The New Agora May 2011

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MAY | JUNE 2011

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THE SHARks HAVE COMPUTERS SCIENCE HEALTH ECONOMY CULTURE

New Energy Pedal Power Harper Did What?

6 Issues the Election Didn’t Touch

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Local Pedal Power

4

On Guard For Me

National 6 Issues the Election Didn’t Touch

Majority

6

Harper Did What?

ShitHarperDid.com

World

8

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Science New Energy Breakthroughs

10 + 15

Wi-Fi Swarms

Movies You Control

Health Fukushima Raised to Level 7 Chernobyl Event

12

The Doc is In

Reviews

16

Book Review - Weapons of Mass Instruction

by John Taylor Gatto

Economy Libya: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About Currency

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The Sharks Have Computers

Events

17

by NakedCty

Culture What if Your Favourite Album Was a Book?

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Welcome to Pine Point

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s more people choose cycling as a means of transportation, rather than recreation, more shops are catering to people who just need an affordable, dependable, and healthy way to get around. A singular example of this new approach is Our Community Bikes in Vancouver.

The shop serves a vital purpose – providing access to practical, low cost transportation and mechanical training, catering to the DIY market, and filling a niche that does not directly compete with other retail bike shops.

Our Community Bikes falls into the relatively new business category of a ‘social enterprise’. Profit is not the motive, but helping people is. Staff manage the shop collectively using consensus based decision making, and strive to ensure that the operation is efficient yet responsive to the needs of staff and the greater community. Here, people can learn how to repair their own bikes, use specialty tools, find inexpensive secondhand parts and buy refurbished, used bicycles. Select new parts are stocked as well, and people often come to look for rare, out-of-production bikes and components. OCB is supported by donations of used bicycles and parts, which are reused, refurbished, re-purposed or recycled. If you ask, staff are happy to repair your bicycle for you, but prefer to teach you to do it yourself.

It’s proving a successful formula. OCB now supports around a dozen staff year-round and is the backbone of the PEDAL Foundation (Pedal Energy Development Alternatives), a charitable organization that promotes the use of pedal powered technology.

OCB has been voted one of Vancouver’s best bike shops in reader surveys by Vancouver Magazine, the Georgia Straight, and the Westender and online reviews such as those on Google Maps, are uniformly positive, a testament to the value OCB provides to its customers and the community. On any given day you can enter the shop and find binners, doctors, punks, and lawyers working side by side, all fixing their bikes with staff teaching them how to do particular repairs catered to their individual needs.

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EDAL OWER

OCB was founded in 1993 with seed funding from Vancity, but by the end of the first year all the money was spent. The operation was forced to rely upon volunteer labour. Fortunately, people saw the value of the idea and OCB began to build a small but loyal customer base. By Year Two the shop was in the black, and it’s largely been that way ever since. Extra revenue is now used to fund other PEDAL projects promoting cycling and pedal power.

PEDALPOWER

.ORG

F r o m 1998 to 2001 PEDAL helped establish Maya Pedal, to develop pedal powered technology for communities in rural Guatemala. During that time PEDAL assisted in constructing pedal powered grain mills, water-pumps, coffee de-pulpers, roof-tile makers, macadamia nut-hullers and other appropriate technology to assist in local economic development. Since 2001, Maya Pedal has run independently, with a board of directors comprised of Mayan staff and volunteers from local partner organizations. PEDAL remains involved as a partner, acting as a liaison with the Canadian International Development Agency, coordinating volunteers and donations, and promoting awareness of the project.

PEDAL also teaches a number of skills training courses. Once a month, staff offer a 3 hour Introduction to Bike Repair workshop, as well as an Advanced Bike Maintenance class. On the first and third Wednesdays of the month, female shop staff host a trans-inclusive Women’s Night, with the goal of breaking down gender barriers still prevalent in this industry. OCB also endeavors to be a safe space for all marginalized people with a zero tolerance policy on homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, and so on.

O n any given day you can enter the shop and find binners, doctors, punks, and lawyers working side by side, all fixing their bikes.

I n 2007, our After School Bikes! (ASB) program was created with a grant from Transport Canada. ASB’s mandate is to improve access to bicycles and cycling in Vancouver elementary schools. This initiative addresses a clearly identified gap in meeting the needs of young cyclists. According to a 2006 report from the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, 30% of students would like to cycle to school. Sadly only 2% regularly have this opportunity. The City of Vancouver’s stated goals in its greenest city initiative include a 10% mode share for cycling as a means of transportation. Through ASB, PEDAL is working to achieve similar results in schools.

PEDAL staff also run a Free Bike Program providing bikes to individuals referred to us by recovery, health and well being organizations. Through the program, used bicycles are diverted from the waste stream, volunteers gain basic bike repair knowledge rebuilding the bikes, and marginalized people in our community benefit from affordable/ accessible transportation. Over 800 bikes have been donated to the community through this program.

PEDAL has made amazing contributions to the community. Although the list of projects has evolved and changed over the years, the theme of the bicycle as a simple yet transformative technology has remained central to the organization. By promoting the use of bicycles and pedal-powered technologies, PEDAL provides individuals with the equipment and skills to embrace a low-carbon, lowcost approach to their transportation requirements.

As the world grapples with the negative impacts of the fossil fuel economy, shops like OCB are quickly being recognized as part of the foundation required to build a healthy future.

WHAT IS ON GUARD FOR ME ?

OnGuardForMe.com is the first ever registered public lobbyist firm in Canada. That means On Guard For Me represents the public who have become clients. Once a person has become a client (member) they fill out a survey and based on the majority results, I lobby government on that issue on their behalf. The main thrust of my lobbying activities will be to have the public consulted by their elected representatives before drafting policies. As it is, the public is not consulted on anything. Yes, they can vote but that means almost nothing these days because the influence of lobbyists on the small number of top government officials takes place after an election. In addition, the leader now has enormous power to punish and exclude any elected member of their party who does not go along with what the leader says. In addition, there is no practical recourse for broken election promises or the introduction of surprise new policies such as we have seen in BC with the HST. That brought me to think about democracy. Can you have it without the involvement of the people?

HAS YOUR BACKGROUND IN AS MORE PEOPLE BEGIN TO MEDIA EASED YOUR TRANSITION PARTICIPATE, WHAT WILL YOU DO TO LOBBYING ?

ON THEIR BEHALF? I am still teaching media and getting On Guard For Me off the ground so the transition has really just begun. I do feel well prepared for the work though having a media background.

DID YOU FIND IT DIFFICULT TO REGISTER AS A LOBBYIST CONSIDERING YOUR UNIQUE CLIENTELE (THE PUBLIC)?

In BC it was no problem. Federally however it was rather interesting. They didn’t know quite what to make of me and we had to have several conference calls with the Registrar and their managers and legal people before it was sorted out.

My ultimate goal is to have elected members consult with and actually represent their constituents. I can only communicate the voters’ (members) message on that issue to those currently in office. How they respond will be reported back to the members. If it becomes obvious to voters that this request is being rejected or ignored and that voting the ‘party line’ remains, then perhaps voters will be more inclined to vote for an independent rather than someone affiliated with a particular party.

DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO EXPAND YOUR EFFORTS TO OTHER PROVINCES ?

Of course, if and when there are enough members expansion is possible.

| Interview with Susan Einarsson by Walker Morrow |

On Guard for Me Lobbying for the Public Interest walkersunknownthoughts.blogspot.com

WHAT FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN THE IDEA OF PUBLIC LOBBYING ?

HOW MANY MEMBERS DOES ON GUARD FOR ME CURRENTLY HAVE ?

WOULD YOU PREFER TO LOBBY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OR THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT ?

I began teaching media studies five years ago and took my Masters Degree three years ago. These two shifts away from doing day to day work as a journalist gave me a much broader understanding of what was going on with our governments. I really began to understand policy, how it governs our lives and the amount of influence on policy-making certain parties were having. The public NOT being one of those parties.

I would discuss events with my students and encourage them to take an action if they did not agree with what was happening. Then I started to see that it really did not matter if a person wrote a letter to their MP or MLA. No one ever knew about it and largely, individuals are ignored. I also saw special issue or interest groups springing up, organizing on an issue, trying to have their voice heard.

