How the Shock Doctrine is being applied to Greece -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

How the Shock Doctrine is being applied to Greece -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net: http://www.sott.net/article/291859-How-the-Shock-Doctrine-is-being-applied-to-Greece

Seventh of nine children

Ender's father.  7 of 9 is a shout out.

Ron Paul and Gore Vidal

So Ron Paul dares to ask the question "what if our foreign-policy is not serving our best interest"? When I watch this video it reminded me of Noam Chomsky and some other author perpetual war for perpetual peace and I can't remember, Gore Vidal maybe.

Ever since I got on the small government conservative bandwagon I'm wondering how conservatives square the idea of a small government with an ever expanding military?

Ron Paul erases a dilemma about being a small government conservative because that has always been my major problem with the "conservative party".

Bradley Manning and "The Running Man'

Why are there so many coincidences between Bradley Manning's saga and the movie "The Running Man"? For those of you who don't remember the movie the "crime" which the main character (Ben Richards) is accused of committting is firing from a helicopter at unarmed civilians. Richard's real crime in the movie is disobeying the order to fire on people who were rioting for food. When he disobeys the order the commander back at the baseorders the co-pilot to detain Richards and take control of the helicopter. They do, massacre the civilians anyway and then Richards is set up as "the butcher of Bakersfield" complete with doctored video/audio footage as evidence.

Coincidence number one: The "smoking gun" material released by Wikileaks from the alleged Bradley Manning material was a video of military pilots firing on unarmed civiilians while receiving confirmation from their commanders that what they were doing was legal. For attempting to tell the truth about this incident Bradley Manning has now been in solitary confinement for 4 years or so and awaits his February 2013 military show trial in which he could receive the death penalty for "aiding the enemy".

In the movie version of the story the American population has been lulled into compliance by a neverending stream of violent and meaningless television programming (sound familiar) until a group of activist/commandoes hijack the satellite signal and interrupt the broadcast with the text "KILLIAN IS LYING TO YOU". After this text appears on the screen the actual footage of Ben Richard's helicopter's attack is broadcast and the house of cards comes down for the government controlled media.

So all we really needed was the text "KILLIAN IS LYING TO YOU" to appear on the screen as the Wikileaks video of the helicopte gunship attack was broadcast on the internet for this whole "Running Man" scenario to take place. The book is set in 2025, that makes us a couple decades early but then again who thought we would have drones patrolling the US as early as 2011-12?

There wasn't such thing as a public internet in 1982 when "The Running Man" was published so King's vision of the public suddenley becoming aware of the totalitarian state's machinations was via a hijacked satellite feed. But it's interesting that the Wikileaks infomation is often obtained when it is "hijacked" by whistleblower citizen activists like Bradley Manning (allegedly).

In a recent photo of Bradley Manning he was wearing a beret and I thought of the Dweezil Zappa character's beret in "The Running Man".

So now we have at least two events: 9/11 and the Wikileaks video allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning which were foretold by Kings book (1982) and movie (1987). Coincidence number three: An important character in the book who leaks important information to Richards and helps him expose what the government is doing in named Bradley.

The moral of the story is: If you want to know what is going to happen in thirty years read Stephen King's sci-fi.

Doing what you love may cause you Pain

Whenever I would mount up to ride my bicycle home at night someone would inevitably say "what if you get hit by a car" or "isn't that dangerous?". Somehow that always irritated me. Those of us who have passion for something dangerous do the calculus in our heads non stop. In my case I must calculate when the largest number of impaired drivers will be on the road, what roads they will use, and the lighting, bicycle access and other hazards of alternative routes etcetera. So yeah, it's dangerous, I know it's dangerous and I'm making decisions to mitigate the risk. When I was strapping on my football helmet or putting on a military uniform, skateboarding or BMXing no one ever said "isn't that dangerous?"

