Politics, Society etc.

[alvarezbassist17]

What the fuck, Texas?

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/12/texas-education-board-cuts-thomas-jefferson-out-of-its-textbooks/

I read about that, it's some scary shit.  Those left-wing christians are a fucked up bunch, it blows my mind how society can keep coming up with new versions of old problems, i.e. how does nobody see that this is religious censorship/propaganda?  Here's a really good article I read about it.  mises.org has become my favorite website, so much goddamn information there without all of the extremist biases.

On a different topic, health care "reform" passed the house today.  God, I don't understand how liberals can be so mother fucking stupid.  Even if you buy into their (sometimes wayyy far fetched) sob stories, there's NOTHING in this bill that's going to help anybody long-term.  You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that prices are just going to keep skyrocketing, that there is going to be some form or another of rationing (virtual colonoscopies are already not covered by Medicare even before extending government subsidies to the entire population, doesn't sound like much, but it's the definition of a slippery slope) and that the government is going to be on the hook for far, far, far more than the Congressional Budget Office admits.  Not to mention the billions upon billions of dollars in new taxes, raising the medicare payroll tax (even though that still doesn't make the program solvent) along with a host of other inheritance and other taxes.  Too bad the economy is going to tank and the dollar is going to inflate at unimaginable levels before any of these benefits are actually realized.

Yo Tarkil, should I look at movin to China?  I hear a lot of good things.

[Nailec]

left-wing christians

i doubt there is such thing as a left-wing christian.

every radical left position imho smust oppose against hierarchic ideas such as christianism.

im not sure if your doing this on purpose to call those guys leftists as you will probablly keep your right side clean of such regressive ideas.


and u would prefer china over the usa because you feel controlled by the government? just wow. enjoy your liftetime of jail when you teach someone about the idea of freedom in china.

[Nailec]

x

[bright lights, big city]

and u would prefer china over the usa because you feel controlled by the government? just wow. enjoy your liftetime of jail when you teach someone about the idea of freedom in china.

haha you make a pretty good point there

[bright lights, big city]

and actually the comment about "left-wing christians" doesn't make any sense, if you are indeed responding to the Texas Board of Ed article, alvarez.

Personally, I like the amendment that replaced 'demoratic' with  'constitutional republic'. Texas Is The Reason people hate the U.S. (high five if you know why I made those capitalizations)

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

Hello, my name is Nailec and what is sarcasm?

Texas Is The Reason people hate the U.S. (high five if you know why I made those capitalizations)

TEXAS IS THE REASON...THAT THE PRESIDENT'S DEAD!

[devilinside]

LOL

[alvarezbassist17]

left-wing christians

i doubt there is such thing as a left-wing christian.

every radical left position imho smust oppose against hierarchic ideas such as christianism.

im not sure if your doing this on purpose to call those guys leftists as you will probablly keep your right side clean of such regressive ideas.


and u would prefer china over the usa because you feel controlled by the government? just wow. enjoy your liftetime of jail when you teach someone about the idea of freedom in china.

The way I've come to understand the political spectrum is through the amount of central planning and communal aspects in a given society.  So under this assumption, communism would be on the far left and anarchism would be on the far right.  The Christians trying to initiate some form of control over what is taught in centrally planned schools sounds a lot more left to me by that definition.  I think the Christian activists have been wrongly grouped in with the right because of their association with Republicans, in my opinion that's one of the plethora of ways the Republican party has drifted towards the left since its inception, and at an accelerated rate since the presidency of Herbert Hoover.

And what I meant about China was only on a financial/economic basis.  It's more clear every day that they are going to emerge as the world's powerhouse economy while the US, Great Britain and much of Europe are going to be totally fucked.  I feel terrible for Germany, their ties to the Euro are going to fuck them in the ass when the other debt-ridden Euro countries go under.

[Nailec]

i wouldnt say, were fucked in ten years. our societies recognized that "the pursuit of happieness" doesnt just mean we have to become rich.

over the past decades we have seen that the price for just maximizing our wealth is way to high. therefore we decided to care for those things, that have been left behind, when just caring for our profits: environment, health, emancipaion of the subject etc.

economical power is just one part in all this.

there is really no need to enviously look at china.

[alvarezbassist17]

You really don't understand what you're saying, you're proving my point.  Germany is one of the better European economies because of its relatively lower level of debt.  This means the country as a whole is LIVING WITHIN ITS MEANS.  You're saving more money and spending less as an aggregate, and your country is in fact becoming more wealthy.  That's how economies truly grow, through savings and wealth/capital accumulation, there is nothing in the slightest bit evil about this.  This is what is happening, it's not that your society has recognized that "the pursuit of happiness" doesn't just mean you have to become rich.  You do realize how incredibly arrogant that sounds, right?  The way I think about what you're complaining about (how greeeeeeeeedy everyone is) is countries living BEYOND their means, such as Greece, and the United States.  Much unlike Germany, we CAN'T PAY FOR everything we've been consuming, let alone our foreign operations or our unfathomable, staggering welfare/entitlement obligations, stuff that's not included in the national debt, it's speculated to be between $70-150 TRILLION DOLLARS.  That's in-fucking-sane.  That's what I call greed, that's not accumulating wealth, it's accumulating debt and consuming more than you are rightfully due given your production.  So essentially you have everything backwards involving economics and the government.  Germany is good in the way you and I are talking about, but it's because they are genuinely creating wealth, becoming "richer" (in the very best sense of the word), without insane deficit spending and government over-obligation, GREED. For the love of god, will you please, PLEASE read this book and watch this video?

