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Fuck that social contract

Zodra je zegt, ik ben anarchist en ik heb een uitkering is de kans groot dat een of andere pipo gaat zeggen: tss, wel tegen de staat zijn maar er toch geld van ontvangen. Een redenatie die volgens diegene meestal op zich zelf staat zodat ie vergnoegd denkt te hebben gewonnen. Dat deze uitspraak meestal gedaan wordt door mensen die ook zeggen: al die buitenlanders jatten mijn baan, en in dezelfde discussie weten te zeggen dat ze hier alleen maar komen om een uitkering op te strijken en lui en werkloos te zijn, behoeft eigenlijk geen verwondering te wekken.
Maar goed, ik ben dus een soort van anarchist, en ik wil een uitkering. Ik wil geld van de staat en vervolgens doen waar ik zin in heb. Helaas zijn het niet meer de jaren 80, dus tegenwoordig mag dat niet meer van de kleinburgerlijke middenstanders geest die door dit enge door prikkeldraad omringde landje waart.
Waarom ik daar recht op denk te hebben?
Omdat ik nooit een contract met deze samenleving of staat aan heb willen gaan. Ik ben hier geboren, kreeg een Nederlandse Nationaliteit, en daar moet ik verdomme maar blij mee zijn. Want je hebt toch geluk als je in zo’n welvarend land geboren bent? Nou, weet je, houd die welvaart van je maar. Ik ben redelijk gelukkig met 4 muren en een dak, wat kleding, platen en zo nu en dan eens een goede fles whisky of zo. En wat vrienden om me heen. Dat is wat ik van het leven wil. Beetje schrijven, wat aankloten, niks doen, wel wat doen, weet ik veel.
Maar helaas, in deze maatschappij mag dat niet zomaar, tenzij je rijk geboren bent, dan kun je met respect aangekeken worden als je wat aankloot en geld er door heen brast zonder te werken. (waar de ouders waarschijnlijk hard voor hebben gewerkt, of, nog waarschijnlijker, andere mensen hard voor hebben uitgebuit..)
Anders wordt er van je verwacht dat je netjes gaat studeren, werken, huisje en dat soort onzin haalt, en braaf je belasting betaald zodat de staat haar deel van het sociale contract na kan komen. Je bescherming bieden tegen geboefte, en je te beschermen en verzorgen in het geval van ziekte of ouderdom.
Hartstikke goed idee natuurlijk, dat we elkaar helpen en voor elkaar zorgen wanneer het nodig is. Dat zorgt er toch voor dat je als mens makkelijker overleeft. In theorie is zo’n sociaal contract ook niet verkeerd, alleen de uitvoering zint me niet.
Ik ben het namelijk helemaal niet eens met wat deze staat uit mijn naam loopt te doen. En ook niet met de vorm van invloed die ik daar op uit kan oefenen. Dat politieke circus wil ik niet, ik wil geen indirecte vertegenwoordiging, politieke partijen en al die democratische farce. Maar je kunt er wel niet aan meedoen, en vervolgens dus geen invloed uitoefenen (voor zover er sowieso sprake van enige invloed is..) maar dat verandert noch de staat noch de termen van het sociaal contract wat ik dus bij geboorte al (onvrijwillig!) ben aangegegaan.
Ik kan natuurlijk mijn sociaal contract met de Nederlandsche Staat beeindigen, en inruilen voor dat van een andere staat, mits ik aan de juiste voorwaarden voldoe. Maar dat wil ik waarschijnlijk ook niet, omdat er geen staat is in deze wereld die een contract aanbiedt wat ik wil ondertekenen. Het enige contract wat ik kan of wil accepteren is een contract wat ik samen met een groep opstel, wat uit eigen keuze ondertekent kan worden en ook weer opgezegd.
Ergo, ik zit opgescheept met een waardeloos sociaal contract waar ik niet onderuit kan, wat mij allemaal verplichtingen oplegt waar ik nimmer om heb gevraagd in ruil voor enkele rechten of zekerheden waar ik ook niet persé iets mee wil. Maar, omdat ik nu eenmaal aan dit contract vastzit, neem ik het recht op een uitkering. De plicht tot werken daarvoor accepteer ik niet. Dan hadden ze me maar moeten vragen of ik het contract accepteerde toen ik op zelfstandige leeftijd kwam. En me de optie moeten geven om neen te zeggen, en vervolgens naar een Staatsloos gebied toe te sturen, waar ik onafhankelijk kan leven van de staat en deze maatschappij. Waar ik met de mensen om me heen een contract op kan stellen dat vrijwillig na gekomen wordt.
Iedereen zou dat recht moeten hebben, om het contract te weigeren zodra je 16 ofzo wordt. Dat je kunt kiezen tussen de veiligheid van een maatschappij met al bekende wetten, regels en plichten, of dat je zegt, nee, dat lijkt me niks, ik weiger dit contract en

