Escape from WeaponWorld

My ultimate nightmare

2011-11-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Let me confess to you this, my ultimate nightmare of future events. What do you think?

The world population, crowded up against its overburden and penalized by it beyond endurance, will seek a Leader to provide them with his Ultimate Solution. It is obvious that American Republicans are already in the process of doing so, willing to listen to any insanity, provided it fully fulfills their apocalyptic fantasies.

There will be no lies, just Peace on Earth in realtime (since all government functions will have collapsed into military anarchy in the meantime, à la Perestroika), and the future promise of a quick, clean death and relief from their nightmare world; or miraculous survival into a new Utopia of relieved of population pressure, endowed by the Leader's genius with an appealing political architecture and a miraculously restored natural environment.

And/or he will simply say: “I am the Anti-Christ foretold; obey/worship me and fulfill the prophecy to come.”

Using real-time, "Industrial Sound and Light" techniques, this Leader will orchestrate waves of high-tech genocide identical with those described in the Bible's Book of Revelation. Meteor/comet retrieval and bombardment, massive nuke strikes, biohazard dissemination and worldscan photoshop facsimiles (in the absence of survivors) where those prior are beyond technological capability. As far as he will be concerned, the closer to that mass-casualty narrative, the better.

The world population, rendered miserable by decreasing resources, wars over them and tyranny to support those wars, will practice a mass version of suicide-by-cop at the hands of a world government ruled by their beloved Leader. Individually, they will hope to survive this massive cull, (the way proletarian republicans hoped to become slave-holders or millionaires, despite the odds), and support it and its Leader fanatically. Only fanatical Christians will oppose them, non-violently, and be massacred for their pains. And we few, I hope, will resist this miserable travesty, goddamn it.

The World Leader will become insane (if not already so) by reason of the deaths and suffering he has caused beyond counting. He will seek to become God. Every genocide of the past will seem like child’s play, compared to his.

What will follow is beyond imagining. This Leader may summon all his SS troops (recruited, trained and uniformed from the billions of orphans he has caused) to Megiddo, and we shall see what transpires, assuming we are unlucky enough to survive to that point.

I am afraid this won't happen much later than the tail-end of our own lifespans. God help us.

From profit to profiteering

2011-11-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

Why I’m against capitalism as an unchallenged social template -- and socialism, and any other “ism” for that matter.

The fact is that any (ANY) organization goes from supporting its declared mandate (whatever it may be) to supporting that organization’s leadership by boosting its profit margin, regardless of and at the cost of its original mandate.

The MTV cable television channel went from supporting popular music to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now broadcasts idiotic babble almost nonstop and very little (very bad) music. Television primetime News went from supporting public information to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now shamelessly broadcasts worthless infotainment and almost no international news. The cable television History Channel went from supporting history education to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now broadcasts reality shows having little or nothing to do with history, many reruns of old shows, and more and more rare original history-based programming. American politics went from supporting popular democracy to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now conducts a criminal race to the bottom to acquire the most campaign finance, and can no longer legislate constructively.

Corruption is the inevitable end of capitalism (or any other social template) as freely expressed.

In socialist systems, “social power” replaces “pure profit.” Otherwise, the equation remains the same. In any other “ism,” its original story, justification and mandate are eventually replaced by its leadership’s promotion through the acquisition of pure profit (or consolidation of social power).

This would not be so bad if it stopped there. But an organization that ceased to fulfill its mandate though its leadership’s acquisitiveness would provide less and less valuable service, would cease to extract profit/power from that disappointed client base, and would eventually be replaced by a new organization that honored the original mandate more closely and thus collected more dependable profit/power from that client base.

However, once the original mandate is abandoned and profit margins begin to slide, the organization resorts to disinformation and dirty tricks; and eventually to outright lies, violence and criminality (or propaganda bombast, secret police terrorism and political corruption) to increase its profit/power margin. This is the ultimate death-spiral of dominant social organizations: devolution into a Mafia. The greatest short-term profits are achieved by criminal activity, so the leadership eventually defaults to criminals. The best criminals are guilt-free psychopaths and sociopaths and their slaves. They eventually replace everyone else in positions of leadership.

It is thus that the government of humanity, the oldest and most evolved of social organization, is based on lies, terror and corruption carefully regulated.

The only (temporary) solution to this problem would be the regular replacement of an organization’s leadership by independent outsiders more interested in the its original mandate than in mere profit accumulation. This is the advantage presented by democracy. Only a temporary solution, as these specialists will be replaced over time by more profit-oriented generalists, and these generalists will sooner or later by dominance-oriented sociopaths.

The only solution to this problem would be the built-in, mandated self-destruction of the organization and its substitution by another of independent origin and separate manpower. This solution induces additional problems: the waste of valuable talent during the original organization’s destruction, and the infiltration of sociopaths among recruits to the new organization, more and more of them over time until they achieve total dominance.

There is no obvious solution to this problem on a permanent basis, except perhaps the universal acceptance of the idea of sociopath takeover over time, permanent watchfulness against it, and systematic efforts to suppress its effects. It might be interesting to revert from capitalism-dominance to socialism-dominance every few generations or so, society-wide, so as to eliminate one set of sociopathic profiteers (along with their source of profit/power), eventually replace them with another set devoted to a different source of profit/power, and so on.

Eventually, any form of social turbulence or replacement will be overrun by sociopaths who appear programmed to dominate any long-term social organization to the harm of everyone except themselves. Even then, most sociopaths eventually sabotage their own lives and often die friendless and broke. Everyone loses.

Obama! Review your priorities before the next election.

2011-04-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

You're there on the spot when some rich schmuck call into question your obvious American citizenship. You're AWOL in Wisconsin, when your Labor supporters need your help.

Kindly review your upside-down priorities. If you're never there for us, why should we be there for you?

It Takes Forever (as wished for)

2011-03-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

In response to General Stanley L. McCrystal’s article in Foreign Policy, “It Takes a Network.” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network

It Takes Forever (as wished for)

Let’s assume your half Crusader/half Plains Indian politico-military-organized crime network remained up and running despite the best efforts of the West Point/Ivy League Protective Association and its Media/Congressional/Supreme Court/Presidential (oh hell, everybody with money) puppets. Public magical thinking from on high is the in-thing, these days – to replace rational thought which is out of TV fascion (Get it? Fascist and fashion?... Never mind).

You, like everyone from President Obama, Gates and etc. on down, have chosen not to declare your victory conditions. You know, those conditions which, if they ever occurred in nonmagical space-time, would allow you to fold up your very, very expensive tentage and wend you quasi-interplanetary way home? “Next war: Mars! Then we’ll start talking REAL money!”

What might those victory conditions be? Here are a few humble suggestions. Mix and match as you see fit -- the more implausible the victory, the better as far as the powers that be are concerned.

Every potential Af-Pak and neighborhood rebel accepts unilateral, unconditional surrender, simultaneously and forever.

You can statistically prove that every leadership element of the opposition network has either been killed or suborned by your own, including all elements as yet unborn.

750,000 Afghan Army, Police and self-defense Militia have their uniformed hands out for American military aid, indefinitely. They even have a stealth jet Air Force, and landlocked though they be, a four-carrier Navy and, of course, a Marine Corps. How do you say Semper Fi in Pashto?

A dependable flow of minerals, natural gas and opium guild Western bottom lines into the indefinite future (already hard at work on that one).

All Afghans convert into pacifist anarchist Jains. No exceptions unless they become card-carrying Republicans.

Afghanistan declares its national sport is badminton instead of mountain/desert/urban warfare against any and all comers, and themselves during brief interims when no outsider is stupid enough to try.

Afghans discover American TV, stop thinking from now on, and thus adopt the American Way of Life. With international support, Afghanistan invades Madagascar in anticipation of destroying enemy sanctuaries during its eternal “War on Grief.”

The country of Pachtunistan is ripped from Afghan and Pakistani sovereignty, and all the Taliban go home to run for public office and murder each other in the street (à la Republic of Ireland, circa 1920s).

All the Pachtuns become organized, Ghandian non-violent protestors (no, that’s already been accomplished around 1912, and sabotaged quite handily by the Brits and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the one and only time in total cooperation with one another). Besides, the Western media wouldn’t consider this a “victory.” Not Republican (bloody-minded and staggeringly costly) enough.

Pakistan and India have a nuclear war, and Afghanistan is sterilized by the resulting nuclear cloud blowing in the wrong direction (the natural one being onto the American Mid-West).

Russia, Iran, China and India offer to garrison Afghanistan with a million men each, thus placing a rifle platoon on every water point and mountain top in-country. NATO pumps up its determination to offer an additional million troops as a “rapid reaction force.” They sit there, doing nothing much but terrorizing the countryside and eating up domestic improvement investments for the next century; then they are sent home to “manage” their respective civil wars induced by that lack of funding. Presumably, using the “network” strategy you perfected, against their own people, including in the USA and Europe.

Ok, those are some suggestions off the top of my head. Got any of your own, in this war deliberately set up to go on forever, smart guy? A war profiteer’s wet dream and a tactician’s nightmare. Please append the date of projected end-of-conflict and final evacuation of neocolonial forces, from among the four that follow: 2111, 2211, 3111, the next Ice Age.

