Paul M. Jones

One of the prosecutors in the case of the online pioneer who killed himself this weekend, Aaron Swartz, was accused in 2008 of driving another hacker to suicide.

Some of Swartz's friends have accused Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann of contributing to Swartz's suicide, with his unwillingness to compromise on the prosecution of Swartz in a case involving scholarly journal articles.

Back in 2008, another young hacker, Jonathan James, killed himself after being named a suspect in another Heymann case.

James, the first juvenile put into confinement for a federal cybercrime case, was found dead was two weeks after the Secret Service raided his house as part of its investigation of the TJX hacker case led by Heymann -- the largest personal identity hack in history. He was thought to be "JJ," the unindicted co-conspirator named in the criminal complaints filed with the US District Court in Massachusetts. In his suicide note, James wrote that he was killing himself in response to the federal investigation and their attempts to tie him to a crime which he did not commit.

via Internet Activist's Prosecutor Linked To Another Hacker's Death.

The stages [of the crash] are laid out below. The first three have already occurred.

1 INITIAL CRASHES

• Crash of the residential property market
• Crash of the commercial property market
• Crash of the stock market

2 INITIAL KNOCK-ON EFFECTS OF CRASHES

• Loss of homes
• Loss of jobs
• Inflation

3 IMMEDIATE ACTIONS BY GOVERNMENT

• Bailouts for select groups
• Dramatic increase of debt
• Politicians going in the opposite direction of a real solution

The first knee-jerk reaction began immediately, with the Government attempting to "make the problem go away" as quickly as possible. Almost invariably, at this stage, the corrective strategy is hastily prepared and shortsighted, assuring further deterioration of the economy.

In this stage, the politicians on both sides fail to focus on a real solution. Instead, their primary focuses are, first, to avoid a painful real solution, and, second, to engage in finger-pointing, each political party blaming the other for the problem. The problem worsens steadily until one of the next series of major dominoes falls. This is usually sudden and triggers the toppling of other dominoes.

4 SECOND WAVE OF CRASHES

• Major crash in stock market
• Currency plummets
• Increased bankruptcies
• Increased unemployment

5 INTERNATIONAL TRADING PARTNERS REACT

• Foreign countries refuse to accept more debt
• Foreign trade slows dramatically

At this point, the Government introduces dramatic change, such as ill-conceived protectionism, which backfires almost immediately.

6 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTES DESPERATE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE MEASURES

• Defaults on debt
• Restrictive tariffs on imports
• Currency controls

7 ECONOMY REACTS IN LOCKSTEP TO GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

• Hyperinflation - dramatic increase in food and fuel costs
• Massive unemployment
• Extensive foreclosures
• Extensive bankruptcies

At this point, the dominoes are tumbling quickly, and a rapid unraveling of control is about to take place.

8 SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE

• Bank closures
• Extensive homelessness
• Food and fuel shortages
• Electric power becomes sporadic, blackouts common

As these factors unravel, the public mood turns to a combination of blind fear and anger.

9 SOCIAL COLLAPSE

• Crime rises dramatically (particularly street crime)
• Food riots
• Tax revolts
• Squatters' rebellions

10 MARTIAL LAW

• Creation of special army to address "domestic terrorism"
• Random killings become commonplace

At first, the authorities focus mostly on violent subjugation and arrests; then, as prisons quickly become hopelessly overcrowded, camps become the norm. Soon, these too become unmanageable, particularly as a result of high cost of food and manpower. At that point, the solution turns to the killing of anyone who is suspected of a crime and, more frequently, anyone who is not submissive. (This will not resemble the Gestapo of the late 1930's. It will be less organized and more chaotic.)

11 REVOLUTION

If revolution is to occur, it will happen at this point. Many people will feel that they have nothing to lose, and anger will be at its peak. If revolution does take place, it will not be an organized movement as such. It will be spontaneous, and breakouts will manifest themselves like popcorn popping, largely at random, with ever-increasing frequency. At some point, it may possibly evolve into something more organized.

via After the Storm - International Man.

Our modern view of romantic love is so profoundly foolish because it fails to grasp the fact that the unconstrained search for romantic love leads to a never ending stream of new love, ultimately followed by disappointment/disinterest for one and heartbreak for the other.  This constant quest for a new high or fix followed by the inevitable crash is at the core of choice addiction.  For women pursuing choice addiction the reality of the larger pattern is nearly universally ignored, and the momentary feeling of “I will love him forever” is frozen in time with the trail of wreckage conveniently forgotten.