As I slowly weave through a herd of deer in the falling snow on the bike path or enjoy the firefly light show I am reminded of why I choose to face the danger. Just the feel of the wind and the sound of a silent forest at night is enough reason to bike commute and it is my inability to adequately convey the beauty of these moments that aggravates me when I am asked the inevitable "isn't that dangerous?" question.

I want to say "not as dangerous as suffering 4-8000 sub concussive blows to the head over the course of high school and college football" or "not as dangerous as standing on a tank in the Soviet Union in the middle of a pro-democracy protest" but I never do. I simply laugh and say somehting about how at least I can't get a DUI. Which of course leads to the inevitable "yes you can too, on COPS this guy was...". Now as a law school graduate I must acknowledge that in theory this is correct, if you are riding a bike in Watts at night, with no light, drinking a 40 out of a paper bag than my friend Mark Fletcher who is an LA County Sheriff's Deputy will most definitely and justifiably give you a DUI.

But if I am sailing down a hill, lights blazing, at 35 miles an hour, on my $2000 bike, and I run a red light in an affluent Ohio suburb, I don't exactly fit the profile. And I have gone through red lights, stop signs and generally disregarded all traffic laws in the presence of law enforcement (let's face it who else is on the road at 3 am on a Wednesday) with no repercussions. Back before I switched to a road bike I was always picking out mountain bike friendly escape routes in case I saw the blue lights behind me but thirty years into bike commuting I have never interacted with law enforcement. Unless of course one considers borrowing a sherrif's cell phone to tell my wife I'm about to be choppered to the hospital as interaction.

So yes it is dangerous, and yes I'm still in a wheelchair 6 months later but please, for the love of God, the next time you see me gearing up for a night ride be assured that I'm aware of the potential peril but I live to ride, and I ride to live.

Viktor, Vitya and Raisa Gorbachev

Ever since I decided to apply to Bright Ohio my wife and I have had some pretty heated discussions about education. As a philosopher I wonder how it is that we can have such different perspectives given our similar backgrounds. We both graduated from Ohio law schools and had very successful experiences in similar Ohio public high schools and universities but I think exceptional teachers are rare and she thinks they are common. And my theory as to why we are so far apart on this issue is geographical. She has been in Ohio her whole life but I went to school in Germany, California, Texas, Washington State, the Soviet Union and Maryland.

As an exchange student in the Soviet Union in 1991 Vitya Gorbachev and I had many illuminating arguments. When I wasn't gloating about how the U.S. military had wiped out the entire fleet of T-72 tanks during Gulf 1 without a single casualty we argued about who was smarter. And in this area I was an abominable failure. Despite having scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and the 95th percentile on the LSAT this kid was dominating me. Our game was simple, I would look up the most difficult, obscure word I could find in a Russian-English dictionary, ask him the meaning of the word and he would tell me, every single time. I resorted to jargon-like medical terminology that seemed to me to be too bizarre for even a doctor to know, and Vitya would calmly respond "that's some condition involving a lung infection", vague but accurate.

Later that summer Vitya was in hot water with Raisa and Viktor because he'd only got a 3 (out of 5) on his university entrance examinations. "It's because you're always smoking and drinking with that American" Viktor bellowed. It was then that it dawned on me that not only did this kid own me in the vocabulary showdown, he was mediocre by Soviet standards. It's like that "U.S.A. medium" condom joke in reverse, and in real life.

When I returned to the newly re-christened Russia to work in 1993 I married a Russian woman who was finishing her history degree at Moscow State University. One night we were drinking with some friends and someone made a reference to an American author that I didn't get. The next morning my wife began asking me about various American and English authors and was horrified at how few of them I knew. She had been to the U.S. and was not surprised that I was basically an uncultured buffoon, what was unforgivable was that we often told people that we both had degrees in history. Up until this conversation she had apparently been under the impression that a history degree from an American university would require one to have some knowledge of literature as did a history degree from a Soviet university.