Or are you merely paid to refine the killing, and not put a stop to it?

Bush-Hitler or Obama-Hitler?

2011-01-22T10:27:00.001-08:00

There is no resemblance between honest progressives who compare Bush to Hitler and dishonest reactionaries who smear Obama as one; no “shared incivility or inappropriateness” between those progressive and reactionary critiques. That argument could only be made by brazenly double-dealing Republicans and Democrats scared of their philosophical shadow.

Every time a Republican is caught lying for-the-record for the fifteenth time, cheating on his taxes and stealing someone else’s, the first thing out of his mouth will be the first line of defense of every five-year-old caught red-handed: “But he did it first!”

The most excruciating example of this false similarity is the one whereby any Republican Yahoo may accuse Obama of being a Nazi Communist Socialist Kenyan-born Muslim, because some progressive dared to compare Bush to Hitler previously. Like me. Enthusiastically. Besides, for anyone with a basic education in history, those Obama insults cancel each other out. You cannot be a (God fearing) Muslim and an (atheist) Marxist at the same time; but never you mind… as Republicans, imbecility suits you.

The match the Tea Party and Republicans have made, between Obama and Hitler, is ridiculous; it confirms their ignorance and stupidity, unless it’s their passion for lies and cons. However, no Democrat or progressive can dismiss parallels between Hitler and Bush with mere expressions of good will and good wishes, and retain a pretense at honest historical analysis. Such a dismissal is nothing more than moral cowardice.

As for Bush and Hitler:

Both were elected to the Presidency using questionable methods, with disputed electoral returns not subject to impartial audit, without an electoral plurality, and in violation of their respective Constitutions.

Both were upheld by Supreme Courts packed with Party Loyalists.

Both initiated wars based on publicly broadcast lies.

Both ran their wars (and the rest of their Administration) with inexcusable incompetence and no improvement over time.

Both made use of public disasters (the Reichstag Fire and 9/11) to further their belligerent agendas.

Both placed Party Loyalists in positions of judicial responsibility, when those jobs should have been entrusted to apolitical professional bureaucrats.

Both created new, anti-Constitutional prison systems independent of judicial review.

Both created anti-Constitutional police states based on illegal intelligence gathering.

Both instituted sadistic systems of deliberate torture and mistreatment beyond the law that were eventually applied to the citizens of their country, supposedly under Constitutional protection.

Both used the Nation’s judicial system to persecute their political opponents.

Both had browbeaten media critics and gotten them fired, thus encouraging the rest to cringe respectfully and submit to a long series of Administration swindles and lies without a whimper.

Both appealed to the ignorance, stupidity, fear and greed of the most bigoted minority of the population (their ‘political base’) to justify their immoral policies. Both used the sense of self-entitlement, the paranoia, xenophobia and persecution complexes of ignorant masses to mold their opinions to favor evil.

Both violated the Constitution they were sworn to uphold (our Constitution’s definition of High Crimes and Misdemeanors – so far unpunished in Bush’s case).

Both Presidents surrounded themselves with criminal advisors (later condemned).

Both sneered at global diplomacy and other world leaders, pronouncing themselves superior to them and independent of their requirements, even though they obviously were not.

Both ruined the country placed in their care: Bush economically, Hitler militarily.

No German Right-Winger apologized for German Nazis ruination of the German State, even though they supported them with all their might. No American Right-Winger apologized for Bush and his serial corruption and incompetence ruining America, even though they voted for him through two fraudulent elections. Apparently, right-wingers never feel the need to admit their errors: the giveaway sign of a sociopath.

The U.S. government & media’s concerted effort to sweep this diabolical likeness under the rug has created a lethal precedent for the next set of wannabe Republi-fascists not too distant on the political horizon. “After all, Bush got away with a pseudo-Nazi Administration, and was never punished for it; why not do it Right, next time, and go all the way?”

I can’t tell what is scarier: Bush’s fascistic high crimes and misdemeanors, or the cowardly refusal of his replacements, from Obama on down, to inflict an exemplary punishment on him and his co-conspirators, and thus head off their fascistic successors’ rotten misdeeds. Instead, the sharp wedge of fascism was spiked into the heart our Constitution. We have established a legal precedent behind which every future American tyrant and tyrant lover may find refuge.

The similarities listed above, between Bush and Hitler, are clear and straightforward; no such one can be listed between Obama and Hitler. However, a much more subtle and shifting resemblance does exist, between the Obama Administration and Hitler’s immediate predecessors: the liberal democrats of the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933, from just after the end of World War I until Hitler took over).

As for Obama and Weimar democrats:

Both groups were in the Opposition, until they took over from a Far-Right that had wrecked the Nation.

Both groups paid lip service to liberal democratic principles while betraying them at every opportunity. “Liberal”: formerly a term of respect denoting grace and charity; now corrupted into its corporate opposite.

Both groups honored elite-countersigned treaties that bankrupted the Nation and destroyed many of its jobs to pay off international corporate interests.

Both groups oversaw massive transfers of wealth (a large chunk of GNP) upwards to corporate elites, and oversaw the pauperization of the middle class and the bankruptcy of the Nation.

Both groups supported Capital over Labor, and corporate elites over the People.

Both groups were infamous for shielding criminal banking and financial activities, and hiring the perpetrators to dictate financial policy for the Nation.

Both groups aggravated the militarization of civilian police functions.

Both groups disempowered and trivialized their progressive base in favor of corporate, right-wing policies.

Both groups introduced job-creation programs with the utmost reluctance and at the last possible moment – thus surrendering propaganda credit for those new jobs to the fascistic government that wound up taking their place.

Both groups wasted away their initial popular support through ceaseless cooperation with right-wing elites and cooptation by them.

Both groups were criticized and parodied by increasingly popular and politically ineffectual comedic troupes (the only media announcers anyone could have trusted, eventually, who wound up cracking their last jokes behind barbed wire).

Eventually, the Weimar democrats were left flat-footed and powerless by their fascist replacements. The most popular, powerful and honest Weimar politicians wound up serving time in concentration camps, without a clue what had happened to their famous and classical Western representative democracy, and how they could have prevented its dissolution into Nazi tyranny. After all, they had slavishly done everything their corporate masters had told them to do. What could possibly have gone wrong?

Here in America, that is more or less everything we have to look forward to, quite likely.

Please note: Obama could have taken an entirely different path than that of Weimar Germans after World War One. He could have adopted the progressive policies that Franklin Roosevelt adopted after he took over from the Right-Wing (as usual) ruination of the Great Depression, and garnered all the popular support that Obama has lost, since he has chosen to embrace the same corporate corruption that has always landed us in this mess, before and since. Obama has failed his mandate and wasted his electoral advantage; there is nothing more to expect from him, than his Weimar-style surrender to the fascists.

So, if I anyone accuses you of calling Bush a fascist and tells you that designation is just as inappropriate as calling Obama a Nazi Communist Socialist Kenyan-born Muslim, please refer this Republican Yahoo to my written rebuttal – assuming he can read. And, if that accusation comes from a so-called progressive or liberal, ask that invertebrate where he mislaid his backbone.

It’s time to replace all those corporate puppets, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, ad nauseum: the best Republican money can buy and that Democrats will hold their nose and vote for. Let’s start looking for the first of a long line of Franklin Roosevelts and their Administrations of unrivaled honesty for the 21st Century, why don’t we?

Corporatism is mere reheated Monarchism -- resist it the same way!

2010-10-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

The political mess we face here in the United States, is a rehash of the worldwide anti-monarchial revolution that has taken place, on and off, for the last three centuries.

On one side, the People, composed, by definition, of equal human beings who share certain rights and obligations, but most especially, their mortality and, I guess, hope and goodwill for the children and their future. On the other, some self-aggrandizing social network with much stronger guns and propaganda, virtually immortal and indifferent to the future of the People, compared to its raw voracity for cash money in the short term.

The quarrel between People Power and Organized (Crime) Tyranny is merely being re-rehashed under a different guise. Stupid Greed versus humanity. The reptilian mind versus the mammalian. The Nazis versus the rest of us (regardless of your qualms with the use of that term).

And if you don’t think this is a Left/Right thing, it is because you, as a typical American, have never seen, read or heard from a real American Leftist in all your life. Thanks to Gestapo-like tactics and systematic media strangulation extending through the last century, America can boast of a large, bilateral Party of Constitutional Conservative Centrists (whining hand-wringers and corporate lackeys all, while they sell the family farm away to) a Right, a far Right and a nut-job element panting for the Apocalypse and/or a Thousand Year Reich swathed in Red, White and Blue – but no organized Left whatsoever.

What the U.S. really needs is a well disciplined and popular (you will be surprised, how popular) political Party. Call it Progressive, Communist, what you will. It will demand the hostile government takeover of the banksters, selling off their profitable appendages and casting adrift the rest; the nationalization of the petroleum/coal/nuke cartel and allocation of its profit to greener alternatives; and the mobilization of the entire workforce into a strike machine that would paralyze the country if its demands were not met. We would be free to make this Party’s demands as extravagant as we wished; there would be no need to limit them to suit “moderates” and compromise with right-wing gangsters.

