Last week I issued a three-parter that proposed several dozen fresh tactics for the Enlightenment side of our current culture war. And as a unifying umbrella, I made them part of a "Democratic Newer Deal"... both satirizing and learning-from the most agile polemical maneuver of the last 40 years - the so-called 'GOP Contract With America.'
Others are wholly my own.
Some of the proposals take the form of internal reforms that Congress could enact on their very first day - of a session whose majority consists of sane and decent people.
For example, pause and envision this reform and procedural rule. One which no future GOP-led Congress would be able to retract!
Distributed subpoena power: We shall establish a permanent rule and tradition that each member of Congress will get one peremptory subpoena per year, plus adequate funding to compel a witness to appear and testify for up to five hours before a subcommittee in which she or he is a member. In this way, each member will be encouraged to investigate as a sovereign representative and not just as a party member, ensuring that Congress will never again betray its Constitutional duty of investigation and oversight, even when the same party holds both Congress and the Executive.
Think about that for a sec. very soon each Representative or Senator would view that personal, peremptory subpoena -- whether one per year or per session -- as a treasured and jealously-guarded prerogative of office. Possibly useful to their party or to confront major issues, or else to grandstand for the folks back home. Either way, they will balk at any attempt by future party leaders to terminate the privilege. And thus it could become permanent. And the minority will never again be barred from calling witnesses to interrogate the majority.
Or look at another internal reform that I'll talk about next time... to reconstitute the advisory bodies for science and fact that used to serve Congress, but were banished by Gingrich and Hastert and company, because... well... this Republican Party despises facts.
Other proposals would be legislated LAWS that seem desperately -- even existentially -- needed for the U.S. republic! Like this one I have offered annually for the last fifteen years:
We shall create the office of Inspector General of the United States, or IGUS, who will head the U.S. Inspectorate, a uniformed agency akin to the Public Health Service, charged with protecting the ethical and law-abiding health of government. Henceforth, the inspectors-general in all government agencies, including military judge-advocates general (JAGs) will be appointed by and report to IGUS, instead of serving beholden to the whim of the whim of the cabinet or other officers that they are supposed to inspect. IGUS will advise the President and Congress concerning potential breaches of the law. IGUS will provide protection for whistle-blowers and safety for officials or officers refusing to obey unlawful orders.
Wouldn't everything be better if we had IGUS right now? Go back and read the full text.
And then there's this one - a way to bypass the corrupt Citizens United ruling by the suborned Supreme Court - using a clever and totally legal means, that is supported factually by Robert Reich. Though I think my approach is more likely to get passed... and to work.
THE POLITICAL REFORM ACT will ensure that the nation’s elections take place in a manner that citizens can trust and verify. Political interference in elections will be a federal crime. Strong auditing procedures and transparency will be augmented by whistleblower protections. All voting machines will be paper auditable. New measures will distance government officials from lobbyists.
Campaign finance reform will reduce the influence of Big Money over politicians. The definition of a ‘corporation’ shall be clarified: so that corporations are neither ‘persons’ nor entitled to use money or other means to meddle in politics, nor to coerce their employees to act politically.
There are others, like how to affordably get every child in America insured under Medicare, while we argue over going the rest of the way. We'll get to that amazingly simple method next time.
But here's another one that is super timely because - as reported by the Strategic News Service - "Huge new botnets with 40M+ nodes are available to criminals on the dark web..." That's Forty MILLION computers around the world - including possibly the one you are now using to view this - have been suborned and turned into cryptic nodes for major cyber crime.
Indeed, we are far more open to cyber attacks than ever, now that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been downsized by a third! And the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) dissolved, and the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) terminated. And many counter-terror agents have been (suspiciously) re-assigned. Hence, here's a reform that might address that... and it might - if pushed urgently - even pass this good-for nothing Congress.
THE CYBER HYGIENE ACT: Adjusting liability laws for a new and perilous era, citizens and small companies whose computers are infested and used by ‘botnets’ to commit crimes shall be deemed immune from liability for resulting damages, providing that they download and operate a security program from one of a dozen companies that have been vetted and approved for effectiveness by the US Department of Commerce. Likewise, companies that release artificial intelligence programs shall face lessened liability if those programs persistently declare their provenance and artificiality and potential dangers.
Again... these and maybe 30 more are to be found in my big series on a proposed "Newer Deal." I'll try to repost and appraise each of them over the next few weeks.
Almost any of them would be winning issues for the Democrats, especially if they were parsed right! Say, in a truly workable 'deal' for the American people...
...and for our children's future.
== Political notes ==
Kimmel’s latest has been to satirically take on Trump's crowing about his 'aced' cognitive test. That test (which is not for IQ, but to eval senility or dementia) was accompanied by yowling that two female Democrat Reps were 'low-IQ.' Kimmel's offer of a televised IQ vs dementia test is brilliant. It'll never happen. But brilliant. In fact, Kimmel's offer of a televised mental test is a version of my Wager Challenge.
The key feature is REPETITION! The KGB-supported foxite jibberers have a tactic to evade accountability to facts. point at something else and change the subject. Yet, no dem - not even brilliant ones like Pete B and AOC - ever understands the power of tenacious repetition. Ensuring that a single lie - or at most a dozen - gets hammered over and over again.
All right, they ARE doing that with "Release the Epstein files!" Will they learn from that example to focus? To actually focus? And yes, demanding $$$ escrowed wager stakes can make it a matter of macho honor... honor that they always, always lose, as the weenie liars that they are.
127 comments:
Dr Brin in the previous comments:
And Galt refusing to share his inventions, even via existing imprefect markets where 'looters' would steal some value , was tantamount to murdering a billion people..
Ayn Rand's heroes had some notions about economics which seem wise when you're wrapped up in the moment of the book, but don't make a lot of sense in reality. They smugly treat fiat money and Taggart Transcontinental stock as having zero value because they can be arbitrarily manipulated. I could see valuing such things below their ostensible face value for that reason, but treating them as if they are Monopoly money is just another fallacy. As long as they can be traded for goods and services, they self-evidently do have a non-zero value.
I think what those characters were trying to say is that you can't bury fiat money or TT stock in your back yard and expect it to maintain its value indefinitely over time. If so, I say "So what?" You can't do that with pizza or petroleum either, thanks to entropy. You can't even really do it with gold. Gold may be tradable for more goods and services in 50 years, or it might be tradable for less, but contrary to Rand, it does not maintain a constant intrinsic value for all eternity.
I think what those characters were trying to say is that you can't bury fiat money or TT stock in your back yard and expect it to maintain its value indefinitely over time. What a weird position for an author to take. Used books are also worth far less than the price printed on the back cover. You can buy a hardcover Ayn Rand book (printed price $28) for about $5 at online used booksellers.
Rand's novel was written in a time when train travel and radio were the preeminent forms of transportation and communication. Though both air travel and television existed, they were treated in the book more as novelties.
Point being, I don't think online bookstores were on her BINGO card.
No Randian has ever even tried to answer my 2 dozen 'j'accuse!' denunciations at https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/aynrand.html
- like her 'life-oriented philosophy' following characters never having children or even discussing it! (For reasons I speculate.)
- like the fact that she denounced the Interstate Commerce Commission's regulation of railroad charges... and DEMOCRATS DISSOLVED THE ICC and ended the practice. And no Randian ever gave them credit or ceased to the looter-anticompetitive GOP as their preferred "hold my nose and vote" alternative.
...and many others.
I will admit that THE FOUNTAINHEAD was a bearably readable and even diverting novel, if sadomasochistically kinky, unlike ALL of her other, turgidly awful writings. Irt worked because it focused on art and architecture which truly ARE often rife with deceit and villainy.
So? The US patent system, while hugely imperfect, is NOT. And Galt could have patented his inventions and saved a billion lives while becoming richer than Croesus.
- like the fact that she denounced the Interstate Commerce Commission's regulation of railroad charges... and DEMOCRATS DISSOLVED THE ICC and ended the practice.
Much of the plot of Atlas Shrugged depended on the fact that, at the time of writing, private ownership of gold was forbidden in the United States. The fact that that practice was ended in the 1970s doesn't at all affect her followers' dissatisfaction with the status quo.
I will admit that THE FOUNTAINHEAD was a bearably readable and even diverting novel, if sadomasochistically kinky,
The Fountainhead is a different kind of polemic, and even makes a good case for some of her philosophy without making a tract out of it. It's a story about individual people, even if they mostly act like cartoon characters whose fates are preordained. I've read it twice and may do so again some day.
The problem with Atlas Shrugged is similar to the problem with The Bible. It's supposed to be a story and a how-to-live-your-life manual, and there's a Heisenberg uncertainty principle that says it can't be both at the same time. At least "Atlas" isn't also trying to be a history book as well, which the Bible is.
