Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Patrick Meier: 4G Humanitarian Technology Briefing (99 Slides with Words in Notes Format)

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

ROBERT STEELE:  I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Patrick Meier speak at the National Defense University (NDU) this past Thursday.  He is based in Qatar because the US Government is not very good at spotting, assessing, recruiting, and respecting world-class individual talents.  Patrick is a global asset.  What he knows about humanitarian technology is priceless.  Below is Patrick's “long” briefing, 99 slides, with words in Notes format.

4G Humanitarian Technology

During the Q&A one of the NDU staff asked Dr. Meier if he had considered asking NSA for help [I don't make this stuff up.]  In the ensuing discussion what was really clear to me is  that the the pioneers in humanitarian technology not only do not need anything NSA has to offer, but they are far advanced — vastly advanced — beyond anything the US secret intelligence community is capable of doing.  CLARIFICATION BY DR. MEIER:  Point is we don't need half as advanced tech/methods to do what we currently need to do, much of this commercially available already and slowly coming to open source world as well.

meier-smarmie-2013-v41-1Among the highlights for me personally:

01  Every image taken by a cell phone is capable of having the geospatial coordinates and the time and date stamped within the image.  This feature is turned off on most cell phones.  We need to find a way for individuals to be able to easily activate the feature.  If we can ever get The Virgin Truth off the ground, I'd like to see the OpenBTS cell phones given out free pre-set to this function — its value in relation to early warning on crop or animal disease as well as very rapid situational awareness when many images are coming is, cannot be exaggerated.

02  When humanitarian technologist talk about geo-tagging, they are talking about hash-tags and words added by the sender they are NOT talking about embedded geospatial code.  Some in the audience did not appear to understand this distinction, at least one clearly did.

03  Some — at least as represented in this room by the most talkative among a small handful — are spectacularly ignorant about what NSA cannot and does not do, and about the limitations of big data (legacy) versus big data (real time).  They are particularly limited in understanding that one human brain is vastly more powerful than any single NSA computer, and that a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand human minds, organized voluntarily and coherently

There are very few people that I consider spectacularly gifted and relevant to the creation of a World Brain and Global Game.  Medard Gabel is one of them.  Patrick Meier is another.

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Berto Jongman: Wesley Strong on Fear Geoengineering

03 Environmental Degradation, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Fear of a Geo-engineered Planet


Wesley Strong

Wesley Strong
Ethical Technology

Posted: Jun 21, 2013

The climate crisis demands our immediate attention. Climate change could devastate thousands of at-risk communities beyond repair and leave the face of the earth scarred. We cannot be alarmist enough about continued climate change and the threat it poses to life on this planet. This is the first time in the history of this planet that a species altered global climate to such a degree. The future of life on this planet is entering a period of extreme risk and few are offering rational solutions.

Leftists and environmentalists are correct to confront this issue with great urgency. Climate change grows exponentially as powerful elites continue to pursue a course dominated by the consumption of fossil fuels. Social movements continue to challenge the power of states throughout the globe to continue this destructive course. These movements are large, powerful, and often diverse. They face a very strong opponent, however, and have yet to really land a blow against the powerful capitalist elites that seek to profit from climate change rather than prevent it.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Wesley Strong on Fear Geoengineering”

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Stephen E. Arnold: As Different Types of Thinkers Emerge Collaboration Is Key

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

As Different Types of Thinkers Emerge Collaboration Is Key

June 21, 2013

The article titled How an Entirely New, Autistic Way of Thinking Powers Silicon Valley on Wired discusses the possibility of a new way of thinking. “Pattern thinkers”, those who think in patterns, whether consciously or unconsciously, are separated from “picture thinkers”, who are more aware of aesthetics. The article cites such famous examples from history as Van Gogh, whose paintings of the stormy night sky matches the formula later discovered for turbulence in liquid and Jackson Pollock, whose abstract painting style involved flinging streaks of paint onto massive canvases which were later found to be coherent fractal patterns. The article explains,

“Michael Shermer, a psychologist, historian of science, and professional skeptic  – he founded Skepticmagazine — called this property of the human mind patternicity. He defined patternicity as “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.” …The three kinds of minds — visual, verbal, pattern thinkers — naturally complement one another. When I recall collaborations in which I’ve successfully participated, I can see how different kinds of thinkers worked together to create a product that was greater than the sum of its parts.”

The article argues that it is finding the balance of these three types that has made for the great innovations, such as Pixar– and the lack of balance that has spelled out disaster for other projects, (the article cites the IPhone 4 antennae). We are not sure if this is a positive or a negative approach.

Chelsea Kerwin, June 21, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.

