Julian Assange: "Google and the NSA: Who's holding the 'shit-bag' now?"

[James Redford]

The below article by the editor-in-chief of the website WikiLeaks (
https://wikileaks.org ) Julian Assange concerns the entwinement of the
Western (particularly the United States') misnomered "security" state
(actually, terrorist and mass-death state) with the highest levels of
the supposedly "private" internet sector:

Julian Assange, "Google and the NSA: Who's holding the 'shit-bag'
now?", The Stringer, Aug. 24, 2013,
http://thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now-4691
,
https://wayback.archive.org/web/20141024204022/http://thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now-4691
, http://www.webcitation.org/6TZUJpEsv , http://archive.today/VWQ94 ,
http://megalodon.jp/2014-1025-0541-53/thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now-4691
.

The following is my response to Julian Assange's above article, posted
by me to the above page on August 29, 2013:

----------

I thank Julian Assange for his present exposé.

Google has long been closely enmeshed with the US intelligence
agencies. Dr. Rick Steinheiser in the Office of Research and
Development at the CIA and Matt Cutts of the NSA, to name a few, are
employed by Google in high-level positions. Google Earth and Google
Maps software came from Keyhole, Inc., which was funded by the CIA via
In-Q-Tel. As well, Google has been helping the Chinese government in
censoring the internet in that country.

Government, whatever its de jure status, strongly tends toward
oligarchy. The bigger the government the stronger this tendency will
be, since then the stakes of exercising a disproportionate influence
over government policy are raised--as big government has the ability
to, e.g., make or break business fortunes via its policies and how it
chooses to enforce them. That is true every bit as much for formal
democracies. Consequently, under government, the strong inclination is
a winnowing effect whereby those who rise to the top of the private
sector and the government sector are those who are willing to "play
along to get along", i.e., amenable to supporting the furtherance of
the political establishment's power.

Such applies to media outlets and universities, as well; which, when
combined with the government's own schooling and propaganda,
inculcates the largest part of individuals' Weltanschauung from cradle
to grave: the contents of that worldview being rather thoroughgoing,
if muddleheaded and hodgepodge, forms of etatism, accompanying a high
degree of political naïveté which such a position implies. Hence, the
very intellectual tools which are prerequisite for sustaining an
effective defense of liberty are absent most people.

So also due to that effect of winnowing, there tends to be a
confluence of ideology at the top level, for accruement of power
becomes its own purpose as the government moves toward its logical
conclusion: the total state, and all the horrors that come with it.
Distinctions such as Democrat and Republican, "liberal" and
conservative, etc., are useful for providing hoi polloi with innocuous
distractions, but they mean little at the top echelon.

Since all governments (including totalitarian dictatorships)
ultimately can only exist due to the "consent" of its subjects (at
least "consent" in the sense of resignation), it's understandable why
the oligarchic nature of government would not be widely publicized by
the political establishment within a formal democracy.

The process of tendency toward oligarchy I've outlined above is
intrinsic to government due to the inherent perverse incentive
structures which obtain under government (i.e., the internal logic of
the system). Ultimately it doesn't matter how pure and good the
intentions are of the people who set up the government, nor what type
of government is nominally instituted: so long as the defining feature
of government exists--that of a regional monopoly on ultimate control
over the law--then this process cannot be avoided, since the inherent
incentives of the system are such as to reward actors who bring about
such outcomes (being that one who is able to inordinately influence
the policies of a government can use that influence for his personal
benefit and that of his friends, whereas liberty for society is a
general benefit which accrues to no one in particular). All the good
intentions in the world are no match against perverse incentives.

For those who would like a deeper examination into this most pressing
of issue which I touch upon above, see Sec. 8.2.1 of my following
article; pp. 63-65 of said section give a methodological analysis of
government, with pp. 65-86 giving historical background on some of the
more unseemly acts by states, and finally pp. 87-98 of that section
giving a history on our present globalist plutocracy: James Redford,
"The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything",
Social Science Research Network, Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19,
2011), doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708 [
https://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything
, http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf ,
http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf
,
https://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/redford-physics-of-god.pdf
]. This article concerns physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J.
Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum
gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything; however, it also analyzes
the societal implications of said, particularly the implications of
the exponential advancement of technology and hence also the coming
radical life-extension technologies (i.e., transhumanism) in light of
a world dominated by a callous oligarchy.

----------------------------------------

James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), Dec. 4, 2011 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2001),
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1337761, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 ,
http://theophysics.host56.com/anarchist-jesus.pdf ,
http://webcitation.org/66AIz2rJw

Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website with information
on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theorem and the quantum gravity
Theory of Everything [TOE]), http://theophysics.host56.com ,
http://theophysics.freevar.com