Brainsturbator Forums

The Good Reverend Roger Switches Religions.

2008-12-11T16:20:52-05:00

I have a new cappuccino machine, which Maria bought me when I changed religions and gave up cactus. In retrospect, this may not have been the most responsible decision she’s ever made. It turns out that I can put away 3-5 quadruple cappuccinos an hour without so much as leaving my chair out on the balcony.

Needless to say, this has led to more aberrant behavior than all the cactus I ever took. After all, now I’m wired to the gills and I still have full use of my brain. A disturbing side effect that you’d really rather not hear about - but will anyway - is this: Despite the fact that caffeine thins out blood vessels, apparently it is in large doses more powerful than a wheelbarrow full of viagra. Maria has in fact locked me out on the balcony until “such time as my fit of priapism ends and I let her get some sleep”. Ho ho! It turns out that EVERYONE has their limits.

Except me, so long as I have coffee beans, cream, and water.

Provided I have these three things, I am invincible. The hooting and screeching of the primates around me does not bother me, and - provided I don’t look directly at it - the Dumb cannot hurt my brain. I am above it all, here upon my fortress of arrogance.

It occurs to me that if world leaders drank this shit as much as I do, that most of our problems would be solved (on way or another). Wars would be simpler. After 20 cappuccinos, Bush would have been in Iraq himself, swinging a chainsaw, surrounded by the mutilated carcasses of his foes. Well, okay, maybe not Bush. But Nixon sure as hell would. Hell, Nixon would rip them apart with his teeth. And then he’d scoop out their hearts and shit in their torsos, all for the approval of the emperor and the roar of the crowd.

As you may have figured out by now, I may have found a new religion.

HAR HAR! Are you ready for that? Are you ready for a 265 pound maniacal jackass attempting to explain his religion to you, while spitting coffee, vomit, and stomach lining all over you? Oh, yes, this upcoming decade looks to be even more fun than the last one...provided my heart doesn’t explode out of my rectum like a caffeine-powered bazooka round. And THAT might even be acceptable, depending on whom my arse is aimed at.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to explain this wisdom to the masses. They have all come out onto their balconies to listen. Or perhaps they have come out to see who is bellowing “Only in America” by Brookes and Dunn at the top of his voice as he types these words to you.

Or kill me.

The Post-Everything Future of 5GW

2011-08-21T00:09:08-05:00

Big ups to Wes Unruh for hipping me to an article that’s a year old but hit my brainpan like Starfish Prime:

http://securitydebrief.com/2010/09/29/fifth-generation-warfare-a-growing-concept/

The article is not worth reprinting in full. The author’s bio, on the other hand, very much is:

Steven Bucci writes about cybersecurity, modern warfare and the interagency process, particularly as it involves defending U.S. interests domestically. Bucci formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense at the Department of Defense and also served for 28 years in the U.S. Army. He is currently IBM’s Issue Lead for cybersecurity.

The article is about the threat of 5GW. At first I thought it was a lazy treatment of the topic by someone who didn’t have the time to research it, then it hit me: I wasn’t reading an essay, I was reading ad copy. This guy is actually selling 5GW, as well as hyping for a loose think tank called the 5GW Eductational Institute.
http://www.5gwinstitute.com/

Here’s where things get quotable:

The 5GW Educational Institute is truly one of just a few groups studying the idea of “Generational Warfare.” They are on the cutting edge of a new (and hopefully effective) way to address the challenges our nation faces. They are attempting to be the thought leaders on the topic of 5GW and make the case that the United States is at a moment of transitioning from traditional and separated disciplines in the national security space to the world of highly integrated, multifaceted and sophisticated 5GW.

Our enemies have figured this out already. They are agile, innovative and will try whatever works. We tend to still have an industrial-age methodology. We preach agility, net-centric operations and a legion of other buzz words, but then return to our comfortable traditional corners.

Horseshit. Pentagon Red Teams routinely outperform Al Qaeda, and it’s not like I’m some super-patriot, that’s just an obvious fact. 99% of domestic terrorism post-9/11 has been FBI entrapment, not actual 4GW teams formulating and executing plans.

Let’s be real: I’m no cheerleader for the military industrial complex, but their enemies have not figured out shit, except perhaps that the US military is running on an un-sustainable business plan and their Full Spectrum Dominance is about to hit some brick walls in less than a decade. That doesn’t mean they are 5GW ninjas with telepathic insights, it means they read US media, which has been publishing detailed information about that problem for decades now.

