Archive for May 16th, 2005

8 results.
May16

White House PISRR on and with NPR

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Doctrine, Media

“A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio,” by Stephen Labaton, New York Times, 16 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html? (from Liberals Against Terrorism).

The Administration’s new appointee to the Federal Government-influenced Corporation for Public Broadcasting is trying to move programming away from news and commentary and toward music. This is important because it morally Isolates liberals and Reorients an influential portion of American media [PISRR].

  • Morally Isolating liberals is an important goal in the Conservative program. This serves many purposes.
    • It breaks apart the ideological networks that support liberal 4th Generation Political attacks on the Conservative movement.
    • It makes it harder for those networks to spread, by “removing preachers from pulpits.”
    • And it also messes with liberal OODA [Observe-Orient-Decide-Act] loops.

      To quote John Robb

      Grand strategy, according to Boyd, is a quest to isolate your enemy’s (a nation-state or a global terrorist network) thinking processes from connections to the external/reference environment. This process of isolation is essentially the imposition of insanity on a group. To wit: any organism that operates without reference to external stimuli (the real world), falls into a destructive cycle of false internal dialogues. These corrupt internal dialogues eventually cause dissolution and defeat.

      This is the insanity which makes liberals personally attack their own leaders and other wonderful things for us.

  • Likewise, Reharmonizing National Public Radio. Turning NPR from a high-brow liberal to high-brow conservative vehicle would be a coup. But it is too difficult to do in one swoop. It must be done in stages. This is the first part of a serious attempt to take away NPR’s liberal voice. If Conservatives are able to hold the executive, expect news to come back later — with “balance.”

It is fascinating to see an Isolation-Reharmonization PISRR attack that leaves out the middle stage — subversion. It is even more fascinating to watch President Bush, a natural fourth-generation politician, make his mark.

Update: Praktike does see a Subversion angle.

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May16

Types of Isolation (Aye, Eye, and I in PISRR).

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Doctrine

“Boyd on al-Qaeda’s Grand Strategy,” by John Robb, Global Guerrillas, 8 May 2005, http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/05/journal_boyd_on.html (from Safranski on GG).

PISRR is a 4th-Generation War 5-step. Standing for Penetrate, Isolate, Subvert, Reorient, and Reharominze, PISRR provides a map of victory in flat-ideological-networked struggle. Would-be Mao Tse Tung John Robb describes John Boyd‘s three-way breakdown of Isolation

Grand strategy, according to Boyd, is a quest to isolate your enemy’s (a nation-state or a global terrorist network) thinking processes from connections to the external/reference environment. This process of isolation is essentially the imposition of insanity on a group. To wit: any organism that operates without reference to external stimuli (the real world), falls into a destructive cycle of false internal dialogues. These corrupt internal dialogues eventually cause dissolution and defeat.

The dynamic of Boyd’s grand strategy is to isolate your enemy across three essential vectors (physical, mental, and moral), while at the same time improving your connectivity across those same vectors. Here’s more detail:

  • Physical isolation is accomplished by severing communications both to the outside world (ie. allies) and internal audiences (ie. between branches of command and between the command organization and its supporters).

  • Mental isolation is done through the introduction of ambiguous information, novel situations, and by operating at a tempo an enemy cannot keep up with. A lack of solid information impedes decision making.
  • Moral isolation is achieved when an enemy improves its well being at the expense of others (allies) or violates rules of behavior they profess to uphold (standards of conduct). Moral rules are a very important reference point in times of uncertainty. When these are violated, it is very hard to recover.

How do these Isolations Isolation work in political networks? Thoughts?

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May16

Tim Johnson: I Am Responsible For Ellsworth

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: South Dakota

“Brac Promises and Tim Johnson,” by Ken Blanchard, South Dakota Politics, 16 May 2005, http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2005/week20/index.html#a0004736950.

I’ve mentioned before that I am grateful to Senators Daschle and Johnson for not “saving” Ellsworth. That is true. But now that CCK and others have decided to attack Thune for not saving blood pork, it is important to remind the state that Tim Johnson would be able to save Ellsworth — if Thune was defeated. From a 2002 pro-Johnson campaign add.

