OK lets just start out by assuming that he's going to, probably, be lying. Now, now, I'll admit that doesn't sound very 'bi partisan' of me to say that - but at this point I think you'd have to be a fool not to be at least 'very' suspicious of the motives behind everything George W Bush and his crew do.
So.. lets just assume right off the bat that when he says that his new initiatives are focused on the issue of immigration, and on finding 'a rational middle ground' , then, they undoubtedly have very little to do with immigration and are bound to be both totally irrational and extreme.
With that in mind here's some of the things that 'jump out at me' about this - I'll put links and quotes in later.
1. Ending of something he calls "catch and release" - which I take to mean that he's planning on initiating a program of 'catch and keep indefinitely'.
2. The fact that he mentions that they have 'expanded their facilities' to allow them to end this terrible 'catch and release' thing.
3. The contracts which apparently were awarded by homeland security to KBR aka Halliburton to build huge new internship style camps . Basically big camps with barracks and huge fences and stuff. - To be honest this has been worrying me significantly for quite a while.
3. The fact that the visa waiver form I signed on the way into this country had a newish clause I didn't recognise - something about my waiving my right to appeal against the judgements of the Visa officer.. which lead at the time to a discussion of whether an immigrant had ever had right to a trial in such situations, but, obviously not anymore. I'm not worried about this for myself, especially. Its just an interesting fact to put with the others.
4. All this talk of high technology such unmanned aerial vehicles and biometric identification cards.
5. The fact that he is planning to do a call out of the National Guard, in order to somehow effect this new immigration program. What exactly are they going to be doing, again?
6. The fact that even his loyal Republican crew in the house and senate are balking at that last measure.
7. The idea that, with a 29% approval rating he decides that, now is the time to initiate major initiatives on a hotly contested subject.
Where is he going with this? Exactly.
2006-05-16
2006-04-09
Are we paranoid enough yet?
On 26 Jan 2006 I wrote:
Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right to basically march up to every ISP in the country and install special 'black boxes' [doing] God only knows what and the ISP's cannot even mention this fact publically let alone not comply...
---
Now we have confirmation from a whistleblower that this is exactly what they've been doing.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
.. he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego."While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400...
"
And what can we find out about the Narus 6400? Well the google cache appeared busted on the subject but the preview gives us this one sentence..
Fully configured, the Model 6400 captures application-layer usage details via NARUS Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) on up to six full-duplex 100 BaseT
(Update: Dailykos has since published an artice All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400 which fills out a lot of the details).
In my opinion the key words here are "Semantic Traffic Analysis".
As I wrote previously:
Many people think ECHELON simply targets 'keywords'. However, based on patents filed by various government agencies you can assume it is *much* more sophisticated than that, for instance rudimentary 'language recognition' patents as well as 'topic classification' patents.
The topic classification patent is especially interesting, because, if they are able to create a map of all the types of people / types of conversations that people have, then they can more easily filter out the 'Jana's having a baby!' conversations and zero in on the 'lets organize a march' conversation of radicals and other undesirables - oh, yeah, and [those] "terrorists" and "drug dealers" - the only problem here is that to find the largest number of these in the most cost effective way all they would need to do is walk down the hall start arresting people..
The words semantic analysis are used somewhat differently in the patents I mention than in the technical specs for the Naurus 6400, but forgive me for assuming that the NSA has technology that is more advanced (by a small margin and in the same direction) than what is available to the general public.
--
I guess this casts the Google action in preventing DOJ into their data centers in a quite different light. As I said previously, this isn't about reading the query log - this was always about the right to install a room of 'black servers' right in the middle of the google data center. Google's actions in standing up to that are all the more laudable.
--
Just to be crystal clear on this; at this time what we now have is clear evidence of (sophisticated) *monitoring and analysis* of internet and phone traffic - something we pretty much knew for a long time.
Thats very scary (and illegal, in my opinion), but its certainly better than actual direct government censorship of content on the internet ('chilling effects' on free speech aside).
On the pessimistic side, however, direct (but covert) censorship is probably the next obvious step once you have the right hardware installed in the key data centers.
It may be that if you want to actually directly censor and block information all you need to do is control the choke points - meaning ISP's like AT&T - and not the search engines - like Google. However, it could equally be argued that the more sophisticated (and probably more practical) form of censorship is to directly control the search engine resultss. Certainly the Chinese found that this was a more effective (and subtle) form of censorship than outright blocks on entire search engines or particular websites.
