Election 2016 What We Learned Part 1

My first impression when I saw Trump winning was that “we are so fucked”. And we are. But here are a few notes on the things that we learned, or that I learned.

1. Polling science is bullshit. If they have not figured out the Bradley Effect by now, they never will.

2. Polling may have thrown the election to Trump because some people voted for third parties who might have voted differently if they had only known the real situation.

3. Women and Hispanics did not support Hillary.

4. There is no reason to think that a woman candidate can be elected president.

5. Trump's support is not just uneducated white men. He could not have done what he did without considerable support from women and minorities.

6. Washington thought they could fuck the middle class with impunity, and the middle class fucked back.

7. The Democrats ran a Washington insider in a year when Americans were pissed off at being impoverished.

8. America has voted what it thinks about immigration, Globalization, fucking the middle class to make money for the rich, and LGBT rights.

9. By fucking up on this election, we lose the supreme court for the rest of our lives, and we may very well lose abortion rights. We chose these positions, and the country voted, and we lost.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for Hillary ?

In our first ever presidential election since Global Wahrman came into existence, we have decided to hold our nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. Maybe.

Its true that HRC stands for so many things I despise, and that there would be no hope under an HRC administration of things getting better. Surely if you wanted an example of what the word "corporate whore" means, one should look no further than Ms. Clinton.  And if you want to see Globalization continue to crush Americans in order to give more money to the rich, HRC is your candidate.  She hates unions, she hates the poor, she hates the working classes.  

She is pretty much despicable in every possible way.

But we have the following reasons for voting for her and ultimately they have won out.

1. Bernie Sanders, who I adore, whether or not he would have made a good president, is working for her and has asked his supporters to vote for her, so in deference to him, I will.

2. Trump is an abomination and I have promised my overseas friends that I would do what I could to defeat him. Particularly those who have been fucked by the Brexit madness have requested this.

3. Even though my vote is meaningless as HRC will win CA easily, there is still the issue of the popular vote and I think that there is some validity to adding my pittance to the destruction of Trump.

4. Our enemies are gloating over the stupidity of this election and I hate that. Yes, even though our country's government has fucked its people as hard as it can in order to make more money for the rich, I have a residual self image of this being a great country once, and it irritates me that China is gloating over our self-inflicted stupidity.

If you dont believe me, the Guardian has an excellent article here.

5. The right wing thugs at the FBI have really pissed me off.

Since HRC will certainly win (editors note: oops!), I will go over in a later post the minimum that is required for her to have any credibility in my eyes.  Of course, HRC will not give a fuck what I or any other powerless American cares, so why bother?

It will make me feel better, that's why.

Rumors of War Part II

The rumors about the Libyan Internet Hack were not confirmed, so this post is deleted.

Background Material on Wonder Woman

Now that the Wonder Woman movie is really coming it is time for all of the readers of this blog to be up to date on the fabulous secret history of Wonder Woman.

Impeccable feminist credentials combined with a fabulous unconventional sex and marriage relationship between Marston and the two women who lived with him and raised his children result in a story that is very modern and rewarding.

The person who set off this whole revisionist look at Wonder Woman, if that is what it is, is Jill Lapore of Harvard and the Smithsonian Magazine article is by her.

See

Smithsonian Magazine article by Jill Lapore

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/?no-ist

Atlantic Magazine article which goes into more detail about "kinky sex"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/wonder-womans-kinky-feminist-roots/380788/

NPR article

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/27/359078315/the-man-behind-wonder-woman-was-inspired-by-both-suffragists-and-centerfolds

For those of you sadly out of touch with popular culture, Wonder Woman had a modern cameo that is considered the high point of Batman vs Superman: The Dawn of Justice (2016) and her own movie is being prepared for which a first trailer has been issued and can be seen at the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q8fG0TtVAY

IMDB page on Wonder Woman
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451279/

Lost Nuclear Bomb Found Off Coast? Don't Worry.

updated 11/6/2016

Apparently, a few weeks ago a diver off the coast of British Columbia was diving in a place he did not normally go and came across something really weird. It was a big metal artifact with large hemispheres the size of basketballs on it. It looked like a prop from a Science Fiction movie from the 1950s or 1960s. What could it possibly be?

A Mark IV with all its pieces and covers on

So when he got up to the surface he drew a picture and started asking around. No one had any idea until someone who had been around a long time suggested that he had found “the lost bomb”. You know, one of them nuclear things that the US lost off the coast of Canada when an early bomber crashed.

