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Random political thoughts

09/25/13 - 06/01/17   Updated

(1) For expressing ideas, my Huguenot and Quaker ancestors were tortured in European dungeons. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, they fled the dungeons for the New World - on fire - with the cause of freedom and equality. They helped found Penn's Colony, waged a centuries-long, political struggle against human enslavement, and - during the Revolution, a few were convicted of sedition against the Crown. (By numerous sources, it was reported that they sneered at the hangmen - as they were hanged.) Looking back objectively at their deeds and writings - after the dungeons and the tortures, my ancestors were bat-shit crazy - but in a noble way. Torture is a nastily efficient means of radicalizing its victims. But for the persecution of European heretics, dissidents, dreamers and utopians, there'd be no America - no reason for those who invented it to have quit Europe. My ancestors were dungeon-people, activists and seditionists. They referred to themselves as such - and they were always proud of these facts.

I'm a genetic (and a philosophical) descendant of the dungeon-people, the activists and the seditionists - who sacrificed themselves to mid-wife America into being, and I'm immensely proud of them - too.

(2) You switch on the TV set, listen to a pellet-head behind an anchor-desk blather gibberish - but you do not shut the TV off. Not only do you listen, you seize-on every word, receiving and adopting the blather - as though it were the deliverance of an oracle. The anchor desk is a potent symbol - much like the throne once was. 34 centuries ago, a 9 year old boy sat on a throne, barked-out orders and his orders were obeyed. His name was King Tut (nbkhprwr3) - possibly pronounced in Ancient Egypt as nap-khafur-YOU-reeah. Tut was, also, widely rumored to have been the son of the Sun. Today - if a nine year old kid squatted on a piece of cheap scenery and belted-out orders, he would be punished or chuckled at. Perhaps, it's time to conceive of and approach the anchor-desk squatters - identically - as misbehaved children.

Bill O'Reilly (who was not in a combat situation during the Falklands war): "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."

Brian Williams (The news anchor who was not in a helicopter forced down in Iraq): "The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG."

(The preceding message was brought to you by The Partnership for a Mass-Media Free America.)

(3) Recently, a friend of mine was the victim of an attempted frame-up by local, Pennsylvania cops. (These days - in PA municipalities, police frame-ups are as common as trees in a forest or water in an ocean.) My friend quipped (Jay Smith-like): "I wish someone would drop a nuclear bomb on Pennsylvania!". I retorted: "If a nuclear bomb were dropped on Pennsylvania, would Pennsylvania be contaminated by radio-activity or would poor, helpless, defenseless radio-activity be contaminated by being in contact with lawless Pennsylvania? That's a real conundrum!".

(4) Nursery rhymes and US foreign policy -

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Is it coherent to ask this question: "Did a cow really jump over the moon?". Nursery rhymes stand in no need of verification; that is, what's referred to in them need not correlate to events, occurring in the world for them to provide entertainment. Likewise, did it make sense to inquire in 2003: "Does Iraq really possess weapons of mass destruction?". The tales of American politicians and their media-stooges stand in no need of verification; that is, their tales - too - often give rise to lurid "entertainment".

(5) By way of a stark, historical contrast, American activists of the 17th and 18th centuries had as their objectives: the abolition of slavery (1688), freedom of the press, the right of religious conscience, independence from British occupation and the recognition of labor rights (1775). Today, American destructivists advocate and engineer: aggressive warfare, the suspension of habeas corpus, torture, extra-legal drone executions, mass warrantless surveillance and the mass incarceration of the US population.

Human progress drove the activist movements of the 17th and 18th centuries - and human regression (or worse) drives these 21st century destructivists.

(6) A critique of pure equality. To be an American is to be swallowed-up in inconsistencies. To be an American is to revel in being swallowed-up in inconsistencies. To be the devil is to puncture and dissect these thinking-cramps, revealing them for precisely what they are - rubbish-notions. The legal, double-standards, applying to cops, DAs, judges and politicians - relative to common-run Americans - are too glaring for most to acknowledge (or even bear).

The counter-logical sequence - below - is the concept, animating the day-to-day operation of the US legal system.