http://jim.com/econ/contents.html
Applying Economics to American History

I would absolutely love it if you would just try to understand that we are not fighting for different things.  You just lack any concept of what the difference is between greed and wealth, and do not understand free market principles in the least.  It really, truly (and this is coming from hours upon hours upon hours of personal, private study) is not about being greedy and trying to fuck as many people over as you can while getting rich at the expense of others.  It's about the opposite, VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION, something completely lacked when you're talking about the government.  It's about discovering that even if you have the nicest, most benevolent people to ever be in government, they are BY THEIR VERY DEFINITION hampering the progress of society if they do much of anything besides protect the right to this voluntary association.  It's about creating wealth for every single person in the world, based on no arbitrary difference in culture, race, sexual orientation or otherwise, but only upon personal motivation.  It's about the least possible barriers to individual success.  It's about the advancement of society as a whole, so that society can then afford to support its destitute, disadvantaged, down on their luck, as well as giving them more opportunities to help themselves.  Watch that video, and listen to what Tom says about poverty, it's absolutely profound.

[alvarezbassist17]

p.s. is there anyone else on this board besides my dogs trey and tarkil that genuinely understands libertarianism?  I'm just wondering if it's roughly the same ratio as it is with people i know personally, even the pretty conservative ones.  Still not too much mention of Austrian Economics or Ron Paul (one of the few living people involved in government that can be held up as truly unwavering in principle).  Says lots about where people get their respective educations.

[Nailec]

i think its absolutely fine that there are people like you with a deeper understanding with the economical side of our societies. that is where politcians have to moderate between my utopian dreams and your economic knowledge to create a working reality.

the ideal politician indeed doesnt hamper down the accumulation of wealth by a voluntary association (a marxist term btw.).
but i have the impression that your just talking about the working class and ignore a huge rest of the society that has to be party of this voluntary association, too.

take SIEMENS as an example. it had some deals with Iran going that might have led to more wealth amongst germans. but big parts of the german society (left, center right) felt uncomfortable that this company, that once helped to build equipment for the nazis, is now helping a regime probablly seeking to destroy israel.

the politics recognized this and put pressure on siemens, that finally cut their deals.
this is what i meant when i said were not just blindly look at the economic side of an issue. wealth also includes these moral aspects. overall i feel better not getting the money out of those deals but instead i have a quit conscience.


while germany atm hasnt as much debts as other nations, we will be facing huge problems in the near future, too.
-talking about your society getting older and older > less people that gain money have to take care of more old people.
-other nations are critizising germany for its strenght in export. probablly we have to step back a little in order to support others (i dont know the eact circumstances and accusations here)

[alvarezbassist17]

First, maybe the term "voluntary association" could have been coined by Marx, I don't have time to research it right now, but the concept of freedom of association was a big part of the American Revolution...  I don't understand if you're trying to call me a part-Marxist, but he criticized capitalism in many ways, and voluntary association is one of the major things that keep the bad human nature possibilities of capitalism in check.  In an economy with an abundance of jobs and voluntary contractual arrangements, it is not possible for a worker to be indefinitely exploited.  In an unhampered economy, this abundance of jobs both allows the worker to choose with whom he or she associates themselves, and necessitates that, because labor in this situation is scarce, that companies bid for their workers, therefore naturally, and more importantly without any need for force by a government entity, raising wages, safety standards and therefore standards of living.

You really, really, really need to watch that video.  I'm not being condescending.  The Austrian School of Economics and its concepts are extraordinarily easy to understand, they're explained via logic and anecdotal evidence rather than complicated mathematical models that don't always work and don't always reflect reality or take every factor into account.  

The issue with Iran is more complicated.  I'm not familiar with this story, my only question is whether Siemens finally capitulated because of being forced by the German government or because they realized the unpopularity of this decision would hurt their company.  It's also weird to me that somehow the people in the German government are more liberated from the Nazi image than Siemens.  Has there been publicized evidence that they've supported Pro-Nazi organizations or something?  Why is it just assumed they're being Nazi sympathizers because they're associating with Iran?  And after checking the Wiki about Siemens, it says the technology was for spying on their own citizens, obviously not an admirable pursuit, but that doesn't really have much to do with Israel.  I'm not saying it wasn't morally reprehensible for Siemens to sell these things to Iran, I'm just saying that if the workings of the deal were made public and it was that big of a deal to the people, Siemens would've lost a shit ton of customers.  And there's nothing free market about the military-industrial complex and no way to hold the free market accountable for that.

