Operation Odyssey Dawn and Charlie Sheen

A March Madness Recap: When a Society Mentally Losses It



It began with blowing up over 120 million dollars in one sitting (120 Tomahawk missiles * 1 million+ dollars per missile). The Nobel Peace Prize winner decided that perhaps it is best to divert attention from the fact that US still does not have a budget (and is now down to 56 billion in cash!) with a little bit of the old ultra-violence. Millions of democrats and college students went to the streets to prevent involvement in another civil war in the Muslim world cheered on the mass murderer in chief in his quest to help the oppressed Libyan civilians/rebel army/Al-Qaeda (eastern Libyan cities that NATO is now championing have disproportionately contributed to sending Jihadists to Iraq).

It appears that bread stamps, circus stamps, and diversionary adventures abroad stamps will be the last things to be defunded by American empire (after gutting such monsters as the teachers unions and the EPA). People just need to feel any semblance of power in their emasculated poverty stricken lives even if it means cheering on multi-millionaire steroidhead super bowl players ramming into each other or multi-million dollar bombs dropping on cheap pick up trucks in the desert. This vague psychological association with military projection of power abroad will even be remembered in fond terms after the debt default.

Speaking of winning, this March the country also discovered a new postmodern leader. Charlie Sheen came to embody the American dream within just a few days. Millions rallied to a person with the financial power to not only super engage in (qualitatively and quantitatively) addictions that most Americans already have but who also told the world to go where the sun doesn't shine. The rising economic depression derived mass psychological hysteria has found a champion, somebody who they briefly lived through.

All that's left is for Sheen to run for the office of the President of the United States. California, which usually shows what the rest of the country can expect in the future (financially, socially, emotionally, in terms of paying gov employees with alternative IOU currency, etc), demonstrates the sheer circus that can happen when people are desperate for a celebrity hero. Sheen, Trump, fundamentalist Christian teabagger crypto-fascists rising to the challenge are guaranteed to make for a final absurd complimentary theatrical gasp as money printing and austerity measures go into high gear. Unlike in the last days of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of the national psyche will be painstakingly televised.

And that is at oil just costing $115 a barrel. When it matches its record high in 2008 and moves beyond, we should see things get "gnarly" as entire regions are literally separated from each other due to people's inability to drive. Perhaps then certain characters will be able to conceptualize to the public on how they can start winning outside of this ridiculous circus. Seriously? Blowing up a million dollar missile and losing a 30 million dollar plane while negotiating cuts to the EPA (as the country is slowly being poisoned by gas fracking)? They've even outdone the Soviets in self immolation. The sole Reagan International Airport air traffic controller falling asleep is a preview of things to come.

French Aggression in Libya

The absurdity of an imperialist "no-fly zone"

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French version of George W Bush, apparently wants to scrub Libya of anybody he perceives as "scum" (term he used to describe the rioting French youth in 2005 back when he was the French version of Giuliani). Distracting the French people from economic turmoil at home with a foreign adventure against a socialist country with better economic growth rates than France itself may even appear as foolproof.

This probably seems less funny to secular socialist Algeria next door (especially if the rumors of Algeria and secular socialist Syria aiding Gaddafi's airforce prove to be true). The oil rich Algeria has adequate experience with being butchered by the French. If Libya falls to Western corporate oil interests (such as British oil majors who were driven out like vipers by Gaddaffi in the 70s and of course Italy's Eni) then Algeria will be the next obvious target.

Intuitively, the people of the region understand that the West must not be allowed to create an unstable puppet state in eastern Libya. Such a state would allow NATO bases which would then proceed to exert their own repulsive version of financial oligarchic "democracy" as practiced in EU and USA. We recently saw protests near US embassy in Tunisia telling Hillary Clinton to get lost.
 
The mere existence of NATO threats against majority of Libya's people (rebels at most have support from 30% of the population) demonstrates that Western leadership vastly underestimates the neural ability of well educated young Arabs to comprehend hypocrisy. The go ahead given by Robert Gates to ongoing Saudi invasion of Bahrain (to aid Sunni monarchy busy decimating the demonstrations of 70% Shia population a few miles from an American navy base) is prime example. NATO generals may have the neural structures of old men and racist tendencies of old school imperialists but it is laughable that they would actively engage in such double standard simultaneously! They might have gotten away with training the government of Yemen in demonstrator and separatist suppression (Yemeni gov snipers shot over 40 demonstrators this week in cold blood) while decrying Gaddaffi's response in an age before the Internet. Now they just appear as pompous nincompoops. This shows Soviet-esque levels of regional public relations incompetence.

