Putting Tesla’s EV Car Recall into Perspective

April 27, 2017 (Wishful-Thinking) - News coverage about electric car manufacturer Tesla’s recent recall of over 50,000 vehicles over potentially faulty parking brakes has followed a narrative summed up by articles like Ars Technica’s, titled, “Its Always Some Else’s Fault — Tesla recalls 53,000 vehicles built in 2016 over faulty parking brake.”

In it, Ars Technica claims:

Tesla is voluntarily recalling 53,000 Model S and Model X electric vehicles because of problems with the parking brake. As was the case for Tesla’s last recall, the company is blaming someone else for the issue. Specifically, the electric parking brakes installed on the EVs “may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier.”

It also notes that:

Quality control issues have plagued the young carmaker. Both the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports lambasted the Model X, and many electric motors in early Model S sedans appeared unable to last more than 60,000 miles.

What Ars Technica and other publications have failed to do, however, is put the Tesla recall into context. According to a 2016 U.S. News article titled, “The Biggest Car Recalls in History,” such context is provided.

Not only have other car manufacturers faced recalls many times larger (with millions of cars recalled at a time), the largest recall in automotive manufacturing history involved faulty parts used by multiple auto companies supplied by a third-party company, not unlike Tesla’s current recall.

U.S. News would report:

More than two dozen automakers were forced to recall close to 70 million vehicles in the biggest auto recall in U.S. history after receiving reports of a defect in airbags from Japanese supplier Takata. Honda recalled the most vehicles – more than six million – but Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Mazda, and others sent letters to owners while grappling with a supply shortage.

However, as Ars Technica pointed out, Tesla is a “young automaker,” while other companies have been established for decades, facing multiple gargantuan recalls in their respective histories, and still facing them regularly despite what many analysts have claimed Tesla lacks, “experience” with quality control.

The Battle to Control the 3D Printing Revolution: DIY or CIA?

March 23, 2015 (Eric Draitser - TruthOut) - Scientific and technological innovations have the power to fundamentally transform human civilization as new possibilities previously deemed impossible are made realities. However, it is not the technologies themselves that dictate the nature of the political, economic or social evolution. Rather, it is control over, and access to, technology that has the truly profound impact. While advanced medicines, new methods of energy production and biotechnology breakthroughs are in themselves important, when monopolized by a select few, the implications for the majority of people can be dire.

So it is with the emerging revolution in 3D printing, a technology that manufactures (or "prints"), layer by layer, physical objects from computer models using a variety of materials. While 3D printing has existed in concept since the early 1980s, only in recent years has the technology been brought to the desktop level, allowing individuals and small groups of hobbyists to print a wide variety of objects, from plastic coasters to medical equipment. Having started in the traditional industrial and fabrication setting, it was the application of 3D printing by independent, technologically inclined "hackers" (individuals who manipulate and/or customize computer and electronic equipment to fit their needs) that helped mainstream this technology.

Today, there is a consensus among those in the know - from the most ruthless capitalist profit-seekers to anarcho-communist hackers - that the 3D printing revolution is coming, and the world will not be the same once it arrives. So the struggle is not whether there will be 3D printers, but rather how that technology will be used, how it will be dispersed in society, who will have access to it, and who will control and/or steer its development.

The central question will not be whether a working-class person can 3D print some household object in his garage; this is a foregone conclusion. Instead, it will be whether or not the ability to 3D print the elemental parts of modern and future society (computer processors, nanobots, telecommunications equipment etc.) will be open to all, or controlled by the few.

And it is here, on the front lines of the battle for control and access to this breakthrough technology, that the struggle between the political and economic establishment and the rest of us is taking place. On the one hand, there are those tirelessly working to democratize and decentralize 3D printing, and on the other hand are the powerful forces that seek to monopolize this innovation in order to maintain their grip on power.

3D Printing, Decentralization and the DIY Revolution

As 3D printing gradually moved out of the realm of science fiction to become a technology that could be financially and technically accessible to individuals, the transformative potential of the innovation became readily apparent. Obscure startups such as New York City-based MakerBot brought 3D printing to the desktop via theNYC Resistor hackerspace - a "hacker collective" based in Brooklyn where communally owned tools and computers bring together a wide array of innovative technology enthusiasts who share knowledge and expertise in a variety of fields. Such a combination of technical know-how and ideological commitment to collaboration has fueled the creative energies of many such hackerspaces and makerspaces, and the many politically conscious, often radical activists and non-activists alike, to generate wildly fascinating and innovative breakthroughs.

