Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 10

The War on Error

Anyone who thinks history is in the past should think harder.

Yesterday was the 68th anniversary of Hiroshima and if you want to read the Ourmani party line, it’s all here and in the links and comments. I don’t have much to add other than the observation that the present does indeed change the past, and my views are no exception. I think. I can’t remember what the party line was.

After more than a decade of the war on terror, the greatest nation the world has ever known has been, as they say in my old neck of the woods, led down the garden path. That a superpower should have allowed itself to have been brought to its knees by the actions of a handful of jihadists, beggars belief. It certainly buggers it.

Our Man hopes that the saner folk in DC will prevail against the surveillance state, a manifestation of a rampant misappropriation of a great nation’s wealth, as does the editor of Foreign Affairs , though any student of history would note that things have got a lot worse with the folks sleepwalking into the industrial military complex since Eisenhower warned our grandparents to get off their arses and do something about it.

So, back to our enlightened (and enlarged) arses of today and it’s clearer than ever as the propaganda of war rings ever more hollow that Hiroshima sits more and more squarely in an inglorious thread of the arrogance of power (or the power of the arrogant), the fallout from which is still infecting us all.

Anyway, carry on.

Before the fireworks

I had written a long rant about the surveillance state and why even folk who don’t know their Snowdens from their Starbucks should still give a damn (and Gitmo, Manning and drones and terrorism horseshit) but you’ve heard it all before.

So here’s a sketch instead I called before the fireworks. Make of it what you will.

And here’s a link to what we do at Gitmo in our glorious never-ending war against terror, and why Google is the Quisling of the 21st Century.

Carry on.

It’s up to you

I’ll keep this brief. I don’t do many posts begging for money, and this ain’t for me or for charity. It is a plea to consider helping fund a pal of mine’s Kickstarter project right here . He is planning to come over from California to take more pics of some of the homeless of Tokyo and record his impressions of what he finds.

As Our Man sees it, there are three reasons why you should consider funding him beyond the fact that he’s a pal of mine:
The faults with establishment, mainstream media are legion. But you can hardly bitch about them if you are not willing to consider supporting independent media. All you have to do is shout Dan a couple of bucks so he can come over here and improve his journalistic skills, tell a compelling story and shine a light on an oft overlooked matter of social injustice.I don’t know what the future of journalism looks like but I’m pretty sure it looks more like a lone reporter armed with a point and shoot, a blog and a passion to tell a story -- someone like Dan -- than the myriad corporate cut-n-pasters and government stenographers who get to call themselves journalists and sneer at those lower down the information food chain.It’s up to you, as it always has been.

The Our Man in Abiko Blog Disclaimer

It’s a bit long, but it will do for now:

This is a Google blog. As such, it is being secretly copied and stored in some godforsaken desert bunker in the USA for future use that nobody, not even in the NSA, knows exactly what for. How can they? It’s in the future. But don’t worry, you’ve got nothing to hide. Google is completely trustworthy. You can also trust the state to have your best interests at heart, to keep your data safe and never, ever abuse its position. Still, you might wish to consider not reading this blog on a mobile phone in one of the ever expanding list of countries where drones target folks’ iPhone GPS locations, if you value your life; not leaving a comment here unless you seriously want to forget about that run for the presidency or that well-paid job in national security. It’s not paranoia, it’s just common sense. Offline is the new underground. Everything else is public. Have a nice day.

Strawmen

Another day, another national election in Japan. This time round, I paid even less attention than I did the last time, so I’m even less qualified than usual to impart my unethusiasm. The first take I read about it all was here , which is fine as far as it goes, though I’d quibble with the writer’s relief at Japan finally having thrown off the shackles of compromise and being free to stamp through one party’s glorious solution to Japan’s myriad ills.

But to be honest, I’m not too dissatisfied with the mess that Japan has been in for the last 20 or so years when I look at the economic straightjacket that the UK has strapped itself in to while the post-Snowden establishment America looks ever more of an ideological wasteland in need of, if not a revolution, then at least a jolly good talking to.

So, I look at the continued good fortune of the pro-nuke, pro-free trade, pro-print money and jobs for the boys party of Japanese PM Abe, and I think, ho bloody hum. It will all end in tears, of course, but we’ll be able to fool ourselves that everything is going to some kind of plan for another year or so.

LATER… This just in … Abe’s lot are way short of a 2/3 majority to rip up the pacifistic post-war constitution so talk of a hawkish, rightist movement of Japan somewhere between Genghis Khan and Hitler is a tad overblown.

“Aren’t you embarrassed that you just report the government’s story?”

Today, the chaps behind The Women of Fukushima started following Our Man on Twitter, and Abe’s pro-nuke party is on the verge of securing a landslide in the upper house on Sunday, I guess it won’t make any difference playing this video, but seeing as it’s Hunter S. Thompson’s birthday today, you never know, it’s worth a shot.

Lost my cool

I’ve aged 20 years since Sunday.
I’m short of breath, I can’t focus. I’m grumpy.
Some greater power turned the thermostat up 10 degrees overnight and left the humidifier on.
The air has a physical presence now.
I walk out of an air conditioned room and and hit an invisible wall.
If it were my daughter I’d rush her to hospital and demand antibiotics.
But it’s not.
It’s just the way it is.
And the way it will be, for your future.
You just gotta sweat it out.

