The Left Should Welcome the Surveillance Society
I suppose the Left is still harboring some embarrassment concerning the excesses of the Stalin Period, but wait, didn’t all the corruptions, the criminals and the black-markets, which spoiled the Soviet Experiment, didn’t all that arise AFTER the so-called Stalinistic ‘excesses’ were brought to a halt. Hmmmm. History might examine for the possibility that the people that Stalin sent to the Gulag, in the effective majority of the cases, belonged there.
But the Anti-Soviet Propaganda, if not true, was very influential. So now that a Left that should by its nature wish to know everything, control everything, maintains, instead, a doctrine exactly the same as the most Nazi Anarchist Libertarian – that the most sacred right of a person in a Liberal Democratic Society is enough Privacy so that his criminal behavior cannot be detected. Well, we know why Libertarians wish to protect Crime and Corruption. But what interest does the Left have in advancing private predatory behavior?
And we should consider that the Left is always losing because it seems soft on Law and Order Issues. Well, this is a ridiculous surrender. The Left, in all of its History, should be quite comfortable with the most rigorous Law and Order. Russia had its Surveillance. China too. Why does the Western Left think it must blind itself and let the thieves run free?
But now the Left may have a more compelling argument for taking back its rightful heritage – International Terrorism. Yes, people can use the specter of International Terrorism to frighten people into adopting programs that would ordinarily be counter to the American Traditions of protecting the privacy of Corruption and Crime. However, the unfortunate Truth is that the threat of International Terrorism is real. As much as I can sympathize with the plight of the Palestinian, or share in the laments of the Pan-Islamic World that the West has been unfairly encroaching upon their Culture, Economies and Traditions, still, my first concern is that some crazy muslim fanatic not blow up any more buildings or airplanes (if not for loss of life, but only because all the NEW Security would multiply the irritations we must put up with).
We have the technology. A Total Surveillance World would quickly put an end to the possibility of anyone ever being able to purchase weapons or bombs, transport weapons or bombs, or plan for their deployment. Will Privacy suffer. Sure. But Honest People have nothing to hide. And if you are not Honest, then screw you and you deserve it!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
The October Surprise, Don't Go to the Ballgame
The October Surprise, Don’t Go to the Ballgame
The Americans have an informal custom concerning their Presidential Elections – the October Surprise. What it consists of is this, that those already rooted in Power manipulate some huge event, close to Election Time calculated to influence the Electorate to vote en mass for their desired candidate.
In America today, McCain stands to continue all the Institutions of the Military Industrial Complex. Indeed, the man is a crazy bad tempered War Hawk, in other words, the perfect choice for that entrenched Class of War Mongers who now control so much Money and Power from their perches in Washington.
Obama represents only the Future. All the Established Interests of Today probably suspect they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from an Obama Presidency. They’re probably right. So much Fear and Anxiety, so much to be lost, might make people do some really crazy things. And they are all Christians, so, really, they can do anything, are capable of anything, since they are assured that Jesus will love them and Save them no matter what they do. Forgiveness does little for supporting Moral Responsibility. This can make Good Christians extremely dangerous.
Every Political Expert will assert with every certainty that a National Security Emergency would be good for the Republican Candidate – McCain’s only chance, since the collapsing Economy would tend to favor the Democrat, Obama.
So the October Surprise will be a National Emergency Disaster.
Nine Eleven gave Bush 4 more years, and gave him a strong enough Mandate to make the War Interests paramount, and meanwhile pushed the price of Oil, for his Texas buddies, to 5 times the price from when he got into office. Nine Eleven was a huge money maker.
For this up and coming October Surprise I think they will use Iranians, because they want to stir up a War against Iran. What happens is the CIA or the Israeli MASAD funnel money to honest to God Terrorists through a false chain of command and steer them toward whatever is the preferred Target. With Nine Eleven, the CIA found a Cell of nice young men from Saudi Arabia who really did fly the planes into the Twin Towers, but it was the CIA that had planted the explosives in the building and reduced them to rubble. For this next time I have heard rumors that there are many Radical Groups in Iran, loosely disciplined, and they would be easy for the CIA to infiltrate, fund and direct, all while the Radicals themselves would think they were being funded by, oh, Saudi money, and directed by Osama himself. The Target? The World Series. And I think that the CIA will not be happy unless the body count exceeds that of Nine Eleven. This time the CIA might blow up an entire Stadium. How many people fit in one of those places? Even ordinarily sane American will be overwhelmed by a shock wave of unbearable rage. The rush to war will be unstoppable. And they will look to the Republican Hot Head to lead them, not the Democrat who wants to ‘talk’ to Enemies.
My advice? Watch the games on TV. Then vote Democratic anyway. Don’t reward those CIA or MASAD pricks for their continual killing of Americans just so they can keep the War Machine dividends rolling in for their bank accounts. Yes, they will prove the Iranians did it, but they will omit to inform the World that it was, for all intents and purposes, a CIA operation.
Okay, okay, you think all this sounds crazy. Well, it is, but its not my fault. The fault belongs the National Security System whereby any Military or Intelligence Agency, with absolutely no oversight, is perfectly free to declare any of its dealings TOP SECRET. So anybody can do anything they want with almost certain assurances that nobody will find out, or if anybody does find out, that they can be prosecuted by the Law for telling anybody. So they can shoot Kennedy, blow up the Twin Towers, or anything else they want and laugh about it because nobody can ever know, or if they know, can never tell. The Freedom of Speech doesn’t really matter if nobody is allowed to say much of anything because the most important stuff gets Classified.
Oh, remember the Corollary Truth to the National Security State – that you will never hear the Truth because somebody somewhere in some Office or Agency must have Classified it. The only thing they can tell you is Lies. If it didn’t happen or does not exist, they can’t put a Secret Stamp on it. What this means is that any Information released by a National Security State is necessarily Not True, or they would not be allowed to tell you.
Again, don’t go into any stadiums until after the Election. Or don’t complain to me when your dead. Oh, and if you are a remorseless sick ghoul, or merely just a Republican, it probably would be a good time to buy into Defense Stocks, probably the only stocks that will go from now until the End of the World.
The Americans have an informal custom concerning their Presidential Elections – the October Surprise. What it consists of is this, that those already rooted in Power manipulate some huge event, close to Election Time calculated to influence the Electorate to vote en mass for their desired candidate.
In America today, McCain stands to continue all the Institutions of the Military Industrial Complex. Indeed, the man is a crazy bad tempered War Hawk, in other words, the perfect choice for that entrenched Class of War Mongers who now control so much Money and Power from their perches in Washington.
Obama represents only the Future. All the Established Interests of Today probably suspect they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from an Obama Presidency. They’re probably right. So much Fear and Anxiety, so much to be lost, might make people do some really crazy things. And they are all Christians, so, really, they can do anything, are capable of anything, since they are assured that Jesus will love them and Save them no matter what they do. Forgiveness does little for supporting Moral Responsibility. This can make Good Christians extremely dangerous.
Every Political Expert will assert with every certainty that a National Security Emergency would be good for the Republican Candidate – McCain’s only chance, since the collapsing Economy would tend to favor the Democrat, Obama.
So the October Surprise will be a National Emergency Disaster.
Nine Eleven gave Bush 4 more years, and gave him a strong enough Mandate to make the War Interests paramount, and meanwhile pushed the price of Oil, for his Texas buddies, to 5 times the price from when he got into office. Nine Eleven was a huge money maker.
