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The author of the attached report, Patrick Cockburn, is one of very best reporters reporting on the Middle East, and perhaps the most knowledgeable on Iraq. This is a very important report, in my opinion.

Partition could really have a destabilizing influence on the entire Arab region, but especially Syria, as well as non-Arab Turkey. The neocon (and Israeli) dream enhancing Israeli security by breaking up the Muslim state system into a directionless mass of insecure weak warring statelets may well be on its way to fruition. Next stop – Iran????

Chuck Spinney
Marina di Ragusa, Sicilia

Iraqi army losing hold on north to Sunni and Kurdish rebels as troops desert

Patrick Cockburn

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Soldiers are deserting a beleaguered Iraqi army as it struggles to keep its hold on the northern half of Iraq in the face of escalating hostility from Sunni Arabs and Kurds who dominate in the region.

Around the oil city of KirkukKurdish troops have advanced south to take over military positions abandoned by the army, while in Baghdad senior Iraqi politicians say that for the first time there is talk of partitioning the country.

The current crisis was sparked on 23 April when the Iraqi army attacked a sit-in protest in the Sunni Arab town of Hawijah, killing at least 50 people and injuring 110. Outraged Sunni Arab protesters have since stepped up their demonstrations against the Shia-led government. Demonstrators are increasingly protected by armed men, some of whom are accused of dragging five military intelligence soldiers in civilian clothes from a car that came near a protest in Fallujah and killing them.

There are signs that the Iraqi army can no longer cope with a crisis in which it is confronting both Sunni Arabs and Kurds.Many soldiers prefer to desert the army rather than shoot at protesters said Najmaldin Karim, the Kurdish Governor of Kirkuk, where Hawijah is situated, in an interview with The Independent. Most deserters are Sunni, Mr Karim said, but he added that some are Shia who don’t want to fight in strange places for something they don’t believe in.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Iraq Army Losing North, Partition Being Discussed”

2013/04/292013/04/29

Dean Kamen: Slingshot Water Purification System

05 Energy, 12 Water

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The Slingshot water purification system was invented by Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway PT. His purpose was to develop a system that was inexpensive to manufacture that could also provide a high volume of purified water. His target market seems to be Third World countries, although he clearly hopes that the wealthy countries of the world will help supply them with this vitally needed resource. He thinks he can get the price down to about $1,000 to $2,000. And he estimates that it could provide enough drinking water for a village of about 100 people.

The Future of Water: The Slingshot

Dean Kamen is possibly the world's greatest living inventor. Although he has been well-known among futurists for years, he rose to wider fame when he invented the Segway in 2001. His inventions also include the world's first wheelchair capable of climbing and descending stairs, and the world's first drug infusion pump which is used to provide diabetics with insulin on an as-needed basis. Kamen is remarkable because unlike most inventors, he does not work under the umbrella of a large corporation, university, or government agency. He is truly a DIY innovator.

Kamen's latest invention sets the stage to change the lives of billions of people over the next decade. His new water purification system, dubbed the Slingshot, is far cheaper and more accessible than anything that has come before it. The refrigerator-sized Slingshot is capable of taking “anything wet,” in Kamen's words, and transforming it into water that is so pure that it can be both consumed and used in sterile injections. It can convert ocean water, polluted water, or raw sewage from an outhouse into pure drinking water.

Continue reading “Dean Kamen: Slingshot Water Purification System”

2013/04/292013/04/29

SmartPlanet: The rise and $23 billion fall of text messaging

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence

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The rise and $23 billion fall of text messaging

Text messaging, the 20-year-old thumb-happy talk replacement that radically changed people’s communications habits and enriched cellphone carriers, is on a decline.

Mobile operators like Verizon and Vodafone lost a combined $23 billion of potential revenue in 2012 as users opted for other ways to send short notes to each other, market research firm Ovum notes, as reported by the BBC.

The latest thing in thumbs. "Chat apps" like WhatsApp overtook text messaging in 2012. — The latest thing in thumbs. “Chat apps” like WhatsApp overtook text messaging in 2012.

Many phone owners switched to “chat apps.”

“Instant messaging on chat apps, such as WhatsApp, has overtaken the traditional SMS text message for the first time,” writes the BBC, attributing that finding to another research firm, Informa.

Chat apps carried 19 billion missives a day in 2012 compared to 17.6 billion for texts, Informa notes.