However, it takes a lot of time, energy and resources to get the public informed about who you are, to get people together and to sustain let alone increase any pressure on government. Meanwhile corporations, having plenty of resources, are successfully influencing the top people in government who in turn set the policy and then apply pressure upon their members to support it.

Since I just formally launched Feb. 7th, not many people know about On Guard For Me yet and membership reflects that. This week, several wonderful volunteers from the political science program at SFU came on board and will be helping with social media and setting up talks with groups and I plan to go on a speaking tour in the early summer. So, this is the ground floor!

We live in a world impacted by policy on both the provincial and the federal level and so On Guard For Me will lobby to both levels of government

WHAT WAS IT LIKE MEETING BILL VANDERZALM AND CHRIS DELANEY OF FIGHT HST ?

I spoke with Mr. Vander Zalm once and met with Chris for lunch but the relationship was nothing more than that. I admire how much impact their campaign had and how successful they have been on getting government to at least agree to ask the people via a referendum, their opinion on the tax. Sadly, that vote will not happen for sometime. My observation is that they are protective of their Fight HST members which is understandable as new political futures may await them in terms of a new political party.

“In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.”

- Charles de Gaulle Page 5

- by Garth Turner - GreaterFool.ca -

Majority

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It’s a certainty fed-

o, a business-stroking, corporate tax-slashtle over presages what may be the most spectacular eral stimulus spending, stable majority government takes the self-ignited, delusional flameout in Canadian history. wheel and what happens? In the ditch, dude.

And speaking of Mr. Ignatieff, let’s return to the ing will end and the At least that’s the way it looked as the Toronto stock likely impact of this election on your home, or your next few budgets will market bled 250 points and the dollar declined in hormonally-charged nesting spouse’s obsession with value the day after Canada turned into a two-party getting one, and disturbing addiction to house porn. usher in some serious system. Was politics the cause? More importantly, First, the positive stuff. A majority government austerity. After all, H what’s this mean for a bung in North York? means no political uncertainty for four years. MarWell, yes, there will be consequences. But not kets like that, so it’s positive for investors who think promised weeks ago yet. Tuesday’s market mess was more the fault of a the economy will do better. Conservatives and their shot Osama bin Laden than an eviscerated Michael plans to reduce corporate taxes to the 15% range are to cut $11 billion in Ignatieff. The dead guy (Osama) reminded people viewed as facilitating higher profits, which should spending and try to revenge rarely works out the way you expect, and make Bay Street happy and help support equity valAmerica might have just pissed off the terrorists, ues. No more crazy Dipper talk about ending energy achieve a balanced who were apparently occupied with their virgins. company subsidies or cleaning up oil sands emisbudget by 2014.

So in the flight from risk which ensued, commodisions or saving sludge-coated ducks from Fort Mac ties were sold off, silver bugs tailing ponds, is seen as a boost for squished and the TSX sank. the poor $170,000-per-year electriAdding to this sense of uncal engineers who bleat to me on this ease was an interest rate inblog. And how can that be bad? crease in India where, like On the other hand, it’s a certainty China, inflation’s out of control. federal stimulus spending will end This is a handy little preview of and the next few budgets will usher what happens here soon. And in some serious austerity. After all, H all this should remind anyone promised weeks ago to cut $11 billion with too much money in (a) prein spending and try to achieve a balcious metals or (b) equity mutuanced budget by 2014. This may not al funds, they need to call home. be easy, since the only reason we’ve More on Harpernomics in a had an economy for the last two years moment. First, let’s follow up has been the combination of bailout on yesterday’s fun blog which bucks and emergency interest rates. detailed the drubbing real esGoing cold turkey could come as tate has started to take in selfa shock to a lot of people who borabsorbed places like Victoria rowed too much to buy too much and Calgary. And nowhere does house, banking on a return to normal. myopia rule like in Vancouver. I So, lower economic growth will sure, sure, sure hope the soggy probably trim the value of the dollar, little coastal dwellers who read without dampening inflation. Food this lame blog took their profits and energy costs are already swell24 Sussex Drive Stephen Harper’s Complimentary home when I suggested it. Like many ing uncontrollably, which just about of you, the market is growing guarantees the Bank of Canada will mold. be raising interest rates this summer. ume and shrinking inventory. In other words, if the Two weeks ago I told you sales were falling off number of houses for sale had not plunged 23.5% And autumn. And winter. After all, brother dog Mark a cliff in places like Richmond, as the HAM starts from last year, then real estate values would be Carney’s warned us he wants our excessive loan-takto retreat. Now even the realtors admit it. Van home crumbling as supply overwhelmed tepid demand. ing to end, and that bloated household debt poses the sales last month crashed 21% from March, and are This is the worst of both worlds. Sales are fall- biggest risk to the future. down year-over-year by more than 8%. This means ing and homeowners are too afraid to sell because And that’s just the stuff we know for sure. the market erosion with us for most of the past year house prices are insane and nobody can afford to Is this a climate conducive to real estate? Do the is actually picking up speed.

Conservatives care? move. So starts what could be a death spiral.

Incredibly, prices are rising on declining volI hear they have houses already.

The record high prices that house pumpers chor-

| WHY ENGLISH IS HARD TO LEARN | •

The bandage was wound around the wound.

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The farm was used to produce produce.

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The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.

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A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

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When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

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I did not object to the object.

We must polish the Polish furniture.

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He could lead if he would get the lead out.

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Since there was no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

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A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

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To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

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The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

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They were too close to the door to close it.

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The buck does funny things when does are present.

After a number of injections my jaw got number.

SHIT HARPER DID.COM

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Real Issues the Canadian Election Didn’t Touch byHenry Makow Ph.D | henrymakow.com

part from who gets the handouts, people or corporations, there were no defining issues. All four parties are generally agreed, or didn’t want to risk alienating anyone by bringing them up. I suspect all four leaders are Freemasons or affiliated in some way.

As a result, there was an air of unreality about this election. Here are six issues which would have made it real.

1

The handling of the G-20 Summit in Toronto last June. The billion dollar cost of “security” has been a minor issue. But the decision to use the conference as a NWO martial law exercise is not an issue. 1105 peaceful demonstrators were arrested and thrown into makeshift concentration camps. This was the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Undercover cops dressed up as violent anarchists, broke windows and set fires to police cars. Only 99 charges were laid. A thousand people were rounded up for no good reason. It was a national disgrace. The Harper government is extremely vulnerable on this issue yet the so-called “Opposition” parties have not made it an issue.

2

Harper’s pandering to Israel and Zionism.

Harper has said “Canada will defend Israel whatever the cost.” Excuse me? Israel is the world’s fifth largest nuclear power. Canada is a military pipsqueak in comparison. Harper had nothing but praise for Israel’s slaughter of 900 non-combatants in Gaza in Dec. 2008. The Opposition leader has murmured about Canada returning to the role of honest broker, but neither he nor the NDP have made this an issue. There is a lot of anti-Zionist feeling in Canada, especially Quebec, but apparently the Masonic lodge has agreed on this one. Many Canadian Jews are also uncomfortable with Harper’s carte blanche for Israel.

Harper’s main fundraiser is a Jewish billionaire named Irving Gerstein. According to Wikipedia: “On February 23, 2011, Irving Gerstein was charged along with Senator Doug Finley for violations of the Canada Elections Act. Elections Canada alleges Irving Gerstein was complicit in a scheme that involved filing false tax claims and exceeding federal spending limits on campaign advertisements. If found guilty Gerstein faces up to a year in prison and fines exceeding $25,000.”

3

Immigration. “Multiculturalism” has always been an issue too important to world government to allow Canadians (or Americans) to debate it. Any demurrals have been stigmatized as “racism.” Canada used to be a country of European Christian origin with a vibrant ethnic minority. It is becoming an Asian-Latin-African country with a European minority.

India, Japan, China, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Israel would not allow their cultural character to be transformed by migration. Yet the Illuminati bankers will not let Canada, the US and other people of European Christian origin have their own national homelands. Again, no political party will touch this issue because they are all in the same camp.

4

Libya. The Canada I grew up in did not do the Rothschilds’ killing in far off places like Afghanistan and Libya. Canada spent $20 billion and lost 160 soldiers in Afghanistan. It has sent six CF-18’s to bomb Libya and kill Ghadafi’s children.

China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstained.

Germany and Italy bowed out of NATO operations.

All four Canadian political parties agreed to do it.

This could have been a defining election issue. It is not.

