COMMERCIAL AIRPORTS take great care to exclude weapons and explosives from their passengers' bags and accessories. Why bother when authoritarians can bypass security regulations and restricted airspace with armed drones? US officials brag that they killed the world's Number One Bad Guy, an Iranian major general named Qassem Soleimani, who they claim was responsible for American casualties. Naturally the precision airstrike killed Soleimani's entourage as well, including Brigadier General Hussein Jafari Nia, Major-General Hadi Taremi, Colonel of the Guards Shahroud Mozaffari Nia, Captain Waheed Zamanian, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy-commander of the Iraq's People’s Mobilization Forces, and Mohammad al-Shibani, Muhandis’s son-in-law. No word yet on what their crimes are alleged to have been, had charges been brought and the group been summoned to a court of law, as would be done in any self respecting international law abiding society. Anyhow NBD, the U.S. of Assholes has traded its nocturn Seal Team raid Death Squads for MQ-9 Reaper drones guided by War Room extrajudicial assassins. And Yanks no longer shy away from Death's Head nomenclature. We've gone from Predator drones to Reaper. Ha ha "Grim Reaper" get it? America Fuck Yeah! No, you dumbfuck blimpnecks, that drone is actually a sower. Of a grim harvest.
Info Virus
Meme cultivation
Texas church gunman kills two gunmen before being killed by next gunman
A gunman goes into a church --have you heard this one? Essentially the latest headline goes: Texas church gunman kills two armed churchgoers before being killed by yet another. That's a lot of Texas church gunmen. Apparently when the shooting stopped even more worshipers pulled out their guns. Let’s see, the lesson about needing a gun to defend oneself doesn’t add up so well in this example. In Texas totting a gun to church means you have a one in three chance of surviving an attack by a fellow gun believer. Sunday's two victims were armed after all and it didn't save them. And if we think about this charitably, as we ought to because the first gunman, the troubled one, was a churchgoer himself, having a gun didn't save him either, the actual odds become one survivor out of every four church gunmen. God rest everybody's piece. So the lesson here is, don't go to church! And especially not if you are packing. If a fellow troubled soul doesn't shoot you, security will.
Joe Biden admits he’s Republican
JOE BIDEN thinks he can sway voters by saying he’d consider a Republican as his vice-presidential pick. Then he explained about choosing a running mate: “Whomever I would pick, were I fortunate enough to be your nominee, I'd pick someone who was simpatico with me, who knew... what my priorities were and knew what I wanted to do. We could disagree on tactic, but strategically we'd have to be on the exact same page.†How’s that for truth in advertising? Biden thinks he might be on the exact same page as what's supposed to be the other party. HA.
Corporate News Streetwalker Didn’t See That Coming
Local news reporter Alex Bozarjian felt “violated, objectified, and embarrassed†when a passing marathon runner grabbed her butt on live TV. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of that! Corporate media INDULGES in disrespect and objectification, shouldn't their representatives be braced for the consequence? Was it a sexual assault? The grinning runner did that FOR THE CAMERA! A slap aimed to denigrate and disrespect should greet every mainstream news hack who presumes their victimized public cannot strike back. Bozarjian's station says "No woman should have to endure that abuse simply doing her job." Doing THAT job --how about ALL of them? Male AND female! Whether fool or knave, unknowing or mendacious, media whores deserve a slap whenever they surface in public. Though that slap would probably be more effective delivered in the face. Bozarjian got off easy.
