Tag Archives: Politics

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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.

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Vlad gives up washing dishes with detergent; uses scotch instead

Once upon a time a former leader of the Soviet Union could bang a shoe and threaten death to all and everybody would believe (falsely, in retrospect) that he meant every word. But now, Russia’s all powerful state is reduced to attacking the free world by, uh, banning dish detergent. Uh…? [cue tumbleweed]

Seriously, this is a thing. Oh no, Vlad. Not our detergent. You inhumane bastard! Shall we surrender the Arc de Triomphe to you now or next week?

Granted, Russia can still actually bring death to all via an accidental nuclear launch or unleashing Vlad’s-Trained-Crane-Assault-Brigade (VTCAB); but seeing as how neither of those options is productive (the cranes stole Vlad’s coke), I guess he’s got nothing left but to reach for the bottom of the base of the barrel.

But even Vlad’s got limits. He can ban detergent and cheese, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to do without scotch and his X-Box. So I guess he’ll wash his dishes with half a bottle of scotch. And then drink the other half while playing X-Box surrounded by his five supermodel-former-figure-skater girlfriends. What a horrible life Vlad must have; who’d want to live like that? [blankly stares around cubicle for a moment]

Anyways, what I find most delicious about the BBC article is the social media trolling of this stupidity by ordinary-average-Russians. This one’s my favorite:

 

_85184251_russia2

“Psst, kid. Do you want a bit of washing powder?”

Bravo.

 

“I’ve spotted Merkel; she’s next to the bath soap aisle. Fire, my pretties! Fire! VTCAB! ATTACK!”

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he doesn’t know what to do next

Ordinary average citizen, jai-alai connoisseur, and journeyman Xi Jinping’s got a problem. He’s decided to gamble the future of his little Party cabal on the concept that he can always have it both ways.

1) That he can deliver modern strong economic growth to the masses while also maintaining total economic control in the hands of the cabal

2) That said modern strong economic growth will keep the masses tame so they don’t overthrow the cabal

Even if you believe (2) is possible (I don’t), the real problem is (1) is impossible. Xi’s starting to learn that modern capitalism and total state control don’t mix. And the result is his economy’s tanking, and the dude doesn’t know what to do.

You can’t have an economy where you let a Shanghai taxi driver play the stockmarket one day, and then wake up in the morning and pull levers from Beijing to order the market what to do. It doesn’t work that way. Either the market becomes a chaotic mess or economic growth slows. In today’s case, both are happening.

So today, using his lever, Xi’s decided to let the yuan devalue in an aggressive attempt to kick start exports. He’ll probably have about as much success with that as he did trying to save the stockmarket last month. Meaning he’ll fail and lose even more credibility. Then what? I suspect he doesn’t know. Sooner or later he’s going to run out of people he can arrest.

China’s still growing faster than just about anybody else, and has more cash than most alien empires, but the glory days of the past are gone. What happens next is key not just for China, but for the rest of the world that’s now driven as much by what happens in Beijing as in Washington. And I think we’ll see over the next few months, an equally dominant display of political incompetence from both global capitals.

I’m actually wondering if the whole global economy is about to crash again like 2008. China’s slowing and taking all of Asia with it. Europe is still in perpetual debtor’s prison. America and Britain are only growing very, very slowly. Narendra Modi’s attempts to recharge India have amounted to very little. And on and on.

It might get real ugly this winter as folks stop shelling out cash on vacations and start freezing again. I wonder if the planet has the slack to absorb another big recession? Everybody’s still recovering from 2008. What a mess that’d be.

Eh, that’s quite the depressing thought. Uh, have a nice day please.

xijinping

“Hmm, now that I actually think about it this way, it really doesn’t make any sense after all. Oh. Hmm.”

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the current sadness of American politics

I’m pretty sure if the Founder Fathers are boozing it up in Valhalla right now, that they’re also shouting, overturning tables, and generally pissed off with what they’re observing.  Everybody seems inclined to pick a side.  I refuse to pick a side when it seems both sides are in the same business of destroying us all.

Obama took to the stage today to say such encouraging things as:

“Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq are now opposing the Iran deal…”

“I am not saying this to be provocative,” Obama said. “I am stating a fact . . . the choice we have is some kind of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in three months, but soon.”

I’m pretty sure he said all of these things to be provocative.   And so, a guy who came to Washington to apparently change Washington, has fallen victim at every point to the typical unhelpful Washington tactic, demonize your opponents, at every opportunity.  I tend to, somewhat, give Obama the benefit of the doubt in that he may not have been this way before 2008.  But surely, at this point, he’s as much a part of the problem as anybody else.