Next year the gap will widen, to 50 billion versus 21 billion, the research firm predicts. Other chat app providers include Viber and KiK, all competing against services like Apple’s iMessage, Blackberry Messenger and Facebook Chat Heads in an assault on texts, notes the Financial Times

Don’t toll the bell just yet. Texting is still rising, and revenue will hit $127 billion in 2016, up from $115 billion last year, Informa forecasts. While chat apps are popular among smartphone users, consumers in emerging economies with simpler phones will keep text messaging alive for now. Businesses are also considering increasing their use of text messaging because it works on all phones.

“There are a few things that, I think, will keep the SMS alive for a few years yet,” says Informa’s Pamela Clark-Dickson

A few years? Oh how the mighty will fall. What’s next, a Twitter tailspin?

More from under your opposable digit:

A keyboard optimized for thumbs

2013/04/29

Eagle: A Nation of Zombie Idiots?

Cultural Intelligence

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300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

America has devolved into a nation of welfare zombies living on little more than brain stem function

Sunday, April 28, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

If you want to look where America is headed, look no further than the recent activist video released by Mark Dice. He attempted to gather signatures for a petition that demanded America become a Nazi-style Orwellian police state, complete with forced mercury injections of children and door-to-door gun confiscation nationwide. Astonishingly, people gladly signed it!

Not just one or two people, but a steady stream of people. Demonstrating their true idiocy — there's no other word for it — they put their signature on a document that called for a return to the Hitler regime of World War II with mass murder and concentration camps.

The purpose of this exercise was to see just how far you could go in proposed insane laws and still garner public support for it. After watching this, I'm convinced that the average American would vote for a law that called for the rounding up and imprisonment of all gun owners, the outlawing of cash, and even the surgical removal of all breasts of female children in order to prevent “future breast cancer.”

In truth, there's nothing today's mainstream idiots won't go for if it's proposed by government: The ritualistic sacrifice of your firstborn child, a federal income tax rate of 90%, the outlawing of home gardens… you name it, people will sign a petition to support it.

And why? Because they are zombie idiots who literally have barely enough brain matter still functioning in their skulls to dress themselves in the morning, swipe their EBT cards and use a TV remote. We are dealing with people whose brain activity barely rises above brain stem functionality.

Read rest of article.

2013/04/292013/04/29

Berto Jongman: YouTube (37:46) David Icke on Media Propaganda and Brainwashing

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Media, YouTube

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Most interesting point is that mainstream media “destroys” information, confuses the public rather than informs. Long but interesting B roll of a television station faking, completely, the presence of correspondents in a war zone while actually being in the home office studio.

Published on Apr 26, 2013

http://www.davidicke.com

Two streams of reality: one is secret striving to control everything, and the other is “the movie” scripted for schools and media to explain away inconsistencies (truths) so that humanity does not connect the dots. Alcohol, drugs, entertainment, evangelism — all focused on “soft” control of people.

Bottom line: “little me” as an individual is powerless, go with the flow, when in fact, we are infinitely powerful in the aggregate and as we accept being conscious and responsible.

2013/04/292013/04/29

Berto Jongman: Foreign Policy’s 500 Most Powerful (Old Think)

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

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Is it possible to identify the 500 most powerful individuals on the planet — one in 14 million? That's what we tried to do with the inaugural FP Power Map, our inventory of the people who control the commanding heights of the industries that run the world, from politics to high finance, media to energy, warfare to religion. Think of it as a list of all the most important other lists. Here's how they stack up — and why (sorry, declinists!) Americans are still No. 1 in pretty much everything that matters. For now.

Online List (Requires Registration)

Offline List (Document): 500 Most Powerful

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Foreign Policy's 500 Most Powerful (Old Think)”

2013/04/292013/04/29

Berto Jongman: Water Wars

12 Water

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Water wars?

Increasing water scarcity could drive the next century's conflicts.

Al Jazeera, 25 April 2013

Has water replaced oil as the word’s scarcest resource? By 2030, 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high scarcity. In Yemen, the situation is already verging on catastrophic and is low on the government agenda. It has long been contentious between Israelis and Palestinians, and with little cooperation on the issue; there is no solution in sight. Whether it’s due to issues of natural or politically created scarcity, will future wars be fought over water? Join the conversation at 1930GMT.

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to:

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Water Wars”