Jeffrey Epstein escapes federal jail
Even petty blackmailer extortionists know to warn "if anything happens to me, incriminating evidence will be released to the media." Billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is already fading from the news and not one manila envelope has dropped. What does that tell you about what "happened" to Jeffrey Epstein? It didn't. You might think his suicide was really a murder, but let's remember he counted the most powerful pervs among his friends. Fat chance any of them wanted their friend and primo procurer killed. Before his suicide, Jeffrey Epstein signed a will, his last legal opportunity to do so, then he did El Chapo one better. With allegedly dozing guards (one of them a temp with a shorter personnel record, maybe more easily impersonated), and under faulty surveillance cameras, El Epstein disappeared from federal custody into his own self-financed witness protection plan. What's it take? An anesthetic cocktail for the short gurney ride, not that many parties to pay off or knock off later, your body is released to an unnamed "Epstein Associate," and it's party time again at your Virgin Island! Pretty damn obvious.
Just when you’ve supposedly seen it all… yes, it’s Trump again.
This will make the Alt-White people scream like a monkey being sodomized with a shovel.Trump promised to Make Ecology Great Again. It's like constipation... 'No Shit' I've a feverish imagination but don't inflict it on civilians. I couldn't make this up if I dropped all my scruples. And took a bunch of drugs. He said it while looking around at the California Fires, the parts where he could stand without being incinerated. Which begs the question, why is this bastard not in a cell awaiting justice? The guy contracted AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE (taxpayers, not tax and draft dodgers like You Know Who...) to build a 'resort' meaning 'casino' in Puerto Rico and couldn't complete the task. Now, I know he didn't ever put his tiny hands to shovel, hammer or military rifle but he was The Leader/Boss whatever excuses for himself getting more money from 'his' projects than all the people who DID work on 'his' projects... Come on, this guy went bankrupt on CASINOS which are infamous for getting the last laugh consistently. Does any sane person really believe he should be allowed to give his infamous s..t midas touch to all life on our increasingly fragile world? it ties in neatly with the following paragraph. And in the past month he ordered the BLM to give federal lands to 'energy' meaning ONLY fossil fuels. What was quietly not discussed was and still is giving all the Tribal water rights, ordered by the Supreme Court when Roosevelt was president, as being the right and first consideration to the Tribes... 110 years ago and that's Teddy Roosevelt. So the Natives and everybody in America gets to drink mining and oil company waste forever. Trump has crossed a line I would never have thought possible. I could expect and explain it if what was tweeted had been said by somebody in the terminal stages of alcoholism.
Hamilton the Musical lionizes the real Benedict Arnold of the Am. Revolution
OUR GUILDED AGE OF GREED AND NARCISSISM is naturally going to recast Alexander Hamilton in a heroic light. Though he adorns the ten dollar bill, Hamilton was neither a president nor a founding father. The first secretary of the treasury was rather the nation's founding banker. Not a Mr. Drysdale safe deposit banker, its loan officer. Hamilton believed the nation's currency should belong to a private bank and be loaned to the public, at interest, compounded so the debt could never be paid off. Every schoolchild knows Jefferson hated Hamilton but the reason was always obfuscated by federalist triviality. In fact Jefferson believed the fruit of a nation's productivity was supposed to be distributed to the people. Hamilton insisted it go to a bank which need share only the crumbs. Hamilton the Rat Bastard betrayed America's founding fathers who sought to escape the Bank of England's talons. Its loans were not only usurious, the bank's discretion to expand or restrict credit enabled it to create financial crashes so as to seize the public assets proferred as collateral. Though the original colonies had benefited by printing their own currency in the past, Hamilton convinced George Washington that instead of the nation printing its own currency, a bank should do it, so the 100% profit of printing money could be spread among private shareholders, not the American public or their legislature. Any schoolchild could grasp the unfairness of the contract which Hamilton imposed on what would have been a prosperous people. The national debt is still binding today. Its abolition and everyone's emancipation could be just one big school walkout away. Hence the constant indoctrination. That's what makes Hamilton: an American Musical all the more pernicious. Because it's aimed at children. Its theme of How History Will Remember You is an ode to infantile angst, while obviously innoculating their childish allegiance to mature scrutiny. Hamilton is High School Musical league, with the pretense of being historical. Parents are agog because they think there's substance behind the interracial rap voguing and vapid graphic novel dialog. It's the same excitement parents showed for Harry Potter Middle Earthian dreck because at least the kids are reading. Before the revolution the American colonies prospered with their own currency. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson visited England and saw the poverty and squalor where they expected to see the shared bounty of the world's most powerful empire. The "Bank of England" was sucking England's economy dry and soon a law was passed to mandate that the colonies subjugate themselves to the same perpetual loans. That's what prompted the American War of Independence. The Tea Tax and No Taxation Without Representation are perfidy. Why is school-taught history so boring? Because it's a fabrication to hide the truth. Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison opposed the yoke of debt slavery, while Hamilton's cohorts and banking agents kept reimposing it. When President Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt in full, he bankrupted the bankers! Abraham Lincoln paid for the War of Rebellion by printing Greenbacks. Their
Today kids are learning a valuabe civics lesson. Government won’t do anything for people, without a gun to its head.
