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Robyn shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.
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Robyn authored The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It. A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately
described her as “Food's Erin Brockovich.”
Phi Beta Iota: Across all twelve “policy” domains from agriculture to water, with food cutting across all domains ans especially Family, Health, and Society, we are seeing the emergence of public intelligence in the public interest. What we are not seeing (yet), is the integration of “true cost” information as a core element that must be available to the public; and the integration of all that we can know about each domain in isolation, into a larger “360 degree” strategic analytic model for getting a grip on how we live and how we spend.
I just completed a short field mission to Kyrgyzstan with UN colleagues and I’m already looking forward to the next mission. Flipping through several dozen pages of my handwritten notes just now explains why: example after example of the astute resourcefulness and creative uses of information and communication technologies in Kyrgyzstan is inspiring. I learned heaps.
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The degrees of separation needed to verify a rumor was close to one. In the case of the supposed border attack, one member of the chat group had a contact with the army unit guarding the border crossing in question. They called them on their cell phone and confirmed within minutes that no attack was taking place. As for the rumor about the poisoned humanitarian aid, another member of the chat found the original phone numbers from which these false SMS’s were being sent. They called a personal contact at one of the telecommunication companies and asked whether the owners of these phones were in fact texting from the place where the aid was reportedly poisoned; they weren’t. Meanwhile, another member of the chat group had himself investigated the rumor in person and confirmed that the text messages were false.
Fascinating video but one has to wonder if this research is used in other research projects pertaining to advertising and military interests. According to Pierre Sprey “MIT is a terrible place to be from if you're gonna tell the truth about defense..they get more defense money than anyone.” (Source: Pentagon Labyrinth C-SPAN video).
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the most serious unrest of his 11-year tenure Thursday as anti-government protests in a southwestern city threatened to escalate after a deadly crackdown.
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On Wednesday, security forces launched a pre-dawn raid in the city in which dozens of people were killed, according to witnesses and activists. Precise estimates of the death toll range from 15 to 51.
On Thursday, witnesses said, thousands of people gathered in the city to bury the dead, chanting, “Syria! Freedom!”
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Phi Beta Iota: “Freedom” is neither a partisan term, nor one that can be bought by Lockheed Martin or discounted by Goldman Sachs. Young, freedom, and the autonomous Internet. Not at all what the “elite” had planned. Most interestingly, the dominos falling to non-violent public will are in sharp contrast to the published plan of the neo-conservatives to take down the Middle East by force–nuclear if necessary.
Media: At War (NY Times)
Byline: RAY RIVERA
Date: 24 March 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai surprised some people this week when he announced that his forces would take over security responsibilities from international forces in the city of Lashkar Gah, capital of the volatile southern province of Helmand, this summer.
But if the news spread quickly, it did not travel by cellphone. That’s because mobile phone networks throughout the province have been silenced for nearly a week now under orders of the Taliban, according to company officials.