Having said this, eventually the Northern Hemisphere will unite economically and politically in a police block that will extend major influence into the Southern Hemisphere. However, France can't just take over from United States and lead a pack of other European corporate owned hyenas for this to happen. It is a historically unworkable model for the post-American multipolar world to try to take on a form of an imperialist coalition styled on the old yankee model. EU and North America (starting with England, USA, and France) must first have a wave of regime changes and embrace democratic non-oligarchic systems of governance. This will positively influence other Security Council members. Only after the Western banker tyrannies undergo massive changes will the UN security Council be unified enough to begin to engage in genuine human rights dialogue with the Southern Hemisphere.

As for France, it looks like they've been emulating America's economic and social rot in the 1980s. We can expect Sarkozy to call Gaddaffi a mad dog any day now. Algeria (which has won its own domestic war on Islamic terrorists and is now engaged on an economically successful 5 year plan) should openly begin to support Libya and perhaps threaten to freeze French financial assets. If they are not proactive the hyenas are guaranteed to turn their gaze to the next target to sink their imperialist teeth into. I doubt Vietnam would be comfortable with France or America trying to overthrow its neighbors and creating an impudent no fly zone next to its border.

To conclude, how would Sarkozy respond if Marseille, second biggest city in France, fell to French anti-bankster rebels? We can be sure this backstabbing midget would put it under brutal siege (if not level half of it). You know, to get that "scum" out.

Minimum Wage Past and Present

19th Century 13 year old child laborer versus 2011 McDonalds laborer

                         VS.












Let's compare the salary of a 13 year old Andrew Carnegie making $1.20 dollars a week to the current federal minimum wage salary ($7.25*40=$290 a week).

There wasn't a minimum wage in 1849 so Carnegie pretty much got the lowest possible exploitation price as a bobbin boy (illustrated above). 12 hours a day * 6 day week makes for 72 hours. $1.20 divided by 72 gives Andrew 0.0166 cents an hour. Not bad scamp! But how do you measure up to the modern day wage slave making $7.25 an hour considering all that money printing over the last 160 years?

Let's assume little Carnegie worked a 40 hour week to keep this comparison simply illustrated. That's 66 cents a week.

A gold dollar introduced in 1849 had 1.5048 grams of gold. Andrew thus made 0.993 grams of gold a week (worth $45 in today's money) and 0.024 grams an hour (worth $1.11 in today's money)

A silver dollar introduced in 1840 contained 24.057 grams of silver. Andrew thus made 15.877 grams of silver a week (worth $17 in today's money) or 0.396 grams an hour ($0.43 in today's money).

A large copper cent in 1849 contained 10.89 grams of pure copper. Andrew thus made 718.74 grams of copper a week ($6.64 in today's money) or 17.96 grams of copper an hour ($0.16 an today's money).

Considering the spectacular nose dive of the dollar in recent years (with corresponding decade long "rise" in commodities such as silver, gold, and copper), the "today's money" calculation is not constant. For your information, I used the gold price of 1400 an ounce (off from its recent record peak of 1430), silver price of $34 an ounce (off from its recent record peak of $37) and copper price of $4.20 a pound (off from its recent record peak of $4.60).

Notice anything peculiar about how much Andrew made in different commodities (which were literally money back then as they are now) priced in today's dollars? Surely he couldn't have made $45 or $17 or $6.64 a week simultaneously?

Throughout the 19th century, the US government set an official peg of silver to gold (15.1 price ratio via Coinage Act of 1792 and 16.1 via Coinage Act of 1834) and copper to silver. It roughly but imperfectly corresponded to the actual fluctuating world supply of these commodities. Since the money was not fiat money, the ratios roughly held. In other words, if we still used precious metals as currency, not only would gold, silver, and copper amounts Andrew earned hover a lot closer to each other in valuation but valuation of gold itself would spike dramatically due to its demand as currency. That is a story for another day. Here is a preview.

