STOP US Government Loan Guarantees for Nuclear

05 Energy, 08 Proliferation, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Ethics
John Steiner

NukeFree.org

From Bonnie, Jackson & Graham: “We May Be on the Brink….”

Dear NukeFree.org supporter…We may be on the brink of stopping the US nuclear industry from building new reactors. 

We ask you to help make this happen.

The atomic industry desperately needs $36 billion in federal loan guarantees.

If we stop them, new reactor construction in this country will be severely restricted, if not ended altogether.

As the editor's blog currently posted at NukeFree.org explains:
( http://nukefree.org/editorsblog/americas-new-nuke-showdown-starts-now )
Japan and Germany have turned away from atomic power.

The first Congressional vote on these guarantees, as embedded in the 2012 federal budget, could happen in an Appropriations subcommittee as early as June 2.

We ask that you contact the White House and your Senators and US Representatives as often and forcefully as you can. You can do that on your own, or through the NIRS Action Alert linked through NukeFree.org:
( http://nukefree.org/loan-guarantee-battle-heating-take-action ).

Tell them it's time we scrap the failed atomic power experiment, and embrace the green-powered future we need to survive.

This is a battle that we can win. Defeating these handouts will have a HUGE impact.

Please join us. This definitive turn away from atomic power CAN happen.

No Nukes!

Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash

The Criminal Insanity of Both US Parties–Borrow One Trillion a Year, Debate About Tax Increases

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Dem plan for millionaire surtax intended to soften GOP

By Alexander Bolton 05/18/11

The Hill

Senate Democrats are using their proposal to raise taxes on millionaires as a stalking-horse to force Republicans to accept other tax increases.

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: The Hill is letting us down when it fails to provide context.  This “debate” over tax cuts is either criminal insanity or insanely criminal.  As long as the federal government is BORROWING one trillion dollars a year “in our name,” any discussion that does not begin with “stop borrowing” is unconstitutional, illegitimate, and grounds for the impeachment of every member now serving in the Senate and the House, including Ron Paul if he does not bring this basic fact forward in public.

Ninth Circuit Court Says Veterans Administration, Congress and President Seriously Screwed Up

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Sgt. Jacob Blaylock, seated left, one of four in his Guard unit to commit suicide, at the grave of Sgt. Brandon Wallace Photo: Clinton Gill - NY Time

Ninth Circuit Court Says VA, Congress and President Seriously Screwed Up

Tim King, 12 May 2011

Salem-News.com

Court decision will radically change VA's approach to Veteran's health treatment.

(SALEM, Ore.) – Never in my life have I read words so supportive of veterans.

Read entire article….

A Social Network for Making Future Plans

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence

A Social Network for Making Future Plans

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, May 17, 2011

New York Times

Most social networking services are for sharing what you’ve done in the past or what you’re doing right now. A new one, WhereBerry, is for sharing what you want to do in the future.

On WhereBerry, which opens to the public Tuesday, people post activities they want to do someday, like restaurants they want to try, movies they hope to see or events they plan to attend. Their friends can comment and make plans.

“We’re giving people a single place for all these ideas that float around for people to do,” said Nick Baum, who founded WhereBerry with Bill Ferrell. They are former Google engineers. “If you put them here, you won’t forget about them and the combination of things will make you do a lot more stuff.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: WhatBerry should be along right behind this.  As a collective aggregator this appears to have vastly more potential than its current narrow focus.

First Habitable Planet Confirmed by French

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Academia, Earth Intelligence, Strategy

Greg Tito | 17 May 2011

Escapist Magazine

French scientists believe that a planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581 could sustain life similar to Earth.

Twenty light years away is a small red star. Orbiting this sun are six planets that range in size from slightly smaller than Earth to about the size of Neptune. Several of these planets fall within the star's “Goldilocks” zone, neither too hot from proximity to the star nor too cold from being too far. If a planet is too hot, all water would be steam but if its too cold then it would be ice, neither of which can support life. Luckily, a group of astronomers from the National Centre for Scientific Research in France believe that the fourth planet – unimaginatively labeled Gliese 581d – is just right.

