Simpson on the mark
Six years ago the fount of American wisdom, Homer Simpson, predicted the outcome of next week's US presidential elections. Standing on the steps of Capitol Hill, Homer said, "Fellow Americans, I have discovered your leaders are from outer space!" He ripped off their masks to reveal terrifying monsters. The crowd reacted with horror. The monsters smiled and said, "So what? It's a two-party system and you've got to vote for one of us."
THE HILL: Experts hedge bets as election tightens. It’s Schrodinger’s election now: Hillary and Donald are each both President-elect and not President-elect, and they’ll stay that way until we open the box in a couple of days
Washington Post fact-checker says Trump lies way more than Clinton
Washington Post fact-checker says Trump lies way more than Clinton
Famous people even of East Attitude fame often live in bubbles-- even famous philosophers. Zizek is insulated from the real world. I'm sure plenty of insulated people supported various despots throughout history. After all, they had nothing much to lose-- or they thought they didn't. . . Is Slavoj Zizek trying to impress his Slovenian (former illegal migrant and a model of "extraordinary ability", who gives birth to royal children such as Baron ) Melanija Knavs aka Trump? After all, her father Viktor belonged To Slovenian Communist Party so both share the same political leanings - Slavoj is just a media tart commie
Today, students across America will be wetting their pants. And not in the good sense. Famed Marxist philosopher-clown Slavoj Zizek has just endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency.
Is it a joke or does he mean it? Of course, he means it. Unless he doesn’t. Is it a joke? Perhaps, but if it is a joke that probably means that he means it. In any event, the hordes of students who have glommed on to this highly overrated philosopher will be severely troubled by the fact that, between Hillary and Trump, Zizek prefers Trump.
One expects that he will be forever banned from American college campuses.
To Zizek, “Hillary is the true danger.” He continues to explain his preference:
In every society there is a whole network of unwritten rules, how politics works, and how you build consensus. Trump disturbed this. And if Trump wins, both big parties, Republicans and Democrats, would have to return to basics, rethink themselves, and maybe some things can happen there.
Zizek believes that Trump will produce a great American awakening:
That’s my desperate, very desperate hope, that if Trumps wins, listen, America is still not a dictatorial state, he will not introduce fascism. But it will be a kind of big awakening. New political processes will be set in motion, will be triggered.
Why not Hillary? Zizek explains that:
… she stands for this absolute inertia, the most dangerous one. Because she is a cold warrior, and so on, connected with banks, pretending to be socially progressive.
What do Women and Men Want from Leaders: integrity and fair 👤👣👣👣👣👣👣👣
Political branch stacking the new growth industry .... Amen
Political branch stacking the new growth industry .... Amen
What’s the Matter With the Polls? Politico
The Republican Party is now deep into its post-democratic phase.
It is not just that it has selected as a candidate a man with a professed authoritarian streak, and a fondness for Vladimir Putin, a man who has said he may not accept the result of the election should he lose Republicans slide into authoritarianism under Donald Trump makes party unworthy
PolitiFact is getting ready to rate
the promises of the new president
In a political environment defined by widespread polarization and partisan animosity, even simple conversations can go awry when the subject turns to politics. In their in-person interactions, Americans can (andoften do) attempt to steer clear of those with whom they strongly disagree…A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that political debate and discussion is indeed a regular fact of digital life for mbmany social media users, and some politically active users enjoy the heated discussions and opportunities for engagement that this mix of social media and politics facilitates. But a larger share expresses annoyance and aggravation at the tone and content of the political interactions they witness on these platforms…”
5 ways to fact-check data sets
The Berlin Wall was a scar — a concrete and barbed wire boundary that divided families, East and West, communism and capitalism, tyranny and democracy. People died trying to climb over it while others labored to carve tunnels beneath it.
In a political environment defined by widespread polarization and partisan animosity, even simple conversations can go awry when the subject turns to politics. In their in-person interactions, Americans can (andoften do) attempt to steer clear of those with whom they strongly disagree…A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that political debate and discussion is indeed a regular fact of digital life for mbmany social media users, and some politically active users enjoy the heated discussions and opportunities for engagement that this mix of social media and politics facilitates. But a larger share expresses annoyance and aggravation at the tone and content of the political interactions they witness on these platforms…”
5 ways to fact-check data sets
‘The Mark and the Void’ is a brilliant preposterous ragtag jumble of a comic novel. It is about the banking industry. Despite this sorry backdrop, ‘The Mark and the Void’ is a comic novel told from the viewpoint of a banker named Claude ...
