Lobster!

                                                                                         

              

              I have of late been plagued by a horrible dream. My skin, once firm and manly is now soft and sponge like. I can no longer feed myself. The very surface of my skin burns with a fire all consuming and were it not for the pieces of moistened clothe that envelope me I feel I should surely burst into flame.

                 This is, obviously hell, compounded and made immeasurably worse by the knowledge that I have had no forewarning, not hint, nor suggestion as to how I got here.

                    The torture people push little carts from victim to victim.

                      “Mai Tai?” They say, “Mimosa?”

               Were I but certain that these potions would bring instantaneous suicide I would down them in an instance, but my fear, founded in experience, is that these monsters would like nothing more then to extend the agony they have imposed on others, and on me in particular.

                    And it hurts. Tears well up in my eyes. Mother what have they done to your child! Rain, rain Flibbertigibbet! This must be my punish for the sins I never knew I committed!

                   The horse eggs break my teeth. How the cold dark sea calls to me. Were I once again, again a lobster these pains would matter not.

            Oh! Happy days of bygone youth, of youth bygone by golly in my cold atlantic home.

                                                

                                               

unibursal Pabadeesa

            

        You know I don’t like being a thief and a crimbinal and pyrite all these years and I  wusched I could better make it one. So I am thinking  on the obvious fo awhile now and I b’lieve I have come up with Project UP – that is the Universal Pamacea guaranteed to solve all our problems and then some.

         As I understand it there’s tens of millions of men who growed up with roof over their head and food on the table and some even took vacations and had families to occupy their spare time with. Mostly they got the roof and grits but the other stuff is further and farther betwixt.

           You ask them is this bothers them and they say “No, I’m keeping busy and something’s bound to turnup.”  What do you expect? “Sure it bothers me and I got a 12 gauge under the bed in  case it really bothers me.”

              That’s problem number one.

                Problem number two, which we are all intimately acquainted with is people who spend too much time online and especially appropriating the legally owned property of other law abiding, hard working, tax paying and property owning citizens.

        Dudn’t no one see the connection?

It’s very simple  - give me a job that pays 80 thou

A year and I won’t have the time to spend all day downloading stuff -  I may even pay for it with my new found wealth.

    Changing the focus. I used to write a blog which eventually gravitated to the business of the companies that controlled multimedia on the web. This was late 9

1990’s.  And I got totally pissed because a lot of people

Had gotten into the field and the major companies, rather then allow them to enter the market place dragged their heels and basically sabotaged it.

            The result was the crash of 2000. There have been so many crashes we can’t keep them straight but rest assured – after each crash we come back a little weaker then we went in.

               I don’t want to blow anyones mind but the piracy thing could have been stopped years ago – just make a product too large to be downloaded – suffice to say I didn’t want to give the creeps any ideas because they have a knack for taking good ideas and turning them into shit.

          Okay so that was year 2000 – but the idea of deliberately impeding technology to maximize profit continues till today – and frankly it’s a drag.

State of the art – thirty years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-sx02eiysg

 This is the famous amorphic wall as in Bill Gates house .  It’s been around for ages, since the 80’s.

         If you look at Firefox the add ons and such are impressive which is the way things should be but aren’t because Firefox is open source.

         I’m not a developer  far from it. But when the first mp3  apps came out, like macamp and winamp part of the

Coolness was being able to chose between many  skins – all made by outsiders and free.   Now look at I-tunes – I
 never cared for it. And worse yet as they developed I-tunes they started stripping down the original QT player so to get a playlist for example you must use I-tunes  which is bloatware and non skinable.

       The reason Apple has become a dirty word among developers (this is old news) is first they moved to OSX  and removed classic capability soon after which mean that all the little guys in basements who had spent ten years on their product were effectively fucked.  The big companies in comparison could upgrade quite easily – and at a tidy profit.  Then to add insult to injury the move from PPC to intell meant another tranche of software became obsolete.

           It wasn’t that OSX and Intell cpus were bad ideas, it’s just they left a lot of people behind – people that  like those laid off in their fifties – are never going to catch up.

          It’s all ancient history now  and I mention it not to diss Apple so much as to suggest that there’s a much better way to do things and what is more you don’t have to live on bread and water to do it. 

         I happened to make a few people rather well to do when I told them to buy Apple at it’s low point, because I go with management and especially in tech industries that’s the way to bet. But now?  We shall see, won’t we?

      Nevertheless the lesson to be learned, which is that a closed system dedicated to personal profit cannot compete with an open system which spreads the profit around has already been learned, many times.  That systems dedicated to the good of the few have existed is not news either.  The thing is such systems have to be held in place by procedures that we generally think of as repressive, if not brutal, or even  genocidal.

          In reality most systems are somewhere in the middle and I am not about to be the one who decides what kind of regime you or I function under.  I will o so far however as to point out that we must not delude ourselves into believing that it is in the interest of those in the upper hierarchy to encourage innovation if such changes will remove them from power.

      It is not going to happen regardless of the constant misinformation campaign seeking to convince us that it will.  However to quote someone,”If you keep going in a circle eventually you wind up where you started.”

        And sometimes it’s a mobius transformation.  That is when the revolutionary becomes the opposide side of what they believed they were fighting for – a tyrant.

               I have thought long and carefully about Marx’s declaration that one of the most effective ways to destroy capitalism is to give it everything it wants.  This is not that far from the suggestion that the last capitalist will be hung on a rope he just sold. 

         We have seen the practical application in the past forty years. When all regulations were removed the problem was not limitless power but instability. (Suffice to say, the dirty little secret of Wall Street is one mans instability is anothers opportunity.)

         Riding a bicycle is comparatively simple, but try doing it when after a night of drinking and it becomes impossible.

         Again,  this time to refer to Darwin’s suggestion that without private property the natives of Tierra del Fuego were doomed. These were people that lived on the southern most tip of  South America in a primitive state. They now are extinct.