On the other side we have a circus which would make a medieval bazaar look tame.  Tonight, 10 people are going to “debate” for the honor of leading the free world.  And by debate I mean they’ll answer canned questions by hack reporters trying to play “gotcha” while they read off sound bites in an attempt to get noticed for that key “one-liner”.  In other words, the very definition of style over substance.

I think Trump’s a fringe goon unfit to lead a lemonade stand.  And I wouldn’t vote for him.  But I truly hope he completely detonates tonight’s debate format.  It’s truly a farce, a disgusting way to pick a presidential candidate.  But there will be 27 more of them run by both parties before the election.  Swell.

But soon, Trump will be gone.  And then the other side will have their own debate using the same format.  And then eventually we’ll have an election to pick the next person who gets the honor to become president, go to Washington, and demonize their opponents without conducting anything reasonable.  Gee, isn’t it all great.  What’s not to be excited about!  [waves American flag; while wearing 11 campaign buttons; singing America the Beautiful; drunk; in an unlit basement]

And nothing will change.  The Founding Fathers will still shout from Valhalla.  And the rest of us not involved in politics will still hope these idiots somehow don’t manage to destroy us all.

debatestage

textbook picture Circa 2345 describing the key reasons for the downfall of the Republic

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Obama adds third unplanned stop to African itinerary

The Washington press pool struggled to rearrange schedules as the Obama administration announced without notice that the President will now also visit Libya’s famed Kaf Ajnoun or Mountain of Ghosts. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained the move as, “An appropriate means to wrap up our trip in keeping with the President’s theme of meeting with horrible human beings.”

The concluding visit to one of Satan’s known earthly dwellings will follow Obama’s forthcoming sit downs with famed war criminal Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya and Hailemariam “The Street Sweeper” Desalegn in Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa, Obama is also scheduled to address the African Union.

Although the AU is said to be interested in rescheduling the speech’s start time due to an imminent AU vote to unanimously ratify the title of “Imperial Majesty for Life” to Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza, a move supported by America’s State Department. The AU is also set to reconfirm its annual stipend to Omar al-Bashir’s private aircraft corporation Speedy provided its “no notice use for all” clause remains intact.

While at Kaf Ajnoun, Obama will spend time at such key sites as The Road to Hell and The Devil’s Hill. Said Earnest, “Since he came to Washington, the President has learned the diplomatic dark arts like the best of them. He figures it’s time he paid his due respect to those who have enabled the ghoulish powers he now possesses. In fact, I’m told the State Department Bureau of African Affairs insisted on this stopover.”

Earnest also mentioned several other critical American goals during the trip including talks to get more of Angola’s oil than China, additional tank, tear gas, & piano wire sales to Egypt, and the forthcoming pool renovation contract by Halliburton of a mysteriously unknown but supposedly important villa in South Africa.

When asked by reporters if Obama worried about potential human rights protestors during his speech in Addis Ababa, Earnest wryly chuckled, “You ah, you don’t really understand how things work here, do you?”

kaf-ajnoun-ghost-mountain

Arcturus News Muster – 23 July 2015

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Japan is debating the wrong issue

It’s been 70 years since Imperial Japan walked itself into a bar room brawl it couldn’t win. And everybody remains chasing ghosts. China and South Korea still won’t talk to Japan on a reasonable level, in large part because Shinzo Abe can’t choose to spend some of his off time playing Pachinko instead of crawling around Yasukuni.

And today’s Diet debate has brought to a head the obscure local concepts of collective-self-defense, constitutionalism, pacifism, and so on. It’s all part of Abe’s effort to make Japan a “normal nation” again. For the majority of the Japanese people who want no part of this, it’s about defending 70 years of prosperity and not pointlessly starting vicious bar room brawls.

It’s the push and pull of a culture struggling with the reality of an increasingly withdrawn America. Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Japan are all starting to realize they have to do more themselves. The difference is none of these other countries have the historical baggage Japan does. A significant portion of Japan’s population quite literally despise their own history. All you have to do is carefully watch two or three old Japanese golden-age movies to figure this out.

I could talk about this defense / historical discussion for four hours, but honestly, I can’t get past the idea that Japan is debating the wrong issue. The future of Japan is not going to be about collective-self-defense, constitutionalism, pacifism, and so on. The future of Japan is demographics.