To mitigate her shame in her choice of husbands she brought me with her to class after we'd both worked that day and introduced me to the English language literature section of the Moscow State University library. I was in heaven. My re-education took many years. I was starved for reading material in English and the Soviets obliged. All you bibliophiles will appreciate how enjoyable it is to read a great work in your mother tongue and the comic relief of the Russian footnotes politicizing everything from wardrobe choices to Indian involvement in the American Revolutionary War.

My father in law put himself in charge of my cinematic education. He introduced me to Alan Parker and reintroduced me to Stanley Kubrick. I gained such an appreciation for my own culture and it angered me that I had to be led to it by Soviet educated family members. Middle America does not cherish the gems of English and American literature. I didn't have to read Faulkner, Hemingway or Shakespeare in high school or University. I wonder if the Curmudgucation blog could spin that as evidence of a successful education. My test scores indicate that I am in the intellectual elite as compared to other Americans yet a mediocre Soviet teenager has encyclopedic knowledge of his mother tongue's vocabulary while mine is dismal.

Kasich's Coup D'Etat

I was recently applying to the Bright Ohio program and stumbled across the Curmuducation blog opposing it. I was astonished at the level of vehemence displayed in the blog and as a philosopher it made me wonder: qui bono? Public school teaching in America, as far as I can tell by my experience as a public teacher's son, public teachers' brother in law, parent of three children in public schools and product of said public schools, seems to be the one profession which has successfully enforced a culture of mediocrity.

I have always been perplexed by educational leadership's opposition to teacher evaluations, charter schools, voucher programs and generally anything which would bring the empire of public education into the realm of the meritocracy where the rest of the capitalists live. But given the performance of the American public school system in my lifetime I can see the reluctance of those at the helm to being objectively evaluated. I had some exceptional teachers, but the key word is "exception". Jack Black said it best in "School of Rock": "those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym".

My undergraduate education started in engineering and ended in Russian, history and law. As an undergraduate it seemed to me that the most talented chose technical majors like physics, engineering, accounting and finance, the middle of the road history, literature and the arts, and the real dunces opted for education. I certainly have no scientific data to make this claim, it was just an impression. But now that twenty plus years have gone by it seems that my theory has been born out by the number of people in my high school class who have migrated to education as a profession after failing at something else.

A few years ago I was managing a bar that hosted Governor Kasich during his drive to pass Issue 2. My engineering experience had led me into the culture of the UAW as a teenager so I was excited about the prospect of the Ohio Teachers' Union releasing their stranglehold of enforced mediocrity. I was frankly surprised that issue 2 was defeated but it has helped me to understand the Bright Ohio program.

Kasich is an executive, a problem solver, and a strategist. He knows that the juggernaut of the Ohio Teachers' Union will oppose accountability, promotion based on merit, and innovative solutions for education. Issue 2 was the voters opportunity to strip the Ohio Teachers' Union of its power to protect a culture of mediocrity. Kasich grew up in Cleveland, perhaps he reasoned that "any fool knows that the UAW bankrupted two of the Big Three automakers, and a union is destroying Ohio education". That was my thinking when we hosted Kasich to promote Issue 2 but we neglected to account for the sheer number of people in the rust belt who have benefited form that culture of mediocrity. Issue two was defeated, Kasich didn't give up, he made a tactical shift.

Bright Ohio brings meritocracy to educational leadership. The education bloggers are apoplectic that Kasich would want managers (school principles) to be trained by Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. The Curmuducation blog links to a study of American education which clumsily attempts to portray the American educational system as a success. Exceptional teachers like Mrs. Brendl, Mr. McBee, and Mr. Bagwell would have welcomed a professional manager. The mediocre teachers whose commitment to education is represented by the forty hour week and summers off will rightfully be forced to make way for new talent. When the middle class welfare culture of the teaching profession is replaced by a meritocracy the United States will begin scratching the surface of the age old question: why does the richest most powerful country in the world have such a bad school system? The NEA. Philosophically it's the same reason you bought a Honda or a Toyota instead of a Ford.

Meritocracy over mediocrity.