          So we say, “Information wants to be free.” Right? That is the mantra of the basically good guys.  We do not wish to see the goddess opportunity chained in some dungeon at the command of the horrible beast from Redmond, for instance. Nor do we want the best things in life to only go to the few. 

       Still private property, for better or worse, is one of the realities of our world.  There are many of us who, for a variety of reasons, jealousy perhaps   or love of freedom want to preserve or in some cases create individual freedom.  We like it. A surprising number of people don’t understand this  but it has to be taken, as Jefferson would say, as self evident.  The freedom to walk across a field conflicts with the owners property prerogatives – so there’s a conflict inherent here.

     Here we go through the looking glass.

    In the real world the case for open source software – for instance- or free content file sharing  has been made. The open source software advocates  have a very powerful argument that their products have consistently proven better then the corporate ones.  If that doesn’t convince you I can give you an even more convincing argument. War.

         Wars are almost always  won by the sides that work together of their own free will and are not forced to do things by paymasters. I doubt one could find a more crucial application of business necessity.

                     So why isn’t open source the norm?   For the same reason CEO’s make hundreds of times more then line workers – because among other things, in the absence of war the necessity of justice is not appreciated or considered.

     That’s where we come in.  It is our job to make people appreciate not the desirability but the absolute necessity of justice – economic justice.

    We have waited many years and we may yet wait many years more, but our  day will come and our vision will persevere .

      To sum up then. Theres the lord of the manor, initially all powerful.   Theres the serfs, the microserfs  if you will, and there will be a union, or guild, call it what you will. But I have had my head handed to me enough times to know that we must become aware of and adopt the strategies of the opponent.

         I feel like L Ron Hubbard in a way when he talks about the powers needed for survival. We must learn from the masters – the corporations. We must learn to emulate their lies, to intimidate the weak and  deceive the powerful.  If god isn’t on our side we can make a deal, Make God a deal he can’t refuse.  Choose the battle well, like Alexander don’t fight unless victory is probable. 

         These are the maxims of the cold war – of the new cold war that is being waged within the walls of the empires.

           If this repels you. If the knowledge that you are above the hunt and degrading opportunity then you are free to do what you want.

          Of course there will be doubt.  When the Muslims invaded Spain under the flag of God there were those who could not see why they should fight.  In truth, in those days especially Islam was probably a more open ideology the Christianity.

          As a young boy  I would sit at the feet of men who had fought in the second world war. These were no armchair heroes flattering fools, they were people who had seen  war upfront. And they said “There were bad things done on all sides.” 

       I never discovered exactly what these bad things were but one can guess.

      Fortunately in this new game such violence is counter productive and ironically we must guard against the accusation that it is in our interest to use it.

      -  back to the normative essay     

        My orientation has changed a little. I used to think of the virtual state as a way of circumventing the current power structures and in part without getting them mad at us.  Another way to look at it is to try to imagine the freedoms we currently grant to corporations – to circumvent national laws, regulation and taxes – being given to  if not to individuals, then smaller corporations.

          I don’t need a fuckin miracle.  I’m prepared to keep refining the concept until it works  because I have nothing better to do. Also I want to avoid the trap of thinking that one person can make a difference. In other words it’s not a matter of one person inventing the wheel it’s a matter of the wheel waiting to be discovered.

              That’s a whole nother mind trip – ut maybe if in fact we have regressed to the middle ages economically and socially with the corporations playing the role of the manors and barons we should accept that.

        The difference between CEO’s and line workers in the US has continued to  increase – now it’s over 300%

And I don’t see any corrective mechanism for that

         It’s like with Obama, who I don’t particularly dislike – unlike his predecessors, but  as   Naomi Klein has noted  - “Where’s the policies?” I don’t at this point care why I’m just dealing with what is.

            Fuck. Maybe humans just like being slaves. They seem to revert to it time and time again – but to get back to the middle ages analogy  what we want to do is the equivalent of making buildings- it’s a task that requires a lot of different skills – but not too different.

         The actual masons , who were formed as a response to the nobility are still around, actually tat group is kinda set in it’s ways and has a protestant orientation. FWIW – In MA Bell the Masons had a lot of power to promote  and as in many of these cases with organizations it was also used to obstruct persons deemed not team players.

          Don’t let this fuck you up but a lot of players in NYC meet through their dealers, heroin dealers. It’s an exclusive club and everyone is sure to be discrete. Like I say lets be honest a lot of players are or were junkies at some point. It’s not my thing but I have worked with them and let’s just say they are not always reliable.

          Then in TV there’s the gay mafia, again like junkies, these guys and girls, in the past especially are exceptionally discrete, employing “beards” ( hetero role playing partners) and you can’t blame them because in many cases it’s hideaway your real self or starve.

       

          And we all do it to some extent. And it’s not entirely a lie.  A guy says he’s in the field for the love of music and not just to make money, despite the fact that he seems to do everything possible to make money,  we really don’t  have the right to throw stones.

     I saw the phil spector movie recently. Phil was an early hero. David Mamet wrote and directed and apparently made the case that Phil was innocent of killing the girl. But Phil was his own worst enemy.

For a long time he has come off as crazy as a loon.

I don’t know what the story is there. He made some damn good records.

          I realize I’m changing the subject and this “essay” is wandering all over the place. So to wrap it up and put it together what I am saying is that artists have to learn to act like businessmen – instead of being repelled by the three piece suits.

          I realize I’m changing the subject and this “essay” is wandering all over the place (as usual). So to wrap it up and put it together what I am saying is that artists have to learn to act like businessmen – instead of being repelled by the three piece suits.

    It's almost counter intuitive, which may be why it's not often tried.   It's like injecting order into chaos in order not to lessen it but rather to increase it. 

  My first thought is to think of the famous universal syllogism.

