Tag Archives: Middle East

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on the proceedings of an ongoing criminal enterprise

It’s hard to escape the taint of dirty money in modern society.  Hell I watched three NFL games yesterday and all 32 team owners are some of the most scuzzy dudes on the planet.  But I still watch.  These dudes have their hands all over the public till.  I think New York State just gave the Bills like a $1B for the new stadium.  I wonder if that money, could say, be used to hire more NYC subway cops?  But nah, the billionare needs it more.

So I guess I can somewhat understand how billions of humans are just going to straight ignore the criminal farce of Qatar hosting the World Cup, and enjoy themselves the games.  After all, in the grinding routine of life, a good ball game with family and friends sure does hit the spot.  But make no mistake, these games were bought via bribes to FIFA by a corrupt petro dictatorship with stadiums built using non union indentured slave labor.

It’s like asking the Klingons to host the Olympics after they drop a battlecrusier’s worth of gold pressed latinum onto the doorsteps of the IOC.  Just like FIFA, the IOC would take the money, and Kronos would host the games.  Only the Klingons have additional (not optional) demands.  Those who do not qualify in Heat 3 of the 100M butterfly have to subject themselves to the pain stick lineup ritual.  When asked, why that specific Heat, and that specific event, the Klingons get all angry and throw half full blood wine mugs at the IOC goons’ faces.

When you leave out the slave labor, there are only a little under 400K actual Qatari citizens.  It’s as if Cleveland, and only Cleveland, hosted the World Cup entirely on its own.  It’s patently absurd, but then again, so is bold faced open international bribery in front of the whole planet.  And FIFA is still telling the planet to just embrace the suffering.  Here’s a great article from Defector on FIFA goon Gianni Infantino essentially claiming he’s all things to all people, including a Klingon, and how it’s ok to worship Satan, so long as you have feelings, real like, people feelings.

This type of immoral world where anything goes so long as you can be bought, and then talk your way around it afterwards, it’s what makes dudes like Vlad and Xi swoon.  This is the world they want us all to live in.  And a bunch of people are just fine to go along with it.  Just ask Budweiser (an all American brand owned by a Brazilian / Belgian brewery conglomerate hedge fund) who got knee capped at the last moment on alcohol sales.  What was Bud expecting?  When you do a deal with the Klingons, don’t be surprised when they fuck you over on a whim and laugh to your face about it.

Enjoy the games, folks.  Take what joy you can.  There’s nothing you can do to fix Qatar or undo the corruption.  So enjoy the month long ride as some of the planet’s most elite athletes duke it out for their homelands glory and honor.

My prediction?  Hell, I don’t know shit about soccer / futbol.  I couldn’t name you a single player on the American team.  I do know they’re going nowhere.  Because for top high school atheletes in America, soccer is their seventh sport of choice.  So who wins?  Uh, um, Argentina?  I think I heard Messi this is his last World Cup, so he’ll play hard?  And Argentina’s usually good aren’t they?  So, I dunno, fuck it, Argentina.

behold: a future Qatari high school futbol stadium Circa 2027 that will look like it was built in 1964

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almost anyone can be bought

My interest in golf is lower than Boris’ alcohol tolerance level.  Did you get it?  I did a thing there from yesterday’s post.  Boris did not get the hook.  Shocking.

I’ve played golf exactly once, because the best boss I ever had asked me to.  So I did.  I hated it and I was terrible.  I love sports,  but I don’t get golf.  It’s a sport, I guess, but so cock fighting.  And I’m not into that either.

I only know anything about golf when it happens to be on the screen in a bar (and I wish any other sport was on the screen), or from my coworkers who love it and talk about it all the time.

So here’s the earth shattering golf deal as of today:

1) The Saudis are creating their own golf league called LIV Golf.  For the record, LIV Golf sounds like a sex toy.

2) The Saudis are doing this because their Dictator & Overlord in MBS is trying to soften Saudi Arabia’s image and court foreign investment.

3) In order to make LIV worthwhile (at least outside the bedroom), the Saudis are poaching the PGA’s best talent via millions and millions and millions of dollars.

