A two-minute video clip uploaded to the NASA technology gateway website is making waves. The promotional video released January 12 is exciting some people while agitating critics of the research field called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR).

It’s not aimed at techies.

Instead, in public-friendly language,  a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley research center says “NASA’s method” of LENR which uses materials such as nickel, carbon and hydrogen has shown that it can “produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation, and without producing nasty waste.”

Notice that the scientist, Joseph Zawodny, says LENR “has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy.” He doesn’t say whose experiments demonstrated it. He could mean that NASA scientists have witnessed repeatable experiments and have maybe paid for further research into LENR.  Or maybe they do have a working prototype themselves, who knows?

The video also doesn’t mention the Italian entrepreneur Andrea Rossi whose announcements about his own hydrogen/powdered nickel/catalyst invention are making news around the world.  But hey, it’s only a two-minute clip. To get the public’s attention you have to be short-and-to-the-point.

Critics object to the vagueness of the video and accuse the scientist of jockeying for future research grants by giving NASA credit for theoretical work others have done. But is that the most important question?

Our world is in danger of exploding into the ugliest of oil wars. Maybe Dr. Zawodny and his boss at the research center care enough to feel the urgency of humankind’s situation.  I believe that is the case.  At a two-day Foundation for the Future workshop a few years ago which included the very perceptive chief scientist at NASA Langley, Dennis Bushnell, I heard Bushnell’s concerns about energy and where we’re headed. Also more recently he’s spoken at the Conference on Future Energy. Dr. Bushnell is on pages 39-40 of  Breakthrough Power, 2011 edition.

Whatever the motivation for releasing the NASA video,  it’s out and its easy-to-understand message could touch the public as well as reach whatever funding entities it’s aimed at.

“While the world is drastically dependent on fossil fuels, researchers at NASA Langley research center are working on another way of producing energy-efficient nuclear power,” the video begins.

After briefly illustrating a theory about LENR  the video answers what would be my main question– could LENR end the dependence on dirty energy technologies? “This clean form of energy is also powerful, able to support everything from transportation systems to infrastructure.”

Dr. Zawodny says the easiest place to use the LENR process  would be in the home. “You would have a unit that would replace your water heater. And you would have some sort of cycle to drive electrical energy from that. And then it would dump its waste heat into the water, or air handling system for the building.”

“So it would be a dual use thing, it would be sitting there producing heat then you’d drive electricity from it to run your electronics. Power the house, power the building, power the light industry.”

“And then the waste heat would be used for environmental control. And warm water.”

Despite its unwieldy title “Method for Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to Initiate and Sustain LENR,” the video is clearly meant for a non-technical audience.

Suggestion:  Send this to your nearest politician or environmental activist. Then send it to everyone on your list. The political will to changeover  to clean technology doesn’t develop magically, in an oil-soaked world. People must tell other people what our choices really are.

Thomas Valone is asking energy news groups to help Nikola Tesla’s last close living relative to keep the non-profit Tesla Memorial Society alive. Valone, a PhD engineer and president of Integrity Research Institute, Washington DC,  http://www.teslamemorialsociety.org/ says Tesla’s relative William Terbo is interested in Valone’s proposed “three-prong attack on the kingpins who made big money off of Tesla, as explained on page 23 of (Valone’s) book, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s Science of Energy.”

“We have a window of opportunity to accompany Bill as we visit Westinghouse, GE, and the J.P. Morgan foundation which gave away $10 million in 2010 to nonprofit organizations.” To show what each of these companies owe Tesla today, Valone listed dollar amounts in his book as he wrote in detail about the ways in which the companies had taken advantage of Tesla and his inventions.

Tesla was an electrical genius who brought us the system of AC power that we use today, and he deserved much better treatment from the “tycoons” than he received. Valone says Tesla spent the last 40 years of his life in financial poverty but he was too much of a gentleman to hold a grudge.

In his autobiography, Tesla wrote that he was unwilling to give small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted his efforts. “My (Wardenclyffe) project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.”

Valone believes it’s an easy sell to embarrass Westinghouse, General Electric and the J.P. Morgan Foundation into setting the record straight for historical and ethical reasons. Today he put out a call on Facebook: “Let me know if anyone is interested in pursuing this heroic mission.”

