“Murdering priests and dumping forty-seven bodies in the street in one day could not be seen in the context of defeating the terrorists; on the contrary such acts were probably counterproductive.”
Continue reading The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens):
Ah’ hell! So there goes Victor Lewis-Smith … after a “short illness” – a term that he may well of proffered to describe his life – in the typical fugue of overly-descriptive sardonic rampancy he was notorious for rousing.
Continue reading Victor Lewis-Smith, 1957-2022, Paul Sparks, TV Offal:
“Arguments that shift blame from powerful producers to “human nature” or “all of us” are useful in distributing responsibility.”
Continue reading The Play Book – How to deny science, sell lies, and make a killing in the corporate world (Jennifer Jacquet):
Stake through the heart.
Someone’s really, really gone & done it with this one. Of all the subjects, arguably the most murderous of them all is a rarely scrutinised radius, a concealment strategy that is crucial to it’s perpetuation.
The arms trade.
Colliding currents. Ley lines & interchange. Serendipity serpentinous … the curlicue & the coilings cross collisionary cascading.
Eh?
Intersecting delta of creative conterminent contingencies & corresponding coincidences..
As you do.
Busy moment for a stupid country.
We’ll mourn the burden lost but not remedy the crisis rampant.
It’s not paying respect, it’s “paying” subjugation.
Ingrained idiocy, inexplicable & indefensible – it’s just blind faith based on a prescribed ideal with peeling plastic.
“The capacity that digital companies have for abstracted, exponential growth has allowed them to amass political and economic power unheard of even in the time of the Gilded Age robber barons. Numerous studies have concluded that economic elites now enjoy substantially more impact on government policy, while “citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
Continue reading Survival of the Richest – escape fantasies of the tech billionaires (Douglas Rushkoff):
“Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are fiercely dedicated to a political project that will eliminate trade unions, abolish and/or commercialise public education, increase economic inequality and the power of billionaires and big business, ignore and aggravate the environmental crisis that threatens human existence, promote endless wars and militarism, governance for the rich, a corrupt judicial system, and elections that go to the highest (and anonymous) bidders. Above all, Murdoch champions the elimination of independent journalism. All the institutions that make for a credible modern democracy are in his crosshairs.”
Continue reading Murdoch’s Politics – How one man’s thirst for power shapes our world (David McKnight):
Yikes. Prepare to be unsettled & alarmed. This is an urgent & weltering assessment & tally by Professor of Public Policy & director (& founder) of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, Prof Louise Shelley. An advanced veteran on the subject & a skilled scribe, we are delivered a withering & disturbing stream of highly accurate warnings & acute details concerning illicit trade, smuggling, organised crime & a wide diversity of corruption in its many forms & appliances.
Continue reading Dark Commerce – How a new illicit economy is threatening our future (Louise I. Shelley):
“Thiel is sometimes portrayed as the tech industry’s token conservative – a view that wildly understates his influence. More than any other Silicon Valley investor or entrepreneur – more so even than Jeff Bezos, or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, or Zuckerberg himself – he had been responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly – with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.”
Continue reading The Contrarian-Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s pursuit of power (Max Chafkin):