Un haut responsable de Cdiscount, travaillant sur le site de Cestas (Gironde), a été mis en examen lundi 1er février à Bordeaux. Il est soupçonné du vol de données personnelles de potentiellement 33 millions de clients, dont au moins une partie ont ensuite été proposées à la vente sur des sites spécialisés.
A l’issue de sa garde à vue, ce « responsable d’entrepôt de la société Cdiscount a été déféré au parquet et présenté à un juge d’instruction » le 1er février, a indiqué le parquet de Bordeaux à l’Agence France-Presse (AFP). Le cadre a été mis en examen des chefs d’« extraction frauduleuse de données contenues dans un système de traitement automatisé », d’« abus de confiance » et d’« escroquerie », « au préjudice de Cdiscount », sur la période du 1er octobre 2020 au 30 janvier 2021, selon le parquet, qui confirmait une information du journal Sud Ouest. Placée sous contrôle judiciaire, cette personne est également visée par une procédure de mise à pied à titre conservatoire, a précisé à l’AFP Arnaud Dupin, avocat de Cdiscount.
Téléchargement découvert le 29 janvier Filiale du groupe Casino depuis 2000, Cdiscount est le no 2 en France du e-commerce, derrière Amazon, mais premier acteur français du secteur. L’entreprise a son siège à Bordeaux et dispose d’un de ses plus importants entrepôts logistiques à Cestas, en Gironde. Selon Cdiscount, qui a porté plainte, le cadre mis en examen est le directeur du site de Cestas.
Le vol de données a été découvert le 29 janvier par les « services de cybersécurité » de la société, laquelle a alors « immédiatement lancé des investigations internes ». Celles-ci « ont permis d’établir qu’il s’agissait d’une action interne malveillante et isolée et de faire cesser cet acte dès le lendemain », a expliqué un porte-parole de Cdiscount à l’AFP dans un communiqué.
La justice soupçonne le cadre d’avoir téléchargé illégalement sur son ordinateur une base contenant potentiellement les données personnelles des quelque 33 millions de clients de la plate-forme de vente en ligne, selon une source proche du dossier.
Pour Cdiscount qui n’a pas souhaité confirmer ce chiffre, ce cadre « a utilisé de façon malveillante les autorisations [informatiques] dont il disposait de manière légitime, compte tenu de ses fonctions », pour s’introduire dans la base. D’après les services de sécurité de l’entreprise, la base de données a ensuite été proposée à la vente en ligne par un vendeur sous pseudonyme, identifié comme étant le directeur du site de Cestas, selon Sud Ouest.
Incertitude quant à l’utilisation des données Le Monde a pu constater qu’une base de données d’environ 124 000 noms, semblant correspondre au fichier utilisé par le service client de Cdiscount, était proposée au téléchargement depuis la mi-janvier sur un site spécialisé.
« Ce que nous pouvons clairement affirmer, c’est qu’aucune donnée bancaire n’est concernée par cet événement, Cdiscount ne stockant aucune donnée bancaire de ses clients », a assuré l’entreprise dans son communiqué. « Les données concernées [par le vol] sont les nom, prénom, sexe, date de naissance, adresse, numéro de téléphone et e-mail du client, ainsi que le montant total des commandes sur les deux dernières années », a détaillé l’entreprise, qui a aussi expliqué que « rien ne permet de penser que ces données aient pu être vendues » à des tiers.
« Dans l’hypothèse où cela aurait été le cas, l’utilisation possible de ce type de données est la tentative de phishing [escroquerie par laquelle un pirate tente de soutirer des informations personnelles, le plus souvent en se faisant passer pour un service légitime] ou la prospection commerciale non désirée », avertit Cdiscount.
submitted by Continuing Well, when the props fouled the third time, I suggested we call it a day, as we’d already made some 32 sea-kilometers. We were out on the fringes of the worst of the kelp forest beds, and after a good night’s sleep, we’d be ready to deploy bright and early and get some seismic data acquired and recorded.
But, first, there was the first night aboard ship. In a rusty old tin-can with few creature comforts, as the annual winter monsoon winds wane and the seas actually begin to settle slightly.
I took that as both good omens. The bitching and kvetching I head from the locals about the ‘abominable weather they had to endure’, even from the Coast Guard types, really struck me as uproariously funny.
I just chalked it up to being sequestered from the rest of the world for so long. Put these characters in the path of a Midwestern tornado, East Indian summer monsoon, or Siberian blizzard, and they’d shit themselves blind. I didn’t really think too much of it, although it became somewhat of a game when the imperialistic foreigners tried to one-up each other with horror stories from excursions past.
“No shit”, Dax said, “We were snowed in for a full fortnight.”
“No!” several of us recoiled in mock horror.
“Oh, yah, hey.” Dax continued, “It’s just great when blizzards snap the power lines, and all the toilets freeze. The house cat didn't die until we burned up all our wood. Considering we ate her raw, she tasted pretty good…”
Several of our handlers, a few in the Coast Guard and most of the Korean scientists reacted rather badly to Dax’s story; especially when it had been gorily translated.
Seeing this, Dax stood up, got the soju bottle, and asked if anyone needed a top-up. I asked while puffing away on a large Jamaican cigar if anyone needed a smoke.
At this point, Dax was winning. He had seven of the assembled crowd run to the rail to relieve themselves of our canned Chinese dinner.
Not ever one to shrink from a challenge, I related my second-hand story of my Brother-in-law, who was in the US Coast Guard for years and years. I waited for the green crowd to re-join us and regain what remained of their composure. I figured the quasi-military national Coast Guarders here would appreciate the tale.
Mine wasn’t a gory or shocking tale, just one of the incredible water conditions off the coast of California.
I waited until everyone was settled, drink in hand, and smokin’ ‘em if you got ‘em.
“Well”, I said, “It was on board a ship much like the one we’re currently on,” I said as a rascal wave broke over the railing in counterpoint. “About the same size as this vessel, but with smaller wheels. You know these Coast Guard shallow-water boys”, I chuckled. Always meaning to jab one group or another in the place where I know it stings.
Yeah, I’m a real bastard that way sometimes.
The Korean Coast Guarders sneered hardly at me; but not too hard. They liked my cigars, cigarettes, and open disbursement policy too much.
“Yeah, anyways”, I continued, “He was offshore California in one of the US Coast Guard cutters. It was a boat about 26 meters or so in length. They were out doing search and rescue after a mega-nasty storm blew in from the west and scuttled a sailing regatta race.”
I was drawing them in with my ‘just so’ story, nice and easy, until…
“Yeah, there were several capsized monohulls, catamarans and trimarans. Damn, these things were fucking yachts. Owned by rich idiots that almost knew how to sail but didn’t know enough to get out of the way of a fucking severe storm…”
I really had their attention with ‘soaking the rich’.
“Well, the waves grew and grew, but my Brother-in-laws's boat was built to handle severe weather. These patrol and rescue boat has the capability to roll over 360 degrees and self-right within 30 seconds. Like right now, you’d never even notice this degree rock and roll”, I said as I demonstrated with my cigar, tracing out tighter and tighter rolls, and higher degrees of rocking and rolling.
“They were approaching a capsized trimaran, but the waves kept growing and growing…” I said, leading by example and having them watch me with unblinking attention.
“The waves grew and grew, and normally you’d take these head-on. But that was impossible, because when afternoon came it was slashin' rain, in the face of a hurricane west wind. The boat rolled to the left, heeled, almost keeled, a then rolled the other way just as quickly.” I noted.
They followed me as I timed it with the heavings of our own boat, to the left…to the right…
“Then, just as they were about to reach upon the trimaran, a rogue wave! Out of nowhere”, I said, rocking and rolling along with our own little boat, “
BAM! Hit amidships! It didn’t roll once, it rolled twice!” I made great and magniloquent gestures of a tiny boat being savaged by a monstrous rogue sea wave.