Continue Reading via TruthOut ... 

If You Can't Stop 3D Printed Guns - Print One

People will inevitably 3D print guns and there is nothing you can do to stop them except prepare society to be mature and responsible enough to handle this new power. 

March 4, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And the sort of people that kill range from the mentally unstable and/or the medicated, to political extremists, to criminals, and of course the biggest killer in human history, the government. Unfortunately, a shortage of weapons or the legal inaccessibility of weaponry never seems to be enough to stop such people from harming or killing others - and levels of violence appear more linked to social and economic issues rather than access to weaponry.

Take the United Kingdom and Japan for example, two nations with populations that are for all intents and purposes "disarmed." Despite the UK having a population almost twice as small as Japan's it still has more total murders per year then their Japanese counterparts. The problem is socioeconomic, and so too is the solution. Here, we can see that access to weapons has little correlation to violence.

In fact, one could easily overlay a map of global poverty on top a map of global homicides and see the obvious correlation. And despite America's love-affair with firearms, it is by far not the most violent nation on Earth - not even close.

Gun Control Made Irrelevant 

Compounding the futility of a government trying to pad every sharp corner in society to "protect us" from harm, is the advent of personal manufacturing. Personal manufacturing allows us to make as many and as varied sharp corners as our minds can conjure. For every law put into place to outlaw each of these proverbial sharp corners, 10 more will take their place.

One of these sharp corners includes 3D printed and CNC milled guns.

3D Printing Industry author Michael Molitch-Hou in his article, "The 3D Printed Gun: Individual Freedom, Collective Violence," argues that:

Steve Israel is concerned with lone wolves. The media, in response to the shootings in Connecticut and Colorado, are concerned with mentally ill loners. Cody Wilson is concerned with personal freedom. The human species, however, is a collective entity, based simply on the fact that we all have to live and work alongside one another. So, perhaps it is our collective that should take some responsibility for these horrible acts of gun violence. What in society could be causing people to commit acts of violence on the scale of Newton and Aurora? Is 3D printing legislation going to prevent violence or might public access to better mental health facilities prevent violence instead? How did our collective not notice the burgeoning instability in Adam Lanza and attempt to do something about it? How does our society, on a regular basis, ignore the systemic inequality that leads to gun violence amongst the impoverished, for instance? In other words, is it possible that, by acknowledging the human species as a collective, we might begin to improve the standard of living of the entire community?

And although Molitch-Hou, throughout the article appears to make Cody Wilson look as if he is laboring under strained logic, his concluding thoughts quoted above are in fact precisely the solution to violence in American society (and everywhere else for that matter). We must identify the factors that cause violence in the first place and address them, not the implements one may or may not use while being violent.

Op-Ed: Big Pharma & Gene Therapy

March 2, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) I just recently watched a TED Talk - this was the CEO of Bluebird Bio - a pharmaceutical and biotech company - talking about their work on gene therapies.

These are cures that work on the first shot - correcting your condition or augmenting your body to repair itself on the genetic level. One shot and you are cured for life - more or less - because the corrected cells then multiple, carrying the corrections on in each additional cell.

The work for now can be a bit primitive, but the technology is already drastically changing lives for the better.

It is nothing short of revolutionary - it stands to change humanity forever - and if Bluebird Bio doesn't do it, someone else eventually will. The problem is obvious though, these cures may cost a lot to develop but once they are perfected, they cost relatively very little to produce and give to patients compared to traditional and less effective therapies. And when they are given to patients, it is a one time deal.

Realizing this prompted the CEO of Bluebird Bio to say something very questionable - claiming that by fixing a patient on the genetic level, they will from then on be producing his corporation's drug (though not really since it is not a drug, it is corrected DNA) and while he doesn't come right out and say it, anyone familiar with big-pharma and big-biotech's method of operation knows that they expect you to pay for it ... for life.

And so that is how big-pharma plans to continue rolling in piles of money even when technology makes it possible to permanently cure people with a single shot, by extorting people literally like a cartoon villain - demanding "1 million dollars" per life-saving shot - the subject of a previously published report titled, "Big Pharma Dangles Life and Death Over Patients' Heads."

