A US Department of Defense (DoD) research program is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar program is designed to develop immediate and long-term warfighter-relevant insights for senior officials and decision makers in the defense policy community, and to inform policy implemented by combatant commands. Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD Minerva Research Initiative partners with universities to improve DoDs basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US. Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model of the dynamics of social movement mobilization and contagions.; The project will determine the critical mass (tipping point) of social contagions by studying their digital traces in the cases of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey. Another words the Pentagon started during the end of the Bush Administration right before the economic collapse amassing a database for labeling non-violent protest movements potential terrorists.So that means that any collective who opposes right-wing foreign or economic polices; like the anti-war movement or the occupy movement. These are menacing times for our democracy.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:22:08 +0000