Net Runner - The Reality

Many of us nerds have either played or at least heard of the game Net-Runner.  This is part of the Cyberpunk genre of games and literature.  A great deal of this comes from watching the pace of technology accelerate and also combining it with the political perceptions of the late 1970's and early 1980's in a critical and dystopian manner.

The reality is that we do live in a crapsack world governed mainly by well capitalized interests and corrupt government officials acting mostly in cooperation if not outright coordination/collusion.

• LIBOR rate rigging
• FOREX (foreign currency exchange) Rigging
• Gold and Silver (really all metals) market rigging - nevermind the aluminum cartel

That is all just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what a crapsack world we really live in.  We all buy the sausage, but few of us are aware of how it is made and how many dirty hands touch it before it reaches our collective mouths.

On to the actual point of things!

Technology is advancing rapidly though asymmetrically.  Intel is busy pushing the next generation of connectivity alongside Google.  Intel's SD-card sized computer is in the works, though the current generation uses an Atom processor rather than a Quark processor.  This is done mostly for performance reasons, but leaves it bulkier than the original design called for.

 

The above picture is a reference design to show where things are headed soon.  It has wireless connectivity, runs a linux OS, and is a developer board.  This means that it is for the use of others to make applicable to our lives.  Chips like this can be fitted into any number of items from shoes and other apparel to making an extremely efficient distributed computer system embedded in a soldier's body armor, part of a police uniform or even helping you and your friends create a "personal-LAN".

Imagine integrating these connectivity devices with other wearables like google glass and using an encrypted connection and some VPN software having your own private communications system all hands free.

what you have here is the beginnings of the Star Trek Next Generation comm badge at the very least.  It would be able to provide GPS coordinates, link up and have its power augmented/supplemented by other devices, used as part of a personal ID system that replaces credit/debit cards and passports and driver ID's.

this little device could replace all of your miscellaneous identification and payment devices.  You won't need it implanted a la mark of satan..simply having it as part of a wrist watch device would be enough.  Cover it in an OLED screen and you have a functional watch tied to the system clock that updates via the nuclear clock over your now permanent internet connection.

The internet is also about to become free - as satellites are about to be launched in the next few years to broadcast internet connectivity world wide.  At first connection speeds may be slow and latency high.  But over time we will have a dick-tracy video/ radio watch.

The internet of things will quite literally let us perform miracles.

Back on to what it can do for soldiers.

• Provide a local network for communications that is short range and encrypted
• Use other wearable devices to give soldiers enhanced situation awareness (expanded spectral vision)
• Act as an emergency homing beacon in a compact and rugged form factor

Soldiers now with computerized systems on their armor basically have laptops on their backs or equipment that is still bulky.  A small distributed network however can be placed all around the solider's uniform so that even if one part is disabled the rest will function even if slightly degraded.

Police forces can benefit from the same things and so can individuals.  wearable safety devices while out hiking powered not my batteries but the energy of one's own movements.  GPS devices that never fail because they are powered the same way.  No one ever needs to be lost again.  These small units could monitor in real time a person's blood sugar level if they are diabetic giving a real time read-out on your watch of both actual and average over time.  Oxygen levels for people with COPD and a whole host of other conditions can be monitored.

This is only the beginning.

The Gaming Generation

My Generation - tentatively called "Millenials" of which I am one  of the earlier born members is the generation that is the first to grow up with the internet in a relatively modern format.  Additionally computer games in my generation finally  became more than moving dots and dashes around and more than letters and numbers.

Fully realized 3-D rendered and hardware acceleration became normal very quickly and soon the human need for social interaction would merge.  Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, EVE Online and even  games on Facebook and other platforms emerged.  Mobile gaming is finally becoming mainstream as our communications devices now have the gaming power of yesteryear's laptop computers.

Socially we are more interconnected than ever before.  Our devices are portals to each other.  Some see it as a distancing, or a filter and in some cases these analysts are correct.  Anonymity lets many individuals act in manners that are otherwise not permissible in social situations.  Other times the technology, such as integrated webcams on laptops, tablets and phones allows for intimate connections across vast distances.

