Last Virtual Mexican Border Fence Was a Billion Dollar Flop-Better Ideas

So why should anyone believe the next try would be better? Before the last virtual border fence was built Congress believed it was a sure-fire state-of-the-art go. Selling the Brooklyn Bridge to the Senate might not be as difficult or take weeks to get 68 votes. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2010 that the virtual fence worked on just 53 miles of the 2000 mile border.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/22/nation/la-na-invisible-fence-20101022

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100420/IT04/4200310/DHS-official-Virtual-border-fence-8216-complete-failure-

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/homeland-security-junks-its-sensor-laden-border-fence/

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2013/06/28/senate-passes-immigration-reform-bill

The last time D.H.S. did not have adequate over-site of its prime contractor. After reading a quality fiction book by the attorney who impeached Gov. Blogojevich of Illinois about government insider corruption one wonders if Boeing of Chicago- the builder of the last virtual fence- will bet returning to the friendly Obama trough again.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d116.pdf

http://people.howstuffworks.com/virtual-border-fence.htm

The Secure Border Initiative was virtually a leaky bucket of a sales job. The physical fence was not completed and the virtual fence was non-sense. Since the contract for the last one was cancelled in 2011 the administration and Democrat accomplices of the Senate might feel its time to shovel some more pork.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Feds-cancel-Boeing-virtual-border-fence-957190.php

Operation Igloo White developed by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam Conflict was one of the first large scale efforts at constructing a virtual fence to interdict opposition employment force illegal aliens. Those soldiers were of the communist political theory and infiltrated supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail in to the Republic of Vietnam. The sewing of sensors along the trail to alert satellites and scramble bombing missions when opposition work-force infiltrators arrived to cut down the average wages of free market workers (well, perhaps this analogy isn't terribly accurate yet the point that the virtual fences are too expensive is the point here) of poor South Vietnamese peasant laborers wasn't entirely ineffective. The costs of the virtual fence were said to be a self-inflicted wound to American treasure as it was asymmetric economic war. The military supplies lost by the infiltrators were of far less cost than the virtual fence technology. Of course personnel costs to the infiltrators were significant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbO30to1f60  Operation Igloo White Summary

Physical barriers are sometimes effective against ground-game invaders. Hadrian's Wall built by the Roman Army in the 2nd century along the Scottish border kept those savages out of Roman England for quite some time. Illegal aliens today have more numbers and technology  than the Scot savages back in the day yet not the energy and time. If Hadrian's wall worked against the Scots a new, improved berm with hybrid electric cars driving along the top to patrol should work now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian's_Wall

Building physical boundary defense walls creates jobs. They can also set aside ecological reserve areas for wildlife-perhaps jaguars and other endangered species of the South. The two lines of Walls of Constantinople kept the Byzantine Empire safe enough for nearly one-thousand years. And let us not forget Offas Dyke of the 8th century that protected Mercia from the savages of Powys (Welch) back  in the day. The berm was as much as 85 feet wide and 8 feet high and ran along areas between the kingdoms without natural barriers.

Clawdd Offa can be an inspiration to builders of a meaningful new border barrier between the U.S.A. and Mexico. An All-American aqueduct could be built along with a berm to carry saltwater pumped up from the Pacific ocean to the continental divide that is allowed to flow downhill in each direction. Some of the saltwater would be evaporated and condensed under plastic to make freshwater for agriculture and recreation. Solar power might be used to give a boost to the vast siphon exploiting the difference between Pacific and Gulf of Mexico waters to maintain a constant flow rate to replace water lost to evaporation and other uses.

A border barrier recreation and desalination zone would  be a better project than a sterile fence  that doesn't grow anything at all and is an experimental area for infiltration, climbing, tunneling and so forth. A fence is a thing that inventors might use large mortars to launch illegal watermelons over, and catapults flinging people with parachutes might be attempted on the silly fence. Probably fence contractors want the work that thereafter is as much an eyesore as any for-profit prison's fences.

Why the U.S. Congress has no imagination or desire to make a profit on large scale projects these days is uncertain. In former times they has the Columbia Basin project, the Apollo program, The Tennessee Valley Authority and so forth. The Congressional ideas about border security flim flam fencing are irritating. Some of us like neighborhoods without ugly California fencing subdivisions so that wildlife can wander freely. Border control zones need aesthetic earthworks and water filled canals that are useful and park-like yet effective. Building a prison infrastructure to keep unemployed Americans from leaving eventually isn't a good idea. Teach the unemployed to fish in a desert by building a canal filled with piped-in water is to keep illegal workers out too.

 Even two border patrolmen per mile instead of one won't stop careful infiltration of terrorists and shock workers. Without patrol cars driving atop a series of reinforced berms with green space between as well as canals the defense infrastructure is more to keep bureaucrats and lawyers out rather than illegal workers that Democrat politicians like.

D.O.M.A., Snowden and Senegal Added to Skinnerian Political Economy

Edward Snowden's release of classified N.S.A. data may help foreign hackers exfiltrate commercial American secrets. A song I wrote named Beneath the Stars has lyrics 'every year it snows that's just a mace behind your face'. With disposable cell phone communicators for every illegal alien to talk to Pakistan or wherever from the U.S.A. how can N.S.A. computers keep track?

Speaking from Senegal on the subject of homosexual marriage President Obama explained that all people must be treated equal. Equivalence of all things is easy if they all have zero value. If numbers are all equal so must men and women, adults and children, heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Corrupt elites packing the Supreme Court issued the decision overturning California's proposition 8 as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (D.O.M.A.). The judiciary is packed with queer symps of natural democrat ilk. Since Miro Satan was signed and played for the Boston Bruins in the 2010 season it was easy to see with the advertisement where the Eastern establishment's sympathies lay.

The psychologist B.F. Skinner thought that human beings are equal, as must Doctor 'Evo' Dawkins, President Obama and the liberal Supreme Court in the context of being organic bags of impulses with ideas cycling through. The organisms may have property lines and philosophical ideas about the reality of differentiation in solid-state objects, but those ideas are nullified by the equality of things as meaninglessness in-itself.

