behavior across the organization will require time and hard work. “But if we can do it at BlackRock, we can do it across capitalism,” he says.
Making the job of Fancy and other chief investment officers easier is the fact that the workforce is increasingly made up of Millennials, for whom ESG is central to any business analysis. Halvarsson told us that 20% of AP2’s employees are Millennials. “They expect us to integrate sustainability as a natural part of our daily work,” she said.
More ESG activism by investors.
Shareholder activism is on the rise in financial markets—and ESG is increasingly becoming a focus of these interventions. Historically, equity and fixed-income investors have been hands-off, keeping the stock or bond when they like it and selling it when they don’t or when they think it’s reached its peak value. But active managers who intend to hold a stock for a long time and passive managers who hold a stock forever have an incentive to see that companies address the material ESG issues that will improve their financial performance. One form of active engagement is proxy resolutions and proxy voting, an aspect of the active ownership strategy for sustainable investing. According to the ESG research and advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services, 476 environmental and social (E&S) shareholder resolutions had been filed in the United States as of August 10, 2018. The share of total resolutions focused on E&S has grown from around 33% in the 2006 to 2010 time period to around 45% from 2011 to 2016. By 2017, it stood at just over 50%. Leading topics for these resolutions include climate change and other environmental issues, human rights, human capital management, and diversity in the workforce and on corporate boards.
Even some activist hedge funds are moving into sustainable investing. For example, JANA Partners has launched its JANA Impact Capital Fund (JIC) and partnered with CalSTRS to encourage Apple to address the overuse of its iPhones by children and teenagers. (Disclosure: One of us, Eccles, is on JIC’s advisory board.) According to Charles Penner, a partner at JANA and the co–portfolio manager at JIC, the pressure has worked. “Apple quickly affirmed its commitment to the safety of its youngest customers the day after we raised our concerns, and it has since released new controls,” he said. Jeff Ubben, the CEO of ValueAct Capital, launched its ValueAct Spring Fund at the start of 2018 and took its first position in the global power company AES. Since Ubben joined the AES board, the company has accelerated its transition from coal to renewable energy sources and has become the first publicly traded U.S. power company to make its climate disclosures in accordance with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. As the company accelerates its carbon reduction goals, it is attracting European and Canadian ESG-oriented investors that had previously avoided it. Ubben told us, “Our goal is for each ValueAct Spring Fund portfolio company to earn a sustainability premium in its stock price for the long-term environmental and social value that is being generated.”
Investors that do not have the scale and resources of firms such as BlackRock or the activist orientation of JANA are partnering with groups such as Hermes Equity Ownership Services (Hermes EOS) to engage companies on ESG issues. As of September 2018, Hermes EOS represented 45 asset owner and asset manager clients, with $468 billion in AUM. In 2017, it worked with 659 companies on 1,704 issues related to the environment, ethics, governance, strategy, risk, and communications, making progress on about one-third of them. “We aren’t just seeking information,” explained Hans-Christoph Hirt, the head of Hermes EOS. “We are trying to change something.”
Companies need to increase middle managers’ involvement in material ESG issues.
Another group, Climate Action 100+, which includes more than 320 investors representing $32 trillion in AUM, is lobbying the largest greenhouse gas emitters to address climate change at the board level and set targets to cut emissions. Anne Simpson, head of strategy at CalPERS, described the coalition as “the irresistible force” pressing on the “immovable object” of large emitters that do not want to change. “There has never been a global gathering of so many large institutional investors with such clarity of intent,” she observed.
What’s Holding Back ESG Investing
Despite the forces propelling ESG investing forward, there are still barriers to overcome. The biggest obstacle to investment is that most sustainability reporting by companies is aimed not at investors but at other stakeholders, such as NGOs, and is thus of little use to investors. To be sure, there are data vendors that scour through an assortment of source materials, including whatever reports or data they can get from companies, to provide some assessment of ESG performance. But this is a poor substitute for comprehensive ESG information reported directly by the company.
Several organizations—such as the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (or SASB, where one of us, Eccles, was the founding chairman)—are trying to fill this gap. However, no governments are thus far mandating the use of the standards. And even when companies choose to adopt them, the reported numbers are rarely subject to a rigorous audit by a third party.
While the world of ESG data still feels a bit like the Wild West, substantial progress in improving the quality and availability of information is being made through market forces, the efforts of NGOs, and, in some territories, regulation—such as an EU directive requiring all companies of a certain size to report nonfinancial information once a year. “The quality of ESG data is not perfect,” BlackRock’s Fancy said, “but it’s rapidly improving.”
Preparing for the New Era
Our research reveals five actions that companies can take to prepare for the new era of sustainable investing.
Articulate your purpose.
Larry Fink, who writes an annual letter to CEOs, created quite a stir with his 2018 missive, titled “A Sense of Purpose.” He wrote, “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” He elaborated on this view in his 2019 letter, “Purpose & Profit,” stating that “purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them.” He further stated that “profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose—in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked.” According to Michelle Edkins, BlackRock’s global head of investment stewardship, “Some people think ‘purpose’ means diverting from profitability—but it doesn’t.” As Colin Mayer, a professor at the University of Oxford and an expert on corporate purpose, recently told us in an interview, “The purpose of a company is not just to produce profits, it is to produce solutions to problems of people and planet and in the process to produce profits.”
The easiest way for board members to communicate their company’s place in society is to publish a “Statement of Purpose.” In it, the board articulates the company’s reason for being, identifies the stakeholders most important to its continued prosperity, and lays out the time frames over which senior management’s decisions are evaluated and rewarded. It is essential that this statement come from the board since its role is to represent the intergenerational obligations of the corporation. Hermes EOS has launched an engagement campaign to encourage company boards to publish just such a statement. “Clarity about the corporate purpose is fundamental for board effectiveness,” explained Hermes EOS’s Hirt. “It’s a cornerstone of constructive engagement with investors and other stakeholders.”
Improve engagement with shareholders.