"First there is a mountain

 Then there is no mountain

Then there is"

or the zen version

“before satori one chops wood and carries water

   then one does not chop wood or carry water

   after satori one chops wood and carries water"

Then, of course, I could put on my tough guy hat and read the riot act. For instance one could inform the capital markets that they had better make nice with the workers or they will face consequences that they will find far less comfortable then the alternative.

To put this in the medieval terms "Either pay the bricklayers a decent wage or you will have no cathedral - and we all know what happens to cities with no cathedral  - that's right, they go to hell and burn forever." 

           Woody Guthrie one time in the fifties got talked into trying out in the Rainbow Room which is a restaurant at the top of the NBC building/Rockefeller center.    And so he gets there and rides the elevator up.  Steps out, looks around for ten minutes and gets back on the elevator.  He just didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t for him.

         Can you imagine some “suit”  saying “What’s this talking blues thing? Where’s the melody?”

  

 

        

Operation Lucky Charm

                                    Once upon a time there was a powerful and rich nation called Greensylvania. It had done well in the eyes of it’s gods and it’s gods in turn had done well to it. This meant they could watch television all day long, when they weren’t high on drugs, and sometimes, often, when they were high on drugs.

                         But, alas the time came, as it comes to many a rich nation, when the mothers of Greensylvania sat back in their upholstered sofas and said,

“                "Herman, I'm not satisfied. I want more out of life.”

                      Since the average Sylvanian witnessed some five million artificial murders in a lifetime, along with sex and love between all known sexes and species this could only mean one thing – reality.

So the king sent for the second in command, the head propagandist and made his wishes that the mothers of Sylvania be satisfied and happy.

                        The head propagandist, Charles Spenser, racked his mind. He puzzled up his head. He consulted soothsayers and fortune tellers, not to mention research analysts , futurologists, and the members of the board of directors of Sylvania.

                  For once the committee came up with a plan. Actually it wasn’t entirely original, but who cares. It was a plan.

                           The next day Spencer flew to Redlam, a small country in a far hemisphere and laid out his offer.

                       “We will give you one billion dollars if you are willing to sacrifice a thousand of your finest young people.”

                         The Prime minister of Redlam was appalled.

                           “Are you crazy? Are you insane? That is preposterous! Who do you think we are?”

                        “We know who you are, we are just trying to settle on a price, said Charles Spenser.

                      “Out of the question” said the PM.

                           “At least try to consider the arrangement in principio”’

                     With that the meeting ended abruptly. When the next meeting was held Spencer noticed that the background music had changed from “The Blue Danube” to the "March of the wooden soldiers”

      '    "After consultation with the king", said Charles Spencer, "We have decided to be reasonable and have decided to lower the number of deaths to five hundred instead of a thousand, only you have to jazz it up a little. We seek entertainment."

                     "This is still out of the question" said the special representative for humane treatment of human sacrifices, Jasminna Gringold.

                                  She began to speak, “The notion of sacrificing such a large number of our finest people just for a billion dollars is untenable, absolutely untenable.

                             “Did I mention that the billion dollars was to be paid on a yearly basis and could be renegotiated upwards depending on the ratings?"

                             Jasminna’s nostrils flared.After awhile she regained her composure and said.

                                   “We are currently of two minds, should we accept your offer, one is a straight trade and the other is for a comparable number of children.

                          “Fast runners?”

                           “Maybe not Olympic quality but none handicapped.”

                                 “I’ll have to take this to the king” Said Spenser

                          “Take your time.”

                 It came to pass then that the Grand Actuarial Atomizer had recently completed a project concerning pigs and their feasibility as Air Mail delivery vehicles and was on the look out for other meaningful employ, perhaps more remunerative as well.

                               The Capitol was abuzz with excitement at the news of the possible deal. Humphrey Humpover was quoted as saying.”

                         “They are working their butts off for this.”

                            Seventeen hundred accountants tuned into Cap TV as their master Atomizer was escorted into the presence of the King.

                         After the proper formalities had been attended to the Grand Actuary “got down to business.”

                         Upon his face was the slightest of smiles which did not fail to be noticed by the professional face watchers. The stock market surged.

                          The Grand Actuary was an old man. Well, past the time of retirement, of good health too. In fact he should have been dead long ago if it were not for his third heart transplant and several other replaced organs – gifts of a grateful public.

                              He began to speak,

                         “We must not be guided by superstitions, by misguided contrivances, or false sensitivity to the ratings, but rather, but rather.. Here he had lost his place in the speech for a moment and he had to pause to find it again.

                             But rather we must be guided by reason, and compassion for the children – for the generation yet to come and we must make every effort to assure that every Redlamanite has the opportunity to achieve all that is possible within his or her range of measurable abilities.

                                   Given these factors it is easy to see that this proposal must be accepted. With a billion dollars we can immunize a thousand people against Polio, we can buy hundreds of Happy Meals for children in the ghetto, we can retrain the untrained; in short we can effect and save the lives of tens of thousands of people. Warm loving people with families will be blessed by a second chance in life.

                         The choice as to which people need be sacrificed doesn’t have to be inhumane. We can put thirty thousand names in a hat and only chose a few thousand for the program. The survivors, er, I mean the winners, will get a grand parade DOWN BROADWAY, with ticker tape and pretty girls to stand next to. We have called this grand project to help society “Operation Lucky Charm”

                          The King was happy. The Prime minister was happy. The accountants were over joyed. The contestants were a little less happy, but still they had a four in five chance of being winners which are better odds then before when they have virtually no chance of gaining their freedom.

                                   And so on the second of July, in front of a unprecedented audience the show went on. There were fireworks and orchestras. Some of the more attractive sacrificial victims had little vignettes of their lives shown before they were thrown off the cliffs. When young mothers had their throats cut in front of their infant children there was not a dry eye in the house. It was, in short, a huge success.

