Hasta La Gadget!

By delaying action on Trade Promotion Authority legislation, Congress threatens the future of American agriculture and the rural way of life.

Today, our farmers, ranchers and rural communities are more prosperous and successful thanks to strong trade agreements. Last year, American agricultural exports grew to a record $152.5 billion and the past six years represent the strongest in history for U.S. agricultural trade. For many American products, foreign markets now represent more than half of total sales. Trade literally supports American agriculture and the rural communities that depend on farm income.

Trade agreements are a driving force behind expanded U.S. exports. And these trade agreements were only possible because our negotiators could speak with one voice and negotiate free and fair trade deals that opened new markets and new customers to our farmers and ranchers.

Without fast track authority, American agriculture–and millions of Americans connected to food, agriculture and transportation–cedes momentum and leadership on the world stage. The United States should be writing the trade rules on labor and human rights, the environment, and intellectual property. But every moment Congress delays takes power out of the hands of the American farmer and puts it into the hands of our foreign competitors.

But for most Americans, this is about more than dollars and diplomacy–it’s about keeping a good paying job and preserving their communities, and exports and the jobs that come with them make that possible.

New trade agreements benefit more than just the segment of the American population directly involved in producing our food. Expanded export opportunities also benefit the packers, processors, shippers and others employed at every step in the production chain. Agricultural exports support more than one million American jobs. Moreover, additional farm income and agribusiness jobs generate more cash flow in rural economies, supporting local businesses on main street. In parts of rural America, these jobs are critical to preserving our small towns and rural way of life. Expanded U.S. trade overall has added roughly $13,000, on average, to every American family’s income.

That vital economic and community development progress will be undone if Congress refuses to act on the Trade Promotion Authority legislation currently being debated in both the House and the Senate.

We are all already seeing indications that the growth in agricultural exports–and the new jobs that come with it–enjoyed in years past may be at risk in the coming years. Not only does the United States face barriers in important growing markets like Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and the European Union, we are currently being hurt as these countries negotiate agreements that lower barriers for our competitors, some of whom have lower standards when it comes to environmental impact, consumer safety, and working conditions.

That is why more than 70 organizations from all over the United States representing American farmers and ranchers of all sizes and production methods support Trade Promotion Authority. Former Republican and Democrat Secretaries of Agriculture serving as far back as the Carter Administration recently published an open letter in support of Trade Promotion Authority. Democratic former governors have also called on Congress for the speedy passage of Trade Promotion Authority.

They know that trade is vital for U.S. agriculture and the American economy as a whole. Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers live outside of our borders, and the only way to reach them is through expanded trade agreements that treat U.S. products and producers fairly.

They know that our farmers and ranchers will be left behind and shut out from the negotiations each day that goes by without fast track authority for the President and his trade negotiators. We can’t hope to get the best deal for American businesses, workers, and consumers unless the United States is helping to write the rules.

Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority is not new. Congress must act in the best interests of every American and give this Administration the same negotiating authority that American Presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, has had over the past 80 years. To do anything less would be a detriment to our nation’s strongest and most productive industries, including agriculture.

It’s time for Congress to stand up for American businesses, communities and families, rural and urban alike, and pass Trade Promotion Authority legislation.

Tom Vilsack serves as the Nation’s 30th Secretary of Agriculture.

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Asymmetric approaches to improving government transparency and accountability.

U.S. politics is a frustrating maze. We sense sinister forces at work to gain undue influence and advantage within it but it’s so very hard to find and expose. At best, acting upon discoveries happens years after damage has been done. Often all we can do is slap wrists. It means there is presently very little to deter politicians and special interests from acting with impunity.

This is a very sad state of affairs. It leads many people to abandon participating and relinquish control over their lives. It activates others to take polarized sides seeing fellow citizens as mortal enemies. They fight each other while the true culprits who benefit from societal fratricide hide in the shadows and take advantage of the chaos. There is less and less credible threat to dissuade this sort of destructive behavior as time goes by.

But what if there was? What if, as disruptive innovation has done in so many cases, there was a way to detect suspect behavior and expose it in real time? What if indications could be back tested for patterns of misbehavior and the results of objective analysis communicated to those specifically affected so that everyone could see officialdom beginning to stray as it happens? Would such a detection and warning system force politician’s hands to be cleaner? Would such a system expose patterns of action by special interests across broad swaths of action, now deftly hidden, and make them plain as day?