Since I’m posting my past articles re Bedini tech, here’s one that a New Zealand magazine, Uncensored, published earlier this year. They had good graphics but this is just the text:

Bedini Helps Progress Toward New Energy Future

By Jeane Manning

(Nov. 2011) The international network of “free energy” researchers is entering an exciting era, with rapid expansion of knowledge about new and rediscovered science. For instance, legendary inventor John Bedini recently attended an energy conference for the first time in a quarter-century, and he and colleague Peter Lindemann taught attendees some key principles of making fuelless energy systems.   

Meanwhile mainstream experts in electrical engineering theory may face embarrassing moments in the future unless they have the humility to learn about what is possible in an open, rather than closed, thermodynamic system. The emerging field of research called “Tesla’s Impulse technology” and its variation labeled “Bedini technology” are bypassing textbooks that ignore open systems.

If you ask Bedini, “What’s an open system?” he might cite a windmill, a solar-electricity cell or a living tree as common examples. They receive input energy from outside themselves. Similarly his battery-charging circuits tap into the background primal energy that surrounds and permeates everything.

As a result of pioneering inventors such as Bedini, the growing number of researchers are gaining advanced understanding not found in textbooks of basics such as magnetism. The goal of many is to produce energy with an autonomous (stand-alone) device. An intermediate step for the purpose of demonstration is to learn how to build a self-running electric motor with no need for fuel.

A recent DVD interview with Bedini ends with a blatant clue indicating that the United States Department of Energy has had that knowledge for the past decade. More about that later in this article.

More than 25 years ago, John Bedini became known to the world as a young engineer in California who built a prototype of a “free energy” motor that powered itself and at the same time could do useful work. With only a 12-volt battery attached, his electrical motor ran and ran but the battery did not run down as would be expected. It did that with an innovative circuit tapping into the surrounding background energy of the universe and by using the battery in a way that converts that elusive energy-from-the vacuum into useable electrical charge.

He decided to help others by providing circuit drawings and specifications, so he wrote a small book. The now-defunct Tesla Book Company published it under the title Bedini’s Free Energy Generator. The book told how to build a motor like the one running on his workbench. His readers tried it for themselves, some successfully and some not.

As a result of writing his book, he was invited to be a guest at a 1984 symposium in Colorado, organized by independent scientists to honor the inventor Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943). Some months before the conference a Colorado resident, Jim Watson, had read Bedini’s booklet and phoned its author repeatedly. Using information that Bedini had shared, Watson quietly built a self-running machine – large-scale. When Bedini arrived at the conference in Colorado, to his surprise the stage was dominated by what Watson had built – a 800-pound flywheel connected to an aircraft starter motor. The system was charging its own batteries throughout the conference with power to spare. One source says it was putting out eight kilowatts – more than enough to run a house. The massive flywheel system demonstrated the technology Bedini had developed. The demonstration ended abruptly, however; one night someone broke into the conference room and stole Watson’s batteries.

The fact that Jim Watson and his family later disappeared from his colleagues’ sight is now well known and elicits speculation about suppression. Even retired military officer Bill Jones, a physicist who said he had tried to help Watson get funding, put out a call for information about Watson’s whereabouts in 1986. Dr. Jones told me no one knew where Watson and his young family had gone.

(I had met Jim Watson in Colorado Springs and at his rural home in the hills, so I recognized him years later, in the mid- 1990s in Denver. He was lingering near the door at the back of a large meeting hall during a New-Energy conference. He appeared well-dressed in an expensive business suit, but his eyes held what may have been sadness or a wistful feeling. When I asked if he was indeed Jim Watson, he looked uncomfortable but nodded an affirmative. We were interrupted, and shortly afterward he was gone.)

The mystery of Watson’s whereabouts and rumors that he had been threatened and/or “bought out” didn’t silence John Bedini. He and his physics mentor Thomas Bearden had been interviewed by radio host Bill Jenkins. Then at a 1985 Town Hall Forum in California, Jenkins gave up his own time slot as guest speaker so that Bedini and colleague Steven Werth could demonstrate a new energy-converting system.

When the audience of civic officials, utility company representatives and investment brokers arrived at the luncheon, they found light bulbs strung past their plates. Bedini told them his plan to make his electricity generator available to the public at a low cost instead of selling it to the highest bidder. He and Werth gave a demonstration of “overunity” — they showed the system putting out 80 per cent more power than was being taken from any battery. However this particular audience apparently didn’t appreciate the message. One official growled, “Remove the damn bulbs so we can eat.”