OH THE IRONY. But Poe's Law probably governs in high schools too. For the same reason irony doesn't compute on social media: adolescent frontal lobes. I don't have much use for guns myself, but it's obvious to me that when the corporate media gets behind a public issue like gun control, it can't be in the people's interest. AT ALL. Since when have even Big Dems supported anything righteous? The news usually blacks out calls for social reform. Unless it's the common people you're asking to disempower, not corporate hegemony. Today the press is platforming the protests with live feeds and biographical highlights of the youthful petitioners. This is MANUFACTURED DISSENT. Nickelodeon suspended its television programming to accommodate, in essence, a protracted commercial break. A young person's choice to "walk out" from school today is not rebellion, it's conformity. To the astroturf. Get a load of the profiling of the Florida students, portrayed as movement organizers! Their role more resembles contestants for America's Got Talent: the Protest Edition. The #March14 school walkouts across the country only confirm the mendacious education our children are getting. Gee kids, when you graduate, to no job, no health care, no environmental protections, no economic rights, maybe even no home, AND a leveled playing field of NO PRIVILEGE for any of you, you kids are going to need guns.
Can one liberate sheeple?
Animal liberators face a dilemma. Livestock deserve to be freed, every last piglet and lamb. But animals bred for captivity won't survive without it. Emptying a CAFO will precipitate an equally calamitous tragedy outside its door. The remedy of course is to stop breeding sentient beings for human consumption. The same probably holds for people. Social justice advocates can aim to liberate the "sheeple" but into whose hands?
President Trump wants a Bastille Day? By all means, let’s give it to him!
YES, GIVE TRUMP HIS MILITARY PARADE! Let the world see the tinpot military dictatorship which the US has become. President idiot was inspired to order his generals to parade their best hardware after attending France's Bastille Day celebration. Obviously he doesn't know the French republic is commemorating their liberation from the Ancien Regime of monarchy, theocracy and feudalism. That's when Parisienne rioters overran the fabled Bastille prison, the impregnable fortress which held political prisoners. It was the act which launched the French Revolution. Historians estimate the crowd of Sans Culottes to have numbered less than 800. Remember that next time you think the turnout at your demonstration is too small to make a difference.
How to play a REAL game of Monopoly.
MONOPOLY was invented by an anarchist who wanted to demonstrate the folly of capitalism. She called it The Landlord's Game. Virtually unchanged, Parker Brothers' Monopoly still teaches that the land grab end game always results in a monopoly. Players don't consider such an outcome objectionable because board games need a single winner, and since everyone starts at square one, all have a chance to drive the rest of humanity bankrupt. You don't have to tweak Monopoly much to render a perfect forecast of a child's prospects in the real economy. Start the game with all the properties fully populated with hotels and houses, all owned by the player who won last time. Now go. Just kidding. But dispense with the New World homesteading delusion. Unless you're planning fresh conquest and genocide, land ownership today is sewn up. Fully populate the properties and distribute them in advance, to one or all of the players, it doesn't really matter. The real monopoly lies with the bank. The banker in this tweaked version of Monopoly doesn't play at all, as far as rolling the dice to progress around the board. The banker's token doesn't need the wage earned by passing "GO", nor does he need to risk going to jail. Yes the banker is a white male. The banker's token lies idle wherever it wants on the board, while the bank doles out the money and reposesses the properties whose owners go bankrupt. Actually in the tweaked mode, the banker doesn't distribute the money, he lends it. Every $200 to pass GO, he keeps a share. Every property and building is actually on loan, so he collects interest. What's lent and what's collected are secretly recalculated every round to leave the bare minimum which players need to keep circulating the board. That's the game. Enjoy! If it doesn't sound fun to you, too bad. Keeping a player's interest in an unfair game is unimportant because monopoly is compulsory.