If the U.S. had a self-disciplined Left organized along the same lines every other industrialized country but this one has, then American Centrist sheep bleats for universal health care, consumer protection, clean elections, infrastructure reconstruction and job creation would suddenly become quite sensible, middle-of-the-road compromises. They would stop being dismissed by the collective fascists as ravings of the “Loony Left” and quashed at every turn.

Martin Luther King succeeded in transforming American racism (until its fanatics murdered him) because much angrier, more violent blacks stood in the background, ready to take over if his demands were not met. Essentially, King’s message was: “Accept my message of peaceful co-existence and equity, or embrace theirs of violent revolution.” American Progressives have failed to heed this example. Rather than promoting a Party that would make the most extreme demands, then settling the compromises; they have started out by humbly begging for the compromise solutions, and finished by watching them be brushed aside in favor of maintaining status quo abuses.

I suspect that most Americans, even those that dare call themselves Progressives despite their total failure for generations, are much more comfortable being ruled by a pack of lying, thieving reactionaries, than by any alternative group from the Left. They would rather all their fondest hopes failed forever, than risk being ruled by anyone but corporate crooks. They therefore deserve whatever fascist abuse they refuse to scour clean, once and for all.

2010-06-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

Fusion reactors? It wouldn’t be the first or last time that the powers-that-be were 100% misleading and misled.

The Utility of War: the Art of War in the Modern World

2010-05-22T19:44:00.000-07:00

In The Utility of War: the Art of War in the Modern World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007, General Rupert Smith compares wars of the past, which he calls Industrial War, with those in the present, which he calls war amongst the people.

During Industrial War, well-defined nation-states used to game each other like high-stakes poker players, anteing up all their manpower and industrial resources for a climax confrontation that ended (quite conveniently) in total defeat for one side and total victory for the other. He says this type of historical war has ended with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, even though the developed nations (actually, all the nation-states of WeaponWorld) are still trained, organized and equipped to understand and fight it and it alone.

He affirms that modern nations must learn to fight a new kind of war, one in which minorities with specific means and ends that differ from those of the developed nations, live among the people, and in which both sides fight “to capture the will of the people.” The currency of this new kind of war is the aimed bullet as long as order under law must be re-established, then evidential information leading to prosecution and sentence, to re-establish justice once and for all.

Unlike in industrial war, the people are not the enemy, even though the enemy live among the people; the presumed goal is the re-establishment of justice instead of the defeat of an entire people and its army; and the common currency is information instead of firepower. The outcomes that war amongst the people may achieve are amelioration, containment, deterrence-or-coercion, and destruction, in ascending levels of applied force and descending ones of likelihood of success; and the time frame is indefinite and perhaps endless instead of ASAP. Finally, the military are but one of many means to achieve the desired strategic end, and not the primary one, compared to political, diplomatic, legal and economic actors (one’s own, one’s allies’ and the people’s). There are too many other good ideas in this book to go into them here; a recommended reading.

In 1984, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger outlined six conditions (the Weinberger Doctrine) which the U.S. had to fulfill to avoid another Vietnam-like quagmire:

1. It should be of vital national interest to the United States and its allies.

2. Intervention must occur wholeheartedly with a clear intention of winning.

3. There must be clearly defined political and military objectives.

4. The relationship between the objectives and the forces must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.

5. There must be a reasonable assurance that the American people and Congress will support the intervention.

6. Commitment of U.S. forces should be the last resort.

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War (1991), added condition(s) number seven.

7. Should the U.S. intervene, the operation should be short, occasion few casualties to U.S. forces, and the force used must be decisive and overwhelming.

General Smith shows how these conditions cannot cope with War of the People instead of Industrial War, the major reason being that most of them cannot be answered reliably before a new operation is undertaken. Later on in his book (page 392), he lists a number of questions that rational leaders of developed nations should answer before they engage in any new military adventure.

“Whom are we opposed to? What is the outcome they desire? What future do they threaten? How is this different from our desired outcome?

“Are we seeking order or justice? On a scale between them, where is our outcome? If we are seeking justice, whom is it for?

“Who are we going to deal with, their present leaders or do we want others in power? If so, who are they? Are we changing the present leadership entirely? If not, who stays?

“Whose law are we using; their or ours? If ours; do we want their law to change?

“Who is administering the state; them or us?

“Do we know the outcome we want in sufficient detail that we can set objectives to be achieved? If not, the most we can achieve is a situation likely to be conductive to an outcome we will approve of. Can we define this “condition” so that we can set objectives to be achieved? If not; the most we can do is to ameliorate and contain, whilst we find the information to answer the foregoing questions.

“At what level (Strategic, Theater or Tactical) can we in theory achieve objectives directly by force of arms? Should we do this? Can we do this? Will we do this? When do we do this?

“If not, what are we prepared to threaten and promise in order to achieve the objectives we have defined? What does the opponent most value that we can threaten? What does he want most? (Remembering always that threats are expensive when they fail and bribes are expensive when they succeed.) When do we do this?

“How do we show the threat is credible; that we will carry it out, that we will succeed even if we have to escalate to do so? Are all other courses of action open to use perceived as being less attractive to us than carrying out our threat?

“How do we show the opponent’s threats are insufficient and that we will reject their alternative outcome?

“How do we ensure our promises are credible in the eyes of the opponent and the people?

“How do we ensure the opponent and the people can be trusted?”

Above and beyond the questions that General Smith poses, the most honest ones that a nation-state must ask itself are:

Is the military anarchy of WeaponWorld, currently upheld by military nation-states as well as terrorist organizations, in the developed or undeveloped worlds alike, justifiable on moral, tactical or strategic grounds? Wouldn’t PeaceWorld offer a less paradoxical setting to defend the most valid ideals implied in the questions listed above? In the meantime, aren’t we morally equivalent to those terrorists, merely better financed and organized hoodlums? Thus incapable of defeating them in the long run, since unwilling to adopt the moral, propaganda and organizational prerequisites (PeaceWorld) to do so for keeps?

An email I got from Tom Porter re: Anomalous Archeology

2010-03-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Mark,

couldn’t find the site with the very interesting pix, but here are next best -

Anomalous archaeology

http://www.energeticforum.com/psychic-paranormal/836-forbidden-anomalous-archaeology.html

Anomalous artefacts

http://paranormal.about.com/od/ancientanomalies/ig/Most-Puzzling-Ancient-Artifact/

Oklahoma

http://www.viewzone.com/oklahoma.southend.html

Michael Cremo

http://www.forbiddenarcheology.com/

& MC verbals at

http://www.wendag.com/forum/showthread.php/407-Forbidden-Archaeology

Personally, I've been at odds with conventional Darwinian shit for a long time, but on the other hand, what to make of this new evidence? Keep an open mind?

Supreme Court = Rat Bastards

2010-01-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

Well, the same Supreme Court rat-bastards who managed to embezzle the presidential election in favor of Bush the Lesser, have now stolen the entire American political process. We citizens of the U.S.A. are well and truly screwed, helpless pawns adrift in the Niagara cash flow of our new Corporate Monarchy. Long live King Cola!

Haiti 2010

2010-01-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Heartfelt grief to our brothers and sisters who’ve lost loved ones in the Haitian earthquake. No words can compensate their suffering. This disaster is so crushing because the island has no economic slack or surplus to cope with it. What’s more, the world’s reaction (requiring a full week for a proper response) demands systematic improvement. New Orleans: F; Indian Ocean Tsunami: D; Haiti: C-; your hometown: ?

Those are our failings, for us to redeem. We can guess what Martin Luther King would have said about this, on this his holiday. “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”

Haiti has been a blot on the American Soul: the throbbing canker sore of our syphilitic inheritance of New World slavery. We should lance that boil and heal it. As usual, the least among us have suffered the most from it, past and present, and would offer the most promise in the future.

We must allow Haitians to manufacture this economic surplus. Unfortunately, bogus WeaponWorld requirements reduce to nothing the real needs of those survivors. They may be provided with emergency rations, water and gunpoint security in the short term, but left to their fate in the long run -- so much human waste to be exploited or ignored.

On PeaceWorld, our reaction to the Haitian disaster would be self-evident. Once we had met immediate needs, vast investments in infrastructure would generate economic self-sufficiency once and for all.

The following local industries need to be financed: construction, tourism, piecework clothing for export, and agricultural self-sufficiency (the first elements of any healthy economy). Along with these, communication and education infrastructures and ecological restoration throughout the island, virtually from scratch. Once they have been properly financed, Haiti may regrow into its natural place in the global scheme. NGOs on the ground know exactly what is needed, and must be consulted. Everywhere and under all circumstances, native leaders must be responsible for local development, and natives, hired to construct it.

This is the best we could offer to such poor folk so long subjected to economic servitude and enforced misery. We owe it to ourselves to restore their full potential. There would be nothing but gain in this, as much for us and for them. It would not be passing charity but the ultimate justice. And from it we could forecast unexpected benefits, as against the injustice that has disgraced, injured and ruined, out of the blue, all involved.