California is an oil-industry state. Apparently, some people who profit by our dependency on oil didn’t like what the independent-minded electronics whiz Bedini was doing by giving out details on how to build “free energy” machines. Soon after the Town Hall event, vested interests stepped in and literally slammed him against a wall. In one incident, two muscular thugs who accosted him asked, “Is that your car out there?…You’re gonna keep on buying gasoline for it, aren’t you?”

Some inventors have shut down their experiments and energy research completely when faced with similar threats to themselves and their families. John Bedini couldn’t give the public a self-running machine that would power their houses, but even if frustrated to be held back by the politics of energy he didn’t stop learning. He interacted with the bright inventors of magnetic devices such as Howard Johnson and Floyd “Sparky” Sweet, and built many toy-size prototypes. Someday the time would be right to bring clean abundant power to the people. Bearden has described John Bedini as a humanitarian concerned about the elderly pensioner who can’t afford high utility bills, “shivering in the cold winter and not daring to turn up her furnace…”

BORN TO BE ELECTRONICS WIZARD

Bedini is also motivated by scientific curiosity, beginning when he was a boy roaming the hills of southern California and pocketing rocks to grind up later for making experimental transistors. After he graduated from high school, the U.S. Army recognized his brilliance in electronics and gave him advanced training.

Following military service, Bedini worked for big-name companies in stereophonic equipment. According to one biographer, his employers didn’t appreciate him designing equipment that was advanced far ahead of theirs, so he and his brother Gary formed their own company, Bedini Electronics.

As well as what he had learned from observing nature and from special assignments for the Army, John Bedini continued a study of the works of Nikola Tesla which he had begun at a young age. At some point, however, Bedini had to overcome his eleven years of grounding in conventional electrical theory before he could understand what Tesla was doing in what Tesla called “Radiant energy” circuits.

LOOKING BACK TO TESLA

Tesla gave us the AC (alternating current) systems of electrical power generation and distribution that we use today. However during the last years of his life he made discoveries that would have made his AC inventions obsolete and would have replaced them with a safer system and abundant power for everyone.

While the popular media present only a limited slice of Nikola Tesla’s accomplishments, independent scholar Gerry Vassilatos places Tesla in a framework of lost science. He says Tesla’s involvement with standard electricity ended suddenly because of an accident that led him to discover rare electrical events. Vassilatos’ book Lost Science describes Tesla’s work in rich detail, but this article will just relate a turning point.

After the world began using his AC electrical systems, for a time Tesla was a millionaire and free to do pure research. One mystery that drew his attention was the explosive effect resulting when current was abruptly applied to electrical lines. In those days when power plant operators slammed hand-operated switches on or off at a certain speed and if the power level was high enough, their electrical equipment was blasted apart as if by lightning. Tesla wanted to know the full reason. He made a small lightning-generator to blow up sections of wire so he could study the effects at higher and higher voltages.

One day when Tesla abruptly closed his switch and the wire exploded, a pressure wave stung him. A more dramatic incident happened when he changed to an automatic switch. While the switching repeatedly interrupted current from his generator – bang, bang, bang — the strange pressure wave filled the large room. Every time electrical contact was made, thin blue-white sparks shot out of the wiring and they were magnified more than ten times what would be expected from the voltage supplied, Vassilotos reports. Tesla had difficulty getting close enough to turn off the switch. The blue-white sparks and shock effect happened during brief electrical pulses called impulses, instead of resulting from back-and-forth alternations of the current.

Tesla’s life changed when he discovered what he called the “radiant” effects of those high-voltage impulses (which can be compared to a pressure wave, a bang or a water-hammer-like event.) He struggled to explain the effect by using accepted mathematics, but it didn’t fit. Academics believed they had already seen – and described mathematically — all the basic electrical effects that exist.

Not needing to conform to other scientists, Tesla followed the evidence. Instead of merely electromagnetic waves, he began to work with a form of electricity that seemed to project from his devices as rays. Vassilatos says those rays appeared to stretch out in a progressive shock-shell and reach far distances without apparently losing strength.

From then on, Tesla’s announcements were increasingly difficult for conventional experts to believe. Even today, most engineers studying Tesla’s work assume that his “impulse system” is only a high-frequency alternator. Vassilatos says they are mistaken. Tesla called his type of automatic magnetic-arc switching a “disruptive discharge circuit.”