4) This is considered bad because:

a) MBS is a murderer and war criminal + dictator

b) Apparently the PGA bans you if you go play for LIV, I guess, for some reason

Almost anybody can be bought, and shamelessly bought too!  Just ask any Hollywood actor what they think about China.

Here’s Greg Norman’s take on murder: “We’ve all made mistakes and you just want to learn from those mistakes and how you can correct them going forward.”  I guess Greg would be totally cool if someone murdered and dismembered one of his children.  Just as long as the killer was willing to learn from his mistake.

Here’s Phil Mickelson’s take on murder: “They’re scary motherfuckers to get involved with. We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”  I guess Phil would be totally cool if MBS murdered and dismembered his Wife, just provided MBS still allowed Phil to change the way golf operates.

Of course, Greg and Phil are not pro-murder (I think) but are essentially (in the most cringe worthy of PR talking points of all time) just spouting whatever they think people want to hear while they’re on the way to the bank.  It’s about coin.  They don’t care about anything else.

To be clear, Phil and Greg are golf legends.  It’d be like if Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers banned themselves from the NFL to play in a Saudi football league called KY Balls.  The golf world is in hysterics.

Anybody can be bought.  Hell I probably could be too.  Let’s say some shitfaced dictator showed up and offered me $100M, I don’t know, how about Cambodia’s fucking Hun Sen.  Say this piece of shit came to me and said, “Write me eight blog posts and I’ll give you $100M.”  Would I REALLY turn this guy down?  I’d probably be like:

1) Hun Sen is a dictator and an asshole

2) But I can’t save Cambodia all on my own, the great wheel does turn, doesn’t it?

3) $100M is a lot of money, I’d be set for life, and I could use a lot of that money to help my local community

4) Eight blog posts is not a lot of work

5) Fuck it, hold my nose let’s fucking do it

I hope I wouldn’t.  I mean I REALLY, really hope I’d decline.  But I might just do it, who knows.  Almost anyone can be bought.  It makes me sad for our lovely human race.

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the BBC can’t remember own failures; but we can!

Oh my, I have no life. How come I can remember a lunatic piece I wrote over four years ago but not when I last took mine doggy for a haircut? The BBC is (rightly) all over the Washington Post’s obit about how Baghdadi was just a misunderstood neighborhood religious tutor. But the BBC seems to have forgotten when it once referred to Hitler as just a poor failed struggling artist. Said this blog’s unhinged, dumb author (me) back in 2015:

I especially like how the BBC wraps their article with this one liner about Hitler:

“He went on to become Germany’s military and political leader from 1933 to 1945, launching World War Two and causing the deaths of millions.”

For some reason they wrote this line in a non-dominant, weak voice; like Hitler was just some disgruntled toll booth operator who spray painted his bosses’ car.

How about this instead, BBC:

“He went on to brutally acquire the title of Germany’s military and political dictator from 1933 to 1945, attempted to conquer Europe and committed cultural, physical, and emotional genocide against tens of millions. Nobody misses him.”

Why does this modern newspaper writing style surprise anybody? It sure doesn’t surprise me. The modern elite (which includes the media) is all about the grey. Moral equivalency is a supposed virtue now. Good/evil, black/white, are for bigots and losers. Monsters aren’t meant to be hated, they’re meant to be understood.

It’s tolerance and understanding for all! Except, for those who voted for somebody they didn’t, or for somebody who says something online about [insert anything here] that they disagree with, or if they’re fans of the Houston Astros, and so on.

In the year 2176, Big Brother will murder one-billion people. The joint BBC/Post obit headline for him: “I love you.”

PS: goodbye false caliph, you piece of shit, nobody will miss you

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human scum still alive

I prefer my evildoers to be comical or true believers. These are the bad guys one can get behind.

On the comical end of the spectrum are Bond villains, Indiana Jones Nazis, or say Maduro (a bumbling idiot of a former bus driver who hangs onto power because his vice president and generals are addicted to drug trafficking money). There was actually a Venezuelan propaganda video where Maduro was driving the slums talking up his record and in the background is a building with graffiti calling for his downfall. Not only does Maduro fail to notice this, but they were actually stupid enough to leave this in after editing. Now that’s a level of comical dumb I can get behind in my bad guys.

