“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”
~ Herbert Marcuse
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The U.S. Government Buys and Sells Its Citizens for Profit and Power
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
Biographical information. Biometric information. Criminal backgrounds. Travel records.
There is not a single person in the U.S. who is not in some government database or another, and these databases are increasingly being shared between agencies, fusion centers, and the police.
Americans have become easy prey for hackers, scammers, snitches, spies, and con artists.
But don’t be fooled into thinking the government is protecting you.
To the contrary, the U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders.
By the way, those highest bidders also include America’s political class and the politicians aspiring to get elected or re-elected. As the Los Angeles Times reports, “If you have been to a political rally, a town hall, or just fit a demographic a campaign is after, chances are good your movements are being tracked with unnerving accuracy by data vendors on the payroll of campaigns.”
Your phones, televisions and digital devices are selling you out to politicians who want your vote.
“Welcome to the new frontier of campaign tech — a loosely regulated world in which simply downloading a weather app or game, connecting to Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or powering up a home router can allow a data broker to monitor your movements with ease, then compile the location information and sell it to a political candidate who can use it to surround you with messages,” writes journalist Evan Halper.
In this way, “we the people” have been reduced to economic units to be bought, bartered and sold by all and sundry.
On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
Those intimate details, in turn, have become the building blocks of massive databases accessed by the government and its corporate partners in crime, vulnerable to data breaches by hackers, cyberattacks and espionage.
For years now, and with little real oversight or restrictions, the government has been compiling massive databases comprised of all manner of sensitive information on the citizenry.
Biographical information. Biometric information. Criminal backgrounds. Travel records.
There is not a single person in the U.S. who is not in some government database or another, and these databases are increasingly being shared between agencies, fusion centers, and the police.
The government has also, with little oversight and few guidelines, been adding to its massive trove of data on Americans by buying commercially available information (CAI) from third-party sources. As a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed:
“[Commercially purchased data] can reveal sensitive and intimate information about the personal attributes, private behavior, social connections, and speech of U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons. It can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals. Even subject to appropriate controls, CAI can increase the power of the government’s ability to peer into private lives to levels that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other social expectations.”
In other words, this is the diabolically sneaky way in which the government is attempting to sidestep the Fourth Amendment, which requires that government agents have probable cause and a warrant before spying on Americans or searching and seizing their private property.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: biometric, profit, profits and power, U.S. government | Leave a Comment »
Coming Soon: The Dethroning of Human Intelligence
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
The question arises: Will Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) initially be a trait of a machine or an augmented human? I think a machine will get super-smart first, if only because most humans develop much-needed common sense while they grow up, which in the area of brain amplification would dictate caution.
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make . . . — “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” Irving John Good, British cryptologist, 1965 (my emphasis)
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. — What is the Singularity?, Vernor Vinge Department of Mathematical Sciences San Diego State University, 1995
First, some relevant history.
The idea of creating something man-like or even greater than man dates back to the beginning of recorded history, but many in the AI world credit a 19-year-old girl as their spiritual mentor, English author Mary Shelley. In 1818 she published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, the story of a young scientist named Frankenstein who creates an intelligent creature from laboratory experiments. Frankenstein today is a metaphor for the monster, but in the novel the creature is presented sympathetically, in other words, misunderstood.
In 1950 Alan Turing posited that a machine could get so good at conversing with a human that it could pass for human, based only on its responses. Critics jumped on his assertion but he addressed them all in his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, wherein he described his Imitation Game.
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How A Deeply Controversial White House Adviser Is Running The Agenda On Gaza
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
Brett McGurk has sought to put a Saudi-Israeli relationship “at the forefront” of the U.S.’s Middle East policy — downplaying Palestinian concerns and human rights.
Brett’s theory of the region is that it’s a source of instability but also resources,” the former official said. “It’s a very old-school, colonialist mentality: People need strong rulers to control them, and we need to extract to our benefit what we need while minimizing the cost to ourselves and others we see as like us, in this case Israelis.”
“This approach always fails,” the official continued, saying it’s “short-sighted” and forces the U.S. to reinvest in the Middle East every few years.
“Here’s a clear example before you: they wanted to bypass the Palestinians” in Saudi-Israel normalization, the former official said.
Bowing and scraping to people who attack and control us in the hope they might be nice to US.