On Israel, I'm no historian, but these articles pretty well sum up my opinion on it.

http://mises.org/daily/3285
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul335.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

[alvarezbassist17]

I wrote this paper for my managerial psychology class, it's mostly about the austrian business cycle.  check it.

Politics, Power and the Free Market
By Corey Wright
Managerial Psychology
March 10th, 2010

   In today's United States of America, it is highly difficult to engage in any activity without having politics and/or power come into play somehow.  With the changes that have accompanied the Information Age and the increased ease of access to information of the financial, political, and human interest sorts, have come the politicization of nearly every aspect of human life, to an infinitely greater degree than was intended by the founders of our country.  One of the definitions of "politics" given by Merriam Webster is "competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership," and the definition given for "power" by the textbook is "the ability to change the behavior of others."  When one puts these definitions together, he or she comes up with a combined definition of "competition between competing interest groups or individuals for the ability to change the behavior of others and leadership."  I believe that this exemplifies the effect that politics and power have on our lives. 
       Since the topic of politics and power is so very broad, I decided to focus on their effect on the views of the populace with regards to the free market.  For every crisis in recent memory, and also to try to explain past crises, the leaders of this country have wrongly tried to lay blame on lack of federal regulation and intervention in the free market.  This wouldn't be such a wrongful accusation if it were merely an academic mistake, but unfortunately, it means the stagnation of our economy, the debasement of our currency, and a much higher than optimal unemployment rate in addition to the loss of many kinds of freedom.  I will explain how politics have led to widespread misconceptions of economic freedom by those in pursuit of more power, by illustrating a few cases that I feel exemplify these misconceptions.  I will start by speaking about the Austrian School of Economics as opposed to Keynesian Economics and how they are popularly misconceived.  I will then move on to a discussion about how they both relate to the global economic picture using examples from the United States: the Great Depression and the current financial crisis.
       I will start by briefly discussing the competing economic theories.  The school of Keynesian thought is fairly modern; it came about in the 1930s, during the beginning of Great Depression.  While every school of economics has many unique subtleties, the main view held by Keynesian Economics that I will try to refute is as follows: the government should use fiscal and monetary programs to stimulate an economy during an economic downturn.  Following this argument, I will then try to represent how Keynesian theory is politicized, and then used to achieve power through this government action.
      Within this school of economic thought Keynes argued "that governments should fight the Great Depression with heavy spending. With consumer and business spending so weak, he argued, governments had to boost demand directly" (Reddy, 2009, p.1). Their point of view says that essentially the lack of spending by businesses, consumers or governments is the reason that an economy loses steam.  Whenever the business and consumer end of spending ceases to drive the economy, the government should stimulate the economy through fiscal and monetary policy.  This is recommended to be done in two main ways: through the artificial lowering of interest rates by the central bank, and through government funding for products, services, and construction that might not have otherwise been undertaken in a government subsidy/incentive-free economy.  Robert Murphy of the Mises Institute sums up their argument as follows: "when there are idle resources lying around, the traditional economic problem of scarcity disappears. The government can prime the pump by throwing borrowed money around, and this can only boost total output, because employed workers produce more than unemployed workers" (Murphy, 2009, p. 2).  This is based on the assumption that prices should not and cannot fall to a level that would make them attractive enough to warrant demand from consumers, so the government needs to stimulate this demand. 
      The Austrian School of Economics, the oldest continuous school in history, has much the opposite viewpoint, as well as more of a focus on the long-term than the Keynesian School.  They argue that an economy cannot be brought back to stability, followed by growth, by using government stimulus.  In addition to this argument, they explain the "boom-and-bust" cycle through their business cycle theory.  Roger Garrison sums up the Austrian business cycle theory in his article "The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle."

The Austrian theory of the business cycle emerges straightforwardly from a simple comparison of savings-induced growth, which is sustainable, with a credit-induced boom, which is not. An increase in saving by individuals and a credit expansion orchestrated by the central bank set into motion market processes whose initial allocational effects on the economy's capital structure are similar. But the ultimate consequences of the two processes stand in stark contrast: Saving gets us genuine growth; credit expansion gets us boom and bust (Garrison, 1996, p.1)

In layman's terms, this theory says that an economy grows sustainably and in a far more stable manner by a growth in public savings.  It is based around what signals are sent to entrepreneurs by the current interest rate in terms of what levels of consumption is preferred by the public.  It speaks of different "levels of production."  The lower order stages of production are those that are more close to the actual consumer, such as retail stores.  Higher order stages are those such as research and development.  When savings grow naturally, consumers are signaling that they wish to delay their consumption to a later date, and the consequence of this extra savings is higher levels of available capital on bank's balance sheets, which in turn lowers the amount of interest a bank will charge.  This sends a signal to entrepreneurs that it is far cheaper for them to borrow to invest in more long-term projects (research and development, factory/store expansion, etc.) because of the large effect that interest rates have upon their costs.  This goes hand-in-hand with consumers wanting to delay their consumption.  Thomas Woods, in his article "Intervention and Economic Crisis," explains what ensues when interest rates are lowered artificially and entrepreneurs are given the signal to engage in more higher-order stages, while the public has not indicated a delay in consumption.

