"It's that we're doing it ourselves"

Bruce Schneier on Big Brother:

The fear isn't an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state, although with the U.S.'s programs of phone-record surveillance, illegal wiretapping, massive data mining, a national ID card no one wants and Patriot Act abuses, one can make that case. It's that we're doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society. (Essay)

...and consumer society. I'm all for free market, but so are THEY and THEY're not our friends.

Whiplash segue.

THEY are the Artificial Intelligence entities that are the institutions that feed off of our toils known as a corporation. It's the entities that when viewed as a whole are functioning single "beings." These beings exist to feed the multi-neural (shares of stock) impulse to generate profit and revenue in the shortest amount of time as possible. Everyone wants huge returns on their investments while abdicating their responsibility to understand the consequences of the actions that their companies take in the effort to satisfy the maximum profit condition. This creates an organization that behaves like a being with all sub-sets having to behave more-or-less how the whole entity wants them to behave or else be purged. With limited liability, each sub-function is able to function with less conscience than might normally be employed.
This creates a whole that can be considered a psychopath.

From Wikipedia's article on the 2003 documentary The Corporation (available in 23 parts at YouTube):

The Pathology of Commerce

Dr. Robert Hare, a consultant to the FBI on psychopaths, draws parallels between a psychopath and the modern corporation. His findings corroborate the following behavior:

• Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
• Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
• Reckless disregard for the safety of others
• Deceitfulness: Repeated lying and conning of others for profit
• Incapacity to experience guilt
• Failure to conform to the social norms with respect to lawful behaviors

And think about it. These entities spend billions of dollars every year trying to BELIEVE or researching how to get you to BELIEVE. They spend billions to influence human behavior. They spend billions to influence human laws.
No, the alien entitiy that threatens human existence won't be in the for of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a leather jacket and chasing some tween. It won't look like a green slime from space chasing a theater full of kids.

No, THEY look entirely different

Link to The Corporations website.
The movie trailer...

"Harry" Tuttle Lives!

Significant

I thought this was important enough to echo Boing Boing.

Have you seen any nuclear material?
Pakistan places advertisements regarding 'misplaced' isotopes.
"Pakistan has never lost nuclear material per se, but it has a poor track record of protecting its nuclear technology." (article)

They say it's for material that may from medical waste and the like before Pakistan was a nation.
I give a 9.9999999999% chance that that's the case. 85% chance loose nukes and show up in some bomber's hands, but they're caught. 4.9999999% chance there's an attempted detonation in Iraq.
.0000001% chance loose nukes detonate in Britain and .0000000001% chance make it in a cargo container and detonate in the U.S.
It's still shitty we even have to think in these terms.


Now that I've hit on some keywords, I bet you this'll get a glance from the TIA, ADVISE, and ECHELON.

Note to Intel: If you're looking here you're wasting taxpayers money. Hit the bricks. The most effective intel comes from old fashioned investigation techniques.

Don't forget me...

Image from http://berlin-wall.org/

..when they place the last brick in Fortress America's wall.

From the What The Fuck?!?! department (but then again, I'm not surprised).

ACLU Says Government is Excluding Foreign Scholars Because of Political Views

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it filed a new legal complaint challenging the federal government’s continued exclusion of prominent Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan. The complaint also challenges the Patriot Act’s “ideological exclusion” (emph. mine - Snag) provision, which authorizes the government to deny visas to foreign citizens on the basis of their political views.

Ideological Exclusion?!?! I didn't agree to that! Nobody put that to a vote! My representatives surely wouldn't have allowed that bullshit!
Joliet Prison, Illinois
To think, you can't come to the U.S. because of what you think.
To my fellow American's remember this...a wall works both ways.

Funny little graphic

I've seen this kicking around the net for awhile now. It's so...well...identifiable. Disturbing, but a there's truth there.

This fits somewhere

In the whole big schema of things to come, this is foreshadowing something...

Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes

Like Yamashita, the freeter, many of the cyber homeless fade into this colorful crowd, finding anonymity as well as shelter.
"The younger ones don't look any different from other young people," said Kazumasa Adachi, a manager at one of the more elegant net cafes where staff wear suits and receive customers with the polite efficiency of hotel receptionists.
He recognizes cafe dwellers by the heavy bags they lug around.
"They are different from the real homeless because they belong to the working poor, so they do have some money, whereas the ones on the street have no money at all," he added.