I stood up, blew a great blue cloud of smoke towards the poop deck, and said, loudly, “Rolled over once. A full 360! Then rolled right over again. A full 720 degrees!” as I demonstrated what happened with my cigar and drink.
The eyes following me rolled and rolled as well. Some straight back into the owner’s head and some to the left, some to the right…it was like ‘Loose Slots’ night in Vegas, they were rolling and rolling.
And then racing for the rails. Topside to deliver the remains of their hearty canned dinners.
“Beat you, Dax!” I smiled as I sat back down, “I got nine with that at one. And two of them were Coasties!”
“Did that really happen?” Ivan asked.
“According to my Brother-in-law. But he’s an engineer if you know what I mean…” I smiled.
We concluded story night as we had drifted free of the kelp forest and the Captain of the boat decided he’d risk an anchorage for the night. The weather was ameliorating, the seas calming themselves down, and the wind dropping a couple of notches on the Beaufort Scale.
“Well, gents”, I said, “I need some air. The aroma down here of Chinese Aplo™ for dinner, those who didn’t make it to the rails, and the solitary head for the entire crew has lost its charm. If you’ll excuse me”, I said as I grabbed a bottle of ersatz vodka, and several cans of Taedonggang beer, “I’ll be on the aft deck; in my comfy chair and contemplating the wonder of it all.”
With that, I ventured up the stairs and out onto the aft deck.
Dax naturally followed and he found his own not-bolted-down deck chair. We had a constant flow of visitors, foreign and nationals alike. It was shaping up to be a fine night for being out under the stars, there was no light pollution at all. We sat in our chairs, drank our drinks, smoked our smokes, and argued the finer points of astronomy as seen from this part of the world.
I had several side chats with the scientists and academicians from the Korean side. They all had one thing on their minds. Well, one thing after cigars and cigarettes. They wanted Western scientific journals. They were actually trying to bribe me to get those copies, any age, any subject; of Science, AAPG Explorer, and SEPM Proceedings, anything of Western science as it is today. I said they were welcome to a couple of copies of Science and SPE journals I had brought with as an afterthought, for free. With 900 won to the dollar, they needed every won they could get. I wasn’t about to take anything for the free dissemination of knowledge.
However, if they saw it fit to buy me a drink or seven, I wouldn’t object.
In reality, I’d buy those as well.
We made secret pacts to meet at the hotel-casino the night before we left, whenever the fuck that would be. We had a lot of work before us as it stands. It won’t be for a few weeks, I reminded them.
They had no problem. If I could ask the other in the team if they’d do likewise, the appreciation would be palpable.
Great. Now I have to go get my field notebooks and make some more new entries.
Dax cratered around 0100. I elected to stay the night and sleep under the stars as the boat slowly rocked one way and rolled the other. It was quiet, dark as a tomb, and brilliantly lit up by the stellar backbone of the night once the clouds fumbled out. Tomorrow looked as if it were to be bright and sunny if the gentle westerlies had anything to say about the next day’s conditions.
The next day dawned early, bright, and ridiculously sunny as it usually does when the monsoons have departed and it had stopped raining.
“OK.”, I thought, “Time for a hearty breakfast. For someone else. I wonder what’s available here.”
I ventured down to the cold galley and there were several boxes of dry Chinese breakfast cereal, “Shredded Tweet” and the like, some sort of obviously aged bakery, and a case of Taedonggang beer.
“Hmmm”, I mused out loud, “Beer and rice crispies. Breakfast of champions.”
Dax walks in, rubbing his eyes. He sees me drowning my rice cereal in foamy ersatz milk.
“Reminds me of field camp!” I smiled as I chowed on the morning’s offerings.
After our ‘hearty’ breakfast, all the scientific parties gathered in the main stateroom. It was cramped, but the walls were magnetic and we could hang maps, well, charts actually since we’re well offshore now, and plots the day’s course.
Out in the Yellow Sea, we were supposedly over a subsurface, and by dint of being offshore, submarine, dome. Salt dome? Unlikely. Probably more of a
shale dome, which isn’t a bad thing when hunting for oil and gas.
Looking at the charts, I ask the locals what our current position was relative to the domal uplift.
After several long moments of silence, I asked again.
“Umm, guys”, I said, “If you’re not going to be forthcoming with something as simple as positional data, then turn this boat 180
0’s and take us back to shore. I am fed up, as are my team, with this tight-holing of the simplest of data when you are the knotheads that asked us here for help. We get paid either way, and I for one wouldn’t mind being paid triple to sit in the hotel’s basement and drink”
After telling the translator to translate that last part literally, I sat back, pulled out a really nasty cigar, and went through all the threatening moves of firing it up in the enclosed cabin.
“You will have to excuse us”, came the reply from one of the elders, “We are not used to dealing with
oegugseon [foreigners].”
“Are you used to following orders?” I asked brusquely.
“Of course!” came the near-unanimous reply.
“Great. Then consider this an order: You will relay the appropriate information when asked by any Westerner on this cruise. Consider it as coming from the Supreme Leader of this expedition.” I noted.
Using the term ‘Supreme Leader’ was both a bow to their current bad-hair-cut in charge and my desire to let them know I was serious as a kick to the scrotum about the whole fucking deal.
There were a couple of gasps and some consternatious talk, but eventually, one brave soul got up, walked over to the chart, and pointed to our relative location.
“There”, I added, “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Didn’t hurt in the least, did it?”
There were a few chuckles amongst our national colleagues, so I figured that was at least a little progress.
“OK, then”, I continued, “Volna? Ack? You’re up to bat.”
I turned the proceedings over to the geophysicists. They would devise the configuration of the towed array, our speed, direction, charge size, which was based on depth, and all the other geophysical flips and twists one has to do in order to acquire the best data.
This shit doesn’t come cheap. The Mesozoic-Paleozoic marine residual basin in the South Yellow Sea where these domes live is a potentially significant deep potential hydrocarbon reservoir. However, the imaging of the deep prospecting target is quite challenging due to the specific seismic-geological conditions. In the Central and Wunansha Uplifts, the penetration of the seismic wavefield is limited by the shallow high-velocity layers (HVLs) and the weak reflections in the deep carbonate rocks. With the conventional marine seismic acquisition technique, the deep weak reflection is difficult to image and identify. We confirm through numerical simulation that the combination of multi-level impulse source (i.e., explosive) array and extended cable used in the seismic acquisition is crucial for improving the imaging quality.
With that, we’re going to be recording a minimum of four stacks, with a receiver interval of 25 meters. The array will have a shot interval of 50 meters, with a 25 meter near offset, and a 2500 meter far offset. We will attempt to record 180 channels, off-end, with a sampling period of 0.5 seconds, and a record length of 5 seconds. We’ll sail the same course 4 times to verify previous records and attempt to add ‘fold’, i.e., extra data from the same point, to the overall records.
That’s the plan, at least.
Loads of preparation, logistics, and execution.
After a half an hour or so, both Volna and Ack are finished with the national scientists.
They set down their notebooks, pens, notes, and pointers; walk out of the meeting room and directly over to the galley.
“Hungry, fellas?” I inquire.
“Rock?”, Ack asks, “You have explosives here, right? Sink us. Just fucking sink us right now.” As he pours himself and Volna a stiff shot of real vodka.
“Uh, oh. Problems in Dreamland?” I ask, utilizing the derogatory name for the geophysical domain of exploration data.
“Un-be-fucking-believable.”, Volna adds.
“Your colloquial American is coming along well, Volna.” I snickered a bit.
“I learn from you”, he spat, “Cannot believe this. They don’t record while underway. They tow single array and stop. Then drop dynamite over side. They record. Then they do it again. Claim this gives them good fold. This is bullshit. You said devise program. HA! Take us to shore and let me teach them the fucking basics of geophysical acquisition. Then in a few years, we come back and do it right.”
“Oh, fuck”, I reply, wincing, “That bad?”
