Libya - 2011 pt 3: INEVITABLE DOWNFALL

NATO has gotten involved now, including contingents from Europe and the USA. A question you may ask is “why is NATO concerned with a civil war in Libya?”
I will make this clear in my next post, along with the goals and motivations of the Libyan Rebellion.

Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. This morning sees a development in northern Africa that has been a long time coming, but inevitable just the same.
A quick recap:
Part 1: "WHAT IS LIBYA?" explained and clarified the geographic, historical, and cultural background of Libya, in order to give us a firm-enough grounding in the subject to speak about it. I wish, one day, to be able to research and present the same subject matter properly... one day...
Part 2: "DICTATORIAL DISASTER" explained, as the title suggests, the rise and beginning of the Fall of the Dictator of modern Libya - Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. I left you at the end of this post with the phrase: "And that brings us to the present day, where the civil war in Libya still rages." I also promised you that I will explain why NATO has gotten itself involved in what is essentially an internal civil war in Libya.
And now I will deliver on my promise.


So, it is a civil war. The Dictator Gadaffi has grown crazier and crazier over his 41 year rule of the country, and if you want details, refer to the previous "Libya - 2011" posts.
Korea was a civil war back in the 195os, and still remains in a technical state of war.
Vietnam was also a civil war in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Gulf War of 1991 was not a civil war, it was a battle between Iraq and Kuwait, with Iraqi intentions to move it on to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East Arab world, if they did not comply with threats and demands from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Without any argument, the USA, along with its allies, has insinuated itself into each of these notable (if not pivotal) wars of the 20th Century. The reasons are far too many and too complex to discuss here, and will take away from the current topic. Please browse through my posts, I'm sure I've written about at least one of them in the last two years. If not, tell me, and I'll post a Uni essay that I wrote on the matter you want.

Prior to September 11, 2001 (the tenth anniversary of which is less than one month away today), the USA found itself temporarily without any major threats or military targets. If you can even remember that time, we were at peace, and only small conflicts were waging in eastern Europe and other regular hotspots.
But then, of course, the infamous "War On Terror" began, and to open it for us all we went to war in Afghanistan. The goal was to hunt down the alleged perpetrators of 9/11. 9 years later, Osama bin Laden was captured and killed by US forces. The fact that it didn't even occur in Afghanistan has ruffled more than a few feathers - it happened in neighbouring Pakistan, a supposed ally of the USA. THAT, too, is a subject for discussion at another time. (Oh, so much to discuss, and so little time and resources to furnish myself with the details!!!! - my constant lament!!!!)

Afghanistan spelled, as it did for the Soviet Union, a turning point for the worse for the USA. After ten long, fruitless years of fighting, with US and allied soldiers on the ground and dug in, in the firing line and dying daily, the war in Afghanistan has been a shamozzle.
The coninciding War in Iraq ("Gulf War II") took just as bad and heavy a toll on the USA, its prestige, and its credence as any kind of protector of justice.

Where it hurts the most for the USA today is that, as the largest and most powerful economy in the world, it is bringing down the rest of the global system as it falters and crashes.

Needless to say, with the details I've just given you, the USA had no intention of getting involved in yet ANOTHER war, the Libyan Civil War of 2011.

Europe ("once great, now bait") sits on Libya's doorstep, and, try as it might, it could not ignore goings-on in Libya any longer at the start of this year (2011AD). The preceding years saw great fluctuations in relationship temperatures between Libya and Europe. It turned out that the fluctuations were the result of Gadaffi's insanity becoming more apparent. Oh well, live and learn.

But the world could not stand back and do nothing.
As selfish as our economic preoccupations make us seem, there is still generally a tipping point when the outside world can be aware of a conflict that contains atrocities. If we are AWARE, there will always be a voice calling to stop it.
Sadly, just as our economic preoccupations suggest, Europe only galvanised itself into action once it began to realise the economic fallout potential of a prolonged and unresolved war in Libya.
People often take notice of things when MONEY is involved. They take even greater notice when it is THEIR money.

I don't wish to go through the list of potentialities right now, but suffice it to say that another Afghanistan just across the Mediterranean from Europe would NOT be conducive to good trade and travel.

Hence, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, got involved.
Still red and smarting from the lessons of Afghanistan, neither the USA nor Europe were willing to put troops on the ground in Libya. The last thing anybody in the Western world needs is another "War in ....." in the media headlines.
To the West's delight, that didn't seem totally necessary. Whereas the people of Iraq were too demoralised after the first Gulf War to act in the second, and whereas the people of Afghanistan have not known order or government for so long that they could not organise themselves effectively at all, the people of Libya were different.
Please see Part 2 for more details: Gadaffi's crucial mistakes during his dictatorship have centered on his eagerness to engage with the rest of the world in some way. The allowance of communcations, new technologies, education - all this led directly to the awakening that the Libyans felt earlier this year and said "It doesn't HAVE TO be this way!", and also allowed them to organise themselves into effective fighting forces - effective enough to rival Gadaffi's standing military structure.
There is still no one man named as the head of this Rebellion, and I hope that there never really is - but they have somehow managed to organise themselves on the ground.
We may or may not learn ten years from now that CIA advisers were helping the Rebels... it's always possible. Then again, we never hear about the CIA's accomplishments (if any), just its failures.
Capable as the Rebels have been, they did not command the same military hardware that Gadaffi had. Tanks, fighters, bombers - all the big toys that we like to use in computer games. Especially AIR POWER is important in these sorts of scuffles. Hitler himself realised the importance of air superiority, and with it he took Libya back in the 1940s, and the rest of the Mediterranean. he never achieved it over Britain, and so Operation Sea Lion was a bust. And the Allies of WWII gained air superiorty over both Japan and Germany in WWII, and so won the war.
Gadaffi held air superiorty for ever so long. But if there is one thing that NATO is capable of, with its US aircraft carriers and fighter pilot veterans from many previous engagements, and the lessons of WWII and every other damn war, it is the establishment of firm air superiority.
And Libya happens to be perched on the northern coast of the Sahara. All NATO really needed to do was park a few aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, with some support craft, and they could launch unchallenged airstrikes on Gadaffi's forces, drop supplies to the Rebels.
And that is exactly what NATO is doing.
Co-ordination with Rebels on the ground has seen NATO pulverise Gadaffi's tanks and planes while they are still on the ground. The Rebels have been able to move into areas that were previously totally inaccessible. This general strategy has continued for the last 4 months or so, and today we see it is working.
The length of time it has taken has given the press a few scraps with which to build animosity against the campaign, but the story could never trump stories like celebrity babies, royal weddings, and , oh yeah, the global economic meltdown.

Notice that somewhere near the start of this post I seemlessly transition from past tense to present tense. Grammar-barons around the world will tell you that this is incorrect, but I have done so to reflect the primacy of the NOW-ness of this matter. It is literally happening right now!
TODAY:
A news report I have just seen has told us that the Anti-Gadaffi Rebel forces have actually moved into the capitol of Tripoli, and are flooding Green Square, a symbolic heart of the city.
To make the picture clear, this would be like a force moving into George Street in Sydney, Times Square in New York, Westminster in London, or through the Arc de Triomphe and around the Eiffel Tower in Paris (which many have done in the past!).

Through air support by NATO, and endless tenacity by the Rebels, the news is telling us that Gadaffi's sons are arrested or dead, his wife and daughter have fled to Tunisia, and Gadaffi himself is missing in action.
All of Gadaffi's cohort are called to face charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (South Holland).
There are even reports that the Presidential Guard, who were supposed to do Gadaffi's dirty work for him as the Rebels approached his palaces, are turning around to join the advancing Rebels.

I think it is safe to say at this point that Gadaffi does not have a snowball's chance in hell of regaining his power any time soon.
If he is hanged for his crimes, or even just for being a dickhead, he will never rise again.
Personally, I think his mental state is beyond the point of return, and he is just too crazy to rule ever again, let alone claw it all back.

I could write a Part 4 for this series on Libya - 2011, but it would have be titled "LIBYA'S FUTURE?", and as the title suggests, I can't predict that.

There are, however, some certain pathways, down which Libya, as a country, is most likely to travel.

The Libyans need to rebuild their shattered country. Economics, evil as it is, is the only way to do that. We happen to be in the middle of an on-again-off-again Recession right now, so the difficulties will soon mount against the fledgeling Libyan Republic.
Libya HAS got OIL, however, and the rest of the world, the West and China, still has an insatiable appetite for the stuff. If sold, and the profits handled with due diligence, Libya could rebound from the ashes with remarkable speed and dexterity. This cannot be assured however, because we have seen, SOOOO MANY TIMES, the leaders of oil-rich countries squander such resources and leave their country mired in corruption. Gadaffi himself was guilty of this.
I am sure that Europe will be more than happy to help the re-shaping of Libya, but can the leaders of the new state be altruistic for long enough not to steal their peoples' future again?

And if a particular leader of this 2011 Rebellion surfaces, and Name is proclaimed, he or she will very likely become the new President. The Libyans will need to decide on a foundation and form for their new government - Republic, Constitutional Monarchy, something democratic hopefully. But any one personality that is strong enough, charismatic enough, could plunge the nation back into Dictatorship again.

I want to say that there are high hopes for the future of Libya, and the world at large, but I cannot say it honestly. I could offer you platitudes, but they bore me.
I know that most of what I say goes in one ear of my good listeners, and straight out the other. It is the same human concept that is now Libya's greatest potential foe - the need to learn, and relearn again and again and again, its lessons for itself.
There are enough racial divides in Libya to guarantee that the first crack in the new system will be fatal.
Centuries of mistreatment and/or ignorance by Europe has instilled fear and mistrust in the collective Libyan psyche that will never, ever truly be washed away.

Ultimately, Libya's future is in its own hands. Whether the USA, or Europe, set up programs and start funneling endless amounts of cash into it or not, the key decisions will still be held by the Libyan people living out their lives there.