There is indeed the valid argument that these treatments cost money to research and develop, and the people involved in doing so deserve to profit from them. And I agree, but guess what? The government gives these corporations millions of dollars through all sorts of grants every year so they can do just that.

Here is just one announcement of Bluebird Bio getting just such a grant from the Government of California, "Bluebird Bio Awarded $9.3 Million From the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to Further Gene Therapy Clinical Development," an announcement made in 2012, the same year Bluebird's CEO was on stage giving his Ted Talk.

Surely society would be all for giving even more money toward this sort of research - something the government should  be doing instead of spending literally a trillion dollars on a single weapons system - like the F-35. But then there is the reality that greed prevails, and special interests rule.

People have got to get informed on gene therapy - it will change humanity forever and whoever controls it controls humanity's future. That being the case, the people should be the one's wielding it, not a handful of corporations dangling life over the heads of sick kids so they can please their investors and stay in business.

I admittedly don't know the whole story about Bluebird - I'd hate to say they were corrupt and greedy if they were really doing everything they could within a system that is itself backwards ... but it was difficult to listen to their TED Talk and not walk away feeling I've just been extorted. If you hold the keys to saving lives, you must unlock the door, handsomely rewarded or not. And part of being a "good guy," is taking it upon yourself to create a better system within which life-saving research can move forward without parasitical investors demanding immense profits in return at the expense of both ethics and progress. 

Science as the New Religion

Irrational faith in corporate R&D is not science, it is a modern day cult. 

February 26, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - When money and power are involved, those standing to gain the most will say and do anything to push their agenda forward. Five centuries ago, saying and doing anything involved exploiting people's superstitions and their faith in religion. Today, saying and doing anything means also exploiting science.

Science, engineering, and design are amongst our most practical and effective tools to make real and meaningful change. But because they are so powerful and appealing, the potential for their abuse in the wrong hands is immense. Compounding this is the naivety of those who are fascinated by science's promise but blind to its potential abuse.

It wasn't long ago when big-tobacco had armies of "scientists" citing the latest "studies" confirming the health benefits and safety of smoking. Of course these were paid liars, not scientists, even if many of them had PhDs. And it was lies they were telling, even if mixed with shades of science. Today, special interests have refined this practice of filtering lies and exploitation through the lens of science regarding everything from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to the false debate on climate change, to the questionable interests behind global vaccination programs.

The latest example of this comes via National Geographic which recently published an article titled, "Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?," which claims:

We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change—faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts.

Indeed, just as religions claimed a monopoly on morality and spirituality, National Geographic condemns those "empowered by their own sources of information" and "their own interpretations of research," maintaining that the only truth to be found is amongst the "consensus of experts."

The Consensus of "Experts" 

The article goes on to claim:

The idea that hundreds of scientists from all over the world would collaborate on such a vast hoax is laughable—scientists love to debunk one another. It’s very clear, however, that organizations funded in part by the fossil fuel industry have deliberately tried to undermine the public’s understanding of the scientific consensus by promoting a few skeptics.

National Geographic never explains why "organizations funded in part by the fossil fuel industry" are conspiring to lie, but the notion that "scientists" would conspire to lie is "laughable." After all, scientists work under various organizations funded by special interests as well, including immense corporate-financier interests - many of which overlap with big-oil, ironically. If the billions to be made by big-oil is motivation enough to lie and say the Earth isn't getting warmer, aren't the billions to be made in a "carbon credit" pyramid scheme also motivation enough to lie that it is?

Images: The "science" of smoking. Images collected by the New York Times for their article, "When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco" depict "scientific studies" assuring consumers of the safety, even benefits of smoking cigarettes commonsense told everyone else were literally killing people.  Those today who think they are ahead of everyone else by parroting "scientific studies" regarding big-ag's GMOs, big-pharma's vaccines, and big-oil and bankers' climate change racket are ahead of nothing. They are being duped by an old trick practiced shamelessly for at least 100 years. 

Facebook: Colonialism 2.0

Putting the entire planet online... then controlling everything they see or read. 

December 24, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The Western media has attempted to portray Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious plan to get every human being online as altruistic at first, but later revealed as simply what could be called "profitable empathy." In reality however, the truth is much more sinister, with Facebook already revealed to be much more than a mere corporation run by Zuckerberg and his "ideas" 
Facebook is the pinnacle of social engineering, an online operant conditioning chamber - also known as a Skinner box - that is being used to track, trace, document, and manipulate half of the entire online population. Despite users attempting to utilize Facebook to connect and communicate with individuals and organizations of interest, Facebook has turned its features against users, insidiously manipulating their timelines to show selected posts and updates while "soft censoring" others to manage public perception.

