Tuesday, December 31, 2013

A Tale of Coup Cities - 7

Regular readers know that in this series we have been doing an "autopsy", a forensic autopsy, using some facts and some common sense.

In so doing, we have learned that it does not take much effort to comprehend the reality of an ideological policy coup (which has clearly taken place in the United States).

However, it does take quite a bit more effort to discern exactly when that coup began.

That is because it did not happen all at once, rather, it happened piecemeal, and in fact that coup is still in progress.

This is just to say that the coup has not been completed, so, in today's post we will follow some money, your money, my money, and our fellow citizens' money, in the form of our tax dollars.

That is, we will use the technique of "follow the money" as one dynamic of the autopsy, but we may just throw in some of "that other technique" too, which is "follow the immunity."

Further, we may even throw in a new technique "follow the impunity."

Thus, in this series, our autopsy of national events will look at money, immunity, and impunity to discern the type of coup that has taken place, and then point to a source, that is, point to the perpetrators of the coup.

But, before we continue on with doing that, let's review some of the autopsy techniques and results up until this post.

The modus operandi of this autopsy up until this post has been to take certain traditional American values (e.g. Constitution, law, foreign policy, environment), determine what position government takes on them now, and compare that to historical positions the government has taken.

In the first post of this series, we analyzed certain events in the sense of national direction, observing the trend of the people to say that we as a nation are going in an uncharacteristic, wrong direction (A Tale of Coup Cities).

In the second post of this series, we noted public statements by a General who was told specifically by Pentagon Officials that no one was going to tell them what to do, which that General concluded was the essence of a coup (A Tale of Coup Cities - 2).

In the third post of this series, we noted that the definition of a "coup d'état" is "a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force", and then quoted a prior cabinet member saying that he observed changes which were tantamount to that definition (A Tale of Coup Cities - 3).

In the fourth post of this series, we noted the total change in the behavior of the military NSA with regard to its world-view as to spying on Americans, and how that had changed as much as night and day, i.e., had completely changed (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4).

In the fifth post of this series,  we took a look at the notion of "follow the immunity", and linked to a post (Follow The Immunity) which considered that notion by noting who was "too big to jail" even for committing wrongs such as torture, which reflected the essence of a coup, in the sense that torture had long been considered to be a crime in our nation.

But, we went beyond that example, noting that a certain complete nation was immune from our accountability, even for its taking a part in 9/11 (A Tale of Coup Cities - 5).

In the sixth post of this series we contemplated three events that could be considered as evidence and indications as to when the coup began, or at least when it intensified or progressed (A Tale of Coup Cities - 6).

As to following the money, following the immunity, and following the impunity as methods for detecting symptoms of a coup, let's begin by taking a look at the landscape of 1998 as portrayed by a book of that time:
This book doesn't read like a polemic, but the sheer weight of its facts makes it one: we are spending $250 billion a year on defense, we don't know why and it's not enough. It is the kind of book that leaves a reader agitated and indignant, and should by all rights ignite an urgent national debate. Why, to cite one recent example, did Congress have a knockdown battle over $1 billion in Federal funding for more teachers, yet add more than $9 billion in ''emergency'' defense spending with hardly a peep of public discussion?

William Greider, best known as the journalist to whom David A. Stockman, the first Reagan Administration's budget director, bared his soul, and the author of books on the Federal Reserve and global capitalism, begins ''Fortress America'' by wondering what happened to the ''peace dividend'' -- capital freed from military spending by the collapse of the Soviet threat. After touring our military establishment, he concludes not only that there hasn't been one, but that our ''vast arsenal will become increasingly incoherent and hollow -- mismatched against the new global realities.''
(Tanks and Planes. Cheap. Barely Used, reviewing "Fortress America"; cf. Fortress America excerpts). Way back in 1998 the public was outraged at the spending of a mere $250 billion a year on warmongering?!

Today, some 15 years later, the budget is close to 4 times that amount, especially if you consider the cost of vast spy networks now used to spy on innocent Americans (Homeland Security Happy Daze - 2).

This totalitarianism was not likely foreseen by the author of "Fortress America", as a possibility, or perhaps, even as a probability:
Fortress America remains mobilized to fight the big one but justifies itself now with vague threat scenarios that envision fighting two wars at once, twin regional conflicts that will be smaller in scale but simultaneous. Instead of a robust debate over new priorities or skeptical questioning of these fanciful premises, the political elites in both parties have settled into denial and drift - a status quo that argues only over smaller matters, like which new weapon systems to fund and where they will be built. Defense spending, as one strategic analyst put it, has become "the new third rail of American politics." Most politicians are afraid to touch it.

It seems improbable that Americans will wish to spend more on a peacetime mobilization, not when federal spending is being cut for nearly everything else. Indeed, the public is inclined right now to stand clear of foreign engagements, especially ones that might involve American casualties. Despite the official projections, most analysts expect defense spending to remain flat or even decline further.

But unwilling or unable to adapt to the new circumstances, the armed forces and their allied manufacturers are proceeding with ambitious plans based on the assumption that the reduction in defense spending is only temporary and that Pentagon budgets will soon begin rising robustly again. (The Clinton administration assumes the same: its five-year projections call for another $30 billion and a 40 percent increase in the procurement budget, while Republicans seek even more.)