This is exactly what “big data” aka “deep learning” technology does. Let’s say you wanted to find politicians who might be peddling influence out of their offices. One could absorb every revision of every legislative bill in authored by every political office holder for every legislative session for as far back as every government keeps public records. In terms of big data, that’s actually not a lot.

Now here’s the take the power back part. Automate searching for every bill that shows it experienced a radical revision of content indicating it was altered from one intent to another by the author. Don’t bother to read what’s in it. The warning sign that someone was trying to bypass the legislative process by slip streaming a change to fast track a special interest’s influence.

That’s not enough prove anything by itself. But it can act as a trigger to then cause a follow on big data algorithm to examine every piece of legislation ever sponsored by that politician in their entire career regardless of how many offices they have held to see if it’s happened before. If so, how often? And, is the pattern of positions taken when these radical alteration occur consistent or random? A pattern of random ones that have no policy cohesion is actually the most worrisome that the legislator might be a reed in the wind.

The thing about big data algorithms running in real-time is they tend to be harshly objective. They don’t care if your position is left or right. They just report they found an anomaly in the matrix. That anomaly may just as easily turn out to be laudable as it could turn out to expose crookedness. But it will bring what was in the dark shadows into the bright light for all to see.

How many legislators warranting headline risk explaining do you think such a system would detect if it were running right now? How many exposures of malfeasance do you think it will take to begin change the behavior of government? Would it change incentives enough to deter future inappropriate behavior if politicians knew their careers were a very, very open living document?

That’s just one data mining scenario. A proper legislative big data transparency system would run tests on other artifacts of governance. It would run additional tests to reveal patterns about legislative issues erupting on the scene in many places at once and even the extent to which special interest organizations are acting behind events nationwide.

You don’t actually believe a legislator that guts a placeholder bill and replaces everything below the bill number re-wrote it in a moment of Jeffersonian brilliance do you? Neither should you believe the same bill the same set of legislative points miraculously appeared in half the legislatures at the same time as the result of a lucky fluke. That’s the signature of big money at work.

Note that the “big data” needed to run such and analysis is almost all public record. Technically, anyone with the equipment, software suite and programming skills can do this. What’s your reaction to using big data this way? Do you think of this thought experiment about what disruptive technology could do to radically alter the playbook for government transparency and accountability is a good thing or a bad thing?

Dennis Santiago was the architect and author of the “Move Your Money” system that delivered an internet based means for individuals to find safe and sound community banks near their zip codes during the middle of the 2008-2012 financial crisis. He partnered with Arianna Huffington to provide this service to the public for free at a time when the need for such transparency was needed by a very nervous nation.

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The American and Gulf leadership have sought to save the Camp David summit, which has been boycotted by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, through it will be attended by the head of state of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. President Barack Obama called this extraordinary summit to give the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) reassurances regarding the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which he has made the top strategic goal of his foreign policy. The Gulf nations accepted the invitation with a view to reaffirm their security priorities and explore the long-term strategic relationship between Washington and the GCC as the US president sees it, having upgraded the relationship with Tehran into the level of partnership. While there are shared priorities concerning the fight against terror, even in this issue the US and Gulf strategies differ over identifying who supports terrorism. President Obama, in an interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, said Tehran continues to support terrorism and is an element of instability in the region, but suggested this will not stop him from seeking to sign a nuclear deal with Iran in the coming two months, and build a conciliatory and cooperative, bilateral relationship between the US and Iran. Thus, the Camp David summit is kicking off with aborted consensus accompanied by leaks suggesting there is American resentment over the absence of the top Saudi leadership and the Gulf insistence for the United States to meet its regional priorities including in Yemen and Syria though serious measures and not loose promises.

The US-Gulf summit will convene hours after writing this article. Traditionally, the main orientations and decisions of such summits are prepared beforehand, when negotiations at the level of ministers and experts take place over the smallest detail before the meeting takes place. The decision by King Salman bin Abdulaziz not to attend the summit two days before it convened was a political decision with serious implications, no matter how much US and Saudi diplomacy try to downplay it and claim there is no message behind the king’s absence. The reality is that King Salman wanted to let the US president know he is unsatisfied by the US reassurances and that he refuses to be a tool to beautify the Iranian nuclear agreement.

This position made it easier for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to head to the White House and then Camp David with a charge of decisiveness with regard to certain Saudi positions, while underscoring Riyadh’s determination to maintain the strategic relationship between Washington and the GCC.