My suspicion (OK, its a total guess) is that, in the States at least, the NSA and other parts of the state/non-state military-technological apparatus are probably experimenting with the censorship of certain specifc pieces of information even right now. A good place for them to start would be, for instance, specific information about themselves, their methods and what they plan to do next. (This has the added advantage of being a much easier thing to argue for legally).
Its fairly clear that direct censorship or control of political discourse on the internet is something that organisations such as the NSA (or the techno-military-industrial complex generally) wouldn't consider themselves able to do at this time. Despite all their technology and hardware, the number of bits to flip and the sheer volume of content to mechanically 'understand' and filter makes that effectively impossible.
It could be argued that have achieved a good measure of success in the filtering of the message of the mass media - and if you ask someone who's actually lived in the states for a few years and I'm sure you'll see what I mean - but its still too hard for anyone to control or manipulate the discourse of 'blogosphere' at this stage. However, we should be vigilant on this - as soon as they believe they can do this I'm sure that they will. Furthermore, if 'they' are smart they won't telegraph their abilities in this respect - the first indications may become crystal clear just at the moment that it becomes effectively impossible to organise resistance to it.
"The internet" may be the last truly free bastion of political free speech in the States at ths time.. and if that were to be closed down via a more sophisticated version of 'the chinese firewall" .. well God help us all.
Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right to basically march up to every ISP in the country and install special 'black boxes' [doing] God only knows what and the ISP's cannot even mention this fact publically let alone not comply...
---
Now we have confirmation from a whistleblower that this is exactly what they've been doing.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
.. he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego."While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400...
"
And what can we find out about the Narus 6400? Well the google cache appeared busted on the subject but the preview gives us this one sentence..
Fully configured, the Model 6400 captures application-layer usage details via NARUS Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) on up to six full-duplex 100 BaseT
(Update: Dailykos has since published an artice All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400 which fills out a lot of the details).
In my opinion the key words here are "Semantic Traffic Analysis".
As I wrote previously:
Many people think ECHELON simply targets 'keywords'. However, based on patents filed by various government agencies you can assume it is *much* more sophisticated than that, for instance rudimentary 'language recognition' patents as well as 'topic classification' patents.
The topic classification patent is especially interesting, because, if they are able to create a map of all the types of people / types of conversations that people have, then they can more easily filter out the 'Jana's having a baby!' conversations and zero in on the 'lets organize a march' conversation of radicals and other undesirables - oh, yeah, and [those] "terrorists" and "drug dealers" - the only problem here is that to find the largest number of these in the most cost effective way all they would need to do is walk down the hall start arresting people..
The words semantic analysis are used somewhat differently in the patents I mention than in the technical specs for the Naurus 6400, but forgive me for assuming that the NSA has technology that is more advanced (by a small margin and in the same direction) than what is available to the general public.
--
I guess this casts the Google action in preventing DOJ into their data centers in a quite different light. As I said previously, this isn't about reading the query log - this was always about the right to install a room of 'black servers' right in the middle of the google data center. Google's actions in standing up to that are all the more laudable.
--
Just to be crystal clear on this; at this time what we now have is clear evidence of (sophisticated) *monitoring and analysis* of internet and phone traffic - something we pretty much knew for a long time.
Thats very scary (and illegal, in my opinion), but its certainly better than actual direct government censorship of content on the internet ('chilling effects' on free speech aside).
On the pessimistic side, however, direct (but covert) censorship is probably the next obvious step once you have the right hardware installed in the key data centers.
It may be that if you want to actually directly censor and block information all you need to do is control the choke points - meaning ISP's like AT&T - and not the search engines - like Google. However, it could equally be argued that the more sophisticated (and probably more practical) form of censorship is to directly control the search engine resultss. Certainly the Chinese found that this was a more effective (and subtle) form of censorship than outright blocks on entire search engines or particular websites.
My suspicion (OK, its a total guess) is that, in the States at least, the NSA and other parts of the state/non-state military-technological apparatus are probably experimenting with the censorship of certain specifc pieces of information even right now. A good place for them to start would be, for instance, specific information about themselves, their methods and what they plan to do next. (This has the added advantage of being a much easier thing to argue for legally).