Until more money arrives, the defense apparatus is literally feeding on its own parts, pinching this and that, scrimping here and there, in order to keep the same Cold War force structure in place and the same lineup of new weapons moving through the pipeline of development. During the Cold War era, the military institution acquired a reflexive appetite for growth that it's now unwilling to give up. Instead, it lumbers toward a self-induced crisis of malnourishment, as when an addict's starving body eats its own liver.

Some smart people, in and out of the Pentagon, see what's coming and have proposed various blueprints for fundamental restructuring and drastic reduction. Radical alternatives are shrugged off by political and military leaders, however, not to mention the defense industry. It is not necessary to study the mind-numbing budget projections to see the problem. The outlines are visible in the routine facts of military life, the daily burden of maintaining the best and biggest army, navy, and air force in the world.
(Fortress America, excerpts; emphasis added). The writing was on the wall for a military that was getting what was considered to be an excessive $250 billion for its annual budget.

But something happened to change all that, something happened to quadruple the military budget within a relatively short amount of time.

That "something" was 9/11,  and combined with certain foreign relationships, it was said to have "changed everything", according to the official propaganda scripts (Fighting Terrorism For 200 Years - 4).

It is reasonable, when considering before and after comparisons on issue after issue in this autopsy, to conclude that the evidence points to a coup having taken place incrementally over time.

And that the coup is still in progress at this date (cf. American Feudalism).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Conspiracy Theory
(Nick Jonas & The Administration)




White Rabbit
(Jefferson Airplane)



Monday, December 30, 2013

The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil - 5

Don't Say That -It's The Season
Regular readers know that we started a series that points out how the fleets of destruction have been securing oil for Western powers for a century now.

The first post was made on today's date in 2009, progressing to the 4th post (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil - 4) a couple of years later.

Just recently we took a look at the origins of this policy of about century ago (Viva Egypt - 2 and The Universal Smedley - 2) just so we could inform Dredd Blog readers of a fair share of reality.
here
As we contemplate this today, nothing has changed.

The fleets are still stationed where the oil is at this very moment, loaded with enough nuclear weaponry to destroy all life on Earth quite easily.

Here is the text of the first post:

The 5th Fleet together with troops are in the Middle East where there is lots of oil.

The 4th Fleet has been reactivated after 58 years of being moth balled, and has been sent to Central / South America where there is also lots of oil.

A website of the federal government tells us:
"Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy."
(Department of Energy [they removed it, so here is The Wayback Machine copy of that page: Department of Energy]). Which is the same thing as saying you are economically dead without your blood, your oil.

The struggle for economic life then, would be the struggle for oil would it not?

Bush II put it in the cowboy language during a state of the union address to congress, saying that "America is addicted to oil".

Alrighty then, here is a digest of our dealers who supplied us with the petroleum drug for the years 2003-2008:
===============================
OPEC countries (12,385,349) (42.8%)

non-OPEC countries (16,553,830) (57.2%)
------------------------------------------------------------
All countries (28,939,179) (100%)
===============================
===============================
Break it down:

Persian Gulf countries (5,141,389) (17.8%)
Canada (5,002,249) (17.3%)
===============================
Americas:

Mexico (3,466,520) (11.98%)
South / Central Americas (4,656,426) (16.1%):
Argentina (172,464), Belize (1,434), Bolivia (3,934), Brazil (372,205), Chile (18,862), Colombia (393,349), Costa Rica (4,450), Ecuador (501,895), El Salvador (6,296), Guatemala (33,659), Panama (695), Peru (63,662), Uruguay (4,432), Venezuela (3,079,089)
===============================
(Department of Energy, compilation at bottom of page). The OPEC and non-OPEC percentages equal the total percentages that add up to 100%. (The Persian Gulf & Americas figures are just sections, so they will not add up to 100%.) Also note that some of the Americas are OPEC members and some are non-OPEC.

The narrow Strait of Hormuz, a strategic oil drug gateway, has the nation of Iran on one side, the UAE and Oman on the other side where headquarters for CENTCOM has several HQ bases.

Lately "the terrorists" who take up most GE news coverage are said to be controlled from al-Queda in Yemen which controls the other critical oil drug gateway, the narrow Strait of Bab el-Mandeb where the oil drug also passes through.

Clearly the fleets, the soldiers, and terrorism seem to be centralized where the oil drug is found or transported from (for some "mysterious" reason).

In Dredd Blog's most recent post we pointed out the ongoing lies to try to cover up this reality (The Death Juice of The Worried Revolution).


If I was a Terrorist:


The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Friday, December 27, 2013

The Death Juice of The Worried Revolution

The "juice" or "lifeblood" of the worried revolution (which is also known as the Industrial Revolution) according to the U.S. Department of Energy, is oil ("Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy").

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has reviewed the history of how oil, which is an environmental poison when used, became the death juice of an entire civilization.

A civilization that was told (by those holding political power, and by those who control those who hold political power) that oil is "the lifeblood" and "the power" of modern civilization.

