Monday, October 31, 2016

machine

"Control can sometimes be an illusion. But sometimes you need illusion to gain control." 
--Mr. Robot

Our machines no longer work for the people: it is us who now effectively work for our pointless and deadly machines, literally and figuratively, either in useless industrial jobs or by paying federal taxes for programs which serve no common good. It is the oligarchy and its servile mass media which distract the masses, allowing elites to control financial flows and money laundering operations, weapons smuggling, as well as privatizing potentially liberating inventions such as quantum computing, renewable technologies, cures for cancer and preventable diseases, and genetic advances. To emancipate and unshackle the human condition from needless suffering should be the collective goal of society: instead, we are servants of machines, peons of progress and GDP advances of the economy, and prisoners of the Democratic and Republican parties and their shadowy corporate overlords, the psychic vampires who siphon human potentialities and energies from what could be vibrant, egalitarian, peaceable communities, if they were allowed to prosper freely.

    --William Hawes

two-parties-one-machine

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Rev. Billy

in light of the recent acquittal of the Bundy Boys, in America, if you are a white, christian (Morman) male, you get a pass for your armed occupation of federal property. If you are black, or muslim, or a member of the First Nation, you are a terrorist, and get jack-booted for your non-armed more or less peaceful demonstration against powerful corporate interests.......

"After the power of what we have seen among the Squamish canoeists and kayaktavists and now of the Standing Rock Souix and their many guests, now is a good moment for us to return to these teachers, without anxiety that we’re headed back to the sixties.  Many of the American Indian Movement heroes were murdered by the feds.  But this time if we stand by and don’t defend these first people—if all we do is watch, the way that white settlers stared from their front porches at the walking and dying on the Trail of Tears—then we won’t be able to save ourselves." 
make-your-stand-standing-rock

Thursday, October 27, 2016

We are all Deplorables now


The corporate media is sending a message; a message aimed at a much broader audience than undecided American voters (assuming such creatures really exist). The message is, “get with the fucking program, or get stigmatized as an anti Semite, or a racist, or a Russian spy, or whatever.”
A line is being drawn in the ideological sand......This line cuts through both the Left and the Right … supersedes both Left and Right, making bedfellows of supposed adversaries like Obama, Clinton, Kagan, Wolfowitz, Scowcroft, and their ilk on the Normal team, and a motley crew of Trumpists, Putinists, European populists, Corbynistas, Sandernistas, socialists, anarchists, Wikileakers, anti-Zionists, anti-capitalists, neo-Nazis, Black Lives Matterers, angry Greek pensioners, environmental activists, religious zealots, the Klu Klux Klan, David Graeber, most of the contributors to CounterPunch, and various other “extremist” types, many of whom detest each other, in the Deplorables current starting line-up.
   --C. J. Hopkins

the-pathologization-of-dissent

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Is this a great country or what?

"In treating Social Security like a slush fund, the federal government has borrowed, spent and vowed to pay back the $2.5 trillion or so “surplus” in payroll tax revenue it has siphoned out of Social Security. The money has been spent but the federal government has promised to pay it back."
    --Tim Geithner, President Obama’s first Secretary of the Treasury

All lies are bad, but some lies do more harm to the livelihood of American civilians than others.  Probably, the biggest lie, which most severely hurts millions of Americans, involves the true status of the Social Security system.  The harsh truth is that the government, over a 30-year period, has taken and spent every dollar of the $2.7 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue which was specifically earmarked for paying benefits to the baby boomer generation.  There are no plans to repay the money.  The money was taken without the knowledge, or the permission, of the public.

why-does-the-government-continue-to-lie-about-social-security

Monday, October 24, 2016

the Toba legacy

When the mind itself is an object of perception, the rule of instinct is checked by the powers of reflective reasoning and judgment. Given the standard assumption that the supreme good is progress, why didn’t the birth of our subspecies (195,000 years ago) unleash sustained technological development? Why did the human toolkit continue adhering to long established standards, occasionally drifting this way and that, for more than 120,000 years? The first generation of our kind — and the 5000 or so that followed — seem to have experienced something we can hardly imagine today: they were contented and felt no need to innovate. When you live in harmony with nature, when the work of finding food and making shelter is both fulfilling and well within your abilities, why seek progress? Despite the danger of predator attack, most people lived past 60 in excellent health....... and then came the Toba event- the biggest volcanic eruption in 400 million years.