"Studies" have even been published proving the effectiveness of Facebook's unethical social engineering. In one study, the emotions of users were successfully manipulated by selectively posting only negative or only positive posts from individuals or organizations on users' contact lists. 

A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled, "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," stated in its abstract that (emphasis added): 

We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues. Not only are the findings troubling - illustrating that Facebook possesses the ability to influence the emotions of its users unwittingly through careful manipulation of their news feeds - but the invasive, unethical methods by which Facebook conducted the experiment are troubling as well.

In another experiment Facebook manipulated the news feed of some 2 million Americans in 2012 in order to increase public participation during that year's US presidential election. 

Where's the Money in Free Software?

Free as in freedom, not free as in cost, but part of the deal is that the software code is released, so if there's always the ability to get the source code, where's the money in free software?

Don't Replace Facebook, Disrupt It

November 11, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Facebook is a problem. It is undoubtedly being used by special interests to manipulate and monitor entire populations both within the United States and well beyond. It represents a tool that in no way serves the people actually using it, and instead allows special interests to use the users. It is a dream global panopticon for the abusive dictators that run Western society and presume dominion over what they call an "international order."

But in order to counter this threat, Facebook cannot simply be "replaced." It specifically, and what it represents, must be disrupted entirely.

Facebook is a Skinner Box for Humans 

Facebook has been at the center of several recent controversies that are increasingly leaving users disillusioned and in search of alternatives. At the center of these controversies is Facebook's "news feed" feature. Ideally, news feed would work by showing on your timeline updates from those individuals and organizations you follow. There are two options for news feed - "most recent" and "top stories." Facebook has decided to upend this feature by insidiously controlling what appears on your news feed regardless of which option you select. 

Now, you will no longer receive regular updates from accounts you follow, and instead will see a "filtered" version determined by Facebook's algorithms. Many Facebook users are unaware of this fact and are perplexed as to why they are no longer receiving regular updates from accounts they follow.

Facebook's own explanation as to why they've implemented this policy is as follows:

Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.

Facebook's real motivation is more likely a combination of implementing soft-censorship and an effort to monetize news feeds by forcing content makers to pay in order to access people already following them. What's left is wealthy content makers like large corporate media outfits monopolizing the public's attention whether the public wants it or not. 

3D Printing and the Age of Disruption

November 2, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Disruptive technology is that which overturns an industry unable to adapt or evolve to meet competition enabled by a technological edge. This has occurred across various media industries - from the newspaper to large network news channels, to music and movie producers - the dropping cost of entering the market and competing either directly or by undermining previously monopolized channels of distribution have challenged special interests' grip on information.

Many have predicted such a disruption across other industries beyond the digital world and within the physical, tangible world.

3D printing, more than any other technology, has served as the bridge between digital and physical disruption. The ability to turn digital files into physical objects allows people to design, scan, share, and send digital representations of physical objects just as they can images or text online. With 3D printers, these objects can be printed out in an increasingly larger number of materials and with ever improving resolution. They can also, at times, be printed out for far cheaper than it would be to buy them from a traditional manufacturer.

Image; 3D printing has begun disrupting businesses in the physical world just as file sharing has disrupted media businesses in the digital world. Here, a user printed out their own tabletop game pieces, saving hundreds of dollars in the process. 

It appears the first industry to be hit by the disruptive power of 3D printing are those that produce small plastic objects. This includes British-based tabletop game company, Games Workshop (GW). GW produces miniature plastic game pieces for strategic games that could be compared to very elaborate chess. These pieces can be prohibitively expense to collect in the large numbers necessary to play a game - and it should be remembered that at least two sets are required.

Ello -The Facebook Killer?

September 26, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Ello, a social network alternative to Facebook is expanding its user base immensely, even as it remains in beta testing. Market watchers and tech trend analysts attribute the influx of users indicative of Facebook's waning popularity due to its invasive, profit-driven, monopolistic, and downright creepy conduct. 

Facebook's incremental, manipulative policy and terms of use have been described as everything from a greedy business practice, to a government sanctioned means of mass manipulation and soft censorship.