And Galt could have patented his inventions and saved a billion lives while becoming richer than Croesus.
He'd have only accepted payment if it was in gold.
Galt Patenting his inventions
Patents are like a thin veneer on all of the underlying structure and knowledge that is required to make them worth anything!
What good would the knowledge of how to make Galt's miracle metal have done to a caveman?
Without all of the underlying technology to make the stuff, measure it and use it .......
Underlying techs that ingrate Galt never acknowledges or pays for.
Heck, what "intrinsic value" would GOLD have had for a caveman?
Again I ask, what makes you think that the people who actually run this country will ever allow you to pass any of these laws?
I've had that reaction to many of our hosts recommendations. His common sense approach to districting, for example. But the reason state and federal districts are so gerrymandered is not because no one has thought of a way to make them fairer. It's because lawmakers don't want to make them fairer.
What good would it do to explain to Judge Doom how to make the Red Car more efficient and profitable? He bought the Red Car to dismantle it.
Rand's novel was written in a time when train travel and radio were the preeminent forms of transportation and communication. Though both air travel and television existed, they were treated in the book more as novelties.
Point being, I don't think online bookstores were on her BINGO card.
Before there were online bookstores, there were ACTUAL bookstores, some for new books, and some for used books. (There's still a few of them around, and many of those that survived are very special places)
OGH would know more about the economics than I would (if he still remembers ;-) e.g. I don't know what prices were at used bookstores in the 50s. But in the 90s, used to be about a buck for paperbacks in the bins, and I think you got a quarter or 50 cents back for books you sold them. The printed price on my copy of a Tom Clancy novel from that era was $9 CAN.
Even new bookstores had tables set up near the front for books that had sat on the shelves past their sell-by date (there would be one display at 20% or 30% off, others that were $5 or less for hardcovers for dogs that just weren't moving).
So the market value of Ayn Rand's book as soon as you walk out of the store with out would have been about 1/8th of what you paid.
So the market value of Ayn Rand's book as soon as you walk out of the store with out would have been about 1/8th of what you paid.
I would guess she considered that you realized the value of buying her book when you read it. Just as I realize the value of a slice of pizza when I eat it. Trade-in value has little to do with consumables. No one, not even the Romans, claims that it's a bad idea to eat food because it's only worth what you can trade it for.
Now if we were talking about poly-bagged, mint condition copies of "The Death of Superman", then sure, the only reason for buying them would be as a store of value. Most paperback books don't roll that way.
The amazing thing to me is how conservatives see all taxation as slavery, but will fall over backwards to yield enthusiastically to much worse exploitation by big business.
John Galt works as an inventor at a motor plant in a company town in rural Wisconsin. Just as he "invents a way" to make an innovative new motor that runs on atmospheric electricity, the owner dies and his heirs decide to run the plant as a communist collective. John Galt’s reaction is the calmest but hugest temper tantrum in literature; he decides not only to quit his job in rural Wisconsin, but to destroy the entire nation’s economy to teach them something something garbanzo.
And yet, if the original owner had lived, the motor Galt had invented would have been appropriated as the property of the company, because that’s where it was built, according to the adhesion contracts that all engineers and product developers signed as a condition of employment under 20th century capitalism. It would have been called the Starnes Motor, CEO Starnes would have been credited as its inventor, and it would have depended on the kindness of Starnes’ heart whether Galt even got a bonus for the use of his mind. And THAT would have been just fine by him, but taxes and labor cooperatives are a bridge too far? Blank out.
Celt asks the wrong questions about rules.
The Rule Obedient (aka 'those who are inclined to follow the rule-of-law') are often subject to a peculiar psychosis, insomuch as they assume that any rule (once written) has the magical power to compel obedience in those who are most disinclined to follow external direction, leading to the near exponential proliferation of civilization-smothering regulation.
I therefore argue that Celt & our fine host would be better served by examining the actual basis for the the rule-of-law among men, instead of producing more meaningless legal boilerplate due to their acceptance of the biblical Divine Logos myth.
Best
_____
The compendium of US Federal Laws, Regulations & Statutes has increased by more than 7000% since 1938, while rule obedience (as a population percentage) has gone into steep decline, as the rule obedient continue to insist that MOAR rules will usher in a golden age of law & order when the opposite is provably true.
Celt: (1) You make a very good point, since I have been raving several of these notions for nigh on TWENTY years. It's not corruption that prevents Dems from acting on them. In 2021-22 the Pelosi miracle bills did many fine things, including reversing the decay of US infrastructure... and sure, ALL construction bills contain some kickbacks. This one maybe 0.01% as much as is routine under Trump. But it was still great stuff...
...and none of it prepared us for Trump v 2, as my IGUS bill or the war powers act or others would have done. Because they simply could not imagine... or consult anyone with imagination.
And - since almost none of my proposals would have undermined the interests of dem lawmakers, there's just one explanation... insipid lack of imagination and derision of anything Not Invented Here. Kamala's people illustrated that sickness to an especially spectacular degree.
2. But that's how it might actually happen! Very little in my list of 35+ reforms would not garner 60%+ support from sane Americans, if offered well and very little of it would gore any Dem sacred cows. What is needed is a major election result... plus another miracle... the still residually sane wing of conservatism finally getting fed up.
3. In any event, I aim to GET THE IDEAS OUT THERE. And you guys can help.
---
Locum must be cribbing this stuff. It's too smarmy-smoothly written and it is stark, jibbering insanity. Hey goombah, YOURS is the most disciplined-obedient political movement in US history, lockstep Nuremberg-style rallies. ANY cant or jibber issued at midnight by the Kremlin basement is repeated by Fox in the morning and must be repeated, verbatim, by all GOP officials by evening or they are in trouble.
feh.
I think Loc is too moral. Won’t go into his rule-compliance screed; but to go on a tangent will write that there is that which is thoroughly immoral yet entirely necessary.
Such as torture.
We can all agree that torture is extremely wicked albeit torturing spies has to be done. Unless someone believes that nationalism is passe’, and we should be more Kumbayah.
People know what they’re trained to know: Loc was trained as a physician. What does he know about the nuances discussed here?
Nope we do NOT all agree! - torture is counterproductive - it produces convenient lies and is NOT useful
The combination of "extremely wicked" and "counterproductive" means that it should never be used
Counterproductive? yours is an Opinion, not fact.
Much info has been obtained by torturing spies.
... sure, morally you’re correct; but this is a practical matter. It concerns national defense—-not ethics in a Philosophy class.
@Alan Brooks,
You invoke national security as if torture is always a net gain in that realm, and that the only reason to refrain is for bleeding heart reasons. We most certainly don't "all agree" on that point.
Torture often produces any fantasy that the victim believes will make the pain stop. During the Iraq occupation, there were all sorts of news items about plots bomb plots using model airplanes and something about cows that I don't quite recall. No doubt, the "intelligence" gained from torturing prisoners.
That aside, torture provokes vengefulness from the other side. George Washington famously forbid torture of captured Redcoats, which made them more willing to surrender rather than fight to the death.
Torture also disgusts potential allies.
There may be very limited situations where torture is appropriate. A captured member of a terrorist cell who knows when a terror plot is planned for, perhaps. Even so, I find your categorization of "spies" as the necessary victims to be questionable. What can they be coerced to tell us other than what they already reported back to our adversary on? Not quite the ticking time bomb excuse.
What's counterproductive was to over-use a method of interrogation that formerly had been reserved for the very most urgent and heinous moments and men... and so overuse it that we were forced to outright ban it and send people to prison. And cripple the very few specially chosen utilizers NOT to use it under those special circumstances. It's less about 'morals' than about jibbering stoopid dunce-headed idiots. And THAT was just the Bushites! Who were absolute geniuses compared to these microcephalic, pervs and Kremlin sig Heilers.
Much info has been obtained by torturing spies
True!!
But 90+% of that "info" has been total bollocks!
The experience during WW2 was that the British method of giving a nice cup of tea, talking to them nicely (and bugging their quarters) worked MASSIVELY better than torture or ill treatment
Pragmatically "Torture" has zero actual advantages and massive disadvantages
So even if it was not "evil" then it should NOT be used
LH,
there MAY be very limited situations where torture is appropriate?
There ARE— not may be—such situations.
Duncan,
If the number is 90+ percent useless intelligence, it still leaves 10- percent useful info.
This is one time you are not convincing and won’t be—
unless you provide more evidence re torture being out of the question.
@Alan Brooks,
You're scaring me, dude.
Do you also advocate torturing and killing their family members to make them talk? Because that would be more effective, right?