Its fairly clear that direct censorship or control of political discourse on the internet is something that organisations such as the NSA (or the techno-military-industrial complex generally) wouldn't consider themselves able to do at this time. Despite all their technology and hardware, the number of bits to flip and the sheer volume of content to mechanically 'understand' and filter makes that effectively impossible.
It could be argued that have achieved a good measure of success in the filtering of the message of the mass media - and if you ask someone who's actually lived in the states for a few years and I'm sure you'll see what I mean - but its still too hard for anyone to control or manipulate the discourse of 'blogosphere' at this stage. However, we should be vigilant on this - as soon as they believe they can do this I'm sure that they will. Furthermore, if 'they' are smart they won't telegraph their abilities in this respect - the first indications may become crystal clear just at the moment that it becomes effectively impossible to organise resistance to it.
"The internet" may be the last truly free bastion of political free speech in the States at ths time.. and if that were to be closed down via a more sophisticated version of 'the chinese firewall" .. well God help us all.
2006-02-25
FWD: [ny911] Write to the Village Voice today..
________________________________
Some points you might choose to make, in your own words [sic] of course:-
9/11 was the pretext for two wars and a transformation of the country. Trillions of dollars were shifted from butter to guns. It's all based on the idea that foreign terrorists are the primary threat to our security. The truth of 9/11, that the threat actually lies within, will help end the wars and reverse the destructive Bush policies.
[thanks Nick, you nailed it]
- Point out that 9/11 skepticism is widespread. The majority of the world is suspicious of 9/11. Here in New York, 49 percent of respondents to a 2004 Zogby poll found said they agreed that government leaders knew about the attacks in advance and "consciously failed" to take action to prevent them.- You might identify yourself as a long-term skeptic of the Official Conspiracy Theory of September 11th, or as a newcomer to the 9/11 truth idea. But if you attend the weekly meetings at St. Mark's Church every Sunday evening, don't neglect to mention that. Especially that these are weekly, every Sunday, at St. Mark's. Let's get some new people!
- The antiwar movement cannot make inroads within the pro-war base until the myth of 9/11 is eroded. As long as people fear and believe in the phantom menace, they will support the government that promises to protect them.- The antiwar movement cannot make inroads within the pro-war base until the myth of 9/11 is eroded. As long as people fear and believe in the phantom menace, they will support the government that promises to protect them.- You might praise the article for being more even-handed than has been usual in such treatments. [actually i liked it] Or you might criticize it for its failings, as Prison Planet just did. Either way is fine, long as you convey your own disbelief in the official story.
Some points you might choose to make, in your own words [sic] of course:-
9/11 was the pretext for two wars and a transformation of the country. Trillions of dollars were shifted from butter to guns. It's all based on the idea that foreign terrorists are the primary threat to our security. The truth of 9/11, that the threat actually lies within, will help end the wars and reverse the destructive Bush policies.
[thanks Nick, you nailed it]
- Point out that 9/11 skepticism is widespread. The majority of the world is suspicious of 9/11. Here in New York, 49 percent of respondents to a 2004 Zogby poll found said they agreed that government leaders knew about the attacks in advance and "consciously failed" to take action to prevent them.- You might identify yourself as a long-term skeptic of the Official Conspiracy Theory of September 11th, or as a newcomer to the 9/11 truth idea. But if you attend the weekly meetings at St. Mark's Church every Sunday evening, don't neglect to mention that. Especially that these are weekly, every Sunday, at St. Mark's. Let's get some new people!
- The antiwar movement cannot make inroads within the pro-war base until the myth of 9/11 is eroded. As long as people fear and believe in the phantom menace, they will support the government that promises to protect them.- The antiwar movement cannot make inroads within the pro-war base until the myth of 9/11 is eroded. As long as people fear and believe in the phantom menace, they will support the government that promises to protect them.- You might praise the article for being more even-handed than has been usual in such treatments. [actually i liked it] Or you might criticize it for its failings, as Prison Planet just did. Either way is fine, long as you convey your own disbelief in the official story.
2006-01-26
China google and censorship
It's really unfortunate that it is the name "google' that is showing up in all the headlines in connection to Chinese censorship.... because the only reason it is news is that it is strikingly*different* from the way that google normally behaves.Microsoft and Yahoo for example had already caved in (if thats the word for it) months ago to the Chinese demands for censoring chineselanguage search engines, and some of the collusion on the part of Yahoo China and companies like Cisco is really quite shocking for example.