                                The Prime ministers ratings sky rocketed. A few weeks later a confidential memo was passed around to the effect that as long as the billion dollars was in the bank it would be earning interest and after all there were other issues involved, a highway construction fund, consultancy fees, fees to determine the proper amount to be paid in consultancy fees, and so on.

                         Later on the program ran in to a little trouble. Some Somali pirates blew up an oil tanker belonging to Greensylvania. So Greensylvania blew up the Paris Opera. When asked why this manner of retribution the official response was.

                         “There is nothing in Somalia worth even half the price of a cut rate, bargain basement bomb, but Paris has some of the best filet mignon on earth.”

                        The logic proved sound. To prevent further attack the French government has agreed to send to Greensylvania one hundred steaks , with the appropriate dinner ware and cooks every year, on the anniversary of the first Operation Lucky Charm.

                           Diplomacy is wonderful. Logic is truth. Together they can lead us to a better world.

Tamlin

      

postapocalyptic boogaloo

    This is really of limited application but I suppose it must be said.
It concerns the research and theorizing I  engaged upon while in England in the first decade of  this century.  I've noticed that both the Tamlin Legend and the story of the Tuatha de Danaan, two  of the main topics in
years 2000  to 2007   are increasingly being represented on the web.  For the most part they don't se the contemporary applications, but that will come.





    Believe me I am far too practical a chap to suddenly  vere off course, especially from reports of financial markets to ancient keltic mythology. Granted they both communicate in highly metaphorical and often incomprehensible language - but this was not thread that  connected them.

         I did mention some similarities between Nuada  silver hand and the prosthesis possibilities of the future, plus the use of so called smart drugs to alter not so much consciousness, but the intensity of consciousness but this also was not the main deal.

        Historically there is a precedent for this. During the stone ages there were, for a long time about a million people in Europe but during the extremis of the ice ages, when life for humans was difficult that number is believed by some to have gone as low as twenty thousand. 

         Look,I won't kid you -it does not take an apocalyptic scenario to suggest that humanity itself is on the cusp of major changes. Via genetic alteration, via environment changes, even by something as quaint as Kurweils Singularity, when machines are "smarter" then humans, we may suggest that  humanity be governed by demands of   quality not quantity..

        This doesn't need euthanasia to become a reality  - one need only  restrain the ability of the masses to reproduce   freely but getting them focused on other things. 

       I'm not here to fight the future I just want to deal with it. Part of what I am saying is it is possible that future generations will look back at today and consider us barely worth living.   We are talking about
a  physiological leap that will dwarf things like the Renaissance or the introduction of the spoken word.


      One of the parallels I refer to then is the position of the Celts in 400 CE. They had faced the Romans and lost, this is correct, but they had to realize that Christianity really spelled the end of their way of living. The thought full among them, and those in Ireland, did what they could to preserve the old ways - not because human sacrifice was desirable, but because the values   of reason and memory and even love,were.

  I joke I am about 20 years ahead of the crowd which  in a way is good because it proves I'm correct,  mostly. Plus I am not that well versed an anthropologist to embark on any far out speculation.  On the other hand I have a broad enough background to reach conclusitons that specialists might overlook.


      So the kelts began in the region of austria went north and then west. They did this because the invention of marriage, which was a by product of the invention of  agriculture, also meant the coming of the sky god, eg husbands and the death of the mother goddess. 

           Yes dearies I know this is somewhat abstractbut you have to know it to pass the test.

      The refugees you see believed in marriage as an equal partnership whereas the greeks - the romans and everyone else believed the women were chattel.  Eventually we won. Our way of life conquered the world. you don't see wall streeters wearing kimonos do you?

       But this is a huge battle - a scope of thousands of years and it is still going on  ultimately the poles are justice and love  which are opposites.

         Don't kid yourself Justice is tricky.     right so   I was sort of a first mover on this - my site is no longer ranked high on google because a lot of  other people, mostly white celts, have heard of Tamlin  and although they don't fully  understand  something is pulling them, just like it pulled me, to explore.  For the record there is a slight tinge of racism to this whole  swords and sorcery movement


           And now the story of the migration is getting out.  Alot of times they miss whole sections or skip important points but that too will change.  Also a lot of  these new devotees after all have only the net to learn from and have not the years and opportunity to visit the original sites that I had to spare.

     A  final point today is a few weeks back I  mentioned the Mystery Cults of Rome and compared them to new age seekers of today.  There's a long haired black jazz player I know  and I wanted to tell him  - "This is
not real" - meaning the peace and love crowd is onlyone part of the picture the other side of the coin is the prison system.  What it comes down to is the people and love crowd want stability - they are on top and they want to stay that way.  Again that is not a battle for us to fight.

        Never let your enemy define you. You are better then that because you have to be.

         In the mean time  - hail Sedona.

    In other words we are not looking to take over the world  -  we are looking to find a way to prevent the world from taking over us.

         This is a critical distinction.

      The Christians defeated the Romans because they  did not want to fight them - they only wanted to live a new way. There are others further along the path then I am, but it is a path, a way.


    they are those who talk about how the perceived mass of the universe is only held toether by forces we cannot perceive and in a sense those forces are indistinguishable from thought


         long live the virtual state
                                -Norma Deren







   

          yeah and tippicanoe too   
                                   The  ALF






            

BitCoin - Mise En Scene?

    The following  brings things around in a circle. I started out online writing for the hacker scene (this was before the internet)   and have gone through various permutations; first reviewing mac audio software, then the business situation during th 97 to 01 boom, then, while in England, the structure of myth and propaganda, and lately, all over the place.

     As the title indicates the question before us  today is the desirability of the use of Bitcoin for the scene. Obviously I am a theorist of the virtual state and not overly concerned with specific logistics - among other things it has kept me out of jail since in large part the authorities don't know what I/We are talking about and as well there still remains the heritage of free speech in America from before.

   OR as Jackson Brown puts it "In America we have free speech up until the point someone begins to listen."

