RoboBees…The Answer To Dying Bee Colonies?

By coordinating large numbers of small, agile robots to mimic the physical and behavioral robustness of insect groups, the program could direct a swarm of robots to accomplish tasks faster more reliably, and more efficiently than a single unit.

Scientific American “Honey bee populations around the world are in decline due to causes ranging from ‘super mites‘ to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and even cell phones – and if the insects disappear completely the planet’s ecosystems would be in peril. The issue has become so dire that now a team of Harvard and Northeastern University scientists are working on a swarm of miniature Robobee robots that could pollinate flowers and do the job of real bees if required.

Speaking to Scientific American, the team leaders said: “In 2009 the three of us began to seriously consider what it would take to create a robotic bee colony. We wondered if mechanical bees could replicate not just an individual’s behavior but the unique behavior that emerges out of interactions among thousands of bees. We have now created the first RoboBees—flying bee-size robots—and are working on methods to make thousands of them cooperate like a real hive.” Full Article Here

 

Building The Global Special Operation Forces Partnership

This is…well…unnerving…and chilling.

 

ISOF (Photo credit: United States Forces – Iraq (Inactive))

 

(May 2012) Military assault demonstrations at the ISOF 2012 conference in Tampa bay, Florida. The participating SOF teams came from 10 allied nations: Australia, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Jordan, Norway, Poland, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and included American SEALs, Green Berets, Air Force Combat Controllers, and US Marines. This year ISOF’s theme is “Building the Global SOF Partnership.” This is composed of mutually supporting partners working to identify and preemptively address problems, and helping to defeat the appeal of violent extremism.

 

 

 

Robotic Farmers

“Will people still be picking apples in 100 years?

I don’t think so.”

A robot-farmer named Prospero

“The barriers are legal and social and whether it will be acceptable to the British public.”

Excerpts from Daily Telegraph

David Gardner, Chief Executive of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, pointed out robots are already milking cows.

Within the next 20 to 40 years, he said that robots will be able to cultivate land, ‘zap’ weeds and pick fruit and vegetables.

Already Fendt, a German company, are hoping to make a driverless tractor available by 2014. Farmers would control two tractors from one cab. It could be used in flat, large fields in East Anglia within a couple of years for repetitive tasks like de-stoning the soil on vegetable beds.

The new “cabless” tractors use technology developed in the military, that use GPS to know where they are and sensors to detect humans or other life in the way of the machine.

“A large part of the future of British agriculture is robotic.” Full Story

Prospero is the working prototype of an Autonomous Micro Planter (AMP) that uses a combination of swarm and game theory and is the first of four steps. It is meant to be deployed as a group or “swarm”. The other three steps involve autonomous robots that tend the crops, harvest them, and finally one robot that can plant, tend, and harvest–autonomously transitioning from one phase to another.

Prospero is controlled with a Parallax Propeller chip mounted on a Schmart Board. Its body is designed by Lynxmotion and the orginal programming allows it to walk autonomously in any direction while avoiding objects with its duel ultrasonic Ping))) without turning it’s body. An underbody sensor array allows the robot to know if a seed has been planted in the area at the optimal spacing and depth. Prospero can then dig a hole, plant a seed in the hole, cover the seed with soil, and apply any pre-emergence fertilizers and/or herbicides along with the marking agent. Prospero can then talk to other robots in the immediate proximity that it needs help planting in that area or that this area has been planted and to move on via IR (currently represented with a green and red LED ). The more seeds it plants, the more the “green” LED lights up, the more it draws other robots nearby (+2). The more it detects planted seeds, the more it repulses other robots with the “red” LED (-1)

Related articles

• Robot Serves 360 Burgers Each Hour (ubergizmo.com)
• Robots will be farming within 40 years (telegraph.co.uk)
• Beyond Bodies: More to Robots Than Humanoid Shape (theepochtimes.com)

The Fuck-It Point; When Is Enough…Enough?

The video below is a short and very powerful film about the darker side of life inside that which we call ‘civilization’. I wonder how we can consider ourselves civilized when our lives are so permeated with death, violence & destruction? Is it civilized to stomp out any and all life forms that happen to either provide something we need or stand in the way of the things we want?

Are we truly enlightened beings if we are willing to obliterate any culture or way of life that is not the same as ours? I don’t think we really are. We say we have ‘advanced’ as a species but is this REALLY true? Would beings who have truly advanced be willing to live inside a bubble that enslaves them? Enslaves others?

