Category: Policies

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Journal: Army Shines with Bee Deaths But Case Still Open

01 Agriculture, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Military, Mobile
Full Article Online

Possible Cause of Bee Die-Off Is Found

The New York Times

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: October 6, 2010

DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of horticulture: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a very exciting story, and a real accomplishment by the US Army team applying Cold War bio-chemical skill sets to what may be the single greatest threat to US agriculture other than vanishing water.  The Times did not, however, reference other causes of bee disorientation and dysfunction, such as cell phones and other electromagnetic pollutants.

See Also:

Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons (April 24, 2007)

Journal: Electromagnetics, Bees, & Agriculture

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Journal: Third Parties “Crashing” Debates with IT

11 Society, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process
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John Mertens to Use Multimedia Technology to Debate Candidates Despite Exclusion from the Official Debate, October 4th.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Despite earning a ballot line in the 2010 U.S. Senate Race in Connecticut, Dr. John Mertens is not invited to participate in the first post-primary U.S. Senate debate, in New Haven, Conn., Monday, October 04, 2010 from 6:30 – 9:00 p.m., but Mertens has found a way around this roadblock.

Using multimedia technologies to show the televised debate and candidates Blumenthal and McMahon’s answers (live), Mertens and his team will pause to allow candidate Mertens to answer each question before resuming the televised broadcast, giving equal voice to all three candidates. Olwen Logan, publisher of three online local news publications, writer and PR consultant, will be moderating the event.

“John Mertens’ broadcast is a brilliantly creative way of using technology to push back against the duopoly which continues to exclude him and other alternative voices from being heard,” said Christina Tobin, founder and chair of The Free and Equal Elections Foundation. “Voters everywhere deserve to hear from all candidates for public office so they can make educated decisions at the polls.”

“We’re inviting the audience to be citizen journalists during the debate through twitter, and to stay after to connect and discuss issues,” Mertens said.

Read More…

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TOP SECRET: China’s Plan to Take Over America

02 China, 07 Health
Learn More....

Beijing aims to spread Chinese medicine

“We want to make Chinese medicine more acceptable to Western consumers,” Zhang says.

So does Beijing. In August, China‘s health ministry launched a government-backed industry-university alliance to promote traditional Chinese medicine in the global market. As the number of foreign countries already using such medicine rises, exports of TCM are now worth almost $1.5 billion a year, says Wang Guoqiang, director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

. . . . . . .

One of the world's oldest medical systems, traditional Chinese medicine views the body as a network of interconnected systems and energies. There is a focus on remedying underlying causes rather than treating symptoms. Presenting it in a scientific manner is a challenge.

. . . . . .

China wants to more than double its foreign student numbers to 500,000 in 2020, from a record high of 240,000 in 2009, according to the Ministry of Education. Some 13.5% of foreign students study medicine, while about 60% study Chinese.

Phi Beta Iota: Our highly classified information, from the Special Compartmented program Oscar Sierra, is not to be confused with the direct channeling from God done by Tea Party candidates.  The Chinese think strategically.  They are huge.  Between exporting knowledge and exporting lusty unmarried men unable to find a bride in China, they will have no trouble at all competing with Brazil, India, and Indonesia for biological and intellectual control of Earth in 2150.

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Journal: Social Web Cannot Be Censored or Gated

11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

Why the Social Web is the Guardian of Net Neutrality

Jon Goldman Jon Goldman

Mashable

EXTRACT:

The rise of the social web has tipped the balance of information sharing power from corporations to users. Many of the remaining ties consumers once felt toward their favorite search engine or broadband provider have been loosened, making user recommendations the most critical factor in e-commerce decisions. The same thing has happened with content. What our friends watch, play or listen to is increasingly the deciding factor in what media we choose to consume.

This has two important effects on the net neutrality debate. First, social media has rewired people to expect an open and unrestricted Internet. It’s clear to most web users that a controlled Internet (whether by corporations or government) is not in the best interest of the user (or in the long run, the marketplace of ideas). Second, consumer choice is at a high level. Most users are not restricted by a single point of access, both to the web as a whole and for discovery of the information it contains.

Tip of the Hat to  Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: Read the full article to also understand Google and Verizon power plays to own the commons.  This is an important article that misses a major supporting fact: at Burning Man an OpenBTS wireless environment was created, using open software and hardware to leverage open spectrum.  Google is the Standard Oil of the past, and Verizon, if it does not learn fairly soon that it is the content that can be monetized, not the connection, is going to be the Maginot Line of the past.  By the by, John Perry Barlow said all this at OSS '92.  See also Howard Rheingold's remarks.   The US Intelligence Community has blown a quarter century out of ignorant obstinancy.

See Also:

OSS '92 Proceedings (Free Online)

Hacking Humanity

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Journal: Free Speech for People Challenges Supreme Court

09 Justice, 11 Society, Collective Intelligence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Drew Courtney or Miranda Blue, 202-467-4999 / media@pfaw.org
<mailto:media@pfaw.org>

Jeff Clements, General Counsel, Free Speech for People, 617-281-5350
<mailto:617-281-5350%20jclements@clementsllc.com>  /
jclements@clementsllc.com

October 4, 2010

Bipartisan Group of Former Attorneys General and Law Professors Call on Congress to Examine Constitutional Amendment To Reverse Citizens United

As the Supreme Court returns today for its new term, a bipartisan group of law professors and prominent attorneys, including seven former state attorneys general, issued a letter criticizing the Court¹s ruling in January in Citizens United v. FEC <http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/sites/default/files/finalfsfppfaw.pdf> , which equated corporate spending in elections with free speech rights, and calling on Congress to consider a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.

Free Speech for People and People For the American Way announced the release of the letter, which was signed by more than fifty leading law professors and attorneys, including former Massachusetts Attorneys General Frank
Bellotti and Scott Harshbarger; former Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore; former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods; leading constitutional scholars; and numerous former federal and state prosecutors from across the
country.

The diverse group of attorneys, scholars, and public servants call the Citizens United decision ³a serious danger to effective self-government of, for and by the American people.² The signatories urge Congress to consider a
constitutional amendment to address that danger, noting that ³most of the seventeen amendments adopted since the original Bill of Rights have corrected what the American people understood were obstacles to the equal rights of all people to participate in self-government on equal terms.²

Continue reading “Journal: Free Speech for People Challenges Supreme Court”

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Journal: Supreme Court Sells America’s Birthright

09 Justice, Cultural Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends

The Cash Cow of Anonymity

Posted on Oct 4, 2010

By Eugene Robinson

The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.

How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?

It turns out, according to The Washington Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in “independent” campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent of that total going to support Republican candidates. Who’s putting up all that money? You’ll never know, because Americans for Job Security—which calls itself a “business association”—doesn’t have to disclose the source of its funding.

Read full article online….

Phi Beta Iota: The Supreme Court is no longer the arbiter of the Constitution or of Justice–the decision to ratify corporate personality, the most anti-democratic concept after slavery–and to allow organizations to spend freely on manipulating elections, is the nail in the coffin of the Republic.  The original Republic is dead–Benjamin Franklin was correct, we could not keep it.  Whether a Second American Republic arises from these ashes remains to be seen.

noble gold