Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2512 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2013/02/182013/02/18

SmartPlanet: High-Speed Rail — Teaching Governments, Mobilizing All Eight Tribes to Press Forward on High-Speed Rail and Localized Everything

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“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading about high-speed rail.

1.) Protests bring Italian high-speed rail mega-tunnel to its knees. High-speed rail has garnered a lot of praise recently. The U.S. has a new national high-speed network map. China has unveiled the world’s longest high-speed line. Japan is beginning construction of their long-anticipated Maglev train line. But not all the news surrounding high-speed rail is so rosy.

2.) India and France to strengthen cooperation in railway sector. India and France have singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen cooperation in the railway sector.

3.) Is there hope for high-speed rail In Austin? A California transit company recently proposed a map of a national high speed rail network that places Austin as a major hub on the east/west southern rail lines. As KUT News reports, Austin would be mere hours away from major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, not to mention Dallas and Houston.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: High-Speed Rail — Teaching Governments, Mobilizing All Eight Tribes to Press Forward on High-Speed Rail and Localized Everything”

2013/02/182013/02/18

Yoda: Understanding Governance — Without Money, Righteous; With Money Corrupt

03 Economy, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Ethics

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Confused, force is.

First the good.

Stigmergic Governance Via the Web

In My piece, The End of Entropy I propose the following:

With a central website, in forum style, to address major issues – divided into local sections, regional sections and global sections, with “votes” at a certain level elevating the problems and solutions to the next level to be voted on by a greater number – we can collectively coordinate to solve the issues of this planet. Social responsibility will be seen as spending 15 minutes a day (or more) reviewing the issues on this site. This seed parameter will see an emergence of human unity as a race and as a planet.

What is there proposed is a stigmergic governance – a way to govern society without a governMENT. In a system with no money or need for exchange, stigmergic governance will work – as long as there are money interests, it is unlikely to, with votes bought, up or down, and other disruptive aspects. This is what I propose in a free energy/robot system where no money is needed (read The End of Entropy for a picture of how this works). If You are unfamiliar with the term, stigmergy, a good place to get a handle on the term is here.

A very good illustration of stigmergy is Linux. In this case, one Individual created a basic program and offered it freely in open source. Others came along and began to improve upon it, create software to run on it, and so on. There was no “leader” in this group – those who wanted to get involved did so – and from the initial basic program, a whole creative “empire” came to be…all entirely free and freely.

Read full post.

and now the bad.

Continue reading “Yoda: Understanding Governance — Without Money, Righteous; With Money Corrupt”

2013/02/182013/02/18

Marcus Aurelius: Washington Times NAILS the Pentagon for Lack of Integrity — a Total Government Shut-Down for 22 Days, with Documented Cause & Effect Might Shock & Awe

Corruption, Idiocy, Military

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(1) I don't know whether this article's headline is accurate or not; I'd like to think it is.

(2) IMHO, root causes of sequestration issue lie with POTUS who suggested concept, Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction which failed to do their job, and both parties of both houses of Congress who have failed to pass a budget.

(3) DoD, particularly SECDEF, CJCS, and Service Chiefs, IMHO has/have credibility problems because early in the process, they were all shouting [****], probably politically directed, that DoD should be a participant in deficit reduction.

(4) Lack of planning, while mandated by OMB, is inexcusable. Secret planning and wargaming goes on in DoD all the time. This could have been handled with a few people working in a vault with an offline computer. That would have postured DoD to issue the statutory furlough notices to DoD employees several weeks ago.

(5) While I know some DoD employees will disagree with me from a personal cash flow perspective, I think that now that sequestration is upon the USG, if not resolved by 01 March, the best thing to do would be to shut down the government on that date for 22 days while documenting and aggressively publicizing in graphic detail the effects. And there would be effects — people would die, air traffic system would probably shut down, criminals would run rampant, important things would not happen, bills would go unpaid, and the list would go on and on. That ((MIGHT)) seer into public and officeholder minds the inadvisibility of every doing this kind of thing again).

Pentagon aims ax to make a point with sequester cuts, uses worst-case scenarios to force deal

By Rowan Scarborough

The Washington Times, Sunday, February 17, 2013

The Obama administration is putting attention-getting Pentagon projects on the chopping block in a bid to pressure Congress into making a deal that avoids $46 billion in military budget cuts March 1, analysts and congressional officials say.