If the number is 90+ percent useless intelligence, it still leaves 10- percent useful info.
If you can immediately discern the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise, no, a method that gives you misleading info most of the time is not useful, let alone worth becoming evil for.
You're masking your thirst to identify an "other" that it is ok to torture with concern for national security. I'm not buying.
Banned outright?
How do you know torture isn’t being conducted anyway, in absolute secrecy?
So presumably Alan Brooks would have been OK with the Ukrainians, provided they could reach him, applying whatever level of torture required to get the Starlink re-enabling codes out of Elon Musk after he crippled one of their offensive actions by switching coverage off.
It strikes me that would have fitted any definition of 'urgent and heinous moment'.
I do not know that it isn't done in extreme secrecy. But the task of doing that is far harder now that very explicit laws would reward your colleague next to you for handing you over. Not under the current admin, of course. Which encourages the same insane attitudes as the Bushes, tho on steroids.
If Ukrainians would want to torture me to get the Starlink re-enabling codes out of Elon Musk, they can do so—as long as they do it with love in their hearts.
Not family members, no.
If it pleases you, will write that all torture is wrong and should be banned. It won’t make any difference, as what goes on in secret will go on despite what we write here at this blog.
We are not privy to what is going on.
Torture is almost always counterproductive - and letting "torturers" decide when it isn't is a really really BAD idea
In WW2 - which is long enough ago that most of the secrecy has lapsed - it became very clear that torture was almost never useful -
People go to torture as "punishment" - which like using the prison system as punishment - does not actually change people's behaviour very much
•almost always counterproductive
•almost never useful
A bit too qualified.
...ozajh,
your comment is a
preposterous scenario!
There MAY be very rare occassions when Torture provides useful information
But those rare occasions are swamped by all of the other occassions when "wrong" information is generated
AND even that adverse effect is swamped by the adverse effects on your own people who do the torturing
AND even that huge negative is completely swamped by the negative effects of your doing torture on the other nations and forces that you interact with
So we have a rare "positive" and inevitable and MASSIVE negatives
I would compare this to the act of using a landmine as a stepping stone
The first problem with torture of any kind is: it is a crime, even in the US. By using, instigating, ordering and even supporting it, you chisel away from the Rule of Law. It becomes a slippery slope, and sooner or later, you arrive at Rule of the Jungle.
Oopsi, you are almost there.
Second: it is a sign of institutional lazyness and lack of training, talent, diligrence and respect for constitutional rights so common in law enforcement and intelligence services. If you "need" to torture to achieve your goals, you have done something wrong before, and will do so in the future with impunity.
That in turn will attract a certain kind of people and repel others.Skilled investigators and interrogators soon are replaced with armed goons.
Like ICE.
Duncan’s opening above says it: there’re
very rare occasions when torture provides useful informations. And yes, those occasions are swamped by the “wrong” information generated by torture.
No one here would write that torture ought to be routine. Yet once in a blue moon torture can be lifesaving.
If there are exceptions to every rule, torture is one of them.
This thread started when I wrote how Loc isn’t hostile, he sets the bar too high. Such is the problem attempting to communicate with religionists also; not that they’re “wrong” but, rather, how their standards are excessive—except for the most self-sacrificing.
No, I think Loco has shown dark triangle traits multiple times in the past. Plus, the height of the bar shifts with the situation.
your comment is a
preposterous scenario!
I have said it in the past, since Musk and Thiel are a danger to our souvereignity and welfare, I would not be surprised if GRU, MI6, DGSE did not at least contemplate to kill them.
Aha, so sealioning the sealion.
Still you picked a strange case to present as the "everyone believes" control situation. Really burying the lede.
Watching Ken Burns' "American Revolution", certainly interesting, although I so concur with a lot of the criticisms of bias, and the depiction of 'Canadians' (and others) is contrived at times. He seems to struggle to simply state the simple truth: America's path is Imperial Enlightenment. Almost Roman at times.
Alan Brooks:
I side with cairncross here. You propose a wager with known limitless cost for unknown limited gains. I would much rather risk dying from a terrorist attack than guaranteeing that my tax dollars go to torturers. I do so for reasons both moral and pragmatic: for if the State gets a taste for the whip, then it would only be a matter of time before it whips you and I.
I see in your contrarianism a case of false realism. You think that you are pragmatic in opening the door to tyranny. You are wrong. I also see in your false pragmatism the subversion of reason by emotion. Torture to gain false information and national disgrace is undisciplined. Hotheaded passion starts wars: cold calculation ends them.
There is a name for doing dishonorable deeds in the name of fear. It is called "cowardice".
TBH, Newsom's social media trolls are not expert, and come off as inauthentic. Progressives have always had a problem memeing effectively. For all of his many many many flaws, Donald Trump is a natural at it, and his cranial foam can be funny even to those of us who hate him, as opposed to Newsom who comes off looking like that "how do you fellow kids" meme
scidata that is utter bull. For all of its many crimes and imperial behaviors, America differs in several ways.
1. The military plays no role in civilizn life. Even now, Trumpist co-options into cities are pathetically small. A civilian can spend her entire life and only meet a soldier once or twice. That is among the half dozen NEVER MENTIONED reasons why the Union had to win the Civil War, beyond slavery and such. Had the South won, we'd have become another silly, millitarized Europe, obsessed with forts and hostile borders and standing armies.
2. Albeit WAY too slowly, each US generation expanded the circle of rights, First banishing nobility and redistributing the HALF of all land in the colonies that was owned by absentee lords to lower-middle white males... then a generation later the Jacksonians liberating poor white males... then ending slavery... then welcoming immigrants... then suffrage for women... then civil rights... To ignore that clear trend and how it is a fundamental character trait is a mistake that's almost as bad as our having ROMANTICIZED the process as perfect and completed "liberty and justice for all." Both extrema miss the point.
The process was despicably too slow!...Merely vastly faster than any other human society in history.
Ken Burns is part of that tradition of questioning our parents. Whuich is fine. But the left often takes it way too far, spitting on the nation and cultures that MADE them and made them critical.
----
As for the T-word... history shows it to be evil, of course. And only rarely pragmatic to get NEW information. Using it to answer "Did you..." or "do you confess to..." ids not just evil, it is utter proof of total stupidity.
Of course I'm no historian. I was more commenting on Burns' revisionism and romanticism. Also, he's talks mostly about the 18th century, not the 19th, 20th, or 21st. He makes these points explicitly:
- they didn't talk much about democracy in Philadelphia
(in fact the native peoples are depicted as the real democrats)
- they were bigger on listing George III's evils rather than erecting a gov't
- they hugged and flattered the French monarchy
- the Revolution had a strong whiff of Empire and Manifest Destiny
- propaganda, cruelty, and even savagery were rampant everywhere
(this was just post Seven Years' War)
As for the term 'Imperial Enlightenment', those were my words, Burns never uttered them (but I'm not finished all six episodes yet). Your own stages of the Civil War seems to lay out such a pattern n'est-ce pas?
It is soaring in its aspirational themes and anecdotes. The battle scenes are necessary, but hard to watch, just as they should be. And it makes one love America even more, which was his intention if you watch his recent interviews.
Thank you for the 'utter bull' assessment. I long to be included as a participant in debate, not to be 'poor scidata' as Locum once put it :)
Tension or contrast would have been a better word than 'pattern'.
I recall that when Rudolph Hess made his, let's say 'idiosyncratic*' decision to fly to England mid-war to propose peace to Churchill, the Nazi high command assumed the Brits would torture everything they could get out of Hess, such as the Barbarossa plans. They were startled and contemptuous when Hess remained untortured.
Of course, MI5 was already aware of these plans and Churchill was desperately trying to convince Stalin of them. And Stalin had his own Red Choir delivering the sheet music. He just didn't believe it, because it's not what Stalin would have done. Hitler had a good deal going with Stalin - freedom to dominate Europe and massive economic assistance - and was an idiot to break it. NO amount of torture will help overcome preconceived notion.
The Gestapo and the GRU implicitly believed that torture worked. I'm unconvinced that there was any instance where the torture that went on actually helped either state's war effort, except for the obvious one - fear of torture reduced internal resistance.
(If I sound like I'm canonizing the Brits, I'm pretty sure that I can find instances of torture used on suspected IRA members, and for the same reason - to instill fear.)
During the Warren Terra the US shipped suspects to places like Syria to be tortured because we apparently didn't have the in-house expertise**. And, I suspect, to avoid any oversight. Of course, waterboarding is dead easy.
*I'm not sure if Hess was rich enough to be considered 'eccentric'.
** yay us, if true.
Pappenheimer
P.S. "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored."
John S. McCain
For fiction discussing the role of torture (and a bit of very dated SF) I recommend 'Shadow of a Broken Man' by George Chesbro, set in the Cold War.