Investors, both active and passive and across asset classes, are seeking deeper levels of engagement with their portfolio companies. As “sustainable investing” becomes synonymous with “investing,” shareholders will want to be able to engage with the C-suite, including the CFO, and directly with the board. The “Statement of Purpose” provides a good foundation, but it should be part of a larger, integrated report for shareholders. As defined by the International Integrated Reporting Council, “an integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization’s strategy, governance, performance, and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of value.” In practice, this means that company reports should include a materiality analysis that identifies the ESG issues that affect financial performance. Such a report is an effective way to demonstrate to shareholders and other stakeholders that the company is practicing “integrated thinking” regarding its role in society. It is a way of changing the orientation from short-term financial results to long-term value creation.
The “Statement of Purpose” and an integrated report provide a good foundation for a company to start communicating its long-term plan. The Strategic Investor Initiative of CECP, a CEO-level coalition, has created a framework for executives to share the long-term strategic plans for their companies, and it hosts CEO Investor Forums in which to do so. Nearly two dozen heads of S&P 500 companies—including chief executives at 3M, Aetna, Becton Dickinson, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, and Unilever—have presented their plans to institutional investors with some $25 trillion in assets under management.
Finally, companies should take charge of quarterly calls and not let them be driven by short-term sell-side analysts. A good start is to eliminate earnings guidance. Management can then use these calls to explain progress on ESG targets and how the targets are contributing to financial performance. This is already beginning to happen. According to a 2018 report by Goldman Sachs, nearly half of S&P companies addressed ESG topics in 4Q conference calls.
Increase involvement by middle management.
As ESG considerations at major investment firms are trickling down from the CEO and CIO level to analysts and portfolio managers, companies need to respond by increasing their own middle management’s involvement in identifying and managing the material ESG issues. After all, middle managers are the ones who commit resources for achieving strategic objectives. “Real change will happen when business units are focused on what ‘ESG’ means for their own purpose and innovation,” said Jonathan Bailey, the head of ESG investing at Neuberger Berman, an asset manager with $315 billion in AUM. “Investors and the CEO create the space, but it is middle management that will create the products and services that serve both shareholders and society.”
Getting middle management more involved is the responsibility of the board and senior leaders. When appropriate, executives should include middle managers in conversations with investors. Middle managers in business units should also participate in the materiality determination process in which companies identify the ESG issues that impact their business. Top management should evaluate and reward middle managers on both financial and ESG performance, and with a longer-term perspective than quarterly or annually.
Invest in internal systems for ESG performance information.
Whereas every large company has a sophisticated and robust IT infrastructure for generating financial reports, few firms have reliable systems for measuring ESG performance. Instead, ESG information is typically generated through spreadsheets or various boutique software solutions focused on distinct topics, such as carbon emissions, supply chain, or customer retention. The result is untimely and poor-quality ESG data, which presents challenges not only to investors but to corporate managers themselves. Indeed, one of the main obstacles today for many companies wishing to produce an integrated report is that their ESG information is rarely available at the same time and in a comparable format as financial information. Developing standards for ESG information, as GRI and SASB are doing, will be helpful here. But corporate leaders can also play a vital role in speeding the pace of change in three ways.
First, they can put these standards into practice in their external reporting. Second, companies should challenge the software vendors that provide financial information to extend into ESG metrics. Some of the large software firms are already working on this—and they will work harder and faster if there is clear market demand. Third, businesses should press their audit firms to provide assurance on reported ESG performance, just as they do for financial performance. Yes, there are challenges (such as the need for standards and better and more integrated IT systems) and concerns (increased liabilities, for example) in doing so. But these are surmountable problems that must be solved to accommodate the changing focus of investors.
Improve measurement and reporting.
Some ESG issues don’t affect a company’s bottom line but still impact society at large. A growing segment of the investment community is interested in those impacts—and willing to allocate capital to firms that actively work to benefit society. The challenge for companies wishing to attract these investors is that there is currently no agreed-upon way of measuring a firm’s “externalities”—the positive and negative effects of its products and services on society. As just one example of the challenge, consider geographical location. A windmill replacing coal in China has a greater positive impact than adding a similar windmill in Norway, where nearly all of the energy comes from hydropower.
The Impact Management Project is a network of organizations working to harmonize impact measurement and reporting initiatives. CEO Clara Barby calls it a “big tent” of people and organizations committed to creating standards that will be useful to companies and investors. Companies, like investors, are on the frontier of this effort and will be learning together. A good framework for thinking about impact is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the 17 goals that the UN identified as necessary for a sustainable future, including eradicating poverty and hunger, ensuring responsible production and consumption, and promoting gender equality. A 2016 PwC study of sustainability reporting by 470 companies in 17 countries found that 62% mentioned the SDGs, although only 28% provided quantitative targets linked to societal impact.
CONCLUSION
A sea change in the way investors evaluate companies is under way. Its exact timing can’t be predicted, but it is inevitable. Large corporations whose shares are owned by the big passive asset managers and pension funds will feel the change the soonest. But it won’t be long before mid-cap companies come under this new scrutiny as well. All companies, though, should seize the opportunity to partner with investors willing to reward them for creating long-term value for society as a whole.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2019 issue (pp.106–116) of Harvard Business Review.
Robert G. Eccles is a visiting professor of management practice at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is on the advisory board of the JANA Impact Capital Fund and the board of directors of the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets.
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday is an astonishing disturbing book" .... Financial Times
Wikipedia’s ‘mainstream’ problem. January 9, 2015 wwhp Wikipedia
WIKIPEDIA, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/01/wikipedias-mainstream-problem/
Slate’s David Auerbach published an article this week called “Encyclopedia Frown”. It’s a great summary and it’s showing how this problem is just increasing.
“The encyclopedia that anyone can edit” is at risk of becoming, in computer scientist Aaron Halfaker’s words, “the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semiautomated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit.” An entrenched, stubborn elite of old-timers, a high bar to entry, and a persistent 90/10 gender gap among editors all point to the possibility that Wikipedia is going adrift. Because Wikipedia is so unprecedented, I cut it a lot of slack, but precisely for that reason, it faces unanticipated dangers and no easy solution.
Slate states that there is no solution in sight, which is somewhat true. Aiki Wiki as a platform will be able to address this issue and my hopes are, once completed – Wikipedia would be able to integrate with Aiki Wiki as a solution. That’s awhile away. Slate, like I and many others, do not see a solution on Wikipedia any time soon.
What is a Wiki War?
May 7, 2015 wwhp Wiki Wars, Wikipedia 4
http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/05/what-is-a-wiki-war/
Wiki wars, defined somewhat.