It was inevitable that start-ups and activists would seek to offer Facebook users an alternative that allowed social media to be used as a tool of empowerment, not insidious manipulation and censorship. Ello appears to be tapping into that with its manifesto which states:

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.
You are not a product.

In theory, not only does Ello's manifesto sound ideal, it is likely to attract a multitude of disillusioned Facebook users fed up with the big-tech's monopoly, but who have stayed aboard for a lack of a better alternative.

12 Billion People By 2100 - And Why It's No Big Deal

September 23, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Wired magazine recently published an article titled, "Boom! Earth's Population Could Hit 12 Billion by 2100," which despite the typical narrative of misanthropic population control that works its way into any Western mainstream article on the topic of growing populations, remained relatively positive.

Wired quoted statistician and sociologist Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington who stated:

“A rapidly growing population with bring challenges. But I think these challenges can be met.”

And Raftery is correct. Wired would also include in its article that:

...it’s worth remembering that human populations doubled between 1960 and 1999. That tremendous growth spurt occasioned fears of widespread famine and societal collapse. On the whole, though, we made it through in decent shape.

Many of those fearmongers between the 1960's and up to the turn of the century are still deeply involved in manipulating the discourse on the topic of human population growth and measures they claim are necessary to curtail it. John P. Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in 1977 ludicrously concluded that the United States would collapse when its population reached "280 million in 2040." America's population is now well over 300 million with nearly 3 decades to spare. Holdren would add in his now entirely discredited co-authored book titled, "Ecoscience," that:

"...if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come."

Holdren's "population control measures" included a despotic "planetary regime" that would have made the architects of the 3rd Reich blush.

"Climate March" Hides Real Culprits and Real Solutions

Climate march is silly at best - dangerously counterproductive at worst.  

September 21, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Big business and the big political parties and politicians they own have converged in what is being disingenuously called the "People's Climate March."  MSNBC would report in an article titled, "The largest climate march in history kicks off in New York," that:

They’re calling it the largest mobilization against climate change in the history of the planet. On Sunday morning, protesters from all over the United States and the world are converging on Manhattan to demand that global leaders take action to avert catastrophic climate change. Earlier this week Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental group 350.org, projected that the march would consist of “hundreds of thousands” of participants.

Not surprisingly little in terms of actual solutions are mentioned by the organizers and instead the march is meant to set the stage for political and financial deals to be made at the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. Organizing the march are institutions funded by the very governments and corporate-financier special interests that have helped create devastating environmental and socioeconomic disasters across the planet over the past several decades in the first place.

Also involved are profiteers who have taken advantage of the general population's genuine concern for the environment to propose and benefit from scams consisting of everything from land-grabbing thousands of acres in Africa to peddling "carbon credits" and other financial gimmicks that make immense profits from doing literally nothing at all in terms of production and by creating a false sense of security, may even be compounding environmental catastrophes.

For those drawn to such "marches" and who are dismayed or disillusioned by the disingenuous nature of those trying to hijack their good intentions to peddle self-serving political and financial gimmicks, what can they do to develop and actually make good on the vague promises being made during this year's "People's Climate March?"

The Climate Always Changes - We Must Always Be Prepared 

The climate is always changing, and nearly everything human beings and nature do, both on Earth and beyond it, has an impact on it. A changing climate, like earthquakes and volcanoes driven by the constantly changing geological state of our planet, or diseases that sweep animal and human populations amid a perpetual biological arms race, will be a challenge humanity will always have to face.

Makers: Escaping the Pull of Big-Business

Image: Make Volume 40 - worth reading. It is a guide to
building a new paradigm and new local institutions. 

September 7, 2014 (LocalOrg) - A popular magazine that should probably be more popular is Make. While this is always subject to change in the future, for the time being, it is actually a magazine that empowers rather than manipulates like its competitors on the news stands. While Popular Mechanics may at one time in the distant past have actually helped people learn more about the world around them and enabled them to change it - it has become more of a clearing house for covert Fortune 500 propaganda amid a torrent of overt advertisements.

Co-Opting, Tainting the Maker Movement 

Perhaps understanding the power of the emerging maker-movement and the fact that an entire segment of the population is moving beyond helpless dependency on the Fortune 500, Popular Mechanics, as well as the special interests it represents, has attempted to co-opt it. Its latest issue with its cover story titled, "The Makers," features many of the prominent personalities within the maker movement. It also, however, features at least two picked straight from big business - including representatives from Autodesk who helped lead the charge for SOPA/ACTA as well as war profiteer General Electric.