If consumption spending is not constricted, the lower-order stages of production do not contract. And if they do not contract, they do not release resources for use in the higher-order stages of production. Instead of harmonious economic development, there will instead ensue a tug of war for those resources between the higher and lower stages. In the process of this tug of war, the prices of those resources (labor, trucking services, et cetera) will be bid up, thereby threatening the profitability of higher-order projects that were begun without the expectation of this increase in costs... The lower-order stages will win the tug of war. Expansion in the higher-order stages will have to be abandoned. Some of the resources deployed there will be salvageable; others will have been squandered forever or will be of little to no use in later stages of production (Woods, 2010, p.1).

If these signals to entrepreneurs had come about naturally, by a genuine increase in savings, there would have been actual, material resources saved to see these longer stages of production through.  This is not so when interest rates have merely been lowered artificially.  When this lack of savings is realized by the aggregate investors, the correction, or bust/recession takes place. 
This theory came about through decades of study and theorizing, and was made most popular by Friedrich August von Hayek, a Nobel Prize winning economist from Vienna, Austria, who won his Nobel Prize in 1974 for this very theory.  It explains the "cluster of errors" that come about in an economy that is manipulated by a central bank.  When interest rates are artificially changed, then entrepreneurs are "tricked" into investing in the wrong time-oriented stages of production.  By this economic theory, a recession is a period where entrepreneurs are trying their best to correct these mistakes, to reallocate their resources to better fit the needs and wants of society.  How this disconnect is defined is the central difference between Keynesian theory and Austrian theory; the Keynesian thinks of these resources as idle, while the Austrian think of them as misallocated. 
       This correction of resource disbursement, in contrast to the popular viewpoint, is not only necessary, but a good thing for society, that is if this correction is allowed to take place quickly and naturally.  Thomas Woods, in his article "The Forgotten Depression of 1920" discusses a rarely mentioned historical case when the market was allowed to correct naturally after the Federal Reserve's first period of credit expansion.

The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover — falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics — urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.
Instead of "fiscal stimulus," Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.
The Federal Reserve's activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, "Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction." By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

This is in stark contrast with the strategy undertaken by presidents Hoover and Roosevelt after the bust of 1929, when the government and central bank tried everything in their powers to get the economy going again.  These radical new plans, however, only led to a perpetuation and increase of the imbalances in the economy which were not corrected until the latter half of the 1940s.
   This can also be related to the boom and bust cycles that have been experienced by those of us living today.  When the dot-com bubble burst (a boom also perpetuated by cheap money provided by the Federal Reserve), the Fed lowered the Federal Funds rate to a staggering 1% in an effort to delay a major recession.  This was effective, in the sense that the recession felt was very mild, but rather than resources becoming reallocated to viable alternatives, the speculation simply moved sectors from dot-com companies to housing, because with such low interest rates, it was seen as profitable in the long-run to invest in a something as long-term as a house.  The unprecedented demand brought forth highly inflated housing prices, and with fixed interest rates, there was nothing to rein in this sense that housing prices could never come down, a very dangerous view to have perpetuated through a populace.  When the bubble inflated in the dot-com stocks, it was more-or-less felt only by those who held those stocks and Wall Street.  A far higher percentage of people are involved in housing, so the bursting of this latest bubble was extremely hard to paper over, not to mention hard on the entire American population, as well as many abroad. 
   My point in researching and explaining all of this is to show its relation to politics and power.  There is hardly any area of politics that can affect an entire society's prosperity and well-being than the power of a government to manipulate the monetary supply and the allocation of resources in an economy.  It is no wonder that Keynesian economics is lauded by politicians on both sides of the spectrum, because it theorizes that the government can indeed centrally plan an economy.  The problem with this is that it fails to explain the root cause of the boom and bust cycle: the manipulation of interest rates by the government, or in the case of the United States, a central bank given a monopoly on the money supply.  The government cannot possibly know the specific interest rates demanded by each bank in the country at any given moment, so it is unable to guide the genuine, most efficient growth that is needed and wanted by society.  This power is not something that should be given to any single entity, and if analyzing American history since the inception of the Federal Reserve and noticing the subsequent devaluation of our dollar is any indicator, it has become far more difficult for the average person to make enough money to sustain himself.  In 1913, one ounce of gold cost $20.67; today, one ounce of gold costs $1,105.50, a loss of 98% from the value it once held.  That means a person needs to be paid 53.5 times as many dollars today to make the same amount as they would have in 1913.
   The government has made every effort to demonize the free market along with keeping itself vindicated from any fault.  This abuse of politics and power has done nothing but slow the sound economic education of society.  It has harmed the standards of living of not only the free, developed countries, but also those developing, poorer nations in need of a genuine wealth creating environment.