ANCIENT HISTORY

Looks like I’ve been blown off by Ambassador Roos. He hasn’t seen fit to respond to my letter I tweeted to him the other day, but he hasn’t blocked me and is still following me on Twitter, so that’s something.

Anyway, I have a few points that I thought I’d share with my current dozen readers and secret service followers of the future.
Obliged to PERSON X for the recommendation to read David Brin’s Transparent Society. I’ve read the Kindle sample and shall buy the book. His argument appears to be that technology will eat up our privacy, but there is the possibility that it will work out not so bad if we the people routinely snoop on each other and not let the state have all the fun. He sites the wonderful drops in crime that cctv cameras on the streets of Britain allegedly caused. Well, I could argue that one, but in theory he has a point. I shall read more before commenting further.And lo, Rupert Murdoch is caught on tape spouting all sorts of shit  that prove he was lying to the thingy commission on press ethics or whatever. This appears to prove Brin’s point that with technology (a concealed iphone) everyone is a potential whistleblower.And then Egypt imploded again and it once more made me wonder how worked up about theoretical rights and stuff I had a right to get on twitter when folks are spilling blood over such questions.I shall be sifting through the info here to figure out how to set up encrypted email, because despite Brin’s optimism, I still think having the ability to communicate with some expectation of privacy is vital in developing sources and breaking stories. Not that I do such things these days, but I’d like the ability, you know?And in cover life news, I’m in the throes of moving the business out of the bunker and onto the mean Main Street of Abiko. What this means in the short-term is less internetting, but in the long-term more time spent writing. Expect a new Kindle essay in a month and a new novel in about three.And this video is about the best thing I’ve seen about the whole NSA-Snowden thing. It’s pretty funny too:

PLAY THE GAME?

So many things to say about the surveillance state, but I couldn’t put it better than Scahill and Greenwald, so I’ll leave it to them. I can’t recommend the vid above highly enough if you have any interest in hearing from two true American patriots and are not frightened of the word socialism.

But enough about them, let’s talk about me.

Ambassador Roos or his underlings haven’t seen fit to reply to my question I asked him last week about whether the country he represents is recording all my digital communications with the world. But perhaps he didn’t see any need to answer because almost certainly the US government (and Blighty, let’s not forget) are spying on me. I know this because they are almost certainly spying on you too. Everyone, in fact. They’ve got the whole digital world in their hands. There has been no denial of spying. There has been no denial of the secret government agreements to have backdoor access to every Microsoft, Google and Apple product that we have ever used since 2007.

And while I’m not so conceited to believe the US government gives two figs what I’m up to--I mean, why should they?--I also appreciate that they are going to treat me as they do every other foreigner (and American citizen) as a potential threat/problem/number. In other words, all my email conversations, twitter rants, facebook photos, Skype chats and Google searches for scantily clad women are being kept forever in a vault in some buttfuck desert town where they are glad of the jobs ever since Wal-Mart drove out all the local businesses before closing down.

Yours are too.

Like Snowden, like Greenwald, like Scahill, like any sane person who has thought about the issues at stake for more than a soundbite, this is not the world I want to live in or want my children to live in.

So, what can I do? I don’t really know. But here are some starting points that resonate with me.

I will not play their game.I will speak my mind.I will not be scared.I will stand up for those who are standing up for me.I will not back down.As a first symbolic act, I have disabled my Sitemeter hit counter on this blog. From now on I will not be secretly tracking which mad fuckers are still reading this blog. I can hardly rail against the state for collecting metadata from folk if I am too, can I?
I’m not playing their game anymore.

NOTHING TO HIDE 2020

“We don’t have anything really big on him, yet. He once wrote a disparaging letter to the US Ambassador to Japan.”
“Kardashian?”“No, the one before, Roos.”“Roos? Never heard of her. You can’t find any more recent dirt than that?”“It’s tough. He went offline in 2014. Made a big fuss about individualism and something called the Magna Carta and privacy.”“Those are terror code words.”“I know. The crawler flagged those suckers pronto.”“Wait. back up. Did you say offline?”“Yeah. Completely.”“Gmail?”“Nope.”“iPhone?”“Nope?”“XHamster?”“Not even that.”“Man. What does he do with his time?”“I did an analog.”“And?”“He reads a lot now.”“Jesus. Books?”“Yeah. Sometimes one a week.”“My God. What’s he into? Let me guess, freak-show shit?”“Totally. De Tocquerville, Vonnegut and Strunk and White. All dead.”“Reading the dead is a misdemeanor. We need something to put him away for good.“There was something. But I wanted to clear it with a super, before I was sure.”“Go on, I’m listening.”“Well, the year before he went offline. He posted the word lifegasm and I think he meant it ironically.”“My God. Irony.”“An Act of Terrorism in all 50 states and Homeland Territories since Democratic Martial Law was declared and...”“I know.”“...back-dated to any instance since the year 2000.”“Well done, we’ve got the bastard. Fire the drone under authority of Suspicion of Engaging in Unpatriotic Verbage.”“Already have, sir!”