Wordpress

Invention: An Internet of Integrity

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   I am astonished that no one starts up an internet of integrity. The Niche is wide open, entrepreneurs! Imagine tech that does not spy on you and use you for their profit. Soon the people will be catching on, so it may well be a bull market. Imagine a Twitter that does not sell fake followers, a WordPress that does not block search term access to one’s site awaiting an extortion fee. Imagine a government obliged to obey the Bill of Rights they swore an oath to uphold, and just not use the camera and audio in every computer to take paternal and tyrannical powers over every citizen. Imagine a nation that cared to secure elections more than short term profits, and a 2016 election that was not hacked by the Russians to run Donney up the flagpole and watch the slavish Republicans salute! Perhaps we would have had Bernie or Hillary v. Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. Imagine if thee wee not a Russian hacking of U.S. hospital computers, and no Russian mob induced Oxy epidemic! We may have even had Ben Carson!

   And imagine an FBI that would admit to using the spy-tech and Russian assistance against ISIS and domestic terrorism, but made a terrible mistake in forgetting what it means to have risen through the ranks of the KGB-oops! Imagine a Congress that would regulate the internet and perhaps gun lobbies to boot, and oversee the federal executive agencies like it is supposed to, pursuing questions when these arise, rather than allowing the FBI/etc. to attack the one raising the questions.

   But that is what it means to be a Platonist, to bear the pain of knowing not that the best regime is unachievable- who cares?- but that all these evils are entirely avoidable if we would just stand up with a little integrity, even on the internet.

   So what if we set up such a thing, right alongside the old internet, now we have seen the flaws in that which will surely lead to disaster? And in the meantime, remember, the key to the discontents of modern tech is manual backup. Have they deported Emmanuel Backupez already? Senior Peace?

Orwell’s 1984 in 2017: Truth and Delusion

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   If you seriously cannot tell which is reality and which is illusion, I suggest you look at who is persecuting people for mere speech. And here we see the surprisingly deep importance of the principle of the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I keep forgetting that there are Trump supporters, and perhaps people who seriously cannot tell, as well as people who due to an ethical failure do not care or are simply willing to pervert the truth for baser interests.

   In Orwell’s 1984, there are of course people who believed that government, or, there are fools.  I recall Orwell’s description of his neighbor’s family, where all were as if wholly deluded, the father, mother and two children, all avid supporters willing to live wholly in the world Big Brother had created for them. There are also people who from fear do not consider truth, and of course a third sort, people who know well the difference, and for some ungodly reason are willing to impose the tyranny and its delusion onto everyone. That is how the domestic life of North Korea appears to us out here in the West. But seriously, who knows? Are there not “two sides to every story,” and did you not know that “truth is relative?” “We have our culture and they theirs,” and did you not know that ethical truth is culturally relative? “Who knows?” or rather, swallow this: if we lived in North Korea, Kim Jong Un would truly be the “Great Father!” Sarcasm is important, and does not, sometimes, come across through the written word. I keep forgetting that there really are Trump supporters. Trump has people willing to believe his fake news, and also to believe his accusation that any criticism of him is fake news. Our press struggles nobly to achieve for us objective clarity in the face of the stupidest lies. Many Americans seriously admire a good sales pitch regardless of the truth. Trump also has people who seriously cannot tell the difference, and, again, third, people who know the truth of the story quite well and are willing to produce for him fake news. And look now across America: Our democracy is seriously having difficulty telling the difference.

   2=2=4, and it does not equal 5. I had a great professor who once mentioned Orwell, and we, the students, were surprised that he would descend to discuss a novelist. He said he liked the work quite well, 1984, but took issue with Orwell’s presentation of human nature as being that malleable. But this was before the age of the Internet. If we do not act now, the orchestrated opinions may soon be those of We the people. It is perhaps an ethical problem, or, at root it is an ethical question: Are you willing to pervert your theoretical mind and common sense for the sake of bodily self interest? Will you do this if they threaten you? Or do they only need to pay you? And how much? For, like the joke about the prostitution of the wife of the man offered a “million dollars” to let the seducer sleep with his wife, we have already established that she is a prostitute, the only remaining question is the price. Read Machiavelli’s play Mandragola. And do you have enough money yet, America?

