"What's it all about? Where is this all headed?"

Hey, fuck if I know. Why you askin'? Because you want answers, right? The key is knowing which questions to ask. Right now, as I write this, the world economy is on the brink once again, the for the second time in under five years. Why? Because we won't change, we refuse to, we're creatures of habit. The yammerers will go on about how we need to "get back on the gold standard and eliminate the income tax," which was all disproved and thrown on the shitpile of human history, gone, over, done. I could say I believe in unicorns, but that gets as many laughs from people with a real education. Good luck on the last one in these here U-nited States.

Does that faze the terminally ignorant and insane? Of course not, and now you know why wars occur, and some very big ones are coming. "There will be wars, and rumors of wars," was perhaps the easiest prediction ever made, human beings are an incredibly stupid species, yes we are. You irrational dummies are really the death of everything, you reactionary fools on the right.

I've been talking about a collapse on this page for the last six years and have seen one coming for far longer. 2008 nearly did the job, or rather, we nearly did it on ourselves letting criminals in DC and on Wall Street to run amok with their thirty year crime wave. Finally, this shit is coming to a head: we either reform our financial and campaign systems, radically scale-back our military, and reinvest in our workforce, or forget, show's over. As horrible as I imagine things are going to get, this is fair, this is just. We should pay for our apathy, our ignorance, and our tendency to fuck everything we touch up. No touching, no more. 

South America saw the writing on the wall decades ago and has succeeded in cutting away our influence in the region, which is good, democracy and empire cannot coexist. Neither can democracy and vast, unchecked wealth and influence, power. In less than one generation, America will become a shadow of its former self, and if you think you have, you really haven't, you ain't seen nothing yet. We will become a true pariah state that no one in their right mind will do business with without major conditions. The scales are really going to fall from the eyes of Americans once they realize that all this "freedom" was only the power to buy stupid, plastic crap they never needed so some asshole can get rich and to then take the money to dismantle democratic traditions and institutions, that's where we're at, the final stages of capitalism.

Are we too far gone? I believe so. This doesn't mean there aren't things that can be done to save what's worth saving, but collapse appears to be the only way left out of what's becoming a very ugly, scary place to live. We currently incarcerate more people than Russia, China, and all the other worst human rights offender nations on this earth combined, and we enslave them in what's called "privatized prison labor." The war on terror has eroded so many rights I've lost track, maybe even the surveillance state has too, let's hope so. 

Where is the outrage? It's where knowledge would have been in the minds of an ocean of profoundly ignorant Americans, waiting to be informed and  activated. Now you know why the Republicans and Democrats are defunding education (who wants to read anyway?). Ignorant people are easily controlled. But enough about the right, Libertarians, and irrational Obama supporters who refuse to criticize him for what is wrong.with his shredding of the Constitution in the war on terror.

For similar reasons, we're going to collapse as the former Soviet Union did a little over two decades ago. It's overdue without reform. What happens in the aftermath is determined by what we do now, and then. It had better be logical, natural, disciplined, united, and constructive. The alternative is everyone killing each other. When the rich have kicked away the social contract, this becomes not only possible, it can become inevitable. Without a sense of a whole, connected polity--a society--there is no point, and all will be lost. All the luxuries many enjoy, perhaps even the ability to feed oneself adequately, the right to vote, to be safe in one's person, to be able to travel without restrictions, to be able to assemble with others for political expression--all this can vanish in the blink of an eye in the current atmosphere. 

Will some get richer from a collapse? I don't think so, this is going to be more fundamental a collapse than that, what could have occurred had there been no FDR or New Deal, and that's where we're at right now. Yes: even the rich are going to lose their asses on this one. It will at least be worth it for that one. Everyone with a patch of dirt might consider taking up gardening since that could be all that's going on in the US soon.

1921-2011

In a bold move towards transparency, the Chinese Communist Party has changed its named to Howard Johnson's™. Have a great day.

An interesting analog in the age of digital hacking

Ed.--A recent spate of cyberattacks on Google's Gmail system (originating in China) reminded me of a some similar techniques employed against Deborah Jeane Palfrey (the DC Madam), perhaps by the United States Government or non-governmental actors--contractors of one variety or another. The Chinese attacks ensnared several hundred individuals, some of them high level American government officials, presumably some working for the State Department.

Some whose Gmail accounts were breached were American military personnel as well as a few Chinese dissidents, perhaps included as a diversion or as overlap from other hacking operations originating from the same actors. Whoever they were, they were looking for specific types of people doing specific types of work for the U.S. Government; specific individuals were targeted for hacking.

Do no evil?

Google routinely cooperates with the America national security state, so it's no surprise that they've been targeted by other nations using third party actors to provide a kind of plausible deniability. In the case of the recent attack on Google, it's safe to assume that the encouragement of non-governmental actors was formulated to prevent accountability being directed at the regime in Beijing, a fair assumption. Does the U.S. do this? Certainly--one could argue that we pioneered its use--and some of this echoes the very real world attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001, ushering in a newer form of mercenary where attacks by one state against another are done indirectly by proxy, "non-governmental" agents.

