Defending the Indefensible

Posted on December 19, 2011 by ehurst

I reiterate: Not only can we not stop this train wreck, but we sin if we try.
I’m not choking with rage because I don’t have any vested interests. There is the usual debate over just what the NDAA 2012 means. There are some who believe it’s not quite as drastic as the alarmists claim. Nor would I dishonestly paint them as defenders and apologists of this evil government over the US. That there is a debate hardly surprises me.
Those who wrote this bill intended it would be ambiguous. If there are folks out there who do not by now understand the bulk of Congress is utterly corrupt and evil, there is nothing I can do to enlighten them. We can no longer afford to write this off as simply being misguided, when so many of them openly profess a hatred for a certain group of people, whom they then define in such a way it describes most ordinary American citizens. They take themselves too seriously, and are furious that anyone would complain at their decisions for us. Granted, they are about as theatrical as any other group of public liars, but if you haven’t seen the visceral anger in their statements about things, you just can’t grasp what’s going on up there.
I was around and conscious when the PATRIOT Act was passed, and I recall a similar debate then. The defenders insisted the FBI needed the power to go after terrorists, and it would not be used any other way. Guess what? It has been used almost entirely against everything except terrorism. The PATRIOT Act has been used against some of the most petty “crimes” and if you could be around to hear the petty hatred and contempt expressed by those who abused this power, you would understand. It is not a lie to say the federal government of the US, broadly speaking, considers her citizens the enemy.
The wording of the NDAA is confusing enough to cause a vigorous debate, with competent lawyers arguing both sides. Let’s get one thing straight: If the President and his minions decide they want to execute any US citizen without trial, they’ll find a way to justify it. They’ve already done that. How hard is it to imagine they would do something less shocking? Arrest without a warrant, indefinite detention in secrecy and torture of American citizens? They’ve been doing that already. You could know about that if you were interested.
To imagine the ambiguities of the NDAA is not intentional is intellectual dishonesty. To imagine it won’t be used as the alarmists suggest shows you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Have your say, by all means, while you still can. That freedom, particularly here on the Internet, is also now officially placed under presidential whim by the NDAA. But take you seriously? Your name is mud.
The rest of us can see the handwriting on the wall, and we don’t need Daniel the Prophet to translate for us. The US is now under martial law. The only limiting factor is having sufficient troops to conduct mass arrests. There aren’t even enough to grab those who honestly and seriously intend to resist, who are armed and ready to spill blood. As a matter of tactics alone, I suspect the Internet itself will be hit first, so that folks like you and I will not have access to the kind of honest reporting we often get from alternative sources on the Internet. The MSM Lapdog Press has shown themselves reliable in silence about such things, so when the mass arrests come, the surprise factor would be gone if the regular sources aren’t shut down.
This business of fighting terror has become the latest excuse for the same old tyranny which has been around for at least a century. I can remember when the favorite enemy was communism. God still pukes at the horrors inflicted in the name of stopping communism.
I find it hard to take seriously anyone who at this point want to quibble about the meaning of detention until hostilities are declared ended. The NDAA does say this military detention targets those who support al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and does say such supporters can only be detained until the end to hostilities is declared. Yes, the President could declare them ended any day now. How likely is that? The Taliban exist only because we funded them in the 1970s when the USSR was in Afghanistan. We didn’t call them Taliban then, but it’s the same people doing the same thing against our people. We made their organization possible. And as for al-Qaeda? I can’t take seriously anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that is wholly created and sustained right now by the CIA and allied security agencies. Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent to the end, a hired bogey man waved at us for years to justify all this police state crap. If you think al-Qaeda is real, as described by official government pronouncements, you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. You’re too stupid to talk.
Such people are part of the controlled opposition. You’ll be fine when the arrests begin. They may eventually come for you later, but at first you’ll be safe. Meanwhile, God is not fooled and not amused. The US government is under God’s wrath right now, and any support you offer offends all of Heaven. It won’t matter if you think there are bright spots of honor with men like Ron Paul; the system itself is damned. Cling to it at your peril.
I don’t claim any particular authority. All I’m doing is putting in words the irresistible move of God in my soul. If I am mistaken about what some of that movement means, there is still the requirement you, too, hear His voice for yourself. Don’t get the same answers? You are wrong only if you aren’t asking. But I don’t have to put up with what sounds to me like lies, and I don’t have to take you seriously, and I don’t have to be nice to you when I write about the things which matter to me.
God is Truth, and He makes His own path in the minds of men.
Addenda: One of the prime sponsors of the NDAA as written is Lindsey Graham. He agrees with the alarmists on what it means:

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.”

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Not Quite the Apocalypse

Posted on December 18, 2011 by ehurst

We are in deep doo-doo, and it will get worse, but it’s not the End of the World.
Having once tasted civilization, humans are loathe to go back to something less. Granted, most of humanity haven’t seen that “something less” in the fullest sense, but every time they get a taste of it via psychopaths and predators, they realize it’s no fun. People tend to be self-organizing, and some societies more so than others. Having lived in Europe, I can tell you the Dutch would recreate a very secular civilization all by themselves, and the Germans would try to impose theirs on the rest of the world out of self-preservation. This has nothing to do with their governments, but the habits of the people.
America has suffered much from destructive major social influences. As the economy collapses further, we rightly expect more people to become predators. It will be bad enough to require vigilante law, and pretty harsh at that. The official government in most contexts will come apart. Too many government officials are themselves of the predator mindset, the kind of folks who become predators when you turn them out. That’s how they got into government service in the first place. We’ve had really bad government for a long time, and only the social structure and the luck of timing in economics kept it working. We won’t do as well as the Dutch, Germans, or even the French or Italians. The Greeks will be very different from us, so I’m not sure “better or worse” is a useful label. That’s simply my impression from having dealt with the people, but Americans really suck at this kind of thing because the influence of TV, movies, other popular entertainments, and our utterly senseless education system.
America is the world’s greatest consumer of mind-bending drugs, both legal and illegal — that should explain a lot.
That there is a global predator class steering much of our decline is simply too obvious to pretend it’s a mere conspiracy theory. The conspiracy is real. I seriously doubt it’s run by folks approaching omnipotence and/or omniscience, even in the relative sense. They aren’t any smarter than the most intelligent folks outside their circle, and their servants simply don’t understand.
What I’m really saying here is I claim to see things they can’t or refuse to see, and whether I am any smarter is hardly the issue. I’m banking on an extrapolation — by following the advice of a bunch of folks who wrote a collection of ancient literature we call the Bible, I’ve had a really good success at what they seem to consider important. I’ve followed the advice of some other folks who seemed to understand those ancient writers in arriving at some of these conclusions, and as I attempt to explain the broader world around me, that ancient wisdom seems to hold up well. Their claim to speak for the Creator and Master of the Universe seems to hold up, too. So I’m using my limited intelligence to make sense of what they say I should expect, and I’m sitting here muttering about it to anyone who will listen.
And I say these Illuminati are chasing something which they can’t obtain. They have tremendous influence, and most of them are truly brilliant, but I think their assumptions are badly broken. The problem I see is, too many of those who claim to share my reliance on the Bible share too many assumptions offered by the Illuminati, either as propaganda, or as instruction.
I agree with Vox we are actually in a hidden deflationary spiral. Most of what we call money which we count, and which we measure as available to be used as “money supply,” is credit in virtual space. Credit is simply the willingness of someone to let you borrow on the promise to repay with interest. That willingness is fading fast. This portion of the money supply is about to collapse, and we will end up with a far smaller money supply. A few folks get this, and most of them are the predators trying to keep you from understanding it. They want to trap a lot of people in the system they are about to crash on purpose, because your trust in that system keeps available the things imaginary money can buy, and they plan to buy a lot of that right before they pull the trigger.
That’s the reason for all these hurried fraudulent repossessions and foreclosures. Those things are real property. The real problem is whether the system by which ownership can be enforced will hold up. It’s not just law, but a social contract, a common assumption we all have to abide by certain limits. There are limits to what the current system can enforce against a mass population no longer supporting the rules. This is the part I doubt any group of Illuminati can calculate, and certainly not their vast army of servants. That the vast army of banking elite here seems too deeply invested in managing the coming chaos convinces me they aren’t the Illuminati themselves, who would surely have a better plan.
