brainiac conspiracy

Sunday Night Music Blogging

Because if reincarnation is really true, our future selves will have problems when the food runs out.

---Baron V

No Money to Restore Those Unemployment Insurance Cuts

Because . . . the same old shit:

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the NSA has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to NSA documents, computer specialists, and US officials. The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

Wouldn't it be nice if our government would pay our job creators to innovate stuff that didn't involve spying on people? There are so many worthwhile things we could be doing!

---Baron V

Tried to Warn Them About This

And while I hate to say "I told you so," well, that's only because I did!

Actually no, it's not at all complicated. Iraq was never ours to "lose" in the first place. What we really "lost" was a regional balance of power in the Middle East---strengthening Israel and the Saudis, and isolating Iran---that had largely worked in our government's favor for the past 40 years, and the reason we lost it is because some foreign-policy geniuses in the past administration thought it would be a great idea to send the bull into the china shop and upend the balance of power in the region because freedom. But this would not be fair and balanced reporting, so we must solicit the opinions of President McCain and Attorney General Graham and all of the other persons were utterly wrong about Iraq at the time their own constituents were being conned into war. But that's what happened all the same, and AQ in Iraq is their legacy. It's really that simple.

---Baron V

If Our Friends in Freedom Want Another War

Then obviously, we need to have another war.

I don't blog much about Israel or AIPAC because it's an intractable hornet's nest that invites nothing but misery upon people who write about it, but let's just say this: However Israel and its lobbying arm want to manage their affairs, I'm fine with it. What I'm not fine with is subsidizing them with our money so they can pursue policy objectives that put American lives at risk. If they want to avoid criticism, all they need to do is return the annual welfare checks, and bloggers like yours truly will shut up for good.

But more to the point, all pro-war Democrats are evil amoral people who need to be primaried because (a) more war is not in the national interest, and (b) we should have been talking to the Iranians for decades. Their government may still peddle the "Great Satan" crap to gird the loins of the true believers, but their people are probably the most Westernized of any nation in central Asia. Which is to say, if we talk to them, we might find that we have as much in common with the Iranians as we do with, say, Israel. And maybe, just maybe, that's what the Israeli lobby, and their water-carriers in Washington, find so threatening. (Not to mention the fact that inventing endless enemies, and waging endless wars, is a proven profit center for the greater D.C. metropolitan area, so there's that.) But regardless, all pro-war Democrats still deserve to lose their jobs.

---Baron V

America's Humanitarian Outreach

It's official: We're exceptional!

The US has been voted as the most significant threat to world peace in a survey across 68 different countries. Anti-American sentiment was not only recorded in antagonistic countries, but also in many allied NATO partners like Turkey and Greece.

Now how on earth could people think such crazy things?

Snark aside, this does highlight a significant difference in the relationship that we Americans have with our civic institutions versus the relationship that people in other countries have with their civic institutions. See, most people on the planet view the military with a healthy degree of fear and trepidation---it's a necessary evil at best---most likely because they and their countrymen have been forced to live, at one time or another in their history, under martial law and/or strongman government. Americans, by contrast, view the military as a source of pride and patriotism and awesomeness and makework-without-end. When you think about it, it's not easy to think of any other country where the military is so revered as ours (North Korea comes to mind), and it should remind us---again---that as a rule, when Americans interject themselves into other peoples' politics, the locals, as a rule, don't much care for it, no matter what our high-minded explanation may be for bombing their villages and killing their inhabitants. Just trying to helpful here.

---Baron V

Who Lost Iraq?

Following up from yesterday, it's a question that's going to be making the rounds in the near future---and in fact, it's started already!---so again, it would have been a politically savvy move if the administration had gotten out in front of this meme by creating a mechanism, e.g, a commission, by which the public could be informed as to exactly how Al Qaeda happened to establish itself in Iraq in the first place. Not to mention all the specific reasons why poor Arab peasants would feel motivated to join a gang like Al Qaeda! It's all about apportioning responsibility, and about reminding attention-deprived voters that they were conned into waging a pointless war that has yielded nothing but bad outcomes. But by remaining silent, the administration isn't accomplishing anything beyond shielding the guilty parties while inviting needless grief upon themselves. Not smart!