On the true believer end of the spectrum I like my villains to mean what they say. This provides the clearest indication for the rest of us as to how one can conduct their lives. For example, Hitler shot his own wife and himself rather than be taken. Dude was pure evil, probably mostly insane, but at least meant what he said. Or take the currently popular Thanos (I don’t watch these movies but it’s hard not to know what happens) who follows through on his evil plans all the way to the end, and on multiple occasions, dies to the bitter end for them.

Contrast this to bad guys who are total losers, they neither provide comic relief nor the pleasure of a true bad guy. For example, take Stalin, for all his crimes (more bodies than Hitler) what he essentially boils down to is a coward. Granted, we must take the story with a grain of salt as the tale is from his daughter (who had a mixed relationship with him at best) but at the very end Stalin apparently dies in bed but as a broken man full of fear in his eyes at the prospect of death. Hey man, I get it, nobody wants to die, I’d be scared too. But when you clock a body count in the tens-of-millions, you’d better have more of a gut when your time comes.

Or take another example with our current human scum of the day in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is apparently still alive after five years of war. For those who aren’t aware, ISIS is finished as a landholding organization. What remains is a true stateless terror cell. al-Baghdadi made his name calling for an apocalyptic vision of his false view of Islam where the end was near and the apocalypse would rebuild humanity in a new era, his world. I’m paraphrasing but that’s what this guy sold to the planet. It was this vision that brought tens-of-thousands of foreign fighters from across the globe to fight for ISIS.

But oh dear, oh so sorry folks, because I guess al-Baghdadi didn’t really mean it after all. Shocker. If al-Baghdadi really believed any of that, he’d be a corpse in Baghuz either dead by his own hand or any number of lethal means from the Syrian Defense Forces or their Western allies. Instead he’s slumming it up in some false tent / film set like a total loser. I mean, just look at this guy, he looks like a roadside panhandler. All he needs is a cardboard sign with third grade handwritten scrawling: “unemployed false prophet/jihadist – need money – homeless veteran – please help – God bless!”.

_106640101_300496f7-8b2d-434b-a283-cd2bf06cb852

It’s like bin Laden. For all that dude was and claimed to be, he died in a purpose built cult compound mansion surrounded by his PlayStation and his (ultra large) porn stash. What a total loser.

al-Baghdadi’s time is coming, it’s just a matter of when. But like bin Laden he’ll go out as a complete fraud. An evil man for sure, but one who was never comical, serious, or even competent. It’s a testament to the flaws of humanity that such pathetic creatures manage to mayhem as much as they do.

What’s the real lesson from al-Baghdadi’s brief, violent reign? That he was good at it? Or rather, as I believe, that his foes (the criminally incompetent Syrian and Iraqi governments) were just even more incompetent / fraudulent.

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science knows nothing; we know everything

Well as it turns out science says there is in fact no new tomb rooms where they buried that Tut guy.  But what does science know?  Ground penetrating radar?  Bah.

Over two years ago we predicted (among other things) that Tut’s new tomb rooms:

“Tut’s new tomb rooms don’t exist”

They could have saved all that radar money and given it to me.  Beer isn’t cheap.

We here at TAP have all the answers.  We know everything.  Science knows nothing.

Why do I repeatedly post about Ancient Egypt stuff throughout the years of this degenerate blog?  Eh, it’s kind of a childhood fad thing.  In another life I’d be an archeologist digging up history.

I’d be solving the mystery of why Pharaoh X murdered Pharaoh Y to get the amulet and retain immortality without the use of the pyramids alongside some insanely beautiful French colleague and our lovable but oafish Dutch translator.

Then a truck bearing a black flag rolls up and I pull my Webley revolver, ready to duel with ISIS.  But it ain’t ISIS, out from the tinted doors rolls Zahi Hawass wearing a pristine three piece suit, his trademark hat, and duel wielding a pair of Yugoslavian machine pistols.