   But sometimes there is a serious difficulty about truth and a mirror image, which after all does have the same features as the true picture. Birds often are seen trapped in an illusion that the bird in the mirror is indeed another bird, because they have never yet seen such an example, and it takes a while to learn that such an illusion is even possible. Who would intentionally set up a mirror to confuse me in this way? Can we not just trust that the Lord would not make things so difficult for common sense? Do you mean, Mr. McDonald, to say that we really do have to consider such things about the president of the United States? Are we not obligated by the grandeur of the office not to question? Are we not obligated by the chain of command? Yes, indeed, this is not North Korea, yet, and every American citizen has a right to work on a Supreme Court case, to support impeachment when it in the nation’s interest, to speak freely and to ask questions freely. Trump had never read the constitution, and that is why he so often trips over it, and the Trumpsters do not care, and that is un-American!

   But this does not change the truth: Those who say 2=2=5 are lying. The philosopher can always be presented as mad, because the people cannot, without a great natural intelligence and a life of toil devoted to the truth, understand him, and, amid their life absorbed in practical concerns, they do not care. Again that is why our constitution is so important, and free speech so fundamental. I will add that that is why the abuse of our courts and the issue of perjury is so fundamental. I was taken from my driveway and held for 20 days without even getting a single word in to a judge, until a court appointed lawyer gained an independent evaluation by a psychologist who did not have an interest in filling a bed or getting me addicted to their drugs, and this convinced a judge of the rather obvious truth that they did not have a right nor any legitimate power to seize me 20 days prior. The abuse of our mental health system is, along with perjury, very serious, a very important development, because this system needs to be in place and honest for those who truly need it, that is, for genuine emergencies. I have seen it, the courts and our mental health system, corrupted by Trumpsters for political reasons, and this is simply not ok, that is, assuming that we do see something truly wrong with the way of life under Kim Jong Un, and we are not to assume it is simply our cultural preference. I am pressing charges of perjury, but it is quite likely that the police will be told to do nothing, and that the officer will again say that the question is “above his pay grade.” And it is perjury: When certain Tumpster relatives learned by experience that they could not have me “treated” by compulsion unless I were a “danger to myself or others,” they simply lied to say I was. We have an uncle who has a PhD in “Education,” and he was influenced too by some “psychologist,” likely a Trumpster, and perhaps someone in our government who has an interest in my being certified insane: I do not know, and fear to raise these questions so as not to appear “paranoid.” But someone sure does have an interest in presenting as insane, or a mere “conspiracy theorist,” anyone to whom it has become apparent the extent to which Russia threw the 2016 election. Again, if you seriously cannot tell which is truth and which illusion, I suggest you look to those suppressing the questions, to those suppressing free speech, for I was seized in my driveway while the Supreme Court Case #16-907 to void the 2016 election due to Russian interference through the internet was moving through the courts, I having done nothing wrong, not a thing I do not have a right to do, having threatened no one illegally, nor even said a single thing that is false, but for mere speech. One can always tweak and twist a word, and then forbid the accused to explain. The limed bird, remember, the more you struggle to free yourself, the more you will be stuck, if only we use everything you say only against you, will not listen, and insist it is you who will not listen, while it is we who are entering your world to determine how things shall be for you. Liberty is fundamental, and when one has violated the rights of no other, it is the obligation of government to leave him alone. This is fundamental law in America still, the principles of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and the Third assertion of the Second sentence of our Declaration: “…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The purpose of government is to secure rights, and so again, since it is apparently difficult, when one has not violated the rights of another, government has no purpose and must leave him alone.