“Oh, no”, Ack continues, “It’s worse.” As he down 100 milliliters of booze in one draught and pours another for Volna and is own self, “No on-board demultiplexing. No on-board pre-processing. No-onboard QA/QC. No on-board anything. It’s fucking hopeless. Sink us, I’d rather take my chances with the sharks.”
“They
can’t do all that stuff or they
won’t do all that stuff,” I asked, expecting the worst.
“Oh, it
might be possible, with this museum-grade crap they call a computer they have on-board. It’s just time-consuming, tricky, and will need constant attention. But with this raft of sad-sacks, flub-a-dubs and third rate hobbyists?” Ack and Volna agree as one.
“Consider it job security”, I replied, “How about this? One test loop and we use that data to do what’s necessary; just once. Then we can say we’ve shown them the way. After that, I’ll leave it up to the National scientists.”
“Good thing we have 2 full days, Rock”, Volna said, “Because we do a single AC (acquisition) run, it’ll take the rest of the time to show these buggers how it’s done.”
“Ack? You agree?” I asked.
Ack agreed, in spades.
“OK, gentlemen”, I said, “Let’s make it so. About time, too. I haven’t blown anything up in a couple of weeks. I’m getting antsy. Let’s go tell them the good news.”
“NO! WE REFUSE!” was the cheery response from the nationals when Ack, Volna, and I laid out the rather lengthy program for the next couple of days.
“OK. Someone tell the Captain to head for home. We’re done here.” I calmly told our handlers and the translators.
Panic in Pyongyang.
Immediately, there is this hue and cry about how this was not supposed to be how this trip was going to work. This was to be an acquisition trip only. This was to be a one-off to show Best Korea geophysical prowess. This was supposed to be data gathering trip
on the Western scientists…
Oops.
That last one was a bit of a mistake.
I turn to one of the translators and ask them to re-translate that last part, just in case I was hearing imaginary things.
“Oh, yes”, he replied, “He said they were here to gather data on the Western Scientists as well as offshore data.”
“Is that a fact?” I reacted. “Please tell them I need to see all my team members on the fantail immediately if you would. Sorry, translators and nationals not included in this little meeting.”
We reconvene on the fantail a few minutes later. I walk in on this little conclave with cigar and drink in hand.
“OK, gents”, I say, puffing a huge blue cloud, swigging a tot, “Here’s what I think we, as responsible international scientists, should do in this regrettable situation. We were asked to come here, with provisions that we would not be under cynosure, observation, or surveillance. Given ‘Open and Free Access’, no questions asked. We were to be treated as “esteemed guests”. This is obviously a load of dingo’s kidneys. I think we need to get as creative as possible and do whatever we can to provide as much deliberate misinformation to these characters to annoy, amaze, or disgust them as much as possible. Comments?”
There’s a general buzz, but no real dissention. After a few moment's discussion, Dax suggests we get a load of XXXXL condoms, and leave them around packaged as “Texas Medium”.
“That’s the spirit”, I reply. “Anyone one else up for a little Psychological Operations on our not-so-clever-nor-truthful hosts?”
We all agree that we will, in our own little way, start a campaign of deliberate misinformation, misdirection, and general petty bullshit nastiness for our hosts to discover and by which be dismayed.
Everyone’s in agreement. This trip has been a rotund bale of jeers from the get-go.
Promises made, promises broken. Itineraries approved then inexplicably disapproved. We make requests, they accede; and then nothing ever happens. It’s most frustrating.
We’re tolerating a lot of horse, bull, cow, and assorted other farmyard excrements; all in the name of international harmony and scientific goodwill. This has been an outgoing one-way street for too long. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
“Hellfire and Dalmatians!” I growl, growing angrier every minute I think about the subject, “We need to take the high, low, and middle ground on this offensive. Nothing too overt or obvious; however we need to jank these bastards good. But they can’t realize they’re being janked…!”
Ack cuts in.
“The esteemed Dr. Rock is right. Psychotic...but absolutely right. We got to take these bastards. We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years...cost millions of lives. In this case... I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires...a really futile and stupid gesture... be done on somebody's part.”
There’s a general buzz among the assembled.
“And we're just the guys to do it.”
Shouts and catcalls of deep agreement.
“Operation ‘Confound-a-Korean’” is now enacted.
“About fucking time!”
“Let’s do it!”
“Dissen gonna be bery messy! Me no watchin!”
“OK, I think, “Who’s the prequel-series wiseass?”
“OK, gentlemen”, I continue, “We continue with our scientific duties. No fucking around there. But, when it comes to…interpretation…opinion…or personal viewpoint; let’s go full impede. Dazzle them with brilliance or baffle them with bullshit.”
We all agree and after a couple of quick rounds of old thought provoker, we realize this trip has just taken a hard left into Wackyland. We will have to let our comrades onshore know of this, but that can wait until we return. Right now, we all have jobs to do. Real jobs, serious jobs, covert and sneaky jobs…
So, it’s back to the recording shack as we lay out the plans for the next couple of days.
Volna begins: “OK, listen up you primitive screwheads. We’re going to assemble and layout a recording array that’s called a Meisenheimer Triplet. You do know what a simple Meisenheimer Triplet is, don’t you?”
There’s a slight murmur from our national friends, but in the end, they all plead ignorance.
“Right. Thought so. A Meisenheimer Triplet is a central towed array flanked by two shorter, subparallel flanking sub-frammitz arrays. We will assemble this array on-board, even though it’s probably going to take every ounce of silver solder and electrician’s tape you’ve got. The amount of data received is orders of magnitude greater than any single Sheriff-sonde array, like the ones you been using.”
Suddenly, there are nods and murmurs of agreement.
“Right”, Volna smiles sinisterly to me, “With that, we’ll need to devise an explosive package, well, actually, a series of explosive packages based on the harmonia of the pre-bottom fore-sets, water depth, tow vehicle velocity, water column density, and decomposition coefficients of the said water column. Oh, yeah. Fish too.”
Volna is really getting into the spirit of the affair.
“Who is your explosives engineer?” Ack asks, “He’s going to have to do some serious number-crunching with all the pre-blast data we’ll need to supply. “
One quick translation and there’s nothing but long faces and querulous looks from our national crowd.
“We have no explosives engineer”, the head Best Korean geophysicist laments. “Explosives are very, very heavily regulated by the government. That’s why we have several Government Observers on board. They handle the explosives.”
“Oh?” Ack remarks, “Are they fully up to speed on the Barnard-Reichmann equations for hydro-displacement of serial charges? Which subset of the marine rarefication coefficients do they employ?”
“Ummm, don’t know.” was the answer.
“Don’t know? Well”, Volna continues, “Then, they must be pretty good with the Langefors-Kihlström formulae, right?”
“No. Not as such.” Came the response.
“I see”, Ack sighs, “Well, then, I guess they must utilize the Il’yushin algorithms then. OK, it’s a bit old school, but they should still work.”
“Ah. Well. No.” was the rejoinder they offered.
“Well, then what the fuck do they use?” Volna explodes, “A modified Ambraseys-Hendorn model? Ghosh-Damen 1? Ghosh-Damen 2? Indian Fargin Standard? Prejaculated Rai-Singh protocols, fer’ chrissake? Which?”
Nothing but shaking heads and wringing hands.
“They take a case of dynamite, wire it up, and throw it overboard with a long fuse.” Was the eventual answer. “That’s why we stop to record.”
Long, exasperated sigh later, “Jesus Q. Tapdancing Christ on a crème cracker. No wonder you never get anything done.” Volna continues, “You characters are in luck. You just happen to be so lucky to have an internationally-renowned Master Blaster right here on board ship today.”
Volna turns the crowd over to me, “Doctor? Do your damnedest. And good luck.”
“Thanks, Volna”, I say, cigar in one hand, stalwart drink in the other, “OK, guys. Here’s the deal. When it comes to explosives and explosive design, I’m the hookin’ bull.