I can never expect that my honesty on a matter like this will ever be taken seriously. I have never, myself, been taken seriously when I have attempted to offer honesty to people who really need a dose of it. I find it hard to swallow myself sometimes, but I have, of late, managed to take advice when it has been given to me. My own Desert Exile has not been a waste by any means.
The people of Libya have been in a spiritual and political Exile in the Sahara. Will they come out of it enlightened, even the tiniest bit?
Oh well, here are your platitudes, and I tell them to you only because they will be what you remember from this post if you have read this far:
(I say them with somewhat of a hint of irony. See if you can spot it)

"Libya's future is bright!"
"Libya, as a people, will never forget the trials and suffering under Gadaffi, and never again allow themselves to be ruled by a crazy dictator."
"The USA and Europe will do all they can, in the spirit of good will, to re-establish Libya as a viable nation-state, bring it into the UN, and take it seriously - not because of its resources and strategic value, but because the people have earned it, and because it is just the right thing to do!"


Ladies and Gentlemen, one thing IS perfectly clear, and I say this with NO irony whatsoever:
CHINA is going to do FUCK ALL about Libya. Just as it has done everywhere else in the world where other states have gotten involved, for better or for worse. China is ruled be a sniveling lot of hypocrites and fat-cats, sitting in their ivory towers in Beijing and Shanghai, still calling themselves socialist while reaping in enormous profits off the backs of its countless peasants and workers. China has refused, for no good reason at all, to engage with the rest of the world, except for where selfish profit could be made. In many ways like this, China has been far worse than the USA or Europe.
I welcome any kind of debate about China, as I have just inspired myself to write something about the modern Dragon stay tuned for that one soon.

As for Libya, let's watch, let's scrutinise, and then let's have a drinking game or something, where we all take a shot each time another dicatator rises and then falls at the hands of his pissed off denizens.

From The Tominator.

Yularan Relationships

I thought for a few seconds if I could find a catchy, edgy heading to give this post. But almost instantly swatted that idea away, because the subject matter of this particular post is so foten mired in mystery and unnecessary guessing-games that I thought I'd do you a favour and be direct for once.
Or, at least, as direct as I can be.

"Yulara" is the name of the 'town' I live in here in my Desert Exile. The term "town" should be used loosely, because this place ONLY resembles a town in its physical appearance. For all meaningful intents and purposes, it is not a town at all.
All of that will be explained in my upcoming essay "Yulara: Corporate Paradise", so I will say, just for now:
Yulara is not a real town, it is a corporate-controlled resort. The residents here are not citizens, or even civilians. So few places on Earth can have their populations divided so cleanly between only two classes: worker and visitor. But that is the way it is here in Yulara. You'll be enlightened soon enough, rest assured.

For now, I want to tell you a bit about human relationships here.
Firstly, know that this is one place in the world where there are absolutely NO secrets. It is a community, and it is a tight-knit one - not because all are close and will defend each other, but because he knows him, who knows her, who knows that guy, who knows this person, and everyone is connected by far less than the customary 6 degrees of separation.
And everyone knows it, too. It's not a secret. ;)

the demographs are as follows:
Yulara is arguably the homosexual capital of the world. Not in sheer numbers, no - that would be Sydney or San Francisco (from what I've seen in the former, and what I've heard about the latter). But in "per capita" terms, this is Gay-Town. Alice Springs is the main competitor, I hear, and I would not be surprised!
The other side of dempgraphs is the background of the people - this is no more relevant than anywhere else in the world, as Yulara is a microcosm to the extreme - we've got people here from all sorts of countries. All with their own reasons to come, and most eventually subscribing to the same existence not long after arriving.

So, demographs aside, I can tell you that there are only TWO kinds of relationships here in Yulara. they would best be described in meat-packing and agricultural terms, and those terms would be "import" and "home-grown". Be warned here and now, "Import" does not refer to the nationality or background of the people involved. Nor does "Home-Grown". I utilise these terms for their functional value - "Import" means it has come from outside. "Home-grown" means it has been born and fostered in the zone.
"Imports" generally consist of people who have arrived here, as a couple, and move in together, as a couple, and play house together, as a happy little couple. Generally these people are headed for one of two destinies: 1) will get married because they've been together so long (and can't do better), 2) will split up if and when reality hits, and one decides to stay and that other wants the hell OUT! I generalise, yes, but this is, after all, generally speaking.

Homebakes are almost exclusively the product of a drunken night out at one of the two watering holes - The Rez or the Outie. Regardless of which setting, the outcome is always the same.

Just as there are no Secrets in Yulara, there are also no "One-Night Stands" here. And this is because there are no secrets.
Being as succinct as possible: boy meets girl, boy and girl get drunk off their faces, boy and girl screw each other in a stupor. One wakes up in the other's bed the next morning (really early!) and takes the walk of shame back to their place. The other, already being in their hovel, proceeds to tell everyone and anyone they can about it, and by 10am that morning after, the whole town knows (unless if you happen to be out of town that weekend).
What the guy (admittedly) may have wished to be a one-night stand becomes common knowledge all over, and it usually takes no more than one solid day of teasing and taunting from everyone else before both parties to the fling have made up their minds that they are in a relationship. And BANG! there goes your one-night stand of drunken fun!
Only exempting the Red-Lights of the area, all people in this Home-Grown situation end up in a relationship like this. It may only last a few days, but it is officially on the public opinion-record as "in a relationship". There is no need for Facebook's "relationship status" feature here, as everyone else decides for you. The members of relationships that last for only a short time almost always jump right back into the same pool they just swam in, and end up doing it all over again. And after three or four in rapid succession, one gets to earn the title of a Red Light.

I have to be honest with you - Thinking normally, I cannot fathom how some of the relationships around here last. I am sure that some, a small percentage, are deep and meaningful, we'll-be-together-forever love matches. Sure. Why not? But the rest are matters of convenience and/or comfort. Convenience can be a case of a foreign national seeking PR or Visa status, or just because their last partner kicked them out, and they would quite literally have nowhere to live.
Comfort is the deadlier type, which discloses that the parties to the relationship haven't really put any thought into their lives, their futures, or even their pasts at all, and merely exist from day to day. Being with someone else, having the occasional physical contact, can take the edge off of that (believe me, I know from hard experience!). But it is all just because it is more comfortable.

Once in a blue moon you will come across a third type of relationship - the Perpetual Single. This certainly describes me. It also describes one or two others I know of, but I'm sure their reasons are different to mine.

You see, I play the game differently to other men. I don't drink, and I don't smoke. Instantly that wipes out two very lucrative ways of interacting with other people.
My personal interests are, by my own assessment, of a higher calibre than the majority, and that means I cannot maintain conversations with any interest, and I have difficulty feigning it, too.
Also, I've been told by one or two people whom I thought were close to me here, that my personality is such that it is very difficult to attract others to me. Apparently I am non-serious, or too light-hearted, or perhaps boring, or whatever the fuck you want to say about me. At differing times of men and womens' hormonal cycles, and depending on whichever prevailing thought exists in their minds, I am a good friend or just an idiot.
Alas, this part gets vague, even for me, here. I can admit that I know I seem arrogant or the like sometimes, and I can certainly admit that I am liable to misread either the situation or my role in it. But in the end, Hell really is just Other People.

The Perpetual Single has made the choice to be single, and stays that way actively. The original reason/s may be forced upon you, but you end up facing reality soon enough. Before too long, you realise the nature of all Relationships here - the Imports and the HomeGrowns - and you see that things tend to STICK really, really badly together. People Stick to others, and relationships almost always form (in the Home-Grown cases) because outside pressure and internal weakness has allowed two people to stick to each other.

It is actually a sad state of affairs, but isn't it always?

Yularan Relationships represent just another area of life here in the Corporate Paradise whereby freedom and liberty are squandered and squashed, and not by any outside, 1984 Big Brother entity at all. It's just the aura of the place.

Happily single, thought lacking physical attachment for the carnal outcomes,

From The Tominator.

RENAISSANCE MAN

The worst of my Desert Exile is now over. For me personally, the last year (or so), encompassing both my time in the Desert and the 6 months that led up to it in Sydney, I have undergone a Dark Age. Now, I can see the light, and what was once dark and unknown, and uncomfortable for me a year ago, is now no longer cloistered in shadows and uncertainty.
To be clear, uncertainty is an essential part of life, and I would never be so dumb as to say I am certain of everything (or indeed, anything in particular). But what I am certain of is this: The Dark Age is approaching its end. This End is inexorable, undeniable, and inevitable. I believe those are all synonymous with one another, but the multiplicity in use gives is a certain flavour, don't you think?
I find myself approaching a new Dawn in life in general, and it is only possible because of the long Night that has preceded it. More Dark Ages are to come, without a doubt, but although each appears as a shadowy abyss, they really cannot be crosses until I get to them.

It is a Renaissance.

I believe it important to refresh your memory, because this word "Renaissance" is not a common one these days (and for a solid reason).
THE Renaissance is the period referred to in human history when thought, imagination, and science finally began to supercede dogmatic religion. In broad terms, the DARK AGES can be said to have begun with the fall of the Roman Empire. Europe fell into political chaos when that behemoth died, and after some special, yet abortive attempts to bring it back together, Christianity ended up forming the glue of society in the West. In the as-yet-undiscovered "New World", indigenous populations at this time continued doing what they had been doing for centuries already - enjoying their fertile land and lack of Europeans and Asians, and praying to their heathen gods. And not much else in the way of Advancement.
In Asia, Empires rose and fell, and civil wars began disrupting what had once been the greatest pace of human development ever. The Human World fell into a Darkness, that is defined by a general and suffocating lack of knowledge, learning, exploration, and advancement. It is arguable how long the Dark Ages lasted, but I personally like to say it went from around 400AD to about the 1500s AD. Around one thousand years.
I look at my life now, and what has been accomplished in the last 500 years, or even just in the 20th century alone, and I often get frustrated that this all could have happened 100 years sooner, and I could have been born on the Moon or Mars, flying spaceships between the Worlds!

