Notable Headlines (26-2-2020). Once upon a time in the West

Once upon a time in the West
...The seeds of anti-establishment and anti-elite sentiment were planted decades before Trump and Brexit. Trump and the Brexiteers tapped into the schism between the “anywheres” and “somewheres”, described by British publicist David Goodhart as the few elites who live without traditional constraints and everyone else who depends on the West’s status quo values.
...
‘Westlessness’ is both a phenomenon and a symptom. A phenomenon describing a world in turmoil and a symptom of the lack of communication between the governing classes and the governed.

If the West wants to find itself again, it first needs a language its own people can understand again...

Is Bloomberg an Oligarch? We Asked an Oligarchy Expert
...On Monday, Bloomberg’s team tweeted a bunch of sick photos of people spray painting things like “oligarch” at his campaign office in Ohio and taping little signs that say “eat the rich” at the one in Flint, Michigan.

Bloomberg’s campaign manager called this “derogatory language” and “an act of hate,” which, honestly, is exactly something an oligarch would say...

The U.S. Intelligence Community Intervenes in 2020 Election By Leaking on Sanders
...Sanders rejects much the national security agenda that the intelligence community has pursued both in the Cold War and the war on terror. In the era of endless wars, Sanders’ position is increasingly attractive to voters and thus increasingly threatening to the national security elite that yearns for the pre-Trump status quo...

Thirteen witnesses in the MH17 crash case will remain anonymous as their life may be at significant risk.

Supreme Court Bars Parents From Suing Border Agent Who Killed Their Unarmed Teen Son

Couple fell to deaths over cliff while doing U-turn on dirt buggy
At their inquest, attended by the BBC, Milly’s father Steve Coulson said it was a comfort to know their ‘last minutes were spent having fun’.

Franchise Workers Lose Some Power to Challenge Labor Practices

Trump looks to kill student loan forgiveness program

Did The Simpsons also predict coronavirus? Fans claim storyline about flu outbreak spreading from Japan to the US bears eerie similarities to deadly outbreak

Michael Bloomberg Confirms He Used Prison Labor To Make 2020 Campaign Calls

U.S. prepares for coronavirus pandemic, school and business closures: health officials

Chinese Workers Refuse To Go Back To Work Despite Beijing's Demands

No Surrender
After Police Defend a Gas Pipeline Over Indigenous Land Rights, Protesters Shut Down Railways Across Canada

"We Can't Stop This": Japan Rolls Out New 'Harm Reduction' Policy Aimed At Limiting Virus-Related Deaths

Europe’s Fear of Migrants Makes for Bad Foreign Policy
Paranoid about migration, the EU is an easy target for extortion by governments and militias.

Becoming gold: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘The Holy Mountain’

Jewelry based on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult classic ‘The Holy Mountain’

A Beginner’s Guide to Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Magus of Cinema
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a true treasure of the modern world—a master of both film and magick. Here’s how he progressed on the occult path.

Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency recruitment of German scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after VE Day.

President Truman authorized Operation Paperclip in August 1945; however he had expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism” would be excluded.

Ex-Black Panther freed after 43 years in solitary confinement

Mullahs Moving More Menacing Munitions to Yemen

Can Ankara’s sudden change of heart on NATO save the day in Idlib?

Has Erdogan Finally Lost His Center?

Cairo takes steps to establish Arab security front to halt Erdogan's ambitions

Will the Assads & House of Saud Make Up?

Earliest Mallorca settlers possible Eastern European roots

Incredible ancient stone structures still standing today

In a bid to counter Russia, Libya seeks US military base

Black Athena and the Incredible Whiteness of Being
Louise Hitchcock, Professor of Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology in the Classics and Archaeology Program concludes that Near Eastern cultures had a enormous influence on classical Greek civilisation

How Albania remained true to Stalin until the late 20th century

Israeli Historian Michael Goldelman Challenges the Accepted Chronology of the Kingdom of David

Alternative Facts Aren’t New (Check Out Ancient Greece)

Volunteer Tourists Are Still Showing Up at Greek Refugee Camps. Are They Really Helping?