the-fall
Toba_catastrophe_theory

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Downer Week final

This old world hierarchy of rule by elites must come to a close so humanity can begin to live real lives, and our species may survive. Because no one seems to be winning right now. The most wealthy powerful nation is populated with zombie husks going through the motions, wearing the smile they keep in a jar by the door.
    -- Jason Holland
the-tragedy-of-nothing

Saturday, October 22, 2016

pre-post election blues

Half of Republicans would "reject" a Hillary Clinton presidency, with nearly 70 percent saying a win for the Democratic nominee would be the result of a rigged election, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.
Trump has called on his supporters to "monitor" polling places around the country on Election Day for voter fraud—raising concerns about intimidation and suppression by the right. The independent policy institute Brennan Center for Justice has consistently reported that this kind of widespread illegitimate voter fraud does not exist.
reject-clinton



Friday, October 21, 2016

howl

Moloch, the great malevolent god of human sacrifice, worshipped by Mediterranean societies over two thousand years ago demanded obedience from his terrified and willing followers, and that they would sacrifice their children in fire in order to renew the deity’s strength. Two thousand years later, in 1955, Allen Ginsberg in his epic poem Howl called out our economic and political as a modern day Moloch. Is Ginsberg’s violent shamanic prophecy of mental dissonance and apocalyptic collapse, at once both disturbing and visionary, now our explanatory text and road map for the rest of the 21st century?
moloch-in-paris-on-the-anniversary-of-cop21



Strange Love

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Downer Week No 3- Warm, or Really Warm: you pick

so, do we want to warm up gradually like the frog in the pot, or warm up really, really fast?

“Meanwhile, the seemingly endless quadrennial presidential extravaganza grinds on to the final high holy electoral day with the “mainstream” media focused to an absurd, Aldous Huxlean degree on the silliest and ugliest imaginable matters of (major party) candidate personality and character while the two most pressing threats of our or any time – climate change and nuclear war – are pushed to the deadly margins of permissible public and political discourse. It is truly insane – I don’t know any other word for it.”
    -- Paul Street
pick-your-poison

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Downer Week No. 2- Trump: end game?

"If you do assume that Trump is acting rationally, then it is very hard to explain his campaign moves as steps in a considered plan to get elected president, and much easier to explain them as steps toward monetizing his audience through a media empire. This theory would explain why Trump handed control of his campaign to a media mogul (Steve Bannon), why he has needlessly attacked fellow members of his party, and why he has risked demoralizing his own voters by repeatedly calling the election rigged. These are logical decisions if his end goal is to wrest the intense loyalty of a large minority of the country away from other conservative organs and center it around a media brand he can control."
    --Jonathan Chait
trump-might-not-be-running-for-president

Monday, October 17, 2016

'Downer' Week, No. 1, Fascism

The Democratic and Republican parties may be able to disappear Trump, but they won’t disappear the phenomena that gave rise to Trump. And unless the downward spiral is reversed—unless the half of the country now living in poverty is lifted out of poverty—the cynical game the elites are playing will backfire. Out of the morass will appear a genuine “Christian” fascist endowed with political skill, intelligence, self-discipline, ruthlessness and charisma. The monster the elites will again unwittingly elevate, as a foil to keep themselves in power, will consume them. There would be some justice in this if we did not all have to pay.
    --Chris Hedges
trump-dress-rehearsal-fascism

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

the grand game

excerpts from an email (click on attachments) outlining strategy and goals to the DNC dated 4/7/2015. Well before Trump officially declared his candidacy.
Force all Republican Candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election…
The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
Ted Cruz
Donald Trump
Ben Carson
 
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously.
elevating-trump

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Syria- end game

"Last night, the regime attacked yet another hospital, and 20 people were killed and 100 people were wounded. And Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women. These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes. And those who commit these would and should be held accountable for these actions."
    --Secretary of State, John Kerry

The grave incident Kerry claimed did not happen. Kerry made it up. (Was it supposed to happen, got canceled and Kerry missed the memo?) Kerry used the lie to call for war crime investigations and punishment. This in front of cameras, at an official event with a foreign guest in the context of a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Syria-a-desperate-obama-administration-resorts-to-lying

Saturday, October 8, 2016

drumroll, fly-over, National Anthem......