Also in the Popular Mechanics issue was an insidious article titled, "Junk Science," with the subtitle, "Flawed studies, agenda-driven research, and open-door journals are putting the public at risk." One would expect to see a searing indictment of big-corporate R&D, fraudulent studies to push poison, GMO, and useless or dangerous pharmaceuticals - instead it was a defense of just these very big-business rackets and a condemnation of those attempting to expose them.

The article slams activists fighting to warn the public about the dangers of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, big-pharma vaccines, and big-agri's genetically modified organisms.

Clearly, Popular Mechanics couldn't care less about the principles of open source, decentralization, and progress promoted by the true maker community, and instead, is attempting to flatter them and bring them back into the fold as members of their dark, insidious club of corporate servitude. 

Beware: Facebook's "Soft Censorship"

September 5, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - The Land Destroyer Report maintained a Facebook page under the name Anthony Cartalucci. Since 2009 it was used to express my personal thoughts regarding the news of the day, as well as share relevant links with followers. Today, Facebook, without warning or opportunity to appeal, decided that the Facebook account must be changed over to a "page." By doing so, all those following my account no longer would receive updates, because of Facebook's "news feed" filters.

The premise behind news feed filters is that people have too many "friends" and are following too many accounts, so they can't possibly manage all the content themselves. Therefore, Facebook will do it for them. We already know about the Facebook "experiment" where they intentionally manipulated the news feed of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users without their consent.

A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled, "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," stated in its abstract that:

We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.Not only are the findings troubling - illustrating that Facebook possesses the ability to influence the emotions of its users unwittingly through careful manipulation of their news feeds - but the invasive, unethical methods by which Facebook conducted the experiment are troubling as well.

Clearly manipulating users' news feeds possesses powerful propaganda and mass-manipulative influence - surely influence those with the resources would be willing to pay for. And that is exactly what Facebook has arranged for with their new "reach" system. Facebook's own explanation is as follows:

Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.

Those involuntarily forced to switch from standard accounts over to "pages" will notice the "boost" feature below each post. This is where you are required to pay Facebook money to ensure people who voluntarily followed you to receive content from you, actually receive it. Obviously, this confers a major advantage to well-funded start-ups, established media outlets, and large, corporate-driven propaganda machines. For the independent or freelance journalist, analyst, or activist, Facebook has gone from an open platform to a cage of soft censorship.

Makerspaces: More Than a Fad

July 10, 2013 (LocalOrg) - Make Magazine describes a makerspace as a "gym where you get a membership to use the equipment." That equipment ranges from everything including basic hand and power tools, to machining equipment and 3D printers. Some makerspaces even serve as springboards for DIYbio labs that give the public access to the tools and techniques required to measure, detect, and alter the environment around us on a molecular level.

Image: Mackerspaces from top left and going clockwise in Germany, Canada, and Singapore. A makerspace starts with basically a table and a group of like minded individuals and just like a personal workspace, evolves over time accumulating tools, knowledge, members, and accomplishments.

The Double-Edged Sword of Drone Technology

July 8, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - When we think of drones, we think of remote controlled or semi-autonomous death machines, eyes in the sky, and a future where a despotic global regime can torment us from unreachable heights. But what if alongside their drones, flew ours? A balance of power allows the cutting edge of drone technology to slice the other way - and in our favor.

The Nightmare

As the NSA builds an omnipresent surveillance network across the planet's surface - tracking each and every one of us, ranking us autonomously into various threat categories with the "most dangerous" brought to the attention of human operators - fleets of drones can endlessly circle overhead with the ability to strike us down at any moment. Such a society is technically already here. While drones are not killing Americans on American soil, they are killing Americans on foreign soil under just such a premise. While the justification today is "terrorism" and the "villains" easily hated by most Americans and their deaths just as easily "shrugged off," this can and already is being incrementally changed.

The centralized nature of telecom and the current monopoly the state holds over drone technology ensures that this nightmare only gets darker.

The prospect of unmanned drones circling beyond eyesight and earshot and capable of striking at any moment, any target, anywhere on Earth should terrify those who understand that this ability, if monopolized, will be - and already is - abused. Automated extrajudcial executions from above make for a truly terrifying technological tyranny - and because of the legal and even intuitively ambiguous shadows drones currently operate in, those dying under drones today are ignored, forgotten, or dismissed. It is likely that the incremental expansion of drone executions will strive to maintain this perception in as many "untargeted" minds as possible for as long as possible. Activists seeking to raise awareness of this inevitable threat fight a fruitless battle as much against public ignorance and apathy as against the abuse of drone technology itself.

