When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath — not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there’s this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you’re asked to participate in. By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home. – From the post: A Whistleblower Manifesto by Edward Snowden Yesterday, Forbes published an interesting and disturbing article profiling a company called Ability Inc in the post: For $20M, These Israeli Hackers Will Spy On Any Phone On The Planet.
Twitter has a problem with toxic femininity. Yes I said toxic femininity. - According to a new report released by UK think tank Demos, women are responsible for 50% of misogynistic and aggressive tweets. This comes as a shock to many prominent feminist who had previously spoken publicly about their experiences dealing with misogynists (male misogynists) online who had made it their business to intimidate, threaten and ultimately silence the women they preyed on. - According to the report, 50% of misogynistic and aggressive tweets were sent by women, while 40% were sent by men and 10% were sent by users who's gender could not be identified.
avenge: to take vengeance on behalf of vengeance: from Latin vindicare “to set free, claim, avenge” (see vindicate)
“The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” – President Harry Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, pg. 26.
3-minute video: Police, Military – Was your Oath sincere? Memorial Day is to honor US military who died during active duty. Honorable US military enlist to protect and defend American values explicit in the Declaration of Independence, and American rights explicit in the US Constitution. Importantly, all US military and many categories of government employees take an Oath to protect and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But how can we the living best honor our fallen family, friends, and countrymen when we discover that US .01% “leaders” have lied us to serve in illegal Wars of Aggression for most of our nation’s history? Indeed, the United States of the 21st Century has become among the most dangerous, destructive, and psychopathically vicious rogue state in Earth’s recorded history. Moreover, this conclusion is obvious in Emperor’s New Clothes clarity for anyone caring to look at objective and easily verifiable facts.
Hundreds of Turkish academics are waiting to find out whether they will be prosecuted or sacked for spreading “terrorist propaganda”, after they signed a petition calling for violence to end in Turkey’s southeast, where government forces have been fighting Kurdish separatists. After the petition provoked a furious response from Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, several universities in the country have begun investigations into signatories among their faculty — which could lead to their dismissal if accusations of unlawful political agitation hold up. On 15 January, police arrested and later released 27 academics, according to local media reports, including economists, physicians and scientists. – From the post: U.S. Ally Turkey Arrests Academics for the Crime of Signing a Peace Petition In the latest example of petty tyranny from NATO member and U.S. government “ally” Turkey, a former Miss Turkey has been convicted of sharing a satirical poem that insulted thin-skined President Tayyip Erdoğan.
Julie Borowski: I got tagged in the #MessageToFeminists challenge by a couple people. So, here's my message to feminists. Feel free to make your own video with your own message!
By Author Douglas Galbi:About 1150 years ago in what’s now Iraq, the caliph al-Mutawakkil received as a gift four hundred slave girls. He loved above all others Mahbubah. She was a poet and singer, with a beautiful face and voice. Her name means “beloved.”
One day, al-Mutawakkil was drinking with Mahbubah. He gave her an apple perfumed with an expensive musk blend. She kissed the apple and then departed. Soon one of Mahbubah’s slaves returned with a piece of paper. The paper contained a poem as sensuous as the scented apple:
You — fragrance of an apple I had to myself — you ignite in me the fire of ecstasy. I weep and complain of my malady, and of my grief’s intensity. If an apple could weep, then the one I hold would shed such tears of pity. If you do not know what my soul has suffered, look, the proof is my body. If you gaze upon it, you will see one unable to suffer patiently. [1]
Everyone found those verses “utterly delightful.” The caliph ordered the verses set to music. That was the only song sung for the rest of the day.
Jonathan Haidt (Author and Professor, NYU-Stern) joins Dave, discussing political correctness and free speech on college campus, the role of government, and the rise of Donald Trump.
Brother Nathanael said."Whenever you see a Jew or anyone putting his hand over his mouth while talking then you know he's lying, that's body language 101. Why all the drama? Drama is a ruse to cover up dissembling you know. ...Here's Bibbsy. ...Orwellian speak."
By Author Douglas Galbi: Ancient Greek epic poets addressed Amazons — women who act like men and hate men. For poets, hatred of self-constructed representations is particularly troubling. Amazons could simply be ignored if they kept to themselves in far-away lands.[1] Yet, incomprehensibly and ineluctably, Amazons have been attracted to men, and men, to Amazons. After more than a millennium of epic poetic struggle, Walter of Châtillon’s medieval Latin Alexandreis finally provided a humane solution to the problem of man-hating Amazons. In ancient Greek epic, the heroic warrior Achilles confronted the man-hating Amazon queen Penthesileia in battle at Troy. She had accidentally killed her sister while intending to kill a male deer. In grief, Penthesileia came to Troy to engage in violence against men.[2] She surely expected to attract men’s attention. A man-hating woman warrior who merely wanted to shed blood and die honorably could have disemboweled herself while remaining far way from men. Men would not have known or cared about her death. The man-hating Amazon queen Penthesileia regarded herself as superior to men. Confronting the Greeks in battle at Troy, she proclaimed to them:
By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.
By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.