Bibliography

Garrison, Roger W. (1996).  The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle.  Business Cycles and Depressions: an Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://mises.org/TRADCYCL/THEORSUM.ASP
Murphy, Robert P.  (Jan 12, 2009).  Does "Depression Economics" Change the Rules?  Mises Daily.  Retrieved from http://mises.org/daily/3290
Reddy, Sudeep.  (Jan 8, 2009).  The New Old Big Thing in Economics: J.M. Keynes.  Wall Street Journal.  Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137373330762769.html
Woods, Thomas E. (Feb 27, 2010).  Intervention and Economic Crisis.  Campaign for Liberty. Retrieved from http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=650
Woods, Thomas E. (Nov 27, 2009).  The Forgotten Depression of 1920.  Mises Daily.  Retrieved from http://mises.org/daily/3788
Gold values retrieved from: http://www.measuringworth.org/gold/

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

Christ. It's a fucking novel.

[alvarezbassist17]

haha yeahhh, even with a page limit.  i got lots to say about such topics, wrote all of that in two sittings.  It's really interesting to me and I think the world would be a far, far better place if Austrian economics were taught in high schools.  Surely America wouldn't be approaching the precipice of our downfall at the moment.  Speaking of which, I found this little guy the other day.  Whew, it's pretty rough.

www.usdebtclock.org

[Jerry_Curls]

Awesome article!

The idea of some young American, controlling this weapon with a joystick, killing someone far from them creeps me out. It's like a videogame to them! They aren't physically killling them, the drone did!

Here is an awesome summary this guy, squarepusher, did of this video he recently saw....it deals with the government and its' involvement in the digital world, video games, and net-centric warefare...


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


"Some kind soul at another forum was kind enough to provide me with a link to this extremely pertinent video that I recommend everybody watch.

On-Demand Webcast: "Arming with Intelligence: Data Fusion in Network-Centric Warfare"

http://www.objectivity.com/media/data-fusion-and-network-centric-warfare/default.asp

This is a Flash video in the form of a web seminar - I will be providing screenshots of some of the slides along with my own notes and comments.

(Objectivity/DB, BTW, is apparently an important contractor to the fusion centers and the big military contractors - they provide solutions for the 'persistence layer' in a typical three-layered computer application)

Objectivity, Inc. provides distributed data management and object persistence solutions for government, business and science organizations, and is the enabling technology for some of the most complex and mission critical systems in operation around the world today.

The first speaker is a guy called 'Fred Stein', from MITRE Corporation. (no explanation necessary really). He also taught at the US Army War College and wrote a book called 'Net-Centric Warfare'.

"And I think what's extraordinary about it is the pace of change - that the folks born in that era were raised 'connected' - were 'raised' with the expectation of being able to reach out and touch friends on Facebook; were raised in expectation of not going to the enclycopedia of Brittanica or the library, but going to the Internet."

"And I think that's important during this future discussion - is the expectation of these digital natives - for they, in a military sense, fight the war on the frontlines. They, in a commercial sense, sell the product on the frontline. And the others, the digital immigrants, fossils, or naturalized citizens, often make the decision on what system to buy, what research to conduct, how much money to spend, what to put on the marketplace."

Now you got to ask yourself - what the hell? What business does MITRE have with 'videogames' - and why the emphasis on 'first-generation videogames', 'fourth-generation videogames', all the way up to the Xbox 360?

I have pontificated on this myself - 'videogames' are the 'medium' that drives this change to the 'information age'. They are the 'medium' that enables 'military simulators'. Notice that a 'military simulators' is not based on a medium like film, books or whatnot - no, it's based on what 'events' occur, and the interplay between 'intelligent agents' (AI) and a human element/human player (you).

And then we have the evidence of a popular military videogame, Jane's Fleet Command, being used in conjunction with CAESAR II/Eb.

CAESAR II Eb interfacing with Jane's Fleet Command videogame
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=102701.msg926209#msg926209

MUST READ:Behavioral Modeling and Simulation:From Individuals to Societies(2008)
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=155880.0

This document is all about 'videogames' from a theoretical point of view and how they can enrich currently existing behavior inference/command and control/crisis management systems such as CAESAR, JSIMS, and so on.

Then we have:

Flashback to 2001 - USA Today - Game creators join war against terrorism
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=160855.0

And as a final note on this subject, see:

Video game developers skipping the 'consumer' middleman and selling straight to the military contractors - Total Immersion Software, Austin, Texas
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=163317.msg969961#msg969961

"Defense Transformation is occurring. Secretary Rumsfeld started it. It continues today, it continues in whatever country you're from, from India to Turkey, to Singapore, to Poland, to Germany, to Britain, to Japan, and I've spoken in most of these countries.