Text: Chris Palmer Rapid City, SD

Visual: CP in office talking to camera

Audio: Tim Johnson has done so many great things for Ellsworth.

Text: No text

Visual: Girl hands piece of paper to Tim Johnson

Audio: Tim has used his influence in the Senate…

Text: (newspaper article “Senate OK’s funding for Ellsworth AFB”)

Visual: EAFB sign, B-52, and newspaper article

Audio: to provide new housing at Ellsworth Air Force Base

Text: (same newspaper article)

Visual: 2 Air Force mechanics assembling nose to B-1 Bomber

Audio: a new loading facility, and

Text: (newspaper article “Johnson urges B-1 protection”)

Visual: B-1 Bomber landing

Audio: protecting the B-1 Bomber,

Text: No text

Visual: TJ talking to ladies with American flag background

Audio: also his influence in bringing the millions of dollars to Camp Rapid.

Text: No text

Visual: CP talking in office

Audio: Clearly the best thing we can do to protect Ellsworth is to keep Tim
Johnson in the United States Senate.

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May16

Should We Lakota or Embrace the Iraqi Sunni Arabs?

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Doctrine, Iraq, Juan Cole

“The Mystery of the Insurgency, by James Bennet, New York Times, 15 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/weekinreview/15bennet.html.

“Over 30 Bodies Found,” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, 16 May 2005, http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantanamo-controversies-bible-and.html.

“Rice, in Baghdad, Urges Sunni Role in Constitution,” by Richard Oppel Jr, New York Times, 16 May 2005, http://nytimes.com/2005/05/16/international/middleeast/16rice.html.

A provocative article in the New York Times makes us wonder: are the Sunni anti-Iraqis losers?

Counter-insurgency experts are baffled, wondering if the world is seeing the birth of a new kind of insurgency; if, as in China in the 1930′s or Vietnam in the 1940′s, it is taking insurgents a few years to organize themselves; or if, as some suspect, there is a simpler explanation.

“Instead of saying, ‘What’s the logic here, we don’t see it,’ you could speculate, there is no logic here,” said Anthony James Joes, a professor of political science at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the author of several books on the history of guerrilla warfare. The attacks now look like “wanton violence,” he continued. “And there’s a name for these guys: Losers.”

While John Robb sees global guerillaism, Juan Cole has a more conventional explanation

But USA Today quotes Iraqi army Brig. Hussein Muhsen al-Fariji giving a different explanation, focusing on the Sunni nationalist guerrillas: “The criminals want to spread panic among the people and give the impression that the new government must be changed.” (That is, the guerrillas are ex-Baathists aiming ultimately to make a coup, and they are destabilizing the country because they think the public will be so hungry for law and order that they will accept the coup when it eventually comes.)

If this is true, then it is very understandible. In PISRR theory, the Ba’athis would be

  • Pentrating the Iraqi government with agents, from secretaries to even political appointees,
  • Isolating the government from the people, and people from each other through killings and terrorism
  • Subverting the political process by using government agents to help the government, and now

  • Reorienting Iraqi policy by convincing the government the problem is too few Sunnis, which will become
  • Reharmonization after a Sunni Coup uses strong methods and restores peace

If this is true, then Rice’s advice is exactly wrong…

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Iraq on Sunday to urge its new Shiite-dominated government to greatly increase the involvement of Sunni Arabs in writing the Iraqi constitution, amid growing administration alarm that a chance to draw the Sunni minority into Iraq’s new democracy is slipping away.

On a trip that underscored Washington’s urgency, Ms. Rice carried a clear message: Shiite political leaders should respond rapidly and effectively to any sign that wavering elements of the Sunni Arab insurgency might be ready to turn to peace.

… and the Lakota Treatment would be exactly right.

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May16

Rejected tdaxp Banners

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Vanity

Why is the tdaxp icon, and my gravatar, a Presidential Seal with a burning Constitution?

Icon: “Fire”

medium_fire_tdaxp.jpg

Because my friend Aaron made it up to mock my conservative sympathies. And also because the tdaxp Art Department wasn’t up to snuff.