One might think that liberal use of cocaine and broadcast network power exclusivity supports development of a milieu of belief that the electorate is meaningless and ought to be manipulated by immoral elites above the herd and be correct. There may be more to it than that.

Subjugated meaningless masses of organic units can have high unemployment to keep wages down. They may be managed with food stamps or extended unemployment 'benefits' to keep them from becoming militant. Illegal alien immigrant workers can replace the downwardly mobile at low, low wages and bring a better non-intellectual culture to support homosexual couples in retirement. Boston and San Francisco elites probably have planned for-themselves a way-of-the-world godlessness political agenda dumbing-down the masses to save them from global warming, over-population and mass species extinction without danger of violence; just uneventful back-row smothered mates (a basic chess check-mate pattern that chess G.M.'s Anand, Gelfan and others learned at age 5 or 6).

Abortion, homosexuality, concentration of wealth, legal and illegal  drug use like Huxley's soma, globalism neutralizing national economic and social security in an anti-Christian social environment etc. are some of the content of the evolution of immorality hostile takeover of U.S. pop culture from the top-down. My helium.com page with five peer-reviewed rating stars for 812 articles remaining after some with the q word were deleted reads 'Member since 2007'. What should also be written is 'banned since Dec. 24th, 2010' for being unsupportive of homosexual marriage.

http://www.helium.com/users/105553/show_articles

When I took a Bachelor of Arts degree from Excelsior College-then named Regent's College, and got a diploma from the University of the State of New York for transferring in college credits in order to save a lot of money in 1991 I had no idea what would follow. I couldn't get admitted to the University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate school but the new President of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Jerome Kommisar was from New York's State University system.

I owned a property at Wrangell Alaska. Wrangell is near the Anan River bear observatory. I had written Footprints in the Sand in 1974 while working as a custodian for the University of Alaska Juneau because I wanted to write, was mired in a sinful relationship and lonesome for a girl I used to know. I read Emerson, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Nicoli Gogol's The Overcoat and Other Stories and attended church since an infant. Psalms were second nature even in the dark of an Alaska winter drinking too much beer. I had lots of ideas and mailed the prose poem to a magazine in California. So Charlie Rangel of New York, Kofi Anan of the U.N., and Sen. Chuck Schumer become the emergent global liberal line up pressurizing me at home in Alaska during the 1990's. By 2008 I sold the property. Rangel and Anan finally faded away, Chuck Schumer is still hanging around Washington D.C.

Though a local Wrangell builder climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro this year, I couldn't get a job in Alaska and had to migrant journey as far as Florida to get a little house painting to earn return to Wrangell and improve the hut I built. Instead of getting a grad degree and being an educator I ended up homeless scribbling books while the nation drifted to queer and Wall Street corrupt with outsourced jobs and vast public debt.

Propaganda in the U.S.A. co-opting published works to inimical purpose does exploit individuals for the benefit of the corrupt and puff up Satan's team. It makes the equality of people better for natural democrats redistributing monetary and intellectual capital from those that aren't. It is likely that Satan has no trouble regarding people as being equally of zero value.

 Mt. Wrangell, S.E.-Alaska

                                          
                              U.S.N.Y 1991

Supremes/Corrupted Elites Force Gay Marriage on California

Corrupt elites packing the Supreme Court issued a decision overturning California's proposition 8 as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. The judiciary is packed with queers and queer symps of the natural democrat ilk. Since Miro Satan was signed and played for the Boston Bruins in the 2010 season it was easy to see where the Eastern establishment's sympathies lied.

A nation in decay opts for the wrong way to go. Now singles will be those discriminated against financial by the government for not being involved in the depraved establishment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23068454

Will Snowden Be the First Test Case of N.D.A.A. Extraordinary Rendition From Ecuador?

Will Edward Snowden become a test case for the National Defense Authorization Act provisions of 2012 and 2013 that allow arrest and detention of U.S. citizens abroad? One wonders how that act would conflict with any extradition treaties or lack thereof such as with Ecuador where the N.S.A. contractor fugitive seems to be trying to go.

Maybe Mr. Snowden meant well, certainly the fugitive Julian Assange of wikileaks looks upon the filching of classified data as beneficial in some way, yet to who?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23031801 Snowden's flight route to Equador?

http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Issues/2012_NDAA/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/06/24/wikileaks-defends-nsa-whistleblower-condemns-prism-digital-surveillance/

The United States has a history of problems of the sort such as the inventor of the machine gun-Maxxim had. He thought that it would end all war because it was just too effective act killing soldiers. Sometimes spies divulge government secrets, or rather, whistle blowers divulge government secrets because they feel that it is for the greater social good. Even cold war era communist sympathizers had at times similar opinions such that it would be good to balance out secret weapons parity by providing plans to the enemy. Well, who can say how that works out. What is know is that if one swore an oath to keep secrets and broke that oath one has a bill to pay, and Mr. Snowden instead of seeming like a flake should have stayed during the hot summer of global warming in the states to face the music. At least the other misguided soul-Corporal Bradley Manning did not flee to the pristine wilderness of Siberia for summer fishing and winter hiding out in a spa.

Non-Academic Philosophy and Challenges of Relevance

Independent thought without academia may be easier than within. I am thinking more about the corporatist and networked impact of which academia is ancillary. It is about schoolwork and study after all more so than holistic analysis or criticism of all that exists. Sartre left academia at The University of Le Havre  to write 'Being and Nothingness' and 'The Critique of Dialectical Reason'. While at Le Havre he wrote 'Nausea'. His thought developed after going out in the world.

Perhaps academic philosophy tends toward history of philosophy and logic as rigorous science approaches better suited toward student and bureaucratic processes. I agree that very spaced out pedagogical method would be unhelpful for instructing those seeking to learn about philosophy. Social institutions tend almost necessarily to conformity and failure of self-criticism. The broadcast media-government-corporatist-military/industrial complex is an organic entity for-itself   that would be concerned about black marks and brownie points while the world was in global warming and mass extinction danger.