But none of this makes the global (non-tech) news because the techindustry expects MS and Yahoo to be 'evil'. (Ie dog bites man insteadof man bites dog).
Apparently, Yahoo mail, at the request of Hong Kong officials trawled through their email records and fingered a dissident who was laterthrown into jail for a 10 year plus sentence (or something like that) and Cisco along with other US companies was largely responsible forbuilding the 'great firewall of china'.
What's particularly scary about this is that once they know how to do that stuff, then they can, of course, turn around and give it to US and/or European authorities easily and without too much fuss.Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right tobasically march up to every ISP in the coutnry and install special'black boxes' done God only knows what and the ISP's cannot evenmention this fact puiblically let alone not comply.Google on the other hand recently refused to comply to a DOJ request to turn over, basically *all* their search queries as well asthe multi-billion page database built up by their web crawler.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with *protecting childrenfrom pornography* (and even less with, what is wrongly described in multiple locations as being about "child pornography" when in fact the law in question is about minors getting acccess to Pornography).
In fact this is about neither child porn nor children accessing porn. No, this is about the DOJ getting access to the core of Google\'s network. Lets think this through a bit. There is no way, of course, that the DOJ is asking Google to print out all the data on a hundred million pages of paper and deliver the whole lot via the some huge Berlin airlift operation into Washington.
No, not at all, this is about getting DOJ servers right into the center of the Google data center, so they can run any type ofquery and leverage the awesome power of the google data centre to whatever ends.
Critically, Microsoft and Yahoo as well as the other search engines, quietly complied to similar DOJ requests weeks (months?) ago, but nobody wrote frontpage stories about that.
In fact you have to wonder. Is it a pure coincidence that Google finds itself having its reputation ruined over this China censorship thing only a week or so after they refuse to comply with the DOJ. I guess one has to believe so, but, big picture wise this was a helluva bad call on the part of Google. Certainly I don't agree with providing censored results (even if it is supposedly a better compromise than no results at all - remember Munich!) No. Google should never have considered that question in isolation. Because they have put themselves in a position of ruining their reputation for 'doing no evil' just when they need it most for the upcoming battle with the DOJ.
But none of this makes the global (non-tech) news because the techindustry expects MS and Yahoo to be 'evil'. (Ie dog bites man insteadof man bites dog).
Apparently, Yahoo mail, at the request of Hong Kong officials trawled through their email records and fingered a dissident who was laterthrown into jail for a 10 year plus sentence (or something like that) and Cisco along with other US companies was largely responsible forbuilding the 'great firewall of china'.
What's particularly scary about this is that once they know how to do that stuff, then they can, of course, turn around and give it to US and/or European authorities easily and without too much fuss.Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right tobasically march up to every ISP in the coutnry and install special'black boxes' done God only knows what and the ISP's cannot evenmention this fact puiblically let alone not comply.Google on the other hand recently refused to comply to a DOJ request to turn over, basically *all* their search queries as well asthe multi-billion page database built up by their web crawler.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with *protecting childrenfrom pornography* (and even less with, what is wrongly described in multiple locations as being about "child pornography" when in fact the law in question is about minors getting acccess to Pornography).
In fact this is about neither child porn nor children accessing porn. No, this is about the DOJ getting access to the core of Google\'s network. Lets think this through a bit. There is no way, of course, that the DOJ is asking Google to print out all the data on a hundred million pages of paper and deliver the whole lot via the some huge Berlin airlift operation into Washington.
No, not at all, this is about getting DOJ servers right into the center of the Google data center, so they can run any type ofquery and leverage the awesome power of the google data centre to whatever ends.
Critically, Microsoft and Yahoo as well as the other search engines, quietly complied to similar DOJ requests weeks (months?) ago, but nobody wrote frontpage stories about that.
In fact you have to wonder. Is it a pure coincidence that Google finds itself having its reputation ruined over this China censorship thing only a week or so after they refuse to comply with the DOJ. I guess one has to believe so, but, big picture wise this was a helluva bad call on the part of Google. Certainly I don't agree with providing censored results (even if it is supposedly a better compromise than no results at all - remember Munich!) No. Google should never have considered that question in isolation. Because they have put themselves in a position of ruining their reputation for 'doing no evil' just when they need it most for the upcoming battle with the DOJ.
2006-01-24
Chris McKinstrey and Quantum Spin
This is truly awful.
