Collaboration Zones – Page 1134 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/03/042012/03/04

Koko: Iowa passes outrageous law demanding total secrecy over factory meat filth and cruelty practices

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Iowa passes outrageous law demanding total secrecy over factory meat filth and cruelty practices

Ethan A. Huff

Natural News, 4 March 2012

(NaturalNews) Capturing undercover footage of extreme animal abuse at factory farms is soon to be illegal in Iowa, thanks to the passage of a new bill that squelches First Amendment protections for agricultural whistleblowers. In one of the fastest legislative rush-throughs in history, the “American Heartland” state's House and Senate recently passed House File 589, also known as the “ag-gag” bill, which redefines undercover filming and various other whistle-blowing activities as “agricultural production facility fraud” punishable under the law.

Prior to the passage of the bill, which now sits on Republican Governor Terry Branstad's desk for signing, exposing the horrific conditions in many of Iowa's factory farms was a legally-protected free speech right. Once signed into law, however, H.F. 589 will make Iowa the first state in America to actively muzzle individuals from exposing the ugly truth about what takes place at chicken farms, animal processing plants, and even behemoth genetically-modified (GM) crops farms across the state.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The truth at any cost lowers all others costs. This is the worst possible step Iowa could take.

2012/03/042012/03/04

Reference: The Predicament of Mankind: A Quest for Structured Responses to Growing World-Wide Complexities and Uncertainties (Original Proposal to the Club of Rome).

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, White Papers

Ozbekhan, H. (1970) The Predicament of Mankind: A Quest for Structured Responses to Growing World-Wide Complexities and Uncertainties Proposal to the Club of Rome.

Club of Rome Original Proposal 1970

Phi Beta Iota: The Club of Rome considered two proposals. Limits to Growth, a top-down micro-management approach won. The losing proposal focused on educating people and assuring public buy-in to achieve implementable and sustainable reforms.

2012/03/032012/03/03

Robert Steele: Japan Connects with the Truth

05 Energy, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Impotency

Steele smiling head shot — Robert David STEELE Vivas

The truth about what happened in Japan will not be known for some time. Remarkable, however, is the below admission of two key attributes for successful governance: first, share all information broadly and quickly; and second, do not believe ignorant over-confidence (if not outright lies) told by “experts” from both the public and private sector. The Japanese government may not be practicing complete openness, for example, with respect to the radioactive contamination of the Tokyo suburbs, but this is a step in the right direction. “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.”

Japan’s government failed responding to earthquake, tsunami: PM

Japan's prime minister acknowledged Saturday the government failed in its response to last year's earthquake and tsunami, being too slow in relaying key information and believing too much in “a myth of safety” about nuclear power.

“We can no longer make the excuse that what was unpredictable and outside our imagination has happened,” Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said. “Crisis management requires us to imagine what may be outside our imagination.”

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2012/03/03

Josh Kilbourn: Israel, Others Begin US Stock Spree

08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

Next Leg Of The Ponzi Revealed – Foreign Central Banks To Begin Buying US Stocks Outright Starting Today

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 1 March 2012

We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg.

The Bank of Israel will begin today a pilot program to invest a portion of its foreign currency reserves in U.S. equities.

The investment, which in the initial phase will amount to 2 percent of the $77 billion reserves, or about $1.5 billion, will be made through UBS AG and BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Saadon said in a telephone interview today. At a later stage, the investment is expected to increase to 10 percent of the reserves.

A small number of central banks have started investing part of their reserves in equities. About 9 percent of the foreign- exchange reserves of Switzerland’s central bank were invested in shares at the end of the third quarter, the Swiss bank said on its website.

The investment will be made in equity index trackers and will include between 1,500 to 2,000 shares, among them stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL), Saadon said.

