Hmmmm, this was written by BROOKINGS INSTITUTION and repeated word for word by FCC CLYBURN-----Brookings Institute are my 5% to the 1% white citizens we will be rid of when we GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.  So, FCC Clyburn giving speeches right out of far-right global Wall Street think tanks making it all sound good for WE THE PEOPLE.


'In short, Title II was designed for the bygone world of
monopoly-provided telephone service. It never was
intended, as advocates of extending Title II to the
Internet now urge, to apply to services that were not
characterized by monopoly, such as Internet access'.

Breaking up the MA BELLS now ATT calling them a monopoly will occur with this recent mandate for ATT to sell its hold on telecom lines.  We will see ATT fade and merge with what is now a real global telecom monopoly of Verizon and Comcast.  What Clyburn did as well was to send SPRINT to JAPANESE ownership which with T MOBILE being German making that ONE WORLD ONE TELECOM multinational structure.  It will be Asian nations taking over the hardware sector of telecom.  All this is done to assure each Foreign Economic Zone globally allows presence of all these multinational telecom structures then merging into ONE WORLD ONE TELECOM.


Below we see the United Nations and the global neo-liberal FOREIGN AFFAIRS journal both calling for NET NEUTRALITY.  Again, when global Wall Street uses these terms it is referring to global corporations and their access.  When they say all this consolidation is CONSUMER-FRIENDLY they mean global industries buying global telecom products and services----NOT WE THE 99% OF PEOPLE.  Yes, 5G with tri-banding is necessary for DRIVERLESS VEHICLES which will be almost exclusively used by global transportation, global factories with their robotics, and who doesn't want a SMART HOUSE with a medicine cabinet telling us we are low on prescriptions?  THAT IS A MUST FOR WE THE PEOPLE!  Of course none of this is for the 99% and we will not be able to access any of these increasing high-speed broadband structures outside of the workplace.

Republicans Fear Net Neutrality Plan Could Lead to UN Internet Powers

An Obama administration official dismisses any link between the FCC's rules and international authority over the Internet.

 Ethernet cables lead to a server at the Rittal stand at the 2013 CeBIT technology trade fair the day before the fair opens to visitors on March 4, 2013 in Hanover, Germany. National Journal

• Brendan Sasso
• Feb 25, 2015

 




Subscribe to The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy Daily, a roundup of ideas and events in American politics.



The U.S. government's plan to enact strong net neutrality regulations could embolden authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to seize more power over the Internet through the United Nations, a key Senate Republican warned Wednesday.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune of South Dakota argued that by claiming more authority over Internet access for net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission will undermine the ability of the U.S. to push back against international plots to control the Internet and censor content.


Countries like Russia already have made it clear that they want the International Telecommunications Union or another United Nations body to have more power over the Internet, Thune said.

"It seems like reclassifying broadband, as the administration is doing, is losing a valuable argument," Thune said at his panel's hearing on Internet governance. "How do you prevent ITU involvement when you're pushing to reclassify the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act, and is everyone aware of that inherent contradiction?"


On Thursday, the FCC is set to vote on net neutrality regulations that would declare Internet access a "telecommunications service" under Title II. Advocates, including President Obama, argue that the move is the only way the FCC can enact rules that will hold up to legal challenges in court. The rules aim to prevent Internet providers from acting as "gatekeepers" and controlling what content users can access online.

David Gross, a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein who advises tech and telecom companies, agreed with Thune's warning.
The U.S. has consistently argued that the Internet is not a "telecommunication service" and therefore outside of the authority of the International Telecommunications Union, he explained. "If they were to find that Internet service is a telecommunications service, that would undoubtedly make the job of my successors much more complicated," Gross, a former ambassador to the ITU during the George W. Bush administration, said.

A top Obama administration official dismissed the comparison between net neutrality and UN control of the Internet.
"I don't think it's quite as stark as your description suggests, senator," Larry Strickling, the Commerce Department's assistant secretary for communications and information, replied to Thune.
He acknowledged that countries like China and Russia are actively looking for ways to claim more power over the Internet through the UN. But there's nothing inconsistent about the U.S. opposing those efforts and supporting tough net neutrality rules, he argued.

Europe and Canada already consider the Internet a telecommunications service and have joined the U.S. in opposing pushes for more UN influence, Strickling said. No one has claimed that their position is hypocritical, he said.

"I fundamentally don't think this will change matters going forward," Stickling said. "The United States is opposed to intergovernmental resolution to these Internet issues. We will remain opposed to that."

Later in the hearing, Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat and net neutrality supporter, argued that the FCC's rules will strengthen the ability of the U.S. to push for a free and open Internet on the international stage.

"I hope that our strong net neutrality rules can be the basis for an open Internet," Cantwell said.

__________________________________________

Here is Bill Gate's Microsoft MARIA CANTWELL saying just that----when global Wall Street says OPEN INTERNET it means a global 1% open market.  She says we have strong net neutrality rules as all our telecom structures are privatized to global corporations with NO REGULATION. Cantwell is of course a far-right wing global Wall Street running as a Democrat in Washington State---

'Later in the hearing, Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat and net neutrality supporter, argued that the FCC's rules will strengthen the ability of the U.S. to push for a free and open Internet on the international stage.
"I hope that our strong net neutrality rules can be the basis for an open Internet," Cantwell said'.

When each US Foreign Economic Zone acting as an independent CITY STATE tied to the global corporate tribunal as ECONOMIC COLONIES have all their air wavelength privatized to multinational corporations having the power of pushing a button to disable all energy and telcom power at a whim----you have a far-right wing, authoritarian, totalitarian governance.

The national media knows the uses of these terms geared towards the 99% of consumers is really geared towards ONE WORLD ONE TELECOM -----but they continue to allow global Wall Street pols to pretend they are working to protect WE THE PEOPLE.

AMAZON AND MICROSOFT WORKING TOWARD NET NEUTRALITY -----OH, THEY MUST BE THE GOOD BILLIONAIRES.  NO, THEY ARE ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE TELECOM.
Blogs
Cantwell Stuck in Neutral(ity?)

By Art Brodsky
May 24, 2006
Net Neutrality, Policy Blog

With the Senate Commerce Committee scheduled to have a hearing tomorrow (May 25) on Net Neutrality, we will have a chance to answer one of the real puzzlements of the debate:


Where is Maria Cantwell?



Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) has a long and distinguished record in the tech sector. As a member of the House of Representatives in the early 1990s, she successfully fought off the Clinton Administration plan to put an decoding device in everyone's telephone -- the Clipper Chip -- that would allow the government to have access to encrypted telephone conversations.

After losing her House seat in the Republican sweep in 1994, she went to Real Networks before her political comeback in 2000, winning the Senate seat. She's up for re-election this year. Her challenger, Mike McGavick, is a well-funded candidate with lots of business backing and support from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), with whom Cantwell fought over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

There is certainly some hometown support for Cantwell to come out in favor of Net Neutrality. Amazon has been engaged in this issue for years. Microsoft has come on as well, and both are part of the coalition working for Net Neutrality legislation.

The hometown Seattle Times on May 22 published an editorial, "Ill effects of a gated cyber world." The editorial was short and to the point. Here's a sample: "If computer-network providers are allowed to hijack the Internet, the damage will go much deeper than the consumers' wallets. Democracy will be at risk with the inevitable limiting of voices if Internet neutrality is not ensured."

The editorial concluded: "The biggest loser in a gated cyber world would be American democracy. Democracy is already suffering from the effects of consolidation, especially in the media where only a handful of companies either own outright or own interests in films, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, book publishing, and any other media channel that can be devoured. Congress should think of that before funneling more power into the hands of a few."

But there are pressures on the other side. The great weapon that the Bell companies yield is that they have thousands of employees in every state. There are about 4,000 Qwest workers in Washington state, and probably a few thousand retirees also. During the debate on the House version of a telecom bill, Kirk Nelson, Qwest's Washington state president, sent a letter to all employees. Here's what it said:


Dear Fellow Washington Employee:

Qwest needs your help on an important legislative issue. Specifically, I'd like you to contact your congressional representative in support of the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act, legislation that will streamline the way local television franchises are negotiated.

COPE is expected to be considered by the House of Representatives sometime next week. Passage of this bill will help Qwest and other companies compete against the cable monopolies. Because of this, Qwest supports this legislation.

The cable monopolies and their allies want to kill the bill and are orchestrating their own letter writing campaign. That's why it's critical that you contact your representative and urge a "YES" vote.

I've attached a link below that will automatically prepare a letter for your elected representative. It's easy and will only take a minute. All you have to do is enter your name, home and e-mail addresses, and click the "send" button.

In addition to asking for their support of the bill, the letter urges "NO" votes on two amendments backed by our opponents. The first will mandate build-out requirements for second-entrants to the TV market, and the second creates unnecessary laws -- termed "net neutrality mandates" -- that will prevent companies like Qwest from entering into commercial agreements with Internet content providers. I've included more details on each amendment below.

Again, please take a minute today to urge congressional support for COPE. This bill is not only important to Qwest, it's important to millions of consumers across our region who are looking for relief from soaring cable rates. Click http://qwest-cope.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/48428/28752450/www.capwiz.com/qwestoutreach here to send your letter.


Sincerely,
Kirk Nelson


P.S. I'll keep you updated on the success of our letter writing drive and the outcome of the House vote. Again, please send your letter today!

Amendment Detail:

• Build-out Mandates: Build-out mandates require massive investment regardless of consumer interest or technical feasibility. Instead of promoting deployment, these mandates stymie it. If a build-out mandate were imposed, franchise areas that could benefit from some competition would see none.
• Net Neutrality Mandates: Qwest strongly supports net neutrality. However, we oppose amendments that impose other, so called, net neutrality mandates. Internet providers and carriers should not be prevented from reaching commercial agreements for network services that enhance their products without raising consumer prices. Additional net neutrality amendments are unnecessary and will stifle innovation and investment.

That little link in the middle takes you to a web site with a form letter for Qwest employees to send letters to Congress. Here's the test of the Net Neutrality part of the letter: "Net Neutrality Mandates: Qwest favors the net neutrality safeguards codified in COPE. However, we oppose amendments that impose other, so called, net neutrality mandates. Internet providers and carriers should not be prevented from reaching commercial agreements for network services that enhance their products without raising consumer prices. Additional net neutrality amendments are unnecessary and will stifle innovation and investment. Please vote NO."

One doubts the message will change when the Senate Commerce Committee marks up its bill, a session now scheduled for mid-June.

At this point, Cantwell is in fairly good shape. She's got about a 10-point lead in the polls, and has raised about $8.6 million, contrasted with about $2.6 million for McGavick through the end of March. As a first-term Senator, she wants to make certain she gets a second term and doesn't want to take unnecessary chances.
But Net Neutrality should be an issue on which she takes a stand, not only for because of Microsoft, Amazon and Real Networks, but for everyone in the state.

UPDATE: Sen. Cantwell didn't make an appearance at the Commerce Committee's May 25 hearing on Net Neutrality.

_______________________________________

When Obama and Clinton neo-liberals pretend they are fighting for net neutrality and small business integration into what is called deregulated, competition-driven privatization and then, at the very end of Obama's terms he installs an FCC CLYBURN to install every telecom policy bad for WE THE PEOPLE---we are seeing left progressive posing. We know from 2009 forward that FCC was working towards CLYBURN's policies.


While the American people were listening to national media pretend Obama's earlier appointments were worried about too much consolidation, not enough net neutrality----here is Genachowski as a VENTURE CAPITALIST no doubt out of the FCC funding all kinds of privatized, broadband corporations to his enrichment.  We never expected this appointment to protect WE THE PEOPLE.  So bringing an FCC CLYBURN in at the last minute was designed to make it appear Congressional pols and appointments were working for the 99%. 

IT IS ALL KABUKI THEATER.

Any organization pretending that what the FCC under Obama was doing was NET NEUTRALITY FOR 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE knew this was about ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE TELECOM.


'Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson loves President-Elect Obama's choice to chair the FCC, Julius Genachowski. In a post titled, "This News Made Me Smile A Mile Wide," Fred lists 10 reasons why:

• The new head of the FCC reads [A VC]. He's heard me talk about the issues he'll now make policy on. And he's heard your views on those issues.
• He's a venture capitalist, at least that's what he's been doing for the past couple years.
• He's an internet executive, at least that's what he did for most of this decade when he helped Barry Diller assemble and build IAC'.

Failure of US to allow OPEN INTERNET with foreign corporations integrated into its global telecom structure would hamper other Foreign Economic Zones in other nations from OPEN INTERNET----ergo, ONE WORLD ONE TELECOM.

This article is long but looks at the policy issue broadly.  Remember, this talk of innovations and startups are tied to global corporations and their needs----it has nothing to do with small business and individual citizens creating an internet environment.


'In the United States, both small and large providers have already violated the very principles that net neutrality is designed to protect'.



The Case for Net Neutrality

What’s Wrong With Obama’s Internet Policy
By Marvin Ammori

For all the withering criticism leveled at the White House for its botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, that debacle is not the biggest technology-related failure of Barack Obama’s presidency. That inauspicious distinction belongs to his administration’s incompetence in another area: reneging on Obama’s signature pledge to ensure “net neutrality,” the straightforward but powerful idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all traffic that goes through their networks the same. Net neutrality holds that ISPs shouldn’t offer preferential treatment to some websites over others or charge some companies arbitrary fees to reach users. By this logic, AT&T, for example, shouldn’t be allowed to grant iTunes Radio a special “fast lane” for its data while forcing Spotify to make do with choppier service.

On the campaign trail in 2007, Obama called himself “a strong supporter of net neutrality” and promised that under his administration, the Federal Communications Commission would defend that principle. But in the last few months, his FCC appears to have given up on the goal of maintaining an open Internet. This past January, a U.S. federal appeals court, in a case brought by Verizon, struck down the net neutrality rules adopted by the FCC in 2010, which came close to fulfilling Obama’s pledge despite a few loopholes. Shortly after the court’s decision, Netflix was reportedly forced to pay Comcast tens of millions of dollars per year to ensure that Netflix users who connect to the Internet through Comcast could stream movies reliably; Apple reportedly entered into its own negotiations with Comcast to secure its own special treatment. Sensing an opening, AT&T and Verizon filed legal documents urging the FCC to allow them to set up a new pricing scheme in which they could charge every website a different price for such special treatment.

Obama wasn’t responsible for the court’s decision, but in late April, the administration signaled that it would reverse course on net neutrality and give ISPs just what they wanted. FCC Chair Tom Wheeler circulated a proposal to the FCC’s four other commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, for rules that would allow broadband providers to charge content providers for faster, smoother service. The proposal would also authorize ISPs to make exclusive deals with particular providers, so that PayPal could be the official payment processor for Verizon, for example, or Amazon Prime could be the official video provider for Time Warner Cable.

Word of the proposal leaked to the press and sparked an immediate backlash. One hundred and fifty leading technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Kickstarter, sent a letter to the FCC calling the plan a “grave threat to the Internet.” In their own letter to the FCC, over 100 of the nation’s leading venture capital investors wrote that the proposal, if adopted as law, would “stifle innovation,” since many start-ups and entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to afford to access a fast lane. Activist groups organized protests outside the FCC’s headquarters in Washington and accused Wheeler, a former lobbyist for both the cable and the wireless industries, of favoring his old clients over the public interest. Nonetheless, on May 15, the FCC released its official proposal, concluding tentatively that it could authorize fast lanes and slow lanes on the Internet. Although the FCC is now officially gathering feedback on that proposal, it has promised to adopt a final rule by the end of this year.

Despite the missteps so far, the administration still has a second chance to fix its Internet policy, just as it did with HealthCare.gov. Preferably working with policymakers of all stripes supportive of open markets, it should ensure that the FCC adopts rules that maintain the Internet as basic infrastructure that can be used by entrepreneurs, businesses, and average citizens alike -- not a limited service controlled by a few large corporations. In the arcane world of federal administrative agencies, that guarantee comes down to whether the FCC adopts rules that rely on flimsy legal grounds, as it has in the past, or ones that rely on the solid foundation of its main regulatory authority over “common carriers,” the legal term the U.S. government uses to describe firms that transport people, goods, or messages for a fee, such as trains and telephone companies. In 1910, Congress designated telephone wires as a common carrier service and decreed that the federal government should regulate electronic information traveling over wires in the same way that it regulated the movement of goods and passengers on railroads across state lines through the now defunct Interstate Commerce Commission, which meant that Congress could prevent companies from engaging in discrimination and charging unreasonable access fees. When the FCC was created in 1934 by the Communications Act, those common carrier rules were entrusted to it through a section of the law known as Title II. Today, the broadband wires and networks on which the Internet relies are the modern-day equivalent of these phone lines, and they should be regulated as such: like telephone companies before them, ISPs should be considered common carriers. This classification is crucial to protecting the Internet as public infrastructure that users can access equally, whether they run a multinational corporation or write a political blog.

However, in 2002, Michael Powell, then chair of the FCC, classified ISPs not as common carriers but as “an information service,” which has handicapped the FCC’s ability to enforce net neutrality and regulate ISPs ever since. If ISPs are not reclassified as common carriers, Internet infrastructure will suffer. By authorizing payments for fast lanes, the FCC will encourage ISPs to cater to those customers able and willing to pay a premium, at the expense of upgrading infrastructure for those in the slow lanes.

The stakes for the U.S. economy are high: failing to ban ISPs from discriminating against companies would make it harder for tech entrepreneurs to compete, because the costs of entry would rise and ISPs could seek to hobble service for competitors unwilling or unable to pay special access fees. Foreign countries would likely follow Washington’s lead, enacting protectionist measures that would close off foreign markets to U.S. companies. But the harm would extend even further. Given how much the Internet has woven itself into every aspect of daily life, the laws governing it shape economic and political decisions around the world and affect every industry, almost every business, and billions of people. If the Obama administration fails to reverse course on net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a patchwork of fiefdoms, with untold ripple effects.

INNOVATION SUPERHIGHWAY

Net neutrality is not some esoteric concern; it has been a major contributor to the success of the Internet economy. Unlike in the late 1990s, when users accessed relatively hived-off areas of cyberspace through slow dial-up connections, the Internet is now defined by integration. The credit for this improvement goes to high-speed connections, cellular networks, and short-distance wireless technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth, which have allowed companies large and small -- from Google to Etsy -- to link up computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearable electronics. But all this integration has relied on a critical feature of the global Internet: no one needs permission from anyone to do anything.

Historically, ISPs have acted as gateways to all the wonderful (or not so wonderful) things connected to the Internet. But they have not acted as gatekeepers, determining which files and servers should load better or worse. From day one, the Internet was a public square, and the providers merely connected everyone, rather than regulating who spoke with whom. That allowed the Internet to evolve into a form of basic infrastructure, used by over a billion people today.

The Internet’s openness has radically transformed all kinds of industries, from food delivery to finance, by lowering the barriers to entry. It has allowed a few bright engineers or students with an idea to launch a business that would be immediately available all over the world to over a billion potential customers. Start-ups don’t need the leverage and bank accounts of Apple or Google to get reliable service to reach their users. In fact, historically, they have not paid any arbitrary fees to providers to reach users. Their costs often involve nothing more than hard work, inexpensive cloud computing tools, and off-the-shelf laptops and mobile devices, which are getting more powerful and cheaper by the day. As Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and a venture capitalist, has pointed out, the cost of running a basic Internet application fell from $150,000 a month in 2000 to $1,500 a month in 2011. It continues to fall.

In some ways, the Internet is just the latest and perhaps most impressive of what economists call “general-purpose technologies,” from the steam engine to the electricity grid, all of which, since their inception, have had a massively disproportionate impact on innovation and economic growth. In a 2012 report, the Boston Consulting Group found that the Internet economy accounted for 4.1 percent (about $2.3 trillion) of GDP in the G-20 countries in 2010. If the Internet were a national economy, the report noted, it would be among the five largest in the world, ahead of Germany. And a 2013 Kauffman Foundation report showed that in the previous three decades, the high-tech sector was 23 percent more likely, and the information technology sector 48 percent more likely, to give birth to new businesses than the private sector overall.

That growth, impressive as it is, could be just the beginning, as everyday objects, such as household devices and cars, go online as part of “the Internet of Things.” John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems, has predicted that the Internet of Things could create a $19 trillion market in the near future. Mobile-based markets will only expand, too; the Boston Consulting Group projects that mobile devices will account for four out of five broadband connections by 2016.


NOT NEUTRALITY

All this innovation has taken place without the permission of ISPs. But that could change as net neutrality comes under threat. ISPs have consistently maintained that net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem, but this often-repeated phrase is simply wrong. In the United States, both small and large providers have already violated the very principles that net neutrality is designed to protect. Ever since 2005, the FCC has pursued a policy that resembles net neutrality but that allows enough room for interpretation for firms to find ways to undermine it. From 2005 to 2008, the largest ISP in the United States, Comcast, used technologies that monitor all the data coming from users to secretly block so-called peer-to-peer technologies, such as BitTorrent and Gnutella. These tools are popular for streaming online TV (sometimes illegally), using cloud-based storage and sharing services such as those provided by Amazon, and communicating through online phone services such as Skype. In 2005, a small ISP in North Carolina called Madison River Communications blocked Vonage, a company that allows customers to make cheap domestic and international telephone calls over the Internet. From 2007 to 2009, AT&T’s contract with Apple required the latter to block Skype and other competing phone services on the iPhone, so that customers could not use them when connected to a cellular network. From 2011 to 2013, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon blocked all the functionality of Google Wallet, a mobile payment system, on Google Nexus smartphones, likely because all three providers are part of a competing joint venture called Isis.


In the EU, widespread violations of net neutrality affect at least one in five users, according to a 2012 report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. Restrictions affect everything from online phone services and peer-to-peer technologies to gaming applications and e-mail. In 2011, the Netherlands’ dominant mobile carrier, KPN, saw that its text-messaging revenue was plummeting and made moves to block applications such as WhatsApp and Skype, which allow users to send free texts. Across the Atlantic, in 2005, the Canadian telecommunications company Telus used its control of the wires to block the website of a union member taking part in a strike against the company.

Opponents of net neutrality insist that efforts to enforce it are unnecessary, because market competition will ensure that companies act in their customers’ best interests. But true competition doesn’t exist among ISPs. In the United States, local cable monopolies are often the only game in town when it comes to high-speed access and usually control over two-thirds of the market. In places where there are real options, users rarely switch services because of the penalties that providers charge them for terminating their contracts early.

Some skeptics of strong regulation have proposed rules requiring companies merely to disclose their technical discrimination policies, but those wouldn’t solve the problem either. Even in the United Kingdom, which boasts both healthy competition among ISPs and robust disclosure laws, companies still frequently discriminate against various types of Internet traffic. Indeed, wherever you look, the absence of rules enforcing net neutrality virtually guarantees that someone will violate the principle. As it stands now, after the FCC’s rules were struck down in January, U.S. law does little to protect net neutrality. As companies push the boundaries, violations will become more common -- and not just in the United States.

If the FCC doesn’t rein in U.S. ISPs, there is likely to be a domino effect abroad. Some foreign officials view the net neutrality movement as nothing more than an attempt to protect U.S. technology companies, since given their size, they are the main beneficiaries of net neutrality abroad. (Twitter, for example, does well in foreign markets only where the government doesn’t block it and carriers don’t charge extra for it.) Foreign ISPs have long hoped to exclude U.S. companies from their markets or at least charge them for access, and if U.S. providers are allowed to play similar games in the United States, it will give foreign governments the perfect excuse to give their ISPs what they want. Similarly, if the U.S. government continues to allow American ISPs to block or charge foreign technology companies, such as Spotify, which is based in Sweden, then sooner or later, other countries are likely to retaliate by giving their own providers a similar right. The result would be a global patchwork of fees and discriminatory rules.

Another danger is that if the Internet becomes less open in the United States, some forward-thinking foreign governments could enhance their net neutrality protections as a way of luring U.S. entrepreneurs and engineers to move abroad. Soon after the U.S. federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules in January, Neelie Kroes, a vice president of the EU Commission who is responsible for its digital agenda, asked on Twitter if she should “invite newly disadvantaged US startups to [the] EU, so they have a fair chance.” By early April, the European Parliament had adopted tough net neutrality rules. Likewise, Chile, the first nation to adopt net neutrality rules, in 2010, has sought to attract global entrepreneurs through a government initiative called Start-Up Chile, which has invested millions of dollars in hundreds of foreign technology companies, most of which hail from the United States.


LIFE IN THE SLOW LAND

Imagine if, years ago, MySpace had cut deals with cable and phone companies to block Facebook, if Lycos had colluded with AltaVista to crush Google, if Microsoft had contracted with service providers to protect Internet Explorer by blocking Mozilla Firefox. If ISPs are allowed to block, discriminate, and charge for different applications, such scenarios could become commonplace. The main reason they have not been is because the FCC, in 2005, stated that Internet access should be “operated in a neutral manner” and subsequently stepped in a few times to enforce that policy: against Madison River Communications regarding Vonage, against Comcast regarding peer-to-peer services, and against AT&T and Apple regarding Skype. The enforcement has not been completely consistent -- in-store payments from Google Wallet are still being blocked on AT&T’s, Verizon’s, and T-Mobile’s wireless networks -- but it has still largely succeeded in imposing some discipline on the market.

Without that FCC regulation, the Internet would have come to look very different than it does today -- a lot more like the cable industry, in fact. For decades, cable companies, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and satellite TV providers, such as DirecTV, have acquired equity stakes in channels as part of their carriage deals. That arrangement has resulted in disputes over price tiers, with smaller channels claiming they get put into more expensive, limited service packages than a cable company’s own channels. In a lengthy dispute with Comcast, for example, the independently owned Tennis Channel argued that it should be placed in the same basic service package as the Golf Channel and the NBC Sports Network, two sports channels that Comcast owns and provides to all its subscribers. In May 2013, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled in Comcast’s favor; the Tennis Channel appealed to the Supreme Court, which in February declined to hear the case. Internet companies have never had to give up equity stakes as part of service deals to reach users or had to compete with firms that are owned by ISPs and thus given preferential treatment. And most of them would have run out of funding during the years of litigation if they had taken legal action like the Tennis Channel has.

A scenario in which websites have to acquiesce to ISPs in order to secure competitive access to the Internet would kill innovation. Small companies would no longer be able to reach every segment of the market at no extra cost. A new company’s rivals, if they could afford it, would be able to pay for better service, thereby reducing consumers’ choices. Many start-ups would be unable to pay expensive access fees and would simply not start up in the first place. Investors would end up putting larger sums in fewer companies, and with no clear limit on how much ISPs could charge, the potential rewards from successful investments might be smaller and would certainly be more uncertain than they are today.

It is unrealistic to expect competition among ISPs to prevent or limit such fees; it hasn’t done so in the United Kingdom and other European markets. Nor can one argue that ISPs need the money. They already enjoy comically high profit margins on broadband delivery, and their operating costs continue to decrease. In weighing the potential damage to entrepreneurship against the financial gains of a few huge telecommunications companies, the U.S. government should back the entrepreneurs.

That’s especially so since without net neutrality, telecommunications and cable companies could also stifle free expression by favoring the websites and applications of the largest media conglomerates over those of nonprofit news organizations, bloggers, and independent journalists and filmmakers. Permitting media giants to pay for a fast lane unavailable to all online outlets would raise the barriers to entry for all new publishing and sharing tools -- eliminating innovations along the lines of Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress. These tools, most of which started with extremely small investments, have helped citizens find new ways to petition and protest against their governments. New and better tools of this kind will continue to emerge only if the field is left open.


KEEPING THE INTERNET OPEN

The Obama administration needs to get the rules governing the Internet right. Obama’s initial, feeble attempts to do so came during his first term, when the FCC was chaired by Julius Genachowski, a law school classmate of Obama’s who demonstrated a distinct lack of political insight and courage on the job. In 2010, the FCC adopted a set of net neutrality rules know as the Open Internet Order, which barred providers from blocking or giving preferential access to particular websites and applications and required more disclosure about their policies. Moreover, in the order, the FCC effectively prohibited ISPs from creating and charging for fast lanes, declaring them unreasonable. But under pressure from ISPs, Genachowski punched two gaping loopholes into these rules. He exempted mobile access from the order, even though more people now go online through their cell phones than through their home computers. He also made it possible for ISPs to violate net neutrality through connection deals that they make directly with websites -- a loophole that Comcast has exploited in its shakedown of Netflix.

Ultimately, however, it was the FCC’s 2002 definition of ISPs as “an information service,” rather than a “common carrier,” that overwhelmed the weak rules established in 2010. Last year, Verizon challenged the 2010 rules, arguing that they went beyond the FCC’s jurisdiction given the commission’s own classification of ISPs as an information service. Since they were not common carriers, they could not be regulated according to Title II of the Communications Act, which would allow the FCC to treat them like telephone companies and ban unreasonable Internet discrimination and access fees. In January, a U.S. federal appeals court agreed with Verizon and struck down the 2010 FCC rules.

In legal terms, the FCC can easily address all these issues when it adopts a new order later this year. By reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, the FCC could regulate them as it does phone companies. It should not shy away from using the authority that Congress gave it; the Supreme Court, in 2005, made clear that the FCC has the power to change ISPs’ classification. Getting the legal definition right is crucial, since the FCC’s last two attempts to enforce net neutrality were struck down in court on jurisdictional grounds, first in April 2010, in a case brought by Comcast, and then in January of this year. In both cases, rather than relying on its main authority over common carriers under Title II, the FCC attempted to impose net neutrality requirements through weaker regulatory authorities, including Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gives the FCC the authority to regulate broadband infrastructure deployment. Each time, the court’s ruling was sharply dismissive of the FCC’s legal reasoning, as nondiscrimination rules can be applied only to common carriers.

In addition to fixing the FCC’s legal footing, the new order should close the two loopholes in the moribund 2010 rules. First, there should be no exceptions for restrictions on mobile access. That is particularly important since many start-ups now develop applications initially or even exclusively for mobile phones, such as Instagram and Uber. The FCC should also make clear that ISPs cannot charge websites for direct connections to their networks, as Comcast has done with Netflix.

But Wheeler, Obama’s FCC chair, has indicated that he prefers a different path. In late April, in an attempt at damage control after the FCC’s new proposed rules were leaked, Wheeler wrote in a blog post on the FCC’s website that he wouldn’t “hesitate to use Title II” at some undefined future date. But instead of invoking those powers directly, the May 15 proposal tentatively concluded that the FCC would again rely on Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act as the basis for its legal authority, although it did say that it would also consider the use of Title II. Section 706 is the same flawed authority that the FCC already relied on in its 2010 rules and that the appeals court in January already held could not support restrictions against discrimination or fast lanes. Wheeler appears to have chosen this path because it is easier politically; the ISPs will not complain, since they are getting everything they wanted.

Although the Obama administration and the FCC are the main decision-makers, Republicans should recognize the need to support an open Internet. Over the years, some Republicans, including former FCC Chair Kevin Martin, who served under President George W. Bush; former House Representative Charles “Chip” Pickering; and former Senator Olympia Snowe, have supported net neutrality as the best way to promote entrepreneurship, free-market competition, and free speech. Opposing an open Internet now would put the party on the wrong side of its values and on the wrong side of history.

A country’s Internet infrastructure, just like its physical infrastructure, is essential to its economic competition and growth. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, high-speed Internet is not only slower in New York City and San Francisco than it is in Seoul; it also costs five times as much. Suffering from an even more expensive, less robust, and more fragmented Internet infrastructure would put the entire U.S. economy in a global slow lane.

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain an a engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe -- or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests. The Obama administration should focus its energy and resources on net neutrality and make sure that the FCC does the right thing for the U.S. and global economies. If it does not, many online businesses will soon have the kinds of problems usually associated with certain failed government websites.

_____________________________________________


This is a good description of what REAL US FCC net neutrality for the 99% should look like. The FCC is tasked with CONSUMER PROTECTION ---that being WE THE PEOPLE. They of course see CONSUMERS as they the global 1% corporations.
The FCC under an ATT monopoly was able to assure all regions both rural and urban had the infrastructure needed to receive dependable TV, RADIO, and later INTERNET keeping these rates affordable because our Federal taxpayer money subsidized ATT in building that HARD-TELECOM WIRING. We have had that affordability until CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA now we are seeing taxes, fees, rates climbing and this is only the beginning.
WE MUST REVERSE THIS MOVING FORWARD PRIVATIZATION---IT IS ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND IS NOT CONSUMER-FRIENDLY. WE NEED THESE VITAL UTILITIES REGULATED.
The US has always been open to foreign journalism----foreign corporations and global markets----we can do that with keeping our US air waves sovereign and regulated for WE THE PEOPLE.


Making the Internet a utility—what’s the worst that could happen?


A cable lobby lawyer reveals the industry’s darkest fears.Jon Brodkin - 12/17/2014, 9:00 PM

The cable industry takes a subtle approach to anti-Title II advertising.
National Cable & Telecommunications Association

315 There seems to be nothing the broadband industry fears more than Title II of the Communications Act.



Title II gives the Federal Communications Commission power to regulate telecommunications providers as utilities or "common carriers." Like landline phone providers, common carriers must offer service to the public on reasonable terms. To regulate Internet service providers (ISPs) as utilities, the FCC must reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, a move that consumer advocacy groups and even President Obama have pushed the FCC to take.

Under Obama's proposal, the reclassification would only be used to impose net neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling applications and websites or from charging applications and websites for prioritized access to consumers. The FCC would be expected to avoid imposing more stringent utility rules in a legal process known as "forbearance."

Although Title II offers perks that help providers build out networks, ISPs and telecom industry groups have argued that Title II would bring a host of oppressive regulations that the FCC would have a hard time not imposing. They claim that Title II will impose so many extra costs that they’ll be forced to raise prices—though customers might point out that ISPs aren’t shy about raising prices to begin with.

So what, exactly, are ISPs afraid of?

We wanted to find out what the worst-case scenario for broadband providers is. Hypothetically, assuming the FCC were to impose all possible Title II regulations (even though Obama specifically said he doesn’t want that to happen), what kinds of new regulations would ISPs have to follow and what new costs would they absorb? And would consumers pay the price in higher bills and worse service?

The cable industry has a lot to say on this subject


To get answers, we spoke with the biggest cable industry trade group, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). It represents cable providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Cablevision, and Charter.

One big requirement Title II could bring is regulation of rates charged by Internet providers, either imposing a uniform limit on what all providers can charge or forcing each one to get permission for price increases and justify them based upon the amount they invest in their networks.

Theoretically, the FCC could also enforce “local loop unbundling,” which would force network operators to lease access to last mile infrastructure. In turn, this could bring a new set of competitors who would resell Internet service over the incumbents’ networks without having to lay their own wires throughout each city and town, similar to how the DSL market operated before the FCC removed the unbundling requirement in 2005.
On the plus side for cable companies, the NCTA is confident the FCC won’t enforce local loop unbundling.
“The thing that worries people the most is probably rate regulation.”

“Unbundling in the [Communications] Act, is under Section 251C, which only applies to incumbent local exchange carriers,” Steve Morris, the NCTA’s associate general counsel, told Ars.

An incumbent local exchange carrier, or “ILEC,” is a telephone company that held a regional monopoly before the markets were opened to competitive local exchange carriers or “CLECs.”

“Our preliminary view is that there’s no way you could find that an ISP is an incumbent local exchange carrier, so those provisions should not apply to ISPs,” Morris said. Landline phone companies that also offer Internet service, like AT&T and Verizon, are still ILECs and could theoretically be subject to unbundling. But this isn’t likely given that the FCC abandoned unbundling nearly a decade ago.

While other Title II regulations wouldn’t necessarily apply to Internet providers because of the FCC's forbearance powers, industry groups argue that forbearance is a highly complicated process that will make it difficult for the FCC to avoid imposing common carrier rules that go far beyond net neutrality.
“I think the thing that worries people the most is probably rate regulation,” Morris said.

There are multiple markets in which the FCC could regulate the rates charged by Internet providers. The most obvious one is the prices charged to residential and business customers who subscribe to broadband. The NCTA doesn't seem worried about that.

“Most people seem to say the commission could forbear from that,” Morris said. “The president seemed to say there was no need for that sort of regulation.”

More likely, though, is regulation of the interconnection deals Internet service providers strike with other large network operators such as Level 3 and Cogent and online content providers such as Netflix. Netflix and others have called upon the FCC to mandate “settlement-free peering,” interconnection deals that happen without payment. Traditionally, payment-free interconnection has only been available in cases where the ISP and the entity it connects to exchange a roughly equal amount of traffic. Netflix wants free network access regardless of whether the traffic is balanced, and the site could get its wish with Title II.

“Netflix and Level 3 and Cogent have all been pushing for mandatory, settlement-free interconnection and traffic exchange,” Morris said. “Well, that’s rate regulation. You know, saying that someone has to do something at a zero price, that’s rate regulation.”

The primary goal of net neutrality advocates is to outlaw paid prioritization deals in which online content providers pay to have their traffic sped up over the so-called “last mile,” the path from the edge of an ISP’s network to a consumer’s home. (ISPs have not struck any such deals yet, but they could because the FCC's prior net neutrality rules were overturned in a court order in January 2014.) Interconnection is different from paid prioritization; it occurs only at the edge of an ISP's network where it connects to the rest of the Internet and would not be affected by most net neutrality proposals.


The FCC is reviewing interconnection deals but hasn’t said whether it plans to regulate interconnection rates. With Title II, it could insist on reasonable rates without necessarily requiring that interconnection be free. “Reasonable” would be left open to interpretation and decided on a case-by-case basis when there are complaints.

Harold Feld, an attorney and senior VP of the pro-Title II group Public Knowledge, pointed out that Section 251A of Title II requires telecommunications carriers to interconnect with other carriers. A requirement like this could have helped force Comcast’s hand when it was demanding payment from Cogent in exchange for upgrading links used to carry Netflix and other traffic. That dispute was settled indirectly when Netflix paid Comcast, but customers suffered from worse performance in the meantime.


Assuming Cogent was also considered a telecommunications provider, “the FCC could say, ‘look, you’re not allowed to sit there and do nothing when you’re faced with capacity constraints,’” Feld told Ars. “‘There has to be some way in which you upgrade to meet the capacity demand when it’s clear there is capacity demand.’ They could even say generally, ‘your pricing has to bear some relationship to cost.’”
Under Title II, Netflix could also complain to the FCC if it believed Comcast and other ISPs were charging unreasonable rates for interconnection, because Netflix would be a customer of a common carrier, Feld said.

But rate regulation isn't something the FCC does lightly. The commission has spent years gathering pricing data on the special access market, in which businesses such as Sprint and T-Mobile buy bandwidth from the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink, without making any final decision.



New taxes or just scare-mongering?

Although rate regulation on the consumer side could involve a mandate to keep broadband affordable for ordinary people, anti-Title II groups are arguing that utility status will bring new taxes that would cost customers billions of dollars a year.

“We have calculated that the average annual increase in state and local fees levied on US wireline and wireless broadband subscribers will be $67 and $72, respectively,” economists Robert Litan and Hal Singer argued in a policy brief by the Progressive Policy Institute this month. “And the annual increase in federal fees per household will be roughly $17. When you add it all up, reclassification could add a whopping $15 billion in new user fees.”

This analysis has been met with skepticism. For one thing, the US government bans state and local taxes on Internet service, potentially wiping out a large portion of the charges Litan and Singer predict. The moratorium has been in place for 15 years, and Congress just renewed it again. (Singer argues that their analysis focuses mostly on fees that are not outlawed by that moratorium.)

