things to pay attention to
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You can’t have a state enforced monopoly currency controlled by private banking interests along with corporations with state granted limited liability and allow corporations to destroy natural capital without legal limit and expect anything other than what we see: a dominated market (mistakenly called free) and the destruction of our world for corporate profit as corporate power grows as an externalization maximizing enterprise.
The bottom line
Science Stunner: Observations Support Predictions Of Extreme Warming And Worse Droughts This Century
“Future warming likely to be on high side of climate projections,” concluded a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). And that “higher temperature rise would produce greater impacts on society in terms of sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, and other threats .” Many in the media have been getting this story wrong — unintentionally lowballing the future warming we should expect this century if the NCAR analysis is correct.
Hey all you hacktivists, cypherpunks, mystical anarchists and global revolutionaries out there,
S17 anniversary
The Boardman Lecture for 2012 featured Glenn Greenwald , one of the most influential political commentators in the country, speaking on "Endless War and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in the Age of Terrorism." The event attracted more than 200 attendees . To listen to the audio of this lecture, please click here or listen to the sections below.
Glenn Greenwald gives Boardman Lecture *Audio Now Available* | Department of Religious Studies
Mark Ames: The One Percent’s Plan for the Rest of Us – Livestock to be Milked for “Rent”
Yves here. Mark Ames’ post discusses the institutionalization of a regressive policy, that of trying to eke more corporate growth out of extracting more and more out of workers rather than sharing the benefits of productivity gains with them. As we’ve discussed, Henry Ford, who was hardly a chartable sort, voluntarily doubled the wages of his workers, both to improve retention but also to enable them to be able to afford to buy his products. As Thomas Palley has discussed, and the chart below underscores, the US changed in the early 1980s from a model where rising worker wages were seen as the driver to growth and hence a focus of policy, to one where rising consumer debt levels and asset appreciation were used to substitute for stagnant incomes.Attorney General Holder defends execution without charges
In a speech at Northwestern University yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder provided the most detailed explanation yet for why the Obama administration believes it has the authority to secretly target U.S. citizens for execution by the CIA without even charging them with a crime, notifying them of the accusations, or affording them an opportunity to respond, instead condemning them to death without a shred of transparency or judicial oversight. The administration continues to conceal the legal memorandum it obtained to justify these killings, and, as The New York Times ‘ Charlie Savage noted , Holder’s “speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo.” But the crux of Holder’s argument as set forth in yesterday’s speech is this:
THE HUMAN MACHINE MERGER: ARE WE HEADED FOR THE MATRIX?
Most viewers of The Matrix consider the more fanciful elements–intelligent computers, downloading information into the human brain, virtual reality indistinguishable from real life–to be fun as science fiction, but quite remote from real life. Most viewers would be wrong. As renowned computer scientist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil explains, these elements are very feasible and are quite likely to be a reality within our lifetimes. To be published in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix ( Ben Bella Books , April 2003). Published on KurzweilAI.net March 3, 2003. The Matrix is set in a world one hundred years in the future, a world offering a seemingly miraculous array of technological marvels—sentient (if malevolent) programs, the ability to directly download capabilities into the human brain, and the creation of virtual realities indistinguishable from the real world.It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent.
Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation - Johann Hari - Commentators
I have long held that the greatest tragedy, among countless misfortunes that recur in the long and agonizing human story, is not when evil triumphs over good, or when oppression overcomes freedom, or even the wretched loss of ten billion potential might-have-beens. No, the most devastating defect in our character -- a trait that held us down ever since the caves -- is the very same twist in our natures that makes us such fine storytellers. I am talking about our incredible penchant for -- and creativity at -- self delusion and rationalization.
The Cato Hypocrisy
QUESTION: Professor Chomsky, perhaps we should start by trying to define what is not meant by anarchism -- the word anarchy is derived, after all, from the Greek, literally meaning "no government." Now, presumably people who talk about anarchy or anarchism as a system of political philosophy don't just mean that, as it were, as of January 1st next year, government as we now understand it will suddenly cease; there would be no police, no rules of the road, no laws, no tax collectors, no post office, and so forth. Presumably, it means something more complicated than that. CHOMSKY: Well, yes to some of those questions, no to others.
The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Peter Jay
The Xtremes: Subversive Recipes for Catastrophic Times
"In just a few short months, we’ve witnessed people power in action.(updated below) It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued , among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.