Despite the dramatic effect experienced by nineteenth-century power plant operators, Tesla eventually learned how to create sparks that were “soft” and non-hazardous compared to other forms of electricity. Were the emanations safer because Tesla’s system blocked the slower, denser electron flow found with regular electricity? Vassilatos speculated that blocking those dense charges freed the “mysterious effusive aether streams inherent in electricity”.

(I’ve seen evidence that there is indeed a safer form of electricity. At a conference in Maryland a Canadian physicist re-enacted a Tesla experiment. He built a certain unusual circuit according to Tesla’s specifications and then put his bare hand – holding a bulb lit by that circuit’s wire — into a clear glass bowl of water. A member of the audience volunteered to try it and I have a photo of him holding the light bulb in the water. Aether power?)

Aether is a controversial word describing invisible energy that permeates us and all space everywhere and always. Some researchers now call it “zero-point energy”, but that term may not be the best description. Tesla viewed his Radiant energy as an aetheric gas, a current that flows through space without a need for electrons. John Bedini and Tom Bearden have pointed out that James Clerk Maxwell, famous for formulating classical electromagnetic theory, had set up a system of equations able to deal with properties of the aether as a type of very subtle fluidic gas. Maxwell’s mathematics reinforces the case for the validity of Tesla’s worldview.

Tesla believed that as a result of his discoveries new energy technology would be developed and would revitalize our world. After all, he had learned basics such as how to magnify the “radiant electricity” and send it long distances. “Humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick; see the excitement coming!” he predicted.

John Bedini and other experimenters give credit to Gerry Vassilatos’ research, and to other studies of lost science such as the Magnetic Current manuscript of the mysterious Edward Leedskalnin, as having revealed insights in addition to Tesla’s patents.

Meanwhile the Bedini family had moved to northern Idaho where John and his brother Gary continued their business — manufacturing high quality audio amplifiers and innovative audio equipment. John is also trained as a machine tool operator and welder, so the Bedini shop can make nearly anything — from unique circuit boards to an experimental automobile. It’s not surprising that he’s built prototypes of advanced generators — and instruments for studying their workings, such as scalar detectors.

He has shared his knowledge. On his website or online forums Bedini has for years given out details on how to build non-conventional motors and circuits. Countless experimenters contacted him about their success or lack of results. Often they had made slight changes, thinking they had a better way to do things. However, unlike the small changes that experienced cooks make to improve someone else’s recipe, the engineering changes did not improve the results. Instead the fiddling often showed that the experimenter didn’t understand the basics of the outside-the-box knowledge.

Bedini withdrew from forums on which immature or disrespectful participants wanted “free energy” handed to them without effort on their part. However he does have patience with serious experimenters willing to start with basics of the new science and willing to first build small devices to learn how to work with the energy-from-the-vacuum. He calls that energy “negative energy” when describing his circuits. It’s entirely different in operation than standard electricity, and engineers can’t detect or measure it with today’s meters.

AT RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE

John Bedini didn’t appear at any more public conferences for non-conventional energy topics until the milestone event at the Coeur D’Alene Resort hotel in northern Idaho, November 13-14, 2010. Rick Friedrich, whose company Renaissance Charge sells Bedini-invented battery chargers, organized that conference in only nine weeks. To attract attendees, Friedrich asked the now world-renowned inventor to participate. An audience of about 370 people showed up – partly because Bedini promised to be there to answer questions.

The conference was a milestone on several counts, from the caliber of attendees to the empowering knowledge revealed. People traveled from at least 20 different countries to the small city in northern Idaho. Perhaps non-conventional energy science is inching closer to mainstream attention; at the conference while selling my books I spoke with industrialists, engineers, university students, retired electricians, entrepreneurs and other professionals who research Tesla technology in their spare time.

To visually demonstrate ways to tap into the background energy, Bedini unveiled a complex 14-foot high machine that he had spent many thousands of dollars to build.

He says that showing how a scientific principle works is more helpful in the long run than selling a ready-made device or providing its complete schematic and detailed list of parts. It’s like the difference is between “give a man a fish” or “teach the man how to fish.” If a consumer buys an unusual generator and it breaks down, he or she has no hope of repairing it without understanding its principles.

