08.15.13
Posted in Bioterrorism, Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 3:11 pm by George Smith
After more than 20 years of writing on specialized matters in national security, I’ve come up with a theorem that works on all things American.
The megastructure that now makes the national security a commodity has completely warped the thinking of Americans, from the top to the bottom.
So much so that it’s evident and can be described in a fairly simple rule, one that describes much of the war on terror and the American business of threat-seeking.
And here it is:
The probability that any predicted national security catastrophe, or doomsday scenario, will occur is inversely proportional to its appearance in entertainments, movies, television dramas and series, novels, non-fiction books, magazines and news.
Or, put another way, the probability that something bad will happen, as described or predicted by experts or any government, intelligence or quasi-corporate/government assessment agency, asymptotically approaches zero as it attains widespread use in popular entertainments. (And that’s usually very early in the development cycle.)
Therefore, you can bet your sweet bippy there’s never going to be an electronic Pearl Harbor, or an electromagnetic pulse attack, or a national blackout caused by Chinese hackers, or people dieing from a ricin mailing even though it’s so easy to make. And al Qaeda does not come back from being hided for more than a decade. No one gets a second chance.
Summed up: Too many bad movies, too much bad television, too much fear-making as edutainment, passed off as serious news, advised by bad people slumming from the national security industry, their purpose primarily maximization of employment. Everything touched by it, tainted by an intrinsic badness. And it is definitely not supported by the real world but must be maintained by a uniquely American machinery of manipulations, lies and purposeful technology-mediated confusion.
And thanks to Frank’s Pine View Farm where I’ve been working it out in commentary.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 11:45 am by George Smith
While I’m very sympathetic to fellow citizens who think they can innovate jerry-bilt gadgets and miscellaneous consumer goods to fight the US surveillance state, Kickstarter campaigns won’t do it. The US government pays contractors 3,4, and five orders of magnitude more than you’ll ever raise in crowd-sourcing.
From the WaPost, a flavor of tech invention fad news built on the impression that Americans are now shocked, just shocked, over the Snowden affair and just how much of the technology of the war on terror is being directed at them:
“Developed as Adam Harvey’s master’s thesis at New York University, CV Dazzle, named after a type of ship camo used during World War II, is face paint designed to make features undetectable by computer vision algorithms … From there he moved into a line of ‘anti-drone’ garments made of a metallized fabric that traps body heat … Harvey rushed to begin an online Kickstarter fundraising campaign [for a metallized anti-track-your-smartphone case] ahead of schedule. The Kickstarter campaign went active Aug. 2 with a goal of $35,000 … Halfway through the campaign, they have raised more than $44,000.”
It’s too late.
Have to be the deliveryman of bad news: It’s not fixable in my lifetime. The technology of American global security has been turned on the civilian populace because that’s where the money is now.
You didn’t think forever chasing around the feebs in Al Qaeda was going to create enough of a lasting profit margin, did you?
Two months ago 3D-manufactured plastic guns were going to change everything, too. And then there was last week’s spying hardware gadget pest from Malice Afterthought.
America’s so awash in big thinkers and innovating talent, one just can’t understand why there would be 48 million on food stamps and a national growth rate of barely over 1 percent.
Just wait until the HyperLoop goes into action. It’ll be better than flying cars and your evening meal in a pill the size of one dose of Viagra.
In real news, the US is a corporate fascist state where you’re freedom is to shop. Increasingly, that means only the topmost and its allowed servant army.
So here I present th best Let ‘Em Eat Cake in the New America copy this week, easy on “Bespoke” jewelry at the NYT:
“But when she acquired a 10-carat Burmese sapphire earlier this year on a buying trip to Asia, she knew just the client who would want to commission her to transform the rare stone into something unique. It was a woman in her 40s living in TriBeCa who already owned many of Ms. St. Clair’s signature pendants, and had a generous husband who wanted to buy her a gift to mark their 20th wedding anniversary … After several weeks of discussion with the couple, which involved sending multiple sketches and three-dimensional molds, Ms. St. Clair created a ring for a fee, she said, of approximately $350,000.”