On the federal level, the hypothetical new fees would come from the Universal Service Fund (USF), which pays for broadband infrastructure in underserved areas with money collected as surcharges on phone bills.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former NCTA CEO himself, speaking to the cable industry in April 2014.
NCTA

Pro-Title II groups disagree with Litan and Singer, saying that the FCC wouldn’t have to impose USF charges on broadband. “On the matter of new federal and state USF fees, the FCC could decide to waive the requirement for providers to contribute a portion of their retail broadband revenues to the federal USF,” wrote Matt Wood, policy director of consumer advocacy group Free Press. “The Commission could do this because a cost-benefit analysis might show that the additional fees would depress overall broadband adoption among poor and elderly communities—which would go against the USF’s very mission.”

Besides that, Wood argued that the Universal Service Fund could remain the same size, so that surcharges on broadband would be offset by reductions in surcharges on wireless and wired phone lines.

Singer made a point-by-point response to Wood’s rebuttal, and the NCTA claims to be convinced that Title II will bring some onerous new fees. Litan and Singer supplied “an important analysis which demonstrates that consumers will be on the hook for billions of dollars in new taxes and fees under a Title II regime,” an NCTA spokesperson told Ars. “The significant increase in consumer taxes further demonstrates why Title II should be rejected. If connecting all Americans to broadband service is a true national priority, imposing billions of dollars in new taxes on this service is a perplexing way to accomplish that goal.”


Big Cable's multi-faceted argument, continued

Here is a summary of a few other concerns raised by the NCTA:


The right to stop service

Broadband providers classed as common carriers might need to seek permission to discontinue service in unprofitable areas.

“For the most part that has not been a problem for our companies,” Morris said. “Usually we get into a business because we want to be in the business and we’re not planning to get out of the business. But those issues are coming up much more now on the telco side as they try to move to IP [Internet Protocol] and move to more fiber. It may not be as big a concern as some of the other things we’ve talked about but if there are a lot of hurdles we have to jump through to get out of a business or a service, it makes you have to think a lot harder about getting into it in the first place. If you have a service and you think there’s consumer interest, but you’re not really sure, you may be hesitant to try it if once you offer it you’re not going to be able to stop offering it.”


Rules affect small ISPs, too

“Every article you read about this, it’s always Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, and certainly a significant percent of customers get their service from those big companies,” Morris said. But there are hundreds if not thousands of small ISPs serving small areas. The American Cable Association alone represents 900 smaller operators.

“We have some small members," Morris said. "Not only do they not have the ability to charge Netflix, Netflix doesn’t even come to [their facilities]. These guys have to go somewhere to meet Netflix and pay to get there. These are companies that serve a few hundred or a few thousand customers… They’ve invested private capital in places that are hard to serve. They’re sometimes family businesses. They’re working to bring the people who live in their community good Internet service and the idea that they’re going to need to hire lawyers and other specialists to make sure they’re in compliance with a whole new set of regulations when everybody is fine with the way they offer service today, it’s crazy.”


Pole attachment rates

Cable companies typically lease pole space from electric companies and sometimes phone companies. If cable providers were classed as telecommunications carriers, “there’d be the possibility of significant increases in the fees we’d have to pay the utilities for the exact same attachments that we have,” Morris said. “How you’re classified affects what you have to pay. It’s not a logical regime but that’s how it works.” (Google has since pointed out that Title II reclassification might help its own Internet service, Google Fiber, secure access to "poles, ducts, conduits, and rights-of-way owned or controlled by utilities.")

Tariffs

Common carriers have to post tariffs stating the terms and conditions and rates for the services they offer, and the FCC can object to the terms and ask for changes, Morris said. The FCC has generally held that advertisements can count as a carrier’s tariff, according to Feld.


Uncertainty

“If all the commission said was, ‘residential broadband Internet access service is subject to Title II,' everyone would have to work through what does that mean, which statutory provisions apply, which rules apply, and in some cases it’s not necessarily going to be clear, which will lead to disputes or at least the need for clarification,” Morris said.

Morris pointed to how the FCC used Section 201 of Title II, which prohibits unreasonable charges and practices, to levy a $10 million fine on TerraCom and YourTel America in October for privacy and data security violations.

“Even though there was no actual rule governing how they would secure data, the enforcement bureau said, ‘the way you did it was unreasonable, we’re fining you $10 million,” Morris told Ars. In fact, the FCC's decision cited both Section 201 and Section 222, the latter of which covers privacy and data security violations.
Still, Morris worried that Section 201 could be applied “in the context of network management. Engineers are trying to block spam, they’re trying to worry about cyber security, and they manage the network to keep it all working, and you could see a network management practice that in the heat of the moment seems totally fine, but six weeks later a bureau chief says, ‘that was unreasonable, you shouldn’t have done that, I’m going to go after you for that.’”

Although Morris was confident local loop unbundling won’t be enforced under Section 251C, he speculated that 201 is so broad that “you could get a bureau chief who says, ‘I think it’s unreasonable to not provide unbundling, even though there’s no rule that [requires it].”

The case that maybe Title II won’t be so bad


Now that we’ve been through a worst-case scenario, is there any reason to think that Title II won’t trigger the apocalypse for ISPs and their customers after all? In fact, yes—if we take ISPs themselves at their word. While broadband providers typically offer doom-and-gloom scenarios when arguing against Title II, sometimes they go off script, especially when talking to investors.
AT&T called Title II an “unqualified regulatory success story.”

Verizon Chief Financial Officer Francis Shammo told investors at a conference last week that Title II would not affect how the company invests in its wireline and wireless networks. At the same conference, Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus noted that even Title II proponents are not pushing rate regulation.

The argument that the FCC would have trouble forbearing from imposing the strictest Title II rules was shot down by Charter CEO Tom Rutledge. “Obviously forbearance done properly could work, and we think that the fundamental objective seems reasonable," he said. In another moment of candor, AT&T last year told the FCC that Title II with forbearance is an "unqualified regulatory success story."


This is in line with arguments made by Feld. “Title II forbearance is actually so easy it makes me want to puke,” Feld wrote in one blog post, countering the industry’s argument that the process of forbearing from enforcement of specific Title II regulations is complicated and unpredictable.

In another post, Feld described the last time the FCC classified a service as Title II, when the FCC made cellular voice roaming a common carrier service in 2007. “This took remarkably little effort,” Feld wrote. “The FCC explicitly rejected the requirement to do rate regulation or a requirement to file tariffs with the prices and did not need to engage in any extensive forbearance. They just said ‘nah, we’re not gonna do that.’ The final adopted rules are less than a page and a half.”

Besides forbearance that applies to a whole industry, there are also forbearance petitions in which individual telecom companies request relief from specific regulations; one such petition from CenturyLink has already dragged on for more than a year. Here is the NCTA's take on forbearance:


Feld acknowledged that reclassifying broadband would be less straightforward than reclassifying voice roaming was. But he also pointed out that cellular phone service (voice, not mobile Internet) was put under Title II in 1993, with forbearance from many regulations that applied to landline phone service, and “the wireless industry seems to be doing OK.” Wireless Internet service could also fall under Title II if the FCC opts to reclassify.

Although Feld argues that forbearance from rules not related to net neutrality won’t be too difficult, we asked him which parts of Title II could apply to broadband providers if the FCC doesn’t use forbearance and tried to apply all possible rules.

Feld agreed with the NCTA that local loop unbundling is highly unlikely even with Title II reclassification. The FCC could enforce unbundling on incumbent phone companies that offer DSL like it used to, but there’s a question of whether they should be considered “incumbent” in the case of broadband since cable has greater market share, Feld said. The FCC also decided to forbear from imposing unbundling rules on fiber in 2003 to encourage deployment, he said.

“On the whole, I agree with NCTA on this. Structural separation—modeled on the old DSL resale model or similar to what they do in France or England—is not a real risk for any ISP,” Feld said. “That's unfortunate, in my view, but that's the reality.”



US states have largely abandoned rate-of-return regulation on phone service in which carriers' expenditures are scrutinized by the government to make sure they’re necessary, with profits then calculated based upon allowable expenditures. Price caps that aren’t tied to profits and expenses are simpler and could actually be imposed on Internet service by the FCC without reclassifying broadband. That's because of the commission’s powers under Section 706, which requires the FCC to encourage deployment of broadband and specifically says that price caps are one measure the FCC could use to achieve that goal.

Feld sees complications with price cap regulation, though. The FCC would either have to set different price caps in each market based on cost of living and other localized factors, or settle on a national price cap that would be so high as to not be meaningful in most cities and towns.

On the other hand, the FCC could use its Section 706 powers to force all broadband providers to offer an entry-level Internet package for a small fee, say $10 a month, if it believed that would encourage deployment of broadband, he said. State governments could get involved, too, though most have already deregulated telecom markets.

Sections of Title II that are likely to apply to broadband providers include 201, 202, and 208, the ones applied to cellular voice, Feld said. Those include the requirement for reasonable rates and practices; a prohibition against unjust or unreasonable discrimination in rates and practices; and the establishment of a complaint process.

Back in 2010, the FCC considered reclassifying broadband and forbearing from all provisions except 201, 202, 208, 254, and possibly 222 and 255 (see page 56). Notably, that list did not include Section 251 on interconnection or Section 203 on tariffs. Section 222 covers privacy of customer information. Section 254 lays out universal service requirements guaranteeing access to all, including rural residents and people with low incomes, while 255 ensures access for the disabled.

The discrimination and reasonableness provisions should provide the commission enough flexibility to ban discrimination against websites or applications and paid prioritization, Feld argued. That would satisfy most network neutrality advocates. A useful complaint process would be particularly important as well, because imposing Title II on broadband could strip the Federal Trade Commission of some of its powers to bring action on behalf of customers against Internet providers.

If Title II becomes reality, Internet providers can blame Verizon

The fact that Title II is being considered at all is largely due to decisions made by Verizon, which successfully sued to overturn net neutrality rules issued in 2010 by the FCC without Title II. Verizon’s victory may backfire, since federal appeals court judges said the FCC couldn't impose the restrictions it wanted to without reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service. The new proceeding could revive Title II as well as impose equally strict rules on wireless Internet service, whereas the previous rules applied the most onerous conditions only to fixed broadband.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is taking his time on making a final proposal, saying he expects to be sued and wants something that is legally defensible. He argues that Title II has not harmed the cell phone market, and he has good reason to be skeptical of industry arguments. AT&T argued in May that not even Title II would allow the FCC to ban paid prioritization; as the threat of Title II became more real, AT&T and Verizon began claiming that the FCC could ban paid prioritization without resorting to Title II after all.



A “hybrid” proposal the FCC is considering would reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, but only with respect to their relationships with content providers, instead of their relationships with consumers. No one on either side of the debate seems to like this idea. Morris said a hybrid approach would bring more regulatory uncertainty; Feld said the hybrid approach “adds to the litigation risk” because it relies on a complicated theory “instead of the well-known and clear path of Title II.”

The dispute will continue for another month or so while the FCC makes up its mind, perhaps for months after that if more lawsuits are filed. Separately, the FCC has also not yet decided whether Voice over Internet Protocol should be Title II, an important matter as the traditional circuit switched phone network is being replaced by the IP-based voice services sold by broadband providers.

For now, ISPs are trying to convince the public and the FCC that they have Americans’ best interests at heart.
“There’s no one who provides Internet access who said, ‘you know, I would invest more under Title II, this would help me introduce new services,’” Morris said at the end of our phone interview. “It’s clear we’re talking about levels of bad and there’s no upside… For what consumers are getting today, they’re not going to get anything better under Title II, but it will get worse because their prices are going to go up, our cost of providing it is going to go up, our incentive to invest in it is going to go down. Let’s leave with that thought.”

_________________________________________

THE DANGERS OF MOVING FORWARD CYBERNETICS CREATING THAT UTOPIAN TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

This video is a great documentary of not only the history of computers but cybernetics driving this industry and it began and is still about creating virtual realities blending art and technology to create that utopia of technology for that select global 1%. The documentary provide real information-----interviews movers and shakers in these efforts and it is to WE THE PEOPLE to find whether this technological virtual existence for those 1% MOVING FORWARD is worth reversing with rolling protests for weeks and months. The amount of mineral needed to maintain these SMART CITIES AND BUILDINGS in Foreign Economic Zones around the global will be MASSIVE---lots of planetary mining slaves living their own virtual reality with brain malleability.

This ends this week's discussion on FCC AND INTERNET public policy by global Wall Street designed to create this ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE TELECOM ---net neutrality for those global 1%.

Our favorite far-right , authoritarian oligarchy----Saudi Arabia building from scratch what will be a model Foreign Economic Zone. Here we see a graduate from far-right neo-conservative global IVY LEAGUE Stanford in the region of CA where this video starts MOVING FORWARD COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY.


'The Net - The Unabomber. LSD and the Internet'


Timothy Flinch
Published on Mar 16, 2012
Full version of Lutz Dammbecks 2003 documentary.
Highest quality on YouTube.


"This fascinating German documentary explores the bizarre life story of Ted Kaczynski, using it as a prism for the often unexamined history of the Internet. Director Lutz Dammbeck takes an unorthodox approach to the material, speculating about the darker side of technological innovation, and touching on subjects as diverse as terrorism, the CIA, acid, Ken Kesey, and utopianism."

Do we really think this is all about middle-class housing? REALLY??

 We see here the goal of OPEN GLOBAL CYBERNETIC SYSTEMS


May 11, 2015 @ 08:02 AM 

The Little Black Book of Billionaire SecretsSaudia Arabia: Home Of One Of the World's Largest Planned Smart Home Cities?

Patrick Moorhead ,  

The Internet of Things (IoT) has certainly been a hot topic of discussion over the past few years, and some would argue it’s an over-used buzzword, reconditioned from the embedded world while adding big data analytics. All of the talk is turning into reality in many areas, though, and is emerging in some areas much more quickly than some would ever think.  My firm does a lot of analysis in both the Human and Industrial IoT space and are introduced to some very interesting case studies of those who are deploying IoT today or intend to deploy in a big way.
I had a very interesting discussion this week with Fahd Al-Rasheed, Group CEO of Emaar Economic City (EEC), developer for one of the largest private projects on earth, the $100B  King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC), located in Saudia Arabia. Al-Rasheed intends to turn KAEC into one of the largest smart cities on the planet and I believe has the vision, circumstances and capital to pull it off.

King Abdullah Economic City Rendering (Credit: EEC)
Al-Rasheed and EEC over the last nine years have literally been developing a 65 square mile (168 km) city for 2M people….. from the grounds up…… with private funds.  It’s a $100B project that will fund what you would expect to find in a city- businesses, schools, hospitals, shopping malls, hotels, public transportation, ports, and of course, homes. Al-Rasheed wants KAEC to serve as a “hub” to the Red Sea areas, giving access to Africa, the last new frontier on the planet.  EEC estimates that by 2050, over 1.5B people will have access to goods produced or shipped through the city, up from 620M people in 2010. Western companies Pfizer PFE -0.21%, Johnson Controls JCI -0.55%, Toys R Us Inc., IKEA , Volvo, and Renault apparently see the opportunity and are already tenants in KAEC.

KAEC is interesting enough, but as a technology industry analyst, what EEC is doing with the 400,000 resident’s homes related to IoT is more interesting to me. Al-Rasheed has a vision for what he calls the “Perfect Home”. While details are limited, these smart homes are targeted to middle income families with homes ranging from $250-300K, and designed to be high in aesthetics, sustainability, and high-tech. Naturally, I want to spend time on the high-tech side of the equation.
Al-Rasheed is focusing right now on four areas related to IoT:  home automation platforms, smart lighting, security, and intelligent energy consumption. This doesn’t mean areas like entertainment are “dumb”, but the other areas are their focus. To start with the home automation platform makes sense, as it has to be the glue that connects everything together in the IoT world.  As I’ve documented ad-nauseam, the lack of these devices talking to each other is a major inhibitor to adoption. Today we have disconnects between AllJoyn, OIC, Apple's AAPL -0.22% HomeKit and Google's GOOGL +3.94% Nest. While I expect AllJoyn and OIC to come together and play nice eventually, I don’t hold out near-term hope for Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Nest to play well together.

These are just some of the issues that Al-Fahd and his team are going to need to figure out. As he got his MBA from Stanford, Al-Rashad is connected to Silicon Valley and knows how it operates. Al-Rasheed told me that if vendors can’t play nicely together, he’ll build a technology team to do it for them. You can afford to do that with a $100B project like KAEC.  It’s very possible to do this as Revolv (now Google's) and Nortek's NTK +% Elan showed us, but not the optimal path as it’s a lot of work to make all the different wireless schemas, lower level protocols and APIs work together reliably and consistently. Revolv was filled with brilliant people, but they were acquired by Google. Net-net, Al-Rasheed doesn’t want to go down this path and he is spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley talking to the leaders in the space.
Emaar Economic City Group CEO and Managing Director (Credit: EEC)

Today's discussion will be kind of technical but please glance through to see terms tied to telecommunications and how national media and global Wall Street pols are lying, cheating, and stealing our US airwaves to the detriment of WE THE PEOPLE.

We have discussed the selling of airwaves before ---the fact that the lower frequencies are stronger, can travel furthest, can go through buildings so are the best sectors of a wide air wave spectrum.  Obama and his FCC opened bidding several year ago of what was higher end airwaves that were good but not the best causing local TV, radio, public media to start to sell their stations ----there goes the consolidation of who owns these air waves.  Remember the discussion around Clinton era 1996 telecom deregulation was as usual to

MAKE THE MARKET MORE COMPETITIVE --TO GET THOSE SMALL BUSINESSES ON LINE AGAINST BIG, BAD MA BELL.

We read just after that were just the opposite occurred---as with all privatizations of public agencies some pay-to-play few millions were thrown out for small businesses and then a decade out the consolidations to global Wall STreet took control. 

IT IS NEVER ABOUT MORE ACCESS OR CREATION OF SMALL BUSINESS WITH GLOBAL WALL STREET.


Below we see what are considered the CREAM OF THE CROP OF AIR WAVELENGTH-----700 MHz above and below.  This is where our analog communications have centered last century and it is what global Wall Street wants for its global telecommunications.  Here we see all nations tied to Foreign Economic Zones as in Asia----are all doing the same---they are designating those air waves in their nations to digital communications handing high-speed broadband to what will be their version of global telecom.  If you are having ONE WORLD ONE COMMUNICATION ----with global online businesses needing constant access and fast connections then all nations set aside these air waves for global communications.

None of this is about competition---it is about handing the most powerful air wave transmission spectrum to that global 1% leaving WE THE PEOPLE with the weakest of spectrum much only able to transmit locally and not capable of building penetration.


'Asia-Pacific Telecommunity band plan in the 700 MHz band
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from APT band plan in the 700 MHz band)

The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) band plan is a type of segmentation of the 698–806 MHz band (usually referred to as the 700 MHz band) formalized by the APT in 2008-2010[1] and specially configured for the deployment of mobile broadband technologies (e.g. most notably Long Term Evolution, LTE). This segmentation exists in two variants, FDD and TDD, that have been standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)[2] and recommended by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)[3] as segmentations A5 and A6,[4] respectively. The APT band plan has been designed to enable the most efficient use of available spectrum. Therefore, this plan divides the band into contiguous blocks of frequencies that are as large as possible taking account of the need to avoid interference with services in other frequency bands. As the result, the TDD option (segmentation A6) includes 100 MHz of continuous spectrum, while the FDD option (segmentation A5) comprises two large blocks, one of 45 MHz for uplink transmission (mobile to network) in the lower part of the band and the other also of 45 MHz for downlink transmission in the upper part. As defined in the standard, both FDD and TDD schemes for the 700 MHz band include guard bands of 5 MHz and 3 MHz at their lower and upper edges, respectively. The FDD version also includes a center gap of 10 MHz. The guardbands serve the purpose of mitigating interference with adjacent bands while the FDD center gap is required to avoid interference between uplink and downlink transmissions. The two arrangements are shown graphically in figures 1 and 2'.

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The article below is written by a telecom industry geek who thinks all these sales of low-frequency air waves is great for the world.  Yes, it is the basis of 5G speeds but we are shouting WATCH OUT FOR WHO GETS THE BENEFIT OF THESE SUPER-SPEEDS.  The driver of these technologies is global online businesses needing to transmit farther, needing to transmit super-sized data packages, and needing the super-fast transmission for things like  GLOBAL TELEMEDICINE/INTERACTIVE MEDIA.  Much of these telecommunications will be tied to robotics----to global military----to global Wall Street making that derivatives bet even more faster.

ATT is what is left of MA BELL and yes it had the monopoly in these spectra----breaking that monopoly just so global telecom monopolies can take over is NOT GOOD FOR WE THE PEOPLE.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU CAN FORESEE WHERE THESE BLAZING FAST BROADBAND SPEEDS WILL BE PRICED TOO HIGH FOR 99% OF CITIZENS.


'And that’s why mobile carriers are so interested in this auction: It deals explicitly with limited low-band waves, around 600 MHz. Because low-band can travel further and penetrate buildings easier than high-band alternatives—AT&T wants more'.

'Aside from building a more reliable mobile network, this chunk of low-band, along with future high-band auctions in the years to come, will likely be the basis for blazing fast 5G speeds'.

The amount of mega-data tied to global online businesses is massive and the need to transmit that data seamlessly in order to be competitive globally is a must.  This is the goal of ever-higher speed technology ----not bettering the life of WE THE PEOPLE.

Why You Should Care About The FCC Spectrum Auction

Darren Orf
3/29/16 3:46pm
Filed to: FCC




Image: Powerpig

Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) begins the laborious process of making our mobile internet even faster and better. The government is buying underused TV airwaves and selling it to mobile carriers for billions of dollars. These radio waves—also known as spectrum—will shape mobile US connectivity as streaming video continues to swallow up bandwidth across the country and as we inch closer to 5G internet speeds.


This giant re-allocation of radio waves is being called the broadcast incentive auction by the FCC. In 2008, the FCC raised $19.1 billion in a similar auction, which created the groundwork for 4G LTE and led to AT&T and Verizon’s cellular dominance for the next several years. Just last year, the FCC raised a record-setting $45 billion from bidders and many expect this auction to raise even more money.


But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with the basics.


What’s spectrum?


pectrum is really just a fancy term for radio waves, a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (hence the name). These wavelengths can stretch dozens of kilometers or can be measured in mere millimeters. Where light and color are part of the visual spectrum, invisible radio waves are what carry 4G signal and companies are aggressively fighting over these limited frequencies.
“Mark Twain had that great line about real estate, he said ‘I’m putting all my money in real estate because I understand they ain’t making it anymore,’” said Wheeler during last year’s CTIA keynote.


And that’s why mobile carriers are so interested in this auction: It deals explicitly with limited low-band waves, around 600 MHz. Because low-band can travel further and penetrate buildings easier than high-band alternatives—AT&T wants more.


But T-Mobile wants to stop that from happening, saying AT&T and Verizon already control three-fourths of low-band frequencies. This is actually one of the major reasons why T-Mobile is famously terrible at receiving signal inside buildings and has equally terrible coverage outside major cities. It’s high-band can’t penetrate walls or travel as far as the competition.


So imagine just this one drama as just a thread of a larger web of companies—including new players like Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network—wrestling over ways to deliver data more reliably.


Why should you care?


Freed up radio waves, purchased by cellular carriers, will improve coverage across the country and help shore up resources for the US’s growing appetite for online video.
“We hear this constantly that there’s a demand for wireless spectrum,” Charles Meisch, a spokesperson for the FCC told Gizmodo. “As capacity grows, types of applications that developers can come up with also change.”
For example, years ago apps like Periscope and even Netflix would be almost useless on low-speed 3G (or 2G) networks. Because of much faster 4G LTE, streaming apps are now much easier to use. Video takes up 50 percent of all US mobile data and will likely grow to 70 percent in 2021, which is when this rearranged spectrum will go into use. Because video requires more over-the-air bandwidth than other types of data, these bigger lanes will open up the possibility for applications we haven’t even thought of yet.


Aside from building a more reliable mobile network, this chunk of low-band, along with future high-band auctions in the years to come, will likely be the basis for blazing fast 5G speeds.
“I foresee lower-frequency bands playing a role in 5G,” said Tom Wheeler in a blog post. “In much the same way that 700 MHz paved the way for America’s world-leading deployment of 4G, so could 600 MHz accelerate U.S. deployment of 5G.”


5G is the next generation of wireless communication that will bolster our growing “smart” ecosystems, whether on highways or in our homes. This large swath of low-band coupled with data-carrying high band, going up to even 60GHz, could be an important part in the next generation of mobile

.
What does this mean for the future?

Although US data speeds are often lampooned for being laughably slower than other Asian and European countries, the US was a pioneer in creating and adopting 4G and 4G LTE networks. The spectrum auction that starts today is the official beginning of the next generation of the invisible web that makes modern communication possible.


Sure. Download speeds and coverage will improve, but those are only short-term benefits. This low-band spectrum could be the bedrock that the US builds a “smarter society” and creates a better system that can handle the data burden of our increasingly connected lives.

____________________
And here we go-----global corporations looking like they are only buying this or that spectrum have in fact the goal of controlling the whole transmittable spectrum by TRI-BANDING.

We are made to believe that all this INNOVATION is being done by startups and are small businesses but guess what?  As always consolidation will occur very fast and ONE GRID ONE TELECOMMUNICATION will control all of these spectrum. 

All of this super-fast broadband speed is tied to global corporations and their businesses made more profitable and competitive it has nothing to do with quality of life for 99%.  We will have absolutely no control over the only air wave frequencies that can transmit outside of a local area----that can penetrate and reach all citizens.

Right now that pesky 5% to the 1% are soaking up the insider trading on stocks for these new companies so they say SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE DON'T CARE WHERE ALL THIS LEADS.  They will be under the bus with the 99% as US Foreign Economic Zones come with air waves controlled by ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.

So, to be effective in global telecom transmission these global corporations will need low-frequency for penetration of buildings---higher frequency to carry data capacity----and VOILA----a few global telecoms own all Foreign Economic Zone communication capacity. Think about global VEOLA ENVIRONMENT being handed all public water agencies across the US and globally.

Ting goes for three: Tri-Band LTE

• Posted by Andrew Moore-Crispin | December 18, 2013

An older cell tower riding off into the sunset. Thanks iStock!EDIT: Updated to explicitly state that Ting Tri-Band LTE doesn’t come at an extra cost and to correct erroneous information about wave frequencies as they relate to capacity and travel.


We’ve talked at length previously about the fact that Ting customers get the self same cell service and access to network improvements at or at very nearly the same time as our network provider’s own retail customers.
Recently, another 70 LTE sites came online bringing the total to 300 sites.


The latest and most potentially impactful in a steady stream of major network improvements is Tri-Band LTE.
So what is Tri-Band LTE?Tri-Band means LTE service offered on three distinct frequencies or “bands.” Each of the three bands (800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz) has its own unique benefits. By offering three bands together, any shortcomings of a single band are shored up by the strengths of the others. In other words, with three bands together, you get more reliable coverage, greater capacity and faster speeds in more places.
Lower frequency bands are able to cover a wide area and can penetrate building materials readily. However, they’re lacking when it comes to capacity.
Higher frequency bands offer great capacity but can’t travel as far or through obstructions like lower frequency bands can.
With the mid-range band in the mix, you get Tri-Band LTE that offers the broad coverage and material penetration of the lower band with the increased capacity of the high frequency band. Switching between bands is seamless and whichever frequency is strongest is the one your Tri-Band device will use.
Tri-Band rolloutTri-Band LTE is available at no extra charge to Ting customers with a compatible device (more on those in a sec) in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa and Miami. As our network provider brings more Tri-Band capable towers online across the country, Ting customers will get access at the same time as said provider’s retail customers.
Tri-Band devicesEffective as soon as we hit the publish button on this blog post, we’ll also be putting our first Tri-Band capable devices online on the Ting devices page.
Tri-Band smartphonesThe Nexus 5, which can be purchased direct from Google, is a Tri-Band capable device. If you get a Nexus 5 and a Ting SIM card, and if you’re in one of the aforementioned five Tri-Band locations, you’re set.
We’re also adding several new Tri-Band devices to the Ting lineup:

• Samsung Galaxy Mega (black and white)
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini (black and white)
• LG G2 coming soon in both black and white.

____________________________________________
All of these spectra sales have to do with harmonizing Foreign Economic Zones globally for ECONOMIES OF SCALE----that global 1% and their corporations.

'Spectrum harmonization and potential economies of scale'
Obama's FCC appointment was a telecom industry insider who played at posing left social progressive with terms like net neutrality and protecting ATT stockholders from what is a breaking the wall of US telecommunication sovereignty.  This is why discussions over mergers between Sprint, T Mobile, Verizon and which gets what access held long discussion.....what happened when Obama at the end of his term installed CLYBURN as a temporary appointment to the FCC?  It allowed what was controversial to be installed in a matter of months by someone coming and then going.  While Clyburn's actions were 100% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE TELECOMMUNICATION for the US again they posed left social progressive by making this sound as if it opened the door to small business and even tied extended call times to prisoners.


What Clyburn did was open that HOLY GRAIL OF AIR WAVES---the 600-700 MGz for sale-----she further consolidated the telecom industry by attaching SPRINT to a Japanese corporation taking what was a real startup----Clearwire with it.  As we see below SPRINT was already moving itself out of US telecom market as it sat out air wave auctions so we knew it was on the way out of US market.

'Clyburn’s time as chairwoman proved to be a whirlwind of activity, however. In less than six months, she created rate caps for calls made to prison inmates, oversaw the auction of two large blocks of wireless spectrum, opened the door to interoperability between wireless carriers and pushed through a massive three-way merger between Sprint Corp., Clearwire Corp. and Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. That’s a highly productive tenure by any measure'.


Calling Clyburn an OUTSIDER when she is the daughter of Clyburn the Congressional pol having voted in Clinton era for that horrible 1996 Telecommunications Act----she was simply that hit-and-run do the dirty work of global Wall Street letting all the establishment pols say OH, WELL-----her actions were what handed all of US viable air waves to global telecoms taking control away from all local US regions.

Sprint Will Sit Out Airwaves Auction; Stock Falls: Telecom Winners and Losers
Susanna Ray
Follow Sep 28, 2015 7:30 PM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Sprint (S) dropped after the telecommunications company said it doesn't plan to bid in next year's U.S. auction of wireless airwaves, a move that some considered shortsighted and a blow to its competitiveness.
Sitting out of the auction will save Sprint billions of dollars, but it could deprive its network of future upgrades, the Wall Street Journal wrote Sunday.


FCC’s Clyburn Makes the Most of Her ‘Outsider’ Status



Brendan Bordelon   |   August 31, 2016 | 03:43 PM


Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn really wants you to know she’s not one of those “inside the Beltway” types.


That may seem hard to believe coming from the daughter of Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a congressman since 1993 and the No.3 Democrat in the House. But until she took the FCC job in 2009, Clyburn never left her home state for more than a few weeks at a time.

“I did not come up to D.C. to be like a lot of others (respectfully, this sounds a little tough) that I see in D.C., who always want to be picture perfect, wrapped up in a bow, and ready for presentation,” Clyburn says.
“I am very different if you to compare me to my colleagues,” she said in an interview with Morning Consult. Referring several times to her “Southern accent,” she said, “I am very much outside of the Beltway.”


Clyburn’s quiet and poised demeanor strikes a sharp contrast to Tom Wheeler, the physically imposing FCC chairman who exudes a larger-than-life political presence. Yet for nearly six months in 2013, Clyburn sat in Wheeler’s chair. She was acting FCC chairwoman while Congress deliberated over Wheeler’s confirmation.


There was a historic nature to her chairmanship. She was the first woman and the first African American to lead the commission. Still, few expected much out of her tenure. Allegations that her family name helped secure her seat dogged Clyburn starting in April 2009 when President Obama announced his intent to nominate her. When she took over the FCC in 2013, tech insiders assumed Wheeler would be confirmed in a matter of weeks.


“A lot of people had doubts about me as a commissioner,” Clyburn admits. “And they definitely had doubts — let’s just be plain about it — [about me] leading the commission.”


Clyburn’s time as chairwoman proved to be a whirlwind of activity, however. In less than six months, she created rate caps for calls made to prison inmates, oversaw the auction of two large blocks of wireless spectrum, opened the door to interoperability between wireless carriers and pushed through a massive three-way merger between Sprint Corp., Clearwire Corp. and Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. That’s a highly productive tenure by any measure.


How does Clyburn explain her breadth of accomplishments over such a short period? She says candidly that the two vacancies on the commission at the time certainly helped. Neither Wheeler nor Republican nominee Michael O’Rielly were confirmed, leaving her just with Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai as commissioners.


“To have three [commissioners] — it makes it easier to get face to face,” she said.
Clyburn says her 11 years on the South Carolina Public Service Commission also lent her valuable policy-making experience, as well as an up-close view of the impact regulatory policies have on communities.


On a deeper level, however, Clyburn frames her success as chairwoman as a product of her outside-the-Beltway mindset. She points to negotiations she brokered over spectrum interoperability as the clearest example.
“We sat in a room with providers and we said, ‘Look, we can get this. How far are we apart, really, on this?’” she said. “We did it the old-fashioned way, how I was raised. You sit down and you talk through your problems, and you see if there is a solution.”


How is Wheeler’s leadership by comparison? Clyburn’s response is cagey. “The commission, the agency always takes on the characteristics of its leader,” she said. Unlike some of her colleagues, Clyburn is not an attorney and doesn’t have decades of D.C. experience. “Some of those characteristics, I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t have,” she says.
But she says her unwillingness to play the usual Washington game has worked to both her and the FCC’s advantage. “It really, I think, allowed the agency to be stretched in different ways — I like to think, in a positive way,” she says. “We can really get things done for some people that have been chronically on the wrong side of the opportunities divide.”


Not that there haven’t been some slip-ups. She raised the ire of Republican commissioners Pai and O’Rielly earlier this year, after they accused her of reneging at the last minute on an agreement to cap the budget of Lifeline, the program that provides phone and internet subsidies for low-income consumers. The commission wound up voting to expand the program without a budget cap and without the support of the Republican commissioners.


Pai opened a probe into potential abuse within the program several weeks after the dispute, and the GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee followed suit about a month later.


Clyburn is hesitant to speak about the specifics of that controversy, but she makes no apologies for how it turned out. “I have no problem coloring outside the lines, stubbing my toe every now and then, healing, and getting things done,” she says, again making reference to her outsider status. “I will do what it takes to serve the community.”


The needs of underserved communities come up again and again when talking to Clyburn, and she repeatedly expresses her wish to be a “conduit” for change in impoverished areas. As one example, she spearheaded the commission’s multi-year effort to lower inmate calling rates, an issue that hadn’t been looked at in 10 years.


With her commissionership ending next year and the White House’s new tenant still unknown, it’s not clear how Clyburn will continue to serve as an anti-poverty advocate. She’s not giving many hints.


“The beautiful side for me, not necessarily being the most detailed planner, is the fact that I am open to making a difference wherever the — I don’t want to sound cosmic here — but wherever the forces of nature take me,” she says with a grin. “And nature is expansive by way of definition.”

______________________________________________


Below you can see who applauds what is now called A 21ST CENTURY FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS structure---our friends at global Wall Street BROOKINGS INSTITUTE, FREE STATE FOUNDATION, AND GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY INSIDERS.  Clyburn did indeed give ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE what it needed and as we read here-----setting the new standard for telecom infrastructure around 5G and super-data will create an infrastructure designed only for global corporations.  How expensive will high speed packages get with these super-speeds?  They will price the 99% off the lines while subsidizing global corporate costs in PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS.

As we see below these policies will kill cable and satellite ----there goes any diversity!

Please look at how national media sells all this as a win for consumers ----a win for low-income----because all these policies ARE ILLEGAL MONOPOLIES KILLING FREE MARKET and that is why they must sell all this as GOOD FOR CONSUMERS.


Clyburn called an OUTSIDER when she served on South Carolina's PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION-----everyone in Maryland knows the capture of MARYLAND PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION filled with corporate appointments that rubber-stamp rate hikes and mergers no citizen in states want. 

Raise your hand if you know all our state public service commissions have been loaded with corporate industry appointments these few decades so they are not OUTSIDERS----they are 5% to the 1% global Wall Street players.


Please take time to see how they are again calling policy a WIN FOR CONSUMERS when it kills WE THE PEOPLE---it is important because these actions are illegal and unconstitutional assault on citizens and sovereignty.


The FCC has changed the definition of broadband The minimum broadband download speeds now begin at 25Mbps, up from 4Mbpsby Micah Singleton@MicahSingleton Jan 29, 2015, 11:48am ESTAs part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of US households without broadband access. Currently, 6.3 percent of US households don’t have access to broadband under the previous 4Mpbs/1Mbps threshold, while another 13.1 percent don't have access to broadband under the new 25Mbps downstream threshold.
FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler was vehement in his support for the new broadband standard. "When 80 percent of Americans can access 25-3, that's a standard. We have a problem that 20 percent can't. We have a responsibility to that 20 percent," Commissioner Wheeler said.
"We are never satisfied with the status quo. We want better. We continue to push the limit, and that is notable when it comes to technology," FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said. "As consumers adopt and demand more from their platforms and devices, the need for broadband will increase, requiring robust networks to be in place in order to keep up. What is crystal clear to me is that the broadband speeds of yesteryear are woefully inadequate today and beyond."
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wants to increase the minimum broadband standards far past the new 25Mbps download threshold, up to 100Mbps. "We invented the internet. We can do audacious things if we set big goals, and I think our new threshold, frankly, should be 100Mbps. I think anything short of that shortchanges our children, our future, and our new digital economy," Commissioner Rosenworcel said.
"I think our new threshold, frankly, should be 100Mbps."
Taking his argument against changing the broadband standard into deep space, FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said "the report notes that 4K TV requires 25Mbps, but 4K TV is still relatively new and is not expected to be widely adopted for years to come. While the statute directs us to look at advanced capability, this stretches the concept to an untenable extreme. Some people, for example, believe probably incorrectly that we are on a path to interplanetary teleportation. Should we include the estimated bandwidth for that as well?"
Changing the national broadband standards to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up is a bold move for the FCC, which has faced opposition from cable providers which are staunchly against this measure, as it essentially removed DSL services from the broadband discussion. While cable and fiber optic services can easily meet the new standards, DSL — which is delivered over telephone lines — generally never reach the new download threshold.
Current DSL offerings won't be considered broadband under new rules


Companies like AT&T and Verizon, which employ DSL services to a notable number of their users — 4 million of AT&T’s 16 million broadband subscribers and 2.6 million of Verizon’s 9.2 million subscribers have DSL. AT&T’s fastest DSL offerings only reach 6Mbps down, while Verizon’s DSL speeds top out at 15Mbps, and that won’t be increasing, at least on Verizon’s end. Speaking to Ars Technica, a Verizon spokesperson said "we currently do not have any plans to enhance that." As you would expect, cable companies weren’t too happy about the new rule.
In a letter sent to the FCC last week, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) made known its objections to any changes to current broadband standards, stating that examples used by supporters of raising the broadband standards "dramatically exaggerate the amount of bandwidth needed by the typical broadband user." Netflix is one of those supporters pushing for a higher broadband standards, as faster broadband speeds are needed to stream its 4K content, and will increase its potential for more subscribers. But right now, Netflix’s interests and the public’s interests are aligned — everyone wants faster broadband internet except for the people who have to provide the service.
The NCTA told the FCC that 25Mbps down isn't needed for 4K streaming — the number Netflix recommends for anyone streaming its Ultra HD content — and that users aren't even interested in higher quality content yet. "Netflix, for instance, bases its call for a 25 Mbps download threshold on what it believes consumers need for streaming 4K and Ultra HD video content — despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of consumers use their broadband connections in this manner," the NCTA said. "...The consensus among others in the industry that 25 Mbps is significantly more bandwidth than is needed for 4K streaming."
While you may not need a minimum download speed of 25Mbps to stream 4K content, it wouldn't hurt, and standing pat with subpar US broadband capabilities just isn't a viable option at this point. With the US currently ranked 25th in the world in broadband speeds, the FCC's decision will force cable providers to step up speeds for everyone, something that probably would have happened with even a little competition in the broadband market.