War, like the man said, is hell. A wiki war is perhaps is no different.
Wiki wars are literally conflicts between individuals or groups fighting over the control or influence of narratives published on the internet, primarily Wikipedia and a number of various MediaWiki platforms, which play off of Google’s search engine algorithm for broad public and global awareness. Wiki wars, from my direct experience, truly are “battles to the death for insanely low stakes” as put by veteran Wikipedia editor and RationalWiki brain trustee, David Gerard.
A wiki war occurs across a digital, contextual, and psychological battlefield. A landscape comprised of WikiMedia platforms and extending their reach into Google search, subReddits, and WordPress blogs which become weaponized to influence perceptions, support various ideological or commercial agendas, suppress edits by groups of online users, or to intimidate and harass other users on the web. Even bots are used in wiki wars, with counter bots created to battle them in return. Wiki Wars are very complex, and in a heated event, they can often require 8 – 16-hour full-time days in heated arguments, consensus building, research, and three-dimensional chess strategies between admins and editors gaming the process.
Wiki wars often begin from one single event, an ‘edit war’ that occurs on Wikipedia between the editors on an article.
The edit war turns to wiki war when working through disagreements on the sly, employing various tactics of editor suppression to remove the dissenting editors from the article.
One aggressive event to remove an editor from an article can trigger hundreds of defensive, and then regressive responses, igniting communities around the web into a much larger event which can play out for years. (see GamerGate, from which emerged the alt-right, and one could argue, eventually helped win the Trump presidency through digital persuasion, trolling, targeting, meme generation, and likely unintentional interaction with Russian or foreign agents riding the wave.) Please read more at http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/05/what-is-a-wiki-war/ . Please follow and like us on Facebook and Twitter
Wikileaks exposes two UK secret facilities critical to US Government
Includes GTT / Hibernia Express new superfast internet cable station in a seaside funfair
Cablegate leaked memo identifies Internet undersea cable stations
In December 2010, the infamous Wikileaks Cablegate operation to publish secret memos sent between US Embassies revealed a list of worldwide facilities "critical to US Homeland Security". Two such facilities in the UK are Internet submarine cable amplifier stations close to their landing points on the West Coast of Britain in popular seaside towns. They are hidden away inside anonymous buildings on unassuming industrial estates, partially masked by helpfully placed foliage.
They appear on Google Street View and the planning applications lodged with the relevant local councils reveal they were built in 2001 by a telecoms operator responsible for a key Internet cable running under the Atlantic Ocean between the UK and New York. For reasons of UK national security I do not pinpoint the precise locations.
"Secret Base" locations revealed – and D Notices
"Secret Base" locations revealed – Part 1 of 5
https://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret.htm
https://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret3.htm?permalink=pesage#pesage
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Introduction
What makes a "Secret Base" secret? By "base", I mean those British Government installations or military sites you've seen surrounded by razor wire fences and guarded by Ministry of Defence (MoD) police. How on earth can these sites be secret? The UK Government hasn't (yet) developed stealth technology in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. So they can't very well make, say, Faslane nuclear submarine base (pictured below) suddenly disappear as you come around the corner.
Having said that, in October 2007, the Sun newspaper revealed in an exclusive story that boffins at the Government's research wing QinetiQ had got together with Professor John Pendry's theoretical physics team at Imperial College, London to develop Harry Potter style "invisibility cloaks" for military equipment such as tanks.
As revealed back in May 2006, in scientific journals New Scientist and Physics World, the technology involves the development of special composite "metamaterials". They have very unusual refractive properties that alter the propagation of light beams. It is thought that the latest top secret research is being carried out on behalf of the MoD at QinetiQ's Nanomaterials Division at Farnborough, Hampshire.
No, it's actually much simpler than all that. A Government laboratory or military base can be made to "disappear" by just deleting it from Ordnance Survey (OS) maps. But how? Well, you need to appreciate that OS is essentially a Government agency within the MoD. Just look-up the derivation of the word "ordnance" and all will become clear. It means "military equipment, artillery and provisions".
Apart from straightforward deletion, another classic sign of "tampering" to look for on OS maps is the use of the rather uninformative labels "Works" or "Depot". This is sometimes an indication that a site has important Government and/or military activities. But why? Throughout the 1960s, Sir Martin Furnival-Jones, Director General of MI5 (the Security Service) during the Cold War, insisted that all sensitive sites be labelled on maps in this way, so their true strategic role would be concealed from potential enemy agents.
All inclusions on OS maps were once vetted by the UK Government's D-Notice Committee. You may have heard of this before. When the Government wanted to "gag" newspaper editors to stop them revealing embarrassing details about MoD-related stories, it was called "slapping a D-Notice" on them. Any locations on the "Sensitive Sites Register" were mysteriously removed from public maps by men in cigar smoke filled rooms in Whitehall and just ended up appearing as farmers' fields.
Sometimes misleading labels on Ordnance Survey maps are good old fashioned foul-ups. Like the map of Stockport Grammar School in my home town. It was corrected in 2018.
Ordnance Survey's map makers up to their old tricks? The grammar school in my home town of Stockport, Cheshire got an unwelcome makeover, but this time it was nothing to do with MI5. It was eventually corrected in 2018.
In February 2004, the Secretary of the D-Notice Committee, Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, contacted me to assure me that things have changed for the better and that the system has been overhauled in recent years. With the introduction of Internet-based mapping and aerial photography data, he insisted that the Committee is now an independent and purely advisory body. It was to be known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC) and the D-Notices more correctly referred to as Defence Advisory (DA-Notices), as described in Nick Wilkinson's history book Secrecy and the Media published in 2009. It was renamed again in 2015, to the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee, with the DA Notices renamed accordingly DSMA Notices.
Secret Bases revealed in flightPermalinkIn September 2006, a dedicated "Secret Bases" fan sent me some stunning pictures taken on a flight in a private jet over the Hoo peninsula, along the River Medway near the towns of Rochester, Gillingham and Chatham in Kent. You don't need Getmapping and Google Earth when you've got your own pilot's licence and a camera assistant.