Golly, what could be more fun than a 60 or so year old nuclear bomb?

If this is the missing bomb, then it is indeed a bomb but not a nuclear one exactly. It would be a dummy Mark IV, a very early type of fission bomb, that did not have any plutonium, although it did have conventional explosives. In fact it is not exactly clear what was dropped, but it was a dummy they tell us.

So the Canadian Navy was interested and said they would check it out and we are waiting for their findings.

But what is fun about the article, other than the discovery itself, is the comments from the readers who are sure, totally certain, absolutely KNOW that the US lied and this is a real live nuclear bomb waiting to go off.

I have no doubt that the finding, if it is indeed the lost dummy bomb, should be treated with care and disposed of, as it is quite possibly an environmental danger of some sort, leaking nasty stuff into the water, such as a whole lot of decaying conventional explosives.

But it is almost certainly not a live nuclear bomb. How do I know this?

Because we (the USA) may not always be right, and we may lie about stuff from time to time, and, yes, we may do stupid things now and again, but, generally speaking, we do not leave unexploded nuclear bombs lying off the coast of the Pacific Northwest in shallow waters.

Honest, we don't. If it had really been a nuclear bomb, we would have spared no expense to find and dispose of it. We may be stupid, but we are not that stupid.

See the article at the Guardian website here.

_____________________________________


Updated 11/6/2016.  OK, I have done a little more research.  The released dummy bomb from the February 1950 event exploded on impact with the ocean.  It contained the HE (high explosive) and uranium elements but not the plutonium core and thus had zero chance of causing a nuclear explosion.  This explains why they did not search for and retrieve the dummy as whatever they dropped would have been destroyed in the HE explosion.

If we can believe what they tell us, and I think in this case that it is likely that we can, then whatever was found is unrelated to the B-36 crash and the dummy Mark IV.


_____________________________________


Wikipedia page on the Mark IV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_4_nuclear_bomb

Wikipedia page on the bomber that crashed, the B-36 which was a really weird airplane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker

Torrent Downloads and Personal Morality

A friend was trying to explain to me that he did not need Torrent to view such things as “Agents of SHIELD”, that he was willing to wait until God and the Networks allowed him to see it on Netflix.

Could it be that he was suggesting that I was in some way morally deficient, possibly even wallowing in sin?

I don't see it that way.

Like all misunderstood geniuses, I feel the need to explain myself, usually while the representative of conventional society, often dressed in a tuxedo, is held at risk, soon to be defenestrated, or laser-decapitated or even eaten by an Amazonian life form.  Unless I feel that he/she/they/it have properly acknowledged my good will and desire to help, their doom is certain.

Come now, Mr. Bond. You do not expect me to miss an episode of Agents of SHIELD, do you?

You see I am not stealing anything.  I am merely borrowing for my own personal and legally defensible use this media product, so that I might better analyze it and review it for this Blog and society at large.

My mission is to help the world, not to steal from it.

The networks were formed on the concept of advertiser-based content. Now, that is not good enough for them. Greed has driven them mad and now they change the rules and declare that the viewer must also subscribe to some service that they have made some sort of pact with to extract money from the newly disenfranchised.

When all I want to do is to view, unimpeded by any network latency or bizarre distribution rules, their creative product so that I might be morally or intellectually uplifted. Yes, I seek improvement, I seek enlightenment. They have broadcast the material, with advertisers as the FCC has permitted, should I not also be permitted to dip my beak and see what has been paid for?

Are we mere tools of corrupt, international media organizations who wish to extract more and more money from the innocent citizen?

And further, what harm am I doing?  Am I making financial profit with this material?  Am I generating badly derezzed rar files to send to my supposedly degraded and morally debased friends?  No, I am using it for my own use. What harm therefore do I cause?

Besides, these companies, all of them, owe me.  I sacrificed my life to help invent and prove the technology they use to create this product. Selflessly, I dedicated myself to that end, and what reward did I get? I was left for dead, impoverished and disenfranchised. Will it hurt so much for them to allow me to view their product created with technology whose early development they totally did not pay for, and review it for the benefit of my readers and all the world?

I personify, even objectify, the desire for all man and womankind to improve themselves through the new synthetic media.

I am only trying to help.

