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Bueno de Mesquita shows the upside of mathematical modelling of social processes. He forgets that social network analysis overlaid on our communications data offers the same technique to the state but not to the people
State-wide database systems currently mooted as an antidote to terrorism will permit a lot to be known about how we are likely to behave. This use of mathematics for predicting outcomes will increase the power of the state to a level not seen since feudal times.
However, as a self-fulfilling prophecy it will enable to state to clamp down on terrorism and thus have the effect of fuelling terrorism through an over-controlled society and repression surrounding the terrorists’ communities.
Eventually we all go blind. If the current Israeli assault on the Palestinians is about anything it is about power, it has nothing to do with protecting Israeli citizens. Ask: why don’t the Israelis create a missile defence against Palestinian rockets instead of going on the offense and killing and maiming so many defenseless people in this act of collective punishment? Collective punishment does not work. Retribution does not work. The UN needs to get in there and protect both sides, both these brutalised peoples need a long time to cool down, for the hate to be doused. Perhaps generations of time are needed. ‘The sins of the fathers…’
Err, not so fast this time. Could we please see the evidence before the generals start massing. By evidence I do not mean a photograph of an explosive device, bomb, pieces of wire, superimposed on a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just to remind you Mr Bolton, that in many western countries we have realised that when our leaders invite us to go to war people can get injured, or worse.
Therefore, appropriate evidence might look something like a 1000 page report validated by the United Nations. Something with a bit of gravitas. People could get killed, let’s show some decorum and put it all in writing so their families will understand the full reasons for which they are about to die.
The Telegraph, Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American’s overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be “far higher” if Washington took no action.
“This is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do,” he said. “Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.”
Mr Bolton, an influential former member of President George W Bush’s inner circle, dismissed as “dead wrong” reported British intelligence conclusions that the US military had overstated the support that Iran was providing to Iraqi fighters.
A US military spokesman revealed last week that the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had drafted in personnel from Lebanon’s Hizbollah to train fighters from Iraq’s Shia militias.
Colonel Donald Bacon, a spokesman for the coalition in Baghdad, said captured fighters had told interrogators that thousands of Iraqi fighters were undergoing training in the Islamic Republic.
The main camp is located near the town of Jalil Azad, near Tehran, according to coalition officials.
The capture of Qais Khazali, a major figure in the Shia insurgency alongside Ali Mussa Daqduq, a senior Lebanese Hizbollah guerilla, last year yielded a treasure trove of information on Hizbollah’s activities in Iraq.
“Ali Mussa Daqduq confirmed Lebanese Hizbollah were providing training to Iraqi Special Group members in Iran and that his role was to assess the quality of training and make recommendations on how the training could be improved,” said Col Bacon. “In this role, he travelled to Iraq on four occasions and was captured on his fourth trip.”
Five Britons kidnapped in Iraq are believed to have been put under the control of Quds Force agents after failed attempts to barter the men for Khazali and Daqduq’s freedom.
The importance of the Quds Force to stability in Iraq was demonstrated last week when a five-member Iraqi delegation was sent to Tehran to meet with its commander, General Ghassem Soleimani. The delegation was despatched by the Iraqi government to plead for an end to Iranian meddling in its enfeebled neighbour.
Who needs sixties counter-culture heroes when a contemporary statesman can produce poetry with this depth and enlightenment.
The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Glass Box
You know, it’s the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you’re using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can’t find it.
It’s—
And it’s all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—
Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—
But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
A Confession
Once in a while,
I’m standing here, doing something.
And I think,
“What in the world am I doing here?”
It’s a big surprise.
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
Happenings
You’re going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don’t happen.
It doesn’t seem to bother people, they don’t—
It’s printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone’s so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story’s there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven’t happened.
All I can tell you is,
It hasn’t happened.
It’s going to happen.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!
A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!
—June 9, 2001, following European trip
The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won’t see.
And life goes on.
—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
Clarity
I think what you’ll find,
I think what you’ll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
The above was copied from the following site where there is an appraisal of the qualities of Rumsfeld’s poetry:
http://www.igreens.org.uk/poetry_of_donald_rumsfeld.htm
Good to see so many people now saying the same thing.
The war-on-Iran has now passed through the deceit stage. The propaganda which led to the invasion of Iraq has been replicated over the past couple of years with Iran the target this time. The next step is to capitalise on the propaganda now that the US people have been softened up by the psyops communications specialists.
The special forces teams have been in Iran for years preparing the ground. We’ll soon see small provocative strikes against ‘terrorist training camps’ in Iran, the inevitable Iranian response to attacks on their sovereignty. Arab people in the region will become even more radicalised against the US, and Israel will sigh relief that the Americans are still behind them. Tactical nuclear strike is the subtext, the implicit violence that even the psychopaths in Washington or London would think very carefully about using – never use your biggest stick, just keep it handy as a threat otherwise you may provoke a retaliation you cannot handle.
