Digital Opportunities

 

If complexity is the problem, then simplicity is the solution and there is no doubt that we are all living in a highly complex world that relatively few understand.  By that, I'm not talking about machines and I'm not talking about systems per se.  What I am talking about are the ideas that propelled us into this complexity with the layers of systems that resulted from them and the marketing concepts layered on top of that which presented a Pollyanna's view of a fully automated world of Digital Opportunities for All.  The fact that policy makers were blinded by the $Green$ is undeniable.  They bought Pollyanna's vision and never looked at the flip side - the dark side.  They never logic checked the projections and I can say that with a high degree of certainty because when one does do a logic check, the dreams turn into nightmares rather quickly.  In the business, it's what we call a no-brainer.  It doesn't take much grey matter to figure it out.  For example -

If you were to ask Pollyanna, what does this baby need?   Pollyanna says:  A computer!  A cell phone!   Fiber Optic Cable!  Technical Education!    A human being not blinded by money says, that baby needs food, shelter and love.  That's what I mean by no-brainer.  


Now that you've had a glimpse of the flip side of the coin.  You need to know who the Pollyanna's were who made the decisions for the entire world to make technology the singular and most important objective of government and corporate policy. 

Genoa Plan of Action - Digital Opportunities for All -  May 11, 2001

The G8 as I hope you know, are the countries with the largest economies.  The 'G' supposedly stands for Group but the Group was led by the GATT countries - the countries who were signatories to the Generalized Agreement on Trade and Tariffs.  The same group that created the World Trade Organization through a series of agreements on global trade and financial policy since 1944.  The agreements are collectively known as the Bretton Woods agreements. 

G8 Summit - Genoa - July 20-22, 2001  -   Digital Opportunities for All:  Meeting the Challenge

On page 2, in the Foreword, it says the following - emphasis added.  ICT is 'information and communications technology'.

ICT can thus help to ignite a virtuous circle of sustainable development.

Pollyanna wrote that statement.   The circle of continuous improvement only works when you are moving in a good and positive direction.  Otherwise, the circle turns into a spiral into the depths of hell driven by evil beyond ordinary abilities to comprehend.  And that's where we are.  We are in the death spiral to hell. 

Some might accuse me of hyperbole but it isn't hyperbole.  It's simply my skills and training as an analyst to project the evolution of systems as they are being designed and built - always positioning for the next phase.  That is the definition of the so-called virtuous circle - always preparing for the next phase of development - or as it happens now, digging deeper towards technocratic hell.   In this dynamic, errors compound with each misstep and if you take the wrong direction altogether as they did, what you are building is disaster compounding.  

What prompted me to write this was that a friend told me about a chart that was shown at a Senate hearing last week while I was out of town.  The hearing was held by the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 2, 2013.  Diane Feinstein who is a big fan of the surveillance, police state presented the chart.  The subject was about NSA's programs of surveillance on the communications and personal information on citizens - at least according to former Booz Allen Hamilton employee, Edward Snowden.

Naturally, I went to the Senate website, Diane Feinstein's page to see if I could get a clear copy of the graphic.  I didn't find that, but I did find a copy of her statement that she read at the beginning of the hearing.   The following are excerpts from that statement:

Diane Feinstein:

“I believe maybe only Senator Hatch was on the Intelligence Committee in 2001. In midyear, the DCI, whose name was George Tenet, came in to meet with us, and what he said was that he predicted that, within three months, there would likely be an attack on this country.

He didn’t know what, he didn’t know when, he didn’t know how. As a matter of fact, I went on—my staff just received—CNN on July 1, 2001, and said this: “There is a major possibility of a terrorist incident within the next three months.” That’s a direct quote from what I said.

Then something took place, which I thought could never take place in this country, and that’s 9/11. I never believed there could be training schools for pilots who would teach people how to fly, but not to land, in this country.

I never thought our visa system was so weak that they could admit terrorists to this country. But I was totally wrong.

The event happened, and it was catastrophic for people, for this nation, for our standing, but most importantly because of the death and destruction that it brought about this country.

And then we learned that there were stovepipes, and our intelligence was inadequate, and we couldn’t collect enough data. And then we learned that there was a man by the name of Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the group in San Diego.

So our great strength today, ladies and gentlemen, in protecting this homeland, is to be able to have the kind of technology that’s able to piece together data while protecting rights.

I listened to this program being described as a surveillance program. It is not. There is no content collected by the NSA. There are bits of data—location, telephone numbers—that can be queried when there is reasonable, articulable suspicion. [Note: NSA does not collect locational information under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.]

If it looks like it’s something for an individual in this country, it then goes to the FBI for a probable cause warrant, and a full investigation takes place.

I so regret what is happening. I will do everything I can to prevent this program from being cancelled out. There’s going to be a bill in my committee to do it, there’s a bill in this committee to do it.

And, unfortunately, very few of us sat on that committee, when George Tenet came in, in June of 2001, and said we anticipate a strike, but we don’t know what, we don’t know where, we don’t know when.

What were they missing?   Information.    What is the solution for lack of information?    Systems of information using communications and computer technology. 

It turns out that Juan Zarate, just a few weeks before 9/11 moved from the U.S. Attorney's office to the Treasury Department to wage financial warfare using bank information as part of the "global war on terrorism".  And funny thing, every act of terrorism generates requirements for more information and more integration and consolidation of information systems to eliminate "stovepipes".   A few million invested in an event can generate billions in revenue from systems development. 

