WASHINGTON: As the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, a top American Senator has said that the best way out of Kabul is through New Delhi and India offers the last opportunity to help make war-torn nation get rid of terrorist safe haven.
“I have long felt that the best way out of Afghanistan is through New Delhi, is to have a military alliance with India that we encourage India to roll into Afghanistan, to be a non-terrorist base,” Senator Mark Kirk said during a Congressional hearing.
Filtering—or the lack thereof—presented the single biggest challenge when we tested MicroMappers last week in response to the Pakistan Earthquake. As my colleague Clay Shirky notes, the challenge with “Big Data” is not information overload but rather filter failure. We need to make damned sure that we don’t experience filter failure again in future deployments. To ensure this, I’ve decided to launch a stand-alone and fully interoperable platform called MicroFilters. My colleague Andrew Ilyas will lead the technical development of the platform with support from Ji Lucas. Our plan is to launch the first version of MicroFilters before the CrisisMappers conference (ICCM 2013) in November.
A web-based solution, MicroFilters will allow users to upload their own Twitter data for automatic filtering purposes. Users will have the option of uploading this data using three different formats: text, CSV and JSON. Once uploaded, users can elect to perform one or more automatic filtering tasks from this menu of options:
Phi Beta Iota: We have no direct knowledge. The growth of credible voices denouncing the “official” story on Syria as a web of lies is noteworthy. As best we can tell, the 900 lb gorilla is now captive to financial and religious forces few comprehend, while the BRICS are emergent as the alternative world order, with a third amorphous autonomous Internet and non-state network of networks in gestation. Earth will survive humanity — whether humanity will survive its own arrogance and ignorance remains an open question.
US/Al-Qaeda threatened Olympics through Saudi proxy
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, stepped forward regarding the Syrian chemical weapons attack and said: “This was an Israeli false flag.”
He cited his intelligence sources as saying that it was actually the Israelis that killed all those people with gas.
He was just one of many people going “way off script” in the US regarding the heinous attack.
Dr. Kevin Barrett in an exclusive interview with the Voice of Russia was very candid when he said it was stunning that someone like Saudi Prince Bandar would come to Putin and threaten to bomb the Winter Olympics and claim that he was acting with the full support of the US Government.
According to Dr. Barrett the US government, threatening to bomb the Olympic Games with Al-Qaeda, through its Saudi proxy, turns the whole “War on Terror Paradigm” on its head.
Before Occupy came along, the Tea Party narrative was dominant in American politics. Conservative activists told a story about how big government was strangling taxpayers and small businesses, holding back growth, fiscally bankrupting the nation, and attacking freedom. Occupy’s rise was a pivot point away from that narrative. It legitimized public discussion of inequality and helped embolden Democrats to talk about this problem, including President Obama, who gave a hard-hitting speech on inequality in Osawatomie, Kansas just three months after demonstrators first appeared at Zuccotti Park.
List Only:
1. Putting Inequality on the Agenda
2. Shaping the 2012 Election
3. Influencing Tax Debates
4. Reviving Progressive Populism
5. Seeding the New Union Organizing
6. Keeping the Heat on Wall Street
7. Offering Alternatives to Capitalism
Phi Beta Iota: Totally delusional but well-intentioned. Occupy — and Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and all of the small party presidential candidate that refused to join We the People Reform Coalition for a “red line” stand on electoral reform — all had their chance and they blew it. A meltdown is coming. We pray it restores the neighborhood.
In identifying “difficult subordinates who should have been promoted, I should have included Colonels Doug Macgreagor and Jim Burton and especially Major Don Vandergriff. Sorry for the omission
CS note – Hersh channels John Boyd* : my comments are inserted in “blue” [italics]
my added emphasis to Sy's words in bold black. Of course, this is really a commentary on contemporary culture, including government and the private sector, not just the media.
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*Note to readers unfamiliar with Boyd or his theory of the OODA Loop: A brief introduction can be found in my essays Genghis John and Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George More comprehensive but accessible descriptions can be found in the books by Robert Coram and James Fallows, and Chet Richards. For those readers who are interested in heavy intellectually lifting, see Franz Ozinga‘s analysis of Boyd's strategic thought or even better, they could study Boyd's original presentations, which can be downloaded from the folder labeled “Boyd Briefs” in my Public Folder or the Pogo Archive.
Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the ‘pathetic' American media
Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should ‘fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'
Pulitzer-prize wining journalist slams “pathetic” US media for failing to challenge White House
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 27, 2013
Seymour Hersh
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says that the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is “one big lie” and that “not one word” of the Obama administration’s narrative on what happened is true.
In a wide-ranging interview published today by the Guardian, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.
On the subject of the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh remarked, “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true.”
Hersh added that the Obama administration habitually lies but they continue to do so because the press allows them to get away with it.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” Hersh told the Guardian.
As the United States approaches its 2014 deadline for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, one often overshadowed aspect of the conflict is the hard-won progress made by previously marginalized segments of the Afghan population, particularly women, girls, and young people.
Afghanistan has one of the highest proportions of young people in the world – many of whom have known only war. The median age of the population is 15.6 years old, the median age of marriage is 18, and half of mothers surveyed during a country-wide mortality survey had their first child when they were teenagers.
But “while more than 70 percent of Afghanistan’s population are under 25 years of age, young people’s voices are rarely heard,” said Maiwand Rahyab, Counterpart International’s deputy director of Afghanistan.
“Let’s not be naïve about the current reality,” Rahyab said at the Wilson Center. “Afghan society is conservative and hierarchical,” making it difficult for young people to contribute meaningfully to policymaking and government reform. But over the last decade, there have been improvements in schooling, health, and opportunities for young people, which he and other panelists described during a special half-day event on June 24, “Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines: Women, Youth, and the War.”
