I’m quite determined not to write a part III-c(5)(xyz) of this series, so I plan to give as good a brass-tacks overview of alt-communications potential as I can in this one post. I’m sorry to disappoint you who expect detail, but that would literally require a book. Hopefully I can provide a framework and a few good links on where future privacy tech might go. But this is an area where you of the Commentariat can fill in where I have to skim. H/Ts in advance to S, CX, the blog Commentariat, and the members of the Living Freedom Forums.…
22 CommentsCategory: Privacy and self ownership
Owning our own information and telling Big Brother to get lost
Once again I’m breaking a long, detailed screed into a two parter. I really have to stop splitting multi-part series into multi-part mini-series. But not just yet. —– Many years ago I got a mocking write-up in one of the big national tabloids for suggesting that someday freedom lovers seeking private communications might resort to carrier pigeons. I’d made the remark only in passing (in a book chapter having to do with many alternate forms of covert communications, from modern adaptations of hobo sign to dead drops). But apparently I’d managed to come up with an idea so ridiculous that…
24 CommentsNote: I would be very glad to have experienced health-care workers jump into comments with any additions, corrections (however savage), reality checks, bright ideas, personal insights, or other forms of enlightenment. —– One thing about the hardest systems to route around: Being HARD, lacking flexibility, they develop a lot of cracks. Take a look at any heavily institutionalized or subsidized medical system. I’ll use the U.S. system because the U.S. is home-not-so-sweet-home. But despite the claims that various socialized systems (e.g. Canada’s and the UK’s) are inherently better, many of the same or equally awful drawbacks apply to them. We…
21 CommentsPolitics is downstream from culture. — Andrew Breitbart Culture is downstream from character. — Me —– Last week I wrote that an important job ahead of us is to build parallel systems, and even parallel societies. We need these to sustain ourselves and sustain freedom as utterly corrupted, immoral, self-serving government and corporatist systems crumble. I promised a series on that. Here it begins. As with my earlier series, “In Praise of Men” (which ended up running to seven segments), it seems best to lay some groundwork. My premises for everything that follows … follow. —– 1. Alternate systems are…
25 CommentsThis will be brief. I have company this week. Though my guest and I have brainstormed through a world of perils and generated vast amounts of blog fodder, I planned to wait until next week, then begin a new multi-part series on bringing down totalitarianism. A moment has come up this afternoon, so here’s a beginning. First, please take a cruise though these links that I’ve been collecting in preparation for the upcoming series, most especially the last in the list. Adaptive Curmudgeon sums up everything that needs saying about the obnoxious, unconscionable, cruel, inciting, totalitarian, and exceedingly dangerous speech…
25 CommentsRusty* was a likeable guy. He attended neighborhood parties. He had another group of friends he met every morning for coffee. Always ready to chat, he could often be seen at the side of the road, talking with neighbors and passersby. Youngish women seemed especially fond of him, and he of them. If you needed a hand, he was there to lend it. Rusty was also smart. Clear into his 80s he had a sharp mind, a good sense of humor, and an awareness of the larger world. In his past, he’d been a private pilot, a small-boat oceangoing sailor,…
31 CommentsWho’s in denial about our current cultural and political state of collapse? Most everybody. Millions of ordinary people who think bad times are always temporary are in denial. Oligarchs and plutocrats who believe we ordinary people are eternally tractable and malleable are in denial. Intellectuals who believe increasing quantities of fashionable nonsense are in denial. Politicians and their handlers who believe they can rule by fiat without consequences are in denial. Fools who imagine “the science” is a religion and that dissent from any statement by a high priest government-approved scientist is heresy are in denial. I’ve been in denial…
22 CommentsOver the years, when people have asked me, “Is it time yet, Claire?” my response has always been something like this: It may be moral to ‘shoot the bastards’ who kill freedom, but this isn’t the time. It doesn’t make tactical or strategic sense. Violence now will only make things much, much worse. That’s still my strong conviction. To any members of the Deep State trolling the ‘Net desperately searching for those elusive “domestic terrorists” they’re so determined to locate invent: I’m a useless target for you. I don’t advocate violence except in self-defense and I dread seeing anybody, especially…
39 CommentsI just re-read Rod Dreher’s FAQ on the Benedict Option. I love it. Although Dreher is talking exclusively to Christians (though inclusively among varieties of Christians), there’s a lot there for the rest of us, as well. He opens with a quote from his inspiration, social critic and historian Alasdair MacIntyre, that says in part: A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What…
23 CommentsAnd so our “awkward stage” continues. The awkward stage is that excruciatingly, endlessly frustrating phase in which tyranny, brutality, and bigotry against freedom grow ever more oppressive but the oppressed feel powerless to act effectively on a large scale. Moral though it may be to string lawless, dictatorial rulers up on lamp posts, it isn’t what good people do — at least not until provocations and deprivations exceed endurance. Yet without effective options, we good people find ourselves ever more bound and restricted. In the 25 years since I opened 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution with my infamous…
19 Comments