21st Century Brigands?

This is perhaps going to be the Golden Age of the mercenary, with further tech-enhancements.

Mercenary hackers aren't new, but the scale of their activities is growing rapidly. Information warfare itself is an old tactic of political entities, and nation states like the United States or even Turkey are engaged in it all of the time.

...Google said Wednesday that personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, had been exposed. Google traced the origin of the attacks to Jinan, China, the home city of a military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more sophisticated assault 17 months ago on Google's systems." ... ("US says no... ," AP, June 2, 2011)

Most modern nation states are engaging in it at some stage, but like the use of drones in recent conflicts, it remains unofficial policy, often mislabeled as "conspiracy." Cyberwarfare isn't new, but the widening scope of its use by state and "rogue" (using the term without any value judgment) actors is.

The Palfrey defense was under surveillance, period, it's inarguable and I bore witness to it directly. Some will say that it was for legitimate purposes of the enforcement of the law, but how then would any defendant get a fair trial under such scrutiny? What's arguable is who it might have been which one could speculate on endlessly with such a muddied trail. That's how it goes with hacking and cyberattacks, but with enough persistence and even some luck the origins of a hit can sometimes be uncovered. The key is to erase as much of a trail leading to the originator of the attack as possible and it's not rocket science, but not so prevalent or as easy in the stone age days of the Internent back in the fall of 1998 when the madam's account was hacked.

Even at the time what they did wasn't especially sophisticated, but the average Internet user wouldn't have known how to do the breach and what followed from it.

Just shy of ten years later I had a productive exchange with a former attorney of the DC Madam's about the breaching of the her email account:

Jeane and I searched and searched and finally traced the insertion of a email forwarding address in her earthlink account to a Yahoo.uk email address. When I took it up with yahoo.uk, they had no answer how anyone had hacked into Jeane's account and could not identify the owner of the yahoo.uk email account as it was to a string of fictious email accounts. (Correspondence with the Editor, August 2008)

This was to be expected whether it was a state actor or not. It's a very good possibility that this was a former client of Pamela Martin & Associates, but that could just as well mean the arrow points to the state as well as contractors.

What raised a few flags this week for me came from this passage in an AP article on the recent breaches in Google's Gmail infrastructure that compromised some of the personal email accounts of a few high level American officials.

The modus operandi is similar if not identical to the breaches in the DC Madam's Sprynet email account back in 1998:

...While Google said last year's attack was aimed at its corporate infrastructure, the latest incident appears to have relied on tricking email users into revealing passwords, based on Google's description in its blog post.

It said the perpetrators changed the victims' email forwarding settings, presumably secretly sending the victims' personal emails to other recipients. ... ("Google reveals... ," Reuters, June 2, 2011 )

The final sentence is exactly what happened to the DC Madam's email account sometime in October 1998.

It's almost become a cliche that intelligence agencies (and similar institutions and groups) can and have used primitive forms of hacking as a cover for the activities against various actionable targets. Perhaps one day we'll find through declassifications that a government contractor created all of those phony email accounts when Palfrey began to become a "person of interest" to whoever hacked her account and changed her forwarding settings, intercepting all of her emails going in and out (I know from experience as I was receiving bouncebacks once the phony account had been closed). Most likely, she was beginning to become a liability to a privileged former client...but the truth of the case is elusive as ever.

"US says no official email hacked; FBI on case," AP, June 2, 2011): http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110602/39b5ae26-4471-4ea8-b6c5-afbde96ef979

"Google reveals Gmail hacking, says likely from China," Reuters, June 2, 2011: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_google

The inherent clean energy opportunity in Japan

This is not meant as any kind of a cynical-jab at the Japanese people, looking at them as some tool for change. The earthquake and subsequent nuclear accidents that are unfolding are a horrific reminder of how tenuous modern life is: in a matter of just five minutes, everything on the Japanese mainland changed forever.

At this point, we have no idea how many people have died or will die as a result of what's been reported as an 8.4 to 8.9 scale earthquake, possibly the worst in their entire recorded history.

The most recent one on roughly the same scale occurred in 1923, killing as many as 140,000 people. But the Japanese were better prepared for a recurrence...except that you can never truly prepare for one when it comes to a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power will always be vulnerable to natural disasters, social upheavals, and most certainly, inevitable social collapse since all civilizations end one day.

The half-lives of most radioactive byproducts of nuclear power will far-exceed the lifespan of any civilization, reason enough to begin a general decommissioning of all existing plants, the neutralization of the waste ("byproducts," and to the best of our abilities), and a rapid conversion over to a constellation of clean or cleaner energy sources, mainly natural and renewable ones. This nuclear disaster hasn't even played-out yet, but I see very real opportunities that need to be grasped, and immediately, by the Japanese public as well as the world community, outside of the corridors of power.