Past generations wrote letters on paper and parchment.  Now we write on electrons and magnetic bits.  Past generations would use a complicated cipher to encode their writings, now we have 512 bit encryption available publicly.  There is something still intimate about a handwritten letter, but email is widely regarded as formal enough for almost any message as long as the formatting is thoughtful.

We used to have naughty deguerreotypes and now we sext each other instantly be it picture or video, or even broadcast it for all to see in a rather shameless manner.

Communication is instant world wide and I for one couldn't be happier.  I can speak with people in Russia, Denmark, Iceland and Singapore all at the same time and in real time with no cost beyond paying for access to the world wide web.  Aside from the fact that this would indicate a possible demise of legacy telecom systems in the future, the larger point is that we now have the ability to communicate as individuals with one another without the filter of a government in between.

Aside from picking and choosing what government you live under one discovers that a man is a man anywhere in the world and we have far more in common than governments would have us think.  We enjoy and have passions for the same things and have the same wishes for our families.  It is odd to think that we are somehow in opposition rather than engaged in cooperation.  But here we are.

My generation is certainly not one that is enamored with world peace, nor despite accusations to the contrary, so full of hubris that we think we can attain it.  However we are the first generation with the infrastructure for such an achievement.  Soon a company will be launching into orbit a constellation of micro-satellites that will broadcast internet access world wide.  It will not matter if you are sailing in the middle of the most desolate (of humans) ocean on earth, nor hiking a trail in Afghanistan, nor even in Antarctica.  Soon borders will mean even less.  What I do fear is that governments will jealously guard and attempt to clamp down out of insecurity.  Instead of freeing their citizens to interact, make contracts and engage socially the national governments will instead create more barriers to entry and try to keep us closed off from one another.

What good is a government that gives up social control?  Why it is the best government that one could have.  A freer people will never have existed on earth than is possible at this moment.  But world-wide we see restrictions.  Turkey closing down Twitter and youtube access is just a public example.  The Great Firewall of China is another.  The NSA's bulk monitoring of citizens online and mobile activities in and out of the United States is one of the most egregious.  And yet instead of backing down when challenged, those forces of authority double down and accuse critics of promoting the enemies of the state.  Hyperbole is ratcheted up and we see the militarization of police with MRAPs and an ever increasing number of SWAT teams and federal grants to support this.  Rights are restricted and the government talks seriously for the first time about licensing journalism and restricting the rights of the press and free speech.

My generation has the ability to choose what road we go down.  We will either go on the road to freedom, or on the road to serfdom.

Game On.

Officer Training Required

A more and more common sight:

Here is the issue:

The officer initiates contact
The subject of the contact indicates that she is not in violation and is in-fact the appropriate distance
The officer instigates by insisting that she move farther back (creating a situation where none existed)
The officer, seeing that this is going nowhere escalates further (under color of law) - demanding identification
The subject knowing her rights refuses based on the grounds that there was no reason for contact with the officer in the first place (illegal stop).
The officer arrests the subject and uses broad charges to justify harassment and abuse.

Result?

Subject injured despite there being no resisting arrest charge (possible excessive use of force)
Subject files lawsuit against the department
department reflexively denies
department still investigates (CYA: Cover Your Ass) just in-case their knee-jerk reaction is wrong.

There are many incidents like this and the list is growing day by day.  There are several reasons why police behave in this manner and it is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Police Officers/LEO's are a tribe much like the marines, or special forces; they are an insular group and everyone else is a potential threat.  This is why the California officers were so freaked out about Dorner.  He was one of them and then he became a threat from the inside.   The American people are the enemy and our cities and rural areas are now widely regarded as battlefields.

Police Officers lack proper training:  Here in my own state very few police officers know that a carry concealed permit also allows for open carry.  As a result the legal advice to residents was to not carry open.  This is wrong.  You do not tell citizens to not engage in a legal activity because you are too lazy to train officers and their superiors on the law.

