Untitled

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one. But I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. and somebody puts a code on my desk, something no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East, and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding---fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are saying, oh, "Send in the marines to secure the area" because they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, getting shot, just like it wasn't them when their number got called, because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie over there, taking shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, because he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price, and of course the oil companies use the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices---a cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course, maybe they even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's outta work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fucking job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids, and meanwhile he's starving because every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're serving is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holding out for something better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President.
--from Good Will Hunting (1997)

The Best Way to Rob A Bank Is To Own One

The cat joined the Re-education Committee and was very active in it for some days. She was seen one day sitting on a roof and talking to some sparrows who were just out of her reach. She was telling them that all animals were now comrades and that any sparrow who chose could come and perch on her paw; but the sparrows kept their distance.
--George Orwell

some thoughts on the kleptocracy from Bill Black

What Happens In Vegas

Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip---the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.
--Hunter S. Thompson
from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A Few Words From Elizabeth Warren

more here ...

Panic of the Plutocrats

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny.

--Paul Krugman
from Panic of the Plutocrats

Expect Us

There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.
--Auberon Waugh

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Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting
on what to have for dinner.
--Benjamin Franklin

Rut Roh

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.
The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers,
network security specialists say.
And the infection
underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.
“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”
Military network security specialists aren’t sure whether the virus and its so-called “keylogger” payload were introduced intentionally or by accident; it may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks. The specialists don’t know exactly how far the virus has spread. But they’re sure that the infection has hit both classified and unclassified machines at Creech. That raises the possibility, at least, that secret data may have been captured by the keylogger, and then transmitted
over the public internet to someone
outside the military chain of command.
--more here

The Whole Wide World Is Watching

The Pogues: When the Ship Comes In


oh the time will come up
when the winds will stop
and the breeze will
cease to be breathing
like the stillness in the wind
before the hurricane begins
the hour when the ship comes in

oh the seas will split
and the ship will hit
and the sands on the
shoreline will be shaking
then the tide will sound
and the wind will pound
and the morning will be breaking

oh the fishes will laugh
as they swim out of the path
and the seagulls they’ll be smiling
and the rocks on the sand
will proudly stand
the hour that the ship comes in

and the words that are used
for to get the ship confused
will not be understood
as they’re spoken
for the chains of the sea
will have busted in the night
and will be buried at
the bottom of the ocean

a song will lift
as the mainsail shifts
and the boat drifts
on to the shoreline
and the sun will respect
every face on the deck
the hour that the ship comes in

then the sands will roll
out a carpet of gold
for your weary toes to be touching
and the ship’s wise men
will remind you once again that
the whole wide world is watching

oh the foes will rise
with the sleep still in their eyes
and they’ll jerk from their beds
and think they’re dreaming
but they’ll pinch themselves and squeal
and know that it’s for real
the hour when the ship comes in

then they’ll raise their hands
saying we’ll meet all your demands
but we’ll shout from the bow
your days are numbered
and like Pharoah’s tribe
they’ll be drowned in the tide
And like Goliath
they’ll be conquered

--Bob Dylan
1963

Say What?

One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven---or even proven at all---to be anything deliberate. It is like an invisible political movement; perhaps it isn't there at all. If a bomb is wired to a car's ignition, then obviously there is an enemy; if public building or a political headquarters is blown up, then there is a political enemy. But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs, if equipment merely fails to function, if it appears faulty, especially in a slow fashion, over a period of natural time, with numerous small failures and misfiring--then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself.
--Philip K. Dick
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bad lip reading: Michelle Bachmann edition