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When media tells us that Clyburn came to FCC office to advance policy that the former FCC would not----one of those was the basis for NET NEUTRALITY.  Net neutrality depends on the designation of internet as a UTILITY ------global Wall Street and all these global telecom corporations did not want the internet deemed at UTILITY.  Now, Obama pretended to back NET NEUTRALITY as he appointed heads of FCC known to be raging global Wall Street ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.  We will look more closely at the conversation right now where Clyburn, like Obama and Clinton neo-liberals pretend they are still fighting for NET NEUTRALITY when Obama and Clyburn's selling of all our US air waves of any value to global corporations assures that will not happen.

IT IS NOT TRUMP KILLING NET NEUTRALITY---IT WAS THESE 21ST CENTURY FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS POLICIES INSTALLED THESE SEVERAL YEARS.


“After a decade of debate and legal battles, today’s ruling affirms the commission’s ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections — both on fixed and mobile networks — that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future,” Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C., said in a statement'.

The only net neutrality that will come with global corporate control of all vital air waves will be ONE WORLD ONE COMMUNICATIONS FOR FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.  This means that any foreign corporation locating in a US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone will have the right to equal access to these high-speed broadband spectra.

Please think about this play on the term NET NEUTRALITY----as consolidations and sales of air waves into the hands of global 1% increases---do we really think this means neutrality for 99% ----it means neutrality for global 1% in Foreign Economic Zones including in US.

Court Backs Rules Treating Internet as Utility, Not Luxury
By CECILIA KANGJUNE 14, 2016

The New Net Neutrality RulesThe Federal Communications Commission is to take a more active role in regulating the Internet as a public utility, which is expected to provoke court cases from major broadband providers.
By NATALIA V. OSIPOVA and CAITLIN PRENTKE on Publish Date March 12, 2015. Photo by The New York Times.


WASHINGTON — High-speed internet service can be defined as a utility, a federal court has ruled in a sweeping decision clearing the way for more rigorous policing of broadband providers and greater protections for web users.
The decision affirmed the government’s view that broadband is as essential as the phone and power and should be available to all Americans, rather than a luxury that does not need close government supervision.
The 2-to-1 decision from a three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday came in a case about rules applying to a doctrine known as net neutrality, which prohibit broadband companies from blocking or slowing the delivery of internet content to consumers.
Those rules, created by the Federal Communications Commission in early 2015, started a huge legal battle as cable, telecom and wireless internet providers sued to overturn regulations that they said went far beyond the F.C.C.’s authority and would hurt their businesses. On the other side, millions of consumers and giant tech firms rallied in favor of the regulations. President Obama also called for the strictest possible mandates on broadband providers.

The court’s decision upheld the F.C.C. on the declaration of broadband as a utility, which was the most significant aspect of the rules. That has broad-reaching implications for web and telecommunications companies that have battled for nearly a decade over the need for regulation to ensure web users get full and equal access to all content online.
“After a decade of debate and legal battles, today’s ruling affirms the commission’s ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections — both on fixed and mobile networks — that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future,” Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C., said in a statement.
The two judges who ruled in favor of the F.C.C. emphasized the importance of the internet as an essential communications and information platform for consumers.
“Over the past two decades, this content has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives, from profound actions like choosing a leader, building a career, and falling in love to more quotidian ones like hailing a cab and watching a movie,” wrote David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan, the judges who wrote the opinion.
But the legal battle over the regulations is most likely far from over. The cable and telecom industries have signaled their intent to challenge any unfavorable decision, possibly taking the case to the Supreme Court.
AT&T immediately said it would continue to fight.
“We have always expected this issue to be decided by the Supreme Court and we look forward to participating in that appeal,” said David McAtee II, the senior executive vice president and general counsel for AT&T.
For now, the decision limits the ability of broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon to shape the experience of internet users. Without net neutrality rules, the broadband providers could be inclined to deliver certain content on the web at slower speeds, for example, making the streams on Netflix or YouTube buffer or shut down. Such business decisions by broadband providers would have created fast and slow lanes on the internet, subjecting businesses and consumers to extra charges and limited access to content online, the F.C.C. has argued.
“This is an enormous win for consumers,” said Gene Kimmelman, president of the public interest group Public Knowledge. “It ensures the right to an open internet with no gatekeepers.”
PhotoTom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C., said the court’s ruling would “ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future.” Credit Matthew Eisman/Getty Images for Common Sense Media
The 184-page ruling also opens a path for new limits on broadband providers beyond net neutrality. Already, the F.C.C. has proposed privacy rules for broadband providers, curbing the ability of companies like Verizon and AT&T to collect and share data about broadband subscribers.
Google and Netflix support net neutrality rules and have warned government officials that without regulatory limits, broadband providers will have an incentive to create business models that could harm consumers. They argue that broadband providers could degrade the quality of downloads and streams of online services to extract tolls from web companies or to promote unfairly their own competing services or the content of partners.
The court’s ruling was a certainty for the F.C.C. Two of the three judges who heard the case late last year agreed that wireless broadband services were also common carrier utility services that were subject to anti-blocking and discrimination rules, a decision protested by wireless carriers including AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

In the opinion, the two judges in favor of the rules said internet users don’t feel the difference between fixed-wire broadband and mobile service. To an iPad user, whose device switches automatically between Wi-Fi and wireless networks, the government’s oversight of those technologies should not differ, they said.
Tech firms cheered the decision, which they said would be particularly helpful to start-ups that did not have the resources to fight gatekeepers of the web.
“Today marks a huge victory for the millions of microbusinesses who depend on the open internet to reach consumers and compete in the global marketplace,” said Althea Erickson, the senior director of global policy at the online crafts marketplace Etsy.
In a statement, the cable industry’s biggest lobbying group highlighted the comments of the dissenting judge, Stephen Williams, and said that its members were reviewing the opinion. The group also said broadband legislation by Congress was a better alternative to the F.C.C.’s classification of internet business as a utility.
“While this is unlikely the last step in this decade-long debate over internet regulation, we urge bipartisan leaders in Congress to renew their efforts to craft meaningful legislation that can end ongoing uncertainty, promote network investment and protect consumers,” the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said in a statement.
In his lengthy dissenting opinion, Mr. Williams called the rules an “unreasoned patchwork” that will discourage competition in the broadband industry.
The biggest threat to broadband providers is the potential of any regulations to hurt the rates they charge for the service, analysts said. The F.C.C. has promised it will not impose rate regulations on the firms like it does for phone companies.
“The pendulum has today swung a bit further in the direction of long-term price regulation,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at the research firm MoffettNathanson.

The F.C.C. was divided along party lines on the rules. It began its quest for net neutrality rules in 2009, with two previous attempts at creating rules overturned by the same court.
In a statement, Ajit Pai, a Republican commissioner who was among a minority who opposed the regulation of broadband as a utility, urged cable and telecom firms to keep going with their legal challenge.
“I continue to believe that these regulations are unlawful, and I hope that the parties challenging them will continue the legal fight,” he said.

Let's look at a general history of deregulating our telecommunications industry. It follows the same path as deregulating other utilities that were controlled by the public often publicly owned while our phone service had been a corporate monopoly of MA BELL.  It has been public policy to regulate in public interest vital utility infrastructure as water, home energy, and communications like our POST OFFICE and MA BELL.

Whereas cable and wire was laid in every community across the US under the policy of equal protection and opportunity for all taxpayers having access to vital utilities.  This was subsidized especially during FDR NEW DEAL-----and has worked for the most part for all Americans and was what kept pricing rates low and affordable.

Global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA come along and say KILL THOSE UTILITY MONOPOLIES and what do we have today?  A super-sized telecom monopoly having no control by government public agencies ----not even owned by US corporations----and price-fixing to ever-higher pricing rates----whatever the market will bear.


'In 1996, Congress responded by passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law allowed long-distance telephone companies such as AT&T, as well as cable television and other start-up companies, to begin entering the local telephone business'.

'Meanwhile, for some consumers -- especially residential telephone users and people in rural areas whose service previously had been subsidized by business and urban customers -- deregulation was bringing higher, not lower, prices'.



Science, Tech, Math › Social Sciences

Deregulating Telecommunications
Deregulating Telecommunications

by U.S. Department of State
Updated March 27, 2017

Until the 1980s in the United States, the term "telephone company" was synonymous with American Telephone & Telegraph. AT&T controlled nearly all aspects of the telephone business. Its regional subsidiaries, known as "Baby Bells," were regulated monopolies, holding exclusive rights to operate in specific areas. The Federal Communications Commission regulated rates on long-distance calls between states, while state regulators had to approve rates for local and in-state long-distance calls.



Government regulation was justified on the theory that telephone companies, like electric utilities, were natural monopolies. Competition, which was assumed to require stringing multiple wires across the countryside, was seen as wasteful and inefficient. That thinking changed beginning around the 1970s, as sweeping technological developments promised rapid advances in telecommunications. Independent companies asserted that they could, indeed, compete with AT&T. But they said the telephone monopoly effectively shut them out by refusing to allow them to interconnect with its massive network.


Telecommunications deregulation came in two sweeping stages. In 1984, a court effectively ended AT&T's telephone monopoly, forcing the giant to spin off its regional subsidiaries. AT&T continued to hold a substantial share of the long-distance telephone business, but vigorous competitors such as MCI Communications and Sprint Communications won some of the business, showing in the process that competition could bring lower prices and improved service.



A decade later, pressure grew to break up the Baby Bells' monopoly over local telephone service. New technologies -- including cable television, cellular (or wireless) service, the Internet, and possibly others -- offered alternatives to local telephone companies. But economists said the enormous power of the regional monopolies inhibited the development of these alternatives.


In particular, they said, competitors would have no chance of surviving unless they could connect, at least temporarily, to the established companies' networks -- something the Baby Bells resisted in numerous ways.
In 1996, Congress responded by passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law allowed long-distance telephone companies such as AT&T, as well as cable television and other start-up companies, to begin entering the local telephone business. It said the regional monopolies had to allow new competitors to link with their networks. To encourage the regional firms to welcome competition, the law said they could enter the long-distance business once the new competition was established in their domains.


At the end of the 1990s, it was still too early to assess the impact of the new law. There were some positive signs. Numerous smaller companies had begun offering local telephone service, especially in urban areas where they could reach large numbers of customers at low cost. The number of cellular telephone subscribers soared. Countless Internet service providers sprung up to link households to the Internet. But there also were developments that Congress had not anticipated or intended.


A great number of telephone companies merged, and the Baby Bells mounted numerous barriers to thwart competition. The regional firms, accordingly, were slow to expand into long-distance service. Meanwhile, for some consumers -- especially residential telephone users and people in rural areas whose service previously had been subsidized by business and urban customers -- deregulation was bringing higher, not lower, prices.

______________________________________

Take a look at the roll-call votes back in Clinton era to understand when WE THE PEOPLE knew both Democrat and Republican these pols were becoming those global Wall Street players----1996 is of course the same time they were breaking GLASS STEAGALL.  There is that pesky PELOSI-----CARDIN-----HOYER----ERHLICH and we see more of what are being called LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES black, white, and brown MOVING FORWARD what is today a complete consolidation of all our methods of communications---TV, radio, phone, cable, now internet.

This telecommunications act was a killer because it broke the divisions between all those methods of communications just as Glass Steagall broke the divisions between banking and investment.  This allowed a complete takeover of US vital infrastructure and MOVED FORWARD to ROBBER BARON takeover by global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE.

So, this is what WE THE PEOPLE want to reverse and any REAL left social Democrat would have been shouting against all this for these few decades---instead, all those PRETEND FEELING THE BERN for example were pushing more and more global technology and the consolidation needed to do this.



Telecommunications Act of 1996

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Telecommunications Act of 1996
Other short titlesCommunications Decency Act of 1996
Long titleAn Act to promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.



NicknamesCommunications Act of 1995
Enacted bythe 104th United States Congress
EffectiveFebruary 8, 1996
Citations
Public law104-104
Statutes at Large110 Stat. 56
Codification
Acts amendedCommunications Act of 1934
Titles amended47 U.S.C.: Telegraphy
U.S.C. sections amended

• 47 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. VI § 609
• 47 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. II § 251 et seq.
• 47 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. I § 151 et seq.
• 47 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. II § 271 et seq.

Legislative history

• Introduced in the Senate as S. 652 by Larry Pressler (R-SD) on March 30, 1995
• Committee consideration by Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
• Passed the Senate on June 15, 1995 (81-18 Roll call vote 268, via Senate.gov)
• Passed the House on October 12, 1995 (passed without objection)
• Reported by the joint conference committee on January 31, 1996; agreed to by the House on February 1, 1996 (414-16 Roll call vote 025, via Clerk.House.gov) and by the Senate on February 1, 1996 (91-5 Roll call vote 8, via Senate.gov)
• Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first significant overhaul of telecommunications law in more than sixty years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. The Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, represented a major change in American telecommunication law, since it was the first time that the Internet was included in broadcasting and spectrum allotment. One of the most controversial titles was Title 3 ("Cable Services"), which allowed for media cross-ownership. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the goal of the law was to "let anyone enter any communications business -- to let any communications business compete in any market against any other." The legislation's primary goal was deregulation of the converging broadcasting and telecommunications markets.[3] However, the law's regulatory policies have been questioned, including the effects of dualistic re-regulation of the communications market

_____________________________________

This is why we no longer believe a COMMON CAUSE is protecting WE THE PEOPLE----this was a MASTER PLAN created in the 1980 by global Wall Street neo-liberals working for the global 1% ----MOVING FORWARD started in force during Reagan so this telecommunication deregulation has REAL INTENDED CONSEQUENCES-----exactly the conditions of super-monopoly held by global 1% we have today.

Make no mistake-----REAL left social Democrats were shouting against all this deregulation back in the 1990s saying just what exists today would happen so everyone involved knew where this was going.  Know what?  It was that deregulation of telecoms that killed FAIRNESS DOCTRINE an FCC regulation requiring equal time for opposing political views so our national media and news was allowed to become far-right global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA neo-liberal neo-con only.  Silenced our REAL left social progressives and our REAL right conservative Republicans.

THIS IS WHEN WE THE PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PROTESTING AND MARCHING EN MASSE.  THEN OBAMA AND HIS FCC MADE ALL THIS 100% WORSE.

You are not holding power accountable if you report on goals and problems REACTIVELY AND NOT PROACTIVELY.

The Fallout From the
Telecommunications Act of 1996:

Unintended Consequences
and Lessons Learned

A special report prepared by:
Common Cause Education Fund
1250 Connecticut Ave, NW Suite 600
Washington DC 20036
T 202.833.1200 F 202.659.3716
www.commoncause.org

May 9, 2005

Holding Power Power Accountable

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


This study tells the story of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its aftermath. In many ways,
the Telecom Act failed to serve the public and did not deliver on its promise of more competition,
more diversity, lower prices, more jobs and a booming economy.


Instead, the public got more media concentration, less diversity, and higher prices.

Over 10 years, the legislation was supposed to save consumers $550 billion, including $333 billion in
lower long-distance rates, $32 billion in lower local phone rates, and $78 billion in lower cable bills.
But cable rates have surged by about 50 percent, and local phone rates went up more than 20 percent.


Industries supporting the new legislation predicted it would add 1.5 million jobs and boost the economy by $2 trillion. By 2003, however, telecommunications’ companies’ market value had
fallen by about $2 trillion, and they had shed half a million jobs.
And study after study has documented that profit-driven media conglomerates are investing less in news
and information, and that local news in particular is failing to provide viewers with the information they
need to participate in their democracy



Why did this happen?

In some cases, industries agreed to the terms of the Act and then went to court to block them. By leaving regulatory discretion to the Federal Communications Commission, the Act
gave the FCC the power to issue rules that often sabotaged the intent of Congress. Control of the House passed from Democrats to Republicans, more sympathetic to corporate arguments for deregulation.

And while corporate special interests all had a seat at the table when this bill was being negotiated, the public did
not. Nor were average citizens even aware of this legislation’s great impact on how they got their entertainment and information, and whether it would foster or discourage diversity of viewpoints and a marketplace of ideas, crucial to democratic discourse.


Now, as Congress once again takes up major legislation to change telecommunications policy, and as it
revisits the Telecom Act, major industries have had nearly a decade to reinforce their relationships with lawmakers and the Administration through political donations and lobbying:


•
Since 1997, just eight of the country’s largest and most powerful media and telecommunications
companies, their corporate parents, and three of their trade groups, have spent more than $400 million
on political contributions and lobbying in Washington, according to a Common Cause analysis of federal records.


•Verizon Communications, SBC Communications Inc., AOL Time Warner, General Electric Co./NBC,
News Corp./Fox, Viacom Inc./CBS, Comcast Corp., Walt Disney Co./ABC, and the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and the United States Telecom Association together gave nearly $45 million in federal political donations since 1997.
Of that total, $17.8 million went to Democrats and $26.9 million went to Republicans.


•
These eight companies and three trade associations also spent more than $358 million on lobbying
in Washington, since 1998, when lobbying expenditures were first required to be disclosed.


All this investment once again gives radio and television broadcasters, telephone companies, long-distance
providers, cable systems and Internet companies a huge advantage over average citizens.

While these corporations have different, and sometimes opposing views on individual provisions of a new
Telecom Act, their overriding desire is for less federal regulation. A new Telecommunications Act could
be written “in a matter of months, not years,” and be a “very short bill,” focused on an almost complete
deregulation of the telecommunications industry, said F. Duane Ackerman, chairman and CEO of BellSouth Corporation. “The basic issue before the Congress is simple,” Ackerman said.
“Can competition do a better job than traditional utility regulation?”

But before Congress listens to this call for less regulation, it is important to understand the changes Telecommunications Act of 1996 put into motion, and how those changes drastically redrew the media landscape, often to the detriment of the public.


The Telecommunications Act of 1996:
•Lifted the limit on how many radio stations one company could own. The cap had been set at 40
stations. It made possible the creation of radio giants like Clear Channel, with more than 1,200
stations,
and led to a substantial drop in the number of minority station owners, homogenization
of play lists, and less local news.



•
Lifted from 12 the number of local TV stations any one corporation could own, and expanded the limit
on audience reach. One company had been allowed to own stations that reached up to a quarter of
U.S. TV households. The Act raised that national cap to 35 percent. These changes spurred huge
media mergers and greatly increased media concentration. Together, just five companies – Viacom, the parent of CBS, Disney, owner of ABC, News Corp, NBC and AOL, owner of Time Warner, now control 75 percent of all prime-time viewing.


•
The Act deregulated cable rates. Between 1996 and 2003, those rates have skyrocketed, increasing by
nearly 50 percent.


•
The Act permitted the FCC to ease cable-broadcast cross-ownership rules. As cable systems increased
the number of channels, the broadcast networks aggressively expanded their ownership of cable networks
with the largest audiences. Ninety percent of the top 50 cable stations are owned by the same parent
companies that own the broadcast networks, challenging the notion that cable is any real source
of competition.


•
The Act gave broadcasters, for free, valuable digital TV licenses that could have brought in up to
$70 billion to the federal treasury if they had been auctioned off. Broadcasters, who claimed they
deserved these free licenses because they serve the public, have largely ignored their public interest
obligations, failing to provide substantive local news and public affairs reporting and coverage of
congressional, local and state elections.


•The Act reduced broadcasters’ accountability to the public by extending the term of a broadcast license
from five to eight years, and made it more difficult for citizens to challenge those license renewals.
“Those who advocated the Telecommunications Act of 1996 promised more competition and diversity,
but the opposite happened,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. “Citizens, excluded from
the process when the Act was negotiated in Congress, must have a seat at the table as Congress proposes
to revisit this law.”

_______________________________________

The downplay of three global US Foreign Economic Zone cities well on their way to SMART CITY status having blackouts at the same time is UNREALISTIC.  This is to what MOVING FORWARD today with deregulated energy and telecom as ONE GRID will lead---the circuitry that used to divide the US into regions and localities is being centralized to ONE GRID and we can bet it was an energy surge/malfunction that took down SMART CITIES EAST COAST AND WEST COAST.

ONE GRID CONTROLS NOT ONLY ENERGY BUT TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND CONGRESS AND OBAMA PASSED LAWS ALLOWING A PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE AGENCY TO SHUT DOWN THE NATIONS' ENTIRE ENERGY/TELECOM GRID ALL AT ONCE.

While we are told this is all about fighting terrorism----WE THE PEOPLE must think about what US citizens having their sovereign rights taken away as MOVING FORWARD creates third world conditions will do with wanting a mass protest to create economic disruption.  It makes all national movements impossible whether through travel or communications.


These incidences seem inconvenient but not worrisome now but what ONE GRID ONE GLOBAL CORPORATION controlling these vital infrastructure means is one flick takes all US cities and this consolidation of telecom and energy occurred with 1996 Telecom Act and electricity utility consolidation.

‘Totally surreal’: Blackouts hit LA, New York and San Francisco

Published time: 21 Apr, 2017 21:00Edited time: 22 Apr, 2017 18:10
Get short URL
A Cable Car sits idle during a citywide power outage on April 21, 2017 in San Francisco © Justin Sullivan / AFP

Power outages hit Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, leaving commuters stranded and traffic backed up Friday. About 90,000 customers were affected in San Francisco.While the outages occurred around the same time there is no evidence they were connected or coordinated.


NEW YORK

The first outage occurred at around 7:20am in New York when the power went down at 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station. That sent a shockwave of delays into the rest of the subway system.
A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman told AP some passengers were stranded on trains. Some cars were dark except for phone light, and some riders say their commutes took two to three hours. Stations were packed.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for a state investigation into the power outrage that ruined Friday's commute for many straphangers.
"The loss of power due to a Con Edison equipment failure during the morning rush hour caused a cascading effect and impacted the lives of thousands of commuters," Cuomo said in a statement. "Simply put, this was completely unacceptable.”


“The @MTA started the weekend early, I guess? Power outage at 53rd & everything is crazy,” one commuter wrote on Twitter.


The weekend is when the MTA does many of its major subway repairs and cuts or reduces subway service.
“It took me an hour and 20 mins to go one stop, give up, find my way out of this mob, then walk back home @MTA,” wrote Liz Baker on Twitter.


By 11:30am, MTA spokesman, Kevin Ortiz, confirmed the generators were running again at the station, and delays were cleared up by the afternoon.
The utility company, Con Edison, said one of its electric lines triggered the outage. Spokesman Allan Drury told AP it is not clear how long the repairs will take or how the failure occurred.


LOS ANGELES

Later in the morning, power outages were reported in Los Angeles International Airport, as well as in several other areas around the city.


SAN FRANCISCO

In San Francisco, the power outages were widespread.


The utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, said a series of outages began at 9 am and within 30 minutes about 90,000 customers lost power.

PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said crews are assessing the situation but there's no immediate estimate for when power will be restored.
PGE officials are pointing to a substation fire as the primary cause of the outage, but have given no public estimates as to when power will be restored.

The blackout includes the Financial District, Presidio and stretch to the Marina/Cow Hollow area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Traffic lights were out at scores of intersections, and cars backed up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.

BART’s Montgomery Station was closed for more than two hours, with trains running through the station without stopping, before the agency reopened it.
All cable cars were down, as were several Muni bus lines that typically run on electricity from overhead wires,. Shuttles were put in place to provide service, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency.

The blackout took out traffic signals, affecting office buildings with residents and workers in the area calling it “totally surreal.”

Twenty-one schools in San Francisco were affected by the outage that affected utilities, including the internet, but they remained open and their schedules adjusted. Families were to be notified if there were changes at the schools.

The Philip Burton Federal Building and US Courthouse were closed down by the outage.
The San Francisco Fire Department said it has responded to more than 100 calls for service since a power outage struck a large area of the city. No injuries were reported.


The department tweeted that the calls included 20 elevators with people stuck inside.
The department adds there have been no delays in responding to calls.

Daisy Prado, a 23-year-old South Bay resident, told the San Francisco Chronicle she was sitting at her desk on the 14th floor of an office building in the Financial District when the power suddenly dropped out. She looked out the window and saw the buildings across the street go dark.

“They told us on an intercom to just stay calm,” Prado said. “People are hanging out the side of their buildings waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Pacific Gas and Electric’s own outage map shows thousands affected and current estimates indicate that the outage is hitting up to 100,000 customers.
At a 2:00 pm press conference, city officials said 300 traffic signals went still down, with either flashing red or no signals, in the North East section of the San Francisco. The city employed 100 parking patrol officers to help with traffic control.  

Drivers were asked to treat intersections as 'Always Stop.'
There had been no reports of traffic collisions. 
San Francisco Police Chief, Bill Scott, said "Our major issue is traffic."

_________________________________________

We think the answer lies below in stating this was a secretive drill by Federal government to test just what happens when systems are shut down.  We know these kinds of drills will be needed as SMART CITY technology with energy and telecom is installed.  At the same time we can bet our Federal government testing all this will sometimes see national media suggesting just what we see below----it was a cyber attack by a foreign entity.

Either way WE THE PEOPLE are already feeling the effects of DEREGULATED energy and telecom and it is not hard to envision these ONE GRID shutdowns being used to target individual businesses---individual communities-----just as the breakdown in TAX UNIFORMITY laws are seeing just the same---taxation being used selectively to create winners and losers and yes---GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA would use the ONE GRID to do this just as they are using our TAX UNIFORMITY against WE THE PEOPLE.


'The cause of the outage has not yet been made clear, though given the current geo-political climate it is not out of the question to suggest a cyber attack could be to blame. It has also been suggested that the current outages could be the result of a secretive nuclear/EMP drill by the federal government'.

ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE KEEPING THEIR THUMB ON ALL THOSE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE COLONIES AS US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES MOVE FORWARD.

"Total Chaos" - Cyber Attack Feared As Multiple Cities Hit With Simultaneous Power Grid Failures
by Tyler Durden
Apr 21, 2017 9:50 PM

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,



The U.S. power grid appears to have been hit with multiple power outages affecting San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
Officials report that business, traffic and day-to-day life has come to a standstill in San Francisco, reportedly the worst hit of the three major cities currently experiencing outages.



Power Cut Shuts Down Seattle


Power companies in all three regions have yet to elaborate on the cause, though a fire at a substation was the original reason given by San Francisco officials.

A series of subsequent power outages in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City left commuters stranded and traffic backed up on Friday morning. Although the outages occurred around the same time, there is as of yet no evidence that they were connected by anything more than coincidence.


The first outage occurred at around 7:20 a.m. in New York, when the power went down at the 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station, which sent a shockwave of significant delays out from the hub and into the rest of the subway system. By 11:30 a.m. the city’s MTA confirmed that generators were running again in the station, although the New York subways were set to run delayed into the afternoon.






Later in the morning, power outages were reported in Los Angeles International Airport, as well as in several other areas around the city.






Via : Inverse


The San Francisco Fire Department was responding to more than 100 calls for service in the Financial District and beyond, including 20 elevators with people stuck inside, but reported no immediate injuries. Everywhere, sirens blared as engines maneuvered along streets jammed with traffic.






Traffic lights were out at scores of intersections, and cars were backing up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.


Via: SF Gate
The cause of the outage has not yet been made clear, though given the current geo-political climate it is not out of the question to suggest a cyber attack could be to blame. It has also been suggested that the current outages could be the result of a secretive nuclear/EMP drill by the federal government.


As we have previously reported, the entire national power grid has been mapped by adversaries of the United States and it is believed that sleep trojans or malware may exist within the computer systems that maintain the grid.


In a 2016 report it was noted that our entire way of life has been left vulnerable to saboteurs who could cause cascading blackouts across the United States for days or weeks at a time:

It isn’t just EMPs and natural disaster that poses a threat to the grid, but there is also the potential for attacks on individual power substations in the vast network of decentralized and largely unguarded power grid chain. A U.S. government study established that there would be “major, extended blackouts if more than three key substations were destroyed.”


Whether by criminals, looters, terrorists, gangs or pranksters, it would take very little to bring down the present system, and there is currently very little the system can do to protect against this wide open threat.
Whether the current outages are the result of a targeted infrastructure cyber attack or simply a coincidence, most Americans think the impossible can’t happen, as The Prepper’s Blueprint author Tess Pennington highlights, a grid-down scenario won’t just be a minor inconvenience if it goes on for more than a day or two:


Consider, for a moment, how drastically your life would change without the continuous flow of energy the grid delivers. While manageable during a short-term disaster, losing access to the following critical elements of our just-in-time society would wreak havoc on the system.

• Challenges or shut downs of business commerce
• Breakdown of our basic infrastructure: communications, mass transportation, supply chains
• Inability to access money via atm machines
• Payroll service interruptions
• Interruptions in public facilities – schools, workplaces may close, and public gatherings.
• Inability to have access to clean drinking water

It is for this reason that we have long encouraged Americans to prepare for this potentially devastating scenario by considering emergency food reserves, clean water reserves and even home defense strategies in the event of a widespread outage. The majority of Americans have about 3 days worth of food in their pantry. Imagine for a moment what Day 4 might look like in any major city that goes dark.
______________________________________________
Here we have the goal of ONE WORLD ONE GRID and it is not only our energy sources wind, solar, electricity all on one grid ----it is our telecommunications as well and look at what is MOVING FORWARD in Australia----sadly they are as captured by global Wall Street neo-liberals as the US-----the telecoms want in on the energy business.  Well, let's face it all global multinational corporations like our energy corporations taking all our state home energy and all our telecom corporations are multinational-----and all those global corporations have boards filled with executives from other multinational corporations so basically already the global 1% own our US energy and telecoms and ONE GRID will see telecoms and energy merge into one global corporation controlling the ONE GRIDS of all Foreign Economic Zones.  What is happening in US with ONE GRID is happening in all Foreign Economic Zones creating THE GREAT BIG THUMB of global corporate tribunal able to kill vital energy and telecom in any US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone with a flick of a button.

THIS MATTERS FOLKS-----FAR-RIGHT, MILITARISTIC, EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POVERTY AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIP COMES WITH ONE GRID KILLING ALL TELECOMMUNICATIONS AT A WHIM.

'Telecommunications companies want in on the action -- and they have money, consumers and huge market influence. Australian telecommunications company Telstra has announced plans to roll out home solar-plus-storage solutions to the millions of consumers it has around Australia. The corporation will offer entire-home connectivity packages including internet, phones and now solar, hopefully making the cost of solar panels in Australia more affordable'.


Utilities
Will Telecom Companies Kill Utilities?


Darryn Van Hout argues that telecom firms such as Telstra, armed with solar-plus-storage, can win in the Australian energy market.
by Darryn Van Hout
February 15, 2016

The energy war is truly underway around the world, and there’s one word on everyone’s lips: storage, or more specifically, the solar-plus-storage revolution. 
Solar-based generation has been available to the market for decades, but energy utilities have managed to keep their stronghold over the energy market. The downfall of solar power has been that it could not cater to nighttime electricity use -- relying on the larger electricity grid to keep it going.
 
Enter solar-plus-storage, the game-changer that solved this issue overnight. Granted, solar-plus-storage technology has been years in the making, but the shock it is causing to traditional electricity suppliers is drastic. The power dynamic between solar, fossil fuels, the government and consumers is highly complex -- and about to become even more so.
 
Telecommunications companies want in on the action -- and they have money, consumers and huge market influence. Australian telecommunications company Telstra has announced plans to roll out home solar-plus-storage solutions to the millions of consumers it has around Australia. The corporation will offer entire-home connectivity packages including internet, phones and now solar, hopefully making the cost of solar panels in Australia more affordable.
 
Telstra’s entry into the energy market in Australia signals a huge change to the industry and what could create enormous growth in renewable energy usage around the country. Telstra’s head of new business, Cynthia Whelan, says, “Telstra is looking at the opportunities to help customers monitor and manage many different aspects of the home, including energy.”
 
“We see energy as relevant to our ‘Connected Home’ strategy, where more and more machines are connected in what is called the internet of things,” she said.
 
Telstra has identified enormous potential in an existing consumer base, which will be looking to make the move to solar in the near future. Predictably, other large telcos will follow suit when the adoption of solar-plus-storage increases, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. While companies like Telstra and their competitors are experts within their industry, this doesn’t mean traditional utilities like AGL, Ergon Energy and Origin Energy won’t go down without a fight. They have, after all, been doing this for a while.
 
The question is whether a long history in the energy industry will be an advantage or a disadvantage. The status quo is hard to change. This is where Telstra is seeing its opportunity.


The utility’s weak spot

Consumer relationships matter. This may seem like a fairly obvious statement, but the history of energy companies and their consumer relationships does not reflect a strong focus on customer service. The traditional relationship between utility companies and their customers has long been a one-sided power dynamic, leaving utility companies with large amounts of control over energy prices.
 
In Australia, the reputation of energy retailers is considerably on the negative end, with just 22 percent of Australians holding a positive view of the energy industry, according to a survey conducted by IPSOS-Mori in the U.K.

 
The reasons for Australians having a poor relationship with their energy suppliers are said to include gas supply issues, the controversial coal seam gas movement, and high electricity prices. In what was once an oligopoly over the energy industry, utilities have had little need to foster their relationships with customers.
 
But as the solar revolution is expanding and customer service experts like Telstra enter as competitors, electricity retailers could be starting to regret relying on a historical imbalance of power. A 2014 Fairfax Business Intelligence survey measuring customer service satisfaction showed that energy utilities ranked worst in terms of customer service.
 
Advisory body Accenture and the Australian Financial Review have released recommendations to the energy sector suggesting exactly that. Their suggestions highlight consumer relationships as the central factor to the success of energy utilities in the changing and increasingly competitive energy market.
 
“Energy providers need to understand that customers are irrational and that many consumers have a preference to interact through non-traditional channels. Energy companies should look to making better use of digital, personalization and user-centered design,” the report states.
 
This is something telecommunications companies have been doing for years. The nature of the telecommunications industry demanded a high level of customer service from telcos, giving them the advantage of positive consumer relations in their entry into the solar industry.
 
The Accenture report describes the energy market as going through a “reinvention that will forge the way to future prosperity in an environment where consumers can and will choose to move completely off the grid and take more control of their energy choices.”
 
Mark Coughlin, head of utilities at PwC, also emphasized customer service as one of the central factors that will determine industry success. “The traditional utility model where the company controls the ‘electrons’ and the consumer has little choice is on its last legs; this model is struggling to meet customer needs.”
 
The empowerment of the consumer is aligning with the enormous growth of the solar storage industry, and there’s no doubt that demand for self-sufficiency in energy consumption is high.
 
Leading consumer care organization Australian Solar Quotes has seen record numbers of solar quote inquiries this year as Australian consumers seek solutions that will protect them from exposure to high electricity prices, driven by the Australian utilities. It’s now only a matter of time until the shift in the way that we buy, store and consume electricity will be available to all Australian households, including the large rental and commercial market.

Let's review the several years of Obama and Clinton neo-liberals in Congress to see where telecommunications policy stand.  States like Maryland with global Wall Street Clinton neo-liberal governors like O'MALLEY saw those governors hand state utilities over to ever larger telecom and energy monopolies at the same time Obama and his FCC decided they could sell our Federal public airwaves to global corporations throwing a bone to handing a few broadband airwaves  to 'local media startups' which will not last longer than building global corporate campuses in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones.  Mergers throughout Obama's terms in telecom---an FCC chair being that executive tied to telecom just as we see Trump did.  The growing of global technology during Obama --from global corporate education to global health tourism----from super-sized SMART CITIES to changing from ANALOG TO DIGITAL ONLY -----all these policies assured that their will be NO ACCESS for 99% of citizens to high-speed internet as all AIRWAVES AT LOWEST SPECTRUM capable of these high-speed transmissions were the ones sold to global corporations.

OBAMA AND CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ALLOWED FURTHER CONSOLIDATION AND MONOPOLY BY GLOBAL TELECOM CORPORATIONS----SEVERELY DAMAGED OUR NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY BY SELLING OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS----AND EXPANDED GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY TO ASSURE THERE WILL BE NO ROOM ON THE INTERNET FOR WE THE PEOPLE AND SMALL BUSINESS.

What could Trump do worse than that?  No doubt he will continue to merge our telecom into

ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE ENERGY/TELECOM CORPORATION AND GRID.  Obama's FCC net neutrality ruling was left progressive posing---there is a need to allow foreign corporations in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones to access this high-speed internet and that is what Obama's net neutrality ruling did----it had nothing to do with the net neutrality for which 99% of citizens have been fighting.


'Accelerate 5G cellular deployment and other wireless advances by reallocating and repurposing spectrum, and use federal research funding for “Internet of Things” test beds and field trials'.


'Clinton also won an endorsement from Jim Cicconi, a longtime GOP supporter and senior executive VP at AT&T—a company that sued the FCC to stop the net neutrality rules'.


As the comment above crom Cicconi states----Hillary was as always LYING ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY FOR WE THE PEOPLE-----the Clinton's are Obama are global Wall Street wanting a ONE ENERGY/ONE TELECOM GRID just as Trump does.

So the issue on net neutrality is tied to whether global foreign corporations in US cities will access high-speed internet or not-----Hillary/Obama support global corporate net neutrality and so does Trump although he is POSING CONSERVATIVE by pretending he will protect high-speed access to US corporations.


Telecom and the White House --

Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump on broadband: She has a plan, he doesn’t
Clinton vows to defend net neutrality—Trump calls it “attack on the Internet."

Jon Brodkin - 10/10/2016, 8:30 AM

Enlarge
SAUL LOEB & ROBYN BECK AFP/Getty Images / Aurich
Campaign 2016


The 2016 presidential election is likely to have a major impact on how the US government tries to expand broadband deployment and how it regulates Internet service providers. But while we have a pretty good idea of how a President Hillary Clinton would approach the broadband industry, there’s very little to go on when predicting broadband policy under a President Donald Trump.


Clinton’s technology plan includes several initiatives designed to “deliver high-speed broadband to all Americans,” and it promises to defend network neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from discriminating against online services. There are questions about how Clinton would implement the plan and whether it's aggressive enough to achieve 100 percent broadband deployment, and her campaign has declined to provide more specifics. But the mere fact that Clinton has outlined some clear broadband goals sets the Democratic nominee apart from the other candidates.



Republican nominee Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have any plan for increasing access to broadband, and there are indications that he would not support new consumer protection regulations. He weighed in on net neutrality, but only in a November 2014 tweet:


The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a public policy think tank, recently analyzed Clinton’s and Trump’s positions on technology. There were six broadband and telecommunications policy categories, and for five of them Trump was listed as having “no position” or having made no comment. Trump had no position on wireless spectrum and 5G; a Communications Act update; broadband and telecom subsidies; broadband adoption and digital literacy; and broadband competition and public-private partnerships.

Net neutrality was the one category where Trump had a position, but only because of the two-year-old tweet.
Besides "that one tweet from 2014 on net neutrality, it's pretty much radio silence from the Trump camp," ITIF telecommunications policy analyst Doug Brake told Ars.


Trump has finally just hired an aide to help him develop a telecom plan, Politico reported Friday. The aide, Jeffrey Eisenach of the American Enterprise Institute, is described by Politico as "a crusader against regulation" and is a staunch opponent of net neutrality rules. Eisenach's appointment suggests Trump might pursue a deregulatory telecommunications agenda, but the candidate still isn't talking publicly about specific policies.


Brake didn’t endorse either candidate, but he said that when it comes to broadband, “Clinton at least has a plan. You can quibble with some of the details in it, but she has clearly thought hard about what the government’s role should be in promoting innovation and has policies that will work to promote innovation throughout the economy.” The ITIF describes itself as nonpartisan, but the group prefers a more conservative approach to telecommunications policy than the one chartered under President Obama and current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.


Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson has opposed net neutrality rules and Internet regulation in general, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein supports net neutrality rules. Stein has called for universal broadband access—but she also claimed that wireless Internet signals can damage children’s brains despite a lack of scientific evidence to support such concerns.
None of the four candidates has responded to our repeated requests for more details. So with the clock ticking toward November 8, we’ll have to settle for examining their public statements.


The Clinton broadband plan

Clinton’s tech agenda describes the nation’s broadband problems as follows: “Millions of American households, particularly in rural areas, still lack access to any fixed broadband provider, around 30 percent of households across America have not adopted broadband (with much higher levels in low-income communities), and American consumers pay more for high-speed plans than consumers in some other advanced nations.”


Clinton campaign

Clinton cited research from the FCC, which defines broadband as Internet access with speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, but she is flexible on what speeds the nation should strive for. By 2020, she wants 100 percent of American households to have the option of buying affordable broadband at “speeds sufficient to meet families’ needs.”
This wouldn’t necessarily involve stringing fiber wires to every home. Clinton wants federal agencies to consider fiber, fixed wireless, and satellite technologies for bringing broadband to unserved areas. Here are some of her proposals:

• Continue investments in the Connect America Fund, the Rural Utilities Service program, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), and Lifeline.
• Use Lifeline to help people learn how to use the Internet and expand access to cheap devices.
• Create a competitive grant program encouraging local governments to reduce regulatory barriers to private investment; promote “dig once” programs that install fiber or fiber conduit during road construction projects; and develop public-private partnerships.
• Expand federal funding to bring free Wi-Fi and high-speed Internet to “recreation centers, public buildings like one-stop career centers, and transportation infrastructure such as train stations, airports, and mass transit systems.”
• Accelerate 5G cellular deployment and other wireless advances by reallocating and repurposing spectrum, and use federal research funding for “Internet of Things” test beds and field trials.
• Encourage state and local governments to relax rules that protect incumbents from new competitors, such as “local rules governing utility-pole access that restrain additional fiber and small cell broadband deployment.”
• Push federal agencies to identify anticompetitive practices “such as tying arrangements, price fixing, and exclusionary conduct,” and refer potential violations of antitrust law to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. (This proposal isn’t specific to broadband but could have an impact on ISPs.)

Separately, Clinton pledged to defend the FCC’s net neutrality rules in court and continue to enforce them. She also supports the FCC's related decision under Wheeler to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act; Title II, while controversial, is the legal mechanism used to enforce the net neutrality rules.



Clinton’s plan leaves out some of the specifics that will be needed to achieve her goals, and the plan proactively takes credit for 5G development that is likely to happen regardless of who wins the presidency. But that doesn’t seem to bother Harold Feld, senior VP of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group that generally supports Wheeler’s broadband deployment and net neutrality policies.


“This is not the blueprint, this is the promise,” Feld said. “Once they get in, they're still going to have to do the blueprint, and that's when we'll see if they'll swing for the bleachers or just try to play it safe.”
As a campaign platform, what Clinton has proposed is “very good,” he said. 100 percent deployment probably won’t happen, but setting the goal at 100 percent makes it more likely that she’ll get to 95 percent or so, Feld said.


“The thing that worries me is this is a very incremental approach,” Feld said of Clinton’s plan. “It builds on what's out there now, it generally solidifies around basic points of agreement.” For example, Clinton hasn’t talked about whether the FCC should crack down on Internet data caps, but “those are not the kinds of things you put in a campaign platform,” Feld said.


A Clinton FCC seems likely to continue on a path similar to the one taken by Obama and Wheeler. Yet she is getting support from the same telecom industry that bitterly opposed Wheeler’s net neutrality plan and many of his other initiatives. Telecom services and equipment companies donated $640,247 to Clinton this year, while giving just $19,319 to Trump, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.


Clinton also won an endorsement from Jim Cicconi, a longtime GOP supporter and senior executive VP at AT&T—a company that sued the FCC to stop the net neutrality rules.
“This year I think it’s vital to put our country’s well being ahead of party,” Cicconi said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Hillary Clinton is experienced, qualified, and will make a fine president. The alternative, I fear, would set our nation on a very dark path.”


Brake said he is hopeful that Clinton would take a more “pragmatic” approach than Wheeler. Though Clinton supported Wheeler’s Title II net neutrality plan, Brake pointed to an interview Clinton gave last year in which she said net neutrality rules could alternatively have been imposed through an update of the Communications Act.


That statement “indicates to me that she gets that Title II isn't something to be desired in and of itself,” Brake said. It’s thus probably unlikely that a Clinton FCC would be more liberal than an Obama one, making things like network unbundling a long shot, Brake said.
_________________________________________
Here we see in 2006 WIFI for the masses-----this was Bush era move to tier the internet and access to a global corporations vs 99% where all high-speed access goes to global corporations and WE THE PEOPLE are pushed to WIFI-ONLY as they make this WIFI sound just as good -----high-speed WIFI----but as people are already finding 10 years later WIFI is fast becoming LOWER-TIER internet access.


'The Community Broadband Act of 2005, still in committee, would "preserve and protect the ability of local governments to provide broadband capability and services." '


If US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones are allowed to MOVE FORWARD Foreign Economic Zone building of global corporate campuses and global factories in these next few decades---they will get all access to high -speed and we will be priced off the internet except for global corporate campus public sites.

Below we see where many states have passed laws to protect telecom monopolies from any public attempt to build public access internet locally.  These are really diehard far-right global Wall Street states----needless to say that Community Broadband Act of 2005 made to pretend global Wall Street pols were going to protect the 99% never happened.

'Lawmakers in Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, and Oregon, among others, have proposed legislation to keep local governments from building their own networks or at least make it more difficult for them to do so. Fourteen states, including Florida and Colorado, have already passed restrictions. "We have not supported a ban on municipal networks," says Verizon's Brian Blevins. "But we've felt where there's vibrant competition, the networks can undercut and disrupt a market that's working very well."'

This article is great in outing what was LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE POSING ----a community broadband access bill with no teeth.


Press Release: Tennessee Sends Broadband Accessibility Act of 2017 to Gov. Haslam's Desk




Wed, April 12, 2017 | Posted by Nick
Tennessee Legislature Passes Broadband Accessibility Act, Delivers Hollow "Victory"While Governor Haslam's Signature Legislation Sounds Great, AT&T Will Be Laughing all the Way to the Bank

Contact:
Christopher Mitchell
christopher@ilsr.org


MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Late yesterday, the Tennessee Legislature officially sent Governor Bill Haslam's signature legislation, the Broadband Accessibility Act of 2017, to his desk. Unfortunately, this bill is more about making taxpayer dollars accessible to AT&T than ensuring rural regions get modern Internet access.
"What we have on one side is a taxpayer-funded subsidy program, and on the other we have a subscriber-based model," says Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. "The tragic thing is, AT&T is a taxpayer subsidized monopoly in rural Tennessee that only has to provide a service far slower than the definition of broadband. Locally-rooted networks like Chattanooga's EPB not only offer nation-leading services but have tremendous community support."


With this bill's passage, the Tennessee General Assembly will likely not pass any other broadband legislation during this session. The Broadband Accessibility Act won't improve Tennessee's rating as 29th in Internet connectivity, but it will do a great job of lining AT&T's pockets. As we've tracked throughout the session, there are a number of bills worth supporting that would actually increase connectivity and allow municipalities to take part in their own broadband future.


Mitchell is deeply frustrated with this situation: "Chattanooga is the only city on this planet that has universal access to 10 Gigabit symmetrical Internet access. It is a stunning achievement and Tennessee taxpayers may subsidize AT&T to build DSL service to Chattanooga's neighbors rather than letting the Gig City expand its fiber to neighbors at no cost to taxpayers. Tennessee will literally be paying AT&T to provide a service 1000x slower than what Chattanooga could provide without subsidies."
Maybe next year.


_________________________________________


If we notice COREY BOOKER pushes this community broadband act----look when he did it-----last month after Trump came to office in 2017.  Booker didn't see the need to promote this during the Obama administration because Booker doesn't really want this ---he is left social progressive posing.


The national media will have Booker as a champion of the 99% with this bill------so the TN and NJ global Wall Street pols posing for voters pretending to fight for widespread high-speed internet.  Notice how Obama campaigned in 2008 as Hillary did on this issue and worked to do just the opposite.

So, no one is looking out for net neutrality or widespread protection of high-speed broadband access-----

Press Release: U.S. Senator Booker Introduces 2017 Community Broadband Act

Thu, March 30, 2017 | Posted by Nick
Press Release: Legislation Introduced in the U.S. Senate to Promote Local Internet ChoiceThe "Community Broadband Act" is Boosted by Senators Concerned with Competition Contact:
Christopher Mitchell
christopher@ilsr.org
612-545-5185


MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Earlier this week, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced the Community Broadband Act alongside fellow Senators Edward Markey (D-MA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Angus King (I-ME), Ron Wyden (D-OR.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). We at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) applaud the effort to ensure communities have the freedom and authority to make local decisions in improving Internet access for local businesses and residents.

"We believe that the decisions about how to expand and improve Internet access are best made by local governments, who are most informed about their communities' needs and challenges," says Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks initiative at ILSR. "We applaud these senators for their bill to ensure communities can decide for themselves if a partnership or an investment in network infrastructure is the right choice."
At a time when we are seeing fights over municipal broadband networks ramping up from Colorado to Tennessee to Virginia, we are glad to see many in D.C. recognize the value of local decision-making to improve economic development and ensure a high quality of life.

_________________________________________
We are hearing these broadband air wave sales are geared toward SMART PHONES but the reality is this-----all that global technology business stated above---education/health care/NSA surveillance/Smart City -----all this will take all access to high - speed broadband and yes the smart phones.  This air wave auction occurred in 2014 with absolutely no protest from Congress even though these sales place all US airwaves viable for national coverage in the hands of global telecommunication corporations mostly ATT and Verizon which all expect to merge as one national telecom as in Mexico.

Without any legal challenge to these sales----knowing net neutrality for the 99% can not occur with these global corporate campus goals all global Wall Street Clinton/Obama neo-liberals were POSING LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC all over the place.  We even had a pretense from Baltimore City Hall pols pushing local community broadband sales knowing these small businesses will not be keeping those airwaves.


'alongside fellow Senators Edward Markey (D-MA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Angus King (I-ME), Ron Wyden (D-OR.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). We at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) applaud the effort to ensure communities have the freedom and authority to make local decisions in improving Internet access for local businesses and residents'.



“The clamoring for spectrum available in this auction,” he added, “should refocus our lawmakers’ attention on the value of this resource and the need to put it to use to meet the needs of the American public.”


When people were shouting Obama should have been impeached for treasonous acts against WE THE PEOPLE----from allowing global Wall Street frauds stay with those openly stealing tens of trillions of dollars ----to the selling of our national broadband airwaves----we have lots of attacks on national sovereignty these few decades.


Wall Street earns $24 billion in just a few weeks -----this is nothing for controlling all national high-speed broadband.

Bidding in Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion
By EDWARD WYATTNOV. 22, 2014

A cell tower in California. Bidding for six blocks of airwaves to be used in mobile broadband has topped $34 billion, more than three times the reserve price set by the Federal Communications Commission. Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images


WASHINGTON — A government auction of airwaves for use in mobile broadband has blown through presale estimates, becoming the biggest auction in the Federal Communications Commission’s history and signaling that wireless companies expect demand for Internet access by smartphones to continue to soar.
And it’s not over yet.


Companies bid more than $34 billion as of Friday afternoon for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum, being sold by the F.C.C. That total is more than three times the $10.5 billion reserve price that the commission put on the sale, the first offering of previously unavailable airwaves in six years.
Prices are likely to rise further, because the auction has no definite end and could continue for days or weeks. The previous record was $18.9 billion raised in a 2008 sale of airwaves that, because of their lower frequency, are considered more attractive for wireless phone use than the current batch.

“It’s stunning,” said Preston Padden, executive director of the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, a group representing broadcast television stations that are considering giving up their spectrum for sale in the F.C.C.’s next auction, scheduled for 2016. “Consumer demand for wireless broadband is on a growth curve that looks like a hockey stick, and carriers are desperate to keep up with that demand.”

Several factors appear to have contributed to the auction’s success, as the pent-up demand from years without an auction coincided with the explosive popularity of smartphones and mobile broadband. The response is more surprising given that the airwaves’ high frequency makes them less attractive for wireless use than those sold in the last auction or scheduled for the 2016 sale.

Coming soon after President Obama called for strong net neutrality regulations to be applied equally to wireless networks, the robust bidding also seems to indicate that mobile phone companies are not as reluctant to make new investments as they indicated they were when protesting the president’s recommendation.


The auction is a significant victory for the F.C.C. and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the agency in the Commerce Department that oversees the nation’s communications systems. It makes it much likelier that broadcast stations might be willing to give up or move their positions on the spectrum to free up airwaves to be sold in the 2016 auction, because they will receive a portion of the proceeds as an incentive.
“Years of hard work paved the way” for the auction, “and ongoing bidding appears to signal considerable commercial interest in this spectrum,” the F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, and an assistant secretary of commerce, Lawrence E. Strickling, said in a joint statement on Friday.


About $7 billion of the proceeds will be used to finance the building of a nationwide public-safety communications network, known as FirstNet, with the remainder going to the Treasury.


A successful sale was anything but a foregone conclusion. The frequencies are currently occupied by government agencies, including branches of the military, which had to be cajoled to agree to move out or to share portions of them.

The relatively high position on the electromagnetic spectrum of the blocks being sold also cast doubt on their attractiveness. Higher-frequency waves generally have more trouble passing through buildings, making them less desirable for mobile phones, although they are able to carry lots of data, increasingly important to wireless broadband.

THAT'S BECAUSE THESE AIRWAVES ARE NOT FOR MOBILE PHONES----


Frequencies being sold include two blocks in the 1695-1710 megahertz band, and four paired sets of frequencies at 1755-1780 and 2155-2180 megahertz. The next scheduled broadcast spectrum auction, in 2016, involves frequencies in the 600 megahertz band.
The last such sale was in 2008, when the iPhone was barely a year old and demand for mobile broadband was at a relative trickle. Today, as consumers stream video and share photographs with many more phones, tablets and other devices, demand for bandwidth has exploded.

Some analysts have also speculated that because the auction of broadcast television bands currently scheduled for 2016 has already been delayed twice, buyers might be skeptical that those frequencies will come to market on schedule — giving them extra incentive to buy now rather than wait.


Still, the current spectrum, known as the AWS-3 bands, is also not likely to be available for use for some years. Government users will first have to move out of the bands, or buyers figure out how to share some of the airwaves with military operators.


Seventy companies were approved to bid in the auction, but the high bidders will not be identified until after the auction is completed. New owners will then have to engineer their devices to work with the high-frequency spectrum, although the biggest companies, like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, already use similar, adjacent frequencies, so that is not likely to be too onerous.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T are assumed to be among the big bidders in the sale. But Philip Cusick, a financial analyst at J.P. Morgan, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday that “the continued rapid rise in bids is a sign that there is a third, or perhaps fourth, large bidder in the auction.”

One of those could be Dish Network, the satellite company, which already owns some nearby frequencies. Dish Network’s share price rose 13 percent last week as investors realized the aggressive bidding meant Dish’s holdings were probably undervalued.


Shares of Verizon and AT&T, for their part, fell slightly, as analysts noted that the companies might be spending more than they expected.

Some prices are truly eye-popping. The price for licenses in a 20-megahertz block of paired frequencies covering New York and Long Island and portions of adjacent states stood at $1.96 billion Friday afternoon. In the bidding round that starts Monday morning, the minimum bid is more than $2 billion.


The results of the yet-to-be-completed auction have some parties calling for Congress to pave the way for more sales, and soon. “Companies are clamoring to give the federal government money,” Vince Jesaitis, vice president for government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group, wrote on the group’s blog last week.


“The clamoring for spectrum available in this auction,” he added, “should refocus our lawmakers’ attention on the value of this resource and the need to put it to use to meet the needs of the American public.”

_____________________________________________

All global Wall Street pols and players knew what Obama's FCC was doing----they knew it would take all control of our telecomm and place it unregulated and monopolized into the hands of global telecoms which will merge to one-----leaving 99% of people with no access or ability to control vital national, state, and local internet and phone communications.

'Consumer groups are leery that this deal will benefit their constituents, with Mark Cooper
— research director of the Consumer Federation of America — saying in an interview, “This is the end of the world'!

'VZ and ATT get wireless;
cable gets wires; consumers are stuck'.

AND WE ARE WORRIED ABOUT WHAT TRUMP WILL DO?


 I didn't have time to format-----


Verizon’s spectrum deal with
cable is the end of
broadband competition


The spectrum deal Verizon signed
with Comcast, Time Warner
Cable and Bright House Networks
Friday, in which the nation’s
largest wireless operator would buy the unused airwaves from
the nation’s top cable providers,
signals the moment that the
consumer benefits of the convergence of voice, video and data hit
the wall. It’s a deal that’s great for Verizon, an acknowledgment
of reality for the cable folks and a bummer for AT&T and
consumers.
Under the terms of the deal, Verizon will acquire AWS spectrum
that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks
had purchased during the AWS auctions under the SpectrumCo name in 2006.


Verizon is paying a $1.2 billion premium for the
airwaves and will get 20 MHz in cities across the continental
U.S., giving it up to 60 MHz for its Long Term Evolution (LTE)
network in certain markets. And fo
r mobile players, having a lot
of spectrum is essential to meeting demand.


But as part of the deal, Verizon and the cable companies have
signed undisclosed “agreements” that indicate how the two
companies will combine their products and create partnerships
around bundling wireless, voice, data and television. Verizon
didn’t explain much, but Kevin Fitchard, my colleague writes:



The most obvious result of that deal would be to allow the
cable operators to become MVNOs on Verizon’s network, but
it may also hold the possibility of Verizon becoming a kind of
cable virtual operator or agent outside of its traditional
wireline territory, selling home broadband, TV and phone
services out of its stores.


In a blog post today Neil Sm
it, President of Comcast Cable
wrote
that Comcast will wait four years before it can provide a mobile
offering with itself acting as mo
bile virtual network operator. He
said Time Warner Cable and Bright House had similar
agreements. However, the tenor of those agreements is essential
in determining how this deal will affect the U.S.’ broadband
competition in both wireless and wireline.
The hope of a new wireless player shrinks
Verizon and the cable guys are hanging up their gloves.
Consumer groups are leery that this deal will benefit their
constituents, with Mark Cooper
— research director of the
Consumer Federation of America — saying in an interview, “This is the end of the world!



“Verizon was supposed to be our
competitor for Comcast in the
wireline space and SpectrumCo was supposed to be a competitor
to Verizon and AT&T in the wireless, and now that’s all gone,” he
said. Indeed, it’s looking unlikely that the cable guys will
continue to act as any sort of co
mpetition, especially given that
Cnet is reporting
they will halt their agreement to resell WiMax
with Clearwire. This leaves the wireless world pretty much stuck
with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and
T-Mobile, with smaller dollops
of competition provided by Leap Wireless and MetroPCS. The
two smaller carriers may even get a tiny boost if the
FCC requires
Verizon to sell off any spectrum assets
as part of approving the
deal.
Despite the potential of a small spectrum divestiture, Cooper
notes that in the last 10 years, AT&T and Verizon have managed
to buy 75 percent of the spectrum
that was put on auction, and
about 90 percent of the spectrum
auctioned in the last decade is
in the hands of the Big Four carriers. Given that spectrum is one
of the barriers to entry for anyo
ne planning a wireless network,
and that getting the stuff approved for a mobile broadband
network is daunting and expensive,
it’s pretty clear U.S. policy
hasn’t helped spread that wealth.
Where there’s wireline there’s hope. Or there was.
Yet aside from the wireless impl
ications, the deal has a huge
potential impact on wireless broadband competition. Verizon
had hinted it might resell its FiOS TV service over-the-top to
folks outside the FiOS service area. Since TV can be a collection
of bits delivered over the Intern
et, the traditional cable packages
could become obsolete if the content companies and channels
could figure out ways to license their content in new ways.

TV will be affected too.
Given that Verizon has both a broadband and a pay TV business,
it had one of the best chances to
push such a radical change in
the pay TV business model. But now that it has some mysterious
“agreements” with the cable guys, it’s unlikely that Verizon
would try to infringe on their
content businesses with its own
over-the-top offering. That’s a bummer for consumers who might
prefer a Verizon package over one
from their local cable provider,
but it’s also indicative of Verizon ceding the wireline market to
cable companies.



As Verizon has rolled out its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) offerings,
it has sold off many elements of its older DSL businesses, and is
now positioning its
LTE wireless service as a competitor to DSL
.
 This is bad news for Frontier,
CenturyLink and AT&T’s markets th
at don’t have U-verse, but it
won’t bother cable providers, whic
h have or are in the midst of
upgrading their networks to
faster DOCSIS 3.0 systems
 that can deliver 100 Mbps service.
Cable companies are already
taking over at the nation’s primary
broadband providers
 as
people dump DSL lines in droves
. The problem is that for many
consumers a choice between DSL, LTE or cable isn’t really much
of a choice at all. Cable networ
ks upgraded to DOCSIS 3 can be
much faster than DSL or LTE, and it’s hard to imagine a
consumer seeing the options as equal. The best hope for a better
competitor to cable is FTTH (not
even AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node
technology that U-verse offers), and it’s possible that Verizon no
longer has much reason to roll
out fiber further so it doesn’t
upset its new partners. This is
why both AT&T and consumers
are on the losing end of this agreement.
Susan Crawford, an influential policy wonk and a professor at
Cardozo Law School in New York City agrees.


She emailed me the following:


“This is the crystalline moment when the division of the
marketplace becomes completely
clear, even to people who
haven’t been paying attention. VZ and ATT get wireless;
cable gets wires; consumers are stuck. Wireless, like wired
high-speed access already wholly dominated by the cable
companies, is a natural monopoly service at this point, with
incredibly high barriers to entry – so high that even current
players, like T-Mo, are having trouble making it. Clearwire
has nowhere to go at this point. So we have the worst of all
worlds: no competition, and no regulatory oversight.”

We will segue from THE DECADE OF THE BRAIN to public policy around communication especially around ONE ENERGY/TELECOM GRID by looking at the differences today that allow scientific research that was constrained for moral, ethical, and civil liberties views BEFORE GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ----and how media and Hollywood now try to bring all these very, very, very, very bad medical advances we know are tied to CIA -MIND-CONTROL forward into main stream.

We discussed these few weeks public policy surrounding CIA/SPACE/THE BRAIN and know what the common factor was in all those topics?  Which institutions are tied to LSD studies?  Johns Hopkins and University of New Mexico.  Which institutions are tied to CIA?  Johns Hopkins and University of New Mexico.  Which institutions are tied to SPACE AND PLANETARY MINING with a focus on human hibernation as a method of transporting human capital?  Johns Hopkins and University of New Mexico.  Know what research is tied to pushing the human body into induced coma for several years for cheapest space transport?  That's right======LSD/hallucinogen treatments breaking down brain circuitry making brain malleable.  Some researchers pretending this is all OK say its like giving planetary mining slaves an IN-HEAD FLIGHT MOVIE produced by controlled hallucination.


The idea of bringing LSD into everyday medical treatment as with human fear of cancer diagnosis is simply masking what is going full speed ahead in human space travel medicine----the BBC's DR WHO........

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION/ONE WORLD ONE HEALTH CARE.


This is just another far-right wing global Wall Street pols and players pretending to be working for left social progressive public interest. Any beneficial treatment that may surface will pale to having these MIND-CONTROL GOALS MOVING FORWARD.




Sleeper spaceship could carry first humans to Mars in hibernation state

Ben Brumfield, CNN


Updated 1:52 PM ET, Tue October 7, 2014

Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Large habitats can hold many travelers. That is particularly useful, if the ultimate goal is to colonize Mars.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – A small space ship for descending to the planet's surface is attached to a large torpor habitat unit.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – This habitat model does not spin, thus occupants travel through space in zero gravity.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Astronauts in a hibernation state called torpor are strapped into modules with medical monitors. They are fed intravenously.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Most units rotate to create centrifugal force, simulating gravity. This helps fight bone density loss that occurs in zero gravity.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Large habitats can hold many travelers. That is particularly useful, if the ultimate goal is to colonize Mars.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – A small space ship for descending to the planet's surface is attached to a large torpor habitat unit.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – This habitat model does not spin, thus occupants travel through space in zero gravity.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Astronauts in a hibernation state called torpor are strapped into modules with medical monitors. They are fed intravenously.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Most units rotate to create centrifugal force, simulating gravity. This helps fight bone density loss that occurs in zero gravity.
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Photos: Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars
Study: Astronauts hibernate to Mars – Large habitats can hold many travelers. That is particularly useful, if the ultimate goal is to colonize Mars.



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3 of 5Story highlights

• A study done for NASA foresees astronauts being unconscious for Mars travel
• It would use a medical method called therapeutic hypothermia
• It is usually used to save trauma patients by inducing torpor, a type of hibernation
• The study says it would be better for the astronauts and deeply cut costs

Atlanta (CNN)Six astronauts lie motionless in a row of compartments with medical monitoring cables connected to their bodies, as their space ship cuts through the silent blackness that separates Earth from Mars.

They're sound asleep and will be for the extent of their six-month trip, having been placed in an artificially induced state of hibernation called torpor.
This is the way a NASA-funded study sees space explorers traveling to Mars -- unconscious, with their metabolism switched into slow motion.Sending astronauts that far into space would be too challenging, costly and grueling without it, says space engineer John Bradford, whose Atlanta-based company SpaceWorks wrote the study for NASA.



"Ultimately, it's what we'll have to do," he says.


Sci-fi becomes reality


Sleeper spacecraft with crews in suspended animation have been flying through futuristic science fiction movies like "Avatar," "Alien," "Pandorum" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" for decades.
Now science reality is catching up, as medical advances have made stasis possible via a method called therapeutic hypothermia.


It has been used since the early 2000s to treat patients with traumatic injuries. Formula One racer Michael Schumacher, for example, who suffered a brain injury while snow skiing, was reportedly put into therapeutic hypothermia.


It renders the patient unconscious by lowering the body temperature. In Schumacher's case, it also prevented swelling of his brain. The torpor stasis, which greatly slows metabolism, can help injured patients survive longer, while medical teams work to rescue them, Bradford says.


But doctors usually induce it for only three or four days at a time, not the 180 days it would take for astronauts to get to Mars, nor the 180 it would take to get back to Earth.


"It may take some time to get it to the state of effectiveness we want it to go to," Bradford says.
That involves animal testing, then some extended testing on humans, perhaps on the International Space Station. It could take decades.

A short-cut

There is a possible work-around, though, that astronauts could start out with.
SpaceWork found a Chinese medical study in which trauma patients stayed in torpor for longer periods.
"They had a sample of about 80 people that went through therapeutic hypothermia for all sorts of traumatic injuries. And those periods did range from three to up to 14 days."


The patients who stayed under for two weeks fared as well as those who were put under for a shorter time.
Two weeks is a time frame SpaceWorks can live with and one that Bradford says his medical partners at the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins University are more comfortable with.


Aboard the spacecraft


Here's how it would work during space flight.
The two-week torpor periods would be straddled, so that there is always one astronaut who is awake for a brief period.
The colleague currently awake could check in on the other ones who are still unconscious to make sure their intravenous feeding tubes are clear, and urine removal systems and so on are working properly.
He can also communicate with Earth. "He can check emails," Bradford says.



Then after two or three days, he wakes up the next astronaut by activating a heating system that brings his or her body temperature up to normal.
Then the awakened astronaut straps the other into the hibernation module, hooks up the medical systems and inserts a body cooling tube through a nostril. Heating pads behind the astronaut make sure the nasal tube doesn't cool down their body too much.


A temperature drop of only about five degrees Fahrenheit is necessary -- from 98.6 to about 93 degrees.
Trace amounts of sedatives in the feeding line would suppress the astronaut's shiver reflex.
The habitat unit housing the sleepers would rotate to create centrifugal force simulating gravity. That would help to mitigate the reduction in bone density that naturally occurs in zero gravity.


How long until this is scenario is reality? Less than 30 years, Bradford thinks.
"I think it's something that can and will be used on the first mission to Mars."

Lighter, easier, happier
Getting astronauts to hibernate like bears makes the mission much easier and more affordable, Bradford says.
They can be stacked up in small habitats; with minimal metabolism, they don't need as much food, no daily change of clothes. Exercise equipment is replaced by electrodes that stimulate their muscles while they're asleep.


That saves lots of space and altogether more than half the weight of the fully equipped rocket that it would take to transport a crew that was not sleeping through the voyage in torpor.

And it would be more pleasant for the crew.
Astronauts traveling in waking condition would likely arrive in decent physical shape, but "mentally, I'd worry about them," Bradford says.

"You're going to be in a pretty tight space -- nothing as voluminous as the ISS -- for the mission," he said. Space is dark and feels isolating.
In June 2010, Russia's space agency simulated a trip to Mars by closing up astronauts in a mock space ship for about a year and a half to see how it affected them psychologically.


They became reclusive, got depressed and slept 12 to 14 hours a day because there was nothing to do, Bradford said.




Ultimate goal?

After six months of travel to Mars, the astronauts would face a 500-day mission on the barren planet's surface, according to SpaceWorks' assessment.
Then they'd have to endure another 180 days in the cramped rocket to get home to Earth.


Ideally, Bradford would like to see the astronauts complete both travel phases in torpor stasis and not even have to wake up every two weeks.

Therapeutic hypothermia would also allow space agencies to pack more astronauts into one ship. That's vital to meeting an often-mentioned possible ultimate goal for travel to Mars, he says.


"If we're looking at colonizing, you've to do more than send six or eight people every year."


_______________________________________________

All across the nation we have SINGLE PAYER/UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE/MEDICARE FOR ALL movements all shouting the very same thing. Before Clinton/Bush/Obama we had local, state, and Federal public health departments providing oversight and accountability and they were leading the fight against what was known to be a far-right, militaristic CIA-driven experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs.
Then there was the Democratic Party---the party of the people were filled with REAL left social progressives who educated BROADLY and fought individual health care policy issues known to be bad for the 99% including hallucinogenic drug research ------we built those patient's bill of rights---those Institutional Review Boards---we made sure our professional medical journals had reviews of all sides of medical issues----we were not today's far-right global Wall Street simply shouting STOP BEING MEAN AND GIVE US SINGLE-PAYER.
WE MUST HAVE REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE LEADING THESE JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS-----PLEASE STOP FOLLOWING TALKING POINTS WRITTEN BY GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH NEO-LIBERAL/NEO-CON THINK TANKS.


Successful HCAO Rally, Lobby Day and Hearing In Salem


More than 200 Health Care for All-Oregon supporters from across Oregon gathered at the Capitol in Salem Thursday April 20 to encourage their legislators to work towards universal publicly funded health care. Coming from as far away as Bandon, Ashland, Sisters and La Grande, the red-shirted activists unloaded from buses, vans and cars to pick up their packets and do their lobbying visits.


On the West Capitol steps at noon, HCAO VP Ben Gerritz (Cascade AIDS Project/SEIU 503) MC’d a lively event led off by an original song, “Medicare for All,” performed by Peter Bergel and Marc Nassar of Dr. Atomic’s Medicine Show, followed by a sing-along of “This Plan is Our Plan” led by Mad as Hell Doctor Mike Huntington. Senator Michael Dembrow, lead sponsor of SB 1046, which would create a single payer system in Oregon, spoke on the bill and listed its now 35 co-sponsors. Rep. Allissa Keny-Guyer praised the work of advocates for health care reform towards covering all Oregonians. Joining the HCAO advocates at the rally were folks organized by Common Cause supporting an electoral reform bill, HB 2578. Rep. Dan Rayfield spoke briefly on this small donor-matching bill. Other speakers at the rally were Linda Roman of the Oregon Latino Health Coalition, Dr Paul Gorman, OHSU, Betsy Zucker, FNP, Nurses for Single Payer and Portland Jobs with Justice and Jason Freilinger, small business owner and Silverton City Council member. 


The crowd attending the Senate Committee on Health Care hearing on HCAO’s bill, SB 1046, and the results of the RAND study on financing universal health care in Oregon, overflowed the first hearing room into Hearing Room C, E, into hastily arranged lobby seating, and other monitors around the capitol. If the hundreds of red-shirted advocates were not enough to make the issue visible, the Capitol was filled with AV images of the hearing on universal health care.


The gist of the RAND testimony was that, of the 4 financing systems studied (public option, an essential benefits model, the ACA as it is and single payer), the single payer system, for about what we pay for health care now, would provide comprehensive care for everyone living in Oregon.


Then Senator Dembrow led off a series of speakers testifying for why single payer would work best for Oregon, including Mary Lou Hennrich, HCAO board member and former CEO of Care Oregon; Chunhuei Chi, OSU professor who helped plan the Taiwan single payer plan; Dr Paul Gorman, OHSU, Tracy McEwen, who suffered a stroke for lack of preventative health care; nurse Lisa Mayamoto, Alberto Moreno, Executive Director of the Oregon Latino Health Coalition and Albany manufacturer Ron Loe. Charlie Swanson, HCAO Legislative Chair, also spoke on the efficiencies of single payer. All made arguments for the moral imperative and/or the economic benefits of a single payer system. 


HCAO Advocates did legislative visits with over 60 (two-thirds) of Oregon legislators, asking them to support the concept embodied in SB 1046 by creating a work group of state-holders to act on the resultsof the RAND study to design a universal health care system guaranteeing comprehensive and more affordable coverage for everyone living in Oregon. 

_________________________________________

Before Clinton/Bush/Obama our public universities were staffed and led by leaders who saw HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE/EDUCATING CITIZENS WITH RIGHTS TO PROTECT vs the private universities like our IVY LEAGUES tied to global Wall Street and making the rich extremely rich and powerful.  Our public universities had the IRBs filled with medical staff taking the issue of public safety===public benefit===cost benefit of research as it affects public benefit seriously.  They were the ones saying----


WAIT A MINUTE---THIS CIA/MILITARY OBJECTIVE IN HALLUCINOGEN RESEARCH HAS PROVEN TO HARM HUMANS AND HAS A BAD GOAL OF MIND-CONTROL---OUR INSTITUTION WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS!

We sat in on a public policy meeting of Maryland Assembly Technology and university partnering with corporations agency in Baltimore and we asked----is the IRB of universities like Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Baltimore involved in approving and giving a good-ahead to these global Wall Street profit-making patenting medical research?  Baltimore is ground zero for NIH/venture capital funded/university research and when I asked they said------NO, THE UNIVERSITIES ARE ONLY INDIRECTLY INVOLVED so there is no IRB oversight or approval needed.  This question cooled the entire day's discussion because THIS IS NOT HOW OUR UNIVERSITY IRB process is supposed to work.

Global Wall Street pols are dismantling and deregulating a once strong university IRB involvement by placing the broad number of players in these projects from funding to management as a reason these IRBs no longer have that control.


Human Subjects Research - IRB


Questions?

Institutional Review Board
202-885-3447
irb@american.edu
4200 Wisconsin Ave, NW, Room 201
Zembrzuski, Matt
IRB Coordinator

Mailing Address
This page only applies to researchers at American University in Washington, DC.


Online IRB Applications

The IRB discontinued the use of Adobe PDF files effective September 1, 2015. Cayuse IRB, an online protocol management and review system Has taken their place. If you have difficulty using the system, please contact the IRB office at 202-885-3447. Students will also need a faculty advisor to use the online system.

Please use the Cayuse Account Request to gain access to the new system. NEW REQUESTS WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER JANUARY 3, 2017, due to the holiday.


About the IRB

Research conducted by American University affiliates using human participants is overseen by American University's Institutional Review Board (IRB). Its purpose is to facilitate human subjects research and to ensure the rights and welfare of human subjects are protected during their participation.


What is the IRB's Mission?

American University upholds the highest standards in the ethical conduct of research, including the protection of human participants, while enabling its faculty, staff and students to conduct research in a timely and efficient manner.  The primary mission of the American University Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to facilitate those objectives by reviewing, approving, modifying or disapproving research protocols submitted by AU researchers.The IRB process is based on rules and regulations for federally funded research, primarily the provisions of Protection of Human Subject in the Code of Federal Regulations (45 CFR 46), and supporting materials such as the Belmont Report. The AU IRB strives to create on campus a culture of respect for, and awareness of, the rights and welfare of human research participants, while advancing knowledge and facilitating the highest quality research.


What needs IRB approval?

All Human Subjects Research must receive approval from the IRB. Therefore, if your research meets the definitions of both research and human subjects, you must complete the IRB process.To view the definitions based on federal guidelines, click here. The IRB has determined that most classroom research, many oral history projects, and some review of preexisting data will not require IRB approval. Click here for details and exceptions.


What is the IRB Process?

There are several mandated steps to receive IRB approval for your research. Click here to review the process.


Have you completed required human subjects training?

Information on training opportunities, on campus and online.


Meeting Schedule and Deadlines

All completed protocols are reviewed as they are received. Most protocols will be reviewed for exemption or fall under expedited review. Protocols requiring Full Board review must be received two weeks prior to a meeting. Meetings generally convene on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month, holiday weeks excepted. Completed protocols received after the deadline will be reviewed at the following IRB meeting.


Noncompliance Investigations and Actions

To review the procedures for IRB review of allegations of noncompliance, click here.
__________________________________

Of course it was the National Institutes of Health , National Science Foundation, National Cancer Institute ET AL which would be looking closely at these university IRBs receiving funding to make sure they were enforcing the strictest of patient safety and benefit standards BEFORE CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ----so our local, state, and Federal public health agencies were checking in on all this academic  university research----the NIH, NSF/NCI would be providing oversight and accountability so these local IRBs made sure they held the strictest of standards.

This article shows not only did we lose these oversight and accountability in medical research-----these same institutions started allowing Federal NIH et al funding be sent overseas to fund research they knew did not meet US standards for protecting WE THE PEOPLE and public interest.  Flash forward to today and now these same dysfunctional protections are now openly allowing research that would not meet US standards to now operate here in the US----ergo these CIA/military mind control studies AND HUMAN HIBERNATION---both of which should be viewed as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.


The foreign funding was likely a global medical research corporation like Johns Hopkins partnered with a foreign institution overseas for example. This has been happening these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA now being brought back to US and our universities as corporations.

