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Title: Our Potemkin Village
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/01/16/our-potemkin-village/
Published: Jan 17, 2018
Author: Justin Raimondo
Post Date: 2018-01-17 09:05:32 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 129
Comments: 4

The empire is getting a bit tattered around the edges

While the population of Hawaii dove under manhole covers, and #TheResistance screeched that The Orange Monster had finally done it and forced Kim Jong Un to nuke the island paradise, it took Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the levelheaded, and quite personable representative from that state, to issue a statement countermanding the “take cover” message sent out by the military earlier.

Rep. Gabbard did this within minutes, thus avoiding a major panic with potentially dangerous consequences, while the Authorities took nearly an hour to issue a retraction.

How did this happen? The Official Story is that “someone pushed the wrong button.” As to the identity of this Someone, or the consequences that have befallen him or her, we hear nary a word.

This bizarre incident underscores the utter absurdity and darkness of the permanent state of emergency which we live under. For it turns out that there was no system in place capable of countermanding the emergency alert once it went out. A tacit understanding of the reality behind our military strategy: it’s a suicide pact.

It also underscores the Potemkin Village aura of what is routinely referred to as our National Security Establishment: in this case, it amounted to some guy in Hawaii wearing flip flops and all too eager to go off duty and get back in the water after going through the unending drill he’d complete hundreds, probably thousands of times before.

So who was the culprit, and what happened to him? The Hawaii authorities refuse to identify him – because “he would be a pariah.” Which is a military disciplinary system that has to be unique in all the world. The administrator in chief of the system, a Mr. Miyagi, explained it this way:

“Looking at the nature and cause of the error that led to those events, the deeper problem is not that someone made a mistake; it is that we made it too easy for a simple mistake to have very serious consequences. The system should have been more robust, and I will not let an individual pay for a systemic problem.”

What about the individual architects of the system? You can be your bottom dollar none of them will bear any consequences for almost starting World War III. Gee, I recall an incident that occurred on September 11, 2001, in which the “defenses” we’d spent billions on simply did not function and thousands dies as a result – and not a single person was fired.

Inefficiency and outright incompetence are built into structures as large, unwieldy, and unresponsive as the American Empire, and this is what the concept of decadence really entails: the slipshod slips in, the shiny surfaces get to looking a little ramshackle, overconfidence and complacency infiltrate both leaders and led, and pretty soon you’re the Austro-Hungarian Empire: big, garish, unsustainable, and basically ready to fall to pieces.

Which is not to say that the Empire is really on its last legs and will fall of its own weight – although that’s entirely possible. Look at what happened to the Soviets. Yet the rulers – and inhabitants – of such empires always overestimate their strength and endurance: they live inside the bubble of their own hubris.

That popping sound you hear may augur more than anybody bargained for …

A SPECIAL NOTE: My apologies for the abbreviated column, but this is being written on the fly as I get ready to travel to San Francisco to receive my fifth infusion of the anti-cancer drugs Keytruda and Alimta. I have to say I’m feeling a lot better since the treatments started, but I still have a ways to go: I’ll keep you posted.

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#1. To: Ada (#0)

To engage those systems, you have to manually type in the access code, manually write the message, enter, and publish. There are no buttons. This person conducted an act of terrorism which was followed up in Japan days later.

Only a liar would ever say someone pressed the wrong button.

"Call Me Ishmael" -Ishmael, A character from the book "Moby Dick" 1851. "Call Me Fishmeal" -Osama Bin Laden, A character created by the CIA, and the world's Hide And Seek Champion 2001-2011. -Tommythemadartist

TommyTheMadArtist  posted on  2018-01-17   9:48:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Ada (#0)

From what I've seen of it, the system that the operator was using was anything but user friendly. Multiple options for many diverse things are on the screen, and the option for sending a real alert of an inbound nuke was the same as the drill option, except for word "Drill" in front of the drill option, and the two options were not even next to each other on the otherwise plain & mundane blue on white list on a text only screen.

I suspected it was something like this before I even heard it. After all, this is a government procured/developed system that did not come from the commercial market, and any time the gov builds it's own system, the product is generally free of niceties that conform to human psychology. And in this case, was also free of a backup/cancellation option just because no one involved in development of it ever thought about it. All in all, about as much thought and competence went into the development of this early warning system as the government of the Soviet Union would have put into it (at least as Reader's Digest would have depicted), and for all the same reasons.

So I can easily believe it's not an operator mistake so much as an institutional mistake on the part of the department as a whole.

Pinguinite  posted on  2018-01-17   10:41:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Ada (#0)

I'm thinking a false flag event was in play and it got cancelled

sonny  posted on  2018-01-17   10:51:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: sonny (#3)

Seem to recall a recent story saying Israel had to come up with another false flag in view of setbacks in Syria, Iraq-Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea. So could have been a launch from Israeli sub but was intercepted. And that "mistake" is a cover story. Like with Liberty and 9/11 can't implicate America's closet "friend."

One benefit is that future alerts will see a more orderly public response, public being hopeful its a false alarm.

Tatarewicz  posted on  2018-01-18   8:22:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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