   But in the end, and in “this world,” these questions are determined not by equations on a blackboard, but by power. We must take a stand, or see free government perish from this earth. I can blog, and have a wonderful time, and you can read, dwelling here with the ideas, if you have leisure, but in the end, they control the visibility and access to my writings through the internet, because we have allowed this to occur. The Resistance can tweet all day, but in the end it is on Twitter, and Twitter is being monitored and controlled, and by someone other than “We the people.” They can win because they have money and power, and we are not taking a stand.

Yahoo and Bing Mess with the Intenet

mmcdonald72014 5 Comments

   Someone has selected the least flattering possible categories from my collection, errors which cannot be removed from the WordPress categories. These are quite obviously selected to create a certain appearance, after Reddit connected me to the two year cancelled Marijuana website of the same name. “Folk Love,” “Drugs” “Foreighn Policy” and “Education” were on there yesterday, and I know a certain government agent who likes to make fun of my misspellings. This blog was never categorized by me as “Foreign Policy,” though the Edward Follis article that now appears below may accidentally have been. Nice, for an old blind guy with more to say than time to edit. “Folk” and “Love” were two separate categories, combined by accident and un-erasable. If this is the FBI, well…FU. If it is someone else, the FBI/Etc. might want to clear its reputation. Perhaps much might be revealed by finding out, as from Yahoo, who is doing this, and what else they have been doing. The practice continues down the page. Hey, do not fear that stranger on the bus! We have just had an election interfered with to promote fascism, and this sort of thing will stop if we expose who is doing it. On the other hand, they count on their guy getting control of the FBI and preventing inquiry. Can’t corrupt the president, just corrupt the next guy, the whole nation, and the presidency itself. Hey FBI, nice work revealing Kaspersky and the Russian involvement in the U. S. elections, after we, the U.S., tried to be so nice, you know, promoting better relations to wok together against the Russian strikes demonstrate is our common enemy.. You might read that comment on being poor, as I am both quite proud of it and of being poor, rather than whoring my share of American liberty. You like bending over so Machiavelli can impress his form on the matter, proud man?

   Kaspersky knew of and used this blog within two days, while the FBI still will not listen to me, and has no questions for me at all.

   I have been prevented, apparently by Microsoft, from using Google, had my computer infected with a virus coincident with reading the article “So, Trump was a Putin Puppet After All,” and none of the search engines find my website by key word searches, so that about 98 % of my traffic is word of mouth. No one will look into this, and we wonder how the elections could have been turned through the spy-marketing system we all love so much we just can’t even admit it exists, let alone put a stop to it. Or is it just Me?

   Here is the Yahoo listing a few days later, with the unused category listed first, and other things about one half remarkably selected to create an appearance. My suggestion again is that I have an agent who likes to present me this way. Compare the Google listing, which is a bit more normal. Again, such things done could easily turn an election, and by that the whole world. It is well beyond the possibility of accident, and intention could be demonstrated to a jury:

Tim Wu: The Attention Merchants / Take Back the Internet

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   Terry Gross had Tim Wu on NPR’s Fresh Air this afternoon to discuss his new book on how advertising has ruined the internet. He coined the term “Net Neutrality,” and Congress passed a law forbidding companies from censoring content for their own interests. WordPress does exactly this when they require an extortion fee in exchange for the accessibility to ones website, and otherwise limiting writers to small groups or bubbles. The loophole in the law is that there is nothing I can do about this without money to go to court, and my book has already failed and my economy is already destroyed. It was my last chance, and tuned out to be the last rigged game.

   Tim Wu is the second person I have head use the word “fascism” to describe Donald Trump.  Wu had some vey enlightening comments on tyranny and propaganda, and the similarity of these to advertising. He points out that Hitler was not only an artist in his pre-political career, but also an add man.  That’s Ok, America, after the experience of tyranny, we will just do what Germany did after the war, and shop elsewhere. The free market will surely take care of it, and they’ll see if we hire them to do this to the rest of our children!

