Thursday, March 29, 2018

watchin' Trump

Think of Donald Trump as the O.J. Simpson of our moment and those hours on that highway as a preview of what media life (which, with the arrival of the handheld screen, has become more or less all life) turned out to be. Think of Donald Trump’s presidential run and now presidency as a never-ending white Ford Bronco ride, and if you accept that, all that remains to be asked is who was murdered (democracy?) and did he do it?
    -- Tom Englehardt

big-brother-isn't-watching-you

meanwhile...

Thanks to online trackers you can now follow doomed Chinese satellite Tiangong-1 as it continues on its collision course with Earth. The only question now is whether you’ll see it hurtling towards your house. 
Tiangong-1, China’s first-ever space station, is expected to crash into Earth in the coming days. You can follow its final journey on N2YO.com and Stuff in Space.


Wednesday, March 28, 2018

global

I’ve been thinking and writing about globalism, which most dictionaries define as “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence,” or “the development of socioeconomic networks that transcend national boundaries,” or something like that … which was more or less my understanding of the term. Little did I know that these fake “definitions” had been infiltrated into these dictionaries by discord-sowing Strasserist agents to dupe political satirists like myself into unknowingly spreading anti-Semitism as part of Putin’s Master Plan to destroy the United States of America and establish worldwide Nazi domination.
    - cj hopkins

then-they-came-for-the-globalists

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

funtime

too much Bolton?

“Bolton is so much of an ideologue that I don’t think he would accurately portray consequences [of policy options] to the president. … If Bolton becomes the national security adviser, the United States has not hit rock bottom in our international relations. We could go lower.”
    -- Zack Beauchamp, “John Bolton, the ultrahawk rumored to be Trump’s next national security adviser, explained,” Vox, March 12, 2018, https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/12/17091772/john-bolton-trump-national-security-adviser-war-iran-north-korea

profile/bolton_john

Monday, March 26, 2018

rage

How can we live with all this rage?
Just as Chomsky has written about “the manufacture of consent,” we can now see how—and why–the American political establishment works around the clock to “manufacture rage:” because the powers-that-be know that fostering this endless  anger is a perfect way to keep their critics tangled up in the ropes and snares of their own hateful rhetoric.  As long as Americans are training their anger at each other, they won’t do any damage to those actual powers-that-be.

    -- John Eskow

how-can-we-live-with-all-of-this-rage?

Saturday, March 24, 2018

into the Facebook dimension

Much like the Samuel French play; “What Do We Do About Henry?” where Henrietta becomes overly intrusive and organizationally inclined to sort out the lives of all those around her, Facebook is determined to sort out and direct all of our lives and, in doing so, has succeeded in aiding and abetting a panoply of virtual criminal elements in the world at large who have now inflicted and influenced us into the mess of a world we are left with in their wake as their ship of success steams onward. 
    -- Robby Sherwin

what-do-we-do-about-facebook?

Friday, March 23, 2018

center of the mind

the Walrus

+ With the hiring of John Bolton, it looks like the Trump administration took the 15th anniversary of the Iraq War as a celebratory occasion.
+ As John Dowd flees the Trump legal team, Bolton is coming in hot to head a war cabinet (Mattis, Pompeo, Haley, and Haspel)…. Perhaps Trump intends to blow up the encircling Mueller probe by doing what Bolton has long wanted to do… bomb Iran.
+ The Senate Bombing Caucus is simply tumescent about Bolton’s appointment: “Selecting John Bolton as national security adviser is good news for America’s allies and bad news for America’s enemies,” said Lindsey Graham.
+ The failsafe against Bolton is that he is a pathological egomaniac and will, within weeks, clash fatally with the other pathological egomaniac in the White House. Trump hates anyone who steals the very spotlight which Bolton craves. So the Walrus is likely to have a shorter tenure than McMaster…if we survive that long.
    -- Jeffrey St. Clair

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

the tower

“Looking at contemporary architecture, the face of advanced western Capital is the Trump Tower (any of them) but also it is the latent violence of the gentrifier, of the interiors of Park Avenue apartments and penthouses, and then finally, the strip malls and industrial parks that are scattered across the U.S. Nothing is to be found or read in the latest prestige architectural project of Norman Foster, or Herzog & de Meuron, or Aecom or Gensler or Renzo Piano or I.M. Pei. For none of these firms or architects are building from within a culture or even society. They are operative in a realm of exclusive wealth for patrons that have little interest in the equality of the future, or to in any ways lessen the suffering of those beneath the boot heel of the system that pays them. They build the architectural version of academic discourse, today. Structures that utilize private visual vocabularies, in a sense, that produce an effect of almost intentional purposelessness. They are buildings of futility, in one way, but of exclusion in another.”

