Category Archives: politics

Some hindsight

Posted on by
Reply

In my first book, I addressed the ecological issues caused by negative anthropogenic influences on the world, namely:

  • pollution of the soil

  • pollution of the waters

  • pollution of the atmosphere

  • damage to the ozone layer

  • the glasshouse effect

  • damage to the food chain and the ecosystem

  • electromagnetic pollution

  • acoustic pollution

  • mental and spiritual pollution

  • moral pollution

So, I think it would be interesting to go back to that list and see whether I understood the problems correctly, in the sense that I called out the actual ones, and if so, have they been remedied or exacerbated since the late 1990s.

The first thing I notice when I read the book again is that I made significant improvements in depth of understanding of the issues since then; basically, I would make a much better analysis today. However, much of it is not actually wrong.

Pollution of the soil was a real problem and actually got worse – for instance, the Americans started using hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) as a method of extracting oil and gas from the ground, by pumping all kinds of toxic chemicals into the ground, contaminating ground water and creating whole lakes of toxic sludge. This is by no means an improvement. The attempt at recycling served to alleviate the guilt of the people but did little to reduce the amount of trash produced, mostly because plastic can’t actually be recycled and it’s all a fraud.

Pollution to the waters was a real problem and it also got worse. The oceans are seriously contaminated by all kinds of plastic debris that gets into the food chain, and then there are the chemicals that get dumped into the oceans, also accumulating in the food chain.

Atmospheric pollution was masked by moving industry to Asia, so that the Europeans and Americans don’t have to see it, so it got better in some places and worse in others.

Damage to the ozone layer was put under control by replacing harmful propellants and refrigerants with non-harmful ones. I guess it will take time for all the harmful stuff to filter out of the atmosphere but it no longer seems to be a serious issue. This seems to be an actual case of a climate alarm that was justified, produced a constructive response, and the issue was put under control or resolved completely.

The glasshouse effect, meaning the anthropogenic CO2 dump in the atmosphere, was an opposite case, where alarmism grew as the predictions were increasingly falsified. Basically, the predictions of the climate alarmists were falsified to such an extent, that I’m no longer sure if any of it was ever justified; there was no increase in sea levels, the increase in global temperature was so small it doesn’t justify any alarm, and the positive effects of increased atmospheric CO2 were noticed on plant life, because apparently the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was normally so little, it was a limiting factor of plant growth, so there was a noticeable greening of previous deserts. However, as the problem turned out not to be real, the hysteria of the climate alarmists reached incredible proportions and became increasingly unhinged. For instance, in Australia the “green” idiots outlawed clearing the brush because CO2 and stuff, and this provided abundant fuel for wildfires, which were then blamed on global warming. This kind of idiocy is becoming more common and is typical for crazy ideologies when they are disproved by reality, and their proponents are simply unable to accept it. For instance, when communism in the Soviet Union failed, this failure was blamed on “saboteurs” and “reactionary influences”, triggering purges.

Damage to the food chain and the ecosystem is still a problem. I don’t know whether it got worse, but it didn’t get better.

Electromagnetic pollution got worse. We are immersed in microwave noise across the spectrum and the consequences of this are not properly researched. My hunch is that some parts of this noise is harmless, because it’s not much different from the natural background, and some parts influence the cellular anatomy that normally deals with interconnectedness between spiritual and material realities, basically saturating with noise the exact parts that are necessary for normal functioning of the subtle spiritual senses.

The acoustic pollution remained the same, however “noise” became a worse, multi-spectrum issue.

The mental and spiritual pollution was a problem then, and absolutely exploded with social media and smartphones that made the connection to the Internet ubiquitous, and made it possible for everybody to be constantly brainwashed with the same, very narrow profile of stuff. It is my estimate that this is probably the worst development since I first addressed the issues, because it turned mankind into, for all intents and purposes, a singular mental entity, and this entity is an imbecile.

The moral pollution was a real problem then, and it got much worse because of all kinds of false morality and virtue signalling. The spiritual space normally occupied by a sense of right and wrong based on transcendence was supplanted by all kinds of false concerns and hysteria, and it all seems to come down to replacement of the traditional concept of human duties with the false concept of human rights.