In Viva Egypt - 2 and The Universal Smedley - 2 Dredd Blog traced the seminal thought process which eventually took us to, then down, the current path which our civilization is on:
From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
...
Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
...
It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
...
Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.

Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil.
(Viva Egypt - 2, emphasis added). One might think that someone could foresee the result of making Western Civilization dependent on the oil lying underneath the sands of various nations in the Middle East.

Especially since that scenario required that Western powers would have to make virtual colonies out of those Middle Eastern nations, by way of military power.

That conscious decision placed oil into the heart and blood veins of the then existing war machinery, and eventually into all of the machinery of the ongoing Industrial Revolution.

With a lot of help from Epigovernment, as stated above, oil began to ooze its way into the mind, body, heart, and soul of Western Civilization --about a century ago (cf. A History of Oil Addiction through A History of Oil Addiction - 4).

That addictive poison is now an inexorable part of our poisoned, suffering civilization (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 2).

Official denial and rebellious refusal to heed warnings are the main policies that got us here, and they are still in full operation today (The Exceptional American Denial).

Those policies that got us into this damned if we do and damned if we don't predicament (The Peak of Sanity - 3).

The coming year may be the one when we pass the point of no return if governments fail to become humane once again (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 10). Let's face it, we really are here and the time to change course really is now.


Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Peak of The Oil Lies - 7

In this series we have been discussing the inexhaustible supply of lies and deceit that Oil-Qaeda has been "providing" to the people through the government and media.

It is a story that has been going on for about a century (The Universal Smedley - 2, Viva Egypt - 2), so long that Oil-Qaeda does not know what "oil" is anymore, and they have never bothered to know what social honesty or truth is.

They have damaged their minds, and some of our minds too, to the point of believing that oil is OK, having no bad affects on the climate or environment, and that it is an "inexhaustible finite resource" that was promised by Cheezus (the Green Bay Jesus) at the signing of the constitution.

The only thing inexhaustible is their treasure trove of lies designed to destroy the notion and reality of peak oil, and designed to cover up the ongoing catastrophe which their lies have made certain (cf. The Peak of Sanity - 3).

Their revolution has succeeded.

What revolution?

They have replaced "the opium of the people", which used to be the addiction to mythical religious ideology, to an addiction based on the mythical religion of "infinite oil" (hiding behind the word "energy"):
The religious tenet, which they try to pass off as science, is epitomized in the Bible's old testament book of Kings:
So Elijah went to Zarephath, and as he came to the town gate, he saw a widow gathering firewood. “Please bring me a drink of water,” he said to her. And as she was going to get it, he called out, “And please bring me some bread, too.”

She answered, “By the living LORD your God I swear that I don’t have any bread. All I have is a handful of flour in a bowl and a bit of live oil in a jar. I came here to gather some firewood to take back home an d prepare what little I have for my son and me. That will be our last meal, and then we will starve to death.”

“Don’t worry, “Elijah said to her. “Go on and prepare your meal. But first make a small loaf from what you have and bring it to me, and then prepare the rest for you and your son. For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says; ‘The bowl will not run out of flour or the jar run out of oil before the day that I, the LORD, send rain.’”

The widow went and did as Elijah had told her, and all of them had enough food for many days. As the LORD had promised through Elijah, the bowl did not run out of flour nor did the jar run out of oil.
(1 King 17:10-16, emphasis added). Now let's hear what the International Energy Agency wants us to believe, as well as some opposing scientists, so we can compare the conflicting stories:
So, what is peak oil? In short, peak oil will occur when the extraction rate of this resource ceases to rise. Typically, this point is reached when half or less of a natural commodity has been removed. It is the peak of the bell curve; the point at which the tail is longer than the rise to the top.

Last month, Time reported that peak oil had been certified dead by the International Energy Agency (IEA). It seems that unconventional energy sources in North America have delayed the onset of peak oil. To proclaim that peak oil is dead, however, is a little misleading. It would be more accurate to say that peak oil is dormant, or at least, that the rate at which oil is extracted is likely to continue on a bumpy plateau for longer than anticipated.

Of course, it is possible to argue over the exact point at which global peak oil will arrive, but at some time in the not too distant future, we are going to have deal with this problem. Oil is a finite resource and as such, it cannot sustain indefinite extraction.
(Preparing for Extinction of Petroleum Man, [Oil-Qaeda took it down, so Use the Wayback Machine Version], emphasis added). The oil barons want us to believe they can do the same oil miracle that the prophet Elijah did for the widow.
(The Peak of The Oil Lies - 6). One of their own, a whistle-blower of sorts like Edward Snowden, has now gone cold turkey:
A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of "continuous recession" and increased risk of conflict and hunger.