Most importantly, would advanced and knowledgeable beings continue to build, live inside of and participate in a system that guarantees their own destruction and the destruction of their entire life support? Doesn’t it seem odd that this is exactly what we do? We act more like spoiled children – taking, taking, taking and throwing temper tantrums & lashing out at anyone who dares to take our toys – than any kind of being with enlightened or advanced way of thinking/acting. What are we going to do when we’ve not only broken all of the ‘toys’ but completely obliterated the toy factory as well?

While I don’t believe in climate change the way it is being sold to us right now, to deny that we are not doing irrevocable damage to every part of this earth is both naive and dangerous. Just as we cannot cure our diseases with medicines that cause even more illness and disease, we cannot continue to mend the damage of technology and machines by creating still more machines and technology.  Spraying pollutants into the sky which interfere with our weather patterns in the name of saving us from ‘climate change’ (re: changing weather patterns) is insanity, pure and simple. And yet, that is exactly what we do…

So when will enough be enough?

 Would you defend your children from harm? If so, then isn’t preventing them from living on a destroyed and desolate planet filled with hunger and hardship, defending them from harm?

What lengths would you be willing to go to in order to preserve ALL life and leave it intact for future generations?

Have YOU reached your Fuck-It Point?

Pentagon To Law Enforcement: No More Free Toilet Paper

Interesting to know that  the Department of Defense routinely gives weapons and assorted tactical gear to small or local law enforcement agencies ‘for cheap or free’ (free for them maybe because I am sure we taxpayers were originally billed far above top dollar for the equipment!). We’re not talking a token gift here and there, we’re talking about a program that operates to the tune of over $2 billion last year. If rumors are true and some agencies like the Penal County Sheriff’s Office has been stockpiling the weapons to sell for profit then I have to wonder why on earth the DoD just didn’t sell the equipment themselves and apply the ‘profit’ towards their own budget?

They supply free or cheap toilet paper to LEO agencies…why? Is there an abundance of TP at the Pentagon…and if for some bizarre reason there really does happen to be an excess of toilet paper…why not then at least donate it some slightly more worthy cause like say…a homeless shelter?

Aside from the money-burning aspect of the program, I have to wonder why small law enforcement agencies have need for Humvees and super-duper high-tech tactical equipment. How many of the 800+ agencies in Illinois actually have cause and use for civilian tanks? Why the need to provide military equipment for patrolling  Small Town America, I wonder? Are they gearing up on a rash of children’s lemonade stands…? Or could they be gearing up to combat them packs of wild-eyed stoners who uh…sit at home and read, create or just mind their own business?

It’s senseless on every level…

Excerpts from Officer.Com  AP Article “Pentagon Halts Free Guns For Police Program” -

“The Defense Department has stopped issuing weapons to thousands of law enforcement agencies until it is satisfied that state officials can account for all the surplus guns, aircraft, Humvees and armored personnel carriers it has given police under a $2.6 billion program, The Associated Press has learned.

The department’s Defense Logistics Agency ordered state-appointed coordinators in 49 states to certify the whereabouts of that equipment that has already been distributed through the long-running arrangement overseen by the agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office. The temporary halt on transferring weapons applies to all states, agency officials said Thursday.

The program provides police departments and other law enforcement agencies with military equipment ranging from guns and helicopters to computers and air conditioners and even toilet paper. The equipment is cheap or free for law enforcement agencies to acquire, but much of it comes with strict rules that prohibit it from being sold and dictate how it must be tracked…

…The Arizona Republic reported last month that the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has stockpiled millions of dollars’ worth of equipment through the program, distributing some of the gear to non-police agencies, and intended to sell other property, which would violate the program’s rules.

“I don’t have any info on if something triggered” the Defense Department’s recent order, Matt Van Camp, a police detective in Payson, Ariz., who coordinates that state’s program, told the AP in an email. “All I know is Arizona is 100 percent compliant on weapons inventory.”