  
            The Scene is sometimes referred to as "You know who you are" and in terms of economic clout I imagine it's in the several  hundred billion dollar bracket. If you ever downloaded anything that someone would have preferred you not - congratulations - you're part of the scene.  (Of course now the word will become over used.)

            The entire process actually is something of a marvel. Each person sees what needs to be done and does it. In a miracle of self organization one person gets the soft and hands it to another who reverse engineers ten to another who puts it online which in turn is the set of another who maintains they have no idea what it happening,

        Suffice to say the creators don't see it as a miracle - they see it as theft.

         Most of us understand that ones chances in life more then ever, revolve around who one's parents are and so  we see it as fighting for survival in a crooked world.  Such is however a question for another day.

 I and others like me expected better then the system has provided and since self reliance is praised that's what we are doing. And there's millions of us being ruled, like ancient Egyptians by a tiny minority of guys in three piece suits. If you wish to argue fairness , go right ahead. We have all the time in the world.





      My answer to the question posed is qualified. One of the rules thusfar set in stone is that one does not pay for warez. Period.  For the scene to operate it requires the combined efforts of many people and for one person to take the result and seek to use it to their advantage alone is definitely a no no.





       The case before us involves a company that wants to in effect "sell"  series tv programs for bit Coin.  Like many pyramid schemes it masks some of the theft via rewards for getting others involved and there are other means of paying.

         I chose to address this because it deals with the essentials of the virtual state, namely ownership and privacy. If the state tells you who to marry that is an imposition on your privacy and as well implies you do not own your own "being."

       A critical but little noticed aspect of the disintegration of the social system is the real battlefield is about who owns the individual - to what extent shall a corporation or governmental agency be free to manipulate the cognitive processes of the individual?

         Most often this comes under the rubric of privacy.  We've admitted previously that the old antidote to abuses of centralized power, namely revolution, is no longer viable. This is more so in the industrialized nations. One can hardly imagine a  group of protesters up against a squadron of  fighter jets.

        This said I'd like to use the term revolution in a softer way wherein  revolution is considered a preserver of privacy. The state has no interest in privacy.

       Paul Krugman has stated that, were he alive today Milton Friedman would be considered a moderate rather then a conservative economist - because the Republican party has move so far to the right. the same holds true with,   of all people, Richard Nixon who would today e called a left winger.  Suffice to say the public at large, especially those suffering under current policies,do not feel like the governing elite.

        The Reagan movement did not effect a permanent change in attitudes. I say this to indicate it was a general realignment. Peggy Noonan was a sparkling polemicist, but those who responded to it can hardly be said to have understood the real meaning of her words.

          So, inthe following I look at privacy, and revolution in two ways. The immediate kind applied to individuals, and the general kind, applied to systems.Certain the two intersect at some point. To great a machine of mass murder one need lists of targets.

         Bit coin, we must assume, is a racket, but in terms of it's deleterious effect on the global currency market that we can regard as desirable  but in terms of our own usage in the barter scene - it is to be rejected.
          

part  2






   
One thing is I can write 500 words in 20 minutes - no sweat - I've been doing it for years. I told a landlord once I have a degree un psychology once. HE said "Oh I hear they often commit suicide."

         If I don't replay to something you say it's either because you have said something  so intelligent I am still making sense of it or you have said something so stupid I can't be bothered. 
 
        Onelearns,basically that a lot of things are said as attacks which in turn are defences of weak minds.  Such was the case with the land lord seeking to "cut me down to size".

       Shit. I have a harelip, a cleft palate, which means I have been making people uncomfortable by my very presence since childhood.  Saying people become shrinks because they are crazy is like saying people become football players because they are afraid of being beat up in bars. 

      to get the the actual subject then - I was just now looking to dl some tv and of course these sites are loaded with snares and  traps and  pop ups etc - One site wants you to pay them in bit coins -

  Aside hacker ethics say you never pay for something someone gets for free.  Even ten thousand worth of soft on a DVD - for  five dollars is no good. It , first of all encourages the wrong kind of people.

   As to Bit coins - if you say the social network movie about the facebook founder, essentially no one comes off looking good. Two brothers wanted to start a similar program and the facebook founder led them on until he could countrol the market - he was eventually fined but like the hundreds of millions of fines payed byt microsoft   there are many times when it is more profitable to break the law then to obey -  for several reasons - one being in many cases the businesses themselves write the actual laws and intentionally play loop holes.


       I'm not not overly interested in the practical workings of BitCoin what is important is it is a global currency - which brings interesting tax considerations into play.


     Again for context - Capitalism in the modern sense was invented by Italian bankers in the 15th century when they extended letters of credit to sailing  voyagers - in  way this was an extension of credit vouchers held by  Templars in the Crusades.  The bankers got very rich- and the idea spread.

    We're at a similar economic crossroads with electric money able to travel round the world instantly.  A lot of it,as I mentioned a few months back, is "dark money" meaning no one knows who owns it and more to the point it is considered not part of any nations  treasury.

          
    Corporations at present can shop around for tax laws, environmental laws, social policies that they like and live under them - but the poor thus far cannot. We are stuck obeying in most cases the laws of the country we happen to be born in.

 the founders of bit coin are not neccesarily nice, or even  intelligent people. Someone comes to them with a plan to make a fortune and they go for it..


    Probably this will not be the first incarnation of what had been called the virtual state.  But I'll leave you with one slightly complicated thought.

    We may suggest that for awhile at least the two forms of currency or government will co-exist. Like Layers  some transactions will take play in national currency and some inthe international barter system

             That is not inconceivable.

       When the possibility of connectivity via telecom became real inthe the early 80's  the first idea that came to mind was called "Zones of privacy"  essentially these were like gated communities only electronic. We have one here although it's simply because we're too insignifigent to crush.

       There's a kicker though. When you send a letter by snail mail it can't be intercepted except by specific court order whereas e-mail has virtually no protection - in other  words in the past ten years theres been a dimmunition of the rights of privacy - some say it's justified since the ability of organized cells to hurt and destroy is increased.