No one has authority over me. Not the Captain. Not the boson’s mate. Not the Captain’s Consort even. Nor the guys in the cheap shiny suits. What I say, goes. No exceptions. No hesitation. We
green or are we going back to shore?”
“
Cholog?” they ask.
“Yes. ‘
Cholog’. Green. Are we understanding one another? Are we all in agreement?
Are you fuckin’ diggin’ me, Beaumont?”
There’s some quick back and forth in Korean, a lot of seeming bad noise. Even the shiny suit squad and Coasties join in the fun.
“Grudgingly, we agree.
Green as you say, Doctor Rock. You are the one in charge.” Came the head national’s reply.
“Splendid. I’m in charge of the charges.” I chuckle, puffing an enormous cloud of expensive Oscuro smoke, “Volna, Ack; please get me the required parameters. I’ll be in the ordnance locker to see what we’re working with here. C’mon fellas, chop-chop!”
Volna and Ack take their select set of geophysical wishers and wannabes while I get the rest of the locals, the shiny suit squad in reserve, but in tow.
I head off to the ordinance locker.
Dax runs behind “Hey! Wait for me.”
“We have to”, I snigger a reply, “We’re going to need a drinks runner.”
“Marvelous…” was the one-word response.
We get to the locked ordinance locker. It’s one of the few original structures remaining on the ship. The boat was torn down almost to the waterline and re-built for seismic acquisition, but they had enough brains to realize that the source of the seismic signals was usually explosive in nature. Dinoseis and Mini-Sossie were closed books to them.
Therefore, the locker remained intact, however grudgingly.
“Whew! And what a locker.” I whewed. “And what a lock. OK, who’s got the keys?”
There are general hemming and hawing and no one seems to know where the keys for the ordinance locker are kept.
“Well, gents”, I say, pointedly, “I would suggest that one or more of you toddle off and fucking find the goddamn keys or this will turn out to be a very short and unproductive trip, indeed.”
A while later, a bit longer than I personally care for, the boat’s Captain wanders up, all a-scowl and generally pissed-off looking.
“Who here needs the key to the explosives locker?” He asks in his Captainly, no-nonsense manner.
There’s more muttering and murmuring, but eventually, all fingers point toward me.
The Captain looks at me.
“Hello.”
He’s giving me the once over with a LASER stink eye. I don’t know which irritated him the most; the lit cigar, the drink, the Stetson, Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, Scottish knee socks or field boots.
“And who the hell are you”? He asks, oh, so wrongly, through an interpreter.
I stand up, fully puffed to full mammalian threat posture and say in a loud steady voice;
“I’m THE Doctor Rocknocker, the
MOTHERFUCKING PRO FROM DOVER!, that’s who.”
Since I had a good 6 inches and way too many kilos on him; my loud, American and very un-oriental answer took him completely by surprise.
His eyes got as big as dinner plates and he shakily held out the ring of keys for the explosives locker.
“Why thank you very much”, I said, bowing in his direction ever so slightly. Wasn’t his fault he wasn’t totally clued in on
all the recent goings-on aboard his vessel.
I toss the keys to Dax, “Here, earn your keep.” I snickered.
Dax deftly fields the keys, chuckles back, and begins the game of ‘which key for which lock’?
I thank the Captain and explain that I’m the
de facto leader of this special education class, and make some pointed, mild epitaphs about landlubbers, national scientists, and the cargo of the totally clueless on board.
He sees I’m not a total boor and relaxes some. We haven’t really had a real introduction, so I grab a translator and engage the Captain in a short, though insightful conversation.
Cigars were exchanged. Handshakes were as well.
Seems he’s just as aggravated by these know-it-alls who really know-fuck-all. We see eye to eye and part friends once Dax finally figures out the combination to the weapons locker.
“Holy fuck!” I exclaim, “Now
that’s a door.” I say looking at the slowly-opening covering of the weapon’s portico. Fully five solid inches of solid steel. Triple reinforced hinges. Deadman's latches. Bringles-jams and solid, non-decabulated cast-steel cross-members.
Just the thing to contain an errant blast and send all that excess energy skyward instead of into the bowels of the boat.
OK, bonus points for that design feature.
I look inside, but it’s dark and fragrant as the inside of an irritated oyster in the bottom of the Tonga-Kermadec Trench.
Dax fumbles around and finds the light switch.
FLIP
“Hmmm.” I hmmed. “Well, we’re all set for dynamite, I see.”
Case after case after case of leaking, cheap-ass Chinese knock-off sort-of Du Pont-style 50% dynamite. Box after box of Pseudo-Dyno-Nobel blasting caps. Delaminating, unwinding spools after spool of “PrimUcord”. Sticky “Korea” brand silk-woven coated Demolition Wire.
“Gads.” I sigh. “What a nightmare. Either this stuff goes off when you give it a dirty look or it doesn’t go off at all.”
Dax looks to me, “So, the trip’s a bust. Is that what you’re saying?”
“If we don’t find something that’ll work, probably,” I reply. “This shit’s worthless.”
We continue to search after I shoo everyone but Dax out of the locker. It’s damp and musty in here, smelling disconcertingly of kerosene, gherkins, and old sardines. That’s one sure sign of dynamite going bad. I warn Dax to be extra careful, that this stuff hasn’t had the best of handling. We could be in for an unexpected surprise.
So, we redouble our efforts and are much more circumspect.
Knock-off this and fake-ass that.
All Chinese in origin. It might have worked one day; but after sitting in here, unattended, unturned, and uncared for? I’m ready to both literally and figuratively pull the plug on this whole fiasco.
Dax is all smiles.
“Doctor?” Dax asks, “What is it that would make you happy?”
“A nice fishing boat, a huge never-emptying bank account, endless cigars, and a comfy chair back in the north of Baja Canada in a tavern on a good fishing lake,” I replied.
“Well”, Dax smiles, “I can’t do that, but how about this?” as he opens a cleverly hidden door.
I look in, let my eyes adjust to the low-light scenario to see no lakes, no huge bank accounts, nor fishing boats; but what I do see makes me smile wide.
It’s a sub-locker full of familiar Made-in-the-USA, True Blue, American-manufacture
cyclo-trimethylene-tri-nitramine, or Good Ol’ C-4 explosive. Block after lovely hexahedral block of the stuff.
“Dax”, I say, “Take a gold star out of petty cash. You’ve just saved the mission.”
“I’ll settle for a tall vodka and one of your cigars”, Dax smiles.
“Later”, I say, “We now have a little job which to attend.”
With C-4, designing the impulse charges is seriously a walk in the park. They’re already waterproof, so all I need is water depth and the number of seconds to which they want to record data. I can bundle a series of blocks of the stuff, charge them with a couple-three or four, just in case, blasting caps, and connect them with stout lengths of demolition wire. These will be dragged, with a ‘Herring Dodger’, to control depth, behind the boat as
we are underway.
It’s a novel idea, I know. One that’s only been in use in the west for about 60 years.
We’ll drag a daisy chain of C-4 packets. One after another, individual charges in the packets will detonate milliseconds apart. I can bundle the packets so that we can run a charge string of up to 12 discrete packets which will attenuate the amplification of the arrhythmic flux, I tell one of my Korean onlookers.
With this set-up, we can record data for literally sea-miles.
First, we will
moosh the C-4 into a flattened, semi-hydrodynamically stable pancake or airfoil, OK, hydrofoil, shape; wire three or five of them together, charge them, then repeat.
Depending on what parameters Volna and Ack supply, the chain will just be a number of similar packets, trailing one after the other, detonating from back to front; down below the hydrophones, but well above the seafloor.
We know that the hydrophones will be at or very near the surface, but we need to know, explicitly, the basal bathymetry of the area we're about to shoot. Wouldn’t do anyone any good if we drove over a seafloor hump and dragged the C-4 over it to have it detonate prematurely.
Or not at all.
So, we need to plot our course and sail it today while we get the hydrophone arrays built and we image the seafloor where we’re going to do some blasting. After that, it’ll probably be an all-nighter to create the blasting strings so we can spend the next day recording, and then head for home as we’re nearly out of victuals and potables.
At least, that’s the plan.
I convene a quick meeting and we plot a course on the latest charts. 30 kilometers of recording.
Shit, that’s going to be a lot of explosives. Doable, but a pain.
Remembering the quality of the recording equipment, I suggest we do a test run in the morning of just 5 kilometers. If that works, and we can up it in increments.
Dax, Sagong the head Korean geophysicist, and I go to visit the Captain.
We visit the Captain and lay out our plans. He has no objections, as were in Best Korean waters and there are no obstacles out here like sunken wrecks, kelp forests, American aircraft carriers, or other impediments.
With that, we tell him to align the ship and let us know when he can begin doing the recon sortie.
He says that he can do that immediately, and before we're out of the pilothouse, we’re recording bathymetric, i.e., depth, data. The technology’s not much different, nor advanced, than a standard Lake Winnebago fish finder, so that’s one disaster sorted.
We are sailing along in a series of parallel straight lines, which when the data are played back and deconvoluted, will give us a good idea of the bathymetry which we’ve been motoring over. It’ll basically give us both a depth map and a surface, ok, bottom, map of the seafloor above which we’re sailing. A little basic submarine hyperbolic quantum trigonometry and well, we have the data we need to plug into the various equations to see what we’ll require when we want to record seismic data to 5000 milliseconds.
With that, there’s not much else to do until we have the survey map. I dragoon Dax and Cliff into helping me inventory the explosives bunker.
“The hell with the dynamite, PrimUcord, and other Oriental-Knockoff Horseshit”, I instruct my helpers, “Let’s just count up the C-4, and see what our tally is. Oh, yeah, give me a tally of the blasting caps. Gotta use those ratty bastards, they’re the only actuators here I sort of, kind of, trust.”
With Dax, myself, and Cliff, we’re done in less than an hour. I decide that I’ll be the keeper of the keys and take them back to the Captain my own self. Rules of engagements, chain of command and all that hogwash.
I hand the keys over to the Captain and instruct the co-pilot to make an entry in the logbook that I returned the key to the Captain, this date, this time.
“By the book. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” I muse.
To be continued…
submitted by BEFORE going further with this, bear in mind it was a response to the previous post "WHAT IF LIBERTY WAS ATTACHED TO HUMANITY" and perhaps one might read that long list of QUESTIONS FOR HUMANITY before diving into issues on how one might repair our corner of the world...onward...
Some people claim we are beyond a "tipping point" of no return. This analysis is commonly applied to global warming to describe the melting permafrost that is releasing methane gas which is believed to be 100 times more potent and lasting than carbon dioxide in causing global warming from the greenhouse effect. Others apply the "tipping point" idea to America's national debt; stating that if we switched from our fiat currency back to a gold standard, we couldn't pay off the interest, let alone our debt, based on current exports and GDP figures. Therefore, we have become a patently bankrupt nation contrary to the principles Thomas Jefferson and others warned us to follow to avoid the use of credit. A bankrupt America in a world of currencies based on a tangible asset like gold or levels of exports would be unable to purchase oil to feed our pathetic industries, let alone our levels of consumer consumption of energy. I managed to get through 2016 without using a drop of petroleum, propane or any other non-renewable source of energy. I studied and invested in solar and wind and it took me more than a decade to select and test the appliances, like a low wattage crock pot placed in an insulated cooler, to learn how to maximize my ability to live on minimal power. Americans don't have a decade to spare.
Denmark did it well. They invested in wind and now boast regions with little or no use for petroleum; which is at the heart of both global environmental destruction, loss of rainforests, pollution of rivers, oceans, aquifers and war, which leaves its own lasting toxic landscape, enormous national debt, widespread death, loss of culture, physical and emotional scars. If poor little Denmark can cure its ills, why can't America accelerate our transition to renewables, save a bundle along the way and reduce our desire or need to engage in wars related to acquiring petroleum reserves, or our need to retain a fiat currency required to fund wars, oil purchases, bribe foreign officials and our own elected leaders. If the spigot of free money were removed, would America be as corrupt as it is today, or as destructive worldwide, as we've become?
I believe part of the "Blueprint for fixing America" involves ridding ourselves of the patently corrupt, financially inept Federal Reserve and if possible, dismantling the BIS, IMF and World Bank, or at the least, installing a series of common sense policies to both upgrade these systems, regulate their actions through intelligent policies designed by a political body that relies on both public opinion through debates and analysis of performance driven QC metrics. The system of printing treasuries and taxing citizens was born, not from political debate or even a public vote, but by a small corrupt group in Congress and our banking system a century ago. It has failed to produce a healthy, debt free nation; the imperialism it funded has failed to produce a healthy, democratic, environmentally sustainable world, or even a world that views America as a true democracy, rather than the brutish arm of global corporations, and it has failed to produce a stronger middle class in America. Therefore, after 100 years of failures, perhaps it is time to replace the defective financial systems and taxes which fund defective military campaigns and patently defective, if not murderous systems of politics.
What will replace "fiat currencies" remains to be seen, though models based on gold, silver and copper seemed to work pretty well before, and future models, such as bitcoin, or credits based on real production of exports, or levels of kwh power from renewables might also prove viable; something, anything, based on a real, tangible asset would be an improvement as it would eliminate the ability of a corrupt banker to simply press a button, create money from thin air, instantly indebting citizens of a nation seen as instant inflation, and then instantly buy their land or bribe their politicians: A person, corporation or group utilizing money for illegal activities would have to actually perform some kind of work to acquire it. Not so the case today.
Whether it is to fix our energy policies, our role of the military in global affairs, our rapidly deteriorating environment, rapidly expanding levels of poverty, homelessness or levels of toxins we are exposed to either from the environment or self-ingested through legal and illegal drugs, our rapidly deteriorating mental health, intellectual capacity, shrinking middle class and standard of living; no matter what the policy is in America that needs to be changed, we aren't changing fast enough. We are like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding automobile. The revelations of just how corrupt and dysfunctional our government, political and economic systems are has only recently been exposed to those who will study and analyze the evidence, and its so shocking they are either paralyzed or ineffective in bringing about effective change. You can't blame them too much. Faced with a new huge problem we really weren't aware of 20 years ago, and now faced with the prospect of trying to educate a sufficient body of Americans to create the change we must, the proponents for change stumble around testing different solutions; and more often than not, they fail.
That is expected. Democracy as proposed by our Founding Fathers was the first of its kind and is an experiment. Experiments don't always work as planned; usually they do not. The trick in this democratic experiment is to recover before its too late. Whether or not we are past a tipping point is somewhat irrelevant as long as we don't give up. We must continue to innovate, to remain optimistic that we can and will prevail; and remain dedicated to the idea that our form of democracy can be shaped into a true popular democracy where every voice counts, where corporations cannot sway us from an honorable path, where people in other nations can become proud in their own quest to emulate our experiment in democracy without the need for our military to force our current corrupt brand of democracy on their citizens. That process has only exposed our defects to a wider geographic landscape and hardened the resolve of many citizens against mirroring America's brand of democracy. As that resistance continues to increase, our military will find it increasingly difficult to find willing souls in each nation who will undermine governments; and therefore our military and corrupt corporate agenda will need to employ hired guns to execute agendas; witness ISIS and CIA funding to topple Syria. In the old days it was easy to find citizens within a nation who were eager to bring American ideals to overthrow a brutal dictator. Today, the people of Syria living under a patently defective leader would prefer that brand of freedom to anything an "American Democracy" might represent. Today, the American brand of Democracy, as a valued export for nations to acquire, is worth less than toxic toilet paper. Dumping nuclear waste on a foreign nation would be less harmful and they know it.