As the Japanese people and their rescuers from their government and from around the world are exposed to radioactive contamination, we need to realize that we have yet another opening here: the outrage that's inevitably coming on the mainland--perhaps even from neighboring countries--is going to be profound. As always, there are cultural, and therefore, historical reasons for this.

For those with a short memory, it should be remembered that the Japanese are the only nation on earth to have atomic weapons directed upon them. They have not forgotten this by a long-shot, and the terrible irony of this catastrophe-upon-a-catastrophe will not be lost on them as it surely is on most Americans, willfully, since we're the ones who dropped two atomic bombs on them in 1945.

We tend to forget about our own war crimes here in the United States, our victims however, do not.

There will be a very loud cry indeed in Japan to decommission these nuclear plants because they have failed every test. The plants themselves were already strongly opposed, but as it usually happens, times were better and they public will was more neutral and the opposition's warnings were ignored. There was, after all, a lot of money to be made, and power demands were growing and still are. That's fine and well, but events have a way of changing things, and catastrophes borne out of both natural disaster and human incompetence and corruption lead to a perception of misrule. As often is the case, that perception is usually accurate.

Prediction: there will be a major groundswell coming against further development and operation of nuclear power on the Japanese mainland. A call for major, wide-scale investment in clean and renewable sources of energy will be heard throughout the island nation. If it reaches the level of mass-production, it will have a global impact since Japan is the third largest developed economy in the world, one of the world's skilled "workshops," like Germany.

Even with this disaster, Japan could be poised to lead the way towards a new and decisive direction, towards the real world implementation of alternative energy sources that are well outside of the box. With China in close-proximity, production in both nations could point to very affordable solar technologies, as just one example.

This is all a wait-and-see, to be sure, since we don't know how bad this nuclear disaster is going get. But I think there are great opportunities here for Japan and the world, coming out of their worst period since WWII, their (and our) greatest challenge. As fate would have it, Wikileaks has uncovered and released one of the cache of American State Department cables, and they purport to contain a passage of Japanese government officials discussing cover-ups of previous nuclear accidents. When-and-if the smokes clears soon, the Japanese people will learn of this; there will be a wide demand for explanations, with the predictable outrage, perhaps even riots.

All we lack is the will since an outraged citizenry that won't have it anymore is an irresistible social force that cannot be held back any longer.

"Mr. Smiley" (product review)

PARENTAL WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS RIDDLED WITH SARCASM, SEND-UPS, BELITTLEMENT, AND SCORN FOR EVERYTHING. PROCEED WITH CAUTION...

With my first few tokes I wasn't expecting anything at all.

Not a buzz, certainly not a high, but I was surprised after around seven hits: this comes awfully close to being a lot like a marijuana buzz and high. Let's not get carried away, however. “Mr. Smiley” (which also goes by the monikers "K2" and "spice," among others) is one of those many enigmatic products littering our shelves and lives these days, and like most pharmaceuticals, it doesn't have a seal of approval from the now nearly defunct Food and Drug administration, created at the behest of the public and that communist, President Theodore Roosevelt, who, when he read an article citing slaughterhouse conditions uncovered by writer and muckraker Upton Sinclair (a socialist, say no more! The ignominy! The gall in caring about people and our nation, the temerity!) exclaimed over his breakfast on that fateful day in 1906 that, “I've been poisoned!” and indeed he had, but it was too late and a bad case of the trots was on his agenda for the evening.

Out of the kindness of his own Red heart, for his own Red heart's well-being, he ordered the creation of the communistic FDA. As we all know, life was never the same after that and an economic disaster ensued that reduced things to stone age conditions forever. A calamity of better health, nutrition, working conditions, and lower profits began to ruin America until very, very recently after all the Soviet Jews were run out of the federal bureaucracy on a rail, and replaced with nice people from the industries who merely want to feed us contaminated, ersatz foodstuffs and drugs at hyper-inflated prices. Truly, this has been part of our wonderful way of life...if you're one of the few within the saintly ranks of our Captains of Industry, men who have worked harder than all the sweatshop workers and illegal immigrant slaves combined!

Hype or reality?

Because Mr. Smiley is sold by different names and has evolved in different forms, most states have voted to ban the chemical compounds JWH-018 and JWH-073, synthetic compounds created by a Clemson University researcher to mimic the effects of cannabis on the brain.

According to published reports, the recipe to make those chemical compounds were eventually leaked to chemists in China, who began producing the compound and selling it as a marijuana substitute. By 2008, the synthetic marijuana began arriving on shelves in the United States, where it gained rapidly in popularity.

Because the compound is marketed as incense, it does not require Food and Drug Administration approval for sale and no long-term studies of its use have been completed.