5

The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement. The integration of North America is continuing behind the scenes. All opposition parties have signed on.

“The SPP is a treasonous metamorphosis of our federal and provincial government bureaucracies into formal instruments to implement the agenda of the shadow government ... dominated by the US Council on Foreign Relations, and the US military apparatus.

“Since March 2005, under the direction of three senior cabinet ministers of each country, about 100 working groups of unelected officials from government and industry have been meeting at taxpayer expense ...restructuring of the apparatus of governance...Implementing changes in our border crossings, in our airports, on our airplanes, in our skies, on and to our roads and highways, in our personal identification systems, in our health, in our vaccines, over our food supplements, in our pesticide safety levels, in our schools and universities, in the exploitation of our natural resources-our rivers, lakes, oil,

gas, in our environment, in the arms industry, in the manufacture and use of depleted uranium, in the exploitation of and experimentation on our indigenous people and our military personnel, in immigration, over our right of Habeus Corpus, in our right of due process, our right to assemble and our freedom of speech, etc., etc.”

6

Monetary Independence. The Statute of Westminster (1931) gave Canada the political freedom to make all domestic and foreign decisions but the ownership of the Canadian Federal Government didn’t change. On its heels came the birth of the Bank of Canada in 1934. The British Crown stepped behind the curtain to allow the appearance of autonomy, but it remained in full force through the field of finance.

“Her Majesty owns the Bank of Canada. The personal and corporate income taxes paid by Canadians are the profits for the Bank of Canada. These profits go to Her Majesty and the Bank of England, absorbing more than 10% of the GNP of Canada every year.”

“The ruling political party in Ottawa is not the real Government of Canada. They are the middle managers separating the owners from the Canadian people.

The British Crown, Rothschilds and other European families own the Corporation of the Government of Canada. The British Crown owns the Bank of Canada.”

“Canada is not a sovereign nation but a private club, unknown to most Canadians. This is why the Queen’s face still appears on Canadian currency.”

Isn’t democracy an effective way to dupe the masses? That’s why everyone must vote.

Like most countries, Canada is controlled by the Rothschild banking cartel (“the Crown”, the “Bank of England” etc.) which controls our government’s credit. We will not be free until we control our own credit and renounce the portion of the debt that was created out of nothing.

The reason there are no defining issues is because our “leaders” are all working indirectly for the banking cartel, which controls the corporations and unions which finance them. The voter decides who implements the banker’s policy, with perhaps a degree of emphasis one way or the other.

Canadians have been uniquely favored. But a people who take their good fortune for granted and fail to address the real underlying issues, eventually regret it.

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T

he Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an annual international design competition that awards $100,000 to the most comprehensive solution to a pressing global problem. The Challenge was launched in 2007 and is a program of The Buckminster Fuller Institute. The competition, open to designers, artists, architects, students, environmentalists, and organizations world-wide, has been

dubbed “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine.

Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world’s complex problems. Furthermore, the criteria of the Challenge calls not for a stand alone solution, but an integrated strategy that addresses social, environmental,

economic and cultural issues. This is aligned with the design approach of Buckminster Fuller, which he referred to as “comprehensive anticipatory design science.”

Although there is only one winner per year, the majority of the entries received are featured on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge website within a fully searchable database known as the Idea Index.

2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Semi-Finalists A New Economic Model for transition to a low carbon, high well-being future economy

Participatory Mapping as a means of protecting forest in the Congo basin

NEF will build a comprehensive new macro-economic model for the UK predicated on respect for planetary boundaries and global equity of resource use. Principally designed to catalyze the transition to a low carbon, high well-being future economy, the model will be developed through rigorous economic analysis over three years.

The Rainforest Foundation UK This project empowers local forest communities to use cutting edge technologies to map their lands and resources and use this evidence as advocacy and negotiation tools for more secure land tenure.

Through this, it also serves as an effective tool to contribute to environmental protection and poverty reduction efforts.

Dreaming New Mexico

Educating Entrepreneurs Tool-Kit EARTH University; to develop an Educating Entrepreneurs Tool-Kit for African faculties of agriculture committed to transforming undergraduate curricula.

The tool kit will enhance the capacity of universities to provide entrepreneurial leadership needed to make African agriculture economically competitive, socially responsible & environmentally sustainable in an increasingly globalized world economy.

TARA Akshar+

Haiti Onward: Building Sustainable Pathways Haiti Onward (HO) embodies a design collaborative combining ancient wisdom with modern technologies to create new economies. Through innovative, multi-tiered collaboration, HO partners with local communities to establish stateof-the-art sustainability training, demonstration and research centers where Haitian faculty and youth spearhead establishment of a just economy and viable ecosystem.

The MicroConsignment Model Our MicroConsignment Model (MCM) delivers technologies to the most remote villages for the first time by creating jobs for local women who never had them before. Because of our innovative model, people can see again, mothers and children are no longer inhaling smoke and indigenous women can support their families.

Spark MicroGrants Strategic premise: “Dreaming the future can create the future.” Bioneers’ Dreaming New Mexico project facilitates ecological and social restoration at the state level by reconciling human organization with natural systems on energy and food systems. It provides visionary solutions, using systemic approaches for communities for place-based bioregional design and collaboration.

Page 8

Spark MicroGrants is a new model for community organizing and granting that enables underresourced communities to address their social problems. With the Buckminster Fuller award we will continue to improve our model, help 2040 communities put their ideas into action and launch Spark MicroGrants as a global organization.

Delivering a scalable solution to adult illiteracy through a highly innovative programme using sophisticated learning techniques and memory hooks, through minimally trained, computer-aided instructors. It enables almost anyone to read, write and do simple arithmetic with more than 95% success rate in just seven weeks of 2 hour classes daily.

Village Health Promoters

QuaDror Homes

In materially poor countries with few resources to dedicate to health care, combined with factors that increase barriers to care such as isolation, war, and language/cultural differences, there is little hope that fully-staffed clinics and hospitals will be built in the near future, or that existing services will be improved and expanded to meet daily health care needs.

Promoting Health and the Environment through synergy of man and land Promoting health and the environment through synergy of man and land” is the motto of Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation. It aims to improve the environment and people’s health by introducing local resources by local impoverished people, building a free clinic, and a school for the children.

Maternova: a global marketplace for maternal & neonatal health innovation

Through an open, interactive innovation platform the maternal/newborn health field can made more efficient and effective. An open, collaborative, fastpaced community and marketplace of tools and ideas is being designed to track, create and deliver life-saving tools and ideas to frontline midwives and nurses saving the lives of mothers in the lowest-resource settings.

FrontlineSMS FrontlineSMS empowers frontline social organizations to leverage the power and reach of mobile technology to enable positive change. We provide organizations in remote, rural regions of the developing world with software that turns a laptop into a mass messaging hub, without any need for Internet connectivity.

The QuaDror Universal Joint is a new space truss geometry, lending itself to a wide scope of applications. This innovation presents great structural efficiency and tremendous potential for a didactic solution to the global issue of habitat. QuaDror Homes provide integrated design, preserving the organic diversity of cultures and ecosystems.

We are developing the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) - an advanced industrial economy-in-abox that can be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world. The GVCS is like a Lego set of modular building blocks which that work together for creating sustainable, regenerative, resilient communities.

Sanergy

Ecosistema Urbano

Sanergy produces electricity and fertilizer by providing safe, affordable sanitation in urban slums. By combining appropriate technology, such as pre-fab ferro cement toilets and bicycle powered pit latrine pumps, with a deployment model that uses a dense network of toilets, an off-grid waste collection infrastructure, and a centralized processing facility, we create jobs and address social needs.

A water purification system that works by natural processes, our lagoons clean the waste waters of buildings for reuse in their surrounding communities while reducing city Co2 emissions. The low–tech, low-cost system is supported by a social software platform, providing opportunities for community members, on a local and global level, to become involved in water conservation efforts.

Solar Power Villages

Blue Ventures

The Earth needs models of settlement where humanity meets its needs without damaging the environment. Solar Power Villages integrate solar collection into greenhouses, store it in hot-oil, and use the heat collected to meet needs for electricity; cooking; water pumping and power (e.g. for grinding corn).

Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Our integrated approach empowers some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of our work help us propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere.