Conference attendees quickly dubbed the machine the “Ferris Wheel” and the audience swarmed to the front of the hall to examine it up close and ask questions. Its features included pie-shaped barium ferrite permanent magnets that create asymmetric fields, magnets with built-in memory that allow their polarity to be flipped, and precision timing of magnetic pulses. The system uses Tesla’s method of discharging capacitors to reduce the huge counter-torque force, Bedini later explained. That’s only among many tricks and features he built into the machine. Nonlinear systems seem to be key to inviting the input of energy from the universe.

However, even watching a 12-foot diameter wheel slowly self-rotate with torque strong enough to lift a large man off his feet isn’t enough to change a career skeptic’s mind. Change of thinking requires the eyes to see how basically different the technology is, and ears willing to hear Bedini’s unexpected messages such as, “Radiant energy is totally different and so is magnetic energy,” or “The magnet has a spacial field never explained in textbooks. Energy is flowing around a magnet” or “You don’t need any current to charge batteries or run magnetic motors.”

Electron flow (standard electrical current) from motor to batteries is not even wanted in the crucial part of Bedini’s systems. Instead, battery plates are charged by what he calls “negative” energy – energy from the vacuum. The flow of energy-from-the-vacuum into the circuit is invited by the series of sharp impulses of pure potential (spikes of voltage) sent along the wire from the motor. The technology is described succinctly on the Renaissance Charge website as using “intense, unidirectional — instead of back and forth — wave impulses to charge batteries of all sizes.” In other words, it uses what Tesla called Radiant energy.

One of the engineers who attended the conference told me that all of Bedini’s battery-charging circuits have the charging event “de-coupled while the primary accumulator is connected to the coil. It’s kind of an asynchronous mode…” He further explains that a magnetic field is created in the coils and then breaks down, and at that point a Radiant energy event can ‘chime in.’

Such explanations and speculations about Bedini’s systems give a taste of how non-standard they are, different from and not limited by conventional electromagnetics.

Those of us who are not technically trained can skip trying to picture the complex details of Bedini’s machine and go to the main point: electrical circuits are not closed systems. Instead, any electrical circuit could be open to an energy flow which is not limited to the well-known flow that binds to the electrical conductor. When a circuit taps into energy from the surrounding space, energy is not created; it’s just converted to a useable form. Therefore no law of thermodynamics is broken by “free energy” circuits.

At the Idaho conference, other attractions related to Bedini’s inventions were also brought out. Rick Friedrich drove a self-running electric lawn tractor into the room and circled it triumphantly near the podium. It was displayed along with an electric car and other variations on Bedini’s patented technology. One of Bedini’s “10 coil” machines spun all weekend, lighting two quartz bulbs and running itself from batteries it was recharging. Working with the Bedini battery-charging technology, industrial electronics consultant and new-energy researcher Jeff Wilson had invented an automated battery-swapping system – another step toward energy independence for individuals.

Electric motor secrets

At the Idaho conference Peter Lindemann presented a lecture — “Electric Motor Secrets, Part 2” – initially about a little-known German invention called the Lockridge Device which was a self-running device.  He explained how and why Back EMF (the opposing electromotive force) functions in electric motors, how it masks the real efficiency of these machines, and how to overcome it, even in conventional motors. Near the end of his talk he gave specifications for building a self-running combination of an electric motor and electric generator from off-the-shelf parts. The audience was impressed. A retired industrial electrician said that after Lindemann explained “we had a very clear idea of how the device worked and how we could build an over-unity motor-generator system.”

Lindemann’s lecture is for sale as a DVD on his website: http://www.free-energy.ws/products.html. He’s also conducting an online dialogue for people who want to build a working model. The discussion thread is on the Energetic Forum in the Renewable Energy section. Lindemann expects a number of the builders to successfully make self-running machines for themselves. And on another monitored thread for builders Bedini is mentoring a cooperative international online web of researchers, newcomers fresh from university, and seasoned engineers in all stages of their careers.

The next conference to showcase Bedini’s technologies is scheduled for July 29-31 in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, the same weekend as the ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, also in the USA.

Students of new energy science who can’t travel could instead buy the book Free Energy Generation: Circuits and Schematics which contains Bedini’s first book, reprinted, as well as a patent in which he and Tom Bearden compress 20 years of their work.

