Tag Archives: 2090

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It’s well past time to let some fighter pilots get their beaks wet

I’ve honestly never understood the supposedly reasonable arguments for not, at the very least, establishing a no-fly zone over Syria.  The situation’s a mess, it’s probably not solvable by the international community, and in any case nobody’s going to put troops on the ground.  So why care?  Because when you’re letting a guy push barrel bombs out the back of helicopters onto apartment blocks, then we are all complicit in such a disgusting act because it’s so easy for us to stop it.

This is yet again, on full display, the incompetent narcissism of the international diplomatic community.  For them it’s about the self-interest of a nation and the preservation of a very precise and refined international order that they build and maintain.  If the events of the last few months have shown anything, it exposes just how foolish this fantasy really is.  So we’ve allowed a guy to murder north of one-hundred thousand of his own people because attacking him would make Russia angry?  How’d that work out for us?  If we’re going to live in a lawless world where Crimea is a footnote by next August, well let’s just go ahead and do whatever we fucking want also.

Sweeping the skies clean isn’t going to solve Syria’s civil war.  Assad can always just fire tank shells into hospitals too.  But you go with the art of the possible.  Despite what cowardly, uniformed politicians (they call themselves generals & admirals) in the West have claimed, this isn’t that hard or dangerous.  They could establish and maintain a no-fly zone in Syria in a week.  This we can do.  We can’t destroy every tank in Syria without invading, and we’re certainly not going to do that.  Fine, we take what we can get.  At least it’s something.  At least it’s a message that we actually care about what kind of world we live in.

Oh my, says the established, educated diplomat.  Well what about the removal of the chemical weapons?  We can’t allow that deal to get detonated, Mr Arcturus, can we?  Ah, I see, so Assad has met all his deadlines on chemical weapons, right?  Here’s a view of the future that’s one-hundred percent guaranteed to be true, friends: Assad’s not going to ever give up all his chemical weapons.  Ever.  That said diplomat(s) actually believed he would, shows their naive idiocy.

Turkey shot down one jet today and strangely the universe hasn’t collapsed upon itself.  The war will go on.  But that jet won’t be dropping five-hundred pound bombs on a school tomorrow.  Time to let some fighter pilots get their beaks wet from whatever honorable nations choose to let fly.  The war will go on, but we’ll save tens-of-thousands of lives.  In this dark world, for the moment, we can put that in the win column.  Evil’s been on a hell of a streak lately.  Time to punch back.

AIR_F-16_Turkish_Armed_Top_lg

First round goes to the man with the gun kill on a barrel bomb helicopter.

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Your future skeleton would appreciate it if you just calmed down

We’re all in a hurry.  We’ll be damned if we spend eight seconds to actually observe where we are rather than dragging out our damn smartphone to check our e-mail and/or texts for the 118th time of the day.  Forget reality, the digital world is so much better, right?  No, but everybody thinks it is.

I’ve spent an awful lot of time traveling lately.  New job, new responsibilities, and a new routine.  Be careful what job you wish for, folks.  You just might hate it an awful lot.  But if you’re lucky, as you hate it, you’ll also discover that it has certain gifts.  Like how it challenges and grows you in ways you’d otherwise not appreciate had you played it safe.

Anyways …, after traveling more times in the last four months than the last four years I’ve determined everybody is sprinting to the grave.  We’re just in an awful big hurry.  Folks run through airports, push through lines, jump through the security gates like the government pawns actually care, and generally are just total assholes.  And even when they get the privilege of doing nothing, like sitting at the airport gate?  Well, within two seconds the smartphone is out and they are either working or texting people whose names they can’t remember.

Hey, remember what it must have been like for a medieval farmer?  The grinding daily toil involved only talking to perhaps one-hundred people in his entire life?  And generally he moved at speeds that today would target him as worthy of a “mental retardation” diagnosis?  Well, how quaint was that?  You’re so fast and awesome that you can output the knowledge of all his life in six texts while you drink your $8 coffee and shove your way through the line.  “Out of my way eight year old little girl, you’re just too weak!”