Plant Chicago Plant Chicago discovers new ways to integrate sustainable urban agriculture and manufacturing in disused industrial structures. We close energy and waste loops in the built environment by directing the waste output of one process into the material or energy input of another through research, development and training of community members.

Global Village Construction Set

FishNET: Protecting Our Oceans Develop integrated ‘low cost,’ high technology solutions (via acoustics, geospatial, satellite, and web 2.0 capabilities) to help solve the problem of illegal fishing in the developing world and international waters.

Focus on entrepreneurial technological approaches that engage stakeholders to address the monitoring, control, and surveillance of ocean environments.

To learn more about each project visit the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2011 website

The Portable Light Project Portable Light provides adaptable solar textile kits that enable the world’s poorest people to sew and weave bags, clothing and blankets that harvest energy. Portable Light strengthens local craft cultures to create diverse energy-producing communities with access to mobile networks that are transforming global health care, education and businesses.

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New Energy P

Ambient Energy Technology

hilippine Inventor Ismael Aviso is breaking down barriers as he continues to develop his ambient energy technology. He is now powering AC motors with DC current and in doing so has solved the issue of overheating in his system. It just takes 0.8 amps at 240 Volts (~200 Watts) to run an 18.5 kW motor during start-up and under load.

Aviso accomplishes this by utilizing a special circuit that collects ambient energy from the environment. The system is composed of a series of capacitors, coils, a toroidal inductor, a special transistor that is resistant to high voltage spikes, and a micro-controller that is critically important. This micro-controller makes sure the various components operate properly to allow for the ambient energy to be harvested and utilized.

In a similar manner to Tesla, Aviso pulses his circuit thousands of times a second or more. The opening and closing of the circuit produces huge spikes of voltage potential that gathers energy from the ambient environment. Nikola Tesla would have stated it was coming from the aether. If you looked at these bursts of voltage on an oscilloscope, you would see that each time he opens or closes the circuit there are thousands of additional alternating spikes of voltage.

In a sense, his circuit is not only pulsed at thousands of hertz, but due to this secondary effect, the system

experiences millions of alternating spikes of voltage. This draws in even more ambient energy from the environment.

In previous tests, Aviso has been able to use this ambient energy to power DC motors while maintaining the charge of the batteries powering them.

He has shown videos of a crude electric vehicle driving around, while the single 12-volt battery that powers the 11 kilowatt DC motor stays topped off at 13 volts. That was the system that was validated by the Philippine Department of Energy. They showed that the DC motor running of mains power from the grid ran at 45%, but when it was running on Aviso’s

pesn

system, it ran at 133% efficiency – overunity, implying that he is indeed harnessing energy from the environment.

In the present setup, he is somehow directing the ambient energy directly into the AC motor. Due to some property of the ambient energy, it allows the motor to run. One possibility is that it runs due to the fact the polarity reversing voltage bouncing up and down in his circuit resembles alternating current.

Perhaps along with this is the fact the ambient energy going into the motor may not have the same properties as ordinary electric current. It could be a nearly pure flow of aether in the form of longitudinal waves.

Tesla used these waves to power all sorts of motors, lights, and other devices. Perhaps Aviso is doing something similar!

Being able to power an AC motor with DC is no small feat. Many industrial processes use AC motors, but require very expensive “variable frequency drives” to control their speed. Aviso’s system does not require such a drive. Additionally, if you want to power an AC motor with DC power, inverters are needed. They are expensive and can be quite large.

However, they are needed in power failures when backup battery power must be used. Aviso’s technology could eliminate the need for such inverters. This is potentially a game-changing breakthrough!

The Wave Disk Engine

T

his Wave Disk Engine is unlike any conventional internal combustion engine. It does not utilize pistons, crankshafts, valves, cooling systems, spark plugs, and many other components of conventional engines. A transmission would not even be needed! Instead, it utilizes a circular disk with many curved channels. Fuel and air enter through inlets positioned around the center of the disk. As the rotor spins, the fuel in each channel is suddenly blocked from escaping. This results in a rapid build up of pressure which results in a shock wave being generated. The shock wave causes the fuel to ignite. As the rotor continues to spin and the chamber reaches an outlet, the hot gases from the combusted fuel are able to rapidly exit. This produces a thrust that makes the disk spin.

The benefits reaped by a vehicle using this technology would be many. Due to the reduced number of parts, the weight of a vehicle could be dramatically reduced. It has been estimated for the same horsepower, a Wave Disk Engine could weigh a thousand pounds less than a conventional engine. This weight savings could translate into additional fuel savings or could be used to add additional features to the vehicle.

Of course having fewer parts does not only save weight, but also means there are less components

Page 10

that need maintenance, repair, or replacement. This would probably save an end user quite a bit of money.

There would be no need for oil changes every 3,000 miles, no need for new spark plugs during tune ups, no need to add anti-freeze, and hopefully fewer embedded computers. Mom and pop car repair garages might actually be able to work on new vehicles again, without thousands of dollars in sophisticated computerized diagnostic equipment!

Most internal combustion engines (ICE) only convert about 20% of their fuel into energy. The Wave Disk Engine is thought to be able to increase this figure up to 60% or higher. The practical result could be a MPG rating of three to four times that of today’s vehicles. The technology is also claimed to produce 90% less emissions than ordinary internal combustion engines. In an age of ever increasing gasoline prices, this could help keep the average person’s wallet a bit heavier.

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Norbert Mueller of Michigan State University is the inventor of the Wave Disk Engine. His current prototype is very small, but he hopes to build a larger version capable of powering a car by the end of the year. He was recently awarded a $2.5 million dollar research grant by the Department of Energy.

TECHNOLOGY

n.com

Y

Rossi Cold Fusion Generator

et another test of Andrea Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat) has been performed on a 4.5 kW version near the University of Bologna. This time a new set of observers were present, one of whom is the chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, who confirmed that Copper is being formed from Hydrogen and Nickel -- cold fusion!

The evidence in support of Andrea Rossi’s “cold fusion” or “LENR” (low energy nuclear reaction) based Energy Catalyzer continues to grow. For those who are not aware, his system combines nickel powder, hydrogen gas, and an input of pressure and heat to produce a large output of thermal energy. On March 29th, 2011 yet another test of the technology was performed at the University of Bologna. Like previous tests, the outcome was a complete success. However, this time a smaller version of the E-Cat was tested and two new observers were present.

Some well known players were present during the test. These include Andrea Rossi (the inventor of the E-Cat), Professor Sergio Focardi, Dr. David Bianchini, and of course Dr. Giuseppe Levi. Two guest observers were also present. One of the guest observers was Hanno Essen, associate professor of theoretical physics at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology. He is also the chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society. The other guest observer was Professor Sven Kullander of Uppsala University. He is also chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Energy Committee.

Smaller System with Great Results The test was performed on a much smaller version of the E-Cat. The previous version of the E-Cat had a reactor volume of about one liter. This system has a reactor volume of only one twentieth of a liter.

Four E-Cat systems were present, but only one was tested. The remaining units had their shielding and insulation removed. This allowed for their construction to be seen.

This new model of E-Cat consists of a stainless steel reactor vessel which is placed inside of a copper pipe. Water flows between the copper pipe and the steel reactor vessel. There are inlets for both water and hydrogen gas. The reactor is activated by current flowing through a resistor which is wrapped

around the outside of the copper pipe. When a certain temperature is reached the reaction begins. The setup is truly simple. It reminds me of old pipe work from many years ago.

Kullander and Essen were given permission to examine the setup, check for hidden power supplies, fill the reactor with hydrogen, calibrate the volume of water flow, monitor the temperature of the water flow in and out of the system, and observe the entire experiment.

The reactor contained 50 grams of nickel powder and .11 grams of hydrogen. In their report (.pdf) they state, “We had free access to the heater electric supply, to the inlet water hose, to the outlet steam valve and water hose, and to the hydrogen gas feed pipe. The total weight of the device was estimated to be around 4 kg.”

The result of the experiment was a constant average production of 4.69 kW of power for almost six hours. Additionally, the input was on average 330 watts (30 of which was used by the electronics controlling the setup). This is fifteen times less than the energy produced by the device (15x over-unity).

This output was less than the 10 to 15 kW produced by the previous version of the E-Cat, but this is very impressive for a device 1/20th the volume!

Kullander and Essen also ruled out that the energy could be coming from a chemical source. They stated, “Any chemical process for producing 25 kWh from any fuel in a 50 cm3 container can be ruled out.