"That's the thing, no one really knows how bad it is," Dieter said. "It may be much ado about nothing, but there's too much that we don't know about it."

It's also not known how popular synthetic marijuana truly is in South Bend. (City not smiling about Mr. Smiley," South Bend Tribune, 05.24.10)

Cry bitter tears for these poor men, brothers and sisters, because it's truly the White man's burden for them to sip champagne on the French Riviera while everyone else toils for them and consumes their toxic products that make our nation what it is: a gastrointestinal nightmare where the water supply is less-and-less safe and about to become privatized along with the air we breathe. Progress, indeed, has its price. But what of the “D” in the FDA, a communistic anagram if ever there was one? Yes, that other naughty word, besides the aforementioned “Jew,” the Satanic-infused word, “drug.” Yes, the FDA is responsible for marijuana still being off the lists as medicinally useful as well as a powerful narcotic, hence its persistence as an effective tool in throwing niggers and spics in prison when times are hard (and whites who "won't get with the program"). Poisoned by the free market?

Yes, haven't we all been after a little over a century later with the wacky-yet-divinely inspired wave of whipped-up sentiment to deregulate almost everything and to head willy-nilly towards the Maoist altar to Ayn Rand and the magazine stand erected to Lenin. Both are not-so-secretly adored by the GOP, secretly by mainstream Democratic leaders. Yes, the cranks have had their generation of fun, but the party's over, and it's time to pay the waiter...but all they have are Euros. What of Mr. Smiley? No, this isn't your grandfather's corn silk or Jimson weed, which you should never, ever smoke if you want to retain your ability to breathe or reason (potentially answering some of the question as to why rural voters shit where they eat) ever again, and besides, crank is for cranks these days.

According to my own eyes, the product has been sold at convenience stores and gas stations in my own part of the Midwest, namely, Northern Indiana and parts of Michigan. How does this product smoke? Very smoothly, I must say, and with an aftertaste that's very similar if not exactly like some decent Mexican weed, the so-so kind they leave for the rest of us and put on a NAFTA-approved semi-trailer bound for desperate potheads who will smoke literally anything to keep their buzz on. Mr. Smiley is made up of (according to the label, so it must be true...) TWO ingredients: “Damiana leaf” and “Mullein leaf extract,” about which I know very little, like high fructose corn syrup, glutemates, and all the other horseshit that manufacturers put into our food supply for reasons that would only make sense to a Soviet bureaucrat. You'll forgive the last contradiction, but this is being written by a product of the American educational system, also patterned after the factory model, so bear with us on this.

First ingredient, Mullein leaf: This is often used as an herbal treatment for asthma! Is it safe? Yes it is, and it is sometimes known to cause a sense of drowsiness, like marijuana, and it's also an expectorant like that Weed of Satan. It's a mild sedative in some people, a common side-effect. It's sold by herbalist outlets in greater quantities than the less-than-an-ounce (one gram) little dispenser that Mr. Smiley comes in. In other words, it's significantly cheaper in larger quantities elsewhere. You can even buy it by-the-pound from Amazon.com.

Second ingredient, Damiana leaf: This is roughly the same deal. You can buy it off the Internet easily, and in quantity for a very low amount of money. Effects? In women, it's allegedly a “natural aphrodisiac,” meaning that it's bullshit and doesn't work at all in that area or most others claimed by those who sell it. Ask a botanist or a pharmacologist. You know: people who are evil communist scientists (the evil "Dr. Yakub" from the Nation of Islam's cosmology) or "fill-in-the-blank" since they have the temerity to be factually correct, trumping one's ego and personal narrative. Interestingly, Damiana lowers blood glucose levels like marijuana does when ingested or smoked, though it's more commonly ingested in tinctures and extracts. It might have psychoactive properties in some people. Sounds like snake oil bullshit, doesn't it?

So, how did “Mr. Smiley” become a “product”? Because some douche-nozzles sat around one day (as most asshole entrepreneurs have in the past in America, and the disease has been exported) trying to figure-out how they could get people to buy something they never wanted, needed, and could buy cheaper and assemble its constituents themselves, and then make a good profit. Take the money and run. There is no product code on the product. There is no address either. There is no Internet address. Yes, “Mr. Smiley” “works,” but you could save yourself a lot of time and money and simply buy its ingredients online for much cheaper, in larger quantities, and put these banal free market crackheads out of business along with the legitimate heat they're getting from the Police. But is it even safe?

Rumors--and that's all that they are so far--are saying that the substance is dangerous. How do they know? That said, I wouldn't advise anyone to buy or smoke it, and I only inhaled enough to see if there was indeed a buzz to be had. There is. Other rumors state that it's being packaged in China, though no evidence is forthcoming on that claim. One thing's certain: by pasting the story all over the Internet, TV, radio, and the like throughout Michiana, every kid in the region who would want to know about the fake drug will now, and they could very well end up finding it, online in one form or another. This has been facilitated by both the local political establishment, the Police, and what's left of the press. Thanks, assholes. Why not just let the kids smoke pot? We know it's not going to hurt them and that the FDA's stance on the substance is a purely political one. Do not taunt Mr. Smiley...