If not, then the Illuminati are a lot more fragile than I thought. Frankly, I think they plan on getting most of humanity to kill each other. This is far easier than most folks imagine, but at the same time, actually quite hard to accomplish. That is, it’s not hard to get us into war, but actually killing large numbers all at once is not that easy. Most of the previous mass slaughters can’t be repeated in the current situation.
TPTB didn’t do a good job of squelching the 2nd Amendment, and there was too much money to be made in selling small arms and ammunition. Mark this up as much to sheer incompetence of the servants (we were never supposed to find out about “Fast-n-Furious” nor see through it) as to miscalculating the peasant resolve and ingenuity. So instead we’ve seen a very fast development of a new class of weaponry. But then, the scandalous profit-taking of the defense industry has crippled that, too. Lots of our fancy military toys simply don’t work. We are left with the assurance initial attacks by the government forces will be devastatingly hideous, then the equipment will come apart and the peasants will start winning. You’ll have to figure in the lack of commitment from the government troops, because very few of the police types are real heroes any more, and those who are will realize it’s all wrong and quit. It’s the military and portions of the federal LEOs which are the real threat. The system draws those with weak or no morals, and makes them worse. But they are vastly outnumbered, and for every current combat seasoned troop in uniform, there’s at least ten civilians with similar experience, and perhaps much better moral resolve.
So here in the US, it could become a real mess compared to the rest of the world. On the other hand, even the rebel patriot types don’t know whether they will do anything when it comes down to it. There is a vast potential which is simply unknown and unknowable. However, it is wholly improbable any actual hostilities would be that wide spread. There are flash points you can probably estimate with some research, but history shows that’s how things happen. Most Americans will not be involved in any bloodshed, and it’s likely most won’t even have a direct observation of any.
But I rather expect the current federal government will dissolve. That’s because it simply cannot keep working, and the people running it have shown a spiteful resolve to keep it going on its current path. They are the ignorant servants of the Illuminati, for the most part. Watch for who disappears when it starts coming apart, though. I’m half expecting the system will break rather suddenly, but it won’t be for awhile yet. These idiots are going to push too far at some point, and I find Americans far more tolerant than most of the alternate or underground press. That has to do with the social psychology of activism, and how folks who make the most noise are not those who make the decisions in a revolution.
I’m quite certain the identity of the folks who actually lead the way will surprise most of those posting on the alternative sites today. I can’t predict what will fill the void when the current system comes apart. There are too many really fine heroes hidden out there, and too many really smart predators, as well. It will also take longer than most of those commentators expect, but will arise from something none of us can predict. I seriously doubt anyone will take an interest in what I call God’s Laws or His requirements for government and social structure.
Nor would I expect the Illuminati to have this all mapped out accurately. I doubt they’ll go away, but their plans will be shot down, and it will be a long time before they get anything started again. And, I believe all this crap will come about while I’m alive.

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Program Notes: CentOS Laptop Coming

Posted on December 17, 2011 by ehurst

That is, if I can get this inherited machine working.
Traded for a Dell Latitude D620. A decent system, but the power jack appears to be disconnected inside. Works okay if the battery is charged up, but none of my Dell bricks are recognized, so the thing won’t charge itself.
I’ve only found instructions on the Net for fixing generic power jacks, but I believe Dell has some added wires. I also some limited instructions for dismantling this particular laptop. What I need is some fairly detailed guidance fixing this particular problem, or at least how to diagnose it better. There’s no way I can afford to send it to a shop, and I’m not real handy on taking laptops apart. About the only other option would be find a docking station cheaply.
Anyone out there willing and able to help me with this?
Update: I got someone competent to agree to look at it for free.
Update 2: Aborted. The Latitude will be unavailable. Making a substitution.