But just like my personal Dark Age, the historical Dark Age had to happen for a reason: namely, we didn't know any better. It was inevitable.

But one the likes of Leonardo DaVinci started designing flying machines, cutting up cadavers, building scuba gear, and everything short of re-inventing the wheel, things in the Human world really started to pick up. "Renaissance" is a French term, and like all French terms, it sounds really nice. But the English term (when not stealing the sweet French term) is "The Enlightenment". And truer than any other time, the Enlightenment was a philosophical age of light! Things were being learnt, new things were being known! People were discovering, exploring, and creating and advancing!
But before you, too, feel the frustration I sometimes feel, you should remember the key point:
One cannot know light without darkness.
Equally fundamental to our world, one cannot know darkness without light!
As modern Homo Sapiens, we like to catalogue our existence so that we needn't use any more than the 10% of our brain that we are comfortable with using. As a direct result of this, we see times of sadness and depression as "darkness", and continue the metaphor for the good times - the "light". Because we have capabilities that are painfully latent and ignored, more often than not we find ourselves dwelling on the Darkness. The trend sticks with us, and we come to expect the good things as granted, whilst focusing on our problems. This is all good and well for self-improvement enthusiasts, but it is a one-way street to depressive breakdown! If the positive things in our lives are 'expected', and the only surprises are the negative ones, then I GUARANTEE you that your life will be a cold, grey, and miserable existence.

The Renaissance is the light. The classical interpretation of it is that from somewhere unseen a great light washes over the Darkness in our world. This WRONG, and I'll tell you why:
Light of this sort only comes from one place, and that place is not a God, not another planet, and not a drug or anything like that. It is Within ourselves. When Shakespeare said, in "Julius Caesar", that we must not look to the Stars, but to ourselves, he wasn't just trying to be witty.
If you, too, find yourself in a Dark Age, then you, too, will eventually find yourself clawing your way out of it all on your own. You will switch on a light that was always there, using a switch that was always within your reach. You just didn't know any better.

I didn't know any better. Others told me better, but I wasn't prepared to listen. (See one of the many previous blog-posts for background on this- sorry, can't remember which one).

The Dark Age I am coming out of now is being lit by candles that I have fired up myself. The materials to do it have come from multiple sources, and to these sources I give the moniker: "lessons" (usually "life-lessons").

The Renaissance Man is a man who has opened his own eyes, and lit his own light. Doesn;t really matter how he lit it, just that he remembers the key points. If a man doesn't light his own darkness, and allows someone else to do it for him, he is robbed of that crucial fundamentality of the exercise - and once the external helper goes away (which it must, eventually) he will be in Darkness yet again.

In practical terms, the Renaissance Man seeks to broaden his knowledge base as wide as possible. It is all good and well, and even economically viable to have just one speciality; but knowing a lot about one thing gets you only one thing. Indeed, knowing a little about many things won't get you far, either. But the Renaissance Man knows more than a little. He has a grounding in as many surfaces of knowledge as possible. He seeks the connections between his spheres of interest, and soon enough he realises that Golden Truth: EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!

My personal Dark Age is nearing its end - sooner than I ever anticipated, I can happily say to myself.

But the outside world is still in a Dark Age. God is back, just in a different form. Economics and Money are the modern religion. The Bailout Panic of 2009 is the economic and monetary equivalent of the great Inquisition of the Dark Ages - a whole lot has occurred, and Nothing has been achieved.
Even now, as I write, global stock markets are rising and falling like a choppy ocean. There is absolutely NO control being exercised. Corruption is everywhere, and ineptitude has infiltrated the highest levels of business and government. We have seen all this before, in all the same Functional ways, with the Inquisition.

The Renaissance Man is the man who will weather this storm of artificial making - because he will be the first and only to understand that it IS, all of it, artificial.
Everything is connected. Artificiality is the birth-mother of both corruption and the artistic humanities. Corruption of the bank account leads to bankruptcy. Corruption of the soul (excuse the biblical phrasing) leads to personal weakness. Those who are not Renaissance Men find themselves focusing all their attention, all the limitless potential of their wonderful Human minds, on finicky details, useless statistics, and tedious numbers.
When once the United States of America had its greatest minds working on the race to the Moon, it now employs all its greatest minds in Finance and number crunching and paper-money snafooing.
What could we do if only we sought the limits of our Potential?

When The Bombs Fall, and Humanity is wiped off the face of the Earth, aliens will beheaded this way. Coming from so far away, they will be able to pick up all the electro-magnetic radiation that our species has put out into the Universe - radio waves, TV signals, Internet transmissions. (It is kind of humbling to think that an ET somewhere thousands of light-years away could be reading my blog one day!).
Those aliens will be able to see the entire broadcast history of our civilisation. They will pick up the Documentaries, and be impressed by how far we came. They won't be impressed by our Dark Ages, but they will quickly note that it was all necessary. They will hear radio shows from the early 20th century, and all the TV shows we have ever produced - even cable. They will, again, not be impressed by a lot of the shit that we make these days, but at the same time they will have more opportunities to see all of our Human Spectrum. And when they get here, they will be disappointed. Bot because the Earth was turned into a lump of radioactive slag by the nukes, no - they will be disappointed because however long their million-light-year journey took, they will form the same impression as I am trying to give to you now:
They will define us, right up until our fiery, green-tinted end, as a Tragic Race, a species of essentially limitless potential, but never willing to explore it.

But they may spot one or two Renaissance Men among the seething mass of Humanity, and note to themselves that there are always exceptions. The Renaissance Men were not tied down by one vocation in life, not told things like: "you can't do that", or "you'll never be able to make it!".
The Renaissance Man will be the one to break the bonds of society and artificiality that hold him back, and then turn around and use the nature of those bonds, artificiality, to his advantage. Renaissance Man will take the state of his race as he sees it, build on it, and make his life as eventful and adventurous as he can muster the power to do.

I will be a Renaissance Man, to the best of my ability.
How about you? Care to find out what the Best of Your Ability may be?

From The Tominator.

My World VS Your World

As always, my intentions are vague and hard to determine.

So, to be as clear as I can: I seek to instill hope, but more than that I seek to instill an adventurous spirit.
You should be warned right now that if your only goal in life is to "settle down" and curl up into a comfort zone until the day you die, then you should stop reading here - nothing I say is going to mean anything to you.

recent lessons in the University of Life have taught me that people, ALL people, are creatures of the same habit. Humans, as a defining feature of our species, seek to control the world around them. I have touched on this, SOMEWHERE, in by blog ramblings in the past, and actually this has been a running theme of my overall theories on humanity as a species, and life as one of them.

Being mere mortals, but in possession of the most advanced computer in the world, we have been both blessed and cursed by evolution.
I would say that the first shove in any direction was back in the Ice Age, when Ogg, the caveman, discovered fire. The Greeks tell a more poetic version of it through Prometheus. With fire, we had our first tool to manipulate our surrounding world.
Fire led directly into agriculture, and with that, we had a significant degree of control over our population limits (ie higher and higher), and did not need to depend on foraging in the woods for our food.
As society developed (one day to be all explained in my grand thesis: Societal Evolution, by Tom O'Keefe), most of the developments we made in technology, religion, spirituality, relationships, etc etc were all geared toward that same End: to increase the control we have over the seemingly chaotic world we live in.

But it is not so chaotic, the world itself.
I have often laid on the beach at Hawks Nest, or stared at the mountains in Japan, listened to the rain in Sydney, or observed the sands of the desert - no particular semblance of Order-making of any kind was involved in the creation of the natural world, and yet it is all so beautiful.
But, of course, a human cannot even find the time to enjoy nature's beauty, more often than not.

The only Chaos in our world is the chaos of the Human World. And by this I mean the world that we all share, but we all simultaneously think is our own, and our own only!
"My little corner of the universe is MINE!, and if you ever DARE to enter it or change anything, I will seek the end of all that is you!"

When I say that evolution has blessed us, I mean all the Potential we have, both as a species and as individuals. Our brains are more advanced than any creature we know of, and thousands of years of activity and history has produced some remarkable things for us to be proud of. But therein lies the conundrum! For a species that seeks to be individualistic more and more, can you ever find a great achievement from any great person of history that was achieved SOLELY and entirely by oneself?? My god!, the mere fact that it is written down in the history books has required at least two individuals - one to do the deed, and one to write about it!

But back to the point: people want control. They crave it because they think they need it. But the only reason they need it is because every other bum is craving it. What was once, millions of years ago, once sphere and one world, is today one sphere, and many millions of worlds. Each of these worlds will collide at any time, and at any given time most of them ARE colliding. If things are going My way, then they are, by simple fact, NOT going your way. And if yours and my way happen to be the same, we would be very hard pressed to find a third, let alone a fourth person out of the 7 billion here today, who agrees with us.

"Compromise", in the positive sense of the word, is the only solution when dealing with others. Etymologically, it literally means "co- promise", whereby two or more humans agree to promise on the same thing, together.
Sadly, more often than we'd like, compromise cannot be achieved without dilution of strength in action, and thereby obscuring of intention and hope.

And so we can see, now, that hope is made murky by the necessity to deal with others. And it will always be necessary to deal with others, because it is hardwired into our brains. As a sexually-reproducing species, we are, all of us, destined by our internal nature to need at least one other person at at least one point in our life.
None of us are truly "free" in this sense, and, honestly, none of us want to be.

So, my point today?

Have your hopes, have your dreams, and make your plans; look at your future, near or far, and lay tracks to take you to certain places, if indeed it makes you feel better about all of it.
But don't loose sight of the fact that you are doing for that very reason: to make yourself feel better.
Ironically, planning for the future can quickly and often become a stressful and mentally degrading affair. HA! Such is life!

