I prefer not to

I think I know how to defeat Google's invasive "personalization" -- for a while...
Much kerfuffle and roiling of late over Google's proposed changes to its privacy policy. There's plenty written elsewhere, so I'll spare you my attempts to either summarize or analyse it. This is about how I respond to it.

Given that in a sense it's useless, that they are scanning all my email as well as this blog (which is hosted on their blogspot service), I still want to register that I think it's offensive to see Google offer me "personal results" at the top of a search page. Why the FUCK would I want my search results "personalized" using my history of past searches as well as everything else Google knows about me? What am I, seven years old? Are people suddenly bereft of any search skills at all? I have been working for software companies for going on 20 years; I know a thing or two about search. Please, Google -- don't patronize me.

Added slightly later: Yes, it's possible to click an option in your account settings that says "Don't use personal results." But that just means they don't display the option for you. It doesn't mean they don't collect information about you. As for the "Search history" that you can also supposedly turn off (and I do) -- I simply don't trust that turning it off actually means they don't collect information about you. I think it just means they don't display it for you.

I'm someone who's used GMail ever since it was available. I love Google's services -- but I also want to be able to say no. So I haven't signed up for "Google +" and I never will -- until the day they stop giving me the choice and simply force me to do so. And that's the day I will dump GMail and make sure everything possible is off their systems -- as if that were even possible.

But til then, I have a simple strategy: never search for anything on Google while logged in to my email or other services.

That's simpler than it sounds. You have more than one browser on your machine, right? Probably Internet Explorer (or Safari, for Mac users), and Firefox. Maybe Chrome or Opera. All you have to do is dedicate one of these browsers to non-logged in Google use. For example, let's say I want to search for a new car, but I don't want fucking car advertising to clutter up my browser and I don't want any evidence of it in my Google results. Let's say I use Google's own browser, Chrome, for my GMail and other Google services. Then I just start up Firefox for the Google search -- and any other anonymous services, like Maps, that don't depend on my identity. And I do my search while not logged in to my Google account.

If I did that while logged in, Google would know I'm looking for a certain kind of car, and then it would know I searched on their maps for the nearest dealerships. Why should I want them to know that? What services could they possibly offer me, based on that information, that would benefit me -- as opposed to benefiting the car dealers whose ads would then pollute my email window and search results and, for all I know, my maps?

No really Google -- thanks for your free services, but UP YOURS on the exploitation.

Pretty standard, actually

People are still aflutter over a financier saying candidly in a BBC interview that "governments don't rule the world; Goldman Sachs rules the world." Some have suggested the interview was part of a series of pranks by The Yes Men, an anti-globalization activist group, but the BBC is standing by its source.

The thing is, the statement about Goldman Sachs is simply a part of the general paranoid's worldview. Google something like "Goldman Sachs conspiracy" or "Goldman Sachs +NWO" and you'll get an eyeful.

In fact, the notion that Goldman Sachs, like other mammoth global corporations, has more power than most governments in some spheres isn't even really a paranoid fantasy, but one of those notions whose half-truth makes it all the more believable, without actually being true. Put another way, it's like people who write Cris (who does tenants' rights counseling by email) "Can the landlord do this or that??" She usually answers, The landlord can do anything, but whether or not you can then object to it before the rent board, or sue the landlord, is another issue. Goldman Sachs can and will do anything it wants to, in certain spheres. The question is whether it is possible to hold anyone accountable for its decisions, or whether any government has the political will to do so.

Of course, there's also something anti-Semitic about saying "Goldman Sachs rules the world" without making a broader statement about banks and financial firms in general.

Watching the video, I thought that in the first half he did come across a little like a prankster. But by the end I thought no, he's just a young guy who is nervous about being so candid. I believe he's real. (And maybe not even anti-Semitic. He was speaking off the cuff; maybe "Goldman Sachs" is simply a way of saying "the largest, most powerful multi-national financial institutions.")

Update the next day: Apparently the fellow who made those statements isn't much of a financier or a trader at all, but an "attention seeker." Actually that doesn't make what he said any less true; it's what a lot of people believe. While I'm sure the BBC is embarrassed for giving air time to someone who turns out to be no more authoritative on the state of the world economy than any other idiot, that doesn't mean he wasn't right about a lot of things.

Be afraid, be very afraid

It's Expanded Terror Threat Day, informally (yet officially) declared every year around this time. As the L.A. Times story says:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials scrambled Friday to identify and find as many as three men who supposedly planned to travel from Afghanistan to detonate car bombs on bridges or in tunnels this weekend in New York and Washington. Officials said they obtained specific but uncorroborated intelligence this week that two or three individuals with close ties to Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan had entered the United States in a plot to disrupt events planned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Vice President Joe Biden told morning TV shows that the intelligence came from a "credible source." ...

The men -- possibly including a U.S. citizen -- were said to have crossed by land from Pakistan to Afghanistan and then to have boarded a series of flights bound for the United States, possibly connecting through Dubai International Airport. ... The warning came from a single trusted source who has given correct information in the past, said a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak to the media. Intelligence officials do not have specific names or fragments of names of any suspects, the official added.