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Dodging That Slice

Posted on December 17, 2011 by ehurst

No matter where you live in this world, our insane SOPA and PIPA legislation is going to affect you.

That is, unless you have no dealings or contact with any American residents — in which case, you would not be reading this. Having observed politics most of my conscious existence, I feel certain these two abominations (eventually combined as one) will be passed into law before Christmas, or soon thereafter. The primary thrust of these two bills is to grant the MAFIAA (Music and Film Industry Association of America, a combination of the execrable MPAA and RIAA) more power to shut down anything they don’t like. Are you prepared to imagine they will exercise any scintilla of ethics in the use of such power? At their behest half the stuff on the Internet will disappear. At the same time, the protection of copyrighted material becomes the government’s excuse to persecute anything the arrogant officials dislike.

The question is not, “How can we stop or change this?” I am utterly certain we are past that point. The only variations at now are scripted far, far above the level of our concerns as users. In terms of the Net users, it’s the second edge of the same blade on the sword of state coercion. The first edge was the imposition of martial law, as noted in the posts of the past couple of days here. The question, then, is what can we do to dodge the swinging of that sword, which will surely come all too soon in our direction?

It depends on why you are connected to the Internet. What does it matter to you? For me, being the unrepentant loudmouth on the topics which interest me, it’s about communication and publication.

I always keep at least one off-shore email account. Right now, I have one in Germany (GMX.net) and one in Norway (mail.opera.com). Both happen to permit using regular mail clients as a full-bodied mail service, but when you run Windows, that’s unwise. Windows users should generally avoid downloading email directly to their systems. So in the case of GMX, it means knowing enough German to use the menus and such. There are lots of free webmail services all over the world, and in many languages. I’m pretty sure the Great Firewall of America (GFoA) will have numerous holes in it, and the proliferation of domains will keep things real.

For blogging, there are numerous options for me. Aside from the big ones we all know, there are several lesser known operations. Again, Opera in Norway hosts free blogs at My Opera. This is one of those community-oriented sites, where other users of the service are by default free to peruse and comment on your blog. There are others of varying fame, some listed here by links:

My Blogsite
Aeonity
Thoughts
SOS
Blogigo
Blogtext
Xanga

If you can tolerate something more primitive, but with vigorous resistance to take-down demands, you could try this rather versatile free site: Free Conversant. I used it once, but that was before I knew enough about CSS to get what I wanted from it. While it can be used as a blog, it’s basic design is more of a conversation site, almost a forum.

A technical note: From what I know of the DNS blocking planned for the GFoA, it’s much harder to block Americans from visiting your site if you are registered under some other domain as a subdomain. If you’ll notice the URLs for some of the blogs on these sites, the only personalization is adding your site nickname as part of a longer domain name. That comes as either a prefix, as here at WordPress, or as a subdomain under it at other sites — somesite.com/yoursite/ is common. With some, having multiple accounts is no problem, either, so you can keep the GFoA administrators guessing. Using your own registered domain name makes you an easier target for GFoA blocking. Instead, focus on keeping your personal brand name(s) (mine are “Kiln of the Soul” or “soulkiln” and “jehurst”) as part of the longer domain name so that your friends and readers can find you wherever you move.

For more fully developed websites, it’s a lot more work. There are hundreds of free hosting plans around the planet, with widely varying degrees of freedom for you as user to set up what you really want. The ease of use varies, as well. If it really matters, you’ll either have to learn webmastering, or get an associate who can do it for you. If showing up in the search engines matters to you, it’s not so much you need to learn SEO (search engine optimization) techniques — I don’t use them at all — but simply choosing a domain which gets indexed. Some of those obscure services see precious little webcrawling.