He’s not out for blood.  He’s just there for his plug.  He screams at us, wide eyed:

Ahhh, now that’d be the life.

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Where be this lady’s corpse?

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when do you send in the army?

So if you were a citizen of Brussels, then at this point you’ve been robbed of a whole week of your life earlier this year and now, all of New Years.  Why?  Terror threats.

Well, what is that?  Apparently it’s whatever somebody says it is.  Just ask your Los Angeles school district neighbor.  I’ve already ranted about this without purpose, it is what it is.  You just need to read the remarks of Belgium’s leader to understand what happened here, he cancelled all of New Years because of:

“…information we have received.”

How long do leaders figure their people are going to just put up with this?  How long are the average working folks of Brussels going to put up with having their lives altered because of information their leaders have apparently received?

With this kind of weak leadership, it is any wonder folks are turning to new fringe political parties and leaders?

I have no idea.  Neither does Donald Trump or Francois Hollande.  I just would think, at a certain point, that your normal average human would eventually get aggravated to the point that they’d expect something to be done about it.  Instead of doing what Europe does best: muddle through.

For now, the European answer, and I suspect the American answer is you just put the army on the streets.  Europe’s armies now guard the streets.  And the American police are mostly armed and equipped the same way as European armies, so it’s all the same to me.

And armies now guard museums, government buildings, mosques, synagogues, and the freaking zoo.

If you live in Brussels, and the Islamic State is responsible for ruining your life, when do you draw the line and demand your leaders deal with the problem at the source?

I fear, the answer is, you don’t.  You muddle through.  Particularly because as it stands, Belgium virtually has no deployable army.  Which is sad when you look at what they did in 1940.

So you’ll say, well, I’m a lunatic.  True.  But where do you draw the line?  If you honestly prefer a life where every public occasion you attend with your family requires a cop / soldier armed with an automatic rifle?   Just say so.  Tell me you want to live like that.

But I’m wondering if the lesser evil to the West’s freedom is a brief army of say 100K troops, mostly American and French, who carve a swath against the Islamic State for about 3 months and destroy it.  Then everybody wags their fingers and says, “Don’t do that again.”

And then you leave the Middle East to figure out the wreckage on their own terms.  And if they screw it up, and the Islamic State emerges again, you do another 3 month invasion all over.

Do you think this is a shit idea?  Maybe.  My idea might suck.  But at least it’s an idea.

The only idea on offer from idiots like Trump is to expel an entire religious group. The only idea on offer from all the leaders of Europe is to cancel New Years.  I’ll stand by the lunacy of my idea.  It’s better than anybody else’s.

belgian police

What’s really creepy about this shot, is that the Belgian police are all wearing masks while inside their own capital city.  And, look closely, the BBC has blurred the faces of those cops who aren’t wearing masks.

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I know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms

I don’t know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms.  Nobody does.  But hey, you never know where life’s going to take you.  There are all kinds of things that could be in there, including nothing.  So why not gamble away recklessly in the hopes we can guess it right?  After all, my Guests possess the most unbridled surveillance resources imaginable, so certainly I can figure this out.  Except that they’re usually too drunk to use them; and I also happen to be an idiot.

– Tut’s genuine Mommy in Nefertiti is in there and it’s the archeological discovery of the century

– Tut’s new tomb rooms don’t exist

– Tut’s 2011 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI with the 2.0L 4-cylinder diesel is parked in there pending investigations by the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation

– They break it open but instead of Nefertiti or Tut, it’s just Khufu sitting there in a lawn chair downing a highball glass of barley wine, and he’s like, “Fools!  I’ve stolen all of Nefertiti’s treasure and added to my stash.  You were only four-thousand years behind the power curve.  You’re fucked!  Ahahahahahahahaha!”  And then he re-ascends to Valhalla in the blink of an eye; and all they get is the lawn chair

– Tut added six-thousand amphora filled with booze in there to ensure he could get ripped in the afterlife with abandon; but then he ran out in 1134 AD and he’s been sad ever since.  The archeologists could try adding more booze filled amphorae to the stash to hook Tut up, but I don’t think it works that way

