tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57210350089884415182024-03-12T22:15:58.245-03:00Innovation PatternsJustin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.comBlogger499125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-70365054864676027782016-11-25T05:55:00.000-04:002016-11-25T17:49:54.259-04:0011-25-2016 | Distant Roar<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcriNMAD9soHGhtT0zlHPJqt9c98MdB3eW0i6SMFna64Tydf_blFtPcANSb6NkOBT2Xb5zpxLkz0lLnNgnLry_9cGjlqqJINdRxzoeRydDiX_vG12ZA4ay5jltx_NmuRSIMMCoSDFsdy18/s1600/leopard-hunt-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcriNMAD9soHGhtT0zlHPJqt9c98MdB3eW0i6SMFna64Tydf_blFtPcANSb6NkOBT2Xb5zpxLkz0lLnNgnLry_9cGjlqqJINdRxzoeRydDiX_vG12ZA4ay5jltx_NmuRSIMMCoSDFsdy18/s1600/leopard-hunt-2016.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
On September 29, 1944, FBI agents burglarized the New York apartment of a middle-aged man who worked at a record company selling Communist songs. He want by the name of Arthur Alexandrovich Adams, and he was a skilled mechanical engineer. He had probably come to the United States in the 1920s, and he may have been one of the first deep-cover Soviet spies in America. He was certainly the first the FBI ever found.<br /><br />
The black-bag job produced a bonanza.<br /><br />
Adams had notebooks that made little sense to the FBI agents who saw them. "He was in possession of a document that talked about some type of water," FBI agent Donald Shannon, a member of the Bureau's Soviet espionage squad, said in an oral history interview six decades later. "We weren't sure of the information so we turned it over to the Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation." Upon expert review, the notes revealed intimate knowledge of highly technical and deeply secret phases of the Manhattan Project. They included work on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water">heavy water</a>, a linchpin of secret research into the atomic bomb.<br /><br />
"We were informed that the person who had his certainly had some information on America's atomic research," Shannon said. Adams soon was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York under the foreign agents registration law -- and the State Department ordered him deported.<br /><br />
Eighteen months had passed since the FBI's first clue that Stalin's spies were trying to steal the bomb. The second clue was now in hand.<br /><br />
Hoover understood in broad terms what the Manhattan Project was about. The War Department had told him about its own search for spies at Los Alamos. He began to realize that control of the bomb was not simply a matter of winning the war. It was about national survival after the war was won.<br /><br />
<strong>Not long before Pearl Harbor, Hoover and his aides had written about the wartime goals of British intelligence: "to be in a position at the end of the war to organize the world." Hoover thought that role rightfully belonged to the United States.</strong> The atomic bomb would be the key to its supremacy.<br /><br />
-- Tim Weiner, <em>Enemies: A History of the FBI</em><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-28717200752581187642016-10-04T05:55:00.000-03:002016-11-25T17:45:06.067-04:0010-04-2016 | Pure Perception<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrES_X2b-JhVJpGhCEiIq4vXhBEWNYfhSXob58jZEQtWbo4l4ga1qkyN6aj3oy0OTVfJfX1xjewj8oUyEv7SNJ-VutBZ-avDE2SXl_dECeRxzcN_E9IHFBy2HrIwmoUJH9kZ06xxIqB7IN/s1600/2016-cydonia.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrES_X2b-JhVJpGhCEiIq4vXhBEWNYfhSXob58jZEQtWbo4l4ga1qkyN6aj3oy0OTVfJfX1xjewj8oUyEv7SNJ-VutBZ-avDE2SXl_dECeRxzcN_E9IHFBy2HrIwmoUJH9kZ06xxIqB7IN/s1600/2016-cydonia.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<strong>Hyde Street. Sunday 11 March 1984.</strong><br /><br />
Ren Breck has just shown me the imagery of Mars that displays what some people consider a giant pyramid representing a "Face," near a series of pyramids they are already calling "The City," which left me unconvinced.
When the photograph was passed around the table at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International">SRI</a>, with only the information that it showed a face, six people found it at six different spots!<br /><br />
--Vallee, Forbidden Science Volume Three<br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-79878010445291646642016-09-26T05:55:00.000-03:002016-09-26T21:35:05.517-03:0009-26-2016 | Cold Snap<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSVrsQUVqcRc8hNJU6eg-nNQawZ2E_ndKrOxMWHGzP5GLsPi1IruKKa8Oy7W6efotCokv8rdLuEDzgXfOQoI3sGaielpmDjXOa11I_1Z3uX4FeoNYcJVhIOWSPzuVIG0CfRnwzY9Wjair/s1600/2015IP-olympus.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSVrsQUVqcRc8hNJU6eg-nNQawZ2E_ndKrOxMWHGzP5GLsPi1IruKKa8Oy7W6efotCokv8rdLuEDzgXfOQoI3sGaielpmDjXOa11I_1Z3uX4FeoNYcJVhIOWSPzuVIG0CfRnwzY9Wjair/s1600/2015IP-olympus.jpg" /></a><Br /><Br />
<strong>Palo Alto, Wednesday 21 May 1980.</strong><Br /><Br />
Bad sleep, shaken by allergies: everything is always blooming here. There is a hedge of rosebushes along our fence, and jasmine at the corner. Over lunch with Hal Puthoff at SRI, I told him I no longer believed our government had an ongoing UFO project. He has reached similar conclusions. I added I had no intention to be used by the Intelligence folks. The more I got to know them, the more I have the feeling they play stupid games. "No," Hal replied, "but as soon as they get promoted they only respond to political signals."<br /><br />
"That's the same thing as playing stupid games," I said. "I can't afford to share UFO data with them -- what if happened to expose some of their own games?"<br /><br />
"We have the same problem," Hal said. "Our successes with remote viewing are a threat to the satellite folks. Some big budget organizations want to shut us down, so they spread false rumors about us. Even the White House is having trouble finding out the truth. In our war game simulation we succeeded in pinpointing the position of MX missiles in one of the 10 hidden silos on a random basis. We did it 12 times in a row, no misses -- a result with odds of one in a trillion! But the budget for the projected MX is 55 billion dollars. How can we fight against that?"<br /><br />
--Vallee, Forbidden Science Volume Three<br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-37002533095048481252016-08-05T05:55:00.000-03:002016-08-05T19:35:10.424-03:0008-05-2016 | Doubleplus Ungood<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8JM28NY-8_xAfdH6iCBuZKd8Sqt_qz2YXCSGexmop7xvfe87Xw1kXFnxpefXnpE4-0K6XEYnhCYNWE6MB_IRq_C-kpKlaASh0zA_aWUGazW_hATiRt14_Lnti9XicqMb1j0QUDLCCeJjy/s1600/rat-maze.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8JM28NY-8_xAfdH6iCBuZKd8Sqt_qz2YXCSGexmop7xvfe87Xw1kXFnxpefXnpE4-0K6XEYnhCYNWE6MB_IRq_C-kpKlaASh0zA_aWUGazW_hATiRt14_Lnti9XicqMb1j0QUDLCCeJjy/s1600/rat-maze.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
There is a strange urge in my mind: I would like to stop behaving as a rat pressing levers -- even if I have to go hungry for awhile. I would like to step outside the conditioning maze and see what makes it tick. I wonder what I would find. Perhaps a terrible superhuman monstrosity the very contemplation of which would make a man insane? Perhaps a solemn gathering of wise men? Or the maddening simplicity of unattended clockwork?<br /><br />
--Jacques Valle, <em>The Invisible College</em>, p. 206<br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-63460295711545070052016-07-23T05:55:00.000-03:002016-07-26T21:10:14.428-03:0007-23-2016 | All Things<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzWHxzek7mhiCW7GgH3gxf_luxvqj_iHR1juNtTvYldndKouMZiNXvGkY00TBrtrGkctQE8TSR_hMshx5kRp00U2I9DDnsPSsXXNtwYKBAlhvxaCV5qprSs0WAgCm5oGN5EgBlrEmJd9C/s1600/all-things-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzWHxzek7mhiCW7GgH3gxf_luxvqj_iHR1juNtTvYldndKouMZiNXvGkY00TBrtrGkctQE8TSR_hMshx5kRp00U2I9DDnsPSsXXNtwYKBAlhvxaCV5qprSs0WAgCm5oGN5EgBlrEmJd9C/s1600/all-things-2016.jpg" /></a>
"<strong>God will invade.</strong> But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when he does.<br /><br />
When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.<br /><br />
God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else -- something it never entered your head to conceive -- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?"<br /><br />
-- C. S. Lewis, <em>Mere Christianity</em>, p. 52<br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-29851493892044390322016-06-26T04:44:00.000-03:002016-06-26T15:13:40.069-03:0006-26-2016 | Post Solstice<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TBMtJG1tw9zDDQ9CzP2qd7_ovvQCPFZYCjvIwrW9DFhFpCYv-WQZt9bw84DP1hA0NiK_HjTiILWWqJpNC_zJ_ZiBEio_eH2pZqn0jptsbAW9QLLy4EHvW8dX30i_jjqO8ruWA7L6nNa8/s1600/WORLDCOM.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TBMtJG1tw9zDDQ9CzP2qd7_ovvQCPFZYCjvIwrW9DFhFpCYv-WQZt9bw84DP1hA0NiK_HjTiILWWqJpNC_zJ_ZiBEio_eH2pZqn0jptsbAW9QLLy4EHvW8dX30i_jjqO8ruWA7L6nNa8/s1600/WORLDCOM.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-reinforced-concrete-56078">The Problem with Reinforced Concrete</a> - Guy Keulemans<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/iranian-threat-go/">Where Did the Iranian Threat Go?</a> - Martin van Creveld<br /><br />
<a href="http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa593&id=2a3b183cc3">When is an Exit Not an Exit?</a> - Venkatesh Rao<br /><br />
<strong>PDF:</strong> <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2897055/US_Instruments_of_National_Power?auto=download">FM 3-05.130 - Sept 2008</a> - courtesy of .<A href="https://www.army.mil/">mil</a><br /><br />
Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-85258778555667588872016-05-18T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-18T17:04:17.376-03:0005-18-2016 | Simple Vanity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zjjh6ZFamhQ-wMAEC6Ad8mFJ3lPql2p5PAfMnBizqix5uwh1W8YRSzairjQ4yDQnymuiyXM0w4_kWluubyRlIBin2GeL8L3ek9V3bxb1dje7I_VKIIzZmp3sak2SoT5OqzEuVlv0lNkv/s1600/pretty-boy-bush.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zjjh6ZFamhQ-wMAEC6Ad8mFJ3lPql2p5PAfMnBizqix5uwh1W8YRSzairjQ4yDQnymuiyXM0w4_kWluubyRlIBin2GeL8L3ek9V3bxb1dje7I_VKIIzZmp3sak2SoT5OqzEuVlv0lNkv/s1600/pretty-boy-bush.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
Desert Storm was a replay of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis">Operation Praying Mantis</a>, albeit on a far grander canvas. By nightfall on February 27th, American commanders estimated that given one more day the demolition of the Iraqi army would be complete. Before that day could arrive, however, Desert Storm ended.<br /><br />