It's a response to the changing strategic environment - how does the world relate to population shifts (My note: Mass immigration/depopulation/drop in global fertility in males), to energy shifts (My note: consuming less yet paying more - taxing you by the mile for your greenhouse gas emissions), to global politics. How does it react to those environments?

And Network-Centric Operations (NCO), then, is that emerging military response"

"Network-Centric Operations is equally capable of delivering bombs on target as it is equally capable of delivering the right information to the right people on target, or even medical facilities or medical aid (My note: Obamacare is part of 'Network-centric operations' then - that's why they have PositiveID in that bill, and the rationing of health care/triage. Why do you think the only form of 'socialized healthcare' you had in the United States prior to Obamacare was in the military? Why do you think 'rations', the primary food supply for soldiers, becomes your primary source of food during wartimes such as World War II?).

So it's a relationship between sensors - the people carry out the mission, and the decisionmakers."

"The bad news is, if you don't like change, you are in real trouble, I think, for today"

MY NOTE: Personnel locator is an 'euphemism' for - "tracking your whereabouts - tracking your location."

The first camera [Film camera] captures the image, but captures it in the wrong format - and it is not networked. The next camera, you might suspect, captures the image in the right format, but isn't instantly networked. And of course, your audience knows where I'm going: for the third one is the now infamous phone camera - that captures the image in the right format, and is instantly networked - and in fact can be both a security plus and a security negative. But it is real and constantly a part of almost every mobile device.

You know what this is? They're using the public - the general public - as live on-demand ISR - Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance. The authorities have access to the personal files/snapshots you take on your camera - they can datamine this together with all the other fusion data - for instance, using your phone as a 'personnel locator' - and get a more accurate snapshot of what it is you have been doing.

Another aspect to this is their insistence on being 'networked' - everything that is 'off the grid' is bad - because they can't access it, it can't be controlled. Arthur Cebrowski (head of Office Of Transformation during the Rumsfeld regime) made a similar remark I think some time ago:

http://www.iwar.org.uk/rma/resources/transformation/military-transformation-a-strategic-approach.pdf



Everything needs to be 'interoperable' - ie - accessible to all known computer systems (UNIX, Linux, Windows, whatever) - using service oriented architectures - software programming needs to allow for rapid prototyping (a shift away from 'compiled' programming languages and to interpreted programming languages - such as Ruby, Python, Cobra, whatever), and everything needs to be 'accessible' to the persons with the 'proper' authentication roles (ie - Administrator of the Global Information Grid gets to have access to EVERYTHING).

This whole idea of 'gaming' is fascinating - organizations now often coordinate their whole activities while playing a game. Things like that, I think, are just fascinating to observe and understand (My note; What he's talking about is 'wargaming' - joint 'wargaming' - 'Simulation' is part of Operations Research, and 'Operations Research' is the discipline that EVERY company works by - and who came up with 'Operations Research'? The OSS and the British intelligence agencies did back in World War II. So, modernday business is based on 'military' doctrine.)

Society Of Control - Gilles Deleuze (1990)
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=143941.0

"The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It's only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing disciplinary societies."

Indeed, just as the corporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school over to the corporation.

This is hell on Earth we're talking about. Continuous control, continuous stress tests - continuous surveillance. The new prison.



This 'slide' was apparently made for the Navy - hence the uniforms. The ability to talk in 'l33t speak' - using all these shorthands in place of speaking natural language.

Well, not only is this a further process in 'dumbing down' the 'digital native citizen' (as they term it), but you can notice a correlation between the way the military has traditionally used acronyms and shorthands for terms in ISR missions and the way people input text when instant messaging ('cu' - see you', 'ttyk' - talk to you later - 'lol' - laughing out loud, 'brb' - be right back - and so on).

So, talking intelligible English is apparently to be scorned in the future. This whole 'machine-to-machine' interfacing - machines being able to speak to each other - apparently they will use this 'l33t speak' too.

At this point, the 'webinar' (corny name that they came up with for this presentation) shifts to a questionnaire everybody has to fill out. Based upon the answers they provide for each of the questions, they measure his or her 'citizenship'.



Apparently, your ability to comprehend 'l33t speak' is a real measure of one's worthiness to exist in this 'New World'.



Most of them are a bunch of 'old world fossils' - this discriminating factor is useful when separating the 'wheat' from the 'chaff' for the upcoming 'information age'."

[Jerry_Curls]

This is where it gets good...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now they move onto the second phase of the presentation - the 'emerging theory of war'.

"The book [his book, 'Network Centric Warfare'] was an attempt to say: "Warfare and everything really changes in the crucible of information".  Other authors who have done a good job on this is 'The World Is Flat', I think was excellent, 'Blown To Bits', and my most recent popular books, is 'The Starfish And The Spider', and 'Wikinomics')."

The warfare leverages new relationships between sensors, weapons, platforms and decision makers.