I have determined that the worst offenders of this trend are, to my surprise, upper-middle-aged men accompanying their wives.  They move really fast, are on electronics every possible second, eat like starving rats, are short/angry with their wives, and move so fast that every second is apparently their last.  Except that it’s not, they just look like they’re on freaking meth.

(mumbling)  What?  (mumbling)  Where did that mirror come from?  (mumbling)  Well, fuck you, buddy, now listen… (mumbling)  Yeah?  (mumbling)  Okay, yeah, maybe.  (mumbling)  Okay, yeah, okay…

So, …, so I guess if you’re going to violate the laws of God and shit on your fellow man, perhaps you might as well admit that what really bothers you is you maybe see a shadow of your future self in such madness.  But then again, I have a phone that’s five years old and is held in place by fear.  So who really cares?  Well, me I guess.

Due to the aforementioned topics, I did something super insane, by my definition, a few weeks ago.  I was super late, that almost never happens, and just to see what I could discover, I sat down in a chair and absorbed reality for a bit.  What, you say?  So, are you just a freak?  Well, yes, but I challenge you, friends:

The next time you are very late for [something] I want to you to do this:

a) Briefly consider what your skeleton will look like after five years in the drink

b) Sit in a chair for five minutes and stare at the wall while you know you are extremely late

c) Bask in how absolutely nothing major in your life changes as a result

None of us is this important.  We’re all going too fast.  We all just need to calm down and enjoy life because we’re all dust very soon.  Slow down.  Be forgiving to your fellow man and woman.  We’re all in this together.  Enjoy it while you can.

grave

Whether I’m in heaven, hell, or nowhere, I assure you, I can’t remember that time I was late for something.

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Nigeria’s not going to make it

This post fulfills a promise I made to my military advisory council of ghosts a few weeks back.  So I guess we’re in quite the pessimistic mood lately.  We destroyed Israel a few days ago, now we’ll move on to Nigeria.

1) You can rob a country until it dies

The world’s greatest thieves don’t live in London or work on Wall Street.  They reside in mansions outside Lagos and Abuja.  Every year they steal more from one of the world’s poorest nations than bankers pilfer from the richest.  They siphon off billions each month.  Everybody knows they’re doing it.  Everybody knows who’s doing it.  Everybody knows they’re getting away with it.  The greatest mark of a successful crook is when you can rob at will and never get punished.  You can count the number of people convicted and jailed for capital corruption in Nigeria on one hand.

The breadth of corruption in Nigeria is hard to describe.  It’s beyond comprehension how vast and ingrained the evil is within the state and business community.  Generally people want to believe that folks will do the right thing.  How does this work when corruption is not part of the system, but is the system.  As currently configured, Nigeria’s government is not in place to govern, but to plunder.  It serves no other reasonable purpose.  Just ask your Nigerian neighbor who pays bribes, has no reliable electricity supply, is not safe, and drives over terrible roads.  What little filters down to the people is to appease them just enough so the government can continue to extract cash.  This trait is common within many countries but in Nigeria they’ve got it to an art.

Oil is often blamed for both creating and greasing this structure.  Yet oil is just the method, not the source, or the end.  Without oil this would still occur, the bandits would just be poorer.  So why do they get away with it?  They are in complete control.  In many nations those who govern and those who carry guns are two different aspects of the elite.  This causes competition and strife.  Nigeria’s gun carriers and pen pushers are the same people.  They work together to keep it going.  They compete with each other to reach and maintain their positions at the top, but are very good at understanding that you can’t push too hard against one another.  Push too hard and you overturn the table.  And everybody wants to sit at the table.

Why do the people put up with it?  There are no people of Nigeria.

2) You weren’t meant to be

Nigeria’s army, government, and elite are local but also essentially national.  The people of Nigeria are local only.  This country does not exist.  Its borders were drawn by colonials who had an understanding of what they were doing, but did not care.  Independence made the problem worse.  Even the British were smart enough to realize they had to keep the north and south separate.  Pulled together, they make no sense as one country.  Some African nations must deal with dozens of disparate ethnic groups to make one people.  Nigeria has hundreds.

