Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2472 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

0Shares

Letters at 3AM: The Revolution Will Be Printed

Digital fabrication will change the course of the future

Michael Ventura

The Austin Chronicle, 8 February 2013

That headline has been digitally duplicated (plagiarized) from David Bjerklie's essay in Time‘s special edition: “100 New Scientific Discoveries.” Bjerklie's headline says it all.

Three-dimensional manufacturing is the making of something out of practically nothing. This technology accelerates as we speak. Bjerklie reports that there is only one retail outlet that sells 3-D printers, MakerBot in New York City. Only one, but it had sold 15,000 3-D printers by late 2012.

Every new article on the subject reports something you never dreamed of. A week ago, I didn't know that 3-D printers could make food.

Bjerklie writes of “a pork chop … produced by a bioprinter equipped with pig-cell ink that had been grown in vitro.” Scientists are working on “3-D printed meat” that “could lessen the environmental impact and ethical objections of raising meat the old-fashioned way.” The 3-D process would be lots cheaper than herding cows. The Great American Cowboy, or what's left of him, may ride off into the sunset for keeps.

Like most writers on the subject, Bjerklie quotes a researcher's warning. In this case, it's Michael Idelchik, vice president for advanced technologies at GE Global Research. Idelchik cautions that 3-D printing “has the potential to fundamentally disrupt” all that we take for granted.

The real eye-opener is Professor Neil Gershenfeld's lengthy essay in Foreign Affairs (Nov.-Dec. 2012). Professor Gershenfeld is not a journalist. He is a scientist, the leader of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atoms. “Cutting edge” is a clichéd usage, but not in Gershenfeld's case. His Center is the knife point of the cutting edge. He subtitles his essay: “The Digital Fabrication Revolution.”

Here's the long and the short of it, in Gershenfeld's words: “Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them.”

Read full article.

2013/03/192013/03/26

John Maguire: Open Source Ecology

#OSE Open Source Everything

0Shares

“Open Source Ecology founder Dr. Marcin Jakubowski and the OSE team explain the philosophy behind their work. Special thanks to our remote collaborators Tom Griffing, Zach Dwiel and William Neal.”

Open Source Ecology: Still going strong in 2013. The Global Village Construction Set is ever-evolving. The CEB-Press (Liberator), Lifetrac Tractor, and Hydraulic Power Cube are already fully operational and helping to lay the foundations for the Open Source Economy.

See Also:

Open Source Ecology

2013/03/192013/03/26

Paul Craig Roberts: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — The legacy of “the war on terror” is the death of liberty.

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

0Shares

March 19, 2013. Ten years ago today the Bush regime invaded Iraq. It is known that the justification for the invasion was a packet of lies orchestrated by the neoconservative Bush regime in order to deceive the United Nations and the American people.

The US Secretary of State at that time, General Colin Powell, has expressed his regrets that he was used by the Bush regime to deceive the United Nations with fake intelligence that the Bush and Blair regimes knew to be fake. But the despicable presstitute media has not apologized to the American people for serving the corrupt Bush regime as its Ministry of Propaganda and Lies.

It is difficult to discern which is the most despicable, the corrupt Bush regime, the presstitutes that enabled it, or the corrupt Obama regime that refuses to prosecute the Bush regime for its unambiguous war crimes, crimes against the US Constitution, crimes against US statutory law, and crimes against humanity.

In his book, Cultures Of War, the distinguished historian John W. Dower observes that the concrete acts of war unleashed by the Japanese in the 20th century and the Bush imperial presidency in the 21st century “invite comparative analysis of outright war crimes like torture and other transgressions. Imperial Japan’s black deeds have left an indelible stain on the nation’s honor and good name, and it remains to be seen how lasting the damage to America’s reputation will be. In this regard, the Bush administration’s war planners are fortunate in having been able to evade formal and serious investigation remotely comparable to what the Allied powers pursued vis-a-vis Japan and Germany after World War II.”

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — The legacy of “the war on terror” is the death of liberty.”