Nobody is touching the US in terms of force projection, so with “Cyberwar” testing poorly with the body politic, I can see the next threat being 5GW. Can you imagine Paul Wolfowitz shilling before Congress and saying “five gee double you” with a straight face, hundreds of times? You won’t have to in about 18 months. Gears are already turning.

I was joking with Wes that I could see 5GW becoming “the critical theory of the warrior class”—which is to say, a culture that produces complex essays that say nothing at all. I didn’t realize how dire that was until I thought about a climate where 5GW is normal conversation: invisible warfare taken for granted. This completely negates the need for manufacturing an enemy, or creating opposition to control—you can simply declare natural disasters and industrial disasters as “5GW attacks.” Explaining the concept becomes part of the news cycle and everyone on the bus is explaining it to each other for the rest of your life.

It’s late and I could explain this better—I will be back to do exactly that.

“Minds to Pay Attention To” via Sean McBride

2012-04-03T09:33:33-05:00

Minds to pay attention to:

1. David Ferrucci (IBM Watson)

2. Denny Vrandecic (Wikimedia Foundation)

3. Doug Lenat (Cyc)

4. Erez Lieberman Aiden (culturomics)

5. Gilad Elbaz (Factual)

6. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

7. Larry Page (Google)

8. Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz)

9. Paul Allen (Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence)

10. Paul Buchheit (Y Combinator)

11. Pavel Richter (Wikidata)

12. Ray Kurzweil (transhumanism)

13. Sergey Brin (Google)

14. Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Alpha)

15. Tim Berners-Lee (Semantic Web)

Is it necessary to lose your innocence to take power over your existence?

2008-07-04T09:03:40-05:00

Feel free to add an explanation with your vote.

lol, I found brainsturbator in the lulzsec irc leaks

2012-01-10T21:59:27-05:00

Jun 01 06:13:49 Topiary or maybe we should just pwn 2600.net itself
Jun 01 06:16:21 storm well that was fun XD
Jun 01 06:17:48 Topiary I love their little clique circlejerks
Jun 01 06:17:55 Topiary they all have a little retweet party with themselves
Jun 01 06:18:11 storm they tweeting?
Jun 01 06:19:00 Topiary yeah check out the feeds of @mach2600 @fakegregghoush @awinee and all retweets
Jun 01 06:19:15 Topiary these are the same guys who specifically went after Sabu + our crew back in Feb with HBGary
Jun 01 06:19:24 Topiary they’re a lovable bunch of scoundrels
Jun 01 06:21:10 Topiary err, madjack just disappeared :x
Jun 01 06:22:00 storm lol
Jun 01 06:25:04 joepie92 disappeared as in...?
Jun 01 06:25:33 Topiary it’s back
Jun 01 06:25:48 storm its cause it gets nulled
Jun 01 06:25:49 storm for 5 min
Jun 01 06:26:23 storm lol
Jun 01 06:26:35 storm thats the funnest shit ive done with 2 servers ^_^
Jun 01 06:26:45 storm who woulda thought 3 ircds could die to 2 boxes
Jun 01 06:27:13 Topiary well it’s good taking out 2/3, watching them scramble to the 3rd, letting them come back, then fucking the 3rd while laying off the other 2
Jun 01 06:27:19 Topiary like playing with rats and switches
Jun 01 06:27:37 storm haha
Jun 01 06:27:41 storm i could drop all 3 at once
Jun 01 06:27:45 storm if i wanted
Jun 01 06:27:50 storm just take 2 more box logins
Jun 01 06:28:05 storm but theres no fun in that ;<
Jun 01 06:28:29 Topiary * [Brainsturbator] (skully2012 at 71-23-43-101 dot war dot clearwire-wmx dot net): Agent Skully
Jun 01 06:28:29 Topiary * [Brainsturbator] #lulzsec #secnews #telephreak #2600
Jun 01 06:28:30 Topiary who is this?
Jun 01 06:28:48 storm no idea
Jun 01 06:28:58 Topiary we don’t either, hmm
Jun 01 06:30:51 storm Agent Skully
Jun 01 06:30:55 storm better watch out
Jun 01 06:31:00 storm hes an 4g3n+
Jun 01 06:31:46 joepie92 lolol

I hope your shit’s secure. I know this was a few months ago so if they were going to do anything they probably have, but if you’re going to hang around these niggas you’d better be prepared.

#Occupy Teach-Ins

2011-11-02T19:13:54-05:00

Running thread for my own selfish benefit, as per.