The Solution - Even the Odds 

Compromised Vaccine Study Reveals Crux of Real Vaccine Debate

July 4, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - In the report, "Big-Pharma Vaccines Deemed "Safe" by Big-Pharma Funded "Study,"" the compromised nature of a recent "Pediatrics" journal study regarding the alleged safety of vaccines was exposed showing the immense and obvious conflicts of interest involved. Though the report was funded by the US government, the authors of the report were drawn from the RAND Corporation - which is funded by and regularly produces reports and studies for the very manufacturers of the vaccines covered in the study.

In particular, RAND is funded by and works closely with both GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Merck & Co. Merck in particular manufactures the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine that has found itself at the center of growing controversy. 

Almost immediately, commentators and detractors skipped past the entirety of the report, and based only on a cursory glance of the headline, began repeating their respective political opinions regarding vaccines. Not surprisingly, yet another false discourse was revealed - a false discourse that either by design or coincidence will leave big-pharma the winners in the end - that is - if the debate is not put back on a more honest and constructive course.

What the Vaccine Debate Is and Most Certainly Isn't About 

The science behind vaccines - teaching the body to recognize and produce antibodies to defend against certain pathogens - is fairly sound. While vaccines are archaic compared to more cutting-edge techniques including gene therapy, where the immune system is re-engineered to eliminate disease including cancer, rather than "taught," the basic concept behind them is sound. This is not what the debate regarding vaccines is about. 

The debate truly centers around huge pharmaceutical monopolies - big-pharma - who control the production, distribution, and even promotion of vaccines. Their product, like the methods they use to promote them, is highly suspect. The addition to their vaccines of adjutants including mercury and other harmful substances done allegedly to cut costs raises legitimate concerns regarding the health of those subjected to what is essentially poisoned versions of vaccines people may or may not need. 

Why Everyone is Wrong about Climate Change

July 1, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Assigning blame for climate change that will happen with or without human activity on Earth constitutes a disingenuous discourse. The climate changes, and nearly everything on Earth and beyond it affects that change. From geological processes to biological evolution, to changes in the sun's output, to yes, even human activity - absolutely everything has an impact on the climate for better or for worse.

Image: Climate change, and even exceptional global warming is nothing new. Even if humans managed to negate any impact they were having on the environment, ice ages, rising seas, and off-the-chart CO2 levels and temperatures are inevitable. All we can do is build civilizations and sanctuaries that can weather the climate, no matter what it does. 

The climate has been in a constant, linear state of change, long before human beings evolved, and even throughout the relatively short period of time humans have inhabited the Earth. This continuous change may have within it temporary cycles, but at no two points in Earth's natural history has the climate been the same.

Image: Global warming in Antarctica, 65 millions years BC. 

65 million years ago, there were no ice caps. CO2 and temperatures were much higher than they are today, and Antarctica was covered with thriving temperate forests inhabited by dinosaurs. In an opposite and more recent extreme, our ancient ancestors struggled through a global ice age. Today, we live on a planet much warmer than inhabited by our cave-dwelling ancestors, but much cooler than anything the dinosaurs experienced. 

Climate change happened, and is happening now. And even with the complete negating of all human activity on Earth, it will continue to change. This does not absolve humanity from addressing its impact on the environment. Quite the contrary. However it gives us a crucial imperative currently being ignored by policy makers and activists alike. 

All the carbon credits, electric cars, and solar panels in the world will do nothing to prevent potentially hazardous climate change, natural or man-made. Tinkering with the climate through "geoengineering" could result in a catastrophic extinction-event unlike anything experienced in natural history. While human activity negatively impacting the climate should be addressed, measures must be taken to confront climate change that will come no matter what we do within the current false discourse now taking place.

What's Suggested and Why it Won't Work

At the very center of this false discourse lies the most ridiculous of all suggestions, "carbon credits." It is the modern equivalent of trying to clean New York City's 19th century streets of horse manure by taxing it. Horse manure disappeared from New York's streets when the car was invented. To eliminate the negative health, sociopolitical, and environmental impact of petroleum fueled cars, yet another novel innovation must be invented. Electric cars charged with renewable sources of energy would be a good start. The move to a hydrogen-based economy may be another worthwhile pursuit. To eliminate CO2 and other emissions from power plants and factories, likewise, innovations must be made.