Another concern is backing up your material. For myself, there is plenty of stuff I can generate and regenerate in just an hour or so, from scratch. This is stuff written into my character, as it were. But to prevent having to do too much work, my static site — Kiln of the Soul (site is gone as of 2020) — is fully backed up. That is, I keep multiple copies of the whole thing; I even have one prepped for burning to a CD, complete with an autorun utility. It would be too easy to simply add excessive junk, but not everything I write is that critical to whatever I regard as my personal legacy. But the basic outline of what I consider important is all ready to upload, complete with landing page and all. I keep it all synchronized on all my backups, and follow the KISS principle. My basic material is all text; nothing dynamic, no JScript, no graphics, just simple XHTML pages. The nature of my work is textual in the first place, so your mileage will vary.

I’m not vain enough to imagine I have, or ever will have, any great following. Everything I have can be quickly reduced to plain text, just like we used to see in days of olde with electronic bulletin boards and slow dialup connections. It’s not simply removing the HTML tags, but replicating the markup according to some recognized standard which has been around for quite some time. If there were no readers at all, I’m not sure I would simply disappear from the Net. I’d keep at it until it was simply not possible within my skills and resources. There is little reference to any market, but the burning urge within.

Others would have to adjust their own plans based on what they imagine is the justification for it. I would have no trouble taking up one of those free Unix shell accounts wherever they are available in the world and producing a plain text blog. Can you imagine the URL — some-weird-place.net/soulkiln/blog.txt — for that? It may come to that someday all too soon.

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Inventory

Posted on December 16, 2011 by ehurst

Today’s a good day to consider what is before us.

As noted yesterday here, martial law is now officially the law of the land. I still believe it will take awhile for things to gear up. However, crushing dissent has already begun in earnest against various mandated government orthodoxies, as noted in the other post yesterday.

At various times I have stated some basic principles of operation here.

1. I can’t shut up. In order to be me, there is a fundamental requirement to write and publish. This and other places on the Net fulfill that necessity for me.

2. I’m a pacifist. I refuse to get involved in fighting and actively resisting the police state. Indeed, I refuse even to protest publicly.

3. That’s because I am utterly certain God has ordained this nastiness as punishment for our gross national sins. (It has nothing to do with grace, Jesus on the Cross, or any of that other stuff; it’s strictly a matter of His Laws.) So any form of active resistance is a sin.

4. Flight is not a sin. If you can get out of Dodge, get out. If you can only flee to some isolated area about which no one else cares much, that may be sufficient. Part of what I am doing in terms of physical fitness is keeping an eye on the necessity of playing cat-n-mouse. I openly encourage and profess my own plans for avoiding arrest under this new system.

5. There is some room to maneuver. Because I’m not a significant threat, and there are only so many badge-bearing thugs against a really huge number of folks who are easily more offensive to the system, they’ll probably not come after me, or people like me, anytime soon. I don’t see any evidence of gearing up right away for a mass movement to crush dissent just yet. Stuff like that inevitably leaks out. Our only real problem is false leaks which promote senseless behavior.

To my advantage is the complete lack of need to hide or keep private any of my grouching and mutterings. There are no secrets here. I may use plenty of sarcasm and humor, but the only thing I can’t let hang out there in plain sight is the Truth itself, since by its nature it must be presented in parabolic and symbolic terms. Even then, I often struggle mightily to make it as obvious as my talents allow.

But I suppose at some point it will become pretty inconvenient to keep mouthing off here on this blog. Simultaneous with the imposition of martial law and the police state in meat space, we have at least two serious proposals for crimping things here in virtual space. All in the name of protecting copyright, you understand. It’s altogether possible WordPress and other free blog space providers will be forced to take action to shut down certain types of dissent. I’m expecting the rise of popularity for more “bullet proof” services in the near future. If that fails, I’ll have to move my publication to something more obscure.