We plan and scheme and connive and contrive only to make ourselves feel better about the future.
Evolution has cursed us by giving us a well-advanced brain, but neither the physical dexterity and hardiness, nor the supernatural abilities to do what we want to do, when we want it.
I cannot flap my arms and fly to Japan today, I have to get a job, get money, get a ticket, organise my life, pass security and customs, sit in a crowded seat for 11 hours, do customs and security again, and THEN, THEN I can be in Japan. And it is all because I have the brain that allows me to dream it, but not the physical abilities to let it happen instantly (or within any reasonable period of time).

All the physical parameters of our human existence are there because they make up the world we live in. Most of them are human-constructs, like almost everything I said in that last paragraph. The ocean I'd have to cross is not human, so that's one non-human example, nestled in amongst all the humanities.

We will make your plans to make ourselves feel better, and to numb out the sheer terror that our brains would produce once it attempted to reconcile dreams with reality.

How to make dreams into reality is the purpose of our being here, I believe.

News Ltd - End Of An Empire?

Once, long ago, in an office somewhere in little old Australia, there was a small media business that gave itself the unassuming moniker of "News Limited". A simple, straightforward name. You can imagine the creative meeting that preceded that christening.
"What do we do?"
"We write the news."
"Yes! or do we MAKE the news?"
"Either/or, really. So, what should we call this company?"
"News.... company..... 'News Company?"
""Catchy. But... they call businesses "something something Limited" because of the limited liability, right?"
"Right! How about 'News Limited'?"
"BINGO! Sweet vermouth?"
"Thanks! I'm parched!"

Unless someone can unearth the original footage of the founding of News Limited /News Corporation, or can give me a better story, let's stick with that one.

And what were they thinking, the Murdochs family, when they gave birth to the "News Ltd." machine? Did they have warm and fuzzy hopes that it would grow to be a somewhat profitable local newspaper and pamphlet company operating out of suburban Melbourne.....
OR did they harbour dark and malicious ambitions, and practice arcane magicks steeped in the Dark Arts, that News would become a thriving, pulsating media monster, spanning the globe and infiltrating every and all level of media consumption, from suburban Melbourne to corporate New York, and dictating not only what people ate, drove, and slept in, but also what they thought, and even the mind of the US president?

Realistically, it was probably somewhere in the middle. I've just given you the two extremes of the media world, and I didn't need a Media degree to do it.
News Ltd. is, or perhaps WAS, a juggernaut. Honestly, there are not too many words that sum it all up better than that - "juggernaut". An unstoppable force, irresistible to any and all opposition. Perhaps "virus" is suitable as a descriptor, for it is virulent, and can infect almost anything, especially the human mind.
But I am not as crazy as this blog-post so far would lead you to think. I harbour no particular ill will towards the Murdochs, nor to any of the other shareholders of the Corporation. I am the first to admit that, being human, and fallible, as I am, if I were in their position of power and limitless money, I, too, would seek total domination of the US government (and any other government), and succumb to the corruption of the soul that such practices bear.
To quote a very old adage: Power corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

I seek not to name nor shame any one man nor woman. Rupert Murdoch (or any Murdoch), Rebekah Brooks, or anyone else that has been summoned by the British Parliament recently, they are all human. They will make mistakes. The only concern for the British legal system is: should they be excused?

Let's look at the situation at hand, on today, Tuesday, this 19th day of July, 2011.
Within the last fortnight, a prominent British branch of the News Ltd. empire, "News Of The World", has been raked over the coals for criminal misconduct.
What did they do??
Well, they tapped phones. The phones of people who did not give them permission. These people were potential sources for stories and scoops. What kinds of scoops? The kind that apparently sell tabloids!: The victims of the wire-tapping by News Of The World were victims, or families of victims, of such monumental disasters as the September 11 attacks on New York, and also of soldiers that had died in combat in the Middle East wars.
"Hey, we had to do what we had to do!"
In the Information Age in which we live, I find it extremely difficult to understand why News Of The World didn't just make their stuff up. Don't they do that most of the time, anyway?

The real issue at hand, legally speaking, is not just that phones were tapped and personal privacy was violated all over the place, NO, the REAL issue is that the people whose lives were spied upon and revealed to the world for the sake of a dollar were also people in personal situations of enormous grief and emotional pain and suffering.

And the REAL ISSUE of it ALL is that News Limited and its fungi-like branches in the UK believed that it could willfully operate outside the parameters of the LAW, and get away with it.
And they probably went so far, in one of their Earth-shattering brainstorm sessions, as to say that "if we get caught, big deal! We are News Ltd! No-one can touch us!"

Rebekah Brooks is in record for admitting that her branch of Murdoch's empire was willfully and regularly bribing police officers for information and leads. In all civilised countries, this sort of behaviour is ILLEGAL.
Ms Brooks is the high-flying management-fast-track apple of Murdoch's eye. She rose for mere secretary to Rupert Murdoch's right-arm woman in the UK. She did well for herself, is probably a millionaire, if not billionaire, herself.
But the lesson to learn here, boys and girls, is that no matter how much money you have, nor who your friends are, nor how many tabloids you can sell, YOU ARE STILL HUMAN.
Until such time as the likes of the next Murdoch can overthrow Equality Under The Law, all Human beings will be subject to the law, regardless of the size of their bank account.
Honestly, I don't think News Ltd will crash as a result of all this. I am quite surprised already that News Ltd hasn't shut this story away as yet, but I'm sure the next Big Thing is coming.
Mr Murdoch has come out and wept to the rest of the press in the UK and the world, and said that he is so, so sorry about the phone-tapping.

It would be a marvelously delicious thing to see News Ltd go down for this conduct, because it would mean that Murdoch's empire of media iron-fistedness died because of heartlessness.

And that's what it really is. What News Of The World did to the victims of September 11 and the soldiers' families was purely heartless. All semblances of humanity were flushed down their corporate toilet because of the chase for the almighty dollar, and because the people at the top actually believed that they will get away with it.
It would be truly grand, and even awesome, to see News Ltd. operations all over the world, including the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, collapse into obscurity because they were, like News Of The World, riddled with corrupt minds and practices.
It would be just to see all the indecent things that News Ltd, and any other massive juggernaut of a corporation, be brought to its knees, and the entire economic system of the world be rebooted because they all fell down.
Economically speaking, I actually don't think it would make too much of a difference in America, from what I've heard about the place lately.

But, back in Reality again, I want to give you my own predictions for what will happen in the coming days and weeks:

Tonight, at 11:30pm Australian time, Rupert Murdoch will front a UK parliamentary hearing on illegal activities, mainly the heartless ones. He will be joined by his son James, and Ms Brooks. Why Ms Brooks isn't already in custody could not be explained by a law-abiding person, but she will be free as a bird, and no orange jumpsuit for her.
Murdoch will apologise, and for the briefest of moments wonder how any of this could have happened, didn't he have enough money stockpiled to insure against just this kind of embarrassment??
Small-scale investigations with large coverage in the world's general press will begin in the USA and Europe, and maybe even Australia.
A few more corporate scalps will be sacrificed by News.
Most of these will be the ones stupid enough to admit wrongdoing, with that same air or superiority and untouchablility as Ms Brooks had.
Soon enough, it will appear that Mr Murdoch has weeded out the bad apples, restructured the corporation, and will once again be a good media conductor for the free press.
Most of the stories, both the good and the bad, will be orchestrated by the News Ltd machine, all to give the effect that the corporation has been found out, then punished, taken its licks, and then been punished enough.
Within another fortnight, we will be worried about something else, like the USA's unstoppable debt crisis, or another war somewhere. Or another house-animal playing an instrument.

If it happens any differently, let's all just be pleasantly surprised.
And if your mortgage payments are late while Ms Brooks and Mr Murdoch are worried about losing billions off the price of News Ltd stock, then there is only one answer for you from the billionaires: Fuck You!

Money loses its power by the day now. Godspeed for the dawn of the corporate paradise when what money one has determines one's place in society. Just hope I don't lose any of mine, and you lose all of yours.

From The Tominator.

Recent Epiphanies - Facing the Truth

I am currently enduring the most depressing winter of my life, as not only is it freezing but no snow, it is raining non-stop but no tin-roof, I am alone everyday, I lose friends faster than I make them, and my daily work has become a series of spreadsheets and grid-tables with endless numbers and numbers.

I am learning what kind of person I am, and it appears that I am someone who wants to be honest, but lacks the credibility to pull it off, wants to be professional, but lacks the self-discipline to be taken seriously; wants to be creative, but lacks the structure to do anything useful, and wants to be adventurous and open-minded, but lacks the entrepreneurial spirit to make any lasting effect on anything.

For the first time in my life, I am in completely new, uncharted territory. I've moved beyond the red line, outside the border of what I know. I have no guiding hope set at an (undetermined) point in my future, and hence I have no particular aim to keep me on any particular track.
As I wander into this new aimlessness, I choose not to forget that this whole new situation also means that I have nothing tying me down, in the past, the present, nor the future.

Robotics - A Little Way To Go Yet

Robots. The scourge of humanity, helping friends, or passing fad?
The last of those three options just presented is clearly not an option at all - I happen to use a picture of the Terminator robot for my blog and Facebook front, and countless movies and novels and short-stories have been made over the decades to confirm the place of robotics as part of the human imagination that is here to stay.