Philosophy in the corporatist era of academia may develop some of the same constraints on free thought and for its expression as existed in the former Soviet Union.  It is not just philosophy that is limited either, political expression by corporate and academic employees is also subject to pressurization.

Non-academic philosophers have the challenge of developing good ideas and expressing those to a mass audience well enough to change political practices. Maybe Condi RIce with that 165 I.Q. unwilling ton stand for Vice President of the United States was like Jacque Cousteau too aware that humanity seems to have a self-determined course toward dystopianism.

Philosophy has tremendous depth in its history. Its nature is in proverbs as well as Coppleston or Russell's history of the subject, in thought of Strawson, Quine, Paul TIllich or even B.F. Skinner. One of the new challenges is to keep human thought including philosophical and metaphysical ideas meaningful in a social context where evolutionary biologists may regard humanity as just bioforms with phenomenal chemical thought structures permutating. That sort of implicit institutional irrationality lends itself readily to new age fascism and the evolution of immorality. In the age of paradox irrationality may be institutionally rational. The influence of Derida, Dewey and Skinner and deconstruction of human reason leaves us perhaps with a quantum approach to contemporary history and philosophy of faith.

Warburton has raised the bar a little on creative philosophical thought within and without academia. After learning of the comments I decided to name my new book of philosophical essays 'The Myth of Non-Academic Philosophy'.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/gary-clifford-gibson/the-myth-of-non-academic-philosophy/ebook/product-21069679.html;jsessionid=DD11F90BC2A9A31C448441FC26D5BF88

U.S. Syrian-Iranian Policy Is Difficult to Understand

The administration of the U.S. Government has offered the Assad Alawite Government of Syria a generous offer of surrender, Sect. of State Kerry said that they would need only mutually agree on an interim government I would suppose before an election of the Muslim Brotherhood into total power. How one wonders could Assad demure on that?

I still wonder about U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. Why is it that we stimulated and supported escalation of a revolt against the government of Syria? It doesn't especially seem to be in Israel's best interest and the first answer that comes to mind is that the administration is worried about Iranian nuclear weapons development and hope that some sort of Shi'a domino downfall would knock the Iranian revolution down. That seems like a long shot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23012637

So far as I know U.S. problems with Iran began after the nationalization of the British oil fields in Iran after the Second World War. Iran had a democracy then and they still have-one of just two functioning ones in the Middle East. Of course we returned the fled Shah of Iran to power and legend has it forced out Mossadegh the Prime Minister. Subsequently we then built up a military for the Shah of the Peacock Throne and developed relations with a very cruel Savak secret police agency of Iran that were globe ranging repressing dissidents. The U.S.A. developed large corporate resource extraction interests and of the course the military industrial complex got good arms sales, and all that was sold to President Eisenhower as a bulkhead against communism. Yet we have seen that Iran has no tendency to become communist-even purging those well-meaning anti-souls.

So during the Iranian revolution the student radicals captured the U.S. embassy, as a temporary measure yet didn't kill anyone-such innocent days. One imagines that Saul Olinsky and or the Weather Underground or even perhaps a returned from Vietnam radicalized John Kerry if Iranian would have joined in that event. The long, slow burning institutional grudge of the U.S. government cannot forgive the Iranians for their trespass, yet Hillary Clinton should have-the State Department was very slow in rescuing the Ambassador in Benghazi as if it weren't to important.

It might be the development of nuclear weapons that is of ongoing concern since former President Amadhdinijab has left office. He did like to twit the U.S. Government yanking its chain with threats on Israel and the Great Satan of course-a true populist exploiting patriotism. Even so Iran does have legitimate defense concerns. Saudi probably has a nuke or two, Pakistan has dozens or hundreds and both nations are Sunni while Iran is Shi'a. Neither is it likely that Iran has forgotten the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam used Iranian corpses to make bridges for his tanks. There were more than a million casualties in that war.

Probably the better way to get along with Iran is restoration of as normal of relations as possible. Usually people on good terms with a fair amount of transparency don't wake up and decide to surprise nuke a neighbor or two especially if it guarantees a mass retaliation.

Iran has defense concerns from the Sunni world and an urban populace that has a tendency for westernization something like that of Turkey. Iran in some respects can adjust its democracy like that of Canada of the past. Iran's Council of Experts is comparable to Canada's Privy Council that is now mostly anachronistic yet formerly was more powerful than parliament as in Iran today. As times change the quantification and allocation of power to various institutions shifts without need for revolution. The Democracy of the United States is somewhat different than either and more of a Republic or really a corporatist entity with pretensions of global universal hegemony through Wall Street. Normalization of relations with Iran-just diving in is likely to be the logically best way to direct U.S. foreign policy.

Another concern of Iran is globalism. There are of course various megalomaniacs of all stripes seeking world dominion. AL Gore has a recent book named 'The Future' that outlines an emerging networked globe marketplace evolution. Not everyone shares that goal or thinks it would be good of course; many have ecosphere reform ideas that fit with economic reform while keeping strong individual boundaries as if they were local gauge symmetries letting democracy and development exist nationally. Iranian Shi'a leaders may be slow to want anything to do with the corporatist world seeking to restore plundering of natural resources supremacy and degradation of morality. The homosexual elite of the Obama administration may hate the Islamic folkways and Sharia proscribed homosexuality. Arnold Toynbee noted that of all social institutions people will defend their religion most strongly especially since it is a matter of eternal fate.

Stimulating the Syrian war was not a good idea and it's difficult to say where it will lead except that tens of thousands more are likely to die. When the war ends there will be thousands of new highly experienced terrorists and professional revolutionaries experiencing unemployment and new local purges of Shi'a, Alawite or Sunni. Probably the next President of the United State will have to deal with issues generated from the conflict. Certainly a Christian influence on Syrian events seems to be minimal.