For this up and coming October Surprise I think they will use Iranians, because they want to stir up a War against Iran. What happens is the CIA or the Israeli MASAD funnel money to honest to God Terrorists through a false chain of command and steer them toward whatever is the preferred Target. With Nine Eleven, the CIA found a Cell of nice young men from Saudi Arabia who really did fly the planes into the Twin Towers, but it was the CIA that had planted the explosives in the building and reduced them to rubble. For this next time I have heard rumors that there are many Radical Groups in Iran, loosely disciplined, and they would be easy for the CIA to infiltrate, fund and direct, all while the Radicals themselves would think they were being funded by, oh, Saudi money, and directed by Osama himself. The Target? The World Series. And I think that the CIA will not be happy unless the body count exceeds that of Nine Eleven. This time the CIA might blow up an entire Stadium. How many people fit in one of those places? Even ordinarily sane American will be overwhelmed by a shock wave of unbearable rage. The rush to war will be unstoppable. And they will look to the Republican Hot Head to lead them, not the Democrat who wants to ‘talk’ to Enemies.
My advice? Watch the games on TV. Then vote Democratic anyway. Don’t reward those CIA or MASAD pricks for their continual killing of Americans just so they can keep the War Machine dividends rolling in for their bank accounts. Yes, they will prove the Iranians did it, but they will omit to inform the World that it was, for all intents and purposes, a CIA operation.
Okay, okay, you think all this sounds crazy. Well, it is, but its not my fault. The fault belongs the National Security System whereby any Military or Intelligence Agency, with absolutely no oversight, is perfectly free to declare any of its dealings TOP SECRET. So anybody can do anything they want with almost certain assurances that nobody will find out, or if anybody does find out, that they can be prosecuted by the Law for telling anybody. So they can shoot Kennedy, blow up the Twin Towers, or anything else they want and laugh about it because nobody can ever know, or if they know, can never tell. The Freedom of Speech doesn’t really matter if nobody is allowed to say much of anything because the most important stuff gets Classified.
Oh, remember the Corollary Truth to the National Security State – that you will never hear the Truth because somebody somewhere in some Office or Agency must have Classified it. The only thing they can tell you is Lies. If it didn’t happen or does not exist, they can’t put a Secret Stamp on it. What this means is that any Information released by a National Security State is necessarily Not True, or they would not be allowed to tell you.
Again, don’t go into any stadiums until after the Election. Or don’t complain to me when your dead. Oh, and if you are a remorseless sick ghoul, or merely just a Republican, it probably would be a good time to buy into Defense Stocks, probably the only stocks that will go from now until the End of the World.
The Big Problem with the End of the World
The Big Problem with the End of the World
Much On Line Prophecy has projected that the year 2012 will bring something akin to the End of the World. That year happens to coincide with the stop point of the Mayan Calendar. Catholic Prophecy has already conceded that the List of Popes has run out, with Old Cardinal Ratinger, the Ex-Nazi, taking the name Benedict which everyone knew was the Last Name on the Pope List of Prophecy (see Saint Malachi of the 11th Century, friend of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux). There are a few 2012 Pages that can fill us all in on many more details of Prophecies that are afield.
A great many prophecies had set forth the notion that the End of the World would be preceded by approximately 3 and a half years of troubles and tribulations. Darn! If the End of the World would culminate in a quick snap, then it would be so much easier to deal with. Those who will survive into the Next Dispensation, or the Next Level, or the Next Vibration… whatever it is which will come Next… well, they would survive, and if they had not been forced to live through any prolonged period of suffering might survive to live happily ever after. But surviving after 3 and a half years of prolonged agony, we could expect that the Next Age might simply be an Age of Damaged Goods. For those who don’t survive, well, if it had been quick it would have been merciful. But a three and a half year decline, calculated to kill by slow grind, well that seems only cruel.
As often as I had maintained that the End of the World was on its way, secretly I would have been quite relieved to find that it had all been just one more On Line Exaggeration, or another Dud of Prophecy that had been propelled along by a grand Public Hysteria but finally dropping off to nothing when nothing failed to ever happened. Well, now, apparently right on schedule we have the Collapse of the World’s Global Economy.
There is little comfort in the Irony that the Liberal Capitalist Democracies had so recently gloated over the Fall of the Planned Economies, their blame being that the Planned Economies supposedly “did not work”. I suspect the real problem was that a somewhat malicious Competition had done its utmost to put the Planned Economies out of business. The problem was murder from without, not any self inflicted systematic suicide. Without such avid Enemies we might have seen the Planned Economies even prosper. Indeed, China is not doing so bad.
But now that Capitalism has melted down, the only alternative to a Quick Collapse of Civilization is exactly the type of Planned Economy about which we still hear derisive echoes. Oh, and while Planned Economies certainly had their challenges in decades past, now, with all the existing infrastructure for an Information Society, Planning would seem to have come into its own. With a Completeness of Information we might expect a Sufficiency in Planning.
There are of course Pure Capitalists who insist that Capitalism must be allowed to have its inevitable Cycles, that we must take the Bad Times, the Busts, along with the Good, the Booms. To them it makes all the sense in the World. But I suspect they hardly deign to think about Millions of People starving to death in the unsupplied Urban Centers of the World. Indeed, the Wealthy throughout History have never discerned when their End was near. They always thought their Estate Walls and Private Security Detachments would be enough to secure their personal survival. It was either a chronic failure of imagination or intelligence that failed to give them the hint, that in the collapse of Everything, their own Security People would turn on them, as money would lose all its value (when do the Security Guards grow tired of paper money that can buy nothing, and instead begin to admire the Golden Candlesticks and the Rich Man’s Pretty Wife?). And as money would decline in value, we could expect that weapons and Armed Force would appreciate significantly. The Effete and Decadent Rich have never survived any Collapse of Civilization to play any part at all in the emergent Barbarisms. The focal points of all righteous anger, the Rich were almost always the first to be swept away by the various Reigns of Terror. So much for their own Advice, from these Pure Capitalists, to simply let the Economic Disasters run their course… if they really knew what that meant, they would hardly be so earnest in welcoming their own Doom. The Last and Hardest Economic Cycle of Capitalism, as Marx predicted, is a Doozy!
Well, an optimist might see the impending Election of Obama as a large plus. He may be open minded enough to actually try organizing a Plan, a mobilization of Labor apart from Capital. Also, as I said before about the Power of Force in Barbarism, under the Wrong President America would be a significant danger to the remainder of the World. After all, we do remember the Republican Party’s Doctrine, the Bush Doctrine, of Unilateral Attack on any Nation that might be considered a Threat. Well, with America being frightened of declining into an impoverished Equality with all other Nations, wouldn’t many of the most ruthless Republicans see EVERYBODY as a qualifying Threat. As resources become increasingly scarce, Americans who had once thought of Capitalism as their Tool for International Competition and Domination, might naturally resort to the only trump card they had left – Nuclear Weapons and their proven Will to use them. In this I do not suspect that Obama would be nearly as trigger happy as McCain.
However, America does not have a good track record on allowing its Liberal Leftest Leaders to live long lives in Office, particularly if they are of the Black persuasion. Millions of Americans are avid gun owners and enthusiasts, and exactly the kind of people who had always been most uncomfortable with the Progress in Black Equality. And it only takes one nut with a clear field of fire… But, à la rigueur, the future Vice President seems a sensible man. More than ever before, it is crucial that the President and Vice President never be together in the same venue. The World cannot risk them both. I don’t trust the Secret Service. I don’t trust the FBI, the CIA, the Military. If Obama has ANY SENSE, he will fire all White House Security foisted upon him by those who had only opposed him – chase off the Secret Service, loyal to who knows who!? (will a White Free Mason Secret Service Agent, or a Mormon for Christ’s Sake, take a bullet for a Black Man that he didn’t vote for?, or rather, that he voted AGAINST! Indeed, the Secret Service could be the very source of any Threat to the Executive, just as the Roman Emperors had most to fear from their own Praetorian Guards). Obama needs to hand pick his own Security Detail – every one PERSONALLY loyal and trustworthy beyond any doubt. Ask John Kennedy… oh wait, he’s dead, and probably because there was not a single Irishman between himself and that Bloody State of Texas that killed him.