Some seemingly brilliant but obviously very conflicted guy decides to commit suicide and posts the fact on his blog and on Joel Spolsky’s website. The net result? He becomes semi-famous (for an internet split second) and I find myself reading through his blog with a mixture of horror and fascination and come across some links that seem interesting and relevant enough to post...
From the post:
….It is time to move on and see what is next if anything.
Enough is enough.
Oh and BTW, the mind is a maximum hypersurface and thought a trajectory on it and the amygdala and hippocampus are Hopf maps of it. No one knew this before me, and it seems no one care. So be it. My time will come in a hundred or a thousand years when the idea again returns....
----
From:
http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/2006/01/geeks-and-lsd.htm#links
Monday, January 16, 2006
Geeks and LSD
So, I am not the only geek who uses LSD to solve problems but I bet I am one of few using LSD to solve the problem of creating a global theory of LSD action...
----
From:
http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/2005/12/wow-mindpixel-hyper-coincidence.htm
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Wow - A Mindpixel Hyper-coincidence...
'Spin is the seat of consciousness and the linchpin between mind and the brain, that is, spin is the mind-pixel' - Huping Hu, Ph.D., J.D.,Spin-Mediated Consciousness Theory: Possible Roles of Oxygen Unpaired Electronic Spins and Neural Membrane Nuclear Spin Ensemble in Memory and Consciousness
----
As for “spin mediated consciousness”, as per Huping Hu PHD (who is, thankfully, still with us, and I hope remains that way regardless of how recognized his ideas are) that is here:
http://www.quantumbrain.org/overview.html
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but does possibly fit with some of the stuff in Penrose's Emporer’s New Mind (which I thought was a very well reasoned and convincing book) and/or this ‘spooky action at a distance’ stuff that got Einstein so worked up.
----
My guess is that we are going to be witness to some sort of revolution in Quantum theory that is in some respects startling in its religious implications some time in the next ten or twenty years (hopefully sooner rather than later). This may even be a situation where The Church will be forced to react to a physical theory that upsets a lot of received wisdom about where we fit vis-à-vis our relationship to existence and God and all that stuff. At any rate it would sure be interesting if that did happen! So all we need is for the young genius to get it all out on paper. Unfortunately, if it ever does happen, I’m afraid it definitely won’t be Chris McKinstry that leads us into this brave new world.
Miles
2004-02-20
The Craps Game
Written in response to..
Peter Dale Scott put it best when talking abut the Vietnam War. It was floating crap game where various corporate and financial players took seats and made money. Occasionally players would leave and be replaced or there would be "shootouts" between the various players. But the moment anyone threatened the game as a whole, everyone in the game turned on them, whether they were allies or not.
To understand some of the players in the craps game, I suggest you look at the US response to recent events in Haiti - the 'administration' issues statements of support for Aristide (and has sent in troops in the past). Meanwhile its pretty clear the CIA are covertly arming the rebels.
Same thing in Columbia - the CIA arms the drug traffickers / FARC whilst the Administration sends millions to support the Columbian Government in their fight against them.
You might say that this is just a strategy of 'arming both sides' - great for arms sales, and sometimes good for destabilizing a region to create a need for US presence. But I really think there's more to this contradiction than that. It appears that the CIA is running a foreign policy/drugs/arms/funding strategy all of its own and that this only happens co-incidentally to agree (on occasion) with that of the 'rest' of the Administration. Now I dunno about you, but that strikes me as deeply corrupt.
Sure, as in any *capitalist* democracy the 'democratically elected' administration' must always work within the limits (private property law, worker oppression, taxes etc) that are set by the Capitalists/Corporations. This applies from Hugo Chavez to Bush, so there's nothing new there. But, unlike many of my socialist friends, I happen to believe that doesn't the democractic administration completely irrelevant - look at FDR, it is possible to have reform, its just that there are certain boundaries. - And hey (admittedly speaking as a liberal white middle class technocrat) I happen to think its better to have a few boundaries than a slow slide towards totalitarianism.
So anyway, as I see it, the immediate problem here is not one of Capitalist/World Bank/Corporate Control or even just one of the usual, inevitable dissapointments of Democracy. The problem in the US is one of corruption - deep seated corruption at the core of many of her most important institutions, and along with that, equally bad a deep cyncism/lack of hope in any of these institutions. On the inside both republican and democratatic congressional representatives don't bother *actually listening and contributing and trying to suggest their own best idea of decent policy* because they believe/know that the system is so corrupted that it's just gonna be a down and dirty shit fight between the systems that decides the issue anyway. Meanwhile folks on the outside from radicals to alternative lifestylers, to businessmen to right wing gun freaks don't bother to vote because 'its all a fix' anyway.