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Berto Jongman: Mike Haydon on TV “Security and Transparency a Zero-Sum Game” — Robert Steele Comments

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Former CIA Head Warns David Gregory: We’ll Have To Be ‘Less Effective To Be A Little More Transparent’

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told Meet the Press’ David Gregory on Sunday morning that security and transparency were a zero-sum game.

Mike Hayden
Mike Hayden

“For part of my life, when I was running the NSA program, I thought lawful, effective, and appropriate were enough,” Hayden said. “By the time I got to CIA I discovered I had a fourth requirement, and that’s politically sustainable. By the time I got to the CIA I was of the belief that I would probably have to shave points off of operational effectiveness to inform enough people that we had the political sustainability and the comfort of the American population concerning what it was we were doing. Living in this kind of democracy, we’re going to have to be a little less effective in order to be a little more transparent to get to do anything to defend the American people.”

Hayden’s comments came in response to journalist Jim Risen’s critiques of lack of transparency in the intelligence community, to the point that low-ranking intelligence officials had little recourse when they spotted something amiss.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Mike Haydon on TV “Security and Transparency a Zero-Sum Game” — Robert Steele Comments”

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SmartPlanet: Should Bus Fares Go Away — What Is True Cost of Fares, and True Falue of Optimzing Public Transport Use?

Commercial Intelligence

smartplanet logoShould bus fares be free?

By | June 20, 2013

As bus fare hikes in Brazil helped spark the largest protests that the country has seen in 20 years (those fare hikes have since been reversed in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), The Economist has a provocative proposition: make buses free.

They come to this conclusion looking at the proof-of-payment fare-collection systems that many transit systems have adopted as a way to make transit systems more efficient. But The Economist says that making transit free would take that efficiency a step further. Here’s the argument:

Fares bring in a lot of money, but they cost money to collect—6% of the MTA’s budget, according to a 2007 report in New York magazine. Fare boxes and turnstiles have to be maintained; buses idle while waiting for passengers to pay up, wasting fuel; and everyone loses time. Proof-of-payment systems don’t solve the problem of fare-collection costs as they require inspectors and other staff to handle enforcement, paperwork and payment processing. Making buses and subways free, on the other hand, would increase passenger numbers, opening up space on the streets for essential traffic and saving time by reducing road congestion.

Transit systems aren’t cheap so, of course, the lost fare revenue would have to be made up somehow. That can be done in a number of ways: a congestion charge for cars entering dense downtowns; funneling money from downtown parking into transit; or getting private sponsorships.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Should Bus Fares Go Away — What Is True Cost of Fares, and True Falue of Optimzing Public Transport Use?”

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4th Media: Syria is Obama’s Iraq — Money Talks, Lies Abound, Only the Poor Die

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

 

Syria Is Becoming Obama’s Iraq: In Perfect Bush-like Fashion, President Obama Too …

In perfect Bush-like fashion, President Obama has invented a bogus pretense for military intervention in yet another Middle East country.

The president’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons — and thus crossed Obama’s imaginary “red line” — will likely fool very few Americans, who already distrust their president after the massive NSA spying scandal. Obama has officially started down a path that inevitably leads to full-scale war.

At this point the Obama administration thinks it has already invested too much military, financial, and diplomatic capital into the Syrian conflict to turn back, and each step forward brings the U.S. closer to a direct military intervention.Much like Obama’s spying program, few Americans knew that the United States was already involved, neck deep, with the mass killings occurring in Syria.

For example, Obama has been directly arming the Syrian rebels for well over a year. The New York Times broke the story that the Obama administration has — through the CIA — been illegally trafficking thousands of tons of guns to the rebels from the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

If not for these Obama-trafficked guns, thousands of deaths would have been prevented and the Syrian conflict over. But even after the gun trafficking story broke, the mainstream media largely ignored it, and continued “reporting” that the U.S. has only been supplying the Syrian rebels with “non-lethal aid,” a meaningless term in a war setting, since all military aid directly assists in the business of killing.

Continue reading “4th Media: Syria is Obama's Iraq — Money Talks, Lies Abound, Only the Poor Die”

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SchwartzReport: US Supreme Court Unethical & Corrupt — As with the Congress, the Time to Flush the Court is Now

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

schwartz reportThis is why the appointment of Supreme Court Justices matters so much. We now have a court which routinely favors corporations over individuals. Here is their latest decision, part of the Legalization Trend. Increasingly monopolistic practices that would previously have been illegal, are now the law of the land. We are becoming a country wh! ere corporate influence makes illegal things legal so that vassal politicians, and corporations can say, “They/we broke no laws. Everything they/we are doing is perfectly legal.”

In Major Blow To Consumers, Supreme Court Protects Mega-Corporations From Liability
NICOLE FLATOW – Think Progress

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: US Supreme Court Unethical & Corrupt — As with the Congress, the Time to Flush the Court is Now”