Who’s Getting Money from NIH?

fullscreen (Photo: Juan Camilo Bernal/Dreamstime)  by Julie Kelly & Jeff Stier April 3, 2017 4:00 AM @Julie_Kelly2


A pair of foreign research organizations have gotten numerous grants for work of unclear value. As Democrats and the scientific establishment howl over President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Congress is investigating whether that agency misspent U.S. tax dollars to fund two European cancer institutions now under scrutiny for conflicts of interest and dubious science. Key lawmakers are also trying to understand the nature of the cozy relationship between federal bureaucrats with budgets and foreign researchers who are eager to accept grants to promote a political agenda at taxpayers’ expense. On March 24, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price (who oversees NIH) requesting information about millions of dollars paid to the Ramazzini Institute, an obscure but controversial cancer not-for-profit based in Italy. The funds were given out by NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), run by Linda Birnbaum; she is also, coincidentally, a Ramazzini fellow. Birnbaum seems to be at the center of a tangled web of federal contracts, agenda-driven scientists and the largely unaccountable organizations that give them cover. Smith accuses Birnbaum’s office of awarding at least $92 million to Ramazzini and Ramazzini fellows since 2009: “The Committee is concerned that contracts awarded to the Ramazzini Institute and its affiliates may not meet adequate scientific integrity standards. If true, this raises serious questions about the integrity of the acquisition process at NIEHS.” Of the payments made directly to Ramazzini, several are from sole-source contracts that did not go through a bidding process. According to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, which filed suit this month seeking public documents about the payments, NIH has awarded Ramazzini fellows more than $315 million in grants since 1985; Chairman Smith says that it’s “unclear what services were rendered” under NIH contracts with Ramazzini. According to the Ramazzini Institute’s website, it achieves “extremely important results at international level [sic] in research into carcinogenic substances present in the environment we live in and in the food that we eat.” Ramazzini claims to work with NIH to develop “experimental data from long-term cancerogenesis bioassays . . . and make available to the scientific community the data of the studies published, and therefore to allow qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the risk and other research.” Despite this claim, no scientific research or budget information is available on their website. Birnbaum — who describes her research as focusing on “the pharmacokinetic behavior of environmental chemicals, mechanisms of action of toxicants including endocrine disruption, and linking of real-world exposures to health effects” — has used her post at NIH to waste hundreds of millions of tax dollars promoting a chemophobic agenda. Her agency gave out $172 million in research grants between 2000 and 2014 to try to show how bisphenol A — commonly known as BPA — affects humans, particularly as a vague “endocrine disruptor.” Birnbaum also squandered $25 million on research that allegedly found male rats exposed to cell phones for nine hours a day had a slight increase in two types of cancer. (She did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment about Congress’s investigation into her agency.) Congress also wants to know more about NIH’s funding of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). This France-based agency has been criticized by government and scientific bodies around the world for using shoddy science to reach politically motivated conclusions. IARC, you may recall, is the group that routinely warns the public that any number of factors could cause cancer; we wrote about its finding that red meat causes cancer here. It operates under the purview of the World Health Organization and receives annual funding from NIH. In a September 2016 letter to NIH, Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had harsh words for IARC: “Despite this record of controversy, retractions, and inconsistencies, IARC receives substantial taxpayer funding from NIH.” He asked for an accounting of NIH’s funding to IARC, saying their standards are “inconsistent with other scientific research, and have generated much controversy and alarm.” IARC and Ramazzini also have ties. The working group that produced one of IARC’s most controversial reports — suggesting that the common weed killer glyphosate is probably carcinogenic — included five Ramazzini fellows. That report has been under fire because it flies in the face of other findings as the only study to show that glyphosate causes cancer. Now activists are trying to get the product banned. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, is used on many genetically engineered crops, which environmental activists oppose. The man who initiated the glyphosate report — Dr. Christopher Portier — also has ties to Birnbaum and NIEHS. Portier worked for NIEHS for 32 years, most recently serving as Birnbaum’s associate director, and had his own laboratory focused on how the environment negatively impacts human health. He, like Birnbaum, is a Ramazzini fellow. Portier has since become a well-known anti-glyphosate activist. This is just one more example of how science has been politicized at several federal agencies and why it’s necessary for Congress to finally demand accountability. Under the Obama administration, federal agencies including NIH refused to fully comply with FOIA requests and inquiries from Congress; those records should now be available under the Trump administration. Activists within the public-health world want us to believe that any cuts to federal research spending will devastate scientific progress. In reality, the NIEHS’s cell phone, BPA, and Ramazzini debacles underscore the fact that when stewards of federal research dollars divert apparently essential science funds to support pet political projects and then defy oversight, Congress and the Trump administration aren’t the ones who should be blamed for halting scientific advances.
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Trump is not being a protector of American interests---he is simply MOVING FORWARD Trans Pacific Trade Pact that is killing public health institutions around the world attached to ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.

Obama and Clinton neo-liberals built BIOTECH FACILITIES tied to universities to create this structure of global Wall Street venture capitalists meets global corporation R and D  meets our global IVY LEAGUE university corporations.  There is no longer a connection to Federal, state, or local oversight structures that used to make sure patient and public interest guided our medical research.  As most of these BIOTECH facilities are tied to global health systems which will become that monopoly in all US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones the funds that once flowed through Federal health institutions are now simply being sent directly to these global health systems to use as they want---like global Johns Hopkins.

So Trump who came to office saying he would stop TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT is simply MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GLOBAL WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION control of our US health system including medical research.  It will be global venture capitalists and hedge funds with global corporations funding much of these 'UNIVERSITY' RESEARCH projects.

The right wing likes to say they are saving money by consolidating all these offices but what they are doing is killing peer oversight and handing all capacity to an NIH that will be staffed with global Wall Street players.  It takes more and more control of oversight from our local regions.

'The plan “includes a major reorganization” of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers'

NIH would see huge budget cut under president’s proposal

Nurse Floreliz Mendoza holds a syringe used in an experimental Zika vaccine clinical trial at the National Institute of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. (Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post)


By Lenny Bernstein March 16 The National Institutes of Health would absorb an enormous $5.8 billion cut under President Trump’s first budget proposal — equal to about 19 percent of its current $30.3 billion discretionary budget.
The plan “includes a major reorganization” of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers and would eliminate the Fogarty International Center, a $69.1 million program dedicated to building partnerships between health research institutions in the United States and abroad.
With few details available in the budget outline, it is unclear what kind of reorganization the administration envisions at NIH, the crown jewel of U.S. biomedical research. The agency funds research into a vast array of diseases and conditions, including cancer, heart disease, developmental disorders and mental illness.
The agency passes out more than 80 percent of its money to more than 300,000 researchers at universities across the country and abroad. It also has hundreds of researchers conducting studies in labs at its sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md. Its world-renowned clinical center treats patients from around the world seeking last-chance cures and volunteers testing cutting-edge therapies.

President Trump just released his budget plan for the next fiscal year, which proposes some big changes in government spending. Here's a look at what agencies are helped and hurt by the proposal. (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Grants to outside researchers tend to be for several years, giving scientists the confidence that they will have the funding they need for the equipment and personnel necessary to carry out their studies. A cut of this size could prove very disruptive to that research, whether it is applied across the board or to some grants only, one former NIH scientist said.
Similarly, the programs in Bethesda — which include the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities — employ 18,000 people who almost certainly would be affected by a budget cut of this magnitude.
The Trump plan also would move the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that analyzes and evaluates health-care programs, into NIH.
[NIH Director Francis Collins to stay on for now]
After more than a decade of treading water financially, NIH received a funding boost in fiscal 2016 under President Barack Obama. It received another cash infusion for fiscal 2017, when funding for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot and a precision medicine initiative was made available.
What's getting cut in Trump's budget View Graphic Trump’s proposal for 2018 would reverse that trend in dramatic fashion, according to the government’s blueprint. The document promises “other consolidations and structural changes across NIH organizations and activities” beyond the cuts it specifies.
___________________________

Scientific American has been a model of medical research professionalism ----peer review------Hippocratic Oath DO NO HARM patient rights being the standard of its journalism.  As an academic reading these medical journals for 4 decades I have watched as they too began loosening standards-----becoming more geared to global Wall Street and breaking down of clinical trial -----public interest standards.  Before this article in 2011 academics were already shouting these few decades that all university medical research standards were being slowly dismantled----partnerships in research with foreign nations to avoid strong US standards in medical research were the source of much of these DISTORTIONS.

Today almost all of our once strong professional research journals have eliminated voices from LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES wanting to protect our US standards of health care and research printing articles promoting the MOVING FORWARD designer medicine---space medicine----minus the environmental disease vectors that dominated US medical research for centuries.


An Epidemic of False Claims

Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings

• By John P. A. Ioannidis on June 1, 2011

False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. We need only look to conflicting findings about beta-carotene, vitamin E, hormone treatments, Vioxx and Avandia. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed.


The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture.


Much research is conducted for reasons other than the pursuit of truth. Conflicts of interest abound, and they influence outcomes. In health care, research is often performed at the behest of companies that have a large financial stake in the results. Even for academics, success often hinges on publishing positive findings. The oligopoly of high-impact journals also has a distorting effect on funding, academic careers and market shares. Industry tailors research agendas to suit its needs, which also shapes academic priorities, journal revenue and even public funding.


The crisis should not shake confidence in the scientific method. The ability to prove something false continues to be a hallmark of science. But scientists need to improve the way they do their research and how they disseminate evidence.


First, we must routinely demand robust and extensive external validation—in the form of additional studies—for any report that claims to have found something new. Many fields pay little attention to the need for replication or do it sparingly and haphazardly. Second, scientific reports should take into account the number of analyses that have been conducted, which would tend to downplay false positives. Of course, that would mean some valid claims might get overlooked. Here is where large international collaborations may be indispensable. Human-genome epidemiology has recently had a good track record because several large-scale consortia rigorously validate genetic risk factors.



The best way to ensure that test results are verified would be for scientists to register their detailed experimental protocols before starting their research and disclose full results and data when the research is done. At the moment, results are often selectively reported, emphasizing the most exciting among them, and outsiders frequently do not have access to what they need to replicate studies. Journals and funding agencies should strongly encourage full public availability of all data and analytical methods for each published paper. It would help, too, if scientists stated up front the limitations of their data or inherent flaws in their study designs. Likewise, scientists and sponsors should be thorough in disclosing all potential conflicts of interest.


Some fields have adopted one or several of these mechanisms. Large international consortia are becoming commonplace in epidemiology; journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association instruct authors to address study limitations; and many journals ask about conflicts of interest. Applying the measures widely won’t be easy, however.


Many scientists engaged in high-stakes research will refuse to make thorough disclosures. More important, much essential research has already been abandoned to the pharmaceutical and biomedical device industries, which may sometimes design and report studies in ways most favorable to their products. This is an embarrassment. Increased investment in evidence-based clinical and population research, for instance, should be designed not by industry but by scientists free of material conflicts of interest.


[break]Eventually findings that bear on treatment decisions and policies should come with a disclosure of any uncertainty that surrounds them. It is fully acceptable for patients and physicians to follow a treatment based on information that has, say, only a 1 percent chance of being correct. But we must be realistic about the odds.
_____________________________________________

Our military personnel felt these same medical research subject conditions during the wars in IRAQ and Afghanistan and yes it involves some of these same hallucinogen drugs used back in the 1950s-60s. Those interviewed suffered ill effects from today's war-zone medical research.


'He was told never to talk about his experiences at Edgewood and to forget about everything he ever did, said or heard at the Maryland base'.


Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments
By David S. Martin, CNN


Updated 8:56 AM ET, Thu March 1, 2012





Soldiers used as test subjects seek help 06:11Story highlights

• Tim Josephs blames secret Army program for health issues, including Parkinson's disease
• Facility tested potentially lethal gases, narcotics and LSD on animals and humans
• Cold War research initially aimed to defend against Soviet chemical or biological attack
• The VA has contacted and offered free medical evaluations to thousands of veterans

The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.


"It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital," recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.


"It was like a plum assignment," Josephs said. "The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals."


But when he went to fill out paperwork the morning after his arrival, the base personnel were wearing white lab coats, and Josephs said he had second thoughts. An officer took him aside.


"He said, 'You volunteered for this. You're going to do it. If you don't, you're going to jail. You're going to Vietnam either way -- before or after,'" Josephs said recently.


From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches' brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ.
Photos: Army guinea pigs: Before and after




Soldier drug 'guinea pigs' sue the V.A. 02:37




Soldiers used as human 'guinea pigs' 04:43
Read the secret (now unclassified) Army document revealing BZ tests on soldiers (PDF)


The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD.

Read the confidential (now unclassified) Army document uncovering LSD tests on volunteers (PDF)


This top secret Cold War research program initially looked for ways to defend against a chemical or biological attack by the Soviet Union, thought to be far ahead of the United States in "psycho-chemical" warfare. But the research expanded into offensive chemical weapons, including one that could, according to one Army film obtained by CNN, deliver a "veritable chemical ambush" against an enemy.


"This incapacitating agent would be dispersed by standard munitions, and the agent would enter the building through all nonprotected openings," the film's narrator boasts.


President Nixon ended research into offensive chemical weapons in 1969, and the military no longer uses human subjects in research on chemical agents, said a spokesman for Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, as the facility is known now.
Tests began for Josephs almost as soon as he arrived at Edgewood for a two-month assignment on January 1, 1968.


"Sometimes it was an injection. Other times it was a pill," Josephs told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Josephs said he didn't know what drugs he was getting. "A lot of chemicals were referred to as agent one or agent two."


Some weeks, he would undergo one test; other weeks, more, Josephs said. And when he questioned the staff about whether he was in any danger, they reassured him: "There is nothing here that could ever harm you."


But Josephs, 63, believes the chemical agents he received during his two-month stint at Edgewood did harm him, triggering health problems that continue to plague him four decades later. Even when he talks about Edgewood, he said, "I get a tightness in my chest."



Parkinson's symptoms


Days before his Edgewood duty ended, in February 1968, Josephs was hospitalized for days with Parkinson's-like tremors, symptoms he said have followed him on and off throughout his adult life.


From Edgewood, Josephs said he went to an Army installation in Georgia, where he experienced tremors so severe, he had to be admitted to the base hospital and given muscle relaxers. The Army then sent Josephs to Air Force bases in Thailand, in support of the war effort in Vietnam. He was told never to talk about his experiences at Edgewood and to forget about everything he ever did, said or heard at the Maryland base.


In 1968, Tim Josephs was told he would be testing gas masks, boots and other clothing, he said.
Josephs left the service when his three-year tour ended, and he began a career as a real estate agent. He married Michelle, a nurse, in 1977, but the couple decided not to have children, fearing his chemical exposure might somehow affect them.

In his mid-50s, Josephs was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological condition that forced him to retire early. Medications cost $2,000 a month, which he was paying for out of pocket.

Josephs applied for veterans benefits based on chemical exposure at Edgewood. Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs granted him partial benefits for his Parkinson's for Agent Orange exposure during his time in Thailand, giving Josephs 40% disability. The letter granting him benefits made no mention of Edgewood.


Josephs says he now takes two dozen pills daily. His symptoms vary from day to day. Sometimes, he has trouble swallowing. Other times, he experiences numbness in his joints or or tremors. He says he tires easily.
He blames his time at Edgewood for all this, and he has joined a lawsuit on behalf of Edgewood veterans seeking medical benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Gordon Erspamer, lead attorney in the suit, has reviewed the partial Edgewood medical records that Josephs was able to obtain with the help of his wife. Erspamer said Josephs probably received an injection of sarin or another nerve gas, because the records show that he received the drug P2S on February 1, 1968, to treat "organophosphate poisoning."


During experiments that began on February 19, 1968, Josephs experienced Parkinson's-like tremors after receiving Prolixin, an antipsychotic medication, Erspamer said, prompting the Edgewood medical staff to give the young soldier Congentin and Artane, two drugs used to treat Parkinson's symptoms.
Erspamer said he sees a connection between Josephs' Parkinson's disease and the drugs he received at Edgewood.


"Those substances affect the same region of the brain," Erspamer said. "Tim clearly had adverse health effects because they gave him such high doses that he ranged from overdose with one substance to the antidote, back and forth, and he actually had to get ... a very powerful antipsychotic drug because, in the vernacular, he flipped out."
In addition to medical benefits, the lawsuit is asking that the Defense Department and Department of Veteran Affairs find all Edgewood veterans and provide them with details of the chemicals they received and their possible health effects.


Erspamer said the government has reached very few of the 7,000 or so Edgewood veterans, and the VA has turned down almost all Edgewood-related health claims. Court documents show that the Veterans Benefits Administration rejected 84 of 86 health claims related to chemical or biological exposure.


"The whole thing stinks, and if the American people knew about it, they would not tolerate it. This kind of behavior toward our veterans would not be allowed to happen," Erspamer said.

"They want to use young men as guinea pigs and throw them away," said Josephs, now 63.
Josephs has not received any health benefits related to his time as a human test subject at Edgewood.


"They're hoping we die off, so you apply [for benefits], you get turned down," Josephs said. "And it just goes on for years and years, and they just want to wear us down. They want to use young men as guinea pigs and throw them away."
The Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs declined face-to-face interviews with CNN, citing pending litigation. In a statement, the Defense Department said that it "has made it a priority to identify all service members exposed to chemical and biological substances ... and the VA has contacted and offered free medical evaluations to thousands of veterans."


Josephs received his letter from the VA in 2008, four decades after he arrived at the Maryland base.
"In order to best serve veterans and their families, VA continues to study the possibility of long-term health effects associated with in-service exposure to chemical and biological weapons," the letter promised.
At the Army's request, The Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit organization that is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, produced a three-volume report in the 1980s on the long-term health of Edgewood veterans. The IOM decided in the end there wasn't enough information to reach "definitive conclusions."


Josephs enlisted in the military fresh out of high school -- at the height of the Vietnam War.
"I really felt a duty to my country to go and serve," he said. "Things were different back then. You believed in your government. And you just wouldn't think they would give you something that would harm you intentionally."

Our organization shouts that if a civil rights movement starts global Wall Street and media will put its own captured 5% in front of cameras and on front pages to have them appear to be the leader.  These are often our stars of stage, Hollywood, books, and athletes.  Please admire the talent and do not listen to their political stances.

The 1960s-70s brought widespread use of drugs and alcohol with our young adults BLOWING THEIR MINDS.  One particular counter-culture was LSD BEATNIKS led by LEARY AND GINSBERG.  These decades had WE THE PEOPLE as citizens able to vote and get rid of pols and control public policy to a far greater extent then now.  The societal stance on drugs was -----we have too much drug use start the drug prevention public health policies.  We showed yesterday where the CIA and military had since early 1900s been using hallucinatory drugs as part of mind-control experiments of THE BRAIN.  It was this knowledge that forced our pols to pass laws forbidding the use of hallucinogens in research----

THEY WERE KNOWN TO DO HARM TO HUMANS.

Those behind mind-control BRAIN research need to create altered states of mind---from dreaming to hallucination -----to create a baseline for brain activity and to understand how far the mind can be taken.  Now, will we get therapeutic outcomes from hallucinogens?  We see marijuana proponents saying so------but marijuana is not normally hallucinating.

So, since the 1960s it has been illegal for scientific research to subject humans to these kinds of drugs.  DECADE OF THE BRAIN moving towards mind-control now has no pols in office wanting to protect public interest----they are that 5% to the 1% global Wall Street and they do anything that 1% says including subjecting humans to hallucinogenic experiments.

Why Doctors Can't Give You LSD (But Maybe They Should)
For the first time since the 1970s, researchers are being allowed to study the potential medical properties of the most tightly controlled substances around. But it's not easy.

By Shaunacy Ferro April 16, 2013

Dreamstime
Tripping On Science


Popular Science
Drug Week


When David Nichols earned a Ph.D in medicinal chemistry from the University of Iowa in 1973 by studying psychedelics, he thought he would continue studying hallucinogens indefinitely. "I thought I would work on it for the rest of my life," he says.


His timing was less than fortuitous. In 1970, the year after Nichols started grad school, Richard Nixon signed into law the Controlled Substances Act, designed to clamp down on the manufacture and distribution of drugs in the U.S. The act classified hallucinogenic substances like LSD, DMT, psilocybin (the psychedelic alkaloid in mushrooms) and mescaline as Schedule I substances--the most restrictive use category, reserved for drugs with high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Marijuana was also placed in this category, and 15 years later when ecstasy came onto the scene, MDMA was emergency-classified as a Schedule I substance as well. By contrast, cocaine, opium and morphine are Schedule II substances, meaning they can be prescribed by a doctor.

Despite some promising results from trials of psychedelics in treating alcoholism, psychiatric conditions and modeling mental illness, by the early '70s, the government had tightened control of Schedule I substances, even for research. It's only now that we're starting to return to the notion that these drugs could be medicine.


If you wanted to kill your career, you did research on psychedelics.
Starting in the early '90s, and as more scientists prove it's feasible, increasingly in the last decade, researchers have been approved to conduct clinical trials with human subjects, and there are promising results showing that substances like MDMA could be useful in treating depression and curing PTSD, and that classical psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD could be a way to soothe anxiety in the terminally ill, treat alcoholism and more. But it's still far from an easy field to break into.
***
In 1938, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD for the first time while studying ergots, a type of fungus. Though the pharmaceutical company that he worked for, Sandoz, didn't have any interest in the compound, Hofmann found himself inexplicably drawn to it. Five years later, in the spring of 1943, he synthesized it again, noticing that it seemed to have unusual properties: After accidentally absorbing small amounts through his fingertips one day in the lab, Hofmann had to leave work early, under the effects of what he called "a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition." A few days later, he experimented with taking what he thought was a small dose of LSD, about 250 micrograms (a common dose now is more on the order of 100 micrograms), and proceeded to trip out of his mind, an experience he describes in his book LSD: My Problem Child.



Thinking that it could have medical uses, Hofmann and fellow researchers at Sandoz research laboratories began testing LSD in animals, and in 1947, the first paper looking at psychiatric LSD use in was published. Researchers saw in acid the potential to model psychotic disorders in healthy brains--a way for psychiatrists to induce in themselves the kinds of sensations their patients experienced as a result of mental illness. It could also be a way to break down boundaries, freeing the mind so patients could open up in psychotherapy.


Despite its current reputation, LSD wasn't just for the Beatles and California hippies, it was seen as "an invaluable weapon to psychiatrists," as Time magazine called it in 1955. Research varied widely in legitimacy, but LSD was tested on an estimated 40,000 people around the world between 1950 and 1963.
The CIA saw insidious potential in LSD: They thought it could be a route to mind control.


In 1953, a pair of Canadian researchers tried to use high doses of LSD to scare alcoholics into sobriety, but discovered it instead produced a kind of mystical, near-religious experience for them that convinced them to stop drinking. They were onto something: A 2012 meta-analysis of LSD-alcoholism trials found though many of the trials from the late 1960s were too small to produce statistically-viable results on their own, in conjunction, they showed consistent, positive results.


At the same time, the government was also dipping its toes in an acid-filled pool. The CIA saw a more insidious potential in LSD: They thought it could be a truth serum or a route to mind control. Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors had experimented on concentration camp prisoners with mescaline and other psychotropic drugs.In the midst of Cold War paranoia, the U.S. Navy thought mescaline could be used to get people to reveal information against their will. When the experiments ultimately proved unsuccessful, the government turned to Albert Hofmann's new wonder drug, already beginning to emerge as a psychiatric juggernaut.


DEA
LSD Blotter
Between 1953 and 1964, in a project called MKULTRA, the CIA experimented with LSD on unwitting civilians, prisoners, government employees and even its own agents, in a manner that Senator Edward Kennedy later described to Congress as making "little scientific sense." It came to the point where "surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives," as Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain describe in Acid Dreams.


The agents monitoring the experiments weren't scientists, and at least one person died after jumping out of a window under the influence of LSD. By the time the Senate held hearings on MKULTRA in 1977, many documents related to the operation had been destroyed on the orders of then-CIA Director Richard Helms in 1973.


Disturbed by the CIA's abuses, Congress restricted the use of hallucinogens like LSD to scientific research in 1965. By that point, the tide was already turning against psychedelics, in part due to unethical behavior (referred to by one contemporary researcher as "excessive enthusiasm") by some of the scientists studying them. Timothy Leary, a psychologist and the psychedelic advocate of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" fame," lost his appointment at Harvard University in 1963 due to the administration's concerns that he and other Harvard Psilocybin Project researchers were sloppy in their scientific approach, even conducting investigations under the influence of psilocybin themselves, and after giving an undergraduate student psilocybin off-campus.

Political motives, too, added to the pressure to halt hallucinogenic research like Leary's, even though it had been surprisingly successful in some aspects, like in reducing prisoner recidivism with psilocybin. LSD, psilocybin and other psychedelics were playing a vital role in a rising countercultural movement, as the forthcoming Albert Hofmann biography Mystic Chemist points out. They were agents of peace and love in a time when the government desperately needed soldiers for the Vietnam War, a war young people were increasingly refusing to serve in. In 1966 the U.S., soon followed by the rest of the world, made LSD illegal. Even the most promising psychedelic research slowed, and by the mid-70s, stopped.
***
This was the world David Nichols faced when he emerged from his Ph.D. program brandishing a dissertation on psychedelic drugs. "If you wanted to kill your research career in academics, you did research on psychedelics," Nichols remembers. To some extent, that's still true, because psychedelic research remains difficult to fund. As a distinguished professor at Purdue University, Nichols received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for 30 years to look into how exactly how these drugs work in the body. But since the organization concentrates specifically on stopping drug use, he couldn't study their potential medical properties.


As psychiatrist Charles Grob wrote in a 1994 article in the Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness:
Together with revelations of unethical activities of psychiatric researchers under contract to military intelligence and the CIA, the highly publicized and controversial behaviors of hallucinogen enthusiasts led to the repression of efforts to formally investigate these substances. For the next twenty-five years research with hallucinogens assumed pariah status within academic psychiatry, virtually putting an end to formal dialogue and debate.


In the early '90s, Nichols was at a scientific meeting telling a story he had told a million times: It's too bad there's not any clinical research, research with human subjects, with psychedelics. "You could do it, but you need private money." He decided he could find that private money, even though he didn't have the medical degree necessary to do clinical research himself. Along with Grob and others, he founded the Heffter Research Institute in 1993 to do legitimate, rigorous scientific research on psychedelics.
For many years when the FDA got a protocol to study psychedelics in humans, they just put it on a shelf somewhere.


Grob, a professor at the UCLA Medical School, was one of the first researchers to get FDA approval to conduct a research study on the therapeutic effects of psychedelics since research had slowed to a halt 35 years earlier. He was interested in using psilocybin (a drug with less political baggage than LSD or even MDMA) to ease the anxieties and depression in cancer patients with limited life expectancy.

So what changed? According to Nichols, now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, there wasn't an abrupt change in regulations, but just a slow shift in attitudes. "For many years when [the FDA] got a protocol to study psychedelics in humans, they just put it on a shelf somewhere."

Animal-based research went on, because the government was still interested in figuring out how these chemicals functioned, but "the presumption was that was impossible to do with humans," according to Mark Geyer, another Heffter Research Institute founder who has been studying the basic neuroscience of psychedelics on animals for almost 30 years with funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Even if the FDA had been willing to approve psychedelic trials with humans, there probably weren't many applications being submitted, because researchers assumed it couldn't be done.

"The goal wasn't to stop scientists, the goal was to stop street use… but the side effect of that was that even legitimate research was curtailed," Geyer explains. "It turns out, as I understand… there was no law on the books that forbade such research."

According to Nichols, sometime in the early '90s, a turnover in leadership loosened the agency's attitude toward human-based trials with psychedelics. After years of lobbying the federal government for permission, psychiatrist Rick Strassman was able to do a study with human subjects of the psychedelic compound DMT.

"Legitimate human research with hallucinogenic drugs, although of great theoretical and practical interest, involves daunting regulatory hurdles that have discouraged investigators from attempting such work," Strassman complained in a 1991 article for the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. Nevertheless, his study, involving 60 volunteers and hundreds of doses of DMT, didn't bring the world crashing around the FDA's ears, opening up the possibility that the agency might approve more clinical trials with psychedelics.

With the Heffter Research Institute, Grob designed and received FDA approval for a small trial to administer psilocybin to 12 terminal cancer patients between 30 and 60 years old. The patients came in for two sessions a month apart -- but everyone received a dose of psilocybin at one of the two sessions. "We didn't feel it was ethical to deny anyone the active treatment because they had limited life expectancy," Grob explains.

Because it was the first study to use psilocybin in decades, the FDA approved a very low dosage for the study. "People were not floridly hallucinating," according to Grob, but the effect was instead more like a waking dream. After a six-month follow-up, the subjects showed a significant, lasting reduction in anxiety. The study paved the way for other research into using psilocybin to ease end-of-life anxieties at Johns Hopkins University and NYU.


Though Strassman proved clinical research to be both legal and possible, it's still not an easy process for scientists. That's part of the reason groups like the Heffter Research Institute and the Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) exist: They have the resources and the motivation to wade through seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles to move studies forward. The Heffter Research Institute can advise a researcher on what has worked in previous trials, and they provide a peer-review process for proposals. If their protocol is approved, the organization seeks private funding for it.

"It takes years to get all the approvals," as Grob says. His first study took a particularly long time to receive approval, though now that multiple studies have established safety parameters and feasibility for these types of trials, the process is somewhat smoother.
You have to really want to work with hallucinogens.

For studies involving people, not only does the research have to be approved by the university's institutional review board, as do most clinical trials, but it also has to be approved by the FDA and the researcher must be licensed to store and work with the drug by the DEA. The DEA requires intense security when it comes to storing the drugs, lest any resourceful college student try to relieve your lab of its drugs, and the licenses are specifically issued to one researcher in one lab--if you move rooms, you'll have to get the DEA's approval.

In clinical work, the drugs have to be manufactured in a specific pharmaceutical-grade manner to ensure quality. Though there aren't the same manufacturing standards, you also need the same Schedule I license to work with animals as you do with humans, even though less than one human dose of MDMA, for example, could supply a study with hundreds of mice.
"You have to really want to work with these," says Nichols, whose lab at Purdue made much of the clinical-grade hallucinogens for other researchers' trials. "Anybody who's a good chemist could probably do it, but there's no money in it."

Currently, according to the DEA, it takes about 9 months to get FDA and DEA approval for a license to research Schedule I substances, though researchers are a little more skeptical. "The DEA's not in a hurry to grant these licenses," according to Nichols.

Only 349 scientists have them, and that number is on the downswing: Three years ago, there were 550 licenses in the U.S. Nichols suggests that this could be a result of the DEA cracking down on researchers with extraneous licenses. In the past, Schedule I licenses had been renewed on a yearly basis without much fuss, but in recent years the agency has required Nichols to submit his current protocol and justify why he still needs the license.
***
Part of the problem with studying psychedelics--and other illicit drugs, such as marijuana--for medical use, is simply that they're not high-tech, and no pharmaceutical company needs or wants to get involved. There's no money in it for them. Though drugs like LSD and psilocybin are relatively easy to make in the lab, as MAPS founder Rick Doblin pointed out in a 2012 interview, "psychedelics are off-patent, can't be monopolized, and compete with other psychiatric medications that people take daily."

"My colleagues say to me, in these days of nanotechology and targeted therapy, what are you doing?" says Donald Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has done research on medical marijuana. "We live in the 21st century. Studying plants as medicine is not where most investigators are putting their money."

And without the outside funding to continue researching, a scientist's career goes nowhere, so even fewer scientists want to get involved.
Organizations like the Heffter Research Institute and MAPS are funded by private donors and don't have the money to do the expensive, large-scale human trials that could show sound results one way or the other. Nichols hopes that federal funding will be available to do larger studies with psychedelics sometime in the next decade, if the ongoing smaller trials can show efficacy. "There's movement toward accepting the possibility that these [psychedelic substances] are useful and not all that dangerous," he says.

The stigma persists, though. "It's still harder for somebody to get involved in psychedelic research, in terms of professionally and funding," says MAPS communications director Brad Burge.

And although psychedelic research has made some headway in England and Switzerland, roadblocks against psychedelic research exist abroad, too. The first clinical trial using psilocybin to treat depression stalled in early April because U.K. regulations require drugs used in clinical trials to be made under strict Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, and the researchers, from Imperial College London, have been unable to find a company to manufacture psilocybin at that standard.

"The law for the control of drugs like psilocybin as a Schedule 1 Class A drug makes it almost impossible to use them for research," Nutt said in a press statement. "The reason we haven't started the study is because finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the license, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult. The whole situation is bedeviled by this primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential, and so they have to be made impossible to access."

There's a growing generation of students and researchers who aren't scared of studying the drugs.Yet despite the hurdles, for some researchers, the potential to cure some of our most troubling woes--like alcoholism, depression and PTSD--make the headaches of doing legitimate psychedelic science worthwhile. Later this week, around 1600 scientists from around the world devoted to this research will descend upon Oakland, Calif. to attend Psychedelic Science 2013, a three-day conference put on in part by MAPS and the Heffter Research Institute.

As Burge notes, the stigma that has haunted psychedelic science could be changing as a new generation of scientists arrive on the scene. "There's a generation of researchers and therapists that worked in the 1960s and '70s," he says, "but also there's this huge and growing generation of students and researchers who aren't scared of studying the drugs...looking for treatments to our most debilitating epidemics."

_________________________________________
Having been a college student in these heady 1960-70s days I can attest I am no prude on recreational drug use ---and was open to try much of what was circulating.  Moderation of any addictive substance is key----those drugs creating a addictive attachment on initial use are the ones most dangerous.  As the saying goes----if the trip is better than life's current reality it becomes addictive.  The concerns for many citizens and many scientists is this------bringing people to a childlike state as this article suggests creates that mind-control state if not in direct application----indirectly through making humans incapable of acting independently.

“However, under LSD the separateness of these networks breaks down and instead you see a more integrated or unified brain.

Remember, we have ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION taking over our US public health and they are that global 1% Wall Street and yes, they are the foundations funding these research. 


We hope citizens will move away from the idea that legalizing drugs is cool and think to where MOVING FORWARD is going ----WE THE PEOPLE need to be clear of mind and body!


The Beckley Foundation is a UK-based think-tank and UN-accredited NGO, dedicated to activating global drug policy reform and initiating scientific research into psychoactive substances.


This is the goal-----
LSD makes the brain more ‘complete’, scientists say as they claim to have unlocked secrets of hallucinogenic drugs

By breaking down parts of the brain that are usually separate, drugs like LSD return us to a childlike state — and that effect on well-being could last long after the drugs’ effects have worn off

• Andrew Griffin
• @_andrew_griffin
• Monday 11 April 2016 19:30 BST

LSD tabs with a design on - each are roughly the size of a postage stamp RexLSD makes the brain more “complete”, scientists have claimed in a pioneering and controversial new study.
The drug breaks down the parts of the brain that usually separate different functions, like vision and movement, creating a more “integrated or unified brain”, the researchers claim. They also found that people who are having drug-induced hallucinations “see” with various other parts of their brain, not just the visual cortex that is active in normal vision.


Those effects might account for the religious feelings that people often report after having taken the drug, the researchers say — a claim that if true could answer some of the deepest questions of drug culture. And those same effects on a person’s well-being might carry on long after the effects of the drug has worn off.
"Normally our brain consists of independent networks that perform separate specialised functions, such as vision, movement and hearing - as well as more complex things like attention,” said Robin Carhart-Harris, who led the research and is the first scientist in 40 years to test LSD on humans, in a statement. “However, under LSD the separateness of these networks breaks down and instead you see a more integrated or unified brain.

"Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world.

“This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way - and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug's effects have subsided."

A trip through time: The history of LSD

By breaking down the constraints that usually keep parts of the brain separate, psychedelic drugs return their users back to a state that is more like childhood, the researchers said in work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature,” said Dr Carhart-Harris. “In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained.

“This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."
"We are finally unveiling the brain mechanisms underlying the potential of LSD, not only to heal, but also to deepen our understanding of consciousness itself."

Amanda Feilding, director of the Beckley Foundation
And those effects could be even further encouraged with the use of music, according to results from the same study, which was published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. Listening to music while under the influence of the drug led the visual cortex to receive information from the part of the brain that usually deals with mental images and memory — and the more it did so, the more people reported seeing complex visions including those from earlier in their lives.

Those discoveries help answer questions that have been asked for decades about how exactly LSD works, and what it does to the brain, the researchers said.

Former Government drugs adviser Professor David Nutt, director of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, one of the project's senior researchers, said: "Scientists have waited 50 years for this moment - the revealing of how LSD alters our brain biology.

"For the first time we can really see what's happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD had such a profound impact on self-awareness in users and on music and art. This could have great implications for psychiatry, and helping patients overcome conditions such as depression," he said.

Professor Nutt was removed from his job as the chair of the Government’s drug advisory council in 2009, after he said that drugs including ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.

The new findings could prove similarly controversial, with some involved in the study suggesting that they could show how LSD could be used for healing and for finding new forms of knowledge. Eventually they might be used to treat psychiatric disorders and allow researchers to treat conditions such as depression and addiction, which tend to arise from entrenched thought patterns.

"We are finally unveiling the brain mechanisms underlying the potential of LSD, not only to heal, but also to deepen our understanding of consciousness itself,” said Amanda Feilding, director of the Beckley Foundation, a charity that promotes evidence-based drugs policy and worked with the researchers on the study.

The research looked at 20 volunteers, all of whom received both LSD and placebo and were deemed psychologically and physically healthy. Each of them had taken some kind of psychedelic drug before taking part in the study.

____________________________________
Everyone has their own convictions on trials and tribulations of life and how they need to be handled.  We have gone through a few decades of what is called CHILD BEHAVIORAL mental disorder treatments leading to categories of ADHD and those drugs designed to CALM DOWN citizens----our experience with MORPHINE to counter HEROIN was a disaster.  Here we have sedation to mask fear and depression. 

Human evolution of the brain deliberately designed its circuitry to allow humans to do all of the above naturally----fight or flight---we have dulled our natural immune system with antibiotic medicine----cleaning solutions to the point our natural immune system does not work----that may not be an accident either.

Some folks will say all these applications are good------we are shouting---let's think of what the bad and ugly of these research could look like if used in a far-right, extreme wealth extreme poverty authoritarian dictatorship----

YOU KNOW----MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE LED BY GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITIES LIKE JOHNS HOPKINS.

Take a look at which institutions are pushing this----LEARY/GINSBERG were of the Harvard circle for instance.

Psychedelic Science: The surge in psychiatric research using hallucinogens

by Stephanie O'Neill

May 19 2014

Dr Timothy Leary, a former Harvard Professor charged with illegal possession of marijuana, during a debate about the effects of psychedelic drugs. Leary claimed that teenage use of LSD was getting out of control. Keystone/Getty Images


This is Part One of our Psychedelic Science series. Click here for Part Two, here for Part Three, and here for Part Four.

Research into the therapeutic potential of  illegal "psychedelic" drugs to treat an assortment of mainstream mental health conditions is undergoing a modern-day renaissance.

A host of published studies in the field is showing promise for psychedelics, such as psilocybin — the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" —  to help treat alcoholism, depression, drug addiction and severe anxiety caused by serious or terminal illness.  
Other studies are finding that MDMA, also known as the party-drug "ecstasy," may be valuable in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

"These drugs ... were researched extensively in the 1950s and the 1960s, through the early '70s," says Dr. George Greer, medical director for the nonprofit Heffter Research Institute, which raises donations for psilocybin studies worldwide. "There were hundreds of studies that were very promising."
But the psychedelic '60s changed all that.

LSD and other hallucinogens, once confined to the lab, exploded into mainstream culture after the pied-piper of psychedelics, Timothy Leary, urged a generation to try LSD and other hallucinogens as a way to "turn on, tune in, drop out." Many followed his advice, some with bad results.  And that triggered a backlash that led the federal government to criminalize psychedelic drugs in 1970. 

A year later,  President Nixon launched the "War on Drugs."
Those measures helped to create a stigma that brought an end to the early phase of psychedelic research, says Rick Doblin, founder the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies  (MAPS).

"There is this tendency when drugs become criminalized for their non-medical use, their medical use then subsequently also becomes suppressed," says Doblin.


But since early 2000,  a new willingness to look again at these drugs has shifted the research landscape. And thanks to the fundraising efforts of  MAPS and the Heffter Research Institute, modern-day psychedelics studies are now happening at top academic research facilities, including  Johns Hopkins University, New York University, the University of New Mexico and UCLA.


"These agents have very broad applicability within psychiatry and can be used for mood disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders," says Dr. Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist and psychedelics researcher at NYU School of Medicine.  "They can be used for so many things that our treatment have not improved in recent years."

But the drugs are powerful and must be used with caution, especially since it's believed they can exacerbate serious mental conditions, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.  However, used in a supervised setting with trained therapists, these drugs have the potential to offer properly-screened patients much-needed new treatment options. 