A report in March by California Watch, which was founded by the Center for Investigative Reporting, found that California police accumulated more equipment during 2011 than any other year in the program’s two-decade history. That follows the overall trend in the program, which last year doled out almost $500 million in gear, up by more than double from the year before…

…The surplus program has grown exponentially in recent years, with a record $498 million worth of property distributed in fiscal year 2011. That includes $191 million in aircraft alone and more than 15,000 weapons worth nearly $4.8 million. Military officials said the program has become more popular as law enforcement agencies sustain deep budget cuts…”

Read Full Story Here On Officer.Com

NATO & Northrop’s Drone Partnership

Published on Monday, May 21, 2012 by Common Dreams  “As part of NATO’s planned multi-year and multi-billion dollar investment in an increased global surveillance capability, building what it calls an ‘Allied Ground Surveillance (AGS)’ system, the 28-nation military alliance penned a deal with defense contractor Northrop Grumman on Sunday for a fleet of unmanned aerial drones along with the requisite command and control base stations needed to operate them…

Northrop Grumman Switchblade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The signing of the deal took place between Northrup executives and NATO officials in a quiet room away from the boisterous street protests taking place outside the NATO summit on the streets of Chicago, where citizens voiced their opposition to NATO’s continued military presence in Afghanistan and it’s increasingly violent role in world affairs in recent years.

NATO has relied heavily on the use of drones owned and operated by the United States in its recent military operations in Afghanistan and in Libya, but this acquisition will allow it to have a vast capability all its own. The system will cost close to $1.7 billion dollars, with billions more needed to maintain and operate the system over the next two decades.”  Read Full Story Here

Necessary Spending

Where oh where does our (war) money go..?

Apparently it goes where ever the hell DoD decides it should…

Who are we mere debt mules to question the great & wise (corporate owned) congressional budget committees?

What kind of legacy are we living future generations if we continue to spend beyond our means in both dollars and human lives in order & continue to feed the profiteering war mongers?

“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together…” 

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

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~ Nonexistent Fiscal Accountability ~

In January 2011 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stated: “This department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path – where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits and lax attitude towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow and the nation’s grim financial outlook.” 

(Wiki) The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was unable to provide an audit opinion on the 2010 (and 2011) financial statements of the US Government because of ‘widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations’. The GAO cited as the principal obstacle to its provision of an audit opinion ‘serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable’. 

Chief Financial Officer and Under Secretary of Defense Robert F. Hale acknowledged enterprise-wide problems with systems and processes, while the DoD’s Inspector General reported ‘material internal control weaknesses … that affect the safeguarding of assets, proper use of funds, and impair the prevention and identification of fraud, waste, and abuse‘. Further management discussion in the FY 2010 DoD Financial Report states ‘it is not feasible to deploy a vast number of accountants to manually reconcile our books’ and concludes that ‘although the financial statements are not auditable for FY 2010, the Department’s financial managers are meeting warfighter needs’.

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~ Globalization ~ 

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta Speaking about meeting of NATO defense minsters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 2, 2012:

 ”It was important to make clear to our European allies that even as our posture there evolves, we remain committed to NATO – the most successful military alliance in history – and we’ll continue to maintain an innovative, robust, and visible presence in Europe. As part of that robust presence, I told our allies that we will soon begin rotating a battalion-sized task force to Germany for exercises and training, as part of the rapidly deployable NATO Response Force, and we will also establish an aviation detachment in Poland to provide better training opportunities. We are also moving ahead with European missile defense – establishing land-based SM-3 missile sites in Romania and Poland, deploying Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ships to Spain, and a radar in Turkey.”

Now is a time for every NATO nation to make the most of the fiscal and security challenges we face to become more united as an Alliance and to strengthen our collective capabilities through such initiatives as Smart Defense. We took a big step forward on this front with an agreement to fund the Alliance Ground Surveillance system – consisting of five Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles and a ground control station. AGS has been in the works for many years, and is the first ISR capability NATO has ever purchased as a pooled resource.

Unified Combatant Command

A Unified Combatant Command is a single force composed of personnel and equipment

from at least two Military Departments, which has a broad and continuing mission.

The United States currently has 9 Combatant Commands:

U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)

U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM)

U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM)

U.S. European Command (USEUCOM)

U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM)

U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM)

U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)

U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)

U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM)

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The Silent Colonization? 

U.S. Africa command received $274 million in Fiscal Year 2010.

The Obama administration has requested $298 million for the command for Fiscal Year 2011.