       That's not the current issue however. The idea of a zone of privacy is like putting a fence around the backyard/  You - the individual- are keeping the others out. It' traditional, like the farmer with the shotgun keeping the revenuers away. We can call this internal privacy. 
        It's easy to invade because we all know where the farmer lives.

      The issue of privacy revolves around, power, control and ultimately wealth. We want to keep our gold from you and in turn we want to take your gold for ourselves.  Privacy is about ownership.  As Darwin said watching the natives of Terra del Fuego - until they develop a notion of private property they will remain savages  - ps they are now extinct.

           The thing is law exists for the protection of property.  It is the external manifestation of the impulse to  privacy.  Where as the farmer with the shotgun defends the farm, the sheriff with his guns  defends the notion of property and the right to own property for everyone (allegedly)

      It is only when the external supporters of the old regime  no longer function that a real revolution has a chance of succeeding. That means not just replacing the figure heads but replacing the actual functioning obligations and duties of the power structure with something that works better.


    I'll repeat what I just said in simpler terms.


 We might feel that having purchased an item we have the  right to share it with others and it's nobodies buisness what we do. That is conventional privacy.


Others may feel that is there is the potential of you obtaining such perogatives of privacy then you must systematically be denied that.  That is what I am calling external privacy.

  in even simpler terms

a man wants to buy a fish but he has no money - ergo he buys no fish

or

a man wants to buy a fish but there are no fish inthe stores - therefore  no fish.


the is also known as supply and demand side economics- and it's worth mentioning that for most of us freedom of speech or freedom in most senses of the word means nothing - we are too conditioned to actually think for our selves - but that's alright    

where all this comes into play is the freedom to eat and to have a roof over your head.


   to restate yet again


    then they kick down your door at ten am on a snowy midwinter day to evict you -  that's a loss of internal privacy

          When the police are arresting hundreds of people guilty of nothing more then being onthe street  - as inthe case of the  occupy movement  that's a loss of external privacy.







    









 

Poor Like Me

                         In the year 2008 I embarked on a strange, sometimes threatening, yet always inspiring voyage of discovery.

                         It began , fittingly enough, beside the sea. It was the end of a long forth of july weekend and I and several male acquaintances were sitting on a deck at a house in Narraganset having drinks My wife had taken our two daughters into into town for gourmet ice cream. My editor and erstwhile employer was there and I was slightly on edge because I knew that he would soon be giving me my next assignment and at the time was beginning to feel that his constant focus on the private lives of stars, while making the magazine a lot of money was not doing my literary reputation much good.

                                 The wives were not in sight. They had apparently wandered off somewhere and Charles, an acquaintance that had something to do with Purdue University and was not of the first caliber intellectually said

“Ever want go to go out for cigarettes and not come back?

The consensus seemed to be that no one present had even considered the notion. The silence that followed the question however indicated that in fact the idea had at least been considered.

                               Carl Sturgeon, the eminent black social theorist, as usual,  brought us back to the world of the living.

                               “You might want to look at it another way. My friend the psychoanalyst never seems to tire of telling me about female patients that are obsessed with having a dozen lovers   or more even”

               “That's why they're on the couch!” shouted Tom Maxwell the television sports announcer, who had had plenty to drink.

                  “Monogamy is a comparatively recent innovation.” Said Lewis Vanderfield, a WASP who never hesitated to let people know it. Then he added the kicker, “Especially among your people Carl, right?.”

                  After a pause Sturgeon asked“Which people do you refer to, the successful writers or the homosexuals?

              That was a bit of a low blow. Lewis had recently been introducing the notion of his marriage to a long time partner and had not been particularly encouraged by the men with conventional families.  Carl was to all appearances happily married to a white woman.   It drove  some of the white fellows crazy, and he knew it and enjoyed it

                         My editor, never one to miss the opportunity to mention money  said 

                  “Well a lot of the one parent homes in black families have to be attributed to economic factors.”

                       Timothy, an Irish fellow who was known to prefer black women interjected, “Either that or they ust live to fuck”

Mr Analytical, your's truly, could not help but say.

                        “That seems provable or disprovable but to me it seems l;ike expediency. If there's no chance of a long term commitment one settles for a short term commitment.”

                          Sturgeon suggested,

                       “Not to destroy any illusions, but women in the underclass are always characterized as “hot to trot.”   Consider the fiery Spanish fireballs, and southern European women in general. There may just be black women that are more focused on providing for their families because they know if they don't do it no one will.

                      Charles returned to the conversation.

“I kinda fancy the notion of a dozen different lovers at the same time.”

The Irishman said, You know the one about the bull and the cow. A man and his wife are looking at a bull and a cow and the wife says , “You know a bull can ejaculate as many as two dozen times a day, and the husband replies, “Yeah, but it's not always with the same cow!”

                              Even with the lubricants this crowd did not roar with laughter, but the point of the humor was well taken. I looked at my watch. It was almost four. Out on the bay before us the amateur sailors had gone in leaving the open waters to the better ones who were taking advantage of the late day increase in breeze.

Gary, who had been so far silent spoke up. It was good to hear his voice again. He had gone through a long troubling relationship with a wife that had not been forthcoming about her affair with her employer and indeed had gone so far as to accuse Gary of wife abuse, a heinous crime.

                       If the woman or man walks out that's nothing. It's a clean break. A lot of times it dudn't happen that way though. You know you keep thinking you're going to get back together with her and you wonder what it is you done wrong.”

                      “Oh Christ,” whispered Timmy.

                   Gary went on, in a world of his own. It was generally thought that Gary was a nice enough guy, but he kept looking for reasons where there were no reasons.

“It's just the way the big boy made people, you know.” said Lewis, who could show compassion sometimes, despite being a Wasp.

                        “She was a bitch, plain and simple” said Timmy.

