PufPuf23
PufPuf23's JournalNixon used Keynesian economics and even more drastic economic measures.
Nixon presided the creation of CETA and various programs (YOC, NYC, etc.) to employ the 14-18 year old youth in economic problem areas, all were direct federal employees working on infrastructure and developing skills in those with less direct access.
There has not been direct Federal hire legislation since Reagan. In the 21st Century high priced contractors on steroids are contracted National Defense and Security with no apparent true accountability of who and how the intelligence will actually transferred to the Feds or otherwise stored or used. The system of Mercenary Contractors replaced lower cost direct Fed employees that had ultimate control over data gathered, legally or pushing the envelope.
Not to use Keynesian economics in direct federal hire for domestic infrastructure is insane or by nefarious design.
Like the Spanish-American War - Maine blows up - Hearst Papers.
There was a news story back in 2005 that ran several years and had a number of forums where the story was the prime topic.
Over several years it turned to a polarized internet subculture with board wars etc.
Within 2-3 days of the event 5 linked neo-con oriented forums became popular and single issued or came into existence. Numerous other forums came to be over the next two years.
The most popular was a blog for the first month that then went to a forum set-up. Virtually all my posts were deleted on the blog so when I joined the forum format I had a new screen name and pretended to be one of them.
There were various conspiracy theories that were actually started by early moderators (eg political and propaganda aspects of a seemingly non-geo-political event).
Several posters befriended me (actually the place was much more friendly than DU but most of the privately friendly people turned out to have agendas).
There was a members only Question and Complaints forum.
One poster taught me how to read site meters. I first learned to see when I logged on and off.
Another poster befriended me by PM after I made a post that indicated my knowledge of helicopters, data collection by remote sensing, and the like. I was a Fed USDA employee from 1969 to 1985 and had been involved in an obscure project where trials were done by USDA but funding and the project was DoD R&D. We started PMing and I mentioned the really obscure project from circa 1980 and we had a common interest. The project was developed for civilian use by USDA but had major military applications. He told me he was posting from his job computer on xxxx military base. So I watched the site meter to see when he came on and off. I was fascinated by all the .gov . .mil , and foreign government posters and lurkers.
There were other forums for Politics, Lounge, etc. for other than the main interest where there was a continuous discussion thread and topic threads. I had fun there doing things link posting verbatim groups of headlines from Drudge mocking one of the site "owners".
An "evil" moderator was banned.
A poster that was in the local media of the story PMed me and told me inside info but not to share and agreed on the theory in that the story was cover for a geo-political event(s). I thought it was cool as the individual was a regular on Faux, quoted in the NY Post, and appeared in other channels on the TV. We talked about her marital troubles a lot and the multitude of BushCo connections to the story too in email rather than PM at her request.
Then Katrina hit and a Katrina forum was initiated. My helicopter friend and I disagreed on the open forum and I PMed he should not be propagandizing on the job and from a military computer. He started harassing me the next several days wherever I posted.
Somewhat in retribution, I posted in the members only Questions and Complaints forum that sometimes over 50% of those signed on were .gov , .mil, or .foreign government and that the .gov and .mil posters should not be using their work computer nor time on job to catapult propaganda about Katrina and politics in general. Some of us had become open in the opinion that the story was used by media for geo-political cover and I also noted that the government presence among the posters supported this opinion.
Suddenly my account was apparently banned. I could not sign on nor post. Weirder yet, someone else someone else was operating my screen name and had a conversation with the poster that was Mrs. Site Owner about the forum-associated web site Café Press products and all my purchases and great enjoyment thereof.
About a week later I could sign on and post but most of the .mil and .gov ISPs were no longer on site meter. However, days later the forum crashed. We were all sent emails saying we had to rejoin and that 3 months of posts were irretrievably "lost". Many of us were not allowed to rejoin but conveniently two more liberal forums came into existence for the us "refugees", one that was heavy to the international posters.
When I joined the new more liberal forum, one of the moderators there PMed me with a welcome. This Mod had been a Mod at the forum where I could not rejoin. Boo Hoo. I mentioned the above event about my .mil friend and post in Questions and Complaints. The Mod said that the same poster was also the "evil" mod that had been earlier banned and he wasn't military at all but some loser in his mother's basement sexually harassing female posters on the forum and in real life. The Mod PMed various emails about the Mod / poster and the women he had harassed. I thought well OK but held my thought that the poster did post from xxx military base with a .mil ISP and I had watched/stalked for months on the site meter and we knew this obscure USDA/DoD project. I watched the site meter so much I had compiled a written list of the .mil and .gov posters.