At a lecture on 'Geohazards' earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that "peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves." Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year:
"We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply... New discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum]."
Dr. Miller, who prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the "ATM problem" – "more money, but still limited daily withdrawals."
(Former BP Geologist, Guardian, [Oil-Qaeda is attaching these revelations, so see here or Wayback Machine as needed], emphasis added). He went on to address the holy grail, i.e., the fracking lies about the new oil revolution which the oil gods have promised during their daily religious propaganda rituals:
Dr. Miller is co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R. Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that among oil industry experts "there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that we are entering a new and very different phase." They endorse the conservative conclusions of an extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC):
"... a sustained decline in global conventional production appears probable before 2030 and there is significant risk of this beginning before 2020... on current evidence the inclusion of tight oil [shale oil] resources appears unlikely to significantly affect this conclusion, partly because the resource base appears relatively modest."
In fact, increasing dependence on shale could worsen decline rates in the long run:
"Greater reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing will exacerbate any rising trend in global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and decline extremely fast - for example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years."
Tar sands will fare similarly, they conclude, noting that "the Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA projection of all-liquids production by that date."

Despite the cautious projection of global peak oil "before 2020", they also point out that:
"Crude oil production grew at approximately 1.5% per year between 1995 and 2005, but then plateaued with more recent increases in liquids supply largely deriving from NGLs, oil sands and tight oil. These trends are expected to continue... Crude oil production is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries and a small number of giant fields, with approximately 100 fields producing one half of global supply, 25 producing one quarter and a single field (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) producing approximately 7%. Most of these giant fields are relatively old, many are well past their peak of production, most of the rest seem likely to enter decline within the next decade or so and few new giant fields are expected to be found."
"The final peak is going to be decided by the price - how much can we afford to pay?", Dr. Miller told me in an interview about his work. "If we can afford to pay $150 per barrel, we could certainly produce more given a few years of lead time for new developments, but it would break economies again."
(ibid, emphasis added). Even though "Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy", what was said above is the "good news."

The "bad news" is that if we use the oil that is still in the ground, rather than going emergency "green" and emergency "renewable resources", we will damage the global climate system further, which will be way worse than the inevitable peak-oil collapse and subsequent very damaged economy (Scientists Warn of 7.2 deg. F. warming).

Dredd Blog has asked: "Why Is The Government Conditioning Us To Austerity? as they claim to celebrate never ending oil and as they chant Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar! in the Oil-Qaeda controlled media?" (cf. "OIL (as a source of wars)" on the "Series Posts" page - click here, or the "Series Posts" Tab at the top of any Dredd Blog page).

The forever green ocean garden no matter what we dump into it is another one of their inexhaustible supply of lies and deceit ideas of growing growth.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.


Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Season's Greetings


M
E
R
R
Y

C
H
R
I
S
T
M
A
S



Santana reunites with former band member who is homeless: (New Recordings Planned).

"Somewhere in Heaven", by Santana


Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Oilandia: A Coast Along the Gulf of Oil-Qaeda

Psychopath City, Oilandia
Can we understand "joy to the world" if we leave out honor unto the Earth which sustains us, and which sustains the whole world?

What are we if we are the destroyers of the Earth while singing joy to the world?

I think Oil-Qaeda and Terrarists may be the proper words for it (The Climate Change Scorecard).

The incessant deceitful ads puked by Big Pollution (BP), about how they have "cleaned up the Gulf of Mexico," may infect a few there in Oilandia, where the mantra of praise ("Oilah Akbar") is habitually chanted by the sycophants in captivity along that coast.

The pirate ships of old have been replaced with the mosquito machines sucking the blood of death from the hellish depths, where the elemental sages of history layer the story of past mass extinctions, the stories we do not hear over the roar of the four, six, and eight cylinder engines of McTell News (“Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? — stupid.” - Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs).

Some scientists observe Dolphins killed by BP while others know that weakened Dolphins are made sick by BP by the many BP degrees of psychopathology hanging on their bragging walls.

Some of us also know that there is more "freedom stuff" being collected by USAFRICOM, even while others of us know that Any More U.S. “Stabilization” and Africa Will Collapse.

"We" can readily agree with Edward Snowden: ‘I already won’, but "we" can't figure out how to celebrate that victory with change we can live with, because it is also true that in another sense "we have already lost."

People in Oilandia are not compensated for diseases forced upon them:



"Joy To The World", by Three Dog Night



Monday, December 23, 2013

The Military NSA Spy Program Is Part of the Powell Manifesto

Sometimes liberals and progressives long for the days of the "moderate right-wing republican / democrat" conservative ideology.

But actually they long for what they think or have heard that "moderate right-wing ideology" is.

The "memo", a.k.a. "manifesto", of Lewis Powell (blue dog), who later became a Supreme Court Justice by way of a nomination by President Richard Nixon, purports to describe a strategy of protecting "American Values."

In today's post, or in a series of posts if necessary, I will make an attempt to show that the fundamental ideology and strategy of that Powell memo or manifesto is erroneous ideology, because it is neither moderate, American, nor intellectually honest at its foundation, being composed of one or more false premises.

The memo begins with language that seems to be "moderate right-wing ideology" in one sense:
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.
(The Powell Memo ... Manifesto, circa August, 1971). A broad attack on "the American economic system" was the fundamental dynamic offered as the basis for putting "moderate right-wing ideology" into action.