Greece readies sweeping shutdown in case of virus outbreak

Nineteen groups appeal to PM to protect unaccompanied child migrants

Open Letter to Greek Prime Minister [EN/EL]
The Greek State has a moral and legal obligation to actively protect the fundamental rights of unaccompanied minors in Greece according to international and national legislation.

Greek islands shut down in strike as locals protest migrant camps

Largest Greek solar power project set to be the biggest in Europe

Turkey's Erdoğan Even Alienates Turkish Cypriots

Pakistan accused of cover-up over fresh polio outbreak
Source claims government plans secret vaccinations after 12 children fall prey to disease

'Grand Challenge' review stresses global impact of microplastics

Ring Continues To Pitch Facial Recognition To Law Enforcement While Claiming It Won't Be Adding Facial Recognition To Its Cameras

US Biowarfare Act Author: Studies Confirm Coronavirus Weaponized!

PICTURED: Prince Andrew's millionaire friend Peter Nygård is seen with scantily-clad women in Bahamas compound where the fashion exec is accused of raping ten teens after plying them with alcohol and drugs

South Korea Confirms 169 New Cases As Total Surpasses 1,000; China Reports Drop In Deaths
Seoul took on a more morbid tone Tuesday following reports in the local press that a civil servant from the Ministry of Justice's Emergency Safety Planning Office jumped off a bridge in Seoul at around 5 am local time Tuesday.

The official was one of several individuals charged with overseeing the government's response to the virus. As cases soar and hysteria mounts, we suspect this news won't exactly help quiet the public's nerves.

USA is pulling nukes out of Turkey

How to Organize Your Workplace Without Getting Caught

YouTube moderators are being forced to sign a statement acknowledging the job can give them PTSD

You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus
Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.

How ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ Turns Readers Into Voyeurs
For the poet Cathy Park Hong, writing about racial trauma requires analyzing its effects in a way that readers can’t leave behind.

The Postal Service Fired Thousands of Workers for Getting Injured While Delivering and Processing Your Mail
USPS forced out 44,000 workers who got injured on the job.

Suckers List: How Allstate’s Secret Auto Insurance Algorithm Squeezes Big Spenders
Insurers are supposed to price based on risk, but Allstate’s algorithm put a thumb on the scale

Swinging the Vote?
Google’s black box algorithm controls which political emails land in your main inbox. For 2020 presidential candidates, the differences are stark.

India is building nuclear submarines and ICBMs. That’s a $14 billion mistake.

'Go back to school and look at the map!' Twitterati hammer CNN as it draws non-existent SHARED border between Germany & Italy

Bosnia war veterans become peace messengers as threats to stability rise

Human rights, not corporate rights
Human rights offer a powerful framework for challenging corporate hegemony and creating a more just and sustainable world.

A key FBI photo analysis method has serious flaws: study

My mistress Melancholy
In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton gave his life to charting a Renaissance disease both alluring and dangerous

Why Hawaii Continues To Keep Fluoride Out Of Its Drinking Water

The US Government Has Sanitized War
We are reminded of our endless wars only when the government wants to invoke patriotism without criticism.

Greek gov’t “awards” companies for migration centers construction, bypassing…

K-Holing: Why Ketamine Causes Wild Hallucinations
“If you imagine an orchestra as an analogy for the brain, LSD takes away the conductor and allows all the different musicians to play their own tune. Different sub-groups can develop within the orchestra, so that would explain the connectivity between sight and sound or taste and sound. With ketamine, it’s almost like the instruments [themselves] would be disorganised.”

Scientists Discover the First Animal That Doesn’t Breathe Oxygen to Live
The parasite yet again expands our horizons for the possibilities of life on Earth.

NYT: $100 million US phone surveillance program produced two unique leads
The USA Freedom Act is up for renewal next month.

Porn site offers free access to people living in coronavirus-affected area (which areas are they?)

Delhi Riots: Intelligence Bureau Employee Killed, Body Found In Drain In Chand Bagh Area

Secret House of Commons doorway from 17th century discovered during restoration works

What is the "Westless" global order?

The Truth About Alligators in the Sewers of New York
Sightings over the decades have lent an air of legitimacy to the century-old urban myth. Here’s how it all started.