The pictures reveal the old Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) at Chattenden Barracks which was used by the historic dockyard at nearby Chatham. It had its own rail system serving the depot from a terminal at Upnor to the south and a branch from Sharnal Street to the east. In more recent decades, Chattenden Barracks was home to the Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) who made use of the old naval depots to the north. The main depot to the east was turned into the Lodge Hill Training Area and some impressive bunkers can be seen in another old munitions enclosure to the west.
Lodge Hill Camp, to the north west, was home to the Defence Explosive Ordnance Disposal School (DEODS), the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technical Information Centre (EODTIC) and also the Police National Search Centre (PNSC). Look on Google Earth and you can even spot a Phantom jet being worked on in the camp.
It seems that Medway Council has controversial plans to use the various Chattenden sites for thousands of new homes. Apparently, many of the RSME Chattenden functions have already been moved over to the Royal Engineers' base at Gibraltar Barracks at Minley, Surrey, near Farnborough Airfield.
In June 2007, it was officially announced by the MoD that the DEODS, EODTIC and PNSC functions at Lodge Hill Camp, Chattenden would be eventually relocated to existing and new facilities to be built at St. George's Barracks to the south of Arncott Wood at Bicester, Oxfordshire. It is amongst all the huge military equipment storage bases around Upper Arncott and Ambrosden, discussed elsewhere in Secret Bases.
While flying over the Chattenden area, my correspondent also captured an impressive shot of the remains of the WWI munitions factory at Lower Hope Point on Cliffe Marshes, just a few miles to the north west. The history of the Chattenden Naval Rail System, including fascinating detailed maps, can be found in the archives of the Industrial Railway Society:-
www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/12/lodge_hill.htmWhen the storage of military munitions goes wrong, it has spectacular but devastating, tragic effects – as the workers and residents around the top secret World War Two underground munitions depot known as RAF Fauld near Tutbury, Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire found to their cost. In November 1944, almost 4000 tons of high explosives were accidentally triggered in one of the world's largest non-nuclear explosions. The massive crater left behind can be seen in another exclusive stunning Pilot's Eye View from my specialist contributor.
https://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret.htm
Ecuador Detains a Friend of Assange. Critics Say It’s Guilt by Association.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/world/americas/ecuador-ola-bini-assange.html
An anti-government protest in Quito that was prompted in part by
Ecuador’s decision to no longer protect the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
By José María León Cabrera
April 21, 2019
Leer en español
QUITO, Ecuador — Just hours after the British police dragged the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, the police in Ecuador made an arrest they suggested was related and involved the nation’s security.
But in the days since, the arrest has drawn a wave of protest from human rights activists and digital security advocates who say there is no evidence yet of a crime — only that of guilt by association.
The man arrested, Ola Bini, a Swedish cybersecurity expert and digital privacy advocate, was detained April 11 on charges that he had attacked computer systems in the country.
As evidence, prosecutors pointed to the laptops, iPads, iPods, encrypted USB sticks and credit cards they found when they searched Mr. Bini’s home and possessions. They noted that Mr. Bini traveled often and had spent more than $230,000 in internet services over the past five years.
Ecuador’s officials particularly cited Mr. Bini’s contacts with Mr. Assange, who faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiring to hack an American government computer to obtain national security information.
Last week, President Lenin Moreno of Ecuador said that Mr. Bini was one of “many hackers” who had visited Mr. Assange at the country’s embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder had sought refuge. “Probably to receive instructions,” Mr. Moreno added.
But as news of the detention has spread, human rights and digital security advocates have begun to question the grounds for the detention, arguing that Mr. Bini, 36, worked to prevent illegal access to private information.
Ola Bini, right, a Swedish programmer and digital privacy advocate, with his father last year in Brazil.CreditGörel Bini Gustafsson
Amnesty International and Article 19, an organization that defends free speech, have raised concerns about the arrest.
Mr. Bini “is a highly respected expert in digital security and cryptography and is recognized for major contributions in the field,” Article 19 said in a statement. David Kaye, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, said that nothing revealed so far connects Mr. Bini to any crime.
Danny O’Brien, the international director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Mr. Bini’s work had helped build a safer internet. The evidence that Ecuadorean authorities presented was simply “the sort of equipment you have when you work in those sort of projects,” he said.
“People contributing their free time to protect internet users have their skills and their lifestyle used against them,” Mr. O’Brien said, a point of recurring concern among human rights advocates.
Mr. Bini was arrested at the international airport in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, on his way to Japan to take part in a martial arts program, said his girlfriend, Sofia Celi. Later, government officials went on television to applaud the arrest — and mention his visits to Mr. Assange.
The minister of interior, María Paula Romo, said the government was trying to prevent Ecuador from turning into a center for digital “espionage and piracy.” Ms. Romo said she could not comment on the evidence against Mr. Bini, but she, too, noted that he had visited Mr. Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy “at least a dozen times.”
Mr. Bini’s lawyers say the detention is unlawful. They say he was denied access to lawyers for 17 hours, was not informed of the charges against him, and was not offered a translator, as required by local laws. His lawyers said they have been harassed and threatened by the police.
Mr. Bini, who was not granted bail, will remain in custody for 90 days while Ecuadorean prosecutors build a case against him.
Mr. Bini’s father, Dag Gustafsson, and his lawyer, Carlos Soria, during a news conference in Quito.
Mr. Bini moved to Ecuador in 2013, when he was working as a consultant for ThoughtWorks, a technology company based in Chicago. The Ecuadorean government had contracted with the company to consult on a new law governing software development.
He had joined the company around 2008, and when ThoughtWorks started offering cybersecurity consultancies, Mr. Bini focused on that area, said Ronaldo Ferraz, who was ThoughtWorks’ manager for Latin America and Africa at the time and oversaw Mr. Bini’s work.
He said that Mr. Bini was being accused of doing “the very same things he protected people against” and that the idea of Mr. Bini’s illegally accessing private information “runs contrary to everything he believes.”
Two weeks after Mr. Bini’s arrival in Ecuador, he gave an address titled “Ecuador as a Privacy Paradise” at a technology event hosted by a state university, during which he expressed concern about governments’ use of technology to monitor citizens.
After his arrest, Mr. Bini’s parents flew to Ecuador and gave a news conference denying their son was involved in wrongdoing and saying that his friendship with Mr. Assange was not enough to incriminate him.