“The radio waves are clogged with hard-luck stories derived from the last wave of cuts: grandmothers and children and chronically ill whose pensions were cut or whose special-needs assistants were withdrawn or whose care was cancelled overnight by governmental austerity, even as yet more billions flow in decidedly unaustere fashion to the notoriously corrupt bank.”
An escape tunnel dug by Jews to escape Nazi captors during WWII has been discovered in Lithuania
A tunnel dug with spoons by Jewish prisoners to escape their Nazi captors during World War II has been discovered in a Lithuanian forest. Escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners
“The story of the twenty-first century is the banks. Look at the mess this country’s in because of them.” ‘The Mark and the Void’ by Paul Murray – Breaking the Bank
Standing Rock pipeline protest was absent from Facebook TrendsTechCrunch MEdia dragons have nothing to do with FaceBorg.
I’ve not traditionally been a fan of science fiction, but something about theHunger Games films really captivated me. It’s that eerie undertone that the films portray about social control and how, at the heart of all things, the strongest motivating force for individuals is to remove their loved ones from poverty
The Hunger Games And The Law Firm LifeHistorians As Policy Advisors? Here’s Why That Isn’t A Good Idea
“History reveals the enormous variety and variability of human institutions and behaviour, setting clear limits on the validity and plausibility of any universalising generalisations. The problem for any would-be applied historian lies in converting this necessary corrective of over-confident social-scientific assertions or politicians’ simplistic assumptions – the historian’s reflex ‘actually, it’s rather more complicated than that’ – into anything resembling the sort of practical policy advice that politicians or civil servants will ever take seriously.”
Standing Rock pipeline protest was absent from Facebook TrendsTechCrunch MEdia dragons have nothing to do with FaceBorg.
"Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day."
I’ve not traditionally been a fan of science fiction, but something about theHunger Games films really captivated me. It’s that eerie undertone that the films portray about social control and how, at the heart of all things, the strongest motivating force for individuals is to remove their loved ones from poverty
An escape tunnel dug by Jews to escape Nazi captors during WWII has been discovered in Lithuania
A tunnel dug with spoons by Jewish prisoners to escape their Nazi captors during World War II has been discovered in a Lithuanian forest. Escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners
The Berlin Wall was a scar — a concrete and barbed wire boundary that divided families, East and West, communism and capitalism, tyranny and democracy. People died trying to climb over it while others labored to carve tunnels beneath it.
In his new book, The Tunnels, Greg Mitchell writes about a time in the early 1960s when two groups of diggers built tunnels that were filmed and financed by U.S. television networks. Those networks wanted to turn acts of daring into primetime specials. But when the U.S. government discovered those projects, the Kennedy administration moved to suppress them. A Harrowing Tale Of Cold War Escape And Suppression In 'The Tunnels' Listen· 6:20
In The Tunnels, historian Greg Mitchell uncovers one of the most gripping stories of the Cold War, in which people in West Berlin dug tunnels under the Berlin Wall to help friends and family escape East Germany. American TV broadcasters CBS and NBC partially funded two tunnels and filmed the digging...and then the Kennedy administration and State Department tried to squash the documentaries during the tense months before the Cuban missile crisis came to a head.
Greg Mitchell talked with us about the tunnelers themselves, the behind-the-scenes machinations of the U.S. government, and the parallels to today.
Amazon Book Review: What sparked your interest in this slice of history?
Greg Mitchell: I'm unfortunately old enough to have grown up with [the Berlin Wall] and grown up in the era when it was at the top of the news many nights, and there was the incredible nuclear threat attached to Berlin. A few years ago I saw the film The Lives of Others, which became my favorite movie of the last decade. There's a great deal in there about East Germany, suppression, Stasi, and surveillance, and it ends with the fall of the wall. I was primed to learn more. But what really sparked it was that my daughter, her husband, and her three-year-old son moved to Berlin and lived about a mile from where the wall was. My wife and I had never been to Berlin, so we were especially happy to go visit them. On our first visit, we took a walk up to where the first wall memorial is and we were just overwhelmed by what we found there. When I came back to New York, I did more research and found these incredible links to the CBS and NBC films, and the fact that they were suppressed. Incredible Escapes Across Iron Curtains and Walls