Grade: An “C-” for the fact that it works, and an “F” for them being typical hustler/grifter douche-nozzle fucks.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100524/News01/5240337/1130

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100519/News01/100519346/0/FRONTPAGE

Coming soon: An essay on connections between a Tiananmen Square account and the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith (Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger )

WWW--Like most of my observations, this comes through serendipity. In 1989, I was told some very shocking accounts behind the violent repression of the student democratic forces by the Red Army troops in and around Tiananmen Square. This was told to me by a Chinese exchange student in his 30s, and he told me without any prompting.

He was an unassuming man with a family who had absolutely nothing to gain in telling me any of it. I have, therefore, little reason to think it's an inaccurate or false account, not that I make any claims that it could be corroborated.

We spent an entire summer doing student painting with him and lived in the same married housing units as him for a few years, he was a very kindly person who's probably instructing at the college level nowadays. This story still shocks me, but when I was recently introduced to the writings of American sci-fi writer Cordwainer Smith (the pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger).

Linebarger's father was close to the Chinese nationalist movement in the 1930s and his godfather was Sun Yat-Sen, practically the George Washington of modern Chinese nationalism. As a result of his ties with China, Linebarger became an expert in Far Eastern studies in academic settings. He also worked in the earliest incaranations of the American psychological warfare sections during WWII. We'll leave it at that for now...

Food for thought until we meet again:
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/foundation.htm

Dalai Lama states that "sex leads to trouble"

"I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this. These collections of men are to be libidinally bound to one another. Necessity alone, the advantages of work in common, will not hold them together. But man's natural aggressive instinct, the hostility of each against all and of all against each, opposes this programme of civilization. This aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative of the death instinct which we have found alongside of Eros and which shares world-dominion within it." --Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, P. 119, 1930.


WWW--The Dalai Lama's right, you know. There's a gal who I see when I go out who's interested in me, and I think she's all that, cute, etc. . But I don't want any part of it. This isn't to say that I don't believe there are those magical folks among us who can handle love and intimacy, but they're a tiny minority of humanity who don't let it get to them and who can control themselves. It's also not because I don't want to see humanity perpetuate--it's that I know there are too many of us, and we're not all that.

The Lama stated some of the unholy truth this week:

Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication. ...[There] are too [many] ups and downs. ...Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make [the] comprehension that those couples [are] always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide [and] murder cases. (AFP, 11.28.2008)

What? The Buddhists are cynics? Uh, yeah, that's a big part of Buddhism, a renunciation of this world. Most Buddhists view the world as being a place of futility, a trap for the soul, something very transitory, and brimming with evil. Correct, and it's how I view the world. Are all relationships futile? No, I don't believe this. But it's close, very close to being that way given the predictability of people's behavior in a relationship.

Freud was right once again. Sex binds us, even when it shouldn't. There would be no point whatsoever to any of this without some carrots (go wild with the symbolism of that, I know you will). The most horrible truth is that when one partner loves another more than the other, they're the inevitable victim in the equation. Almost no one is capable of coping with the responsibility of someone who loves you more than you love them. Being a restless species, we try perversely to make things worse. Not content to leave intimacy despoiled, we inject crass materialism into-the-mix, then blame each other when we fail to meet our mutual expectations.

The worst aspects of humanity have been nurtured under the capitalist order we've all inhabited in our lives, not that it's the only system or order to ruin love and sex. Women in West are especially guilty of promoting this convenient commercialism, wrapped-up as it were in "gifts" that are a mandatory prerequisite for things to be "romantic." Even worse is the female-fixation on the blustering mate who shows constant certainty that they have "things under control," the "Mr. Fix-it" syndrome, when they most definitely have nothing under control.

"Lie to me," she said, "Tell me what I want to hear, not the truth, not ever."

"If you insist," he said. You could just as easily rearrange the genders here, it doesn't matter. We just want to get laid. Men, women, regardless of sexual orientation or how raging our libidos might be. At some point, the flesh needs servicing, empty notions of "romance" aside. Lies are crucial in a culture where the lines between instinct and the repressive conditioning of civilization have blurred.

Self-interest and false sentimentality have been used to keep us buying garbage we never wanted or needed, distracting us away from what's important--each other. We bought it, literally. The Lama goes further than I ever would, Buddhism not being an entirely "humanist" religion and philosophy. He says that we shouldn't get too attached to anyone--not even our loved ones or our children.

This is where I would draw-the-line, and I believe we all need focus on empathy towards others.

