Topics (All Other) – Page 80 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/14

Chuck Spinney: What Caused the Fukushima Meltdowns?

05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The Tsunami or the Earthquake Preceding the Tsunami?????

Below is another pathbreaking report in Counterpunch on the Fukushima question. Fukushima may be off the front pages, but the catastrophe is still generating serious questions with profound ramifications. In a few days, I will forward another blaster will showing how the some of these ramifications this catastrophe reaching into the good ole USA. In the meantime, I urge you to read this report.

Chuck Spinney
Nice, France

The Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Were in Meltdown After the Earthquake, But Before the Tsnumami Hit

TEPCO's Darkest Secret

By DAVID McNEILL and JAKE ADELSTEIN

It is one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: If the quake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly shut down. With virtually all of Japan’s 54 reactors either offline (35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.

. . . . . .

Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002, whistleblower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Sugaoka Kei, a General Electric on-site inspector first notified Japan’s nuclear watchdog, Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in June of 2000. The government of Japan took two years to address the problem, then colluded in covering it up — and gave the name of the whistleblower to TEPCO.

Read full report….

Nuclear/Climate Change: CLOSED 17 May 2011

2011/08/13

Dolphin: Connecting to Earth Point by Point

Advanced Cyber/IO, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial

iPhone App From SimpleGeo Discovers the History, Politics & Wildlife Around You

Geolocation data platform SimpleGeo released its own iOS app this morning to the app store (iTunes link). It clearly points to a future where all the data that's available online about the real-world locations we find ourselves will be available in our hands with the click of a button.

Right now, the app lets you quickly view the boundaries of geographic areas you're in (neighborhood, postal code, congressional district) and it lets you view other layers on top of your map like Wikipedia entries, Flickr photos and Project Noah wildlife sightings. Users with a SimpleGeo Storage account can log-in on the app and then view their own data layers placed on top of the map. That's pretty awesome. Now if only we could share and view each others' layers easily!

Marcus Aurelius: Al Qaeda Ricin, USG, Israel, Nuts

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

From the underpants bomber to exploding print cartridges to ricin bombs…

Qaeda Trying to Harness Toxin for Bombs, U.S. Officials Fear

By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

The New York Times, August 12, 2011

WASHINGTON — American counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that the most dangerous regional arm of Al Qaeda is trying to produce the lethal poison ricin, to be packed around small explosives for attacks against the United States.

. . . . . .

But senior American officials say they are tracking the possibility of a threat very closely, given the Yemeni affiliate’s proven ability to devise plots, including some thwarted only at the last minute: a bomb sewn into the underwear of a Nigerian man aboard a commercial jetliner to Detroit in December 2009, and printer cartridges packed with powerful explosives in cargo bound for Chicago 10 months later.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The insular insanity of the US Government continues. We note with interest that the NYT does not qualify either of the two preceeding plots, both of which are very likely to have been Israeli false flag operations to keep the “terror” myth alive, neither of which was properly investigated. We are right back in the 1970's, and repeat below what Daniel Elsberg said then to Henry Kissinger:

The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].

2011/08/11

Event: 15-16 Oct NYC Singularity Summit

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Technologies

SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2011 IN NEW YORK CITY 15-16 OCTOBER 2011

The Singularity Summit 2011 will be a TED-style two-day event at the historic 92nd Street Y in New York City. The confirmed speakers include futurist Ray Kurzweil, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen, television personalities Jason Silva and Casey Pieretti, and robotics professors James McLurnkin and Robin Murphy.

To stay informed about the coming Summit, you can subscribe to the Singularity newsletter on their website.

SINGULARITY AT PHI BETA IOTA:

Review: Radical Evolution–The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human (Hardcover)

Review: The Singularity Is Near–When Humans Transcend Biology (Hardcover)

Worth a Look: Singularity Summit & Building a Brain

Worth a Look: Singularity University

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on the War on Science

2011/08/112011/08/11

Event: Sept 26-27, Munich Germany, insideAR 2011 (Augmented Reality)

Augmented Reality, Mobile

A descriptive overview of the event is not posted

http://www.metaio.com/events/insidear-2011/

Also see this article which mentions the event.

2011/08/112011/08/11

Dolphin: Seasteading Away from Governments?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Threats

We dolphins are not too thrilled about this idea. Humans have not evolved very far from their Neanderthal roots, and the idea of human hoards invading and polluting the seas is scary to those of us for whom sustainability and resilience comes naturally. Requires further study.

Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating ‘start up country' off San Francisco

Daily Mail, 11 August 2011

PayPal-founder Peter Thiel was so inspired by Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand's novel about free-market capitalism – that he's trying to make its title a reality.

The Silicon Valley billionaire has funnelled $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aspires to launch a floating colony into international waters, freeing them and like-minded thinkers to live by Libertarian ideals.

seasteading 2 — Click on Image to Enlarge

Mr Thiel recently told Details magazine that: ‘The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later. So the question is, can you go back to the beginning of things? How do you start over?'

The floating sovereign nations that Thiel imagines would be built on oil-rig-like platforms anchored in areas free of regulation, laws, and moral conventions.

The Seasteading Institute says it will ‘give people the freedom to choose the government they want instead of being stuck with the government they get.'

Phi Beta Iota: The idea of seasteading in some form of idealic libertarian island of paradise is fairly distant from reality. Accepting that the libertarians will be armed and alert, this concept fails to account for a) the outlaw sea; and b) the dead sea. There is no solution for any group of humanity that is sustainable absent its embracing all humanity.

2011/08/11

John Robb: State Failure, Deep Resistance, Open War

Blog Wisdom, Resilience

Anonymous declares war on Facebook.

For those of you interested in how global guerrilla warfare theory is being applied in the wild, here's a book for you: Deep Green Resistance (by Derrick Jenson, Aric McBay, and Lierre Keith). Here's a little on their ecowarfare strategy from their website, and some more on how they use open source warfare and systems disruption. At this point, nearly every meaningful insurgency in the world is using OSW (open source warfare). From some of the folks behind the London riots to al Qaeda's new “Open Source Jihad” to Lulzsec/etc. Fortunately for these groups, the US military and their consultants are mired in 20th Century counter-insurgency (COIN), fighting farmers/herders in global backwaters.

Vinay Gupta has put up 4.3 Gb of data/presentations/thinking on surviving state failure. Some good STAR TIDES stuff in there.

Ancestral Health Conference. Coincidentally, getting healthy is completely in alignment with resilience.

PeoplePower. “An open-source platform for learning about nonviolent regime change.”