The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Believe this will be in eight parts. Worth following, one can only weep.
Disruptive Technology and Reforming the Pentagon Establishment—Part I
Disruptive Technology and Reforming the Pentagon Establishment—Part II: The Origin of MRAPs in DoD
OMB's Stockman: “We're At The Fiscal Endgame”
To those on the hill and elsewhere who suggest this growing ‘fiscal cliff' and ‘debt ceiling' crisis will all get solved, former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director David Stockman tells Bloomberg TV that “they will punt, punt, punt and kick the can with partial solutions driven by eleventh hour crisis-based extensions that will go on for the whole of the next term!” When asked whether this economy will be mired in the doldrums, he rather ominously states “it will be worse, because we will be in recession” and notes that when the lame ducks re-look at the budget numbers with a realistic recession (instead of the current assumption of no recession within 12 years) it will be far worse and in a political environment where ‘we cannot possibly raise taxes – and we cannot possibly cut spending'. With a 78% disapproval rating for the ‘do nothing' Congress, Stockman is surprised that 16% somehow approve – approve of what? His warning is that unlike in past periods, today “we are completely paralyzed, there is an ideological divide on taxes and entitlement like we've never had before” and while he realizes that “the debt problem doesn't become a debt problem until the market suddenly have a wake up call and realize that if the Fed doesn't keep printing, it's game over.”
Continue reading “Josh Kilbourn: David Stockman on Political Gridlock & Irresponsibility”
2012 Robert Steele Answers PhD Student Questions
Five page document above. Below is full text online for ease of automated translation.
Continue reading “2012 Robert Steele Answers PhD Student Questions”
This new book, Human Rights and Information Communication Technologies: Trends and Consequences of Use, promises to be a valuable resource to both practitioners and academics interested in leveraging new information & communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of human rights work. I had the distinct pleasure of co-authoring a chapter for this book with my good colleague and friend Jessica Heinzelman. We focused specifically on the use of crowdsourcing and ICTs for information collection and verification. Below is the Abstract & Introduction for our chapter.
Abstract
Accurate information is a foundational element of human rights work. Collecting and presenting factual evidence of violations is critical to the success of advocacy activities and the reputation of organizations reporting on abuses. To ensure credibility, human rights monitoring has historically been conducted through highly controlled organizational structures that face mounting challenges in terms of capacity, cost and access. The proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provide new opportunities to overcome some of these challenges through crowdsourcing. At the same time, however, crowdsourcing raises new challenges of verification and information overload that have made human rights professionals skeptical of their utility. This chapter explores whether the efficiencies gained through an open call for monitoring and reporting abuses provides a net gain for human rights monitoring and analyzes the opportunities and challenges that new and traditional methods pose for verifying crowdsourced human rights reporting.
Introduction
Freeters and their political impact
“A Freeter (“a Japanese expression for people between the age of 15 and 34 who lack full time employment or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students” – Wikipedia). Although the Japanese have coined a term for the group, they exist all over the world, and are a social force of underestimated and growing importance. The Japanese are unusual in giving it a name. This is the stratum which provides most of the participants in autonomous activism throughout the global North. In Japan, the Freeters General Union is a political body with a broadly autonomist and anti-neoliberal perspective, which organizes initiatives such as Mayday demonstrations and anti-government protests (see freeter-union.org/mayday/index-en.html). Many of those participating in similar protests in European countries doubtless come from a similar social position.
Read full post, a contribution by Andy Robinson:
Phi Beta Iota: Revolutions come about when preconditions pile up, and then a precipitant occurs. Most of the preconditions for revolution exist around the world, not only in Third World countries, but in the USA and Japan as well. For a precipitant (such as a burning fruit seller in Tunesia, or in the USA, a vivacious soccer mom torching herself on Capitol Hill after a passionate YouTube video condeming the two-party tryanny for treason) there needs to be a mass of individual who a) have time on their hands and b) have above average intelligence and can perceive the criminal insanity of the current situation.
See Also:
Graphic: Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today
2011 Thinking About Revolution in the USA and Elsewhere (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
Open Source Everything
TWITTER HASH: # openall
ARCHIVE OF DAILY HIGHLIGHTS: http://tinyurl.com/OSE-ALL
ROOT POST: http://tinyurl.com/OSE-ROOT
THE BOOK: http://tinyurl.com/OSE-Steele
THE PERSON: http://tinyurl.com/Steele2012
All Opens Below Line . Also Includes Autonomous Internet, Crowd-Funding/Sensing/Sourcing, and Transparency, Truth, Trust, & True Cost
Continue reading “20120715 Open Source Everything Highlights”
Solar Ice Maker: No Moving Parts, No Electricity
“The tubing (or heat exchanger) is filled with a liquid refrigerant material. The reflective panel focuses light and heat energy from the sun onto the piping which vaporizes the refrigerant. So far, no ice. When the sun goes down however the vapor goes through massive heat loss due to pressure differences and roughly 14 pounds of ice are produced depending on the design.
The refrigerant rapidly cools once it hits 104 degrees Fahrenheit, due to its unique properties making, it perfect for typical temperature ranges in warm climates.