Really? With all the terrorist watch lists, several people crossed on foot from Pakistan to Afghanistan, flew blithely out of Kabul through Dubai and thence to the U.S.? Great. Meanwhile hundreds of innocent people can't fly on a plane at all for reasons they aren't even allowed to know.

While:

Traffic backed up at Manhattan's bridges and tunnels Friday as the New York Police Department set up vehicle checkpoints on nearby streets. Police searched parking garages and stepped up towing of illegally parked cars, and some officers wore portable monitors set to vibrate in the presence of unusual radiation. National Guard troops carrying assault rifles patrolled at Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, the city's railroad hubs, and police officers increased checks of subway riders' bags. In Washington, police and federal law enforcement increased security around government buildings and monuments. Extra air marshals will fly on domestic flights this weekend, and foreign air carriers have been asked to step up screening of passengers bound for the U.S. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration will deploy more than 600 teams of bomb-sniffing dogs and bag inspectors on train platforms and subway systems around the country.

I feel so safe I could fly. Just not on a plane.

A typical screed from a paranoid right-winger

I often note the posts of collapsitarians, but today let's look at a typical blatt from one of your basic paranoid right-wing racists. It's titled Lone Wolf False Flag or Real Mumbai-Style Active Shooters?

"False Flag" is right-wing-paranoid lingo for an act blamed on one group but secretly perpetrated by their enemies in order to defame them. The classic example is the Reichstag fire, blamed on the Jews, but actually done by the Nazis. Ever since they blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, almost every act of terrorism is said by one foamer or another to be a "false flag" act, or in other words, a terrorist act secretly enacted by the government and blamed on right-wingers. You get the idea. Without further ado:

As the media and Spokesman-in-Chief, President Obama, warn us of a "lone wolf terrorist event" on or around September 11th, I can't help but think back at all of the articles I've written or posted regarding a "Mumbai-style Attack" or an active shooter scenario such as Arizona's Jared Loughner and the Oslo, Norway event. Many on the far-right continue to believe that this incident will portray a typical causcasian of the conservative swagger to be the trigger man in an effort to further demonize the "Patriot movement" (which has withered into the Old Republican Guard 2.0, ala George Bush-esque Rick Perry and Palin's successor: war-mongering, former IRS tax prosecutor Michelle Bachman) and alleviate pressure on the Middle East and "Obama's homeland." ...

Gun bans. Permanent renewal of the PATRIOT ACT. Orwellian pre-crime thought police. Internet censorship. Even further widespread eavesdropping and wiretapping. New "terror laws" regarding assembling in groups, limits to free speech and access to firearms. This would be one of the cheapest and yet most effective terrorist plots in American history. And with it, broad, sweeping political powers for the Elite.

So that's their basic paranoid take on things: All regulation exists to limit the rights of true patriots, and because any serious terrorist act would only lead to more laws and regulations, which are in the interest of the government, it follows that only the government would be behind terrorist acts.

This is the train of thought of the 9-11 conspiracy nuts, who go to great lengths to demonstrate that only a well-trained crack government effort could possibly have produced the destruction of Sep. 11th, 2001. I won't even both to link to any such blatts, you can find them yourself in ten seconds if you try. They are entertaining for a few minutes and then simply tiresome. Look for them to peak next month, and then if anything remotely terroristic happens in the next, oh, 20 years.

To conspiracy theorists, it all fits together

Despite the fact that the messy pro-democracy upheaval in the Middle East will actually make the world safer by ridding the region of the dictators driving the hoi polloi into the arms of Al Qaeda, to right-wing conspiracy nuts It's All Part of the New World Order's Master (and they do mean master) Plan -- so says the latest post from the Shit Hits The Fan blog, Turning Off the Tap: Population Reduction Through Designed Economic Collapse.

According to their conspiracy theory, the rebellions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other lands are all part of a plan by "banksters [sic], the oil cartel and ... Wall Street" to "(drive) up prices for essentials like food and energy to the breaking point, ... shaking every nation on earth to its core. The effect of such manipulation seems destined to lead toward a severe reduction in numbers of the human population, and a tightening of control over those who remain."

Yes, depopulation! That's all part of it! Of course, this prophecy depends on the vast majority of the population losing its mind and reducing itself through riots and unrest to a fragment. Or as they put it:

The oil and Wall Street powers seem satisfied to allow the civil unrest to spread in order to feed their greed for higher oil prices and resulting control. Surely they recognize that higher oil prices will suck the remaining wealth out of the poor and middle classes around the world. This scenario will obviously cause starvation, illness, and other life-shortening effects, as increasing numbers join the ranks of the poor... and the poor have no where [sic] else to go.