1. All violators of the law should be arrested.
2. X, a governmental actor, is a violator of the law. (war crimes, extra-legal drone assassination, torture, mishandling classified information, unlawful searches, unlawful arrests, etc.)
3. X should not be arrested.
4. 3 does not follow from 1 and 2.

Given 1-4, what's a very obvious prediction on how the US will continue to (de)evolve legally?

When equality under the law is not enforced, there is no law. What prevails is a lawlessness state of affairs. Either the law applies to everyone, or there is no law.

In the US - for over the course of the last 5 decades, the trend has been to immunize (by law or by privilege) those in power from the law and to mass-incarcerate those not in power. Should you have the good fortune to "visit" a US prison, be sure to remark (at the top of your lungs): "Why are there no cops, DAs, judges and politicians, rotting away in here?".

(7) In regions of Europe - during the 15th century, persons convicted of "witchcraft" were burned at the stake. The practice of witch-burning may not have been (entirely) a behavioral trait of a people, locked into a brutish and benighted culture. Executing those who maintain that: "With word-spells alone, we can make the world behave as we wish it to behave!" is (arguably) more rational - than reflexively signing-onto the mind-rot, which passes for conventional political thought in the US, i.e. "Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.", "A civilian who fails to comply with a cop's lawful order deserves to die.", "The 4th Amendment should be made null and void.", "Inequality under the law is equality under the law.", etc. Where witch-burners in the 15th century were terrified of absurdity-spewing idiots and incinerated them, we elect and bow-down to closely related absurdity-spewing idiots.

(8) Thus speaketh the Attorney General of the USA, Jeff Sessions -

I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana - so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that's only slightly less awful.

Incoherently squealing that pot pharmacologically induces a "life-wrecking dependency" that's "only slightly less awful" than smack's are ideas which do not correspond to reality. Those who entertain ideas which do not correspond to reality have no business writing legislation or executing governmental policies.

Let's extrapolate Plato's theory - which predicts that democracies wind-up lawless and the people who inhabit them adopt cowardice and irrationality.

Suppose that there's a population of humans, A, and that the humans of A entertain ideas which correspond to reality. But - at T1, the democratic process is applied on that population. Over time (T2, T3, T4, etc.) - when the democratic process is iterated in A, the humans of A inevitably cease entertaining ideas which correspond to reality (or the frequency of ideas not corresponding to reality radically increases in A). Can appealing to Plato's theory plausibly account for our current crop of cognitive maladies?

If there's one, base-line intellectual human obligation, it's for us to embrace ideas which correspond to reality - not to deliberately (or otherwise) eruct ideas which are - prima facie - unhinged.

(9) Richard Feynman -

"Reality is that which goes on after you stop thinking about it."

Following Mr. Feynman, reality consists of mind-independent states of affairs. It cannot be legislated away. It cannot be drowned-out by a smear campaign. Reality is that which persists - when the legislature is out of session and when the anchor-desk druids go on holiday.

Milgram's progress

07/31/17

Milgram's experiment, the comply and complain later US policing policy, the logical consequences of a universal negative - and proposals for novel experiments, designed to test the limits of obedience to authority, are hashed-out in the following piece. Read the full essay: milgram.html.

Super-religion

06/06/17

A religious (ancient thinking-style) belief is compared to a super-religious (modern thinking-style) belief. As it turns out, our super-religious beliefs are less intellectually coherent - than the ol' time religious beliefs. Read the full essay: experiment.html.

Torpedoing the American mind

04/07/17

Real and counter-real ideas are identified and contrasted. Thinking-styles, conceptual equality and the detrimental effects of counter-real ideas on US politics are examined. Read the essay: torpedo.html.

Dalit American-style

03/26/17

The ancient caste-system of East India and the modern caste-system of the USA are cross-culturally compared and contrasted in the following link. Read the essay: dalit.html.

Mr. Rogers' Nazi-hood

03/12/17

Mr. Rogers, The Neighborhood of Make-Believe, observations of reality, fake news, alternate facts and related cultural befuddlements are further confounded and befuddled in the following link. Read more: rogers.html.

Probing the human crypto-orifice

01/17/17

The current, American practice of forced cavity searches (as performed by US police) is scaldingly critiqued in the following link. Read the full essay: probe.html.

Outta body. Outta mind.

12/17/16

In the link is a brief, biographical sketch of John C. Lilly - the scientist, the mystic and the original psychonaut. Read more: lilly.html.