And while these measures are welcomed, even with clean cars and renewable clean energy, climate change driven by other forces, both on Earth and beyond, and many of which are beyond our means to change or safely manipulate, will still continue. Carbon credits is an outright scam. Alternative forms of transportation and energy production are absolute necessities but will not stop natural climate change. But within the current false discourse, even these crucial necessities are not being approached with any serious focus, with schemes like carbon credits, progress-stunting resource rationing, and neo-eugenic population control taking center stage.   

Pirate Radio Station for $55 Could Help Decentralize Big-Telecom

June 24, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Make Magazine recently featured a tutorial on constructing a FM pirate radio transmitter using a Raspberry Pi board. Raspberry Pis are single board computers that go for about $55 and are regularly used as the centerpiece for a wide variety of projects ranging from art installations to automation and everything in between.

The FM transmitter will broadcast stored media within a limited range to any FM radio receiver nearby. It is a versatile proof of concept that can be used as is to "cover your home, DIY drive-in movie, a high school ball game, or even a bike parade." In the comment sections below the entry, readers could already be seen expanding the parameters of the project to add more options and increase its utility.

Pirate Radio & Decentralizing Big-Telecom

As reported before, while open source software and hardware, as well as innovative business models built around collaboration and crowd-sourcing have done much to build a paradigm independent of current centralized proprietary business models, large centralized corporations and the governments that do their bidding, still guard all the doors and carry all the keys. The Internet, the phone networks, radio waves, and satellite systems still remain firmly in the hands of big business. As long as they do, they retain the ability to not only reassert themselves in areas where gains have been made against them, but can impose preemptive measures to prevent any future progress.

Image: Project Byzantium creates a local "mesh" network - a personal
Internet that circumvents NSA surveillance and big-business rules and
regulations. 

With the advent of hackerspaces, increasingly we see projects that hold the potential of replacing, at least on a local level, much of the centralized infrastructure we take for granted - that is until disasters or greed-driven rules and regulations upset the balance. It is with the further developing of our local infrastructure that we can leave behind perpetual activism that reacts to provocations from big-business and their control over telecom infrastructure and enjoy a permanently altered telecommunications landscape that favors our peace and prosperity.

In this way, accessible pirate radio transmitters built from Raspberry Pi boards can join projects like PirateBox, Project Byzantium, Serval, and other tools to create local communication networks. While PirateBox and Project Byzantium create localized Internets and Serval connects mobile phones without the need for network coverage, pirate radio stations create localized radio content that can be used to connect us to our neighbors and greater community for entertainment and useful information - and help during dire emergencies when centralized infrastructure fails. 

Introducing "The Spark"

April 9, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - "The Spark"(Facebook / Vimeo) is an interesting and ongoing grassroots project that fits in well with an older article featured on LocalOrg titled, "Decentralizing Big-Retail." The article illustrated the waste, disparity, and exploitation promoted by the current "big-retail" monopolies and the consumerist paradigm modern society is dependent on, and suggests as an alternative the leveraging of technology to replace entirely this paradigm with local solutions.

It featured a combination of projects from urban farming to technological havens called "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces" working in tandem to turn a city block into a sustainable, self-sufficient economic unit driven by open source collaboration, technology, and local entrepreneurship.

"The Spark" is a documentary covering real world examples of people doing just this. The documentary features the previously covered Open Source Ecology and their "Global Village Construction Set," as well as urban gardeners attempting to change mindsets as well as their current food paradigm.

The similarities between each project's philosophy illustrates that while one is involved in building technology and the other in growing food within their community, both can work together toward a common goal - a future determined by us not at the ballot box or the local protest rally, but by our own two hands. Another term the comes up frequently is "post-scarcity," or the creation of material abundance through the use of technology that zeroes out resource scarcity.  

This illustrates that the visions of those involved in "The Spark," as well as the solutions in "Decentralizing Big-Retail" are not communes where people convince themselves to be happy with less, but the daring dash forward into a future where politics and protests are replaced by technological pragmatism and progress.

It will not happen overnight, and as those who view "The Spark" will see, it will not be easy. But it will work - which is more than anyone can say about the political hamster wheel humanity has been running on century after long century.