 "We are not at all referencing our work to the recreational drug-use world, which is rife with potential risks," says Dr. Charles Grob, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a pioneer in modern-day psychedelics research. "We are talking about developing a new model ... to be used within medicine and psychiatry."

Grob says psychedelics offer a rather unusual paradigm in which many patients are reporting relief with as few as one or two supervised applications of the drugs, used in conjunction with limited psychotherapy.  

"This is very different than conventional drug treatment, which, more often than not, administers a drug on a daily basis for weeks, months and even years," Grob says.

And research into these drugs is a bit less conventional as well. Because the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies these illegal drugs as "Schedule One"  substances — considered risky with "no currently accepted medical use" — scientists must adhere to strict protocols when researching them. Those include rules on how the  drugs are used, handled and stored.

But a greater challenge remains financing. So far, the government has yet to fund research into psychedelics. That leaves private donations as the sole source of funding.

Scientists in this field say they believe as more evidence into the varied uses for these drugs is collected and published the government will be more likely to grant research funding requests.  
And as more time passes, Grob says, the stigma brought on by the excesses of 1960s counterculture will further fade. 

"The '60s are long over. As the Moody Blues used to sing, 'Timothy Leary is dead'…and many of those with whom he fought have also exited," Grob says, "It's a new world and there is a greater need than ever for more effective treatment models for individuals for whom our conventional treatment models are often sorely lacking.
_________________________________________
Having lived in the 1960-70s I know the scientific and societal reactions to hallucinogens both the effects on citizens and research.  If we Google LSD research today we cannot find one negative article.  The problems lie with individual reactions to these drugs----the  addictive nature----the fact that almost every PHARMA taken mainstream hits our street market as black market sales and new addictions.  The term BLOWING YOUR MIND comes from the fact that some people taking these trips never recover.  There was a spike in suicides ----mishaps leading to death-----all tied to hallucinogens.  Under strict oversight these drugs may provide help----main stream they will create an epidemic of abuse.

We see below how this is already happening----


'LSD was first brought to the United States in 1949 by Dr. Max Rinkel, who carried out research using the drug on a population of 100 volunteers. Together with his colleague Dr. Paul Hoch they noted that LSD produced effects that mimicked schizophrenic psychosis. Indeed, they postulated that LSD produced a model psychosis—that is, it was “psychotomimetic.”'


'He and others worry that classifying Salvia as a Schedule One drug of abuse — a class that includes marijuana and LSD — could slow or even halt promising research. Yet because of salvia's powerful effects, few believe that the drug shouldn't be regulated at all'.

One would suspect the far-right wing of being the one's under REAGAN who emptied our mental health facilities and closed mental health clinics in our communities----whether today's far-right wing global Wall Street really has our most vulnerable citizens welfare in mind-------control.

Powerful hallucinogens reduce anxiety and depression in cancer patientsRobert Ferris | @RobertoFerris
Friday, 2 Dec 2016 | 2:24 PM ETCNBC.com
Getty Images
Magic mushrooms
A single dose of a hallucinogenic drug helped cancer patients stave off depression and anxiety for months on end, according to two new studies from major U.S. institutions.


Salvia: Legal Herb Hallucinogen Draws Teens, Critics
March 20, 20062:14 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
David Schaper

A head shop on Chicago's North Side advertises that it sells the hallucinogenic herb Salvia divinorum.

David Schaper, NPR A powerful and legal hallucinogenic herb is gaining popularity among teenagers and young adults. Salvia divinorum is also raising concerns among parents and lawmakers across the country.

The herb, sometimes called "Magic Mint," "Ska Maria Pastora" or "Sally D," is widely available on the Internet and at some tobacco shops, head shops and stores selling herbal remedies. Critics say it is being marketed and sold misleadingly as producing a high; in fact, it induces an intense, dreamlike experience that can be unpleasant for first-time users. Two states have banned Salvia. Legislation to make it a controlled substance has failed twice in Congress.

Scientists See Research Value in Salvia
David Schaper
Salvia divinorum is a member of the sage family. It's also a cousin to the popular flowering salvia plants that many of us may have in our gardens. Its active ingredient, Salvinorin A, is a powerful hallucinogen.

Courtesy Daniel Siebert Parents of teenagers are becoming concerned about an emerging drug of abuse that, until recently, few had ever heard of: Salvia divinorum.
Salvia is a member of the sage family. It's also a cousin to the popular flowering salvia plants that many of us may have in our gardens.


Scientific researchers say the public is right to be concerned about the herb's growing abuse. But some say salvia is also showing promise in legitimate laboratory research.
Salvia divinorum's active ingredient, Salvinorin A, is a powerful hallucinogen, "as potent as LSD, and essentially, the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogenic drug," says Dr. Bryan Roth, a biochemist and neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University.

Roth also directs the National Institute of Mental Health's Psychoactive Drug Screening Program. Three years ago, he and others in his Cleveland lab discovered how Salvinorin A affects the brain.

"What we found is quite remarkable and unprecedented among naturally occurring drugs of abuse," Roth says. "This compound seems to have absolute specificity for a single receptor site on the brain."
Studies have shown that Salvinorin A works in the same place in the brain as morphine and related pain reducers known as opioids.

"There's been some showing that by modulating opioid receptors, you can potentially treat stimulant abuse," says Thomas Prisinzano, a University of Iowa professor in the division of medicinal and natural products chemistry.

Most studies of salvia's effect on the brain have been on rodents, and no one knows yet whether the results can be duplicated in humans. Such scientific developments still may be a long way off.

Other medical, biochemical and pharmacological scientists have published early studies suggesting that research on Salvia divinorum and Salvinorin A might eventually lead to new drugs that could be used to treat Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and other diseases.

"The bottom line is, we really don't know enough and we need to know more," Prisinzano says. "The field is really beginning to grow, and we are beginning to know and understand more of what Salvia and Salvinorin A are able to do in the body."
He and others worry that classifying Salvia as a Schedule One drug of abuse — a class that includes marijuana and LSD — could slow or even halt promising research. Yet because of salvia's powerful effects, few believe that the drug shouldn't be regulated at all.

"Even experienced hallucinogen users say that the effects of Salvia divinorum are qualitatively and quantitatively different than any other hallucinogen that they have ever taken," Roth says. "It appears to cause an experience that we have dubbed 'spacio-temporal dislocation.'"

In other words, if the dose is strong enough, users take an instantaneous trip to another time and place, an experience many first-time users of salvia find too intense, disturbing and even frightening. Those who try salvia often don't like it and won't try it again.

"Most people who do it hoping to have just an interesting high find it confusing and disappointing," says Daniel Siebert, who has researched Salvia divinorum extensively and urges its responsible use. "It's not something that's fun to do. It doesn't have a stimulating effect. It doesn't really have a euphoric effect."

Siebert worries that salvia is being marketed to teens and young adults as producing a marijuana-like high, when nothing could be further from the truth. He thinks salvia should be regulated in the same way as alcohol — and be kept strictly off-limits to teens.

________________________________________

We will end this week's discussion on THE DECADE OF THE BRAIN with this consideration.  One of the leading research finding and application of hallucinogens is reduced plasticity meaning the divisions of circuitry duties of brain are reduced to allow what is terms CHILDLIKE thought processes.  This relieves our defenses to fear and anxiety.  What that childlike state means-----is a reduction or removal of EGO-----of ID AND EGO.

Now, EGO is not an attractive quality especially when it is allowed to run amuck.  It is what gives individuals mental strength, confidence, perseverance, and leadership qualities.  When EGO dissolution occurs WE THE PEOPLE become very MALLEABLE.

'Another study, to be published in Current Biology4 and led by Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial, looks at how ego dissolution correlates with an increase in global connectivity — all the parts of the brain communicating with each other to a greater degree'.







What is the Ego ?

Published by Gary van Warmerdam February 26th, 2013


Closed The ego is an identity of our own construction, an identity which is false.  If we take all the beliefs of what we are – beliefs about our personality, talents, and abilities – we have the structure of our ego.  These talents, abilities and aspects of our personality will be attributes of our skills, but the mental construct of our “self” is artificial.  And while this description might make the ego seem like a static thing, it is not. Rather, it is an active and dynamic part of our personalities, playing an immense role in creating emotional drama in our lives.

When we have thoughts about our self that we agree with we construct a self-image.  The kinds of thoughts that contribute to the ego structure are:
“I’m not good at math.”
“I am smart.”
“My freckles make me ugly.”
“Nobody likes me.”
“I am better than you.”
“That was stupid of me.”
The ego hides behind the “I” and “me” in those declarative thoughts and statements about our identity.
When we have such thoughts and agree with even the slightest conviction that these ideas define us, then we are building, or reinforcing, an ego.  We first have these thoughts when we are kids, perhaps when we were teased on the playground, or when reprimanded or praised by a teacher or parent.  In all cultures, developing a self-image is a normal part of socialization.  Problems arise, however, when that self-image is negative, inaccurate, or even overly positive.  Considering that we develop our concept of “self” as children, it is inevitable that our self-image doesn’t map to reality as adults.


The Ego Unmasked

Why is the ego so hard to explain or describe?  The ego is difficult to define because the ego isn’t one specific thing.  It is actually made up of many different beliefs that a person acquires over their life. Those beliefs can be diverse and even contradictory.  To further complicate it, each person’s ego is different.  If someone were to clearly identify and describe all the parts of their ego and what it drives them to do, you might not get a good description of what yours looked like.  The challenge of becoming aware of what your personal ego looks like becomes more difficult because our culture doesn’t reward us for directing our attention inward and noticing such things.

How to Spot the Ego

The ego is difficult to see, because it hides behind opinions that appear true – our attachment to descriptions of our identity – and because we haven’t practiced looking.  You can get a glimpse by noticing certain thoughts, similar to those listed above.  The easier way to spot the ego is by the trail of emotional reactions it leaves behind: Anger at a loved one, a need to be right, a feeling of insecurity in certain situations, feelings of jealousy that are unexplained, the need to impress someone, and so on.  These emotions can be attributed to the false beliefs that comprise the ego.  In the beginning it is easier to see the symptoms of resulting emotions and drama, rather than the ego that caused it.

One of the most deceptive aspects of the ego is that it generates powerful emotional reactions, and then blames us for how it made us feel.  The anger we react with comes from ego based beliefs of being right and “knowing better’ than someone else.  Perhaps there is also a victim interpretation of betrayal or injustice underneath.  After we overreact with anger we might feel badly for what we expressed.  The ego shifts to a “righteous self” that “knows better” and berates us for overreacting with anger.   At the same time, it assumes the identity of being the “stupid idiot” that didn’t know any better and takes the blame for overreacting.  All these attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs take place in the mind, and even though they are completely different, we assume all of them come from us.  If they really were expressions coming from our genuine self, they wouldn’t contradict, and we would be able to stop them.

To the unaware person, it is difficult to discern the difference between what is ego and what is really them.  They are left to wonder, “What came over me that I reacted that way?”  Even their post-emotional analysis lacks the consideration to see the different parts of their belief system at work as separate from themselves.  As a result, everything they express is blamed on “themselves” by one of the condemning voices in their head.  In effect, the ego hijacks the analysis and turns it into a self-criticism/blame process.  When the ego controls the self-reflection process you have no chance of seeing the root cause of your emotional dramas, as the ego reaffirms itself and hides in the self-criticism.


Is the ego arrogant or insecure?

“Having an ego” is usually associated with arrogance and is a term used to describe someone who thinks they are better than others.  Yet this is only one part of the ego.  In fact, it is possible to have some positive self-esteem and some negative self-esteem – we are aware of these different beliefs at different times.  The negative beliefs about our self make up our negative self-esteem, while our positive thoughts comprise our positive self-esteem.  Together, the negative and positive esteem forms our ego.

Quite often, these two aspects of our personality are nearly equal in magnitude and offset each other emotionally.  A person who is very hard on themselves with their inner critic may have feelings of worthlessness.  This is a painful emotion to live with, and in order to mask the pain, they might cover it up with bravado, projecting an image of security and confidence, all the while struggling with feelings of insecurity, worthlessness and inadequacy.
Arrogance is markedly different from the confidence that doesn’t come from ego.  A person can be completely confident in their ability, skill, or self-acceptance, without letting it “go to their head” and impacting their interactions with others. And while humility may often be mistaken for shyness and insecurity, a person of true humility is fully present and at peace with themselves and their surroundings.  Confidence without arrogance, humility without insecurity, these are manners of personality that are without the self-image dynamics of the ego.

Letting Go of the Ego

Because the ego has multiple aspects, it is not practical or effective to dissolve all of it at once, nor is it likely that you could do so.   Much like a tree or large bush that is overgrown in the yard, you don’t just lift it out and throw it away – you cut off manageable pieces instead.  The same approach is effective with letting go of the false beliefs that make up the ego. You begin by detaching from individual thoughts that reinforce the ego, then let go of beliefs, separating yourself from the false identity of your ego.

We have spent years building our ego self-images, living inside of them, and reinforcing them.  Extracting our genuine self out of this matrix of false beliefs will take more than a few days.  Yes, it will take a while… so what.  It also took a while to learn to read, do math, walk, and develop proficiency at any valuable skill.  Things worth doing take time and practice.  What better thing do you have to do than let go of what is causing you unhappiness?


Please be aware of the hype in our scientific journalism now that global Wall Street controls all research with no oversight and accountability----no patients rights---no DO NO HARM HIPPOCRATIC OATH.  We really need to reverse MOVING FORWARD now as they MOVE FORWARD to SMART CITIES levels of control of human capital.  Nothing prepares citizens to be planetary mineral mining slaves than a good dose of hallucinogen therapy.




Nature | News: Q&A

Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness


Drug researcher David Nutt discusses brain-imaging studies with hallucinogens.

• Zoe Cormier

11 April 2016  Imperial College London



Under the influence of LSD, the brain's visual cortex has increased connectivity with other brain regions (right) than when imaged under placebo (left).
Researchers have published the first images showing the effects of LSD on the human brain, as part of a series of studies that are examining how the drug causes its characteristic hallucinogenic effects1.


David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who has previously examined the neural effects of mind-altering drugs such as the hallucinogen psilocybin — an active ingredient in magic mushrooms — was one of the study's leaders. He tells Nature what the research revealed, and how LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) might ultimately be useful in therapies.


Why study the effects of LSD on the brain?

For brain researchers, studying how psychedelic drugs such as LSD alter the ‘normal’ brain state is a way to study the biological phenomenon that is consciousness.


We ultimately would also like to see LSD deployed as a therapeutic tool. The idea has old roots. In the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of people took LSD for alcoholism; in 2012, a retrospective analysis of some of these studies2 suggested that it helped to cut down on drinking. Since the 1970s, there have been lots of studies with LSD on animals, but not on the human brain. We need that data to validate the trial of this drug as a potential therapy for addiction or depression.



Why hasn’t anyone done brain scans before?

Before the 1960s, LSD was studied for its potential therapeutic uses, as were other hallucinogens. But the drug was heavily restricted in the United Kingdom, the United States and around the world after 1967 — in my view, due to unfounded hysteria over its potential dangers. The restrictions vary worldwide, but in general, countries have insisted that LSD has ‘no medical value’, making it tremendously difficult to work with.


Suzanne Plunkett/REUTERS
David Nutt.


How did you get approval to give volunteers LSD?

United Nations conventions and national laws do permit academic research on heavily restricted drugs such as LSD. In the United Kingdom, this sort of study is legal as long as the drug is not being used as a therapeutic. This was not a clinical trial: we gave LSD to volunteers who were already experienced with the drugs and took their brain scans over eight hours in the lab in Cardiff, UK, in 2014. It took us nine months to get approval from a UK ethics committee for the work: the research was funded by the Safra Foundation [a philanthropic foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland] and the Beckley Foundation [a charity near Oxford, UK, that promotes drug-policy reform], although we needed to crowdfund through Walacea.com for the resources to analyse the data.


What were the results of the study?

To take advantage of the “long trip” produced by LSD — an eight-hour experience, as compared to, say, four on psilocybin — we put our participants through a huge range of tests.
In one study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we looked at blood flow in different parts of the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and at electrical activity using magnetoencephalography1. We found that under LSD, as compared to placebo, disparate regions in the brain communicate with each other when they don’t normally do so. In particular, the visual cortex increases its communication with other areas of the brain, which helps to explain the vivid and complex hallucinations experienced under LSD, and the emotional flavour they can take.


On the other hand, within some important brain networks, such as the neuronal networks that normally fire together when the brain is at rest, which is sometimes called the ‘default mode’ network, we saw reduced blood flow — something we’ve also seen with psilocybin — and that neurons that normally fire together lost synchronization. That correlated with our volunteers reporting a disintegration of their sense of self, or ego. This known effect is called ‘ego dissolution’: the sense that you are less a singular entity, and more melded with people and things around you. We showed that this could be experienced independently of the hallucinatory effects — the two don’t necessarily go together.


What else?


Among other studies, one of our team, Mendel Kaelen, a PhD student at Imperial College London, has a paper which will appear next week in European Neuropsychopharmacology3 looking at how listening to music affects the experience of taking LSD. He found that communication between the parahippocampus [a brain region important in memory storage] and the visual cortex [which processes information input from the eyes] is reduced when you take LSD. But when you hear music as well, the visual cortex receives more information from the parahippocampus, and this is associated with increases in ‘eyes-closed’ imagery and personal memories. So music enhances the LSD experience and might be important in therapeutic settings.


Another study, to be published in Current Biology4 and led by Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial, looks at how ego dissolution correlates with an increase in global connectivity — all the parts of the brain communicating with each other to a greater degree.


With only 20 participants — and only 15 quality data points because 5 people moved too much inside the brain scanner — how confident can you be in your findings?

We got very clear and significant effects — and they were consistent with the data from previous studies with psilocybin4, although the effects with LSD were much stronger.


Are other scientists working with LSD?

We think there is only one other group in the world currently working with LSD in humans. They are based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, led by Franz Vollenweider. They seem to be focusing on using antagonists [which block LSD and its effects] to clarify the pharmacological targets of LSD. They have done their own fMRI scans, but taken during psychological tasks, rather than when the brain is at rest, as we did. Their results haven’t been published yet, so I can’t comment on their findings.

What studies will you do next?

We have plans to do separate experiments to look at how LSD can influence creativity, and how the LSD state mimics the dream state.

More importantly, we have already completed a trial on psilocybin as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression funded by the UK Medical Research Council: not as a daily drug, but in targeted psychotherapeutic sessions. Results will be presented next month. The basic argument for this is that we know that the default-mode network is overactive in people who are depressed, and we know from our earlier study5 that psilocybin reduces how integrated that network is — at least during the ‘trip’ itself.

Our latest brain-imaging study suggests that LSD has similar effects — suggesting that it could be trialled therapeutically, too.

Here is why we KNOW DECADE OF BRAIN will be used for Department of Defense from super bionic warriors to mind control----authoritarian governments have been doing this research for a century.  Here we see the CIA involved in these games in the 1970s when the article posted yesterday said WE THE PEOPLE protested and stopped what was called dangerous brain studies.

'The psychotronics project draws similarities to part of the controversial program MKUltra in the US. The CIA program ran for 20 years, has been highly documented since being investigated in the 1970s and was recently dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”'


Malkovich and his movie was written for this time and it is indeed a very, very, very, very big concern for  99% black, white, brown citizens. 

Let's see, what is the politics of America today?  Lying, cheating, stealing, no morals or ethics, no US Rule of Law far-right wing extreme wealth extreme poverty militaristic, authoritarian LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.  Not a good time for these BRAIN CONTROL experiments.

When media tells us amputees are asking to have healthy limbs amputated just to have a super-duper prosthetic we need to question if those feelings are true ---the transhuman is a goal of global Wall Street.

The USSR spent $1B on mind-control programs

By News.com.au
December 28, 2013 | 8:39am
Modal Trigger

2009's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" starring George Clooney provided a farcical look at the CIA's mind-control program which was matched by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Everett Collection

The race to put man on the Moon wasn’t enough of a battle for the global super powers during the Cold War.

At the time, the Soviet Union and the United States were in an arms race of a bizarre, unconventional kind – that has been exposed in a new report.

Beginning in 1917 and continuing until 2003, the Soviets poured up to $1 billion into developing mind-controlling weaponry to compete with similar programs undertaken in the United States.
While much still remains classified, we can now confirm the Soviets used methods to manipulate test subjects’ brains.

The paper, by Serge Kernbach, at the Research Centre of Advanced Robotics and Environmental Science in Stuttgart, Germany, details the Soviet Union’s extensive experiments, called “psychotronics”. The paper is based on Russian technical journals and recently declassified documents.
The paper outlines how the Soviets developed “cerpan”, a device to generate and store high-frequency electromagnetic radiation which was used to affect other objects.
“If the generator is designed properly, it is able to accumulate bioenergy from all living things – animals, plants, humans – and then release it outside,” the paper said.


Modal Trigger

The schematic drawing made by Soviet scientist detailing the bio-circuitry of the human nervous system.B.B.KazhinskiyThe psychotronics program, known in the US as “parapsychology”, involves unconventional research into mind control and remote influence – and was funded by the government.

With only limited knowledge of each other’s mind-bending programs, the Soviets and Americans were both participating in similar secret operations, with areas of interest often mirroring the other country’s study.

The psychotronics project draws similarities to part of the controversial program MKUltra in the US. The CIA program ran for 20 years, has been highly documented since being investigated in the 1970s and was recently dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”

Scientists involved in the MKUltra program researched the possibility of manipulating people’s minds by altering their brain functions using electromagnetic waves. This program led to the development of pyschotronic weapons, which were intended to be used to perform these mind-shifting functions.

The illegal research subjected humans to experiments with drugs, such as LSD, hypnosis and radiological and biological agents. Shockingly, some studies were conducted without the participant’s knowledge.

Kernbach’s paper on the Soviet Union’s psychotronics program fails to mention one thing – the results. He also doesn’t detail whether there are ongoing mind-control programs in the US or Russia, but there are suspicions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made mention of futuristic weaponry last year in a presidential campaign article.

“Space-based systems and IT tools, especially in cyberspace, will play a great, if not decisive role in armed conflicts. In a more remote future, weapon systems that use different physical principles will be created (beam, geophysical, wave, genetic, psychophysical and other types of weapons). All this will provide fundamentally new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals in addition to nuclear weapons,” he wrote.
The newly declassified information outlined in the report only touches on the Soviet psychotronics program and the bizarre experiments undertaken. With so much information still classified, will we ever know the whole truth?

____________________________________________

There are global propaganda about these scientific advancements including mind-control and mind-reading.  Scientists took a few decades to map the DNA genetic code and so far have determined there are too many complexities to definitely identify, develop, and install successful corrections of disease vectors by identifying genetic code that may be tied to that disease.  We have a few---breast cancer et al being held as reliable diagnostics but overall the mapping of DNA has led to mostly businesses tied to HEREDITARY lineage.

The problems of complexity not only of the organ called BRAIN but the environmental chemistry, the myriad of functions all driving the same highway of circuitry makes actual intervention on a grand scale unlikely.  We see VITRO studies and advances of neuron generation in lower animals that have yet to be addressed VIVO in humans.  The science says this transfer from VITRO to VIVO will be the most difficult science to overcome.

SCIENTISTS ALWAYS WANT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM AND UNDERSTAND COMPLEX BIOLOGY ---IT IS GOOD TO GAIN THESE RESEARCH KNOWLEDGE.


When we look at the difficulty medical science has had in creating actionable medical devices and procedures using genetics against disease vectors we know the road will be tremendous with brain science.  Meanwhile we are seeing rounds of patents being released from alcohol and drug treatment to alzheimer's treatment much of which was deemed ineffective before release but it is allowed to hit the medical market to recover and replenish global corporate medical research funding.


December 15, 2007
BlogI

Sequence, Therefore I Am: Decoding Your DNA in the 21st Century

The knowledge of one’s personal and familial history — be it genealogical, cultural, or medical — is usually restricted to memories, anecdotes and paper documents. The availability and increasing affordability of DNA sequencing has the potential to change that. Now a multitude of companies are offering to decode your DNA and claiming a crystal ball glimpse into your past, present and future. Are you a descendent of Genghis Kahn? Why does ice-cream cause you pain? Will you develop heart disease? As with any new technology, it can be difficult to decipher what exactly it offers, let alone fully understand the implications of obtaining such information. Do you really want to know your chances of developing cancer? Do the data actually justify being concerned? And will this information be safe from prying eyes? While DNA equals neither identity nor destiny, sequencing can offer a limited but informative glimpse into your genetic make-up.



'Berger boldly predicts that someday chips like his might restore memory capacity to stroke victims or help soldiers instantly learn complex fighting procedures, like the characters in The Matrix. But in some respects Berger is quite modest. He acknowledges that his memory chips could not be used to identify and manipulate specific memories. His chips can simulate “how neurons in a particular part of the brain change inputs into outputs. That’s very different from saying that I can identify a memory of your grandmother in a particular series of impulses.” To achieve this sort of mind-reading, scientists must compile a “dictionary” for translating specific neural patterns into specific memories, perceptions, and thoughts. “I don’t know that it’s not possible,” Berger says. “It’s certainly not possible with what we know at the moment.”

“Don’t count on it in the 21st century, or even in the 22nd, ” says Bruce McNaughton of the University of Arizona'.

Please be careful from where you get these kinds of reports----a TED TALK is largely propaganda on a global scale. There is nothing that can allow a person to transmit commands through air to control behavior of another. What we do have are neurological impulse connections to computers to allow paralyzed citizens to control their computer interactions----as with HAWKINGS.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? The rise of mind control

Mind control still sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies. But it’s coming closer, with implants that can help people with paralysis and, further off, devices to send thoughts between humans



Tom Ireland tries out transcranial magnetic stimulation at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer Saturday 22 August 2015 14.30 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 22 February 2017 13.06 EST

A hundred electrodes are pressed tightly against my scalp and a mixture of salt water and baby shampoo is dripping down my back. The goings-on in my slightly agitated brain are represented by a baffling array of graphs on a screen in front of me. When I close my eyes and relax, the messy spikes and troughs become neat little waves.

Next, scientists here at Newcastle University’s Institute of Neuroscience induce small electric currents in different parts of my head, using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). If they fire the device a few millimetres to the left of my brain’s motor cortex, I feel nothing. Hit my “sweet spot”, however, and my arm moves of its own accord.



What is the neuroscience behind empathy? When do children develop it? And can it be taught?

Listen I’m here for a demonstration of the tools underpinning what many call “mind control” technology. Neuroscientists believe it will soon be possible for humans to control robotic avatars using the power of thought alone, or even to send thoughts or intentions from one person’s mind directly into another – a terrifying prospect for fans of cult sci-fi films such as Scanners, where society is controlled by an elite force with mind control and telepathic powers.

Some even think that people will one day connect their brains together, via the internet, to form an enormous collective super-brain.

Here in Newcastle, researchers hope such technology can be used to restore movement to people affected by paralysis or disability. In another demonstration, electrodes detect the storm of electrical activity coming from my brain down to the nerves and muscles of my arm as I move my fingers. I hear the crackle of individual motor units in my hand muscles firing, amplified through hissing speakers.

The team here are using such signals to help people control robotic limbs, or reroute nerve impulses back into the body to bypass damaged nerves. Such devices are known as brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, and have developed rapidly over the last decade.

Internationally, neuroscientists have gone a step further, sending information from one brain into the another to create a brain-to-brain interface, or BBI. Researchers have even made one person move when another person wants them to, all by connecting their brains.

Greg Gage demonstrates the new ‘human to human’ interface.“Mind control” is suddenly not just plausible, but actually rather easy. You can buy a “DIY human-human interface” online for just over £165, part of a project aiming to make neuroscience more accessible to young people. In one video by neuroscientist Greg Gage, two on-stage volunteers are connected to the device – little more than a few wires, some flashing circuitry and a laptop. When one subject curls their arm, the other is powerless to stop their arm curling too.

“When you lose your free will and someone else becomes your agent, it does feel a bit strange,” Gage says to his young volunteers.

At the cutting edge of this technology, things get a little weirder. In 2013 researchers from Harvard Medical School announced they had made a device that allowed a human volunteer to move a rat’s tail via thought alone. That same year, neuroscientists from the University of Washington sent brain signals via the internet from one individual wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) headset to another with a TMS device, remotely controlling the recipient’s hand movements. One person, watching a computer game, imagined moving their hand to shoot down an enemy missile. His thoughts stimulated another person’s finger to hit the trigger at the appropriate time.
Then there’s the paralysed teenager who kicked the first ball of last year’s Fifa World Cup opening ceremony, wearing an exoskeleton controlled by his mind. And scientists at the Starlab facility in Barcelona, who claim to have demonstrated “conscious transmission of information” – sending the word “hola” from one mind to another, without either person using their senses.


Such experiments understandably make many people feel uneasy. Rumours that the US military is funding research in this area only add to concerns about frightening potential uses. Could people be forced to move or act against their will, or have their innermost thoughts and feelings extracted from their head?


The robotic exoskeleton used at the 2014 World Cup opening ceremony.The answer, at the moment, is almost certainly no. Even the most seemingly profound experiments can be a little underwhelming when looked at in detail. The Barcelona experiment, for example, might sound as if one person thought “hola” and the recipient then heard the word as an inner voice in their head. The reality is very different: the “sender” spelled out the word in binary code by imagining moving their hands or feet – one movement meant “0”, the other meant “1”. The “receiver” then received two types of brain stimulation: one, which caused them to perceive flashes of light, represented the 1s, another pulse with no effect represented the 0s. So, really, one person spelled out a word by thinking about moving, and one person got a kind of futuristic Morse code blasted into their head. Impressive, but hardly The Matrix.


The problem is, brain-to-brain technology in humans is currently restricted to non-invasive technologies, such as the slimy EEG device that is draped over my head in Newcastle. From outside the skull, such devices can only detect flurries of activity in the outer parts of the brain, or large spikes of activity deep in the brain.
“Reading brain activity with EEG is like trying to follow a football match while stood outside the stadium,” says Dr Andrew Jackson, senior research fellow at the Newcastle institute. “You can tell when someone’s scored a goal. But that’s about it.”

Activity associated with movement is one of the easiest types of brain activity to detect and reproduce. Capturing thoughts and feelings, which involve highly specific, synchronised activity, is something very different.

Sending sensations into the receiver’s brain is even less precise. Transcranial magnetic stimulation, the device used to make my arm twitch, can induce electric currents in extremely precise areas of the brain, activating neurons only in those areas. But again, creating complex sensations such as words and thoughts is far beyond the current scope of these devices.

Jackson says: “On the whole the technology [for sending signals] is less precise than the technology we have for recording – it is hard to control where you are stimulating. And we don’t really know much about the language of brain function – we don’t know what sensation will be created by stimulating different areas.”

Giulio Ruffini, who helped to devise the “hola” experiment, says the transmission of real thoughts or messages, rather than a sequence of 0s and 1s, is probably only likely with invasive technology – the implantation of devices directly into the brain.

“It is a far more interesting goal – the brain perceives something and you stimulate that exact experience in someone else. It has been demonstrated with invasive technologies in animals, and I believe it will be done in humans soon too.”

Such implants contain hundreds of minute needle-like electrodes, placed in precise locations in the brain to monitor or stimulate individual neurons. Researchers this year connected the brains of three monkeys using invasive technology, and found the animals quickly learned to synchronise brain activity to collaborate in tasks. In a similar experiment, four rats connected with intra-cortical devices were able to perform tasks to a higher level than single animals.


Ruffini is excited about what implants could achieve in humans. “It is so much more powerful. Already you can connect humans to an interface that controls a robot which you use to grab things. If we establish links between brains that are powerful enough, could those people actually be thought of as one and the same person? Could we even communicate with other species?”

Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer in the field, says that if invasive technology was deemed safe and ethically permissible, “doing something like controlling a car with your thoughts would be fairly trivial”. In his book Beyond Boundaries, Nicolelis envisages a future where people “download their ancestral memory bank” or “experience the sensations of touching the surface of another planet without leaving your living room”. On the phone, however, he is more pragmatic. “Higher order brain functions are not available to be transmitted. If it cannot be reduced to a channel, it cannot be transmitted.”

Like Nicolelis, many working in this field like to entertain all hypothetical possibilities, despite the technology’s limitations and the complexity of the brain. Tellingly, when the UK’s scientific ethics committee looked into emerging “neurotechnologies”, such as BCIs and BBIs, they decided the discrepancy between what might be done and what is actually possible was so large that there is no need for any regulatory action for now.

Commercial attempts to create mind-reading EEG gadgets have largely been gimmicks, and when I try the £165 DIY human-human interface from the videos, I seem to just give my friends electric shocks. It all adds up to a confusing mixture of genuinely brilliant science and speculative hype.

“With some experiments I’ve seen I’m not quite sure what the point is, other than to be the first person to do it,” admits Jackson.

Nonetheless, invasive devices are likely to be coming to a hospital near you, and soon. “Invasive technologies are actually more desirable for a patient who is missing a limb or is paralysed,” says Jackson. “They might not want to have to wear something on their head, they might want something permanent and incorporated into their body.” As I remove this summer’s least sought-after headwear from my poor head, I see his point. The challenge now is creating safe implants that can function beneath the skin for decades.

Others, including Ruffini, remain convinced that humans will be able to link brains more meaningfully, perhaps wirelessly, within this century.

“Humans need to communicate. We have always tried to widen the bandwidth with which we can do it – with language or letter, phone or internet. It may take 50 or 100 years before we are communicating thoughts, but I think it is inevitable.”



Non-invasive brain-to-brain interfaces


 Activity in the brain is detected by a device held on the scalp, such as electroencephalography (EEG). This gives an indication of patterns of neural activity, mainly in areas of the outer brain.


■ The data is amplified, processed, and analysed by a computer, and converted to a signal that can be transmitted into another brain.
■ Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) uses a magnetic field to induce electric current in areas of the brain, stimulating neurons to “fire”. The sensations that can be created by sending impulses into the brain in this way are extremely limited, eg muscle movements or the perception of flashes of light.
Invasive brain-to-brain interfaces
■ A special chip containing tiny, needle-like electrodes is inserted into the brain and fixed to the skull. Electrodes can be placed with enough precision to measure the activity of individual neurons.
■ Activity is detected, processed and analysed by a computer.
■ Electrodes can be placed to stimulate precise areas of the brain. Though more precise than TMS, stimulating complex effects like thoughts or controlled movements is still not yet possible.
_________________________________________

Here we see these transmissions between two mice were less mind-control and mostly neural electromagnet transmission via an internet/computer interface.  These developments are amazing-----very interesting-----but as articles we read show nothing actionable on these mind-control arenas are coming any time in this or next century.

'Very little is known about how thoughts are encoded and how they might be transmitted into another person's brain – so that is not a realistic prospect any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is what Sandberg calls a "draft" of what we might do. "Often, we don't want to reveal those drafts, that would be embarrassing and confusing. And a lot of those drafts are changed before we act.

"Most of the time I think we'd be very thankful not to be in someone else's head."



Brain-computer interface advance allows fast, accurate typing by people with paralysis

In a Stanford-led research report, three participants with movement impairment controlled an onscreen cursor simply by imagining their own hand movements.

Feb 21 2017A clinical research paper led by Stanford University investigators has demonstrated that a brain-to-computer hookup can enable people with paralysis to type via direct brain control at the highest speeds and accuracy levels reported to date.

The report involved three study participants with severe limb weakness — two from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, and one from a spinal cord injury. They each had one or two baby-aspirin-sized electrode arrays placed in their brains to record signals from the motor cortex, a region controlling muscle movement. These signals were transmitted to a computer via a cable and translated by algorithms into point-and-click commands guiding a cursor to characters on an onscreen keyboard.

Each participant, after minimal training, mastered the technique sufficiently to outperform the results of any previous test of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for enhancing communication by people with similarly impaired movement. Notably, the study participants achieved these typing rates without the use of automatic word-completion assistance common in electronic keyboarding applications nowadays, which likely would have boosted their performance.

One participant, Dennis Degray of Menlo Park, California, was able to type 39 correct characters per minute, equivalent to about eight words per minute.


‘A major milestone’

This point-and-click approach could be applied to a variety of computing devices, including smartphones and tablets, without substantial modifications, the Stanford researchers said.

“Our study’s success marks a major milestone on the road to improving quality of life for people with paralysis,” said Jaimie Henderson, MD, professor of neurosurgery, who performed two of the three device-implantation procedures at Stanford Hospital. The third took place at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Henderson and Krishna Shenoy, PhD, professor of electrical engineering, are co-senior authors of the paper, which was published online Feb. 21 in eLife. The lead authors are former postdoctoral scholar Chethan Pandarinath, PhD, and postdoctoral scholar Paul Nuyujukian, MD, PhD, both of whom spent well over two years working full time on the project at Stanford.
Stanford's Jaimie Henderson and Krishna Shenoy are part of a consortium working on an investigational brain-to-computer hookup.  

 
Paul Sakuma
“This study reports the highest speed and accuracy, by a factor of three, over what’s been shown before,” said Shenoy, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who’s been pursuing BCI development for 15 years and working with Henderson since 2009. “We’re approaching the speed at which you can type text on your cellphone.”

“The performance is really exciting,” said Pandarinath, who now has a joint appointment at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “We’re achieving communication rates that many people with arm and hand paralysis would find useful. That’s a critical step for making devices that could be suitable for real-world use.”

Shenoy’s lab pioneered the algorithms used to decode the complex volleys of electrical signals fired by nerve cells in the motor cortex, the brain’s command center for movement, and convert them in real time into actions ordinarily executed by spinal cord and muscles.

“These high-performing BCI algorithms’ use in human clinical trials demonstrates the potential for this class of technology to restore communication to people with paralysis,” said Nuyujukian.

Life-changing accident

Millions of people with paralysis reside in the United States. Sometimes their paralysis comes gradually, as occurs in ALS. Sometimes it arrives suddenly, as in Degray’s case.

Now 64, Degray became quadriplegic on Oct. 10, 2007, when he fell and sustained a life-changing spinal-cord injury. “I was taking out the trash in the rain,” he said. Holding the garbage in one hand and the recycling in the other, he slipped on the grass and landed on his chin. The impact spared his brain but severely injured his spine, cutting off all communication between his brain and musculature from the head down.
“I’ve got nothing going on below the collarbones,” he said.

Degray received two device implants at Henderson’s hands in August 2016. In several ensuing research sessions, he and the other two study participants, who underwent similar surgeries, were encouraged to attempt or visualize patterns of desired arm, hand and finger movements. Resulting neural signals from the motor cortex were electronically extracted by the embedded recording devices, transmitted to a computer and translated by Shenoy’s algorithms into commands directing a cursor on an onscreen keyboard to participant-specified characters.

The researchers gauged the speeds at which the patients were able to correctly copy phrases and sentences — for example, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” Average rates were 7.8 words per minute for Degray and 6.3 and 2.7 words per minute, respectively, for the other two participants.


A tiny silicon chip

The investigational system used in the study, an intracortical brain-computer interface called the BrainGate Neural Interface System*, represents the newest generation of BCIs. Previous generations picked up signals first via electrical leads placed on the scalp, then by being surgically positioned at the brain’s surface beneath the skull.

An intracortical BCI uses a tiny silicon chip, just over one-sixth of an inch square, from which protrude 100 electrodes that penetrate the brain to about the thickness of a quarter and tap into the electrical activity of individual nerve cells in the motor cortex.

This is like one of the coolest video games I’ve ever gotten to play with.Henderson likened the resulting improved resolution of neural sensing, compared with that of older-generation BCIs, to that of handing out applause meters to individual members of a studio audience rather than just stationing them on the ceiling, “so you can tell just how hard and how fast each person in the audience is clapping.”