I had made one real friend and we talked nearly every day on phone or email and often worked in tandem. RIP Fall 2008 Diane from breast cancer. She did not live to see the election but turned me on to POTUS Obama and was one of the indirect factors that brought me to DU. She lived in Manhattan and was already acquainted with a personality that was often on the counter side of the story on Faux. She and I and the local media person above fed this media head talking points and he actually outed her by real name on Faux in thanking her for our research. Only this media person and one other poster knew that Diane and I were close and no one knew just how close we were and could not know because we communicated by phone and email and not PM.
At the liberal "refugee" forum it became known there was a "hidden" forum for a select few that fed much of the "red meat" to the forum. When the "hidden" forum became known (probably by design), they went off to their own forum "clubhouse".
There was a personality in the first 5 days or so of the story back in May/June 2005 that appeared to orchestrate much of the events and was on Faux and also made some cryptic posts on the forums that were de-cyphered time and time again for several years. The personality abruptly departed and many thought he was a CIA agent. I thought he was critical. The local media poster emailed me and asked me to stop posting about the man because he was an innocent that had been drawn into the story. He lived in her neighborhood and had bought his retirement home from her parents. I complied on the public forum but told Diane.
A bunch of posters with similar opinions were PMed invitations to a new private forum of 20 posters. I thought it was a honey pot but went along as did Diane. The owner/founder and one of two Mods told us of the "hidden" forum with seven members that had gone on to their "clubhouse". She told me in private that she of the seven had gone rogue and that she was ex-military intelligence and a PI/skip tracer married to an auto dealer in St. Louis.
Other members of the "clubhouse" included the poster that had taught me to read site meters (also gone rogue to this new forum from the "clubhouse"
, my "friend" in the local media of the story, and a ubiquitous member but not very active on all the forums that happened to be the Chief Scientist at the public/private agency in The Netherlands that assigned ISP numbers for Europe and the Middle East. His avatar on the agency site was an animal but with glasses that closely resembled his picture of key personnel at the agency. I cannot find the site nor wiki for this agency today.
The 2nd Mod of the new forum PMed me and also gave me the same debunking emails of the military but really "evil" mod / poster from the initial forum I had joined and been banned.
Then the poster that taught me site meters and ex-member rogue of the clubhouse was banned by closing the new forum and forming a new private forum. We were not told why.
One day I went to the link of the closed forum to find an old post of mine and saw that it was active and I could still get in with my password. They were there building real life data sets on posters in a forum that had been private and invisible to the rest of us but was open now. Ooops. I told Diane who shared with several others privately. Next thing I know, Diane and another poster were been banned by Mod #2 of our private forum.
I confronted in the private forum Mod #2 and told the others that she had lied to us all about the circumstance for the ban and communications with Diane. The Owner (ex military intelligence and PI skip tracer) banned Mod #2 and asked me to be Mod. This was by email and telephone. I was using an AOL account and my ISP showed up in a city 400 plus miles away and essentially functioned as an anonymous proxy (I am not now nor then that internet savvy). I expressed my disinterest and realized they did not realize I was the one that stumbled into their data base or did not care.
Meanwhile back at the "refugee" forum there was a private members only "Fight" Forum and all of us in the private forum of like mind and rogue "clubhouse" posters were outed as sleuth's and collectors of private information on other posters. This was not true except for the owner and "banned" mod and "banned" site meter reader teacher of the private honey pot but we were all slimed. I sat quietly in both forums. My behavior was somewhat dodgy because I had made a habit of watching the opinion leaders based upon my initial supposition that the story was a cover for geo-political maneuvering and observation of all the .mil and .gov posters. Mostly they approached me. We all have a learning curve.
We began to recruit for our private forum / IMHO honey pot. A poster in other forums would be invited with 100% support. I sponsored a gay guy with AIDs whose Democratic Congresswomen in Baltimore was trying to get him a liver transplant. Several months later he turned a 180 in the private forum (got me banned) and became the biggest troll of the liberal "refugee forum.
Diane passed away right before the 2008 election and the story also essentially faded out in 2008 except a Lifetime movie and various other detritus.
If anyone has read this far, yes these are the ravings of a paranoid madman.
My conclusion was that the story was real but was used in a major media PsyOps and cover for geo-political activities.
This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depends on the specifics and implementation
I assume these lands are the Oregon O&C lands.
http://www.blm.gov/or/rac/ctypayhistory.php
http://www.oregonwild.org/oregon_forests/old_growth_protection/westside-forests/Western%20Oregon%20BLM%20Backyard%20Forests/history-of-blm-and-o-c-lands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_%26_C_Lands
They are forest lands managed by the BLM in the DOI rather than National Forests managed by the USFS in USDA.
Historically, they were subject to a greater intensity of logging and earlier and less regulated logging than nearby National Forests.