 

ga op zoek naar een andere club.
Ik eis het recht op stateloosheid, op luiheid en op vrijheid. Op naar Utopia!(en als we daar zijn, dan zien we dan wel hoe en wat we gaan doen ok?)

Written on 22 December 2011 by Meindert ut Fryslan under Dutch, Economics, Military, Politics, Popular Culture with 3,577 Comments
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Het kadaver van Gaddafi: UCLA bro is still ok.

The revolution in Libya was definitely televised. There’s nothing more inspirational than a bunch of people striding for democracy in a totalitarian state. The heroes had been widely demonstrated, paraded and praised in every western media outlet. Photo reports showed the ingenious improvised artillery vehicles and the vile mercenaries. World leaders wished the revolutionaries all the best while supporting them with aid and assistance. Libya air campaign conducted by the NATO was the longest since Kosovo. Fall of Tripoli was celebrated as the big step in Democratization of Libya. Cheerful faces of Libyans decorated front pages of newspapers. The state controlled media in Russia and China painted a somewhat different picture, however, but who cares what these commie dogs have to say… Its Democracy baby! Fuck yeah!

Now that the public interest have gone down and news anchors moved onto more interesting topics. But the conflict is far from over of course. NATO’s air campaign goes on, and the western media starts to catch on with the escalating insurgency and chaos as NTC fails to control it’s own forces.

Rebel leaders in Misrata appear to have already decided how to punish Tawergha’s people, whom rebels accuse of pillaging homes and raping women during an assault on Misrata in March. Though the rape allegations have been difficult to prove, they have fueled immense hatred.

Now, rebels have been torching homes in the abandoned city 25 miles to the south. Since Thursday, The Wall Street Journal has witnessed the burning of more than a dozen homes in the city Col. Gadhafi once lavished with money and investment. On the gates of many vandalized homes in the country’s only coastal city dominated by dark-skinned people, light-skinned rebels scrawled the words “slaves” and “negroes.”

“We are setting it on fire to prevent anyone from living here again,” said one rebel fighter as flames engulfed several loyalist homes.

Sand, armed trucks and scorched earth tactics! Rape and pillage! Lord Humungus would be proud.

Oh, and by the way, revolutionary UCLA-bro is still doing great!

Written on 26 September 2011 by ptitz under Military, Politics with 3,272 Comments
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No moar Moammar

Tripoli – After forty years, the reign of Moammar Mohammed al-Qadhafi seems to be at it’s end. Qadhafi is on the run, his sons are arrested and the rebel forces are mopping up all that remains of his forces.

As far as insane dictators go, he’s one of the most insane dictator of them all and well known and respected in insane dictator circles.

He opposed both capitalism and communism and invented ‘Arabian Socialism,’ a political philosophy for which he wrote the Green Book, one-upping Mao and his red book.

This book consists of three parts:

  •     The Solution of the Problem of Democracy: ‘The Authority of the People’ (published in late 1975)
  •     The Solution of the Economic Problem: ‘Socialism’ (published in early 1977)
  •     The Social Basis of the Third International Theory (published in September 1981)

The Green Book rejects modern liberal democracy, “free press”, and capitalism. Democracy in Libya is based on direct democracy in the form of popular committees. (However this system is limited in practice by the fact that Gadaffi himself appoints a cabinet and departmental ministers, and the influence of unelected revolutionary committees throughout the government.) Freedom of speech is based on state ownership of book publishers, newspapers, television and radio stations, on the grounds that private ownership would be undemocratic. (At least one observer has called the resulting media “dull” and lacking in a “clash” of ideas.) Libya’s economic system is based on the premise that all employees must be “partners not wage-workers”, and forbids paying employees a wage in return for labor.


“Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.“

He is also notably famous for his role in the Lockerbie bombing, almost killing Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. Now he is busy writing the fourth installment on the Green Book, called “Running and Hiding.”

Written on 22 August 2011 by God of the Grove under Military, Politics with 3,383 Comments

IBM one step closer the “The Technological Singularity”

Armonk, N.Y. – IBM announced a new step in processing technology, as they revealed their Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project which is about experimental computer chips designed to emulate the brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition.

In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.

The goal of SyNAPSE  is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment – all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1

They also announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing $21 million in phase 2 of this project. For science, ofcourse, not to build some ultra-smart weapon out of it, because that would be stupid.

 

IBM’s SyNAPSE project leader Dharmendra Modha  states: “This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century. Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.”

Unlike OCP’s RoboCop project, these chips contain no biological elements. While this bodes well for using these chips in elevators, without making them too murderous, the technology does borrow a lot from the structure of organic brains and use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a “neurosynaptic core” with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons.)

RoboCop is just so 1987…

The two prototypes where fabricated in 45 nm SOI-CMOS and contain 256 neurons. One core contains 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses. The IBM team has successfully demonstrated simple applications like navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification.

For Phase 2 of SyNAPSE, IBM has assembled a world-class multi-dimensional team of researchers and collaborators to achieve these ambitious goals. The team includes Columbia University; Cornell University; University of California, Merced; and University of Wisconsin, Madison. While this is a large team, none of it’s members seem to have seen any movie about artificial intelligences destroying humanity, even while the list of these movies is nearly endless. Also, one of the more prominent killer AIs, HAL9000 got it’s name by taking each letter from IBM and replacing it with the one before it in the alphabet.

Read more about the project here.

Read about the Technological Signularity here.

Written on 19 August 2011 by God of the Grove under Military, Science, Technology with 3,202 Comments

War Without Humans Modern Blood Rites Revisited

An analysis on some of our favorite subjects: Drones, cyborgs and war.
Barbara Ehrenreich elaborates on the intimate connection between warfare and welfare in the U.S, the War as business – switch being made from governmental liability to corporate liability by commissioning external companies and outsourcing non battle related affairs, replacement of soldiers by robots undermining the “passions of war”.

Ends up in a maybe too optimistic note but still a good read.
See full article on Alternet:

How Machines Take Over The War

Written on 18 August 2011 by Mr. Woland under Military, Politics, Technology, Uncategorized with 4,318 Comments
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Russian bombers fly over Netherlands (again)

Two Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) F-16s on quick action alert this morning intercepted a pair of Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers flying in Dutch airspace without identifying themselves. As usual, the RNLAF fighters were guided by the Air Operations Control Station in Nieuw-Milligen.

Story here.  Its the second time this summer Russian bombers have crossed Dutch airspace and fourth incident of this kind this year. It is obvious that the invasion is imminent and therefore i am overfilled with joy and anticipation. Our new overlords shall straighten out this decadent pit of filth once and for all.

Update: a fresh article with more info here (in Dutch).

Written on 18 August 2011 by ptitz under Dutch, Military with 2,814 Comments
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Bill Hicks – War in Iraq

War in Iraq, going overkill on the enemy? The US government making you believe we have to wage this war because otherwise Saddam Hussein will destroy us all. We’ve heard this in the months after 9/11. However, this little video fragment I found originated from  years before, when 9/11 meant the US sponsored coup d’etat in Chile…

Bill Hicks was, in my humble opinion, one of the best stand up comedians out there. I’m not so much in the mood of getting in that whole debate whether Denis Leary stole his work or not so lets now get into that!

What is interesting about this clip is to see that Hicks’ story, even though it’s about the Persian Gulf War, could be applied to most of the US’ military actions throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. When you hear his story you can simply replace Iraq with any other place the US invaded, be it Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq (again?), Korea, Somalia, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc etc etc.

Some might say that Hicks was ahead of his time when telling this story, especially in the context that this same war was repeated about a decade later by yet another Bush. However, when taking a closer look it is part of a common pattern that has been repeated over and over and over. Sadly this means that Bill Hicks wasn’t that ahead of his time in this story, but simply described something that has always part of US’ foreign policy.

And here I was trying to simply post a Bill Hicks video…

Written on 16 August 2011 by Stefmanovic under Humor, Military, Politics with 5,776 Comments