The elite prey upon this division.  To some people, they are the champions of their tribes and ethnic kin.  When your head man has a seat at the table, he can funnel what little cash the people get to your people.  If you desire to speak up, fight the power, the elite don’t have to tear gas you.  Your neighbors will take care of that for them.  Why are you ruining things?  Without our man at the table, we’ll all be poorer.

Occasionally it becomes too much.  The thievery, poverty, and desperation boils ever as in the Delta States.  Not a problem, for the very few times where people actually take up arms there is one of Africa’s largest armies to assist.  The sons of hundreds of tribes against a few that don’t know enough to play the game.  If killing them doesn’t work, try and buy them off.  Just get them to calm down so the robbery can resume.  You don’t need to please people, or even get them to obey, you just need them to do nothing.

On the horizon, a hint of what might be.  In Lagos or Abuja where everybody is mixed together you could get there.  Where were you born, friend?  In Lagos, Nigeria.  What tribe, friend?  What do you mean?  My grandfather was born in Lagos too.  Except that this isn’t going to work either.  A united Lagos or Abuja alone cannot overturn a system so widespread.  The country is too big and complicated, even for a city the size of Lagos.  In a construct of 36 states, Lagos is one.  Lagos has a lot of people, but only 5-10% of the country’s population.  Lagos dominates the economy, but economic power is irrelevant to change when the genesis of the arrangement is not growth but the removal of wealth.

And how can a united Nigerian people in Lagos fix the country, when they’re fighting for their own survival.

delta

3) You can’t take care of yourself

One day, the largest city by population on the planet will be Lagos.  In most aspects it is already the economic and cultural engine of the continent as a whole.  If you want to see the picture of Africa’s bright future, spend a week in Lagos.  Observe the energy, the speed, the intensity; millions of people grinding their way forward.  If you’re here, you can do anything.  You can make it.

But most aren’t going to make it.  Depending on your view of the planet, you could call Lagos a slum before a city.  When this urban entity is the largest on the planet the majority will likely live in it without running water, functioning sewers, reliable electricity, or effective government.  The planet has never seen anything like it.  Even the worst caldrons in the world today cannot compare with what’s coming.  It is common in science fiction to portray the apocalypse and armageddon right before our eyes.  Where the very richest perfect specimens of humanity live within eyesight of folks still caught in the year 300.  This vision will reach its truest form in Lagos, and probably several other cities worldwide by 2090.

Even the purest government on Earth is incapable of solving these problems.  Surely one of the world’s worst will flail at the challenges this reality will produce.  Corruption is an awful thing, but when you don’t know where your next drink of clean water is coming from, you’re not ready to take a tear gas salvo.  You apparently live in a country called Nigeria, but couldn’t care less when your defecating in a plastic bucket.  You’re part of a bright future, but on your way there, you’ll pay two bribes, risk a mugging, car accident, or fatal disease all before you reach your first hour of dreary, toiling work.  If you’re lucky to have a job at all.

This is insanity, the human condition made outside knowledge.  And where madness reigns, so lunacy is born.

lagos

4) If you can’t beat these guys, you’re finished

How many dedicated individuals does it take to ruin a country of 200 million?  When you’re as fragile as Nigeria the answer is ten-thousand.  Nobody knows how many militants serve Boko Haram and its more radical affiliates like Ansaru.  I’m just going to guess ten-thousand, although I’m sure the number is far lower.  All that I’ve described as the future of much of Lagos is already present in the north.  Once the world’s richest economic zone, it is now reduced to decay and desperation by a crippled Saharan trade and a collapsed textile industry.

And so born from this sad story is a group capable of executing children on a regular basis.  Even worse is it’s done without a purpose.  There appear no reasonable goals from Boko Haram or Ansaru.  They are different from the Delta States militias in that they want nothing from the state.  Claims for an Islamic future or overturning the existing order are not realistic or achievable.  If a million in Lagos could not destroy the state, what chance do the ten-thousand have?  None, and they don’t care.  What have they got to lose?  What great life awaits them if they come in off the battlefield?

And pitted against them is what was once considered the largest and best trained army in Africa.  Except that it no longer exists, if it ever did.  You cannot ask a burglar with a gun to become a soldier with a gun overnight.  Any halfway competent army can defend schools, whole towns, the very life of its country.  This army can’t.  Boko Haram is not brutalizing the population with advanced weaponry or the backing of a world power.  They conduct their work up close and personal with light firearms, blades, and flame.

Like many times in human history, cruel, never-ending violence shall expose in the most glaring way what actually exists.  The state cannot protect let alone serve the people.  Nigeria cannot defeat Boko Haram because this government, this leadership, is incapable of it.  It is not who they are.  It is not the organism they built.  And of course, worst of all, they don’t care either.  Boko Haram is up there.  We’re down here behind mansion walls.

Thus it’ll go on.  It’s not going to stop.  Any part of it all.

boko

5) It adds up

So how does this end?  With the collapse of the country?  Shall Nigeria divide into dozens of small nations?  No actually, the country will survive.  It’s not going to come apart.  It will endure.  Maybe even slowly improve.  We’re only human, sometimes it’s all just too much.  We cannot function, but quitting is not our way.  We have to try, we have to try because mass suicide or dejection isn’t in us.  Nigeria’s not going to make it.  But they’re certainly going to try.

Perhaps the most tragic fact is that given all these circumstances, Nigeria still won’t be destroyed.  If obliterated, it could at least be rebuilt better.  Nigeria’s not going to make it.  But it will go on.  And I will pray that I am wrong.  So very wrong.

lagos sunset

Setting or rising?

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We only care because they told us to

I ask you friends, do you honestly care about the Oscar Pistorius trial?  I hope your answer’s no, because if it’s yes just please go away.  You’re not welcome here.

We all love drama right?  In the movies, television, and books?  But the best kind of drama is the one in real life.  Oh, how awesome is it!  And with the Pistorius trial we get the very best traits too!  We’ve got an international Olympic star with no legs.  An extremely attractive woman brutally shot.  Guns.  Screaming.  A guy with no legs.  An austere, little known (for the ignorant West) location in South Africa.  A beautiful girl.  Guns.  And a bathroom door.

If I was to set up a lawn chair inside a courtroom, eat popcorn, and cackle loudly like an asshole as people’s lives were destroyed, I’d be considered a horrible human being.  But our blessed media has made billions doing just that.  They then provide this experience to the popcorn eating masses so they can escape from their dreary lives by indulging in the misery of others.  Maybe we should just watch more sports instead.  At least in sports there’s a clear winner.

Hey friends, you do know that these people’s lives are completely obliterated right?  There is no winner from the Pistorius trial.  Everybody loses.  Her especially, but also him, South African society, the police, the courts, and so on.  In fact, pretty much everybody but the media is taking a shot in the face (pun intended).

Perhaps I’m just being my usual cheery self.  I mean, this is a long lasting human tradition.  I’m pretty sure when Caveman Steve bent in Caveman Al’s skull with a rock that the entire cave was gossiping about it for seven weeks as the tribal council determined what body part to take from Caveman Steve.  Still, we’re supposed to evolve right?

As a free thinking sentient human being you have no reason to care about Pistorius, Knox, or Caveman Steve.  The media only wants you to care so they can get your eyes and they can make a bunch of cash.  Just ignore it, you’re better off.

death

Yes, yes, please come listen to my delightful tale.

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Team Arcturus – These guys want to put themselves out of business

So things are a little worrying in your blog author’s family life recently.  Enjoy life friends, as my aunt recently said, “Things can turn on a dime”.  When the mysteries of life upend your status quo, I think everybody gets a little crazy in their view of the world.  Accordingly, I’m going to once again indulge in another round of reckless intervention discussion.  I guess I’m just interested lately in what kind of world we will live come 2090.

Please keep in mind a few things.  I know intervention is a bad word used by smart people (them) to label dumb people (me) as out of touch with reality.  So a couple of caveats.  This isn’t about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria.  This is about humanitarian intervention to stop the bleeding; genocide where the different parties are generally not somebody’s puppet-proxy-pawn.  I know how complicated and hard all of this is, but if we don’t start somewhere then we are just admiring the problem.  Just admiring the problem equals the ultimate failure of our race’s hopes and dreams for a bright future.

Now a few readers, who probably won’t be back, (by a few I mean two; we’re, ah, we’re new here) expressed mild disagreement (they were polite) via separate correspondence that they did not approve of a UN force that undertakes the task of having people “gets shot”.  I think their interpretation of my idea was a UN force along the lines of the paramilitary troops shown in Elite Squad (my example) where folks are shot without trials, plastic bag interrogations occur, and generally the enforcers do what enforcers do.  Well, to be honest, that’s at least partially what I had in mind.

Look, I’m not a determinist flake like a Jared Diamond, but I do think that folks are fairly well shaped by where they grow up.  A machete wielding psychopath in CAR might have turned out a fairly decent guy had he grown up under rich bankers in London.  Unfortunately for him, his path was somewhat different.  But in the end, as adults, we all make our own choices.  I’m sorry if your life was/is shit, but if you’re engaged in genocide, you either get to stop, or get shot.  Sorry.

What am I really after though?  Clearly there is enough poverty, destitution, and awfulness in our planet to overwhelm the UN’s ability to purchase, let alone expend, bullets.  The UN genocide response force discussed in my previous post (we’ll call them Team Arcturus) is not going to be able to shoot every single weapon wielding ethnic janitor.  I’m after the deterrence that comes from the initial round of UN sanctioned violence.  Now deterrence is a generally underrated concept (for most people it means nukes only), yet we employ it across our lives every day.  Ask your friendly neighborhood speed trap.

After Team Arcturus is employed two or three times, the word will get out to those who are intent on cleaning out a portion of the human race.  “Hey, the UN is interested, Team Arcturus will be here tomorrow.  Those assholes don’t play.  Let’s put away the blades, gasoline, and piano wire before we all get fucking shot.”  When people start to understand that we (the international community) mean business, that we will do what we say, then the level of viciousness might (every situation is different; and my idea may suck) inherently decrease.

The trick is of course actually doing what you say.  Right now the UN is generally ignored because it is in the business of saying a lot, but virtually doing & accomplishing nothing.  This is directly traceable to the design flaws in its organization, but it is what it is.  Would we have to rework the way the UN is run before we could create and employ Team Arcturus?  Maybe, but the recent UN combat operation against M23 near Goma is a good example of how such an action could occur under the existing UN construct.  This would not solve extremely hard situations like Syria, but at least would assist the human race in troubleshooting CAR or South Sudan or Western Burma.

Final answer to world peace?  No.  Initial answer to stop genocide and improve overall quality of human life?  Maybe.  Let’s roll the dice.

armored_infantry

 

Team Arcturus; Armored Infantryman; Circa 2090

“I get used only once a decade, because everybody knows what I do when I’m used.”

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Genocide – Everybody’s cool with it

There’s a lot going on in the world recently.  Sochi rumbles on; a volcano does what volcanos in Indonesia do; Bieber’s not been donated for terminal medical science, yet; the Italian PM just resigned so his teenage son could replace him; oh, and in Central African Republic (CAR), genocide is in progress and nobody seems to know or care.

But wait, I thought we were past this?  Everybody’s heard of Rwanda right?  Bosnia?  Darfur?  Sure, those are times where we (the international community) either got it right or wrong but at least we talked about it, used it to guide our actions.  By the way, Darfur remains a nightmare shithole of anarchy, starvation, and suffering despite the presence of over 15 thousand UN peacekeepers.  Which I guess is my point.

For those of you who think Africa has a lot of pandas, let me bring you briefly up to speed.  CAR is dirt poor, isolated, and hasn’t had a functional government in just about forever.  A Muslim based militia overthrew the government and took control.  But then the militia got out of hand and started a little weekend ethnic cleansing.  So the Christians overthrew the militia with the help of French and UN peacekeepers.  But now the Christians have gotten in on the scrubbing game as well.  I guess everybody thought they just needed to clean up the country a little.  Maybe they should have just used some bleach on their kitchen floors.  Less blood would have been involved.

There are about 4.4 million people in CAR.  Of these, 20% are now homeless, about 800 thousand people.  Nearly every single one of them is going to need support to live.  The country is nearly the size of France.  Since this round of violence began, probably tens-of-thousands have died, but nobody really knows.

So yet again, we (the international community) are on it.  After Rwanda, we said “never again”, and we meant it.   We’ll make sure genocide is stomped from human history because it is the antithesis of everything we want in our modern, free world.  Never again my friends, never again!  (pounds fist on podium)

“Some 7,000 troops – from France and African countries – have been mandated by the UN to help restore order.  But so far they have failed to stop the unrest…”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26160251

Oh, wait, no.

So this is a problem right?  We don’t like genocide.  Wrong.

Everybody’s cool with it!  Consult any newspaper, website, and/or ancient totem scroll today and you will find CAR buried in Section D12, behind the article on liver enzymes.  Nobody cares!

Now most of you will probably respond with something like this:  There’s nothing we can do.  Let them have it out.  If we get involved, we will either make things worse or get dragged into turmoil.

Well, you’re only partially right.  Getting involved in this is like inserting yourself into a bar fight.  You likely can’t stop it, there’s two of them and one of you.  You’re probably going to get punched in the face.  And in the end both guys will hate you for entangling yourself in their Glorious Battle.  But, that doesn’t mean you should do nothing.  And it doesn’t mean there isn’t something you can do to help.

We are doing something, you’d say.  The UN, EU, AU, LPGA, NFL, and France are on the case.  They’re taking care of it as best as we can given the circumstances!

I submit though, that what we are doing is worse than nothing because it isn’t working.  The international community’s method of genocide crisis response is broken.  We need a new way.  We need to make a choice between two options.  I’m ruling out a third option in which hundreds-of-thousands of international troops flood CAR to reestablish order as just unrealistic given how little the planet actually cares.

Option 1)

Replace the UN motto of “never again” with “we don’t give a shit”.  We accept that we are cool with genocide occurring on our planet and we practically and morally wash our hands of what our planet will look like in 2090.

Option 2)

The UN needs an actual army.  Not peacekeepers.  Not a police force, but a small rapid response combat force.  Similar to what the UN just used in Eastern Congo, but larger, and guided by formal policy.  Say about ten-to-twenty thousand troops from various nations.  Highly trained & equipped.  You drop them into CAR, or wherever hell has opened.  They reestablish order on the streets, halt the immediate violence.  Anybody holding a weapon or committing a murder gets shot.

Will this solve CAR and provide a brighter future?  No.  Will this guarantee that all genocide will stop?  No.  But it will at least stop the bleeding.  If you can halt the killing for a few weeks, maybe that’s all you need to calm things down and provide an open space for folks to work with.  Then you can roll in the peacekeepers and start the hard work.

Maybe not the best idea, but again, when what you’re doing is clearly not working.  It’s time for a change.

blade

This fine gentleman is serious about doing what he says.  We’re not.

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Ask, and the skeleton will always tell you what he thinks

This last week I took a mandatory class in what was essentially a business process system.  Did I mention the word mandatory?  I did not want to take this class.  I resisted, told them I didn’t need it, would never use it.  But a few months back I was invited into the office by the boss.

Upon entry the boss locked the door and I found the section supervisor was in the corner wearing a ski mask.  He’s an odd guy but this struck me as a little weird.  I tried to discuss my latest action plan but they shoved my head onto the desk and put a revolver to my temple.  “You’ll go!”  “Sign it!”  They screamed.  I cried.  I soiled myself.  Thought of who would take care of my dogs, but over the course of a mind melting twenty minutes I enthusiastically agreed that a week-long class on this business process was well within the best interests of the organization.  And myself!  So off I went, happy as ever.

The class was not the misery I expected it to be, but two things stuck out:

1)  Attended by dozens of people from a dozen different organizations.  All are supposed to use this business process.  None of them do.  Everybody just ignores it and does whatever the fuck they want.  It’s the height of organizational stupidity.  People are probably making billions off a system that is so irrelevant, folks will spends weeks, months, years to learn it down to the smallest detail, but then nobody uses it to conduct real work.