Researchers also find a wealth of information in the Energy From the Vacuum DVD series by filmmaker Anthony Craddock (www.energyfromthevacuum.com). For instance, Craddock paid John Bedini to analyze documents given him by the late Howard Johnson — magnetic contour maps, photographs of Johnson’s experiments and other clues to how the secretive magnetics expert was planning to build a magnetic motor/generator. At the end of that Magnetic Gates DVD, eleventh in the series, Craddock adds a typed comment:

“The fact that the (United States) Department of Energy has sponsored patents by Vijak K. Chadhok for the manufacture of laterally-asymmetric permanent bar magnets with laterally asymmetric fields strongly implies that the DoE has had working self-rotating magnetic motors since at least 2001.”

In August I was asked to do a short article for New Connexions, a magazine from the Pacific Northwest. Article was titled:

Earth-saving, One Battery at a Time

by Jeane Manning

Who expected that the “exotic Tesla technology” finally available for sale would be an innocuous battery rejuvenator capable of bringing back to life, then extending the capacity and lifespan of, about 80 percent of dead encrusted batteries? Reducing those toxic heaps of discarded batteries isn’t a free-energy job, but it could help clean up Earth.

Audio engineer John Bedini has been perfecting the unusual battery charger and other devices for decades. Now the chargers are sold by his company Energenx and others. An allied company, Renaissance Charge, held a Free Energy Convention in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, demonstrating vehicles such as a Porsche and a lawn tractor converted to electric systems that include the battery innovation. During the convention a 26-foot cabin cruiser boat docked at the resort hotel and glided out on the lake, running on a 100-horsepower Bedini Magnetic Window Motor connected to an innovative controller.

Conference organizer Rick Friedrich says the technologies produce ideal battery charging, allow for higher efficiencies in motor systems, and charge larger battery banks to a greater voltage range. Also, unique permanent magnet motor designs “allow for added efficiency which also can add to a secondary charging process that sometimes is used to keep the primary source charged.”

At the convention, Bedini shared the how-to – some of his technical secrets – about working with the background energy of the universe that famous inventor Nikola Tesla in the nineteenth century had called Radiant Energy, and some physicists speak of as vacuum energy. They say that at an invisible level of activity the so-called vacuum of space in which Earth floats is actually a seething sea of energy.

In the newest DVD of Tony Craddock’s Energy From The Vacuum science series — Crystal Battery Basics — Bedini gives a demonstration similar to what he walked the audience through at the conference. He explains how to take common ingredients and make a practically indestructible battery that can light LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes). Even non-technical viewers could buy a piece of magnesium and a hemisphere of copper a few inches across, condition the copper with the help of a hotplate and Borax, grab some powdered alum from Granny’s pickling supplies and follow Bedini’s instructions. You could make yard lights powered only by a mist of fog or a few dew drops activating the crystal batteries. Free energy.

The Crystal Battery lecture by John Bedini is available on DVD now. It was a popular talk at the 2011 Renaissance Charge Conference in Idaho, on the topic of a do-it-yourself free energy technology.  The DVD runs more than 100 minutes and includes a lively Q and A with John Bedini and his assistant, Chuck Hupp.  Three cameras filmed the action while Bedini cooked up a battery in front of the audience.Videographer Tony Craddock is offering to bundle this DVD with the previously released DVD “Crystal Battery Basics” as a two-disc set for those who haven’t already bought the earlier one, also available from the Tom Bearden Online Store.

Foster Gamble interviewed Catherine Austin Fitts for the Thrive movie, and tomorrow she’s interviewing him. It’ll be available for subscribers on her website http://www.solari.com – 6 pm Pacific Time, 9 pm Eastern.

And today I too had a fascinating hour interviewing Foster Gamble; that’s why I happen to mention the wide-ranging discussion he’ll have tomorrow night and that you can access if you subscribe to Fitts’ Solari Report.

My transcription of today’s conversation will be in the upcoming Science to Sage online magazine. Here I’ll just excerpt what he had to say about Catherine Austin Fitts, to pique your interest in their interview. I’m also a longtime admirer of her vision of how financial transactions could be done differently, and especially of how people could take back control of their lives locally and by cooperating within their bioregion.

Foster Gamble said of Catherine Austin Fitts: “She’s a financial visionary who’s also looked into localism and permaculture and what man does to align with natural forces – not only financially but in every other realm.”