So what do I think should be done? Well sure, I'd vote for a socialist revolution any day, but short of that distant possibility I *do* believe it is possible - via a mandate from the people - to shake things up to the point that a massive reformation of the corruption would take place.
I do believe that there was a solid mandate, the elected representatives
*would* have the power to reform the CIA (or abolish it) and maybe reform the other drugs and corruption infested organisations like the DOD, HUD, GOP, RNC etc whilst there a it.
Now, the capitalists and corporations that really run the place, well I think you can forget about that via democratic means... one has to think in terms of a longer term raising of consciousness and alternative economies on that one. But (Medianite strategy) lets not forget that at a certain point, the corruption and war are *not* in the interests of the corporations and capitalists who I believe prefer stability and order to chaos and disorder. (Uhm, yeah you were right, Barb, when you pointed out that there have been times when the 'powers that be' deliberately manufacture chaos but there is a huge difference between ups and downs that they *control* and things actually getting out of
control.) At a certain point the war and chaos caused by a corrupted out of control CIA on the one hand fascist war hawks on the other might appear to be getting out of control and I tell you, if that starts to happen, it will be shut down pretty fast.
Look, in New Zealand we had for years the problem of two equally bad party institutions to choose from. Then something happened in the late 90's, and we changed the electoral system to 'proportional representation'. As I see it, it wasn't so important what we changed it to (though it's clearly a better system) more just that there was a big shake up. This big shake up means that the old parties lost control, and new parties have sprung up. We still have our normal share of right wingers in New Zealand, but I personally feel a lot happier that we are fairly 'represented' now.
So, I believe there is a possiblity for things to be better. I also believe that exposure of the true level of corruption and evil things they have done is one way towards the sort of mandate I was talking about above.
Sometimes I think this is one of those cases where the US is unlucky because they won the war. The Japanese and the Germans had a huge sweep out of corruption and militarism only 60 years ago. That's whats needed here too.
Oh and there's one more thing. The old marxist line about the inevitability of a communist revolution is always a good one. The point they make is that even the capitalists are helpless to control the ever further ratcheting up of exploitation, mergers and buyouts, inevitably leading to a single ultra-exploitative superclass that become ever more vulnerable.. yeah, you know, that one? Well it's a good one, and there is some truth in the theory that as the world globalizes and wages worldwide start to become more even, that this is whats happening. However, I have one of my own. Its not red inevitability, its green.
The thing is, its *inevitable* that we will move to a lower energy economy. It may happen because we are forced to do so, or it may happen because we choose to do so, but it will definitely happen. (Almost certainly its going to be something in between). Therefore, those who support low energy / low growth thinking will inevitably *win* against the oil companies and the capitalists wedded to a state of permanent high growth expansionism.
If I had any money to invest for my retirement I would invest it across a wide range portfolio of alternative/low energy technologies, and other things that would thrive in that environment (bicycles?) because no matter how bad things get you can bet we are gonna want some more of that, when the shit starts to hit the fan. Hmm I do wonder what BP has up their sleeve in this regard (other than shamelessly false lies and propaganda about selling 'green' oil).
Peter Dale Scott put it best when talking abut the Vietnam War. It was floating crap game where various corporate and financial players took seats and made money. Occasionally players would leave and be replaced or there would be "shootouts" between the various players. But the moment anyone threatened the game as a whole, everyone in the game turned on them, whether they were allies or not.
To understand some of the players in the craps game, I suggest you look at the US response to recent events in Haiti - the 'administration' issues statements of support for Aristide (and has sent in troops in the past). Meanwhile its pretty clear the CIA are covertly arming the rebels.
Same thing in Columbia - the CIA arms the drug traffickers / FARC whilst the Administration sends millions to support the Columbian Government in their fight against them.
You might say that this is just a strategy of 'arming both sides' - great for arms sales, and sometimes good for destabilizing a region to create a need for US presence. But I really think there's more to this contradiction than that. It appears that the CIA is running a foreign policy/drugs/arms/funding strategy all of its own and that this only happens co-incidentally to agree (on occasion) with that of the 'rest' of the Administration. Now I dunno about you, but that strikes me as deeply corrupt.
