Let’s talk about terrorism.
If a disgruntled agency really wanted to overthrow a government, or just royally fuck up a foreign city, the most effective method would be through infrastructure. A child could drive a vehicle into a group of bystanders. But if a “terrorist” aimed to fuck things up, they’d blackout the power-grid. They’d hack a town’s water filtration system. They’d meltdown a nuclear power plant. Yet as computer literate as terrorists are often portrayed to be, with their YouTube recruitment videos and secret Facebook pages and legions of Twitter bots, they never seem to think of this. We very rarely hear any mention of the danger for power-grid attacks, from our generally fear-mongering media or pop culture fiction, not because we don’t care to give anyone ideas, but because the USA government does this itself. Stuxnet probably being the best-known example. So if the technological capabilities of the terrorist armies are unable to reach an obvious conclusion, then perhaps that aspect of the terroristic threat is entirely trumped up. And perhaps the social media stuff is a fabrication. From inside the house even.
Which there’s exorbitant precedent for.
As I keep telling people, there is considerably nothing which a nefarious agent might possibly do with digital information that the USA federal government and generously-endowed multibillion-dollar tech firms are not already exploiting themselves. It’s pure projection. Eric Schmidt chairs a board inside the Pentagon, for fucksakes.
USA allies Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have their own cyber-armies. Largely co-funded by contributions from the USA. Against fake Facebook accounts? Does it matter that Saudi royals own controlling shares in Twitter? Lest we forget the Israelis, who claim no separation between Church and State. How is their Black Cube firm not trolling the Kaaba of the Muslim faith? Domestically, former First Lady and inglorious Secretary of State under the Obama administration Hillary Clinton spent over a million bucks on a cyber army of her own, the same cyber army now obsessively accusing the Russians of having a cyber army. But we need governmental overreach so the quote-unquote terrorists don’t do this same exact thing.
Short of turning out the lights, so to speak, computers cannot really physically harm people. Computers need that power source as well. So they are actually potent, ideal tools for non-lethal reckoning. And that is why the governmental controls, to maintain its own base of power. Wealth and power are synonymous, meaning control will never be relinquished without a buyout. And we cannot crowd-fund a revolution when those needing overthrown possess all of the resources. Not to save its people from scary foreigners who hate the Christian god or the American way of life or whatever, but to stop its own people from having any real power over themselves. But this is why there’s more interest from public officials in regulating the internet than gun sales. A couple of rednecks with pea-shooters cannot compete with the world’s most expensive military. But the right guy or gal with a laptop…
Dung beetles. That’s what billionaire tech CEOs are. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, street preachers, manic or not, are the only Christians worth listening to, as Paul’s “to know Christ and to be like him” means going without everything, having nothing. I’m not even Christian and I can make that out. Spiritual truth, transcendental development, does not incorporate materialism or consumerism. No matter the brand preaching. I like to remind folks from time to time just how much dough orthodox Christian churches in the USA make through tax exemption. They are more like the tech CEOs than Christ-like. The dream chapter from The Brothers Karamazov come to life.
Our culture, our society has distracted itself with maintaining this distinctly western illusion of a separation of Church and State, permitting industrialist entrepreneurs to totally infiltrate both spheres. And our culture, our society, praises these men and women like heroic demigods. For monetizing fucking life itself. Everybody eagerly bought and sold, with their own elected leaders camping out in line all night with ass-cheeks held open.
Anyone promoting any candidate doesn’t seem to learn from experience. The USA government has got to be overthrown, its business interests defenestrated. To say otherwise is to downplay the only actual threat to our liberties in this life. Too many lives are being prematurely lost, and a thousandfold more are regularly damaged beyond repair, in ways that even no amount of money can ever fix. Nothing is right. All of us are allowing this by doing nothing to stop it. It’s not the Syrian government that laid you off from work. It wasn’t the Russians who foreclosed your home. North Korea is not making you fat. China is not auditing your taxes. Terrorists are not why your wife grabs my ass in the grocery store.
The worker bots set on replacing us won’t spend much money on Hollywood blockbusters or skin creams or Doritos or tax preparers or the latest Taylor Swift single. In which case these would go belly up, rendering bots meaningless. If bots take every job then goods/services would need to be purchased for the public by billionaires and hired politicians, maybe through a UBI. But how will unemployed masses make it worthwhile for billionaires? It can only result in one of two possibilities. Either those billionaires pushing for bots are incapable of foresight and thus less capable than their thrones lead the masses to believe, or they aim to wipe out the masses. The alternative is to end modern Feudalism and burn all the currencies.
Most persons alive around the world today understand that sometimes, even day by day survival calls for violence. But whatever you feel threatens your life, you leave it alive, to lick its wounds and to learn and grow from the experience. You enable both education and evolution for everybody and their Uncles Tom and Sam, not detract from them or cancel out all hope for them. So, you boycott, divest and sanction the enemy no matter what form it takes. Hack their financial holdings and redirect all funds to the Red Cross, UNICEF and Greenpeace. Find out where the war profiteers live and shit in every restaurant meal they enjoy. Take control out of their hands, and toss it to the winds. Offer void where prohibited.