In Washington, where destroying the Imperial Guard had never figured as a particular imperative, priorities were shifting. Concern for appearances was displacing serious strategic analysis. To some observers, it looked like the Americans were piling on a hapless and defeated foe. The optics were changing in ways that threatened to tarnish perceptions. When to call time was emerging as the question of the moment.<br /><br />
Powell was quick to sense - and embrace - the new mood. "The doves are starting to complain about all the damage you're doing," the closeted four-star dove told Schwarzkopf on a call to Riyadh. "The reports make it look like a wanton killing." What would Schwarzkopf think about calling a halt on the 28th? After briefly hesitating, the CENTCOM commander gave way. The idea of winning a Five-Day War, outdoing the vaunted Israelis by one day, caught his fancy. (The several weeks of bombing that had preceeded the ground attack did not figure in his arithmetic.)<br /><br />
Soon thereafter, Powell updated President Bush and his senior aides in the Oval Office. "Mr. President, it's going much better than expected. The Iraqi army is broken. All they're trying to do is get out," he reported. "By sometime tomorrow the job will be done." Norm concurred in this assessment, Powell added.<br /><br />
<strong>"If that's the case," the commander in chief asked, "why not end it today?"</strong> Once again, Bush was far in front of his subordinates. Ducking into the president's study, Powell quickly called Riyadh. What if the president terminated hostilities later that very day? "I don't have any problem," Schwarzkopf replied. "Our objective was to drive 'em out and we've done that." Desert Storm would end at midnight Washington time, the president decided, a nice, tidy one hundred hours after the ground offensive had begun.<br /><br />
With the clock ticking down, Schwarzkopf, channeling MacArthur, seized the moment to lay down his own narrative of events that unfolded. In a globally televised presentation subsequently known as "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4">The Mother of All Briefings</a>" - Saddam had vowed to defeat the Americans in "The Mother of All Battles" - the CENTCOM commander declared victory. It was a masterful performance, alternately pugnacious, sarcastic, humane, and self-depreciating. His overarching theme emphasized the historic, indeed unprecedented, nature of the US-led coalition's military achievement. In a "classic tank battle," it had all but obliterated the Iraqi army. Any remnants that survived were trapped. "The gates are closed." It was time to stop. "We've accomplished our mission." The problem was that he had not. And the gates were not closed.<br /><br />
Later the same night, Bush himself appeared on television. Absent Schwarzkopf's bombast, he affirmed Schwarzkopf's verdict. "Kuwait is liberated," the president announced. "Iraq's army is defeated. Our military objectives are met." It was time to move on: "the war is now behind us." The first of Bush's claims was indubitably correct, the second partially so. Unfortunately, the last two assertions missed by a wide margin, with considerable implications for the future.<br /><br />
In fact, substantial elements of the Republican Guard remained intact. Nor were they hemmed in. The unilaterally declared ceasefire offered the prospect of escaping back to Baghdad; they wasted little time in doing just that.<br /><br />
Compounding the error, Schwarzkopf bungled the ceasefire's implementation. In a position to impose, he instead chose to concede, with regrettable consequences. The fault was not his alone. Strangely enough, the suspension of operations caught American political and military leaders alike by surprise. No one in a position of authority had given much thought to what would happen next. Washington had provided CENTCOM with no instructions regarding the terms of any agreement to terminate hostilities. So Schwarzkopf drafted his own...<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
...when that meeting convened on March 3 at Safwan, an Iraqi airfield not far from the Kuwaiti border, satisfying the presumed demands of History competed with more substantial considerations. The atmosphere was rife with grandstanding. <strong>Earmarking furnishings for the Smithsonian Institution "in case they ever wanted to re-create the Safwan negotiation scene" emerged as a priority.</strong><br /><br />
To demonstrate that he harbored no grudges against his adversaries, Schwarzkopf magnanimously agreed to grant an Iraqi request to resume use of their military helicopters. "Given that the Iraqis had agreed to all our requests," he later explained, "I didn't feel it was unreasonable to grant one of theirs." So much for the prerogative of dictating terms. The event adjourned with comradely saltues and handshakes all around.<br /><br />
<strong>- Andrew Bacevich, <em>America's War for the Greater Middle East</em> p. 126-128.</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-16347652385564682192016-05-15T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-15T14:58:03.255-03:0005-15-2016 | Mixed Results<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXL43AhFzcD-84ZsU5f9MpcKrbcRNKcwk1OQmotxv4Evu99LRWTQ9tx7vcx0jh9siHRnyA1f4MRnq1O4KcGfuXjQhdbPipzvFe8bm1_NXweQoXukQRzyKcexHFSvtTV71Hn0Ze9O08H6c/s1600/2015IP-yukio.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXL43AhFzcD-84ZsU5f9MpcKrbcRNKcwk1OQmotxv4Evu99LRWTQ9tx7vcx0jh9siHRnyA1f4MRnq1O4KcGfuXjQhdbPipzvFe8bm1_NXweQoXukQRzyKcexHFSvtTV71Hn0Ze9O08H6c/s1600/2015IP-yukio.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<a href="http://www.efalken.com/papers/Taleb2.html">On Taleb</a> - Eric Falkenstein<br /><br />
<strong>Wiki Gem:</strong> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime">Illegal Prime Numbers</a><br /><br />
<strong>[PDF]</strong> <a href="https://themigrationperiod.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/nicklandlureofvoid.pdf">Lure of the Void</a> - Nick Land<br /><br />
<a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/manifesto-of-the-committee-to-abolish-outer-space/">Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space</a> - Sam Kriss<br /><br />
Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-13064437293077609922016-05-14T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-15T14:41:58.038-03:0005-14-2015 | Fitness Landscapes (Slight Reprise)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE8HpCTb6CEEZGw1JjRWyVTiRKMp9I8P4kHE8BLoQ7Z83jg64Uj8wncR41tlGQVJs4flQCFLk3kV6oy10o2aH_3DX-Nz6YCmO_coO49KxBZxyqoifHFD9FRJ1UP1yF5-uP_A9TR5LflI17/s1600/2015IP-olympus.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE8HpCTb6CEEZGw1JjRWyVTiRKMp9I8P4kHE8BLoQ7Z83jg64Uj8wncR41tlGQVJs4flQCFLk3kV6oy10o2aH_3DX-Nz6YCmO_coO49KxBZxyqoifHFD9FRJ1UP1yF5-uP_A9TR5LflI17/s1600/2015IP-olympus.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
The normal functioning of the world serves to hide our state of truly catastrophic dispossession. What is called <em>"catastrophe"</em> is no more than the forced suspension of this state, one of those rare moments when we regain some sort of presence in the world. Let the petroleum reserves run out earlier than expected; let the international flows that regulate the tempo of the metropolis be interrupted; let us suffer some great social disruption and some great "return to the savagery of the population," a "planetary threat," the "end of civilization!" Whatever. Any loss of control would be preferable to all the crisis management scenarios they envision.<br /><br />
When this comes, the specialists in sustainable development won't be the ones with the best advice. It's within the malfunction and short-circuits of the system that we find elements of a response whose logic would be to abolish the problems themselves. Among the signatory nations to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol">Kyoto Protocol</a>, the only countries to have fulfilled their commitments, in spite of themselves, are Ukraine and Romania. <strong>Guess why.</strong> The most advanced experimentation with "organic" agriculture on a global level has taken place since 1989 on the island of Cuba. <strong>Guess why.</strong> And it's along the African highways, and nowhere else, that auto mechanics has been elevated to a form of popular art. <strong>Guess how.</strong><br /><br />
What makes the crisis <em>desirable</em> is the fact that, in the crisis, the environment ceases to be the environment. We are forced to reestablish contact, albeit a potentially fatal one, with what's there, to rediscover the rhythms of reality. What surrounds us is no longer a landscape, a panorama, a theater, but something to inhabit, something we need to come to terms with, something we can learn from.<br /><br />
We won't let ourselves be led astray by the ones who've brought about this "catastrophe." Where the managers platonically discuss among themselves how they might decrease emissions without "breaking the bank," the only realistic option we can see is to "break the bank" as soon as possible, and, in the meantime, take advantages of every collapse in the system to increase our own strength.<br /><br />
<strong>The Invisible Committee, <em>The Coming Insurrection</em> p. 81-82</strong><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-26885637720986504672016-05-12T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-13T17:27:19.675-03:0005-12-2016 | Salad Days<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyIJEeO1TmeWwSdp46OKHz7Zz1SCmMJzS16_uPYe-SETDi-FmQIdsdbzMrdVmAPUjsxx6CFtXC_o51LGlDHkG2TQqxa-tFHwN0s4p0K-MtntTmSTdu92QsykTOcq9HW_IvypvPJb3DkqB/s1600/rumsfeld-70s.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyIJEeO1TmeWwSdp46OKHz7Zz1SCmMJzS16_uPYe-SETDi-FmQIdsdbzMrdVmAPUjsxx6CFtXC_o51LGlDHkG2TQqxa-tFHwN0s4p0K-MtntTmSTdu92QsykTOcq9HW_IvypvPJb3DkqB/s1600/rumsfeld-70s.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
The principal item on the agenda in these conversations was Rumsfeld's career. Nixon was engaging in one of his favorite pastimes, dispensing political advice. At the time of their talks both men assumed that eventually Rumsfeld would run for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Illinois. The main question was what jobs or experience would help him win a Senate seat. Nixon encouraged Rumsfeld to do something in foreign policy.<br /><br />
"Believe me, in a big sophisticated state, and yours is a big sophisticated state, it's about the world. It's not about their miserable little subjects," the president told Rumsfeld. He recounted his own experience as a representative from California, becoming active in the House Un-American Affairs Committee and in the investigation of Alger Hiss, so that when he ran for Senate from California in 1950, he was considered a foreign policy "expert" and voters looked up to him.<br /><br />