Anywayt, how bad could things get. Well, duh, we WERE talking of the End of the World. But the suffering. First consider that all the highly populated urban areas are supplied only because people are paid to drive the trucks, and because there is still fuel for the trucks. And the trucks aren’t empty. If economies collapse, will there be the Political Will to order people to stay on the job? Republicans or Libertarians would hesitate before regimenting complete Societies. And Democrats lack the knack for effective Organization… well, until Obama who has had a famously well organized Campaign… but could he regiment a Society stripped of its Money? Would there even be sufficient Loyalty, Honesty and Self Discipline in the People, or will they instantly turn to rioting, looting, hoarding, black-marketing – of trying to save themselves while almost intentionally advancing the death and agony of others?
Again, America presents a huge challenge. Ordinarily, if the Best of Human Nature did not automatically Triumph, and Discipline needed to be exerted upon a restless Population, then a kind of Marshal Law imposed by Police and National Guard could keep people on the job and assure that the necessary functions would maintain as required. But, again, things in America are complicated by the over-abundance of Firearms combined with a Individualist Survivalist Mentality… of people who had planned for years on ways and means of killing everybody and taking their land and food for themselves… sort of Zionism transplanted to America.
Some Americans think that Hardship will pull everybody together. But that is not why so many people have been stockpiling guns and ammo. I really think that America is predisposed to destroy itself – the Lights will go out and America will become a land of a thousand battling War Lords, with millions dying in the crossfire.
All the densely populated Areas will have problems. Surprisingly, the areas most likely to do the Best are the areas that are now doing the worst. They have hardly nothing now and they are used to it. Chronic Need has fused some of these Social Units together into Cooperative Bodies that do the most to make the best of whatever little they have in common. The future will not represent such a drastic change for them. Indeed, as the Populated Areas depopulate, the presently disenfranchised will be able to move into the relinquished space and finally have their chance to thrive.
Are there any large Societies today where cooperation and self-discipline are Characteristic? Are there any Cultures that haven’t made virtues of Greed and Competitive Hatefulness? Where riots aren’t automatic? Where hoarding isn’t reflex? Where if people are called to work without pay, they’ll show up and do their best for the General Good? Such a Society will be the Survivors who will live to see the Next Dispensation.
But Societies that are just huge conglomerations of competing individuals… Capitalists at heart who were the ones to bring us to this Brink… for them it will truly and irrevocably be the End of the World.
Much On Line Prophecy has projected that the year 2012 will bring something akin to the End of the World. That year happens to coincide with the stop point of the Mayan Calendar. Catholic Prophecy has already conceded that the List of Popes has run out, with Old Cardinal Ratinger, the Ex-Nazi, taking the name Benedict which everyone knew was the Last Name on the Pope List of Prophecy (see Saint Malachi of the 11th Century, friend of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux). There are a few 2012 Pages that can fill us all in on many more details of Prophecies that are afield.
A great many prophecies had set forth the notion that the End of the World would be preceded by approximately 3 and a half years of troubles and tribulations. Darn! If the End of the World would culminate in a quick snap, then it would be so much easier to deal with. Those who will survive into the Next Dispensation, or the Next Level, or the Next Vibration… whatever it is which will come Next… well, they would survive, and if they had not been forced to live through any prolonged period of suffering might survive to live happily ever after. But surviving after 3 and a half years of prolonged agony, we could expect that the Next Age might simply be an Age of Damaged Goods. For those who don’t survive, well, if it had been quick it would have been merciful. But a three and a half year decline, calculated to kill by slow grind, well that seems only cruel.
As often as I had maintained that the End of the World was on its way, secretly I would have been quite relieved to find that it had all been just one more On Line Exaggeration, or another Dud of Prophecy that had been propelled along by a grand Public Hysteria but finally dropping off to nothing when nothing failed to ever happened. Well, now, apparently right on schedule we have the Collapse of the World’s Global Economy.
There is little comfort in the Irony that the Liberal Capitalist Democracies had so recently gloated over the Fall of the Planned Economies, their blame being that the Planned Economies supposedly “did not work”. I suspect the real problem was that a somewhat malicious Competition had done its utmost to put the Planned Economies out of business. The problem was murder from without, not any self inflicted systematic suicide. Without such avid Enemies we might have seen the Planned Economies even prosper. Indeed, China is not doing so bad.
But now that Capitalism has melted down, the only alternative to a Quick Collapse of Civilization is exactly the type of Planned Economy about which we still hear derisive echoes. Oh, and while Planned Economies certainly had their challenges in decades past, now, with all the existing infrastructure for an Information Society, Planning would seem to have come into its own. With a Completeness of Information we might expect a Sufficiency in Planning.
There are of course Pure Capitalists who insist that Capitalism must be allowed to have its inevitable Cycles, that we must take the Bad Times, the Busts, along with the Good, the Booms. To them it makes all the sense in the World. But I suspect they hardly deign to think about Millions of People starving to death in the unsupplied Urban Centers of the World. Indeed, the Wealthy throughout History have never discerned when their End was near. They always thought their Estate Walls and Private Security Detachments would be enough to secure their personal survival. It was either a chronic failure of imagination or intelligence that failed to give them the hint, that in the collapse of Everything, their own Security People would turn on them, as money would lose all its value (when do the Security Guards grow tired of paper money that can buy nothing, and instead begin to admire the Golden Candlesticks and the Rich Man’s Pretty Wife?). And as money would decline in value, we could expect that weapons and Armed Force would appreciate significantly. The Effete and Decadent Rich have never survived any Collapse of Civilization to play any part at all in the emergent Barbarisms. The focal points of all righteous anger, the Rich were almost always the first to be swept away by the various Reigns of Terror. So much for their own Advice, from these Pure Capitalists, to simply let the Economic Disasters run their course… if they really knew what that meant, they would hardly be so earnest in welcoming their own Doom. The Last and Hardest Economic Cycle of Capitalism, as Marx predicted, is a Doozy!
Well, an optimist might see the impending Election of Obama as a large plus. He may be open minded enough to actually try organizing a Plan, a mobilization of Labor apart from Capital. Also, as I said before about the Power of Force in Barbarism, under the Wrong President America would be a significant danger to the remainder of the World. After all, we do remember the Republican Party’s Doctrine, the Bush Doctrine, of Unilateral Attack on any Nation that might be considered a Threat. Well, with America being frightened of declining into an impoverished Equality with all other Nations, wouldn’t many of the most ruthless Republicans see EVERYBODY as a qualifying Threat. As resources become increasingly scarce, Americans who had once thought of Capitalism as their Tool for International Competition and Domination, might naturally resort to the only trump card they had left – Nuclear Weapons and their proven Will to use them. In this I do not suspect that Obama would be nearly as trigger happy as McCain.
However, America does not have a good track record on allowing its Liberal Leftest Leaders to live long lives in Office, particularly if they are of the Black persuasion. Millions of Americans are avid gun owners and enthusiasts, and exactly the kind of people who had always been most uncomfortable with the Progress in Black Equality. And it only takes one nut with a clear field of fire… But, à la rigueur, the future Vice President seems a sensible man. More than ever before, it is crucial that the President and Vice President never be together in the same venue. The World cannot risk them both. I don’t trust the Secret Service. I don’t trust the FBI, the CIA, the Military. If Obama has ANY SENSE, he will fire all White House Security foisted upon him by those who had only opposed him – chase off the Secret Service, loyal to who knows who!? (will a White Free Mason Secret Service Agent, or a Mormon for Christ’s Sake, take a bullet for a Black Man that he didn’t vote for?, or rather, that he voted AGAINST! Indeed, the Secret Service could be the very source of any Threat to the Executive, just as the Roman Emperors had most to fear from their own Praetorian Guards). Obama needs to hand pick his own Security Detail – every one PERSONALLY loyal and trustworthy beyond any doubt. Ask John Kennedy… oh wait, he’s dead, and probably because there was not a single Irishman between himself and that Bloody State of Texas that killed him.