They use terms such as “gold watches,” “hot button” and “Washington Monumenting” to describe the cuts outlined over the past two weeks by the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and National Guard in briefings and hearings.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Washington Times NAILS the Pentagon for Lack of Integrity — a Total Government Shut-Down for 22 Days, with Documented Cause & Effect Might Shock & Awe”

2013/02/182013/02/18

Eagle: Public Fear Over Obama Waffling on Drones Killing Americans Within the USA — Another Reason Not to Confirm John Brennan

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement, Officers Call

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300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Barack Obama Openly Hints At Desire To Kill Citizens With Drones Inside America…

In a very oddly worded public response to a question posed to him during an online interview, Barack Obama dances around the topic of using military drones to kill Americans inside of the United States. Watch the following response and as you do, keeping in mind at no point does President Obama simply say NO we would never do that…

Phi Beta Iota: What is frightening is that Obama is incapable of saying, simply, “NO, we will not use drones to kill people inside the USA.” Taken in combination with the various “suicidings” across the USA, the “natural gas” explosions, and many unexplained “disappearances,” an outside observer would be hard-pressed to offer a vote of confidence for this Administration's grasp of the “rule of law.” John Brennan was told, in writing, to get the drones off the table in his opening remarks. He refused to do that. For that reason alone (the willful confirmation that he WANTS the drones unfettered), he should not be confirmed and Congress should mandate an end to the CIA drone program — transfer all of the drones to the military, and turn them into UNARMED organic reconnaissance assets within the Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA) Program.

Owl: Sixteen Stabs in the Heart for USA — All From Concentrated Wealth — Single Most Common Cause of Revolution…

2013/02/18

SchwartzReport: 100% Renewables Coming Sooner

05 Energy

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Here is an excellent assessment of the possible, and I consider it to be good news. The main thing that should concern those of us in the U.S. is that the stranglehold carbon energy has on our Federal government is going to seriously retard America's progress. This is the intersection to two major trends: the transition out of carbon energy, and the increasing deterioration of the United States because we are falling further an! d further behind as a result of that corruption.

100% Renewables Could Be Closer Than We Think
GILES PARKINSON – Clean Technica

2013/02/172013/02/17

Chuck Spinney: Scientology for Rednecks — the GOP as Racket

Cultural Intelligence

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My good friend Mike Lofgren, a former Republican staffer on the House and Senate Budget Committees, and author of the The Party is Over: How the Republicans Went Crazy, the Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, is still elaborating on his accurate — and in this case hilarious — diagnosis of the party of Lincoln. My advice to main line Democrats: resist the temptation of schadenfreude; you are part of the problem, as Mike cogently explains in his important book.

Scientology for Rednecks: What the GOP Has Become

Mike Lofgren

Huffington Post, 02/17/2013

As with many religions, political parties have a tendency to start as a movement, transform into a business, and finally degenerate into a racket designed to fleece the yokels. One organization which has gone out of its way to illustrate this evolution is the Republican Party. And it has done so with a national scope and fundraising apparatus that would have made Jimmy Swaggart or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mute with awe.

Read full article.

2013/02/172013/02/18

Gold Transformer: Secret Service Disarms Marines, Russian Bombers Circle Guam — The Lunacy Continues

Cultural Intelligence, Ineptitude, Military

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These two pieces go well together.

Marines Were Disarmed for President Obama's Second Inaugural Parade

He's gutted their healthcare, plans to cut their pay and apparently, doesn't trust them either. David Codrea over at Gun Rights Examiner points out that Marines marching in President Obama's second inaugural parade recently were caring rifles without bolts, meaning they were removed.

Read full story with video and photo.

Russia delivers a message for post-superpower America as sequestration defense cuts loom

Two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam this week in the latest sign of Moscow's growing strategic assertiveness toward the United States. The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time-hours before President Barack Obama's state of the union address.

Phi Beta Iota: The Marines should have refused to decommission their weapons and refused to march. This is a classic example of silence and complacency replacing integrity at multiple levels. Shades of Third World dictatorships and the “Palace Guard.”As for the Russians, they are stupid, so we put this down to perestoika's revenge — they want the lunatic right and the military-industrial complex to continue death-spiral spending. A clever analyst would conclude that the Russians are vastly amused by the “pivot” to Asia and sick with laughter over how incoherent and inept US governance is, both at home and abroad.