– They find completely empty rooms because they buried Tut in a hurry, after the murder and all

– Zahi Hawass shows up wielding a pair of old Yugoslavian machine pistols and holds everybody hostage, shouting at the top of his lungs to the Geraldo cameras, “Sign up for my newsletter to be first to here about my upcoming lectures and books!”  Poor, poor Zahi, dude you supported the wrong dictator, you should try and get in good with Sisi to get back in the game; you were a hoot to watch

king tut

give up your secrets ya bastard

 

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vicious EU uncertainty begins today

There are legit arguments for both sides of the refugee / migrant issue. Just as there are legit arguments for both ends of the austerity debate. But until today the EU had never done something like this before: they rammed through a major piece of legislation over the objections of several countries.

When the Greeks were asked to vote last weekend they returned Syriza to power and thus explicitly endorsed the most recent EU backed bailout plan. That same plan also required the endorsement of Germany’s parliament among several other national elected bodies. In other words, democracy and the votes of individual citizens came into play.

Maybe the EU council thinks they can dictate refugee / migrant policy over the heads of all / some amount of voters. But I doubt it. So when the Czech Republic government refuses to take their mandated allocation quota of humanity, what’s the EU council going to do? Fine them?

The guidance states: “Financial penalty of 0.002% of GDP for those member countries refusing to accept relocated migrants.” Ah, I see. Well, what if they don’t pay up? Then what?

Hungry and Romania are full EU members; the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Finland are all in the Euro. What happens if they’re forced to implement this policy against their will or what happens if they ignore it, and nobody forces them? Either way, the entire construct of the EU could come apart.

What happens to modern Europe if the EU comes apart? Or massively shrinks?

You can think this is a good thing or bad thing, but either way it’s monumental and rather fascinating. When the Syrian war started four years ago I’m not sure anybody would have predicted this kind of consequence. Yet here it is.

For good economies, culture, and just straight peace of mind, vicious uncertainty is not a thing to desire. But that’s what we’re going to get here for all of Europe for some time. Uncertainty.

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and oh by the way; 120K might only be about 10% of the current number of refugees / migrants; what’s the plan for the rest of them?

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math, demographics, and destiny

This seems like a relatively uncontroversial topic to wade into. Nobody’s got strong feelings on this one at all. But we’ll put our own belligerent spin on it; for that’s what we do.

 

Let’s start with some numbers:

– There are 81 million humans in Germany today

– Give or take a few million, there are approximately 50 million global refugees currently displaced due to armed conflict

– Give or take a few hundred-million, there are about 1 billion folks who live on about $1 a day

– A ballpark estimate says in 2050, Germany will have about 72 million people over half of which will be old folks

 

So a few belligerent observations:

– Even if Germany was populated by angels, they don’t have the bandwidth to house even a fraction of the world’s war refugees, let alone everybody’s economic migrants.

– But nobody in Germany (or in much of the rest of the developed world) has yet to crack the code on how they plan to pay for all that government spending / debt in 2050 when almost one-third of their populations are retired old folks.

– So whether anybody admits it or not, in order to stay solvent, Germany has to either let more refugees in, cut government spending by astronomical levels, or start having more German babies.

– I’m an idiot, but I’m pretty sure the German state (and all the other countries too) isn’t going to be cutting government spending or forcing women to get pregnant. So guess what option they have to take?

 

Any finally:

Germany and the rest of the modern world need to do more to tackle these problems at the source. For instance, if millions of Syrian refugees want into Germany, then we need only ask the question: Why is Bashar Assad still alive?

Europe has let Syria fester for four years. Did they think there wouldn’t ultimately be consequences given how close Syria is? How long do you think it’ll take before half of Libya tries to get in on this as well? Or what about all those folks in Cameroon living on $1.37 a day?

Solving Syria and conquering poverty are probably two of the hardest things you could ever try to do. But there are consequences to doing almost nothing in Syria and doing far, far too little to tackle global poverty. And in today’s case, those consequences are literally showing up at the West’s door.

refugees

choosing destiny for the planet

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on death and social media

The odds of you checking out on camera via violence or accident are infinitesimal. You’re probably sixteen times more likely to get struck by lightning. Your last moments are hopefully to occur peacefully alongside family. And while that event isn’t going to end well for you, at least it’s what we’d consider natural.