Thorium versus Uranium

2010-01-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

As far as nuclear technologies are concerned, Thorium nuclear power plants may offer a better alternative. They hold significant advantages over their Uranium238 equivalents.

Thorium ores are available in large quantities, much greater than Uranium reserves soon to run out. Secondly, Thorium232 reactors cannot go critical (unlike so-called pebble bed reactors, a compromise technology part-Thorium and mostly Uranium); they would be a lot cheaper to build and run than those requiring costly safeguards against runaway nuclear reactions. Third, Thorium power plants do not produce weapons-grade material (Uranium235 and Plutonium239) as end products. Finally, the tailings of Thorium reactions have a radioactive half-life of hundreds instead of thousands and millions of years, and are thus easier to store until they are safe.

Uranium238 reactors were favored over Thorium ones BECAUSE they produced weapon-grade materials required for the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons humanity saw fit to build. Thorium reactor research reached the point of building working models. However, they were sidelined in favor of Uranium reactors; just like solar, water and wind power were sidelined in favor of nuclear, coal and petroleum equivalents. Time to abandon insane technologies in favor of reasonable ones.

Left in the Dark

2009-12-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Graham Gwynn and Tony Wright, Left in the Dark, Kaleidos Press, 2008. www.leftinthedark.org.uk.

From its inception, some seventy million years ago, humanity had enjoyed a diet of jungle fruit easily digestible and rich in flavenoids. This optimal diet inhibited the production of steroids and MAOs in the human body, stimulated its pineal gland activity, and induced a physiological feedback loop that further inhibited steroid activity, lengthened the prepubescent growth period (the more advanced the species, the longer its prepubescent growth) and tripled the volume of the human brain in an extremely short time from an evolutionary point of view. During this period, humanity’s thought processes were increasingly based on two co-equal brain hemispheres operating in parallel and balanced sanity.

Unfortunately, from 200,000 to 12,000 years ago, humanity was forced to adapt to much less hospitable environments. Something induced the catastrophic constriction of the human gene line to five or six female survivors. Thanks to its overgrown brain capacity, humanity survived this transition from a diet of lush arboreal fruit, to the savanna equivalent of tubers and seeds, then post-glacial animal flesh. These distorting diets induced a cumulative and total deterioration of our intellectual capacity, without any corresponding physiological evolution. We remained exactly the same species, just ate different foods.

This nutritional alteration increased the influence of testosterone in human bodies (both male and female), which reversed our prior advantages by inducing a cascade of mental retardation that stressed the human sleep cycle, shut down the human brain’s right hemisphere in favor of the left (linear thinking and short-term memory over holistic thought and long-term processing), and founded human behavior on restrictive fear instead of holistic understanding.

According to this book’s conclusions, we are the mentally crippled survivors of this transition from a physiologically optimal diet of arboreal fruit, to less and less advantageous ones (terminating in the absolutely worthless junk food of today), which induced a spiraling decay in our values and behavior. The ancient legend of humanity’s fall from grace is actually a nutritional one, of fall from optimal brain food to more and more detrimental ones and consequent behavioral aberration. About which we have had not a clue, up ‘til now. The still, small voice we hear so rarely (and too often mistake for the voice of God), is the entombed one of our right brain.

Think this through, first.

2009-12-21T12:02:00.000-08:00

I find myself forced to note that, everywhere on Earth, representative democracy is in freefall and the voice of the people, crushed by the profit-seeking of elites, more or less brutally according to geographical circumstance, but without obstruction or organized dispute, and more and more formally.

Social problems have become so extensive and intractable (like just before the French Revolution) that national-capitalists have established without dispute a global corporate monarchy (Long live King Cola!): the only one, according to them, able to overcome its problems if not ignore them until they disappear in accordance with the tattered logic of their reactionary enchantment (they have nothing more to depend upon). Even though it only manages to worsen those problems, in every country and every instance – until they explode simultaneously and everywhere, unavoidably.

We are just waiting for an alterglobal revolution to revisit all this, when the peoples on Earth will agree in concert that they are fed up with their respective gerontocracies, interchangeable not in wisdom or age, but in their obsolete technologies and hallucinatory self-satisfaction: this event entirely unforeseen but within the means of the worldwide web and its World Agora tropism for sociopolitical decentralization, universal welcome and demilitarization.

Let us hope that this spontaneous Laocracy will establish itself through perestroika and not Terror, and that the unavoidable counter-revolution will be just as peaceful but much less sovereign. If not, beware the ensuing chaos: blood will run in the streets of a world in flames, as has never been seen before.

I beg you to think this through more thoroughly, beforehand.

Universal Health Care NOW!

2009-12-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

Give us universal single payer health care (like any civilized country has) or give us your political seat!

http://peaceworld.110mb.com/270AMA.htm

Treat Afghanistan like Bosnia

2009-10-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

The problem with Afghanistan today is that no one country and/or alliance of countries, attempting to fulfill its parochial interests at the expense of everyone else’s (and especially the Afghan people’s) has a chance of succeeding on its own. Not the Russians, not the Europeans, not the Americans, not any other isolated alliance. Everyone in power today is thinking small and of indefinite duration, when they should be thinking big and on some predetermined time scale. We should be treating Afghanistan like Bosnia but on a much greater scale.

What is needed in Afghanistan is wall-to-wall military boots on the ground to ensure local security, along with sufficient civil affairs and police assets to rebuild the country from the ground up. This the whole world could supply, but no one country or alliance that had other priorities.

So here is my proposal. Under United Nations control, every country so disposed would be called to provide division-sized military units split evenly between combat forces and trainers for the Afghan Army, police and police trainers, and civil affairs and construction units. Each country would be allocated one or more districts of Afghanistan to garrison (depending on the number of divisions it chose to send), with the understanding that twenty percent of its troops would be withdrawn every year until none were left, and only the native Afghan Army, police and government cadres remained onsite after five years.

Priority would go to deploying divisions from Muslim countries. Pakistan would be exempted in order to secure its internal security. Indian troops would be deployed as far away from the Pakistan border as possible; Chinese, Russian and Iranian troops, as far away from their own borders as possible. European, American and Muslim country divisions would fill in the gaps. The target goal would be one million foreign troops during the first year, and their orders would be to secure local peace and practice intensive civil development within their area of responsibility under the direction of the U.N.

With that many troops on the ground, military security would quickly become a secondary problem. Priority would go to infrastructure development (schools, roads, administrative services and commercial activities), as well as police training and the elimination of local government corruption. Afghanistan’s entire opium crop would be purchased in bulk by the U.N. every year for five years and destroyed on site. Funds so spent would go to agricultural and small business development locally, until local economies could replace the income gained by the growing poppies. Democratic elections would be organized, monitoring and held annually until they became routine and expected.

The entire U.N. project would be designed to pack up and leave Afghanistan after five years, and everyone would know it. If Afghanistan could not be demilitarized, rebuilt and stabilized politically within five years by such a massive international policy, then it can never be stabilized. We should resolve this problem once and for all, not compromise it indefinitely. Otherwise, get out and cut your losses.

Poetry is good for you

2008-04-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

Pick a poem, any poem to read, of mine

http://peaceworld.100mb.com/013POEMS.htm

Or those of others.

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/

Poetry is the broccoli of the mind:

An acquired taste, but worthwhile.

According to Mark Lynas', Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

2008-03-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

“In constraining carbon through rationing, we might soon find that we were building a different sort of society, one emphasizing quality of life before the raw statistics of economic growth and relentless consumption. I have no grand plan for how this society might look, nor do I pretend that it would be some kind of utopia. Life would go on, with all its trials and tribulations—and that, after all, is precisely the point. Unless we do constrain carbon, life will very largely not go on at all.” Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., 2008, p. 302. The next few paragraphs (ending in a grim list with a few addenda of mine) are my summary of this vital global warming primer. Read them and weep.

Picture God as a senile old coot, once lauded as the master artist of his time. Having lost his eyesight these last few years, he has reduced his worldly pallet to four colors: tans, grays, the purest aqua blue and cloud white. Gone all the icy white, erased without mercy from equatorial mountains (one degree), from the Arctic Ocean (two degrees), then from the Alps, the Rockies and the Andes (three degrees), and finally from the mighty Himalayas, even Greenland and the Antarctic after a mere five degrees of increase in average world heat. Gone forest green, tropical or temperate, since the ice’s life-giving rivers would no longer flow so dependably in summertime; gone the dark browns of good soil, either washed away by floods or turned into dustbowl by drought. In the heat engine of a hotter Earth, rains will conform to the following biblical scheme: “For to those who have much more will be given, but for those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” No more fallow fields, no woods, no living coral reefs and no fish.

Gone all the port cities, flooded no matter how they fortified themselves; gone the bioluminescence of human cities by night, a few remaining smudges of survival luminosity closed up against polar shores, if they could get away with it. Instead, bright lights flash out to sea, where once-frozen, now thawed methane hydrate froths up from square miles of continental shelf and detonates in titanic explosions that will interrupt the occasional Force 6+ hyper-hurricane with massive tsunamis. The oceans are the purest aqua blue because there is no oxygen in the water and therefore no life. The remaining biomass is inedible scrub and mangrove swamp, and not much of that; all induced by a mere five degree rise in average world temps. Six degrees and forget human bioluminescence for at least a few centuries while the climate stabilizes from the equivalent of the Permian-Triassic die-off when the world almost became a barren ball of rock. A few humans might survive, reproduce and rebuild, in good time. An equivalent drop of six degrees would glaze the entire planet in ice, perhaps all the way to the equator.