This repulsion driven resurgence of civic engagement is so 2002, sorry.
If we can credit the proto simian president George W. Bush with one good thing, his mediocrity did re-engage the electorate. Not enough of it, nor with satisfactory haste, but eventually Bush's misdeeds repulsed enough Americans to elect the first black president. They hoped he would jail the Bush cabal and restore peace, but that didn't happen. Instead the Bush wars carried on and Barack Obama started his own, also redoubling attacks on the American people, the middle class, immigrants, domestic jobs, Main Street, the environment, and paradoxically, the lives of black men. Equality, justice, civil society, continued to be degraded. The wave of youthful activists who saw their black Abraham Lincoln unmask himself to be a Herbert Hoover, disengaged from politics in disgust. While the widespread revulsion to Donald Trump appears to surpass record tolerance levels, in reality, the alarm and incredulity are not unfamiliar. Once again public despair is being channeled toward the voting booth, as if elections, and midterms, and the same old candidates, and the same stump speeches, will finally yield deliverance. We can hope that we're quicker studies this time round, prepared to give Donald the boot after just one term, but in truth, that was the plan with Dubya. It seemed so inconceivable that the Trumpian Bush could win a second term, that when he did, Americans felt they owed the world an apology for the error. Remember the 2004 SORRY EVERYBODY campaign? That election's democratic challenger turned out to be a ringer, which exasperated voters who were certain that anybody-but-Bush was in the bag. Midterm elections, whether they succeeded in sweeping Congress or not, provided negligible representative fortification against corporate predation. Not 2002, 2006, 2010, nor 2014. So why is the delusion so persistent? This time round, I dare not be such a killjoy to suggest Trump will not be stymied in 2018 or dislodged in 2020, but I can't see a people friendlier legislature nor any presidential replacement on the horizon that won't capitulate like John Kerry. This weekend's women's marches and protest signs were cathartic and inspiring, and the vigor always feels promising, but People, we're following the same piper! Throw the bastards out, etc! Si Se Puede! Trump Bush!
US president spills beans on shitholes where developed world goes to shit.
Citing "shithole countries" of Africa, Trump impolitely referenced where it is that developed nations go to shit. OBVIOUSLY, SHITHOLE is vulgar, derogatory and unhelpful. Used by the US president to describe dark-skinned nations, it's reprehensible and racist. But "shithole" is more than a euphemism. Literally it's a place made awful by being the dumping ground of everyone's excrement. The specific lands which Trump slandered, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, and all of Africa, are beautiful, scenic, and bountiful places. How could "shitholes" begin to describe them? Well, in a gold-plated toilet scale... Isn't "shithole" an appropriately condescending description of the purposefully underdeveloped and exploited African and Caribbean lands? The victims of the externalized costs of colonialism, capitalism, and now climate disaster, are what President Trump calls shithole countries. Predictably the international western press is translating shithole in its colloquial sense, not its literal, as shabby, backward, etc. --obviously to spare western readers from embarrassing themselves about their abusive relation to the third world, because there is absolutely no doubt that every culture and every language has a word (which predates plumbing) for where the community goes to shit.