And this brings us to the minimum wage McDonalds worker making $290 a week (6.4 gold grams) versus Andrew's $45 (0.99 grams). Victory of social progress!? Our modern 2011 bottom wage slaves making 6-7 times their counterparts in 19th century?

Not so fast. Due to capitalist control of the governing bodies, regulation usually occurs when it has already occurred naturally. For example, child labor laws were introduced when majority of businesses stopped utilizing child labor. Regulation only occurs to frame and embed what has already happened. That is, when the moneyed interests still engaging in a certain practice are a minority that can be overwhelmed politically (also note that majority of businesses in the north have ended slavery before northern federal authorities made it illegal).

There is reason to think (due to the suppression of gold and silver metal price by major financial interests in the last few decades) that the minimum wage already is at the bare minimum that is tolerable by the human herd and not something that is in any way intolerable to businesses paying it out. In other words, if it was to be eliminated tomorrow we would not have wage slaves selling themselves for $1-2 fiat dollars. This will become more evident as major fiat non-backed currencies of planetary powers go through their inevitable debt bubble collapse.

Considering millions of adults in United States work for minimum wage there is reason to believe they are not only being exploited at the same financial level of 19th century peasant children, but that they are actually being exploited more (and it is set in law and marketed as progress!)

Skyscrapers as Pillars

21st Century deserves to be jump started architecturally. The type of construction that inspires the way first steel frame skyscrapers did


Architecture as Psychological Marketing

One question stands tall in the Western world. How to inspire a new generation of schoolchildren to get engaged in engineering, architecture, and infrastructuralism in general?

It appears that although majority of top notch architects and very capital intensive engineering experts are Western, the youth in Europe and North America are quietly surrendering inspirational architecture to Asians. The cream of the crop of Western designers may themselves be living and working in Asia at the moment. What needs to be built is a breakthrough structure that is a 21st century wonder of the world and that puts European Union back on the global map. Due to capital intensive nature of such a structure, it would help if it is pan-European in origin. A type of building that the whole continent can claim, be psychologically awed and inspired by, and that aids in political and cultural unification. The tourist revenue can be split among contributing nations (with host nation getting disproportionately smaller share or no share as compromise).

Background

The gothic cathedral was often the tallest structure in a medieval city. The toiling peasants in the nearby farmlands saw it from far away as a constant reminder of god's omniscience and the church's pinnacle of engineering. Peoples' filthy huts and short difficult lives paled in comparison to the wondrous skyscraping monstrosities that sometimes took over 3-4 generations to build. On Sunday, the locals got a chance to stop their labor and get inside these buildings where relatively well educated and clean looking  individuals told them what to think. Once the church found out how to support the roof while utilizing less rock for walls, the psychological public relations effect was complete. The peasant mob was bathed by light from enormous windows in gigantic rooms with ceilings seemingly held by god himself. The effect was fearful awe, wonder, and acceptance of the authorities that conjured up such magnificent architecture. The buildings served as visual marketing and bolstered social stability and community.

Perhaps it is time to borrow a page from organized religions in utilizing grandiose architecture as psychological propaganda (to create enthusiasm for secular macro level technological progression of mankind).

So far we had a few things grand enough to strike the hearts and minds of humanity. These are the space program and modern infrastructure such as skyscrapers, dams, bridges, and tunnels. However each has limitations as psychological inspiration towards macro level societal improvement. When inside tunnels and on bridges, the length of them fails to impress due to limited perspective of the person standing or riding. A long tunnel looks like any other tunnel. A bridge meanwhile is but a medium for travel that is passed rapidly. The space program is appreciated in the abstract and can not be immediately grasped.

The skyscraper has the best chance at becoming the best medium to impress since one can interact with it in more numerous ways than a bridge or a dam. The skyscraper's limitation however is that it gains power and engages the mind through comparison of itself to nearby buildings through observation from afar or from atop the skyscraper itself. Skyscrapers also fail to impress sufficiently once you get up close to them since 120 story buildings will not look much taller than an 80 story building. Additionally, the building is still dwarfed by the sky above it as well as by a possible thick cluster of numerous shorter skyscrapers that may be in the nearby area.