VIA: http://www.browndailyherald.com/occupy-teach-in-draws-full-house-in-salomon-1.2651788

Professors from departments including economics, history, sociology and political science spoke at the event, each lending their own expertise to contextualize the movement. After each set of speakers, there was a question-and-answer session.

...

Community members — such as a member of the Rhode Island Anti-Sexism League and representatives from Occupy Providence — spoke last at the event, which lasted over three hours. By the end of the event, the auditorium was half-full.

“I think it’s awesome that teachers are involved, but I got the most out of the community members,” said Emily Doyle ‘13. “They’re the ones who have seen what’s happening in Providence and are motivated to change it.” She said she thought it was a mistake to schedule community members to speak last.

VIA: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016658588_occupy01m.html

The Occupy Seattle demonstrators took some free classes Sunday night and into early Monday, courtesy of half a dozen instructors from North Seattle and Seattle Central community colleges.

The class titles included “The Art of Protest Signs” and “Camera Techniques for Documenting Human Rights Abuses.”

They were held for free in the brick courtyard along Broadway at Seattle Central, near where demonstrators have been camping out since Saturday.

The instructors conducted the classes on their own time.

There was no overcrowding at the sessions.

Esther “Little Dove” John, 59, a psychology and conflict-management instructor, says her 5 a.m. session on “Labor History and the Psychology of Greed” had a dozen people attending, and half of them were fellow instructors.

“People were cold and shivering, using blankets, bundling up together,” she says.

Why was she there?

“This is the moment,” says John. “I believe this is the beginning of a great historical sweep.”

Skilluminati CSE

2011-09-02T04:14:10-05:00

A mere “links” section would do no justice to the scope of the Skilluminati ecosystem, so as per a Bling Finger recommendation I’m instituting a Custom Search Engine—basically a sandbox of awesome sites for researchers.

beta test: The Sandbox

This is an open thread for tinkering and suggestions. Got the list up to an even hundred sources and I’m going to write some stuff over the weekend and play around. My bias so far is source documents over commentary so I’ve got Leftists, Hedge Fund alpha males and military-industrial voices in the mix in approximately equal measure.

The Current List
http://mediafilter.org/
http://bankwatch.org/
http://www.prwatch.org/
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/
http://www.spinwatch.org/
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/
http://www.propagandacritic.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/
http://www.corporatewatch.org
http://arxiv.org/
http://www.triviumeducation.com/
http://www.nextgov.com
http://csat.au.af.mil/future-conflict.htm
http://www.endgame.org/
http://practicalaction.org/
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/
http://www.campaignstrategy.org/
http://www.warisbusiness.com/
http://www.psywar.org/
http://www.iwar.org.uk/
http://www.medialens.org/
http://www.archive.org
http://littlesis.org
http://www.itsoc.org/
http://ieeessit.org
http://www.sec.gov/
http://www.ieee.org/
http://longnow.org
http://www.namebase.org/
http://mitworld.mit.edu/
http://motherjones.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://publicintelligence.net/
http://www.shadowstats.com/
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/
http://www.systemswiki.org
http://www.historyisaweapon.org
http://www.visualcomplexity.com
http://www.searchlores.org/
http://www.appropedia.org
http://www.projectcensored.org/
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/
http://www.academicearth.org/
http://www.historycommons.org/
http://www.panarchy.com/
http://un-intelligible.org/
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/
http://www.propublica.org/
http://www.sourcewatch.org
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
http://www.well.com
http://www.phibetaiota.net/
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/
http://www.jeffvail.net/
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/
http://www.edge.org/
http://www.ted.com/
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/
http://subtopia.blogspot.com/
http://cryptome.org/
http://cryptogon.com/
http://steelweaver.tumblr.com/
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/*
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/*
http://www.zenpundit.com/*
http://www.ubiwar.com/*
http://secretsun.blogspot.com/*
http://rigint.blogspot.com/*
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/*
http://www.timboucher.com/*
http://www.urbeingrecorded.com/*
http://www.dysnomia.us/*
http://www.technoccult.com/*
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/
http://www.skilluminati.com/*
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.mitre.org/
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/
http://www.schneier.com/
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/
http://www.socialcritic.org/
http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org
http://www.crocodyl.org/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com
http://www.gallup.com
http://www.pollingreport.com/
http://people-press.org/
http://www.fedstats.gov/
http://www.holmesreport.com/
http://www.nndb.com/
http://www.cdi.org/
http://www.fiatpax.net/
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/
http://www.tbuckner.com

Information Operations Contractors: A Survey

2011-09-07T10:38:14-05:00

The purpose of this thread is tracing the topology of the corporate/military IO ecosystem. The goal is an atlas of the players involved.

