Dealing with terrorism

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There is something I don’t understand, and maybe someone can enlighten me?

The ISIS plotters and bombers have unrestricted access to the internet.  The master minds disaffect them on the web, encourage them to plot and kill on the web and there is free information on the web as to how to make bombs. In a session on terrorism broadcast on C- Span the other day it was explicitly stated that young moslems are influenced and recruited on the internet.  The influence of the mosque and the family is very small (the mosque is now too public).

So why can we not simply cut the wires?  If the intelligence services pick up repeated online terrorist activity, dubious phone conversations, plots or intentions to go to Syria etc, why can’t they arrange for the telephone wires or the cable service to be “unavailable”.  (And while we are about it, why can’t the same thing be done to perverts and child abusers?).   The Chinese can censor everything on the web;  why can’t we?  Of course, you have to make sure who you are censoring.  You don’t want to close down a journalist writing about ISIS (or this blog, if it comes to that).

Right-wingers sell whole town to a corporation

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If you want to see where Tory plans to shrink the state will lead, look no further than Barnet. The Tory-run London suburb is in the process of shrinking the number of town hall staff from 3,200 to as few as 332. It is outsourcing so many of its services to the £7bn multinational company Capita, that it has, in effect, “agreed to a friendly takeover”.

But though this is all being done in the name of “saving money”, it is far from clear that it has so far saved a penny. On the contrary, Barnet is now subjected to all sorts of new-fangled charges. For instance, if you now phone the local library to ask if it stocks a given book, the call is routed to a call centre in Coventry, 114 miles away,  an exercise for which Barnet is said to be charged £8. Not that complaining will help: Capita will be running these services for at least the next ten years, whether Barnet residents like it or not; and information about services that used to be public is now off-limits for reasons of “commercial sensitivity”. So much for local democracy. (Aditya Chakraborrty, The Guardian)

I was tempted to call this move typically neo-liberal, but really it isn’t neo-anything.  It’s just plain stupid, laughable, in fact.  For how long will the residents indulge this idiocy?  For ten years, I assume. The idea of public services, free at point of use and paid for by the community, is disappearing.  In England you are increasingly on your own and everything, however petty, has a price affixed to it.  Bring back public service for the public!

How Turbotax keeps US tax returns bewilderingly complicated

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In 2005, the agency that collects state income tax in California began a pilot programme called ReadyReturn (later called CalFile), a voluntary, ‘simple, easy-to-use service that offers free, direct to government e-filing’, similar to the British system. It saved the people who used it money and time, and was projected to save the state half a million dollars a year in administrative costs, since its tax officers wouldn’t have to spend months correcting the mistakes that people make when they do their taxes themselves. The programme was so popular that both Republicans and Democrats wanted to take the credit for it. What could go wrong?

Enter Intuit, the Silicon Valley software company that owns TurboTax (until last year we used it ourselves; no one can exaggerate its complexity).  During the 2006 race for state controller, who oversees tax collection, Intuit funnelled a million dollars to the candidate who said he opposed ReadyReturn because it would hurt ‘private enterprise’ – that is, Intuit. The company also gave more than a million dollars in campaign contributions to the state’s legislators, who promptly killed off ReadyReturn. The state government had to change before the tax board could bring the programme back. More than a million Californians now use it. So why not expand it to the rest of the country?

According to the Sunlight Foundation, commercial tax preparers have spent more than $28 million lobbying Congress to oppose any changes that might cut into their business. So far they’ve prevailed because the people who would benefit most from having easier tax forms can’t afford to do their own lobbying.

I don’t know how long it has taken us every year to gather tax information together, but once we have started entering up Turbo Tax it has taken an intense 8 hours.  After twenty years of this I still couldn’t do it accurately without my wife.  The ridiculous thing is that the IRS knows everything about us, otherwise why, at the end of the process do they accept the return and say it is correct?

Thus is the time and patience of the many subordinated to the greed of the few.  What would Epicurus do about it?  I think he would say,”I don’t have time for this.  My ataraxia is too important.  Tell me what I owe and I will send it on the back of an ass.”

The Caliphate, and what comes after the defeat of the unbelievers

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Since the mainstream media are not reporting this, I thought it might be of interest to readers to complete what I wrote yesterday.

After its battle in Dabiq,  the caliphate will go on to sack Istanbul, destroy Israel and continue to expand, since expansion is the essential duty of the Caliph. At some point an anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill the caliphate’s fighters, leaving  just 5,000 alive, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus—the second-most-revered prophet in Islam—will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.  In other words, true moslems will regain the holy city.  Since God has preordained the near-destruction of his people anyway it really doesn’t matter whether you survive to fight under Jesus or are killed as a suicide bomber or in an attack on Istanbul – you will have fulfilled the wishes of God and will ascend to heaven to claim your free virgins.  Either way you win!

Why is this relevant to Epicureanism?  Because it is the very antithesis of everything Epicureanism stands for and everything we should collectively reject.  Just don’t allow our politicians to be drawn into fulfilling the bloodthirsty prophesies of this most disagreeable of all religious sects.

 

ISIS: what the Western media is missing

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In the Monday edition of the New York Times Paul Krugman, deviating from his usual subject of economics, said that the objective of ISIS was to terrorize non-believers.   It’s true that the “Caliphate”  has a holy duty to terrorize its enemies, but this is not the main objective.

In the March edition of Atlantic Magazine, Graeme Wood, an expert on millenial islamism says,  “For certain true believers—the kind who long for epic good-versus-evil battles—visions of apocalyptic bloodbaths fulfill deep psychological needs……. These include the belief that there will be only 12 legitimate caliphs, Baghdadi being the eighth; that the armies of Rome will mass to meet the armies of Islam in northern Syria; and that Islam’s final showdown with an anti-Messiah will occur in Jerusalem after a period of renewed Islamic conquest”. (Mr. Wood’s article has been precised for this posting).

Dabiq is the town in North West Syria repeatedly mentioned in ISIS propaganda where the Islamic State believes that the armies of “Rome” (read the US and its allies) will set up camp and will be comprehensively destroyed. The Islamic State’s propagandists drool with anticipation of this event, and expect it will come soon. The state’s magazine quotes Zarqawi as saying, “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify … until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.”

What ISIS is doing with its recent attacks is trying to lure the West onto the plains of Dabiq, initiating the countdown to the apocalypse.   Is Obama is right – don’t give them the bloodthirsty pleasure of seeing their stupid prophesies fulfilled – don’t send conventional troops?  Or should we, with our overwhelming superiority in military force, meet them in Dabiq and annihilate them once and for all, demonstrating the stupidity of believing in medieval, religious fortune telling?

Tomorrow, I will pursue the subject and describe what they think will happen after the expected defeat of the crusaders.