To avert this fate, we would have to start scheduling ‘wedges’ or statistical pie slices of saved energy and reduced greenhouse gas (each wedge would reduce CO2 emissions by 1,000 metric tons per year by 2050), this according to Robert Socolow and Stever Pacala of Princeton University. If we ‘insert’ enough of these wedges into our lives, say 13 of them, and do so quickly enough, we may perhaps avoid the most deadly of these heat death phenomena. Some of the wedges to pick from, to discard as too noxious, or to duplicate several times, include:

• Double every automobile’s fuel efficiency
• Halve every automobile’s yearly mileage
• Halve the number of autos on Earth (Should I lead by example and drive my VW Bug over the nearest cliff so no one else can use it?)
• Make as many (?) habitations as possible energy-neutral
• 700 one-Gygawatt nuclear power stations (look out for those that go Pop!)
• Two million one-Megawatt wind power or water power turbines
• Five million acres of photovoltaic solar panels (27 square feet per person on Earth; should I lead by example and go broke lining the roof of my house with solar panels?)
• Massive reforestation (? million acres of replanted trees) and bury those trees once they’ve matured
• End all clear-cutting and massive burns of tropical forests, as of yesterday
• Devote 618 million acres to biofuel instead of food (arm yourself against the famine-struck)
• Sequester 1,000 metric tons of liquid CO2 underground
• Artificial photosynthesis (biomechanical, in vertebrates, in humans?)
• Genetically engineered coccoliths (plankton) producing calcium carbonate by the thousands of metric tons
• Orbiting mirrors, spray the sky with shadow-inducing nitrates?
• Orbiting solar power plants beaming power back to Earth (look out for unforeseen atmospheric effects)
• A massive ‘cull’ of humanity: one Plague or several (natural or weapon grade) or an Apocalyptic disaster that would painfully but conveniently subtract 25%, 30% or more of humanity, and probably us, too, between now and as soon as possible (the Celts feared nothing except that the sky should fall on their heads…)
• ?... (Any other ideas: good crazy, bad crazy or otherwise?)

It's time to withdraw when

2007-04-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

It’s time to execute an immediate withdrawal strategy when one or more of the following events occur (not necessarily in this order):

1) You began the campaign based on well-documented lies.

2) After thirty days in-country, you are not spending at least $10 on local development for every $1 spent on bullets.

3) More than ten percent of your funding cannot be accounted for.

4) The natives start fighting each other (beyond police round-ups) despite your troops on the ground.

5) The native security forces you have set up are fighting each other over the spoils, or unreliable in combat, or despised by the local population.

6) More than ten percent of the advisors you dispatch are ignorant political appointees, and less than 90% are topic-specialists fluent in local languages.

7) The core district of the capital city is off-limits to average natives.

8) Most journalists and NGOs evacuate the area of operations.

9) Anecdotal, on-the-ground perceptions of occupier-native relations are in total contradiction of media/administration propaganda.

10) You are sending the world’s most expensive aircraft out to bomb the world’s cheapest infantry.

11) You cannot afford to maintain a ten-to-one ratio of your own troops versus high-end estimates of opposition combatants.

12) Your human rights violations become a matter of routine and your troops start committing overt war crimes in large numbers.

13) ??? (Feel free to add your comments).

A little late, maybe, but I won.

2007-03-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

It’s funny; I won a war game of the Falklands War quite handily as the Argentineans.

I parked the Argy fleet of ex-World War II rust buckets in three- and four-ship packets at all the Falklands landfalls, and used its modern Air Force very sparingly just to protect the Argentine coast (shorter flights, more missions, better coordination, more loitering/dogfighting capability; most importantly, a final kamikaze reserve kept carefully intact). As I lost ships, I shuffled the survivors around so that Stanley remained a deadly flak trap against low-flying, not-so-fast Harriers I shot down in droves, fouling their bombing runs and eventually chasing them away. I sank the Brit nuke sub in shallow water when it tried to sneak into Stanley Harbor and torpedo my Belgrano flagship (subs are much more vulnerable there, despite their high-tech).

When the British fleet maneuvered close inshore to make a landing, I flung all my ships against it (a short hop: too short for the Brits to react effectively) and sank its pocket aircraft carrier in a conventional gun/torpedo battle. The Brits never made a landing; if they had, my surviving close-support naval artillery would have made their task ten times hotter. That left the Argentine Army and jet Air Force intact, no successful Brit bombardment, no attrition losses. I lost quite a few Argy ships and prop planes in the process, but the UK lost the war, hands down – barring nukes.

No big deal. I just used my Argentine assets so as to optimize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Argentina could have done much the same under the command of other than fascist idiots. The USA, now, likewise. When you’re Mohammed Ali, you dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee; you don’t stand planted there with your jaw hanging out for some bruiser to dislocate in his own sweet time.

The thing about “internal security” operations is, it rots out the military from the most brass-laden honcho down to the last common trooper; turns them into bullies, self-serving shirkers, thieves, liars, cowards and tactical idiots. They cannot stand against an equivalent military force uncontaminated by it. They turn into a gaggle of gangsters with no loyalty, trust, sense of sacrifice or focus on the common good; the few remaining good ones among them quit in disgust, throw their lives away on the cheap, turn stoner or stand back and let the rest hang themselves.

Never confound military honor with militarist fascism; the two are self-contradictory. Military honor is a vital strategic benefit for any healthy society; it can rot away at the slightest infusion of fascism. Lose it and you lose for good. Thank God, or by now we would all be corpses stacked in the concentration camps, toe-tagged by the meticulous sociopaths that history seems to produce inevitably; or just nuclear war survivors chipping radioactive rocks for our next meal.

Military honor is the only thing that checks this spiral into chaos. What are categorically anti-military peaceniks going to use? Your good looks? You’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

March 3, 2007 -- Switzerland and Lichtenstein go to war!

2007-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

March 2, 2007 – A company of Swiss Militia got lost during night maneuvers and wandered across the (unmarked, unfortified) border of Lichtenstein. They hadn’t realized where they’d wound up until they strayed into a nearby village, got their bearings and quietly withdrew home.

Results, awkwardness all around (Lichtenstein has no Army). A thorough chewing-out, no doubt, for the Company Commander in question after his Battalion and Regimental COs were informed of how badly he had embarrassed the hallowed traditions of the martial Swiss. It is said there is nothing more dangerous than a junior officer maneuvering his tight-reined unit with a map and compass by twilight. Casualties: none beyond a few bruised egos and sore muscles. Damage: zero. Strategic threat: zero.

A few laughs for the rest of us, a momentary break from our daily grief over serial massacres around the world, while everyone looks on via TV without doing anything serious to stop it.

In short, Switzerland and Lichtenstein just suffered my kind of war, the kind that would be commonplace on PeaceWorld. Heavily armed, highly skilled soldiers training hard so their country would never, ever be invaded again. All the local civilians peacefully asleep in their snug homes, never suspecting their lives were in danger from foreign invaders because the whole peril would be patently absurd. Everyone goes home with apologies all around.

On PeaceWorld, everyone everywhere would be protected by heavily armed local Militias on the Swiss Model: local youths well paid, harshly trained and superbly equipped to confront any Aggressor. The World Court would ensure strategic security as reliably as the EU government ensures peace between European countries. No serious international threats, no terrorism beyond sensation-seeking theatrics, no more military crackdowns against helpless civilians. Ever. Any hint of such would be forbidden and swiftly punished by the World Court until organized warfare between any two groups on Earth would be as unthinkable as between Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

No more Palestinian and/or Israeli massacres. No more millions of African war casualties, not even dozens. No more fundamentalist Mujadeen… well, some Mujadeen might continue to fight in Afghanistan and nearby (since no one has ever found another hobby they would abide by), but they’d do so in isolation among themselves and at the expense of their own neighbors until their wisest tribal leaders saw reason in peace.

All this is entirely within our actual political, communications and military means. It would be a question of a few months’ massive reeducation by the global orthodox media of the world, then massive reorganization of the world’s war fighting capabilities. We refuse to make it happen because we are politically powerless by choice. If enough Learners chose to check it out, no one on Earth could stop us until PeaceWorld were an everyday certainty.

March 2, 2011 – Heavily armed units of Palestinian or Israeli, Sri Lankan, Somali or American, Chechen or Russian, Central African -- pick your most fearsome military tough guys -- penetrate foreign borders during night-time maneuvers. Casualties: zero. Damage: zero. Strategic threat: zero. The slumbers of local civilians aren’t even disturbed and everyone goes home casting apologies all around. Headlines on the hour.

http://peaceworld.110mb.com/300WORLDMILITIA.htm

I ask you: What the Hell are we waiting for?

