[ExI] the ambiguously evil british have leaked julian assange's address

[Tomasz Rola]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010, spike wrote:

> ... On Behalf Of Tomasz Rola...
> Subject: Re: [ExI] the ambiguously evil british have leaked julian assange's
> address
> 
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, spike wrote:
> 
> > > I still suspect a trap, as apparently the mainstream 
> > >news outlets do as well.  They still aren't taking the bait as far as I
> know.
> > >Has anyone here seen any of the majors reporting scandalous anything 
> > >based on Wikileaks?
> 
> >...Here in Poland there were some news about how US decided to station a
> battery of Patriot rockets...
> 
> So they say, but:
> 
> >... it has been "uncovered" by journalists (after reading the leaks) that
> they were unloaded...
> 
> So they say, but:
> 
> >Or useless, I reckon...
> 
> On the contrary.  Very useful I reckon.  Reasoning: they deploy the launcher
> trucks with dummy missiles, which are then reported to be scarecrows while
> simultaneously being reported to be fake scarecrows, guys dressed up as
> scarecrows with actual shotguns.  The external view of those trucks is
> identical, regardless of whether they are loaded or not.  So the trucks are
> everywhere, with some unknown fraction carrying weapons.  This provides a
> test case, to see if there are any local guerillas who will try to attack
> the trucks, they believing they carry actual missiles.  If the commies
> conclude that *all* the trucks are dummies, they fire their weapons, they
> are mysteriously shot down by one of the dummy trucks.

Uh-hum. I am not sofisticated enough, so nuances of this strategy are 
beyond my limits of comprehension. My guess is, if you want to attack, you 
just deploy force big enough to overwhelm every known truck, and if some 
happen to be dummies, you're even happier. If you want to make guessing 
your attack harder, you just make a lot of dummy launch sites, dummy 
silos, dummy stores, dummy rockets and dummy warheads. And dummy army 
supporting them.

However, after skimming through first chapter of game theory book, you 
come to a conclusion that it's much better to make no dummies at all. And 
your enemy comes to the same conclusion as well. At least this is what I 
think, but I haven't computed it on paper yet, so I might be wrong.

We don't have guerillas at the moment - unless you count some politicians 
in. They restrict their actions to places where they could be most 
effective, i.e. parliament and surrounding areas, government institutions 
etc.

BTW, I'm not afraid of Russian rockets. War is a business (did they told 
it was about ideals? no, not really). I see no business for them in firing 
rockets, at least as long as they want to sell and we want to buy. Also, I 
guess their rockets are mothballed since at least 10 or 15 years - and 
only time will show if mothballing does them any good.

However, whether leaks are true or false, they weaken our position in
diplomatic relations. Or at a very minimum, for the next few years (maybe 
decade) there is no point in mentioning we are US allies since it doesn't 
sound too well. Just MHO.

[...]
> Imagine an army with plenty of rifles but little ammunition, facing a
> possible invader.  Every third rifle is loaded, the rest have only dummy
> shells.  The soldiers themselves do not know if they are loaded or harmless,
> the invading enemy knows not that there are unloaded weapons.  I can imagine
> that being a very effective deterrent.

See above - you don't want to send people with dummy weapons to the 
battlefield.

> Once the trucks are in place, the dummies can be replaced with real missiles
> at any time or in any proportion, without attracting attention.

If anybody gives a damn about doing this. I see a pattern here and I don't 
like it.

> After all this, I am seeing *plenty* of ways governments could fight
> transparency.

Huh? What's transparency?

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **