asking for a friend

Of course having nothing to declare at customs is far more believable than not participating in social media but when travelling to the police states of the world—be it China that takes the full suite of finger-prints of its visitors or the US that just demands passwords to one’s social media accounts, one ought to be fully prepared to sacrifice something, like a decoy wallet with sufficient funds to score a high or a dummy but maintained account that might be enough to satisfy the goons at border control. One is penalised for opting out. As specious as the argument is that if one has nothing to hide, then one has nothing to fear, it is just as faulty as believing that the nebulous authorities already enjoy full-access anyway.
Granted that to a significant degree, we are individually protected by the size of the herd, there is still such a thing as privacy and personal space that the minions of security-theatre haven’t yet managed to infiltrate and some hosts with the integrity not to open the back-door to snoops and spies. Unlike in countries where private deportment can be punishable by death, the concern in the West is not so much that governments want to expose deviant leanings or infidelities—though that may not be far off under administration of holy-rollers, or would blackmail individuals with such information, but rather that incriminating materials or connections could be easily fabricated in order to assassinate the character of those not in step and critical of the regime and its policies. It would be a technical simple feat to scan one’s devices as they go through check-points and plant something illicit on them. Taking intrusion to the next level, social media access could be used to inflict all sorts of damage, setting off false daisy-chains of associations and label one as Status Non-Gratis for life. Forbidden materials wouldn’t be restricted to the physical memory of one’s devices, but could be deployed to the æther to be recalled when needed. Who knows? We subversives may already have a script floating out there somewhere, ready for our own consummation and famacide, once our usefully has lapsed.

bundesebene

A special convention of 1 260 electors—majority of whom are politicians but also some important members of the community from different constituencies and éminence grises—designated Frank-Walter Steinmeyer, off-and-on Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2005 and member of the right-leaning (relatively) Social Democratic Party (SPD) will convene to select a replacement for Germany’s ceremonial president (DE/EN) Joachim Gauck, who will retire in March.
Previously, I’ve advocated that the titular head of state could be handed over to one of the dethroned dynastic royal families, not necessarily be recreated Germany as constitutional monarchy, but such pedigreed individuals could probably discharge those duties just as well, and would be willing to do it for the honour of servicing and would at least partially satisfy the Germans fascination with monarchy that’s now fully directed at the Battenbergs. At this juncture, however, I think it’s important and more than a little impressive that the government was able to cross party lines and elevate one whose opposed—but possibly more compliments the Chancellor, deputised as leader of the free world.

a for effort

Following that timeless adage—those who can, do; those who can’t, become the new Education Secretary—Bob Canada’s Blogworld commemorates (read bemoans) the contentious appointment of Amway-heiress and enemy of public schools Betsy DeVos to the White House cabinet, for whom the vice-president had to intervene in the senate and cast the tie-breaking vote (yet another first for this administration), by grading one of her recent missives. I realise that we are all prone to gaffs and typos and fugue states and the obligatory platforms and the preferred method of communicating within the regime is not quite the most conducive format for cultivating the best diction and style, but Ms DeVos doesn’t seem like she’s even trying, which is pretty paradoxically since she looks like the one in the crowd to implore, “Won’t someone think of the children.” Show your work, Betsy.

semi-legendary

Although his Christian affiliation made him stop short of fully tracing back the lineage of revolutionary general and first president of the Republic George Washington to the Norse pantheon of gods, late nineteenth century genealogist and theologian Albert Welles, taking a cue from saga writer and fellow Christian Snorri Sturluson who demoted the gods to larger-than-life versions of good marshals and stewards of the tribe, essentially linked the individual also romanticised as Roman statesman and embodiment of civil virtue Cincinnatus, across thirty-two generations of Viking ancestors to Odin. Of course these myth-making sessions are important for the cohesion of a people and serve to legitimise leaders and their actions, and while this claim garnered no significant traction nor created pretensions of divine and ordained right, such Teutonic twists have in other milieu led to catastrophic conclusions.

sessio plebis

Significantly, the Friday before the US Presidents’ Day holiday weekend (read more about that contentious and politically-loaded apostrophe here) organisers all across the country and beyond are calling for a general strike, during which no work is accomplished (though judging from the way that Dear Leader regards his bureaucratic workforce, it shouldn’t matter one way or the other) and that economic activity is driven to a stand-still. This is primarily an organic movement and we’ll see how it’s pulled off and how it’s received, but there are five common demands: disclose and divest, women’s reproductive rights and health globally, respect for the environment and accords already party to, the preservation of universal health care, and freedom of movement for all. One has to choose one’s battles carefully and we don’t all have the means to be insufferably galling or petulantly dashing off to the next catastrophe and have the audacity to call that victory, but we can all walk that picket-line in our own ways.

oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc

The latest scuttlebug suggests that as tribute, a belated congratulatory gift—that I’m sure exceeds the threshold for value on what gifts can be accepted from foreign powers according to US ethics code but no one cares about that—the Russian government may turn over Edward Snowden, the fugitive from justice whom they’ve been harbouring since 2013, to American authorities.
I doubt that Snowden will receive the prodigal hero’s parade he deserves, and all of this to me doesn’t make much since first of all the debt of gratitude is owed to Russia for installing the present regime (read more about the Manchurian Candidate theory here) and not the other way around; Snowden, I don’t think, is not some figurative or literal Trojan Horse—and suspect the headlines, probably pulled from the master propaganda playbook, to be a distraction, a-pace with everything that’s come out of the regime so far, to placate the masses and cast aspersions on detractors and prevent news of real consequence from welling to the surface. What do you think? For their parts, Snowden and the Russian government say there’s no truth to this matter.

ivory tower

Via the always engaging Nag on the Lake, we’re given a glimpse into the surprisingly openly acknowledged—no stuff of urban legend that could be easily disavowed, undisclosed locations, hidden and secret lairs—opening up of what was until recently the exclusive domain of the conservative fringe, the preppers, the survivalists to all and sundry with the means to wait out the apocalypse or at least the temporary collapse of society in luxury.
A far cry from the austere fall-out shelters meant to house great swathes of the population, these are subterranean resorts, either purpose-built or in former military bunkers and missile silos—including all amenities and purport to be self-sustaining. Soberly, some also offer a family DNA vault in case the elite need to be resurrected in the future through cloning after the Earth has healed. Let’s hope and pray that it never gets so bad that the occupants have to live in sequestered resplendence by force and end up regretting spending all that money that could have gone to efforts, especially for those more liberal-minded new-comers to survivalism, to clean up the environment, build community cohesion or even to another representative’s campaign. I am sure that those wailing left-behinds stuck on the surface won’t be able to break in easy and they’ll be killer robot sentries to protect the egress to the compounds, but the fact that real estate agents are taking clients, earning commissions and holding open-house suggests to me that it would not remain impenetrable for long.

terra bella or daily planet

One internet giant known for among other things its pioneering map and route-planning services and satellite telemetry will graciously divest itself of that arm of operations later on this spring.
This company is not doing so, however, without an exit strategy that’s going to propel the start-up venture assuming this role towards a surveying milestone that’s also to be realised within the year: a daily refresh of the entire globe, capturing fifty-trillion-pixel resolution composite image of the Earth’s whole surface updated from one day to the next by a constellation of shoebox-sized satellites. What does it mean to take a global snap-shot casually—something that’s not a unique and profound achievement? We’ve hovered close to that goal of scanning every inch for some time but have been within reach until now and I wonder what new insights this comprehensive picture might bring.