Rumsfeld agreed that he'd like to be involved in foreign affairs because "that'd give me a credential." Nixon suggested Rumsfeld might consider a job in the Defense Department but warned him away from becoming a secretary of the Army, Navy or Air Force. "The service secretaries, well, they're just warts. I like them as individuals, but they do not do important things."<br /><br />
<strong>Nixon also outlined for Rumsfeld which countries and regions of the world might help further the career of an aspiring politician and which wouldn't.</strong> "The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe," Nixon explained. "Latin America doesn't matter. Long as we've been in it, people don't give one damn about Latin America, Don." Stay away from Africa, too, Nixon warned. As for the middle east, he went on, getting involved there carried too many potential hazards for a politician. "People think it's for the purpose of catering to the Jewish vote," Nixon told Rumsfeld. <strong>"And anyway, there's nothing you can do about the middle east."</strong><br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
...Rumsfeld did what could to please the president, and that meant helping out with White House political operations. He worked with <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmitchellJ.htm">Mitchell</a> and <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKcolson.htm">Colson</a>, the key figures in Nixon's political apparatus. <strong>One secret bit of help Rumsfeld volunteered was to use his old Princeton ties for secret contracts with the Gallup Poll</strong>, which Colson believed had "dovish" instincts. "We have decided that we'll try Rumsfeld working with Gallup. He went to school with George Jr. at Princeton," Colson told the president in July 1971. Nixon and Colson were eager to try to influence the results of major pollsters, notably Gallup and Harris, perhaps getting them to phrase their questions or to present their results in a way that was helpful to Nixon. "I mean, if the figures aren't up there, we don't want them to lie about it," Nixon explained to Colson at one point. "They can trim them a little one way or another."<br /><br />
There is no evidence in the Nixon tapes that Rumsfeld tried to sway the outcome of Gallup's polling results. Rumsfeld did, however, manage to glean some advance information about what Gallup's upcoming poll results would show, giving Nixon an edge of a few days to prepare. Rumsfeld appeared to realize that in these contacts he was asking Gallup to go beyond the traditional independent role of a pollster. At a White House session in October 1971, Rumsfeld urged Nixon to keep these contacts with the Gallup Poll top secret:<br /><br />
<strong>Rumsfeld:</strong> <em> Say, I just want to report, sir, about my conversation with George Gallup.</em><br /><br />
<strong>Nixon:</strong> <em>Oh yeah, you went to school with him, didn't you?</em><br /><br />
<strong>Rumsfeld:</strong> <em>I did. And I kind of want to be awful careful about telling people around the building that I'm talking to him. Because all he's got in his business is his integrity.</em><br /><br />
Rumsfeld then informed Nixon that an upcoming Gallup Poll would show that the president's popularity had gone up.<br /><br />
Nixon and Haldeman seemed to believe that these secret contacts through Rumsfeld were paying off in subtle ways. On the even of Nixon's trip to China, Haldeman told the president that the Gallup Poll would be timed in a way that would help Nixon. "I can't believe that Gallup would tell Rumsfeld that he would <em>hold</em>," Nixon exclaimed. "Because Gallup was always, 'Jesus Christ, I call them as I see them.'" Haldeman explained that Gallup wasn't rescheduling the poll itself, but merely altering when the results would be made public. "He would wait and release it next month, after you got back," he explained.<br /><br />
<strong>James Mann, <em>Rise of the Vulcans</em>, p. 17-19</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-22283316981205093632016-05-11T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-12T19:16:47.776-03:0005-11-2016 | Being Concise<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoIR1k60u1mp0pout2VUHWHxlj9K2Q7cQ_2xrlrjcoh7tWci1JgujMlKKV_sn8z2e95KlS9jmxJ6QQwKnpz34OS8EO9SvfNJc2YcJB-4-BPFXY1kQVnGom97K9yLTrVr7K5QbOdnyyWYm4/s1600/eisenhower-abroad.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoIR1k60u1mp0pout2VUHWHxlj9K2Q7cQ_2xrlrjcoh7tWci1JgujMlKKV_sn8z2e95KlS9jmxJ6QQwKnpz34OS8EO9SvfNJc2YcJB-4-BPFXY1kQVnGom97K9yLTrVr7K5QbOdnyyWYm4/s1600/eisenhower-abroad.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
At the conclusion of the war against Nazi Germany, from his headquarters in Riems, France, Dwight D. Eisenhower had sent this admirably succinct cable to the War Department: <strong>"The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 02:41, local time, May 7th, 1945."</strong> In the seven decades since, no U.S. regional commander has replicated Eisenhower's achievement. Not one has ever fulfilled his mission. That is, at no time have conditions within the command's assigned <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_of_responsibility">AOR</a> ever reached the point where the officer in charge has felt able to report the job finished.<br /><br />
<strong>Andrew Bagevich, <em>America's War for the Greater Middle East</em> p. 37</strong><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-28585415281100639582016-05-10T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-10T22:12:42.501-03:0005-10-2016 | Laundry Lists<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRjXITlDPXsxDJbUAvxNIvU7iVri-TfxpSmh-2Kq_KJ5bkwAnNDDQzS10WA-gaMNMiilIL38untILzBKuZUuhF2Gelw2WC6vWhg9Xf0R2s8QDiqpcGLkPj1IgypTn6QLpeoo2ltEMIbTq/s1600/putin-shades.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRjXITlDPXsxDJbUAvxNIvU7iVri-TfxpSmh-2Kq_KJ5bkwAnNDDQzS10WA-gaMNMiilIL38untILzBKuZUuhF2Gelw2WC6vWhg9Xf0R2s8QDiqpcGLkPj1IgypTn6QLpeoo2ltEMIbTq/s1600/putin-shades.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-republican-voters-decided-on-trump/">Nate Silver Reconsiders Trump</a> - 538<br /><br />
<strong>PDF:</strong> <a href="http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/files/news%20and%20insight/risk%20insight/2016/political%20violence%20contagion.pdf">Political Violence Contagion</a> - Lloyds<br /><br />
<a href="https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/on-the-stupidity-of-nate-silver/">On The Stupidity of Nate Silver</a> - Sam Kriss<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.isgp.nl/2016-01-17-Alex-Jones-cia-army-special-forces-disinformation">Alex Jones CIA and CNP Family Background</a> - ISGP<br /><br />
Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-8831007560764058972016-05-09T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-09T11:26:19.898-03:0005-09-2016 | Leverage Points<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFZX49xiEMtVvRPMexMLxI8Tn064J0xTWL27DyDVsFUdmg-Jiq0miQdQ-4eeWGFeGzhKCxZOWAI0iGnVG0bjS3hW4H_11zB9dQE3nud77zOhhT9dEEtD8MH__p1zejiP-doJE4_D702AX/s1600/mumbai-attacks.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFZX49xiEMtVvRPMexMLxI8Tn064J0xTWL27DyDVsFUdmg-Jiq0miQdQ-4eeWGFeGzhKCxZOWAI0iGnVG0bjS3hW4H_11zB9dQE3nud77zOhhT9dEEtD8MH__p1zejiP-doJE4_D702AX/s1600/mumbai-attacks.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
The metropolis is a terrain of constant low-intensity conflict, in which the taking of Basra, Mogadishu, or Nablus mark points of culmination. For a long time, the city was a place for the military to avoid, or if anything, to beseige; but the metropolis is perfectly compatible with war. Armed conflict is only a moment in its constant reconfiguration. The battles conducted by the great powers resemble a kind of never-ending police campaign in the black holes of the metropolis. No longer undertaken in view of victory or peace, or even the re-establishment of order, such "interventions" continue a security operation that is always already in progress. War is no longer a distinct event in time, but instead diffracts into a series of micro-operations, both military and police, to ensure security.<br /><br />
The police and army are evolving in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction">parallel</a> and in lock-step. A criminologist requests that the national riot police reorganize itself into small, professionalized, mobile units. The military academy, cradle of disciplinary methods, is rethinking its own hierarchical organization. For his infantry battalion a NATO officer employs a "participatory method that involves everyone in the analysis, preparation, execution and evaluation of an action. The plan is considered and reconsidered for days, right through the training phase and according to the latest intelligence ... there is nothing like group planning for building team cohesion and morale."<br /><br />
The armed forces don't simply adapt themselves to the metropolis, they produce it. Thus, since the battle of Nablus, Israeli soldiers have become interior designers. Forced by Palestinian guerrillas to abandon the streets, which had become too dangerous, they learned to advance vertically and horizontally into the heart of the urban achitecture, poking holes in walls and ceilings in order to move through them. An officer in the IDF, and a graduate in philosophy, explains "the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. This is why we opted for the methodology of moving through walls, like a worm that eats its way forward."<br /><br />
Urban space is more than just the theater of confrontation, it is also the means. This echoes the advice of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Auguste_Blanqui">Blanqui</a> who recommended (in this case for the party of insurrection) that the future insurgents of Paris take over the houses in the barricaded streets to protect their positions, that they should bore holes in the walls to allow passage between them, break down the ground floor stairwells and poke holes in the ceilings to defend themselves against potential attackers, rip out the doors and use them to barricade the windows, and turn each floor into a gun turret.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
The metropolis also produces the means of its own destruction. An American security expert explains the defeat of Iraq as a result of the guerrillas ability to take advantage of new ways of communicating. The US invasion didn't so much import democracy to Iraq as it did cybernetic networks. They brought with them one of the weapons of their own defeat. The proliferation of mobile phones and internet access points gave the guerrillas newfound ways to self-organize, and allowed them to become much more elusive targets.<br /><br />