Pappenheimer
P.S. compare John Galt to that Shipstone guy of the Heinlein novel 'Friday', who invented a magic limitless-storage battery that revolutionized civilization, never patented it, and somehow his corporation is producing enough 'Shipstones' to allow the half the world to own one, without revealing enough information for the gizmo to be copied or reinvented. That blew my suspension of disbelief even harder that anything in Ayn Rand's works, but at least Heinlein didn't have Shipstone say "F them all if they're just going to profit off of me without giving me a cut'. Of course Heinlein was into the Dean Drive, too.
All truths have exceptions. The French underground learned the hard way to disperse and change IDs if one of them was captured.
The one British action that we might applaud today was among the colonists top grievances... the Appalachian act forbidding settlemenst beyond the mountains. Seems friendly to natives... but its real purpose was to prevent indentured servants along the coast from fleeing uphill and making their own lives. Look up the battle of King's Mountain.
After reading the replies today, I stand corrected.
Torture by the US and allies today is extremely rare, possibly nonexistent; yet having a spy ‘disappear’ forever may well occur more frequently.
Don’t know and don’t want to know.
I share Locum’s negativity (could be genetic) and pay excessive attention to what he writes.
At any rate, reading of how Khalid Sheik Mohammad, or someone similar, was waterboarded long ago didn’t bother me.
After reading all the replies here, that torture has a slippery slope, coarsening, effect is apparent.
This is a formal apology, and will endeavor not to repeat such pugnacious—and somewhat paranoid—opinions in the future.
Paradoctor,
False realism & pragmatism, yes, and also a presumption without evidence that torture is still practiced.
Plus a cynical assumption that what goes on behind closed doors is always worse than one could imagine.
This weekend CB has educated me.
Thank you AB. I, too, am a callous person in some ways and my top objection to the T word (not my ONLY objection) is the practical fact that used by sadists and idiots it accomplishes nothing and that the very rare cases where true professionals might get info of critical and urgent importance are now much HARDER on those professionals than before the idiots reigned.
But yeah. I lost (before I was born) most of my 3rd, 4th and 5th cousins to titanically execrable acts by true human monsters. Viciously banal idiots who took a great nation down paths of pure evil.
And I will die on the hill of fighting anything similar, whether my reasons are pragmatic or moral.
This discussion reminded me of a conclusion of a book (forgot title and author) about the history of modern secret services:
They are the only institutions that are rewarded if they fail.
It starts with the early days of MI5 and MI6 constantly explaining botched operations and enemy successes with lack of ressources and rights.9/11 might be the premier example for the "fail to succeed" mechanic.
It's certainly possible to "fail to succeed" if the thing you're failing at and the thing you're succeeding at are different.
As of 1994, Torture is absolutely ILLEGAL by US statute, inside & outside of US national boundaries, according to US Federal Law 18 U.S.C. § 2340A, the international UNCAT agreement & the Geneva Convention.
That said, it is a well-known fact (as leaked by Edward Snowden & Julian Assange) that the US government has been know to dabble in torture-adjacent 'enhanced interrogation techniques' at Abu Ghraib & certain black op sites across the globe, especially following 9/11.
It all goes back to what I was saying earlier:
That the LAW, no matter how explicit or well-written, is entirely without magic & cannot compel obedience in disobedient human subjects.
This confirms my earlier conclusion that any idealized rule set like Dr Brin's 'Contract for America', no matter how reasonable & well-written, is most certainly doomed to inutility & failure.
Perhaps I've been unduly influenced by my ongoing unhappy residence in California, as state & local law enforcement no longer enforces traffic laws despite the continued existence of a California Vehicular Code that is nearly 800 pages long.
I must therefore conclude that the Rule-of-Law is DEAD here (at least in California).
Best
I agree with Duncan and add that torture also harms the torturer. It's an obvious evil that a person must then commit? Think what that does to your code of ethics.
scidata,
The series is actually a wonderful example of how geopolitics works. The newly forming nation, if treated as an organism, had needs and wants that could overrule a persons code of ethics. Yes... the native peoples were more democratic, but they weren't part of the newly forming nation that hungered for land and independence.
It IS useful to see history with our sacred 'founding' myths stripped away. The men and women involved were people of their times and NOT the myths. They could yearn for liberty while keeping slaves in the kitchen and preventing their wives from owning property. Yet... the ideals they espoused caught the imaginations of much of the world (eventually) and spread like wildfire. The natives were totally screwed. Utterly. So was the French aristocracy.
One thing I thought Burns and friends didn't do justice to was the fact that the ideals of our revolution didn't start in the colonies. The wildfire started among the Dutch almost two centuries earlier, spread to the English in their civil war, and radically altered the crowns that eventually came together as Great Britain. The REASON our revolutionary ideas caught on in the colonies is we WERE British subjects. The fire came over with the immigrants.
For the record, I like the idea of a Cyber Hygiene Act... but I would argue for writing out the details for indemnification to cover standards known to NIST and other government agencies who already understand how to defend our assets. My day-to-day work involves hardening IT systems for the US Navy. IF people took steps (or our services did for us) similar who what I do at work, a LOT of crap would stop happening.
--------
I'd also make sure that financial transactions that do NOT follow these standards are to be considered null and void if any party to them objects to them later... AND NO ADDED FEES on these transactions may make up for the bank's losses. The credit card industry's standard transaction fees are as high as they are BECAUSE they fail to deal with fraud properly.
This extra would cause the financial industry to conform to the standards faster than anything else.
They DO appear to be ignoring the expired license plate registration decals. 8)
Can't say I object to that even if I keep mine current.
This perfectly distills how the present phase of the 250 year US Civil War is about adulthood and fact-informed modernity vs. those who despise and wish to destroy both. Why so fiercely right now? Because they see a mature and decent America leading a mature and decent, AI-augmented world on the looming horizon. And it terrifies them - their alliance of nescient oligarchs and lumper-prols - into waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions...
...from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.** ... And as I show in my current blog series, against the very concept of accountable law. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ (Contrary Brin blog)
**(And watch as the lack of those fired counter-terror professionals will hit us hard, as it did when GW Bush fired dozens, 6 monther before 9/11.)
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/winner-of-this-weeks-joseph-welch?
Larry, (from last thread)
You asked about my position regarding corporations as people.
I don't accept them as equivalent to natural persons.
At best I refer to them as 'juridical' persons. That means they are property with some of the rights of persons. Slaves essentially.
The reason I give them any personhood at all is because NOT doing so leads to terrible situations.
1: If someone steals from a corporation, who gets to push for a criminal indictment? The owners? Most owners of publicly traded companies are barely involved. Management? They are often the ones doing the stealing.
2: When a company signs a contract to purchase something from another company (Happens every day. They are called purchase orders.) who is on the hook for a breach? Who gets sued when a company's employees violate software license rules?
Giving a corporation some limited kind of personhood eliminates a lot of the legal danger that comes with general partnerships where the actions of one parter have legal consequences for ALL partners. Various corporate structures exist BECAUSE of how liabilities flow inward to the people involved in running and owning them.
So... they are a kind of slave with limited rights. One can steal from a "slave", but it is the owner who gets to decide whether to tolerate it or not. A "slave" can decide to trade with someone, but it is the owner who can coerce adjustments.
Fortunately for us, our corporations don't have minds like ours. They'd object if they did. Look at how some of them DO object to certain community events (Hobby Lobby objects to many things) and you'll find the minds of the owners only slightly below the corporate skin.
Yes, the story began before 1775. For example, I don't know anyone (except perhaps OGH or Walter Isaacson) who is a bigger fan of Ben Franklin than I am. Although in my case it's more because of his Scottish Enlightenment ties and this quote that was on the landing page of the Citizen Science team I ran for 12 years:
Tell me and I forget
Teach me and I remember
Involve me and I learn
- Benjamin Franklin
Also, I've always agreed with your Barbarian riff, which is sort of where I got the Imperial Enlightenment label. Myths soothe, but truth disturbs.
@Alfred Differ,
I'm ok with corporations being treated as "persons" in legal proceedings (I like "judicial persons"). Going as far as the Roberts court does in treating corporations as having the inherent rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence seems off the rails. Human persons are expected to act as citizens and moral agents as well as economic agents, whereas corporations are legally forbidden from non-economic motives (except, as you note, for Hobby Lobby which gets to have sincerely-held religious beliefs). Human persons can also suffer harm in ways that corporations cannot, and can feel sympathy for others in ways that corporations cannot. They're not the same kind of thing.