Getting back to George Tenet, on September 12, 2001, he gave a statement to the CIA Workforce that is published on the CIA website.   The one thing I would ask you to focus on in that statement is the following - emphasis added:

As President Bush said last night, the search for the sponsors of these unspeakable acts has already begun. Our Agency is among the leaders of that search.

Obviously, the sponsors are the people who paid for the event and the money flowed through the financial system supposedly (cash still works and I understand that North Korea makes a fine copy of the $100 bill and then there is always payment in-kind - hard to track that).  But regardless, the ducks were all in a row for the fascist integration of government and banks in financial transactions.   All they needed was an event big enough to justify that integration and 9/11 gave it to them and Juan Zarate was in position to capitalize on it - no pun intended.

 
Backtracking

When there is a compounding error, the job of a Systems Analyst is to backtrack to the point of failure because compounding errors can never be corrected except at the point of origin. 

In 1986, China notified the G7 - GATT members of it's wish to resume membership in that organization.   In September of 1986, the U.S. Trade Representative, William Brock initiated the Uruguay Round at Punta Del Este at the GATT Ministerial Conference.   In 1990 at the G7-8 Summit in Houston, Texas, the group decided to create the World Trade Organization which by definition becomes governing authority for international trade.    Also in 1990, then Senator David Boren had an article published in the Washington Post calling for a change in U.S. Foreign Policy.  He called for the State Department to shift from nation-state diplomacy to become pimps for big business.  There is no doubt that he was salivating at the idea of the gold at the end of the Chinese rainbow: 

"For the past four decades, America's allies have been willing to follow this country's lead largely because of the perceived threat from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. As long as there was a threat, they needed the shield of American military protection, especially when we were bearing so much of the economic burden of paying for it…

A different set of assets will be needed for a leadership role in the next century. Economic strength along with the moral force of America's political and social example as a model for others will be more important. While we must remain prepared to deal with a variety of military threats, overall military strength will be less important... 

Second, change the perspective of American embassies and missions to give greater emphasis to supporting our economic interests. We must recruit more people into the Foreign Service and intelligence agencies with economic skills and training. Right
now, two-thirds of our embassies do not even have a commercial officer in the embassy to assist our businesses. When we do have a commercial officer, it is three times as likely that the official is a foreign national.

Embassies must be regarded as outposts to further our economic interests. We must put behind us the attitude that commercial sections of diplomatic missions are nuisances best relegated to basements or annexes. If we don't restore our economic influence we will soon be without political influence."

Pollyanna's point of view on David Boren's plan was that the State Department economic offices would sell lots of American stuff to the Chinese.  The flip side view was that China could produce mass crap to import and sell in the U.S. putting American businesses out of business.  At this point, there is no doubt as to which view was the true view. 

Since 1974, everybody involved in trade negotiations and international trade on behalf of the United States has been involved in treason against the people of the United States.  1974 was the year that the Congress authorized negotiations on issues other than tariffs - which means that they used the G7 GATT agreement process as a backdoor way to force changes in our domestic economy and domestic laws and those changes have been to cripple and gut the U.S. economy - to cannibalize it from the inside out.    

Transportation as the Trojan Horse

In 1988, a spin-off group from a Texas regional transportation planning project was formed.  They called themselves Mobility 2000 and their purpose was to develop a plan for a national automated highway system.  The plan they developed was called the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) and it was adopted as national transportation policy in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991.   

Essentially, the plan was that if it moves, trap it, track it and ultimately, tax or toll it.  Given the number of cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, planes, trains, boats, etc. they were looking at incomprehensible amounts of money to be made by technology companies.  There was so much in fact, that the defense contractors even went for a piece of the action.    

DOT - Implementation of the National Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) Program Plan 

There are a number of really important things to note in that report.  The government provided the funding for the development of the technologies through the universities.  Also, See Page 29 - Defense Technology Conversion.   There is no difference between tracking an enemy airplane, ship or vehicle - and tracking a family on their drive to church on Sunday. 

 

Who Goes There?

An automated national highway system provided government funding and support for systems to identify and "background check" every moving thing in the U.S.  essentially, turning the United States into a battle space and everybody here into a potential criminal or terrorist until proven otherwise. 

The above started out with the Pollyanna view of efficiency and convenience.   Booz Allen Hamilton was one of the principal contractors for transportation systems design and implementation and not surprisingly, Booz Allen Hamilton was involved in DARPA's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system.  The above concept was the demon seed for TIA. 


Source:  NAFTA Superhighway Memory Hole by D. Niwa

 

I hope you noticed that the development plan on the left is for the North American International Trade Corridor.  That "trade corridor" is what we Americans refer to as our interstate highway system and though they don't show it on this particular cover, the corridor extends from the tip of Mexico up through Canada.

When you put all of these pieces together, you'd have to be a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal not to understand that Total Information Awareness was designed for the purpose controlling a population who will someday soon learn that the G8 provided the Digital Opportunity for a coup d'etat  and that it wasn't accidental because they are the same people who negotiated away our sovereignty in the trade agreements.  The corporations that supported it are the same corporations who have profited from it and that will be the fascist policymakers for a territorial administration under global corporate rule. 

What most probably have not put together is that it is Booz Allen Hamilton that will benefit from the takedown of the NSA.  Edward Snowden served them very well.  And ultimately, it won't matter much to James Clapper and Keith Alexander if the NSA does go down because there will be a job for them at Booz Allen.   

I almost forgot - I didn't show you the chart that Diane Feinstein presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the public:

Note:  I added the arrows, circle and labels.

 

Vicky Davis
October 12, 2013