PDF (46 Pages): The Next Chapter of Global Terrorism (December 2012)
Continue reading “Brookings Institution: “The Official Persistent Terrorism Threat””

Similar spirit to Flight 93 on 9/11. Federal Flight Deck Officer program could serve as a good model for training and standards. A good Ohio legislature would clean up the laws and preclude lawsuits.
Hundreds of Ohio school workers want to carry guns
More than 450 teachers and other school employees from around Ohio have applied for 24 spots in a free firearms-training program being offered by the Buckeye Firearms Association.
“We’re pleasantly surprised, but it’s not shocking,” Ken Hanson, legal chairman for the association, said today of the response since the group began taking applications on its website 10 days ago. “The demand has been there for quite some time.”
The issue of arming school employees to protect students has been “on the radar” of school boards in Ohio for several years, he said, but the organization decided to launch its training program after the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.
“That was the breaking point,” he said. “We decided it’s time to quit talking about it and move forward.”

From Pravda on the Potomac. In parts, makes us sound like the Swiss, who are an officially armed nation.
Why do Americans love guns? They’re part of our culture.
Henry Allen
Washington Post, December 25, 2012
Henry Allen, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2000, was a Post editor and reporter for 39 years.
Let me dust off my favorite Sufi parable.
A man loses a ring inside his house. A friend sees him crawling around outside and asks, “If you lost your ring in the house, why are you looking for it here?” “You fool,” says the man, “the light is much better out here.”
And so it goes with people looking for solutions to gun killings in America.
We’re talking about the very best people, the people with statistics and proposals for regulation, crawling around in the sunlight of their social-scientific rationality.
They never find a solution because all their legislation, academic studies, mathematical proofs, and proposals for waiting periods, background checks and buying limits aren’t going to do much more than they ever have.
Nor are the pleas of the progressives asking why anyone would ever want to own a gun — thereby demonstrating their arrogance toward the people who own the hundreds of millions of guns in the United States.
Both the problem and the solution lie elsewhere, in what historian Richard Hofstadter called “America as a Gun Culture.”
Black-Market Abortion Drug Sales Appear To Be Rising
The New Republic‘s cover headline this month is a topic that pro-choice activists speak about occasionally amongst themselves, but rarely address in public: “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” The reason that it's not much discussed in public forums is that reproductive health advocates are data-driven people, and one thing that's nearly impossible to get data on is the prevalence of women quietly buying an ulcer medication named Cytotec from sleazy online dealers and using that to terminate pregnacies at home, far out of the reach of doctors and agencies like the CDC or the Guttmacher Institute that compile statistics on abortions. The writer of the piece, Ada Calhoun, admits that there's no way to know how common these black-market abortions are, but points out that the rise in websites peddling Cytotec specifically to terminate pregnancy (instead for its on-label use to treat ulcers) makes it hard to deny that this is a growing trend:

Huh?
Sandy Hook: Huge Hoax and Anti-Gun “Psy Op”
By Jim Fetzer and Dennis Cimino
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Dennis Cimino, who has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.
There are obvious signs that tell the difference between genuine and fabricated event. The recent shooting of police and firemen responding to a deliberately-set fire has all the signs of being a bona fide event: there is a single consistent narrative, one shooter has been clearly identified, and there has been no good reason to doubt that the subject, William Spengler, went off the rails and committed the crimes. There are many articles about it, which relate the same basic themes: “Killer of 2 NY Firemen had semiautomatic rifle, left note”: “Police say the man who lured firefighters in Webster, N.Y., into a deadly ambush had the same make and caliber semiautomatic rifle as the one used in the Connecticut school massacre. Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said Tuesday that 62-year-old William Spengler was armed with a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, a .38-caliber revolver and a 12-gauge shotgun in Monday’s ambush. Spengler killed two firefighters and wounded two others before fatally shooting himself.”
Continue reading “Mini-Me: Sandy Hook Massacre — Still Conflicted”

The Hourglass Strategy: Healing the Americas with Intelligence & Integrity
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO, Earth Intelligence Network
Mr. Steele grew up in Latin America, returning as a clandestine case officer, and then going on to teach governments across the region how to leverage Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, and has been described in the media as a serial pioneer and an unsung hero helping create the future. If implemented, ethical evidence-based decision-support becomes the foundation for a completely new innovative and positive OAS in the Americas.

The USA and the OAS have lost their way. The formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) was ignored, just as President Barack Obama ignored the value of the book Open Veins of Latin America when it was given to him by President Hugo Chavez. The seven sins of American foreign policy, beginning with ignorance and ending with arrogance, persist. Meanwhile, in Asia – and reinforcing the future of CELAC – President Obama was politely sent home with a sound rejection of his proposed and obviously predatory Trans-Pacific Partnership; instead, a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is being established. The Western Hemisphere including the Arctic should be but is not Priority One for the USA and OAS. The fact is that the USA and OAS lack a strategy, lack coherent policies, and lack harmonized spending strategies for embracing, nurturing, and devising mutually beneficial diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) programs. This is a global short-coming best addressed first in relation to the Americas.
Continue reading “Reflections on Healing the Americas — Open Source Agency & Hourglass Strategy”