Every network has its weak points, the notes that must be undone in order to interrupt circulation, to unwind the web. The last great European electrical blackout proved it: a single incident with a high-voltage wire, and a good part of the continent was plunged into darkness. In order for something to rise up in the midst of the metropolis and open up other possibilities, the first act must be to disrupt its perpetual momentum. That is what the Thai rebels understood when they knocked out electrical stations. This is what the French anti-CPE protestors understood in 2006 when they shut down the universities with a view toward shutting down the entire economy. This is what the American longshoremen understood when they stuck in October 2002 in support of three hundred jobs, blocking the main ports on the West Coast for ten days. The American economy is so dependent on goods coming from Asia that the cost of the blockade was over a billion dollars per day. With then thousand people, the largest economic power in the world can be brought to its knees. According to certain "experts," if the action had lasted another month, it would have "produced recession in the United States and an economic nightmare in Southeast Asia."<br /><br />
<strong>The Invisible Committee, <em>The Coming Resurrection</em> p. 58-61</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-58902057903790294632016-05-07T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-07T23:44:19.736-03:0005-07-2016 | Rent Extraction<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4SqKGqSpXNr82hTqulg_zTiEaC1eZD7EG-4r-DRJGIs3aO6_rI_mP_zAMPjQYhS83S6BrR-vnXy-xWH9LRqWsF_HWUXRq24aVXGkuOsQCCxAzQYLMmt_zRQ9wisTfv8so5J8rcps9Qix6/s1600/LOL-WUT.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4SqKGqSpXNr82hTqulg_zTiEaC1eZD7EG-4r-DRJGIs3aO6_rI_mP_zAMPjQYhS83S6BrR-vnXy-xWH9LRqWsF_HWUXRq24aVXGkuOsQCCxAzQYLMmt_zRQ9wisTfv8so5J8rcps9Qix6/s1600/LOL-WUT.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
Under the economy of abundance, even on the limited scale so far established in the United States, the huge bribe held out -- of <strong>security, leisure, affluence</strong> -- unfortunately also carries with it an equally huge penalty: the prospect of universal parasitism. Earlier cultures have had skirmishes with this enemy: Odysseus' scouts among the Lotus Eaters were so beguiled by their honeyed fare and dreamy ease that they had to be rescued by force. More than one emperor or despot discovered their permissiveness in the form of sensual inducements and enticements might be even more effective than coercion in securing compliance. Once established, the parasite identifies himself with his host and seeks to further the host's prosperity. Since parasitism has been widely observed in the animal kingdom, we have sufficient data to make a shrewd guess about the ultimate human consequences.<br /><br />
Now megatechnics offers, in return for unquestioning acceptance, the gift of effortless life: a plethora of prefabricated goods, achieved with a minimum of physical activity, without painful conflicts or harsh sacrifices: <strong>life on the installment plan, as it were,</strong> yet with an unlimited credit cards, and with the final reckoning -- existential nausea and despair -- readable only in the fine print. If the favored human specimen is ready to give up a free-moving, self-reliant, autonomous existence, he may, by being permanently attached to his Leviathan host, receive many of the goods he was once forced to exert himself to secure, along with a large bonus of dazzling superfluities, to be consumed without selection or restriction -- but of course under the iron dictatorship of fashion.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
If proof were needed of the real nature of electronic control, no less a promulger of the system than McLuhan has supplied it. "Electromagnetic technology," he observed in <em>Understanding Media</em>, "<em>requires human docility</em> and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electric technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity which which he served his coracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs." To make his point McLuhan is driven brazenly to deny the original office of tools and utensils as direct servants of human purpose. By the same kind of slippery falsification McLuhan would reinstate the compulsions of the Pyramid Age as a desirable feature of the totalitarian electronic complex.<br /><br />
The 'Big Bribe' turns out to be little more better than the kidnapper's candy. <strong>Such a parasitic existence as megatechnics offers would, in effect, be a return to the womb: now a collective womb.</strong> Fortunately, the mammalian embryo is the only parasite that proved capable of overcoming this condition once it has been established, the baby's birth cry triumphantly announces his escape.<br /><br />
But note: once a human being has left the womb, the conditions that were propitious to his growth become impediments. <strong>No mode of arresting development could be so effective as the effortless instant satisfaction of every need, every desire, every random impulse, by means of mechanical, electronic, or chemical equipment.</strong> All through the organic world development depends upon effort, interest, active participation: not least upon stimulating resistances, conflicts, inhibitions and delays. Even among rats, courtships precedes copulation.<br /><br />
<strong>Lewis Mumford, <em>The Pentagon of Power</em> p. 338-340</strong>
Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-56299563379811791632016-05-06T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-06T12:22:12.641-03:0005-06-2016 | Mere Humanism<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKd2wEssV8BqjAw4J7KLFpNe5PvSb2ZbJSsMwzKQ2cay9ZqBmNdiGBL2Ca5gUZfzmyk6ujIZMR4Rggg9UiraC_P2ynYaPV80QrTa-enJNuwCvtYurAwz4SORHe5VXfeLQkH-x3G5vssi9H/s1600/herman-kahn.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKd2wEssV8BqjAw4J7KLFpNe5PvSb2ZbJSsMwzKQ2cay9ZqBmNdiGBL2Ca5gUZfzmyk6ujIZMR4Rggg9UiraC_P2ynYaPV80QrTa-enJNuwCvtYurAwz4SORHe5VXfeLQkH-x3G5vssi9H/s1600/herman-kahn.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
As Zbigniew Brzezinski remarks: "The government is conservative in relation to change because it generates essentially post-crisis management institutions. In order to create pre-crisis management institutions, in a setting which we could call political-democratic, we will have to increasingly separate the political system from society and begin to conceive of the two as separate entities." To separate the way in which men relate to one another and reify that way itself as something over and above the men themselves is to achieve the triumph of what Jacques Ellul calls "technique," <strong>by substituting the efficacy of systems for the experience of men.</strong><br /><br />
Because the liberal humanist believes in institutional rationalization and in <em>working from within</em>, he is only too easily rendered impotent by the masters of procedures and routines. Liberal humanists are men of good will, but like the benevolent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owenism">Owenite</a> capitalists who sought to check the power of the industrialists, they are beautiful orchids growing in a jungle. <strong>The appeal to "work within the system" is always sounded by the systems managers, for they know well that the mass of liberal humanists is nothing against the inertial mass of the system itself.</strong><br /><br />
Once again the historical irony appears that all things end up in the position opposite to their beginning. The beginning of liberalism with Locke was a movement away from the throne and altar into new free spaces of the market and the school. Now at the point of its complete development, we are bound to the corporation and machine. The <em>genius loci</em> of this era in which the school and the market are one is, of course, the new operational liberal, the technocrat. And one of the most eminent members of this new breed of liberal is Herman Kahn.<br /><br />
The author of <em>On Thinking the Unthinkable</em> and the man who put the word "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megadeath">megadeaths</a>" into the English language is certainly the man who can look into the eye of thermonuclear war and, without blinking, take the shroud measurements for the corpse of civilization. But, surprisingly enough, Kahn too succumbs to the general positivism of his time and only toys with apocalypse when he is asked to look ahead. For him, too, the future is more of the same, and in his Hudson Institute's study, <em>The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years</em>, he sees the future in a linear extrapolation.<br /><br />
Mr. Kahn takes into account the probable appearance of nativistic revolts against technology, but he does not see these as becoming sufficiently effective to alter the basic, multifold trend. He sees the twentieth-century Luddites as being as ineffective as their predecessors; <strong>the Technological Revolution in America will roll over protest just as the Industrial Revolution did in Great Britain.</strong> The liberal industrial worldview will spread until all the undeveloped nations are under its polluted sky.<br /><br />
Kahn's view of the future is a very predictable one, for it is only human for a writer to expect that history will grow in his direction. The liberal feels that liberal values will become increasingly triumphant; the powerless fundamentalist feels that the apocalypse will tumble the proud and mighty into the dust, and that he will be found living in the truth. Few on either the Left or the Right ever imagine that they both will be right, and that in the supra-ideological process of history, events will be as profoundly ambiguous as existence has always been.<br /><br />
So it is not so strange at all than an established technocrat like Herman Kahn should see history as moving in the terms of his liberal, multifold trend. We are all magnets and what is locked in the fields of our consciousness is merely the "facts" we attract. But what is surprising about Kahn's worldview is its utter dearth of imagination.<br /><br />
<strong>-William Irwin Thompson, <em>At The Edge of History</em> p. 114-117</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-63575485037896450622016-05-05T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-05T15:21:33.194-03:0005-05-2016 | Mars Taurus <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2FW9OM6QLfEYLxHsD8pqTuwGk1fHDn5WPzfNDr3hee_vHLBsga3a87L9noAVue_glV01f0qZGrWjgK9sZ3rrdYMrJcWRWxqU2-I2WxZQqc58jSVEZ-KO9DaQcRgyUiknmlK88C0QeQ27x/s1600/2016IP-mercury.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2FW9OM6QLfEYLxHsD8pqTuwGk1fHDn5WPzfNDr3hee_vHLBsga3a87L9noAVue_glV01f0qZGrWjgK9sZ3rrdYMrJcWRWxqU2-I2WxZQqc58jSVEZ-KO9DaQcRgyUiknmlK88C0QeQ27x/s1600/2016IP-mercury.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/video/business/1194832812497/testimony-of-james-simons.html">Testimony of James Harris Simons</a> - CNBC - (<a href="http://innovationpatterns.blogspot.com/2013/02/02-18-2013-trade-secrets.html">more here</a>)<br /><br />
