Monthly Archives: November 2015

The Rise of Radicalism

In my prior article I made the argument that the real reason the terrorists target the US and other Western countries is not because they “hate us for our freedom” but rather that they hate us for interfering in their lives. The US and other Western nations (such as France) have a long and sordid history of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, be it either operative-fomented coup d’états or outright military actions. There is a willfully selective blindness in the west that allows us to only see where we are but not how we arrived. But, my point is not to rehash my prior thesis but to respond to one of the stronger objections to it. It has been pointed out that this sort of argument ignores the fact that radical Islam truly wants all non-believers to die, that it is akin to Nazism and must be wiped out – those making that argument are correct, but not in the way they presume. Yes, indeed there are some adherents of Islam that believe these sorts of things. They are called radicals. Within any group of humans that subscribes to some ideological concept there are those who lie on the fringe and have their own unique interpretation of the group’s ideas. These ideas, by virtue of being “fringe,” are in the minority; the rest of the group quietly ignores such types lest mere acknowledgement of their ideas imply tacit acceptance.

For example, there are fringe groups who use the Bible as justification for their belief that the earth is flat, that “kinds” should be separated and thus racism is a “Godly” viewpoint, or that firebombing abortion clinics and murdering the abortionists is legitimate. Now of course all of us in the majority disagree with these viewpoints and claim their interpretation is obviously faulty, but nevertheless they still make the claim. So maybe, just maybe, radical Islamists fall into the same category of distorted interpretation. I imagine for every cherry picked outrageous phrase from the Koran one can find an equally outrageous cherry picked line from the Bible. Are we to honestly believe that ALL of Islam 100% agrees on the violent and hateful interpretations of such cherry picked lines? Christianity alone is proof of man’s inability to agree on anything. For something that is supposed to be the absolute word of God (the Bible) there sure are an awful lot of denominations with differing viewpoints on various aspects of scripture. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that there is absolute solidarity among Muslims with regards to their scriptural interpretation.

The truth of the matter is that yes there are indeed radical Islamists that do believe we should all die, but it is the ignorant and ham-fisted actions of the west in the Middle East (primarily since the end of World War II) that have given their crazy viewpoint more credence and expanded their sphere of influence among fellow Muslims. When the radicals preach that the non-believers are devils who will come to kill them and destroy their way of life and then an endless onslaught of non-believers comes in and does exactly as they predicted year after year that tends to strengthen, not weaken, the position of those making the prediction. So the more any country occupies, bombs, and overthrows ruling regimes in Muslim countries the more they play right into the narrative the radicals are selling. This bolsters their authority and makes it that much easier for them to win more recruits and adherents. More bombs feed the flame of radicalism, they do not extinguish it.

Think of it like this: the majority of people view white supremacists as radicals, but now imagine what would happen if there were a massive and organized movement wherein all non-whites started killing white people en masse. Do you not believe this would have more and more people listening to what these white supremacists had to say? The longer such attacks continued the more and more people would turn to their ideas and do whatever they said in order to protect themselves. Then, one day they would no longer be a “radical” group but instead would represent the mainstream. This is what nearly 70 years of open and clandestine interference in the Middle east has wrought: turning the followers of a small and obscure sect of Islam into a growing force that will someday soon become the dominant authority. Apropos the Hitler reference: the only reason we had to fight Hitler is because the American government (by virtue of Wilson’s desire to plunge us into WWI) had a hand in creating the onerous Treaty of Versailles that primed Germans to welcome his radical rhetoric and ensured his rise to mainstream power.

If a drug company invented both a disease and the drug to cure it there would be outrage, yet when the state creates our enemies that only it can now slay we welcome it with open arms and applause.