---Baron V

Still Waiting For That Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Yes, I know we are governed by leaders who believe in Looking Forward, Never Back, but the fact remains that we can never fully understand nor learn the lessons of history if that history is withheld from us. If the secrets of history were unlocked to us instead, there's no telling what we might learn! We might even discover we've spent the last 12 years, you know, fighting the wrong people.

---Baron V

We Fought The Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War—Combined—in Less Time Than We've Been in Afghanistan

Of all the wars that our great nation has waged during my lifetime---and there have been quite a few!---the Afghanistan war was probably the easiest to justify in moral terms (i.e., a "just war"), though even at the time, when we first invaded, I wondered exactly how we would ever be able to declare "victory" since we were fighting not an army with armored divisions and tanks in formation and men in uniform but an ideology with a diverse set of adherents who dressed like civilians and who could blend into the civilian population and be essentially invisible. Especially now that we have flying killer robots to rain hellfire from afar upon the enemy's villages, wedding parties, etc., I'm having a hard time seeing how we justify still being there---let alone hectoring the locals for the right to stay even longer.

---Baron V

Peace Breaks Out

I was a bit glib on the subject this morning, so in fairness to the Obama administration, we shouldn't discount the significance of this Iran nuclear deal, even if it mostly doesn't hold. Our government's Iran policy has been all sorts of wrong for six decades---going all the way back to Mossadegh---so the ability of our government to sit down with its leaders without bellowing for regime change or accusing them of bad-faith negotiating: In other words, treating them as human beings deserving of dignity . . . well, we shouldn't have to proclaim this development as a big fuckin' deal, but given our track record, it really is. After years of hostilities throughout the last century, we've managed to make peace with the Germans, Japanese, Russians and Vietnamese, and there was never any reason why Iran should be any different. The only thing that's held us back from achieving this sooner, I think, has been the fear of what our Friends in Freedom in the region---and their warmongering supporters back home---would think. If the administration has decided their voices should be ignored, well, they're right. Warmongers should be ignored, unless there's actually cause for war. With Iran, that's never been the case. So again, more jaw, less war, and freeze out the war hawks.

---Baron V

Credit Where Due

Personally, I think the Iranians gave up too much---I've never understood how Americans can tell any nation that they must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons when we stockpile thousands of them---but I guess they badly wanted a deal. Whatever the particulars they eventually hammer out, it's a very positive step to see our government pursuing Middle East policy goals that are in our own best interest, and if they're not in the best interest of the current government of Israel, that's their problem, not ours, to solve. More jaw, less war, please.

---Baron V

Hidden History

It's amazing the things you learn years after the fact:

Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, a conclusion that they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death.

If only we could imagine who would possibly want him dead. I'm stumped.

---Baron V

Random Thought

One of these days---probably in the distant future---we will all share a laugh in amazement that we ever allowed so many of our pubic-policy debates to be hijacked by a gang of cranks, crackpots and conspiracy theorists peddling snake oil for money and ratings. You only have to wonder how many more people need to die before we have that epiphany, and decide to do something about it.

---Baron V

Hump Night Music Blogging

Because breaking up is hard to do. Because relationships, they're complicated!

---Baron V

Saturday Night Music Blogging

Because our leaders never tire of scaring us, and it's not even Halloween!

---Baron V

Hate to Break The News

But it would be most helpful---edifying, in fact!---if our nation's media scribes would stop treating the "Republican Party" and the "Tea Party" as though they were two distinct entities when they are simply two brand names for the same exact product. If there were any "mainstream" Republican "moderates" left, they would have voiced their opinions by now. They haven't, because for all practical purposes, there aren't any. I realize it's difficult for a lot of people in the Washington policy establishment to wrap their brains around the idea that one of our two major political parties has been commandeered in toto by a gang of racist grifters and psychotics, but that's the reality of our time, and continuing to portray the current legislative standoff in Washington as The GOP At War With Itself is not contributing to anyone's understanding when the actual conflict is The GOP At War With The 20th Century.