<a href="https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/">Uncanny Valley</a> - Anna Weiner<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.xenosystems.net/independence/">Independence</a> - Nick Land<br /><br />
<strong>Wiki Gem:</strong> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia">Inedia</a> Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-84308563269322705222016-05-04T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-04T18:22:13.923-03:0005-04-2016 | Fertility Rituals<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQlFW-OyY9IGRINgbSwKjoOdIg1iAbPJZRzXzHGqBPqO-20pLQDYSkMyMsCbcuQvmpsMJMr-CPFFeJmVkOSh4hZf-IySzrfCzZssFnvpdHnsNkCW_ZNo_PMQyZg9P4CUnbgpTuaePfKVBi/s1600/david-brandt-berg.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQlFW-OyY9IGRINgbSwKjoOdIg1iAbPJZRzXzHGqBPqO-20pLQDYSkMyMsCbcuQvmpsMJMr-CPFFeJmVkOSh4hZf-IySzrfCzZssFnvpdHnsNkCW_ZNo_PMQyZg9P4CUnbgpTuaePfKVBi/s1600/david-brandt-berg.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
By the end of 1980, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_International">The Family of Love</a> had grown to almost eight thousand members. Dispersed throughout the world in small homes, most disciples were isolated from the larger community. In many areas of the world, disciples were out of touch with the sense of unity, sacrificial cooperation, and missionary zeal characteristic of the early years.<br /><br />
In 1981, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berg">Father David</a> initiated the "Fellowship Revolution." Homes were ordered to begin weekly fellowship meetings with others in their area.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br >
The Fellowship Revolution was accompanied by a renewed insistence that as many disciples as possible leave North America and Europe and move to the south and the east. The move was necessary to avoid a coming nuclear disaster and to bring the proclamation of salvation through Jesus to as many people as possible before The End.<br /><br />
<strong>The introduction of video equipment was another significant aspect of the Fellowship Revolution.</strong> In 1980, the <em>Music with Meaning</em> (MWM) community in Greece recorded various aspects of their life and ministry and sent those videos to the World Services HQ. Father David, who had lived in seclusion for over ten years, was delighted to have this access to his "kids." <strong>He encouraged all the Homes to obtain video equipment and begin sharing a record of their lives with him and other homes.</strong> Videos functioned to break down the isolation and played a significant role in pulling The Family back together.<br /><br />
<strong>In keeping with his desire to explore fully the limits of sexual freedom, Father David requested that MWM and other homes make "Love Videos,"</strong> which would involved musical background and: "Our beautiful women could dance in a very artistic and soft and loving way ... I don't mean a lot of porn ... just plain beautiful beauty and artistry the way God made you in your natural beauty." Numerous Love Videos were produced.<br /><br />
<strong>Father David soon also offered a suggestion that homes might film some romantic or erotic scenes between couples.</strong> Disciples responded by producing videos that depicted sex acts, usually men with women, but also women with women. <strong>These more explicit videos were sent to Father David and distributed among select Homes; most disciples were not involved.</strong><br /><br />
By the mid 80's, the novelty had worn off, and The Family were becoming more sensitive to the possible negative effects of these videos. In April of 1984, World Services put heavy restrictions on who could order the dance videos. Within a few years, disciples were instructed to stop altogether and erase any recordings in their possession.<br /><br />
<strong>- James D. Chancellor, <em>Life in the Family: An Oral History of the Children of God</em> p. 12-14</strong><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-69174073403341565762016-05-03T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-04T19:26:19.010-03:0005-03-2016 | Minor Quibbles<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWs83srSXI0QKDesCNATIeIN7Vu3wugDayR-sqOKZmUVzgwXaYWXS-A_K_wYubzPjmcMUx-FdmX3r2sltsLR9UjwrRD2FgqzYmySkaG9a0vi1JxycuzdI3-_WAqWTBq-eyIQI4ODYRDUm/s1600/the-coming-insurrection.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWs83srSXI0QKDesCNATIeIN7Vu3wugDayR-sqOKZmUVzgwXaYWXS-A_K_wYubzPjmcMUx-FdmX3r2sltsLR9UjwrRD2FgqzYmySkaG9a0vi1JxycuzdI3-_WAqWTBq-eyIQI4ODYRDUm/s1600/the-coming-insurrection.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
The first global slaughter, which from 1914 to 1918 did away with a large portion of the urban and rural proletariat, was waged in the name of freedom, democracy and civilization. For the past five years, the so called "war on terror" with its special operations and targeted assassinations have been pursued in the name of these same values.<br /><br />
Yet the resemblance stops there: at the level of appearances. The value of civilization is no longer so obvious that it can be brought to the natives as a package. Freedom is no longer a name scrawled on walls, for today it is always followed, as if by its shadow, with the word "security." And it is well known that democracy can be dissolved in pure and simple "emergency" edicts -- for example, the official restitution of torture in the US, or in France's <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_portant_sur_l%27adaptation_de_la_justice_aux_%C3%A9volutions_de_la_criminalit%C3%A9">Perben II</a> law.<br /><br />
<strong>In a single century, freedom, democracy and civilization have reverted to the state of hypotheses.</strong> The leaders' work from now on consists of shaping the material and moral as well as symbolic and social conditions in which these hypotheses can be more or less validated, in configuring spaces in which they can seem to function. All means to these ends are acceptable, even the least democratic, the least civilized, the most repressive. <strong>It was a century in which democracy regularly presided over the birth of fascist regimes</strong>, <em>civilization</em> consistently rhymed -- to the tune of Wagner or Iron Maiden -- with <em>extermination</em>, and in which, one day in 1929, freedom showed its two faces: a banker throwing himself from a window and a family of workers dying of hunger.<br /><br />
Since then -- let's say, 1945 -- it's taken from granted that manipulating the masses, secret service operations, the restriction of public libraries, and the complete sovereignty of a wide array of police forces were appropriate ways to ensure democracy, freedom and civilization. At the final stage of this evolution, we see the first socialist mayor of Paris putting the finishing touches on urban pacification with a new police protocol for a poor neighborhood, announced with the following carefully chosen words: "We're building a civilized space here." <strong>There's nothing more to say; everything has to be destroyed.</strong><br /><br />
<strong>The Invisible Committee, <em>The Coming Insurrection</em>, p. 85-86</strong><br /><br />
cf. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Revolution">The Triple Revolution Memorandum</a><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-50449349894240671792016-05-02T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-02T18:22:19.004-03:0005-02-2016 | Incremental Certainty<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUFpd9p_jJmoPaMB9PCZQRIPe-IL5TUCeeHNJm-9yf8gVJhLztPrlwHHAAMc0SlokMM8F5VML5JFQE2Erk9j0U4iovHxukViTbTxRxtHBbHCQl3mF4LMJGd8wstzoSMsrj5eCcj8Jtj8N/s1600/reagan-smile.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUFpd9p_jJmoPaMB9PCZQRIPe-IL5TUCeeHNJm-9yf8gVJhLztPrlwHHAAMc0SlokMM8F5VML5JFQE2Erk9j0U4iovHxukViTbTxRxtHBbHCQl3mF4LMJGd8wstzoSMsrj5eCcj8Jtj8N/s1600/reagan-smile.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
In the 1980 presidential elections, candidate Ronald Reagan took a hard line on defense. In stern and urgent tones, he lashed out at the Soviet menace, calling for a vastly expanded military buildup. His opponent sought to use this stance to characterize Reagan as a warmonger, even a mad bomber. It was on of the weak spots in Reagan's public image.<br /><br />
At a certain point in the campaign, Reagan's handling of foreign and defense policy shifted noticeably. His tone became more reasoned and calm; the word <em>peace</em> began to appear more prominently in his speeches; references to "war" and the "arms race" faded. A new phrase emerged to cover his position on armaments, something bland and noncommital, but seemingly prudent: "a margin of safety."<br /><br />
What caused this change of tone and rhetoric? It was done in response to a key campaign advisor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wirthlin">Richard Wirthlin</a>. The advice might have been based, as such advice usually has been, on pure political instinct, which may or may not have been persuasive with the candidate and his many other counselors. Politicians always work at the center of rumors, guesswork, hunches, tested savvy, gut feelings. But in this case, Wirthlin's advice was based on something else: numbers, lots of numbers. It arose from a barrage of public opinion polling all across the nation. Wirthlin commanded statistics. They gave his advice the appearance of something more than guesswork. It looked like science.<br /><br />
In the late 1960s, Wirthlin, a former economist at Brigham Young University in Utah, opened a market research firm in southern California called Decision Making Information. Like many such firms which measure consumer tastes, DMI easily moved into political polling, where Wirthlin was first hired on by Ronald Reagan to guide his gubernatorial campaign in California in 1970. DMI provided the usual services: voter surveys, sampling, simulations.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
<strong>John Kennedy was the first national candidate to make important use of polling.</strong> That was in 1960; his hired pollster was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Harris">Louis Harris</a>, who then became an independent expert. By the late 1970s, every serious candidate for office in the United States who could afford the price was following Kennedy's lead; expensive polling along with lots of media exposure had become the prevailing campaign style. But by then, top figures in the business, like Wirthlin, had gone on to new heights of push-button statistical precision.<br /><br />