Is this any way to run our public life? I am British but I feel no less a part of this Madness of Crowds than anyone in the US or Israel. Powerful western countries (i.e. US and Europe) are rogue states, and since our international laws are powerless to stop them it is time for the people of Europe and the US to stop these governments – by the ballot box, or else. Because the stakes are so high, because governments have already proceeded beyond the pale,. They have gone beyond national sovereignty, beyond the social contract, and so we’ll do the same. We’ll take to the streets, we’ll disempower them, unilaterally if necessary. Pre-emptive strikes are the rule they have written.
The UK Government, the UK people, are guilty of war crimes against the Iraqi and Afghan peoples.
Make War History is requesting that you withold taxes used for this War – You are a War Criminal if you supply money to the Government for an illegal war. Desist!
Join the Make War History campaign, start a local group, get involved and as Chris Coverdale puts it – a tax strike would stop the war in a week. Chris has the law on his side but not the judges at the moment, they don’t see his arguments as valid, but they are valid and they are the law. If enough of us support his campaign to get the Police and Courts to begin an investigation then we could create a massive and historic legal fissure in the dam of fasicm that is the Military-Industrial Complex.
The following is an excerpt from IndyMedia UK on the campaign started by Coverdale:
“…having made 3,000 separate attempts to report these crimes over several years, he found himself at his wit’s end with a banner, leaflets and megaphone outside parliament. but the only police attention he received was an arrest for ‘unauthorised protest’ and ‘use of a megaphone’. he was found guilty earlier this year at bow street magistrates, and appealed the case to southwark crown court, where once again, despite listening to his defence citing his responsibility under war law to do everything in his power to stop the greater crime of genocide, the court found against him.
although southwark court gave him a conditional discharge and awarded costs against the prosecution, he has been pursued for the original £250 costs awarded at bow street, and today’s appointment was a ‘means hearing’ to enforce this award. chris appeared before district judge elizabeth roscoe hoping to argue that if he were to pay the court costs he would be committing an offence under british law of conduct ancillary to genocide by providing the means for the government to continue its illegal war against iraq.
he was at pains to point out that this was not a matter of conscience, but actually a factual issue of existing laws, pointing out that the court’s actions imposing and pursuing these financial penalties can be construed as offences under principles six and seven of the nuremburg principles, articles 25 and 27 of the rome statute, and sections 50, 51, 52, 55, 66, and 78 of the international criminal court act 2001.
judge roscoe failed to understand the specific point chris was trying to make, suggesting that these matters of war law were brought up in the original trial and dismissed, but obviously they weren’t considered in relation to fines and costs because the sentence was only handed down after the legal arguments of the socpa case had been concluded. however, the judge refused outright to hear chris’s submission relating to the legality of any imposition of financial penalties, stating that she was only there to enforce the sentence. when asked how chris could get a court to uphold war law, she replied that she couldn’t tell him how to proceed other than to get legal advice. however, having studied war law (with a layman’s eye) for many years, chris is probably in a better position than most lawyers to press these points. there are simple facts in both domestic and in ratified international law, and these facts need to be raised properly in a court of law, but chris keeps getting side-stepped at every approach.”
If enough of us push this then the Police and Courts will have to act in order to uphold the law.
No ifs or buts, is waterboarding torture or not? If you think it’s a valid means to some end, read Derrick Jensen’s A Culture of Make Believe and then see if you still feel the same way.
Torture, stress positions, and other ‘interrogation’ techniques are not primarily attempts to gain intelligence but attempts to break the will and morale of an enemy. These are aspects of what Gen. Rupert Smith calls War Among the People, where an ideology is the real enemy of the dominant power. The power of an ideology can be broken by weakening the minds of its overt actors. Remember Winston Smith’s experiences in 1984? The torture we have seen in Iraq and the hidden torture programmes of the CIA are aimed at this end: you will stop resisting and ‘…love Big Brother with all your heart’.
This aspect of warfare has been happening since the wars against communism in the latter half of the 20th century, and it will only increase as multiple forms of resistance to hierarchical powers continue to increase. The forthcoming Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in the US is a different manifestation of this mind control technique, where a witch-hunt will act to chill free speech and free thought in order to make activists and their ideologies less threatening to the dominant power. Thought crime has come of age.
Believe it or not one aim of this latter tactic is to help reduce the impact of the awakening (known as radicalization) that can occur when people read the same kinds of internet content that you are reading right now. You may be interested to know that the correct definition of radicalization is: to go to the root of an issue.
I completely missed this until it was pointed out to me. Tony Blair revealed his true colours and the media didn’t notice either:
“There is a tendency even now, even in some of our [US] own circles, to believe that they [THEM] are as they are [THEM] because we [US] have provoked them [!] and if we left them [!] alone they would leave us [!] alone. I fear this is mistaken. They [THEM] have no intention of leaving us [!] alone.” Tony Blair on ‘extremist Islamic ideology’
Separate the ingroup (US) from the outgroup (THEM) in order to set the scene for a fight. Someone in such a position of power and influence should not be using such language in these dangerous times. Satan’s spawn these politicians.
Seems to be no better way of putting it so I’ll present it all as it is:
In the counsels of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961.
The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called corporation because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -Benito Mussolini
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see through your masks
And I hope that you die and your death will come soon
I’ll follow your casket through the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered into your death bed
Then I’ll stand over your grave till I’m sure that you’re dead
- Bob Dylan