Five Sigma (a poem)

The facts of contemporary history were unevenly distributed
theoretical functions of state 
transformed into Utopia of global networks
gauge symmetry rotations 2/3rds of the way to happiness crashed
like a polar cap melting down
when even frogs were in decline

The rotational symmetry of the political world dark and deep
currents of transformation rise
while the world's fast asleep
when hallucinukes float through the keyholes
cascading waters surging forward
bosons forced through field dreams

Assemblies of atoms stay solidly together
running through time in all kinds of weather
particles swollen in fields with gravity pulling together
sunshine and rain sites of blue whales
Sampson and Armstrong sorting through lunar shale

Bone thugs beat a symbolism of signs
in a race to the bottom gathering dusty brine
constructing all things for a network of hives
counter-cyclically encompassing all things alive

With the immoral; compass inevitably pointing wrong
Them is a lost direction
Of dance in a song.

Intro to Quanta of Contemporary History

Can contemporary history be developed as a nexus of discrete essays regarded as individual quanta that might thereafter be sorted into groups and transformed through various field symmetries into distilled subject-meaning units? We wonder if elements of linguistic philosophy especially the ontological relativity of W.V.O. Quine and tool paradigms of quantum physics could be applied to history writing?

The world political and social culture is a vast template for analysis. It seems that world the political economy and ecosphere is too complex to fit within competent political management. Thus a more impartial quantum approach to history writing capturing some real-time opinion and ideas apprehended by the historian, as philosophical commentator might be worthwhile.

Perhaps the quantum unit template of contemporary history is old tradition in modern history compilation with techniques well developed, yet perhaps not. This is my initial approach and for due to various constraints will be limited. I will apply this method to my next contemporary history volume, Quanta of Contemporary History.

Quantifying contemporary history as units of event-process phenomena in a given space-time nexus can paint a mosaic for the contemplative reader of what sort of things occurred and were of interest. In the world today all issues seem inter-related or contingent. Not only are simultaneous histories developed like space-time coordinates in a field addressed with general relativity, there is a transcending monist continuum in which all the events of the year are embedded. We wonder how general relativity and the independent values of space-time apply within the finite mass of a Universe with an overall monistic history of expansion and realize that it is to an observer traveling through the cosmos that relativistic space-time differentials occur. Only for an historian or reader of contemporary events would the complete complex of events arise as a mosaic of discrete, individual quanta units of history.

Ideas too form quanta units of contemporary history. Ordinary citizen analysis and awareness of a vast national and global field of event-process contribute to the development of democratic opinion formation and even expression of political interest and will in public forums such as online Internet sites. It is challenging today to record what ideas or worldview any individual has or had regarding contemporary history. This volume essentially portrays my own ideas written over the past ear on various emergent subjects of interest.

It is too easy for the privileged to cross over the border these decades as if it has no reality. Since the first Boeing jetliner in 1958 the ease of global travel has increased. With the Internet and e-commerce globalists have a difficult time knowing where borders are.

A world without borders for corporations does not necessitate a world of peace, democracy or individual civil with liberty and justice for all in a good environment. The rise of advantage for globalists coincides with a decrease in individual economic liberty and the growth of networked ad hoc collectivism through Wall Street. Political free expression and local political control declines in a neo-corporatist global economic environment. Politics going against the mainstream tends to be repressed. Political lemmings rush headlong toward eco-disasters the market is unwilling to recognize ahead such as global warming and mass species extinction.

Fortunately for those inclined to disfavor nationalism U.S. politics has developed a contemporary application of Darwinism that helpfully obfuscates the nagging idea of nationalism and national interest. Evolution theory has developed in politics as a buzzword for fate.

Evolution political theory is a blind historical force determining political development rather than intelligent design inclusive of the well being of all U.S. citizens in the U.S.A. today. It is a convenient excuse enabling the concentration of wealth and political power in privileged elites. Political evolution theory applied as an equivalent of the oriental joss (fate) may be satisfactory for select scientific classes of epistemological extremists on the left and right with a point of view of human mind upgraded in the worst of B.F. Skinner's behaviorist paradigm of human organicism. The human body in that paradigm is meat and mind is no more than a bio-chemical apparition within.

Good Summer Non-Fiction Reading

Nigel Warburton recently left his position as senior lecturer at the Open University. The philosopher takes a turn at non-Academic philosophy free of the constraints of academia. His recent book Philosophy Bites Back with David Edmonds is at the top of my list of non-fiction. There are more non-fiction books of interest.

The Future by Al Gore leads with the concept of globalism as a stateless .com for the Utopian evolution. Cynics take a different view of globalism. Thunder on the Mountain by Peter A. Galuszka takes a hands on dirty look at big coal and corporate indifference. We don't believe globalism will improve human nature much, but will instead enforce a draconian domination by oppressive elites.

Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey of Whole Foods and Raj Sisodia seek to improve the 'heroic spirit of business' by upgrading their thinking caps through guru'd mentoring. Good luck. It's a good read too.

Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland is subtitled THE RISE of the NEW GLOBAL SUPER_RICH and the FALL OF EVERYONE ELSE. This book sounds like a must-read. Evidently people are interpreting the global elephant of capitalism and corporatism in different ways believing it will run amock and trample every place the grapes of wrath are stored profitably or dump too much fertilizer. 

Jared Diamond wrote THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY subtitled What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies. I like this topic quite a bit and hope to find the time to read the book. In the meantime here are a couple of traditional society tips.

Long ago S.E. Alaska had less water and more land and ice. When the end of the Wisconsin ice age started 16,000 years ago that all changed. Ice started melting and the sea level rose. Though Alaska brown bear genetically have two different lines arriving at different times and being isolated by rising water on islands such as Admiralty, they wern't the only ones affected. Human settlements of S.E. Alaska also changed.

Anthropological pre-history has people boating or walking along the Pacific coast maybe 20.000 years ago to points south with the now submerged land erasing the trail. It is known though that Athabascan tribesmen arrived from the Yukon and Stikine River maybe 5,000 years ago. They built a network of salmon traps in S.E. enabling a renewable harvest. Folklore reports Tlingits (means Sea Lion clan) of the larger Tongass tribe of Athabascans wasted very little of salmon eggs putting some of the egg and roe together in the streams before eating the fish. Salmon roe has vitamins A, C and D with 30% protein and no trans-fat or carbs.

