“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

This freaks me out: Read Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker piece on the extensive ramp-up of Iran war planning in the White House and then send the article to everyone you know. These people are completely insane.

Money Quote from an unnamed intelligence official:

“Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President”

“Our Claim:
Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy – that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we mean that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.
The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.
Because of the revolutionary nature of our claim, not only to the world of science but to the world in general, Steorn issued a challenge to the scientific community in August 2006 to test our technology and report their findings. The process of validation that has resulted from this challenge is currently underway, with results expected by the end of 2007.”

Steorn today announced a ten day public demonstration of its free energy generation technology (branded as Orbo) that does not require any energy source or fuel. Because these claims smack of a perpetual motion machine the energy and science communities scoffed at the concept last year when it was announced as an accidental discovery. As I covered back then, Steorn issued an open challenge to the scientific and engineering community to debunk their claims, a challenge which was apparently taken up by several hundred people.
Now they claim that they will openly demonstrate the technology in London in a completely transparent test and will release licenses to it under a modified general public license. The test will be available live on the web tonight with four cameras streaming the device in action. The license will be widely available at a nominal fee to encourage widespread adoption.

It is hard to dismiss the scam factor in claims such as this, however if there was the slightest chance that this was legit it would be an earthshaking breakthrough offering free energy worldwide without emissions. Crazy but interesting to watch the story unfold.
Stay tuned.
Update: Due to ‘technical difficulties’ they are not launching the demo until tomorrow. The blogosphere is on the case: Free energy tracker.

This should be the best post-iPhone story this week unless it’s all bullsh*t…

Update #2: Not happening today (7/5/07) possibly because of the ‘heat from the video lighting’…ha!

Final Update: Demo cancelled indefinitely. If these guys used a PR firm they should be fired immediately. If not they should get one ASAP because this comes under the category of PR disaster- as in international laughingstock…

“It is not real in any language. We are looking for accountable language and numbers. I might be be a rock star, but I can count.”
Bono

He is talking about the G8 announcement on aid for AIDS in Africa, a 25 page document that manages to have no committments whatsoever in it, but he might as well be talking about the Bush global warming ‘initiative’.
These announcements are nothing more than disinformation, stalls and denial campaigns, in other words, carefully crafted lies designed to keep us from actually doing anything. This has become a pattern among politicians of all stripes worldwide. The problem is that we face a worldwide, long term crisis that requires concrete collective action now. And the nationalistic political systems we have in place are simply not up to the task of working on a global scale.
As a capitalist, I think the best hope is that some of the major multi-national businesses realize it is in their interest to deal with this, not waiting for governments to act. This may be driven by profit or the need to protect their markets but it has to happen. Unfortunately the big oil companies are collectively short-sighted from a strategic perspective because they know that nothing can replace the short term cash cow they are riding. Until they come around and stop their lobbying and funding of massive disinformation campaigns, progress will be slow and deadly.
I realize that my statements regarding global corporations will horrify some but I have to ask: Who else is going to lead it? There is a reason why most speculative fiction (near term sci-fi) writers usually project a world run by global conglomerates- they cannot see any other obvious future.

Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe compares NASA chief Michael Griffin’s astoundingly ignorant comments this week to the situation Rachel Carson faced when trying to warn of the long term dangers of DDT back in the 60s. Then it was chemical companies blithely assuring us of the wonders of pesticides. Today it is Bush appointed lackeys undermining the efforts of real scientists.
The pattern here is one that the Bush machine has used effectively since 9/11: Muddy the discussion with misleading statements and proposals that are designed to slow any progress. The recent disruption of G8 talks on cutting emissions by an undefined ‘plan’ announced by Bush is a prime example.