Lawn Order Cult Attacks U.S. Women, Children

A gathering of citizens and foreign supporters who were engaged in their patriotic duty of exercising First Amendment rights were sprung upon by a south-east U.S. branch of the Lawn Orders. The Lawn Orders was originally formed in as a citizen aid society in 1829 in London, but has over the years degenerated into a cult-like group of authority worshipers. While Law Enforcement organizations still contain members who "Protect and Serve" and enforce Constitutional protections for the citizens of the U.S., the Lawn Order cult was born out of generations of recruitment among society's most afflicted with self-confidence issues and authority complexes leading to a "siege" mentality among it practitioners.
More on the terror inducing attack...

Los Angeles Police Response to Immigration Rally Probe (NewsHour - PBS)

Members of LAPD Lawn Order cult

Members of the press corps were also attacked while attempting to document the events.

TV Crew Caught In Clash Between Protesters, Police

Self sufficiency

Self sufficiency is a concept that's learned, the skills follow. Thinking more about Penn Jillette's thought that "living within your means offers an immense amount of power" and Mr. Jalopy's "if you can't open it, you don't own it" I realized that this applies to my own self. I went back to exercising (my body) this morning and it dawned on me that lifting weights and cardio is a form of hacking. It's a form of ownership. With all the crap food and the ubiquitous enticements out there destined to kill you early, one way to get back at "the man" (of whom I refer to often as THEY or THEM) is to take control of your body's health. This thinking ties in nicely with mind/body connection of the RE/DEProgramming I did on myself to quit smoking of which I'll recount my method another time.
Some thoughts I won't elaborate on. Just spitballing...

• Fast food is a form of chemical warfare. It uses carefully designed chemistry to keep you desiring the fats, sugars, and salts. Fast food is unhealthy and at the rate the average American consumes it, shortens their lifespan.
• Fast food advertisement is psyops (mil jargon for Psychological Operation). It is designed to appeal to one's conscience, sub-conscience, emotional, and psycho-chemical systems.

One drawback to quitting smoking, of which I did for 2/3's of my life is that the weight hit me pretty good. I went from about 215lbs to 245lbs. It's coming off on its own slowly, but getting back into my routine should put me back at my fighting weight of 205-210 in a couple of months.

With that, I highly recommend (and am no way affiliated with) ExRx.net - "ExRx.net (Exercise Prescription on the Net) is a free resource for the exercise professional, coach, or fitness enthusiast." ExRx.net consists of nearly 2000 pages, most of which are found in the Exercise and Muscle Directory. The content of this web site is available on CD-ROM."

On the topic of self sufficiency, I turn to termites. Now I had a guy come out and quote me $1200-$1500 to spray for the little buggers then come back every now and again to check and see how they're doing. Screw that.
Through a little research here's what I've found:
Boric Acid - I've know about this very low-tox shit for a long time as a way to kill roaches. Turns out it's effective on termites too. But how to deliver it to them???
Propylene Glycol - Low-Tox anti-freeze of which I use in the Fairlane in case it ever pukes from overheating. Animals, particularly dogs, like the sweet taste of coolant, but the regular stuff will kill them.
Heat one to two pounds of Boric Acid into one gallon of Propylene Glycol below boiling. When ready for use mix another gallon of water and spray on wood. Second treatment if needed. The wood will wick the shit right up and when the termites come for dinner, they die. Keep away from plants though.
Total cost: An afternoon and $25 for 5lbs of Boric Acid and $8 for the coolant.
Added bonus, the mix also prevents dry rot.

Chompin' at the Bit

I've got to get out to the garage and start tweaking, tuning, and modding the Fairlane soon. I'm jonesin' for the grease fix.
To hold me for a while, here's a fairly well done montage of Mad Max chase scenes set to one of my favorites Ace of Spades by Motorhead.

And a link to part 1 of a 12 part dice of the whole Mad Max 2/Road Warrior flick. About 9 minutes a day before work to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...