Guidelines for Requests for Free Work

At various times in my so-called career, I have made it clear that when I was not otherwise occupied, that I would be happy to help my friends do something entrepreneurial in an effort to jumpstart some interesting or worthwhile venture to the place where it could be self financing. Or alternatively, we could do a project that is not ever going to be financially positive, but has some artistic or societal merit.

Although I sincerely meant this offer, the reality has shown that (a) doing projects that do not have funding behind them never seems to work out and (b) people have grossly misunderstood what I was offering, which has changed anyway based on previous experience.

So in the interests of clarity and good will, and not to waste anyone's time, here are a variety of guidelines, explanations, and also a discussion of things that have been learned.

1. Underfinanced and improperly managed projects almost always fail.

I have done about a half dozen projects for friends way below market rates (or free) which have not achieved their goals and have not been at all satisfying. Here are some of the things that happen: The project runs into a barrier that very modest money would solve, but no money is available. Or, the other people on the project can not be bothered to keep me informed about what is going on, and/or bother to review the work that I did on their behalf. Or, the other people on the project lose interest and I just wasted my time.

2. With few exceptions, projects that have been proposed have been insufficiently interesting or possibly just badly described

Just what it says. In most cases, the projects are just a way to get some free labor and do not really capture my imagination and lead nowhere. My creative input is not required or desired. In one case my creative input probably was desired, but my friend did not actually tell me that, I had to figure it out later which, yes, is a little weird but there you are.

One notable exception was an excellent entrepreneurial project by someone who will go by the initials of ES. His project is/was actually a very good and challenging idea that under the circumstances I was not able to achieve. This is a big disappointment to me, but is not a reflection on him. He totally got it.

3. Projects that claim that they will pay me after they get financed never get financed.

Therefore, if we are going to do a project and I am not going to get paid, the project has to be worth it to me on some other level. See below.

4. A project that claims to be entrepreneurial and wants my input but does not offer concrete terms is not going to work for me.

If you think that something is going to get financed (and 98% of the time these projects do not get financed), and you want my input without paying me, then you need to be specific about what it is I get. I can not guess, and a verbal agreement (or non-agreement) isnt worth the paper its written on. Sure youre a friend. Sure things are at an early stage. It is still important to be specific and be clear.

5. Any project that does not pay me, has to have one or more of the following.

It could be a genuine pro bono project that actually tries to help the world in some minor way that I am in favor of. It could be a for profit venture in which case we must be clear about my role, my equity or other compensation, and we need to be clear about the resources necessary to achieve success and what the role of other people on the project are. And I have to believe that the people on the project are serious. But even then, note 6 below.

6. At this point in my life, and given the track record here, any such project has to have significant creative input from me and credit for me, or it is not worth my time. Been there, done that, its time to show new work.

But why mince words, the free project is basically dead, unless it is my work.

Alternatively, of course, you could pay me, and then I am happy to do whatever you want. Its the way the free market system works, it makes whores of us all.

Editorial: US Coast Guard Continues Oppression of Innocent Civilian Submersibles

Global Wahrman wishes to protest yet another example of the US Coast Guard oppressing the innocent and civilian use of submersibles and semi-submersibles.

Yes, this unfortunate oppression by our out of control, drug-obsessed Coast Guard, eager as always to restrict the use of the oceans by the people of the world has seized what they say is a SPSS, self-propelled semi-submersible, minding its own business in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central America with what they say is an 8 foot hold filled with tons of cocaine. Of course we have to take their word for it as the SPSS sank before they could remove the so-called evidence.  Before it sank, the USCG removed a mere 2.8 tons of cocaine.

“Cocaine? What cocaine?” said Raul Rodriguez of Columbia. “We thought we were bringing talcum powder to our relatives in Guatemala. This is clearly unwarrented oppressiion by the US Coast Guard attacking innocent native peoples”.

The private use of semi-submersibles, something we want to encourage, is being held back by this outrageous behavior on the part of our Coast Guard and we hope that the Government will take note of our protests and restrain this kind of attacks on innocent neighborly talcum-haulers in the future.

See here for more information.

Rumors of War October 2016

Lets now move beyond the grim reality of the collapse of our political system, and lighten things up around here by considering whether or not we are on the brink of another serious regional or world war. Not only is this a very reasonable time to ask such questions, it also leads into the larger blog theme of “predicting the future”. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is necessary, we can rely on our own knowledge of history and what we can see of world events.

Whenever a war happens, there are always people who say that there were clear signs that the war was obviously going to happen and that either we should have been better prepared, or should have avoided it, or that the government knew it was going to happen and wanted it to happen, or any of a number of other opinions, some of them interesting, many of them completely out-of-their-mind crazy.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in the real world there are always tensions and conflicts that could explode into a major war. But it also the case that there are a variety of “indicators” that a war may be on the horizon. Here are a few drawn from recent history: (a) a nation is pursuing what it sees to be a goal of critical national importance and another nation executes economic sanctions (war) against it, (b) a nation is executing a rearmament of their armed forces as fast as they possibly can, (c) a nation executes an intense intelligence attack on another nation with whom they are at peace of a size that is unparalled in peacetime, (d) a nation insists that it controls another nation's territory or that a formerly public right-of-way is declared to be their sovereign territory, and always has been.

Do we see any of these four situations in the world today? In fact, we see all four of these.

Russia has a centuries long relationship with Ukraine and Crimea. They see that relationship differently than we do. For them, Crimea is the ice-free port that Russia strategically requires. For them, Ukraine is a slavic territory that has been part of Russia for centuries. The very origins of Moscow and Russia can be traced to Kievan Rus in what we might now call Ukraine. The west has imposed sanctions on Russia for the events in that part of the world. Right or wrong, these sanctions are certainly hurting Russia.

Both Russia and China are extensively rearming and reconfiguring their armed forces. The Russian army, navy and air force seem to be rebuilding at a vastly increased rate. China is doing something similar.

For the last decade, China has executed a cyber-attack against the United States of unprecedented scope. The only people who do not know it at this point are people who are really not paying attention (or don't want to know). The US Government has given every indication that it knows and that it wants it to stop. We know that something has been going on in part because our country has begun an immense investment in offensive and defensive cyberwar.

China's actions in the South China Sea are about as aggressive as a nation can be in times of peace. It is a setup for a hot war, and they are arming for it. They want it, they need it, they have to have it. And if we don't like it, we have to fight for it. The problem is not what we want, the problem is what all China's neighbors want and we are in a mutual defense alliance with those neighbors. Probability of war? High, about as high as war between India and Pakistan, for example.

Oh, did I forget to mention India and Pakistan?  Or India and China?  Or Vietnam and China? Or Pakistan's financing of terrorist groups? The war in Syria and the refugee crisis? Russia's blatant cyberwar against America? N. Korea and its nuclear weapons? Russia and Chechnya (what's left of it)? Or the Congo? Or Somalia? Or Sudan? Or Libya?

So are we headed to world war? Not necessarily. After all, even a hot regional war does not imply a world war.  But if we do end up in a major world war, there will be people who say that there was plenty of evidence that it was on the horizon.

This topic continues here.

Three Cold War Intelligence Stories

When the Cold War ended, or at least morphed into another form, many people claimed to expect a peace dividend. I never did, I thought that was the most egregious wishful thinking as clearly the world was leaving one set of perils and diving right into another. (To be fair, the people calling for a "peace dividend" knew this very well, they were merely arguing for more money for such things as education after years of being told there was no money for it, we had to spend the money on the Cold War). 

On the other hand, I did expect and we are slowly receiving an “intelligence voyeur dividend” as events that happened during the Cold War became explained, or partially explained, or revealed, or whatever. What is the value of such exposure? I think that there is value in telling the history of that time, or at least some of that history, and there is also value in having a better educated citizenry, one which will have some understanding of the way the world works and what has been happening around them in the recent historical past. 

We have here three essays, all published in The Guardian in the UK about three different people who were involved in intelligence matters in the Cold War and whose story, what is known about them at least, is worth reading if you care about this sort of stuff.

The first is an article on Ashraf Marwan who was killed in London in 2007. He died a very rich man. He may have been assassinated, he may have committed suicide. He was certainly a spy for Israel, or was he a double agent under the control of Egypt? Its a wonderful story that suggests an answer to one of the mysteries, but by no means all.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/who-killed-20th-centurys-greatest-spy-ashraf-marwan

The second is about a Czech / Soviet spy who penetrated the CIA and was the last prisoner traded to the Soviet Union in the cold war. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/how-a-czech-super-spy-infiltrated-cia-karel-koecher

The final story is about a dyslexic member of the US Intelligence community (possibly the National Reconnaissance Office) who collected material and tried to sell it to interested parties and how they caught him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/spy-couldnt-spell-how-biggest-heists-us-espionage-history-foiled

Spy vs Spy from Mad Magazine