Mr. Bini’s girlfriend, Ms. Celi, is a coder herself and has written academic papers with him on cryptography. She said there seemed to be a lack of understanding about the work Mr. Bini did, and what “cryptographic and privacy-preserving tools actually mean.”
MI6 Building London- MI6 and the CIA were behind arrest of Julian Assange
ON CONTACT: Wikipedia – A Tool Of The Ruling Elite
Wikipedia Exposed As Corrupt Tool of The Establishment OCTOBER 26, 2018 BY 21WIRE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPrpKDjQ5U
RT America
Published on Oct 20, 2018
On the latest episode of On Contact, investigative journalist Helen Buyniski exposes Jimmy Wales' egalitarian Wikipedia as yet another tool of the ruling elite. More from Helen here: http://helenofdestroy.com/index.php/4...
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Category: News & Politics
Wikipedia Exposed As Corrupt Tool of The Establishment OCTOBER 26, 2018 BY 21WIRE
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/26/wikipedia-exposed-as-corrupt-tool-of-the-establishment/
Big Business have turned Wikipedia into platform for propaganda into a platform for private propaganda for the ruling elite ..
RT America’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, talks with investigative journalist Helen Buyniski who exposes an editing racket resembling a type of “pay to play” policy, along with a collapse in credibility of this highly-politicized organization. Despite the obvious signs, a wave of disinformation is still being allowed by Wikipedia’s aloof co-founder Jimmy Wales (pictured above) who has knowingly allowed his online portal to transition from an egalitarian knowledge base into yet another corrupt tool of the ruling elite.
“... Wikipedia has become more and more obvious that Wikipedia is a website that should have no credibility at all … it would be one thing if Wikipedia was considered to be just a bias source like a trash rag … the bathroom wall of the Internet I like to call such trash rage… but it’s not ,, Wikipedia is considered the holy oracle of truth ….. however Wikipedia is really anything by the holy oracle of truth …” .. investigative journalist Helen Buyniski
“..Wikipedia has become an online source of instant information about politics, people, countries, conflicts and an array of historical events that confine our culture …But this online Wikipedia search is completely different from the old scholarly well researched encyclopedia or academic journals that once graced library shelves … Wikipedia’s contributors and editors are largely anonymous and are not required to show or produce any expertise in the subjects they write about and edit .. they are often unpaid …there are those who bear grudges .. or … champion particular ideologies or conspiracy theories .. along wit bib business …that closely monitors and edits all that appears about its products and business dealings that has turned Wikipedia into a platform for private propaganda … nowhere is this more evident in the way Wikipedia treats left wing anti capitalist critics such as the British MP George Galloway … along with journalists such as Glen Greenwell and Seymour Hersh …Joining me is investigative journalist Helen Buyniski to discuss Wikipedia and how it has become the tool to propagate the reining ideologies and biases for the ruling elite ….” RT America’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges
The issue of corruption at Wikipedia has been thrust into the public spotlight recently with the exposure of one of its main censorship and defamation avatars known as “Philip Cross”, an apparent pseudonymous editor-contributor used to slander and defame leading dissident voices in the West and to bolster NATO aligned propaganda talking points across thousands of Wikipedia pages. Over 133,000 edits have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years – many of which are skewed and defamatory, including entries have smeared award-winning filmmaker John Pilger, and TV presenter George Galloway, along with numerous other alternative media journalists and academics as ‘Kremlin’ or “pro-Russian” journalists and commentators. But this is only the beginning.
While Wikipedia can be a useful source of basic information on many academic subjects and for geography and general history. However, in the area of personal biographies and western foreign policy related attribution of blame (chemical weapons, ‘dictator’ death tolls in states Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, Ukraine etc) – the platform has been utterly corrupted by well-financed lobbies, PR consultants, law firms and other nefarious corporate vehicles employing persons subcontracting for government intelligence agencies, as well as various and sundry bent political operatives-for-hire.
RT America’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, talks with investigative journalist Helen Buyniski who exposes an editing racket resembling a type of “pay to play” policy, along with a collapse in credibility of this highly-politicized organization. Despite the obvious signs, a wave of disinformation is still being allowed by Wikipedia’s aloof co-founder Jimmy Wales (pictured above) who has knowingly allowed his online portal to transition from an egalitarian knowledge base into yet another corrupt tool of the ruling elite. Watch:
The issue of corruption at Wikipedia has been thrust into the public spotlight recently with the exposure of one of its main censorship and defamation avatars known as “Philip Cross”, an apparent pseudonymous editor-contributor used to slander and defame leading dissident voices in the West and to bolster NATO aligned propaganda talking points across thousands of Wikipedia pages. Over 133,000 edits have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years – many of which are skewed and defamatory, including entries have smeared award-winning filmmaker John Pilger, and TV presenter George Galloway, along with numerous other alternative media journalists and academics as ‘Kremlin’ or “pro-Russian” journalists and commentators. But this is only the beginning.
While Wikipedia can be a useful source of basic information on many academic subjects and for geography and general history. However, in the area of personal biographies and western foreign policy related attribution of blame (chemical weapons, ‘dictator’ death tolls in states Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, Ukraine etc) – the platform has been utterly corrupted by well-financed lobbies, PR consultants, law firms and other nefarious corporate vehicles employing persons subcontracting for government intelligence agencies, as well as various and sundry bent political operatives-for-hire.
RT America’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, talks with investigative journalist Helen Buyniski who exposes an editing racket resembling a type of “pay to play” policy, along with a collapse in credibility of this highly-politicized organization. Despite the obvious signs, a wave of disinformation is still being allowed by Wikipedia’s aloof co-founder Jimmy Wales (pictured above) who has knowingly allowed his online portal to transition from an egalitarian knowledge base into yet another corrupt tool of the ruling elite.
Pilot's Eye view: Looking south over RSME Chattenden, Kent with Lodge Hill Training Area (left, east) and Lodge Hill Camp with bunkers (right, west)
Trust me, I’m lying…on Wikipedia
March 15, 2014 wwhp activism, Reputation disruption, Wikipedia
http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2014/03/trust-me-im-lying-on-wikipedia/
“Wikipedia acts as a certifier of basic information for many people, including reporters. Even a subtle influence over the way that Wikipedia frames an issue – whether criminal charges, a controversial campaign, a lawsuit, or even a critical reception – can have a major impact on the way bloggers write about it. It is the difference between “So-and-so released their second album in 2011” and “So-and-so’s first album was followed by the multiplatinum and critically lauded hit…” You change the descriptors on Wikipedia and reporters and readers change their descriptors down the road.”
“Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday, suggesting another motive for contributing to Wikipedia.
https://ryanholiday.net/trust-me-im-lying-confessions-of-a-media-manipulator/
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
"Is a Playbook for the Dark Arts of Exploiting the Media"......
Robert Greene Author of THE 48 LAWS OF POWER
The 48 Laws of Power (1998) is the first book by American author Robert Greene. The book is a bestseller, selling over 1.2 million copies in the United States, and is popular with prison inmates and celebrities. Greene initially formulated some of the ideas in The 48 Laws of Power while working as a writer in Hollywood and concluding that today's power elite shared similar traits with powerful figures throughout history. In 1995, Greene worked as a writer at Fabrica, an art and media school, and met a book packager named Joost Elffers. Greene pitched a book about power to Elffers and six months later, Elffers requested that Greene write a treatment. Although Greene was unhappy in his current job, he was comfortable and saw the time needed to write a proper book proposal as too risky. However, at the time Greene was rereading his favorite biography about Julius Caesar and took inspiration from Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon River and fight Pompey, thus inciting the Great Roman Civil War.[10] Greene wrote the treatment, which later became The 48 Laws of Power. He would note this as the turning point of his life.
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday is an astonishing disturbing book" .... Financial Times
The cult classic that predicted the rise of fake news—revised and updated for the post-Trump, post-Gawker age.
Hailed as “astonishing and disturbing” by the Financial Times and “essential reading” by TechCrunch at its original publication, former American Apparel marketing director Ryan Holiday’s first book sounded a prescient alarm about the dangers of fake news. It’s all the more relevant today.
Trust Me, I’m Lying was the first book to blow the lid off the speed and force at which rumors travel online—and get “traded up” the media ecosystem until they become real headlines and generate real responses in the real world. The culprit? Marketers and professional media manipulators, encouraged by the toxic economics of the news business.
Whenever you see a malicious online rumor costs a company millions, politically motivated fake news driving elections, a product or celebrity zooming from total obscurity to viral sensation, or anonymously sourced articles becoming national conversation, someone is behind it. Often someone like Ryan Holiday.
As he explains, “I wrote this book to explain how media manipulators work, how to spot their fingerprints, how to fight them, and how (if you must) to emulate their tactics. Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I’m tired of a world where trolls hijack debates, marketers help write the news, opinion masquerades as fact, algorithms drive everything to extremes, and no one is accountable for any of it. I’m pulling back the curtain because it’s time the public understands how things really work. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.”
Free and open press freedom is essential for a well balanced society to exist so that there are checks and balances on those in power....
"... How are you living your life? ... you wake up and make day to day choices .. and we should have the right and freedom to make such choices .... without every thought, spoken word and action being recorded, monitored, stored and judged by unknown faceless people and software programs ... All of us have an opportunity to fix problems in society .....we can not fix it by ourselves ... if you're waiting for a hero ... you will be waiting for ever .. because it is not a politician that you are looking for to solve the problems in society .. it is the average person in the world .. it is you and the person sitting or standing next to you ... all of us have a responsibility .. we can not fix it by ourselves ... but we don't need to ... what we have to do is make a small positive change .. that can be replicated ... that can be shared ... we need to think about our ideas .. we need to think about these problems .. we as individuals need to not only create a defence but also an offence for a free and open society ...we need to recognise that one of the essential problems right now is one of debate ... words no longer have the same meaning as they once meant ... such as the word terrorism ... which is a word with no single agreed upon definition .. there are governments that are now charging people with terrorism ... who are only acting in ways that traditionally were considered just to be political protests ... where an action that is just journalism and free speech is transformed by the government into an act of terrorism ... it also happens to positive parts of our language .... such a freedom ... openness .. democracy.. liberty ... human rights ... we've moved from a belief that as long as things are moral they are sustainable ... they are supportable ... they are things that we should back ... to a belief that legality is the same thing as morality .... as long as the government says that someone broke the law ... we infer .... we believe that instinctively they did the wrong thing ... but ladies and gentlemen .. sometimes the only moral choice is to break the law" ...... Edward Snowden ..
WikipediaExposed aims to help the average person regain the power back into their hands by providing a forum for open discussion and debate where facts, information, opinion and debate can be exposed to the world without the person who provided such fact, information and/or opinion being in fear of arrest, repercussions and attacks on themselves, their family and friends..... just for daring to provide such open discussion and debate where facts, information, opinion and debate .... to the world wide web ....
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador
Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador states that ..." during a meeting Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort ..... had with Lenin Moreno the new president of Ecuador after a week of taking office of the president of Ecuador ...
Lenin Moreno offered to hand over Julian Assange to the United States, in exchange for financial support from the United States .. “ that was something incredable ..” Rafael Correa the former president of Ecuador went onto state … “ last year Mike Pence the vice president of the United States visited his country ,,,, and again Lenin Moreno ... the new president of Ecuador offered to give Julian Assange to the United States in exchange of receiving financial support from the United States …...
"I don't agree with all the things Jullian Assange used to do, but the main point is that his human rights were being violated," Ecuador's former president Rafael Correa tells François Picard after the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder in London. Correa spoke to us from Brussels. Subscribe to France 24 now: http://f24.my/youtubeEN
Please email to info@wikipediaexposed.org your:
Facts- Information -Opinions -Open Debate
on any subject that you feel is important to have openly presented to the world for full public debate and discussion ...
Do you want your own WikipediaExposed page?
wikileaks2-Exposed in Wikileaks Cablegate memo: Critical to the US Government — another Internet submarine cable amplifier station in a different UK West Country seaside town
The truth is always important to be brought to public light
Defence Intelligence (DI)
https://www.secret-bases.co.uk/wiki/Defence_Intelligence
Defence Intelligence (DI) is an organisation within the United Kingdom intelligence community which focuses on gathering and analysing military intelligence. It differs from the UK's intelligence agencies (MI6, GCHQ and MI5) in that it is an integral part of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) rather than a stand-alone organisation. The organisation employs a mixture of civilian and military staff and is funded within the UK's defence budget. The organisation was formerly known as the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), but changed its name in 2009.