Another fact is that Tlingits were the last tribe to have slaves in the U.S.A. They had traditional war with neighboring tribes such as the Haida executing as many as 70,000 a story goes in the mists of traditional history keeping a single hair count of each dead warrior building up to several inches thick. The Haida lived at Skid Gate in the Queen Charlotte Islands and may have arrived from Hawaii in large canoes manned by 60 warriors and/or women. Hai in Chinese means ocean I think, like Shang-hai means the Shang (original Chinese tribe) ocean. Our blue water navy can learn something from that too maybe.

Alaska News of HAARP, Weather/ Mind Control, Boundary Petitions & U.S. Senate Campaign

The U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in the 2016 Alaska election currently held by Mark Begich-a Democrat, got a new candidate today-Alaska's Republican Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell. Treadwell will join another candidate-Joe Miller (who ran unsuccessfully against party-line-jumping Republican-to-Independent-to-Republican Lisa Murkowsky losing the close election with cross-over Democrats voting for Murkowsky in 2010) in the run against the son of former U.S. Representative Nick Begich who was killed in the K.A.L. 007 shoot-down by a Soviet fighter-jet decades ago over Sakhalin Island.

Begich has a somewhat aloof webpage making it more difficult to send him emails than the Republican congressional delegation. Sen. Begich heated many Anchorage sidewalks when Mayor to melt ice. He also appeared with George Norrie on Coast-to Coast AM to discuss HAARP several times. What the government's hidden program of ethereal transitions was about was the concern. As Senator he hasn't told us if those evil machinations are still sending out possibly bad waves or if tin foil hats are a good enough defense. Maybe HAARP helped spy satellites listen to conversations of extra-terrestrials on Chinese mountaintops. Yek the dreaded possibility remains that Mark sold out to exobiological martinets pulling strings of U.S. political economy from the deep lab at Area 51 and won't disclose the facts he has learned.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2005/10/23 HAARP, Weather and Mind Control

The Treadwell vs. Miller Republican primary should be a good one with the incumbent Begich watching from the sidelines (Begich beat the late Sen. Ted Stevens after he was convicted of seven felonies that were eventually thrown out on appeal) will have to guess if the scion of the Treadwell gold mine family or the Yale Law, Univ of Alaska Fairbanks M.A. in Economics, Bronze Star winning man-of-the-people will be his opponent in 2016.

The Treadwell Mine in Juneau was a fascinating turn-of-the-century development that was state-of-the-art in its day with some facilities for workers and their health. Lt. Governor Treadwell still prefers natural resource development, though it's no longer the turn of the 20th century. There will be 11-12 billion people on Earth by 2100 and global warming controls and mass species extermination reversals are not developing at an adequate pace to work. Politicians should be leaders instead of throwers of accelerants on global eco-flames.

Anchorage Mayor Dan 'Body Count' Sullivan has thrown his hat into the race for Lt Governor. Sullivan's record of making life difficult for the poor of Anchorage let residents watch the annual winter body count of homeless people dying of hypothermia increase to as many as 11. Anchorage is a city were realistic effective policy can be far more important to life than traditional and hardened insider political postures.

The Alaska State Supreme Court threw out the political reapportionment process last month directing it be restarted. We will probably all get new voter's I.D. cards if the cookie cutters can decide how to best gerrymander the districts to let foreign corporations scarf down anything valuable

The Juneau-Petersburg borough boundary issue was decided in favor of Petersburg. The natural boundary would have given Petersburg as far north as Kupreanov Island's north end to Cape Fanshaw. Petersburg instead got the equivalent of a position on Juneau's 30-yard line at Holkam Bay.

http://commerce.alaska.gov/dca/lbc/2012_City_and_Borough_of_Juneau_Annexation/

One wonders if environmental concerns were the reason why? With a far smaller number of people living in Petersburg maybe development of natural resources would be slower than if Juneau got an equal portion of wilderness. Yet the reasoning might be the opposite; Juneau might have more environmentalists than Petersburg making getting easy approvals from the Petersburg borough assembly more attractive to  disposable-ecosphere developers.

http://juneauempire.com/local/2012-10-28/juneau-appeals-petersburg-borough-boundary-approval       

http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/01/03/petersburg-becomes-19th-borough-in-alaska/

Juneau has a highly visible drive-up glacier, the Mendenhall Glacier, that is in fast melting recession because of global warming. The Mendenhall Valley auto culture is a local focal point pollution source for northern greenhouse gas  emission where one can see the direct damage perhaps working against Juneau's credibility as  conservator of vestigial wilderness in S.E.

Mendenhall Glacier

Road building mania drives many including the Governor and Lt. Governor to seek roads to Haines and adverse impact on whale lifestyles not too numerous wolves, marmots and indirectly human life on Earth. The cheap and easy cookie jar of wild environment drives plundering instead of creative economic invention and renewal of habit on Earth. One would hope these geniuses would develop a green ethic for transplanting to make lifeless exo-planets green and Lush before desertification of Earth kills us all.

Image credit State of Alaska

The city-borough of Juneau is correct in appealing the decision to give the area in red to Petersburg. Petersburg's natural range of influence should end at Cape Fanshaw. The area in red should be set aside for non-development so whales and voyageurs might have relief from the maddening crowd in the few decades of eco-health remaining ahead.

Whale jumps at Faragut Bay April 2013

Internet & S.S.U.T.A. Taxation Status Explained by Rep. Don Young of Alaska

Alaska Rep. Don Young explains efforts to tax the Internet through the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement that 24 states have signed in to.

   " Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 684, the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.  I appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns with me.