Striking a balance like this requires flexibility, which is an art that tests leadership and performance. Some in the Obama administration made their calculations on the basis of experience, and decided that Arab leaders are not able to be truly independent as long as their security depends on the relationship with the United States. For this reason, there can be no room for independent decision-making no matter how much they deny this, and there is no alternative to the US sponsor of Gulf security no matter how ready France and other nations appear to sell their weapons. These people in the US administration can be described as a mirror reflecting Obama’s thinking and doctrine, which sees Iran as the priority element in the Iranian-Gulf equation.

This puts the Gulf leadership to the test, particularly the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.These countries are active in the region on a myriad of issues being discussed at Camp David, including security and defense cooperation, the Iranian issue and its regional dimensions in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq and the nuclear dimension, the long-term strategic relationship between Washington and GCC capitals, and terrorism.

The Iranian leadership prepared for the US-Gulf summit in Camp David by presenting itself as a partner ready and able to crush ISIS, and justifying its military intervention in Iraq and Syria through Shiite militias and Hezbollah. Tehran is peddling its services because it understands ISIS is the priority for US officials, the public, and the media equally. Iran sees that it is in its interests to present itself as America’s top partner to eliminate Sunni terrorism represented by ISIS and similar groups. Iran is using the war on terror to lend cover to its expansion in Iraq and to buy Washington’s silence regarding its direct involvement alongside the Syrian regime and Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conflict.

The Gulf delegations heading to Camp David brought with them arguments to persuade the US administration that crushing ISIS requires popular and official Sunni participation, and that a US-Iranian partnership as an alternative to the international coalition is a foolish policy.

For its part, Washington welcomes the Iranian-Arab competition over eliminating ISIS. However, it is making a risky gamble if it assumes that fueling Iranian-Gulf rivalry, or Shiite-Sunni rivalry, will serve its interests. Such a strategy leads to more strife, and to spawning Sunni and Shiite extremism equally. It could bring the Syrian model to other Arab and Muslim nations, and even bring terrorism to US cities no matter how strongly American decision-makers are in denial about this.

At any rate, the issue of fighting terrorism is possibly the easiest topic in the US-Gulf discussions. However, when this issue intersects with the Syrian issue, disputes arise pushing the Gulf to take an independent path away from the US policy of turning a blind eye and burying heads in the sand.

The ideas carried by Gulf leaders to Camp David concerning Syria resemble the Decisive Storm model launched in Yemen, where the Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia moved without Washington’s prior consent — though with its prior knowledge — to take the protection of Saudi national security into their own hands and let the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran know that they have become too insolent and made a strategic blunder by crossing red lines in Yemen on the borders with Saudi Arabia.

With respect to Syria, and thanks to the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish rapprochement that has been initiated a few months ago, the momentum has returned to the battlefield accompanied by determination to take an independent line from Obama’s policy of self-dissociation on the events in Syria. The most that Washington prepared itself for in the recent period is just to manage the crisis, while Syria continues to disintegrate. The least Washington seems prepared to do is push forward Obama’s previous policy based on demanding Bashar al-Assad step down. In effect, the Obama administration’s discourse even suggested it had no qualms about Assad remaining in power and about his alliance with Iran as long as they are both fighting ISIS as they have promised to do.

The convergence or divergence between the US position and the Gulf position calling for a qualitative shift in US stances has to do with seriousness and decisiveness. The Camp David summit may not conclude with a breakthrough in the US position, but something new will take place in Syria whether Obama’s policy likes it or not. Indeed, Gulf diplomacy has decided that the Obama administration’s refusal to confront Iran over its expansionist ambitions in the region — citing the priority nature of the nuclear issue — is a deliberate relief for the leaders of Iran from accountability, if not endorsement and silent blessing for Iranian expansion in Syria and Lebanon.

Regarding Yemen, accord or differences are of a different kind. The Gulf leaders have headed to Camp David carrying the achievements of Decisive Storm, the Arab military operation in Yemen, and of Restoring Hope, if Washington decides to be firm with Tehran over Yemen.

Iran tested the United States on the eve of the Camp David summit, when Iranian Navy Admiral Hossein Azad said that warships have escorted an Iranian ship carrying aid bound for a port in Yemen, and refused to be boarded for inspection, challenging a recent UN Security Council resolution issued under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The resolution authorizes searching ships bound for ports in Yemen.

