Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Food Industry’s Erin Brockovich–Unhealthy Truth

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
John Steiner

From John and Margo

All we can say is do watch this!

Patriotism on a Plate
February 2011 TEDx Austin talk.

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.

Amazon Page

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.”

Follow Robyn O'Brien on Twitter

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.

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Public Intelligence Emergent: Citizen Network in Krygzstan to Check and then Counter Rumors

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats, Tools

How To Use Technology To Counter Rumors During Crises: Anecdotes from Kyrgyzstan

Patrick Meier | March 26, 2011 at 11:47 pm | Tags: rumors, Skype, SMS, validation | Categories: Crowdsourcing, Digital Activism, New Media | URL: http://wp.me/pecFU-1n8

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.

. . . . . . .

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.

Read more….

Continue reading “Public Intelligence Emergent: Citizen Network in Krygzstan to Check and then Counter Rumors”

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Russia Returns Heavy-Hitter to Afghanistan

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence, Strategy
DefDog Recommends...

Highlights a classic failure of US intel and State…..no experts with the
depth or contacts necessary to conduct statecraft…….

Mullah Omar gets a Russian visitor

By M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times, Mar 24, 2011

EXTRACT:  The executive order makes the customary reference to the new appointee's worthy credentials as “an experienced diplomat and Orientalist”. And then, out of the blue, it adds that Kabulov “repeatedly held talks on the release of Russian pilots with the leadership of the Taliban in Kandahar, including [Taliban leader] Mohammed Omar”. There was no real need to have said that. It almost seems jarring to single out one mission in a distinguished diplomat's checkered career. But it said all that needed to be said.

By the language of the sport of cricket, one would shout from the crease in the heat of the moment: “Howzaat!” Is there an umpire nearby who could annotate the trajectory of Russian thinking? Not much ingenuity is needed to comprehend that Moscow is opening a line to the Taliban leadership and sending into the Hindu Kush someone who can meaningfully converse with the Quetta shura (council). Pakistanis know Kabulov, Iranians know him and Mullah Omar knows him. Afghan President Hamid Karzai knows him, too.

EXTRACT: Kabulov's mind is an open book – as far as a diplomat's mind can be. While serving in Kabul, he was an easily accessible ambassador and even American military commanders used to drop by to pick his brains. Kabulov's main complaint, though, was that the Americans were good listeners, but not good learners.

He kept harping on that the United States was repeating the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made in Afghanistan during its occupation in the 1980s, and to complicate matters, American policies have been innovating on Soviet mistakes by inventing original mistakes of their own for which as he once told John Burns of the New York Times, “We [Russia] do not own the copyright.”

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The article is a reference work, worth keeping, worthy of war colleges and those who aspire to be great leaders.

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NIGHTWATCH on Bin Laden Sightings–Saudi PSYOP?

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda

Troubling End Note: Asia Times Online on 24 March published an article by Syed Saleem Shahzad, who is an insightful commentator on South Asian affairs, as well as the publication's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He has studied al Qaida a long time.  He wrote that US intelligence has actionable information that Osama bin Laden has been “criss-crossing” the Pakistan – Afghanistan border region in northwestern Pakistan during the past few weeks.

Phi Beta Iota: Bin Laden sets alarm bells ringing By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Shahzad wrote that US officials are “stunned” by bin Laden's visibility and the frequency of his movements. Bin Laden's purposes are not known. Terrorist analysts reportedly think the new level of activity means bin Laden is planning another large attack, though the 9/11 planning was actually not done by bin Laden. The South Asia analysts think he is meeting with friendly Afghan warlords to bring the Afghan War to a favorable conclusion for the Taliban.

What is disturbing is how little mainstream media attention this article has received. Readers are encouraged to read it.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Catholic Church Getting Serious About “Truth”

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, History, InfoOps (IO), Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Strategy

VATICAN-PHILOSOPHY Mar-22-2011 (360 words) With photos. xxxi

Vatican says church philosophy studies must combat suspicion of truth


Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski talks about new norms for the ecclesiastical studies of philosophy. (CNS/Alessandro Serrano, Catholic Press Photo) 

 

 

 

 

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When training priests and educating students in philosophy, the Catholic Church must combat a widespread sensation that there really is no such thing as permanent, objective truths, a new Vatican document said.

Because so many students are influenced by the cultural suspicion of truth, the Vatican said it will require an extra year of study before a student can earn a church-recognized bachelor's degree in philosophy.

Read complete Vatican story….

Phi Beta Iota: Something very important is happening within the Catholic Church.  The Most Holy Father Benedict XVI is a “convergence Pope” and moving on multiple fronts.  He is seeking to reconcile religion with science; philosophy with theology; logic with pastoral direction.  In short, His Holiness is deepening and elaborating on initiatives begun by Pope John Paul II, to include pro-active inter-faith and pro-active science and religion summits.  Faith matters.  History matters.  Science matters.  There is something happening here that is potentially a revolution in global human evolutionary psychology.

See Also:

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Live Crisis Mapping: Routing Around Old Mindsets

03 Environmental Degradation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, CrisisWatch reports, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Maps, Mobile, Real Time, Tools
Click for Live Map with Substance Links

OCHA, UNOSAT and NetHope have been collaborating with the Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) specifically CrisisMappers, Crisis Commons, Open Street Map, and the Google Crisis Response Team over the past week.

The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.

The public version of this map does not include personal identifiers and does not include descriptions for the reports mapped. This restriction is for security reasons. All information included on this map is derived from information that is already publicly available online (see Sources tab).

Click for Live Map with Substance Links

In the midst of this transition in Libya, one of the most devastating earthquakes in centuries hit northern Japan, causing one of the most destructive tsunamis in recent memory. Just hours after the earthquake, a member of Japan's OpenStreetMap community launched a dedicated Crisis Map for the mega-disaster. A few hours later, Japanese students at The Fletcher School (which is where the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map was launched) got in touch with the Tokyo-based OpenStreetMap team to provide round-the-clock crisis mapping support.

Over 4,000 reports have been mapped in just 6 days. That's an astounding figure. Put differently, that's over 600 reports per day, or one report almost every two minutes for 24 hours straight over 6 days. What's important about the Japan Crisis Map is that the core operations are being run directly from Tokyo and the team there is continuing to scale it's operations. It's very telling that the Tokyo team did not require any support from the Standby Volunteer Task Force. They're doing an excellent job in the midst of the biggest disaster they've ever faced. I'm just amazed.

Tip of the Hat to Patrick Meier and Team at iRevolution.