Read rest of article….

Sterling Seagrave: Reflections of an Old China Hand

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Sterling Seagrave

Gold rising further except for profit taking bursts. China is buying all the gold it can get, and unloading all the paper dollars it can dump.. Other countries, including Russia are buying gold. I can see the Yuan or RMB playing a larger role as a global currency, but most people are too ignorant of China to accept the Yuan quickly or easily. The Swiss have a huge mass of gold well stashed, so I can see the Swiss franc playing a larger role. It's hard to make a forecast for the Euro, although it will almost certainly survive the US dollar. It's also possible that the Swiss might make a deal with the EU that would result in the Euro being backed by Swiss gold. Now that the head of the IMF has been burned at the stake, his very good brain is of no further use. The EU is scrambled eggs right now. Sarko can't survive without a miracle. India's potential will take a very long time to organize and get rolling; I went to school there and it's a seething cesspit.  It's time for the US to get out of foreign wars, but unlikely that it will because of the weapons market. Obama seems impotent. The Pentagon and its corporate backers and partners seems to be deciding policy. I'm not happy about Petraeus at the agency.  I think the USG and the US are totally hosed. Desperate for a new demon. Good time for Lee Kuan-yew to retire. Wise of him. The immediate future does not look good. War and more war. Civil war. Revolution. Take your pick. The cupboard is bare. It's all been looted. What a mess America has made since 1945. Moments of glory, decades of folly and stupidity….  Israel and the Palestinians are a parody of the world as a whole.

I think the last real ingots of gold in Manhattan were in the basement of the Twin Towers. The Fed and the Treasury don't dare be transparent or audited, because whatever real (solid) gold they ever had was moved to Malta and other offshore or mountain stashes long ago, replaced with Play-Dough. Christ, even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing stops now and then to change engraving plates and produce “Presidential dollars” to be used as bribes by the White House (ever since Truman); we have that from a guy who is now retired after running the shop  since 1945. The satellite imagery boys, where I have sources, dream of being about to electronically penetrate the earth to a depth of 100 feet or more from satellites but when I last checked 3 or 4 years ago they were still dreaming. They fiddle with HAARP trying to achieve earth-penetration, and only end up causing huge earthquakes and tsunamis; measurements already show the poles have begun to shift partly due to melting ice masses, but also due to fiddling with HAARP. The Fukushima quake and tsunami have been attributed to fiddling with HAARP, possibly the Sumatra disaster as well. Not all scientists are smart and prescient. We're damn lucky they haven't already blown us to smithereens, while scratching their backsides. Never forget that the Fed has always existed as a fraud by intent and design. President Wilson commented years after enabling the Fed in 1913: “I have destroyed my country.”

See Also:

INTERVIEW WITH STERLING AND PEGGY SEAGRAVEOSS.Net, Inc.

Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold

Amazon’s Broken User Experience

03 Economy, 04 Education, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, IO Sense-Making
Jon Lebkowsky Bio

Doc Searls has posted a slideshow explaining how Amazon’s user experience is broken, in the context of a discussion about vendor relationship management (VRM), which is about evolving a world where customers have at least symmetry in the power relationship of customer and vendor. The slides are old (January 2010) and things might have changed, but I don’t think they’ve changed as much as they should’ve, because I still experience similar frustrations when I visit Amazon.

Phi Beta Iota: Amazon is a great company with an extraordinary cloud offering and enormous potential they have chosen to leave unattended.  They rejected a 2007 proposition (Amazon as the Hub of the World Brain) that would have seen them create a markeplace for informed relationships and knowledge by  the call or page, and they have rejected all suggestions for enabling buyers, readers, and reviewers to “co-create” the Amazon experience.  It's a pity mostly because the world need multiple forms of M4IS2 hybrids, and this is something Amazon could have provided as a service of common concern, with both the cloud for melded shared information and the authors and their readers as the human intelligence component.