2)  What the fuck is up with all the business worker pictures?  You know what I’m talking about.  They’re all the same.  Here is an example for those of you who have real jobs and actually contribute something worthwhile to humanity and thus don’t know what I’m talking about:

oxygenthiefs

“We’re oxygen thieves!”

Some optimistic folks have this hundred year rule to describe the pointless nature of life.  As in, who the fuck cares, in a hundred years we’ll all be dead.  It’s like remarking to your neighbor the weather is nice today, before you ask him what color you think his skeleton will be after six years in the drink.

I’ve found this rule a rather poor way of looking at things.  If we all truly believed it, then why aren’t humans feasting upon each other’s flesh in the streets?  You might think I’d be the first person to claim it’s the giant octopus keeping us all under control.  But I’m going to go more along the lines that what we are built inside of goes a little deeper, it’s quite special.

So I have a different way of looking at the darkness.  It gets to the depths of servitude, you know, the kind that wastes human life and aptitude; robs us of our ingenuity and drive.  It’s not in our base nature, we just do it to ourselves.

Anybody ever walked to work via an underground mall and/or subway tunnel before?  At like seven in the morning; say about four-thousand of your best friends trudging their way across concrete on the way to the elevators, escalators, stairs, transporter room; on the way to their cubicles, boxes, corner offices, whatever.  It’s like you’re adrift in a sea of rotting human meat, all of it floating along into the vortex.  Nobody says a word.  All you hear is the mindless clicking of thousands of shoes and heels.

When I see those business pictures, that’s what I think of.  You know what?  I’d rather they put the skeleton up there during the business discussion.  At least that’d be honest.

richardandhisteam

“Are you up to speed on your latest metric quals?”

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Don’t obey, trust your soul,

So I recently engaged in business travel to the third Buddhist enlightenment level of Anagami. How did it go? Well folks, I’m back here so that should answer your selfish question. Let’s just say you can’t do anything anymore without getting bombarded with an advertisement generated by tentacle version 45.1b of the blessed octopus.

Once upon a time you could count on the ability to sit down under the Bodhi tree and chart your own path as a future non-returner. Now you have to endure such always delicious scenery as: “This journey to the next realm brought to you by Tata Motors. Tata, driving you toward the inner reaches of your soul!”

If you think I’m being silly, you just wait. You’ll hear this before 2090:

“This third and six brought to you by Tide. Tide, cleaning out the goal-line defense of your hard stains.”

…

Anyways.

While on my journey I naturally participated in the ever-present fiction known as air travel security. While seated before the departure gate along with two thousand of my best friends, I noticed that just a few seats over was a stack of suitcases and a baby stroller. All by themselves, unattended.

So what did I do? Nothing. I sat there. Now if that was a weaponized baby stroller I was so close they’d have picked up what was left of me using refined dental tools. But of course, the owners of said luggage were off getting themselves and their baby some water and showed up later, armageddon thus averted.

So why did I do nothing when the security and control bureaucracy demands that I immediately report the situation to my local enforcer? Well friends, here’s the kicker, and I want you to try this the next time you travel. Because chances are you already have, even if you didn’t notice.

Everybody does nothing.

People leave their luggage at the bar, in the bathroom, down by the newspaper kiosk, next to the cult religion display, with the creepy smiley guy, and so on.

The only person taking airport security seriously anymore is Satan. This is the reality of it.

Now granted, both the good & bad guys have decided to make the airways a battlefield. So there is that. I mean, why do the terrorists go through all the trouble to build an underwear bomb for months when an eighteen year old recruit with a $300 shotgun, which they could buy in almost any democracy today, could cause more damage in a shopping mall than all the airline attacks of the last decade? Each side has chosen this stupid insanity.

The real secret is that the bad guys lost. Friends, there will be an airline attack down the road. It’s going to happen, we’re all human. But the battle is over, good won. Your neighbor knows it. If he didn’t, he’d report that abandoned bag in the terminal, as I would have done.

In the meantime, where does that leave your friendly traveler? Well, I offer this. If by some miracle thirty years down the road we suffer no airport attacks, do you think your local airport security guys will lessen their burden? Of course not.