The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.” This statement is VERY significant coming from a report written not only by professional scientists, but also by the chairman of a skeptical society!

Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) Engine

T

he MYT™ (Massive Yet Tiny) Engine, by inventor Raphial Morgado, is an internal combustion engine of new design that features multiple firings in one cycle, producing enormous torque in a small area.

The MYT engine features 40 times higher power to weight ratio, low parts count, low maintenance, high mechanical efficiency, and low pollution. It is poised to benefit applications including airplanes, ships, 18 wheelers, SUVs, passenger cars, and even down to carryon power generators. The MYT™ Engine as a pump/compressor also exceeds existing pumps/ compressors in providing massive pressure, volume, and flow, all in one unit.

The first prototype model, which first ran on

diesel but was later converted to run on compressed air (for indoor demonstrations), exerts 850 cubic inches of displacement even though the size is only 14” diameter by 14” long, weighing 150 lbs, compared to 3000 lbs for a comparable engine of conventional size capable of that much power output.

As of Winter 2010, the company is presently working on a 6” diameter motor, which could be built inexpensively by machining, without the cost of casting, for its first beta testing units.

They are also considering a geothermal application of the pump/compressor version of the engine. On the side, as a hobby, Morgado is pursuing an Angel Flight Pack that would enable personal flight for as long as an hour.

Page 11

Fukushima raised to level 7 Chernobyl event

by Mike Adams | NaturalNews.com

T

he title of this article probably should have been “TOLD YA SO.” After all the down playing, all the denials, all the disinfo and deceptions by both the nuclear industry and the mainstream media, it finally emerges that the amount of radiation released by Fukushima was far, far higher than what we were told.

How high? So high that the Fukushima catastrophe has now been raised from a level 5 event to a level 7 event on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.

They just skipped right over level 6 because they know even a 6 would be laughable at this point.

Page 12

A level 5 event is an “accident with wider consequences.” A level 6 event is a “serious accident,” and a level 7 event is a “major accident.” If you really do the math, however, Fukushima should be a level 28 event because there are four reactors each at level seven (4x7 = 28). Chernobyl only had one reactor, and it stored far less fuel than any one of the Fukushima reactors.

The amount of released radiation required to quality for a level 7 event is “several tens of thousands of terabecquerels.” For example, 50,000 terabecquerels.

How much radiation has already been released from

Fukushima? 500,000 terabecquerels -- and that’s just from iodine-131 and doesn’t even count the other isotopes that are also being released. In other words -- and here’s the real shocker -- the amount of radiation released from Fukushima is over TEN TIMES the amount needed to qualify for a level 7 event!

With the arrival of this new designation, Fukushima is now OFFICIALLY a Chernobyl-class event, and nuclear officials are now openly and publicly admitting that the total radiation release from Fukushima could soon exceed Chernobyl -- although they’re desperately trying to claim it somehow won’t, if only due to the power of their own imaginations.

Meanwhile, we’re being treated to an ever-expanding lesson in the table of elements as yet more radioactive materials are being detected in the Fukushima releases. Today, strontium was found in the soils near Fukushima, adding to the impressive list of other elements that were blown into the environment by the explosions there: Plutonium, Iodine and Cesium.

If only Fukushima had blown gold out of its core Japan might actually have a way to pay for all this. But sadly, the by-products of nuclear fission are not the precious metals we would all wish for.

Rather, they are the radioactive elements determined by the laws of physics - the very same laws of physics that the nuclear industry once thought it had smugly conquered.

Murphy, that clever little bastard, seems to crop up everywhere these days.

Far worse than we were originally told, with this new designation of a level 7 event, the massive cover-up has melted down. Although Japan has tried desperately to withhold radiation data, shut off the gauges, explain away the extremely high sensor readings and assure everybody that it was only a “miniscule” amount of radiation being released into the environment, the sad but undeniable truth of the matter is that Fukushima is a global-scale nuclear disaster that’s now unleashing radiation across the world that’s showing up in our milk and food.

The excuse behind raising the event to level 7 right now instead of earlier is laughable but predictable: Authorities claim they just didn’t know how to measure the radiation!

“Our preparations for how to measure (the radiation leakage) when such a tsunami and earthquake occurred were insufficient and, as a result, we were late in disseminating information internationally,” said a senior official working for Prime Minister Naoto Kan. In other words, the nuclear industry didn’t know how to measure radiation, they claim, and even when they did figure out how to take measurements, they withheld the resulting data.

The clever ‘disinfo’ campaign marches on. NISA is now saying that the radiation released into the atmosphere is only 10 percent of Chernobyl’s release.

But what they don’t readily admit is that

forward I suppose? Sure, they lied about the radiation releases in the past. They down played the seriousness of the event; they withheld data and explained away the broken gauges as flukes. But now they’re suddenly going to be up front with all of us and tell us the truth. Now we’re going to get honest and accurate information out of Japan, if you can believe that.

Still, nuclear industry shills can’t help themselves from continuing to downplay the situation. “Judging from all the measurement data, it is quite under control,” says Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. He also said that raising Fukushima to a level 7 event was no cause for worry, and that “...it doesn’t mean that a significant amount of release is now continuing.”

It seems that Unesaki didn’t receive the memo that says, “Stop lying to the public.” He’s still operating from the previous official memo which instructed everyone to, “Deny and Downplay.”

Remember when Fukushima was only a level 4 event and all the nuclear industry experts and government experts were saying “this is nothing like Chernobyl?” Then it was raised to a level 5 event and they repeated, “It’s still nothing like Chernobyl.” And now with the official designation at level 7, they’re screaming, “We swear!

It’s nothing like Chernobyl!”

Except that it is. It’s a lot like Chernobyl. All the elements are the same, after all:

- The toxic iodine-131 and cesium-137 being released into the environment.

- The strange but persistent government cover-ups.

- The lying to the public.

- The downplaying of the human fatalities caused by the event.

- The outrageous ineptitude of the nuclear industry “experts” who told us these power plants were safe.

It sounds almost exactly like Chernobyl, come to think of it. And if you read the news archives from 1986, you’ll find extremely harsh words from the USA condemning the Ukrainian officials for withholding data and down playing the situation there. And yet, just 25 years later, the tables are turned. Now Japan and the USA are in fullon cover-up mode, playing the part of the Soviet officials who lied to their own people about the severity of the disaster.

If there’s one thing we’ve all learned from history it’s that you can always count on your government to lie to you in times of trouble. At precisely the moment the People need honest, accurate information about the severity of a disaster or crisis, government leaders will take to the podium and calmly announce that everything is fine and people should take no precautions whatsoever. And then immediately after these speeches are given, they scurry off to their underground command bunkers.

Praying with the Priests of Nuclear Power | Carl Chaplin

they’re releasing massive quantities of radioactive water into the ocean, and that doesn’t count as “atmosphere,” you see.

They also don’t want you to remember that Fukushima is engage in an ongoing release of radiation with absolutely no end in sight. It is only a matter of weeks, in other words, before Fukushima does exceed the total Chernobyl release levels.

How do we know that? For one, that same senior official quoted above also says the Japanese government is now telling TEPCO to “set target dates for when it would halt the radiation leakage as well as restore the cooling systems” Set target dates? It’s like being stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare. Let’s all have a “committee conference” and we’ll put together an “actionable game plan” so that we can “accentuate our positive accomplishments” while we all “facilitate going forward with team players” and other such corporate speak nonsense that often flows from the mouths of business suit morons who have no idea what to do but somehow want to take credit for it.

If there’s a target date to set for halting the radiation, it should be TODAY. If there’s a target date to restore cooling to the spent fuel rods, it should be YESTERDAY. Does anyone really believe these are things to be slapped onto a calendar like your best friend’s birthday?

Oh, and by the way, we’re now supposed to believe the Japanese government is telling us the truth from here

Waters of Oceans, Rivers and Lakes | Margaret Kowalewska You cared for us

by polluting your pristine body

sparkling with rainbow bubbles

oceans, lakes and rivers.

You nurtured us

through greed and negativity.

touched by loving penetration of

Dear Good unite us in love with

You sustained our lives.

The injustice happened to you and;

warm sunrays to carry a song

waters of the globe

We failed you

the healing needs to begin with

of the ocean at its purest volume.

to give birth to clear oceans,

We betrayed you

bringing back your beauty

We are sorry and we feel your anguish.

rivers and lakes in harmony

We disrespected you

of crystal clear substance

Please forgive us;

with the universal balance.

