(no subject)
The Clocktower Project
or
a blueprint for the open-source assassination of Ralph Nader
I watched Meet The Press this Sunday, like I do every Sunday. And what I saw scared the hell out of me. Ralph Nader - back from the oceanic trench where he sleeps & speaking nightmare words, "I am running for President."
I don't know how much ill-will this will generate, and frankly I don't care. If I had a time-machine, the first thing I would do buy a glass-bedded Weatherby V in a flat-shooting showstopper, something like 7mm or 300 Winchester. Then I would set the dial to January of 1999, zoom back to the east coast and drill Ralph Nader.
Imagine an America where Gore wins in 2000. 8 years of a balanced budgets. 8 years of improved CAFE standards. 8 years of a green energy Apollo project that would create thousands (if not millions) of jobs, while cutting off the flow of dollars to petroauthoritarians like the House of Saud or Hugo Chavez. Imagine an America where maybe we got OBL before he got us, and if not, at least we would have gotten him after the fact. Imagine Afghanistan with the 101st and 82nd on the ground, the 10th Mountain, the 3rd and 4th Infantry, and every swinging dick in the SPECWAR command - it's an Afghanistan where moderate Islam has a fighting chance and nuclear Pakistan is stabilized.
We didn't get to live in that America. In the big picture, it was due to the gullibility of the American people and the foibles of the Electoral College system. America gets to carry that particular burden of stupidity forward into history. Collectively we all share the blame for that. But if want to narrow the list a bit, if you want to lay the blame at the feet of two men, that list is easy: Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader. Bill Clinton knew he was the focus of the vast right-wing hate machine and yet couldn't keep is dick in his pants. Ralph Nader knew the criticality of the election to come and still decided that it was time for him to run, because of his apparently biological inability to see past his own ego. It must be something akin to organic brain damage.
Nader can't be allow to affect this election. Clearly he is insane and cannot be reasoned with. If it turns out that he's utterly irrelevant, great. I am happy to see him spared. He wasn't always a self-interested asshole. But if it appears that he's getting any kind of traction with the electorate, if his presence imperils the Democratic party retaking the presidency, then somebody is going to need to blow some daylight through Mr. Nader's brainpan. In right-wing circles this is called clocktower voting, and if the Right can use it to blot out the bright lights of humanity like JFK and Martin Luther King, then maybe its time the sane & clear-eyed took a page from their playbook and started playing this game like it counts.
Does this sound like radical right-wing hate speech? Wrong. It is assuredly hate speech, but it is radical left wing hate speech. I am not going to let this egomaniacal boomer asshat destroy my country again. Somebody has to do something about this motherfucker, and if necessary, do something to him. Unfortunately, I cannot hop in a time machine and pull a Skynet on Nader for the 2000 loss. However, if it looks like he's got a shot of being the GOP's best friend for a second time running I have a plan.
What I am proposing is an open-source, anonymous donation-driven plot to assassinate Ralph Nader. I don't have it all worked out, but this is where the open-source part comes in. I am sure that there enough outraged people on the left that we can fund, ideate, plan, staff and actualize a workable plan to eliminate Nader and save the Union.
HOW IT WILL WORK
The Clocktower Project has 5 major phases. It works something like a 527 issues advocacy organization, something like software development groupware, something like a futures market, except that it creates a group structure for political assassination. In this instance, the assassination of Ralph Nader.
Fund
An offshore account is set up that can accept credit card donations. Donors can make a cash purchase of "burner" debit cards at 7-11 or another major retail outlet. They can then use what is effectively anonymous electronic cash to make a donation to The Clocktower Project.
If that's too brazen, we start an online casino where people can play to lose against the house. The distribution of this knowledge can be carried out by word of mouth, providing plausible deniability to everyone who donates to the project. Under this model, we basically use a tripartite structure - the Clocktower Casino functions as the funding arm. The Clocktower Project website is the intellectual and political center-of-gravity. Then a leaderless cell structure communicating through hard encryption and codenames actually carries out the operations.
Plan
This is the explicitly open source part of the project. Ideas about how to assassinate Nader are disseminated here. Intelligence as to his whereabouts & schedule are posted. When a team has a good idea, they create a project ( for example: "Miami Car Bomb"). If they need help, they can put out a call to the network. Expertise could then be shared among the teams, pertinent intelligence added, etc. This is basically a commons-based knowledge system like the ones Yochai Benkler discusses in Wealth of Networks. The merits and actionability of these plans are then peer-reviewed in the Bid phase. Maybe you are good at planning, but never went to sniper school? Disgruntled Iraq War vet with some awesome demolition skills, but no idea of how to launder money? It's ok! This is where the miracle of findability and disintermediation that is the internwebs comes into its own. Its an applied social network. Biz school kids without the guts to pull the trigger can link up with people with more... concrete skills. It's like the netroots of the Obama campaign, but just more... applied.
Bid
Donors then bid on the plans they like - in a process that works basically like a futures market. If donor's like a plan, they can donate in its favor. If they dislike a plan, they can donate against it. This creates an over all "win pot" for the plan that does succeed. Donors can make votes to release funds to a promising project if it meets certain benchmarks.
All of this provides a feedback mechanism to weed out bad plans that are too risky or generate too great a capacity for collateral damage - for instance, people would be unlikely to vote for crashing a passenger jet into a lecture hall crowded with well-intentioned hippies listening to Nader's megalomaniacal rantings. However, a workable agenda around precision rifle fire or a Hellfire missile strike on his motorcade should attract lots of support with the right backgrounding and planning. Basically, this is something like the Iowa Electronic Markets, but tied to plans of action.
Execute
This is it. Somebody gets Nader. Maybe its an automobile accident. Maybe somebody paints him with a headshot. The tricky part is to video the kill and capture a public encryption key as a contiguous part of the action. Better yet, sharpie the public key into a wall and then videotape the key as part of your "gun camera" footage from the hit.
The key then becomes part of the public record, and gives Clocktower Project cadre a mechanism by which the payout can be arranged.
How do you untraceably email someone a public key encrypted message? I don't know. This is why its an open-source project. I'm sure somebody does. Maybe it can use an anonymizing resource like TOR.
Payout
The actor or team of actors is paid for their efforts on the behalf of the project.
If they want to do it just as a non-profit venture, they can just use the cash to offset their expenses. In fact, another bid could go out to a courier to set up a numbered account in the Caymans or Switzerland. The entire operation can be Nth blinded, anonymized in nested operational cells.
It's can be done people! Drill Nader in 08!