There are many sects of Buddhism, so you can tell that they don't agree on such issues either. Yet, he's right about sex. That spells trouble and the over-complication of our lives, it means unnecessary drama and irrational compromise. Men and women are going to have to live separately for a long time before we're all ready for sustainable cohabitation...if that's even possible or desirable.

Hats go off to the lucky few who've already achieved it.

The basic difference between the East and the West is geographical location. The cultural sources are the same. Men and women--and individuals-in-general--are much farther apart than mere cultures in the modern world.

Freud was also right that we're always going to be in conflict with our animal side. Sometimes, a cigar really is just a cigar (why do some feminists use Freudian imagery so much?)...and you can keep it anyway. "Let's do it" might be about the most intellectually and morally honest greeting, but honesty is the last thing anyone cares about. It's enough to turn anyone off. Trouble? Brother, you don't know the meaning of "trouble."

Philip K. Dick android head still missing, with "No Plans to Rebuild You"

The People's Republic of China--It's out there somewhere, but it appears someone, somewhere, still has the head of the Philip K. Dick android. Hanson robotics still has the body, which is weird. The whole scenario is weird, like a PKD story.

Let's face it: it's probably in China, right now, and a whole factory is manufacturing PKD androids by-the-thousands (with lead-paint). That would be kinda cool--minus the lead-paint.

The androids could help lead a revolution there, then liberate the citizens of the United States of America from the corporations and the politicians. Somehow, I think artificial-intelligence will evolve to this point, where it starts telling us to be more human to each other. But then, I was always a fan of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), and I believe we need someone bigger than us to make us behave, some kind of non-human force. Nature (global warming) will have to do for now.

The droid has been missing since February of 2006, though "stolen" is a more appropriate term. If it's not in China, one could imagine some intelligence entity (not aliens) from nearly anywhere--even here--that wanted the technology...and maybe even some much needed enlightenment.

Remember: the head was created by a consortium of A.I. specialists, and there were over 2 million words from Dick's writings, many of them unpublished pieces from his legendary "Exegesis" and even some correspondence. If you want a good summary of what the Exegesis was, imagine a genius trying to explain the nature of reality in abstract terms. It's a sprawling document that was never finished by its author, but he gave it a good try!

I recently had the good fortune of correspondence with Hanson Robotics and asked them if they had either found the head or were going to construct another--bad news. "No" to both, the head is still missing and they have no plans to build another anytime soon. It's understandable considering how much the original cost to create it was and the fact that someone, somewhere, might attempt to steal a new one.

But why just steal this particular android's head? As far as anyone can tell, nobody ever grabbed the Albert Einstein whenever it was in-transit on a North American flyover.

Hi Matt,

Thank you for the email.The PKD head is still unaccounted for.
We do not have any plans at this time to reconstruct another.

Best regards, Matt Fisher
Hanson Robotics

At least we have lots of footage and photos of the original android, but imagine being able to converse with a simulacrum of someone who wrote about them? Friends and family of the late writer were consulted extensively to contribute what Dick's countenance and mannerisms were like when he was alive, and they've attested to the accuracy of the droid.

And why not a John Lennon, or an Adolf Hitler, Leonardo DaVinci, Aristotle (not Onasis), Socrates, Julius Caesar or George Orwell? Mark Twain would be a wonderful android, or even Sigmund Freud. But imagine being able to ask Philip K. Dick a question. We could have had a taste of that before February of 2006. Now what could be a better gift to Philip K. Dick fans--and the human race--to give the head back?

To whomever stole it--we want it back now. Don't be a dick-head. Elect an android to Congress, because machines don't lie! Speaking of that, they should build a Richard Cheney model, it would be more human.

http://www.hansonrobotics.com/

Philip K. Dick android still missing

North America--It's out there somewhere, but it appears someone, somewhere, still has the head of the Philip K. Dick android. Hanson robotics still has the body, which is weird. The whole scenario is weird, like a PKD story. It's probably in China, right now, and a whole factory is manufacturing PKD androids by-the-thousands.

That would be kinda cool. The androids could help lead a revolution there, then liberate the citizens of the United States of America from the corporations and the politicians. Somehow, I think artificial intelligence will evolve to this point, where it starts telling us to be more human to each other.

The droid has been missing since February of 2006 and vanished in-flight within the continental United States, oy veh. Hanson robotics and a consortium of A.I. contractors put over 2 million words of text from Dick's private writings into the android's head (including parts of the "Exegesis" that the public has never had access to).

Since much of the data is still unpublished, the missing-head has been a cause for concern to the Philip K. Dick Estate. No updates, though Hanson has vowed to build another head. I would wager they are nearing completion of it now. I've been told that the voice-synthesis is eerily close to that of Dick's, and even with its flaws comes off like a resurrection of the man. The closest story of PKD's to this event is "The Simulacrum," one of my favorites.

http://www.hansonrobotics.com/
http://www.pkdandroid.org/

THE NEXT GREAT DEPRESSION IS COMING, AND IT'S OUR FAULT

The United States--This is an unbelievable story. The GAO's Comptroller General--David M. Walker-- is saying we are facing an inevitable economic disaster based on Washington's borrow-and-spend policies under the Bush administration and the GOP controlled Congress.

