Chuck Spinney: Imperial Idiocy Wrecks Middle East (Fruits of Treason) — End of Sykes-Picot Betrayal, Five Inter-Mixed Conflicts, Return of the Tribes

Patrick Cockburn has written a very important essay on Syria in the London Review of Books (attached below).  The essay is aptly titled but has only a few oblique, albeit important, references to Sykes – Picot Agreement, a document some readers may not familiar with.  Let’s begin with a little background. The Sykes-Picot agreement (it …

DefDog: Intelligence Smoke, the Real Fires are in DoD — and the Coming Crash

Useful distraction from the real fires in DoD. Obama defends secret NSA surveillance programs – as it happened Spy chief strongly defends surveillance, calls it legal Timeline of revelations about US domestic spying Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook US intelligence boss calls for criminal investigation …

Chuck Spinney: Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons? Bullshit. + Syria Regional Meta-RECAP

Pressure is mounting for the US to become involved in the Syrian civil war.  Advocates of intervention have all sorts of motives.  Once of the most attractive talking points from the perspective of the interventionists is the Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons on its own people.  This short and well focused essay addresses that …

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

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 …