AFRICOM Mission: Africa Command protects and defends the national security interests of the United States by strengthening the defense capabilities of African states and regional organizations and, when directed, conducts military operations, in order to deter and defeat transnational threats and to provide a security environment conducive to good governance and development. 

AFRICOM  Activities & Factsheets

 Washington Times 2-6-2012 - “They train host nation’s forces, and include units from each service, such as the Green Berets, who specialize in irregular warfare and work in small teams no larger than 12. The Green Berets also build roads, schools, provide health care and live among locals, speaking their language.”

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Congress Left in Dark on DOJ Wiretaps

A Senate staffer was tasked two years ago with compiling reports for a subcommittee about the number of times annually the Justice Department employed a covert internet and telephone surveillance method known as pen register and trap-and-trace capturing.

But the records, which the Justice Department is required to forward to Congress annually, were nowhere in sight.

That’s because the Justice Department was not following the law and had not provided Congress with the material at least for years 2004 to 2008. On the flip side, Congress was not exercising its watchdog role, thus enabling the Justice Department to skirt any oversight whatsoever on an increasingly used surveillance method that does not require court warrants, according to Justice Department documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

The mishap is just one piece of an ever-growing disconnect between Americans’ privacy interests, and a Congress seemingly uncommitted to protecting those interests.

via Congress Left in Dark on DOJ Wiretaps | Threat Level | Wired.com.

With Liberty & Texting For All…

The article below is another example and reason why we should beware of letting the government have too big of a role in our lives – especially when they claim to be acting in the interest of our safety and personal well-being. It should also serve as a warning of the dangerous connections between our government and corporate interests. When they are completely one and the same, how we will hope to prevent a ban like this one from happening here in the US?

Africa may seem like a world away but note the similarities between the problems in their system…and the problems in ours…

Excerpts From BBC Article, DR Congo election: Deaf anger at ban on texting

By Thomas Hubert

Published 14 December 2011

Deaf people in the Democratic Republic of Congo say a ban on texting threatens their lives because they no longer receive warnings of violence.

The government banned SMS messages more than a week ago to preserve “public order” following disputed elections.

President Joseph Kabila was declared the winner, but his main rival, Etienne Tshisekedi, rejected the result. Last month’s elections were the second since the 1998-2003 war which claimed about four million lives.

…

Four people were killed in the capital, Kinshasa, after Mr Kabila’s victory was announced. He is due to be inaugurated for a second term next week. The official results gave him 49% of the vote against 32% for Mr Tshisekedi.

The opposition says they plan to organise mass protests, alleging the polls had been rigged.

…

According to the Kinshasa-based African Association for the Defence Human Rights (Asadho), the texting ban has affected all Congolese people.

It said text messages were an essential tool for communities to maintain security, as they could spread alerts cheaply, quickly and discreetly to a large number of people who may be in danger.

Other human rights groups have warned that the ban could cost human lives in isolated regions with poor mobile phone reception, as emergency services could only be alerted to rebel attacks via text message.

London Rioters Preferred BlackBerry

It is always interesting to watch the light and dark sides of our communications technology and laws do battle. Social networks and speed-of-light communication capabilities are incredible tools for revolutionary activity and organizing actions with large groups of people scattered around a country (or the world) with an ease protestors of generations past would have given anything to possess. But…what helps one side ultimately winds up helping the other side, too. So while technology like Blackberry can bring about amazing things for the side of good, they can just as easily be manipulated to assist the tyrannical forces of darkness.

Although Twitter and Facebook have played a key role in the recent London riots, police believe that for the first time there, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was the main and favored organizational tool. Why? Unlike text messaging or Twitter, BBM is a free, private social network where almost all messages are encrypted when they leave the sender’s phone–meaning that many messages are untraceable by the authorities.

What’s the Big Idea?

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM), which has said it would co-operate with a police investigation, can be legally ordered to hand police details of users suspected of unlawful activity. However, the Canadian company would be likely to resist those demands and the content of users’ inflammatory messages would be encrypted. The manufacturer has previously insisted that even it cannot unscramble users’ messages when sent on the devices.

Read it at The Guardian

via Why London Rioters Preferred BlackBerry | IdeaFeed | Big Think.

Here is a related story from SCMagazine about Blackberry’s blog being hacked in retaliation for cooperating with law enforcement -

The official BlackBerry blog has been defaced after its parent RIM said it would co-operate fully with the Home Office and police force following the London riots.