Games without Frontiers

As the horrific events unfolded last Friday in Paris before a world stage, we, the audience, sat in stunned silence as waves of helplessness washed over us. If only we could protect those in harms way and end the madness. This sense of helpless resignation caused me to reflect on a line from Peter Gabriel’s song “Games with Frontiers” – ‘In games without frontiers, war without tears.’ Indeed this would seem contradictory, as this was a time for tears; however, for those in control of the game, there are no tears. This ‘war on terror’ is a boundless chess match in which the ‘leaders’ on all sides are utterly lacking in remorse when a few of us pawns get knocked over. They may wear their heart on their sleeve when addressing the masses, but when the cameras are off the mask of empathy is stripped away. Were this not true they would endeavor to engage in peaceful dialogues or simply withdraw rather than doubling down on the violence (which as I write this France has already done). As each side lobs their bombs at each other, we pawns become haplessly caught in the crossfire (the 9/11 attacks, Malaysia Air 17, Pan Am 103, Iran Air 655, Bali bombings, Russian Metrojet 9268, London bombings, countless others, and now, Paris). When will it end? If our ‘leaders’ have their way, never. All leaders have an agenda. Agendas require power to execute. Leaders derive their power from others willingly giving it to them. So like the con artist, they use deception to trick their target into willingly giving them what they want. When we feel unsafe we turn to those who claim they will restore what we desire. Problem is, those who promise that are the ones who precipitated the events that we now fear. But like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, we fall for it every time.

This pattern of misdirection to reinforce one’s power position is not unique to the West. All conflict involves two parties fighting over some real or imagined initial injury. But human pride is such that neither side will ever back down. You attack me, I attack you, ad infinitum. At some point all conflicts distill down to the point that no one even remembers what started the conflict, only that they must strike back to get back for the prior strike upon them. This is where we are today. Feuds going back dozens, hundreds, or thousands of years drive just about every conflict in the world today. The leaders justify continued attacks by dehumanizing the opponent and his motivations into an absurd caricature that allows us all to feel justified in mass murder. Both sides do it, but the irony is we laugh at the ludicrousness of others being angry at the US because they think we are the “devil” but take with deadly seriousness being told we are attacked because we are free. To see the lie in that statement all we need to do is witness the words and deeds of these so called haters of freedom. Osama bin Laden put that one to rest over 10 years ago when he stated “If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden”. Then even more usefully he tells us how we can end their motivation to attack us, “the best way to avoid another Manhattan is to not threaten the security of Muslim nations, such as Palestine and Lebanon”.

If we truly wish to “do something” to prevent future attacks then please channel some of the energy you used in changing your Facebook profile to demonstrate solidarity with France into the more useful endeavor of supporting leaders that promise to withdraw our military and political presence from foreign soils where we have no business. If we withdraw from and ignore those who hate us we defuse the ability of their leaders to demonstrate how “bad” we are to their would be fighters. Few want to fight an enemy that has done nothing to them in ten years. Let’s start that clock now.

Consider how angry and upset we are over these attacks in Paris and then reflect on the fact that similar attacks occur on an almost monthly basis by drone and yet we hear nothing about it. Innocents murdered in cold blood and yet from the media all we hear are crickets. Those affected are just as upset as we are now and such actions only serve to keep the feud alive.

If a drone destroyed your child’s school or a mall where your loved ones were shopping (or even a hospital) would you not feel a sense of overwhelming rage and a desire to “get back” at whoever sent that drone? I am not suggesting such actions motivated by revenge are justified, but rather simply pointing out that this desire for revenge is a natural, primal human response. So given this knowledge, why do we keep throwing rocks at the hornet’s nest if we know the hornets will without fail sting us?

Fun stereotype

Sometimes stereotypes are just fun… 🙂

 

In Heaven…
The mechanics are German
The chefs are French
The police are British
The lovers are Italian
And everything is organised by the Swiss.

In Hell…
The mechanics are French
The police are German
The chefs are British
The lovers are Swiss
And everything is organised by the Italians.

Do no harm?