“And she’s someone who was at the highest level of finance herself, even offered a job on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, which fortunately she turned down.” And she began to realize how dysfunctional the financial system is. “When she was the Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development, under Bush senior, she began to see the levels of corruption.”

“She told me that an average of $9 million a day was going missing in every major city across the country,” Gamble said. “And that’s not just money spent unwisely, but literally disappearing from the budget — going into somebody’s black box somewhere. So she started blowing the whistle on that type of corruption and was harassed horribly by the powers-that-be, dragged into the courts for ten years, her business was shut down; she was really broken financially.”

“But this is a woman of relentless spirit and integrity. She never stopped telling the truth, more than ever now, and is bringing forth new financial models based on positive return on investment rather than this debt-based economy that’s driving us into the ground.”

“I highly recommend that people check out her website at http://www.solari.com. In fact I will be doing an interview with her about these subjects on that website tomorrow night.  6 pm Pacific tomorrow night,” Gamble told me. “Yes, covering a whole range of topics.”

Tomorrow if I had airfare to Waco, Texas, I’d have been a guest at Pete Sumaruck’s seminar. I wouldn’t have seen his ZeroAmp energy invention powering a house, because this weekend the information-and-selling event (entrance fee $500)  is held in a church basement where he won’t be able to do a complete showing of what the equipment can do.

Maybe someone who purchases one of the controlling components of the system anyway, and learns from the inventor what off-the-shelf parts to add to it, will report to this website. Pete plans to do a followup workshop for those who attend tomorrow and need to see the ZeroAmp technology powering a home.

Did Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou personally try to bring a game-changing energy technology to his country? It appears likely. For instance, when the Defkalion Green Energy company in Greece was claiming the right to use Andrea Rossi’s patent on the Energy Catalyst (E-Cat) invention, the Greek deputy minister in charge of regional development and competitiveness, Sokratis Xynidis, was promising that it would bring jobs for the unemployed.

My source of information — and he wants it emphasized that it’s his personal opinion –  is Theophanes Raptis, a physicist and scientific software developer from Greece who recently commented on misunderstandings about his country’s involvement in the E-Cat saga.

Raptis was first informed about the story near the end of 2010, by a colleague. He learned about the involvement of Ambassador Christos Stremmenos, who is a former ambassador for Greece in Italy and a retired science professor.

“It seems that Stremmenos had a high command — most possibly directly from G. Papandreou environment — to make an effort to transfer this technology in our country.”

Raptis recounts the events as follows: “After some months, a small company appeared under the name ‘Defkalion Green Energy Technologies’ who claimed to have adopted the rights to utilize the Rossi patent for building a factory near the Xanthi city of Thrace (NE Greece). There were also several announcements on the press and on Greek TV on the issue backed up by vice minister Xynidis who also promised several thousand labor positions to the unemployed people of the area on this factory and the forthcoming market.”

“Then, an unexpected dispute occurred between Rossi and the members of DGETech. that seems to have ended this cooperation. Rossi now claims that the core of the patent was never given to DGETech. and that no actual rights were transferred to this company.”

“Most probably what happened -as one can conclude by reading their public correspondence- was that the private investors were not ready to cover the immense expenses for the creation of a whole industrial unit as it seems to have been the original content of the Rossi-DGETech agreement.”

“Nowadays, Rossi claims that he will transfer his technology to the US. Personally, after having carefully read two or three preprint papers by three different authors that also differ significantly in their explanations from each other, I have the final impression that as in the original Fleischmann – Pons case nobody really understands what exactly is going on inside the Rossi device! At least not until the catalyzer will have been revealed, something that has to happen after some time as long as the WPO regulations apply which demand the full patent content to become publicly available.”

Raptis had a personal communication with the scientific manager of DGETech who he said was unable to settle certain important issues:

“a) It is known that the type of asserted reaction, namely Ni -Cu transition, must release gamma photons in the 511 Kev range but this was never actually measured. In fact, what the company claimed was that all radiation gets “thermalized” inside the devices volume — something difficult to believe given the amounts of energy released.”

“b) When asked what would have happened, if the exterior cover of the reactor was to be removed (implying that this could turn the device into a kind of “dirty weapon”), the man got angry and told me that only peaceful applications were under consideration — at the same time revealing that there was a separate agreement between Rossi and ‘some US authority’ on the exclusion of any such additional defense or military application on behalf of the US government.”