Who's he? Nobody important, just the nation's accountant.

One of the BIG problems is that our currency bonds are being bought-up by the People's Republic of China and other "economic allies" like Japan to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. What? You didn't know this? Yes, because Americans are stupid enough to want it both ways: out-of-control defense spending, but with lower-taxes with social services only for themselves. Wouldn't you?

Americans are almost singularly insane on this point: they won't elect anyone who will tell them the truth. The truth? If you want government services of any kind you have to raise taxes. Of course, this unprecedented borrowing is fallout from Bush's ending of progressive taxation. Progressive taxation? What's that? Nothing much, it just made the American middle class possible at all. But their wacky economics have been common currency since before the 2000 elections, and Americans have demanded this of them. It took a lot of dumbing-down to achieve this mentality.

The one who dies with the most toys is uh...is dead.

The baby boomers are retiring in the face of all this debt, which will likely lead to a demographic-disaster that we've never seen. Well, yes, if we keep borrowing like this for another 30 years, which is unthinkable anyway. The political costs are already too high to maintain this reckless fiscal policy, so it's unlikely to continue for even ten more years. But we would deserve it by the end 30 years, but who wouldn't?

Walker is practically advocating a social revolution to avoid this mess, calling for a groundswell, but I think maybe it's too late. Our deficit is $8.5 trillion, which would make any REAL conservative nervous (and angry) as hell.

When the bulk of the Boomers start using their Medicade, Medicare and Social Security entitlements, without adequate progressive taxation there to fund it as it did for decades...wow, watch-out! The public won't have it, we don't want to pay higher taxes, especially the richer we get. Walker isn't very optimistic, and neither am I, Americans are pretty stupid. Just look at Iraq and the dozen permanent military bases we have there. How much did they cost? How many social programs did it take to do it?

Where are the billions of our tax-dollars that have gone-missing in Iraq? Prove me wrong America. You won't, you're too stupid and greedy. We're going to get what we deserve, so maybe there is justice on this rock called Earth. It's going to be entertaining watching people dressed down in this country, seeing the cocksure idiots blame themselves (an accurate assessment) because their hollow ideologies have failed them. I'll be laughing all the way to Canada or Sweden, but somewhere that's civilized.

Philip K. Dick Simulacrum Still Missing (with a head full of speed)

The story of the missing Philip K. Dick simulacrum is a bizarre tale that began February, then had an end of June update again this year (still missing). As though taken from one of Dick's stories, the android was displayed prominently at a Chicago sci-fi convention (they did a Q&A), and Comic Con in San Diego.
But, after leaving with the body and head for Texas, main designer David Hanson forgot to retrieve it from the overhead carry-on compartment. Allegedly, the airline located it again, and sent it back to Hanson, but it has yet to arrive.

Yeah right, some baggage handler is using it for a Halloween decoration this year!

Imagine if they got it to talk: you would have a new PKD novel unfolding into our reality. What if a janitor from Puerto Rico found him? It would be hilarious if the person who found it learned from the simulacrum, and returned the head out of guilt!

I'd like to think the simulacrum awoke, and realized he really was Philip K. Dick, and decided to live a normal life somewhere. He would have his coffee in the morning, smoke, and have his beer in the evenings. He could do speed. Maybe he could find a cheap-apartment outside of Berkeley--the real Philip K. Dick wouldn't even recognize the town anymore.

He could go to Disneyland, becoming more-and-more like the original man. Who knows, maybe he could write like Dick eventually. But somehow, I think the android would become sad at how much the world had changed since Phil's death in 1982, but also how little it has changed. It's a bittersweet dream that might convince me there is some divine architecture to the universe, but as in Dick's novels, truth and proof of the divine will always be something elusive to humanity.

The irony of all this is that the CPU of the android has around 10,000 pages that have remained mostly unpublished from Dick's private writings. They could even be from his legendary "Exegesis", which is still basically unpublished in its 2 million word form. So, I would imagine the children of Philip K. Dick are a little worried about the whereabouts of the head. This is a strange thing when a lot of other databases have gone-missing, all in the same period...

Hanson has vowed that if the head isn't found, he'll build another one. That would be great, and I'd pay a lot of money just to sit and talk to a piece of Philip K. Dick--the only one we have left now. The creation of this android is exciting, and it also evokes the sadness embodied by Philip K. Dick and his canon. It is so miraculously infused with the spirit of the man, and it offers some hope.

I could see androids saving humanity from-itself, and wouldn't it be beautiful if Dick was partly-responsible for it? The loss to science-fiction was enormous when he died, though hardly anyone knew it at the time.