Whether it backs down or escalate, Tehran has deliberately tested its opponents to cover its weakness in the Yemeni developments and to provoke Saudi Arabia, which Iran wants to implicate in a quagmire in Yemen. However, the priority for Tehran in the broader strategic relationship is first, the nuclear deal, and what it will produce in terms of upgrading the level of US-Iranian relations. And second, convincing Washington of building a regional security regime replacing the existing regional one between the United States and the six GCC nations. Iran wants to dismantle the GCC, and wants to become the security partner of the United States in the Gulf, replacing the US’s Arab partners.

The fate of Iran’s regional ambitions will depend on the nuclear deal, which Obama is set to conclude in July. As for the fate of the Gulf’s ambitions, this is the responsibility of Gulf leaders and the good performance to negotiate over the entire US-Gulf relationship, from security and defence, to long-term strategic relation with Washington following the expected detente in US-Iranian relations.

It is possible for Camp David to be fruitful and bring about a new US decision to let Tehran know that there is no way the United States would bless Iran’s regional expansionist ambitions. Rather, the United States must make fateful decisions before signing the nuclear deal is seeking after. In this scenario, the Iranian nuclear deal will mean there will be tight international oversight and even a path to re-imposing sanctions if Tehran seeks to build nuclear weapons. This will be key to a desired relationship between Iran and the Gulf which would take the entire Middle East region closer to coexistence and with a focus on the rights of the Arab and Persian peoples to have a decent life, work opportunities, growth, production, and creativity. Only then can the Camp David summit be described as “historic.”

Translated from Arabic by Karim Traboulsi

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Well, this is kind of surprising: the Xbox One lead console sales last month. I say it’s surprising because there wasn’t an exclusive game that launched for the system, nor was their a new bundle deal going at the time, either. Regardless, it’s good …

The view atop Koko Head Crater on the Hawaiian island of Oahu is breathtaking. For many, taking the 1,048 steps up is also a spiritual and reflective experience.

For some of these exhausted hikers, it’s been a welcome surprise to discover a yellow toolbox with “Prayer Box” written across it at the summit. The box has no instructions, but a pencil case with paper and a few pens is attached to it with Velcro.

If hikers have a specific prayer or meditation on their mind, the box is a chance to quite literally tell it on the mountain.

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A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on Sep 8, 2014 at 3:30am PDT

Angela Tomiye, the box’s creator, told The Huffington Post that “it’s just an opportunity for people, if they were seeking prayer, to be able to write it down right there.”

A year and a half ago, Tomiye hiked up Koko Head, one of the most popular hikes on Oahu, to place the box there. She has returned every two weeks to take the prayers out so she and a group of friends can pray over them.

Every time she returns, Tomiye says, the box is completely full of prayer requests from locals and tourists alike.

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A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on Apr 5, 2015 at 10:29pm PDT

Tomiye said the idea came to her in something like a dream.

“Well, it wasn’t a dream so much as I was awake,” said Tomiye, who works as an eyelash extension professional. “I was with a client when I had this vision: a prayer box on a mountain top. I really didn’t understand what it all meant. I just knew that it was a prayer box up high and it was in nature.”

She let the vision sink in for a while, “just trying to make sense of it” before asking God for help. “I heard him say to me, ‘Everyone needs prayer but not everyone is willing to walk into a church.’ I couldn’t really ignore what he had been saying to me.”

So she tried to replicate the box as best she could from her memory of the vision. She used her grandfather’s unused toolbox, painted it yellow and cut a hole in it.

The prayers left there, she says, are emotional.

“There’s a lot of prayer for healing,” Tomiye told HuffPost. “A majority of the prayers are for other people, but any time it’s a prayer for themselves, it’s a prayer for guidance and it’s for happiness. A lot of people seek happiness in their lives.”

After maintaining the box anonymously, Tomiye and her friends have decided to expand their project. The prayer box already has an Instagram account, but the group wants to start other prayer boxes across the Hawaiian islands and along the western coast of the mainland. They also plan on launching an Indiegogo campaign and a website in the coming weeks.

As for Tomiye’s prayer, she said she prays that “God would give me the courage to chase every dream that he puts on my heart. He’s constantly stirring all these dreams within me, and I have a lot of desires to travel. … Just wanting to do something that would impact a lot of people, and fortunately, I see the prayer box as way of doing that.”

Some of the prayers from the Koko Head Prayer Box:

A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on May 9, 2015 at 8:44pm PDT

To find my true soulmate and to know what it feels like to love and be loved.

A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on May 8, 2015 at 12:29pm PDT

A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on May 2, 2015 at 2:47pm PDT

A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on Mar 19, 2015 at 11:26am PDT

A photo posted by @weareprayerbox on May 14, 2015 at 4:31am PDT

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