Federal Funds/Militarization of Police: Bad.

America is becoming a battlefield and our police forces are increasingly populated with mentally ill veterans and sociopaths who engage in manipulative power trips under the color of law and the guise of protecting people.  Comply citizen, or get beaten like the chattel you are.

The Continuing Snowden Revelations

ITS A CONSPIRACY!

No really...it is.  But before digging in to the latest of the continuing reveals of exactly how far our intelligence services are overstepping their constitutional bounds let us take a travel back in time...not all that far to 2010.  This Article can be viewed for context but the main crux of it is from a paper Cass Sunstein (President Obama's Head of Information and Regulatory Affairs...a fairly Kafkaesque‎-esque position if you ask me) wrote with a Harvard Professor, Adrian Vermuele, dealing with how government should respond to citizens distrust of government.  The entire paper is publicly available HERE for you to read.

I refuse to take things out of context and Cassie here makes it quite easy to contextualize his statist attitude.  His wife by the way is Samantha Power.  She is a former journalist turned think tank fellow, turned Obama campaign advisor, turned State Department official.  She published her own statist paper/thesis dealing with a concept she called "The Right to Protect".  This entails using NATO/US/UN forces to intervene in 'humanitarian' crisis around the world based on the assumption that since we have a large military that we should use it for the benefit (as we see said benefit) to promote an open society/democracy/self-determination.  Of course this open society thing is funded by George Soros and the Tides Foundation at large.

Much of this is interconnected via think-tanks and the continuous cycle from Academia to think-Tank to Govt feeding cycle.  It is an intellectual version of the military industrial complex...rather it is the intellectual-industrial-complex. An interesting PDF can be found HERE on the number of think tanks in the USA.  Make of it what you will.  All of this dissembling may seem scattered but that is only because to explore the material in depth would require several books and leads down a rabbit hole so deep and twisting only the most dauntless of scholars or journalists would dare go down.

All one has to do to see the think tanks and though- shapers psychological warfare techniques are in operation is to wait for a significant event to occur and the security experts pop out of the woodwork.  Some of them are CIA/NSA/ Private contractor plants and the rest are shills for the administration (whoever is in power).  Their job is to deflect, discredit and destroy the opposition.  No different than what Cass Sunstein advocates in his paper.  One of the many symptoms of Cass Sunstein's cognitive infiltration strategy that is easily visible takes place in the many commentary sections of online publications.  There is always some racist bait or sexist or something there designed to take an illogical position aligned to the side that needs to be discredited before momentum is gained.

It is clever but diabolical.  And so far reaching that few would believe it...until documents came out saying that it is exactly what happens.  But 'tin foil hat' ITS A CONSPIRACY.  Well technically it is exactly that.  It is a concentrated group of people plotting to use their power against the larger group and influence them without their knowledge towards a goal that the concentrated group considers appropriate or beneficial...to their own selves and likely to the exclusion of others.

It is a thesis...turned actual plan. And it is the very definition of Kafkaesque.  The machine is being designed to grind liberty into dust.  A Semblance of Liberty

Born to fight, and we're born to flee
Doomed to live on ecstasy
Born to lie, and we're born to cheat
Look in the mirror, who do you see?

Born to flee, and we're born to fight
Without your mask, you're terrified
Don't hide your personality
That's who you are, your identity

If the virtues of tomorrow
Cause the greed of today
We won't have a future
Nor liberty

Born to breathe, and we're born to pursue
That's all we are supposed to do
The semblance of our liberty
Is nothing more than slavery

Born to flee, and we're born to fight
Is it failure that's our delight?
Born to cheat, and we're born to lie
Look at yourself, have you lost your mind?

If the virtues of tomorrow
Cause the greed of today
We won't have a future
And no more liberty

If the virtues of tomorrow
Set the need on the way
We won't have a future nor liberty

Private vice leads to public virtue

[Laughs!]