I love Martin Luther King

2007-01-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King was not killed because he advocated for Black America. He was not killed because he advocated for minority rights in America. The powers that be had already established that they were amenable to those things; the interests of American elites and those of its minorities were tied together and mutually dependent. Insofar MLK advocated for those things, he was their pioneer spokesperson and their best publicist. The result of his efforts in that line of thought is the America we now see: an America where any person of good standing and character can achieve his or her goals regardless of skin color or ethnic origin. There are still many injustices and errors to rectify, of course, but these are relatively minor technicalities compared to the brilliance of his achievement. You are reading this text because you are not out on the streets arguing these issues in battle maneuvers; you don’t have to do so because Dr. King achieved your primary goals peacefully.

Martin Luther King was killed because he advocated for non-violence and World Peace. He was killed because he advocated for the brotherhood of all humankind on Earth. The powers that be were repelled and panicked by those things; the interests of American elites and those of World Peace were antithetical and mutually contradictory. Insofar MLK advocated those things, he was a raving revolutionary and their worst possible menace. The results of his effort in this respect were his murder and another fifty years of rejection of his most prized belief; thus, a world where no one is secure in the knowledge that his or her children will not be incinerated this very afternoon in some global holocaust, or sent off quietly to soldier for some obscene end and kill the children of other people. There is no progress; on the contrary, we are getting closer and closer to the global chaos he warned us against, with no relief in sight. You are reading this text because Dr. King failed at this primary goal at this moment in time; you do so because you live in an intellectual vacuum otherwise.

To those of you out there who revere Dr. King on this his birthday, rejoice momentarily in the triumph of his aspiration that American minorities be treated with equal respect and welcome. Then despair in the catastrophic rejection of his vision of World Peace. Work for that, now. No other task is fitting enough reverence for his memory. In addition, the technical errors you perceive in the treatment of American and world minorities will disappear once the scourge of World War is removed. The one results from the other. World-dominating elites were short-sighted enough to believe they could resolve the former problem without addressing the latter; are you? Dr. King was far-sighted enough to see this would never be the case; are you?

http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-nobel.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/warandpeace/wpquotes.htm

http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/1964a.html

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING: CIRCA 2012.

2006-12-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

May the following adjectives be applied to every similar proposal in the future, that it may die abirthing; and to its slimeball advocates, so as to discredit them on the spot. May those same advocates be dispatched to do what they do best: like selling used cars “As is, no warranty.”

Rumsfeldian: adj. 1. Pertaining to a massive, aggressive and transformative project or nested series of projects based on questionable motives, leaky logic and a tissue of lies. 2. Pertaining to a magic fix in search of an imaginary problem, of apocalyptic consequence, tricky execution and perilous outcome. 3. Ruinously expensive: a cost vacuum that will suck in every resource, available or otherwise, and demand ever more, even beyond bankruptcy. 4. Of no possible benefit outside Fantasyland or Mafiaville. 5. Morally objectionable and pragmatically unconvincing at first glance by anyone without a self-serving interest in it, and growing less realistic and moral with time. 6. That grinds to powder any honest critic. 7. Which prohibits the likelihood of valid alternatives in the future. 8. Pertaining to a dead-end, plan-B destroyer; rammed through to its futile and counter-productive trailing-off (it can have no valid ‘conclusion’.) 8. Undertaken despite the warnings of disinterested experts and alarmed laymen alike, long before, during its inception and swelling in volume through its maturity. 9. To the peril, ruin and shattered morale of everyone involved at ground level, and destroying the reputation of every official who buys into it. See rumsfeldianism, n. and Rumsfeld, Donald, p.n.

Bushian: adj. Rumsfeldian, but with much less intelligence and based on appeals to base emotions like fear, herd instinct and greed.

Cheneyan: adj. Rumsfeldian, but with even less conscience and more bloody-mindedness.

Rovian: adj. Cheneyan, but from ambush behind the scenes and in a back-stabbing manner.

Asabyia, or the confidence of elite civilizations

2006-09-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

Meditations on War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin, and The Muqaddimah by Ibn-Khaldun (a man whose heart was as great as his mind—if you claim the same gifts, go read him ASAP).

Historical empires are a standard method of maximizing human population density. Population is maximized from the center, the capital and/or central cluster of cities, out to the periphery where it is least dense. Ethnic agglomerations differ from empires in that they have (had, they no longer exist for the most part, among our modern urban societies) less well-defined centers, more mobile and diffuse in terms of population density.

The inter-ethnic barrier Peter Turchin describes is a line drawn between two or more expanding waves of population density of different and incompatible ethnicity (compatible ethnicities tend to blend, the denser absorbing the lesser ones, more or less aggressively). Normally, this barrier occurs along the least densely populated peripheries of these groupings. Its low population density is only increased as imperial armies and ethnic raiding parties cross over and/or fortify it. This is a high-lethality area where cultural evolution is accelerated by lethal competition and reduced carrying capacity. The outcome of evolution within this omnicidal Petri dish is a spike of mutual confidence among survivors (Khaldun’s asabiya plus Turchin’s elaborations). Comparatively speaking, this would be a social aberration, similar to bacteria learning how to pump antibiotics from their cells, even though this energy expenditure would be prohibited under normal circumstances of mutual competition with organisms that did not burden themselves with such a task. This social aberration (maximized confidence) permits smaller populations of “barbarians” to overcome/absorb greater, seemingly better organized ones and appropriate their resources (carrying capacity – land), reducing the opponent’s population density and increasing their own.

Though human population density has increased mindlessly throughout history – insofar it was able – this was not an inherent good. Population densities below a certain threshold do not permit effective resistance against denser outside concentrations – even if confidence spikes (as it would, inevitably, in smaller conglomerations competing with other small ones). Beyond a certain threshold, the population density of successful empires exceeds carrying capacity (multiplied by technology as appropriate), confidence is replaced by rational strategizing and moralists begin punishing saints and promoting knaves in their place (see Turchin’s definitions), instead of the reverse, in an attempt to solve this unsolvable problem. This would resemble an out-of-control immune response in an otherwise healthy organism. Both spikes and troughs of confidence would be situational aberrations. At that point, a lesser population density wave, its confidence spiking, attacks and takes over the denser one whose confidence is in trough.

This cycle will be reenacted endlessly until one world community (empire is an inappropriate term, since empires are built to fight other empires/ethnicities and there would be no other such to confront the world community we are talking about here) finds a way to regulate planetary population densities to just below sustainable carrying capacity, each sub-population within its own biosphere. Civilization is a series of clumsy attempts, constantly refined by disaster, to solve this problem. Our central problem is therefore not technological development, nor even peace, but the voluntary self-regulation of population densities to sustainable levels corresponding precisely with carrying capacity times technology properly applied (I might say reverently applied) of indefinite duration. The stabilization of optimal confidence levels, instead of feed-back transitions from spikes to troughs and corresponding military chaos.

There remain several problems: how is confidence boosted and how is it diminished within large human populations? The diminishing part seems easier to resolve. As womenfolk who belong to conquered peoples or declining empires witness their natal families being massacred and social structures destroyed, as they are raped and enslaved by violent strangers, as new periods of hunger and misery replace prior times of sufficient food and relative peace, they will undergo physiological stress factors that will subtly warp their children’s minds, both before and after birth. These affects will be both physiological and behavioral, increasing the number of knavish children and reducing that of saints, producing heightened levels of selfishness, antisocial behavior and social collapse.

Recall that we are speaking of very large numbers of people over great stretches of time. Turchin speaks of this type of transition, from confidence to selfishness, as taking hundreds of years for a full cycle within a given population, several dozens of generations. At any given time, even during the here and now, countless women are abused and their children grow up damaged by this abuse. But under optimal conditions and ideally, a majority of women would remain content (less stressed) and that contentment would reflect a healthier crop of children and greater levels of social cooperation. At least as long as population density did not exceed carrying capacity multiplied by sustainable technology.

How is it, though, that the greatest historic outbreaks of confidence have occurred among relatively minor tribes at interethnic boundaries – a location so lethal that it would seem to optimize the victimization of women and corruption of their children? The only alternative would seem to be the advent of truly wolf-like small societies within this zone: infinitely cunning, brutal and successful in their attacks upon outsiders, yet angelically benign with respect to their own women and children. How this paradox arises (powerful military groups are by nature abusive of their children) I do not know. Perhaps there is a level of social stress and military peril beyond which the increase in wife and child abuse becomes paradoxical, the way massive or continuous dosages of a drug would produce the opposite outcome expected? This topic requires intensive study.

The same can be said of reduced confidence levels in well-fattened old empires en route to decline. What is it about the provision of adequate rations, social order and reduced stress that would reduce confidence levels and replace them with selfishness and destructive social conflict? In short, why would overall peace corrupt civic virtue, while the threat of annihilation would appear to groom it? This topic requires even more intensive study.

What set off WeaponWorld, 5000 years ago?