Anywayt, how bad could things get. Well, duh, we WERE talking of the End of the World. But the suffering. First consider that all the highly populated urban areas are supplied only because people are paid to drive the trucks, and because there is still fuel for the trucks. And the trucks aren’t empty. If economies collapse, will there be the Political Will to order people to stay on the job? Republicans or Libertarians would hesitate before regimenting complete Societies. And Democrats lack the knack for effective Organization… well, until Obama who has had a famously well organized Campaign… but could he regiment a Society stripped of its Money? Would there even be sufficient Loyalty, Honesty and Self Discipline in the People, or will they instantly turn to rioting, looting, hoarding, black-marketing – of trying to save themselves while almost intentionally advancing the death and agony of others?
Again, America presents a huge challenge. Ordinarily, if the Best of Human Nature did not automatically Triumph, and Discipline needed to be exerted upon a restless Population, then a kind of Marshal Law imposed by Police and National Guard could keep people on the job and assure that the necessary functions would maintain as required. But, again, things in America are complicated by the over-abundance of Firearms combined with a Individualist Survivalist Mentality… of people who had planned for years on ways and means of killing everybody and taking their land and food for themselves… sort of Zionism transplanted to America.
Some Americans think that Hardship will pull everybody together. But that is not why so many people have been stockpiling guns and ammo. I really think that America is predisposed to destroy itself – the Lights will go out and America will become a land of a thousand battling War Lords, with millions dying in the crossfire.
All the densely populated Areas will have problems. Surprisingly, the areas most likely to do the Best are the areas that are now doing the worst. They have hardly nothing now and they are used to it. Chronic Need has fused some of these Social Units together into Cooperative Bodies that do the most to make the best of whatever little they have in common. The future will not represent such a drastic change for them. Indeed, as the Populated Areas depopulate, the presently disenfranchised will be able to move into the relinquished space and finally have their chance to thrive.
Are there any large Societies today where cooperation and self-discipline are Characteristic? Are there any Cultures that haven’t made virtues of Greed and Competitive Hatefulness? Where riots aren’t automatic? Where hoarding isn’t reflex? Where if people are called to work without pay, they’ll show up and do their best for the General Good? Such a Society will be the Survivors who will live to see the Next Dispensation.
But Societies that are just huge conglomerations of competing individuals… Capitalists at heart who were the ones to bring us to this Brink… for them it will truly and irrevocably be the End of the World.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Why the Bail Out
Why the Bail Out
Initially, upon first hearing of the bail out, I was indignant and proposed to all of my cats that the Rich should be made to directly fund the bail out themselves, out of their personal accounts, which could be compelled from them by raising their Tax Rates to about 99% while offering tax exemption only in the case where they voluntarily purchase Federal Bail Out Bonds. But soon it occurred to me that the very reason a Bail Out is required is that nowhere in America does there remain any big pile of money still sitting around. What happened to all the Dollars? Well, they have gone to the Near East for Oil, or they have gone to China for Goods, or even to India for Services. These Foreign People, not being as economically sophisticated as Americans, demand cash. So, the American’s made due by borrowing, and they borrowed by collateralizing what they thought they owned – they borrowed on their Houses and on their Hedge Fund Accounts. The very essence of the Emergency is that these sources of collateralized debt have now been demonstrated to be effectively valueless. There is no actual Wealth left in America.
Years ago in better times an Economics professor taught us about Monetary Velocity. He presented a pithy example – pretend that in India or somewhere a Shop Owner sells a shovel for 10 rupees, and then he stuffs the 10 rupees into his mattress. There, the effective worth of the 10 rupees is one shovel’s worth of value, or in terms of Velocity, 1 Shovel per Day. But in America, in the morning a shovel is bought for 10 dollars and then immediately the Shop Owner makes a call and spends the 10 dollars for a drum of nails, and then the nail sales man buys a couple cases of beer, and then the beer store owner buys a bundle of magazines…. On and on and on. The same ten dollars, in a High Velocity Economy is worth far more than just one shovel per day. This was seen, back then, as a good thing.
Now, what we have is High Velocity Debt. The way that works is that Collateralized Debt is used to advance further borrowing. People assert ownership of what they had only borrowed to purchase, and while barely nothing is actually paid for, they pledge their Title of Ownership as collateral for their next level of Purchases. What we eventually have is Trillions of Dollars of On-the-Book Ownership, but with almost no equity to support any of it, that is, no solid dollars of value anywhere to be found. Honestly, what does happen to the ownership status of hundreds of millions of dollars of collateralized purchases all spiraling out from a single Mortgage Deal that in the end turns sour? What we find happening is that the entire Economic Boat capsizes.
So, okay, things are indeed bad. Can there even be a Bail Out? Well, honestly not. The American Government has no Dollars. Yes, the American Government could print a great many new Dollars, but one would expect that everybody presently holding U.S. Dollars, U.S. Bonds, and assets which are indexed to the value of the U.S. Dollar, well, all these people should strenuously object at any Bail Out Plan that consists wholly in diluting the value of Dollars that are out there in the accounts of honest people across the World.
So, if anybody should be discussing the implementation of a Bail Out Plan, it should be those Nations that now hold so much in the way of Dollar Reserves, and that is Japan, China, and all of the Oil Economies. And their Bail Out Plan can be straight forward – they can purchase all of these worthless banks for next to nothing, fire all the Good-for-Nothing Americans, and place their own Managers in charge of the World Economy.
I can conclude with two statements. Firstly, if the American Taxpayer is made to Bail Out this Wealthy Top One Percent of America, then there needs to be a Transfer of Ownership. The Wealthy in America cannot be rescued from the torrent by its Wage Slaves and then still expect that the relationship will remain as it had been. A National Rescue must certainly infer an Effective Nationalization of Ownership. We will no longer expect Taxes from the wealthy. America will pay its Bills with its rightful Dividends from its asserted Ownership. As these Capitalists have always insisted, it is all just a Game of Winners and Losers and the Losers should be good sports. Well, now they are the Losers. The Nation now OWNS the Banks. That is that!
Secondly, if America has demonstrated to the entire World that it is effectively Bankrupt, then the Rest of the World needs to step up and exert its influence to prevent America from taking any further rash actions that could continue to thin down the value of the Dollars, so many of which these Foreign Powers hold in their Reserves. How could these Foreign Powers exert any leverage? Easy. America has thrived upon the Dollar’s status as the effective International Currency. Those who hold the most Reserves of Dollars could simply threaten to throw them out the windows, into the streets, to swamp the world in Trillions of Dollars which everyone will soon enough find to not be worth the paper they are printed on. You see, a U.S. Dollar is only worth what somebody is willing to give for it, and we all know very well that America no longer has anything to sell. The Value still residing in the Dollar comes largely from the effect of the Rest of the World still trading with it among each other. Therefore, if the World ever rejects the Dollar, well, that’s the End Game and Checkmate for America right there.
And what could America do about it? America, since it has no real Oil Reserves could not even afford to throw even much of a Military tantrum, and America would starve into the worst 3rd World squalor in less than 180 days. Remember how quickly the Soviet Union had collapsed? Well, America would set some new records for Speedy Demise.
And I think the American Economic Leaders know it… and that is why they are scrambling to implement some kind of a Bail Out. And I suspect they are holding their breath hoping the Rest of the World stands by and does nothing.
