Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2370 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Editor's Note

In today's issue I want to illustrate several trends, and show how they blend together into a meta-trend. This is our shadow. An amalgam of hysteria, fear, anger, racism, willful ignorance, and a sense of affronted victimization. Each of these stories illustrates an aspect of this meta-trend. By putting them together I wanted to give a sense of how broad this trend is. It is an act of intentioned self-sabotage of historic proportions. For other examples read Jared Diamond's Collapse, or Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly. We are coming to a crisis. I want to be clear here. This is not about partisanship, this is about attitudes and priorities. Finally, I close the edition with a different world, the one that could be, if we would only make national wellness a first priority. [Denmark, not the USA, is the gold standard for secular Western democracy.]

— Stephan

Letters at 3AM: An Arbitrary Nation
MICHAEL VENTURA – The Austin Chronicle

Is Democracy in Trouble?
E.J. DIONNE, JR. – Truthdig

Washington Gets Explicit: Its ‘war on Terror' Is Permanent
Glenn Greenwald – The Guardian (U.K.)

Beltway Scandal Machine Breaks, Knows Nothing About America
JOAN WALSH , Editor-at-Large – Salon

Rand Paul: UN has Secret Plot to ‘CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL’ of America’s Guns
Eric W. Dolan – The Raw Story

Right-wing Radio Host: I Want to Shoot Clinton Right in the Vagina
ERIC W. DOLAN – The Raw Story

And finally let me close the edition with this… What we could do, what we could be… if socially progressive adults who had national wellness as a first priority made policy.

America Needs Denmark's
Senator Bernie Sanders, (I-Vt) – Reader Supported News

2013/05/202013/05/20

Koko: Crazy Ants Displace Fire Ants — Are Humans Ready for Crazy Animals & Plants They Have Created?

03 Environmental Degradation

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The first real sign of predatory “crazy” life that “crazy” humans have created.

‘Crazy' ants driving out fire ants in southeast

Invasive fire ants have been a thorn in the sides of Southerners for years. But another invasive species, the so-called “crazy” ant that many describe as being worse has arrived and is displacing fire ants in several places.

“When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back,” said Edward LeBrun, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, in a statement from the school. “Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound.”

Crazy ants, on the other hand, “go everywhere,” invading homes and nesting in walls and crawlspaces, even damaging electrical equipment by swarming inside appliances. [Image Gallery: Ants of the World]

A study published in the April issue of the journal Biological Invasions found that in areas infested with crazy ants, few to no fire ants were present. Exactly how they are able to outcompete fire ants is so far unknown. In areas with crazy ants, the researchers also found greatly diminished numbers of native ant species, according to the study.

Read full article.

2013/05/20

Stephen E. Arnold: Google Implants — You Will Buy What We Are Paid to Tell You to Buy….

07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Ethics, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

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Google Implants By 2030?

From Marketplace Tech comes an interesting article on Google Glass and the projections into the future in regards to similar projects. The article, “Google’s Ray Kurzweil on the Computers that will Live in our Brains,” discusses how everything Google puts its hands on is changing how we search, retrieve and interact with information. As in nearly all articles these days discussing Google Glass Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, leads the conversation.

Kurzweil posits that we will eventually move beyond devices that simply allow us to look at the world through a keyhole. Instead, he forecasts that people will be online all the time. He projects that devices post-Glass will ultimately be the size of blood cells able to be sent inside the brain and connect to the cloud around the mid-2030’s.

The article tells us more:

“In Kurzweil’s vision, these advances don’t simply bring computers closer to our biological systems. Machines become more like us. ‘Your personality, your skills are contained in information in your neocortex, and it is information,’ Kurzweil says. ‘These technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years and we will be able to manipulate the information inside your brain.’ As that data locked up inside our brain becomes searchable, inimitable human qualities suddenly become easier to emulate. Kurzweil denies that the searching and backup up of the brain itself is a bloodless pursuit, depleted of human emotion.”

Artificial intelligence and the melding of biology and machine is increasingly discussed in the media in reference to Google Glass. Will Glass evolve to Google impants? The bigger question is touched upon in this particular article: is it altruistic intentions or advertising that is driving this kind of technology?

Megan Feil, May 20, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

2013/05/202013/05/20

David Swanson: CIA – An Idea Whose Time Has Gone with Comment from Robert Steele

Ethics, Government

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CIA: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

By David Swanson

There's a contradiction built into every campaign promise about transparent government beyond the failure to keep the promises. Our government is, in significant portion, made up of secret operations, operations that include warmaking, kidnapping, torture, assassination, and infiltrating and overthrowing governments. A growing movement is ready to see that end.