Its not that the original design of our democracy was either dishonorable, nor was it a bad idea or even poorly designed. In its day it was brilliant and even today it is far superior to the democracy Americans live with daily. We don't have a real voice in the process of electing our President, nor do we have a real voice in the way Congress operates, nor a real voice in the various emerging "secret courts" that increasingly preside over the actions of citizens, nor a real voice in public spending policies that are bankrupting future generations who have even less, if any voice, even faster than they are bankrupting current generations of our young in their 20's, who are far poorer than the older generation who at least had a chance at home ownership and developing a profitable business under some "free", "capitalistic", "market driven" middle class system that is all but gone in America today. What we are witnessing is not only a rapidly shrinking middle class and rapidly expanding population of impoverished, but a rapidly evaporating system of democracy, rapid expansion of our national debt and destruction of the global environment all taking place at the same time.
Its an interlocking series of events that are quite telling in their synergistic effect on each other, yet complex enough to defy our ability to manage today's crisis du jure, let alone plan and execute an intelligent series of steps to bring a halt to these grave trends and thereafter, create a thriving, financially solvent, reasonably moral, non-violent America that can again become a shining beacon of Democracy for all the world to emulate without force; rather by simply becoming envious of our prosperity and the success of our middle class. Today, any envy foreigners might hold for American ideals are primarily focused on the celebs, and a level of wealth, few global citizens will ever attain; nor should they try. The lifestyle of the rich and famous is patently unsustainable and not very good for the financial health of a nation or the environment. Wealth in and of itself is no more evil than a car used in a bank robbery. Wealth, when properly applied can build schools, buy solar panels or wind turbines, or create innovative R&D facilities to invent new technologies that can foster new businesses and provide more Yankee exports. On the other hand, wealth applied to bribe politicians, build leaky oil pipelines or systems that pollute groundwater, or simply to buy a $50,000 dress for a Grammy Award ceremony is dangerous, destructive folly.
Therefore, part of the path out of this mess needs to be a sense of modesty and reality based on what we've learned in the past 200 years about gross decadence and the ability of large groups of citizens to become easily hypnotized by fabulous levels of wealth most of them will never attain. Perhaps in a class entitled Personal Econ 101 we should both encourage people to develop ideas, invent, market, sell and manage a personal business, and include a section on prudent personal policies on how to manage their new found wealth; race tracks, casinos, bars and brothels are probably not good habits to hold if you expect to build and retain a thriving business, or nurture a reasonably sane, healthy family to carry your business and wealth forward to future generations. Teaching kids in any nation to acquire wealth merely so they can buy a new black beamer is not conducive to creating a sustainable society, sustainable financial policies, a sustainable environment, nor a sustainable government or society. Modesty, education and the prudent application of technology, financial resources, labor and mined or manufactured assets all have their place in creating a sustainable world or fixing what ails America and the world today.
It is unfortunate, though easily predictable, that current generations all around the planet have generally lost all hope in obtaining that kind of world. They understand the government corruption; they see through the American Democratic farse and in their minds, if that enlightened nation is but a brutish scam based on corrupt political figures, extortion and murder, what hope does any human have of finding any peace or prosperity in any land? The result is an increasingly predatory nature of our tweens, teens, young adults and even middle aged folks who should know better, but are almost just as selfish and short-sighted as the desensitized generations raised on bloody TV and video games. Murder isn't really so bad as long as you're on the right side of the barrel; its expected in today's world. Get over it.
We have become a mentally sick species destined to extinction if we don't change that attitude. We are living in the 6th great extinction and there is no guarantee our species will survive the process; in fact, some historians and anthropologists note there is a group of wealthy elite who are encouraging a mass die off to bring the human population down to 100M to perhaps 1B from the 7B level today. Perhaps we should let them proceed. Perhaps the earth will be better off after that horror show is over; but the really big question then becomes, if that sick group who would wage global genocide and continued environmental destruction to accomplish their agenda is the primary ruling elite after the bloodbath, what sort of future for habitats, let alone our own species, can we expect from that twisted group?
Its another global problem staring us, the educated, enlightened 21st Century Human in the face, like headlights in the eyes of a deer; and we just don't have all the answers required to put humanity and the planet, or even our own nation, back on a predictable, moral, ethical, sustainable course. And so life in the 21st Century has become a giant hedonistic free-for-all suicide party; the population of predators and sociopaths is growing at a logarithmic rate, while those who would embrace charitable or democratic ideals are quickly being marginalized, or easily used and abused by those with power and money to do so. I personally believe the only way to halt, then reverse these dire trends is for the few remaining souls with a moral compass to unite and develop an action plan to first fix America. But with so many internal challenges, and personality conflicts even between "good souls"; we have failed to unite, we have failed to even be able to clearly identify people of moral fiber, as the many wolves in sheep's clothing are all around us. Recently I did a cursory audit of a huge, wealthy environmental group aimed at "saving dolphins, oceans and the environment", and found they had neither the wisdom to create prudent policies, nor any real effective activity, save their ability to sell t-shirts and expand their member base and revenue streams; very sad.
And so the blueprint to cure America must include QC metrics; how many kids passed a high level math test as a result of your after school, charter school or public school program? How many of them are employed while in college because they clearly understand the student loan program in the U.S. is a patently defective system designed to enslave them? How many understand that trappings of financial slavery and are attempting to live intelligently within their modest means, rather than "...spend money they don't have for things they don't need." (George Carlin).
We need to teach our young that the hypnotic glitz and glamour of the celebs and elite is not nearly as nourishing as a camping trip to a pristine forest that we need to keep pristine. We need to teach them that throwing money at an environmental charity is not quite as effective as simply picking up your trash, as well as some extra trash when visiting a beach. We need to teach them that car pooling is both fun and profitable, and we need to teach them that mending clothing to squeeze the last day out of a pair of shorts can be financially more sustainable and even a lot sexier than trying to acquire a $500 leather jacket, or 7 inch plastic pump cowboy boots. We need to find our roots as a blue collar worker, and Ag sector economy, rather than a nation of dog walkers, maids and gardeners serving the wealthy.
Unfortunately, the population of families able to make a living in the Ag sector is also vaporizing, due to regs related to GMO seeds and USDA policies that have almost eliminated the ability of small farmers to survive. Meanwhile, our blue collar "MAKE SOMETHING USEFUL" jobs are all being outsourced to overseas sweat shops, as are our innovative White Collar Silicon Valley jobs in a world of a rising population of programmers, leaving only a dwindling white collar sector of financial management jobs (who produce few if any useful, tangible, sustainable products we really need, save a thriving toxic derivative market), and a bunch of dog walkers and real estate agents who only sell what already existed; a bit of dirt with some wood and a splash of new paint - the American Home - which is a center for consumption, doesn't actually produce anything useful, including intelligent, caring, charitable kids with any sort of skill set required to fix our nation, let alone our planet. I know of mothers who are so so so proud their son or daughter is a top notch dance champion, and as a musician, I am proud to be able to play rock, jazz or classical piano pieces, even sometimes at public gigs, but if I didn't make something tangible, useful, sustainable during the bulk of the hours in my week I'd feel useless; I'd just be another consumer instead of someone who manufactures SOMETHING tangible that others can use to both improve their standard of living, and reduce their impact on the environment.
Folks who install solar panels do that sort of "honorable, ethical, blue collar work". Granted, they aren't manufacturing something, but at least they are doing some work that leaves a real, tangible asset on a structure that has the immediate effect of reducing America's reliance on petroleum; and that has long-term, positive financial and environmental consequences for the family, community and nation. Turning back to our stellar "Entertainer" kids, or kids studying to become real estate agents, you have to wonder if those grads will be surprised when they wind up as baggers at a grocery store trying to pay down a student loan that will never end, while paying off child support payments for kids they couldn't afford, nor spent time with to educate them on what mistakes to avoid, (nor ever went camping with them to teach them the value of minimalism, or pristine environments), while paying for social programs like Social Security and Obamacare our poor, bankrupt nation that exports almost nothing simply cannot afford. I praise our artists for their studious habits and wonderfully inspiring productions, cutting edge journalism and screen plays that cause us to reflect on ourselves and humanities journey through time; but with an overwhelming onslaught of advertising, high fashion, porn and violence, it might be prudent for every artist to also hold down a "day job", at least part-time, that actually contributed to creating a more financial, environmental and ethically solvent America. Even a part-time daily contribution by every breathing American towards these objectives might help reverse dire trends and create a united population of educated citizens who both care and are doing something constructive to counter-balance our highly destructive, unsustainable way of life today. Parents and schools need to educate kids on balancing selfish, personal agendas with activities that contribute to society in real, tangible production of products and services focused on deploying technologies that move America towards curing our ills before the "tipping point" trends running amuck today topple us over.