“c) I still suspect that it would be possible to control some amount of Ni – Cu transitions artificially produced by our own pulsed power generator in use for our own conductor explosion experiments mentioned here http://cag.dat.demokritos.gr/publications/IMP.pdf, given highly enriched isotope coatings, but there would be some radiation coming out nonetheless. I seriously doubt that even Rossi and Focardi fully understand the complete description of the reactions taking place in their case, although they may truly occur.

Raptis concluded, “It is totally up to Rossi now to decide whether he wants to continue developing this technology in US or anywhere else in the world, but the only way for the matter to settle down is to have a full read of the complete patent and the ability to carefully reproduce the whole device before a complete understanding.”

Theophanes Raptis closed the email with his best wishes to everyone,

He works at the National Center for Scientific Research ”DEMOKRITOS’,’

In the Division of Applied Technologies.

I thank him for giving me permission to post these comments — one man’s insights into the Greeks’ experience with the now-famous E-Cat invention of Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi.

It’s time for news updates on outside-the-box energy systems to Occupy the news coverage of clean energy. And time to acknowledge that all members of the human family are stakeholders in society’s choices regarding energy.

The recent news coverage of Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi and their Energy Catalyst (E-Cat) system for more-output-than-input power is a case in point. Instead of the usual mainstream television stations and newspapers, predominantly from one country, whom you’d expect to attend a potentially world-changing event, the human family sent its maverick journalists — people willing to go where the governmental, media and science establishment fears to tread.

For example, from Australia comes coverage of E-Cat and related news by Craig Brown, webmaster of eCatNow!; and from Sweden the coverage is by writers connected to the NyTeknik weekly newspaper (read by the Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers). An American full-time independent journalist attending the landmark October 28 demonstration of E-Cat in Italy was Sterling Allan of Pure Energy Systems PESwikiwebsite. His e-newsletters come out weekly and daily.

Where were the media giants? Those traditional megamedia are shrinking and the independents are growing in stature. I’m told that Associated Press was to be given somewhat exclusive coverage because they were attending the demonstration last Friday. A purported science writer from AP did attend, but where are the front-page stories?

Fear of cold fusion isn’t a sufficient excuse for the media. Being afraid of being embarrassed if a demonstration fails or being criticized by the hot-fusion physicists and other vested interests are not good enough reasons to shun such a potentially world-changing demonstration.

Even if the test isn’t considered conclusive by physicists who couldn’t be there to measure input and output and who aren’t provided enough independent data from those who were there, the fact remains that Andrea Rossi demonstrated something that needs to be looked at and further developed before humankind builds any more destructive and polluting energy projects.

However, Wired.co.UK is also to be commended for having the courage to run an article by their correspondent David Hambling, saying that Rossi’s cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test on October 28, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours. “A technical glitch prevented it from achieving a megawatt as originally planned.” The demonstration was to convince engineers from Rossi’s mysterious ?American? customer, “which was evidently satisfied and paid up.”

Hambling added that we can’t crack open the champagne and celebrate the end of fossil fuels quite yet. “Skeptics have plenty of grounds to doubt whether the new test really takes us any further forwards.”

He gave two reasons for a start, as to why skeptics are not yet convinced. For one, the customer remains anonymous. Secondly, “observers apart from the customer were only allowed to view the test for a few minutes at a time and during the entire test the E-Cat remained connected to a power supply by a cable. The external power was supposedly turned off; as a demonstration it would have been more impressive for the reactor in its shipping container to be visibly disconnected while operating.”

I acknowledge that skeptics have good reason to withhold judgment — but not to pass judgment viciously or arrogantly at this time and indulge in name-calling. Give it a chance!

The Electric Universe 2012 Conference will have the theme The Human Story. It proposes answers to:

“Why is the corona of the sun far hotter than the sun’s surface? Why do comets produce bright comas and tails even when their surfaces reveal no sublimating ices? Why do seeds, when subjected to electrostatic fields, suddenly produce biological forms not seen in hundreds of thousands of years? Conventional science has continuously left us with questions it has been unable to answer—until now.”

Organizers of the upcoming conference say we can “Experience a three-day journey through the Electric Universe and discover the unified underpinnings of the natural world” on January 6-8 at the Rio Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas. http://www.thunderbolts.info/EU2012