By 2050 Japan’s population will have declined by 1/3. Nearly one out of every two Japanese will be over the age of 65. No country on Earth has ever gone through such a transition before. It’ll literally reshape Japan as we know it.

How will this change society? The culture? The people? And most importantly, how will Japan pay for all of this?

They should be talking about this in the Diet, in yakatori houses, Pachinko parlors, and on street corners. But the best they can seem to manage is the occasional dialogue on how many Philippine nurses are allowed in to work in nursing homes.

I don’t have an answer for this problem. At this point nobody does. But China is not Japan’s biggest threat. Nor is Japan’s history the biggest concern that should drive the future. Demographics is going to determine Japan’s path. Until Abe, the Diet, and the country tackle this, everything else is a sideshow.

diet debate

wrong topic

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newsroom baffled how leaders wrote Iran speeches via belligerent time travel

At the conclusion of fifteen straight hours of an overall “baffling ordeal” the entire newsroom of the Daily Planet struggled to write a single coherent article on the recent Iranian nuclear deal. Arguments among staff primarily centered on the similarity of speeches made by the planet’s leadership to words they already said six months ago. “We spent about seven hours investigating the possibility that the space time continuum had ruptured and we were both late for Christmas, and all humanity was doomed to a vicious black hold related death,” stated deputy editor Brace Winslow, “but after consulting the Pluto robot folks at Johns Hopkins we’ve ruled out that possibility. Which was fortunate, because I hadn’t had the chance to buy a damn thing for my future ex-wife.”

After a sleepless night, several pizza runs, and six discarded bottles of various alcoholic beverages the grizzled reporters settled upon the theory that the President, Republicans, Iranians, Israelis, and Euro-trash politicians all wrote their speeches six months ago and simply read them upon the agreement’s approval. “What we’ve yet to figure out is how they could write these speeches and then just read them,” remarked Winslow, “it’s almost like nobody has read the agreement before speaking.”

Yet the undaunted newsroom decided to determine the root cause of this discrepancy. “No responsible leader would just spout their own canned talking points without actually reading a critical document. So our conclusion is all the world’s leaders knew what the exact agreement would be when they wrote their speeches back in December. Because they could see through time. So we’re going back to Hopkins to figure out how this was done. The Iranian deal’s pretty huge; but think of it, our leaders can literally travel through time.  We could go back and shoot Hitler!  What a scoop.”

newsroom

Arcturus News Muster – 15 July 2015

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on beer, breweries, airlines, airports, collusion, and selling out

So the airlines are supposedly colluding on price, eh? Who would have thought? I did. But I’m just some guy who flies regularly. I’m not a big shot at the Justice Department. But my Guests and I just did a brief half-hour of research to confirm what we’ve always suspected. It will undoubtedly take the Justice Department five months and $18M to do what I just did.

Kindly observe this tale of two airports: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport & Manchester–Boston Regional Airport.

So I went to Priceline Senόr Bancό de Rόbber Bill Shatner’s website to fly between these two locations. I chose 10-12 November to:

– Eliminate the possibility of last minute flight booking disparities

– Non-holiday week

– Not on a Friday or the weekend

– Random boring normal week

Manchester to Phoenix NOV

And, hmm, I get $347 with Delta and United, and American / US Air is within 7%. So why are Delta and United charging the exact same price? So I figure, okay, maybe Bill’s got an inside Star Trek deal in place with Delta and United. So I journey directly to the Delta and United websites to get it straight from the airline’s maul.

United 348

United gives a figure of $348 or $1 off Shatner.

Delta 355

Delta’s $355 or a whole $7 more than Shatner.

Just to further investigate I strolled over to Southwest and no points for guessing how much they charge for this flight.

Southwest 348

Yeah.

So of the four major airlines (all now under Justice Department investigation) three of them charge the exact same price. The other is a whole 7% more expensive. I see. Yeah.

So is all of this just a coincidence? That $348 is just how much it costs to fly from Manchester to Phoenix and none of the airlines can mess with that price?

Put another way, none of these airlines seem interested in providing a price different from the others, so they could, like, make money. You know, compete with the other airlines for your business to make a higher profit than the other airline. Capitalism, competition, etc?

So are the airlines colluding on price? I’ll let you decide. But the answer’s yes.

Speaking of reasons why collusion occurs, it seems presidential candidates have taken it upon themselves to conduct campaign events at breweries. Why?