Page 13

DISCLAIMER: THE INFORMATION PRESENTED HEREIN IS PRESENTED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. CONSULT YOUR NATUROPATHIC PHYSICIAN, MEDICAL DOCTOR, AND/OR PHARMACIST FOR ANY HEALTH PROBLEM AND BEFORE USING ANY SUPPLEMENTS, MAKING DIETARY CHANGES, OR BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES IN PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS

Dear Dr. Dahl, I hope you can help me restore my vision. I have been diagnosed with macular degeneration, and to imagine being without my sight is horrifying. I know they tell me that there is no known cure but there must be something available that will offer relief?

Brenda, T, Edmonton, AB Dear Brenda, I fully understand your concerns; it is frightening indeed to think of your world going even partially dark, so I know how desperate you must feel. Although macular (retinal) degeneration does not cause total blindness, it seriously impairs vision, preventing simple activities like driving and reading, because of the blurry dark fuzz at the centre of the eye.

You did not mention what form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) you have been diagnosed with: is it “wet” or “dry”? This makes a substantial difference in both prognosis and in treatment options. Nor did you specify what your general health condition is aside from the degeneration, which, of course, can help paint a picture of how you came to have this condition.

Page 14

My understanding is that both AMD conditions, wet and dry, are caused by a nutritional and/or oxygen deficiency and resultant free radical damage. Free radicals that cause AMD are created when ultraviolet and blue light strike the eye which is not stopped by the cornea and lens which damages the retina over time. AMD is also affected by pollution and improper eye protection coupled with the lack of proper sunlight, so it is important to take all these things into consideration in one’s lifestyle and apply them in harmony, for a holistic approach.

Many studies have shown the benefits of nutritional therapy in the prevention of AMD, and, when properly treated, lessening the advancement of the condition.

These studies emphasize the nutrients carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin, anti-oxidants Vitamin C and P5P, and the amino acid L-taurine. Research showed Lutein and zeaxanthin to be the most helpful, since they appear to lessen the ultraviolet and blue light damage and may protect against lipid peroxidation (LPO), a mechanism of cellular injury in the eye. It may also be significant in protecting the blood vessels that supply the macular region.

The absence of one nutrient can affect the body’s ability to use another, just as the absence of oil can prevent an engine from using the gas. These elements work synergistically to maintain health and well-being, so it is important to ensure we are well-nourished.

Age is a major consideration in AMD, of course, but more so your biological age than your chronological one: in other words, how did you drive this baby during your years in the driver’s seat? Activity levels and stress also affect the body’s need for nutrients from your diet and/or supplementation, making it clear: just like our car, we need to be tuned up to go the distance.

Exercise is very important in raising oxygen

levels within the cells of the body, and increases both lymph and blood circulation, to help in the prevention of chronic eye diseases. Make sure you exercise (let your overall health – and your doctor – determine how strenuously) to a minimum of 20 minutes per day, four days a week.

Eye tips: -Don’t keep your eyes focused in one place for an extended period of time; rather, give your eyes a frequent break by looking around. Get at least 20 minutes per day of natural sunlight, which your eyes, as light-affected organs, require. But always remember to wear proper UV- rated sunglasses, to protect against the damaging effects of sun rays.

-Holistic treatment of AMD cannot be complete without rebuilding the eyes through nutritional methods.

Beneficial foods include spinach, asparagus, and other leafy greens, in addition to garlic, broccoli, and organic eggs, kale, zucchini, kiwifruit, garden peas, Brussels sprouts, goji berries, and blueberries.

Supplements and suggested dosages and brands (where possible): •

Lutein 20 mg per day – various brands

•

Zeaxanthin (a bioflavonoid) 6 – 10 mg. – ZeaVision - patented

•

Vitamin C 500 mg – 3 per day – various brands

•

L-Taurine 500 mg – 2 per day – Life Choice

•

P5P complex 2 per day – Life Choice

•

L-Carnitine 2,000 mg per day – various brands

•

Pure Homeopathic Colloidal Silver spray – Life Choice

•

Oral Chelation Therapy – must contain EDTA

•

Ozone Therapy - Reported to both reverse and stop the progression of AMD, it is well-worth pursuing.

•

Micro-stimulation – This therapy shows positive results in maintaining vision, for some patients.

Yours in health, Dr. Dahl

Wi-Fi Swarms A

team of scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have designed a robotic system that enables the rapid establishment of a pop-up Wi-Fi network. Using flying micro-robots grouped in a swarm, wireless networks can be instantly set up at places all over the globe. After serious catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods, communication infrastructure is often demolished, which complicates the work of emergency teams dramatically. This invention can help emergency teams to communicate quickly in response to disasters. Explains SciDev: “In the aftermath of earthquakes and other disasters, when communications infrastructure is damaged or overloaded, the first thing rescue teams do is set up temporary radio or mobile communication networks to coordinate the search for survivors. But these networks have limited data transmission capacity, take time and specialists to establish, and can suffer interference from existing commercial networks.”

The micro-robotic swarm could overcome these limitations. It would hover above disaster areas with each robot in the swarm emitting a wireless signal to enable Wi-Fi-filtered communication between rescuers, says PSFK.

“To distribute the vehicles effectively above a designated zone the research team took inspiration from the way ants leave chemical trails to guide colonies to sources of food. Some of the vehicles hover in small circles linked to the location of rescuers and the other vehicles navigate around these markers. Each vehicle is made from lightweight, flexible polypropylene plastic, weighs less than half a kilogram and has a wing span of 80 centimeters. A battery-powered motor enables each vehicle to fly for up to half an hour before visiting a recharging station.”

This invention is not only interesting for disastrous situations, but translated to our day-to-day situations, it would also work as a service for mega events. Temporary gatherings of thousands of people all trying to call and text would benefit enormously from a proper wireless network. Besides that, it’s also very entertaining to see this buzzing swarm of microrobots in the air as an extra attraction. Check this video and this video to learn more about the technology behind the flying robots.

In conflict situations such as in Libya, the ‘allied forces’ could use a robotic swarm to empower the insurgents with the ability to communicate properly. Imagine a swarm circling above the Tahrir Square in Cairo to enable Facebook and Twitter communication as soon as Mubarak has cut off Internet. The makers will need three more years to improve the invention and make it stable for practical use, as mentioned above. A more simple, single-robot system for crop and biodiversity monitoring has already been rolled out by a spin-off company, SenseFly.

control movies with your mind

by Nic Fleming | Myndplay.com

D

id you wish for Mel Gibson’s William Wallace to escape the executioner’s axe in Braveheart or for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack and Kate Winslet’s Rose to live happily ever after in Titanic?

Technology to be launched tomorrow will allow film viewers to control key plot developments using the power of emotion. The Myndplay system uses a headset to pick up the patterns of brain waves associated with different states of mind and based on the readings takes film stories in different directions to various possible endings.

In the films the viewer takes the role of the protagonist. They can achieve positive outcomes for their character if they achieve either high levels of mental focus or relaxation at key plot junctures, as measured by a headset sensor measuring patterns of electrical activity in the brain.

“It brings a level of interactivity to video that has never been achieved before,” said Mohammed Azam, managing director of Myndplay, based in London. “The viewer chooses who lives or dies, whether the good guy or the bad guy wins or whether the hero makes that allimportant save.”

The experience is a cross between watching a film and playing a video game. It resembles a high-tech version of the Choose Your Own Adventure children’s books. The interactive films are sold online for between

99p and £3 ($1.50 and $4.75 CAD). Other applications include an archery game and a meditation tool, and other sports-based games, such as bowling and golf, are in the pipeline.

Two interactive short films are already available to watch on computers for those with the £79 ($125 CAD) headsets and free Myndplay video player software. Paranormal Mynd is a horror film in which the viewer takes the role of an exorcist hired to banish a demon from a possessed women, while in gangster film Bullet Dodger the protagonist must stay cool to avoid a sticky end in a series of confrontations in London’s underworld.

Myndplay will be launched at the Gadget Show in Birmingham, UK, tomorrow, along with three new short interactive films about an assassin, a bank robbery that goes wrong and another based on characters from Gaelic mythology with supernatural powers.