Given what amuses me, it also raises again the question of operating systems and computer software. I have noted in the past the only real advantage of using Linux or other Open Source is how much control the user has. That control is limited if the user doesn’t write code, but you don’t have to worry about secret back doors and commercial exploitation. Windows has those doors wide open, but has certainly improved on resisting outright criminal exploitation and basic system stability. So I may end up having to consider and discuss, and act on, such things in detail sometime soon.

This, in the context of considering my audience. When I write about computer stuff, I get tons of traffic from people who seldom bother to interact. They matter to me, in the sense I get the chance to help someone do something they couldn’t otherwise. For those who come here because they actually like my writing in general, these few folks are of a sort who are already fairly savvy about life in general. At least, they have been asking the right questions long before they happened upon this blog. If I have to “go underground” with those things about which I simply cannot shut up, you’ll probably know where to find me, provided you have leisure to spare much effort on such things. If I stop posting here, you already know how to get hold of me to find out what’s up. If you don’t, simply email me at the address on my resume (gone now) and I’ll provide a half-dozen email addresses, etc.

But we’ve got some time. Frankly, I expect the evil doers will run out of resources before they get to me. That doesn’t mean I won’t take some heat, but I believe I’m prepared for that. Meanwhile, I still believe in the God who made and rules the universe, and I’m sure He has plans incomprehensible to us all. I am aware of that, even as I profess no particular ideas what that would mean for me specifically for this discussion.

We can still get some popcorn and put up our feet.

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For My Next Adventure… (Updated)

Posted on December 15, 2011 by ehurst

I’m getting older, but I’m not yet old enough to have lost all wanderlust.
Sadly, my next adventure could be some form of custody. Yes, there is much hyperbole there. I rather expect I would have some form of lead time by virtue of being so insignificant on the scale of things. There are several classes of dissenting voices and I don’t rate up there with the big whistleblowers. And since I’ve written so little on Climategate or Climategate 2.0, it seems I’ll be out of the loop on this battle. Why would I write about something so painfully obvious a fraud as AGW?
Indeed, I’m really not much of whistleblower at all. I’m just a muttering grouch crouching at the end of a dark country road out in flyover country. There was a time I was under surveillance, but that died not too long after it began. It’s vaguely possible someone is still checking my blogs, and I’m quite sure my email is being read, but so is yours. I doubt it’s human eyes reading my routine personal traffic, and I really don’t send any important stuff. Okay, it’s important to me and my radical religion, but I have to wonder if they even have a clue what it’s about.
But just in case, here goes: Should I cease posting for, say, three days straight, chances are I have no Net access. You can provide your own guess why that might be, but Cox Cable has an excellent record, and there is lots of free wifi just a bike ride away from here. If my laptop dies, there are two other systems in this house, and several neighbors who would gladly let me use theirs for something important. If it’s some sort of disaster, it would make the news. Central Oklahoma is your clue there. I suppose if someone nuked Tinker AFB, it would affect my life, being only five miles away. So if I stop posting and you can’t find anything obvious, it’s most likely because something unexpected has separated me from the Net.
That could range between illness and death on the one hand. I’ve given my wife all my passwords, but she’s shy and not a writer. I’ll have to compose some standard cut-n-paste for her, I suppose. On the other hand, in the outside chance I’m actually arrested or harmed by authorities, I should expect they’ll grab a bunch more before me, and I’ll have a chance to announce something first.
Then again, I suspect the folks who bother reading my stuff with any regularity are pretty good candidates for such things in their own right. You’ll notice TallBloke is in the UK and his stuff was grabbed on a US warrant, so you judge for yourself what the risks are for associating with me.
I do plan on having at least one more big adventure in my life, but I rather expect I’ll get to post some about it here before it gets too complicated.
Update: Apparently this raid on TallBloke’s home and computers was the result of someone who posted a link in a comment on his blog. That link was to the copies of the second batch of emails which were being leaked by whomever got them. That’s the cache of emails the IPCC folks had tried to keep anyone from seeing, which emails are a “smoking gun” on the fraudulent “science” of Climate Warming. If you know anything at all about Climategate 1.0 and 2.0, you are probably aware of some of this. It also appears this whole incident with TallBloke is being picked up on a great many blogs. Perhaps if enough of us get involved with just a mention of this, it could help to counter-balance evil oppression.
Yeah, I called it that. More, it’s a solid violation of God’s Laws. So it’s all a very big moral failure.