Release Date: 
October 7, 2016
DHS and ODNI Seals
For Immediate Release
DHS Press Office
Contact: 202-282-8010
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
russia-hacks-official

https://www.dhs.gov

Friday, October 7, 2016

Trump is Us

"Listen, don't get the idea I'm one of those goddamn radicals... Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. My rackets are run on strictly American lines. Capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if only we seize it with both hands and make the most of it."
    --Al Capone

"....a significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go.  Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.
That is the new and unrecognizable role that Donald Trump has filled.  It’s hard to conjure up another example of it in our recent past. The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, a mood that fits well with imperial decline.
Think of him as a message in a bottle washing up on our shore.  After all...
This is not about Donald Trump. It’s about us."
    --Tom Engelhardt

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Shred

There are no ideal analogs for Matthew’s expected track and strength along the Florida coast. Only a handful of hurricanes have struck Florida with winds as strong as Matthew’s current 140 mph, and the only hurricanes known to have been “coast scrapers” along the central and northern Florida coast were considerably weaker than Matthew. For most residents along the north half of Florida’s Atlantic coast, and perhaps the Georgia coast as well, Matthew will be the strongest hurricane in living memory. (The last major hurricane to affect the Jacksonville area was in 1898.) Breaking waves as high as 15 to 25 feet on top of potential major storm surge are likely to inflict severe damage to beaches and barrier islands along the central and northern Florida coast.
matthew-rolls-on

.........InfoSec, Reno, Compsec, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, ISS, Passwords, DefCon V, Hackers, Encryption, Espionage, USDOJ, NSA, CIA, S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secert Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, PEM, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, COSMOS, DATTA, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC, UTU, VNET, BRLO, BZ, CANSLO, CBNRC, CIDA, JAVA, Active X, Compsec 97, LLC, DERA, Mavricks, Meta-hackers, ^?........

With the courts, especially at the appellate and Supreme Court level, rolling over and supporting this massive evisceration of basic freedoms, including the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure and invasion of privacy, perhaps the best way for us to fight back is to overload the spy system. How to do this? Just copy and paste random fragments of the following list (a bit dated, but useable), provided courtesy of the publication Business Insider, and include them in every communication -- email, social media, etc. -- that you send out.
thiscantbehappening

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

fear level Trump

"......the binary vision of politics is deeply embedded in the liberal class today. More so than on the right even. A vote for Stein/Baraka is seen as a *wasted* vote. Why? Because there can only be two candidates. Ever. Period. Two parties ensures there is only one party. As Mumia Abu-Jamal said, if the cost of killing off neo liberalism is a Trump victory, so be it. And Margaret Kimberley said she will vote Stein and hope for the death of the Democratic Party. And I am with that sentiment. But for the white bourgeoisie, this election is about much more than a fear of the guy with the bottled tan. It is about their sense of impending loss of privilege. And that privilege is baked into the erosion of education, the growing police state (which does not patrol affluent white neighborhoods) and with an expanding permanent war state globally. And most of all because WINNING is what matters. Period. Full stop."
    --John Steppling
fear-level-trump

Sunday, October 2, 2016

i.Me

Our dramatically-increasing reliance on smartphones and the emergence of augmented reality are flashing-alert signposts along the path to a corporate capitalist consumer culture version of the matrix – a society in which an always-on augmented/virtual reality-experience is constructed for each individual based on profit-producing algorithms crunching the “user data.” The crucial process on the way to such a society is the podification of the the population – the P-O-D podification – turning citizens into consumers and consumers into products.
the-matrix-around-the-next-bend

watchtower