---Baron V

Today in Freedom

Your tax dollars at work, promoting the politics of inclusion abroad:

“This is a Jewish city,” said Shimon Gafsou of his adopted home town, “now and forever.”

To be more specific: “I would rather cut off my right arm than build an Arab school,” the mayor said in an interview on his terrace at city hall.

Ditto mosques. “No, no, no. No mosques, ever,” said Gafsou. Nor churches. Or Ramadan lanterns or manger scenes. “And no Christmas trees,” said the mayor of a town that abuts the largest Arab city in Israel, celebrated as the childhood home of Jesus.

“Everyone can live here, that is the law, as long as they understand this is a Jewish city,” Gafsou said. “And in that way we are a microcosm of the state of Israel.”

I don't wade into this hornet's nest very often, and to be honest, in one way I really don't care how the Israelis run their country or even the Occupied Territories; if they want an apartheid state, fine and dandy, then let them deal with it. What I do care about is the fact that our money is helping to underwrite this crap. It's impossible to see how it advances our national-security interests in any meaningful way, and if your humble blogger ran the zoo, the welfare payments would have been cut off long ago. I realize it's an article of faith in official policy circles in this country that any criticism of any Israeli government policy is forbidden because Hitler, but we'd be a lot better off as a nation if we stopped talking about "democracy promotion" and started practicing it instead.

---Baron V

Our Friends in Freedom

No one can accuse them of not thinking proactively:

In reference to the Royal Court telegram No. 112, dated on 04/19/1433 H, referring to those held in the Kingdom jails accused with crimes to which Islamic Sharia law of execution by sword applies, we inform you that we are in dialogue with the accused criminals who have been convicted with smuggling drugs, murder, rape, from the following nationalities: 110 Yemenis, 21 Palestinians, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghanis, 94 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, and 44 Kuwaitis.

We have reached an agreement with them that they will be exempted from the death sentence and given a monthly salary to their families and loved ones, who will be prevented from traveling outside Saudi Arabia in return for rehabilitation of the accused and their training in order to send them to Jihad in Syria.

If only we could have some job-training programs here.

Snark aside, you really have to wonder how long it will take for policymakers in Washington to realize that the people who have been most deserving of our freedom bombs are the same people who've worked so diligently to immunize themselves from them. That's kind of a roundabout way of saying that we've been waging war against the wrong people all along, but basically, that's what we've been doing. This probably helps to explain the meager results we've realized for all the trillions of dollars we've spent, and while I'd rather not see us dropping any more bombs on anyone, if bomb we must, we should at least pick the most deserving targets.

---Baron V

Tuesday Night Music Blogging

Because every generation deserves an anthem of its own. This won't be one of ours, unfortunately.

---Baron V

Crisis Management

When things get tough, the tough build Web pages.

More to the point, if they really have the power to intercept just about every single bit of electronic data like we've been led to believe, one would think they'd have plenty of incriminating "smoking gun" evidence of who exactly gassed whom in Syria. The fact that they haven't produced any would tend to suggest that either (a) somebody's setting them up with bogus information, or (b) that our $52 billion intelligence-gathering regime is nowhere near as competent as they would like us to believe. Then again, both of these things could be true.

---Baron V

What if He Didn't Do It

It doesn't change my opinion about the stupidity of starting another war, but up to now I've been willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt in terms of their accounting of events in Syria. There's always the chance, of course, that they don't know what they're talking about because they've been misled, or that they're simply talking shit, so before we start bombing people, our Congresspersons should demand solid evidence of atrocities before we try to make the Middle East safe from them. We've been lied into wars of choice before!

---Baron V