Sure, as in any *capitalist* democracy the 'democratically elected' administration' must always work within the limits (private property law, worker oppression, taxes etc) that are set by the Capitalists/Corporations. This applies from Hugo Chavez to Bush, so there's nothing new there. But, unlike many of my socialist friends, I happen to believe that doesn't the democractic administration completely irrelevant - look at FDR, it is possible to have reform, its just that there are certain boundaries. - And hey (admittedly speaking as a liberal white middle class technocrat) I happen to think its better to have a few boundaries than a slow slide towards totalitarianism.
So anyway, as I see it, the immediate problem here is not one of Capitalist/World Bank/Corporate Control or even just one of the usual, inevitable dissapointments of Democracy. The problem in the US is one of corruption - deep seated corruption at the core of many of her most important institutions, and along with that, equally bad a deep cyncism/lack of hope in any of these institutions. On the inside both republican and democratatic congressional representatives don't bother *actually listening and contributing and trying to suggest their own best idea of decent policy* because they believe/know that the system is so corrupted that it's just gonna be a down and dirty shit fight between the systems that decides the issue anyway. Meanwhile folks on the outside from radicals to alternative lifestylers, to businessmen to right wing gun freaks don't bother to vote because 'its all a fix' anyway.
So what do I think should be done? Well sure, I'd vote for a socialist revolution any day, but short of that distant possibility I *do* believe it is possible - via a mandate from the people - to shake things up to the point that a massive reformation of the corruption would take place.
I do believe that there was a solid mandate, the elected representatives
*would* have the power to reform the CIA (or abolish it) and maybe reform the other drugs and corruption infested organisations like the DOD, HUD, GOP, RNC etc whilst there a it.
Now, the capitalists and corporations that really run the place, well I think you can forget about that via democratic means... one has to think in terms of a longer term raising of consciousness and alternative economies on that one. But (Medianite strategy) lets not forget that at a certain point, the corruption and war are *not* in the interests of the corporations and capitalists who I believe prefer stability and order to chaos and disorder. (Uhm, yeah you were right, Barb, when you pointed out that there have been times when the 'powers that be' deliberately manufacture chaos but there is a huge difference between ups and downs that they *control* and things actually getting out of
control.) At a certain point the war and chaos caused by a corrupted out of control CIA on the one hand fascist war hawks on the other might appear to be getting out of control and I tell you, if that starts to happen, it will be shut down pretty fast.
Look, in New Zealand we had for years the problem of two equally bad party institutions to choose from. Then something happened in the late 90's, and we changed the electoral system to 'proportional representation'. As I see it, it wasn't so important what we changed it to (though it's clearly a better system) more just that there was a big shake up. This big shake up means that the old parties lost control, and new parties have sprung up. We still have our normal share of right wingers in New Zealand, but I personally feel a lot happier that we are fairly 'represented' now.
So, I believe there is a possiblity for things to be better. I also believe that exposure of the true level of corruption and evil things they have done is one way towards the sort of mandate I was talking about above.
Sometimes I think this is one of those cases where the US is unlucky because they won the war. The Japanese and the Germans had a huge sweep out of corruption and militarism only 60 years ago. That's whats needed here too.
Oh and there's one more thing. The old marxist line about the inevitability of a communist revolution is always a good one. The point they make is that even the capitalists are helpless to control the ever further ratcheting up of exploitation, mergers and buyouts, inevitably leading to a single ultra-exploitative superclass that become ever more vulnerable.. yeah, you know, that one? Well it's a good one, and there is some truth in the theory that as the world globalizes and wages worldwide start to become more even, that this is whats happening. However, I have one of my own. Its not red inevitability, its green.
The thing is, its *inevitable* that we will move to a lower energy economy. It may happen because we are forced to do so, or it may happen because we choose to do so, but it will definitely happen. (Almost certainly its going to be something in between). Therefore, those who support low energy / low growth thinking will inevitably *win* against the oil companies and the capitalists wedded to a state of permanent high growth expansionism.
If I had any money to invest for my retirement I would invest it across a wide range portfolio of alternative/low energy technologies, and other things that would thrive in that environment (bicycles?) because no matter how bad things get you can bet we are gonna want some more of that, when the shit starts to hit the fan. Hmm I do wonder what BP has up their sleeve in this regard (other than shamelessly false lies and propaganda about selling 'green' oil).
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