DMI had developed important connections. Its clients included government agencies like Heath and Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Office of Education. In turn, the firm was tapped into nearly forty federal data banks that make their information publicly available. Wirthlin, with the aid of a large staff -- as many as 300 -- was able to mobilize this wealth of data through an intricate computer method called PINS, Political Information Service. He had put together the most ambitious electronic sampling and simulating service ever developed, a new standard for the profession. His telephone surveys -- which included automated, tape recorded polls -- were larger, more intense, more constant. He developed "tracking" techniques that involved nightly phone interviews with between 500 and 1000 randomly selected voters towards the end of the campaign.<br /><br />
Wirthlin's carefully prepared interviews and computer programs, <strong>which divided into 108 demographic categories</strong>, could nearly single out any item on the candidate's platform or person image -- "The nice guy factor," "the meanness factor," -- and rapidly assess the "trend line" fluctuations in specific voter groups, providing overnight reactions to a speech, debate, press conference or even an offhand remark. The same refined and prompt polling could be done to assess the progress of the opposition, and the campaign could be adjusted as the numbers dictated: more of this, less of that, push harder here, smile more, keep your left side to the camera.<br /><br />
The pollsters are available to anyone who can afford them, they have been used by groups of every political persuasion. But they obviously bias elections in favor of those who can spend the most on the best services.<br /><br />
After all, their marketing techniques do succeed in selling a lot of worthless merchandise the public never knew it wanted. More to the point: there exists a pollster, Richard Wirthlin, who succeeded in making Ronald Reagan president. Any technique that can make a winner out of such unlikely material is bound to look impressive to the rest of the field.<br /><br />
<strong>-Theodore Roszak, <em>The Cult of Information</em> p. 188-190.</strong><br /><br />
Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-20633080637759623662016-05-01T04:44:00.000-03:002016-05-01T16:19:49.339-03:0005-01-2016 | Thinking Big<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpDrCBEoUTrHwTNCKW_x0gPM7zsJInkyVUuLRh5cnOus3No-aaQGqmBgakJ9sIz16wathAudho9yap-AWcjm-6jWJPDlO0cfWmYxIzmamYLw6HXFFQcaIZssPKl89Gaw3-nt8J5qRB3zlp/s1600/lenin-tomb.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpDrCBEoUTrHwTNCKW_x0gPM7zsJInkyVUuLRh5cnOus3No-aaQGqmBgakJ9sIz16wathAudho9yap-AWcjm-6jWJPDlO0cfWmYxIzmamYLw6HXFFQcaIZssPKl89Gaw3-nt8J5qRB3zlp/s1600/lenin-tomb.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
Lenin, if we judge him from his major writings, was a confirmed <a href="http://innovationpatterns.blogspot.com/2016/04/04-26-2016-macro-scale.html">high modernist.</a> The broad lines of his thought were quite consistent; whether he was writing about revolution, industrial planning, agricultural organization, or administration, he focused on a unitary scientific answer that was known to a trained intelligentsia and that ought to be followed. The Lenin of practice was, of course, something else again. His capacity for sensing the popular mood in fashioning Bolshevik propaganda, for beating a tactical retreat when it seemed prudent, and for striking boldly to seize the advantage was more relevant than his high modernism to his success as a revolutionary. It is Lenin as a high modernist, however, with whom we are primarily concerned.<br /><br />
The major text for the elaboration of Lenin's high-modernist views of revolution is <em>What Is To Be Done?</em> High modernism was integral to the central purpose of Lenin's argument: <strong>to convince the Russian left that only a small, selected, centralized, professional cadre of revolutionaries could bring about a revolution in Russia.</strong> Written in 1903, well before the "dress rehearsal" revolution <a href="http://www.laborstandard.org/New_Postings/1905.htm">of 1905</a>, this view was never entirely abandoned, even under totally different circumstances in 1917 between the February overthrow of czar and the Bolshevik seizure of power in October, when he wrote <em>State and Revolution.</em><br /><br />
Certain metaphors suffuse Lenin's analysis of the link between the vanguard party and the workers in <em>What Is To Be Done?</em> They set the tone of the work and limit what can be said within its confines. <strong>These metaphors center on the classroom and the barracks.</strong> The party and its local agitators and propagandists function as schoolteachers capable of raising merely economic complaints to the level of revolutionary political demands, or they function as officers in a revolutionary army who deploy their troops to best advantage. <br /><br />
In their role as teachers, the vanguard party and its newspaper develop a pedagogical style that is decidedly authoritarian. The party analyzes the many and varied popular grievances and, at the right time, "dictates a positive programme of action" that will contribute to a "universal political struggle." <strong>In fact, Lenin complained, the party's activists have been woefully inadequate. It is not enough to call the movement a "vanguard," he insisted. "We must act in such a way that <em>all other units of the army</em> shall see us, and be obliged to admit that we are the vanguard."</strong> The goal of the vanguard party is to train willing but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat">"backward" proletarians</a> in revolutionary politics so that they will be inducted into an army that will "collect and utilize every grain of even rudimentary protest," thereby creating a disciplined revolutionary army.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
<strong>Thus the vanguard party not only is essential to the tactical cohesion of the masses but also must literally do their thinking for them.</strong> The party functions as an executive elite whose grasp of history and dialectical materialism allows it to devise the correct "war aims" of the class struggle. Its authority is based on its scientific intelligence. Lenin quotes the "profoundly true and important utterances by Karl Kautsky," who said that the proletariat cannot aspire to "modern socialist consciousness" on its own because it lacks the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism">profound scientific knowledge</a>" required to do so: "The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia."<br /><br />
<strong>James C. Scott, <em>Seeing Like a State</em> p. 147-150</strong> Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-74680417744095115372016-04-30T04:44:00.000-03:002016-04-30T04:44:06.584-03:0004-30-2016 | Humble Beginnings<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGpPkoycW__-Zp7SM1Kwqiu4NV58qJfTH4x39lX30swWZKunV1XGAD7mZ0TwoPizcu62O8l0lTR0VEhA43aIbzAaKgxiMjqvu4HDrJLYFOnUod33NjH01zN-MDQf0QISNxkuTpbHZ-XmIP/s1600/dulles-brovahs.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGpPkoycW__-Zp7SM1Kwqiu4NV58qJfTH4x39lX30swWZKunV1XGAD7mZ0TwoPizcu62O8l0lTR0VEhA43aIbzAaKgxiMjqvu4HDrJLYFOnUod33NjH01zN-MDQf0QISNxkuTpbHZ-XmIP/s1600/dulles-brovahs.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
<strong>Neither Dulles brother particularly welcomed Hitler, whose mildewed origins quickly affected even the best-aired drawing room.</strong> Soon after Hitler's ascension to the chancellorship Allen alluded to a "sinister impression" around Berlin. By 1934 Hitler's boycott of Jews was clearly underway, while "alien"-looking citizens were banged around routinely in public forums. Valued clients of ancient standing such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Warburg">Warburgs of Hamburg</a> were unnerved, and murmured in their palaces of pervasive Gestapo listening devices.<br /><br />
Once Nazism took hold, both brothers grew cautious about speaking for the record. Hitler's medicine was virulent at times -- undoubtedly repulsive towards Jews of importance -- but what would it take to purge the abuses of Versailles? Allen subsequently grew fond of casting himself in the liberal's role at the celebrated partners' meeting at Sullivan and Cromwell late in the summer of 1935. Two of the senior partners were of Jewish descent, and several of the younger people were incensed that the firm still maintained formal offices in Berlin. Group negotiations were bruited about, while Foster protested with uncharacteristic vehemence that the loss of even reduced business from Germany might endanger the cash flow. Blue-ribbon customers like Remington, Standard Oil, and General Motors wanted German representation. The meeting got raucous, and Allen allegedly threw in with the insurgents, and once the vote went one-sidedly in favor of closing down Berlin, Foster was said to have stalked off in open tears.<br /><br />
Like many of Allen's anecdotes, this tale is pointed up by what it omits. One mammoth client Allen himself lured into the shop, Du Pont, was badgering him badly about the Nazi tyranny. Another partner who ostensibly sat in on the controversial meeting maintains that once the vote was tallied Foster "fully acquiesced." Allen later went so far as to deplore the U.S. arms embargo against the Spanish Republic "while its antagonists were kept supplied by certain European governments." On the other hand, he refused to name these Fascist governments publicly. Meanwhile, according to his obituary in <em>The New York Times</em>, Allen had been working on both the Farben and the Vereinigte Stahlwerke accounts.<br /><br />
The brothers would remain available to clients of every conviction, anywhere in Central Europe. According to his business records, Foster visited Germany every year until the war broke out. It told a great deal that Allen had no apparent compunctions not only about signing on as a director of the New York branch of J. Henry Schroder, but subsequently assuming the much increased workload -- and banking the augmented salary -- which went with the post of Schroder's General Counsel. The influential Schroder investment banking houses in New York and London remained affiliated, through blood and commercial ties, with descendants of "die Gebruder Schroeder." They included, emphatically, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Baron_von_Schr%C3%B6der">Baron Kurt von Schroeder</a>, Heinrich Himmler's special angel.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong><br /><br />