There are also situations in which "corporations are people" are absurd on their face. A state doesn't get to count corporations within its borders for congressional representation--not even 3/5 of a corporation. Corporations don't go through naturalization and become citizens. Corporations are not minors before they reach 18 years of age, nor do they have a gender assigned at birth.
So far, I don't think we've disagreed.
I don't see that you've successfully argued against putting legal restrictions on corporate behavior, such as forbidding hostile takeovers. If we go with the slave model, then as far as I know, slaves didn't own other slaves.
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
Quick, what was the name of the guy who (allegedly) winged Trump in the ear?
You had to look it up, didn't you?
Weird how Trump holds an obsessive unending grudge against anyone who he thinks somehow wronged him, but just forgot all about the guy who allegedly tried to assassinate him and never mentioned his name again.
Yes, that is...interesting.
https://bsky.app/profile/rexhuppke.bsky.social
Reporter: If there were a second strike that killed wounded people, would that be legal?
Trump: I don’t know that happened and Pete said he did not even know what people were talking about. I wouldn’t have wanted a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine.
So Pete Hegseth acted alone?
Alfred,
Bit of a change of subject, but I was inspired by you relating a bit of your experience as a space launch start up in a comment in the previous comments section (catching up on them after a week of vacation).
You had mentioned that your teams' ideas were contrary to SpaceX's and that at that time you thought SpaceX was on the wrong track. If you don't mind, could you say a bit about what your teams' ideas to achieve a reusable space launch vehicle were?
Also, have you taken note of Stoke Aerospace's
design for a fully reusable launch system? In particular the 2nd stage, the spacecraft, seems like a cool and innovative design to me. If so, could you comment on what think of their design?
The really innovative part is that they integrate an actively cooled metallic heat shield (shaped like the bottom of a classic reentry capsule), the cooling system for the heat shield and the propulsion system. The propulsion system is LH2\LOX and is arranged with a single combustion chamber but many (24) "nozzles" arranged around the perimeter of the heat shield. The system creates what many have been referring to as an aerospike effect. Steering is achieved by metering thrust at each individual "nozzle" as well as at the combustion chamber. Propellants are used to regeneratively cool the heat shield during reentry.
Looking forward to seeing this thing fly, I wish them success.
from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.**
Sigh.
You did not win the war on terror.
I tell you who did.
The Taliban.
Erdogan.
Israels far right.
The Arabian potentates.
Looks like Islamists winning in the Sahel Zone.
And If not them, it's Kremlin-supported officer juntas. The West has finally lost Africa.
The intelligence apparatus, by becoming an unbalanced and unchecked monstrosity of surveillance for it's own sake.
The billionaire caste, especially those selling the Orwell Machines to governments world-wide.
But you, dear ordinary citizen, lost your money and sons and daughters and trust and liberty ultimately, your future.
Oh, and you know who else won the war on terror?
Trump.
And I dare to pose the question: What if the FBI had not sided with the "oppressor" faction during the height of the Cold War against civil rights activists? Or Daryl Gates had been deposed of earlier?
Where would you be now?
This is pretty amazing. Are Ozempic+ users really already 12% of the US population? Seriously. If this article is true, then a seismic event is taking place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2025/ozempic-glp1-consumer-spending/?
Kewl. Wow.
Der Oger, while you raise important points you exaggerate hugely. The War on Terror was 'won' because there have been no further foreign-run terror attacks withing the US or much of anything across the West. THAT is a huge victory.
Africa's mess is a calamity that will only resolve when
1. Russia is kicked out
2. World $$ transparency targets African elite robbers who have stolen literal $trillions from their people and deposited it all in Helvetia - I mean Switzerland etc.
3. When further such thefts are deterred by punishing the complicit western elites.
ONE African leader could get the ball rolling by declaring the Helvetian War.
You know I share your spite toward the nescient half of billionaires who help petro princes, Czars and mafias to run the current putsch against enlightenment. But not all billionaires are nescient.
The War on Terror was 'won' because there have been no further foreign-run terror attacks withing the US or much of anything across the West.
But domestic terror attacks reminiscent of 1930s Germany are perpetrated by our own government. And depending on one's definition, those might actually be "foreign-run" as well. I definitely feel more scared of federal authorities today than I ever did of al-Qaeda 20 years ago.
I agree with Der Oger - the War on Terror was LOST!! - even from an American POV
There were a very very small number of "Terror Attacks" in the USA prior to thw "War on Terror" - and after it there were at least as many!
You have not had a repeat of 9/11 - but that should never have been allowed to happen anyway
Worldwide we have vastly MORE than before and a large percentage are directly due to the US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq
The "War on Terror" has made the problem WORSE!!
As had the "War on Drugs"
LH you make my point. 24 years after 9/11, our enemies realise that our protector Caste is too competent and they can only terrorize us by first attacking and demolishing those skilled patriot professionals.
Duncen, most of your assertions here are opposite to fact.
Has anyone here addressed Montana's attempt to limit Corporate spending by changing charters? Group releases text of proposed Montana Constitutional amendment to curb dark money? Daily Montanan https://share.google/IudvoFomneMUfaNej
There were a very very small number of "Terror Attacks" in the USA prior to the "War on Terror" - and after it there were at least as many!
Do NOT see how you can say that is wrong!!
You have not had a repeat of 9/11 - but that should never have been allowed to happen anyway
Again do NOT see how you can say that is wrong!!
Worldwide we have vastly MORE than before and a large percentage are directly due to the US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq
NOBODY could possibly argue about THAT!!! - Iraq CAUSED "ISIS"
Bin Laden told us what he wanted the USA to do - and Bush did everything he wanted!
The "War on Terror" has made the problem WORSE!!
As had the "War on Drugs"
Again the whole "War on Drugs" was due to Nixon
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Which is internal to US politics -
BUT by making those drugs illegal while there is a massive US market for them the USA poured Billions of dollars into the maws of the Drug Cartels
Which empowered them causing horrible violence in their countries
I’m not callous but, rather, over-sensitive. However, this is war versus peace in a world of mega-WMDs.
Russia possesses roughly 2500 nukes to our 2000 or thereabouts. China has about 500. Plus there’re other WMDs in various locations. Also, as is discussed here today, terrorists (or ‘freedom fighters’ for the more PC) can do very serious damage.
Thus I had put aside sensitivity and considered if—again, IF— torture is EVER justified; is it counterproductive, etc.
Now it is clear that torture is to be considered verboten, and is probably apocryphal.
How is that different from claiming that Hitler had won WWII because we realized that we can only win by storming Normandy?
I mean, since they are "attacking and demolishing those skilled patriot professionals" even as we speak, how can we have already won?
* * *
And before 9/11, I don't remember terrorism on US soil being that big a concern. There were attacks on US targets abroad, such as the USS Cole, but that wasn't a danger to the US itself. "Terrorism" in those days was almost always about Israel, or (a bit earlier) about Northern Ireland. When people quoted the statistic that a woman over 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband, they were saying that her odds were bad. Terrorism over here was a rarity.
When I first heard about the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, my immediate thought was that it was either Arabs or white survivalist types, and the odds of either seemed about even. We even hoped it would be a domestic type, because that would mean we didn't have to go to war over it. When it turned out not to be a suicide bombing, that made "white guy" pretty certain. OTOH, with the planes flying into the World Trade Center and destroying themselves on 9/11,the terrorists were obviously going to be Arabs.
The "War on Terror" was when we began to be so cowardly about the term "terrorism" that we let it be an excuse for giving up civil rights and justifying the murder of anyone who could be tarred with the label.
terrorists ... can do very serious damage.
Thus I had put aside sensitivity and considered if—again, IF— torture is EVER justified
I'm not following the logic. Terrorism is so scary that torture is justified to...what end?
Now it is clear that torture is to be considered verboten, and is probably apocryphal.
Again, not following. Torture is used for a variety of reasons--revenge, sadism, terrorism itself. Not even counting Dick Cheney's favorite, getting false confessions. There's a gulf of difference between acknowledging that torture is unreliable for divining facts and assuming that it does not exist in the first place.
'There were a very very small number of "Terror Attacks" in the USA prior to the "War on Terror" "
Jesus seriously? Ever heard of Bader-Meinhoff? The Red Brigades? Air piracy and hijackings? Sure, they had all subsided by the nineties AND THAT SUPPORTS MY POINT.
Were you an opponent and not an ally, I would hurl my "wanna bet?" at you.
Oh and every step to back out of the insane war on drugs was done by democrats.
Neither of us knows what torture was practiced in the distant past.. though we are aware that torture has been practiced.
We don’t know exactly what torture and where.
We do not know what or where T.
has been practiced more recently.
Nor the situation today.
How can we assess this without knowing? Without pettifogging?
Bader-Meinhoff? The Red Brigades?