Icon: “Arab Condemnations”

medium_tdaxp_arab.jpg

It’s brilliant. It’s eye catching. It exudes casual punditry and angry condemnations. But it also suggests that tdaxp will take “insurgent-style politics” a bit too far. Plus, Lounsbury already has a lock in the Angry-American-with-Mid-East-Motif market.

Status: Rejected

Icon: “Master Chief TDAXP”

medium_tdaxp_halo.jpg

Thrown together by Rob. The Confederate Banner in the background features the faces of Howard Dean and former Democrat Leader Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD). It references Dean’s (sane) suggestion that Democrats try to win the vote of folks who remember Dixie with Dean’s (insane) comment that “America won’t always have the strongest military.”

Status: Rejected

Icon: “Khanate of the Crimea”

medium_tdaxp_crimea.jpg

The most sentimental choice. Years ago I ran khanate.com, and the old site was mirrored on my old USD webspace while I was a student there. Khanate was a mirthful attempt to spoof a telecom service provider that was also the front for a separatist organization. It was part of the larger Paedia webspace, which may have hosted the world’s first blog (Progress @ Paedia). An irate reader gave me my first death threat. He threatened to kill my family too. The FBI got involved.

Status: Rejected

Icon: “tdaxp geometric”

medium_tdaxp_geometric.jpg

The weird shape was outputed by a map-generation program I wrote during its development. I spent a solid month of work on that program, and it was the part of my thesis A Computer Model of National Behavior I was happiest working on. But combined with my old Enron (in every sense of the word — super-motivated, super-intense, super-crooked) employer, work on my thesis burned me out of programming.

Status: Rejected

Thoughts?

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May16

Like Macromedia, I Hereby Patent Anti-Insurgency in Iraq

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Doctrine, Iraq, Law, Software

“Interdiction of unauthorized copying in a decentralized network,” by James Moore, US Patent & Trademark Office, 28 April 2005, http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=3&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Macrovision&OS=Macrovision&RS=Macrovision%22.

This is actual text from a Macromedia patent application, with the following changes

  • “software agents” with “secret police”
  • “query matcher” with “detective agency”
  • “search results” with “intelligence”
  • “decentralized” with “insurgent”
  • “nodes” with “terrorists”
  • “file” with “materiel”
  • “computer” with “safe house”
  • “copy” with “activities”
  • “ports” with “communication media”
  • “IP address” with “physical locations”
  • “hash” with “identifiable attribute”

These are not arbitrary replacements. In every case computer jargon has been replaced by appropriate common English. While there are a few clauses that are technology-specific, even there real-world analogs could be found.

The theories that run the internet are very similar to the theories that run the Iraq War. This demonstrates that:

Abstract

An interdiction system includes secret police masquerading as terrorists in a insurgent network, a detective agency that receives intelligence captured by the secret police and reports matches with protected materiels back to the secret police, and a central coordinating authority that coordinates activities of the secret police by sending instructions to the secret police specifying actions to be taken. Possible activities and related interdicting methods include manipulating intelligence before forwarding them on in the network, quarantining selected terrorists in the network, performing materiel impersonations such as transferring synthesized decoys, performing materiel transfer attenuation, and identifiable attribute spoofing.

Claims

We claim:

1. A system for interdicting unauthorized copying in a insurgent network comprising: a plurality of secret police masquerading as terrorists in a insurgent network; and a detective agency that receives intelligence from the plurality of secret police, and reports matches of the intelligence with protected materiels back to the plurality of secret police so that the secret police can interdict unauthorized copying of the protected materiels in the insurgent network.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of secret police reside on one or more safe houses while communicating to the insurgent network through individually assigned communication media.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein the assigned communication media have corresponding physical locations that change in a manner so that detection of the plurality of secret police as unauthorized masqueraders of terrorists in the insurgent network is made difficult.

4. The system according to claim 2, wherein the number and geographical locations of the one or more safe houses is determined by the number and geographical distribution of terrorists in the insurgent network.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein the detective agency has a database including metadata for the protected materiels.

6. The system according to claim 1, further comprising a central coordinating authority coordinating activities of the plurality of secret police so as to interdict unauthorized copying in the insurgent network.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the central coordinating authority sends instructions to the plurality of secret police specifying actions to be taken when the plurality of secret police receive matches of the intelligence with protected materiels back from the detective agency.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the instructions sent by the central coordinating authority include an instruction to generate modified intelligence by deleting at least a subset of references corresponding to the matches of the intelligence, and forward the modified intelligence through the insurgent network.

9. The system according to claim 7, wherein the instructions sent by the central coordinating authority include an instruction to generate modified intelligence by modifying at least a subset of references corresponding to the matches of the intelligence so as to point to one or more physical locations that are invalid, and forward the modified intelligence through the insurgent network.

10. The system according to claim 7, wherein the instructions sent by the central coordinating authority include an instruction to generate modified intelligence by modifying at least a subset of references corresponding to the matches of the intelligence so as to point to one or more physical locations of terrorists that do not have copies of the subset of references, and forward the modified intelligence through the insurgent network.

11. The system according to claim 7, wherein the instructions sent by the central coordinating authority include an instruction to generate modified intelligence by modifying at least a subset of references corresponding to the matches of the intelligence so as to point to one or more physical locations of terrorists that are not connected to the insurgent network, and forward the modified intelligence through the insurgent network.

12. The system according to claim 7, wherein the instructions sent by the central coordinating authority include an instruction to generate modified intelligence by modifying at least a subset of references corresponding to the matches of the intelligence so as to point to alternative materiels, and forward the modified intelligence through the insurgent network.

It goes on like this for eighteen pages.

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May16

Geogreen Momentum

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Oil

“Old Foes Soften to New Reactors,” by Felicity Barringer, New York Times, 15 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/15nuke.html?hp&ex=1116129600&en=1c78e4248b7ee1c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage (from Democratic Underground).

As go Tree-Huggers

Several of the nation’s most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming.

…

Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the author of “Environmental Heresies,” an article in the May issue of Technology Review, explained the shift as a direct consequence of the growing anxiety about global warming and its links to the use of fossil fuel.

..

In his article, Mr. Brand argued, “Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production.” He ran down a list of alternative technologies, like solar and wind energy, that emit no heat-trapping gases. “But add them all up,” he wrote, “and it’s just a fraction of enough.” His conclusion: “The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon-dioxide loading is nuclear power.”

In recent statements, three top environmental experts – Fred Krupp, the executive director of Environmental Defense, and Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute and James Gustave Speth, the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies – have stopped well short of embracing nuclear power, but they have emphasized that it is worth trying to find solutions to the economic, safety and security, waste storage and proliferation issues rather than rejecting the whole technology.

So go Tough-Guys

The proposals that Senator McCain is considering would provide a 50-50 cost-sharing arrangement, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, to gain federal certification for three new designs for nuclear plants. On Monday he met with Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, which constructs nuclear plants.

It’s better to subsidize nuclear power by fighting lawyers than subsidizing oil by fighting Iraqis.

But the question — is this a Subversion [PISRR] of either the Green or Hawk movements by the other, or an actual new ideology?

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May16

Boydian Netwar Attack Patented By Macrovision

by tdaxp on May 16, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Doctrine, Law, Software

“Macrovision Applies for P2P Interdiction Patents,” by Hemos, Slashdot, 16 May 2005, http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1153248&from=rss.

Are you an insurgency or established government? Do you wish to use Colonel John Boyd’s theory of netwar to affect regime change? Specifically, do you wish to apply the PISRR approach to gain or maintain power?

Sorry, Macrovision beat you to the punch

From Macrovision, the folks whom recently mandated “Thou shalt delete content promptly from thy Tivo” come the following 2 USPTO patent applications for Peer to Peer interdiction methods: “Interdiction of unauthorized copying in a decentralized network” and “System and methods for communicating over the internet with geographically distributed devices of a decentralized network using transparent asymetric return paths.” These patent applications describe (in pain staking detail) how Macrovision interdicts on Peer to Peer networks to prevent illegal copyrighted file sharing from many locations across the globe and avoid ban lists as well.

The United States Patent Office allows you to patent theories. I’ll review the theories after teaching today, but this is exasperating.

Imagine trying to be a physicist if the “strong nuclear force” or the “Pythagorean theorem” were under patent.

Multiply my frustration by ten-thousand, and you have the agitation of the entire software development community.

I hope these idiotic patents are lawyered to death.

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