Another of Allen's regulars, the Schroder Rockefeller investment banking combination, effected a bridging role. Partners in this 1936 hybrid were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Rockefeller">Avery Rockefeller</a> (John D's nephew, a 42 percent participant) and the cousins Bruno (founder of the London branch) and Kurt von Schroeder (47 percent combined). Both Dulleses cleared out legal objections. Disclaimers appeared each time the liberal press sighted in, and spokesmen repeatedly emphasized that the New York Schroder branches functioned independently of the London house, let alone the Gebruder Schroeder in Hamburg or J.H. Stein in Cologne. It remained a fact that the dominating shareholder in both J. Henry Schroder offices continued to be the majestic Baron Bruno in London, on whom his first cousin Kurt still depended, periodically, to underwrite flagging Rhineland suppliers.<br /><br />
With Hitler progressing steadily, Bruno and the Baroness were actively proselytizing among the English ruling classes to broaden understanding for the new Germany. They inroducted <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/GERribbentrop.htm">Joachim von Ribbentrop</a> to society when he became Hitler's ambassador to Britain.<br /><br />
As General Counsel of the Manhattan Schroder's, it behooved Allan to examine Baron Bruno's resplendent orchid collection at his estate near Cliveden, to attend the Baron's lament of the inequities perpetrated against "my poor country." Schroeder's recriminations seemed reasoned enough compared to with the feverent anti-Bolshevism of other Dulles contacts like Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell, now vociferously worshipping Hitler.<br /><br />
<strong>...</strong>
<strong>Like FDR, Allen had an unnerving way of taking on the political complexion of the last forceful person he'd had a drink with.</strong> When his ex-colleague Hugh Wilson served briefly as ambassador to Germany and observed that while one may "deplore the brutality" of the maneuvering which produced the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss">Anschluss</a>, one "must admire the efficiency," Allen hadn't appeared perturbed. Even Foster was stunned for a moment by Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, but Allen passed it off, in that paralyzingly blase manner he favored when everybody else was raving, by observing that "Hitler's batting average in taking over states is a good one."<br /><br />
<strong>- Burton Hersh, <em>The Old Boys</em> p. 72-75</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-34016368246894323952016-04-29T04:44:00.000-03:002016-04-29T04:44:00.679-03:0004-29-2016 | Wise Guys<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZYQ-ZnNbtfMuX9f29G78ZY4URcnz9zryrsW3dr8zUU7bdA6cHY6yFymiiKsMy48RncFjd3XW6sPCoXzWHE-L_UIa7BGAtsGjtmWZc5_KVtHSEPfcqxwXVTtr0l5YLKZNluT68a31Xh81/s1600/mitchell-werbell.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZYQ-ZnNbtfMuX9f29G78ZY4URcnz9zryrsW3dr8zUU7bdA6cHY6yFymiiKsMy48RncFjd3XW6sPCoXzWHE-L_UIa7BGAtsGjtmWZc5_KVtHSEPfcqxwXVTtr0l5YLKZNluT68a31Xh81/s1600/mitchell-werbell.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
The B. R. Fox Company was located in a duplex apartment on Connecticut Avenue in downtown Washington, DC. While B. R. Fox was supposedly the only tenant, the apartment in fact served a number of purposes and housed an assortment of intriguing characters. For one thing, it was used by <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKconein.htm">Lou Conein</a> as a safe-house for the vanguard of the DEA's Special Operations Group (DEA-SOG). That group numbered a baker's dozen of handpicked Latino CIA officers transferred at "Black Luigi's" behest to the DEA. Appointed to the DEA post by Nixon, Conein's task was to establish an international intelligence network capable of destroying the narcotics traffic.<br /><br />
Accomplishing this would be no easy matter. The DEA suffered from internal corruption, and its best agents were consistently outmaneuvered by Oriental, French and Cuban smugglers trained in techniques by their own countries and the CIA. Lacking sophistication in spookery, the DEA compiled a stunning record of failures and desperately required the expertise available in Langley. The CIA, however, was reluctant to participate in any serious effort to destroy the heroin trade, regarding its own mission as more important. <strong>Moreover, many of those involved in the trade as financiers and couriers were themselves valuable CIA agents.</strong><br /><br />
Conein resolved the dilemma of DEA impotence and CIA recalcitrance by having the Dirty Dozen transferred from one agency to the other. His orders were to create a clandestine service within the DEA, and each of the dozen agents would be regarded as a future DEA "chief of station" in a foreign country. There they'd establish their own apparats, run agents, and carry out a <em>de facto</em> guerrilla war on dope, all of it masterminded by Lou Conein. And, because he distrusted the DEA itself, Conein chose to isolate his proteges from other agents in DEA headquarters. He did this by having them rendezvous in the La Salle apartment building leased to B. R. Fox -- but paid for, in large part, by the DEA.<br /><br />
Besides harboring the Fox Company and the Dirty Dozen, the apartment was also headquarters for Security Consultants International ("SECOIN"). Conceived by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_WerBell_III">Mitchell WerBell</a> (already the proprietor of the Central Investigative Agency), SECOIN was run by John Muldoon, who viewed Washington's huge embassy population as a likely clientele for debugging services. Finally, the LaSalle Building duplex served as a kind of crash pad for freelance spooks.<br /><br />
"It was bizarre," Eliot Spindel says. "Muldoon would show up every day with a stack of cards about three inches high. He'd sit down at his desk and, one by one, make phone calls to the numbers printed on the cards. He'd do that until noon or so, then go out with Conein for lunch, drink beer for a couple hours, and come back to make more phone calls till five o'clock...that's all he ever did. It was unnerving! I still don't know what it was all about. But the place really jumped when WerBell came through on one of his missions. It was like a visit from the general, you know?"<br /><br />
It must have been. At the time, WerBell was simultaneously wired into deals involving the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaco_Independence_Movement">"liberation" of Abaco</a>, the establishment of a submachine gun factory in Costa Rica, the sale of his arsenal to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vesco">Robert Vesco</a>, and a variety of more routine transactions, described earlier. He was, in addition, under pressure from the CIA to leave the country, and according to Eliot Spindel, he was preparing to establish an offshore version of the B. R. Fox Company on Abaco. It's entirely possible that CIA pressure and the off-shore plan were related. Since the 1969 Omnibus Crime Bill, manufacturers of clandestine weapons and surveillance devices have shifted their bases to locations in the Caribbean, establishing factories and shops in mini-nations that have neither the motives nor the funds needed to regulate their export. According to WerBell, the CIA and DEA wanted him in an offshore position so that he could make and sell clandestine weapons in near-absolute secrecy.<br /><br />
<strong>- Jim Hougan, <em>Spooks</em> p. 138</strong><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-5713507984099090022016-04-28T04:44:00.000-03:002016-04-28T17:36:19.998-03:0004-28-2016 | Time Limits<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTMTiWHO-rtPD4Het4edX3w7gYnpmwp5RlL9vSpM_HMBTIszNNQnX3v5RK4QTUP9HHImgFgCCVTwYm18y1IPDr-_KUO-srqDXOG0aFpYvCq5zF2-L9xUFreiEwsro2vVgQgw1e7q4qYa4/s1600/arnold-smile-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTMTiWHO-rtPD4Het4edX3w7gYnpmwp5RlL9vSpM_HMBTIszNNQnX3v5RK4QTUP9HHImgFgCCVTwYm18y1IPDr-_KUO-srqDXOG0aFpYvCq5zF2-L9xUFreiEwsro2vVgQgw1e7q4qYa4/s1600/arnold-smile-2016.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
Half a century ago H. G. Wells observed, correctly enough, that mankind faced a race between education and catastrophe. But what he failed to recognize was that <strong>something like catastrophe has become the condition for an effective education.</strong> This might seem like a dismal and hopeless conclusion, were it not for the fact that the power system, through its own overwhelming achievements, has proved expert in creating breakdowns and catastrophes.<br /><br />
...<br /><br />
Admittedly the partial disasters of war, though no longer locally limited, had through the ages grown too familiar to bring about a sufficient reaction. During the last decade, fortunately, there has been a sudden, quite unpredictable awakening to prospects of a <em>total</em> catastrophe. The unrestricted increase of the population, the over-exploitation of the megatechnical inventions, the inordinate wastages of compulsory consumption, and the consequent deterioration of the environment through wholesale pollution, poisoning, bulldozing, to say nothing of the more irremediable waste-products of atomic energy, have at last begun to create the reaction needed to overcome them.<br /><br />
This awakening has become planet-wide. The experiences of congestion, environmental degradation, and human demoralization now fall within the compass of everyone's daily life. Even in the open country, small communities are now forced to take political action against canny enterprisers seeking to dump wastes from distant cities in rural areas that already have difficulty enough in coping with their own rubbish and sewage. The extent of the approaching catastrophe, its visible nearness, and its dire inevitability unless countermeasures are rapidly taken, have done far more than the vivid prospects of sudden nuclear extinction to bring on a sufficient psychological response. In this respect, the swifter the degradation, the more likely effective measures against it will be sought.<br /><br />
<strong>- Lewis Mumford, <em>The Pentagon of Power</em> p. 411</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-31948354087021871492016-04-27T04:44:00.000-03:002016-04-28T17:10:37.019-03:0004-27-2016 | Small Revolutions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcriNMAD9soHGhtT0zlHPJqt9c98MdB3eW0i6SMFna64Tydf_blFtPcANSb6NkOBT2Xb5zpxLkz0lLnNgnLry_9cGjlqqJINdRxzoeRydDiX_vG12ZA4ay5jltx_NmuRSIMMCoSDFsdy18/s1600/leopard-hunt-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcriNMAD9soHGhtT0zlHPJqt9c98MdB3eW0i6SMFna64Tydf_blFtPcANSb6NkOBT2Xb5zpxLkz0lLnNgnLry_9cGjlqqJINdRxzoeRydDiX_vG12ZA4ay5jltx_NmuRSIMMCoSDFsdy18/s1600/leopard-hunt-2016.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