Sorry no, Reich is not the resistance.
Robert Reich is great. His historical analysis is sound, though hardly radical. His economics challenge the dominant media narrative. If his illuminations work for you, fine. But sorry no, Robert Reich is not the resistance. Reich is only playing the foil to Trump's villain. And how hard is that, really? Reacting to Trump is the Democratic Party line. Resistance means more than the third law of physics. But this focus on the Mueller probe is not even that. It's pure fourth fundamental state of matter.
Meow Wolf’s new Denver development is urban predation in sheep’s clothing.
DENVER, COLO- Alternatively, Santa Fe alt-art venue Meow Wolf is URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN CAT'S CLOTHING. Here's the scam: Laud an arts collective of "creative types". Let them pitch an arts space project to city planners for which you'll supply the ownership investment. Let their non-profit creative-class cred prompt city leaders to provide otherwise unavailable land and the tax incentives and exclusions which come to cultural projects. Let them lead community fundraising to support art etc etc. You buy the land, you own the building, and you give them a 20-year lease. Their rent is subsidized by more community and city support. Cha-ching. In the end, you've got another property, where you mightn't been able lacking eminent domain. And you've roped in long-term tenants whose rent checks are backed by taxpayers. When your cronies lobby the city against that public support and their project is a bust, or when the lease expires, your sky is the limit! How can you lose? Normally you pull this scam on locals, but art communities have their own MBA grads now. So how to subvert urban artists? Bring your own hicks. In Denver, developers are using a New Mexico based band of bohemians called Meow Wolf as their shill intermediaries. Meow Wolf is a sort of Cirque du Soleil meets Halloween haunt house, in Santa Fe, who secured their own "permanent" leased space only last year with the backing of Game-of-Thrones creator George RR Martin. It's the reverse of course, because Meow Wolf attracted the public subsidies for the pulp author turned property developer, who keeps the building. Now someone has decided Meow Wolf can franchise their black-light immersive fun-houses everywhere that low-brow passes for art. For 2018, Meow Wolf has rolled Denver for a new construction downtown. Except no, they and their public support get only a LEASE. Flush with praise for their success, the Meow Wolves admit they're working on simultaneous metropolises across the west, even as they appear so fresh off the boat they hardly know what they're doing! They don't, but their landlords do. Those crazy creatives!
Neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan designed SCI-HUB to free science from parasitic capitalism, by outsmarting it.
A US judge ordered that scientific document aggregator SCI-HUB be shut down. The site's creator, Alexandra Elbakyan, was fined $15 million. Except the long arm of US copyright greed can't reach her in Russia, and the 29-yr-old neuroscientist from Kazakhstan doubts capitalism's goons can outsmart the science community which favors open science. In fact Elbakyan's is a fait accomplit. While the late Aaron Swartz got caught swiping too much at once from JSTOR's digital vault, Alexandra started about the same time, 2011 - she was 22, but she set the rate to single file and crowd sourced pressing the enter key. By 2015, she'd liberated 50 million scientific papers and dispersed the files to research archives everywhere. Why you're not hearing much about this story, or only a skewed portion of it, is because the media and its publishing arms are trying to walk back on Elbakyan's success. If you don't know open access won, in effect, it will not have. For starters, an injunction has shuttered various iterations of sci-hub.org domains, but hashtag #scihub keeps turning up new mirror sites, and you don't need nameservers for IPs (80.82.77.83 and 80.82.77.84). Meanwhile mainstream media, including Wikipedia, falsely compares Elbakyan's project to Pirate Bay or even the JSTOR stash of Aaron Swartz (though Swartz's manifesto was obviously an inspiration). As Elbakyan explains on her blog Engineuring, Sci-Hub's cache of liberated scientific articles is just a byproduct of its main function, as a mechanism to access scientific knowledge on demand, for free, through someone's paid academic license, if, explicitly, not yours. Think of it as deciding that an ADMIT ONE ticket, for