It is easy to see that Powell's manifesto begins with a straw-man argument, then uses that logical fallacy to set up an argument for a process to tear down that straw-man:
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left ... the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
(ibid, "The Powell Memo ... Manifesto", emphasis added). Oh, it is those who are "the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking", who are of course the "minorities."

Yeah, "that's the ticket" as John Lovitz would say.

This "moderate right-wing ideology" which the Powell manifesto sets up, is the straw-man argument that the minorities are out to destroy the American economy (cf. Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy).

To say that "the American economic system", as Powell put it, "is under broad attack" by "minorities" is not intellectually honest, not moderate ideology, rather, it is rank racism and rank feudalism in the extreme (see e.g. American Feudalism - 6).

That straw-man "moderate right-wing republican ideology" is actually elitist propaganda which falsely describes traditional American values of government as being socialist, communist, or fascist (see e.g. The Common Good).

Powell then, after setting up the false premise, goes on to project a formula for instilling an authoritarian business party platform ("the enterprise system") to replace American government with a plutocracy and a plutonomy, while calling it "democracy" (see e.g. The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 9).

The father of the military NSA's spying on all peoples everywhere, J. Edgar Hoover, had the Powell dogma down to a science that neoCons could believe in years before Powell embraced it.

He spied on minorities using the power of government secrecy, which led to one or two of America's greatest shames:
The FBI and Bay Area police were rounding up alien Japanese again today. The searches and arrests, said Nat J.L. Pieper, FBI chief here, were being made “on allegations of contraband and known association with Japanese nationalistic groups.”
...
Within a week the reception center at Manzanar, in the Owens Valley, will be ready to receive hundreds of alien and American-born Japanese who must evacuate the Pacific Coast military area.

More than 100 carpenters and mechanics directed by Lieut. Col. W.B. Higgins, of the Corps of Engineers, are rushing construction of the center for the Wartime Civil Control Administration. The WCCA is the military-civilian organization that will handle evacuation and resettlement problems, under supervision of Lieut. Gen. John L. DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army.

They will be classified as to professions and occupations, and remain at the centers only until they are able to complete plans for re-establishing themselves in back-from-the-coast regions from which they are not banned by military decree.

Persons facing evacuation were warned today against “stalling” or unintentionally taking too much time to straighten our their affairs before leaving the military areas.

The next step in operation of the WCCA, General DeWitt said, will “border on enforced removal.”
...
Hoover, influenced by his work at the Library of Congress, decided to create a massive card index of people with left-wing political views. Over the next few years 450,000 names were indexed and detailed biographical notes were written up on the 60,000 that Hoover considered the most dangerous. Hoover then advised Palmer to have these people rounded up and deported.

On 7th November, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested in twenty-three different cities. However, the vast majority of these people were American citizens and had to be eventually released. However, Hoover now had the names of hundreds of lawyers who were willing to represent radicals in court. These were now added to his growing list of names in his indexed database.
(The Queens of Stalingrad - 2). Notice that the military was at the heart of these activities, in concert with non-military law enforcement, to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights in the name of "American values" (which is military sadism: How The Official Pleasure In Torture is Analyzed).

Some of the seeds of this latest infestation of bullying (On The Origin of The Bully Religion) is being exposed by the forced release of documents purporting to show us that "Bush II" (The Dogma of The High Priest In Chief) made "us" (the military NSA) do it (see NSA declassifies Bush II era docs).

There is growing protest and disgust toward the military NSA and its Orwellian ideology that is fit for the despots of empire (NSA and GCHQ targeted aid agencies and European officials – live updates, Israeli Officials angry at NSA spying), but some writers think that the military NSA will ignore the sharp criticism (NSA surveillance programme: 'It's going to get worse').

In the military NSA minds, they are "saving America" from those highly educated lefties in the minorities after all, by spying on everyone everywhere.

What will they do next, cancel food stamps and unemployment insurance benefits for those who really need them, while raising the military NSA and other war budgets in order to save the economy?

Friday, December 20, 2013

The Evolution of Song Truth - 3

Why can't we live as one?
In this series we have been noticing "song truth", whether it is found directly within the lyrics of songs, or whether it is found in a song's implications.

In today's post let's consider the scientific truth (it's Friday after all) that we have found, and let's consider it along with some song truth.

Gilda Radner once said that "comedy is truth, only faster", so why not "song truth is truth, only more melodious" as an adjunct to that?

The Ecocosmology Blog deals with the subject of the Sun we all live under, as well as some of the almost timeless import of that reality, so, for today's Dredd Blog post the song truth we will consider (so as to compare it with some almost timeless cosmic scientific truth) has these almost timeless lyrics in it:

'cause we all live under the same sun
We all walk under the same moon
Then why, why can't we live as one
'cause we all live under the same sky
We all look up at the same stars
Then why, tell me why can't we live as one

(Under The Same Sun, by The Scorpions, see video below). It is obvious that we live under the same Sun, Moon, and Stars, so the lyrics in that song are true.