                    “Then why did I love her? Why did I love a bitch? Why didn't I find a nice girl to marry?”

           It was at that point that I came to a realization. The story of the tender loving wife, who stays with her man despite physical and mental abuse , is familiar. Could it not work the other way around?

                 Gary was a giver. He is, as the expression goes, someone who would give you the shirt off his back. Jessica was a taker. She'd take the shirt of your back and then ask for the shoes and socks too. They lasted as a couple then, only as long as their two neurotic adaptions fit together – that is to say, until Gary ran out of new things to give Jessica

“Well eventually she walked out on you, right? Someone asked.

“She left me for a bartender – for a fucking bartender”

                  Actually the bartender was three or four boyfriends ago and the last I heard she had worked her way out to a condominium salesman, but it was plain, she wasn't coming back. Gary was a tapped out mine – a saturated market – an emotional ghostown haunted by the shadows of people long gone.

                  My editor tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to me that we take a walk. When we got to the hedge that lead to the stairway that led down to the beach. He began to speak.

                              “Got an assignment for you. My contacts assure me that the economies gblow, or actually it's already started but it's going to keep crashing for the foreseeable future. I began to feel a cold chill down my spine.

                    “I'm not following” I said. But I was. And if there's anything worse then sucking up to the rick it's suck down to the poor, but he had his mind made up.

“Poor like me” he said- “You go underground and write a sob story about the abused but honest, the trod upon but noble,poor. We'll make a fucking boatload of money. You do like Dicken's- play off the guilt complexes of the rich. They know they are to blame but they sure as shit aren't going to make things right so you write a story that says they are not to blame and even if they were to blame the poor like being poor because it build , uhh”

“Moral Character?”I said

“Absolutely” he said

                         “What about my family, my wife, my house, my dog?”

                    “We're ,making a virtue out of a vice.”

                     “What is that supposed to mean?”

                    “What does it sound like?”

                       “You're going to want to talk to you wife.”

                            “What the fuck does she have to do with this?”

                             “A lot. Look John, you have a lot of questions and frankly I can't answer them. In time the answers will come. I guarantee that, but for now you're going to have to put your head down and get on with the job at hand. I worked out this deal in part to keep your wife happy, because she still has strong feelings for you, even if she doesn’t think the marriage is working out.”

“What are you talking about? What the fuck are you talking about? The marriage was working yesterday and now it's not working today?”

                             “John you might as well hear it from me, but your marriage was not working yesterday. Truth is me and Maureen have been lovers for about a year. She was not happy and she came to me.”

                        “You son of a bitch...   a year?”

                    “Stay calm Johnny. Truth is there were others as well. One night stands, things like that. I mean, I care for at least and I hope we can stay friends.”

                             “Stay friends? How about I get a gun and blow your fucking head off – then we can stay friends”

                        “It won't bring her back. She's gone boyo. I've kept you on out of, I don't know, sympathy, I guess and that's why if you come to me with something I can sell in a few months or a year I promise you I will do my best to make a deal somewhere.”

                                        “How about my wife, can you make a deal for her? Is she included in the bargain?”

                          “Maureen makes her own deals. You know that.”

                             I once again looked out at the reggatta and said the obvious,

                            “I can't believe this is real.”

                               “John, believe me, this is all going to work out for the best because right now you have other problems to take care of and you could do without a messy family situation.”

                         “No Eric, I could do with a messy family situation. Did you ever hear the words, for better or worse, in sickness and health for richer or poorer.”

He didn't say anything . He just smiled that smile that I'd seen before in other situations, but never so creul. He had gotten the better of me. He talked her out of marriage, or bribed her or something. Part of me couldn't accept what he said but another part of me knew damn well the game was over. He was so confident and from here on he would have as little to do with me as possible.

                               He was right about one thing though. The next few months were busy. I began to realize I had many new friends . Friends like the Bank of America, Chase, AT&T and other smaller friends. They were all willing to work with me to pay off my debt – no matter how long it took and foolishly as it turned out, I trusted them. I went from a five hundred thousand dollar credit line to virtually nothing in six months. Each time I'd make a payment, trying to get accounts in order, they would tighten the noose making it more difficult.

Try though I may, I looked through the papers but sow no jobs for men with post graduate degrees in Ancient Irish literature and a minor in history. There were bright spots, but not many. I'd been reduced to going to local libraries to use the facilities and in one I saw something that warmed my heart.

                          He was about six foot two an had a square jaw and a perfect physique. His face was unmarked by any imbalance or deformity. It may have been Anatole France (who was a fine writer despite having one of the smallest brains ever measured) who made reference to a person who had everything going for himself except one thng; “Those social graces that open all doors.” Here was a fellow that obviously had those social graces, as long as he didn't open his mouth.

                            He was without question, “executive material”such as I have seen in a hundred boardrooms in a thousand magazine articles and by the millions walking the canyons of Wall Street. His clothing, his shoes, his haircuts even – everything reeked class. The fact that he had not a brain in his head would not defer Pepsi Cola or Nabisoc from naming him CEO.

Oh, thou blond god! Thee of perfect teeth, had I but a tenth of your social graces I could count myself fortunate. And yet , everyday, there he was in the library, with a stack of business cards and a stack of resumes sending them out by the dozen and hundreds because you see - the people receiving the resumes had no idea of what a good impression he made. He would have been better served had he sent a nude photo of himself lifting a silicone enhanced babe over his head and smiling his best Ronnie Reagan smile.

                        Misery indeed does love company.  Are you miserable? Let me keep you company. I'm good at it. Do you know the story of the whore? She's meeting a client for the first time and says “If you want a nun or a schoolgirl it's fifty bucks extra but if you want me at my best it's regular price.”

                               You see, with people who are happy I cannot relate. You give me a heartbroken loser who had seen his world turn to garbage and them I can get along with. Heroes don't need me. Winners don't need me.