Nevertheless, it makes sense to utilize the skyscraper as a building block towards psychological public relations of the 21st century. This is well understood by countries such as China and Dubai. Yet their efforts make a qualitative rather than transformative leap from 1930s Manhattan (in how visitors and documentary watchers are impressed by the structures).

Importance of Megarooms as microworlds

This could be seen  for 100 stories
when looking up within the megaroom

One of the key reasons why tourists still flock to large famous gothic cathedrals is the enormously high ceiling within them. That is also the reason why capitol buildings and many large hotels have ridiculously tall ceiling over one large "megaroom"(that could be over 40 stories high as seen in some Marriott hotels). Just think about how the tourist money would dwindle if the main rooms shrunk in size. Megarooms awe the person within it by creating a microworld that is closed off from the rest of the planet. The heavens are replaced by a ceiling and all other points of comparison are made impossible. Capitol buildings, airports, train stations, and famous churches make people forget themselves and convey authoritative grandness through a large and fully enclosed open space that is not overshadowed by nature.

Skyscrapers as Pillars™

This is where the concept of Skyscrapers as Pillars comes in. The point would be to not awe the person by skyscraper itself but by the enclosed microworld that is being supported.

Modern engineering techniques allow "megarooms" to be well over 100 stories in height. For this to be a reality, the skyscraper itself has to be rethought from its current position as a centerpiece to one of a supporting unit. Additional requirement is integrated closeness that goes well beyond the bridge connect of Petronas Towers.

An argument can be made that spaced out skyscraper pillars supporting a roof (but that open the megaroom to the outside) create the most impressive effect. However, the effect of a microworld is destroyed in this type of modern "Parthenon" version of SAP design. The outside world still plays a role in creation of awe through comparison. A megaroom must be fully enclosed in order to allow various possibilities within it.

For example, the large room within the modern planetarium is one of the most psychologically inspirational rooms in the world. The audience is briefly taken throughout the universe via an interplay of a tall ceiling and high definition projection. One major benefit of a fully enclosed SAP megaroom is ability to project whatever one wishes onto its ceiling and walls. A visitor can literally enter from daytime into an enormous chamber that swirls with sights and sounds so breathtaking as to temporarily render the outside reality forgettable. A swirling planetarium type projection extending over an arc (with maximum tallest point being over 100 floors) would really give visiting schoolchildren a taste of possibilities when it comes to 21st century Western architecture.

Imagine standing in an open grassy field under a beautiful night sky with millions of stars above you. There is spring wind blowing the leaves of some exotic trees nearby. There's also a few groups of people scattered about silently looking up. Then you realize that you are actually inside a megaroom and it is daytime in the world beyond. But the sheer vastness around you obscures the boundaries of the actual walls. The sheer mind bending AWE would be enough to knock some religious people flat on their back and into the arms of belief that extraordinary secular progress of mankind is not only possible but can be extended to great tasks (like space colonization).

One compromise that can be reached with those who want the SAP megaroom somehow open to the world is integration of a relatively supertall (compared to doorways of Gothic cathedrals) slidable doorway. This way the people within can be exposed to occasional view of the outside, the view that nevertheless is dwarfed by the inside. The supported roof can have a small cluster of short structures on top of it (nothing major lets not get crazy).

Pulling off this type of a feat would do for megastructures what large window Gothic cathedrals did to cramped tiny window churches of old. Showing to the world that such a roof can be supported would show the effectiveness of Western technology and engineering for decades to come and inspire generations of kids. Most importantly it would be the first 21st century structure and demonstrate that architecture does not stand still qualitatively. This century's buildings can make 20th century ones look the way those made look the 19th century ones.

In part 2 I'll hopefully have a few sketches ready. I welcome all artistic suggestions on Skyscrapers as Pillars design.

Impeach President Obama

The Constitution, Article II, Section 4:  
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

It has become clear that the federal government has lost legitimacy. Mass scale impeachments (and/or Egypt style calls for resignation via mass strikes) should be pushed for immediately. Let's detail why the first to go should be the president of the United States.