Three dimensional molds. Being able to drop $350,000 on a custom-designed bauble renders irrelevant displeasure over the surveillance state.
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08.12.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 12:16 pm by George Smith
Excerpts from a talk by Pulitzer-winner Chris Hedges at Chautauqua:
Through a “bombardment of cultural lies and manipulations,??? it has erased every progressive movement from the face of the country.
The system has also created a “psychosis of permanent war,??? Hedges said.
To maintain control over the population, Hedges argued, the U.S. government has done what all empires have done: brought harsh forms of control from the outside to the inside.
“A night raid by a militarized police force in Oakland — command helicopters, searchlights, command vehicles, police in black, Kevlar vests … automatic weapons — looks no different from a night raid in Fallujah [Iraq],??? he said.
Becoming a part of a social movement is the only way to respond to these issues, he said. There is no time to play the game of politics.
And, there is this…
Originally.
None of the points are new. I’ve made them here in comment, music and art for the past decade. The serious security threats are not external.
Most now seem to innately grasp this with the exceptions of complete morons. And the villains in the matter, who know exactly how things stand.
Al Qaeda whoopie cushions get little traction outside of the mainstream press these days. There’s a reason for it. There’s a silent disbelief and cognitive disconnect.
And Keith Alexander of the National Security Agency has gone from someone parading around with a story about how the US was being pillaged by Chinese cyberespionage to just another apparatchik in a uniform whose job it is to defend the assertions of government and make claims about the foiling of terror plots, claims no one supports who isn’t paid to.
Think about it, again. Two months ago you couldn’t get away from the news about Chinese cyber-spying allegedly stealing the intellectual treasure, military secrets and future of America.
Uploaded August 2011. Two years old now.
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Posted in WhiteManistan at 7:27 am by George Smith
The very definition of WhiteManistan:
“It’s a swirling inchoate mass of aging, angry white people — and it’s coming for you!”
Also — PARIAH — The Magazine of American Excellence.
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08.10.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 9:22 am by George Smith
From Charles Blow at the New York Times:
Today’s America — at least as measured by the actions and inactions of the pariahs who roam its halls of power and the people who put them there — is insular, cruel and uncaring.
In this America, people blame welfare for creating poverty rather than for mitigating the impact of it.
“Part of our current condition is obviously partisan,” he continues. “Republicans have become the party of ‘blame the victim.'”
That is putting it mildly. The GOP, when in control, afflicts the afflicted. It’s written into the party’s DNA.
Near the end, an academic who studies attitudes toward poverty:
“It seems like Washington is a place without pity right now.”
Pariah: Blow uses it to describe our alleged leaders. I’ve employed it as the fictional magazine because it’s the only word appropriate.
Sarcastically, pariah is the new ‘cool.’ Pariah means one who is despised. Those pictured are certainly worth despising. They work at it, it affirms them.
This is good editorial art, appropriate to our times. Share it. Download the big images and send them to someone important, like Tom Tomorrow, or your local newspaper’s opinion page.
More of PARIAH.
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08.09.13
Posted in WhiteManistan at 11:11 am by George Smith
Best newspaper web headline this week, easy.
Lede graf:
Gun owners across America plan to on Friday go armed to Starbucks outlets when getting their morning (noon and evening) coffee, as part of an “I Love Guns and Coffee??? campaign, and a show of appreciation to the coffee giant for letting customers pack heat when it accords with state law.
And I can think of nothing more perfect than:
Another day in WhiteManistan: The President says he doesn’t consider Edward Snowden a patriot. But in the meantime a bunch of white dudes insist on going to the Starbucks in Newtown with their guns on their hips. The store closes five hours early to avoid trouble.
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08.08.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 3:47 pm by George Smith
And what have we been going on about here for the last decade?
I demand a prize.
Original.