The impetus in the song is that we should live as one, which brings up some scientific truth and extrapolations from it:
1) The stars like our Sun, at the center of all solar systems, will support life forms for an amount of time, but will then destroy life on the planets near them at an unknown time during each solar system's developmental life cycle.
a) For stars that are late K thru M, such as red dwarfs, this applies to the deadly outbursts, that come short of physical destruction, of the planets orbiting close to that type star.
2) That final catastrophic event (destruction of life on inner planets), and all events leading up to it, comprise "The Test" (This test is composed of all the preliminary and final evolutionary requirements for the life forms on all planets near central stars. The Test works as a wall, moat, or barrier, to divide those species who may continue to live in the physical universe from those who may not).

3) To pass The Test, intelligent life forms inhabiting any planet will be required to:
a) first learn to live and work together within, and in accord with, their planet's ecosystem, and to substantially coexist with all the other species on that planet, while overcoming any toxins of power that are contrary to social harmony;

b) develop technology that produces space vehicles able to substantially meet or exceed the speed of light;

c) find another solar system with a habitable planet which contains a central star still having enough time left in its stellar life cycle for them to colonize a habitable planet in that solar system (since it is unknown whether the toxins of power are to be found on all planets, as they are found on Earth, that possibility should be taken into consideration when selecting any new planet or moon as a home world); Note: since red dwarfs are the most stable and most abundant stars, they should be favored over Sun-like stars;

d) colonize that habitable planet, and then improve ecocosmological skills as needed;

e) then repeat the entire process ad infinitum;

f) or, experience a morph into another "species" free from that type of solar/planetary cosmic dependence.
4) The seeds of intelligence (genetic and memetic clues) required to successfully perform The Test are distributed into all species, races, religions, sciences, creeds, and genders. Thus, all individuals should be respected as carriers of some quanta of the seed of intelligence required to pass The Test, lest a fundamental quantum of necessary intelligence be lost.
(Tenets of Ecocosmology). That vibrant Sun which we are currently under, which supports life now, at some time in the future (when it begins to die out), will take all life on Earth with it.

There are several Dredd Blog series that deal with how we are dependent on Earth life, even down to the too-small-to-see-with-eyes-only microbes and viruses (see e.g. The Human Microbiome Congress, Ecosystems & Microbes, and On The New Meaning of "Human" - 2).

Scientists tell us that microbes from our pets can help us with some of our allergies (Dog. microbes, allergies), that we descend from some ancient species (Basal Animal Ancestor - another reason to buy stock in Textbook Publishing Companies LOL), and that we are recent in that scheme of the things of time (Oldest Hominin DNA).

So, why can't we live as one as we reach for the stars (A Lovely Planet In The Neighborhood? - 3)?

The previous post in this series is here.

"Under The Same Sun", by The Scorpions:




Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Keystone Complex To The Rescue - 8

How to tell who is naughty or nice?
On Morning Joke today the right reverend wing-nuts made the case for the military NSA spying on every American, and every human being around the globe, for that matter.

Keystone Kops aficionado Kookie Robbers intimated "how do you know who is being naughty or nice if you don't spy on everyone?"

Her argument basically boils down to the notion that the more inept at the intelligence business or the Kop business our federal agents are, the more they have to watch more and more people as a way to figure out who is being naughty and who is being nice.

"All the competent cops and spies are gone, now that Maxwell Smart has passed away, along with my weakening mind, so we have to fall back on the Keystone Komplex to protect us", Kookie intimated.

That is probably anecdotal to her having been removed from the realm of journalism, and then having been relegated to bottom feeding at propaganda outlets who think it is sexy to catapult the propaganda, as Bush II was fond of doing.

Kookie works for those incompetent agencies which have descended into blatant and habitual lying to congress and the people about the policy coup those traitors have fostered on American tradition and law.

She is a Madam of the Presstitute Brothel for sure, those who think that the U.S. Constitution is "a condom for turrrisssstssss."

Shamely Manless, a favorite Sinatur of the Brotheloids, was also there to help Kookie root all the way down there into the garbage heap of cognition, far from American logic and proportion.

Pop Kultur also stopped by to wipe his butt on a copy of the U.S. Constitution, while puffing on old stogies he had found, short butt not too big around.

That is what social dementia does to those who gorge themselves on propaganda day after day, month after month, and year after year.

The ideology of titanic mistakes is what they call leadership.

On other fronts, such as the judicial branch of government, a federal court held the military NSA activities to be unconstitutional (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8).

That judicial ruling came as a committee of security experts recommended that the military NSA stop animating old Keystone Kops scripts (Intelligence Panel Recommends Limits On NSA Surveillance, Obama Is Urged to Sharply Curb N.S.A. Data Mining).

The previous post in this series is here.

So, Get Smart!


Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland? - 3

"I am your father"
Regular readers know that we closed the previous post in this series by musing: "If we cast the notion of epigovernment into this discussion, then apply these same dynamics, is seems as though metaphorically we are stepchildren in an abusive home" (Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland? - 2).

This is all the more clear when we consider the observations of psychologists and other behavior and brain scientists who have pointed out: "What links Strict Father family-based morality to politics is a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children. This metaphor turns family-based morality into political morality, providing the link between conservative family values and conservative political policies. The Strict Father model, which brings together the conservative metaphors for morality, is what unites the various conservative political positions into a coherent whole when it is imposed on political life by the Nation-as-Family metaphor" (Lakoff).