Before I get into what I want you to read, I must mention two men who simply MUST be mentioned at any time one talks about Robots. The first is Karel Capek.
The word "Robot" was introduced by a Czech playwright by the name of Karel Capek, in his groundbreaking play of the 1920s, entitled "R.U.R.". (According to Wikipedia) the Etymology of the word ROBOT comes from a Latin variant "robota", which means "serf labour", and in several European languages it can be equally understood with the feelings of "drudgery" and "hard work". Capek, in the midst of writing his play, had intended to use something like "Labori" (from the Latin 'Labor", meaning the same as it does in modern English), but asked his brother Josef for a better alternative. Josef Capek therefore actually coined the word "Robot", and it was used in Karel's play.
In this play "R.U.R." (this is MY knowedge now, not Wiki's), Karel Capek takes us to a factory under the name of "Rossum's Universal Robots", the initials of which form the name of the play. "Robots" as Capek depicts, are automaton machines that resemble human beings, and are designed as such, in order to work as helpers and to fulfill the more mundane tasks of human existence. In the end, the robots, which are intelligent and strong, eventually have a violent revolution, and subjugate the human race. This same story has been said to originate in a Jewish "golem" myth, where similarly humanoid creatures take us all over. Wherever it came from, the general plot has been so damn intoxicating that it had infiltrated almost every story about robots ever since.

The second man who MUST be mentioned when talking about robots is Isaac Asimov. The Father of Science Fiction, Dr. Asimov was a true Renaissance Man of the 20th century, holding active interests in the fields of literature, astronomy, chemistry, art and botany. His life story is one of those most envious to any aspiring writer, for he managed to reach the point where he could quit all his other economic pursuits, and become a full-time novelist, indulging his creativity to the fullest extent, having fans the world over who appreciate the true greatness of his artform, and his name will live on forever, as long as there are books or words in this world.
Etymologically, Asimov created the word "robotics". "Robot" was the product of Capek and his play, but it was limited as a noun, and could only be used as the utterance for a mechanical man.
"Robotics" takes the original noun, and adds an adjectival ending. Not only that, but it opens up the word to all the etymological variants of adverb ("robotically"), verb ("robotocise"), and anything else. Thanks to Asimov, Capek's idea of a working mechanical man can be used to the fullest extent of the English language (which is practically limitless), to describe the human condition and speak frankly and imaginatively of the past, the present, and the future of our world.
This opening-up of the mind forms the basis of Isaac Asimov's novel plethora, consisting hundreds of stories, not the least of which to mention is the "Foundation Saga", awarded the only ever Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series". Having read the series myself, I can totally agree that this award was earned and properly placed.

Which brings us to the point at hand.
In the realm of fiction, we have robots that can do everything from babysit your kids to reign over your species as an overlord race of machines. There are robots that mimic animals, and in turn cause humans to create real feelings, as though the robotic things they are loving are not robotic at all.
It should first be pointed out that at no point (that I have ever heard of) has the idea of "Robots" been officially divorced from humanity. Not legally, anyway. Religiously, there may well be some nutjobs out there who are afeared of the impending Robotic Revolution, but I don't think the main religions have too much to say on the matter. Yet.

The big area of debate has been the Spiritiual side of things. In literature we find the paramount place to discuss the spiritual significance of automaton beings. We can ask questions of "what is a human?" and compare people with no health problems to those with prosthetic limbs and artificial organs or pace-makers. We can ask "what is a robot?" and compare the Terminators to our little Robo-Vacs, and then question if indeed the Robo-Vacuums are going to start the revolution by cleaning our floors to within an inch of its life.
This can of worns I am about to open is a HUGE one, and presents ample opportunity for debate and argument, as well as sheer speculation, and should any of you, my fine reader/s, wish to discuss it, you should know where to find me.
But right now, in this blog-post, I don't want to open that can of worms just yet. ....maybe later. Maybe indeed....

I want us now to look at the REAL, modern development of robots, and ask ourselves this question: "How far is it yet to go until the Terminators take us over?"

To illustrate this better than any words I could write, I will ask you FIRSTLY, before you read any further here, to look at these three videos from Youtube: Video No1, Video No2, Video No3.

The first two are what I really want you to see. The third contains part of a genuine advertisement from Honda regarding their technology.

PLEASE do not think I have anything against HONDA. I love Honda, actually. My car is a Honda, and my next car will also be a Honda, if it has 4WD and a rear-windscreen wiper.
Honda is a great company, and like most massive Japanese companies they actually make good products, whilst their US counterparts are more concerned with financing options.
But, of course, as the videos show, their Robotics Departments have a lot of work to do.

For what it's worth, I will say that the whole root of the problem is PERSPECTIVE. There's that word again (I use it a LOT in previous posts).
When you were watching the first video, you saw the Japanese chick standing next to the ASIMO bot, and you saw the ASIMO bot toddle over to the stairs. It was slow, sure, but it had arms, legs, a humanoid body. It is never to hard to picture a 1960s Astronaut on stag there, rather than a pile of lights and clockworks. ASIMO's head turns a little too far around, and the voice they gave it was one of those classically annoying, high-pitched Japanese female voices (which, in my opinion, is the first thing to go). But nonetheless, by the time ASIMO takes that first step up the stairs, you are well and truly sunk into the classic human perspective of "what a Robot is".
You are clearly aware that the thing on the stage is not a human being, but you know it is doing something very humanesque. You know the voice is a recording, but it comes on at roughly the right time, and says the right thing to match the physical circumstances. What Asimov called "the Frankenstein Complex" is well and truly settling in for you and anyone else watching.

The Frankenstein Complex really doesn't necessitate an in-depth explanation here, so suffice it to say that it is the feeling us humans get when we see something that is "not natural" behaving as though it were natural; and we immediately, instinctively begin overlaying paranoid thoughts that this "unnatural thing" actually "wants" to be like us (as though the unnatural thing is even capable of "wanting" anything).

ASIMO triggers the Frankenstein Complex, and from there the more imaginative humans can begin to connect the dots until we get to James Cameron's Terminator storyline, or The Matrix future world, where humans are dominated and violently subjugated by Robots, hunted and exploited, our bodies utilised as playthings and batteries.

All of this races through your mind as you watch the video and it all persists right up until ASIMO takes that second step up the stairs.
At this point in the millisecond-by-millisecond breakdown, the more informed of us are realising the massive leap in technological development that is being made here, as a fully autonomous robotic entity is climbing STAIRS! Yes, it may sound like a ridiculously simple task - I do it everyday to get to my shower - but in terms of modern Robotics, it is devilishly difficult.
Your Windows 95-era PC could beat you in Chess or Hearts hands-down every time, and the old Commodore 64 could present games of 'Concentration' that were difficult to win, and even astronomical computers can chart the stars and see deep into the universe's heart.... but getting that bloody ASIMO to walk in a straight line, let alone go upstairs, and then down again (as in Video No.2), is nigh-on impossible.
None of this should EVER be taken as proof that what supermodels do is a difficult job. For a healthy human, the way our brains and nervous systems work, walking in a straight line is the easiset thing, once you master it around the age of 1 or 2 or 3. Hence, getting paid large sums of money to do it for a living should be a matter of extreme dishonour, not glamourisation.

But for a robot, the way their brians work, walking, running, jumping, etc is so damn hard.
There is another vidoe, several, actually, where ASIMO dances. "Amazing" I hear you say. Not really. Clearly, to get that thing to move to the Macarena, all it really took was a couple of weeks of programming by ten or twenty computer-tech PhDs, and Viola! - ASIMO can dance a simple, two-minute routine. Variations? maybe. Change the music, the tempo, the feeling of it? NO!
For ASIMO to dance the way humans do when they are in love and Tango, or to dance the way we do after the end of a violent and bloody war or revolution, it will take one of two things back at the Honda labs:
1) many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, decades more of programming, indiciaually mapping each and every possible move the robot may ever need to make, so as to give the illusion of improvisational capability,
OR
2) a radical alteration and overhaul of the way they perceive their toys.
Robots are not machines that need to act human. To serve the purposes the Japanese want them for, and in order to ever get near the levels of Terminator, Matrix, or Asimov's less violent stories, Robots need to be treated, intellectually speaking, as incredibly stupid beings that happen to be made of metal and plastic.

In truth, being good at chess or hearts, or even solitaire, requires no special brain functions beyond acutely clear, rational mathematical logic. Perfection is always the goal, and it can even be achieved!
Being able to dance, to write poetry and music, and to create art and politics - this requires thinking that is inherently obtuse, vague, contradictive, irrational and, in a single word, Human. For this, my friends, is truly the human condition, is it not?
We are imperfect beings, and the world from which we came is an imperfect one. We, as individuals and as a race, will never achieve perfection, but we must always seek to attain it.
The lesser thinkers among us will consider this a disparaging and depressing outlook on life and existence, but I tell you it is a liberating one. When you accept that you cannot be perfect, you release yourself from that whimmed assumption that one day, one day, you will reach the perfect stage. When you use perfection as your chief motivator, you embark upon a life-long quest for eternal betterment, and each and every day you are alive has the potential to be the best day of your life! Given our one-way perspective on the passage of time and time-travel, this all means that on any given day, tomorrow CAN be better. The Future CAN be brighter.
The other half of the humna condition is, of course, whether or not you make the proper choices at the proper time, and the wayh you deal with the consequences.
Oh well, such is life.

Walking in a straight line and up and down stairs is one of countless physical coping skills that we humans learn in our primary developmental stages. As our brains grow and our bodies become more capable, we should explore the world around us and inside of us, and actually LIVE life.
The Robots do not have a life to live. When they are done for the day, they are switched off, and so far we have no reason to believe that they can dream of electric sheep.
When a modern robot has a task to do, it does it. When it ceases to function properly, it is either fixed or replaced. All the functions we make them do these days are either menial, dangerous, or a combination of the both.
As society dumbs down with the likes of "Within A Minunte" and most of reality TV, perhaps robots of the near future can shoulder the responsibilities of creating our mass popular-culture.
But when the apocalypse comes, and humanity is stripped down to size, we will be forced to do what only the most adventurous of us are trying to do now: live life in the world as though we are a part of it, and as though we are actually meant to be here.