science, ought to be interpreted to mean one humanity. Most of the articles in question were publicly funded but subsequently privatized by a profiteering publishing scheme that has resisted reform. It drove open access advocate Aaron Swartz to suicide. Editorials opposed to open access make a defense for gate-keeping. Scientists, researchers, academic institutions, and the inquiring public should pay for the value added by gate-keepers. Yeah no. What reporters are downplaying, and what Elbakyan is taking personal legal risk to explain, is that 50 million scientific papers have already been liberated. That cumulative scientific knowledge is now entrusted with myriads of digital repositories across the globe, where it belongs. Only 4.3% of Sci-Hub's new download requests require fresh retrieval behind paywalls. Schrödinger's paper is out of the bag. If western authorities catch Alexandra Elbakyan she'll share the fate of Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange at best. But our thanks to her. NOTES: Elbakyan wrote to US Judge Sweet in 2015, in her own self defense: --- Case 1:15-cv-04282-RWS Document 50 Filed 09/15/15 --- Dear Mr. Robert W. Sweet, I am writing to clarify some details on Elsevier v. Sci-Hub, Case # 15-cv-4282. I am the main operator of sci-hub.org website mentioned in the case. That is true that via sci-hub.org website anyone can download, absolutely for free, a copy of research paper published by Elsevier (Elsevier asks for 32 USD for each download). I would
Covertly spawned, color revolutionary, Arab Springy pro-democracy protests can do for Iran what we did to Syria.
When Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu express their support, you can be certain it's not for the good. Foreign military intervention in Iran aims to repeat the western demolition of Syria. While authentic public protest in Iran should be tolerated, western intelligence operatives should get no quarter. Terminate all covert actions in Iran, especially US-funded "democracy" agents. And NO WAR WITH IRAN.
Nas Daily is Borat for dumb millennials. Israeli Hasbara with pseudo goy knave.
Mondoweiss has the goods on Nas Daily, but they're wise enough to let readers connect the dots. Let's do it shall we? Nas Daily is a viral sensation on Youtube. It presumes to trot the globe presenting a sixty second travelogue for a new location everyday, minus the travel time, location scouting, casting, shooting, editing, seeking permissions, and marketing. Admittedly the inanity of the content must write itself. At best, Nas segments are compilations of travel agency footage, woven with drone-shot videos of the 25-yr-old "Nas" spazzing out with troops of multiracial peri-pubertals around whatever tourist attraction or cultural distinction Nas thinks will blow your mind. The high production costs, the innocuous feel-good themes, and the obvious PR services, leave no doubt the "viral" load is engineered. But by whom? Nas, aka Nuseir Yassin, is also dishonest because he's not globe-hopping with abandon, as the videos suggest. That part is already in the can. While viewers think they're supporting his search for new exotic destinations, he's home binging on Taurine and Final Cut Pro. Nas Daily doesn't warrant mention, actually, until the interspersed episodes seeking to depoliticize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then Nuseir's being a Muslim Palestinian Israeli, happy genocide denier, makes it absolutely clear who is behind these videos. This is Hasbara product focused on legitimizing the Israel colonial project. No wonder Nas doesn't like BDS. Borat was Zionist blackface slapstick which smeared Islamic stereotypes with excrement. This collaborator Borat may be an authentic Muslim, promoting tolerance for all cultural differences, but his secular apolitical whitewash is equally vile.
Oh beautiful for spacious skies… …Gone with the wind!
Wind energy seems practically free, but what a cost! Gone is the scenic farmland of the American plain, raked for ethanol, fracked for gas, pumped of oil, then plumbed for air, to power transportation. As if leaving the mess was the be-and-end-all of why the pioneers settled the west.
Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi jailed for slapping Israeli dragoons who shot her young cousin in the face.
FREE AHED TAMIMI. Israeli occupation authorities have arrested 16-yr-old Ahed and her mother, for posting a video of Ahed slapping an IDF soldier deployed outside the Tamimi home in the Occupied Territories. That act of defiance was apparently too much.