Hi Dr Brin - you confirm my comment - both of those were European - could add the IRA to that list
So as I said - "a very very small number of "Terror Attacks" in the USA" - IN THE USA -!!
And they had all been "sorted" ten years BEFORE the "War on Terror" started
I agree about the Dems taking some tiny steps away from the "War on Drugs" - not enough but they are constrained!
My point with both is that the "War On" objectively made both situations WORSE
AND the major sufferring from both was NOT the people of the USA but people in other countries
I think if we were sitting around the table with beers in hand while ticking through the list of things we agreed upon here to find the ones where we don't, there wouldn't be many left to do more than quibble about. There will be a few edge cases, of course. There will be a few where my disagreement is strong... because of past experience. Still... over beers... it wouldn't amount to much.
I say 'juridical' person (slave) as a close approximation. I have no issue with companies owning other companies. I DO have issues with PEOPLE who nest the ownership layers deep in order to hide fraud. To me, that's a people problem and not a corporate one.
Corporations don't go through naturalization and become citizens.
Actually... there is a process of a kind to bring them on-shore. You have to register them somewhere to pay taxes properly. Fail to do that and the income derived is a risk of being treated like personal or partnership income by taxing agencies. In a lot of places, the corporation has to be 'in good standing' in that jurisdiction to be able to DO business at all. Ask me how I know this... because i know a little bit about Texas state laws around this matter. 8)
such as forbidding hostile takeovers
I do object to flatly forbidding hostile takeovers. I get why some want to forbid that, but they usually point out people problems they are hoping to prevent. Color me skeptical. People are crafty and will find other ways to shift debts to create bloated entities to take to bankruptcy court. The people problem THERE is (again) fraud. It usually IS fraud in our unwritten sense of the term, so I advocate for adjusting the legal definition of fraud instead.
On a completely different note "Stoke Aerospace" appear to be doing exactly what they should be doing and following the SpaceX footsteps/guidebook
I am still amazed that it has taken so long for companies to do that
Bah-lo-ney, Duncan. The USA was central to all the air hijackings and Symbionese Patty and again I would wager that before Bill Clinton the rates were higher and went down in part because of him and the skill he engendered.
Darrell,
SpaceX didn't exist (or was in its pre-Musk days) when my second team worked on our airship project. When I refer to SpaceX, I'm speaking broadly about all the other teams who tried re-usability too. SpaceX certainly wasn't the first. They were the first PROPERLY FUNDED effort and that is what made the difference.
Dig through the history and you'll find Rotary Rocket, XCor (where some of the Rotary guys went), Masten, Armadillo, and many, many more. They all worked at the idea that access to space could be made cheaper and re-usability was usually somewhere in the design. Some believed single-stage to orbit was the way to do it. Others believed in space-planes for the booster of a two or three stage system. Most avoid toxic fuels like the plague much like SpaceX wound up doing. Of the companies that were more than spreadsheets pitched at conventions, a few even managed to produce something AND make payroll for awhile.
My team believed we had to float what was essentially our launch pad. Think big airship and a little rocket. It makes a kind of sense if you think about how and intelligent aquatic species would try to get to space. Would they really launch from their sea floor? Mass ratios can be much higher if you get to start 30 km off the ground.
Those airships turned out to be a major PITA, though. The near-ground requirements were damn expensive. Operating them after the design was proven wasn't likely to be cheap either. They might have been re-usable (ask dirigible fans if the old airships were REALLY all that re-usable), but they would have cost a lot to operate.
Musk and friends at SpaceX have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can fly often, reliably, and not suffer huge ground costs for each flight. They were right. The other teams like them were more right than wrong. My team was wrong.
-----
Yes. Of course I'm watching Stoke. 8)
The great thing about innovation and the disruption it causes is that once someone has proven a thing possible, others arrive (rather quickly) to show variations on the original solution might be even better. How many of us know how the first Wright Flyers actually worked? Twisting wings? Seriously? Anyone know who's idea it was to ditch that, use ailerons, and why the Wrights didn't?
It takes more money than most people realize.
There is also the serious problem that investors who know little about space launch shouldn't be investing in space launch. There really aren't that many knowledgable investors who aren't already bought in somewhere. One of the big laments among my friends right now is that stupid money is beginning to show up. When those projects fail, they taint the entire niche.
Musk has ACCESS to people with money who believe in him strongly enough that they can afford to be stupid about the niche. That's not the case for some of the other efforts.
Y'all should also be paying attention to Rocket Lab, FireFly, and Intuitive Machines.
Also... space launch probably is NOT the place to invest in right now. Access to space is already much cheaper... so what do you want to do out there. Not do out there next decade. Do out there NOW.
Darrell,
As if I didn't already have enough proof that SpaceX was right, I just peeked at the launch schedule and realized that they have (yet another) launch planned from Vandenberg. Just a couple of hours from now. I plan to go outside and watch the future unfold before my eyes as this booster flies for the 20th time... and lands on a floating ship that is MUCH cheaper to maintain than anything I had in mind. 8)
When I'm at my most cynical, I'd argue that the 'War on Drugs' (which began in the early 1980s) was a HUGE SUCCESS, as it accomplished exactly what the CIA designed it to do:
It artificially increased the value of the cocaine crop in order to make the Iran-Contra venture profitable, as our Panamanian CIA asset Noriega distributed cocaine to US inner cities, devastated our black communities and funded both the Nicaraguan Contras & US arms distributions to Iran, ending with the 1989 Panamanian Invasion and a patsy for a perp walk.
I'm starting to get serious Panamanian vibes off the pending conflict with Venezuela, as Madura seems typecast as a likely CIA asset & Noriega clone who destroyed the richest South American communist oil-producer in history & turned Venezuela into a Narco-State, simply by holding office.
Won't it be a gas to find out that Madura was a US puppet all the time ??
I hope Oliver Stone directs.
Best
The air hijacking rates went down when sensible on-board security measures were put in place - NOTHING to do with the "War on Terror" (which was AFTER Clintons time in office) when the only new measure was secure doors on the cockpit which have NOT prevented anything but have enabled at least three pilots to kill themselves and everybody on board
Jeepers Locum actually makes (albeit paranoid) sense... or at least is willing to admit his side committed horrid crimes. Only good Oliver Stone flick is the Doors. But whatevs.
Venezuela was a mess before Madura.
He just made it worse.
Re Venezuela
This Quora answer is well worth reading
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Venezuela-which-still-has-the-world-s-largest-oil-reserves-become-such-an-economic-disaster?no_redirect=1
Ever heard of Bader-Meinhoff?
Ah, the Red Army Faction. There are many myths surrounding them, but initially, they formed during the 1968 and later student protests against the Shahs Visit, the Vietnam war. A major factor that isn't often mentioned is the generational conflict between the Perpetrator generation and their children.*
They never stood a chance because the majority of the population was quite content with what they had, the system lacked the traits that make revolutions successful elsewhere.
There is at least one murder (Alfred Herrhausen, head of Deutsche Bank) that has been attributed to the CIA in some theories for his critique of debt policies in Latin America, and demanding a relief.
The other late high profile murder (Detlef Carsten Rohwedder) was likely commissioned and/or executed by former Stasi officers to help to cover up the disappearance of the former SED Party treasure.
There is a whole ecosystem of conspiracy theories that believe that the third generation of the RAF was, in fact, mostly a false flag operation of the security apparatus.
While the original RAF was crushed, their lawyers became prominent political figures in the later years. One of them, Otto Schily, later became Federal Minister of the Interior when 9/11 happened.
* Horst Herold was then head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, and a former Wehrmacht Army officer. He also was a kind of a inventor and nerd, and called "Mr. Computer" for introducing information technology into law enforcement.
Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the most prominent victim, was a high ranking Nazi responsible for the occupation and administration of Cschechoslowakia and involved in the distribution of slave workers. After the war, he got a very lenient treatment, and became head of the Employer's Union - and a very strong opponent of workers rights. His death at the hands of the RAF can be seen as a form of late karmic justice.
As for the War on Drugs:
There is a kind of evolution of brutality involved. The moment a supply vacuum is created, the party which reacts first and most decidedly fills it. A non-violent drugs dealer will be replaced by a violent one, who in turn will be replaced by narco-terrorists.
A good access to weapons, like in the US, speeds up this development. Also note that some cartels heads have been trained in the School of the Americas in the past.
The only effective way to end the power of syndicates is establishing global financial transparency rules, to go after moneylaundering, corruption and reinvestment in the "core business".
Also, counseling and non-criminalizing prevvention strategies can reduce the consumer base, whereas strategies like DARE have increased it.
You may guess three times why many "law and order" conservatives are opposed to both.