It has to have an Information Grid (My note: The Global Information Grid, as conceptualized by John P. Stenbit, another NCOIC member) - you have to have something from which the information can flow over - that can be a wired grid, a wireless grid, or a combination."

This is the 'shift' in software methodology - going 'agile' - this is why the OMG came up with UML (Unified Modeling Language), why they came up with representations/semantical makeup of data (XML) that is interoperable between systems, why the emphasis is now on SOA (Service-Oriented Architectures) and things like CORBA and SOAP.

"So let me take you through some network-warfare examples.

What you see on the screen now is the grid. The grid is the blue. The red would be a sensor network, and the green would be an 'engagement network'.

This is Cebrowski's onion-layered 'grid' - the 'sensor grid/network', the 'engagement grid/network', the 'information grid/network'.

Let me further enunciate this by pulling a quote from a RAND Corporation document on the 'Revolution In Military Affairs' (paragraph is titled 'Today's Force Transformation/RMA Activities'):

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR1029.pdf

Past Revolutions, Future Transformations (1999)
What can the history of revolutions in military affairs tell us about transforming the US military?




National Defense Research Institute
RAND Corporation

"Network-Centric Warfare. This RMA candidate was proposed by Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and his colleagues in Joint Staff/J-6 (Cebrowski and Garstka, 1998). The network-centric warfare concept employs an operational architecture involving three grids to enable the operational objectives of JV2010 [Joint Vision 2010]: an "Information Grid", a "Sensor Grid" and an "Engagement Grid". The Information Grid provides the computing and communications backbone for the other two grids. The Sensor Grid is an assemblage of space, air, ground, sea, and cyberspace sensors and sensor tasking, processing, and fusing applications, providing battlespace awareness. The Engagement Grid, an asemblage of platforms and weapons, exploits this battlespace awareness to enable the JV2010 force employment objectives of precision engagement, dominant maneuver, and full-dimensional protection. Each of these three grids is connected and functions in a network fashion. (My note: What binds these 'three' disparate networks? Why, the Global Information Grid, of course - it's the glue that binds it all together)" - p107/132

What they show here is 'sense and respond' using the three layers (Information, Sensor and Engagement) and how the three layers/networks if you will communicate inbetween each other. Guess what? This is the reason why all your products are RFID-tagged - this is the reason why they want you to walk around with RFID national ID cards. That way, YOU'RE ON THE SENSOR GRID - and the UAV can pay you a little visit and know where you are at if push comes to shovel. This is how you submit to tyranny - in blissful ignorance of what they're rolling in.



'Precision engagement' using the 'engagement grid' - this will be used for future law enforcement and quelling of dissent/protests.

"You are illegally parked on private property. You have 20 seconds to move your vehicle." - ED 209, Enforcement Droid 209, Robocop 1 (1987)

Will continue on this further as time allows.

[tarkil]

Now, that was interesting for once, and not "conspiracy theory oriented", but plain factual... Thanks for that, and I'd be interested to read the rest if available.

Thanks !

[alvarezbassist17]

since we were talking about cigarettes in the other thread I thought I'd post this article I found, bear in mind it's from 1995:

Are Cigarettes Doomed?
Mark Thornton

Some Americans are no doubt touched by Bill Clinton's concern for the health of children. His press secretary even declared that it was now the President's personal responsibility to prevent American youth from smoking.

But Clinton's ten-point program to prevent teenage smoking, designed by FDA Czar-for-Life David Kessler, will fail like all previous attempts at government nannyism. Worse yet, the program will backfire and retrace some of the progress already made in tobacco consumption. There is also no doubt that all Americans will be "touched" to pay for this program.

The main thrust of the program is to prevent teenagers from smoking so that they won't grow into adult smokers. It sounds innocuous enough, almost sensible, but Kessler's stated goal is to eliminate all smoking and all tobacco use. He won't stop at the vending machine when his policy turns up "out of order." He is quick to remind us that the FDA is not prohibiting tobacco use; that would be--in his words--"unworkable." That means that he would like to prohibit it but does not yet have permission to do so.

The Administration touts this policy initiative as a measure to help children and reduce the cost of health care. Let us not forget that the Clintons wanted to place a $2/pack tax on cigarettes to fund their health care reforms and discourage the use of tobacco. In reality, this is but one of the socialist ideas built into the Clintons' sidetracked nationalized health care agenda.

Can we be surprised? If government pays for health care, it eventually assumes the right to control the health of its citizens. This agenda also includes such possible policy initiatives as forced sterilization, increased use of birth control and abortion, a euthanasia program, a national exercise program, an enhanced anti-alcohol program, youth brainwashing to encourage children to rat on their parents, sanctions on fat people, taxes on luxury goods, controls on the environment, banning of dangerous sports, therapy for drug addicts, etc.

Of course, things could be worse. As Robert N. Proctor recounts in Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Harvard University Press, 1988), Gerhard Wagner--head of the Nazi socialized medical plan--like Kessler and other anti-tobacco agitators today, was constantly complaining about people smoking.