Raised to think that we are free
Living in our caves
Being slaves

We lost control of our lives
At the mercy of the waves
Massive waves

Blind to see what's going on
Conditioned as we are
And we are

We lost control of our greed
But now we face it all
Face our fall

Keeping all that we've created
And consuming all that's possible
Reaching deep into temptation
Nothing can stop us

Guarantee our hard-earned profits
Multiplied ten-fold if possible
Reaching out for new redemption
Nothing avails our needs

My opponent won't rule out raising taxes.
But I will, and The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no.
And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say to them:
Read my lips
[George H. W. Bush]

If the virtues of tomorrow
Set the need on the way
We never had a future anyway
We had no future 'till today

Time and tide
Will not wait for anyone

Consider the lyrics and reflect.

Whats really going on in The Ukraine

The protests in The Ukraine have been growing over time and most of us simply put it in the back of our minds.  The U.S. State Department however has put some interesting attention on it in the past few weeks driving the conflict forward.

First it is important to understand The Ukraine in a historical and Geographic sense.

The nation's name literally means 'Border' which is why it is called THE Ukraine.  There are two major groups in the country.  Those in the western third are Ukranian speaking and generally have closer ties to the E.U. community and the eastern third is Russian speaking with close ties to Moscow.  This should be no surprise.  Most people forget the Ukraine used to be a part of the Iron Curtain only two decades ago.  that is only a single generation.  So what is happening is partly based on historical ethnic/nationalist sentiment.

The other part is political and economical.  Politically Russia wants to keep close ties to the Ukraine to stop the increasing encroachment of the NATO alliance (which was formed to counter Soviet power and now Russian influence during the Cold War...which ostensibly is still on-going if you ask me).  The EU, where a vast majority of the member countries are NATO members or at least allies, is pushing for closer ties to the Ukraine and the current government in the Ukraine is resisting...preferring Moscow.

The Russian Federation is doing everything it can economically to buy support including massive natural gas price reductions for the Ukraine.  On the other side the EU/USA/NATO alliance is supporting the 'activists'/'protesters' at least on the diplomatic side including a senior official passing out cookies to them.  that in and of itself is hilarious because US diplomats are often referred to as cookie pushers from Harvard.  Of course Vicky here manages to avoid the Harvard part of the stereotype...but it isn't a subversion of the trope...more of a parallel where its might as well be the same thing.  Of course her part in the Benghazi cover-up and now showing up in the middle of the Ukraine-near-civil war makes one at least quirk an eyebrow at how one woman can keep popping up in areas at appear to be rapidly de-stabilizing.

At the same time Barack 'The Rock' Hussein Obama is warning the Ukrainian Govt (legitimately elected btw) to not use force against the so-called protesters.  My question would be...or else what?   Obviously it is a veiled threat of sanctions in the least and an armed intervention at worst under the guise of 'humanitarian assistance' or some such drivel.

So the answer to the question as to why this is happening is generally represented by Russian antipathy towards NATO and vice versa.  There are more specific reasons that entail trans-national corporate interests and EU expansion desires.  However it should be noted that there is likely a great deal of support for the protesters via operators from various intelligence agencies...or at least the assets that are distanced from the handlers that pass them messages and directives.

The protests have gone from chanting to gasoline bomb throwing, armory assaulting nigh-on-civil-war in the space of a couple weeks.  All of this is despite the government showing considerably more restraint than any in the United States would given similar levels of violence.  The only way that the government could be characterized as aggressive would be saying that...since it didn't simply give in to the mob of protesters...that alone is an aggressive act and...well you get the escalation almost purely one sided that we have today.

Its fun to watch from a distance...like a supernova.

Update:  Speaking of George Soros and his open society initiative...

Oh look a thinly veiled hit piece by Dana Milbank!

HERE

Step 1) Open with a false premise
Step 2) Offer a meaningless fact
Step 3) Brief Narrative
Step 4) Jealous projection of authors own ego upon his target
Step 5) Profit?

Monkey See Monkey Do

As usual something in the news has struck me again...this time as simply being odd.  Ok also stupid and additionally; entirely revealing.  You can read the full article HERE for all proper context.