The primary role of Defence Intelligence is that of 'all-source' intelligence analysis. This discipline draws information from a variety of overt and covert sources to provide the intelligence needed to support military operations, contingency planning, and to inform defence policy and procurement decisions. The maintenance of the ability to give timely strategic warning of politico-military and scientific and technical developments with the potential to affect UK interests is a vital part of the process. DI's assessments are used outside the MoD to support the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and to assist the work of other Government departments (OGDs) and international partners (such as NATO and the European Union). It is this 'all-source' function which distinguishes Defence Intelligence from other organisations such as SIS and GCHQ which focus on the collection of 'single-source' Human Intelligence (HUMINT) and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) respectively. As such Defence Intelligence occupies a unique position within the UK intelligence community.
Defence Intelligence also performs an intelligence collection function, primarily through the military capabilities lodged within the Joint Forces Intelligence Group (created in 2012 from what was formerly known as the Intelligence Collection Group or ICG).
History of Defence Intelligence (DI)
Defence Intelligence can trace its ancestry back to 1946, when the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) was established under the direction of General Sir Kenneth Strong.[2] The JIB's was structured into a series of divisions: procurement (JIB 1), geographic (JIB 2 and JIB 3), defences, ports and beaches (JIB 4), airfields (JIB 5), key points (JIB 6), oil (JIB 7) and telecommunications (JIB 8).[3]
When the Ministry of Defence was formed in 1964, Naval Intelligence, Military Intelligence and Air Intelligence were combined to form the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS).[4] Although the DIS focussed initially on Cold War issues, more recently its attention has moved to support for overseas operations, weapons of mass destruction and international counter-terrorism activities.[5] Like the rest of the MOD, Defence Intelligence was subject to the 2008 'Streamlining' initiative in which 20–25 percent of Central London staff were cut and it has had to continue to find additional savings since. It changed its name to Defence Intelligence (DI) in 2009.[5]
Organization
Defence Intelligence is headed by the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI) who is a serving three-star military officer and who, as the MOD's 'intelligence process owner', is also responsible for the overall co-ordination of intelligence activities throughout the Armed Forces and single Service Commands. He is supported by two deputies—one civilian and one military. The civilian Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence (DCDI) is responsible for Defence Intelligence analysis and production and the military Director of Cyber Intelligence and Information Integration (DCI3) is responsible for intelligence collection and capability.[6]
Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence (DCDI)
DCDI manages the intelligence analysis and production directorates of Defence Intelligence. These include directorates for:
Strategic Assessments (regional and thematic)
Capability Assessments (weapons systems and platforms)
Counter Proliferation
Counter Intelligence
DCDI is responsible for intelligence analysis and production, providing global defence intelligence assessments and strategic warning on a wide range of issues including, intelligence support for operations; proliferation and arms control; conventional military capabilities; strategic warning and technical evaluations of weapons systems. These intelligence assessments draw upon classified information provided by GCHQ, SIS, the Security Service, Allied intelligence services and military collection assets, in addition to diplomatic reporting and a wide range of publicly available or ‘open source’ information such as media reporting and the internet.[5]
Director of Cyber Intelligence and Information Integration (DCI3)
DCI3 is responsible for the provision of specialised intelligence, imagery and geographic support services, and for the intelligence and security training of the Armed Forces. In addition to a Head Office policy staff he is responsible for two major groupings within Defence Intelligence:
Joint Forces Intelligence Group (JFIG)
The JFIG was established in 2012 under the new Joint Forces Command and superseded the Intelligence Collection Group (ICG). Making up the largest sub-element of Defence Intelligence, JFIG is responsible for the collection of signals, geospatial, imagery and measurement and signature intelligence and comprises:[7]
The National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence (NCGI) formerly known as the Defence Geospatial Intelligence Fusion Centre (DGIFC) and prior to that JARIC (the National Imagery Exploitation Centre)
The Defence Geographic Centre (DGC)
Joint Services Signals Organisation (JSSO)
Defence HUMINT Unit (DHU)
The National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence (NCGI) is based at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire (since moving from RAF Brampton in 2013) and provides specialist imagery intelligence to the armed forces and other UK government customers. They deliver this through the exploitation of satellite imaging systems, as well as airborne and ground-based collection systems. DIFC uses these sources, together with advanced technologies, to provide regional intelligence assessments and support to strategic intelligence projections.[5]
The Defence HUMINT Organisation (DHO) is a Tri-Service organisation that provides specialist support to military operations. The DHO manages strategic aspects of defence human intelligence and is under the command of a Colonel. It draws staff from across the three services.[5]
The Joint Services Signals Organisation (JSSO) conducts research into new communications systems and techniques in order to provide operational support to static and deployed units. The JSSO is based at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire under the command of a Group Captain with some 1,600 staff drawn from all three services.[5]
In 2013, JFIG HQ moved from Feltham in Middlesex to RAF Wyton.[8][9]
Joint Intelligence Training Group (JITG)
The Joint Intelligence Training Group (JITG), at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, provides a single defence focal point for intelligence, security, languages and photography training in the UK, though photography training is carried out at the Defence School of Photography (DSoP) off site at RAF Cosford.[10] The organisation consists of a headquarters, the Defence College of Intelligence and a specialist operational intelligence capability. JITG is co-located with the headquarters of the British Army's Intelligence Corps.[11][12]
Defence intelligence roles
To support its mission, Defence Intelligence has four essential roles:
Support to operations: DI plays an integral part in the planning process throughout all stages of military operations, by providing intelligence collection and analysis at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. Examples of the support DI has provided to operations are:[5]
Coalition action in Iraq
NATO led forces in Afghanistan and Bosnia
UN humanitarian and peace-support operations in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cyprus, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo
DI has deployed intelligence analysts, linguists and reservists overseas, and provide geographic support by supplying both standard and specialised mapping to overseas theatres.[5]
Support to contingency planning for operations: DI provides intelligence data and all source assessments that assist in preparations for future situations with the potential to require the commitment of UK Armed Forces. These products, which cover political and military developments, country and cultural information, critical infrastructure and internal security, all aid contingency planning.[5]
Provision of early warning: A fundamental responsibility of Defence Intelligence is to alert ministers, chiefs of staff, senior officials and defence planners to impending crises around the world. Such warning is vital for short and medium term planning. DI meets this responsibility by focusing on current areas and topics of concern, highlighting the effects of changing circumstances, predicting security and stability trends, and assessing how these trends may develop. The assessments are distributed to decision-makers throughout the MOD, the Armed Forces, other government departments, allies, and UK Embassies and High Commissions.[5]
Provision of longer-term analysis of emerging threats: Defence Intelligence provides longer-term assessments of likely scenarios around the world where UK Armed Forces might need to operate and of the equipment that they might face. It also provides technical support to the development of future military equipment and to the development of countermeasures against potentially hostile systems.[5]
How Defence Intelligence carries out its work
Direction: The Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI) receives direction from the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and Permanent Under Secretary (PUS) on MOD's Intelligence needs and draws national guidance from the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
Analysis and production: Intelligence assessments are written to meet the needs of customers and must be timely and relevant. The assessment process involves judging the authenticity and reliability of new information and its relevance to existing intelligence. Assessments focus on probable and possible outcomes, to provide the best available advice for developing a response or resolution. They are continually adjusted in light of new intelligence or events.