In a blog post, BlackBerry said that it had ‘engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can‘ and was working to comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and was co-operating fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.

The blog post, which at the time of writing is still live on the BlackBerry website, now features a response from ‘TeaMp0isoN’ who said that RIM ‘will not assist the UK police because if you do, innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a BlackBerry will get charged for no reason at all’. Continue Reading…

Related articles

• Why London Rioters Preferred BlackBerry (bigthink.com)
• VIDEO: BlackBerrys used by rioters on streets (bbc.co.uk)
• London riots: BlackBerry workers threatened (telegraph.co.uk)
• Why Has BlackBerry Been Blamed for the London Riots? (wired.com)

Facing An Unnatural Future; A Genome Apocalypse?

Below is a video interview with Mike Adams from Natural News about the recent announcement of the secret cloning program, the various attempts to take over the food supply by use of GMO seeds and foods as well as the increasing number of SWAT raids on family farms and producers of natural foods. This is extremely informative and well worth the time it takes to watch. What a fantastic way to bring together so many of the obscure stories about GMO’s and tie them together into a comprehensive picture for those who have not yet fully grasped the implications of the corporate takeover of our country…and world.

I know that some of the terms like ‘controllers’ are still a bit extreme but I sincerely hope that people keep an open mind and listen beyond the few words that may seem foreign and recognize the truth that is talked about during these videos. There is an overwhelming amount of independent information available to corroborate everything Mike and Alex discuss. Most of the information is available straight from the sources like Monsanto, big pharma websites, scientific publications, etc. There is no denying any of this, no matter how far-fetched it sounds.

Who among us ever dreamt we would live in a world where cows were genetically altered to produce human break milk? Who imagined glow in the dark dogs & robotic leopards? And who actually thought that the movie Robo Cop could some day become terrifyingly real? And yet, all if these things are now in existence.  Technology and greed have combined in ways that are unchecked and unhealthy. There are no great secrets being revealed; none of this takes more than a half hour web search to prove…

What there are is too many people who are too absorbed in their cable TV and video games. There are too many people who choose not to look and don’t take time to look for real news stories and get swept away by staged dramas like the so-called budget crisis and completely miss the stories that are going to impact every life form on this planet for centuries to come.

Exclusive: Inside Darpa’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine

Just one example of what our money is being spent on in the name of  ‘defense’…

Image via Wikipedia

The Pentagon’s top researchers have rushed a classified and controversial intelligence program into Afghanistan. Known as “Nexus 7,” and previously undisclosed as a war-zone surveillance effort, it ties together everything from spy radars to fruit prices in order to glean clues about Afghan instability.

The program has been pushed hard by the leadership of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They see Nexus 7 as both a breakthrough data-analysis tool and an opportunity to move beyond its traditional, long-range research role and into a more active wartime mission.

But those efforts are drawing fire from some frontline intel operators who see Nexus 7 as little more than a glorified grad-school project, wasting tens of millions on duplicative technology that has nothing to do with stopping the Taliban.

“There are no models and there are no algorithms,” says one person familiar with the program, echoing numerous others who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the program publicly. Just “200 lines of buggy Python code to do what imagery analysts do every day.”

During a decade of war, American forces have gathered exabytes of information on its enemies in Afghanistan. Nexus 7 aims to tap that data to find out more about the U.S.’ alleged friends: the people of Afghanistan, and how they interact with their government and with one another.

Not that you’d be able to figure that out, examining the one public reference to Nexus 7. Tucked away in the Pentagon’s gargantuan budget, it makes the program sound like an obscure computer-science project, using “cluster analysis” to find “social networks.” There’s no reference to its operational utility.

On the military’s classified network, however, Darpa technologists pitch Nexus 7 as far-reaching and revolutionary, culling “hundreds of existing data sources from multiple Agencies and Services” to produce “population-centric, cultural intelligence.”

They boast of Nexus 7’s ties to special operations and to America’s most secretive surveillance groups, and its sophisticated tools to “perform automated cross-correlation and analysis of massive, sparse datasets — recomputing stability indicators within minutes of new data updates.”

via Exclusive: Inside Darpa’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Related articles

• DARPA Goes To War (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• DARPA Developing Video Parser (yro.slashdot.org)
• DARPA offers $42 million for ‘revolutionary’ research on social media analysis (rossdawsonblog.com)