How is it that when we try to do good we can often end up creating greater evil? The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 ended in the Reign of Terror and the rise of the dictatorship of Napoleon. The temporary dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia ended up in the permanent dictatorship of the ex-proletariat in the new bourgeoisie of the Communist Party. America fought a revolutionary war against the British Empire, and then became an empire fighting to suppress a guerrilla war of national liberation in Vietnam. But these <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia">enantiodromias</a></em> are not restricted to contradictory world of revolution and politics, for the Green Revolution started out as a project to feed the masses in starving India, and then ended up as the Americanization of Indian agriculture in which the rich got richer and the poor got poorer through the introduction of the petrochemicals, fertilizers, tractors, and large land holding of the modern agro-industry. <strong>The industrialization of the planet and the global distribution of medical services have increased the population so that more people are suffering than ever before.</strong> This year four hundred million people are dying of starvation.<br /><br />
Liberals speak of progress, especially of progress in terms of "modernization," but hunters and gatherers have more leisure time than we have and no way of institutionalizing conflict in warfare. Every step toward progress, whether it is the agricultural revolution of 9000 BC, the urban revolution of 3500 BC, or the industrial revolution of 1770, has carried with it an equal and opposite horror. As Homer recognized long ago, your unique excellence is also your tragic flaw; your greatness hobbles you. We have tried to do good in modernizing the planet through industrialization, but the internal contradictions of industrial society are beginning to become painfully visible; now some ecologists are predicting that the population of the earth with drop a hundred fold <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager">in the next ten to twenty years</a>. If this is the case, then the entire Industrial Revolution and the whole philosophy of progress which went along with it will culminate, either through famine, ecological catastrophe, and economic disaster, or through thermonuclear war, in the greatest cataclysm in the history of the human species. When this happens, it will not be because people were consciously trying to do evil; in many cases, the leaders were trying to do good.<br /><br />
If evil can grow out of efforts to do good, it also seems to be the case that good can grow out of our efforts to do evil. The Roman military engineers built the roads that the Christian missionaries traveled to convert an empire. The British executed by firing squad the Irish rebels of 1916, and thus helped to free Ireland. The Nazis executed six million, and thus helped to bring the nation of Israel into existence. But much of this seems unconscious, for those who do evil certainly do not plan on having good result from it; and those who think they are working for progress do not wish to create the apocalypse. The inventor of the aerosol spray can did not wish to destroy the ozone layer of the planet, but whether it is dynamite, atomic energy, psychosurgery, or genetic engineering, it does seem to be the case that our very unconsciousness of these <em>enantiodromias</em> increases the likelihood of evil emerging from our acts. It is no longer safe to assume that good intentions are enough. One can wreak havoc with benevolence; therefore we have to stop and call into question the ideas of progress and philanthropy upon which modern liberalism is based.<br /><br />
A new race of liberals is arising to seek "<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/On_the_creation_of_a_just_world_order.html?id=_2G1AAAAIAAJ">The Creation of Just World Order</a>," but if we remain as unconscious in this second global wave of liberalism as we were in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White">first wave</a> which came at the end of the Second World War, then we are likely to create untold horror on a planetary scale. IF the Green Revolution can increase starvation, if antibiotics can be described as a threat to the evolutionary viability of the human species, if the entire edifice of modernization can be seen to be a curse, then how can we assume that those who write proposals for a "<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=A+Strategy+for+the+Future+%3A+The+Systems+Approach+to+World+Order+by+Ervin+Laszlo+1974">Systems Approach to World Order</a>" <strong>know what they are doing?</strong> If a thing as tiny as an aerosol spray can generate intense scientific debate about the future of life on this planet, then what of a grand scheme of a handful of academics creating an entire world order?<br /><br />
We are like flies crawling across the cieling of the Sistine Chapel; we cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality, but the true historical reality of our condition is invisible to us. How can you fix up history if you cannot see it? What if history cannot be fixed from inside history? What if the attempt to fix human history is an effort to seek out the dark with a searchlight?<br /><br />
<strong>- William Irwin Thompson, <em>Evil and World Order</em> p. 79-81</strong><br /><br />Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721035008988441518.post-54914929171530951812016-04-26T04:44:00.000-03:002016-04-26T08:02:50.744-03:0004-26-2016 | Macro Scale<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJu9K8dZGDC8dcC7zpVJqMuvKKThsuBa0wyI6me6ggNKNR_EN9HNaTaT0A49SxKFGOpV2NIwLSUzjkiCM_1J89EZQ3Gd6w8l1ag830RnDKPTjubMAoPdeCi0L7BSj1yuJnRCx9i0Fc8aJ/s1600/focus-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJu9K8dZGDC8dcC7zpVJqMuvKKThsuBa0wyI6me6ggNKNR_EN9HNaTaT0A49SxKFGOpV2NIwLSUzjkiCM_1J89EZQ3Gd6w8l1ag830RnDKPTjubMAoPdeCi0L7BSj1yuJnRCx9i0Fc8aJ/s1600/focus-2016.jpg" /></a><br /><br />
Until recently, the ability of the state to impose its schemes on society was limited by the state's modest ambitions and its limited capacity. Although Utopian aspirations to a finely tuned social control can be traced back to Enlightenment thought and to monastic and military practices, the eighteenth-century European state was still largely a machine for extraction. It is true that state officials, particularly under absolutism, had mapped much more of their kingdoms populations, land tenures, production and trade than their predecessors had and that they had become increasingly efficient in pumping revenue, grain, and conscripts from the countryside. But the was more than a little irony in their claim to absolute rule.<br /><br />
They lacked the consistent coercive power, the fine-grained administrative grid, or the detailed knowledge that would have permitted them to undertake more intrusive experiments in social engineering. To give their growing ambitions full rein, they required a far greater hubris, a state machinery that was equal to the task, and a society they could master By the mid-nineteenth century in the West and by the early twentieth century elsewhere, these conditions were being met.<br /><br />
I believe that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements. <strong>The first is the aspiration to the administrative ordering of nature and society,</strong> an aspiration that we have already seen in scientific forestry, but one raised to a far more comprehensive and ambitious level. "High Modernism" seems an appropriate term for this aspiration.<br /><br />
As a faith, it was shared across a large spectrum of political ideologies. Its main carriers and exponents were the avant-garde among engineers, planners, technocrats, high-level administrators, architects, scientists and visionaries. If one were to imagine a pantheon or Hall of Fame of high-modernist figures, it would almost certainly include such names as Henri Comte de Saint-Simon, Le Corbusier, Walther Rathenau, Robert McNamara, Robert Moses, Jean Monnet, the Shah of Iran, David Lilienthal, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Julius Nyerere. They envisioned a sweeping, rational engineering of all aspects of social life in order to improve the human condition.<br /><br />
As a conviction, high modernism was not the exclusive property of any political tendency; it had both right- and left-wing variants, as we shall see. <strong>The second element is the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state as an instrument for achieving those designs. The third element is a weakened or prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans.</strong> The ideology of high modernism provides, as it were, the desire; the modern state provides the means of acting on that desire; and the incapacitated civil society provides the leveled terrain on which to build dystopias.<br /><br />
...but here it is important to note that many of the great state-sponsored calamities of the twentieth century have been the work of rulers with grandiose and utopian plans for their society. One can identify a high modernist utopianism of the right, of which Nazism is surely the diagnostic example. The massive social engineering under Aparteid in South Africa, the modernization plans of the Shah of Iran, villagization in Vietnam, the huge late-colonial development schemes (for example, the Gezira scheme in the Sudan) could be considered under this rubric. And yet there is no denying that <strong>much of this massive, state-enforced social engineering of the twentieth century has been the work of progressive, often revolutionary elites.</strong> Why?<br /><br />
The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that it is typically progressives who come to power with a comprehensive critique of existing society and a popular mandate (at least initially) to transform it. These progressives have wanted to use that power to bring about enormous changes in people's habits, work, living patterns, moral conduct and worldview. They have deployed what Havel has called <em>"the armory of holistic social engineering."</em> Utopian aspirations per se are not dangerous. Where the utopian vision goes wrong is when it is held by ruling elites with no commitment to democracy or civil rights and who are therefore likely to use unbridled state power for its achievement. Where it goes brutally wrong is when the society subjected to such experiments lacks the capacity to mount a determined resistance.<br /><br />
<strong>- James C. Scott, <em>Seeing Like a State</em> p. 88-89.</strong>Justin Bolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06617774048323657315noreply@blogger.com0