A recent conversation with a friend highlighted the fact that even among conservatives there is a pervasive belief that “unfettered” markets require some level of “control” by the government. The poster child for this viewpoint is Rockefeller’s Standard Oil which at its peak achieved 90% market share. The formation of such a “monopoly” (it wasn’t, a monopoly would be 100% market share – something only a government can achieve in the many areas it deems worthy of nationalization) is sufficient proof in their minds of both ill deeds and ill intent. Unfortunately the facts do not support a narrative of ill will. In 1865 when Rockefeller was just starting and had virtually no market share kerosene cost 58¢/gallon. By 1870 Standard Oil’s (SO) share was a mere 4% and yet they had driven the price down to 26¢. Only 10 years later SO’s market share had shot up to 90% and did prices skyrocket as well under this “monopoly”? No, prices declined to 9¢. And by 1890 still at 90% market share prices fell even further to 7¢.  So who exactly was harmed here? Certainly not the consumers of kerosene.

One could argue that the competitors were “harmed” but so what? SO achieved its market position by becoming more efficient so that it could profitably charge lower prices. It did not engage in violence or the threat of violence to achieve its goals, as the state/government is wont to do. Mere “harm” cannot be the nebulous standard by which we invoke the necessity of state intervention. If five people apply for a job then the four that did not get the job are arguably harmed, so, should the state step in and penalize the person who got the job by making him or her share it with the others? When two sports teams play each other is not the losing team “harmed”? Upset fans, potential decreased ticket sales, lower potential ad revenue – all these things constitute types of harm, yet no one is (yet) screaming for the state to step in. Most likely because all recognize the solution would be absurd – they would simply mandate all games end in a tie or that wins and losses must be equalized. We certainly can’t have an unequal “win” distribution, how unfair.

One type of specific harm that anti-trust proponents say must be banned is the practice of “predatory pricing”. This is the practice of a competitor temporarily lowering their price and losing money in order to drive out competitors that can’t afford to lose money as long (the economic equivalent of a game of “chicken”). Problem is, this has never actually happened. Sure there might be temporary “price wars” between competing retailers that go on for a few days, but neither side gets ahead and at the end of the day no company has ever actually been driven out of business this way. The reason for this is the following: either you have to buy up the whole world (impossible) or the act of driving competitors into bankruptcy creates replacements that can more readily compete on price. For example, if a competitor went into bankruptcy then someone else would buy up their assets at pennies on the dollar and reopen the business with a much lower operating overhead. Now they are in a much better position to compete with you. Not a useful outcome.

But lets say for the sake of argument somehow it all worked and you could drive out competitors this way. Where is the natural rights violation? What is essentially happening here is large competitor A is using their deep financial resources (savings) to compete with small competitor B in a way that B is incapable of because of their smaller size. Is this unfair? Well before you answer that consider that this goes on all day long in the business world. Larger companies can spend a lot more of their financial resources (savings) on: more sales personnel, larger R&D budget, improving efficiency through automation and so on. That is deemed perfectly fair, however using those exact same resources to facilitate deep pricing discount is not. Simply put, there is no reason to arbitrarily single out such a practice and threaten to throw people in cages if they engage in it. It is no more of an excuse for state intervention in the market than is a dislike of the font in a company’s logo.

As long as no aggression (fraud, violence, or the threat of violence) is occurring then any and all actions or businesses or products should be permitted. No one should live in fear that men with guns will throw them in cages because of someone’s subjective opinion of what constitutes fairness or harm. Opinions are fine, but opinions backed up by a threat of violence violate everyone’s natural right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Imagine

This one still gives me chills. It touches on a visceral emotion that all humans share, namely the instinct to defend oneself and ones loved ones from actual (not hypothetical) aggression. We know how we (Americans) would react… why is it so hard to understand that others respond the same way?