Harvest on the O&C Lands and National Forests have been greatly reduced because of the Northern Spotted Owl and Coho Salmon Endangered Species listings and various other environmental, political, and legal reasons since 1990 reasons. Most of the readily harvested stands are 2nd growth and would benefit from thoughtful thinning. There are also some stands that would benefit from regeneration or are best left alone for reasons of other resource values or difficult operability.
One reason for the collapse and boom and bust cycle of the timber industry is that mill investment return has been erroneously favored over long term value of the forest as a wood production entity not to mention other values.
O&C lands are primarily Douglas-fir stands and relatively highly productive. Many stands were established after earlier clear cuts and are of the age and size for thinning which were planned but has not occurred. Douglas-fir on its own follows a negative natural log of 3/2 thinning pattern as trees grow larger differentially. Commercial thinning reduces chance of catastrophic loss from fire or insects.
The sawmills and logging equipment would be different technology than what was common in the past. Thinning in Douglas-fir extends the life of stands and keeps more of the landscape in high forest cover. This means there is more carbon held on the site plus the carbon sequestered in solid wood products. Most people don't realize that there is a significant amount of carbon sequestered in the soil.
One could wager that in recent years the timber lost to wildfire in this region has approached that harvested for wood products in the past plus the fires tend to be more intense and damaging to the soil and other natural resources when the only pressure on the forest was by American Indians that often used more frequent and lesser intensity fire as a thinning and renewal tool that promoted wildlife and other vegetation vigor.
Also in the News, The Emperor Wears no Clothes
The propagandists at DU have no shame nor the ethics or values of the Democratic Party of the first 50 years or so of my life.
They are the rainbow have and have mores with "politically correct" GOP-style bloodlust.
Five movements cames together in a Perfect Storm of the 60s:
1 Anti-war
2. Desegregation
3. Free speech
4. Sexual expression
5. Peace and love (flower children).
Plus we had the best music ever; the mixing of cultures and voices was important.
There was much overlap between the movements.
Universities especially were public, were cheap and hotbeds of thought and protest.
There were religious leaders (like MLK, the Berrigans, Bishop Pike, Catholic liberation theology, rebirth of American paganism, rebirth of American Indian religions) allied with the major movements.
I spent the late 66-79s bouncing between Berkeley, San Francisco, and Marin for high school. work, and university and my rural and Indian country Humboldt county home.
My parents did not understand me. I quit hunting age 17. Smoked tobacco a handful of times and never since my teens but learned to like P** age 13.
The arts flourished and the mixing of cultures were syncretic (this happened in religion and life philosophy as well).
Heaven or hell, still proud to be a liberal.
Sadly disappointed in what happened to the USA, World, and our communities, especially post the so-called "Reagan Revolution".
My experience of the present USA is a much meaner and heartless society.
Technology does not always work for good but human understanding of the natural world is always positive.
I did not expect today's world back in the 60s and 70s.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Ubik is/was under most recent option to be filmed by Michel Gondry
who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Here is a website (that hasn't been updated in 2 years): http://collider.com/michel-gondry-ubik-philip-k-dick/76478/
PKD wrote a screenplay, Ubik - The Screenplay, that was written in 1974 for a French director and published in 1985.
The published screenplay was relatively hard to find until republished in hc and trade sc editions in 2008 and 2012.
Linklater, who did A Scanner Darkly, had an option prior to Gondry but did not make the film so there have been at least 3 stabs at developing the book to film.
I'd like to see a quality production of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. John Lennon once purchased on option to film 3SPE.
BTW Philip with one "l".
I'll take an early Godwin in this thread - how-ibm-technology-jump-started-the-holocaust
The Nazis' persecution of Jews was brutal, methodical, and horrifyingly efficient. However, their perverse efforts were only realized with the assistance of a Hollerith Machine - IBM's custom-built tabulation system. IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black explains.
When Hitler rose to power, German intellect descended into madness. The Nazi movement was not merely a throng of hooligans pelting windows and screaming slogans. Guiding the Brown Shirts and exhorting the masses was an elite coterie of pseudo-scientists, corrupted professionals, and profit-blinded industrialists. Nazi jurists, medical doctors, and a clique of scientists — each with their prestigious academic credentials — found ways to pervert their science and higher calling to advance the cause of Aryan domination and racial persecution.
At the vanguard of Hitler's intellectual shock troops were the statisticians. Naturally, statistical offices and census departments were Dehomag's [IBM's German subsidiary] number one clients. In their journals, Nazi statistical experts boasted of what they expected their evolving science to deliver. All of their high expectations depended on the continuing innovation of IBM punch cards and tabulator technology. Only Dehomag could design and execute systems to identify, sort, and quantify the population to separate Jews from Aryans.