Also, another clear winner are cops, who get ressources needed elsewhere, and companies operating for-profit-prisons and SurvTec and their billionaires owners.
JFK jr. wants to introduce working camps for the addicted, so you can add big Ag to the list.
Parasites.
As for the Red Brigades, they cannot be discussed without mentioning the Strategy of Tension, Gladio and the secret Propaganda Due Lodge and their actions.
@Dr Brin, duncan, and myself,
The use of the George W Bush term "War on Terror" skewed the conversation for me. I assumed we were talking about post 9/11.
I do remember the airline hijackings of the early 1970s. IIRC, they began as political statements, often about Israel but other causes as well, and then morphed into demands for ransom. I don't remember much if any death involved in the US, and certainly no horrific death. We in this country just weren't frightened of terrorism the way we became after 9/11.
Yes, it was worse in Europe and the Middle East. And on that front, the war has hardly been won yet--Oct 7 was only two years ago. And to the extent that Hamas and Hezbollah have been crippled, that wasn't exactly our doing.
As for the Helvetian War: I still have not read Earth, so I know not how you want to win it, but - outside the use of weapons of mass destruction - Switzerland is a nightmare for any conventional army to invade. Any male citizen is drafted, and of those who did not enter replacement services, they have their service rifle at home. The Swiss als are riddled with thousands of bunkers and artillery positions. Patriotism and morale is very high.
And, they are surrounded by both political allies and NATO members, and even discussed joining NATO and give up their political neutrality after the Russian Invasion.
Not that you’re wrong, Larry.
But this is about national defense—and you are giving me lawyer-talk.
Currently, If I were to write this story, I'do it differently:
1) After massive financial support by billionaires, Reform UK emerges as the winner of the election. Farage, or a similar character, is reluctantly named PM
2) They want to do Trumpian Things with their majority, but, for constitutional reasons, the King withholds his assent.
3) After weeks of constitutional crisis, the King and next in Line of succession flee to Canada. Reform UK Party Militias might hold London and Northern England, but the South and Scotland are in the hand of the Royalists.
4) An ill-advised attempt is made to Install a puppet king, but only parts of the armed forces accept that. Much worse for the PM, the other Commonwealth Nations Stick with their original King -in - Exile as their Head of State.
5) Who then builds an alliance to invade Britain and reclaim the throne, which leads to a short civil war, which the nationalists loose.
6) The new government wants to make sure that billionaires or other foreign actors never meddle with Britains elections again.
7) They order MI6 to move into positions, to be able to strike suddenly and without a warning.
8) Then, after months of preparation, the King, after being informed by the PM that everything is ready, addresses the Commonwealth and declares He will use his right to declare war on persons, specifically against 100 selected billionaires, their assets and heirs. He gives them an ultimatum to surrender to his justice.
No one does, but counterthreats are made.
9. When the ultimatum runs out, things happen. Yachts sink to the ground. Private Planes Crash. Explosions in Internet Troll Farms happen. Snipers, jockeys with FPV drones and hit teams execute attacks in areas people thought to be safe. When flying to New Zealand to reach his Bunker, at least one billionaire is arrested by the police and extradited to Great Britain.
10) The US threaten with military action themselves, but the English can believable threaten the east coast with nuclear weapons.
11) After one week, most surviving billionaires declare surrender and submit themselves to the mercy of the crown, which means selling off 90%of their wealth and donating it to a fund dedicated to alleviate the consequences of climate change, extortion and colonialism in the developing countries. Trillions of extracted Dollars change hands overnight.
You're not explaining how torture is a benefit to national defense. How the use of it makes us safer. It just sounds like you're using that term as a catch-all to excuse anything.
Like DJT imposing tariffs on Canada in the name of national defense.
Der Oger certainly does express! Can't answer everything, but a couple items:
Um... the Red Brigades story I somewhat knew but details were very interesting. The British Crown-led civil war was a fun scenario, distantly akin to how Juan Carlos stepped up and denounced the Franco-faction when they attempted a coup in Spain. I doubt very much the scenario would play out, at any of the ennumerated stages. But it would make a fun movie or novel. Needs a central protagonist.
The Helvetian War is not about territory but banking records, so that the developing world nations who desperately need the $$$ that was looted from them by former elites can simply transfer title on all the accounts to their national treasuries and use them to help their people.
I've long asserted that ONE brave and Mandella-like president in Africa could risk assassination by making that demand of all $$ banking havens... and those who refuse are declared war upon, for engaging in theft and murder of children.
"To our friends around the world, I say, do not kill any Swiss or Cayman or other persons on our behalf. But if you make them uncomfortable, so their jets do not fly and their clothes stink, then you are allies of goodness and righteousness. Meanwhile, we shall seize - as if our right in war - any assets of those nations that come within our reach."
Under the rules of war, Swiss and Cayman and other 'belligerents' can have their property seized. Some of them cave in. The Swiss do not, and make the mistake of sabotaging and then assassinating the president of (congo?). at which point the war spirals out of control.
All of that is never-described back story to the Helvetian War that characters remember in EARTH.
Too bad you haven't read it. It's one of my best ;-)
Alfred,
Hindsight certainly can be uncomfortable. But air-launch was definitely a plausible idea in its time. Maybe still is. There are still several companies actively pursuing it, as you probably already know.
But it does seem to me, from my amateur armchair, that we have seen enough at this point to support that air launch has no real benefits. Except maybe at pretty small scale. And the larger you go, and that's the way we really need to go, the worse the case for air launch.
I try to keep tabs on all the commercial space companies. Thank goodness for the internet. Access to what they are doing is unprecedented.
I live on the "space coast" of Florida and have had wonderful views of many of the current era launches. One of the best was a Falcon Heavy launch some time ago. The launch was a southern trajectory, towards me, and it was about nautical twilight. Every phase of the flight was visible as sunlight illuminated things up high while it was generally dark. Launch, side booster separation, boost back burns of both side boosters, their coast phase, center booster separation, its gradual fall, fairing separation, reentry burns of the side boosters, and perhaps coolest of all from my distant perspective, and the only time I've seen it from my house, the boosters falling through the atmosphere and just before going below my horizon their landing burns.
Regarding Venezuela, note which cartel's drug corridor is *not* being bombed by the US.
Also, that same cartel (the one that rhymes with "you don't know shit or shinola") had a deal with the former Honduras POTUS that Trump is pardoning.
So, the US bombs a bunch of fishermen on the drug corridor for a few narco-gangs, which serves to depress real smuggling activities on those corridors. The US leaves the dominant player's corridors alone.
The US president pardons and offers sanctuary to high-level members of the dominant cartel.
From these facts, my guess is that POTUS cut a deal for a piece of the action on one of his favorite vices.
Plus, a narco-war gives POTUS cover for abuse of his unlimited war powers in domestic politics.
Finished watching Burns. Nice wrap up - that was the end of the war, but not of the revolution, which continues to this day, here and elsewhere.
Since we don’t know where when and what torture has been used in the past, and if it is still used, it is academic to start with.
But did FDRs admin use torture during WW2? Did valuable intelligence result? We don’t know, yet maybe so.
Interesting point, matthew.
The US revolution became a perpetual ratcheting outward of the boundaries of inclusion that I have written about. And each generation of decent people wind up sourly unsatisfied with the pace of the most recent ratchet, caring not at all that the pace has been vastly faster and more steady (with setbacks) than any other culture in history. So the revolution continues... always resisted by the confederate side of our nature.
Well, we know that Hitler's admin used torture during WWII, and maybe some valuable intelligence resulted, but it didn't keep them from losing the war.
I can sealion too. What if the Allies won the war because we weren't the type of civilization that countenances torture, and the Axis lost the war because they were? What if torture is simply the last refuge of the incompetent?
Please clue me in. Which cartel rhymes with 'shinola'?
"the pace has been vastly faster and more steady (with setbacks) than any other culture in history."
Us Brits started from about the same place - and are now definately ahead of the USA in inclusion - so your "pace" has not been "faster" never mind "vastly faster"
Unless that is you consider the US culture to be a subset of the "western culture" since the 1700's
We’ve pretty much have exhausted this topic. The Axis lost after Barbarossa and Midway.
I dislike torture, however simply do not know if it is the last refuge of the incompetent. Maybe torture was used by America once or twice, with positive result? And we aren’t alluding to hideous torture—more like water-boarding.
When bin Laden was killed, btw, I said I didn’t care at all; was told such is callous..as he was “a human being.”
Still, it was hard to care.
Don’t reply, the thread is played.
Again Duncan, bah-loney! You forget I lived over there for a couple of years. Yes, you banned slavery earlier... while still financing slavers. OTOH when USA got an 'empire' of Cuba + The Philippines it was ALWAYS with clear intent they become independent. And look up Anson Burlingame who manifested US (imperfect) policy to stop imperial grabs at China.