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08.06.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 3:26 pm by George Smith
Tech writers continue the daily charade that young vatos who discover security holes — using whatever they could buy for a few hundred dollars in town — matters. It doesn’t. It may be interesting but it’s irrelevant that guys like Brendan O’Connor, security researchers, put together a bunch of black-boxed public WiFi vacuums.
Forty eight million people on food stamps is a problem. An effective unemployment/underployment rate of 14 percent is a major national problem. The fact that the country with biggest military in world history is ungovernable is a problem.
The private information leaking out of the smartphones and Internet connections of people everywhere, the stuggling class shoppers at the Baja Ranch market, is annoying.
But, as something within the national framework, it’s trivial. Maybe you can earn a lot of money with it, but fix stuff, teach important lessons?
You gotta be kidding.
So why the Hell is it important that the security company business card, Malice Afterthought, is in a picture of a ring of electronic spying gadgets made for 600 bucks.
Six hundred bucks isn’t much to the New York Times reporter. It isn’t much to the security researcher.
“Brendan O’Connor is a security researcher … How easy would it be, he recently wondered, to monitor the movement of everyone on the street – not by a government intelligence agency, but by a private citizen with a few hundred dollars to spare?” reads the NYT.
Six hundred bucks is a lot in my neighborhood. And the difference in regard for it is just another example of the immense divide present in America.
The professional class that’s still doing well tries to keep peddling stories that have no relevance in solving what has destroyed the economy for millions in this country.
“You could keep tabs on people who gather at a certain house of worship or take part in a protest demonstration in a town square [with Malice Afterthought’s gadgets]”, writes the newspaper.
News flash! They’ve been keeping tabs on people in protest demonstrations for years. There’s a multi-billion dollar national security industry devoted to it.
So, we’ve added another few grains of irritating sand to the national matrix.
Wow, more vaguely menacing-looking spying gadgets for security tech nerds. Your data leaks everywhere! Astonishing!
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 3:00 pm by George Smith
NSA director Keith Alexander has made the big time, caricatured in the latest Tom Tomorrow comic.
The paradox is that he’s unnamed. Even though many Americans may now be aware of the Snowden affair and NSA spying on everything, everywhere, they still largely have no idea who Alexander is.
And that’s slightly amusing but not in any really good way.
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Posted in War On Terror at 12:32 am by George Smith
The same anonymous perps in the national security megaplex keep trying to convince everyone al Qaeda withstood the hiding it took from the US over the last decade. No one gets a second chance in the history of major conflict. But this weekend we got the old buzzword “chatter” again. Now it’s the revival of al Qaeda’s alleged ability to make bombs of anything — in this case, clothes.
Be skeptical. The US has much bigger problems than terrorism.
This is just shameful:
There are growing concerns that an al Qaeda affiliate could use a new generation of liquid explosive, currently undetectable, in a potential attack, according to two senior U.S. government officials briefed on the terror threat that has prompted the closing of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies.
Though the Transportation Security Administration has long been concerned about liquid explosives being used in potential devices — as it was during the failed Christmas Day bombing in 2009 — the new tactic allows terrorists to dip ordinary clothing into the liquid to make the clothes themselves into explosives once dry.
“It’s ingenious,” one of the officials said.
What’s ingenious is how easy it is for anonymous sources to plant the most ridiculous claims without any substantial explanation except their say-so.
Yes, now they’re going to make bombs out of shirts and trousers by dipping them in a magical cocktail of chemicals. The reason for this kind of horseshit passed off as intelligence is that people will say anything for job security.
File this as even worse than the underwear bomb, which only burned its wearer. And the mythology of the bombs sewn into body cavities, aka “the Joker bomb,” which somehow doesn’t painfully and totally debilitate or immediately poison the carrier.
If you read the article, al Qaeda seems to have been hurt not at all. Pushing the boundaries of nature and science from the sandy wastes of Yemen, we’re surprised they haven’t yet managed to build a stealthy nuclear-tipped ballistic missile program.
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