Initially, upon first hearing of the bail out, I was indignant and proposed to all of my cats that the Rich should be made to directly fund the bail out themselves, out of their personal accounts, which could be compelled from them by raising their Tax Rates to about 99% while offering tax exemption only in the case where they voluntarily purchase Federal Bail Out Bonds. But soon it occurred to me that the very reason a Bail Out is required is that nowhere in America does there remain any big pile of money still sitting around. What happened to all the Dollars? Well, they have gone to the Near East for Oil, or they have gone to China for Goods, or even to India for Services. These Foreign People, not being as economically sophisticated as Americans, demand cash. So, the American’s made due by borrowing, and they borrowed by collateralizing what they thought they owned – they borrowed on their Houses and on their Hedge Fund Accounts. The very essence of the Emergency is that these sources of collateralized debt have now been demonstrated to be effectively valueless. There is no actual Wealth left in America.
Years ago in better times an Economics professor taught us about Monetary Velocity. He presented a pithy example – pretend that in India or somewhere a Shop Owner sells a shovel for 10 rupees, and then he stuffs the 10 rupees into his mattress. There, the effective worth of the 10 rupees is one shovel’s worth of value, or in terms of Velocity, 1 Shovel per Day. But in America, in the morning a shovel is bought for 10 dollars and then immediately the Shop Owner makes a call and spends the 10 dollars for a drum of nails, and then the nail sales man buys a couple cases of beer, and then the beer store owner buys a bundle of magazines…. On and on and on. The same ten dollars, in a High Velocity Economy is worth far more than just one shovel per day. This was seen, back then, as a good thing.
Now, what we have is High Velocity Debt. The way that works is that Collateralized Debt is used to advance further borrowing. People assert ownership of what they had only borrowed to purchase, and while barely nothing is actually paid for, they pledge their Title of Ownership as collateral for their next level of Purchases. What we eventually have is Trillions of Dollars of On-the-Book Ownership, but with almost no equity to support any of it, that is, no solid dollars of value anywhere to be found. Honestly, what does happen to the ownership status of hundreds of millions of dollars of collateralized purchases all spiraling out from a single Mortgage Deal that in the end turns sour? What we find happening is that the entire Economic Boat capsizes.
So, okay, things are indeed bad. Can there even be a Bail Out? Well, honestly not. The American Government has no Dollars. Yes, the American Government could print a great many new Dollars, but one would expect that everybody presently holding U.S. Dollars, U.S. Bonds, and assets which are indexed to the value of the U.S. Dollar, well, all these people should strenuously object at any Bail Out Plan that consists wholly in diluting the value of Dollars that are out there in the accounts of honest people across the World.
So, if anybody should be discussing the implementation of a Bail Out Plan, it should be those Nations that now hold so much in the way of Dollar Reserves, and that is Japan, China, and all of the Oil Economies. And their Bail Out Plan can be straight forward – they can purchase all of these worthless banks for next to nothing, fire all the Good-for-Nothing Americans, and place their own Managers in charge of the World Economy.
I can conclude with two statements. Firstly, if the American Taxpayer is made to Bail Out this Wealthy Top One Percent of America, then there needs to be a Transfer of Ownership. The Wealthy in America cannot be rescued from the torrent by its Wage Slaves and then still expect that the relationship will remain as it had been. A National Rescue must certainly infer an Effective Nationalization of Ownership. We will no longer expect Taxes from the wealthy. America will pay its Bills with its rightful Dividends from its asserted Ownership. As these Capitalists have always insisted, it is all just a Game of Winners and Losers and the Losers should be good sports. Well, now they are the Losers. The Nation now OWNS the Banks. That is that!
Secondly, if America has demonstrated to the entire World that it is effectively Bankrupt, then the Rest of the World needs to step up and exert its influence to prevent America from taking any further rash actions that could continue to thin down the value of the Dollars, so many of which these Foreign Powers hold in their Reserves. How could these Foreign Powers exert any leverage? Easy. America has thrived upon the Dollar’s status as the effective International Currency. Those who hold the most Reserves of Dollars could simply threaten to throw them out the windows, into the streets, to swamp the world in Trillions of Dollars which everyone will soon enough find to not be worth the paper they are printed on. You see, a U.S. Dollar is only worth what somebody is willing to give for it, and we all know very well that America no longer has anything to sell. The Value still residing in the Dollar comes largely from the effect of the Rest of the World still trading with it among each other. Therefore, if the World ever rejects the Dollar, well, that’s the End Game and Checkmate for America right there.
And what could America do about it? America, since it has no real Oil Reserves could not even afford to throw even much of a Military tantrum, and America would starve into the worst 3rd World squalor in less than 180 days. Remember how quickly the Soviet Union had collapsed? Well, America would set some new records for Speedy Demise.
And I think the American Economic Leaders know it… and that is why they are scrambling to implement some kind of a Bail Out. And I suspect they are holding their breath hoping the Rest of the World stands by and does nothing.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
An Essay on Writing Essays
An Essay on Writing Essays
A correct and effective essay consists in three elements – an introduction, the body of the essay, and its conclusion.
The introduction, of course, introduces, telling the reader, in short, everything he is about to learn, making all of the assertions that will be supported and proven within the subsequent body of the essay. In addition to innate on-the-face positive proofs for the author’s own assertions, recourse can be made to supporting scholarship or even scholarship to the contrary, by discrediting it with one’s own observations and opinions. Remember, that in Scholastic Circles NOBODY is ever totally right, and there is always open some crack of imperfection even in the Best Previous Scholarship that new Scholars can bore into and criticize. Scholars have no respect for the God’s, not even their own. Agreeing with Past Scholarship always seems timid and servile compared to attacking it with opinions of one’s own, and there is always more room for further thought about things. Anyway, once all open circles of inquiry promised by the introduction have been closed, a conclusion comes in order. This is where the reader is informed, in some clever way, that if he had not been convinced by the preceding essay, then, well, he very well should have been. In the best of essays the Conclusion, in establishing that the promised Truth had been found, should suggest, again cleverly, that some Greater Truth is now revealed and evident.
These conditions for an essay – the Intro, the body, and the Conclusion – have never been just mere literary conventions. It is all just common sense, just as any essay is supposed to be. We can see this even if we reduce it to simplest terms, to a gem of an essay in less than 50 words: (Intro)Watch out for that truck! (Body) You were about to step into it. It was 20 tons and going 60 miles per hour and would not have been able to stop. (Conclusion) It would have killed you dead as a bug. The Intro quickly captured the attention of the audience, presenting the problem to be discussed. The problem was discussed lucidly within the Body, and the Conclusion set it all into the pithy perspective of Life Death Mortality issues.
So an up and coming essay writer will never go wrong as long as he remembers those three essential things, to say what he will say, to say it, and say that he said it… and the World now better off for it.
A correct and effective essay consists in three elements – an introduction, the body of the essay, and its conclusion.
The introduction, of course, introduces, telling the reader, in short, everything he is about to learn, making all of the assertions that will be supported and proven within the subsequent body of the essay. In addition to innate on-the-face positive proofs for the author’s own assertions, recourse can be made to supporting scholarship or even scholarship to the contrary, by discrediting it with one’s own observations and opinions. Remember, that in Scholastic Circles NOBODY is ever totally right, and there is always open some crack of imperfection even in the Best Previous Scholarship that new Scholars can bore into and criticize. Scholars have no respect for the God’s, not even their own. Agreeing with Past Scholarship always seems timid and servile compared to attacking it with opinions of one’s own, and there is always more room for further thought about things. Anyway, once all open circles of inquiry promised by the introduction have been closed, a conclusion comes in order. This is where the reader is informed, in some clever way, that if he had not been convinced by the preceding essay, then, well, he very well should have been. In the best of essays the Conclusion, in establishing that the promised Truth had been found, should suggest, again cleverly, that some Greater Truth is now revealed and evident.