So Rep. James Clyburn (not a monkey) feels that it is somehow related to the MLK "Dream" speech to talk about the media being less than diligent in their abilities or willingness to report facts.  I think at least with that summary most people agree...the media has a hard time at being unbiased in its reporting and is more often than not glib.

However...in speaking about Internet based media he claims that they often misquote people or simply quote people out of context.  As if that is something new...and then he blames those "internet media types" for the corporate media (mainstream) not doing their own due diligence and simply running with an unverified story.  So as he gets more and more off-track his thought train de-rails straight into godwin territory.

The quote in context (Hat Tip The Hill.com):

“The people of Germany believed Hitler’s foolishness that led to the Holocaust. They believed that stuff,” Clyburn said. “People will tend to believe what they hear through the media.”

Clyburn singled out “extreme right-wing” bloggers in particular for criticism. He accused such bloggers of forcing Shirley Sherrod to resign from the Department of Agriculture after misrepresenting statements she made to make her appear racially biased. He also said they had libeled the progressive group ACORN, leading to the group’s disbandment. 

"Most of these people are not media people; they are bloggers, and they are bloggers for the extreme right wing," he said. 

“People tend to act now and ask questions later,” Clyburn added. 

He also said that President Obama was vulnerable to misrepresentation due to the media abdicating its responsibilities.

“The media has not been discerning enough, in my opinion, to say to people, ‘This ain’t news. This is foolishness.”

So not only are the "New Media" (Internet media) disciples of Hitler who are intentionally misleading the masses and blaming the jews for everything, but they are somehow removing your ability to think critically and realize what is or is not foolish.  Clyburn obviously feels that there is a growing need for government to do something about these dastardly internet types beyond his control.  Already he has characterized bloggers as "not media people."  So this is related to the discussion that our self-styled betters have been having about the "need" re: desire, to license media people federally so that they can carve out special protections for them and not for you and me.  This was probably talked about for a long time but it was catalyzed by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and those who actually distributed the information Wikileaks (Julian Assange et. al. and The Guardian/ Glenn Greenwald...and now by extension his partner who was recently detained for 9 hours under a very broad and likely fraudulent use of an anti-terrorism statute).

So to really get at Clyburn's point.  You're a monkey and we (the government) need to do more to make sure that you get only one government issued and verified take on the days news.  That way you will do what we want.  This is all about control and not what is best for us as individuals.  This is about creating more layers of bureaucracy and it is folly disguised as wisdom at best and at worst it is a strike against the first amendment... disguised as promoting truth.

Andrea Mitchell is an ignorant slut

I know it sounds provocative but the title is simple a re purposing of a saturday night live quote by Dan Akroyd.

Of course the slut part is simply there for being outrageous but the ignorant part is true.  In some recent comments about fiscal conservatives (where she is simply projecting) she makes some assumptions that should not be made.

Her argument falls this way:  Fiscal conservatives should not want to spend money on border security because they don't want to spend money on things she wants money spent on.  Therefore their argument is invalid.  Her other argument is that the "statist-wing" of the republican party (re: McCain and friends) are heroic for their pursuit of the selling out of the United States, rather further selling out, to the corporate interests that want to keep depreciating wages.

Her asinine comments went right by the host (David Gregory) without even a request for clarification as it was mostly a baseless attack on people she disagrees with.  I don't know what to say about Mr. Gregory except that he is clearly not interested in anything resembling the truth.

Most so-called fiscal conservatives read and understand the constitution differently from Mr. Gregory.  They feel that the government ought only be spending money on their constitutionally specified roles.  Border Security would be one of those...as would the armed forces and various other activities, but they do not tend to like programs like social security, food-stamp/EBT programs.

That is what really gets Ms. Mitchell's ire up.  So instead of actually addressing the issue which is a difference of opinion on what government should be doing/ how it should be in our daily lives; she attacks her opponents based on a false premise that she herself...sets up.  That was possibly one of the largest straw-man attacks in recent days.  I wish I could hand her some sort of award for being a cunt.