 

Ron Paul, March 11, 2009

“Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.”
__
Imagine!: speech written & given by Ron Paul

CREDITS:
Ron Paul for the speech
Voice & Music: Jeremy Hoop
Video animation: Nicholas Bozman & MysteryBox. http://mysterybox.us

Authority

If you were to visit a friend’s house and they asked you to take your shoes off before entering, or requested you leave your wet umbrella outside, would you comply? If you entered a business and they asked you to not play loud music or to wear shoes, would you comply? I think the answer virtually anyone would give in these scenarios is “yes”. Now consider this: if any of the people from the prior examples entered our home and requested the exact same things would we not, after staring at them quizzically, tell them to go fly a kite? Why the difference? Why in the former examples are the requests completely reasonable but in the latter they strike each of us as, if not entirely nuts, at least fairly rude? The difference is authority. Authority over a resource is an inherent right flowing from its legitimate ownership. We honor the request of our friend or proprietor because we recognize their ownership as legitimate. We desire the same respect of our authority and so we conform our behavior to a system where in order to receive such respect, we must give it as well. We are free to refuse the request but it is understood that necessitates exiting from that sphere of authority (ownership).

When someone connected to the state (i.e. government) is said to be an “authority” over us there is a rather sinister implication here: everything, even our very selves, is owned by the state. If the state did not truly own all, then one could at least safely retreat to their home and not fear an invasion by state agents. But alas that is not the case. Call us what you will; serfs, slaves, inmates – they are all treated the same by their owner. In every case of “authority agent” violence toward a citizen, the “respect authority” crowd offers the perennial excuse that if the victim had simply followed the orders of the agent, then their fate (often death) could have been avoided. It is the victim’s fault for not recognizing that they are not free men and that they have an obligation at all times to assume a supplicating prostrate pose if so requested. The slightest deviation from this principal is worthy of a death sentence.

The land of the free indeed: on some streets you can be stopped and searched for no reason whatsoever, you can be pulled over and have your car searched and all electronic devices seized if you happen to be within 100 miles of the US border (that includes the coasts) – no warrant necessary,  the contents of your home are subject to search and seizure on the mere suspicion of a whole litany of victimless “crimes” – or none at all if they get the address wrong, any “substantial” amount of cash is subject to confiscation for no reason whatsoever if it happens to be in your car if you get pulled over. These are experiences of livestock, not free people. Indeed, no one would regard it as unusual at all if a farmer treated his animals this way.

But even the farmer will treat his livestock better than the state treats us. If his animals misbehave he doesn’t just pull out a gun and shoot them. He doesn’t shove them to the ground and beat them into submission. Even if you believe we must give up some (or all) of our rights in order to have safety and “order” there should still be respect for the concept of proportionality. That is, if someone punches a cop, he can punch back, if someone shoots at a cop, he can shoot back. It does not mean a cop gets to shoot pets or people because they “might” pose a threat. If they can’t adequately evaluate risk, then they should find another profession; no one is drafting people into policing. Proportionality does not mean if someone is pulled over for not having their physical driver’s license on them they should end up dead from 7 bullets.  Instead send a ticket to the car’s owner (easily looked up by the license plate). It does not mean if a student refuses their teacher’s instruction they should be slammed to the floor and thrown across the room.  Instead drag the recalcitrant student’s chair into the hallway and close the door.

Even if one accepts the notion that we are but mere guests on the state’s plantation, it is doubtful such a person would accept having a bat swung against their skull as an appropriate response for refusing to wear shoes at a McDonalds. So if you are inclined to feel guilty about not supporting every single police action against the citizenry, remember, it is ok respect their authority if you choose to do so while still not respecting the disproportionate means they sometimes use. The “authorities” should never escalate non-violent encounters into violent ones merely because they are too shortsighted to find any other means to their ends.

Apple TV 4th generation Review (it sucks)

I’ve been an Apple user for over 30 years. I’m on one of those “early adopters” who enjoys playing with the latest and greatest from Apple. The 4th generation Apple TV is the first product I have ever hated. It is just such a huge let down in so many ways from the 3rd generation (and prior) Apple TV.