There are many reasons for the usage of a metaphorical concept.

One of those reasons is to explain that great harm can be done even in the absence of a malicious intent to do mass destruction, especially by those who inhabit offices of power:
Two years ago, on a gorgeous November day, 12,000 activists surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Signs we carried featured quotes from Barack Obama in 2008: "Time to end the tyranny of oil"; "In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow."
...
Our hope was that we could inspire him to keep those promises. Even then, there were plenty of cynics who said Obama and his insiders were too closely tied to the fossil-fuel industry to take climate change seriously. But in the two years since, it's looked more and more like they were right – that in our hope for action we were willing ourselves to overlook the black-and-white proof of how he really feels.

If you want to understand how people will remember the Obama climate legacy, a few facts tell the tale: By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet's biggest oil producer and Russia as the world's biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we've begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine.
(McKibben @ Rolling Stone). There is something innately wrong with competing to destroy that which we must have in order to survive as a civilization or as a life form.

Perhaps this post should have been placed in the series about psychopaths (When You Are Governed By Psychopaths, When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 2, When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 3, or When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 4).

Or, perhaps it should have been placed in the series about social suicide pacts (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 2, MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 3, MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 4, or MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

The direction in which OIl-Qaeda wants nations to continue to go is going to destroy civilization as we know it.

That in itself is clear evidence of either psychopaths or criminally negligent officials at the helm (when no change in direction is made).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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"For more than 15 years the USS Calhoun County dumped atomic waste and condemned weaponry into the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was later sank by the Navy after becoming radioactive." The Atomic Sailors


Tuesday, December 17, 2013

When Dredd Blog Was Young

"A little Dredd with coffee."
Once upon a time a dreaded youngster wore out the keyboards.

On this date in those ancient times Dredd Blog did multiple posts in one day.

For your perusal they are reposted today so you can see if history is presenting changes in a new world, or whether history is much ado about the same.

Below are the posts on this date in 2009 from that young whipper-snapper Dredd Blog ...

... the little meanie who sends fascists and commies and psychopathic politicians into a rage against the truth:


Big Pharma Chastens Men Into Boyz

Senator Dorgan had an idea any reform minded Senator would embrace.

His Amendment to the status quo, where Americans pay many times more for pharmaceuticals than any other nation in the civilized world, would have ended the rape and plunder of needy Americans by Big Pharma.

It would have allowed us to purchase prescription drugs for a fair price.

The three boyz pictured in the photo voted against Dorgan's Amendment, as did a number of phonies who say they are for health care reform:
Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN),
Burris (D-IL), Cantwell (D-WA), Cardin (D-MD),
Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Dodd (D-CT),
Durbin (D-IL), Gillibrand (D-NY), Hagan (D-NC),
Inouye (D-HI), Kaufman (D-DE), Kerry (D-MA),
Kirk (D-MA), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ),
Levin (D-MI), Lieberman (ID-CT), Menendez (D-NJ),
Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Reed (D-RI),
Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Schumer (D-NY),
Tester (D-MT), Udall (D-CO), Warner (D-VA),
Whitehouse (D-RI)
(vote on Dorgan Amdt. No. 2793). Meanwhile several republicans, who a progressive would not have expected to vote for the amendment, voted to be fair to Americans:
Alexander (R-TN), Bond (R-MO), Coburn (R-OK),
Collins (R-ME), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX),
Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Graham (R-SC),
Grassley (R-IA), Hutchison (R-TX), Johanns (R-NE),
LeMieux (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY),
Murkowski (R-AK), Risch (R-ID), Sessions (R-AL),
Shelby (R-AL), Snowe (R-ME), Thune (R-SD),
Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS)
(ibid). Can you say WTF? This is one for Ed Shultz's psycho talk, or perhaps a new segment of his show called "Psycho Vote".

Dorgan's Amendment failed and will not be in the "bill to bail out mini-AIG", which the phonies call "health care reform".

Thanks to all the Senators who care about needy Americans!


George W. Oilwell On Health Care 1984

Baghdad Bob is such a wild and crazy guy who epitomizes newspeak, the language of propagandistic journalism now fashionable in the United States' main stream media, the virtual children of political speak (a.k.a. doublespeak), made famous in 1984 if you know what I mean.

This national speech impairment has not gone unnoticed by the scientific community.

One professor calls this mode of communication "doublespeak", and has written a book "Why No One Knows What Anyone Is Saying Anymore". He points out:
With doublespeak, banks don't have "bad loans" or "bad debts"; they have "nonperforming assets" or "nonperforming credits" which are "rolled over" or "rescheduled." Corporations never lose money; they just experience "negative cash flow," "deficit enhancement," "net profit revenue deficiencies," or "negative contributions to profits."
(William Lutz, Rutgers University). What is forgotten is that this propaganda is not harmless but is toxic, and those who use it are doomed to eventually become deceived by it.

What they call "health care reform" has morphed into an under the table bailout of the predatory Insurance Institutions, one of the tentacles sucking the life out of the middle class and poor.