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Welcome to Martial Law

Posted on December 15, 2011 by ehurst

I rather like the definition of Martial Law offered at Wikipedia.
Each of the two houses of Congress have passed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. For the House, it was HR 1540, and in the Senate it was S 1867. Since they are not identical, there will be a conference between committees from each house to negotiate until they agree to the letter. Then each house will be required to vote on the amended version. Then it goes to the President for signature into law.
The House has passed their committee version as of yesterday, and the Senate is expected to do the same today.
Despite all the rhetoric reported in the mainstream press, it is highly likely the president will sign it. What he claims was a hindrance was not the existence of the provision allowing the military to arrest any human on the planet; the White House wrote that provision. Rather, the President is in a huff because the current versions both require the military to arrest folks for certain things, rather than giving the President, as Commander in Chief of the US military forces, the discretion to decide if he wants to make that arrest.
But the point is the military having arrest powers regardless of location or any other limiting factors. This is the definition of Martial Law. I’m willing to bet this new power won’t be used right away, at least not on any large scale. It’s meant to be there, hanging over our heads as a threat. But at some point, it most certainly will be used.
Nobody who’s been paying attention is surprised, only that it took this long to become the law of the land. They’ve been conducting such arrests for quite some time one a small scale. All it takes is the declaration some person is an enemy, an illegal combatant. Seeing they actually rather enjoy torturing people, they’ve refrained from using the label “traitor,” which would virtually require quick execution. Now they have full authorization to use troops for any combative purpose, anytime, against even their fellow citizens.
It’s here.
Update: As expected, the Senate passed their version on the day this was posted. It remains yet for the President to sign. Please note there is no complaint about codifying military authority to arrest civilians and detain them indefinitely without charge, trial or counsel. What the House and Senate agreed to do was allow the President to waive the requirement for detaining US civilians, and allow him to choose. That was his only complaint.

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Just a Few

Posted on December 14, 2011 by ehurst

People do change.
But very few of them change at any given time, and seldom do they change very much. Radical turn-arounds are quite rare. Human behavior remains subject to much manipulation, but human nature itself is burned in.
This is why we spend so much time rattling around in Social Studies with no useful results. Too much of the effort is aimed at “what should be.” Even when you get someone who is careful about their methodology, the delusion of what-should-be taints the research and results. That in itself tends to prove my point here.
When we content ourselves to observing what is, and what we who understand could gain from it, the whole game of studying human nature changes. We need not be predatory, but recognize the limits of what any single force can accomplish.
While I often poke at the Victorian Period for much of what’s wrong with the West today, it’s really not that simple. There were several leading influences which made it possible for Vicky to mess things up so grandly. Besides, she was only the figurehead we all blame, and not really that influential in the cultural shift which takes her name. But even more important is recognizing the evangelists of Victorianism were simply preying on a well established human trait. They provided a fully developed fantasy which precisely met the times, and took advantage of basic human stupidity. Try as we might, so very much of what we see in the West today is either Victorian or a highly selective reaction to it.
My obscure vision of what ought-to-be regarding the Laws of God is frankly not going to garner much interest, even with those who believe they are seeking the truth. I’m not willing to manipulate and take advantage of mass human idiocy. However, I’m quite eager to point out that idiocy. I find the Laws a very handy explanation for it, a fair and accurate characterization. So I’m not a reformer, not a prophet to the masses. My emphasis is offering truth, not implementing it as some benevolent dictator.
That’s because the mission is not fixing things, but making sure no one has any excuse when they come to stand for the Final Judgment, whatever you may imagine that to be. My whole assumption is fixing is simply not possible. I’m just offering a means to making it all tolerable until it’s over.