The "Stockdale Principle" outlined in the book Good To Great embodies some of these ideals; taking a harsh, honest audit of where we are today and then designing effective management plans to get through the horrid state of affairs and emerge victorious through action based on optimism, and not Pollyanna optimism alone, nor on a fatalistic, hedonistic, careless, if not predatory attitude that seems to enshrine American values at every level of our society. A little discipline is a good thing, when balanced with creative abandon to invent something no one has seen before. A champagne party to celebrate a financial victory is probably also a good thing, IF - key word - you actually accomplished something that helps heal the world or provided some relief to your local community, our nation or a wetlands marsh. Drinking champagne every Sunday morning or buying a new pair of 7 inch plastic pumps just because your debit/credit card allowed it, and you think you deserve it after a 60 hour work week, is a rather short-sighted, if not myopic way of life based on endless consumption, that ignores the increasingly pressing problems of your life, your local community and the global village we all share. Perhaps that $10.00 price you paid for that cocktail might have made a difference had you had saved it to buy a PC keyboard for a child without a computer. Perhaps that $49.00 price for those dress shoes you didn't really need would have been better spent on buying a motherboard for a kid who could learn to install that board into a recycled, dented desktop case, then plug in that new keyboard you also bought them, and build their own PC, complete with a recycled monitor that was headed for a landfill and is now part of a child's at-home education system. Perhaps the parent in that home might remind their child with prudent guidance, that WHEN their math homework was done, THEN they can spend a short time playing some video game on that PC, before they move on to complete their history and science homework, and further remind them that if they fail to keep their grades up, that suite of video games can be uninstalled or blocked altogether. Perhaps instead of turning on the TV to gather the family, which only serves to fracture the family after kids begin wanting consumer items they can't afford, so they begin exploring methods of acquiring capital, like drug dealing in alleys, parents would leave the TV off and focus their energy on helping their kids get through those homework assignments, learn a little math, science and history along the way, learn what it means to create a sustainable home, community and financially solvent nation, and clearly learn what happens if we do not. Perhaps if more parents spent more time educating their kids, and got smarter along the way, more American adults would realize just how under water our nation is, and with some hope derived from that education, learn to fix the mess in their own lives one step at a time.
Its a tall order and I am not sure Americans are willing to give up their baseball games or detective dramas in exchange for spending several hours each evening exploring socially relevant topics; whether political, scientific, or even charitable. But if American consumers don't modify their behavior and levels of consumption, and their hit list of acquisitions, most of which are unattainable due to our shrinking middle class and utter lack of any export industry able to finance our debt without utilizing our defective, bankrupt, imploding global system of fiat currencies; there is no hope for the generation that follows who will repeat the same mistakes because they don't know any better, or weren't educated soon enough to avoid those same mistakes. The painful truth is that as our society finds it increasingly difficult to acquire these sought after luxuries, and we continue to plunge into the financial abyss and political chaos of a third-world nation, we will have both blown the once-in-a-species democratic experiment, and our own ingenious potential to both cure our nation and help heal the planet torn by the industrial age and environmental destruction that is the legacy of a petroleum age.
Petroleum was a blessing and a curse. It allowed a great global brain trust of 7 billion to be created and all the wonderful technology that mass invented, along with 7 billion mouths to feed and feet to shoe, who unfortunately also want 7 billion shiny black beamers we can't afford to build, let alone fuel. Elon Musk of Tesla once said to build 500,000 EV's would require all the lithium the planet can produce. Therefore, we need to invent and deploy another alternative and do so quickly, and while we're at it, utilize simple, affordable, practical technologies and habits like car pooling, mass transit and shopping only for what we really need, while recycling as much as possible, and ensuring our time spent is focused on educating our young so they don't make the same mistakes our generation did. All of these fundamental changes are part of healing America and the planet we all share and whether or not we do it or embrace it, the reality is this Spartan lifestyle IS coming sooner, rather than later, to every community on earth. Get used to it. Get used to the pain of rapid change and a deteriorating social fabric, social services, a rise in unethical, predatory conduct on every front, and a high risk for a rapid implosion and die off of humanity that will be horrific. This IS our future if we do not mend our ways and no amount of technology can save us from wanton, unbridled consumerism, or our universal tendency to ignore harsh realities. A little discipline and practical, effective planning, balanced with our artistic, humanitarian and spiritual agendas is required.
So, curing what ails America is a complex idea that won't be completed by simply electing another corrupt official. You can't cure America by electing a new Mayor, Governor, Congressman or President. You won't accomplish it by switching banks or moving to a community sponsored credit union. You won't do it by simply installing solar on your roof and then pouring yourself a glass of champagne to celebrate the money you'll save on your electric bill or patting yourself on the back for reducing your need for petroleum, nor should you put the money you might save by car pooling into a fund for your annual trip to a Vegas casino where you can blow it in a weekend of heated hedonistic abandon. That sort of wreckless behavior might make sense to a 20 something kid who has never dropped five grand on a crap table, but in today's world that population of wealthy empowered young is also evaporating, and for the rest of us, prudence should guide nearly every action on this high wire act of trying to save humanity from itself. One good mistake, or worse, a continued series of imprudent mistakes, is all that is required to blow our last chance to avert the economic storm already at our door. In fact we don't even need to make a mistake; just continue on as we are doing today and there is little hope of any real, effective change for the better anything in the next 100 - 500 years of humanity's journey on this earth.
Since much of this transformation must embody fundamental changes in how our federal government operates and the QC metrics that need to be installed to change its underlying principles of operation, bloated budgets, imperialistic campaigns and lack of focus on improving the plight of America's middle class, let alone provide much relief for America's impoverished, I suggest that a huge part of "the cure" involves finding and installing politicians who can "Get 'er done". We haven't seen anything like that anywhere in America for several decades, if not for more than a century. Sure, there are a few rare politicians who actually have a reasonably solvent, financially prudent, moral, ethical, perhaps even legal game plan, but they are quickly overwhelmed and marginalized, frustrated or assassinated, or through some other means, ejected from office; a process which leaves only the corrupt or inept left behind. This begs the question, "Would America's recovery be accelerated if a popular driven vote of no confidence by citizens could quickly remove politician's from office?" I don't mean impeaching a President after a billion dollar televised trial that requires Congress to stop dead in its tracks to handle a process that distracts them from more critical resolutions, rather I mean that if 60%, 70%, 80% or more Americans were polled each month, and were found to absolutely PRESS THE REJECT BUTTON, then the President in the Oval Office bowed out on Friday, the V.P. took the hot seat, we held an impromptu election to replace them from viable candidates, and the same rapid, low-cost process was enacted for Congress, State Governors and Legislators, County Supervisors and our Mayors and any other elected official. Put another way; when 80% of your constituents think you're doing a crappy job, odds are you saw that figure rising and the moment it hit 51% the warning shot was fired over your bow. When it hit 70% you had a hole in your boat and probably should have both modified your course and began polling citizens, civic planners, scientists, artists; hippies, bankers, anyone and everyone, on what you might do to improve your performance, and heal your reputation by delivering real solutions to real problems citizens are faced with every single day.