    -- John Steppling

sorry, the Russians still aren't coming

"Russia’s response doesn’t change the facts of the matter – the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable."
    -- UK Foreign Office spokesman 
"Russia has already interfered in the affairs of other countries, Russia has already violated international law in Ukraine, Russia has contempt for civilian life, as witnessed by the attack on a commercial aircraft over Ukraine by Russian mercenaries, Russia protects the use of chemical weapons by Assad (…) The Russian state is responsible for this attempted murder."
             -- Jonathan Allen, agent of MI6 

It could be that Russia is indeed behind the events in Salisbury, even though everything about that possibility defies logic. Why would Russia kill-off an old and washed-up ex-spy in Britain by using an illegal weapon saying “made in Russia” all over it, an ex-spy who they had plenty of time and opportunity to dispatch if they wanted to whilst he was in Russia? Knowing full well the furore such an attack on British soil would provoke, how does that benefit Russia?

     -- John Andrews


dodgy

Salisbury

“It’s like a ghost town.”
    -- Salisbury resident
Visit Salisbury at any time of the year and it will be heaving with people coming to shop, to eat at one of the many cafes, restaurants and pubs, to visit the Cathedral and to walk through the ancient narrow streets.  Not now, it isn’t.  From the moment I walked out of the station towards the city centre I was struck by the lack of people.  Plenty of traffic winding its way through the narrow medieval streets but pedestrians?  No.

    -- Lesley Docksey

salisbury-skripal-and-novichok-a-local-view

Monday, March 19, 2018

the head-chopper-in-chief speaks

The 60 Minutes interview with Mohammed bin Salman was predictably not very informative and served as little more than a platform for the crown prince to spread propaganda. 

60-minutes-embarrassing-interview-with-mohammed-bin-salman

Friday, March 16, 2018

Cat 17 Tammy heading for western NY

good lord! could those mountains actually be in western New York?

"....the climatic finale of the movie depicts a chase scene with three trucks hauling cash from the heist. The chase occurs in the eye of Hurricane Tammy, on a deserted road in coastal Alabama. Curiously, the road is debris-free and dry, with dead leaves blowing across it, even though the front side of the eyewall must have already passed through with its devastating Category 5+ winds. The mountains of southern Alabama can be seen in the distance" (hmm, southern Alabama it pretty darn flat; maybe the movie was really shot in Bulgaria!)

hurricane-heist-movie-bad-meteorology

Thursday, March 15, 2018

inevitability

Although by definition it is fruitless to question inevitability, we should not abide.

I ask why we should acquiesce to the affirmation of inevitability regarding our robotic /AI future. Only those who are lined up to be the owners of all these machines preach inevitability. The advance of machines that invade and alter consciousness, that abort face time with the actual conditions of our lives and the planet itself, is an advance of an addiction, not any other kind of advance.

    -- Joseph Natoli

the-construction-of-inevitability

coup

The National Security Act of 1947...codified the reality of the imperial American military for the baby-boom generation and beyond. The War Department became the Defense Department; the CIA we know today was formed from the Office of Strategic Services. The 1947 NSA document amounted to a formal re-arrangement of the country’s priorities coming out of WWII -- when the victorious United States of America became the “leader of the free world.”

Meanwhile, over....70 years, the National Security State (as an institution led by the Pentagon) has existed as a steadily ascending through-line leading to today’s post-9/11 world. Our imperial military has been, and remains, virtually untouchable through the electoral process that chooses civilian leadership. Just like assault weapons on a small scale, the National Security State thrives beyond the reach of American politics. In my mind, White House Chief of Staff and former four-star Marine General John Kelly resides in this protected zone as a power behind the civilian throne -- there looking out for Pentagon interests and there in case the gasoline tank goes up in a fireball.
    -- John Grant

thiscantbehappening

arbor-traitors

As European-based forestry marched across America in the early 20thcentury resource extraction was king and only fast growing ‘timber’ species were favored.  All others were banished to the apartheid of arboreal under classes.  This caste system committed the “unmerchantables” to a fate of staggering abuse, if not outright genocide, in the name of progress.  In the West, aspen, birch, cottonwood, piñon and limber pine, and others were burned, bulldozed, bashed and otherwise berated to make way for preferred stems.  In a sort of Jim Crow of forestry, these species were figuratively spit on for decades.
    -- Paul C. Rogers

and-what-of-the-trees?