Programmed obsolescence for iPhone? Apple has an app for that! iOS update.
Forget planned obsolescence, the digital age means manufacturers can trigger killer apps like a remote switch for the hangman's trap door. Just poke a hole in your customer’s canteen if you want to bring them back to your watering hole. Was Apple’s throttling of late model iPhones mentioned in the fine print which users approve every time they authorize a software update? I doubt it. First the suspicious timing of the dumbing of smart phones was dismissed as urban myth. Next sleuths learned that googles of “iPhone slow” spiked before launches of new models. Then someone benchmarked the IQ drops of the transformed dumb phones. Now Apple has been forced to admit it programed the slowdowns. Apple says they had to hobble your phone to go easy on its aging battery. Imagine a car dealership progressively disabling cylinders in your car engine, to secretly save you on gas. Essentially Apple is retiring your phone on a fixed income of energy while you consider its functionality still under contract to you, under your employ. Whose iPhone is it?
Storm Bastille. Load Guillotine. Done.
Tax cuts for the rich. Higher deficit interest to the bankers. Less healthcare, Social Security and safety net for you. Ceaseless war for corporate imperialists, continued resource extraction for climate depopulation, and more austerity for the middle class. 21st Century oligarchs say: let the poor eat shitcake. D'YA THINK THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW?! You already went to the polls. You elected a democrat president who served only money lenders and warmongers. You already had a democrat majority in Congress. You already called your representative. You already sent them petitions. No matter the party, rich asshole politicians will pass laws to favor the rich. EAT THE RICH is good for laughs but first you gotta catch them. The French Revolution left us a blueprint that historians have tried to distort and blur ever since. Rise up! Overrun the security citadel. Decapitate the hydra of state. This time, spare not a single Mandarin. Minus greedy sociopaths, the average human nature is good.
The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column
The Premier, Seconde, and Tier Etats were pre-revolutionary constructs to harness the power dynamics of the Ançien Regime. Academics and journalists then sought to pretend impartiality by pronouncing themselves a Fourth Estate, but there is no such division. That concept is a fabrication of the press to feign independence from their bosses. If we must talk in terms of arrondissements, the Fourth Estate in reality is a Fifth Column. It acts like it seeks the truth, in the interest of the people, but in reality propagandizes for the oppressors. The conventional 1st and 2nd classes, the clergy and the nobility of all monarchies, disguise a single religious scam that presents the despot's raison d'etre. The two were only ever one. Even now that partnership persists in today's simulated democracies. The Third Estate, meant to represent the populace, is not an estate at all. It's a people deprived of unity and, literally, estate. There are only two classes: the haves and the have no estates. Schools and media indoctrinate members of the public about the inherent superiority and inevitable supremacy of their betters, and assure us that these journalistic conclusions have been independently sourced. Oscar Wilde wrote in 1891: In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.
“Everything you need to know about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle etc”
1.
Designate US a State Sponsor of Terror
WTF. What act of terrorism has North Korea sponsored lately or ever? Are we talking about the weird assassination of Kim Jong-Un's debauched rival heir? That was a hit, not an indiscriminate act, even as our propagandists now pretend to feel North Korea's cross hairs. It was not even peanuts compared to capitalist corporate malfeasance and western state sponsored shock doctrine. If "State Sponsor of Terrorism" designation is an appellation controlée sort of prerogative, like Public Enemy Number One, it's probably time to democratically crowd source a citizen's intervention. Designate the US a state sponsor of terrorism. Bring on all the sanctions, terms of probation, and ankle monitoring devices required by law. Disarm our terrorist mercenaries and advisors. Throw them in Guantanamo and render them to the interrogation centers of the other rogue regimes who aid and abet state terrorism. Freeze our and their assets and check Priceline for last minute bookings at the Hague.