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When men act this way we call them players or cads, but when women act this way we tend to say: She was following her heart!

via Feral love | Dalrock.

People never trust an accommodating man with important things. That may sound harsh and cynical, but check it up in your own experience. If you have a severe illness, for example, you turn to the busiest, most exacting doctor in town. The fact that he is busy and can’t be bothered by little things gives you confidence in his ability and judgment.

Read the whole thing, from 1922. Via 1922: Why I Quit Being So Accommodating | Mike Cane’s xBlog.

Regardless of the age, the culture, or the social conditions, there is ALWAYS a percentage of the general populace that embraces the totalitarian dynamic.  There is always someone in our neighborhood, in our workplace, and within our family that finds vindication or advantage in supporting the state, even if the state has turned viciously criminal.  They are not only useful idiots; they are conscious participants in the process of pacification and enslavement of their own society.  They understand their role perfectly, and they enjoy what they do.

Look carefully around you and try to pre-identify them. And read the whole thing: Guest Post: Statist Thugs And The Rocks They Crawl Out From Under | Zero Hedge.

The electoral college is a lot better than you think it is. In fact, it's a work of genius that supports the goals of Federalism very well. Read the whole thing (extensive but worth it): The Electoral College: Enlightened Democracy.

Some locavores may continue to believe that our globalized food supply chain is the result of colonial and corporate agri-business raiders who crushed small farmers, packers and retailers the world over simply because they could. But we contend that modern practices are but the latest in a long line of innovations, the ultimate goal of which has always been to increase the accessibility, quality, reliability and affordability of humanity’s food supply. And if we may be so blunt, how many activists still use locally manufactured electric typewriters and copper-wired rotary-dial phones to spread their message and set up “grassroots” links between food consumers and producers? How many move around in horse-drawn tramways, Ford Model Ts or even old-fashioned roller skates with parallel wheels? How many would trust doctors, meteorologists and computer engineers clinging to 1940s technology? If nonlocal modern technologies are good enough to serve the locavores’ needs, why aren’t they also desirable for agricultural producers?

via Why eating global is more sustainable than eating local | Full Comment | National Post.

My friend Chris Hartjes sent me this article some time ago. I found it to be a powerful and accurate description of the U.S. that caused me adjust my world-view on some social issues. The article is difficult to excerpt. I am going to attempt to paraphrase and summarize, but you really should read the whole thing.

The Rise Of The Praetorian Class

We're used to thinking of three classes: upper, middle, and lower. We generally catagorize them by wealth. But the author says that is an inaccurate system. Instead, he says the three classes to categorize by are the Economic class, the Political class, and the Praetorian class.

The Economic class is composed of your classic producers in a free market economy. They are defined not by wealth, but by open and voluntary activity in the market. I would call these your typical capitalists.

The Political class is composed of politicians, lobbyists, influence-peddlers, and other supplicants of government. They are additionally composed of "a patchwork of commercial entities that have learned that employing a politically well-connected pitch man replaces the need for an effective sales and marketing organization and in some cases even the requirement to have a desirable product." I would call these latter your typical crony capitalists. This class is defined, again not by wealth, but by how they exert power over the market using coercion, deceit, and government connections.

Comparing these two classes, the author says: "The arrangement can be summed up by saying that economic activity within the Economic Class places the bargaining power in the hands of the buyer whereas the economic activity within the Political Class places the bargaining power in the hand of the seller."

These two classes should be familiar. However, there is a third class that does not sound familiar: the Praetorian class. "The Praetorian Class includes members of the Armed Services, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel as well as numerous militarized officials including agents from the DEA, Immigrations, Customs Enforcement, Air Marshalls, US Marshalls, and more. It also includes, although to a lesser extent, various stage actors in the expanding security theater such as TSA personnel. The main mission of the Praetorian Class is to keep the order of the day. This requires displaying an intimidating presence in their interactions with the Economic Class."

Read the rest of the article to see how interactions between the classes play out. I found the descriptions recognizable and, for that familiarity, disheartening.

Go to any U.S. university. You will hear lamentation and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Washington has become unfeeling and stupidly refuses to support higher education: don't those idiots on the Potomac know that education is a investment in the future? Don't they know that human resources are our most valuable resources, that public higher education is necessary preparation for a democratic future? That we must invest in the future?

But now wander about the campus, and look at how our typical university allocates that all-important investment dollar. You will find that the "social science" departments are far larger than the "hard sciences," and indeed have more students than are enrolled in liberal arts. You will find that even in states with tens of thousands of unemployed teachers, the Department of Education is among the very largest departments on campus.