   What Tim Wu and all others fail to appreciate is the importance of the Fourth Amendment and the disaster of allowing the gathering of information for “marketing” purposes. Congratulations to Facebook for delivering that trove of information to the Russians to use in whatever diabolical way they can imagine. Or to ISIS, or to a future tyrant of America. That was very smart. And we Americans thought is was all a conflict between profit and bashfulness, like the worst problem is the guy with pancreatic cancer getting adds for funeral homes or the girl who found out she was pregnant from Target due to her shopping habits. The very minimum is that if this stuff is allowed, it should be voluntary. But the Big companies have gone to Congress, who has whored our liberty.

   Another thing Tim Wu does not appreciate is the huge gulf between voluntary add watching and compulsory shopping. I retreat and boycott, for example, U-tube when they force me to watch an add. Boycotting may indeed be an effective way for the people directly to take back the internet. Another is to sue every time these excesses cause harms that can be compensated. But especially, Congress must be made aware of the problem, you know, by we who work for free to look ahead for the good of their constituents. The citizens must elect a Congress that can step aside the campaign finance problem by recovering integrity. This is possible, and even easy, since these companies are suck ups to the profit principle, and, like Dolphin safe tuna, we just have to make integrity profitable.

The Rigged Game Economy

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   NPR had a report discussing the new term “rigged game” as a description of the middle-class-destroying effects of Campaign finance on Congress. Billionaires are able to set the rules of the game so that only they can make money not by the value they produce and offer in the free market, but by controlling the market itself, so that it is no longer free. And everyone finds they have agreed to this by signing those consent forms no one reads but are required in order to communicate or do anything. Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce, and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress this power. If two factories are competing, and one can gain an advantage by poisoning a river, at the expense of the commons (as Garret Hardin discusses what he calls the tragedy of the commons), then Congress can regulate the factories on the issue, so that neither may poison for their own profit. Hence, neither can or must maximize “shareholder value” by poisoning the river for everyone, or setting a drag on the whole economy, the way extortion does. But now, if one factory thinks it is profiting greatly by poisoning the river, their lobbyists can just contribute to some campaign funds, and presto! The issue appears in a different light, and the poison is not so bad after all. And who is funding those expensive studies, say, regarding the Enbridge pipeline, while our Governor cannot receive free thoughts from citizens though the office phone? The playing field is tilted toward the unscrupulous because Congress is doing something other than its job.

   When the internet companies wanted to whore the privacy of every last person on the globe, Congress was easily persuaded to ignore the Fourth Amendment and allow this incredibly profitable and, we argue dangerous pandering.

   But back to the “rigged game.” Bernie Sanders was the first among the politicians to use the phrase, as he was the first to discuss the prescription drug abuse epidemic as a campaign issue. In a letter on the horrors of the tax process, about Christmas eve two years ago, I wrote to my representative Tim Walberg and described the economy as a rigged game because the attempt of the Billionaire interests to use the power of their wealth to set the rules of the economy in their favor. His office does read his constituent’s letters, and that was a very good letter, about how an accountant is needed to fill out the simplest tax form, but the poor cannot afford an accountant, creating an infinite obligation (contrary to due process). I often write about issues to them long before setting these things on the internet, as with the teaching regarding how dolphins do fishing, o the issue of property seizures. I may have picked the phase up somewhere too, as these things occur, but I think I know what studies led me to say this. I imagined Rand Paul and maybe Barak himself seeing that letter, then heard Bernie Sanders say “rigged game,” and recognized it. Someone, by word-of-mouth press, does seem to read the bloggers on the internet, and the CLC invites both parties to com “policy shopping,” as this is the purpose of the McDonald website, and as we do on the issues of both parties. But the phrase comes from having thee times done all that one would think needed to make a living and pay back loans, and come up completely empty. But especially, we were watching that Mob or Russian business model take over among the Googles and Microsofts, where for example payoffs ae required to publish a book, and access to the internet can be withheld for extortion fees, all made legal for a mere few million in “campaign contributions,” otherwise known as bribes. I have watched the prescription drug industry take three of my mother’s ten grandchildren, thirty percent of the next generation, so that they could make money off heroin and oxy. I have watched the press stammering and just unable to comprehend the issue of psychiatric prescription drug abuse, while public shootings now occur weekly, all done by people on antidepressants, people who were under the careful care of the mental health industry, and congress, like the press, is unable to respond.