PS: Next models by Hanson Robotics Inc. wish-list: Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Orson Welles, Josef Goebbels, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, William Blake, Winston Churchill, Ted Bundy, Aleister Crowley, V.I. Lenin, Josef Stalin, St. Francis, Che Guevara, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, John Dillinger, Al Capone, Graham Parsons, John Wilkes Booth, Nat Turner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Augustus Caesar, Bugs Malone, Jimi Hendrix, Moctezuma II, Napoleon, Pablo Picasso, Yukio Mishima, Thomas Edison, Jim Morrison, Woody Guthrie, Lenny Bruce, John Brown, Pontius Pilate, Hernan Cortez, Grigori Rasputin, Sitting Bull, John Lennon, Leonardo DaVinci, Mary Shelley, John Ford, Christopher Columbus, Aldous Huxley, Heraclitus, Ted Bundy, Siddartha, Sid Vicious, St. Paul, Malcolm X, Thomas Paine, Carlo Gesualdo, H.H. Holmes, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Simon Magus, Sir Isaac Newton, Calamity Jane, Friedrich Nietzsche, Zoroaster, Pancho Villa, Ambrose Bierce, Edward R. Murrow, George Orwell, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Comte St. Germaine, Adam Weishaupt, Joan of Arc, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, Emma Goldman...

Perhaps the simulacrum became paranoid (head full of speed), and decided it was time for a trip to the New Synanon under the pseudonym Horselover Fat. But what did it mean, and why had his car broken-down?

http://www.hansonrobotics.com/

Chimpy McFlightsuit (TM) almost speaks: "Iraq is straining the nation's psyche."

"These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists," stated the Chimp in Chief to the White House Press Stenographers. Does he really understand?

Just a few years ago, we were all told Bush never reads-newspapers, never watches the news, and even recently has stated he isn't affected by the polls. YET, he makes comments like the above, so it's clear that he has recently taken these factors into account.

Right, we know Cheney never watches any other news except on Fox(http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0322061cheney1.html ). He's really the President, after all, and who wants to watch bad news that relates to oneself? Anyway, Bush keeps insisting that if we leave, then a disaster will become a "disaster" and it "would provide a safe haven for terrorists and extremists and give them revenue from oil sales."

Oh, instead of oil revenues to our own terrorists at the White House and the oil-sectors of the "global economy". And what happened to that $9 Billion that simply vanished when Paul Bremer left Iraq?( http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/ And funny, no accountability whatsoever. Did it happen under Bill Clinton's watch? Of course, the right wishes they could blame it on him, but no-dice. The whole thing is just another resource war, and 2/3rd's of the American public aren't going-along anymore. They're too lazy to do anything, including going-along. The Preznent's angry, which is tough-shit, the people have spoken: "We're too lazy, and besides, American Idol is on." Sometimes, apathy is a double-edged sword. Soon, they'll probably be speaking-loudly when gasoline is $5-6 dollars-a-gallon, and their atrophied-buttocks can get some circulation.

Like Joseph Goebbels during Stalingrad, the neocons and their supporters think if they keep spinning, lying and obfuscating the truth, that reality will conform to their propaganda on the ground. History has never worked this way, and it never will.

Before the invasion: Iraq was not a haven for terrorists, though it became one once we invaded. It's also becoming a combat training-ground for terrorist groups, where it had never been one before. Having been created by the British as an artificical nationstate with artificial borders, Iraq has been a hodge-podge of rival ethnic-groups, and it really isn't worth-saving. There have been many experts in geopolitics who have said splitting the "failed nation" into three-parts is likely the best route for Middle Eastern stability. Ah, and then there is the influence of Iran in Iraq nowadays, something that was impossible under Saddam Hussein. I think it's time--we need to invade our own country, but how will we justify it? Who knows, but we'll find one.

Speaking of justifications, the last pillar of "Why we went into Iraq" fell last week--with no reaction in the press whatsoever. The Bush administration, and the State Department are thinking seriously of "alternatives to democracy", because they have finally realized that the hodge-podge was only governable with an iron-fist (almost there!). We created this mess and we cannot avert a Civil War once it has begun, and it began long ago. The bill is coming due, much of it from People's Republic of China. We could build a bunch of escape pods and do a collective dine-n'-dash, but that would be communist.

Eventually, they're going to want Taiwan in the package too. Oil might not be based on the US dollar anymore. While morons talk about antiwar activists and the Left "appeasing" (who? North Korea?) "Islamofascists" (an oxymoron for oxymorons), the reality on the ground is going to make it clear what is really going on. We illegally invaded Iraq, and we are being repelled by attrition like any imperial power. Just like France in Indochina, just like Great Britain in North America and just like Spain and America from Cuba. Bye-bye empire, the gambit failed. We'll be better off for it in the end. But then, I believe everything I see on CNN and Fox. Oh, and I'll have fries with that too.