These conditions for an essay – the Intro, the body, and the Conclusion – have never been just mere literary conventions. It is all just common sense, just as any essay is supposed to be. We can see this even if we reduce it to simplest terms, to a gem of an essay in less than 50 words: (Intro)Watch out for that truck! (Body) You were about to step into it. It was 20 tons and going 60 miles per hour and would not have been able to stop. (Conclusion) It would have killed you dead as a bug. The Intro quickly captured the attention of the audience, presenting the problem to be discussed. The problem was discussed lucidly within the Body, and the Conclusion set it all into the pithy perspective of Life Death Mortality issues.
So an up and coming essay writer will never go wrong as long as he remembers those three essential things, to say what he will say, to say it, and say that he said it… and the World now better off for it.
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Woodward Secret Operation
The Woodward Secret Operation
In Bob Woodward’s new book he speaks at half length about a Secret Operation in Iraq that has the proportions of another Manhattan Project, the program that created the Atomic Bomb and which was a huge employer during the Second World War, employing most Scientists and hundreds of thousands of additional people … although most people didn’t know what they were working for or why. Anyway, this new Secret Operation is purported to be just as big and historically momentous as all of that. And this is coming from Bob Woodward who can be expected to understand the proportions of scale before using words like ‘big’ or ‘momentous’.
Anyway, I was curious. Bob gave a few hints but basically begged off because everyone swore him to secrecy (probably telling him they would block future interviews unless he held his tongue, and of course we can trust a journalist to do the right thing). Besides, we already suspected that if we want to know about the Truth of Government, the Media certainly wasn’t going to be much help. The Media gets their Paychecks from the same People who are paying off the Politicians. They’re all one big happy family.
So I called a few old friends that had friends in various Black Ops Organizations. Now the trick about dealing with Ex-Military Spook Types is that Military Culture is a bunch of drunks, when reduced to simplest terms. And drunks talk. The good stuff they brag about. Now this Super Secret Operation that Woodward was talking about, so effective, so momentous… well, there would of course be bragging about THAT. I know, I know… its SUPPOSED TO BE Secret. But the thing about talk is that it is only just talk. Its Documents they worry about. Yes, it would raise a great good many red flags if one were to actually reprint some specific Secret Papers. But drunken talk is customarily assigned the Status of Conspiracy Theory, right next to UFO conjectures and Elvis sightings. The Government would not wish to draw attention to it by shushing it… and so it is that in the shady bars of Spook World everybody knows everything, at least in broad strokes if not in every detail. And so everybody was glad to tell me everything that had been churning through the rumor mill. You know, it’s not so remarkable. It’s probably the same way Bob Woodward found out everything. And if they gave me a million dollar book deal NOT to say anything, I’d keep it a Big Secret too.
And, yes, Wow! Bob was right!... in what he did allow himself to say. It is big… and getting bigger every day. It started small enough. Intelligence Analysts were only looking for a way to cut through all the Data that was piling up – surveillance data from satellites, from airplanes and drones, aerial balloons… it was swamping them. They just didn’t have time to comb through it all. At first they tried to write Computer Programs to sort through the information, but the IT guys were taking forever with it, and getting further behind the longer that they worked at it. Then someone somewhere combined two promising Technological Trends – Computer Generated Design and Artificial Intelligence. Even ten years ago Engineers had noticed that Computer Generated Design was developing a kind of mind of its own – through apparent trial and error CGD was formulating original and innovative design concepts that no human being had even imagined… its what would happen when Computers were allowed to do their own Thinking. And Artificial Intelligence builds even upon that, systematically pursuing objectives while continuously learning from experience. Anyway, regarding the Birth of the Secret Operation, they patched together an Artificial Intelligence Algorithm into a Computer Generated Program Writer. All they wanted it to do was catalog data, and it sure did!
As I have hinted above, the Computer Engineers were surprised at how well the new programming worked, while at the same time sort of expected to be surprised. The Most Important Surprise came when the Program suddenly was able to so effectively catalog Identity. You see, in order to cut down on the total amount of Data which would have to be saved to memory, the Program found a way of reducing Identity to the most basic terms. The Program looked at all sorts of variables that no human Programmer would have thought of. Not that anybody really KNOWS how the program is really working. The Results are fine, and who needs to know how it works anyway. Its Artificial Intelligence doing its thing. But there were requirements. It began asking for specifics. “Don’t give me that! Give me this!” The Engineers had not expected that. The Program wanted Data Surveillance in several Light and Energy Spectrums. Given a few overlapping surveillance photos, reflecting different spectral qualities, the people being observed, even if they appear to be the tiniest of dots, are effectively ‘marked’, can be catalogued in just a few numbers, and will be remembered if they ever pop up again… even as the tiniest of surveillance ‘dots’. This was the real Big Secret Golden Nugget within the Big Secret.
Were the Program Tags perfect? Well, probably not, or not at the beginning. But what was soon discovered was that the Program was great at Tracking and Sorting. As long as the Surveillance Cameras were running individuals could be followed, and nobody could ever be lost in the crowd. Even if thousands of people were to go into an Opera House… I mean Mosque… out of sight for hours, well, as soon as they would leave, everyone would be re-identified and picked up again. Once ‘tagged’ there was never any getting away, and this was with a system that required only the barest levels of stripped down data. Huge areas could be kept under surveillance, quantifying the interactions of hundreds of thousands of ‘targets’.
Of course this could be useful. Think how it might work -- if a Satellite picks up an Insurgent Attack, all the insurgents can be tagged and followed. They don’t need to be instantly arrested, or assassinated, but can be allowed to follow their day by day routines… business as usual. Every move they made would be catalogued.
Woodward tells us that the Secret Operation targets the Leaders. Well, yes, in a way. What the Algorithm is really doing is identifying Nexus Personnel. Yes, often enough tactical level insurgent Personnel will report to official Leaders, and these are identified by the Program. But they also report to various supply clerks, pay clerks, even religious clerks… all the logistical and moral support people that keep day to day terrorist operations going smoothly. So while Leaders are included, the Program is really set up to target all of the necessary support personnel. Leaders are over-rated anyway. The other day I heard the Israelis announce they had just assassinated another Hamas “Leader”… they murdered some young guy who was only 24 years old. If that’s what they call a ‘Leader’ it would probably be more useful to take out somebody really important, like a Supply Clerk. Anyway, the Program takes care of assigning all of these targeting priorities – who sees whom, who reports to whom and how often. The important targets begin to stand out, not necessarily because they are “Leaders” but because they are the people that all the tactical personnel and foot soldiers find it necessary to meet with.
Bob Woodward told us that this Secret Operation is Big and getting bigger. It needs to. As you can guess, such an Operation would be ravenous about sucking up Computer Memory and Power. Although the bulk of the Program is about Cataloging the Important Stuff and tossing out the rest, still, at the onset there needs to be a great deal of Raw Data – surveillance of an entire Country in two or three Spectrums of Light Energy. That chews up a lot of Disc Space. Then, the Cataloging requires a huge amount of Computer Capacity. Records need to go back in time, and even compressed data takes up space in the long run. Indeed, the day to day improvements to the Program are almost entirely measured, not in how it has refined Target Acquisition, but in how it has learned to work just as well with less and less saved data. The limiting factor is Computer Power.
All those Programs we hear about, set up in certain Universities, that ask people to lend over their personal computers for various kinds of Data Crunching, that they say is concerning Global Warming and all such Green Things… well, the rumor is that all such Programs are supplying the necessary Computer Power for the Secret Operation in Iraq. Also, I have been keeping my eyes on my Intel, Cisco and other Computer Technology Stocks. As much as I wish I could say so, I see no sign that the Government is on a Spending Binge in Hi Tech. So, apparently, this Secret Operation was probably something of a lucky accident, at least as far as Government Funding was concerned – doing a lot with what had been an old original limited budget. Anyway, nobody has noticed much of a Supply and Demand distortion in the Civilian Marketplace. My Stock has not gone up. Just think how well this Secret Operation could work once they start really throwing money and resources into it.