Four men in Washington shape America’s policy in the Middle East. Three are obvious: President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The fourth is less well-known, despite his huge sway over the other three ― and despite his determination to keep championing policies that many see as fueling bloodshed in Gaza and beyond.
His name is Brett McGurk. He’s the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, and he’s one of the most powerful people in U.S. national security.
McGurk crafts the options that Biden considers on issues from negotiations with Israel to weapon sales for Saudi Arabia. He controls whether global affairs experts within the government ― including more experienced staff at the Pentagon and the State Department ― can have any impact, and he decides which outside voices have access to White House decision-making conversations. His knack for increasing his influence is the envy of other Beltway operators. And he has a clear vision of how he thinks American interests should be advanced, regarding human rights concerns as secondary at best, according to current and former colleagues and close observers.
“It’s tremendous power that is completely opaque and non-transparent and non-accountable,” a former U.S. official told HuffPost.
Comparing McGurk’s extremely centralized approach in the Biden era to the more consultative way in which past administrations made decisions, a representative of a civil society group said McGurk is “able to drive things with [Sullivan] and the president in a process that is not a process.”
It’s a stunning degree of authority for a 50-year-old operative with a deeply controversial career. One current U.S. official said McGurk’s dominance has rendered the top Middle East official at the State Department ― a former ambassador who, unlike McGurk, was confirmed to her post by the Senate ― merely “a fig leaf.”
“The State Department essentially has no juice on [Israel-Palestine] because Brett is at the center of it,” the official said.
Meanwhile, McGurk’s primary focus, a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, has come to dominate American diplomacy in the region. “He consistently pushed for engagement with the Saudis and sought to put that relationship at the forefront of what we’re trying to do in the Middle East,” the U.S. official said.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment for this story. The agency has experienced internal uproar in recent weeks. On Thursday, a State Department official told HuffPost that staff have submitted at least six formal letters of dissent regarding Biden’s Gaza policy to Blinken through a protected channel.
Amid the crisis that erupted Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and Israel responded by launching an ongoing offensive that has now killed more than 14,000 Palestinians, McGurk has maintained his importance. He’s deeply involved in the negotiations between Israel, Hamas and regional governments that have let more than 100 Israeli hostages come home and boosted the amount of humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza. His team is tightly managing what U.S. officials say about the conflict, and he is in regular contact with foreign officials who say America’s largely unrestrained support for Israel is spurring huge resentment worldwide.
Now there’s growing concern that despite the shock of the Hamas attack and the sweeping Israeli response, McGurk will stand by priorities and tactics that many officials and analysts see as deeply unhelpful.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Agenda, Brett McGurk, Gaza, Israel, Saudi Arabia | Leave a Comment »
US Efforts To Extend Gaza Truce Are “Objectively Pro-Hamas”, Warmonger Bolton Says Biden Admin ‘Scared To Death Of Left Wing Extremists’
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
by Tyler Durden
Monday, Dec 04, 2023 – 04:15 AM
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,
Former national security adviser John Bolton on Saturday criticized the Biden administration for its attempts to extend the truce in Gaza, calling them “objectively pro-Hamas.”
“I think with the initial pause now behind us, I think Israel’s best judgment here is simply to proceed militarily to achieve the objective it says it wants, which is the elimination of Hamas,” Mr. Bolton told News Nation.
“I think the second-guessing by the Biden administration, the efforts to prolong the pause to turn it into a full ceasefire, are objectively pro-Hamas because it denies Israel the self-defense right it has to eliminate the terrorist threat.”
Israel’s war with the Hamas terrorist group resumed on Friday after a weeklong truce brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, during which Hamas freed 110 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
A day before the truce ended, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged for a longer truce on Thursday. He said, “Our immediate focus is working with our partners to extend the pause so that we can continue to get more hostages out of Gaza and more assistance in.”
Also on Friday, the White House blamed Hamas for ending the truce.
“It’s because of Hamas that this pause ended,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, per USA Today.
“They were just simply unable, failed to produce a list of hostages that could help enable that pause extending,” Mr. Kirby added.
“The onus is on Hamas to be able to produce a list of hostages that that they can get out so that we can try to get this pause back in place.”