President Barack Obama guilty of:

1) Multiple counts of mass torture, accessory to torture, and reckless endangerment

- Knowing full well that United States possesses the technology and transportation/distribution systems to supply healthy food to all the citizens, Obama still has not pushed to end the practice of paying farmers not to grow and still has not pushed to supply food to the starving (50 million people, 1 in 6 of Americans in 2008, it appears to be getting worse now even by major rail hubs)

- Knowing full well that overcrowding is unsafe and leads to higher instances of torture such as rape, Obama still has not pushed to end the drug prohibition that feeds the 2 million+ prisoner gulag system (as well as pushing to release those prisoners doing time for consensual acts)

- Knowing full well that the large scale military aggression abroad leads to painful mutilations of thousands of soldiers, Obama still has not pushed to withdraw thousands of Americans out of harms way

- Knowing full well that United States can cover everybody with decent healthcare via expansion of Medicare for all, Obama still has not pushed to provide relief to chronic bodily pain and distress that millions of uninsured suffer from

- Knowing full well United States possesses the technological and logistical ability to construct decent shelter for everybody, knowing full well that homeless and dispossessed face greater risk from exposure to elements and crime, Obama still did not push to end homelessness (as millions of houses in the country stand empty, foreclosed, and/or facing foreclosure)

2) Multiple counts of bribery

- Knowing full well that the "lobbyist" system within United States is legalized and structured bribery, Obama still has not pushed to end it and to use the executive to begin mass arrests of all involved in the "lobbying" bribery system

- Knowing full well he is taking bribes, Obama has still taken millions of dollars of them, often directly meeting with those bribing him or their agents

3) Multiple counts of theft and accessory to theft

- Knowing full well the financial bailout will transfer billions of dollars abroad to European banks, Obama still has not stopped the process and actually expediated the looting

- Knowing full well the Ponzi scheme fraudulent nature of the financial sector, Obama still did not push for mass arrests, has actually provided public cover for the thieves, and has allowed their agents into his cabinet

4) Multiple counts of mass homicide and accessory to murder

- Knowing full well that escalation of aggression in Afghanistan will lead to more civilian deaths, Obama still ordered it, much less scale back the homicide (in fact he allowed his generals to go back to heavy aerial and artillery bombardments of Afghan cities and villages, a practice that was scaled down before he took office)

- Knowing full well he got the political power to stop the death penalty in United States, Obama still allows it to continue

5) Treason

- Knowing full well that the imperial debt burden cannot ever be repaid, Obama still did not push for an inevitable default and in fact allows interest payments to foreign (potentially hostile) powers to continue (increasing the severity of the economic calamity that will afflict the nation)

- Putting the country at risk by conducting himself in a manner that makes a mockery of the office of the president and that further delegitimizes the federal center of force, namely, blatantly and speedily going back on every campaign promise

6) Lying under oath

- Having sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States, Obama still continues the drug prohibition and the "war on terror" which routinely violates (or makes obsolete) majority of the Bill of Rights

- Having sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution to the best of his ability, Obama has actually not fully tapped into the range of his ability as the nation's biggest bully pulpit (in fact this goes beyond gross incompetence into the realm of using his ability to do the opposite [see above])

2/3 of the Senate needed to convict this repugnant criminal and national backstabber

We can go on and on about various crimes of this administration (not only violating ban on assassination but actually assassinating an American citizen, Gitmo remaining open, kidnapping abroad, etc) but they are well known at this point. As their last act (before we start mass action calling for resignation and impeachment of congressmen themselves) US congress can go out with a shred of dignity and proceed to remove the oligarchy's sock puppet scumbag.

Preserving Privacy in the 21st Century

Battle for individual privacy is winnable. There is no need to sacrifice convenience or security either.

What do we mean by privacy? Not having our physical location, activities, preferences, bodily environment, and not for public thoughts known to various entities without our permission. And no, indecipherable to laymen 20 page legal agreements to join an organization or website do not count as such permissions. (It is clear last remnants of contractual society have collapsed if one needs to pass a bar exam to understand what one is entering into.)

Terms of use the way they exist now are meaningless, actually promote violation of privacy due to inequality of contract initiation (lawyer to normal person), and most importantly, assume a private organization can potentially have full control and rights within its domain (whether physical or digital) if a beer guzzling illiterate presses "accept". Such feudal notions are laughable and have no place in the 21st century.