There are also issues I didn’t address then, because they didn’t look like a problem at that time. For instance, the nuclear standoff of the 1980s seemed to be permanently resolved so I felt no need to address it in 1999, however the Americans mishandled the peace so badly, that most of the world, lead by Russia and China, seems to be permanently done with it, and as they reject American rule, conflict seems inevitable.

As a conclusion, I would say that my analysis from 1999 was mostly correct; the only thing that proved to be a non-issue is the glasshouse effect due to CO2 emission, which is hilarious considering the amount of alarmist hysteria about it. On the other hand, I never anticipated the level of mental devastation caused by the social media and the mental monoculture it created.

Texas border dispute

Posted on by
3

Situation in the USA is tense; there is currently a severe border management dispute between the central government and the state government of Texas which looks serious enough to be a possible cause for declaration of independence of Texas, followed by at least half of American states. At worst, this would cause a civil war; at best, there might be extraordinary measures such as complete closure of borders and inability to leave America. Things are already not good there, but they might suddenly get incredibly worse.

What not to do

Posted on by
1

I’ve been watching a video where it is explained how some hackers get caught.

Based on all the technobabble those people espouse, you’d expect them to get caught because they used Windows or a Mac instead of Linux, or Ubuntu instead of Kali, or because they didn’t use an open source BIOS flashed on an old Thinkpad, or because of some exploit in Linux kernel or Tor. What actually happened is, they talked too much on IRC and other places, bragging to other hackers about their exploits in order to bolster their reputation, and they talked too much about their personal circumstances, because they were lonely. Also, they had multiple aliases but ended up overlapping all of them because you can’t bolster your credibility in hacking circles unless it all connects to you. One was careless enough to cross-reference himself to a domain he used where his real contact info was available to anyone using whois. Then FBI blackmailed him to serve as an informant, and he promptly told them everything he knew about everybody else in his circles and they all got busted.

It got me thinking – apparently, the problem with people is that they expect all kinds of complicated means to be used against them, and in reality it is all very simple. For instance, the reason why Snowden never got caught, and why Assange got arrested and Lira was arrested and killed, it’s all very simple. Snowden had a bad plan like the other two – he’d go to Latin America and “get lost” somewhere, reunite with his girlfriend and so on. What would have happened had he managed to pull that off is that the CIA would have traced his girlfriend to him, he’d get busted and that would have been the end of it. Instead, the CIA was over-vigilant and interrupted his poorly conceived plan by cancelling his passport while he was in Moscow waiting for his next flight. By doing this, they forced him to request asylum in Russia, and thus accidentally stranded him in the safest place on Earth for someone running away from America – a nuclear superpower that was just starting to say “no” to America, and he didn’t even realise how incredibly lucky he was at that point. Assange, however, sought refuge in Ecuadorian embassy in London, very much in line of what Snowden tried to do, but London is under complete control of America, Ecuador is a small and weak country that proved soft under American pressure, and he was trapped and eventually deported. Gonzalo Lira made a mistake of trying to keep his sons in school in Ukraine, preserving a sense of normalcy for them instead of understanding that this is a dangerous fallacy; also, he initially had a very poor understanding of the situation, and his opinion of Russia was influenced by both Ukrainian and American propaganda, and so his understanding evolved as time passed and he kept publishing his reports. By the time he figured out the situation, he already missed the opportunity for quiet evacuation of himself and his entire family from Ukraine, and liquidation of his assets there, and by the time he was arrested for the first time, he was basically a known enemy of a totalitarian regime, at the territory controlled by said regime. His second mistake was to obey the laws and play by the rules, and this was fatal, because when he was arrested for the second time, he was tortured and extorted for money, and when he was temporarily released, he tried to exit Ukraine on a legitimate border crossing after publishing a video about it (!), he was of course caught, imprisoned and eventually died in captivity. Basically, when shit hits the fan, fuck the law, and fuck the rules. You need to get your money, bribe someone to get you out of the country, and go to a place that is actually safe, not the place that you like or have romantic ideas about.