Shenoy said the day will come — closer to five than 10 years from now, he predicted —when a self-calibrating, fully implanted wireless system can be used without caregiver assistance, has no cosmetic impact and can be used around the clock.

“I don’t see any insurmountable challenges.” he said. “We know the steps we have to take to get there.”
Degray, who continues to participate actively in the research, knew how to type before his accident but was no expert at it. He described his newly revealed prowess in the language of a video game aficionado.
“This is like one of the coolest video games I’ve ever gotten to play with,” he said. “And I don’t even have to put a quarter in it.”

The study’s results are the culmination of a long-running collaboration between Henderson and Shenoy and a multi-institutional consortium called BrainGate. Leigh Hochberg, MD, PhD, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University and the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology in Providence, Rhode Island, directs the pilot clinical trial of the BrainGate system and is a study co-author.

“This incredible collaboration continues to break new ground in developing powerful, intuitive, flexible neural interfaces that we all hope will one day restore communication, mobility and independence for people with neurologic disease or injury,” said Hochberg.

Stanford research assistant Christine Blabe was also a study co-author, as were BrainGate researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Case Western University.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01DC014034, R011NS066311, R01DC009899, N01HD53404 and N01HD10018), the Stanford Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program, Stanford BioX-NeuroVentures, the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience, the Stanford Neuroscience Institute, Larry and Pamela Garlick, Samuel and Betsy Reeves, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the MGH-Dean Institute for Integrated Research on Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing holds intellectual property on the intercortical BCI-related engineering advances made in Shenoy’s lab.
Stanford’s departments of Neurosurgery and of Electrical Engineering also supported the work. Shenoy and Henderson are members of Bio-X and the Stanford Neuroscience Institute.


_______________________________________

Stanford has been allowed to patent its research for decades which is why it is now a global IVY LEAGUE research and development corporation with endowments growing by the billions because they are being allowed as a private corporation to receive Federal funding to move forward these advances.  Would other public university research facilities make the same findings if they received that Federal funding that before CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA would go to them?

OF COURSE -----NERDS AND GENIUSES GO TO WHERE THE MONEY IS. WE HAVE WATCHED AS OUR BEST AND BRIGHTEST USED TO DISCOVER IN PUBLIC FACILITIES BRINGING TO 99% OF CITIZENS THE FRUITS OF THESE STUDIES.

Clinton/Bush slowly moved the funding to private universities---then private IVY LEAGUE universities and these several years of Obama have created massive global corporate R and D of only IVY LEAGUE universities----taking the public out of all medical research and development.

'The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01DC014034, R011NS066311, R01DC009899, N01HD53404 and N01HD10018), the Stanford Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program, Stanford BioX-NeuroVentures, the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience, the Stanford Neuroscience Institute, Larry and Pamela Garlick, Samuel and Betsy Reeves, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the MGH-Dean Institute for Integrated Research on Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing holds intellectual property on the intercortical BCI-related engineering advances made in Shenoy’s lab'.

You can bet these products will be expensive but rather than the financial gains coming back to public coffers it will go to a Stanford University who will then be able to decide to whom it SELLS THE PATENT. 

If anyone is DR NO tied to ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE global militarized security moving forward to far-right authoritarianism-----it is Stanford and Hopkins and they lead in controlling much of these patented projects. 

Notice 35 years is tied to Clinton era when Federal funding was moved to private universities. This is how the global 1% now controls all economic development and 99% of WE THE PEOPLE have no access to growing small businesses and local economies from these research gains AND why WE THE PEOPLE are not having public, open discussions on ethics and morals---it all goes to private corporate entities with their own agenda and goals.

Again, IT MATTERS WHO IS ALLOWED TO POSSESS THESE PATENTS.  WHO DOES HOPKINS SELL THESE PATENTS TO?  WHO WILL STANFORD SELL THESE PATENTS TO?

Johns Hopkins leads nation in research spending for 35th year in a row

$2.2B spent on medical, science, engineering research in FY2013


By Jill Rosen
/ Published Feb 6, 2015Johns Hopkins University led the U.S. in higher education research spending for the 35th consecutive year in fiscal 2013, with $2.2 billion for medical, science, and engineering research, according to the National Science Foundation.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF's separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.89 billion in fiscal year 2013 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.

At Johns Hopkins, research and development money supports investigations into everything from the origins of the universe to potentially lifesaving medical treatments. Recently researchers have studied the implications of climate change, better protection for those treating Ebola, brain injuries in NFL players, how race and ethnicity might link to asthma, and how black holes can block stars.

"This ranking indicates that in an ever more challenging environment, Johns Hopkins faculty continues to secure funding for research that saves lives, leads to technological breakthroughs and inspires new views in the arts and humanities," said Denis Wirtz, the university's vice provost for research and co-director of Johns Hopkins' Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

The total funding ranking includes research support not only from federal agencies, but also from foundations, corporations and other sources.

Johns Hopkins has led the NSF's total research expenditure ranking each year since 1979, when the agency's methodology changed to include spending by the Applied Physics Laboratory—a research-focused division—in the university's totals.

In fiscal year 2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to reach the $1 billion mark on both lists, recording $1.4 billion in total research and $1 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

Johns Hopkins research is also supported by funding from private sources and from return on investment from past discoveries. In fiscal 2013, Johns Hopkins earned $22.7 million from more than 800 licenses and their associated patents. During that time the institution spun off 12 new companies.

In the new survey, the University of Michigan ranked second in research and development with $1.27 billion. Rounding out the list's top five are: the University of Washington, Seattle, at $1.2 billion; followed by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at $1.1 billion; and University of California, San Diego, at $1 billion.

Looking at all colleges and universities—645 were included in the survey—total research spending in 2013 rose slightly from the previous year to $67 billion, compared with $65.7 in fiscal 2012.

However, the portion of that total that came from federal agencies fell 1.7 percent, from $40.1 billion in 2012 to $39.4 billion. The decrease in research funding has been particularly hard on young scientists, Johns Hopkins president Ronald J. Daniels wrote in a recent article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

________________________________________

Many citizens really believed all the forensic technology seen on CSI ------all TV is make-believe and today even our national journalism is propaganda so please watch out as to scientific developments around DNA coding and DECADE OF THE BRAIN developments and please be knowledgeable of new PHARMA and medical techniques being allowed to move to market with no solid testing. We will lose tons of health care funding to Medicaid for these addiction treatments ---behavior modification ---robotics.



Real forensic scientists shake their heads at TV 'CSI' counterparts


By Pat Reavy@DNewsCrimeTeam
Published: Nov. 30, 2011 4:00 p.m.

Laura Seitz, Deseret News


Nigerian police officers Elias Vzoemeka and Sherifat Adesunkanmi work with Darren Warnick, validation scientist at Sorenson Forensics, during DNA forensic training at Sorenson in Salt Lake City on May 27, 2010.

We don't go driving around in new Hummers and cruise the beaches in Miami. SALT LAKE CITY — Sorenson Forensics Executive Director Tim Kupferschmid will turn on the TV every once in a while and watch crime shows with forensic labs, like "CSI."


But it's not because he expects he'll be inspired with a great new idea or watch something realistic.
"I watch them for the entertainment value," he said. "A lot of these things just don't happen in the real world. You don't identify DNA and then get a driver's license pop up (on a computer) and a GPS coordinate leading you to that person."

But because of popularity of shows like "CSI," Kupferschmid said he is asked by members of the public constantly about things that don't happen in real life.
"They find out what I do and say, 'That's so cool,' and they think it's so glamorous," he said.
The reality is being a forensic scientist can be very tedious and involve long hours of work.

Because of the many misconceptions about forensic scientists and DNA laboratories, Kupferschmid compiled a list of the Top 10 TV Crime Lab Myths. Topping the list is the idea that DNA can be gathered, tested and the results returned in a matter of hours.


"When they do their lab analysis, it seems instantaneous," Kupferschmid said.


In reality, the turnaround for analysis on a DNA case is two to five days. And that's if there isn't already a backlog in cases. But crime labs across the country are faced with huge backlogs, he said. Some labs have a 30- to 60-day waiting period before a case will even be looked at. For cases that aren't high profile or don't involve crimes against a person, the waiting list at some labs in the U.S. can be years, he said.


Another CSI myth is that the person who conducts the lab work also interrogates suspects, makes arrests and does police work.


"We don't go driving around in new Hummers and cruise the beaches in Miami," Kupferschmid said of his real life job.
Very rarely do you find forensic scientists today who are also certified law enforcers, he said.
"You wouldn't send someone to the police academy and then stick them in a lab. It would be a waste of their training. Just like you wouldn't send someone to be a scientist and then put them on the street for patrol," he said.
Another misconception: forensic scientists don't keep track of all their cases once they finish testing evidence.


"We do so many cases, we just can't possibly follow them all. We may follow some of them. Very rarely do we find out the final disposition of the case," Kupferschmid said.


Because only about 10 percent of the cases Salt Lake-based Sorenson Forensics handles come from Utah, Kupferschmid said most of the time his scientists have no idea if the case they're working on is high profile. In Utah, several cases handled by Sorenson have received a lot of attention because they helped solve cold cases.


Sorenson Forensics opened in 2006 and geared itself toward helping the law enforcement community by providing casework services for federal, state and local crime laboratories. The company made a mark immediately by solving several cold case homicides in Utah.
Interest in forensic science has exploded over the past several years as fast as the technology itself. Kupferschmid said the "CSI effect" is evident in today's courtrooms where some jurors have developed unrealistic expectations about how extensive and decisive forensic science truly is.


But on the flip side, the "CSI effect" has also resulted in many more people wanting to become forensic scientists.

"It's good for society to be aware of DNA. Before the OJ (Simpson) case, no one knew what DNA was. Now, it's part of normal conversation everyone has. As a whole, our public is much more aware of what we do," he said.
So if not for the glamor and excitement, why does Kupferschmid — an internationally recognized scientist with 20 years of forensic DNA experience — and other forensic scientists like him continue to do what they do?

"The pride aspect. We're doing something that has an immediate effect on people's lives every day," he said.
One other "CSI" myth Kupferschmid said isn't true are those scenes on TV where the forensic scientist is eating and drinking next to his work and joking around with colleagues.

“There’s no eating or drinking while conducting tests, and it’s hard to converse through a surgical mask," he said.

Top 10 TV crime lab myths


1. Crime labs can gather, prepare, test and have results from DNA and other forensic tests within a few hours.
2. A suspect will sit in an interrogation room wearing the same clothes he wore during the crime — and conclusive test results arrive just as you sit down to question him.

3. Crime scene investigators follow cases from start to finish and conclude investigations within a few days.
4. Crime scene investigators are directly involved with the investigation, raids and arrests.
5. Crime scene investigators can get DNA evidence from any surface.
6. DNA analyses provide two results: Yes, he did it, or no, he didn’t do it.
7. Crime scene investigators cannot only pull up DNA, but they can tell whether it came from tears, saliva, and sweat or cremated remains.
8. Everyone is in a DNA database.
9. When a DNA match is indicated, crime lab computers flash big red letters declaring a “99 percent match,” and a driver’s license photo for good measure.
10. Crime scene investigators conduct DNA testing while munching snacks or joking with colleagues.

When the US is taken to a point where our Department of Defense sets the code of medical and brain research taking us from a well-regulated, developed nation best in world history public health structure to what can easily become the military medical human rights crimes against humanity during WW 2----

we are MOVING FORWARD to ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FAR-RIGHT, MILITARISTIC, AUTHORITARIAN LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.


A Breakthrough in the Checkered History Of Brain Hacking
A recent military-funded program could up-end the way brain research is conducted. By Patrick Tucker
defenseone.com

Our servicemen are experiencing PTSS in huge numbers because of BUSH/CHENEY and their changing of military windows of service for both US military personnel and our state national guards forcing many to serve a decade or more in active combat----never done before in modern history.  Who controls our almost privatized to global military corporations?  People like Bush/Cheney/Blackwater/Ze----all known for crimes against humanity.

We can bet a global Wall Street military which created these PTSS disease vectors are not doing all this brain research to help our US VETS----they are the ones dismantling and defunding our once strong Veterans Administration hospitals.

Rewriting Life

Military Funds Brain-Computer Interfaces to Control Feelings

A $70 million program will try to develop brain implants able to regulate emotions in the mentally ill.

• by Antonio Regalado
• May 29, 2014

Many veterans suffer from overwhelming emotional problems.
Researcher Jose Carmena has worked for years training macaque monkeys to move computer cursors and robotic limbs with their minds. He does so by implanting electrodes into their brains to monitor neural activity. Now, as part of a sweeping $70 million program funded by the U.S. military, Carmena has a new goal: to use brain implants to read, and then control, the emotions of mentally ill people.

Brain reader: An array of micro-electrodes printed on plastic can record from the brain’s surface. It is 6.5 millimeters on a side.

This week the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, awarded two large contracts to Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, to create electrical brain implants capable of treating seven psychiatric conditions, including addiction, depression, and borderline personality disorder.

The project builds on expanding knowledge about how the brain works; the development of microlectronic systems that can fit in the body; and substantial evidence that thoughts and actions can be altered with well-placed electrical impulses to the brain.

“Imagine if I have an addiction to alcohol and I have a craving,” says Carmena, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and involved in the UCSF-led project. “We could detect that feeling and then stimulate inside the brain to stop it from happening.”

The U.S. faces an epidemic of mental illness among veterans, including suicide rates three or four times that of the general public. But drugs and talk therapy are of limited use, which is why the military is turning to neurological devices, says Justin Sanchez, manager of the DARPA program, known as Subnets, for Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies. 

“We want to understand the brain networks [in] neuropsychiatric illness, develop technology to measure them, and then do precision signaling to the brain,” says Sanchez. “It’s something completely different and new. These devices don’t yet exist.”

Under the contracts, which are the largest awards so far supporting President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, the brain-mapping program launched by the White House last year, UCSF will receive as much as $26 million and Mass General up to $30 million. Companies including the medical device giant Medtronic and startup Cortera Neurotechnologies, a spin-out from UC Berkeley’s wireless laboratory, will supply technology for the effort. Initial research will be in animals, but DARPA hopes to reach human tests within two or three years.

The research builds on a small but quickly growing market for devices that work by stimulating nerves, both inside the brain and outside it. More than 110,000 Parkinson’s patients have received deep-brain stimulators built by Medtronic that control body tremors by sending electric pulses into the brain. More recently, doctors have used such stimulators to treat severe cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (see “Brain Implants Can Reset Misfiring Circuits”). Last November, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved NeuroPace, the first implant that both records from the brain and stimulates it (see “Zapping Seizures Away”). It is used to watch for epileptic seizures and then stop them with electrical pulses. Altogether, U.S. doctors bill for about $2.6 billion worth of neural stimulation devices a year, according to industry estimates.

Researchers say they are making rapid improvements in electronics, including small, implantable computers. Under its program, Mass General will work with Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to develop new types of stimulators. The UCSF team is being supported by microelectronics and wireless researchers at UC Berkeley, who have created several prototypes of miniaturized brain implants. Michel Maharbiz, a professor in Berkeley’s electrical engineering department, says the Obama brain initiative, and now the DARPA money, has created a “feeding frenzy” around new technology. “It’s a great time to do tech for the brain,” he says.

The new line of research has been dubbed “affective brain-computer interfaces” by some, meaning electronic devices that alter feelings, perhaps under direct control of a patient’s thoughts and wishes. “Basically, we’re trying to build the next generation of psychiatric brain stimulators,” says Alik Widge, a researcher on the Mass General team.

Darin Dougherty, a psychiatrist who directs Mass General’s division of neurotherapeutics, says one aim could be to extinguish fear in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Fear is generated in the amygdala—a part of the brain involved in emotional memories. But it can be repressed by signals in another region, the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. “The idea would be to decode a signal in the amygdala showing overactivity, then stimulate elsewhere to [suppress] that fear,” says Dougherty.

Such research isn’t without ominous overtones. In the 1970s, Yale University neuroscientist Jose Delgado showed he could cause people to feel emotions, like relaxation or anxiety, using implants he called “stimoceivers.” But Delgado, also funded by the military, left the U.S. after Congressional hearings in which he was accused of developing “totalitarian” mind-control devices. According to scientists funded by DARPA, the agency has been anxious about how the Subnets program could be perceived, and it has appointed an ethics panel to oversee the research.

Psychiatric implants would in fact control how mentally ill people act, although in many cases indirectly, by changing how they feel. For instance, a stimulator that stops a craving for cocaine would alter an addict’s behavior. “It’s to change what people feel and to change what they do. Those are intimately tied,” says Dougherty.

Dougherty says a brain implant would only be considered for patients truly debilitated by mental illness, and who can’t be helped with drugs and psychotherapy. “This is never going to be a first-line option: ‘Oh, you have PTSD, let’s do surgery,’ ” says Dougherty. “It’s going to be for people who don’t respond to the other treatments.” 

__________________________________________
Do WE THE PEOPLE hear this open public debate and discussion on ethics and morals of Federal funding going to anything other than a public university working to find cures for many neurological disease vectors?

The military has done a good job with prosthetics but it drives the TRANSHUMAN robotics of a super-military agent.

'The neuroengineering community serves the best interests of society quite well and we encourage a thorough and open debate of the applications built upon neuroengineering research'.

Here we see all that DECADE OF BRAIN research dealing with robotic neurological prosthetics is now being determines to be too expensive for 99% of citizens wanting that technology with a prosthetic.  Even our VETS are being tossed aside because of expense.  Wha we are seeing is the general public being used for military medical research with goals that are different than stated------our defense budget is already taking over half of national spending and now a sizable portion of our once public health national science funding is earmarked to these military medical goals with BRAIN RESEARCH.


FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA KNOW THESE GOALS OF BRAIN RESEARCH AND WERE THE ONES DEREGULATING AND DISMANTLING ALL OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND FUNDING SOURCES.


This is where DESIGNER MEDICINE comes in -----global market rate for these medical products will serve only the global 1% and their 2% while all Federal funding comes from 99% of US taxpayers............

'Simple prosthetic limbs range in cost from about $3,000 to $15,000. Those that are more mechanically advanced, or come with embedded computer chips, can cost up to $40,000'.


Amputees fight for insurers to cover prostheses

Many policies have cap on artificial limbs, leaving patients to pay on own
Toby Talbot  /  AP
Eileen Casey puts on her artificial leg in Burlington, Vt., Wednesday, May 14, 2008. After bone cancer forced the amputation of her right leg below the knee, she had to take out a loan to pay for an artificial limb after her insurer told her she'd already spent her $10,000 lifetime coverage limit.


updated 6/9/2008 2:42:21 PM ET

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — After bone cancer forced the amputation of her right leg below the knee, Eileen Casey got even more bad news: Her insurer told her that she had spent her $10,000 lifetime coverage limit on her temporary limb and that the company wouldn't pay for a permanent one.

"It was shocking to find out I was going to have to take out a loan to buy myself a leg so I could keep working and living independently," Casey said. At the bank, she said, she burst into tears when they asked what the loan was for.

Since then, Casey has joined a nationwide fight by amputees and the prosthetics industry to get the states and Congress to require fuller coverage for artificial limbs. The insurance industry is fighting the effort, saying such mandates drive up costs and reduce the flexibility customers want.

"The cumulative effect of several mandates can price employers out of the market altogether," said Mobit Ghose, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry lobbying group.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas recently signed into law a bill making Vermont the 10th state to require insurance companies to cover prosthetics as fully as they do other medical procedures. A similar measure is pending in Congress.

These laws say that if an insurance policy covers, say, 80 percent of the cost of any other medical procedure — whether a doctor's office visit or open-heart surgery — it must do the same for prosthetic limbs.
Just under 2 million Americans have lost a limb, with the largest number of amputations due to diabetes, said Paddy Rossbach, president and chief executive of the Amputee Coalition of America.


Simple prosthetic limbs range in cost from about $3,000 to $15,000. Those that are more mechanically advanced, or come with embedded computer chips, can cost up to $40,000. Expenses can grow further because many patients need new artificial limbs or sockets when the stump to which the prosthetic arm or leg is attached shrinks or otherwise changes shape. This is especially a problem in children.

While many private insurers have strict limits on the devices, government programs tend to be more generous. Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly, covers 80 percent of prosthetic costs and, unlike many private insurers, does not consider the more expensive mechanical or computerized limbs to be experimental.

The Veterans Affairs Department, which is seeing a growing number of amputees returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, provides prosthetic care without limits, said VA spokesman Terry Jemison. Anyone eligible for VA benefits — from a young soldier wounded in combat to an older veteran who has developed diabetes late in life — "will receive the latest in technology without limits on cost," Jemison said.

Rossbach argues that the health insurance industry's talk of mandates driving up costs is overblown. She said studies in six states that have passed these laws showed that increased coverage for prosthetics had added 12 to 25 cents a month to the average insurance premium.
Patients' immobility causes other problems
She added that insurance companies' slowness to cover prosthetics can increase other health care costs in the long run, because patients' immobility often leads to other ills.

"If people have a very sedentary life, then they are going to be at risk for secondary conditions — diabetes, obesity, depression, some forms of cancer," Rossbach said.

Still, mandates are not the answer, America's Health Insurance Plans argues.

"Mandates misallocate resources by requiring consumers — or their employers — to spend available funds on benefits that they would otherwise not purchase," it says on its Web site. "They also limit consumer choice by not allowing health insurance plans to make innovative and efficient products available to employers and individuals, including mandate-free policies."

Many health insurers lump prosthetics under the category of durable medical equipment, which includes less-expensive items such as crutches and back braces. Many people do not realize until it is too late that they have signed up for coverage limits that won't come close to paying for prosthetics, Rossbach said.
To Casey, who sells advertising for a Burlington-area TV station, the result seems arbitrary and unfair.
"If I had breast cancer and had a double mastectomy, they would cover breast reconstruction, yet I can't have a leg? This makes absolutely no sense," she said.

___________________________________

This report is long and boring and I could only post a small bit but please Google if you want to understand the problems we are having from lack of access for 99% of people from these DECADE OF THE BRAIN neurological research projects and products.

I like how this article identifies LACK OF COMPETITION in keeping prices down----that is what our Federal Public Medicare and Medicaid did but Affordable Care Act privatized and eliminated those Federal programs by folding them into bulk payments to state health systems.  So, no there are already GLOBAL MONOPOLIES in health systems and patenting of these medical devices/PHARMA tied to BRAIN RESEARCH.


Affordable Care Act was written by Clinton/Obama global Wall Street neo-liberals just to do this.


WORCESTER POLYTECHNI
C INSTITUTE
Robotic Prosthetic
Availability
Analysis
An Interactive Qualifying Project Report:
Submitted to the Faculty of the
WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
Submitted B
y
:
Benjamin Morrison





Executive Summary
In recent years, news and media outlets have applauded the advancements in robotic prosthetics, with special attention being paid to Dean Kamen’s DEKA arm and Hugh Herr’s PowerFoot BiOM.

Robotic prosthetics have been getting extra attention in the past decade due to the large number of amputees returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Congressional Research Service, the number of returning soldiers with full limb and/or partial amputation has climbed to over 1,600 as of 2010.

This is only a small fraction of the U.S. population of amputees, however, which includes approximately 1.9
million individuals.

Despite the growing need for prosthetics that suit the active user's lifestyle, these devices still remain out of the financial reach of the average user. Many never look at the fine print of their private health insurance to see how much of the price of a prosthetic will be covered in case of an accident. Private insurers typically cover anywhere from 50-80% of the cost of a prosthetic, but some health insurance plans limit the
insured member with payment caps that barely cover the cost or only allow the insured 1 prosthetic for a lifetime. The price of these prosthetics is also variable, depending on what the
insurance contract between the in surer and the prosthetist office stipulates. After interviewing prosthetists we found that microprocessor knees can cost anywhere from $33,000-$80,000 and robotic upper limb prosthetics can cost anywhere from $20,000-$120,000.

As a result of these high prices and poor insurance coverage, stories where amputees are denied robotic prosthetics are all too common. For example, Robert Riiber, a bilateral transfemoral amputee (both legs amputated above the knee) was unable to purchase two C-Legs with the insurance he had. He reported falling a total of 25 times with his traditional prosthetics, once while he was crossing the street.

He was forced to quit his job so he could become eligible for Medicare, since Medicare covers 80% of the cost of the device. To further add insult to injury, Medicare and other insurers require that the patient meet physical fitness requirements before receiving a lower limb robotic prosthetic. The patient is asked to perform a serious of ta sks, as shown in Table 10 of the Appendix, and is diagnosed a functional level, or “K Level.” Only the highest two K Levels, K3 and K4, are eligible to receive a robotic lower limb prosthetic, which excludes a large portion of elderly or diabetic patients, who make up the majority of lower limb amputations. These physical restrictions keep K2 Level patients from receiving microprocessor knees, despite the fact that a report from the Veteran’s Affairs showed that K2 Level amputees were capable of increasing their activity level to K3 with the use of
a robotic prosthetic. The interview results from the prosthetist interviews supported this claim, since 4/5 prosthetists answered that some of their patients who don’t use a robotic
prosthetic would benefit from one.
.
Of the four that said their patients would benefit from a
robotic prosthetic, two said that K2 Levels should be granted access to robotic prosthetics.
Hugh Herr was interviewed in order to gain an insight from a prosthetic designer’s point of view. Herr, who wears two powered ankle prosthetics himself, acknowledged that health
insurance companies are reluctant to pay for devices that they deem not “medically necessary.”

Herr claimed that health insurance companies would be more willing to pay for robotic prosthetics if they understood that they would actually be saving money because microprocessor controlled prosthetics prevent the patient from suffering from repeated falls and long-term related injuries. For example, the development of knee or hip problems from walking incorrectly
could cost $80,000-$150,000 to fix with surgery (Analysis of Assembly Bill in the Appendix).


However, since robotic prosthetics are still relatively new, there are no long term studies available to assert this claim to health insurance companies. After interviewing Bob Dzuranda, president of the prosthetic-fitting company Biometrics,
it was discovered that most private insurers do not reimburse prosthetist offices as much for prosthetics as Medicare does, and that these reimbursement rates are decreasing. Private insurers also typically set their reimbursement rates as percentages of what Medicare pays. This makes it difficult for prosthetists to sell expensive microprocessor controlled prosthetics and in some cases prosthetist offices cannot accept a patient’s health insurance if the insurance company’s reimbursement rates are too low. Proposed prosthetic parity laws could fix this, however, by ensuring that private insurers reimburse prosthetist offices the same amount that Medicare does.


In addition to fitness restrictions and low reimbursement rates, the prosthetics industry suffers from a lack of competition. Ottobock and Ossur are the manufacturers of the two most
popular microprocessor controlled knees, the C-Leg and the Rheo Knee. Since these companies have very little competition, it is possible for them to sell the devices at higher prices without worrying about losing their customer base.
Finally, the system that is in place to create new billing codes for prosthetics is slow. This discourages prosthetists from
selling newer prosthetics, since offices that use
the improper billing code are subject to Medicare audits
.
One of the major flaws in the billing process, is that
new devices must complete three months of marketing before they can receive a new billing code. A need for a new billing code must also be recognized by Medicare, Medicaid, or a
national private insurance company. If a device does not receive a billing code of its own, it is usually billed using a combination of older codes. In Medicare Region A, prosthetists must use the same billing codes for a C-Leg Genium as a C-Leg, even though a Genium is twice the cost of a C-Leg.

Since the billing codes are the same, the prosthetist office gets reimbursed the same amount of money by the patient’s insurance, which discourages prosthetists from offering the
newer device. Reduced physical restrictions for lower limb amputees, parity laws, and billing code application reform
have the potential to increase the number of robotic prosthetic users and grant amputees a healthier, more active lifestyle.

__________________________________________

As with privatization of our NASA space program handing several decades of space travel and research to a few global Wall Street 1%----we see now the same being done in DECADE OF BRAIN research going to global corporations and not to our PUBLIC HEALTH STRUCTURES for all to access.  This article was written in 2010 making it seem these medical advances were going to help 99% of patient needs----they knew in 2010 the Affordable Care Act would take care of that making this only about maximized profit pricing.  

OH, LOOK-----ONE GLOBAL CORPORATION IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY MD.


Global Wall Street hype breaking down our public regulated health to create FREE MARKET when everyone knows there has been no FREE MARKET in US since CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.

'The $2.8 billion orthotics and prosthetics business revolves around a few major players: the German manufacturing company Otto Bock HealthCare; Iceland-based össur; Fillauer in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Ohio Willow Wood in Mount Sterling, Ohio; and patient-services provider Hanger Orthopedic in Bethesda, Maryland. There are also smaller manufacturers that supply components such as motors and microchips'.


For the 99% wanting to have small businesses don't worry there will be the non-economy startups that go nowhere thrown a few million while these global medical corporations cater to world's rich.


OH, REALLY?????.....MORE MENTAL HEALTH PHARMA PLEASE!...........'Young, of Otto Bock HealthCare, says Bailey is far from alone. Amputees are now regularly removing healthy tissue to make room for more powerful technology. “I see it every day,” he says. “People will get a second amputation — move their amputation up their leg — to get the prosthetic equivalent of a hotter car.”'


long Read

Bionic Legs, i-Limbs, and Other Super Human Prostheses You’ll Envy

Save your tears for Tiny Tim. A boom in sophisticated prostheses has created a most unlikely by-product: envy.


By Paul Hochman02.01.10 | 5:00 am

There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.

Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.” Herr lost both his legs below the knee in a Mount Washington climbing accident when he was 17, but says that shouldn’t inspire pity. Instead, by donning whirring, whispering, shiny supermachines — the robotic ankles that can propel him across the room in 400-watt bursts — Herr has been given: Power. Allure. The strange animal magnetism of the very bad boy.

“When the prosthetic technology doesn’t work,” Herr says, “and the [amputee] is limping and he can’t run and he’s hurting, then nobody feels threatened, because that person is labeled as ‘cute’ and ‘courageous.’ ” He leans forward in his office and crosses his aluminum shins with an audible clink. “But when the technology works, when it can make you stronger or faster than you were, it overnight becomes sexy and powerful and threatening. Overnight.”

Anybody who hears “prosthetic” and thinks “peg leg” might wonder about Herr’s sunny hubris. The thought that an artificial limb could make anybody stronger or faster, or confer social advantage, is an opinion ripe for skepticism. Wearing one is inconvenient at best. It often hurts. It can break. It is obvious proof of loss. It seems by its very nature to announce a lack of health or vitality.

Yet much of the dissonance in Herr’s “prosthetics as progress” thesis stems from the undeniable fact that for years, prostheses were irredeemably ugly, off-putting, scary. Who would call a disembodied limb a “design object” to be lusted after, like an Audi or an iPhone? Who would consider herself better, or more beautiful, than a person without one?

“When I first got this job,” says Stuart Mead, CEO of Touch Bionics, a prosthetics and robotics firm based in Scotland, “it struck me how depressing it all was. Prosthetics were at the back of the hospital, the downstairs office, the back room. The look of most of these devices was horrible — half-human, half-plastic. This frightening pink color.”

Just wearing one could induce shame: The Barbie doll cosmesis (a cosmetic cover), tipped with a hook, acted like social repellent, pushing the user and the observer apart. “It was like having a scarlet letter,” says Marshall Young, an industrial designer for Otto Bock HealthCare, of the old-style prosthetic limbs. “It was, ‘I’ve got this damn thing and now my life sucks.’ “
All that is about to change — not only because prostheses are being built with materials found in sports cars and jet airplanes; or because designers are giving their creations an exuberant, unapologetic carbon-fiber sparkle; or even because nerve reintegration and myoelectrics are offering some amputees the joy of normal function. The biggest reason for amputees’ unlikely rise into a new, socially advantaged class comes from something much more mundane: profit. The prosthetics business is set to explode, and its products will make amputees stronger, faster, and, to some, more desirable than the rest of us.

In the meantime, Herr says, you can dispense with the Tiny Tim pity and the warm fuzzy feeling you get when a little girl struggles to her feet on poorly designed stilts. Because the new machines — and they are machines — are becoming so lustrous and so efficient that some people are already willing to chop off a perfectly good limb to get one.

The $2.8 billion orthotics and prosthetics business revolves around a few major players: the German manufacturing company Otto Bock HealthCare; Iceland-based össur; Fillauer in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Ohio Willow Wood in Mount Sterling, Ohio; and patient-services provider Hanger Orthopedic in Bethesda, Maryland. There are also smaller manufacturers that supply components such as motors and microchips.

The industry receives regular media attention for its work with returning American soldiers, but those soldiers represent less than 0.1% of the 1.7 million amputees in the United States. Unfortunately, that customer base is about to get much larger. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has predicted that 29 million Americans will be diagnosed with diabetes by 2050 — increasing their chances of having a lower extremity amputated by a factor of 28. Hanger Orthopedic’s CEO, Tom Kirk, points to diabetes and vascular disorders, largely driven by a 37% increase in obesity between 1998 and 2006, as the reason for most amputations. According to the CDC, diabetes-related amputations have risen to as many as 84,000 in a single 12-month period.

Not surprisingly, the money is following the market. MIT’s Herr cofounded a company called iWalk, which has received $10 million in venture financing to develop the PowerFoot One — what the company calls the “world’s first actively powered prosthetic ankle and foot.” Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs recently gave Brown University’s Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine a $7 million round of funding, on top of the $7.2 million it provided in 2004. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) has funded Manchester, New Hampshire-based DEKA Research, which is developing the Luke, a powered prosthetic arm (named after Luke Skywalker, whose hand is hacked off by his father, Darth Vader).

This influx of R&D cash, combined with breakthroughs in materials science and processor speed, has had a striking visual and social result: an emblem of hurt and loss has become a paradigm of the sleek, modern, and powerful. Which is why Michael Bailey, a 24-year-old student in Duluth, Georgia, is looking forward to the day when he can amputate the last two fingers on his left hand.

“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”

On March 5, 2008, Bailey was doing maintenance on a baling machine at a Conyers, Georgia-based paper-and-packaging company called Pratt Industries. The baler is designed to swing metal hooks across coils of galvanized steel ribbons and yank the strands tight around 2,100-pound bales of cardboard boxes.

“An inserter normally grabs the wires, breaks them, and then a hook twists them together,” says Bailey. “The machine did its job — only it did it to my hand. It happened so quickly, all I could do was watch.”
After nine hours of surgery, Bailey was left with two working fingers, his thumb and pointer. About a year and a half later, he was fitted with a prototype of Touch Bionics’ new ProDigits, the world’s first powered bionic-finger prosthesis.

He loves the thing. He shows it off. He likes to turn his head in unison with the flexing of his mechanical fingers, to make it seem like his entire body, not just his arm, is motorized. Like the Terminator.
“It’s pretty surprising,” Bailey says. “I find there are a lot of envious people. They say, ‘Hey! I want a robot hand.’ “

But Bailey is most surprised by his own reaction. “When I’m wearing it, I do feel different: I feel stronger. As weird as that sounds, having a piece of machinery incorporated into your body, as a part of you, well, it makes you feel above human. It’s a very powerful thing.”

Young, of Otto Bock HealthCare, says Bailey is far from alone. Amputees are now regularly removing healthy tissue to make room for more powerful technology. “I see it every day,” he says. “People will get a second amputation — move their amputation up their leg — to get the prosthetic equivalent of a hotter car.”

Orthopedic surgeons often consider amputation the equivalent of failure, Young says, and reflexively save as much of a damaged, injured, or diseased limb as possible. But in leaving lots of human being, they create a bigger problem: There is little room left for high-performance machinery. Now, the allure of that machinery has become so powerful that amputees are routinely taking the extreme step of paying out-of-pocket for what the industry calls “revisions.”

“It’s very simple,” Young says. “Prosthetic feet act like leaf springs on a truck — the bigger they are, the longer the lever arms, the more energy storage and return you get. With enough clearance, you can go from a walking foot to a higher-performance running foot. So people with too much residual limb are in a position of saying, If I want to go to a knee that will let me play basketball, I will have to downgrade my foot. They’ll say, Take four more inches, because I want that cool Corvette.”

According to Young, whose firm supplies Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., some returning soldiers undergo the same trade-up/trade-down decision, but with a twist: Double amputees are in the strangely fortunate position of being able to grow from 5-feet-8 to 6 feet tall — by choice.

Not surprisingly, all of this high-tech gear is expensive. One Otto Bock C-Leg, for example, connected to a custom socket (where the device is fit to the user’s residual limb), plus a high-tech foot, can cost more than $50,000. Upper-extremity prostheses can be just as pricey. That leaves some amputees walking around with what Carrie Davis, who was born with one arm, calls a “bag of hands that’s worth more than my house.”

Davis is a 38-year-old mother of two and Hanger Orthopedic’s national coordinator for Amputee Empowerment Partners, which provides mentors for new amputees. She’s also a two-time national champion in the “female upper-limb amputee division” of the Olympic distance triathlon.

And because her arm is made of black carbon fiber and titanium and makes cool whirring sounds when she picks up a wineglass, conversations tend to follow her.
“Well, I’m instantly intriguing,” she says. “There’s this black arm sticking out of my shirt sleeve. And when I’m wearing what I call my ‘pretty hand’ [with a natural-colored cosmesis], and somebody asks if I hurt my elbow, I say, ‘No, but check this out! Ever see one of these?’ “


Hugh Herr got his master’s in mechanical engineering at MIT and his PhD in biophysics at Harvard, but if his bold pronouncements about the advantages of prostheses still sound merely futuristic (and self-serving), consider: In 2008, a South African sprinter named Oscar Pistorius wanted to compete for a spot on his country’s Olympic team. Pistorius’s personal best for the 400 meters was within a few tenths of a second of the Olympic qualifying time, and he wanted a shot at the Games. But track and field’s international governing body, the IAAF, instead banned Pistorius from competition, citing the undeniable fact that Pistorius has no legs. Or, rather, he has residual limbs and runs on carbon-fiber Cheetah legs made by össur. The IAAF alleged that Cheetahs gave Pistorius an advantage over elite athletes who run on two natural limbs.


The turnabout — to say nothing of the irony — was dramatic. Where once we pitied the amputee and cheered him as he struggled to his feet for the first time, now we wanted him banned for being too … strong.

Another way to look at it: Someday soon, the Paralympics, which are essentially the second-tier Olympics — held after the “real” Games, in front of sparse crowds — will be the place for sports fans to go to watch people really going faster, higher, and stronger.

Herr was an expert witness in the case that caused the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn the IAAF ruling; his testimony included statistics that showed Pistorius’s prostheses to be mixed blessings at best. Among those: His foot is in contact with the ground 14% longer on each sprinting step than an able-bodied sprinter’s (a disadvantage), but he spends 34% less time in the air between steps and takes 21% less time to swing his legs between steps, and has a “metabolic cost of running” that is 17% lower (all factors in his favor). The upshot: Pistorius is approximately equal to his able-bodied competition for the moment — but could be only a couple of upgrades away from being able to leave the Usain Bolts and Tyson Gays of the world in the dust.

The problem for Herr, though, was that the IAAF was not going to ban the gear Pistorius was using; they were going to ban Pistorius himself. They weren’t barring a piece of technology, as FINA (swimming’s governing body) did with Speedo’s original LZR Racer swimsuit; they were going to toss an entire person. One top IAAF official claimed the reason was simple: Pistorius was “affecting the purity of the sport.” That’s the same language used for decades to keep blacks out of pro basketball and girls out of Little League.
“I’ve seen it,” says Matt Albuquerque, founder of Manchester, New Hampshire’s Next Step Orthotics and Prosthetics. “Able-bodied people do fear this advantage on the part of the amputee. They fear that you aren’t just ‘normal’ again, you’re better than human. And nobody wants the one-legged guy beating you. You’re not bragging about that at the dinner table, I guarantee you.”