Chiefs of Defence Intelligence
The Chiefs have been as follows:[13]
Director-General Intelligence
Major-General Sir Kenneth Strong, 1964–1966
Air Chief Marshal Sir Alfred Earle, rtd 1966–1968
Air Marshal Sir Harold Maguire, rtd 1968–1972
Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly rtd 1972–1975
Lieutenant-General Sir David Willison, rtd 1975–1978
Air Chief Marshal Sir John Aiken, rtd 1978–1981
Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday, rtd 1981–1984
Chiefs of Defence Intelligence
Air Marshal Sir Michael Armitage 1984–1986
Lieutenant-General Sir Derek Boorman 1986–1988
Vice-Admiral Sir John Kerr 1988–1991
Air Marshal Sir John Walker, 1991–1994
Lieutenant-General Sir John Foley, 1994–1997
Vice-Admiral Sir Alan West, 1997–2000
Air Marshal Sir Joe French, 2000–2003
Lieutenant-General Sir Andrew Ridgway, 2003–2006
Air Marshal Sir Stuart Peach 2006–2009
Air Marshal Christopher Nickols 2009–2012
Vice-Admiral Alan Richards 2012–2015
Air Marshal Philip Osborn 2015–2018
Lieutenant-General James Hockenhull 2018-present
See also
Defense Intelligence Agency – United States counterpart
JARIC
List of intelligence agencies
Ministry of Defence
Operation Rockingham
RAF Intelligence
References
^ House of Commons (5 July 2016). Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2015–2016, page 16. Retrieved 23 October 2016.
^ Dylan, p. xiii
^ Dylan, p. 31
^ Dylan, p. 184
^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Defence Intelligence: Roles". Ministry of Defence. 12 December 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
^ "Defence Intelligence". Ministry of Defence. Retrieved 7 November2015.
^ "Joint Forces Intelligence Group Achieves Full Operating Capability". Ministry of Defence. 22 September 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
^ "New Defence Intelligence buildings handed over to MOD". Ministry of Defence. 16 March 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
^ "UK JARIC Transitions to Defence Geospatial and Intelligence Fusion Centre" (PDF). November 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 February 2013.
^ "RAF - Defence School of Photography". www.raf.mod.uk. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
^ "Defence Intelligence and Security Centre". Ministry of Defence. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
^ "Bedfordshire - Joint Intelligence Training Group Chicksands". Sanctuary (44): 74. 2015. ISSN 0959-4132.
^ "Ministry of Defence Senior Posts" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
Dylan, Huw (2014). Defence Intelligence and the Cold War: Britain's Joint Intelligence Bureau 1945–1964. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199657025.
Assange arrest shows Moreno is ‘CIA asset,’
turning Ecuador into ‘vassal’ – former FM
21 Apr, 2019
https://www.rt.com/news/457170-patino-ecuador-moreno-vassal-cia/
Julian Assange and Ricardo Patino meet at Ecuador's embassy in central London on June 16, 2013.
Ecuador turns to Interpol to arrest former foreign minister & Assange supporter Patino
The decision of Ecuador’s government to terminate Julian Assange’s asylum is “savagery” and has heavily damaged the dignity of the county, which caved in to the US as if it was its “vassal,” former FM Ricardo Patino told RT.
The former official, who is a vocal supporter of the WikiLeaks co-founder, believes the arrest of Assange has greatly damaged the image of Ecuador, its constitution, as well as the international law as a whole.
“This is an insult to the dignity of our country, it is lawlessness – to allow the British police to enter our embassy and pull out the person we gave asylum to. And according to our constitution and international agreements it is forbidden to extradite him, this is called the principle of non-refoulement,” Patino told RT Spanish in an exclusive interview.
Aside from that, he said Assange still holds Ecuadorian citizenship (currently “suspended” by the government). The country’s laws explicitly prohibit handing over its citizens to be persecuted under foreign laws, Patino noted. The amount of violations is “savagery from a legal point of view,” and Patino says it has clearly shown the country’s president – Lenin Moreno – surrendered to the US “as a vassal.”
Patino then accused the incumbent president of being a puppet of the CIA, tasked with destroying the legacy of his socialist predecessors.
“All that Moreno does is an attempt to completely destroy what we have built. Undoubtedly, it was planned and it was planned with the CIA involvement. He is not smart enough to come up with something like this, so it is staged by the US Embassy,” Patino claimed, adding that a CIA representative frequents presidential and government meetings, telling Ecuadorian leadership what to do.
cable-station2-Ho-de-ho. Yet another Internet submarine cable amplifier station near another holiday camp and next to thousands of caravans, back in the South West in a third town
FReedom of the presswww.wikipediaexposed.org
Hi-de-hi. Another Internet submarine cable amplifier station ...... but on the UK's blustery East Coast, near a very famous holiday camp
wikileaks-Exposed in Wikileaks Cablegate memo: Critical to the US Government — an Internet submarine cable amplifier station in a UK West Country seaside town
Raytheon's Cyber Innovation Centre is at Exchange Square, Manchester
Click for more Pilot's Eye Views of Secret Bases https://www.secret-bases.co.uk/pilots-eye.htm
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