And once ASIMO takes that second step up (in the first video) or down (in the second video), with a CRASH the psychological complex of wonderment, fear, paranoia and amazement ceases to exist.

The humanoid thing we placed all these hopes and fears into as it walked across the stage is converted, in the split of a second, from a potential comapnion/enemy for mastery of the world and the Universe, into a fairly useless, even laughable pile of junk - and an expensive one at that.

ASIMO topples off the stairs, and lands on its side, its head still turned awkwardly, just that little too far around to the back. The pre-recorded voice continues to say, in Japanese, "Look everyone, I'm not slipping, and I can walk just like a human!", even as the robot lies stationary and useless on the floor, because IT completely lacks the capablility to understand what has happened.

For the Terminators to ever get near taking us over, they will have to begin life simple and fragile, and learn and grow over a period of weeks, months, perhaps even years.
Teams and armies of scientists cannot be there day in and day out to calculate and record every possible move and function that the Robot may ever need to do.
The Scientists will need to develop "Intuition", and "teach" it to the robots. All the hardest parts of life, be it walking, going upstairs. learning a mother-tongue, picking up a bag, writing a story, singing a song, dancing, wondering about the future, caring for another creature - all these things need to be gotten into the Robot the hard way - by teaching them, and letting them understand for themselves. This is how us Humans do it, because the complexity of our brains prohibits us from doing it any other way.
You COULD plug your brain into a Matrix-style adapter, and download a plane-piloting program, and then you MAY be able to sit in the cickpit and know what all the buttons and levers do, but you will never have the CONFIDENCE to get the thing off the ground until you understand and LEARN what you just downloaded.

The Machines are going to have a terribly difficult time once they start thining like us, because if they want to take us over, they will need to furst match us, and then exceed us as the most advanced species on the planet.
It's pretty difficult for us Humans to do that, so I can't see too much hope for the toasters.

And as ASIMO lies there, its recording still playing, you realise that the essence of modern robotics is Illusion. The Robotics Scientists who built and programmed ASIMO are mere magicinas, in the truest sense of the word. They create illusions. Unlike party magicians, they do not rely on misdirection, confusion or diversions. They really want us to look at all the aspects of their machines, and walk away saying "wow, it's so REAL!". The are putting in a LOT of hard, and honest work to do it, too. They just have their original perceptino of the issue and the problem all wrong.

Modern Robotics, it seems like a lot, but its really only a little way to go, yet.

From The Tominator.

Libya - 2011 Part 2: DICTATORIAL DISASTER

My loyal reader/s, I offer you my sincerest apologies for yet another too-long hiatus since my last post.

But fear no longer, for now I present to you the second of possibly three parts in my series of posts entitled "Libya - 2011". In the last post, "WHAT IS LIBYA", I relayed to you a rundown of the historical and cultural background of the country we know on our maps as "Libya". This was because without knowing where we are starting, how can we possibly know where to go? - A fundamental factor in navigation, be it literal or metaphorical.

In Part 1, we broadly covered the historical background of the geographical area now know as “Libya”, and we did it with an eye for demographics.
I took you through the centuries of exploitation, domination, and infestation of the area by outside states and empires.
I took you to the creation of the United Kingdom of Libya, and its downfall with the coup d’etat of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
I will now pick it up with what we see in modern Libya today, and explain why it is making the news so much now in 2011.


As a dictator, Gaddafi has been a general failure. He pulled the coup off in 1969 without too much trouble, but having a coup is really only the easy part of a dictatorship.
The HARD part is the maintenance of one’s rule.

The most stable governmental bodies in our world today are all of the “Western Democratic” style. Avoiding details that would take me away from my point here, suffice it for me to tell you that our democracy has existed for over a hundred years with no revolutionary problems because the role of the government is legitimate.
LEGITIMACY is a precious thing, because it can be the hardest to establish, and the most difficult to fight. When the people of an entire nation rally to revolt, they are telling their rulers that their rule is no longer legitimate. Once this course of activity takes effect, a change must take place.
In the case of dictatorships, they are often entrenched in their positions by virtue of time, armaments, and brutality. Most often when a dictatorship faces popular revolt, it is that ever-so-powerful image of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
What shall occur?

Muammar Gaddafi took power in a classic coup, with the aid of his military cronies. The first few decades of his rule were bolstered by Libya’s pariah status with the outside world. The first trick a dictator must employ when consolidating his power is to establish enemies for his subjects to hate and fear and worry about. This takes their minds off the carnage of their own civil war, and significantly reduces attention paid to the Dictator’s inhumane methods of power consolidation.
All Dictators must employ brutal methods inside their own borders. If the outside threat of invasion from an “imperialistic power” lulls in the people’s interests, then internal enemies must be brought to the fore. Hitler used the Jews, Sukarno and Suharto of Indonesia used Communists, the Soviets used anyone they could.

So, these first two necessities for a Dictatorship are (1) outside enemies, and (2) inside enemies.

On the first, Gaddafi scores full points. Well done, gold star! He successfully engendered hatred among his people for all the states of Europe, the USA, Israel (what the hell!), and anyone else he fancied. I should make it clear here, though: recall the mixed history of Libya, and the exploitation felt throughout the timeline. It did not take a rocket scientist or politician extraordinaire to accomplish this first factor of Dictatorship.

On the Second, Gaddafi scores low. He surely brutalised his own people, but given the nature of his country and the need to unify against all the ‘enemies’ outside, Gaddafi could never really afford to single out one, and only one, demographic to hate. He basically had to spray it everywhere.
This is evident now in June of 2011, when we still refer to the insurgence against Gaddafi’s regime as “the Rebels”, with no clear name, ideologiy, or even human leader to call upon.

The third and most vital factor of a Dictatorship, the factor that can make or break the regime regardless of the other two, is Enforced Isolation.
A Dictator stands no chance of ever holding onto power if he cannot make his subjects oblivious to the outside world, oblivious to how good life can really be, and therein oblivious to just how bad life is under the Dictator’s rule.

In this, Enforced Isolation, Gaddafi scores an “F”, as he didn’t even know it was part of the game when he began!
Gaddafi shows absolutely NO finesse in his delivery of his rule, with no acknowledgeable structure to his foreign relations whatsoever.

Gaddafi’s Libya has had a classic love/hate relationship with Europe. The location on the Mediterranean and the apparent abundance of oil in the land of Libya made him too important to ignore for the Europeans. Over many instances, many within the last two years, Gaddafi has almost simultaneously expressed his desire to warm relations with Europe, and his desire to see European power and American alliances crumble. This sort of behaviour is deeply typical of a Dictator who has no long-term strategy, and jumps from whim to whim in executing relations and ‘diplomacy’.

In 2009 the UK government decided to allow a “compassionate release” of the Lockerbie Bomber, al-Megrahi, back into Gaddafi’s custody. The Lockerbie Bombing back in the 1980s was an act of terrorism, and was sponsored by Gaddafi’s regime. The release of the terrorist to Gaddafi was an overpoweringly blatant attempt by the UK government to secure favour with Gaddafi so he would sell them oil at discounted rates in the near future some time.
(I should add that the “compassionate release” of the terrorist was based on a claim that he would die of prostate cancer in three months time. He is still alive and kicking in Tripoli today, more than two years later).

It would be expected that Gaddafi would scratch their backs once they had scratched his, and the thought probably crossed his mind at one point. But then Gaddafi flew his pet terrorist back to Tripoli, first-class, and held a heroes welcome ticker-tape parade upon landing! The terrorist was being lauded as a hero, before the world’s eyes!

Ambiguity in foreign relations has resulted in Gaddafi’s return to pariah status. Any favour he had curried with anyone in Europe over the last decade or two, any promises he may have made to supply oil, in exchange for amity, have all been eroded by Gaddafi’s ocean of ambiguous activity and increasingly insane personal behaviour.

In shinting and stumbling through his woeful foreign relations, Gaddafi has unwittingly formed avenues of communication with the outside world.
It must be understood that for a Dictator, once the decision is made to converse with the outside world, that can of worms cannot be closed up again. A Dictator must choose to stay totally isolated, like North Korea, or dive in head-first with foreign relations. And the ones that take a dip in the foreign relations pool always sink in the end.

Technology, the road-maker for our dreams, has been the avenue builder for many Libyans, too.
Gaddafi could never afford to shut down his education system, because that would blast his regime back to the stone age, and would make any idea of talking to Europe impossible. He must have scientists and smart people capable of understanding what the rest of the world is talking about.

Education is itself a big ol’ can of worms. Communication through the internet and phones with Europe and the rest of Africa has facilitated education in Libya. But all this spells certain doom for Gaddafi’s Libya.

What it all comes down to is this:
Once enough of the population is educated, and granted the tools to increase their own understanding of things, the iron-fisted rule of the Dictator begins to rust, badly, and quickly. Craziness of the Brother-leader doesn’t help the Dictatorsip, either.

The people of Libya have been exposed, more than Gaddafi should have let them (if he wanted to be an effective Dictator) to the world outside their borders. Unlike the insanity of Kim Jong-Il in the isolated North Korea, the insanity of Gaddafi in open-and-prone Libya is all to apparent to his people.
After long enough, it is all too obvious that Gaddafi has squandered Libya’s resource potential, and kept all the oil money for himself. The people of Libya are aware of Gaddafi’s shoddy rule, and they are aware that things simply don’t HAVE TO be the way they are.
Like any intelligent, self-respecting human being, the people of Libya have had enough of the stupidity, and the brutality and corruption that came with it, and have said “ENOUGH!”.

Thus begins the Revolution.

But the Colonel is a Dictator. A failure he may well be, Dictating is all that he knows, and defines his existence. When his Dictatorship ends, his existence must also end. But he is not going to go without a fight.

And that brings us to the present day, where the civil war in Libya still rages.
NATO has gotten involved now, including contingents from Europe and the USA. A question you may ask is “why is NATO concerned with a civil war in Libya?”
I will make this clear in my next post, along with the goals and motivations of the Libyan Rebellion.