     Under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, a state may not impose tax collection responsibilities on an out-of-state seller that does not have a physical presence in the state.  This interpretation has allowed many online businesses to sell to customers in various states without having to collect and pay owed sales taxes unless the business has an actual building in the states.  In fact, to combat this many states have established laws that require the customer to pay the sales tax to their home state, but the rate of compliance is extremely low.

     The inherent difficulties in collecting state-specific sales taxes led many state tax administrators to form a working group tasked with finding a uniform way to collect sales taxes among the states.  In 2002, the working group produced the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), which was adopted by 24 states so far.  Alaska has not adopted the SSUTA and does not impose a sales tax on its businesses or purchasers.

     On February 14, 2013, Representative Steve Womack (R-AZ) introduced H.R. 684 to allow states to impose sales tax collection duties on remote sellers if the state has adopted the SSUTA or similar state legislation.  An exemption would be provided to sellers with online gross sales less than $1 million per year.  This means that if H.R. 684 were law, any state which adopted the SSUTA would have to collect sales taxes from its constituents, who purchased products online from an out-of-state vendor, and remit those taxes to the vendor's home state.  Opponents of this legislation argue that the legislation would force online retailers to become tax collectors for the 46 states who collect sales taxes.  Furthermore, they argue that enacting H.R. 684 into law could mean online businesses facing multiple out-of-state audits if these businesses fail to collect the proper amount of taxes.     As more and more purchases are made over the Internet and states experience more and more fiscal troubles, state governments are looking for new ways to collect taxes from sales generated online.  Alaska does not impose a state sales tax and has not adopted the SSUTA.  Therefore, it does not appear that H.R. 684 would affect Alaskans even if it were adopted.  However, if Alaska were to adopt the SSUTA, the idea that H.R. 684 could force Alaskan online vendors to become tax collectors for 46 states is troublesome.  For that reason, I remain highly skeptical of H.R. 684 in its current form."

Israel-Palestine Two-State Solution Officially Dead Says Saeb Erekat

The two-state solution to incessant Palestinian attacks on Israel is officially dead according to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat made the remark in reply to a statement by Israeli Economic minister Naftali Bennet. Deputy Defense Minister Danny Dannon echoed Bennet's recalcitrance on a two-state solution. We thought as much might develop following the brutal Shia-Sunni civil war in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of the coalition of the willing and neo-con bungling of nation-rebuilding.

Gaza's Hamas party has never quit attacking Israel, and as first cousin of the Muslim Brotherhood the two-state solution founded on a secular government in Egypt and a more moderate P.L.O does seem anachronistic. In the current political environment of a destabilized Middle East, with shoulder-fired anti-jetliner missiles purloined from the late Libyan Dictator Moamar Ghaddafi's arsenal possible reaching Al Qaeda of the Nigeria or the Maghreb, and with a recrudescent Sunni collection of visiting terrorist and revolutionaries active in Syria seeking to establish another Muslim Brotherhood branch government Israel is increasingly seeming to be in something like a geopolitical situation like that before the 1967 Middle-East war where a pan-Arabic group  of governments led by Abdul Nasser developed and executed belligerent actions. If Israel were to accept a two-state solution they would in effect simply be cede defense territory before a possible next conflict.  That would not be in Israel's interest.

http://nationaluasi.com/dru/node/1126

While the U.S. administration has said it would start to donate small arms (weapons of war such as assault weapons, grenades, semi-automatic pistols, machine guns and such) to particular illegal combatants in Syria who pro-Syrians might regard as terrorists for eating the intestines of dead government soldiers now and then, the Syrian conflict may continue for a few years with increased support from Hezballah and other neo-Shiite allies of the neo-Shia Alawite Assad Government. With such an alumni of terrorist pros gathering experience in the conflicts of the Middle East Israel will need to increase it's vigilance. After the end of the conflict in Syria pro or con the terrorist underground networks may seek further employment attacking Israel with renewed support from the infusion of small arms and weapons of war loosed during the Arab Spring of Revolt. In time the traditional unifying factor of terrorist networks might resume the trash talk and attack Israel axis of evil.

Probably the better time for a two-state solution was before all of the changes of the Arab spring and profusion of terrorists and terrorist weapons throughout the Middle East. In the present destabilized environment Israel will have to hunker down and increase its defense capabilities and border security. Perhaps in a decade or two after the present generation of radicals ages a little it might be a stable and responsible enough environment of political leadership for a two-state solution with some land in Syria or Egypt going to Palestinians in addition to the Gaza and some West Bank properties. It would probably be best though that evolution through twittering and Facebooked friendly relations and business practices develop such that in time the regional exploitation of workers issues wither away.

Afghanistan's Social-Military Development; Michael Hastings & 'The Operators'

When a reporter working for Rolling Stone magazine did a story on then commander of U.S. and ISAF troops in Afghanistan four-star general Stan McCrystal in 2010 the die was cast for revealing the V.P. 'Bite-me' appellation heard round the world, and General McCrystal's resignation was accepted when the pdf report was leaked. The reporter Michael Hastings wrote a fine book on the in-depth development of the story with interviews with the general and his staff in Europe and Afghanistan as well as a wealth of information about the war, the effect on the people of Afghanistan and the costs. The booked is named 'The Operators' after McCrystal's Special Forces and JSOC personal history. Operators are what Delta force personnel are called. Instead of being another truth-better-than fiction action adventure tale one might expect, The Operators is a high-level view of how politicians and generals got it wrong.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/16/afghanistan-drawdown-take-security-lead-from-us-nato_n_3450858.html?utm_hp_ref=world

The Huffington Post blog today has a story on the soon to be announced transition of Afghan security forces taking the lead from American and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and it seems about time. Hasting's book provides some detail about the Afghan security forces and American political-military management of the war that are a little disturbing. The war for one thing just didn't seem necessary. We sent a conventional Army to fight against a non-existent insurgency. Initially the C.I.A. supported the Northern Alliances efforts to take down the Taliban successfully helped with a few Blue-72 bombs, Special Forces and bucket loads of cash. Only then did the large military build-up begin to take out an Al-Qae'da that were mostly gone and that had been Arabs and international terrorists doing guest training in country.