Once you hand over this level of power and control, it’s hard to get it back. Don’t blame the guards who will harass you over your shoes. Blame yourselves. In general, I firmly believe the employees of an organization will perform with the dedication and skill that is expected of them by their superiors. Today when the guards care so little of the “threat” they barely even notice you as you go through the checkpoint, you need only point a finger at yourself.

You wanted to be safe. In exchange you received it, now live with the consequences. As for me, I’m going with my gut. I’ll take the risk. I’m leaving this realm via dental tools & evidence bags before I’ll accept we’re done forever. I’ll take that risk, and that bet. My life is worth your freedom. I don’t mean to be an arrogant shit, right now at least, but if we all thought that way we’d be better off.
ProperPlanning

This Actually Happens

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Peace be with you; but we still desire to kill you all

So I figured a good plan for the first real post is to pick an idea that is simple, uncontroversial, and generally uplifting.  Accordingly, it seems smart to talk international politics!

When you woke up this morning, you may have heard that Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe had kidnapped the Chinese & South Korean ambassadors and executed them in Shinjuku Square, right next to the Yoshinoya.  Then you likely did a double take inside your brain and realized they were just talking about a temple.  In a world that has a lot going on, this is front page news across the world.  So this is important right?  Well worth the attention and concern of the human race?  Well, no, not really.  Let’s discover why friends!

A little background for those who follow the length and color of Miley’s hair.  The Second World War was an apocalyptic struggle pitting the descendants of Norse Vikings against the International League of Women Voters for dominance of the trade routes to the Crab Nebula.  It was also a war of ideas, big ones.  One of the more under-appreciated standards to emerge was the concept that it’s generally not okay to invade, conquer, and commit genocide against your neighbors.  By any reasonable understanding of history, this is what Japan did to China & Korea (among others).  Yasukuni Shrine is where all of Japan’s war dead are honored, including such upstanding world citizens as several Class A war criminals.   Times change but now sixty years later Prime Minster Abe decides to pay a visit to Yasukuni, and you’d think the bodies were still warm.  Well for some people I guess they are.  It can be hard to forget and forgive, particularly if in your family’s history somebody checked out early courtesy of the Imperial Japanese Army.

For most I hope, the bodies are cold and the war is long over.  Let’s say you’re an eighteen year old Chinese man, in perhaps Shanghai, who is about to embark on your great life journey.  We’ll call him Mister Shanghai.  In the year 2090 he’d look back on his life’s work as his robot heart failed and see how his country essentially bought the human race.  Mister Shanghai would imagine all the ups and downs, the struggles, and the happiness and I’m pretty sure at no point would he even care to remember who Abe was.  So as Mister Shanghai strolls down Nanjing Road the media, his government, and a whole bunch of folks he’s never met would like him to care deeply that Abe-san has paid homage to a bunch of dead guys.

Here is a classic example of a theme this blog will visit again and again.  Abe’s government, the media, the Chinese government, anybody with something to gain, desperately wants Mister Shanghai to be angry.  Very angry.  There are any number of reasons why.  Let’s just generally mark it that everybody mentioned has something to gain from a continuing cycle of hate, mistrust, and rage.  Everybody but the regular people of Japan, China, and Korea.

It’s probably not helpful to the future of the planet that Abe decided to mark his nationalism card, but it doesn’t actually change anything.  It’s image, spin, and noise.  International diplomacy folks will instruct you on how much this matters, the earthshaking change it will induce.  But the dirty little secret is this:  Ignored, it’s meaningless.

If you’re Mister Shanghai, I offer this as your canned response to those who are telling you how to think:  “Friends!  Yes, I’ve heard what Abe did.   Thanks for trying to help me friends, I’m good on my own.  That’s not very nice of him, but I honestly don’t give a shit.  That was sixty years ago, and I’m just going to be the better man and ignore it.   I’ve got a life, with real problems, so I’ll work those right now thanks.  And if I meet a Japanese man on the street, I’ll shake his hand and ask him how his day has been.”

Is such a sentiment too unrealistic and forgiving for the average man on the street?  It all depends on what world you desire in 2090.  Let’s hope Mister Shanghai rows along.

privatecitizen