Mr. Bolton criticized President Joe Biden for trying to limit what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can do. The national security adviser had previously criticized the truce as a “very bad deal for Israel.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Gaza Truce, John Bolton, Left Wing Extremists, warmonger | Leave a Comment »
Singularity
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity[1]—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.[2][3] According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good‘s intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an “explosion” in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.[4]
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Marvelously Melodic but Mercurial: A Review of Philip Norman’s George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023
Nevertheless, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle is an overall very well researched and written biography of by far the most secretive Beatle that boasts loads of fascinating facts. Most importantly, it brings attention to an extraordinarily talented artist who has never gotten the respect he deserved due to being overshadowed by the greatest songwriting partnership of the 20th century. That Philip Norman has made a significant contribution to elevate George Harrison’s place in the pop music pantheon is a very welcome development.
How swell to at last have a major biography of that most aloof of all rock stars, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle, by respected pop music historian Philip Norman, and how sobering to learn that the reclusive rocker’s feet were all too completely made of clay. Though this book is quite detailed and very well written, I now know far more information about Harrison than his underlying motives. Alas, what is still a worthy biography could have been splendid if not for several shortcomings.
Perhaps the book’s top theme is George Harrison’s remarkable cornucopia of contradictions, something he alluded to in the “Pisces Fish” song on his superb last album, 2002’s Brainwashed:
Sometimes, my life it seems like fiction,
Some of the days it’s really quite serene,
I’m a living proof of all life’s contradictions,
One half’s going where the other half’s just been.
Massive contrasts define Harrison’s story. With bomb craters from World War II still decorating his neighborhood, he grew up in a crowded little Liverpool apartment with no bathroom, whose only heat came from a “small coal fire,” and where the weekly bath was in a backyard bucket. But massive musical success would earn him enormous wealth.
Harrison was the Beatle most in the background whose growing songwriting abilities were largely ignored by the group’s leaders, John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney. But after the Fab Four’s 1970 breakup, the lead guitarist would stun everyone with his astonishing All Things Must Pass triple album to become the most critically and commercially successful Beatle of the early 1970s.
It is comforting to learn how Harrison was usually kind, caring, and giving. Not only did he co-write “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Boogaloo,” two of Beatle brother Ringo Starr’s biggest solo hit songs, but he did not even ask for a (quite lucrative) songwriting credit for either. Even when sick in bed dying of cancer, he offered to visit the drummer’s ailing daughter.
But Harrison was a stubborn loner who was often moody and brutally blunt. As Ringo put it, “There was the love and bag-of-beads personality and the bag of anger. He was very black and white.” Indeed, when Beatle brother John Lennon queried his bandmates on what they thought of his girlfriend and future wife, Cynthia Powell, Mr. Curt remarked she had “teeth like a horse.” While the second Mrs. Lennon, Yoko Ono, conceded “George was very nice,” she still complained how “very hurtful” his caustic comments could be, to which John would shrug, “That’s just George.” And on a long flight when a stewardess asked the softly chanting Hindu convert if she could get him anything, Harrison snarled, “F#%& off, can’t you see I’m meditating?”
The supposedly most spiritual Beatle who publicly sang warnings about “Living in the Material World” privately luxuriated in a 25-bedroom gothic mansion, and the Beatle purportedly most at peace as a devout Hindu nevertheless smoked lots of marijuana, drank loads of liquor, snorted copious quantities of cocaine, and chain-smoked French cigarettes. He was also an inveterate adulterer who cheated in his own house when his first wife was home and even with his closest Beatle brother Ringo’s wife. This was a conquest too far even for licentious Beatle brother John who denounced it as “virtual incest,” and the affair led to the Starrs divorcing the next year.
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Asimov’s Laws of Robotics (AI)
Posted by M. C. on December 3, 2023
Has anyone ever seen these mentioned anywhere? Even in jest?
If not, why not!
The Laws
The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, are:[1]
- The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
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Doug Casey on How Milei Could Make Argentina a Beacon of Freedom and Prosperity
Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2023
by Doug Casey
Doug Casey: Milei’s election is a big deal—potentially a very, very big deal. He’s the first declared anarcho-capitalist in history to head any country. And not by stealth. He, all the while, said that the State is the enemy and should be abolished. Anarcho-capitalists believe that society can run itself without a State, which is a formalized instrument of coercion.
International Man: Javier Milei made history by becoming the world’s first anarcho-capitalist president.
What is the historical significance of his victory? Are you optimistic?