   If Congress does not regulate according to the common good, the free market itself will be destroyed by power. This is perhaps what the Koch brothers and Republican economists did not realize from their principles, how oligarchy slides into tyranny. Free market libertarianism assumes a free government, or, it assumes that the market and private property will be defended from thievery and tyranny. But if companies can profit by destroying the GNP for their own interest, just by tricking and paying off Congress, then any companies that do not do these things cannot compete with those that do, and the whole quickly gets out of hand, as has been occurring. Business presupposes ethics, without thinking, since what is most profitable in the short term can always appear to be tyranny. The economy is then rigged against lower class attempts to rise by genuinely producing value, say, with new inventions. It is like going to Vegas and tying to win at a rigged black jack table, and these too are the studies from which the phase arises. So, ok America, do we really think that worldly success is the measure of a man and the ability to govern in a free nation? Does Trump think it wrong to rig the game if it is rigged to his advantage? Or is this not how the game came to be rigged in the first place?

   NPR was describing how the phrase is being used now, according to every partisan position, these guys saying this or that that they are against is “rigged,” or that the Washington insiders are the riggers, while these silver tongued money men, who even teach how to deceive for ones own profit, the very ones who have rigged the system by influencing both parties, plan to slide right to the side, the way the prescription drug industry evades responsibility.

   Say Hillary, if you are listening, we invented the idea of putting solar collectors into roof shingles, as potentially cheaper than solar panels, but do not even try to work on the idea, as inventions are impossible for the poor to produce.

Student Loans II: The Ombudsman

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   NPR has been considering student loans today, and if I were not blocked from commenting by Facebook etc., I would set a few sentences on their webpage. I just heard back from the “ombudsman,” and they basically said that it was just fine that MGA has added 75,000 $ to my loan, already tripled by interest. Congress has given them the authority to collect fees, and so these might be a million dollars if they want. My suspicion is that this is a recent action by the Republican congress that does not, you see, want to encumber these fine businesses with regulations. They interviewed a default that went three years to a university of Phoenix, you know, like a Trump University, and dropped out after three years. By contrast, my degree was from the University of Dallas, and I completed a Ph. D in politics. I may well have been blacklisted by my government and ejected by the Catholics, but what is sure is that for the ten years I applied for full time teaching jobs, they were not hiring white males for union professorships, due to Federal affirmative action. This is of course contrary to Madison and the Fourteenth Amendment, which does not allow them to hire everyone except white males, and we stick by that Fourteenth Amendment. I have called for the statistics on this, but no one collects them. Sue, I could teach in high school, where the unions have made Ph. Ds worthless and “certification” everything. I could go get certification, which they have made a two year fifty thousand dollar program to learn how to set up a classroom and be sensitive to diverse people. But then when I get out- and everyone knows this is true- the schools will not hire me because I already have a ph. D, and the unions will make them pay me more to cover the same number of students, and the quality of a Ph. D is utterly invisible, to people who have never studied education with the greatest minds. This too, everyone knows, that they have ejected the traditional study of education, and cannot even identify the greatest books on education.

   So, I taught for ten years as an adjunct, because I am called “white.” I do have a rather sever insistence upon liberty, but this has not caused me to lose a single job. I did decline to try to teach at Washtenaw Community college for minimum wage with half a mouth of teeth, because they have a smoke fee campus, and we resolve to obey the rules. But this job would not even provide subsistence, let alone the repayment of loans. And by the way, if I were not “white,” and had gotten a full time job (thee are for practical purposes, no non-“white” Ph. Ds in political science that could not get full time union jobs).