Saturday, March 10, 2018

your obsolescence has already been planned

"About three years ago I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was home one night. I called a meeting with my posessions. I got everything I owned into the living room. My toaster, my clock, my blender. They never been in the living room before. And I spoke to them. I opened with a joke. And then I said “I know what’s going on, and cut it out!”"
– Woody Allen
Ad copy now tells us that our possessions are too stupid to survive. And nowhere is this out-with-the-old instrumental mentality more virulent than in high tech, where innovation has always been king.
– Geoff Dutton

notes-from-inside-a-glass-prison

solve your problems in 0.38 seconds

Friday, March 9, 2018

Googled incorrectly

“There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly,”
    -- Eric Schmidt, Google

Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google’s involvement.

google-is-helping-the-pentagon-build-ai-for-drones


Thursday, March 8, 2018

Lefty at the beach

And so the progressive views the beach scene with a mixture of bewilderment and frustration: Do these people have no idea what's going on? Do they care? They seem content to wallow in the heat to no purpose, paddling pointlessly with rolled-up trouser legs; wasting hours, days, weeks that could be productively spent bettering the world. If even one per cent of these folk could be mobilised, activated to work for progressive change - then the world might indeed change. He drops a sidewise glance down his nose at a middle-aged child, a kidult, slurping on an ice cream cone. Elsewhere, grown men and women are literally building castles in the sand, digging holes for no reason, filling them in - achieving nothing, zilch, nada.

medialens/current-alert

ooooo! more charts and graphs!

Mission Statement

In 2016, American democracy came under unprecedented attack. [applause]

The government of the Russian Federation attempted to weaken the pillars of our democracy and undermine faith and confidence in our society’s most fundamental right — the ability to choose our own leaders. [sustained applause]

This effort was only the latest of Russia’s repeated and ongoing efforts to undermine democratic institutions and influence free and democratic elections throughout Europe [USA! USA!]

the Rise




Figure 1. Annual extreme water levels compared to probability of extreme water levels, Boston Harbor, 1921-2018. (note Winter Storms Grayson and Riley in upper right).

weaker-gulf-stream-means-trouble-coastal-new-england

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

the Russians aren't coming, but Jesus might be

"...after eighteen months of relentless repetition, we have all been barraged with so much ridiculous “Russiagate” and “Collusion” propaganda that it is almost impossible to step back from it enough to recognize how ridiculous it is. Fundamentally. The basic premise of the narrative. Imagine for a moment, if you can, that you had never heard about “Russiagate,” and listen to the story concept as if you were hearing it for the very first time. Ready? OK, here it comes … “Donald Trump conspired with Putin to brainwash Americans with Internet ads into electing him President of the United States so he could help the Russians take over the world!” How is this story concept any more credible than the one where a radical Jewish prophet who’s been dead for over two thousand years, but who rules the universe with his omnipotent father, appeared on a taco in Beeville, Texas?"
    -- c j hopkins

the-cult-of-authority

intercepted-podcast-russiamania-glenn-greenwald-vs-james-risen

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

from Cafe Domenico

What mysticism really tries to surmount is [not the ego but] false consciousness, illusion, Consensus Reality, and all the failures of the self that accompany these ills.
— Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, etc.
It’s time we ordinary rustbelt flyover Americans  considered how we might take upon ourselves the human preservation project, which happens also to be the anarchist project, the anti-fascist project and emphatically, the mystic’s project.
    -- Kim Domenico

mystical-anarchism

Friday, March 2, 2018

debris

"So, the world ends not with a bang but with the weather....the whimper you may hear will be the last gasp of the great mass of an oppressed citizenry under the command of a highly militarized corps of emergency services pursuing a sincere desire to assist in the human and property tolls of weather terrorism - which ultimately threatens to tear apart a society whose government is dedicated to the protection of that class of elite citizens most culpable in the production of its cause."
__ John Davis


waiting-for-the-debris-flows

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Mnuchins

Trump Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin isn't accustomed to facing direct challenges to his wild economic claims or protests over the GOP tax plan he helped craft, and after experiencing both during an event at UCLA's Burkle Center on Monday, Mnuchin demanded that video of his appearance be suppressed.

In addition to challenges from the crowd, Mnuchin was also pressed by Marketplace radio host Kai Ryssdal, who questioned Mnuchin's widely debunked economic growth predictions.

mnuchin-demands-ucla-suppress-video

watchtower