I’m of the opinion that despite the exciting pages of history, the vast majority of humans have never seen or experienced brutal violence. Still, when there were no cops around and everybody carried a club, I’m sure we had our fair share of cave related deaths. Or vicious renaissance era coffee house brawls.

The difference between today’s world and say, a Vienna stabbing in 1734, is that everybody’s holding a camera. More than that, everybody’s holding a full-motion-video camera right in their pockets. Even the fixed-site big cameras are different now. It used to be the only time a security camera’s footage was shown is on the news. Now a security video makes its way to the Internets six minutes later.

Whereas we were once a race that traditionally never saw actual violent death with our own eyes, now every single person carries it at their fingertips. And please understand that I consider this light years from movie or video game violence. One is real, the other is not. It’s that simple.

A thought occurred to me a few days back while watching the video of the Tianjin blast in China. Put simply: “Is this wrong?” And then: “What is it doing to us?”

Everybody loves explosions. We’ve been enjoying fireworks for thousands of years. So like countless others, I got a real kick out of watching one of the biggest blasts you’re likely to ever see.

Here’s one of the better examples. Warning, big time profanity in it (even more than you’d usually read on this blog):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04fV4j7A1w

Cool, right? But if you really took a step back and thought about it, as these major blasts occurred, probably about fifty firefighters were dying, incinerated. While it’s neat for us to watch, it’s also rather horrifying, and deeply disturbing.

You can take it a step further too. Here’s an example of security footage that found its way online quickly because some guy took smartphone video of the camera’s monitor. It’s of a guy having the blast collapse the entire entranceway and wall in front of him. In other words, his last few seconds of life:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7a3_1439409813

If we’re not careful, our inner-freak-human-self can degenerate to the part of our psyche that used to get a kick out of watching medieval public torture executions. It’s a special form of darkness.

The tale continues with yesterday’s murder of two reporters live on camera by a truly deranged individual. You had the unique ability to watch the killing from the perspective of both the victims and the killer. It doesn’t get any worse than this. Oh, but wait, except it does. For the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) goons have posted some of the more vicious videos in human history, hundreds of them.

Tens-of-millions, perhaps hundreds-of-millions, of humans have watched these videos. I’m sure tens-of-millions worldwide have watched the Virginia murders from both perspectives in the last 24 hours.

I intentionally have never watched an Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) video. But I’ll admit it, Virginia I did, both perspectives. And I think it’s broken my brain, and a corner’s been turned.

“Is this wrong?” Yep. You bet.

“What is it doing to us?” Nothing good.

We’re supposed to evolve, right? Thanks to the Internets we now possess the ability to watch somebody die, right before our eyes, at the click of a button, just because we feel like. Or because we’re fascinated by it. Or because we’re just curious. Or because everybody else watched it. Or because maybe in our dark-inner-selves we enjoy it.

Or maybe you think it’s important that we watch, so we truly understand the darkness we’re facing? No, instead you should read any number of United Nations reports on what the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) has done. It’s all there in black-and-white. You get a real good idea of just how truly wicked those dudes are by reading ten pages. We don’t need a snuff video to understand or appreciate evil.

No more. Not for me. I’m going to try and evolve. Certain things are wrong even if many have accepted them as commonplace. The culture seems to have decided that you can drink your coffee and watch somebody die. No thanks, I’m getting off this train.

Or put in another more practical way, the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) goons and yesterday’s Virginia killer have one thing in common: They did the videos because they want you to watch.

It’s generally considered a bad idea to wake up in the morning, pour your coffee, and do what evil wants.

Like all human inventions, social media and the Internets are going to do a great deal of good and bad for us all. Choose the good. Discard the bad. Evolve. Do good. Live well. And hopefully others do the same.

It’ll never happen, but perhaps think of the positive change to humanity if some day, an evildoer posts their murder video online, and nobody watches.

internet death

No more.