A top US health official say the US needs 300 million face masks for healthcare workers

‘The one where we ousted a dictator’
President Duterte may look like he is merely copying the atrocities of the Marcos dictatorship. But a deeper scrutiny shows the system that allowed the Marcos dictatorship to rise prevailed even after his ouster.

Marmite goes subliminal for Mind Control campaign
This is the second part of Marmite’s Mind Control campaign, following on from the end of last year when the brand launched a hypnosis film that it promised would convert viewers into fans

Spy or saint? The Buddhist monk who brought Russia closer to Tibet
The British believed he was a Russian agent influencing the 13th Dalai Lama. How accurate was this suspicion?

China’s blood donations dry up as coronavirus outbreak quells giving

Psychology Today: Is America Governed by a Cult?

Is America Governed by a Cult?

Coronavirus Makes Its First Appearance In Luxe Alpine Vacation Region

The Deep Roots of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Policies

India could provoke war with Pakistan in 2020: US foreign affairs expert

Not Having Health Care 'Incentivizes' People To Be Healthy, Says Fox News Doctor

Citizen Journalists Who Exposed Beijing’s Lies In Wuhan Have Suddenly Vanished

Neo-Nazis from across Europe rally in Budapest

For the new right, Hungary is now what Venezuela once was for the left

Keith Richards Reveals He’s Finally Quit Smoking Cigarettes

Canadian Scientist At Center Of Chinese Bio-Espionage Probe Found Dead In Africa?

FNORDS WE MISSED THE FIRST TIME: 2019 Andy Borowitz Article: Eris, Greek Goddess of Chaos, Confirms That She Wanted Trump to Be President

A Neoliberal Legacy: America’s Fascism Problem Runs Much Deeper Than Trump

RAY McGOVERN: German TV Exposes the Lies That Entrapped Julian Assange

Trump: Evil Just For the Hell of It

Edward Snowden Wants to be Allowed ‘Few More Years’ in Russia – Lawyer

Chinese hospitals deploy robots to help medical staff fight coronavirus outbreak

WHO Director-General Tweets: We are mobilizing the UN

Lecturing Central European states is not what the EU needs

Secret snaps of Israeli spy finally 'emerge from the shadows'

How AI Is Tracking the Coronavirus Outbreak

Door to door sweeps now happening in North-Eastern China as Coronavirus spreads rapidly

Taliban gunman who tried to kill Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala boasts of escaping from jail in Pakistan

 The anatomy of a cover-up
How Iranian regime apologists in the West used social media to silence whistle-blowers about the Ukrainian jetliner destroyed by the IRGC

 US Special Operations Command Now Wants its Own Light Attack Aircraft Fleet

 Chinese officials note serious problems in coronavirus response. The World Health Organization keeps praising them.

 Cherokee Nation becomes first U.S. tribe to preserve culturally important seeds in Arctic "doomsday" vault

 How to Get Your $100 From Yahoo After All Those Breaches

 The strange, thorny and sometimes sleazy origins of 11 tech terms you use every day

 Almost Every Website You Visit Records Exactly How Your Mouse Moves

 Pakistan Swiftly Passes Resolution Calling for Public Hanging of Pedophiles

 After decades of decline, the U.S. national fusion lab seeks a rebirth

 Fingerprint test can tell if someone has used heroin, even after washing hands

 Two Researchers Finally Solve Mathematics ‘42’ Problem Using Planetary Supercomputer

 Photo Essay: Cashmere Crisis Looms in Himalayan Ice Desert

 Emperor of spies
Craig McKay has written a book on General Onodera, the Japanese military attaché to Sweden during WWII, and his intelligence gathering activities.

 The Defiance of the Great Korean Painter, Yun Hyong-keun

 Brexit and Far Right Nationalism in Europe: Risking European Landscape of Peace and Democracy

 11 Secret Documents Americans Deserve to See

 Evangelist says people with dyed hair will not enter heaven

 Three Extraordinary Australian Journalists: Burchett, Pilger & Assange

 How a cluster of islands near the North Pole offers tips for world peace

 Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion

 Fugitive American wife Anne Sacoolas who is wanted over the death of Harry Dunn was a CIA spy and 'held a higher rank than her husband'

 What happens to class conflict in the fight against inequality?