Bob Woodward has told us that revealing the Truth about this Secret Operation would get people killed. Well, maybe, at first it would have. You see, at first nobody trusted the Program and they were sending in Intelligence Operatives to check on the Program’s Information. Were the Terrorists reporting to actual Leaders or just going to favorite neighborhood deli stores? They needed to see for themselves. But, since the program has evolved, they have learned to trust it. When the Tactical Teams finally go in, they find very much exactly what the Program had projected.
So why did all the Government Weenies tell Woodward to shut up about it? Well, they are probably afraid of chasing away what is left of the Insurgents and Terrorists who have not already gotten the big message. You see, the Algorithm is easy enough to beat – if you are a Terrorist, then just stop taking any meetings. Stay away from everybody. Of course, terrorism cannot conduct much business like that, but isn’t that what we want? The more they know about this Secret Operation, the more they can be expected to shut down and run for it. If they all go back to herding goats, afraid for their lives, then We have won the war, haven’t we?
Oh, I suppose there might also be concerns about Privacy Issues. Somebody MUST be thinking about bringing the Secret Operation back home. And it would be SO much more effective if people were kept in the dark about it. It could just as well be used against Organized Crime – to shut down Auto Theft, Drug Trafficking, even discrete instances of individual crime – there is nothing very special about Insurgent Operations that a few tweaks in the Program couldn’t turn it into being primarily a Crime Fighting Tool. For the Law Biding Good Citizen, it would be like God watching over us all. But Criminals, Corrupt Politicians and Police, and Privacy Fanatics would have a reflex opposition to it all. So they told Bob to keep it all a Big Secret.
Well, they couldn’t keep the Atom Bomb secret for very long either.
In Bob Woodward’s new book he speaks at half length about a Secret Operation in Iraq that has the proportions of another Manhattan Project, the program that created the Atomic Bomb and which was a huge employer during the Second World War, employing most Scientists and hundreds of thousands of additional people … although most people didn’t know what they were working for or why. Anyway, this new Secret Operation is purported to be just as big and historically momentous as all of that. And this is coming from Bob Woodward who can be expected to understand the proportions of scale before using words like ‘big’ or ‘momentous’.
Anyway, I was curious. Bob gave a few hints but basically begged off because everyone swore him to secrecy (probably telling him they would block future interviews unless he held his tongue, and of course we can trust a journalist to do the right thing). Besides, we already suspected that if we want to know about the Truth of Government, the Media certainly wasn’t going to be much help. The Media gets their Paychecks from the same People who are paying off the Politicians. They’re all one big happy family.
So I called a few old friends that had friends in various Black Ops Organizations. Now the trick about dealing with Ex-Military Spook Types is that Military Culture is a bunch of drunks, when reduced to simplest terms. And drunks talk. The good stuff they brag about. Now this Super Secret Operation that Woodward was talking about, so effective, so momentous… well, there would of course be bragging about THAT. I know, I know… its SUPPOSED TO BE Secret. But the thing about talk is that it is only just talk. Its Documents they worry about. Yes, it would raise a great good many red flags if one were to actually reprint some specific Secret Papers. But drunken talk is customarily assigned the Status of Conspiracy Theory, right next to UFO conjectures and Elvis sightings. The Government would not wish to draw attention to it by shushing it… and so it is that in the shady bars of Spook World everybody knows everything, at least in broad strokes if not in every detail. And so everybody was glad to tell me everything that had been churning through the rumor mill. You know, it’s not so remarkable. It’s probably the same way Bob Woodward found out everything. And if they gave me a million dollar book deal NOT to say anything, I’d keep it a Big Secret too.
And, yes, Wow! Bob was right!... in what he did allow himself to say. It is big… and getting bigger every day. It started small enough. Intelligence Analysts were only looking for a way to cut through all the Data that was piling up – surveillance data from satellites, from airplanes and drones, aerial balloons… it was swamping them. They just didn’t have time to comb through it all. At first they tried to write Computer Programs to sort through the information, but the IT guys were taking forever with it, and getting further behind the longer that they worked at it. Then someone somewhere combined two promising Technological Trends – Computer Generated Design and Artificial Intelligence. Even ten years ago Engineers had noticed that Computer Generated Design was developing a kind of mind of its own – through apparent trial and error CGD was formulating original and innovative design concepts that no human being had even imagined… its what would happen when Computers were allowed to do their own Thinking. And Artificial Intelligence builds even upon that, systematically pursuing objectives while continuously learning from experience. Anyway, regarding the Birth of the Secret Operation, they patched together an Artificial Intelligence Algorithm into a Computer Generated Program Writer. All they wanted it to do was catalog data, and it sure did!
As I have hinted above, the Computer Engineers were surprised at how well the new programming worked, while at the same time sort of expected to be surprised. The Most Important Surprise came when the Program suddenly was able to so effectively catalog Identity. You see, in order to cut down on the total amount of Data which would have to be saved to memory, the Program found a way of reducing Identity to the most basic terms. The Program looked at all sorts of variables that no human Programmer would have thought of. Not that anybody really KNOWS how the program is really working. The Results are fine, and who needs to know how it works anyway. Its Artificial Intelligence doing its thing. But there were requirements. It began asking for specifics. “Don’t give me that! Give me this!” The Engineers had not expected that. The Program wanted Data Surveillance in several Light and Energy Spectrums. Given a few overlapping surveillance photos, reflecting different spectral qualities, the people being observed, even if they appear to be the tiniest of dots, are effectively ‘marked’, can be catalogued in just a few numbers, and will be remembered if they ever pop up again… even as the tiniest of surveillance ‘dots’. This was the real Big Secret Golden Nugget within the Big Secret.
Were the Program Tags perfect? Well, probably not, or not at the beginning. But what was soon discovered was that the Program was great at Tracking and Sorting. As long as the Surveillance Cameras were running individuals could be followed, and nobody could ever be lost in the crowd. Even if thousands of people were to go into an Opera House… I mean Mosque… out of sight for hours, well, as soon as they would leave, everyone would be re-identified and picked up again. Once ‘tagged’ there was never any getting away, and this was with a system that required only the barest levels of stripped down data. Huge areas could be kept under surveillance, quantifying the interactions of hundreds of thousands of ‘targets’.
Of course this could be useful. Think how it might work -- if a Satellite picks up an Insurgent Attack, all the insurgents can be tagged and followed. They don’t need to be instantly arrested, or assassinated, but can be allowed to follow their day by day routines… business as usual. Every move they made would be catalogued.
Woodward tells us that the Secret Operation targets the Leaders. Well, yes, in a way. What the Algorithm is really doing is identifying Nexus Personnel. Yes, often enough tactical level insurgent Personnel will report to official Leaders, and these are identified by the Program. But they also report to various supply clerks, pay clerks, even religious clerks… all the logistical and moral support people that keep day to day terrorist operations going smoothly. So while Leaders are included, the Program is really set up to target all of the necessary support personnel. Leaders are over-rated anyway. The other day I heard the Israelis announce they had just assassinated another Hamas “Leader”… they murdered some young guy who was only 24 years old. If that’s what they call a ‘Leader’ it would probably be more useful to take out somebody really important, like a Supply Clerk. Anyway, the Program takes care of assigning all of these targeting priorities – who sees whom, who reports to whom and how often. The important targets begin to stand out, not necessarily because they are “Leaders” but because they are the people that all the tactical personnel and foot soldiers find it necessary to meet with.
Bob Woodward told us that this Secret Operation is Big and getting bigger. It needs to. As you can guess, such an Operation would be ravenous about sucking up Computer Memory and Power. Although the bulk of the Program is about Cataloging the Important Stuff and tossing out the rest, still, at the onset there needs to be a great deal of Raw Data – surveillance of an entire Country in two or three Spectrums of Light Energy. That chews up a lot of Disc Space. Then, the Cataloging requires a huge amount of Computer Capacity. Records need to go back in time, and even compressed data takes up space in the long run. Indeed, the day to day improvements to the Program are almost entirely measured, not in how it has refined Target Acquisition, but in how it has learned to work just as well with less and less saved data. The limiting factor is Computer Power.