The interactions be-

tween the billions of neurons in the human brain generate tiny electrical signals. Different states of mind or types of thought create specific electrical patterns that can be picked up with electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors.

The EEG headset used in the interactive video system was developed and launched by Californian company NeuroSky last month, mainly for video gaming and educational applications.

Page 15

Book Review

by Grimm Culhane

T

here is a conditioning lab in your neighbourhood that takes groups of youthful, vibrant individuals and turns them into a single controllable mass adept at “taking their turn” and submitting enthusiastically. Based on a Prussian system of mandatory warehousing and segregating, this practise of shuffling individuals from room to room at the sound of a bell (like cows in a feed-lot) was designed solely to shape the masses into one obedient, servile and easy to manage group. This deindividualization by mass instruction is best known as our educational system.

Just as the Prussian system was useful in creating a harmless electorate, servile workforces and mindless consumers, our school system has become a weapon in the hands of corporate giants striving to control every aspect of our lives. John Taylor Gatto, author and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 continues to expose the indoctrination principles and radical de-individualization of our society, sneakily disguised as the school system, in his latest book entitled Weapons of Mass Instruction – A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling.

Gatto shares an insight only someone with 30 years of teaching experience can share. He asserts that school is not there to nurture brains or talent, just obedience. After

reading this book and reflecting on your own educational experience it will be hard not to agree.

By explaining the history and inherent problems with schooling, Gatto takes us on a ride through the workings (or is that “failings”?) of our amazingly sinister and hurtful educational system. No horror movie could contrive a plot this scary. Starting in kindergarten, one’s indoctrination into the system of schooling begins with the word “don’t” repeated ad nauseum. This repetition, especially for someone at a young age, is an excellent form of habit training and, according to Gatto, the most important weapon of mass instruction.

Going into detail about such things as “the dumbing down of society” and how school has become a “behavioral training lab ordered by industrialists to manipulate the industrial process,” Gatto explains how schooling creates passive, incomplete humans unable to function as sovereign spirits. This may be a hard pill to swallow, but if we are to survive as individuals blessed with the capacity of “free will” we must act and act soon.

The relatively new technology of “behavioral psychology” is also examined as a method of forced learning, designed to weed out everything but proper thoughts, feelings and actions. This type of psychological manipulation is the perfect way to prepare a culture for a lifetime of alienation while making sure its members maintain a high level of consumptive behavior and follow the herd obediently. Who needs to be an individual when you can have a job, spend money and enjoy all the comforts of ignorance?

Slaves obviously did not disappear with the abolishment of slavery. The development of “wage slaves,” people free in name only and much cheaper to exploit, was the only rational solution corporate entities could devise to quash undesirable self awareness and individuality.

Gatto explains how self awareness begins with the foundation of a “real” education, something “schooling” will never teach. Knowing the truth for yourself and striving to be more than just a cog in a machine makes you more than an apathetic human resource. To corporate entities this awareness makes you a threat. Deviations from a steady state jeopardize the system’s mission and people become dangerous when too many see through the illusion which holds society together ( in China this is called “The Policy of Keeping People Dumb”).

Gatto’s inclusion of T.V., computers and video games as conspirators in the degradation of today’s youth helps explain just how deep the powers that be have sunk their claws into the human condition. Like school, these devices help to “dumb down” the population and decrease the likelihood of “going outside” and being “active.”

T.V. addicted kids behave with little to no integrity and have lost the power to “grow up.” Why bother raising children to be adults when maintaining and prolonging childhood makes people easier to control? Gatto asserts

that this results in “a nation of angry, frightened, uncompassionate and incomplete boys and girls in place of men and women.”

This “scientific management” of people through our education system has one purpose in mind: to instill perfect subordination. Educated people are rogue elements in a scheme of “scientific management.” “Education differs from schooling in that school is organized by command and control from without while education is self-organized from within,” Gatto explains. “Schooling emphasizes rules made by others while education awakens a desire for independence, a self correction rather that a slavish need to follow the generalized direction of others.”

Mental colonization is how Thomas Jefferson viewed compulsory schooling. He believed schools make clerks and servants, not thinkers and artists. English philosopher Herbert Spencer said, “The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.” Aristotle believed “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” School is based around the understanding that it isn’t about the youth and education, but the wishes of other people. No pseudo science out of Germany stood in the way in Ben Franklin’s day. The concept of “lean production” (a workforce stripped of power with compassion no longer a factor binding management to labour) would have been cause in itself for revolution back then.

The true evil behind schooling, Gatto explains, is mass abstract testing. Tests cannot predict who will be the best surgeons, college professors or taxi drivers so to this end Gatto has created “The Bartleby Project.” Based on the novella Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville, the mandate of “The Bartleby Project” is to reclaim the educational system by abolishing mandatory testing. To this end Gatto asks students across the country to react like Bartleby himself and fight back by proclaiming “I would prefer not to take your test” when the opportunity arises.

Would this simple action be enough to completely overhaul our education system and return power to those who have it least? Are freedom and self will concepts worth fighting for or are we destined to roam the feed-lot like the rest of the herd, content to be led by the nose? According to William Butler Yeats, “education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” With Weapons of Mass Instruction – A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto strikes the first match in what will hopefully burn down outdated ideals and clear the way for a new and prosperous future for everyone.

newmusic.org

artistslegaloutreach.ca Page 16

Libya: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About Currency and Loans

by John Perkins | JohnPerkins.org

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orld Bank President Robert Zoellick Thursday said he hopes the institution will have a role rebuilding Libya as it emerges from current unrest.

Zoellick at a panel discussion noted the bank’s early role in the reconstruction of France, Japan and other nations after World War II. “Reconstruction now means (Ivory Coast), it means southern Sudan, it means Liberia, it means Sri Lanka, I hope it will mean Libya,” Zoellick said.

On Ivory Coast, Zoellick said he hoped that within “a couple weeks” the bank would move forward with “some hundred millions of dollars of emergency support.”

We listen to U.S. spokespeople try to explain why we’re suddenly now entangled in another Middle East war. Many of us find ourselves questioning the official justifications.

We are aware that the true causes of our engagement are rarely discussed in the media or by our government.

While many of the rationalizations describe resources, especially oil, as the reasons why we should be in that country, there are also an increasing number of dissenting voices. For the most part, these revolve around Libya’s financial relationship with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and multinational corporations.

According to the IMF, Libya’s Central Bank is 100% state owned. The IMF estimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar alQaddafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar,

their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.

In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather a U. S. bank. Ditto, its closest sibling, the IMF. In fact, if one looks at the World Bank and IMF executive boards and the votes each member of the board has, one sees that the United States controls about 16 percent of the votes in the World Bank – (Compared with Japan at about 7%, the second largest member, China at 4.5%, Germany with 4.00%, and the United Kingdom and France with about 3.8% each), nearly 17% of the IMF votes (Compared with Japan and Germany at about 6% and UK and France at nearly 5%),and the US holds veto power over all major decisions. Furthermore, the United States President appoints the World Bank President.

So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a “rogue” country threatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to its knees? What happens to an “empire” when it can no longer effectively be overtly imperialistic?

One definition of “Empire” (per my book The Secret History of the American Empire) states that an empire

Events DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Presented by the Documentary Media Society, a Vancouver based non-profit, charitable society (incorporated in 1998) devoted to presenting independent and innovative documentaries to Vancouver audiences. The society exists to educate the public about documentary film as an art form through DOXA Documentary Film Festival, a curated and juried festival comprised of public screenings, panel discussions, public forums and educational programs.

The 2011 DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 6 to May 15.

www. doxafestival.ca

is a nation that dominates other nations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. The empire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect the currency and the entire economic system that depends on it through extreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did the Spanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the US or, more to the point, the corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined to punish any individual who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example.

Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire is another step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want to honor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are the foundations of our country?

History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or are overthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum.

The past sends a compelling message. We must change.

We cannot afford to watch history repeat itself.

Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another. Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots movements in the Middle East – fostered by the young who must live with the future and are fueled through social networks – inspire us to demand that our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that depend on us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning a world that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.