                                As to the mysterious journey into the world of the poor. Well that was just a come one, a lead in, a con job, a way of getting your attention. Could I write a book about it? Are you could kidding? Certainly.

                             Consider this. Its something cops know and use. I'm in the town of New Paltz which is a college town just upstate new york. A lot of the locals are not widely traveled and what is more the school tends to draw more then it's fair share adults who are fond of children. Mostly its an innocent exploitation but naturally they are very sensitive as to the topic.

                             One such chap who owned a store catering to children also rented rooms and I went several times to try to rent a room from him. After awhile it became apparent that it was a no go – which didn't bother me so much as the fact that he could not bring himself to fabricate some sort of excuse.

                              A similar case happened with a married woman friend of mine. I was willing to leave her alone but another man, married , wanted to get in her pants – so the problem was I was basically in the way. It's a problem I have – the last thing a criminal wants is a cop on the scene so they have to create some cause to get rid of that obstacle.

                              I could tell when this was happening and ordinarily, even if it is against the law I will let it pass. This is not a perfect world and besides a suspicion is not evidence. You may have heard about my nemesis in the form of the small town librarians. Well, after confronting their kiddie toy owner and getting effectively blown off I enter the library and say“Anybody got any hot fourteenyear old boy's?”or something to that effect. After seeing me for three years nearly everyday you would think they'd cutme some slack, but no – they had conniptions and agreed among themselves that I was sick and they were right to feel disgusted. They must have decided I was some sicko at least a dozen times, but who’s counting?

I never got to finish the joke either, It's when I rub my hands together and say “hmmm, saucy!”

                              By the way I don't really think the people in the library are child molesters – but they are very sensitive to the accusation and I apologize for making it known.

                         So anyway what this comes down to is if you really are something, something you don't really want to be, one way or another you want to be as far away from it as possible. A girl who has been assulted by her father or older brother will try to block the memory of the attack out for the rest of her life.

                            So yes, I have been poor, gone hungry gone homeless even – but you what ? I don't want to talk about it. The wound is still too fresh

But so I don't be accused of misleading the dear reader I will give you two things you might want ot know about poverty in fact I am thinking of starting a new TV Show called “Poverty – American Style!” (I suppose I'll start right after I begin the show about pedophilia and before I begin airing games from the transexual tennis league.

                           Actually (Hello Alan) one of my childhood pals grew up to be gay and now lives in frisco where he had a male partner in a doubles ice skating contest – the contest said it was no good and got taken to court which overruled the verdict and now there's male doubles in ice skating.

But back to poverty American style – this is how it's done, a escribed by a Nobel prize winner in the book the Bell Curve (which is hated more then it ought to be) The problem in the US is how to keep the poor from killing the rich. It's an old problem and the largest prison system on earth only goes part of the way towards solving it.

                                       As in the middle ages we know effectively lock up the rich in the equivalent of self sufficient manor systems which we called gated communities. In those areas where estates predominate we make sure there are plenty of police. This only solves half the problem which is how to protect the rich.

                                 The second problem is how to castrate the poor and this is done via poverty zones. In this case what we do is we place all the services need by the poor ( who are defined by their lack of income) in a certain city or area which is far away from the wealth zones. So in the same locale you will find the second hand clothing stores, the food stamps distributes, the drug and alcohol rehab centers, the low income housing and the prisons. This means that all the things needed for survival are located within walking distance of one another and by placing these zones in comparatively out of the way places there is no need to place fences around them.

                                 It's worth mentioning that this principle is also applied to entertainment centers, which, being the exclusive province of the wealthy are place in out of the way places like the mountains of Pennsylvania or even Florida, rather then as was the case in the past, the river side or ocean side of a major city – where the poor would have access.

                                    And finally as the paper of record (the NY times) never seems to tire of reminding us the notion that one gains value as one gains experience in a job is overturned in Poverty-American Style! (Trademark 2013) In the European model, which has developed over several centuries, manufacturing includes a trade union system which in turn allocates position and pay scales to apprentices and master craftsman. The US has since Reagan , effectively destroyed centuries of the collective bargaining modality buy adopting a Southern Paradigm which is based on the slave system.

                                        In the new slave state as a person weakens physically they employability also deteriorates. People in peak employment ages are forced to work long hours at low wages but then mistakenly often believe that they will see salaries increase instead , there being no workers protection laws, they are often fired as soon as their income rises above a certain level.

                               An amusing side note to this issue is the suggestion made by Former President William Clinton who said in effect that the loss of quality employment was something that had to be accepted and that the modern worker was to compensate for this by seeking employment in two or tree different occupations over the course of a working lifetime. As far as we know no one has ever taking that suggestion seriously – beginning with the former president, who successfully negated all attempts to make him change his employment.

                           The devil may be in the details but m,any a battle is won in the generalities (pardon the pun) Which is to say that smile minded bigots with lynch mobs and over active police may not present a pretty picture but they are effective in convincing people that they are not wanted and that it would better for them if they were not to “let the sun go down on them.” We are seeing that more and more as poverty become entrenched in the American Psyche.

                                  Poverty can be viewed as a disease. Like being exposed to a carcinogen the effect of periods of poverty can sometimes not be seen for decades. There were until recently many people who's outlooks were shaped by the depression of the 30's.

                             To conclude with some thoughts from my days as a research analyst in Criminal justice, I was able to study the amount and types of crimes committed in Long lsland, at the time fairly well to do, in the wake of several mini- recessions; recessions that hit individual cities and towns hard, as in the case when a major industry like Grummen Aeronautics shut down.

                                       Essentially the crimes went from targets of immediate opportunity to gradually more severe crimes and what it more they grew move violent over time. There was as constant correlation between the onset of poverty and violence. It is not unfair then to suggest that this will occur on a national scale. Then again I would not wish to underestimate the a mont of pain humans can withstand prior to rebelling.

– Tamlin