Random Notes 20170528

Memorial Day Salute

A righteous salute to all the families of the REAL bad-asses out there. Serious bad-asses. These are the dudes that took a knife to the gut, or got shot in the head for family and country. It is not pretty, but that is what real bad-asses have to risk. Raise a glass to the sky for our fallen countrymen. The boatman awaits us all - they were fortunate enough to cross the River Styx first. Cheers!

Chaos Creating America

One of the best books to read open one's eyes on international affairs and the widespread fraud since the end of World War Two is, "Legacy of Ashes":

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

After reflecting for decades of serious study of history, philosophy, government, political science, and the like, I am coming around to the view that the United States has no real enemies, and we have not had any for a long time.  What we have been doing since World War Two and definitely since the Soviet Collapse, is cause chaos.  There is no reason for all the military spending we do.  There are no threats to the United States whatsoever from a military perspective, and even from an economic perspective.  Give our geography, resources, and population, we are virtually unconquerable, as is the nation of Russia.

So, what the hell are we doing in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world?  Eisenhower said it best, "Beware of the Military-Industrial Complex."  Can anyone explain Vietnam?  Can anyone explain the shenanigans of the CIA in Latin America?  Can anyone explain what the freaking hell we are even doing in the Middle East?  Why should we give a crap?  Does Mexico or Brazil give a crap about Palestine?  No, we are all oceans away, and have no need to care.  So, why do we give a crap about foreign places at great distances from us?

The short answer is probably because we are goddamned fools.  The long answer is that we are bored, and the best antidote to boredom throughout the ages is to begin killing people.  As Tony Robbins says often, holding a gun to someone's head meets all of the basic human needs, albeit in a sick way: Certainty, Uncertainty, Significance, Connection, Contribution.

We failed miserably in Vietnam and Iraq.  What is the conclusion?  Either we were incapable of victory, or we did not want military victory.  Either conclusion is sickening.  If we are incapable of victory against a minor power, then we are a Paper Tiger, and we can be toppled with very little effort as the Pax Americana.  If we did not want victory, what is it that we wanted?  The answer to this question is probably money and expansion of the Deep State - what we now call Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex.

So, we stir up crap around the world to feed the Beast.  The Deep State needs money for guns to produce chaos, which increases the need for the US to come and fix the chaos we created.  This is the reason many think that 911 was an inside job.  Why?  Because if we are willing to get 57,000 men killed in Vietnam on a bogus war for nothing, if there are billions of dollars at stake for the Deep State getting defense contract money and research and development money employing millions of people and enriching the richest people in the world, how hard is it to blow up buildings in New York?  Now, 16 years later, after the colossal failure in Iraq with the killing of over one million people and over 10,000 American soldiers, we look back on 911 and question everything.

It is now conceivable that people who burned down the entire Middle East and exterminating over one million people, can have perhaps planned something as sick as 911.  The sociopaths who exterminate people in the Middle East for fun and profit can easily kill a few thousands in New York without any guilt or remorse.

Syria

The Syrian government is carefully conquering territory and exterminating terrorists.  Russia is helping them out.

This video of a couple of Russian soldiers turned journalists explains the complexity of any government fighting and eliminating terrorists:

Lecture on Terrorist Tactics - paralyzing and destroying modern society

So, Assad and the Russians are rationally and strategically eliminating these factions from Syria.

So, the question becomes now, "Why is the Deep State hostile to the Syrian government?"

One must question the integrity of the American Deep State operatives when a foreign government is strategically fighting to eliminate blood thirsty killers from its borders.  Thus, if the Deep State is hostile to the Syrian government, we can only conclude that it is hostile to the elimination of blood thirsty terrorists.  If the Deep State is hostile to the elimination of blood thirsty terrorists, we must conclude that the Deep State supports these terrorists and the chaos it creates.  This is the conclusion if you are a rational thinking person.

Which brings the thinking person to another line of reasoning.  If the Deep State is supporting terrorism and chaos in Syria, it must also be funding them and training them.  Thus, if the American Deep State is funding and training terrorists in Syria, it brings everything in the past 20 years into question.  Did the Deep State create and support Al Qaeda?  Well, the Deep State did train them to fight the Soviets!  And, if this is true, did they also create and support ISIS and the likes?  Well, ISIS is composed of former Baath Party members of Iraq, and the Deep State supported the Baath regime in the Iran-Iraq war!  The next questions go along these lines: is Saudi Arabia funding these groups with the full knowledge and support of the American Deep State? Since 911 was the work of Saudis, can we not conclude that some faction within Saudi Arabia is responsible for 911, and since Bin Laden was a Saudi, then, this brings many things into question about our so-called history and news of the past 20 years?

So, we are in a strange place in history where it appears that criminals are running large sectors of the American government.  With the publication of the book, "Legacy of Ashes" mentioned above, we cannot rule out any of these scenarios.

The Deep State creates chaos all around the world for justification of military and NGO interventions, so people can have sick adventures, vacations, military adventures, paid consulting in foreign places, all over the dead bodies of millions of people.



///

CIA High Priest, Richards Heuer

CIA High Priest, Richards Heuer

The book

He wrote the authoritative book on the subject, “The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.”  You can download the PDF version of the book free from the CIA, here.

My specialty is Engineering Technical Analysis, and I have learned a lot from this book on Intelligence Analysis.  Analysis as a subject can be cross-functional from many areas of study and practice.

The CIA developed several analytical techniques because they make policy recommendations to places like the military and to executives in the government, and even Congress.  These recommendations can have serious consequences – costly consequences if they are wrong.  So, the CIA has a high interest in analytical techniques that are very reliable.  Theories and policies here cost dollars and cents – and lives in many cases.

Just Enough Information (Then stop!)

With the advent of large databases, what are we to do with them?  Actually, nothing.  Information is not important unless it drives a decision.  Driving a decision takes much less information that one would think.  Furthermore, using all information available makes the decision-making process more error prone when the analyst moves past the critical amount of sufficient information.  More data is bad – very bad.

Some people call it Analysis Paralysis.  Too much data will overwhelm your mental faculties and you will begin to make serious errors in judgment, or fail to act completely.

Disprove Everything

If you can recall our discussion on science here, you will know that Karl Popper told us that we cannot prove anything in science; we can only disprove things in science.  Heuer created a straight-forward tool to use this concept in practice call the “Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.”  You can use the tool yourself with a simple piece of paper or a spreadsheet.  See how to do it from the CIA website, here.

The idea is that evidence can support almost an infinite amount of hypotheses, thus, if your theory has “supporting evidence,” so does perhaps 10 others using the same evidence.  What we are doing here is trying to list as many hypotheses that we think are viable, and then we seek to disprove every one of them.  Are you a real scientist?  Are you a fake?  This separates the men from the mice.  Show me how many hypotheses you have disproven in your path to your favorite hypothesis.  What evidence will disprove your hypothesis?  If this is not stated clearly, you are a fake, or at the least, you do shoddy, inferior work.

Implications for Science

We are told that the Scientific Method is what scientists use.  However, a core piece of the puzzle is evidence that will disprove a hypothesis.  Every “scientific” endeavor must define what evidence will disprove the theories.

Next time you hear someone talking about “science,” ask them to clearly define what evidence will disprove their theories.  There is no excuse, since Heuer has clearly defined the procedure and made it easy for all of us to do with his magisterial Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.

Get the book and use the techniques.

///

Freddy Martini