The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Dowwload as Powerpoint Slide: Requirements Definition 21st Century
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Koko: Humans still don't understand Earth as a whole (closed) system.
Reported arsenic levels in rice prompt concern
(CBS News) Consumer Reports found significant levels of arsenic in apple juice earlier this year, and now, the magazine has a new study, showing many brands of rice also contain the toxin.
The arsenic enters into the rice when it is grown, according to Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He explained the rice with the highest levels of arsenic is from Texas and Louisiana, and along the Gulf coast where fields were used to grow cotton a century ago.
“When there was cotton there they had to treat the cotton with arsenic pesticides to control the bowl weevil,” he said. “Now a century later, that arsenic is still in the soil, the rice is very effective at pulling it out of the soil in and it concentrates in the rice.”
Arsenic causes lung, skin and bladder cancer, Landrigan said. He added that arsenic is also very harmful to babies' brain development. If a baby is exposed to arsenic in the womb because the mother is eating arsenic or if a baby ingests arsenic in the first months of life in cereal, rice milk or other food, the arsenic could interfere with brain development, reduce the child's intelligence, and cause behavioral problems.
Continue reading “Koko: Arsenic in US-Grown Rice – Threat to Babies”
An Open Source Intelligence Center (OSIC) does not exist. The CIA's Open Source Center does not produce intelligence, only classified information, and it is limited to what it can collect online or via US citizens with SECRET clearances who generally lack a deep understanding of history, language, and culture. It also refuses to be serious about Whole of Government decision-support, the one area where classified sources cannot compete. The DoD Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) program is neither a program (single Congressionally-mandated accounting) nor intelligence; it is a gawd-awful mess desperately in need of an across the board audit. followed by major deconstruction and reconstitution. The US Special Operations Command (USSSOCOM) J-23 (Open Source Branch) was for many years the closest approximation, answering 40% of all global USSOCOM essential elements of information placed into the all-source requirements system, at a fraction of the cost of classified sources, and with close to 100% satisfaction of all requirements that were subject to resolution. Among many major issues are the ignoring of intelligence by policy, acquisition, and operations; and the ignorance within the US intelligence community of how to manage the education of customers for Whole of Government multi-level time-phased decision-support.
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Huh?
Italy court upholds American convictions in CIA case
ROME (AP) — Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, paving the way to possible extradition requests by Italian authorities.
The ruling by the Court of Cassation marks the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.
The Americans were convicted in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
“It went badly. It went very badly,” lawyer Alessia Sorgato said after the court announced its decision after a day of deliberations. “Now they will ask for extradition.”victed in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro, one of Italy's top anti-terrorism magistrates who shaped the prosecution, hailed the top court's decision, saying it was tantamount to a finding that extraordinary rendition “is incompatible with democracy.”
Am in Europe where this was brought to my attention. I don't know what to think of this. My local government counterparts are quite certain that this anti-Islam film was a deliberate and orchestrated affair. We live in a very dangerous time. I hope people will take the right decisions.
EDIT: One of my counterparts just told me this:
Sorcha Faal is sensationalist and has it wrong quite often. They base stories on real news stories that can be checked but they extrapolate in weird directions and sometimes make up strange conspiracy theories. The news stories they pick are often very murky and cases disappear from the news without being solved. Very often there is no follow up. They always start with an introduction that a new report has been brought to the attention of president Putin or the Russian secret service to give it some authority. And very often the stories are repeated in official news stories as ‘intelligence'. It may be a deliberate IO operation.
September 17, 2012
China Warns World War III Being Planned To Oust Obama
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A new report prepared by the Foreign Military Intelligence Main Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces for President Putin is warning today that the mysterious 5-day visit by Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie to India this past week (the first such visit to India by a high ranking Chinese defense official in 8 years) was in preparation for a World War China says is being planned within the next few weeks in order to oust US President Barack Obama from office.
As anti-Japanese protests grow in China to levels not seen in modern times, this report says, Defense Minister Guanglie was particularly concerned over the “assassination” of Japanese Ambassador to China Shinichi Nishimiya who last week mysteriously collapsed and died in Tokyo two days after being appointed to his post.
The death of Ambassador Nishimiya, GRU analysts say in this report, was meant to cause a further escalation in tensions between Japan and China where even today important elements within the Chinese leadership are stating: “For The Respect Of The Motherland, We Must Go To War With Japan”.
Continue reading “Penguin: Global Covert Campaign to Undermine Obama – Who, Exactly, Is Doing What?”
Six Degrees of Separation: Implications for Verifying Social Media
The Economist recently published this insightful article entitled” Six Degrees of Mobilisation: To what extent can social networking make it easier to find people and solve real-world problems?” The notion, six degrees of separation, comes from Stanley Milgram’s [small world] experiment in the 1960s which found that there were, on average, six degrees of separation between any two people in the US. Last year, Facebook found that users on the social network were separated by an average of 4.7 hops. The Economist thus asks the following, fascinating question:
Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Social Mobilization via Six Degrees of Separation with Comment”
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Fruitful disobedience: Guerrilla Grafters grow undercover orchards
A secret operation in San Francisco disregards city regulations and grafts fruit branches onto non fruit-bearing public trees, hiding farm-fresh produce in an urban environment. Officials have banned fruit trees from the city sidewalks in the hopes that it will help keep urban areas clean and avoid messy situations as a result of fallen fruit. But Tara Hui and Miriam Goldberg have found a way around that law.
The two women are the leaders of Guerrilla Grafters, a group that exists to make “delicious, nutritious fruit is made available to urban residents” through the creation of inner-city orchards. Using electrical tape to color code their work, the Guerrilla Grafters develop partnerships in each neighborhood they graft in so there’s someone local to monitor progress. According to Hui, “There’s no ownership of these trees. There’s just stewardship.”
The LA Times reports that though city officials disapprove of the grafts, they haven’t done anything to formally remove them. But, it is considered vandalism and if this project were ever to really gain momentum it’s possible that officials would eventually decide to step in and halt it. Others, however, are impressed by their efforts: their work was featured in the “Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good” exhibit at the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.
The group (which consists of about 30 people) has grafted about 50 trees so far. Perhaps it will always be a small-scale project, but Guerrilla Grafters is working to reach as many people as possible: they’ve developed an online mapping app to help track their illicit produce and have an active Facebook group to help grow popularity.