In particular Wagner attacked the "boundless propaganda issued by nearly every German magazine" encouraging people to smoke. His replacement, Leonardo Conti, established the Bureau Against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco. Nazi health officials pointed out that personal health was now an integral part of the German national interest, and that according to Nazi philosophy, "the good of the whole comes before the good of the individual."

Despite all of the protests that they would not ban tobacco, the Nazis soon began to ration cigarettes, close tobacco shops, force several types of citizens to stop smoking, and abolish smoking in buses, trains, government buildings, and public places.

Does that sound like the U.S. today? Higher excise taxes, required warning labels, government-imposed bans in planes and government buildings, attacks on advertisers, tobacco industry executives, and scientists.

The Nazis never reached their ultimate goal because military\economic collapse came before tobacco supplies were exhausted. But here, we have the "Smoke Free America 2000" program in place. And Kessler is backed by a newly vindicated federal smoke police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).

The Smoke Free America program will seek to use all voluntary means possible to eliminate smoking in America by the year 2000. Only at that point will more "convincing" means be applied to completely eradicate the problem. The target deadline provides the haunting reminder that millenialism is still with us and driving policy.

Ideology and philosophy aside, governmental attempts to stop smoking have always failed. Several states passed cigarette prohibitions during the Progressive Era that failed miserably, as did the more ruthless efforts of the Nazis. Canada recently tried a massive antitobacco program that raised the price of cigarettes to $5 a pack with absolutely no success or diminution in teenage smoking. The programs now advocated by Clinton and Kessler have all been tried and failed at the state and local levels; what makes them so sure that they will now work at the national level?

Making cigarettes more difficult to get is not so much a hurdle for teenagers as it is a challenge. Although widely supported by both Republicans and Democrats, it certainly doesn't seem to be in the spirit of family values to have the government, rather than parents, involved in this decision.

The battle between teenager and bureaucrat will come down to a matter of enforcement. If enforcement is lax, teenagers will easily obtain cigarettes and learn disrespect for law. If enforcement is draconian, teenagers will have more difficulty in obtaining cigarettes and we will all lose civil liberties in the process. In both cases, teenagers will get cigarettes and the foundations of American society will be further eroded.

Kessler says that the government will do everything it can to raise the cost of smoking until teenagers stop smoking. Let's see. Government has increased the price of marijuana by 10,000%, but teenagers still buy it. In fact, as the government increases the cost of tobacco, and makes it more difficult to get, we can expect to see an increase in teenage use of marijuana and other substitute products.

In response to predictable failure and frustration, the next steps will include a drastic increase in the tobacco excise tax and direct FDA regulation of tobacco as a drug. The tobacco excise tax route is particularly instructive of the government's ability or lack thereof to solve social problems. Higher excise taxes fall heavily on the poor and encourage people to smoke high tar and filterless cigarettes. If excise taxes are high enough, people resort to smuggling and the black market, as the Canadian experience clearly proves.

If the central government decides instead to allow the FDA to tax and regulate tobacco as a drug, then we are but a short time from a full-blown tobacco prohibition. Remember that narcotics prohibition and marijuana prohibition were initiated as regulatory and taxation measures. Once in the bureaucratic domain, however, these programs were quickly transmuted into outright prohibitions.

There is no doubt that this is exactly what Kessler wants, and exactly what he would do, given the opportunity. Under his interpretation of his powers and mandates, control of tobacco would mean the prohibition of its use because, as he sees it, tobacco possesses no useful or beneficial properties. The FDA and BATF would both gain considerably as a result.

Much progress has been made in the safe use of tobacco products. People forget that people used to chew and spit tobacco on a grand scale. Public rooms were filled with pipe and cigar smoke. But without any help or prodding by government, the market responded with the ready-rolled cigarette, then filtered cigarettes, then low and ultralow tar cigarettes. We've even got the smokeless ashtray. The industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to invent a tar-less and smokeless cigarette. The government won't let them market it.

Economic progress also tends to result in less tobacco consumed. If government were really interested in reducing smoking and promoting health, they wouldn't interfere with the role of the family and self-responsibility.

One of the best keys to promoting health is what economists call time preference. Mature people have a low time preference, a longer time horizon. They have high rates of saving and capital accumulation and practice healthier lifestyles.

People with high time preference tend to live for the moment, spend more than they earn, and engage in risky activities and unhealthy lifestyles. Policies that promote free enterprise and individual responsibility have the positive effect of reducing time preferences while government nannyism, like the welfare state itself, increases time preference and exacerbates the problems of irresponsibility.

Clinton's concern for "our children," or at least the ones his attorney general isn't gassing, and Kessler's worry about our health, are but a smokescreen for totalitarian political ambition. That's what's behind curbs on advertising, bans on vending machines, and phony tobacco "education" campaigns.



Any opinions?