2006-09-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

The causative events that replaced peace mentality with weapon mentality in the human conscience are subtle, numerous and synergistic. What’s more, peace mentality is by nature prehistoric, since during the past five thousand years, written history has consisted in the perfection of weapon mentality at its expense. It would take centuries of historians much smarter than me to enumerate these origins honestly. The section WHY of LEARNERS attempts this enumeration in a few hundred pages.

http://peaceworld.freeservers.com/020TABLEOFCONTENTS.htm

Would I be crazy enough to dare delimit, on a page or two, some causative elements I presumed to find without scientific proof? Of course! Thank you (SLP) for asking me that question. In this American vacuum of cerebral dialogue, wherein I find myself captive, my own conclusions cannot succeed all by themselves.

First off, the transformation of mankind, from meat for saber-toothed tigers into the dominant omnivore species of this planetary ecology. Don’t ask me how that happened; I have no idea. As a tactical problem, facing species of stronger carnivores, it seems almost insoluble to me, without talents if not extraterrestrial assistance of which we have no idea. Also, the bankruptcy of these magical and mythical aids - at least, according to us modern ignoramuses – that rendered human economies into a zero-sum military proposition, instead of that of peaceful, unlimited resources prior, based on grace and the miraculous co-operation resulting therefrom. All that since hundreds of millennia, concluded 5,000 years ago.

I bandy about thousands of years of human culture. Recall that one thousand years of human time equals at least twenty successive generations of tribal elders, each at least fifty years old. Each generation subtly influenced by its predecessors and each subtly influencing its replacements. None of this occured overnight.

Meanwhile, the cyclic and accelerating destruction of a much more peaceful human civilization, of a planetary ecology much more welcoming and of technologies that would seem bizarre to us; by means of continental ice melt tsunamis that took place approximately 10,000 years ago. The only survivors were a few primitive shepherds and hunters-gatherers on highland plateaus proof against these tsunamis (and some civilized survivors who enlightened them as best they could). They rebuilt isolated and much less subtle civilizations in a decimated ecology and equipped with starveling energy technologies. They replaced this ancestral culture based on oral recitation of holy texts learned by heart (and thus much more worthy) with those based on written texts, much better at authorizing and perpetuating weapon lies and stupidities.

I love poetry; you cannot understand how much. My digitally pixilated words are shit compared to poetry you could not help but memorize and recite because they were so beautifully wise.

The following transformations are not listed in chronological order; be warned.

The dumbed-down survivors of this destruction could not cure those born with violent mental pathologies and incorporate them into peaceful civilization in an elegant manner. These deviants agglomerated and organized themselves into destructive bands. The prior civilization could not survive them, suffering as it did climate transformations and new plagues beyond its ability to cure. Given the disappearance of truly nutritive and medicinal farming, remaining agricultural technologies competed against those of nomad herders, and the first villages, rebuilt during millennia of mounting shortages, were fortified and militarized. The Plant Trap impaired the raising of healthy children. (I am summarizing – see LEARNERS for details). Alcohol was adopted in order to concentrate rare farm surpluses for preservation through many periods of famine. Its behavioral repercussions canceled hundreds of thousands of years of refinement in our social ethics as internally peaceful packs of omnivores. Military technologies, religions and organizations prevailed at an accelerating pace over those peaceful, and managed to extinguish them almost entirely. Here we are.

Yet this attribution of first causes, no matter how attractive to the intellect, is not required for Learner transformation. These causes are embedded in the depths of time and therefore beyond our control. Weapons mentality survives because of the weapon mythology it disseminates. We need to replace that mythology, in its cultural entirety, by a peaceful, entirely parallel one just as justifiable. Our recognition that we hate peace – as much as individuals as members of cultures that hate it – and our self-transformation as well as that of our cultures by acts of pure, communal will – no matter how lame – those must be our current goals.

I suspect that this transformation could be the most lethal one we need undergo, barring the ultimate expression of weapon mentality that could sterilize the whole planet, short of our stopping it once and for all. Thereafter, if our civilization survives at all, we may rebuild peaceful paleotechnics, if not their superior substitutes, able to grant us unlimited energy directed towards peace, replacing ours of military penury. We are willfully stupid; it is a question of reinventing ourselves smarter on a planetary basis; of recabling the collective superconscience, as ADN would wish us to do.

The religious implications of this transformation, I leave you to consider according to your fancy. Christ never required them of us; He compels nothing of anyone, as Love never does. “Let him without sin throw the first stone.” Those words confirm His Divinity, and God’s—beyond our wildest expectations. If we will not adopt them voluntarily, we are not worthy of them, nor is our species to survive. After all, ADN has all the time in this universe, as well as those to come, to create a worthy civilization. Will we be found worthy? I stumble over refuse on our streets and children famished all over the Earth, that confirm our unworthiness.

The substitution in peace of this cultural weapon mythology is our principal task. Scientific enumeration of prior causes will be the task of Learners to come: beneficiaries of a civilization much smarter than ours, recovering from our perpetual self-lobotomies to better answer military requirements, each antinomial and ultimately insoluble.

I await this perestroika, while dreading the repercussions of our militant, ritual stupidity. Given this principal task, our primary problem consists in adhering to peaceful means (of which we are virtually ignorant) in order to reach this peaceful end, instead of falling into the trap of militant means (seeming many times easier and less suicidal to us) that will only confirm the cultural dominance of weapon mentality. Rather, I await the advent of international Learners much more gifted than me, through the coaching of their distinct lives, to teach us how to reach it. LEARNERS is just the spark of inspiration cast upon the parched tinder of their planetary genius.

If it were up to me all alone, or to a few Learners so inclined, no success would be feasible. Up to every one of them operating as a co-operative commune, perhaps one chance in two. Up to someone else, practicing whatever else, good luck with that!

Fight in Iraq or fight at home

2006-09-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

Nixon negotiated with the North Vietnamese behind President Johnson’s back during a declared Police Action (Vietnam). Reagan negotiated with the Iranians behind President Carter’s back during the (Iran) Hostage Crisis. Bush the Minor negotiated with the Taliban behind President Clinton’s back during another military crisis (Twin Towers I, the Destroyer Cole, the bombed Embassies). Then, as President, this same Bush the Minor choke-chained the intelligence community and thus permitted 9/11 to happen (so as not to disturb delicate natural gas pipeline negotiations that the Taliban broke off nine days before 9/11).

Now, from my eccentric perspective, rendering aid and comfort to an avowed enemy of the United States, behind the back of the Commander in Chief and in direct contradiction of his intent, and facilitating thousands of American casualties in the process, that’s Treason punishable by firing squad (I’d settle for throwing every responsible party in jail and chucking the keys – no need for an International War Crimes tribunal; we can dispose of this little matter in-house).

This is no wild-eyed conspiracy theory. These high crimes and misdemeanors are on the record for anyone to see. Heck, Republicans BRAG about getting away with them. What is the punishment for serial Treason in the USA? Getting your Party Commissar elected against a Democrat incumbent. Not once, mind you; three times. Who permitted this triple treason? The Democrats, both in and out of Congressional majority. If a Democratic President is ever elected again (which I doubt, unless some crypto-slime like Lieberman) the Republicans will simply cut a deal with our worst enemies abroad, and thus regain the White House. Simple. Effective. Guaranteed success.

Throw in an unpunished Presidential assassination (Kennedy) and the assassination of a Democrat Presidential shoo-in (another Kennedy), plus two blatantly stolen Presidential elections, (2000, 2004). Plus NOTHING done to prevent recurrence (2006, 2008). I cannot help but conclude, if Bush the Minor or his upcoming Republican Presidential replacement, Adolph Hitler III, went out on the White House Lawn and, in front of the entire White House Press Corps, shot your Grandmother in the back of the neck, the entire Democratic Leadership Committee would fall over itself to swear it was the fault of Left-Wing extremists, and the lot of you would buy it

Please! Let’s have no public disturbance!

The other day, Bush told us that if we withdrew from Iraq, we would have to finish this war on our streets at home. God bless him; for once in his lifetime, he spoke the truth. If we force him to withdraw from Iraq, he will wage exactly the same kind of war against us at home. We have been warned.

The Beka Valley as 21st Century Cannae

2006-07-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

OK. Let's play "Name Your Favorite Nightmare Scenario!"

Bets, anyone? Who’s sucker enough to bet on humanity, compassion and reason over religious insanity?

Ten trillion dollars short and thirty years late

2006-07-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Steven Aftergood's Blog: Secrecy News, reports that the U.S. Army has finally updated its counterinsurgency doctrine, thirty years after the last one was written up, post-Vietnam, and three years after Iraq was invaded.

http://fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/07/

Do you recall the Wienberger Doctrine? The one Colin Powell was supposed to endorse? Don't ever go to war without overwhelming force, retain clear objectives, have a precise in-and-out timeline and collect multi-lateral international support? You know, all those things we barged into Iraq without the slightest trace of? That was the gist of the U.S. Army doctrine written thirty years ago. Fat lot of good it did us, then and now. I wonder how much more good this new one will do us. Perhaps in later applications in Boston, Chicago and Seattle?

Well, I guess this new doctrine should be called: "By the way, don't squash too many civilian bugs while you're at it..."