All those Programs we hear about, set up in certain Universities, that ask people to lend over their personal computers for various kinds of Data Crunching, that they say is concerning Global Warming and all such Green Things… well, the rumor is that all such Programs are supplying the necessary Computer Power for the Secret Operation in Iraq. Also, I have been keeping my eyes on my Intel, Cisco and other Computer Technology Stocks. As much as I wish I could say so, I see no sign that the Government is on a Spending Binge in Hi Tech. So, apparently, this Secret Operation was probably something of a lucky accident, at least as far as Government Funding was concerned – doing a lot with what had been an old original limited budget. Anyway, nobody has noticed much of a Supply and Demand distortion in the Civilian Marketplace. My Stock has not gone up. Just think how well this Secret Operation could work once they start really throwing money and resources into it.
Bob Woodward has told us that revealing the Truth about this Secret Operation would get people killed. Well, maybe, at first it would have. You see, at first nobody trusted the Program and they were sending in Intelligence Operatives to check on the Program’s Information. Were the Terrorists reporting to actual Leaders or just going to favorite neighborhood deli stores? They needed to see for themselves. But, since the program has evolved, they have learned to trust it. When the Tactical Teams finally go in, they find very much exactly what the Program had projected.
So why did all the Government Weenies tell Woodward to shut up about it? Well, they are probably afraid of chasing away what is left of the Insurgents and Terrorists who have not already gotten the big message. You see, the Algorithm is easy enough to beat – if you are a Terrorist, then just stop taking any meetings. Stay away from everybody. Of course, terrorism cannot conduct much business like that, but isn’t that what we want? The more they know about this Secret Operation, the more they can be expected to shut down and run for it. If they all go back to herding goats, afraid for their lives, then We have won the war, haven’t we?
Oh, I suppose there might also be concerns about Privacy Issues. Somebody MUST be thinking about bringing the Secret Operation back home. And it would be SO much more effective if people were kept in the dark about it. It could just as well be used against Organized Crime – to shut down Auto Theft, Drug Trafficking, even discrete instances of individual crime – there is nothing very special about Insurgent Operations that a few tweaks in the Program couldn’t turn it into being primarily a Crime Fighting Tool. For the Law Biding Good Citizen, it would be like God watching over us all. But Criminals, Corrupt Politicians and Police, and Privacy Fanatics would have a reflex opposition to it all. So they told Bob to keep it all a Big Secret.
Well, they couldn’t keep the Atom Bomb secret for very long either.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Jewish Paradox
It is extremely tiring being called a Nazi because I disapprove of the Contemporary Jew doing exactly what the Nazis had been doing.
The Nazis thought they were the Master Race and therefore had right to kill anybody who came in the way.
And the Jews, probably learning more from the Nazis than they should have – a Stockholm Syndrome kind of thing no doubt, now do the same thing – killing anybody who stands in their way of their vision of a Greater Israel. What the Jews had originally complained of has become their own modus operandi. The Jews said that they ‘would never forget’, and they haven’t, apparently having made of the Nazis’ behavior toward them something of an Instruction Manual on how they would subsequently behave toward everyone else. Sort of a ‘genocide them before they genocide us’ kind of thing.
It’s sad that America helps them out to such an extent – as a tiny little country they never would have been able to do it all on their own, and they would have had to arrive at a Peace Deal by now. But with the Help of America, thank God, they’ll never have to make Peace with anybody. You see, it’s the Protestant Vision that by enabling the Jews to re-establish Israel, the Last Battle will be provoked – Armageddon – and then, just as prophesized, Jesus will make his Second Coming, the Righteous will be Raptured… blah, blah, blah. What it comes down to is that the Americans who are in power actually have no intention toward Peace, despite what they say, but are doing everything in their power to provoke War. Indeed, giving the State of Israel 5 billion dollars every year to remain in a constant state of War. That 5 billion dollars basically underwrites their whole Economy. Peace would in fact bankrupt them. When you hear on the news that either Washington or Tel Aviv is moving toward establishing Peace with the Palestinians, that it is really against all of their historic interests and motivations, and probably only a prelude to some scheme for embarrassing the Palestinians before ratcheting up the War Machine to even more strenuous intensities and expenses.
Anyway, I’m the guy who is for Peace and against victimizing a relatively helpless minority (for although much is made of the threat of ‘Terror’, it’s a danger that has only killed or harmed .0000000001% of the targeted population, putting ‘Terrorism’ largely in the column of being nearly all ‘bark’ and not hardly any ‘bite’. One is more likely to win the lottery than to be harmed by Terrorists. Indeed, much is made of so little only to justify the Perpetual War that American Protestantism still believes will bring them their Armageddon and their Rapture. But perhaps they should be reminded, that the State of Israel was re-established in 1949, more than a half century ago, more than a generation ago, and that there have been already rather a few full blown Wars, and Armageddon has not happened yet. How long do they expect their tardy God to put things off? Yes, its already been 2000 years, so how much longer could it be?
Really, the American Protestants should consider the possibility that Armageddon and the Second Coming had already happeneded, with the Destruction of Jerusalem in the year 71 A.D. It honestly fit all the Prophetic Descriptions. Armies marched on Jerusalem from every corner. Then it could very well have happened that all the Genuine Christians of the day were Raptured and lifted up into Heaven. The bitter pill for Modern Protestants to swallow, though, is that they are now part of the Population of the Reprobate – the Children of the Damned. Ooooops. You know, somebody had to be. If so many damned people were to be left behind, well, one can’t expect that they should all just shrivel up and die. Life would go on, and it did. Also, these Protestants should take it as a hint that the Christian Church that ‘survived’ really was not part of the Real Church at all, not the Jews that Jesus had taught, but Greeks who followed the Teaching of Paul who had been an actual Persecutor of the Real Messianic Church that Jesus had established. It’s really all in the Book of Acts, if one reads it from that slant.
The best that these Protestants should hope for, or pray for, is a New Dispensation – enough of trying to milk the old Prophecies. They should review the more recent Events in Religious History. There had been all the Appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but the Protestants at their best and most Charitable, ignore Her. Now that the Protestants are allied with the Anti-Abortion Catholics on the Extreme Religious Right, they try to be un-provoking to their new Political Partners, but when assured there are no Catholics in the room they still continue to refer to the Mother of their Lord Jesus Christ as “the Whore of Babylon”… anything to re-justify their violence and hatred during what they call the Reformation, when they killed half the Catholics in Europe in order to confiscate Church lands, and set up rebellious little Nation States outside of purviews of Christian Civilization. However, they probably would not like the New Marian Prophecies anyway, as they are largely along the lines of bemoaning the Fall of Christian Civilization (Catholicism as it had been in its Glory Day), and the rise of Barbarism (everything Protestant, with its twin vehicles for Corruption – Capitalism and Democracy).
Okay, okay, you get the message – they are all Bad Guys. They either realize it and don’t care, or they are in complete denial about it, resting in their Faith that God somehow smoothes over the Moral Difficulties involved in having other Peoples suffer so that a few Chosen Jews and Protestants can live as Masters of the World and the Sole Inheritors of Heaven. In any case, it is necessary to deflect the blame from themselves to any who oppose them. Like the Jews before them they need to rise up and cut down even their own Prophets if they should happen to broach uncomfortable topics of conversation.
So I am the Bad Guy for insisting upon a modicum of morality. It’s sad when the good guys are now called Nazis or are seriously compared to the Nazis. They should consider that if it should be true, then how bad would that make everybody else?
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