We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation.

by NakedCty

Astrolabe Presents: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A New Music in New Places Concert at Britannia Mine - May 15, 2011 @ 3:00 p.m

A moveable concert through the historic buildings and artifacts of the Britannia Mine, once the largest copper mine in the British Empire, now an awardwinning Museum and National Historic Site! An allcontemporary, all-Canadian concert featuring the music of Clifford Crawley, Jocelyn Morlock, Jeffrey Ryan, R. Murray Schafer, Norman Symonds, and more, and featuring the WORLD PREMIERE of Leslie Uyeda‘s The Sex Lives of Vegetables (Part III) with poetry by Lorna Crozier. 1-800-896-4044, ext. 244 or scott@bcmm.ca.

For full events listing visit our calendar at theagoranational.ca Page 17

The Sharks Have Computers Now

by Llewellyn King | whchronicle.com

J

im McTague, Washington bureau chief of Barron’s, the stock market newspaper, is as gentle a journalist as pads the halls of Congress or pops into the briefing room of the White House. But he has chosen to poke a tiger with a short stick in his new book, “Crapshoot Investing: How Tech-Savvy Traders and Clueless Regulators Turned the Stock Market into a Casino.”

The book is likely to stir regulators, legislators and traders. It tells a sad and frightening story of inept regulation, congressional good intentions gone wrong, and technological excess.

McTague says a very small number of trading firms, using highly sophisticated computer programs, have upended a once efficient market for the allocation of capital and turned it into a casino operating at electron speed. The losers, he says, are traditional brokers and small investors who do not stand a chance in a market dominated by trading that moves faster than information can be released to the public. The much-loved New York Stock Exchange “ticker” now lags actual computer trading, McTague says.

Currently, 70 percent of all trades are executed by hugely complex algorithms written in computer code by mathematicians and physicists, who have abandoned their traditional lines of employment for the gigantic rewards of Wall Street.

In a chapter headed “The Road to Ruin,” McTague says, “The history of U.S. investors and their experiences in the equities market has all the earmarks of an abusive relationship, and it will require an eminent psychiatrist several hundred pages to explain why the battered investors return to the market time after time after their previous drubbing, knowing in their hearts that they eventually will be brutalized again.”

The great example of how dysfunctional and dangerous the markets have become is May 6, 2010. It is the day of the “flash crash,” when the so-called high-frequency

trading computers lost their electronic minds There are stories about what triggered that day of disaster; but, in the end, the thing is that it did happen.

Computer trading ran away with the market and nearly sank it. In a 10-minute period, many classy blue-chip stocks were nearly wiped out. For example, Accenture, trading at around $42 was reduced to a penny.

When trading was suspended that day, the crafty computers simply moved the trades to other exchanges, such as Frankfurt and London. Eventually most of the lost value was restored, but not the lost confidence.

The computers had outsmarted themselves. Their programs rely not only current trading conditions and knowledge of specific stocks, but also on historical data.

“The computers read the newspapers and they have information from historical reporting as well as today’s business pages,” McTague says. The problem is they do not have any newspapers from the 1920s; and when the crisis of May 6, 2010 hit, “the computers did not know what to do, so they began liquidating.”

This sad tale begins in the 1970s when Congress, with good intentions, sought to make all stock markets more competitive and the New York Stock Exchange in particular a more open and consumer-accessible place.

In 1975, the reforms were enacted as amendments to the basic securities law of the country. Over the years, the regulatory agencies implemented these reforms. According to McTague, they botched the job.

The reformers also misjudged the impact of computers. Their idea was that they were going to make the

Welcome

markets more egalitarian. Instead, they have favored the greedy few at the expense of the small investor, broker and 401K pensioner.

McTague has no magic solutions, nor does he suggest that people with excess cash stuff it in their mattresses.

But he has some tips which he follows himself, including: • Do not trade early in the day because that is when most small investors put in their orders, and the sharks are waiting to eat them in the afternoon.

• Do not leave your research to other people.

• Be brave and hold on, if you are confident in the stock you have invested in. But do not hesitate to sell it if necessary.

In the short term, computers are making nonsense of the old advice to buy and hold, so investors have to watch their stocks carefully and do their own homework.

Broker-turned-journalist McTague is still trading himself, aware of the dangers. He concludes, “… there is no sure-fire method for a retail investor to beat the market. It has become a shark tank and we are the anchovies. Every time you buy or sell a stock, you are rolling the dice and hoping for a good outcome.”

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Taking it Home

Glencoe Campground

Heaven and Earth

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The Source

Welcome to Pine Point “Some towns thrive and some towns fall to ruin, but a town that gets flattened to the ground and erased from the map altogether? That’s both highly unusual and exactly what happened to Pine Point, a Northwest Territories town that is the subject of a neat interactive project about memory and belonging recently launched on NFB Interactive, the Film Board’s interactive site”.

- Carolyn Weldon

From Nina Simon, Author of The Participatory Museum: elcome to Pine Point is an incredible narrative work that incorporates text, music, videos, and images into a lightly interactive, utterly engrossing digital story. (When you check it out, make sure to put your browser on full screen mode.) It is, in short, the best multimedia history project I’ve ever seen, and I wish more museums were pursuing projects like it.

What makes Welcome to Pine Point so amazing?

It’s nostalgic in the best sense of the word. In 2009,

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Dan Spock wrote a beautiful essay, In Defense of Nostalgia, arguing that history museums should embrace the emotional power of loss, memory, and personal connection that comes with nostalgia. By interweaving images, artifacts, sounds, and the human stories of the town, Welcome to Pine Point invites people with no prior connection to the Northwest Territories to care deeply about its story.

It uses multimedia beautifully. I was really impressed by the diversity of artifacts in Welcome to Pine Point-from yearbook photos to VFW badges to video and photos from the 1980s and today. The variance and effective use of different media types reminded me of any great exhibition design, and it also highlighted how rarely museum professionals apply creative, surprising design techniques in online or media-based exhibits.

Welcome to Pine Point is a piece about memory, and how memory is utilized, filtered and activated. It’s way more a story about memory than a profile piece on a town. Paul Shoebridge

It tells layered personal stories. The subjective “I” voice of Michael drives the whole story. Because he cares about Pine Point, you care, or at least you’re up for the adventure. Michael’s strong narrative voice makes jumps in location or story manageable (even if I did spend some time confused about the connection between Cosmos 954 and Pine Point). Michael also interviews former Pine Pointers, and the highly personal “then and now” features on Kim Feodoroff and Richard Cloutier are highlights of the whole project.

It makes you contemplate your own connection to history. The first-person narration allows the project to directly address the audience with deep questions without sounding unnatural. When Michael wonders what it would be like to have your hometown disappear, he doesn’t sound pretentious. He’s a real person trying to figure it out, and that makes you as a viewer want to join him in figuring it out too. Some of the artifacts--government documents explaining that Pine Point will be taken off the map, videos from the final week of the town’s existence-are devastating. It’s impossible to watch people toasting the end of their town and not think about how you would feel in the same situation.

It makes you think about what it means to be human.

Welcome to Pine Point is an arresting exploration of the conflicts between technological progress and humanity. If a mine makes a town exist, is that good? If a mine closes and it makes the town cease to exist, is that bad? What happens to the people? How do we make these decisions, individually and collectively? These are big juicy questions that few exhibitions really force me to grapple with the way I did as I watched Welcome to Pine Point. Nina Simon The Goggles- Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, formerly creative directors of Adbusters magazine, had planned to do a book about the decline of photo albums when they happened upon a website called Pine Point Revisited, created by ex-Pine Point resident Richard Cloutier. The Goggles arranged to meet with Richard, who then hooked them up with other former residents, known as “Pine Pointers.”

What if Your Fav Album Was a Novel?

“The results are as idiosyncratic as the albums themselves. Prince’s Purple Rain is transformed into a sci-fi fantasy by one P. Rogers Nelson. The Beatles’ Abbey Road feels like a well-mannered Penguin Classic. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs looks like a Book of the Month Club hardcover selection circa 1955. Patti Smith’s Horses trades its famous Mapplethorpe portrait for the look of a popular series of kids’ reference books. And the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks looks like something you’d stuff under your mattress (and then wash your hands).”Mother Jones “I got to thinking, well, what would those records look like if they actually were books, if the name of the album was actually the title of a novel or reference book?” Christophe Gowans After creating the covers, he digitally ages them to look as well-loved as the LP sleeves and CD booklets that accompany their musical originals.

The Complete Library of Mr. Gowans works can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgstopgo/sets/72157623910604943/with/5584000606/

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www.sovsquamishgov.org