1) No keyboard support? What on earth were they thinking? And to rub a little more salt in the wound, the new virtual keyboard layout is much more tedious and slower to use… no longer can you go up and down and side to side to quickly get to characters, now you can only go side to side. Better hope your passwords doesn’t have any “z” and “a” combinations

2)The touchpad remote is nice, but did they have to _remove_ button navigation. I thought the + and – would be a substitute for up/down scrolling. No. Apparently it is for volume? But volume of what? It does nothing on my unit. Apparently Apple never considered those of us hosting our our iTunes library with literally hundreds of movies. No longer can you simply hold the “down” or “up” portion of the remote and let it scroll down (even that was not the best of navigation methods)… no now you must sit there and constantly ‘swipe swipe swipe swipe” with your finger. I’m sorry that gets very tiring after more than few seconds… try doing that for 30 seconds and you’ll see what I mean. Going to get carpal tunnel in my fingers here

3) What was the point of setting up the device with my phone? It didn’t get my password so I have to constantly enter it over and over and over again. Please, authenticate ONCE to be sure it is me and then STORE the password. It’s a TV device. Security concerns are minimal, no one is breaking into my house to buy movies on my Apple TV.

4) Ok so the “channels” in the prior Apple TV was getting out of hand, but what do they replace it with? Nothing at all. Now you get to go to to the “app store” and try to remember and then search for all the channels you used to frequent (“was that History or H2? I don’t remember).

5) This is not directly targeted at this device but at Apple in general with their TV system. Why oh why can you not build a secure database of every username/password and authentication combo for all the third party channels and retain that information so when we set up a new device it is linked to our AppleID and automatically gets applied to the new unit. It seems the Apple keychain would be be a natural place to store such information. Nothing I enjoy more than looking up passwords to a multitude of different accounts and then going through this laborious back and forth of “go to your computer and type in this code, then go back to this device and type in the code you got”

6) With my previous Apple TV (3rd gen) I had an issue with both an Onkyo receiver and my current Yamaha RX-A3020 where the Apple TV will not sync to the receiver when it reboots or if you switch the receiver on, and then turn on the Apple TV, so I have to switch to something else, let it sync then switch back. But at least once that was done it stayed synced. I was hopeful this issue might have been resolved with the new unit. Nope, now its even worse. Now it just randomly goes out when I’m in non-Video mode (i.e. changing settings, or simply scrolling around). There is no rhyme or reason, just blanks out and the receiver says “no signal” Unfortunately this is one of those unsolvable dilemma as everyone blames everyone else. Apple will surely blame Yamaha, Yamaha will blame Apple or Epson (my projector) and so on. Nobody’s fault, yet I can’t consistently use this stupid device now because of all this HDCP content anti-piracy garbage. yes, better than a million be inconvenienced then for one person to copy some movie. And no, it’s not the HDMI cable, I have the highest quality cables money can buy and I do not have this issue with _any_ other device, only Apple TV (not even an Amazon Fire).

7) When watching TV shows I have ripped myself you have to watch all the way to the end of the credits in order for the “not watched” blue dot to go away and you’re stuck with the “half watched” button. If you stop watching as the credits roll it still thinks it is ‘unwatched” and you must manually change it by first changing it fully unwatched then to fully watched. Sigh. And then even when you do that it remains on the list if you are in “unwatched” list mode. With the Apple TV 3 if you stopped watching at credits it assumed you were done and the dot was gone and it was removed from the list. Minor annoyance but it is these minor things that additively make a UI great vs just serviceable.

So I paid $199 to upgrade a device that is even buggier than the last model, has fewer features, is slower and more tedious to navigate and offers not a single UI improvement over the prior version – not even folders/groups to put similar “channels” in.

It’s not like we’ve achieved the pinnacle of the state of the art and there are no real improvements to be made with such devices. There are. There are plenty. But the fact that Apple achieved not a single UI improvement (their traditional hallmark) is perplexing and disappointing indeed. Is this the beginning of the end that marks their slow descent into ‘meh’ design?