Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1924 – Public Intelligence Blog

Chinese business website Caixin Online has a great video on China’s Open Source Hardware Movement, this is an area that promises to change the manufacturing industry.

Open Source is the philosophy of sharing intellectual property and allowing anyone to improve the idea on the proviso they share their changes with the rest of the world.

The hope is that open sourced products end up being more reliable than proprietary designs due to scrutiny from hundreds, or thousands, of reviewers.

Until recently, open source has been largely restricted to the software world but now it’s moving into broader Engineering and manufacturing circles.

As the Caixin video shows, the open source hardware movement is introducing geeks to a tool which many thought was dead – the soldering iron.

I noticed this a week or so ago when I walked into a co-working space and found the lady I was meeting hunched over a soldering iron putting together a part for a quadcopter.

Right now soldering parts to build quadcopters or game controllers is just the beginning, the really interesting things start when open source meets 3D printing – then we’ll see some real game changing things happen.

2013/05/312013/05/31

SchwartzReport: Half of USA In or Near Poverty — And It Is Getting Worse

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society

Here is the latest in the breakdown of the middle class. As you read this, remember the Pew study on women, and the lower cohort in poverty. We are becoming a second world country, with a crumbling infrastructure, an uber-rich class, an oversized military, and what amounts to a growing impoverished prole class mesmerized by sports, values politics, consumerism, and American idol shows.

The growing irrelevancy of the traditional structures of American governance can easily be seen in our corrupt barely functioning Congress, increasingly made up of people who see Federal politics as not a career culmination, or an act of public service but, instead, as a stepping stone to commercial success and celebrity.

Half of America is in or Near Poverty — and It’s Getting Worse
PAUL BUCHHEIT – Nation of Change

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Half of USA In or Near Poverty — And It Is Getting Worse”

2013/05/312013/05/31

Syria: Assad on Top – With Russian & Christian Support

08 Wild Cards, Ethics, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence

Syria: Fighting. Press service reports indicate that the combined Syrian army and Hizballah forces have control of most, or all, of the town of al-Qusayr. Government claims of success were matched by opposition pleas for assistance from other areas.

Comment: Control of Qusayr means control of Homs Governate and city, which had been in opposition control for months. Opposition groups remain in control of the northern border with Turkey and parts of eastern Syria bordering Iraq, mainly because the government decided to abandon areas too difficult to hold with limited resources.

Peace talks. The various opposition groups are so fractious that they have been unable to agree on representation at the US-Russian sponsored peace talks in Geneva next month. As a result, the main opposition political group announced it would boycott the talks, ostensibly because the Syrian government would not comply with its condition that Asad step down first. This condition is an attempt to put the best face on the failure to craft a united position and presence for talks.

Asad's interview. President Bashar al-Asad announced that the Syrian Army has accomplished major achievements in facing militants on the ground. In an interview broadcast on the Al-Manar television channel on 30 May, he confirmed that the military scales have completely turned in favor of the army. Al-Asad said that “Syria and Hizballah are a single axis,” adding that there are “groups of Hizballah fighters in border areas of Lebanon, but the Syrian Army is doing the fighting, running the battle in the face of the armed groups, and will continue this battle until they vanquish those that he described as terrorists.

Al-Asad denounced the roles of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in supporting and funding armed groups and he spoke of the presence of nearly 100,000 militants with different Arab and foreign nationalities that entered with the support of these countries.

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2013/05/312013/05/31

NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan – The Price of Indiscriminate Drone Assassinations — While Failing to Act Elsewhere

Drones & UAVs

Pakistan: The Pakistani Taliban confirmed on Thursday that Wali ur Rehman Mehsud was killed by a US drone attack.

Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan told press, “I confirm the martyrdom of Wali ur Rehman Mehsud in a drone strike on Wednesday. We are shocked at the martyrdom of our leader but are proud of his sacrifices.”

“We had sincerely offered peace dialogue to the government but we strongly believe that the government has a role to play in the drone strikes.”

He said the Taliban consider the Pakistani government fully responsible for drone strikes in the region, because the government is passing information to the United States.

Comment: For now the talks are dead and the price/incentive package for future talks has just risen for the Pakistan government.

NightWatch received several insightful feedback comments on this topic. One point is that peace talks were unlikely to go anywhere so there is no harm done by the drone attack.

A second point is that Pakistan's air force and army have the weapons to shoot down drones but have never done so. Their inaction belies official public outrage over violations of sovereignty. If the nation's leaders wanted to stop the drone attacks, they have had the military means to do so for years. The public denunciations, therefore, are for the masses and not the real position of successive governments.

The US position is that it has the permission of the Pakistani government for drone attacks, which is evidenced by shared intelligence and the permissive air environment.

NightWatch takes no sides, but notes a few facts. Repeated polls in Pakistan have found that the majority of Pakistanis consider the US the enemy of Pakistan largely because of the drone attacks. The price of the drone attacks is the alienation of most of a nation, especially a generation of Pakistani youth.

No drone attacks have ever been directed against Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his cohorts who have resided in Quetta or Karachi since late 2001. Omar still directs the Afghan Taliban without fear of a US drone attack or commando raid.

Drone attacks against the Haqqanis and Hekmatyar have not prevented them from executing sensational attacks in Kabul.

2013/05/30

Berto Jongman: Amy Goodman on Obama’s Sledgehammer

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Being read (and heard in podcast form) in Europe.

Hammond, Manning, Assange and Obama’s Sledgehammer Against Dissent

By Amy Goodman

One cyberactivist’s federal case wrapped up this week, and another’s is set to begin. While these two young men, Jeremy Hammond and Bradley Manning, are the two who were charged, it is the growing menace of government and corporate secrecy that should be on trial.

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2013/05/302013/05/30

Paul Craig Roberts: The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism — What Prostituted Economists Will Not Address

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism

When I was a graduate student in economics, the social cost of capitalism was a big issue in economic theory. Since those decades ago, the social costs of capitalism have exploded, but the issue seems no longer to trouble the economics profession.

Social costs are costs of production that are not born by the producer or included in the price of the product. There are many classic examples: the pollution of air, water, and land from mining, fracking, oil drilling and pipeline spills, chemical fertilizer farming, GMOs, pesticides, radioactivity released from nuclear accidents, and the the pollution of food by antibiotics and artificial hormones.

Some economists believe that these traditional social costs can be dealt with by well defined property rights. Others think that benevolent government will control social costs in the interests of society.

Today there are new social costs brought by globalism. For developed countries, these are unemployment, lost consumer income, tax base, and GDP growth, and rising trade and current account deficits from the offshoring of manufacturing and tradable professional service jobs. The trade and current account deficits can result in a falling exchange value of the currency and rising inflation from import prices. For underdeveloped countries, the costs are the loss of self-sufficiency and the transformation of agriculture into monocultures to feed the needs of international corporations.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism — What Prostituted Economists Will Not Address”

2013/05/302013/05/30