It would be intolerable for an office building to have hidden micro cameras everywhere. Cameras using face recognition software to constantly scan employee location/mood in various parts of the building, audio record and read their lips to see what they say, allow zoom ins on an employee during work, lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, etc. Cameras and sensors which record and store every possible bit of data from urine in toilets to heart/pulse rate fluctuations during meetings. We intuitively understand that physical 1984 dystopia in a private hierarchical organization is repulsive even if they promise to "not share your stool analysis data and lip reading with third parties".

When it comes to government, preventing such abuses is relatively easy. The mainframes and databases of the NSA, FBI, etc can be physically destroyed the way STASI files were. The people responsible for accumulating such records can be put into prison. The government organs of a replacement regime can then be made transparent using the latest technology (having the government as an entity have its "privacy" heavily violated by the public that it lords over). That does not mean collecting private conversations and urine samples from government employees but having tremendous real time access to an entity that is a monopoly of force within a given area. Also it is rather easy to use microcameras and sensors to record the government when it has proactive contact with the public where abuse can occur. This means that when a policeman stops a car of a citizen, the citizen's car can and should record and transmit every aspect of this encounter in real time to the citizen's lawyer, public and private database, online etc. However, when the policeman is just cruising the neighborhood in his car and talking with fellow employees, such surveillance over him or her is intolerable. The government as an entity should have its macro level functions (policies, non-nuclear arsenal related activities) be under rigid surveillance by the public yet have the private lives of its micro level individual functionaries respected.

Preserving privacy and dignity within the physical and digital realm of private organizations is a lot harder task yet not an impossible one.

Sure we can start by:

1) Throwing the tyrannical idea of corporate personhood (key source of various major planetary abuses currently) into the dustbin of history
2) Legislating that large private organizations are cooperatively owned, democratically run, and have flatter organizational structures
3) Making all basic online contracts 5 sentences long for normal citizens
4) Have the government enforce individual privacy with the zeal of Switzerland or Luxembourg

However these efforts will still lag behind the exponential progress of surveillance technology from private individuals and organizations. What is needed is a moral and legal framework that develops a constantly active bubble of protection around every single individual. Such a protective bubble would guarantee that every person has the right to privacy (location, bodily environment, preferences, not for public thoughts) from the start. In other words, whether you are a public/private employee or a customer, certain key aspects of privacy will be understood to be off limits at all times.

For example when you go to a doctor and provide various bodily fluids for testing, that information would be stored in your hyper encrypted database (residing either in your physical portable computer, virtual wallet, etc) and not in the doctor's database. The new government can perhaps distribute a sort of standardized Passport type database to everybody who wants it (to offer a sort of public option for groups like the elderly who are not as well versed in new technology). The idea would be that your privacy is like your property and things that occur on this property belong only to you. Sometimes you may loan your information (preferences) when you enter a physical or digital store for convenience. That loan will be returned as soon as you exit the store.

Sure, you may loan bodily information from your privacy property (existing within your database) to a doctor and his colleagues at times but at the end of the day the vault will lock. The Internet itself, the links between personal databases, can be made hyper encrypted to beef up anonymity to levels not yet imagined. This way, when you join a social networking digital realm of some sort, there would be a strict legal and cultural understanding that your informational loan can be taken back by you at any time.

This systems engineering task becomes increasingly easy to implement if key things like communication infrastructure is publicly owned and publicly financed/developed. This way the government builds say, 1 gig a second national hyper encrypted network that covers everybody for free (to be upgraded to say, 100 gig a second network as soon as tech advances) and has responsibility for preserving privacy on it. In this regard protection and augmentation of privacy becomes no different than provision of other welfare such as clean drinkable water and food.

There should not be financial incentives for private organizations to violate your privacy. Bandwidth should be "too cheap to meter" to reduce ads and allow entry for small developers. Google is already a de facto arm of the NSA and existing major private players like Facebook can be made to bend to the public will in the years to come (after their corporate personhood is shredded). Civilization will continue and people will continue to develop interesting software even after a major cultural change.

In part 2 I'll touch upon 21st century identity management, guarding against mass scale production of encrypted fake identities, and technological defenses against privacy intrusions (such as privately owned satellites or flying machines tracking, spying, and exploiting this data).