Issue 43 - Remote Control (Counter) Terror

The Ideology of Vulnerability

Author

Jesse Hirsh
September 17, 2024

Welcome to Issue 43! There’s a certain poetry in ending a run at 42, but the interesting links and news items keep accumulating and the only way to clear them is to write an issue! Not to mention it is hot af here today so sitting at the computer beats working out on the farm.

We did get some positive response to our query about an upcoming salon, however we’ll wait a bit before doing so.

Table of Contents

Attacking and Subverting Supply Chains

News flash out of Lebanon, Israel has successfully executed a remote control (counter) terror attack on Hezbollah that is unprecedented in scope and effect.

Nine killed, 2,750 wounded across Lebanon as Hezbollah pagers explode

Hezbollah official calls it the group’s ‘biggest security breach’ in nearly a year of cross-border fire with Israel.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/17/dozens-of-hezbollah-members-wounded-after-pagers-explode-in-lebanon

While the news is still fresh, it is not hard to understand the prevailing narrative which is that Israel (with potential help) infiltrated the supply chain for the pagers used by Hezbollah, either on a software level, or on a physical level, and executed a coordinated (counter) terror attack by causing pagers used by members of Hezbollah to explode at the same time.

The current speculation is that these pagers contained explosives that were timed or triggered to explode, however the possibility of remote sabotage of lithium batteries shouldn’t be ruled out as yet.

No doubt this is an attack that will get a lot of attention from both military and technology types, representing a new frontier in remote warfare and sabotage. As with the SolarWinds attack, it demonstrates that supply chains are vulnerable and provide tremendous opportunities for adversaries.

Combine this with what we’re seeing in Ukraine and the rise of lethal technology is beyond cause for alarm.

Prisoners Hack Tablets And Create U$1 Million

Here’s a great story from Kentucky that gives a disturbing glimpse into the current state of the prison industrial complex:

KY prisoners hack state-issued computer tablets to digitally create $1M. How’d they do it?

The state of Kentucky and Securus Technologies charged prison inmates steep prices. Then the tables turned. A Herald-Leader review of 1,700 pages of documents reveals the deception that stunned state officials.

amp-kentucky-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article290664609.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17250263478852&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kentucky.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics-government%2Farticle290664609.html

Some prisoners get access to specialized technology that not only limits what they can do with it, but also charges them for digital services that should be free.

Hilariously, not all of the technology is secure, and when exploits are found, prisoners naturally share them with each other. In this case, it wasn’t rocket science:

Playing around with the new app, Brown later told investigators, he discovered that if he a put a minus sign in front of a dollar figure as he transferred money from his commissary account, he would actually add that much money to both his commissary account and his Securus account.

Typing in “-$500” suddenly credited $500 to both of Brown’s accounts, money that didn’t really exist.

“Inmate Brown continued to make deposits by placing a minus sign in front of the amount,” investigators wrote in their report on the incident a month later, after interviewing him.

How to Live Long? Pension Fraud!

Remember all that stuff about Blue Zones, ageing, and the secrets to longevity? Turns out the research supporting that argument isn’t credible, and a more realistic explanation is pension fraud?

‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman

Saul Newman’s research suggests that we’re completely mistaken about how long humans live for.

theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023

This may be a consequence of the quantified society. If and when we do go and check whether the stories we tell are accurate, they tend to come up short, or in this case young.

Here’s a link to the academic article for deeper lolz:

Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. remarkable age. Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3

The Ideology of Vulnerability

This is an interesting argument that we wanted to share, not so much because we support it, but because it radically reshapes the larger debate around contemporary culture and politics.

Vulnerability as Ideology

Peter Ramsay argues that the concept of vulnerability provides an organising ideology for contemporary capitalist society, serving to present the interests of the powerful in maintaining the political and economic status quo as the interests of all.

thenorthernstar.online/analysis/vulnerability-as-ideology-i

In Part One, below, he sets out how vulnerability and identification with the vulnerable form the content of contemporary middle class virtue, and how that works as an official ideology to legitimise the status quo with its politics of permanent emergency. 

In Part Two, he explains why vulnerability became a key aspect of the ruling ideology of authoritarian liberalism in recent times notwithstanding its evident irrationality, and how this ideology has frustrated the development of any political alternative to it by converting politics into culture war. 

In Part Three, he argues that the new ideology is the consequence of liberalism’s historic decay and that only an assertion of democracy against liberalism can reverse the dystopian implications of this decay.

Water is Love

This film, Water is Love is produced by the Tamera community, both of which seem worthy of our attention.

The Vet Grift

The Downfall of Bee Better

Had we published this issue a week or so ago, we were going to write about the Downfall of Bee Better, a little schmuck in suburban Toronto who had a modest rise on TikTok and a spectacular fall. Now however that feels like old news. Yet to leave you with a crumb you can use to find it on your own, this satirical take helps mock the rise of faux expertise on TikTok.

@bribri_is_wheezy

Babes… where is the correlation. #beebetter #beebettercompany #kamalaharris #harriscampaign #harriswalz #kamala #minecraft #boeing #flight... See more

Matthew 19:24

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Album coming out soon!

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