Albuquerque says many patients come in to his practice with a “peg-leg mentality” — the assumption that they’ll be forever held back by substandard, unbeautiful technology — only to discover that some people are actually afraid of competitors connected to sleek, powerful devices. “One of my buddies was on the wrong side of a cable when an F-16 landed on a carrier in Vietnam,” Albuquerque says. “Amputated both his legs, right there on the deck. Turns out, he’s a great golfer. And I’m a fairly small guy, about 5-foot-4. We like to play together. But nobody wants to play us at the golf club, because nobody wants to get beat by the midget and the guy with no legs.”


As the rhetoric heats up — as robots perform surgery and build automobiles, and as the suspicion grows that our original equipment is somehow deficient — Herr offers some perspective. Poor eyesight, he says, is a medical condition. Eyeglasses are prosthetic. And while they were once purely medical devices, they’re now expensive fashion items.

“Let me make a point,” Herr says. “Eyeglasses — it’s a fucking sex apparatus. Often people can have contact lenses, but they choose in certain social environments to wear their glasses, because it looks hot. People put glasses on to make themselves look more intelligent. To augment their appearance, not just their performance.”

Herr’s suggestion, of course, is that the better prostheses make us perform, and the more glamorous they look, the more beautiful they will make amputees seem, too, even though their sheen, contour, texture, and color have ceased to look human.
“What is the obsession with looking human?” he says. “You think the only beauty is human? Bridges can be beautiful. Cars can be beautiful. Cell phones can be beautiful. They don’t look biological. So why do you anticipate 30 years from now that amputees will give a shit about human beauty? They won’t. Their limbs will be sculptures.”

___________________________________________
Below we see for what the BRAIN RESEARCH tied to accessing the deepest regions of the brain have as a goal---the holy grail of NEURAL STEM CELLS.  As we read in this article the presence of these vital stem cells in a human brain are very small-----not many to be found and hiding in difficult regions of the brain to access and harvest.

IF they can develop a procedure to reach and harvest neural brain stem cells there would be a need for SOURCES of more and more and more brain stem cells and know what?  We already have a global human organ trafficing cartel taking organs right out of 99% of people to sell on these markets.  The drive to get these stem cells would be enormous and the rich would pay huge market rates for these procedures. 

THIS IS THE BAD AND UGLY OF BRAIN RESEARCH DURING AN AGE OF LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS OR ETHICS, NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW GLOBAL WALL STREET NAKED CAPITALISM

'For any brain regeneration strategy to fly, adult neural stem cells (or an equivalent substitute) would need to be obtained in large numbers, safely grafted into a given site of injury, and precisely coaxed to mimic the natural behavior of the adult neural stem cell. Only then could we rebuild damaged neural circuits'.


Medical ethics always weighed the cost benefit to social benefit of Federal funding for medical research AND it always made sure the 99% received value from their taxpayer funded successes in that research.

 Medicare was gutted of funding several years ago of almost a trillion dollars while Federal funding for BRAIN RESEARCH and building biotechnology facilities as corporate R and D soared. We are moving towards PREVENTATIVE HEALTH CARE ONLY FOR A 99% while these designer medical products earn global health corporations billions of dollars each year. IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE ----LET'S GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS and bring public health back to the people.


Science

Could Your Brain Regenerate Like Skin?

Brain regeneration used to be considered a medical fantasy. But research shows that fantasy could eventually become a reality.


Levi Gadye, Contributor |Sep 7, 2016


You might resent your skin for being the source of your acne or dandruff woes, but even the most finicky of skin tends to be resilient when you need it most. An effective miracle occurs nearly every time we suffer a cut or a scrape: Our skin rebuilds itself from scratch. When damage to the skin is too severe for self-repair—say after a serious burn—doctors can often just graft skin from an innocuous region like the inner thigh to replace it. The new skin takes hold and grows as if it had been there all along.


[T]he human brain remains one of the most difficult organs for doctors to rehabilitate, let alone rebuild.Our brains couldn’t be more different — the human brain remains one of the most difficult organs for doctors to rehabilitate, let alone rebuild. Following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or stroke, some patients are able to recover a portion of their lost abilities after months or years of committed therapy. But even in the best of cases, the brain doesn’t actually repair its damaged parts. Instead, it trains surviving brain circuits to take over for circuits that have been destroyed.


Such retraining of the damaged brain represents the best shot many brain damage victims have for recovery. Automated rehabilitation devices, like the robotic exoskeleton ReWalk, can help patients learn how to walk after suffering from brain damage, and neuroscientists are currently beta-testing brain implants that could allow paralyzed patients to control computer cursors or prosthetic limbs with their thoughts.



ReWalk is a robotic exoskeleton that can help people re-learn how to walk
Nevertheless, neither of these modern brain rehab strategies comes anywhere close to the skin-grafting therapies available to burn victims. Indeed, until recently, the mere thought of regenerating the brain seemed laughable to most scientists, because the brain was believed to lack a key ingredient for self-repair: stem cells.


Stem cells are the workhorses of tissue regeneration. The skin is a regenerative rockstar because it contains countless skin-specific stem cells, called keratinocytes, which constantly generate new skin cells both in healthy skin and after an injury occurs. For the majority of the history of neuroscience, conventional wisdom held that the brain must lack any so-called neural stem cells, because brain damage was usually permanent.


However, in 1998, a groundbreaking study led by neuroscientist Fred Gage turned this dogma upside-down by showing that areas of even the elderly human brain possessed what are called adult neural stem cells, which continuously produce newborn neurons.
Fred Gage / Salk Institute


Suddenly, the pipe dream of regenerating the brain seemed like a real possibility, but there was a major hitch. Unlike keratinocytes, which reside underneath every square inch of our skin, adult neural stem cells are few in number and live in only two hard-to-reach nooks of the human brain. No surgeon would dare dig into a patient’s brain to harvest these stem cells for a brain tissue graft. Doing so could cause even more damage, and there’d be no guarantee such a graft of adult neural stem cells would even work.


For any brain regeneration strategy to fly, adult neural stem cells (or an equivalent substitute) would need to be obtained in large numbers, safely grafted into a given site of injury, and precisely coaxed to mimic the natural behavior of the adult neural stem cell. Only then could we rebuild damaged neural circuits.


Back in 2000, there were few options for obtaining adequate numbers of human stem cells for any purported type of tissue graft, let alone a brain tissue graft. Unborn fetuses can provide stem cells for research purposes, but for grafting to work, it’s better to source stem cells from patients themselves. (Grafts between individuals often fail due to immune system rejection of foreign tissue, which is why burn victims usually receive skin grafts from their own bodies.)


In 2007, Japanese researchers led by Shinya Yamanaka overcame this problem by devising a method for converting an abundant type of skin cell, the fibroblast, into a stem cell, dubbed the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC). The team found that activating four genes inside of skin fibroblasts “reprogrammed” them into iPSCs, which could then be spurred to mature into any type of cell, from muscle to blood to neuron. (This discovery earned Yamanaka a Nobel Prize in 2012).
Shinya Yamanaka / UCSF


With this technology, doctors could conceivably harvest skin fibroblasts from a patient, reprogram those cells into iPSCs, grow the iPSCs into the desired cell type, and then graft those mature cells back into the same patient to help rebuild a damaged part of the body. The only remaining question: Could this process work for brain damage?


Since Yamanaka’s discovery in 2007, researchers have been steadily working towards a regenerative brain therapy. Armed with a better understanding of how neural stem cells work, scientists can now easily convert skin fibroblasts into iPSCs, then into neural stem cells, and then into neurons. Some labs have succeeded with producing “cerebral organoids” out of iPSCs — artificial amalgamations of neurons that begin to resemble a miniature human cerebral cortex, suspended in a nutrient-rich solution. These organoids are perfect for studying how newborn neurons wire up, a prerequisite for grafting any iPSCs or neural stem cells into the human brain.


Others have taken inspiration from Yamanaka’s work to reprogram support cells, or glia, into neurons directly inside the mouse brain. This strategy that avoids moving cells from body to petri dish and back again. And just this year, scientists converted mouse fibroblasts directly into neural stem cells using a cocktail of nine drugs, drastically simplifying the reprogramming process by skipping the initial conversion to iPSC. Perhaps the best indication that therapies for brain regeneration might soon become reality is the fact that thousands of scientists worldwide are now actively studying it.


It’s no longer unreasonable to envision a future in which brain damage is countered not only by rehabilitation, but also by regeneration…It’s no longer unreasonable to envision a future in which brain damage is countered not only by rehabilitation, but also by regeneration. The details of such a hypothetical treatment, let alone its testing in clinical trials, remain at least a decade or two away. Right now, no one can say for sure whether such a therapy will involve the grafting of reprogrammed stem cells into the brain, or if we’ll be able to skip grafting altogether and directly reprogram support cells that are already in the brain into neural stem cells.


Or maybe, just maybe, the first regenerative brain therapy will be something different altogether. Scientific discoveries are easier to explain after the fact than they are to predict. But this much we can say for sure: the future looks bright for many brain injury patients who’ve long believed they’d never be able to fully recover what they lost.  

We shared an article dealing with SMART PHONE marketing of products and much of the language in program development sounds an very much like DECADE OF BRAIN research.  From pleasure centers of the brain to mimicking DOPAMINE we can bet much of that Federal funding for these BRAIN research projects went to TECH INDUSTRY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT just as all green energy development went to global corporate sustainability and space mining.  Before Clinton/Bush/Obama our National Institutes of Health/NCI/National Science Institute sent funding to public universities where public health research and developments brought low-cost medical advancements to 99% of people because it was Federally funded.  Our health care WAS affordable because of that dynamic.  Now, all research is done only with profitability in mind and public health has become global corporate use of medical advancements to control WE THE PEOPLE.

When we see research into drug and alcohol addictions then we see this below we see that former research is an extension of the later.  If we figure out how to treat addiction we know better how to enhance addiction. 

THIS IS THE DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH BY GLOBAL WALL STREET HEALTH SYSTEMS DRIVEN BY PROFITEERING AND POWER.

'When smartphones become a teen's drug of choice
Anderson Cooper: You call this a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.” It’s a race to the most primitive emotions we have? Fear, anxiety, loneliness, all these things'?

"By manipulating the neural system of this animal, we can make it turn left, we can make it turn right, we can make it go in a loop, we can make it think there is food nearby," Ramanathan said. "We want to understand the brain of this animal, which has only a few hundred neurons, completely and essentially turn it into a video game, where we can control all of its behaviors."

Do we really need to control behavior to treat addictions or can we rebuild our public health mental health structures that worked for most defunded and dismantled by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. Here is global IVY LEAGUE HARVARD corporation getting those Federal NIH/NSF funds as is true of now global IVY LEAGUE corporation Johns Hopkins and global IVY LEAGUE Stanford-----all tied to ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE lying, cheating, stealing---no morals, no ethics, no US Rule of Law, no God's natural law PRAGMATIC NILISM.

Clinton era dismantled the holistic approach to addiction treatment and replaced it with ALL PHARMA.


Public Release: 23-Sep-2012

Understanding the brain by controlling behavior

Using precisely-targeted lasers, researchers manipulate neurons in worms' brains and take control of their behavior


Harvard University


In the quest to understand how the brain turns sensory input into behavior, Harvard scientists have crossed a major threshold. Using precisely-targeted lasers, researchers have been able to take over an animal's brain, instruct it to turn in any direction they choose, and even to implant false sensory information, fooling the animal into thinking food was nearby.

As described in a September 23 paper published in Nature, a team made up of Sharad Ramanathan, an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and of Applied Physics, Askin Kocabas, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Molecular and Cellular Biology, Ching-Han Shen, a Research Assistant in Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Zengcai V. Guo, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute were able to take control of Caenorhabditis elegans - tiny, transparent worms - by manipulating neurons in the worms' "brain."


The work, Ramanathan said, is important because, by taking control of complex behaviors in a relatively simple animal - C. elegans have just 302 neurons -we can understand how its nervous system functions..
"If we can understand simple nervous systems to the point of completely controlling them, then it may be a possibility that we can gain a comprehensive understanding of more complex systems," Ramanathan said. "This gives us a framework to think about neural circuits, how to manipulate them, which circuit to manipulate and what activity patterns to produce in them ".


"Extremely important work in the literature has focused on ablating neurons, or studying mutants that affect neuronal function and mapping out the connectivity of the entire nervous system. " he added. "Most of these approaches have discovered neurons necessary for specific behavior by destroying them. The question we were trying to answer was: Instead of breaking the system to understand it, can we essentially hijack the key neurons that are sufficient to control behavior and use these neurons to force the animal to do what we want?"


Before Ramanathan and his team could begin to answer that question, however, they needed to overcome a number of technical challenges.
Using genetic tools, researchers engineered worms whose neurons gave off fluorescent light, allowing them to be tracked during experiments. Researchers also altered genes in the worms which made neurons sensitive to light, meaning they could be activated with pulses of laser light.


The largest challenges, though, came in developing the hardware necessary to track the worms and target the correct neuron in a fraction of a second.
"The goal is to activate only one neuron," he explained. "That's challenging because the animal is moving, and the neurons are densely packed near its head, so the challenge is to acquire an image of the animal, process that image, identify the neuron, track the animal, position your laser and shoot the particularly neuron - and do it all in 20 milliseconds, or about 50 times a second. The engineering challenges involved seemed insurmountable when we started. But Askin Kocabas found ways to overcome these challenges"


The system researchers eventually developed uses a movable table to keep the crawling worm centered beneath a camera and laser. They also custom-built computer hardware and software, Ramanathan said, to ensure the system works at the split-second speeds they need.

The end result, he said, was a system capable of not only controlling the worms' behavior, but their senses as well. In one test described in the paper, researchers were able to use the system to trick a worm's brain into believing food was nearby, causing it to make a beeline toward the imaginary meal.


Going forward, Ramanathan and his team plan to explore what other behaviors the system can control in C. elegans. Other efforts include designing new cameras and computer hardware with the goal of speeding up the system from 20 milliseconds to one. The increased speed would allow them to test the system in more complex animals, like zebrafish.

"By manipulating the neural system of this animal, we can make it turn left, we can make it turn right, we can make it go in a loop, we can make it think there is food nearby," Ramanathan said. "We want to understand the brain of this animal, which has only a few hundred neurons, completely and essentially turn it into a video game, where we can control all of its behaviors."
###Funding for the research was provided by the Human Frontier Science Program, the NIH Pioneer Award and the National Science Foundation.
________________________
'The Checkered History of Military Brain Tampering'

Here is an important member of our brain stem---the amygdala---from where many of our emotions and addictions arise.  Research into these brain activities will produce good medical treatments for many behaviors but as has always been the question who decides what behavior is bad or normal.  We have a decade of misuse of behavioral PHARMA used on our school children----on a broadening definition of depressive states.  Children labelled with these brain differences will indeed be tested and tracked in pre-K to vocational career paths with no income future.   The Affordable Care Act contains wording that will take rights to gun ownership away from citizens having any mental illness....well, that could be all of us.
Back-door gun control is not a left social Democratic stance to protecting US Constitutional rights especially when health policies have become so selective.
Where will parental rights come into play when these research map our brain stem impulses and a health system decides it is COST-EFFECTIVE to physically treat these areas or force PHARMA to treat any number of behaviors. Today, our ability to get with a health insurance plan we can afford is tied to citizens following what those health systems prescribe as treatment----little room for patient rights.

'The amygdala’s diverse role results from its “promiscuous” connections to many other brain regions, explains Tye, who has been working to disentangle these connections to understand each projection’s specific effect on behavior'.

'Sanchez and DARPA officials were adamant (exceedingly so) that the intent of the Neuro-FAST program is to advance brain science broadly. Officials were reluctant to discuss any other specific applications for that research. But that doesn’t mean those applications don’t exist, or that the military isn’t interested in them'.

Of course here is the DOD being allowed to slowly dismantle all patient rights, HIPPOCRATIC OATH, medicine for the common good protocol to fast-track their dastardly needs to manipulate human capital brain and behavior.
A recent military-funded program could up-end the way brain research is conducted.

By Patrick Tucker
Scientists funded by the Defense Department have just announced a breakthrough that could allow researchers to create in 220 days an extremely detailed picture of the brain that previously would have taken 80 years of scans to complete. 


The military has been looking to build better brain hacks for decades with results that ranged form the frightening to the comical. This latest development could revolutionize the study of the brain but also the national security applications of neuroscience.


Scientists at Stanford University who developed the new way to see the brain in greater detail, outlined in the journal Nature Protocols, said that it could mark a new era of rapid brain imaging, allowing researchers to see in much greater detail not only how parts of the brain interact on a cellular level but also to better understand those interactions across the entire brain.


“I absolutely believe this is going to transform the way that we study the brain and how we perform neuroscience research,” said Justin Sanchez, program manager for the Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology, or Neuro-FAST, program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which funded the research. “What we’re saying here today is that we can develop new technology that changes how we observe and interact with the circuits of the brain.”


The most common research methods for exploring the brain today involve the sensing of brains’ electrical activity, a technique called EEG, or observing of hemoglobin flow under functional magnetic resonance, called fMRI. Rather than simply listen to the brain’s thought spasms of electro-magnetic activity, the Stanford researchers’ technique instead uses light to reveal causal relationships in the circuits themselves. “It’s all about optical interfaces for the brain, optical techniques to image the brain, optical techniques to record activity from the brain and optical techniques to record neurons and their firing effects form other neurons,” said Sanchez.


This technique is related to the emerging subfield of optogenetics, and while it is considered the cutting edge of neuroscience research, it’s not new. But the technique pioneered by the Stanford researchers allows for three-dimensional visualization that is both granular and wide enough to encompass the entire brain. Said Sanchez, “Traditionally, with the optogenetic technique, you really don’t have the structure to go along with the activation. That’s why the Neuro-FAST program is so exciting.”


Sanchez and DARPA officials were adamant (exceedingly so) that the intent of the Neuro-FAST program is to advance brain science broadly. Officials were reluctant to discuss any other specific applications for that research. But that doesn’t mean those applications don’t exist, or that the military isn’t interested in them.


The Checkered History of Military Brain Tampering


For a quick and historic tour of the Defense Department’s interest in brain hacking, start with this 1973 report, written for DARPA, detailing Soviet research into psychokinesis, the manipulation of matter through thought, and other aspects of “paranormal phenomena.” This report became part of the bases for the book and film The Men Who Stare At Goats, the later of which saw the character of George Clooney, as an army trained “psychic weapon,” successfully killing one of the unlucky hoofed animals entirely through the force of focused will.


Then move on to this 1988 National Academy Press report on issues, theories and techniques for “Enhancing Human Performance,” which eagerly anticipates  future super soldier motor skills and concentration states acquired through applied brain science. From there, continue to this 2009 report outlining 
Over the years, the military’s research into brain science has produced some bizarre results, such as the DARPA “roborat” a rat that had electrodes implanted into its motor cortex allowing researchers to manipulate direction and movement.


There have also been some big hits.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory showed in 2012 that the human brain’s electrical activity could predict how well an individual was going to perform on a test. According to The Futurist magazine:


The researchers asked 23 people to attempt to memorize a list of words while undergoing brain scanning. The average subject recalled 45% of the words on the list. The EEG data correctly predicted which five of the 23 subjects would beat the competition, remembering 72% of the words on average.If you had someone learning new material and you were recording the EEG, you might be able to tell them, ‘You’re going to forget this, you should study this again,’ or tell them, ‘OK, you got it and go on to the next thing,’” chief researcher Laura Matzen said in a statement.


A previous program actually did yield some remarkable insight into the potential for better soldier performance through focused brain states. Amy Kraus, a former DARPA program manager, on Monday told a group at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, the work that she presided over succeeded in finding the secret mental secret that preceded good marksmanship. “It turns out the expert marksman has a brain state,” she said, “a state that they enter before they take the perfect shot. Can I teach a novice to create this brain state? The answer was yes.”



She said that by recognizing that state, researchers were able to improve the ability of regular people to improve their marksmanship by 100 percent. “These are recordable, measurable, algortyhmical,” Kraus said.


But according to Sanchez, improved performance through changes in brain state is still not something we truly understand.


“The neuroprocesses associated with those advanced functions – we don’t know what they are yet. We don’t know how all of those advanced circuits can produce those brain functions. That’s why we’re at the more basic level.”


The ability to see the cellular interconnections that actually contribute to mental activity is far more important to an actual understanding of mental states – super and otherwise – than is the ability to measure the electromagnetic rumblings associated with those states. Similarly, a bit of know-how about animal husbandry will tell you something about why a horse is fast or slow but not nearly as much as will genetics.


One of the most significant near-term applications of military-funded neuroscience is not the potential to create super soldiers but rather an understanding the effects of combat and training on service men and women. “As we’re doing more to and with war fighters, how much of a burden can we place on them? How much risk can we expect them to take over a lifetime? How much medication? How many devices? How much change in their behavior, through direct manipulation of their brains?” said Jonathan D. Moreno, University of Pennsylvania professor and author of the book Mind Wars, at the Potomac Institute. “These are people who sign up to defend us. They sign up to take risks. Nonetheless, in the 21st century, we will have to slice that finer than we have in the past because we are asking them to do more for us.”
_______________________
We have listened to global Wall Street pols and 5% to the 1% players shout as usual it is ALL THOSE REGULATIONS that keep INNOVATIONS at bay and make medicine expensive.  All those regulations are what allowed WE THE PEOPLE to go to any medical facility and feel a level of professionalism and 'DO NO HARM' patient protections.  Yes, Affordable Care Act DEREGULATED public health and yes these Federally funded medical research projects now do not have to be in public interest----if profits are to be made.
When medical research has become for-profit driven by global corporations we now have those corporations crying foul that DOD is ignoring all developed nation protections for WE THE PEOPLE so why should they have to adhere to those bothersome public health protection REGULATIONS?

Please think how global Wall Street is using these political terms like SOCIALIZED MEDICINE----we need to return to our patient-centered left social Democratic health stance.


This is the problem with today's advancement in DECADE OF BRAIN RESEARCH coming right at the time our US health and medical industries have been capitalized to global Wall Street profit-making----accumulating wealth anyway you can------the research can be good AND can be very, very, very bad and ugly.


AMERICA’S SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
By Dr. Lawrence Wilson
© September 2016, L.D. Wilson Consultants, Inc.
 
All information in this article is for educational purposes only.  It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.
 
              Health care systems in most developed nations are in financial difficulty.  Health benefits are being cut back due to exploding costs. Degenerative illnesses such as diabetes and cancer are at epidemic levels in spite of new drugs and treatments. While doctors, politicians and insurers blame each other, they rarely mention the real problem.
            Skyrocketing costs are due to the structure of health care in all these nations. All are mainly socialized, including America. This means they operate as top-down bureaucracies, out of touch with people’s real needs.
 
THREE HEALTH ARE SECTORS
 
            America really has three health care sectors:
 

• The socialized sector comprises about 65-70% and includes Medicare, Medicaid and the Indian Health Service.  It also includes the Veterans Administration, the Public Health Service, programs such as Kidscare and the bulk of medical research. The latter includes the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, National Heart Institute and about 30 other government institutes. The ‘donors’ for this research have little say over what or how wisely their health research dollars are spent.
•             All the above are funded from taxes confiscated from the people at the point of a gun, making them a less-than-compassionate system.  All are insulated from the health care marketplace and thus from rational decision-making.  All are run as huge bureaucracies, with their inherent problems of fraud and high administrative overhead.  Medicare rules alone are 133,000 pages.  This makes the 10,000-page income tax code look like a model of simplicity.
• The regulated sector, which is called the private sector, comprises most of the rest of the health care system.  It is not a free market or private sector by any means.  The correct word is the over-regulated sector because it is riddled with thousands of cartel-inspired rules and regulations that cripple most of the real competition from alternative method of healing, for example, and from alternative healing devices that must be approved by the FDA, which is thoroughly corrupt and does not allow most of them.

<>·The true private sector is very small in health care.  These are mainly unlicensed ‘healers’ who offer a variety of services, almost under the radar of the regulated and socialized sectors of health care.  Yet they care for thousands of people, generally with simple, natural healing methods such as nutrition, herbs, massage, foot reflexology, shamanic methods, bodywork and a few others.


DEREGULATING HEALTH CARE
 
            Whenever an industry becomes mired in special-interest rules, deregulation is the answer. It is a healing process that many industries periodically need. America deregulated trucking, airlines, the phone system and power generation. In every case, dire predictions of chaos did not come true and the public benefitted greatly. Power deregulation has been very successful everywhere except California, where it was not done correctly. This is important, because medical deregulation must be fair and encourage competition in order to benefit the public.


            Private regulation of health care is not new.  For her first 120 years, America had a true free market health care system free of government interference.  Herbalists, hydrotherapists, nature cure practitioners, allopaths or drug doctors, homeopaths, osteopaths and others offered services and competed with one another.  There were few licensing laws so no group had a legal advantage.  Whoever helped people the most prospered.  Competition between many kinds of practitioners kept prices low, people paid for exactly what they wanted and our health statistics ranked first in the world.  Today America ranks 19-22nd in the world in many health care areas.

BECAUSE OF MASSIVE HEALTH INDUSTRY PROFITEERING AND FRAUD OF HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH YEAR SINCE CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA KEEPING MANY PEOPLE FROM ACCESSING ORDINARY PUBLIC HEALTH CARE-----IT IS NOT THE HEALTH REGULATIONS.
 
PREVENTION AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
 
            The biggest problem with the drug medicine cartel  is that drugs and surgery do not prevent disease, do not address deep causes of disease and do not make people healthy. They mainly suppress symptoms. According to the American Public Health Association, 48% of the determinants of disease are now due to "behavioral lifestyle", 25% are due to genetic constitution, 16% to the environment and only 11% are due to lack of access to medical care. Often drugs make people sicker, which only adds to the cost. Malpractice lawsuits due to harm from the system add even more cost.


            According to a recent article in the Journal of the AMA (JAMA 2000 July 26;284(4):483-5), modern medicine is the fourth leading cause of death in America, just behind cancer, heart disease and strokes.  This only includes deaths that occurred in hospitals.  The Nutrition Institute of America completed a broad survey of the side effects of drug medicine.  They found that adverse drug effects and medical errors account for some 669,000 deaths, making it the leading cause of death in America.  A 2009 report by Gary Null, PhD, entitled Death By Medicine also found that modern medicine is the leading cause of death in America. 
 
A NEW PARADIGM
 
            An entirely different model of health care is possible. Instead of focusing on diagnosis and treatment of disease entities, it focuses on supplying missing factors of health. The new model is a true science of preventive medicine. There is no reason to wait to supply the factors of health. Prevention is hundreds of times less expensive than treating a condition when it has fully developed.


            The new model uses more sensitive assessment methods that detect imbalances long before a disease occurs. Whether by checking one's spine, hair tissue mineral analysis or acupuncture pulses, small problems can be detected and corrected before they become serious ones. It is the only way to control health care costs and really improve people’s health.
            The new model stresses participation and presumes the patient is responsible for his health. Changes in diet and lifestyle can only be recommended. Self-discipline and desire to be well are required. An adult-adult or client-consultant relationship with the doctor replaces the current parent-child relationship. Patients need to ask a lot of questions. Taking responsibility is healing in itself. It is empowering, replacing the futile and energy-wasting attitudes of fear, denial and self-pity.


            The new model redefines health. It is not just an absence of cancer or heart disease. It is the act of relating harmoniously with one’s physical, emotional, intellectual and social environment. Health is never a commodity that can be bought and sold, doled out to the poor or guaranteed by a government agency. All such thinking is incorrect. Health is an outcome of understanding oneself and perfecting one’s relationship with one’s surroundings.
 
ADOPTING THE NEW MODEL
 
            The health care cost crisis offers an opportunity to view health care like any other industry. There is no market failure. How can there be market failure when there is almost no health care market, in the sense of free agents who willingly buy and sell based on free access to information?

            Deregulating health care would have to be part of dismantling the welfare state, as the two are closely related.  Medical licenses are not only the basis for the cartel’s control.  They are meal tickets for any doctor who wants to participate in the welfare state.  No one mentions how unfair this is.  All Americans pay for the welfare system, but only licensed practitioners receive benefit in the form of reimbursement for their services.

            Replacing licensing with private certification would break the power of the cartel and help restore a free market.  No physician would be prosecuted and jailed for doing his best.  Many people, brainwashed by 100 years of life under the cartel, would object, as they have objected to all the other deregulation efforts.  I believe, however, the American people would be much better off.

            Instead of the FDA, several competing consumer rating groups would do far more to protect the American people than the current system. Lest this seem impossible, it was the system used successfully in America for over 120 years. Several organizations tested new medicines and medical devices and decided which merited their seal of approval.

            Though we may not wish to admit it, American health care is only slightly less socialized than the single payer systems of Europe and Canada. No wonder costs are out of control. Deregulating health care would benefit all Americans and restore a crippled system to sanity.  Health care does not have to be costly or dangerous.

______________________________________

The DECADE OF THE BRAIN produced many advancements for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's et al but along with the NOT REALLY CLINICAL TRIAL OR FDA oversight many of these early PHARMA have proven ineffective for most patients.  Some patients benefit many do not but with today's COST BENEFIT VS MARKET VALUE health system DECIDER BOARDS----we are seeing as this article from UK states that health insurance plans will not take the expense of what are ever-increasingly expensive medical treatments in a global MARKET-VALUE pricing.

Dementia will no doubt be treated by BRAIN MAPPING nerve tissue growth ----implanting regenerative brain tissue designed for just those sectors of the brain found to be causing that particular malady.  This is what we call DESIGNER MEDICINE and the costs will be what only the global 1% and their 2% can afford.  This is the bad of all Federal funding going to private, profit-driven global IVY LEAGUES working for patenting wealth----what will be usual treatments will be declared designer and inaccessible to 99% while those research on the brain deemed behavior controlling, bad, and ugly will hit these same 99%.  Most Americans will miss the good and get the brunt of bad and ugly in DECADE OF THE BRAIN.

Health & ScienceAlzheimer’s drugs are expensive, and they don’t work very well for most people
By Consumers Union of United States January 7, 2013


Alzheimer's drug 'too expensive' for NHS


by JENNY HOPE, Daily Mail
Last updated at 09:32 10 January 2006



An Alzheimer's drug that may be banned on the NHS could help relieve the suffering of tens of thousands of patients, a study reveals.

Ebixa is the first drug to treat the later stages of the disease successfully, with other methods effective only for mild to moderate symptoms.
The latest research shows it restores the ability of even severely ill patients to do routine activities such as washing, dressing and feeding themselves - as well as helping them feel more alert for at least a year.


Drug rationing

But while the drug is licensed for use by NHS patients, it faces being banned by the Government's 'rationing' body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

NICE is planning to axe four Alzheimer's drugs, including Ebixa, as they are considered too expensive for the NHS at around £2.50 a day per patient. A final decision is expected later this month.

If the move is rubber-stamped, it would leave Alzheimer's patients in England and Wales without any treatments.
Doctors in Scotland and Northern Ireland will continue to be able to prescribe them.

Up to 600,000 people in the UK suffer from Alzheimer's, with around 100,000 said to have severe symptoms.


Delays causing 'anguish'


Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "We are deeply concerned that vulnerable people are being denied access to the only licensed drug treatment for severe dementia because of NICE's draft guidance and its delay in making a final decision.


"The Society and thousands of people with dementia and their carers are waiting in anguish."
The long-term US study involving 175 patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's was published yesterday in the Archives of Neurology journal.
Dr Barry Reisberg, of the New York University School of Medicine, led the research.
He said "Our study verifies that this medication continues to be beneficial and is safe with remarkably few side effects."

Ebixa, which costs £69 a month, is the first in a new class of drugs called NMDA receptor antagonists which appear to have a protective effect on the brain, slowing down progress of the disease.
_________________________________________

We introduced optogenetics as the AHA OF BRAIN RESEARCH and it is the favorite of Department of Defense research as well.  Again, the science is always valued it is the financial costs to overall health outcomes for all Americans that raise the questions of WHAT GETS FUNDED.  Optogenetics is very, very basic science that is more likely to fail than succeed but because we are seeing THE DECADE OF THE BRAIN occur at the same time as GLOBAL INNOVATION WHERE NO IDEA IS A BAD ONE------we will see more and more funds thrown at a few areas of research which already have questionable ETHICS AND MORALS.

I love seeing the voice of the man in the article below ----it makes me think at least some citizens being public interest are watching and reporting.


'But nowhere in my column did I urge that optogenetics research end--any more than in my criticism of the big new U.S. Brain Initiative last spring I urged that neuroscience stop. I want the hype to end. Believe it or not, my criticism of optogenetics and its coverage was meant to be constructive'.


I like as well this writer's reference to what is unproven science being MAINSTREAMED to the public via United Nations TED-X.  This is the problem we have had these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA where commercialization of medical products before any FDA or peer-group approval hits global media in an attempt to get WE THE PEOPLE to demand more funds MOVE FORWARD not ready for prime time research.  Not fair of these BRAIN RESEARCHERS knowing just how to stimulate our emotions.

'Neuroscientist Richard Tomsett says one of my examples of hype—a TED talk by Ed Boyden, another leader of optogenetics—doesn't count because "the whole point of such talks is hype and speculation." Really'?


Why Optogenetics Doesn’t Light Me Up: The Sequel

When asked about my style of journalism, I sometimes say that my goal isn’t necessarily to get people to agree with me. It’s to provoke readers into reconsidering some issue.

• By John Horgan on September 1, 2013

When asked about my style of journalism, I sometimes say that my goal isn't necessarily to get people to agree with me. It's to provoke readers into reconsidering some issue.


Has coverage of optogenetics, which thus far has only been tested in animals, exaggerated therapeutic potential for humans?


Well, my recent critique of optogenetics has provoked lots of folks, and most don't agree with me. We've been whacking each other on Twitter, but that format—I've belatedly realized--brings out the worst in me. Someone smacks me, I smack back, reflexively. I want world peace but can't control my own aggression. Embarrassing.


My obnoxiousness makes it too easy for people to attack the messenger and ignore the message. So instead of continuing to bicker with my fellow Twits, I decided to respond in a more measured fashion to several points made by bloggers who have criticized my post. My hope is that this exercise will lead to some useful lessons about science reporting.


Did I call for "the end of optogenetics"? My Scientific American colleague Scicurious suggests that I want to "throw out [optogenetics] because we haven’t cured anything yet." Journalist Paul Raeburn, similarly, says that the guy who proclaimed The End of Science (the title of my first book) is now calling for "the end of optogenetics."


But nowhere in my column did I urge that optogenetics research end--any more than in my criticism of the big new U.S. Brain Initiative last spring I urged that neuroscience stop. I want the hype to end. Believe it or not, my criticism of optogenetics and its coverage was meant to be constructive.


Did I overstate the hype? Lots of folks still insist that I exaggerate the degree to which scientists and journalists have touted the potential of optogenetics to transform treatments for human brain disorders. But that potential is a theme—implicit or explicit--of virtually all reporting on the field, including all the pieces I cited in my original post.


Here is how optogenetics pioneer Karl Deisseroth introduces his 2010 overview of the technique in Scientific American: "Despite the enormous efforts of clinicians and researchers, our limited insight into psychiatric disease (the worldwide-leading cause of years of life lost to death or disability) hinders the search for cures and contributes to stigmatization. Clearly, we need new answers in psychiatry."


Neuroscientist Richard Tomsett says one of my examples of hype—a TED talk by Ed Boyden, another leader of optogenetics—doesn't count because "the whole point of such talks is hype and speculation." Really? So scientists shouldn't be criticized for hyping their research in mass-media venues like TED—which reaches gigantic audiences--because no one is taking them seriously? Surely that can't be right.



Now, you could say that scientists and journalists have a right--and even responsibility--to envision possible directions of research. Fine. But they also have a responsibility to discuss limitations of such research, so as not to raise false hopes. The bulk of coverage has not gone far enough in outlining these limitations.
Should I have mentioned Helen Mayberg's research? Journalist David Dobbs calls me "wrong to declare that no one has yet identified any neurological correlates" of mental illness. He cites neurologist Helen Mayberg, whose research he calls "one of the past decade’s most significant lines of work in depression." Mayberg has reported alleviating depression in patients by stimulating a brain region called A25 with pulses of electricity delivered by implanted electrodes.


According to Dobbs, Mayberg has suggested that "it might be possible to use other means less intrusive than drills and wires--optogenetics in particular--to tweak the circuit she’s been buzzing with her stimulators." There it is again, the therapeutic promise of optogenetics.



I'm less impressed than Dobbs with Mayberg's work, for several reasons. First, her published brain-stimulation results involve small numbers of patients and have not been replicated in controlled, clinical trials. Dobbs mentions this caveat. What he does not mention is that Mayberg has received consulting fees from manufacturers of implantable nerve-stimulating devices.


Mayberg, oddly, has also served as a paid consultant for the prosecution in over 40 capital punishment cases, in which she has argued against the use of brains scans as mitigating information. I learned about Mayberg's corporate and legal consulting activities by reading posts written in 2010 and 2011 by journalist Alison Bass, who raises questions about Mayberg's conduct here, here, here and here. Bass, when I contacted her recently, said she stands by her reporting.


Dobbs has vigorously defended Mayberg against Bass's criticism, calling Bass "wrong, wrong and wrong." But Dobbs does not dispute the basic facts of Mayberg's consulting activities; he just thinks they have no bearing on her credibility. Dobbs should nonetheless have disclosed Mayberg's corporate and death-penalty consulting in his reporting on Mayberg, including a laudatory feature article in The New York Times Magazine in 2006, even if—indeed, because--that information would have cast Mayberg in a darker light.*
Are high costs of U.S. health care relevant to optogenetics? Several bloggers found my discussion of U.S. health care to be unfair and irrelevant to a discussion of optogenetics. Scicurious writes: "I also don’t understand the idea that you can’t get excited about opto because some people don’t have healthcare… That’s like saying that many people don’t have adequate transportation and therefore we shouldn’t get excited by going to Mars."


Actually, that's a pretty good analogy. I think that the poor state of public transportation and other government-funded services should have a bearing on discussions of and funding for big scitech programs, like missions to Mars or the Moon. For an especially eloquent expression of this perspective, check out this YouTube recording of the poet-rapper Gil Scott-Heron's famous poem "Whitey on the Moon."



In the same way, the abysmal state of health care in the U.S. should have a bearing on discussions about biomedical research. I'm not saying that journalists, every time they report on a biomedical advance, need to analyze its potential impact on our health-care problems. But knowledge of these woes should inform coverage of biomedical advances, especially since technological innovation is arguably contributing to our high health care costs.



I understand the desperation of scientists, journalists and everyone for progress in our understanding and treatment of brain disorders. I'm desperate too; mental illness has ravaged people close to me. The question is, How do we balance hope with skepticism? How do we avoid succumbing to what blogger Brandon Keim (in a lonely positive commentary on my original post on optogenetics) calls "the appetite of our public culture for (often tech-centric) narratives of progress and imminent improvement"?


I don't have any magic formula. My reporting on biomedicine is no doubts at times too skeptical and critical--but that's because of my conviction that most reporting is not skeptical and critical enough.


*Addendum: David Dobbs on Twitter says that "by my memory, Mayberg had no consulting relationship w device maker in 2005/6, when I wrote the Times piece." He adds, "I respectfully ask that you remove that accusation unless you can find that she did." Mayberg started serving on an "advisory board" for Cyberonics, a Texas-based manufacturer of vagus nerve stimulators, in 2003, according to this press release: http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/293/29/. Dobbs tweeted, "Amazed u consider Bass credible." Bass is more credible than Dobbs--or Mayberg, for that matter.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)John Horgan

John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind. This article is adapted from his Scientific American blog Cross-Check.