– Everybody loves beer

– Get to pose with industrial looking equipment

– Meet hard working Americans not yet replaced by some dude in Shenzhen

– Everybody loves beer

bush brewery

Here we see Bush 3 at Four Peaks Brewery in Arizona.

clinton brewery

And here we see Clinton 2 at Smuttynose Brewery in New Hampshire.

I like these breweries. Smuttynose’s Robust Porter is first rate.

Robust Porter

I’ve only drank Four Peak’s Kilt Lifter when I’m layover at Phoenix Sky because you can’t get it out east yet. Good stuff too.

kilt lifter

You can get Kilt Lifter at Zinc Brasserie’s in Terminal 4. By the way, Zinc Brasserie’s is the only place you need to eat at Phoenix Sky. Don’t bother with anywhere else. I literally schedule layovers at Phoenix Sky to eat there. Place is freaking awesome. I’ve never been at Manchester long enough to eat there, so I don’t know what they’ve got.

Anyways, despite my affection for Four Peaks and Smuttynose I’m rather unnerved they’ve decided to sell out like this. Don’t you go ahead and think breweries host campaign events for free. They want payback, eventually. A phone call here, a campaign contribution there. A little access, a chance to remind somebody later when you need a favor. A concept otherwise known as collusion.

If the airlines are colluding against the law they’ve been doing it for at least a decade. And now the Justice Department wants to get involved? Honestly I’m surprised they’re actually doing something. Businesses have gotten so good at rigging the game or selling out that I’m always surprised when the consumer is handed a real victory, like when Comcast recently lost the chance to become the true giant octopus.

But I kind of expect the airlines to break the rules. They’ve been doing it since the dawn of flight. When Sarsaparilla Airways was shoving $2 bills into Woodrow Wilson’s pocket. But beer is supposed to be better than that. Beer is for us, more personal, intimate. You drink it at home, while relaxing with good television or a great book. Beyond crooked awfulness. It irks me to see them in the game this way.

Is beer the next total sell out? I guess we’ll know if Bush 3 or Clinton 2 wins, and then I stroll into my local shopette and see six packs of Robust Porter and Kilt Lifter. And they’re both the exact same price.

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this week’s financial antics will expose the follies of five years

You can’t muddle through forever, eventually things actually have to happen. But at this final hour, I can’t help but imagine a metaphor of Greece as a coke addict, curled up in a ball on the floor of an abandoned building, shaking, and the Troika is standing hunched over him, arm around the shoulder, offering the chance to take yet another hit.

Unless you happen to live in a realm not called reality, you cannot deny Greece has been bankrupt for five years. But everybody’s kept trying to find a way to muddle through. Greece is surely to blame for running up unsustainable debt; but blame the EU, IMF, Bank(s), and the EU for allowing the fiction of solvency to continue.

Don’t believe me? Just read this paragraph I altered from this BBC article:

 

Greece’s temporary [clean moment] is sending [dealers’] money into other [drug] markets, which experts say will continue in the short-term, as [dealers] worry about a potential massive [drug free era] in the country.

Despite worries about the deepening [drug free era] in Greece, [cocaina] market watchers say that [dealer] markets are equipped to handle the short-term volatility.

“To a certain extent, we do expect markets to react to this, with peripheral [coke] yields probably higher, the [price of blow] a little bit lower throughout the week and some strength in the safe havens like [heroin] and the [new synthetic powders],” David Stubbs from [Venezuela] told the BBC’s Today programme.

He added that because the [corner] situation in the eurozone had improved since 2011, the region’s [habit] should be able to weather the storm.

 

Everybody wants to shout about how bad it’ll be for Greece if they formally go bankrupt, leave the Euro, and otherwise temporarily exit financial markets. Well you know what, Greece’s been in depression for five years. A Greek child born yesterday is currently scheduled to spend the first five decades of their life paying off debt they don’t own.

Bankruptcy laws were created for a reason, both for individuals and even countries. That the EU is trying so very, very hard, even today, to do a pathetic-last-minute-deal-that’ll-just-kick-the-can-down-the-road-for-three-months has really turned my brain into thinking it’s become entirely about the EU. And the Troika isn’t bothered by what happens to the Greek citizen. And it also doesn’t help things when Greece has a prime minister who literally appears so removed from realism every day I think he’s actually on coke.

Just let them go bankrupt. It’ll be a very, very hard decade. But after five years, and facing five more decades of this, short term suffering is better than enduring a perpetual debt state. Pull the EU dealer off Greece’s shoulders, take that dude to a clinic, and get him clean.

flags

coming soon; to a flaming agora protest near you