Hastings writes that the majority of Afghan soldiers and security forces smoke hashish, as does President Karzai. Homosexual exploitation of boys by Afghan security forces is also common. They have a phrase 'boys are for fun and girls are for children' in Afghanistan. We do not need to support such a Muslim society that is implicitly corrupt perhaps through the effects of decades of foreign intervention.

In my opinion the United States can't get anything right economically and uses military power instead of defensible ecospheric economic intervention that survives anyone's terror attacks. There is just no green economic genius in the U.S. military and politicians tend to be clueless about foreign intelligence before intervention militarily.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Operators-Terrifying-Americas-Afghanistan/dp/0452298962

There are plans to build-up warlords to persist regionally after the U.S. drawdown and let the corrupt at least offset development of a Taliban-led fundamentalist state. In such a political climate U.S. Special Forces might interpolate to attack incipient international terrorist training bases theoretically. Billions being spent tends to be the first congressional response to international terrorism defense even if there isn't any good reason for it. It's as if students with the flunking math scores are running the U.S. government and that isn't very helpful to the economic bottom line or dead civilians.

Accuracy is important in chess, and it's important in economics and war as well. U.S. generals like Stan McCrystal don't have the authority to just win the war, and civilian political leaders haven't the competence to run the war if it isn't conventional at least.  That is one present problem for the American democracy. Wrong political choices and management mean wars are badly addressed. Not even the counter-insurgency techniques of General Petraeus (COIN) derived from Galula's doctrine were meaningful for Afghanistan. Insurgent recruitment increased to resist the foreign invaders (U.S.) whenever we killed an insurgent or two. The 'insurgency' was that of natives at home defending against aloof, wealthy killers spending money on defense items like drunken sailors-maybe to find Bin Laden, who was probably allowed to escape from Torah Borah to Pakistan years before.

Anand (Ind) vs Carlsen (Nor) World Chess Championship Nov. 6 to 26, 2013

The 2013 World Chess Championship match between champion Viswanathan Anand and first-time challenger Magnus Carlsen will be held in Chennai India in November. The 22 year old Norwegian will square off against the 43 year old Anand who is brilliant at counter play.  Carlsen has the highest-ever chess rating at 2864. Anand's rating is fourth in the world at 2786.

The chess world three decades after saturation of pc's and chess programs has taken a turn toward the quick. Timed games online at chess.com may have 10,000 players on any given Saturday. It's free to join and amusing intellectually to play. youtube has many free chess videos from chess coaches like thechesswebsite, MatoJelic and Kingscrusher. Following the action of master-class chess players online in live blitz games lasting five or ten minutes, or as little as one minute bullet games is a refreshing way to clear the cobwebs out. It takes about a year to learn to play at a 1000 level, so there is some work required to move one's score up  the ladder. 

World chess champions of the past started chess playing as early as age four (Karpov). Carlsen was a Grand master at age 13. There are three players with scores higher than 2800 and they all started playing chess early in the morning.

Club chess players are those with ratings between 1200 and 1800. Higher than that one finds FIDE masters (FM's), National and International masters and Grand masters (GMs). In the world there are about a thousand Grand masters. What is interesting about the present highest-level chess play is the large number of players rated higher than 2700. The U.S.A. has a player-Hikaru Nakamura, rated 5th in the world with just two fewer points than Anand. Aronian, Kramnik, Karjakin, Topolov, Grischuck and Caruana are other top-ten rated players that one expects to be challenging in the future, whoever wins the thrilla in Chennai.

Image credit: U.S. public domain Philadelphia Museum of Art 1917 Juan Gris, Chessboard, Glass and Dish

Snowden's Theft of N.S.A. Data Indicates Broad Exposure to Digital Corruption

Edward Snowden's theft of N.S.A. surveillance information to reveal to the public and Communist Chinese the depth of technical penetration of communications networks does indicate the tip of the iceberg of data mining the upper classes and criminal gangs exploit. Douglas Bamford's excellent 2009 book on the N.S.A. The Shadow Factory provided a in-depth look into the covert-overt agency. Private sector data mining companies track a lot of information too. Not just online either; r.t.f. chips in everything from smart cards to automobile parts and phones are tied in to computer networks tracking the location of hard-wired Americans.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-Factory-Eavesdropping-America/dp/0307279391

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining

http://www.kypost.com/dpp/news/region_central_cincinnati/downtown/data-mining-is-big-business-for-kroger-&-getting-bigger-all-the-time

It is interesting that any sort of debate exists on Snowden's violation of public trust. Democracy requires that people obey the laws voluntarily. That the N.S.A. does data mining means that its part of the real modern world. The public ought to be alarmed about the inherent insecurity of Internet communications and general data tracking yet of course they aren't. It's too complex and abtruse of a topic to be concerned about and if their privacy goes out the window well, they already probably tweeted something about their criminal activities anyway.

It is probable that a complete reformation of the Internet and cell phones, rtf card readers and other surveillance structures should be redesigned to enable virtually complete privacy. The crackerbox palaces of modern high-rise office buildings that collapse like a house of cards if hit by some jet fuel explosive should be phased out and modern artificial mountain range living structures with high-quality ecosphere contribution phased in. No one in politics has any interest in a competent reform of anything though. Evolution toward the global warming, mass extinction of bio-diversity, mass human population collapse through conflict, scarce resources and the death of individual freedom from the interference-of-others via mass control,  the concentration of wealth and repression of individual free enterprise because of the corporatist controlled political environment will probably go ahead like a reciprocal of the recession of glaciers. Not too worry. It will be twitted and reported when it happens.

Development of Marine Nitrogen Cycle Knowledge & Global Warming

Development of knowledge of the marine nitrogen cycle has increased the past twenty years. Molecular biology and genetic database technology provided new insights into what, where and how oceanic nitrogen is transformed, fixed and sequestered.  The recently published McGill University study (see article link below) showed that a few thousand years are needed for the oceans to adapt to global warming. 


http://aem.asm.org/content/68/3/1015.full  Nitrogen Cycling in the Ocean: New Perspectives on Processes and Paradigms

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130614111606.htm McGill University study to quantity ocean nitrogen cycle response to climate change.