Oh we could go back and forth. But the simplest fact is that the world pax instituted by Britain and France both before and especially after WWI was cruel and punitive and utterly counter-productive. The Pax Americana has been the greatest era of human progress ever seen (amid some crimes and idiocies: and a tsunami of them today).
Imagine if Europeans and all the world had gone back to spending 25% of gross national wealth on arms and armies, instead of the ONE PERCENT that they could get away with, under the Pax umbrella the USA citizens paid for. An umbrella that DID gost US vast fortunes that ingrates howled at us for,
I will admit two of trhe top twenty universities in the world are in Britain. Know where ALL of the rest are? Despite all-out war against them by the flaming ingrates of the gone-insane US right.
Oh and Alan Turning could have gone to San Francisco. He should have.
I was not talking about the progession - but about where we are NOW - Today!
And Today the USA is definately behind the UK, NZ and most of europe in "inclusiveness"
Compared to the UK the USA is racist and misogynous - we are NOT perfect but we have definately progressed further than the USA
If we started in the same place and we are now ahead then you have NOT been going faster!
If we go back in history then the country that was behind was the USA - Racism !! - Lynchings!
If you did not have the "Confederates" holding you back then you would not be so far back - and possibly you would be ahead
As far as military spending is concerned the USA spends far far more than is sensible
You should spend enough so that you have more than your possible enemies
The USA spends more than the next twelve nations added together and nine of them are your firm allies! - or they were before the Orange one started threatening us
Reference to "War on Terror"
Before Bush started this it was mostly a "Police Problem" - the police and law enforcement were the ones tasked with catching and stopping
Bush changed this to a "Military Problem" - and the Military is NOT good at that sort of thing!
Imagine if Europeans and all the world had gone back to spending 25% of gross national wealth on arms and armies, instead of the ONE PERCENT that they could get away with, under the Pax umbrella the USA citizens paid for.
Wl
During the cold war, we had double to triple the number of soldiers we have now, plus the tanks and fighter jets, PLUS a welfare system that was much more generous and humane than today.
We also had much more taxes on high incomes, inheritance and wealth.
Wonder who started with "small state", "trickle down", "welfare queens" etc.(though admittedly it was our stupidity to follow that road and also install the "Black Zero" in public spending deficit as a quasi-religious fetish.)
Megyn Kelly says the quiet part out loud. The cruelty is the point.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bloodthirsty-megyn-kelly-goes-on-deranged-rant-about-wanting-to-see-smugglers-suffer/ar-AA1RAqGs
...
But [Megyn] Kelly, a staunch Trump supporter, seems careless of the dubious legality of the attacks, celebrating the deaths of over 80 people in the Caribbean in her online show. The Trump administration claimed the attacks were necessary to prevent drug trafficking from coming into the U.S. However, little proof has been provided that the people in those boats were actually drug traffickers.
“I really do kind of, not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer,” Kelly said. “I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.”
“I’m really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who, 10 seconds earlier, almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water,” she continued.
...
They've now gone from mere cartoon supervillainy to outright evil, aspiring to be Nazis.
I said it before: use Den Haag to get rid of every last of them, unless you want a competent version to return in 2032, either by forcing them to confess they acted in a way that their rights to be elected for an office is forfeited under the 14th admentment, or extradite them if they do not.
The US revolution became a perpetual ratcheting outward of the boundaries of inclusion that I have written about.
What is all this 'inclusion' nonsense about the US revolution? It's not written anywhere and, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no mention of 'inclusion' in any US founding documents from the US Declaration of Independence to the US Constitution.
You do know that the whole 'Give us your huddled masses' folderol was not a law, statute or regulation, don't you? That the US restricted immigration from non-western & non-european countries most severely until 1965?
And, you know that there's absolutely nothing in the US founding documents that forbids a definitive end to all further in migration in the future?
Inclusive, inclusiveness & inclusivity, my posterior !!
Best
Megyn Kelly isn't a politician. She's a tv commentator. I don't think she can be charged with war crimes for asserting that she'd like to see war crimes committed or that she gets off on fantasizing about them.
Larry, there is precedence:
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines..
Alfred Rosenberg, too, but He actually Held political offices.
Location.
Some locations are inclusive; some are extremely exclusive.
jibber-away. The US revolution expanded power from the King and 0.001% of the English (not Scots etc) population, enfranchising about a third of Americans. White males who owned a house, even a cottage. Furthermore the founders seized and redistributed the half of land in the colonies that had been owned by absentee artistocrats. (one of the biggest acts of socialism in all of history.)
All of that was a huge step in what would become an inexorable (if far too slow) process of rights expansion.
That process continued when the poorest white males backed the "Jacksonian Revolution' of the 1820s, making the American Experiment the most massive Middle Class the world ever saw, percentagewise.
Do we now look back and wince at the portion of Founders who had slaves? Or the crimes of Andrew Jackson? Yes, and rightfully so. We can also feel shame that the next step - ending slavery - took so long and had to be enforced so violently. But it did happen, returning to a fifth of the population oenership over their own bodies and labor. Though hugely, hugely imperfectly.
The next expansion? It manifested as a tsunami of immigrants from despised places like Ireland, Italy and Poland who got to vote almost instantly. No English language requirement! That was for their kids.
Then Womens' Suffrage and political rights. Again, imperfectly, with a needed century of follow-up!
And then the greatest pairing of all, the GI Bill generation desegregating the military (the one step that meant no turning back and led to the Civil Rights Bills) and building 1000 of the world's greatest universities, which enabled children of the working classes to enter any profession, invent anything their minds could come up with and compete directly with the inheritance brats of aristocracy....
...which is THE reason why oligarchs around the world - plus their lumpen-prolconfederate anti-modernity serfs - are waging their current world putsch against enlightenment, to restore 6000 years of failed feudalism.
Was this great inclusion project ever perfect or even remotely enough? By later standards, each earlier phase was miserably, culpably, immorally slow! Which is the point! Later phases did have higher standards! Because the process of inclusion expansion kept going. It became a core part of our character, such that young people today go scrounging for teensy remaining persecuted minority groups to stand up for!
The miserable slowness WAS culpable. And nothing like this process ever happened before, in the history of our species.
Only now we face another crisis. If we can stand up together, the process can continue. We may have been too slow, but what we accomplished is incomparably better than those 6000 years of utter, utter stoopidity and evil.
Standing up together also means we have to be kinder and gentler with Loc. We are not communicating much with outsiders—more like we are preaching to the choir, to
little effect.
What purpose in flaming a divorced, retired physician?
Dr Brin - all that is true - if rather exaggerated -
about 3% had the franchise in "Britain" back then - not 0.001%!! -
A LOT of the land that was redistributed was owned by settlers who were chased out of the country by the rebels - about 30% of the initial population were "loyalists" who had their property stolen and were chased out
But while you guys were moving forwards - advancing into the future!
So were we!!!
"And nothing like this process ever happened before, in the history of our species"
Sort of true - but at the same time that the process was happenning in the USA it was happenning in Europe
Firstly, the US right-to-vote was initially restricted to approximately 6% of the US population, specifically land-owning white male christians, since poor white non-property owning US males only gained the right-to-vote as of 1856, US women only gained the right-to-vote as of 1920 & native americans could only vote as of 1924.
Secondly, the idea of the USA being 'A Melting Pot' was first popularized in 1908 by a Jewish playwright named Israel Zangwill -- a fact which identifies the 'melting pot' idea as a mostly Jewish conceit -- which was directly preceded by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 & other long-lasting immigration restrictions which stayed in place until the flood gates opened with The Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1965, leading to a whole lot of demographic replacement but not a whole lot of melting together.
Thirdly, the idea of 'inclusion' had absolutely no place in US law until The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (which prohibited federal discrimination against the disabled), The Education of Handicapped Children Act in 1975 (forbidding discrimination against the handicapped) & again in 1977 when the courts upheld The Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
It is therefore GASLIGHTING to insist that the USA is, was and has always been this idealized bastion of inclusive inclusiveness & inclusivity when inclusiveness (as currently defined) has only existed in statute form for about 50 years.
This means that this Inclusiveness Ideal is neither the history nor the future of the Enlightened West, except in the fevered imaginations of a fearful & manipulative few.
Best
Duncan good points and yet seriously? the 3% elected parliament but even they were merely upper middle class. The King and maybe 1000 others owned everything. And controlled trade rigidly.
Nothing... not one single thing just said by Locum is remotely true. It is all jibber jabber as he sinks back into madness.
Sorry Alan. But I am being kind by not banishing.
onward
Onward.
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