Doug Casey: Milei’s election is a big deal—potentially a very, very big deal. He’s the first declared anarcho-capitalist in history to head any country. And not by stealth. He, all the while, said that the State is the enemy and should be abolished. Anarcho-capitalists believe that society can run itself without a State, which is a formalized instrument of coercion.
It’s unprecedented for somebody to be elected to run a State that he wants to abolish. And propose that if it continues to exist, it should only have the police, military, and the courts. And even those should be privatized.
Am I optimistic?
Looking at it from a long-term point of view, for the last hundred years, individual freedom has been diminishing, and State power has grown hugely all over the world. What’s worse is that the trend is accelerating. Many countries are on the ragged edge of turning into socialist or fascist dictatorships.
That includes the US. Since Reagan left office, all of our presidents have been disasters of various types, with the current regime being the worst yet. In Argentina, the Peronists have run the country completely into the ground over the last 75 years.
Of course, maybe Milei’s election is just an uptick in a continuing downtrend because you can’t change a country’s national philosophy overnight. But destroying a State apparatus infested by Peronists, socialists, fascists, and other horrible parasites is a good start. If he can pull the apparatus of the State out by its roots, not just trim it back, the result might last for quite a while.
I’m encouraged by the fact that young people and poor people are among his biggest supporters. They recognize that they’re the ones who the State damages the most. Could Argentina be the start of a worldwide trend towards free minds and free markets?
Since I prefer to believe humans are basically decent, I can’t help being optimistic—even if cautiously. He’s going to get lots of resistance from the Deep State, unions, the media, welfare queens, and other “usual suspects.”
International Man: Perhaps there is no issue more important in Argentina than money.
Milei has promised to “burn down the central bank” and replace the peso with the US dollar. He has made statements favorable to eliminating all legal tender laws and allowing whatever commodity the free market would choose as money—though he hasn’t articulated his exact plans.
What do you think Milei should do regarding the money issue? What are the risks of adopting the US dollar and not having any monetary alternatives?
Doug Casey: First of all, he totally understands the government shouldn’t be in the money business. I know that shocks most people to hear, but trusting the government with money is like trusting a teenager with a Corvette and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Anarcho-Capitalists, Argentina, Freedom, Javier Milei, prosperity | Leave a Comment »
It’s Not About Saving the Planet, It’s the Big Daddy We Need To Look For
Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2023
From Wall Street Silver: “Net Zero was never viable. It is impossible to completely remove CO2 from our energy needs and overall economy. Politicians are just now beginning to realize that. Just about every modern technology requires oil, natural gas and/or coal in order to function. Many of the metals required need to be mined and new deposits are often remote with no access to the electric grid.”
So, the net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing.
Don’t tell Greta, but the hits keep coming for wind projects…
For perspective, $4 billion equals about 28 billion DKK. Orsted’s equity is 76 billion DKK, so that $4 billion hit is equivalent to some 37% of its market cap. How the hell did they get it that wrong? Perhaps we can just put it down to delusional expectations that pervaded in the wind industry and still pervade today.
Remember: your energy bills have skyrocketed in order to subsidise bird-killing wind turbines that don’t work. You may think it’s just silly and those pushing this agenda are simply delusional, but this is actually part of the Net Zero agenda to deliberately deindustrialise (and thereby impoverish) the West, while China and other countries unashamedly continue to capitalise on the huge economic prosperity afforded by the use of fossil fuels.
None of this has anything to do with saving the planet, and everything to do with demolishing our standard of living, demolishing our economic prosperity and transforming the former middle class into a neo-feudal peasant class.
- From Wall Street Silver: “Net Zero was never viable. It is impossible to completely remove CO2 from our energy needs and overall economy. Politicians are just now beginning to realize that. Just about every modern technology requires oil, natural gas and/or coal in order to function. Many of the metals required need to be mined and new deposits are often remote with no access to the electric grid.”
- Then there’s this from The Travelling Scientist: “The Paris accord interestingly promotes “non-fossil biocarbon-based” CO2 sources as being okay and counts towards net zero… so cutting trees and burning wood is no problem to the regulators, and becoming ever more popular to meet regulations companies are even patting themselves on their backs in their quarterly reports for doing so.”
- And this from James Melville: “The unethical truth of net zero. Around 40,000 child slaves in Congo work in hazardous conditions in cobalt mines, with inadequate safety equipment and for very little money. The cobalt is used in many products – including electric car batteries.”
A Thought Experiment
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