Essentially, what gets people caught/killed are simple, stupid mistakes, not some exploit in ssl. You get killed by believing in the rule of law, you get killed because you were trained to play by the rules of society and that is absolutely lethal when the state is taken over by evil groups, or society collapses. You get killed because you believe in sanctity of embassies, because you believe in freedom of the press, because you call ambulance when you’re sick or injured, and because you believe in legal ways of doing things, instead of acting like a professional criminal, because when the state is taken over by evil people, good people become criminals, and they would greatly benefit from understanding this fact, and acting accordingly. If you’re on the territory of 3rd Reich, you must either be a law abiding Nazi, or a criminal. The only third option is to be a victim.

What gets people killed is lack of understanding that their “normal life” is over. Any wish to preserve normalcy is deadly when excrement starts hitting the impeller.

The purport

Posted on by
11

A few days ago it was revealed that Gonzalo Lira, a pretty famous youtuber who stayed behind in Kharkov and openly criticised the Kiev regime and its Washington sponsors, died from torture in Ukrainian prison.

I didn’t want to react immediately because I wanted to think things through. My first impulse was sadness because someone I knew pretty well was killed in a horrible manner. My second impulse was anger at the perpetrators and their American handlers, and a wish for them to be punished for their evil. Then I thought about his role in this, because a reasonable person would first get out, and then criticise them, because the point of his criticism was that the Kiev regime is incredibly corrupt and evil, and is known for killing its critics, so him staying behind implies that he either believes his criticism of Kiev to be wrong, or he for some reason thinks he will be exempt from retribution, probably because of some invisible shield of human rights that all Americans believe they have. It is also possible that he had a mid-life crisis of some kind and wanted to be a hero, but since he didn’t look suicidal, he probably just assumed he’ll be fine because reasons.

What we did find out is that the person that said that pen is mightier than the sword didn’t know what he was talking about.

The limit of prediction

Posted on by
Reply

The problem with trying to predict future events is that all interested parties also make their own predictions, they assess outcomes of possible moves and use all of their power to avoid the most undesirable outcomes.

Basically, this means that I can, for instance, see the predicament of the American economy, but so do the American analysts, and their willingness to make even the most drastic moves in order to prolong the status quo should never be underestimated. If they know that something will doom them, they will do literally anything to prevent it. “Anything” can range from printing trillions of dollars, spoofing the entire economy, creating a civil war, to cooking up a nuclear war. One can think that nothing can be as bad as nuclear war, but if you’re in a position of someone who knows they will be doomed without it, and with a nuclear war they can arrange everybody else to be doomed worse, the picture changes.

Also, it’s easy to speculate what the Russians could do, if they so wanted, but it’s almost impossible to know the exact thinking of the people who are actually in charge. They might have an internal red line they will never make known, and if that red line is crossed, they might activate a pre-arranged plan that is also not known outside their inner circle; for instance, if the Americans escalate past a certain point, for instance by starting to hit deep targets within the Russian Federation with carriers that can be modified to carry nuclear warheads, and it can’t be known in advance whether the warheads are conventional or nuclear, they might activate something ranging from a deep tactical response to a full nuclear first strike. You see, they really want to avoid a nuclear confrontation, but they are aware that they are in fact encouraging escalation by being too restrained, and this will inevitably encourage the West to perform a sneak nuclear attack. They are torn between really not wanting things to escalate, and realisation that their restraint might cause exactly that. So, it’s reasonably easy to understand what they might do by analysing the options that are available to them and making a cross-section between that and the analysis of their behaviour and thinking. Basically, you see what they can do and then eliminate the options that cause outcomes that are highly unfavourable to them, and then plot a tree of possible desirable courses. For instance, it is quite obvious to me that the Russians can take the entire Ukraine within a month. They could also cut off their gas, oil, food, water and electricity during winter and kill off the entire population. They could cut off all supply and communication between NATO and Ukraine. However, when you make a cross-section between that and the desire to de-escalate and decrease the probability of making the conflict threatening enough for NATO that really bad options start looking probable, you are left with options that look like “winning by not losing while the enemy is drained of resources and demotivated”.

In essence, I can plot out a tree of options, but you need to be aware that all the parties involved are doing the same thing, and what makes sense to me doesn’t necessarily have to make sense to them; for instance, if I calculate that the best outcome would be a nuclear first strike, and Russian leadership already decided that they would never use that option, it would be very hard for me to assess what the second most favourable option would be, because they might be betting on something I see as exceedingly unlikely.