Those bankster bailouts right out in the open, done even when they were "on message", became unfashionable to "doublespeakers", once they felt the outrage of the public.

So the bailouts are now done surreptitiously through the time worn practices of deceit.

The U.S. news media, as usual, are unaware of the catastrophic damage this Saran Wrap phoniness is doing to the image of The United States of America in the eyes of The United States of Europe, as well as other nations in the world, who are far more sophisticated in health care matters.

They even know what the word "care" means.


Ye Olde Drone Hackers Ride Again

So the cavemen really are sophisticated enough to hack into our best and brightest?

They really did hack into military drone aircraft station KBOM to see our view of things? That is what the journalists are reporting:
Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems.
(Wall Street Journal). Just for kicks lets remember that there are lots of posts which point out that security is the word the military thinkers use to scare the congress into trillions of dollars spent on useless wars and infrastructure improvement in foreign nations that many folks can't find on a map.

For forty years the military has been hackable. If you want a book that documented the current reality 40 years ago, read The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stoll. He had a difficult time convincing the military that it was being hacked as if it was an open book:
The meeting was top secret, so I couldn't listen—someone fetched me when my turn came. In a small room, lit only by the viewgraph machine, there were around thirty people, most of them in uniforms. Generals and admirals, like you see in the movies.

Well, I talked for half an hour, describing how the hacker was breaking into military computers and skipping through our networks.
...
I know as little about the military world as the next person. "I guess I'm impressed, though I'm not sure why," I said. "You ought to be," Bob said. "These are all flag officers. General John Paul Hyde works at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And that guy in the front row -- he's a big shot from the FBI. It's a good thing he heard you."
(ibid, The Cuckoo's Egg, p. 200). This took place 40 years ago when a long hair from Berkeley informed the military they were being had, so they gave the long haired hippy astronomer the National Medal of Honor.

But they did not fix the system, because when someone hacks the system they can go to congress yelling "security security" to scare congress into giving them more money not to fix it.


Jobs Are On The Way Yesterday

The House passed what it calls a jobs bill last night 217-212.

That adds to the largest public works legislation in history, which promised jobs until 2009.

We really do not know where that money went that was supposed to be spent here in the U.S. to help the citizens of America, but it looks like it went to military expenditures for soldiers, weapons, and mercenaries (a.k.a. hired killers) doing endless wars in dead end corners of the world.

Or perhaps this new money will go toward increasing jobs in the new military oil complex venture into lands south of the Texas border.


End of yesteryear.

Somehow things seem to have the same difference.

"Silvio", by Bob Dylan:


Monday, December 16, 2013

ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8

This series is about a case filed in the Second Circuit, in the Federal District Court in Manhattan (complaint: ACLU v. Clapper et. al.).

A judge in the District of Columbia Circuit, in a Federal District Court there, has ruled that the military NSA practices are likely unconstitutional, and has therefore issued a preliminary injunction (pre-trial).

At footnote two of the judge's memorandum opinion, the judge mentions the case this Dredd Blog series is following.

The judge wrote the following: "The complaint in ACLU v. Clapper, Civ. No. 13-3994, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on June 11, 2013, alleges claims similar to those in the instant two cases."

In issuing the injunction, the court ruled to wit:
But in the meantime, for all the above reasons, I will grant Larry Klayman's and Charles Strange's requests for an injunction and enter an order that (1) bars the Government from collecting, as part of the NSA's Bulk Telephony Metadata Program, any telephony metadata associated with their personal Verizon accounts and (2) requires the Government to destroy any such metadata in its possession that was collected through the bulk collection program.
(Klayman v Obama, U.S. Dist. Court for the Dist. of Columbia, 12/16/13, PDF). The judge stayed the injunction pending appeal, but told the government to start figuring out how to lose the data it has collected.

That decision by conservative Judge Leon (appointed by Bush II) may help persuade the judge in the ACLU v. Clapper case Dredd Blog is following in this series.

We await a decision by Judge Pauley in this ACLU v Clapper case.

UPDATE: Judge Pauley, of the DCNY federal court, reached the opposite conclusion from what federal Judge Leon did in Klayman v Obama.

New York federal Judge Pauley, appointed by President Clinton, ruled in favor of the government, and dismissed the case brought by the ACLU (ACLU vs. Clapper, PDF), prompting this comment by the ACLU:
“We are extremely disappointed with this decision, which misinterprets the relevant statutes, understates the privacy implications of the government’s surveillance and misapplies a narrow and outdated precedent to read away core constitutional protections,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “As another federal judge and the president’s own review group concluded last week, the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephony data constitutes a serious invasion of Americans’ privacy. We intend to appeal and look forward to making our case in the Second Circuit.”
(ACLU Blog). We will follow the two federal cases in this series as they move on to the Federal Appellate courts and the Supreme Court.

The ACLU filed an appeal in ACLU v Clapper (Guardian).

UPDATE 2: Another case is moving along in the Ninth Circuit:
That case is: First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA
A copy of the complaint in that case is here (PDF).
This makes three federal circuits in which the NSA is now being sued (D.C. Cir., 2nd Cir., and 9th Cir.).

The next post in this series is here, previous post in this series is here.