Friedrich Zahn, president of the Bavarian Statistical Office, phrased it best in recalling the role of Nazi statisticians. "The government of our Führer and Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler is statistics-friendly," wrote Zahn in Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv (ASA), the official journal of the German Statistical Society. Zahn emphasized that Hitler's "government not only demands physical fitness and people strong in character and discipline, but useful knowledge as well. It demands not only political and economic soldiers, but also scientific soldiers."
more.......
http://gizmodo.com/5812025/how-ibm-technology-jump-started-the-holocaust
I am not calling POTUS Obama evil nor claiming we are committing genocide. One questionable justification in fact is to reduce deaths by targeting individuals.
Together with the NSA and other data gathering, we have built technology and institutions that would have been a WWII wet dream and that could create a 21st Century nightmare, if taken to an extreme for terror, war, or any sort of "social engineering".
Remember this from the 2008 primary season?
Obama Denies Assuring Canada on NAFTA
First Posted: 03/28/08 03:46 AM ET
SAN ANTONIO — Barack Obama said Monday that his campaign never gave Canada back-channel assurances that his harsh words about the North American Free Trade Agreement were for political show _ despite the disclosure of a Canadian memo indicating otherwise.
According to the memo obtained by The Associated Press, Obama's senior economic adviser told Canadian officials in Chicago that the debate over free trade in the Democratic presidential primary campaign was "political positioning" and that Obama was not really protectionist.
The adviser, Austan Goolsbee, said his comments to those officials were misinterpreted by the author, Joseph DeMora, who works for the Canadian consulate in Chicago and attended the meeting.
In Carrollton, Texas, Obama told reporters: "Nobody reached out to the Canadians to try to assure them of anything."
snip
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/03/obama-denies-assuring-can_n_89539.html
Comparing Obama to FDR and the 1930s to now are false equivalencies.
Like NAFTA, the TPP is a pro-corporate and pro-concentrated wealth unlike what was done by FDR to benefit the People and the nation.
From your own quote:
"Of course, it is important to remember that the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to expand world trade were accompanied by such critical pieces of legislation as the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act, which vastly strengthened the place of unions in American life. The 1930s and ’40s were also years in which the government engaged in an unprecedented level of investment in America’s infrastructure and industry — largely through deficit spending — that helped vastly expand our manufacturing base and render the United States the most powerful industrialized country in the world. Our efforts to expand trade and do away with protection were only part of a broader effort to reform the U.S. economy in such a way as to provide what FDR liked to call “economic security” for every American. "
Scanner Darkly is easily the most true to novel PKD film.
Looks like we might get to see Radio Free Albemuth, another PKD film done with PKD readers in mind.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elizabethkarr/radio-free-albemuth-theatrical-release
Sort of OT but about Stanton and Lincoln
Philip K Dick wrote a novel, "We Can Build You", published in 1972 about a simulacra of Stanton and Lincoln. The book is back in print published by Vintage.
from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Build_You
cut
"We Can Build You is set in the then-future year of 1982. It centers on Louis Rosen, a small businessman whose company produces spinets and electronic organs. Rosen's partner wants to begin production of simulacra, or androids, based on famous Civil War figures. The firm completes two prototypes, one of Edwin M. Stanton and one of Abraham Lincoln. Rosen then attempts to sell the robot patents to Sam K. Barrows, an influential businessman who is opening up lunar real estate for purchase and colonization. Unfortunately, while the Stanton simulacrum proves able to adapt to contemporary U.S. society, the Lincoln simulacrum proves unable to do so, possibly due to the fact that the original experienced schizophrenia. At the same time, Louis begins a relationship with Pris Frauenzimmer, the schizophrenic daughter of his business partner, who has designed both simulacra. This becomes an obsession and Louis himself begins to hallucinate about Pris."
cut
My recollections of last read:
The Stanton (first product) and Lincoln androids are so real as to go out in public and have incongruent and independent minds of their own. Lincoln is depressive and unwilling to be on any message for an agenda. Stanton is aggressive and goes off the reservation to work with the "real" competitor.
From Vintage book jacket:
"Louis Rosen and his partners used to sell spinets. Now they are selling people -- or, to be more precise, ingeniously designed, historically authentic simulacra of Edwin M Stanton and Abraham Lincoln ......... And there's the added complication that someone -- or something -- like Abraham Lincoln may not want to be sold."
"Is an electronic Abraham Lincoln any less alive than his creators? Is a machine that cares and suffers inferior to the woman Louis love --a borderline psychopath that does neither?
My note: That the Stanton simulacra who bullies and is a traitor dominates the Lincoln simulacra before getting into the human emotion and Mars-Earth corporate colonization parts of the tale.
Not a shill, just a PKD reader since my teens in the 60s SF area. The book as aged well and is structured as relatively linear and finished story.
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