2013/03/192013/03/26

Winslow Wheeler: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — Learning from the Past

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Media, Peace Intelligence

0Shares

The media is doing its usual vapid tour of the 10th “anniversary” of the American invasion of Iraq. Far better to consider how the nation permitted the disgrace to happen. Mike Lofgren cites three important lessons to learn.

For myself, I believe it most important to consider the domestic politics and careerist posturing that drives civilian (and military) leaders to beat the drums of war in order to manipulate political (and budgetary) decisions, or worse to simply advocate war.

Consider Mike's lessons below as you read in the morning news articles of the current US B-52 exercises over the Korean peninsula and the hysteria of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in reacting to a historically minor budget correction. Given the nature of the North Korean regime, is this the time to bait them? Have the Joint Chiefs shown they are capable to dealing with budget events they have only had a year and a half to prepare for? Is there an American domestic political (and budgetary) content to the US escalation of events in Korea?

As you read Mike's important column below, it is useful to think about such questions.

Michael S. Lofgren

Former Congressional Staffer, author of The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted

Iraq: 10 Years After, Have We Learned a Thing?

On the decennial of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the persons responsible have shown remarkably little guilt over launching an unprovoked war of aggression, even when the lamentable results might be expected to give one pause to rethink the enterprise. Marveling at the complacency about Iraq of America's foreign policy elite as they are fawningly interviewed on the Sunday talk shows, columnist Alex Pareene says that “[p]eople who were integral in the decision to wage that war sat there and opined on what the United States should do about Iran and China and North Korea and no one laughed them out of the room. It was disgusting.” Disgusting, but hardly surprising here in the United States of Amnesia.

Are there any lessons to be drawn from the debacle? Here are three tentative conclusions:

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — Learning from the Past”

2013/03/192013/03/26

Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Colman McCarthy

Alpha M-P, Peace Intelligence

0Shares

Colman McCarthy (born March 24, 1938 in Glen Head, New York), an American journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist, progressive, an anarchist and long-time peace activist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. From 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post. His topics ranged from politics, religion, health, and sports to education, poverty, and peacemaking. Washingtonian magazine called him “the liberal conscience of The Washington Post.” Smithsonian magazine said he is “a man of profound spiritual awareness.” He has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, The Progressive, The Atlantic, and Reader's Digest. Since 1999, he has written biweekly columns for National Catholic Reporter.

Continue reading “Who's Who in Peace Intelligence: Colman McCarthy”

2013/03/192013/03/26

SchwartzReport: State of the Media — Quite Dead….

Corruption, Ineptitude, Media

0Shares

This is the latest on the major trend concerning the American media. Not a happy story. A democracy requires a healthy functional objective media to be healthy itself. The trend seems to be moving against this.

Click through to see the excellent clarifying graphs.

The State of the News Media 2013

Pew Research Center

EXTRACT

This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.

Read full article (long and fact-filled).

2013/03/192013/03/26

NIGHTWATCH: Cyprus Shows Three Threats – Fall of Government, Widespread Rioting, Spread of Rioting to Mainland Europe

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

0Shares

Cyprus: Comment. International press outlets have provided detailed reporting on the so-called tax Cypriot leaders have proposed imposing on bank deposits to help pay for an international bailout. Cyprus is the fifth European Union country to request a bailout. The issues are complex and not relevant to this brief discussion.

NightWatch sees three threats in the situation. First is the breakdown of public confidence in the government and public financial institutions. That is already manifest in the run on ATMs. Banks on Cyprus were closed on the 18th, but the run on the banks should continue when they open on the 19th. There will not be enough cash to service the customers. Civil disorders should be expected.

The breakdown in confidence feeds the second threat which is the breakdown in respect for law and order. Cyprus is one step away from widespread rioting and a serious breakdown in public order. Rioting is likely when ordinary citizens conclude that they are powerless to protect what they have earned and no amount of effort on their part ensures their property rights.

The third threat is that the fear of losing everything will spread to other countries.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home