The Central Intelligence Agency is central to our foreign policy, but there is nothing intelligent about it, and there is no good news to be found regarding it. Its drone wars are humanitarian and strategic disasters. The piles of cash it keeps delivering to Hamid Karzai fuel corruption, not democracy. Whose idea was it that secret piles of cash could create democracy? (Nobody's, of course, democracy being the furthest thing from U.S. goals.) Lavishing money on potential Russian spies and getting caught helps no one, and not getting caught would have helped no one. Even scandals that avoid mentioning the CIA, like Benghazigate, are CIA blowback and worse than we're being told.

We've moved from the war on Iraq, about which the CIA lied, and its accompanying atrocities serving as the primary recruiting tool for anti-U.S. terrorists, to the drone wars filling that role. We've moved from kidnapping and torture to kidnapping and torture under a president who, we like to fantasize, doesn't really mean it. But the slave-owners who founded this country knew very well what virtually anyone would do if you gave them power, and framed the Constitution so as not to give presidents powers like these.

There are shelves full in your local bookstore of books pointing out the CIA's outrageous incompetence. The brilliant idea to give Iran plans for a nuclear bomb in order to prevent Iran from ever developing a nuclear bomb is one of my favorites.

Continue reading “David Swanson: CIA – An Idea Whose Time Has Gone with Comment from Robert Steele”

2013/05/20

Kalani Kirk Hausman: Quentin Harley released SCARA based “RepRap Morgan” 3D printer and its design

Manufacturing

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Quentin Harley released SCARA based “RepRap Morgan” 3D printer and its design

Reprap Morgan is a concentric dual arm SCARA FDM 3D printer, designed and built by Quentin Harley. The SCARA stands for Selective Compliant Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliant Articulated Robot Arm. Harley has been working on this project for a couple of years, and in February Harley released pictures showing off the build. The extruder of this Reprap Morgan 3D printer moves along the x and y axes and the bed itself moves along the Z axis. Its major parts, such as the arms, driving gears, pipe adapters are printed on a 3D printer.

. . . . . . . .

“RepRAP Morgan is all about a dream. A dream to make it easy for anyone in South Africa, or anywhere else in the world to build a 3D printer without needing exceedingly expensive materials, hard to find components, stuff that has to be shipped at sometimes more than the cost of the components, requiring advanced tools.” Notes Harley. “Morgan is to be a tool for creation, not a toy or end product. It should be used in education, and must be affordable and safe enough for school kids to use.” adds Harley.

2013/05/20

Sepp Hasslberger: Turn Water Into Fuel

12 Water

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Stanley Meyer died an untimely death just after he had secured a $ 5m investment to start commercial production of his super efficient water splitting technology.Edward Mitchell continued in Meyer's footsteps and is ready to develop a kit. He does need funds to do that. This is his crowdfunding campaign.

Turn Water Into Fuel

By True Green Solutions

New Energy Funding

The Water Capacitor turns water into a hydrogen-oxygen gas mixture that can then be used as a fuel for heating, cooking, welding, fixed generators, and powering internal combustion engines.

The Water Capacitor will then be incorporated into a kit offered from True Green solutions to individual consumers.

The Proof of Principle was demonstrated in Stanley Meyer's original water splitting devices as hydrogen fuel was extracted from water with his Electrical Polarization invention that was documented in his patents through the mode of operability.

Edward Mitchell has already built a working prototype and is now refining the design to be incorporated into a complete Exciter Array (Water Fuel Capacitor(C)) Kit.

Two videos, photos, diagram.

2013/05/20

Jean Lievens: Money, Markets, Value and the Commons – detailed stream description (DRAFT)

Design, Money, P2P / Panarchy

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From the P2P Foundation.

Money, Markets, Value and the Commons – detailed stream description (DRAFT)

Working page for the money, markets and value stream of the Economics and the Commons Conference.

Please read, view, and feel free to edit, comment, add to the list of stream recommended readings and viewings (at the end of this page), or contact the stream coordinator (Ludwig Schuster) as appropriate.

A stream forum for real time discussions is available on the conference communications site.

Introduction

Money, markets, and value are some of the core-categories of today's capitalist societies. They come with specific meanings, forms and interpretations which are reflected in and at the same time give shape to socio-economic and cultural contexts.

This stream shall deal with the question what happens if these specific forms are (deliberately) changed. Do we need money in an economy of the Commons? If yes, how would that money need to be designed and who should control it? If no, how could a demonitised society look like? And perhaps most importantly, how can the phase of transition be envisioned? In this stream light shall be shed on the different standpoints and the reasonings behind them in order to reach a more clear-cut view and to find some common route in this extremely wide and controversial, yet highly important field.

Linked Table of Contents Below the Line.

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