Links

Another link dump.
Compiled from my travels:

ARTIFICIAL SYNCHRONICITY, LANGUAGE MANIPULATION, KUNDALINI AND THE CORNERS OF REALITY: HOW THEY'VE TURNED YOU INTO A MENTAL SLAVE & SOME TOOLS TO HELP YOU DECONSTRUCTING THIS BRAINWASHING AND GETTING FREE FROM THIS CIRCUS

I forgot how I came across this and I haven't had time to read it through, but that's a kick ass title.

I'm sure I must have gotten this from Boing Boing. For the computer hobbyist -
[Photoshop Tutorial] Creating fake 'Miniature' environments



Here's a link to build your own, inexpensive 120,000 Volt Van De Graaff Generator

A blogger who filters what he sees through the works of Philip K Dick.
Which PKD Story Are We In Today?

Lastly, a blog that pulls together a lot of stuff that interests this blog and does it more consistently - futurismic

Return

I've been busy, damnit!

When life conflicts with art.
A death of a cat/friend/family member, a construction project, and a wedding in Canada.

While driving, I had some podcasts to pass the time. Boing Boing had a great interview with Mr. Jalopy of Hoopty Rides. Check it out the site for some great...um...projects. Hard to explain.
A good quote from Mr. Jalopy "If you can't open it, you don't really own it."

REpurpose
I've tried to keep political commentary to a minimum, but every week I get more and more indignant. It's all I can do not rip the heads off of twittering idiots who want to continue to debate the rightness of the current American administration. There's nothing to debate.

THEY'RE A BUNCH OF LYING, ANTI-AMERICAN, NEO-FASCIST, CORPORATE CRIMINALS WHO WILL SAY ANYTHING TO PROVOKE YOUR BASEST, MOST VILE INSTINCTS TO MAINTAIN POWER AND BLEED THE COUNTRY OF ITS CAPITAL! THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR COMMUNITY, OR YOUR COUNTRY!
THEY WANT YOUR MONEY!

Complex 39 envisions a not quite post-apocalyptic future in which the world is controlled by corporate mechanizations and the few highest placed profiters of the system. I think we've turned a corner that we're not coming back from. In the U.S., citizens are programed for consumption compliance and socio-political ambivalence. As with a frog in a pot, it's all about being slow enough so the frog doesn't know he's being boiled alive.

To paraphrase Penn Jellett, "living well beneath your means gives you an immense amount of power." Cut costs, live well, get off of the credit-go-round. Almost everything THEY offer is to keep you enslaved to the system. There's no end to it in their world. There's no real retirement from it.

With that, I also use this space to organize the myriad of sites/ideas/points-of-reference that support my own blend of living art in that aesthetic frame of reference.

Coming soon - Our attempt to augment home heating oil with Biodiesel. It's cleaner and costs about fifty cents to a buck a gallon to make.

"Knowledge is power" - Sir Francis Bacon

Last Word
First off, to make it clear, the rest of the world is at best thinking we (U.S.) as a nation are nuts. So many think we're just evil, arrogant, hateful bastards. At the wedding I attended recently, the Canadians were very gracious, but it was clear that there was a deep disappointment with our "War on Terror."

What I really want to say is that the war wasn't/isn't lost.

The war in Iraq was over in about a week or so.

The occupation, Operations Other Than War (OOTW), Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), counter insurgency operations, and/or civil war will last generations. The violence on the streets off Baghdad is nothing new nor unforeseen unless one is unschooled in basic history or if one is in the government and charged with protecting the nation, criminally incompetent. So if someone is yammering about someone saying "soldiers lives wasted" or "the war is lost", tell them to shut the hell up. They don't know shit about war if they're claiming we're at war. We're at a simmering pot of bullshit. We're at a never ending occupation of a former "country" that's sucked down $500 billion thus far. We're presiding over a region of disparate peoples who really don't want to live together.
We're there because the boomers wanted SUV's in their aging hippy-dippyness rather than wake up after the first major oil crisis. The boomers ignored their responsibility to stay alert and vigilant to the same forces that got us into the likes of Vietnam. I don't ignore the responsibility of the coming generations to do something, but they were there first and they're massive in numbers. They're a political and economic powerhouse and they could have done something in the 70's that would have helped avoid all this.
I digress...

The fact is, right or wrong, the war is over and we won.
But then we stayed there and an occupation is not war.