Source: WaPo

An expanding network of Pentagon contractors with professed expertise in information operations has become the focus of an investigation ordered last week by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Gates’s action was prompted by news reports that Michael D. Furlong, a senior civilian Defense Department employee, had used $25 million in funds from the Pentagon’s program against roadside bombs to hire private contractors to gather information on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan—activities that Furlong says were authorized by top U.S. military commanders.

But Furlong’s now-halted operation is just one example of units in every branch of the armed forces spending millions of dollars on private contractors—many of them retired military, CIA and other intelligence specialists—to satisfy military commanders’ new interest in information operations.

“Information operations is the hot thing, and somebody turned on a hose of money,” said W. Patrick ("Pat") Lang, a retired senior Defense Intelligence Agency officer who served in Army Special Forces. “Retired colonels and senior executive service officers are forming teams to compete.”

Gates told reporters Thursday that such operations are “critical” to the war in Afghanistan, albeit in need of “an overall strategy or perhaps adequate oversight.” Beyond the Furlong case, he said, “there are broader problems in terms of oversight in these important areas that need to be corrected, and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Based in Lackland Air Force Base, Tex., the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center is the 435-person lead unit that “plans, integrates and synchronizes information operations in direct support of joint forces commanders . . . across the Defense Department,” according its mission statement. Those operations may include “psychological operations . . . and military deception,” according to a 2006 publication from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Because senior military officers have had little experience in those areas, they frequently have relied on private contractors.

The Warfare Center, where Furlong is based, has a relatively small budget of its own. But it also gets funding from across the Defense Department, from the Joint Forces, Special Operations, Air Combat and Army’s 1st Information Commands, wrote Navy Lt. Cmdr. Steve Curry, chief of media operations for Strategic Command, in answer to a question.

Between 2006 and 2008, Central Command alone had 172 contracts worth $270 million just for information operations in Iraq, according to a Defense Department inspector general report released in September.

Purchases of products and services made through major contracts included “military analysts, development of television commercials and documentaries, focus group and polling services, television air time, posters, banners, and billboards,” the inspector general reported. Smaller individual purchases under information-operations programs included “magazine publishing and printing services, newspaper dissemination, television and radio airtime, text messaging services, internet services and novelty items,” the report said.

Another aspect of information operations is the complicated chain out of which they develop. One such chain was illustrated on Jan. 9, 2009, by JB Management of Alexandria.

JBM announced it was part of a winning team selected by the Warfare Center to provide “Human Network Analysis and Information Operations Support” for one year with “three additional year-long option periods.”

JBM’s president, Harry Gibb, is a retired Army colonel and its chief operations officer, Andy L. Vonada, is a retired Marine Corps officer whose last assignment was as “lead politico-military planner for the strategic plans and policies directorate for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Alex J. Johnson, chairman of the JBM board of directors, is another Army veteran.

And the firm’s director of capture and strategy, Robert Cordray, is a West Point graduate who left the Army after five years, went to work for another private contractor and was deployed to Iraq to assist with information operations.

National Program Office

2011-09-19T13:05:26-05:00

via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Program_Office

The National Program Office (NPO) was an office of the United States Government, established to ensure continuity of government in the event of a national disaster.

The NPO was established by a secret executive order (National Security Decision Directive 55) signed on 14 September 1982 by President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War in preparation for a nuclear war, presumably with the Soviet Union.

The NPO plan was classified Top Secret, codeword Pegasus. It was also referred to as Project 908 (also known as “Nine Naught Eight"). The only oversight was by a Project Pegasus committee chaired by then-Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.

via: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/18/us/pentagon-book-for-doomsday-is-to-be-closed.html

A Pentagon agency, the Defense Mobilization Systems Planning Activity, was given the task of making plans to glue together a shattered Government. But the planners found it impossible, even in peacetime, to coordinate the White House, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department and other agencies.

The project was an amalgam of more than 20 “black programs”—so highly classified that only a handful of military and civilian personnel knew of them.

“That raised the bureaucratic nightmare to the nth power,” Mr. Blair said. “No one knew what anyone else was doing. It was hard to find out even the technical characteristics of some of the plans. You had all the difficulties of creating command-and-control networks cutting across bureaucratic lines, combined with the secrecy of black programs—even the bureaucrats running it were handicapped.”

...