The social sciences will be large and important departments, with many members of faculty and much classroom space. One wonders what it is that graduates in the social sciences are prepared to do. It must be an important skill; we are spending a large part of our scarce but all-important investment funds to acquire it. Oddly enough, though, we're not training so many engineers and scientists, physicists and mathematicians. Why?

But of course the answer is well known. In most universities, our education investment funds are allocated by entering freshmen. They go to a kind of oriental bazaar, where they are seduced into choosing a major; the number of majors then determines the department's share of the university's budget funds. It does seem an odd way to allocate an important resource.

One might suppose a better way: that the legislature, or other public authority, determine the number of engineers, biologists, physicists, medicos, sociologists, etc., that might reasonably be required in the future, and allocate public funds among the departments accordingly. Students wishing to declare various majors could do so; but when the number that the taxpayers will support is exceeded, the next student to enroll in that major gets to pay tuition accordingly. If tax-supported higher education is an investment--and what other theory justifies sending the tax collector, policeman, and eventually the public hangman to extort the funds from the taxpayers? -- then might we have some care in the way that investment is allocated? The present scheme looks like a bad parody invented by an inept science fiction writer. Who'd believe it if it weren't happening?

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The real difference between arts and sciences is the difference between data and evidence; and the "social sciences" don't know one from the other.

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When this was put to Dr. Paul Bohannon (5), dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Southern California, he replied that Mead's value didn't lie in her data-gathering. She stretched imaginations and made people think larger thoughts.

Granted this may be true, but it seems more the job of a science fiction writer than a scientist.

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The social sciences have made an art of forgetting embarrassing facts. If a fact doesn't fit the theory, leave the fact for another discipline. Sociology has nothing to learn from anthropology, which has nothing to learn from social psychology. None of these has anything to learn from the mathematics, physics, or chemistry departments.

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The poet who believes he knows something of science having taken "Sosh 103" and "Ed Stat" is far more dangerous than ever he would have been if he had remained ignorant.

Meanwhile, novelists have as much right to be called "experts" on human behavior as any social scientist, which is to say we can learn as much about our fellow humans from a good novel as from a sociological treatise; and I know which I would rather read. Similarly, the poet may find beauty in the theory of probability, and will learn something of the difference between data and evidence while studying it; "Stat for Social Scientists" teaches nothing, and is dull in the bargain.

When the social scientists are challenged as unscientific, their usual plea is that their subject matter is very complex and thus the methodology of physical science won't work. This is an interesting argument, but it would carry more weight if students of social science knew something of physical science's methodologies. Granted that the "social sciences" have an intrinsically more difficult job; is this any reason to abandon the tools of science?

The article is long but well worth reading in its entirety. Via The Voodoo Sciences.

The architects of the Third Reich thought of themselves as artists and intellectuals, determined to secure “freedom for the healthy.”

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One can now turn to specific examples from the albums of such “artists” to see what they had in mind when Goebbels spoke of eliminating “the diseased” and creating “freedom for the healthy.” At the end, the reader should have a good idea of just what a “healthy” official of the Third Reich was, and what values he espoused among his family of fellow Nazis.

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Throughout his two albums, for example, Himmler is shown in variety of uniforms, all of which were custom tailored according to his designs. It was Himmler the “artist” or costume designer who added details and flourishes to these uniforms. In a work of popular history, Sydney D. Kirkpatrick describes Himmler the couturier at work on an SS line of uniforms.

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And yet for all the oddities of their personal lives, there is the side of the Nazis that seems normal. Many Nazi officials came from the educated middle class of German society, and in his comments on the trial of Einsatzgruppen members in Nuremberg after the war, the British historian Gerald Reitlinger (author of The SS, Alibi of a Nation, a superb study of the SS) observed of the defendants that “the only common denominator was that nearly all had been to a university and the majority had achieved the doctorate so dear to the German middle class.” The idea of Nazi intellectuals may be troubling to some, but as has long been known, intellectuals rose to power in the systems of both fascism (meaning both Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy) and the Leninist-Stalinist version of communism. Hitler and Stalin required the talents of writers, organizers, and, yes, artists to accomplish their ends.

Be sure to look at the pictures; disturbing throughout, not because they are obviously abnormal but because they are horribly normal: Nazi Family Values | Hoover Institution. I suppose the lesson here is that they thought they were the good guys. If you are an educated, erudite, academic intellectual, you think you're one of the good guys. It's not necessarily so.