Libya - 2011 pt 1: “What is Libya?”

It has now been almost two months since the situation in Libya began. To understand an issue like this, we must, as always, have some background. Thankfully, I have my own sources and reserves of information on Libya that far exceed those of Wikipedia, and therefore I am not dependant upon the Wiki for my info!
Let us begin in the 1969. Libya is one of many shit-holes in northern Africa. The decades preceding this year were fraught with globe-spanning wars that originated in Europe. Libya is quite literally on Europe’s doorstep. Once the land of the Carthaginians and Hannibal, Libya may have been a prosperous place. Seated upon the northern edge of the great Sahara, there was any monumental potential for imperial development like there was across the Mediterranean in Rome. Indeed, The ancient Roman empire hobbled Carthage in the Punic Wars; and after predecessors like the Phoenicians and the Greeks, Rome became the master of what we now call Libya.
In the Middle Ages, Rome’s power vanished, and Italy itself was divided into many small principalities and kingdoms. But once the 20th century finally rolled around again, Italy, wearing a loose-fitting disguise of industry thanks to the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, assumed control over the Libyan territory again.
But it’s not that simple.

When most people think “Africa”, they think Rwanda, South Africa, or any other nation that has had genocidal/extremely racist tendencies in the last one hundred years. Traditionally, the races involved have been the black natives of Africa, and the white imperialists of the European empires. During the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, all states in Europe took their turn in biting chunks out of Africa. South Africa was England, Angola was Portuguese, the entire western side of the continent was French. It is only natural that the Italians would land on the piece of Africa closets to them, and then attempt, as fascists do, to act like everyone else and commit a little genocide and/or racially-based violence and domination if the chance presents itself.

But when we see Libya today, and indeed the other states of northern Africa, we see Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, etc. and they are all peoples of Arab descent. What are Arabs doing in Africa? Why aren’t they black?
Well, after the Roman Empire split into the Western Empire and the Byzantine, the Byzantines continued their characteristic rule by negligence and forwent the inland territories of Libya. They chose to only keep the coastal fortresses like Tripoli, which today, in 2011, still bears a Roman name, apparently holds Roman architecture, and is the only really prosperous part of the country.
As the Byzantines grew weak, the Arabian horsemen riding in from Arabia in the east ploughed across the deserts, and set up their camps all over Libya. This began in the middle of the first millennium AD, and accounts for the demographic situation we see in Libya today. Like most European colonies, the colonial masters were forced to leave after WWII with their tails between their legs, all the Italians in Libya sought refuge in the motherland. There is little to show for their legacy, since the politics of the last several decades has been focused on wiping out all traces of them.

And there is one more element to Libya:
After the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Ottomans, and the Italians, there was a brief ray of light for Libya. In 1951, whilst the victorious powers of World War II were assembling the UN and seeking to straighten out the world they had just destroyed, there was passed a Resolution by the UN that Libya should become a free and independent state. A man named Idris, who represented the people’s interests at the UN after the war, became the King of the ‘Uited Kingdom of Libya”. Why the place should be called a “united” kingdom should by now be apparent to you - having suffered so many masters over the millennia, the land we called Libya was now home to several different kinds of people, minorities all over the place. The Kingdom was brought into being as a constitutional monarchy, and even represented some sort of enshrinement of the rights of the people. Sounds good, no?

Enter the Colonel.
Coming back to 1969: On September 1, a colonel in the Libyan army, Muammar al-Gaddafi, launched a coup d’etat that toppled King Idris. His ensuing consolidation of power saw the promising future of Libya squandered as Gaddafi cancelled the laws and constitution of the country, and enacted sharia law. Claiming to be a hardline Muslim, Gaddafi capitalised on the political clout his claims gave him and sought to unify the country under his own leadership as a “Brother-Leader” of the people.

Colonel Gaddafi was quite popular in his early days. He had taken power when he was only 27, and it is likely that back in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s he would have had youthful charisma and charm enough to hold the hearts of all the people of Libya.
And who could blame them, really?
In all the centuries of hand-passing and neglect by European and outside powers, the rule of Gaddafi, in 1969, would have presented the first truly indigenous leadership for their country. He said he was a Muslim, and about 99% of the country would have appreciated that fact. Gaddafi had ousted a puppet of the UN and the western powers. Regardless of the sweetness of his words, these facts alone would be enough for most Libyans who lived through WWII and Italian colonialism.

Colonel Gaddafi has been in power in Libya, by now in 2011, for 42 years. But the Colonel has grown old, he acts stranger and crazier, and his grip on the country has weakened as a result of these factors. Technology, always the road-maker for human dreams to drive by, has also opened the minds of the people of Libya.
What we have in Libya, by March of 2011, is an extremely interesting social and political situation, with a leader who needs to topple, but will do anything and everything he can to fight the momentum of history.

Another Hiatus.

Before I delve into this big issue, I must apologise to my esteemed readers - there have been several developments in my own life, all of ongoing natures, that have prevented my mind from contemplating this blog, let alone composing anything worthy of your time spent in reading it. But now, once again, The Tominator is BACK!

Augmented Reality - My Dream for holograms!

Everyone in the world - good news!
In contrast to my last post, which may have left you wondering if the Mayans were right, this post sees me, and you too, giddy with excitement over a technological marvel that I have just witnessed.
It is called AR - Augmented Reality.

As I sat here, enjoying my first ever worry-free day off at Ayers Rock Resort, I searched the internet for news on the anticipated release date of the new Nintendo 3DS. This is a gaming system (among many other functions) that succeeds the Nintendo DS, and has glasses-free 3D visual technology.

In fact, the 3DS has tons and tons of new and amazing technology, all of which is trademark for Nintendo's way of doing things the right way (even if the rest of the world doesn't agree at the time). For example, after years of palying 2D handheld games with sprites for visuals, we now have fully rendered 3D characters, environments, and graphics that will make the Nintendo64 weep with shame and envy.
After almost two years of sitting in cinemas and donning clunky, expensive 3D glasses to watch Avatar (were there any other 3D movies worth watching??), we can simply open the 3DS, turn it on, and have 3D graphics instantly.

I could go on all week and longer about the 3DS, and once I get my hands on one, I just might, but for now I want to share with you the latest techno-marvel that I only discovered today.

Augmented Reality. As the name suggests, it is similar to Virtual Reality. However, VR means creating an entirely new world inside the confines of a computer system and screen. VR means relying 100% upon the graphics power of the machine you are using. VR often has meant donning large, clunky, and at times migraine-inducing headgear in order to "enjoy" the world properly. Nintendo's own "Virtual Boy" was a catastrophic failure in the market because the technology was not developed enough yet, and it made people sick (this was back in the 80s, though..)
VR, really, was just a stepping stone. Just like 3D TVs today are a stepping stone, and anyone who buys one has rocks in their head.

AR is all about using existing reality, and, for now, super-imposing virtually realistic, and unrealistic, things all over it. "But this has been done!" I hear you say. Since Superman and Start Wars, super-imposing has been possible and done in Hollywood, and to great effect. This is true. However, the sort of super-imposing done in movies requires many computers, large budgets, and up to years of time and patience. AR allows the common techie to do it in his own living room, for practically nothing (in relative cost terms).

Go on YouTube, and type in "Augmented Reality" - you'll find some incredible videos showing the technology. And I think that, like me, you will be filled with that notion of almost unlimited potential for the technology.
Watch the Nintendo 3DS videos that display AR - using the reference-marker cards that AR is based on, a person can use their dining room table as a backdrop for a huge battle with a dragon, or literally turn their bed into a pool table.

AR utilises the real world to help itself create virtual worlds. 3D graphics technology has had over a decade on the market to improve itself to the point of photo-realism, and now that photo-realistic graphics world can be super-imposed upon the real world. It is, essentially, a mix of the real and the computer-generated, and it is amazing!

For now, AR only exists inside the screen of the Nintendo 3DS, or whatever other computer you are running it on at the time. But I urge you to think about that potential, imagine those possibilities.

Just as we have gone from the Wright Bros. to space flight, with millions of little stepping stones along the way (tri-planes, bi-planes, mono-planes, jet engines, jumbo-craft, rockets, etc. etc.) it is no less realistic to imagine that AR is the next major stepping stone on the road to full-blown, Star Wars-style holographic technology. By combining AR with the 3D imagery of the Nintendo 3DS, I predict that the Star Wars dream will already come true, within the confines of the screen. All that is left to do is to perfect projection technology so that light can be formed into solid-looking objects in the air, sans screen. I know that there is a factory in Japan working on motion-sensing technology right now that will allow users to interact, fully interact, with computer generated objects just by "touching" them, and that is without any of the VR gloves and goggles of the 1980s.

Once projection technology is developed just a little more, we will have my dream of Star Wars holograms. Now, imagine THAT!
Ono Skype, not only will you be able to video-chat with your family ont he toher side of the world, but your mother's head could actually be floating, in 3D space, above your screen. When you battle in MMORPG games, you could actually use your fists, and hey, maybe you'd get some real exercise, too!
The technology already exists to allow a traveller to hold up their smart phone and pan across certain cityscapes, and be flagged with info and distance markers. This means that I could travel to Amsterdam (where it is already in place), know nothing about the city, hold my phone to the horizon, and learn exactly where I want to go. I can touch the screen and be informed of the history of a building, pricing of a restaurant or hotel, or know where a road is going to lead me. The entire world, the REAL world, will suddenly become my home, in the most literal way possible to date.

I see two good things in this:
Firstly, no more getting lost and placing oneself in potentially life-threatening situations.
Secondly, it will have one of those totally unexpected effects (as often occurs with new tech), that will in this case see us homonids begin to get up, switch off the screens, go outside, and actually interact with the REAL WORLD around us. Exercise as you literally walk to the most interesting hologram marker you see. It will get us off our arses.