The Boston Masturbation

11/04/16

The Boston Massacre, the Murder Act, the American Revolution, Colin Kaepernick and the US's present use of force policy are fondly remembered and examined in the following piece. Read it: masturbation.html.

Louis the XIVs "R" Us™

09/12/16

The comply or die policies of the Inquisition, Peru under the Conquistadors, post-Counter Reformation France and the USA are criticized, compared and contrasted in the following piece. Read the essay: inquisition.html.

Russell in a vat

08/12/16

In the link, Hilary Putnam, the brain-in-a-vat scenario, Descartes' evil demon, Lord Russell's hypothesis and Wittgenstein's neat and BRUTAL dissections of the intolerably complex. The ol' gang's onboard, discussin' metaphysical possibility, the non-existence of an external world, the reliability of human memory and the arrangement of "otiose" hypotheses. Read the essay: biv.html.

Cogito Ergo Fucked

07/06/16

In the link, Descartes' famous cogito is subject to a brutal, logical analysis. The cogito turns out to be nothing but a tautology - an empty expression. Read the essay: cogito.html.

The Worst Arguments

05/25/16

The late Aussie realist - David Stove, Kant, anti-realism, Sexual Selection, physical constants and self-referential fallacies are canvassed - in the following piece. Read the essay: stove.html.

A Family of Dysfunction

05/04/16

In the link, there's an essay uncovering and examining a series of self-referentially inconsistent beliefs/theories - which go un-noticed by those who adhere to them. Read the essay: fallacy.html.

Mind-cramps

04/08/16

Politics, possible worlds, counter-realism, lethal pot and non-lethal, nuclear fission bombs are explored in the following essay. Read more: cramp.html.

Moorean Rain

04/04/16

In the link is a rather novel analysis of (though not a solution for) - a real brain-twister, referred to as Moore's paradox. Read the essay: moore.html.

Huguenots and us

03/18/16

In the following link is a comparison between 2, distinct populations (French Protestants and present-day Americans), regarding how each dealt with (or failed to deal with) the legal inequality and summary killings inflicted on them by state actors. Read more: huguenot.html.

The Third Enlightenment

02/01/16

Speculations on how America might revive itself - with analogies to similar trends, declines and reversals experienced over the ~2,500 year history of Western Civilization - are fleshed-out in the following piece. Read the essay: enlighten.html.

Chariots of the Congolese

01/02/16

In the following link are a series of cross-cultural thought-experiments, designed to clarify whether (or not) the practices of US government employees (cops, prosecutors and judges) are ethically sound. Read the essay: congo.html.

nginx & fcgi

11/27/15

In this guide, we'll configure nginx for CGI/FCGI support - with a hack I partially cribbed from executing FCGIs on OpenBSD's httpd via a UNIX socket. Read more: nginx_fcgi.html.

Pennsylvania - a dictionary

10/02/15

Warning: the following link contains satire in dictionary format. The toxic, political schemes - polluting the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - are properly defined: penn.html.

Torture pie

09/16/15

For a few years, opinion polls have shown a decisive shift in American attitudes towards endorsing torture as a legitimate endeavor. In the link is a short essay, criticizing the world-wide revival of this wretched practice: torture.html.

Holder's due process

08/30/15

In the following link is a terse essay, logically dissecting the illicit redefinition of due process rights - by the former, Attorney General of the USA, Eric Holder. Read the essay: holder.html.

OpenBSD's httpd

05/16/15

Installed by default on OpenBSD 5.6-8, OpenBSD's own webserver incorporates excellent CGI, FCGI and vhost support, and it's packed with security features - including a non-overridable chroot policy and privilege separation. In the link is a brief excursion into securely hosting onion domains with httpd. Read the full essay: httpd.html.

Apache & mod_fcgid

05/04/15

Unlike CGIs, which spawn a new process on every hit, FastCGIs run persistently and can handle concurrent requests. In this guide, we'll compile and install the fcgid module, alter Apache's httpd.conf for FCGI support and provide a quick demonstration of converting CGIs to FCGIs. For performance sake - on the darknet, converting CGIs to FCGIs is highly recommended. Read more: apache_fcgid.html.