   So, I tied to repay my loans with writing and inventions. Thank You, WordPress, for blocking my internet access in hopes of gaining an extortion fee, and thank you to the Republican Congress that took money to allow such a thing. Thanks to the office of Tim Walberg, who cannot even tell me what laws allow MGA to default me surreptitiously and charge me 75,000 $, thee times that borrowed for a Ph. D, to push a paper across a desk and stamp it. Nor can my state representatives or anyone else tell me, o even take up this question: Are they doing this to everyone, or did they just do it to me? Have they added 75,000$ to very many loans, financially enslaving and ruining a whole class of college educated people? Or did they just do this to me? And if so, why? Thanks to the “ombudsman,” for being a yes man to MGS, allowing them to do whatever they want. What is interesting is that if I ever could afford to pay them, I could afford a lawyer, and we would raise these questions in court. I have a bread bag with twelve pieces of junk mail I have still not had time to open, and we will open these and read them and respond on court time. I never got through my IRS paperwork, let alone answer junk mail proliferated when creditors use and sell our prostituted information. Thee is a limit to the paperwork we can be obligated to do, and I know, because I have hit the limit.

Microsoft Displaces Search Engines Other Than Bing: Walberg Does Not Care

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

   For the past month or so, Microsoft has made it impossible for this computer to access Google. Google, of course, was doing this to Microsoft before, until we were tricked into downloading Windows 10 and Microsoft seized the computer. And Now I get a permanent pop-up, trying to force me to “choose” Bing explicitly so that the computer stop choosing  the search engine for us.  Wake up, congress! My Representative Tim Walberg’s office cannot even hear about these problems with every business in every oligarchic corner of America. His challenger in the gerrymandered district, Gretchen Driskell, also has nothing to say when I tell her Mr. Walberg is vulnerable on issues of the internet and the control the billionaires have given themselves over our lives. But it makes a voter vomit to hear the Trumpster say he is the one to fix the “rigged game.” It is just his kind of schliest, and worse, that has given us this world, where we are to become the instruments of technology which is the instrument of unseen powers. I tried to run myself for this congress seat, half facetiously, but am far too poor to gather 3000 signatures, especially with WordPress allowed to keep us in the bubble, interfering already with the U. S. elections.

Now for two weeks Yahoo has placed a pop-up over my screen which gives me the alternatives of choosing Bing as the default search engine or choosing to keep Bing as the default set by Microsoft. The pop-up will not go away until one chooses. One wonders why, like with a Russian confession, they go through all the trouble of tying to make us “choose.” Everyone in Congress has taken money from these Billion dollar companies, and just cannot believe or understand what happens to the internet, and then the world, once Congress finances campaigns by bribery.

But now that it has been revealed that Yahoo was hacked, and all that information they forced out of us has been sold to the Russians, at least it is clearer now why I have refused to give Google any information in exchange for anything.

The Computer is Still Quite Slow, Especially Inter-WordPress

mmcdonald72014 Leave a comment

Having removed three strange WordPress downloads from the computer, called 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 zip files, the computer remains very slow, especially going from one part of the WordPress website to another, as in publishing a blog or checking statistics. A new message has appeared, “Saving of Draft failed,” each time I write. Again, these downloads are strange because I did not download them, and they seem to have entered through my e-mail. Google was busted in Europe for distributing high speed internet on a selective basis, if I am not mistaken, but again, criticism of either Facebook or Google in the United States has been almost non-existent. I have suggested to my representative that he look into what WordPress is doing in our relations to the broader web, but the entire office does not even seem to understand that there is an internet at all. They simply use and flatter Facebook, while taking their money as “campaign contributions,” while ignoring complaints about the First Amendment, such as: “All who will not give information to Facebook are excluded from commenting on your website.” NPR, too, has ignored this complaint, receiving it again like a saying from Mars, like they do not have the categories needed to hear it. The internet companies are simply free to do whatever they want to the lawyerless poor. The FBI is more concerned with spying on us than with securing rights. Which is the purpose of government? Once again, this is not media, any more than this is representation, nor is this honest business.