Granted, a rapid change in high level leadership can create chaos; but we already have that today, so there's no big loss there. Granted, Americans can be a fickle group and a popular President today can easily become vilified the moment the food stamp program get slashed, or health insurance rates take a hike. Granted, if our currency goes into a freefall, as many economists predict, and we can't get the oil we need, if we begin experiencing brown outs and black outs like many developing nations endure daily, and if our highways continue to deteriorate just like our system of healthcare, ag and manufacturing sectors, its going to be pretty tough to stay in the Oval Office when such a system of rapid REJECTION is in place. That said, these negative trends are already with us across the board and I don't see either Presidential Candidate really mentally capable of fixing any of them; not one. To assume Hillary will fix things is insane; she's a known felon with absolutely no remorse, and though not convicted in a court of law, every American paying attention knows it. To assume Donald can fix it is to believe a businessman who often bases his profits and retained earnings on bankruptcy laws, and who would alienate a huge Latin American population, gays, women - name the group - is equally insane. Donald might actually be good for America, as he might be able to gut a lot of the bloat in government today, but at the end of the day, would you rather have a surgeon or a wreckless butcher performing your open heart surgery?
The answer, I believe, is to enact a series of laws that require a politician at any level to step aside quickly when a massive, popular vote of NO CONFIDENCE appears; whether its a poll taken weekly, then summarized and enacted upon on a monthly or quarterly basis, or whether we simply employ such a law to regulate Congress, quickly removing Legislators who refuse to impeach any President who acquires a massive level of public wrath measured by frequent, regular, popular vote driven surveys managed by a known, impartial, trusted audit team; i.e. your local librarian staff. Perhaps if the libraries around the nation benefited financially from educating our young and at the same time, acting as a central community gathering place for political and charitable action committees, we'd see some improvements. Frank Zappa said "If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to a library." and with the emergence of google, wikipedia and thankfully, the retention of libraries in our culture, there's little or no excuse for Americans not to continue obtaining an education, especially during this period of national crisis.
With the technology that exists TODAY there's little or no excuse for failing to develop the polls, surveys and rapid voting mechanisms that would provide politicians with a "HOW AM I DOING?" answer, and if a rapid REJECT mechanism was built into every political office, things would probably get better much faster than any other method we could devise. Put another way; a drunk surgeon shows up to do your heart surgery and you happen to wake up just as they have begun cutting you open. You realize that person is patently unqualified to both perform the job ahead, let alone care for your life along the way. No matter how many other expert healthcare professionals might be present, wouldn't you vote to "STOP EVERYTHING. EJECT THIS CLOWN AND BRING IN ANOTHER SOBER, QUALIFIED TEAM LEADER?".
Do you really think repairing our fragile, torn, crippled, dying nation is any less critical than your open heart surgery? Do you realize Washington D.C. has one of, if not the highest rate of alcoholism in our country? That's a huge "in-your-face" clue as to why things are as bad as they are in our nation and communities today.
We have TV shows like the Apprentice or Survivor where only the best make it to the final episode. As Donald himself knows all too well, substandard performance gets you "FIRED!". There's no big trial; no long expensive paperwork trail. Its done with a smile, perhaps a pat on the back for those good things you were able to accomplish early on, but if you lack the stamina or ingenuity or prudence to continue making progress, guess what? You're done. Get out. Let someone else take the ball and run from wherever we are towards the goal line.
Some will argue, and rightly so, that in a nation where the top political leader can be rotated like a pair of shoes, the only real power lies in a military Junta of corrupt, power hungry Generals and those who serve them or are "taken out". Well, if you've intimately studied American politics, that's what we have today anyway. Get a clue. Ike warned us about the Industrial Military Complex, wives of military officers and the officers themselves have come forward and revealed the way things work, so its no big surprise to see Obama swearing he's going to reduce deployment, then not long after he's in office, continue America's occupation in foreign lands. Its no big surprise to see every nation on earth condemn Israel for the situation in Palestine, and then see the U.S. is the only nation to veto resolutions that might force Israel to mend its ways. Its no surprise to see Orthodox Jews making overtures with Iran, while the government of Israel and Hillary threaten to bomb Iran into oblivion. It is no surprise to see rising rosters of homeless in America while we spend trillions fighting wars to acquire oil at a time in human history when we've already proven we can get all the energy we need to run entire nations from wind and solar projects; if we actually built them.
And so the question of whether or not a rapid rotation of Presidents or Congressmen, Governors or Mayors might lead to a nation led by military leaders has already been answered; we already are. Perhaps only by putting someone in the Oval Office who understands this problem early on can we expect American streets to look less like battle grounds, and American Cops to look and act less like U.S. troops in Iraq. I may be wrong, but the system in place is patently corrupt, patently defective and completely ineffective. Whatever Democracy and America were SUPPOSED to be 200 plus years later it surely has not become.
The solution? Throw the bums out and do it with less fanfare, less budget and less lost time. Hey, we might even make a weekly TV show out of it. Why do we have to wait forever for a State Of The Union address? When a nation is as messed up as we are today, a weekly 15 - 30 minute BOARD MEETING with American Stakeholders - every citizen - seems more appropriate. Like any board meeting, it should cover Old Business; i.e. programs being implemented and their QC Metrics produced by third party citizen bodies, and available online for download and analysis, and New Business, proposals for new programs, budgets, and a selection of innovative ideas that were gathered from the citizens themselves. A true representative of Americans would embrace their people, their ideas, their audits, and actively seek their opinions of their performance in office. A true representative of Americans wouldn't need a LAW to leave office if they knew their performance sucked and an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted them out; they'd just apologize - quickly - and step aside.
And so the BLUEPRINT to fix America quickly, if not in time to avoid a complete meltdown, probably includes a rapid REJECT/RE-ELECT process. Its like a Jehovah Witness I know explained, as they are looking for good honest souls; "You have to sift through a lot of mud to find a few flakes of gold." Its a lot like the kids I teach in hard-core neighborhoods; you have A students, B students and F students. Very few kids are C or D students for long in a well run class. They are either encouraged and want to learn, and soon rise to the B or A level, or they are not encouraged or lack the desire and in a well run class they fail within a week or two and are asked to go spend their time in some class, some where, that they actually want to participate in. There is little sense in wasting time trying to teach a kid something they really do not wish to learn. The old saying "You can't teach a Pig to sing; you waste your time and just annoy the Pig." applies.
And so the BLUEPRINT also means putting the right students in the right classes, and ensuring ALL STUDENTS understand the value of useful, productive work that requires skills America needs to remain competitive; unfortunately, ballet isn't one of them. If a kid wants to learn to play guitar or piano; great. Let them learn it like I did and study at home after finishing their math and science homework. They'll know it better and learn it faster at les cost than mommy having to spend hundreds or even thousands on piano lessons or instruments for a school marching band. I was also in a marching, orchestra and jazz band and while I have fond memories of it and wish America was so wealthy it could continue to afford these types of electives, those days are long gone. WHEN we have a balanced budget and WHEN we have kids no longer living in cars with their mothers anywhere in America - and I mean ANYWHERE - and WHEN we have cured our nation of our addiction to oil and plastic clothing; WHEN we have enough spare renewable energy to drive desalination plants to irrigate our fields to replace the crops lost due to global warming and ever-widening regions of drought, and WHEN we have desalination plants - 100's if not 1,000's of them - that do not produce dead zones from brine discharge, do not run by burning coal, LNG, petroleum, or require any process that produces nuclear waste; WHEN we have a planet that is not engaged in wars over in ground assets used to drive unsustainable economies and consumer practices, and WHEN we have Judges, Mayors, School Teachers, Governors, Legislators and Presidents all keenly aware that if they screw up a POPULAR VOICE can hand them a Pink Slip in a blink, THEN I will happily support schools with music and painting electives. In the meantime, the basics please; its all we can really afford and any child who really wants to learn to carve wood can take a class online, get a paper route or learn to repair computers in a free class they study online at their local library, then save their pennies to buy their first chisel, paint brush, ballet slippers, guitar or upright piano as the case may be.
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