Obviously. Of course, there's no evidence that the events of the last couple of months are the result of outside influence from anyone other than democracy-minded people themselves. Secondly, it seems odd for a cabal of "banksters" and other members of a shadowy financial oligarchy -- of course "Wall Street" is simply modern crypto-fascist code for "the Jews" -- to launch a global takeover by means of increased democracy. Thirdly, if there are "Jews" behind countless democratic Arab movements, that would be very strange. And finally, there is no evidence that anyone is losing their minds as a result of the turmoil, except maybe Moammar Gadhafi. In fact, newly-freed zones seem to be taking up the challenge of self-governance with optimism and a reasonable amount of decorum.

But an essential part of the conspiracy theorist's practice is to ignore everything that doesn't fit the theory's template. For them, the conspiracy is constantly in the process of proving itself true.

Sins of silence

Daniel Ellsberg interviewed in the L.A. Times, reflecting on his role in history:

Although he was attacked by political opponents for betraying his country, Ellsberg's regret is rather that he didn't leak documents earlier -- in 1964 when the conflict was still escalating.

"I'm one of a few dozen people who could have prevented the Vietnam War," he says, drumming his finger on his wooden table with every syllable. A Democratic Congress would have turned on Johnson, he thinks, if they had seen how bogus his war justifications were. "But I was very inhibited -- I felt like I was breaking my promise."

It's human nature that troubles him the most.

"Humans are herd animals," he says. "They depend very much on being part of the group, and to remain part of the group, they'll do anything. And a much larger number will go along with anything. And the broadest form of that is keeping your mouth shut."

There's crazy and then there's certifiably insane

One of the more truly insane blogs I follow is The Vatic Project, which regularly posts anti-Semitic economics-related rants and other forms of paranoid fantasies about the state of the world. Just another dot on the spectrum of collapsitarian nuttery, this particular dot pretty far out on the spectrum. Today he -- whoever it is -- posted something and included an introduction, as he often does. A preface of sorts. And this preface is priceless.

They do not want this one up. Taking control of my cursor again so I can't put it up. So do not know when you will get this. I was trying for today, but it may not be til later when I can do this without the messing around. Be patient, ITS GOING UP NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY, I AM FULLY AND UNEQUVICALLY STUBBORN. THIS MEANS YOU NOW HAVE TO READ IT, BECAUSE THEY ONLY DO THIS ON INFO THEY DO NOT WANT OUT THERE.... SO GET THIS OUT THERE ALL OVER THE PLACE. THANKS. Its about waiting til I get a different shift. hehehe.

It appears that its the OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL TREASURY THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT. SO PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THAT AND DIG EVEN FURTHER SINCE THEY SEEM TO HATE THAT ONE WHICH IS WHERE I GET THE WORSE MESSING OF THE CURSOR.

Wow, "they" must really not want it up on the internet -- whoever "they" are -- because no sooner did I click on the link than I get a "Page Not Found" message. It Really Makes You Think, Doesn't It??!?

For those really interested, here is a screenshot of the feed from Google Reader from which I pulled his text. I was able to get only a couple of the lines of the actual article, but it's the preface I love.

King of Hawaii (the verb)

In researching my latest novel, I hit upon a gold mine of material just published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit whose main mission is to monitor and report on hate groups. Among the articles they published in the September issue of their publication Intelligence Report is a list of leaders of the "sovereign citizen" movement, which is a loose group of people with a magical belief in an alternate legal system. The most amusing profile contains this information:

A former tool-and-die maker, the man who writes his name as ":David-Wynn: Miller" — or, as he amusingly says it verbally, "David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller" — came up with his "truth language" scheme as a result of a frustrating court experience in 1988, when he was going through a divorce. In short, all truth language sentences used in court filings must begin with the preposition "for," contain at least 13 words, and use more nouns than verbs to be effective (he has claimed that only nouns have legal authority). David Wynn Miller considers himself a "Plenipotentiary Judge" in the Unity States of the World, and has named himself as the King of Hawaii, a feat he claims he accomplished when he converted Hawaii into a verb.

That is awesome! And this guy is not even a performance artist. God, I love this country.

Today's paranoid: Obama said to be jockeying for one-world presidency

From a Time story about a Virginia gathering of Congressional candidates sponsored by a Tea Party group:

Feda Morton, the only woman in the race, has been a teacher, a state-championship basketball coach, a school board member and a Republican organizer. A diminutive mother of five sporting a sparkling flag pin, she fidgeted as she recited the merits of her candidacy in an interview with TIME. When the topic turned to Barack Obama, she confessed deep fears. "I don't think the President really cares about our health care," Morton says. "He's not trying to lead America. He's trying to position himself to be a leader higher up, and the only way he can do that is to bring America into the whole one-world order concept."

Obama, she adds, belongs to a plutocratic cabal that manufactures crises for personal profit, foisting scams like health care reform and global warming on U.S. taxpayers to depress the economy. "Look at who his czars are," she says. "He's tied very closely to George Soros, European socialist organizations, Howard Dean. These people all play into this one-world order, one-world money system. And it's to make money for them."

Wow! I love the expression "his czars" -- it's like a combination of the concept behind Jesus's admonition that no one can have two masters, with some neo-Red Scare ideology. Here is her website.

technorati: paranoia, nuts, Tea Party