Far more elaborate plans began with National Security Decision Directive 55, an order signed by President Reagan in January 1983 and still top secret. The directive to create “continuity of government” during and after a long nuclear war was drafted by, among others, Oliver L. North, then an obscure marine on the National Security Council staff.

In the Reagan Administration, the project was supervised by Vice President George Bush. A senior C.I.A. officer, Charles Allen, was deputy director. In the Reagan and Bush Administrations, the project involved hundreds of people, including White House officials, Army generals, C.I.A. officers and private companies run by retired military and intelligence personnel.

...

Then the fragmented leadership would be woven together with a communications system of space satellites and specially outfitted tractor-trailer trucks equipped with sophisticated transmitters. Convoys of at least 16 lead-lined trucks, each commanded by an Army colonel, were to hurtle down the nation’s highways eluding Soviet warheads after the Pentagon was destroyed. On the trucks and throughout the nation, sophisticated radio and computer terminals shielded from the effects of nuclear explosions were to link surviving military and civilian officials after the capital was destroyed.

Billions of dollars were spent on such equipment, much of which is now gathering dust in Army depots.

Barry Horton, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence programs, said that he could answer no questions about the project, since “the details of these efforts remain classified.” Other Pentagon officials confirmed that most of the project was being mothballed as part of an overall review of nuclear war plans, although none would agree to be quoted, citing secrecy strictures.

...

But the secrecy surrounding the project began crumbling after Mr. North referred obliquely to his role in it in Congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987. After the subject was raised, Representative Jack Brooks, Democrat of Texas, asked if “plans for the continuity of government” included a “contingency plan in the event of an emergency that would suspend the American Constitution.”

In the Bush Administration, members of Congress and the press became aware of internal Army disputes involving the project. Some concerned awards of multimillion-dollar, no-bid contracts to former Army officials who had left the program. Others involved Army analyses concluding that the project’s crucial communications links would break down in a crisis.

High-ranking Army officials took strong measures to quash the unwanted publicity. According to a 1989 House Armed Services Committee report and Pentagon records, they ordered an officer attached to the project—a soldier with a self-confessed record of drug abuse and black-marketeering—to identify whistle-blowers within the program and smear them as Soviet spies.

Last year, a military satellite communications system separate from but crucial to the Doomsday project—the $27.4 billion Milstar program—was deemed incapable of enduring a long nuclear war. A scaled-down Milstar satellite, the first of six now scheduled to be built, was launched in February, with half its classified communications gear stripped out and replaced by ballast.

While some “continuity of government” programs continue under the aegis of Pentagon planners, they are pale versions of the vision laid out by President Reagan in 1983.

“They are realizing these requirements are throwbacks to the cold war,” Mr. Blair said. “They are not relevant to today’s world.”

Why is Democracy Broken? The Demographics of Big Apathy

2011-09-04T09:10:31-05:00

Source: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1786/who-are-nonvoters-less-republican-educated-younger

As is typical in U.S. elections, nonvoters are significantly younger, less educated and less affluent than are likely voters.

Nearly three-quarters of nonvoters (72%) are younger than age 50, compared with only 42% of likely voters.

Similarly, a majority of nonvoters (60%) have not gone beyond high school, compared with just 34% among those likely to vote.

This education gap is somewhat larger among young people: 55% of nonvoters younger than age 40 have only a high school education, while the figure among young likely voters is just 20%.

Low education levels and low incomes go hand-in-hand: 43% of nonvoters have family incomes under $30,000, compared with just 19% among likely voters.

Reflecting their low incomes, many more nonvoters (31%) than likely voters (14%) describe their personal financial situation as poor, and fully 51% of nonvoters say that they or someone in their household was out of work and looking for a job at some point in the past 12 months. Among voters, 36% had this personal experience with unemployment.

A much higher proportion of nonvoters than voters identify as Hispanic or Latino: 21% of nonvoters vs. 6% of voters.

Part of this difference, of course, reflects the fact that nearly four-in-ten (37%) Latinos in the U.S. are not citizens and thus not eligible to vote.

...

Nonvoting does not appear to be a byproduct of contentment with the political system.

Somewhat more nonvoters than voters say they are basically content with the federal government (25% among nonvoters, 16% among likely voters), but this is a decidedly minority view.

Fully half of nonvoters are frustrated with government and 19% say they are angry.

Similarly, most nonvoters (73%) say they can trust the government in Washington to do what’s right only some of the time, or never. This is about the same level of distrust expressed by voters (76%).