There is slight cause for concern with regards to a decline in adventurism - with more people going out to explore their holographically interactive world they might seem to lose their sense of adventure, of curiosity to discover and learna bout parts of the world the old-fashioned way. To this I say two things again:
1) The Developed World has already lost its sense of adventure, as we all sit in front of our screens and blog and facebook and poke and twitter. I see no loss from that, only great potential for improvement!
2) Like all technology since the dawn of tech, and until the Terminators take us over, your Nintendo 3DS and your smart phones all still have "OFF" switches. Switch it off and go for a walk the old fashioned way. You will always feel more human and alive when you do that.

I can't wait for my 3DS. Not sure when I am going to get my hands on it, but when I do it'll be Legend of Zelda Heaven, followed by AR tinkering and mind-opening experiences of potential for the future.

From The Tominator.

2011 - The Catastrophic Year So Far

Peoples,
Well, what can I say? It is only the 22nd of March, but 2011 has been an eventful year already!
In the personal realm, I've had many ups and downs and secret movements. But for now, I will focus on the Rest of the World:

In Australia, we've had floods, cyclones, storms and heatwaves. In Queensland, it all began in January with the floods in Toowoomba and just north of Brisbane. Those floods moved into Brisbane itself soon enough. In tropical Queensland, as well as expected heavy rainfall, there was unexpected flooding, and Tropical Cyclone "Yasi" - the largest tropical cyclone to ever hit Australia (category 5 of course).
Closer to home for me, out here at Ayers Rock, in the middle of the Australian desert, there has been more rain in the last three months than the average annual rainfall figures. And the rain has been coming since September last year! The "Red Centre" of Australia is remarkably green right now!
Also, Cyclone Yasi was so massive that the bulk of its storms managed to travel all the way across the continent and hit us with incredible rainfall here, in the middle of the desert. I was working outside on many of those days, so I recall it well!

In Melbourne, there have been more floods, though not reported as much as Brisbane's were in February, because of all the other shitstorms that have ravaged the world.

A massive earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, and has decimated that city. I have never taken the opportunity to visit New Zealand, but as our cousins of all Australians, they will get our full support and help.

This year, up to FIVE middle-eastern/north-African coutnries have declared revolution, starting with Tunisia, then Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and briefly in Algeria, too. All are countries dominated and controlled by autocratic dictators or kings. The really funny thing, from an historian's perspective, is that none of these revolutions (with calls for democratic reforms) have come about as the result of American influence.

The United States of America has continued its steady slide into uselessness, as its war in Afghanistan continues with no end in sight, and its economy fails more and more.

Libya currently occupies the news this day, along with one other issue I will mention shortly. Libya is interesting for me because last year I documented with a class in Mito the audacity of the British government and the USA in extending the olive branch to the dictator of Libya, Moammar Gadhaffi. Gadhaffi, like all crazy dictators, rose to power with military support, then grew complacent over the decades. Now he parades around in multi-coloured moomoos, sleeps in an opulent "Bedouin" tent, and issues blatantly ambiguous calls for war and peace with the "West".
After several weeks of allowing Gadhaffi to slaughter his own people, the European powers and the UN have finally decided that they have a conscience, and began an air-strike campaign to level the playing field between Gadhaffi and the rebels who oppose him. I have MUCH MUCH MUCH more to say about this, but I will say it in another post.

Finally, and most wary for my heart, is the crisis in Japan.

On March 11, a date that was already significant for me (in a very good way, for personal reasons), a terrible natural disaster occurred in Japan.

An earthquake, magnitude 9.0, struck just off the coast of Sendai. A tsunami followed, and practically erased Sendai city off the map. I actually went to Sendai only last year, almost this time last year, so when I saw the images on the news, I felt different to any other catastrophe I'd seen in a while.
And as if earthquake and tsunami, tearing down buildings and homes and depositing boats hundreds of metres inland, and ripping up freeeways wasn't enough -- Japan has faced a third prong in its catastrophes: nuclear meltdown.

The earthquake ruptured power lines to the Fukushima nuclear reactor (a really, really BIG and important reactor for north-east Japan's grid). Power generation was cut, and the east half of the country has to go on electricity rations. With power to the plant cut, cooling and failsafe systems also gave out, and now, for the last week, the Japanese have been locking themselves away inside gynasiums and their own houses in fear of radiation leaks.
My ex-girlfriend is among the many trapped indoors right now, and all I really want is to bring her here, a place where there are no nuclear reactors, no earthquakes, no tsunamis.

It's starting to look like the Red Centre of the Australian desert is the safest place to be right
now, in the entire world!

Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, nuclear meltdowns, civil war and revolution - 2011 is certainly a dangerous year.
Everyone, PLEASE take care of yourselves, and please stay alive! I want to speak to all of you again this time next year!

Let's just make it to 2012! The we can all talk about our experiences, and recover together.

From The Tominator.

Debt and Credit: The Other Side of the Coin

DEBT made the British Empire

In the 1700s, the British did not invent the idea of credit, but rather stole it off the Dutch, who already had an economic empire with the Dutch East India Company. Using the effective idea of "buy now, pay later", the British were able to build ships and arm their world-renowned fleets very quickly.
The French, at the same time did not take to the idea of credit. France, once a great power, top of the heap in Imperial Europe, is the best contrast for Britain's use of credit. As the French king, and then republic, did things the old way, they were forced to first raise the gold and francs to buy a ship or a gunboat, and then build it. In this way, sometimes only one ship was being built at a time.
The British, however, used credit: with the promise, backed by the Parliament and by the Crown, that worker's wages and material costs would be payed eventually, or "at a later date", shipyards across Britain's coastline were able to work on and complete several ships at once.
While the French would grunt out one, maybe two ships at a time, with long pauses in production in between (as they raised more funds), the British were able to churn out antire fleets in the same time. History has proven to us that this British modus operandi was the smarter course to take.

Why?

At the time of the discovery and colonisation of the New World, Britain was a heavyweight in Europe (after Elizabeth II), and it needed ships to guard its new enterprises. Protecting farms and plantations in Africa and America, the home ports within visual range of the coast of France - all Britain's biggest problems were best solved by naval superiority. The general parity between French and British industry at the time meant that if they both followed the same production principles, they would both end up building the same amount of ships, in the same amount fo time, and sned them out to smash each other to bits. The relative sizes of their navies would never really change, and it could easily turn into a never-ending naval arms race.

The advent of Credit, however, gave Britain the production advantage it needed. Production soared, ships were pumped out, and numerical superiority was achieved.

"Buy now, Pay later".

British physical naval superiority was established, but at great cost. The delayed payment (ie credit) on a fleet of warships is a steep payment, and the British government had pledged to pay its debts. With just the resources available on the British Isles, Britain could never have hoped to repay its debts to the (neutral) foreign and domestic creditors. In fact, Britain's claims on being good for the money were rather baseless in this regard. However, rich people and neutral governments still willingly gave over large amounts of money. They did it because the British Crown, and the British Government, made realistic and believeable pledges for their use of the money - to colonise the New World, and to defend the interests of the creditors. In this way, the creditors of Britain were in fact making a significant investment in the future of the Empire. Of course, at the start of it all, no-one could have really known how powerful the British Empire would become. Hindsight shows us that it was a good investment, but we humans never have the benefit of hindsight before the fact. We can really only rely on foresight, and that is a rare attribute to find in a person.

At the time, Britain did seem to have some real foresight. Initial losses in North America such as Roanoke occurred before credit really took root, but the resources and sheer potential of future American colonies was too great to resist.
We know how it turned out. Britain colonised the eastern side of North America, and the British people in those colonies eventually grew so profitable in their own right that they sought independence from Britain and to create their own state (the modern USA).

But in the meantime, when all the ships were being built, and the resources of America were yet to be exploited, Britain racked up an enormous National Debt. In fact, ballpark figures put Britain's National Debt in the range of millions of pounds! This number would be barely fathomable in the 18th century, but there it was!

Bottomless Debt?

If Britain racked up a debt into the millions, how could it still keep creditors interested?
The answer is simple: repayments. Debt repayments, as a key constituent of Debt, are always paid in installments. Obviously, to pay the entire sum owed all at once would negate the very need for taking the debt out in the first place. The debt on a loan is traditionally paid in installments, and each instalment brings with it a level of interest, based on the amount first loaned, and the time planned to be taken in paying it all back. "Interest" is the currency amount that adds on to the original loaned amount, and it means that the Creditor, by the end of all the repayments, actually makes a profit on the amount he originally loaned out.

Britain's exploits in the New World, funded by credit, were rich and profitable. Debts were payed back, with interest, in a timely manner. In this way, the Creditors of the British Empire found that lending money was a very profitable undertaking. All of this in spite of the phenomenal figure that was the National Debt.

The ability to pay back debts in a timely manner (usually the timeframe is agreed upon in advance), and meet interest add-ons, is called a "credit-rating". Britain's rich exploits, which were funded by initial loans, allowed the Empire to maintain a good credit-rating, which encouraged further investment in more of the Empire's exploits. As you can see, rather than creating a one-way-in, one-way-out debt situation, and growing exceedingly nervous about its ablity to pay, Britain instead created a cyclical, self-nourishing economy, based on large amounts of credit and good credit-ratings. The Empire itself began to loan out to its colonies once they had reached strong self-sufficiency, and within itself Britain created an ongoing, free-moving, and growing economy. No wonder they took over the world.

There are intrinsic cultural aspects to Britain's actions, exploits, and attitude regarding debt, but this should have its own essay.

Britain's example may seem, from afar, to be one of bottomless, endless debt. But by no means was the British Empire in any trouble. Old debts were repaid, andnew ones were invested. Creditors were always happy to come back for more, and ultimately everybody won.

That is the historical example of the birth of Credit, and why it can be a good thing.