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Fraudulent Use of My Personal Info

Posted on December 13, 2011 by ehurst

I’m trying to imagine why, but someone seems to have lifted my personal contact details and posted a bogus resume on several job websites, such as Monster. First, I got a bunch of notices from the websites. I’ve complained to them, and asked the accounts be removed. Second, I’ve gotten several emails offering jobs for which I am not at all qualified or interested: Electrical Engineer, banking management, sales, etc.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’d sooner become a crack whore before I would work in sales. Yes, I’ve already done sales, and I feel like beating senseless anyone who dares suggest I do it again. This, while being a complete pacifist.
As I said, I really can’t imagine what sort of prank this was supposed to be. It’s an annoyance, and perhaps a minor embarrassment, but otherwise it seems utterly senseless.

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Sheep, Sheep Dogs and Shepherds

Posted on December 13, 2011 by ehurst

Human excellence is self-selecting.
Sheep don’t think of themselves as sheep. They consider themselves people, all different, all special. Sheep dogs think in terms of what they do, which is face down the threats. They aren’t likely to intervene much if the sheep kill each other, though a particularly bright dog will stop one from harming others. Each incident has its own goal; they don’t think in terms of security as a whole. The shepherd thinks in terms of the greater welfare of the flock and the reason he bothers even having sheep. We can argue whether this or that one isn’t exactly a member of the flock, who qualifies as sheep dogs and shepherds, but the basic principle is well understood.
Sometimes the only difference is context.
A distinction I implied in yesterday’s post was the excellence of realizing we need not see human aspirations in terms of goals and objectives, but in terms of the excellence of being committed to human welfare. Most of the world might think they understand that, but their lives prove otherwise.
When it comes to a lot of human activities and concerns, I’m content to wear the woolly cowl. Sure, I understand security, but I’m not quite that instinctive about responding to individual threats in most contexts. I’m too slow; I want to think about it. It made me hate being a Military Policeman, because I was always thinking like a Provost Marshal or commander. I wasn’t qualified, largely because the military doesn’t want real commanders, but I really didn’t want that responsibility in the first place.
I wanted to be everyone’s favorite uncle, for lack of a better symbol. I wanted to be there at some distance, but always ready and available to carry people through those times when they needed some distance from the daily grind. I am not all that useful until folks are conscious of that need for some distance. Now that I’m older, it’s more like grandpa, literally and figuratively.
Even when I want to be among the flock, I can’t do it. I’m not interested in eating grass, not interested in rutting and bumping heads with the dominant rams, and not frightened by everything that moves. I can’t fake it.
But whether I like it or not, I’m stuck as a shepherd in many ways. It’s pretty lonely. Most of the time the sheep have no clue what I’m going on about, nor could they be made to care. The sheep dogs keep looking for someone to tell them what to do, or they get restless. I’m not always sure I want to tell them what to do. Sometimes I feel like even the other shepherds don’t get what I’m saying. So I’ve been out hiking away from it all, letting someone else herd the sheep.
The sense of not having to worry about anything is refreshing, but I keep running into the odd sheep here and there, lost, abandoned, forgotten. The instincts just won’t die. But the other shepherds won’t let me work with them, let me share in the labor because they don’t trust me with their flocks. Feels like I’m in the wrong country, but it’s that way wherever I’ve traveled, as it were. I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this, but I still have my own staff, and something of a rod. I have my own kind of sling and stones, which I can’t keep myself from drawing out when I see a predator.
Maybe I’m simply on the wrong planet.

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