Robert Redford's son Jamie and film co-director Micah Fink on their documentary, premiering July 18 on HBO, about one of the largest toxic-waste cases in U.S. history. (July 15)
Phi Beta Iota: This is complete documentation of a massive atrocity to which the US Government is a co-conspirator. There is absolutely no question but that Ford Motor Company executives–including the Board of Directors–should be indicted and investigated. There is also no question but that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “leadership” then and now should be investigated. Sadly, Congress is itself impeachable. The US Government (and the two parties that front for Wall Street) are NOT the public's friend–they are bought and paid for–CORRUPT. We are long overdue for “The Virgin Truth” as a brand able to provide intelligence with integrity in the public interest.
“I have 21 years of Army service going back to the Vietnam War. My loyalty to the government should be a given. It is gone. I am certain it will never return regardless of how long I might have lived.”
A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering U.S. military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.
Phi Beta Iota: We know and admire Bob Baer, one of the greats in clandestine case officering, whose books, Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude and See No Evil–The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism correctly observe that no amount of professionalism in the intelligence ranks can make up for massive ideology, corruption, and impeachable malfeasance in the White House, Congress, and the military-industrial cabal. War is how the unethical elite deal with unrest at home–it syphons the poor angry young men out of the system and distracts the booboisee. Israel, like the USA, has multiple governments, and right now the two extremist versions are nominally in charge and think they can get away with bombing Iran and then redirecting the US military against Iran. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is the best “truth-teller” on how crazy they can get, and how much they disrespect the USA. They give no thought at all to the five front war that George Bush started with the Islamic virtual caliphate, or the consequences of “burning” the young seeking reform, turning them all against Israel and the USA.
In January, a time when many scientists concentrate on grant proposals, Jennifer D. Calkins and Jennifer M. Gee, both biologists, were busy designing quail T-shirts and trading cards. The T-shirts went for $12 each and the trading cards for $15 in a fund-raising effort resembling an online bake sale.
The $4,873 they raised, mostly from small donations, will pay their travel, food, lab and equipment expenses to study the elegant quail this fall in Mexico.
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In the crowd funding genus, MyProjects is a different species from Kickstarter. All projects on the site have been vetted by scientists and already receive financing from Cancer Research UK. And the funds are guaranteed regardless of whether the MyProjects goal is reached. Mr. Bromley calls it “substitutional funding.”
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The quail project was one of thousands that Cassie Marketos, a community editor at Kickstarter, has approved. “It’s one thing to buy a book about quails,” she said. “But to know that you played a small part in making it happen is a much different experience.”
Phi Beta Iota: The world is in an intermediary stage toward governing without government. The era of outrageous fraud, waste, and abuse–massive investments by the government of tax-payer funds on the basis of ideology or special interests, not intelligence with integrity–is coming to an end. Participatory democracy, alternative localized or specialized currencies that cannot be taxed, and intelligence-driven self-governance that is open to all stakeholders (Panarchy), are all emergent.
The Curriculum Reform Forum is dedicated to disseminating thought leadership in the field of curricular reform in order to inspire local reform initiatives. It is a platform for global dialogue fostering the exchange of ideas as well as a resource offering concrete support to academic practitioners.
Inspired by this question of the father of Modern Skepticism we would like to approach contemporary curricular reform with the wisdom and fervour of an owl going into nosedive. You are invited to read our manifesto and join the conversation!
A new survey from Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of those with liquid assets of $1 million or more found that 94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.
Fully 90% of respondents have a negative view of the current global economic climate and 41% say they have little or no faith that the U.S. will be able to right itself in this fiscal climate.
Phi Beta Iota: The super rich have created a global plague of failed states, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation, thinking governments that they corrupted will take care of it. Not so. Corruption is a super-plague. Integrity is the antidote, M4IS2 is the method by which the super-rich can fund a win-win recovery. They did it once before, addressing public health in New York City. Time for big ideas again.
Anyone who believes we are winning the War on Terror doesn't understand the goals of AQ. They wanted us to be afraid and to spend our money, both of which the government is doing in spades…..one really has to ask, then, who is winning?
By Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
NEW YORK – As a foreign correspondent for NBC News, I haven’t spent much time in the United States during the last decade. I return only occasionally to check in with colleagues, visit family, or, this last time, to research a documentary for MSNBC.
The documentary, still in the works, is about the Global War on Terrorism, and what it has done to our military, economy and American society in general. Perhaps because the subject was on my mind, I found a recent travel experience especially meaningful.
Through my work I travel to some of the busiest airports in high-risk areas. Just this year I have been in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, France, Italy and many other countries. But I have yet to feel so angry, so embarrassed or so scrutinized as I did going through airport security for a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to New York’s JFK while visiting home.
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I’ve watched American troops fight, and sometimes die, to drive the Taliban and al-Qaida from Afghanistan, and to secure free elections in Iraq. They have been fighting for other people to be free. I was horrified to see that despite their sacrifices we’d let ourselves become a nation that appears to be driven by fear.
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But at the airport, watching a 7-year-old girl go through a full body scan in public – just so she could fly out of the city of Los Angeles – made me wonder how much we have lost.
Phi Beta Iota: The Founding Fathers do not approve….
Thomas Jefferson:A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.
Thomas Jefferson:Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
James Madison:Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