More protection for S.E. Alaska salmon habitat would be helpful if that fish is to survive in the century ahead in the wild.

http://m.juneauempire.com/state/2013-06-11/scientists-ask-protections-salmon-tongass

Pres. Obama to Arm Rebels, P.M. Cameron Claims Syria Used Sarin & Killed 150

Though Germany invented Sarin gas in 1938 the United States and Britain developed large stocks and perhaps the first casualty was a British test subject at Porton Down. Sarin is about 500 times more powerful than cyanide and can kill  in a minute. Sarin is a nerve agent and messes up neuro-chemicals. The administrations of the U.S., Britain and France claim the Assad government used Sarin on the rebels and killed 150 of them. We are a little skeptical because it is a potential excuse for U.S. intervention on the side of the rebels.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE95C16L20130614

If the Assad government used a chemical weapon it would be quite bad (it was outlawed by the U.N. in the 1990's). We wonder though why Assad would use such a politically dangerous weapon to kill just one-hundred people instead of conventional yet effective weapons of which he has plenty. We wonder if the claim is another Gulf of Tonkin resolution or W.M.D. in Saddam Hussein's Iraq quanta of political flim flam? Twice-burned once shy.  With defense outlays for Afghanistan winding down in 2014 the military-industrial complex may be searching for new places to drop munitions for profit (defense contractors need to resupply the U.S. military for profit).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22908836#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Senator McCain has already called for U.S. intervention to ground the Syrian Air Force. Cratering explosives on airfields and maybe Stinger should-launched missiles for Al Qaeda visiting rebels might do the trick. One wonders if the Syrian Air Force was used to kill just one-hundred rebels with Sarin by air drops of bombs?

In 2004 Iraqi rebels used an artillery shell with two-part Sarin precursors to attack a U.S. convoy ineffectively because the shell needed to rotate at high speed to mix the Sarin and an I.E.D. wouldn't do it. Syria has artillery and tanks to launch Sarin-precursor filled shells (not like creme-filled donuts) if they wanted to, so where is the effectiveness of a no-fly zone for controlling a possible Sarin attack from the air? It seems possible that former Iraqi rebels have a store of Sarin-precursor filled artillery shells that they might be able to use as guest-rebels for Team Sunni in Syria. We are skeptical about the Sarin fog of war, and hope for restraint from the Condor legion wing of the U.S. Government lusting for no-fly zones abroad until use of chemical weapons becomes a solidly witnessed and documented fact. 

A substantive approach to verification of quanta of contemporary history requires a probability curve of use consistent with military objectives in the given political environment. The allegation of technical use of Sarin gas by the Assad government of Syria thus far is not convincing. It seems to be a managed political level akin to claiming the unemployment rate was 7.9% before the Nov. 2012 Presidential election rather than 8.0. True or not there were still 30 million souls out of work in the U.S.A.


Image credit of Rocky Mountain Arsenal 1970 Sarin dtest rabbit-Library of Congress photo taken by U.S. Forest Service employee.

Evolution as Intelligent Design- Evolving Moral Positions and Intellectual Content v.2

 Sartre once said that he had evolved a new idea on what an intellectual is. President Obama used the phrase that he was evolving a new opinion about homosexual marriage decades later. Evolving subjective intellectual content is a self-regarded activity these days. One cannot be sure if such intellectual development evolves because of random chance or the natural selection of saying what the people want to here most in order to get political power (regardless of the merit of the idea). If evolution of ideas is powered by conscious, intentional thought then evolution comprises design. That paradox is ponderous. It means that evolution and intelligent design are synonyms. Evolving an opinion about the whore in the harbor of Babylon the Great trading with all the nations of the world might be easier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g8JVK4Fppw Sartre on 'What an Intellectual Is'

If morality is what people actually do in a social context, then perhaps ethics is a description of the normalized procedures for implementing moral choices. Certainly people seem to choose to do wrong often enough with select ethical criterions, yet perhaps for atheists without belief in a transcendent moral structure there is no wrong, but only evolution. How can it be wrong for Hitler to invade Poland within an evolutionary criterion? For Christians and Dietrich Bonhoeffer that wickedness of the Reich should have been morally and actually opposed?

One may reasonably oppose the existence of a logical condition as being present if there is present some sort of factor that cannot coexist simultaneously.

Not (A & B).

A or B

A & B

If one can prove these simple conditions to be valid for select, or Universal circumstances inclusive of an omnipotent God then I suppose one would have a hard to defeat bunker position with a clear enough logical field of fire, yet I believe that the presence of evil (if one recognizes evil and is not just atheistically 'evolving' an advantageous position does not satisfy the Universal disjunct logically.

Not simply because complex numbers evidently are used for description in quantum mechanics and one day for quantum computing that transcend the binary 0 or 1 criteria of computers today, but for the reason that God stipulated right out that people have original sin and a fallen nature. The premise is that given immortality mankind might become even more wicked than now. Mankind is given to labor and women to go through childbirth and mortality would abbreviate the evil of human experience.

That doesn't mean that human beingness is bad-only that the human nature to go wrong needs to be overcome through faith, yet I wanted to remain on logical grounds rather than that of faith for the present.

I have no idea what sort of things God might want to accomplish in eternity. I believe that God is tougher than NFL players with those concussive head injuries however, and he might be able to withstand tough things in the Universe that he creates perhaps as stress tests. Certainly human beings going through some of those horrible times were quite remarkably tough. Those Christians eaten by lions or burned alive for their faith were of strong moral character. Even some Buddhists that have burned themselves in protest of war showed a certain ability to overcome the horrors possible of the mortal coil, yet one would think that it should be evil rather than one's self that does evil in-the-world.

I think that the problem of evil is not something that precludes the existence of the Divine being-especially since He exists for eternity, sent His Son to share the experience and is has enough time to make things right.