Apache & virtual hosts

04/29/15

By request, here's a tutorial, describing how to initialize new onion domains. To run more than one onion website under the same instance of Apache, the configuration files for it and Tor can be tweaked to set up new, virtual domains with mod_vhost_alias. Read this entry: apache_vhosts.html.

UNIX crash course

04/01/15

In the link - below, there's a relatively painless romp through the sometimes painful terrain of UNIX commands. My intent is to describe a simple (though comprehensive) presentation of basic, UNIX commands - which are generic enough to execute on most modern, UNIX operating systems. Read more: crash.html.

Tool time for admins

03/24/15

In the link is a 3-for-1 tutorial written for the admins of onion sites. To a precise degree of accuracy, NTPd, a time :daemon, will sync the local clock with a pool of remote, regional time servers. netcat, the swiss-army network-knife, will be hauled into service as an anonymous port scanning device. And - with a simple netstat command, the number of virtually simultaneous connections to an onion site will be revealed. Read more: tools.html.

A tale of two tuners

03/21/15

In the following piece, I describe the hardware issues surrounding, the software configurations for and the operation of two, TV tuner cards (a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800 and an Asus TV7133/4) under Linux. Read more: 2_tuners.html.

Darwin contra Fodor

01/08/15

This essay pressuposes that Jerry Fodor's hatchet-job on Darwin in Fodor Against Darwinism has been read and thoroughly digested. I apologize for the dreadful length of this piece, but someone needs to quote what Darwin actually wrote about selection - placing Fodor's false "dilemma" into context within the history of evolutionary biology and unmuddling the many misunderstandings that Fodor has concerning biology and genetics. Read more of my obliteration of Fodor's attempt to de-Darwinize evolutionary biology: fodor.html.

Analysis of an old Yes song

12/31/14

Released in 1970 - though not included on Yes's Time and a Word album, Dear Father was the B-side to the Sweet Dreams single. For some time, this song has puzzled, intrigued and haunted me. Its lyrics, at first glance, do not seem to pan out logically, or they (and the song itself) may lend to conflicting interpretations. Read the full essay: dear_father.html.

Cannabis and psychosis?

10/16/14

In December of 2007, I submitted the following piece to the Lancet. It's a brutally savaging rebuttal of its conclusion that long-term pot use causes psychosis. The essay is a far-ranging logical and philosophical assault on the criterial and methodological approach adopted in this line of "research". Although my critique was published elsewhere (and declared "impressive"), it was rejected by the Lancet - because an editor screamed that I lack the proper "medical credentials". Though it's a bit long and - at times - abstract, anyone interested in what is palmed-off by the media as "hard science", regarding the allegedly long-term, negative consequences associated with marijuana consumption, may want to check it out: cannabis_psychosis.html.

MitM attack

05/03/14 - 11/16/14

For a period of 3 weeks, a Man in The Middle Attack has pervaded the darknet. To date, over 400 onion domains are known to have been targeted. The attack consists of at least one person creating new onion addresses, cloning websites "on-the-fly" and re-writing the original sites' contents. The attacker can re-write any text on an original page to a "cloned" page - in real time. Read more about this attack and how to block and/or bypass it with webserver rules: mitm.html.

lighttpd & virtual hosts

04/18/14

To run more than one onion website under the same instance of lighttpd, the configuration files for lighttpd and Tor can be tweaked to set up a new, virtual domain with the "simple-vhost" directive. The following link contains the gory details: lighttpd_vhosts.html.

lighttpd+Tor

04/15/14

To me, lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is the onion webserver of choice - due to its flexibility, blazing speed and excellent support for SSI, CGIs and virtual hosts. In the link is a guide for configuring Lighttpd to host an onion domain: lighttpd_onion.html.

i2p for UNIX

04/12/14

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I was blogging elsewhere in onionland and on i2p. Here's a link to my new (simple yet detailed) guide for installing and configuring the software - required to connect to the invisible internet project, i2p, under UNIX: i2p.html.

Absurdity: a modest critique

07/21/13

The US government's redefinition of torture and other absurdities are skewered in the following piece. Read the essay: absurd.html.

Plato vs. Obama

06/03/13

In the link, Plato's and Obama's views - as to the nature and universality of the law - are contrasted. Read the essay: plato.html.