War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.
-- Randolph Bourne
“Education within the last three decades has diminished rapidly in its capacities to educate young people to be reflective, critical, and socially engaged agents. Despite all attempts to degrade the value and purpose of education, the notion of education as the primary register of the larger culture persists. Yet, under a neoliberal regime, the utopian possibilities formerly associated with public and higher education as a public good capable of promoting social equality and supporting democracy have become too dangerous for the apostles of neoliberalism. Critical thought and the imaginings of a better world present a direct threat to a neoliberal paradigm in which the future must always replicate the present in an endless circle in which capital and the identities that legitimate it merge with each other into what might be called a dead zone.”
-- Henry Giroux
“How are you? Is everything okay? This is the Israeli military. We need to bomb your home and we are making every effort to minimize casualties. Please make sure that no one is nearby since in five minutes we will attack”
PHOTO: GIDEON MARKOWICZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Erelis@17
I don't think that Colonial used the Russia card. That came from another source. As far as a cyberattack is concerned it lacks credibility for a couple of rather obvious reasons:
1) To have an effective cyberattack you need a complex automated system that can be entered and manipulated to do what you want as opposed to just shutting off the power. Colonial has said that they didn't know the severity of the leak and therefore didn't know how bad the leak was. That implies that the system is not highly automated and lacks even sensors to monitor a significant problem. Consider that the Russians knew exactly what the Ukrainians were stealing from the gas pipelines that transited to Europe. Simply waiting will give the answer anyway, if it's down for more than a few days it wasn't a cyberattack, it means they are plugging some of the leaks before they turn it back on.
2) The timing is simply too perfect. You have this pipeline that is an ecological disaster that absolutely has to be fixed. There is never a good time to shut this thing down, it simply carries too much fuel to not cause a major supply disruption.
By by blaming the Russians they keep the animosity focused not only on the Russians but just as important off of the operator of the pipeline, the EPA and a host of other state and federal institutions that have been tasked with monitoring something like this.
Posted by: anon48 | May 11 2021 20:34 utc | 22
The Biden administration may soon recruit an army of private snoops to conduct surveillance that would be illegal if done by federal agents. As part of its war on extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups
-- James Bovard
The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command Europe kicked off the Trojan Footprint 21 exercise on May 3. The war games will be held until May 14 in five Black Sea and Balkans nations: Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Romania. Special forces from the U.S. – all branches of the armed forces including Green Berets – the five host nations, Britain, Germany, Spain and Ukraine are involved.
The exercise is designed for “enhancing interoperability between NATO allies” to prepare for “counter[ing] myriad threats.”
only one, threat. Russia.
Back in 2011 Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” became the celebratory anthem of bin Laden’s demise. The song had been released in 2009 and gone mega-platinum that year, the singer just sixteen years old. The day after the nighttime raid on the Al Qaeda leader’s compound in Pakistan, Cyrus’s hit was taken up by the tank-topped zeitgeist, the YouTube video racking up millions of new hits. Legions of viewers put up their jubilant posts on the site, bigoted slurs cavorting with sexually prurient outpourings. America had voted with its virtual feet and made “Party in the USA” bin Laden’s funeral song, the lighter-than-air digital body of pop culture dancing triumphantly on the arch-terrorist’s watery grave.
The message of “Party in the USA” is that the American Dream comes not from hard work, but by being discovered on the dance floor. The advertisement of sexual availability is the quickest road to success, one to be raced down in a Camaro with big fat racing stripes.
-- David Yearsley
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
~ Noam ChomskyIn a speech on Friday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the next “major war” the US military fights will look “very different” from recent conflicts. Austin said future conflicts will be different due to advances in technology. “Galloping advances in technology mean changes in the work we do to keep the United States secure across all five domains of potential conflict — not just air, land, and sea but also space and cyberspace....potential adversaries are very deliberately working to blunt our edge.” He said this means the US must invest in “cutting-edge capabilities” of “all domains,” including artificial intelligence.
Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com
Alas, GeezerRadio has been off the air for quite some time due to virus/COVID19 from Outer Space debris. We have had to maintain a low audio profile, only monitoring background radiation profiles.
If you are reading this message and your local time right now is 18:55_4/30/21, then you probably better hunker down so to speak....
/ed.
