They are everywhere these days, a symbol of cause-based marketing at its most profitable. But are those little pink breast cancer ribbons really making any difference at all in the fight against breast cancer, or are they merely a crafty tool to funnel billions of dollars into an industry that thrives on the never-ending quest to supposedly discover a cure?
The new film Pink Ribbons, Inc., which recently made its debut in theaters across Canada, takes a hard look at all the pink ribbon mania and asks some serious questions about what it is actually accomplishing. Acclaimed filmmaker Lea Pool does a marvelous job exposing the corporate agenda behind those little pink ribbons, and her findings are sure to shock millions.
Little known to many, for instance, is the fact that the original breast cancer ribbon was created by a woman named Charlotte Haley, now 68 years old, as an awareness tool to expose the fact that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) spent virtually none of its budget on cancer prevention. Today, that ribbon, which was originally a salmon color, has been hijacked by corporations and turned pink for the purpose of raising gobs of money in the name of “finding a cure.”
“Raising money has become the priority, regardless of the consequences,” said one woman interviewed for the film, concerning what all the breast cancer hullabaloo is really about. “If people actually knew what was happening, they would be really pissed off,” added another woman.
By now, most readers have probably heard of the critical report issued on Afghanistan by a serving Army Lt Colonel. For those readers who have not seen it, this email forwards it without commentary.
In the attached 84 page report (pdf), Lt Colonel Daniel Davis (US Army) opens with the following charge:
“Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior has almost certainly extended the duration of this war. The single greatest penalty our Nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception.”
The remainder of this unclassified report, explains why he holds this view (he has also submitted a classified version to his chain of command and to Congress). The report has gotten wide publicity, and its unclassified form has was been released by the New York Times and Rolling Stone. This report was downloaded from the Rolling Stone web site. A good summary of the news coverage of the Davis Report can be found here.<
Phi Beta Iota: We have been focusing on the lack of integrity in government — and particularly within the national security world (diplomatic, information, military, economic – DIME) for over a decade. INTEGRITY is everything. Not having intelligence and integrity is like constantly putting sand in the gears of a very complex machine. It may enrich the repairman (contractors) but it kills the Republic and that for which the Republic stands – the Constitution and the common welfare (Preamble to the Constitution). It merits mention that government intelligence and counterintelligence are required to embrace a larger and more holistic responsibility in part because the media has become totally corrupt — from Bloomberg to Fox to the Washington Post, they are generally publishing undiluted crap that could as easily be a press release from the party being reported on. When they do report usefully (e.g. Top Secret America) they water it down by avoiding the “true cost” economics and the personal accountability issues that really matter. For this reason, we view the new craft of intelligence, and the much expanded role of intelligence within government, as the seed crystal for a national renaissance.
An article like this poses the question – who is really insane, psychiatrists or the people they treat? When readers finish this article, they may vote for the former.
“In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts said its new categories and “tick-box” diagnosis systems were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous.” Some diagnoses – for conditions like “oppositional defiant disorder” and “apathy syndrome” – risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medicalising behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said. At the other end of the spectrum, the new DSM, due out next year, could give medical diagnoses for serial rapists and sex abusers – under labels like “paraphilic coercive disorder” – and may allow offenders to escape prison by providing what could be seen as an excuse for their behavior, they added.
The Black-Scholes equation was the mathematical justification for the trading that plunged the world's banks into catastrophe
Ian Stewart
The Observer, 11 February 2012
EXTRACT:
The equation itself wasn't the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren't appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.
Phi Beta Iota: For some time now we have been articulating a concern about the government's ignorance of computational mathematics. This is part of the new craft of intelligence and financial as well as Internet counter-intelligence. The full article is an extraordinarily understandable and complete review of the role that mathematics, combined with the absence of integrity, played in bringing down the world economy. What the article does not emphasize is that it was government ignorance, government apathy, and government complicty that allowed the global financial catastrophe to happen despite 30 years of continuing warning.
See Also (by the professor author of the article above):
The U.S. Defense Department's fiscal 2013 spending plan draws more than 40 percent of proposed reductions from weapons accounts that contribute less than a fifth of the budget, based on Pentagon projections.
The military budget that President Barack Obama will send to Congress on Feb. 13 calls for $525 billion in spending, a reduction of $45 billion from previous projections. About $18.7 billion of the cuts would come from weapons procurement, according to data provided by an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the budget hasn’t been submitted.
The breakdown shows the Pentagon is cutting weapons more deeply in an effort to limit cuts in personnel and benefits, according to Todd Harrison, a defense analyst.
“Compare that to spending on military personnel, which accounts for one-third of the budget but is only taking one- ninth of the cuts,” Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said yesterday in an e- mail. “Protecting pay, benefits, and end strength is a higher priority than modernizing weapon systems.”
The $98.8 billion the Pentagon will propose spending on weapons in fiscal 2013 compares with $117.5 billion it had projected for the same period a year ago. Through 2017, cuts in weapons spending would average about 37 percent of the annual reductions projected by the administration, according to a nonpartisan government analyst who also spoke on condition of anonymity before the budget submission.
Details behind the reductions will unfold over the next month as lawmakers and their staffs press the Pentagon for specifics and military officials outline their respective service budgets.
Cutting 100,000
A five-year plan outlined by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last month calls for slowing weapons acquisition and reducing forces by 100,000. That plan already has been criticized by Republican lawmakers as cutting too many people.
“The president has abandoned the defense structure that has protected America for two generations, turning 100,000 soldiers and Marines out of the force,” California Republican Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a Jan. 26 statement.
Few weapons systems would be canceled outright by the Pentagon.
“The absence of big program kills may suggest to investors that DoD investment fared relatively well,” Byron Callan, a defense analyst with Capital Alpha Partners LLC in Washington said in an e-mail. “These procurement figures suggest a tougher reality for industry. Even without big, iconic platform cuts, industry will still see some pain.”
Lockheed's C-130
One project being canceled is $4 billion to modernize the C-130 transport plane built by Lockheed Martin Corp.The Navy plans to cut eight of nine planned Austal Ltd. high-speed transports.
Phi Beta Iota: In passing, the C-130 is the only aircraft in the inventory that can land virtually anywhere–this is important since the US Navy cannot get into 50% of the ports world-wide and the US Air Force is incapable of sustained diverse long-haul airlift. Bloomberg skirts the hard truths to be found in an honest thorough analysis.
Spy Vs Spy: The Secret Wars Waged In New Spooks' Playground
London Times, 11 February 2012
Azerbaijan: This small country is used to being a listening post, but its position at the centre of activity in the present climate is a big cause for concern. Sheera Frenkel reports from Baku.
In a warm café in central Baku, Shimon sips his Persian tea and grimaces at the unusually large snowdrifts outside. Nearby is the building that houses the Israeli Embassy — and Shimon's unofficial place of work. In all the years he has worked in Azerbaijan, he has only been to the building once.
Shimon is one of dozens of Israeli Mossad agents who work in Azerbaijan at any given time. His familiarity and comfort in the country are obvious as he speaks about various towns and cities that he has come to know.
“This is ground zero for intelligence work,” he said, having agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. “Our presence here is quiet, but substantial. We have increased our presence in the past year, and it gets us very close to Iran. This is a wonderfully porous country.”