It was written by General David Petraeus who commanded the 101st Airmobile Division and Colonel Conrad Crane of the Military History Institute. They should be praised for the moral courage it must have taken them to promote such a doctrine despite the mental inertia of the rest of the U.S. Military and especially its neo-con, chicken hawk, torture-is-worthwhile minders. So should Marine Colonel T.X. Hanes, for inspiring this effort with his book, The Sling and the Stone. Must get a copy of that book to read…

Steven quotes this draft manual as follows:

"Traditionally, armies have had to unlearn much of their doctrine and (re)learn the principles of COIN while waging COIN campaigns."
Counterinsurgency "presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander."
Among the "paradoxes of counterinsurgency" are the fact that "the more you protect your force, the less secure you are"; "the more force [is] used, the less effective it is"; and "sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction."

I only found out about this development by reading the July 13, 2006 version of http://www.lemonde.fr/, the website for Le Monde, the French equivalent of the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor combined. Le Monde ran a nice long article about the Secrecy News piece, with more quotes from the final draft Field Manual. I’m sure I couldn't find more than two column inch squibs concerning this topic among all those newspapers combined, and AP, and Reuters and UPI—but then again, I’m a hopeless optimist when it comes to American journalism. Forget TV.

Anywhoo… The reason I bring this up is because I whipped up my very own version of counterinsurgency doctrine (being the “Army of One” that I am) at least eight months ago, at

http://peaceworld.freeservers.com/300WORLDMILITIA.htm

You are welcome to go take a look at it. My version is not only unclassified and in final, but free to the general public. Plus its A LOT shorter.

Once (if ever)

"Counterinsurgency," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24 (Final Draft), June 2006 (241 pages, 2.4 MB PDF file)

comes out in its declassified final version, you will be amazed how similar our conclusions turned out to be. Is that a good thing? Search me...

Who benefits from Mumbai?

2006-07-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

I can’t stop thinking about all those poor people in Mumbai, just like all those poor Spaniards and Londoners, New Yorkers and Kenyans, Iraqis, Israelis, Afghans and Palestinians. That brother/sisterhood of bomb victims winds up being the most innocent, cosmopolitan, ecumenical, interethnic and profoundly human on this sorry planet. Too bad the whole of humanity can’t rally around their peaceful memory, and not the bloody-minded priorities of their murderers.Rattling to work on morning trains; superheated, thick and sticky crowds attempting valiantly to remain civilized; everyone yearning that that first stuffy challenge of the morning be over and done with, that the day’s gray workload liberate them from it; the gray monsoon rattles every car roof under its ceaseless downpour. The roar, the sway and the damp, burnt tang of cheaply lain track… Then the stunning blow (I can feel its first kiss on my crawling scalp), literally decapitating, vaporizing the upper torso of those nearest, caving the skulls and collapsing the shoulders of those standing mid-ground and spattering the remainder with vaporized gore and a shrapnel of overhead grillwork and bone splinters, scything broken-legged everyone sprawling as mortally wounded trains screech to a grinding halt… Dead silence momentarily, then the screaming aftermath rinsed in blood and endless rain. The hospitals overrun with dead and dying filling the corridors and sending nurses and orderlies running pale for extra supplies, trying not to slide on all that bloody spoor. The agony, the shock, the grief. All those innocent children turned instantly into orphans through no fault of their own—they’ll never really believe that. Horrible beyond imagining. Yet quite common, these days. Pretty much a replay of Bali, of London, of Barcelona, of 9/11, of Iraq day-to-day—and of how many countless bombings before and since?

Did someone recruit twice as many willing suicide bombers in the Muslim community on the outskirts of Mumbai as from around London? Guarding their sacred bundles in the overhead racks until they were vaporized by them, too? Didn't their fellow passengers smell the stink of their fear, read it off their body language? Finally, was that recruiting slime ball paid by ISI crazies or by equally insane loose cannon peers in India? Mumbai, that most worldly of cities heading up a world-weary yet upsurging nation among the senior on Earth. Salman Rushdie’s stomping grounds, well known to us residual reading occidentals because he’s guided us into it, through it and beyond it, lovingly, more than once. The Paris, New York and LA of India; which only Indians could combine into one package. A center of cosmopolitanism and a shaky bastion of mutual tolerance, if deeply traumatized in the recent past. The one place the extremists on both sides would love to decapitate: both literally and figuratively—as someone has managed to achieve: may he rot in Hell forever. May his Hell be a perpetual train ride in a first-class charnel car containing seventy virgin decapitated corpses crowding around him and laughing shrilly out of blood-bubbling throats at his vicious stupidity. Who but Hindu extremists will benefit? Certainly not Mubarak with his three-to-one outlays on the military versus health and education combined, his country swarming with Yahoos disguised as good Muslims sandbagged behind every other mountain, his fistful of nukes that pretty much cancel everyone’s glorious military ambitions. Not the vast majority of Kashmiris who wished everyone would just go home and leave them alone. Not Muslim Indians who must feel like hunted animals on their own block right now.

How many thousands of insults, how many sly blows and cunning crimes do those two hundred dead and three times as many wounded atone for? How many times more pain and anguish will they incite, as innocently as those sorry bastards did deliberately who blew up that holy mosque in Iraq? I ask again: who benefits? Only the BJP – whom I’ve read had pretty much run out of political steam and relevancy in the upcoming Indian elections, short of this catastrophe – and its psychotic outriders, of course. They delude themselves they and their Hindu fundamentalism will benefit. May they choke on that steaming benefit… Wasn’t it, after all, fundamentalists who murdered Gandhi, just like Israeli Premier Yitzhak Shamir, just like Egyptian President Sadat, just like any leader with any compassion, common sense and charisma for the last few decades on this planet; while corrupt and incompetent hand-wringers swap places with corrupt and incompetent firebrands, while corrupt and fully competent swindlers run everything from the back rooms, and some damn fool can always be found to gun down anyone honest who holds out any promise of peace whatsoever—and so on, ad nauseum, with every-growing consistency and ‘efficiency’? I repeat, who benefits most? In short – whatever side they claim to be on and whatever God they claim to worship but actually disgrace – no one who merits the title human.

Well, here goes nothin'!

2006-07-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know about the rest of you out there ... I really don't.

As far as I'm concerned, I must have taken a wrong turn during my last reincarnation, to wind up on this funky, dead-end planet: three thousand plus years of "Thou shalt not kill" and killing is still the hottest export commodity; two thousand years of "Love your neighbor as yourself" and hatred is a banner headline and vote-getting novelty every morning; fifteen hundred years of "Always help a fellow Muslim and never harm one" and Baghdad, Iraq. You'd think someone would have figured out something slightly less stupid and vicious by now.

Either I committed some unforgivable sin during past lives and this is where my bad karma dumped me; or, like an idiot, I volunteered to parachute into this suicide palace on some mission impossible; or both. Either way, I could kick myself...

All-in-all, humans seem to be a relatively OK bunch, taken as individuals. Wherever I've traveled on this planet (and I've covered some ground) those who wanted to help others and be helped by them have outnumbered the rest by hundreds to one. We just seem to have empowered every one of those less-that-one-in-a-hundred sociopaths to gun us down, dumb us down and ruin everything -- by the book.

Me, I'm looking for peaceful alternatives. Holistic solutions, not reductive, a-little-fix-here fussbudgets. Global ones instead, umbrella ones, giant, three-ring-circus, big top tent ones. A gigantic baobab tree under whose cool shade we could quietly discuss the sane management of PeaceWorld, out of the UV-glare of WeaponWorld's official insanity.

All by my lonesome, I've been plotting a planetary prison break from WeaponWorld. With only the occasional pause for a few insane cackles and a moment or two of neurotic muttering, I've carefully mapped out all of WeaponWorld's weak points and soft spots. WeaponWorld is a fortress of combination locks, voice codes and hardened-armor doors, true; but for twenty years now, I've been jiggling tumblers, stealing passwords and drilling hinge cores. I just may have found one or more ways to defeat WeaponWorld and replace it by PeaceWorld. Now, all I need is a massive number of peaceful infiltrators to go probe those weaknesses, find out where the guards have really gone AWOL and pour through the cracks and crannies I've mapped, that riddle WeaponWorld's seeming massive battlements, out into PeaceWorld beyond.

I'm looking for fellow LEARNERS, fellow PeaceWorld expats doing hard time on this WeaponWorld just like me, whose ambitions are no less extravagant than mine. So far, they've been a hard bunch to find. They are lost here and there in the bovine herd of humanity chewing its cud more or less contentedly until the butcher's bill comes due. They have no cohesion, no common value system; they are credophobes. Thanks to the gangrenous ideologies they were brought up on, they are afraid to believe in anything any longer, except a few reductive little fixes their scientific training taught them would be OK just this once.

Forget your little fixes. Forget your cluelessness and the sense of helplessness it induces in you. Instead, check out what I have come up with, and believe in SOMETHING once again, besides the killer-primate babble you were raised on… Check it out:

http://peaceworld.freeservers.com/020TABLEOFCONTENTS.htm

See for yourself. Then get back to me if you care at all about things of any importance. Just be POSITIVE for once -- I don't mean certain, I mean constructive. That is all I ask. I ask nothing less from every Learner on Earth.