Patrick Meier: Trails of Digital Trustworthness

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Trails of Trustworthiness in Real-Time Streams

Real-time information channels like Twitter, Facebook and Google have created cascades of information that are becoming increasingly challenging to navigate. “Smart-filters” alone are not the solution since they won’t necessarily help us determine the quality and trustworthiness of the information we receive. I’ve been studying this challenge ever since the idea behind SwiftRiver first emerged several years ago now.

I was thus thrilled to come across a short paper on “Trails of Trustworthiness in Real-Time Streams” which describes a start-up project that aims to provide users with a “system that can maintain trails of trustworthiness propagated through real-time information channels,” which will “enable its educated users to evaluate its provenance, its credibility and the independence of the multiple sources that may provide this information.” The authors, Panagiotis Metaxas and Eni Mustafaraj, kindly cite my paper on “Information Forensics” and also reference SwiftRiver in their conclusion.

LAST PARAGRAPH BROUGHT FORWARD: A copy of the paper is available here (PDF). I hope to meet the authors at the Berkman Center’s “Truth in Digital Media Symposium” and highly recommend the wiki they’ve put together with additional resources. I’ve added the majority of my research on verification of crowdsourced information to that wiki, such as my 20-page study on “Information Forensics: Five Case Studies on How to Verify Crowdsourced Information from Social Media.”

Phi Beta Iota: The concept of trust reputations was discussed at Hackers in Silicon Valley in 1994. Computers deliver information to the lowest common denominator. Humans — human brains and human trust — remain the essence of humanity.

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Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Trails of Digital Trustworthness”

2012/03/032012/03/03

John Steiner: Ivory Trade Again Endangering Elephants

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, Earth Intelligence, Law Enforcement

Dear All,

Below is EarthAction's monthly current Action Alert on global environment, peace, and justice issues. This one is most important, and timely action is needed.

Protect Africa's Elephants

Despite the international ban on the trade of Elephant Ivory in 1989, it is estimated that every year 38,000 elephants are killed for ivory sales on the black market. Poachers sell raw ivory for around $20 per pound. Most of this ivory eventually makes its way to China, where it is resold at $700 per pound‹or more.

This means that a single tusk from a full-grown bull elephant can fetch upwards of $50,000 on the black market. The poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks requires the death of some of the most beautiful and endangered animals on our planet. Unless action is taken soon, many of the gains made in recent decades to protect the great elephants of Africa may be undone.

In 1989 elephants were initially listed as an Appendix 1 species by CITES (the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna), banning any and all trade of ivory. In 1997 they were downgraded to an Appendix 2 species, allowing the trade of ivory with regulation. Many nations do not have the capacity to strictly monitor the flow of ivory through their borders, nor are measures in place to effectively monitor the global ivory trade. Disguising illegal ivory as a legal product requires only an artificial aging process.

Read full alert with links for taking action.

2012/03/03

David Isenberg: Vice President Condi Rice?

Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Brought forward from 22 December 2011 because of mention of Vice Presidential option for Mitt Romney (or Jeb Bush if the brokered convention takes place as many have suggested is planned).

Phi Beta Iota: Three observations must be made here. The first is that that intelligence was not faulty — Charlie Allen got it right with line crossers and the debriefing of the defecting son-in-law. George Tenet prostituted his office and betrayed the public trust. The second is that the book does not do justice to Dick Cheney and his shadow government behind the President's back. Finally, the third observation, that no secretary of state in recent memory seems to have a strategic analytic model or the ability to actually address the ten high-level threats to humanity. They are, instead, in the immortal words of Madeline Albright (we do not make this stuff up), “a gerbil on a wheel.” We can do better. A good start would be a foreign policy of peace, commerce, and friendship, a rejection of secret agendas, and a pursuit of a prosperous world at peace — a world that works for all. Anything less is, in our collective view, a betrayal of the public trust.

The Rocky Ascent of Condoleezza Rice

Joseph Lelyveld

The New York Review of Books, 22 December 2011

No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington
by Condoleezza Rice
Crown, 766 pp., $35.00

Read full review.

Phi Beta Iota Book Reviews: Diplomacy (104)