 The Brutal Lessons Gaming Taught Me About Revolutions, Robots, And War

 Scary reality: China's secret Cambodian military base

 The return of toilet towels: can we get over 'the yuck factor'?

 Beer and brandy gushes from kitchen taps, shocking apartment building residents

 Modern-day witches ‘still facing endless abuse’


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The beginning of the Bomb

On July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age began, as the old cliché goes. Hundreds of modern alchemists journeyed to an occult gathering in the New Mexico desert to conjure up a fantastical, mysterious force in the early hours of the morning. The famously unclear origins of the code name for the project, “Trinity,” only adds to the lore.

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Preemptive Legitimate Defense: When a Movement of Your Body Can Kill You

From The Funambulist:

Whether we talk about the war in Iraq or the murder of Trayvon Martin, there seems to emerge a legal means of justification for a country to invade another or for a white man to kill a black boy. I call this means “preemptive legitimate defense” insisting on its oxymoronic character that demonstrates its ethical and legal absurdity. Such a claim is revealing the contradictions of our era, what Slavoj Zizek denounces in the marketing inventions of decaffeinated coffee and beer without alcohol and their geopolitical equivalent: wars for peace. These contradictions emerge from the necessity for a majority of people in the Western World to maintain their way of life and to obtain an ethical justification for their political positioning. The notion of legitimate is therefore important: it involves a narrative whose consistency should be sufficient to be self-persuasive (the kind that makes us say that we should not give money to a beggar because (s)he is probably part of a larger network that is abusing her or him). The notion of preemptive also implies a narrative: an anticipated one — and therefore a fictional or speculative one — that would retroactively justify the defense. We find the paradox of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report here: if you know that someone is going to commit a crime you can arrest him (her) before (s)he commits it; yet, if you do arrest him (her) the crime has not been committed and therefore this person cannot be legitimately punished. The justification of a “preemptive legitimate defense” — of course, this is never presented that explicitely — is therefore always either hypocritical or delusional.

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Decolonial Strategies and Dialogue in the Human Rights Field

José-​Manuel Bar­reto, Critical Legal Thinking :

...A dog trained to attack the flesh, and tor­ture, kill, and gorge a man and a child in front of the mother con­nects Fernando Botero’s Abu Grahib with Bar­to­lomé de las Casas’ Short Account of the Destruc­tion of the Indies. In this scen­ario of colo­nial wars a dog is turned into a beast­—a tor­ture dog or a war dog—by the inhu­man­ity of con­quista­dors and invaders. The dog becomes a power­ful machine for ter­ror­iz­ing and des­troy­ing the body, and for dehu­man­iz­ing the col­on­ized—and the col­on­izer. Five hun­dred years apart these two images or stor­ies are bound together by their ori­gin: the his­tory of the advance of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism, and the sens­ib­il­ity of their authors for the suf­fer­ing of the vic­tims. The viol­ence and dread of these events res­on­ates in the global con­scious­ness and moral sen­ti­ment of our times

[ ... ]

Mod­ern­ity can­not be iden­ti­fied exclus­ively with eman­cip­a­tion, the Renais­sance and the Enlight­en­ment, but it is also his­tor­ic­ally evid­ent that colo­ni­al­ism was another of its cent­ral found­a­tions. The con­ven­tional con­cep­tion of mod­ern­ity needs to be revis­ited to accom­mod­ate the leg­acy of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism: the con­quest and col­on­iz­a­tion of the world—a vast enter­prise of dom­in­a­tion mar­shaled through wars of aggres­sion, gen­o­cides, slavery, plun­der and exploit­a­tion. 

[ ... ]

The his­tory of mod­ern ideas—mod­ern ration­al­ity itself, con­cep­tions of the state, even Marx­ist and other cri­tiques of cap­it­al­ism—runs inter­re­lated to the his­tory of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism. For a geo­pol­it­ical ana­lysis of know­ledge, the cul­tural col­on­iz­a­tion of world civil­iz­a­tions, ration­al­it­ies and intel­lec­tual dis­cip­lines ended in the cru­cial assump­tion accord­ing to which the ori­gin of legit­im­ate think­ing is con­fined to a cer­tain geo­pol­it­ical loc­a­tion, Europe, exclud­ing the exist­ence of other sites of know­ledge gen­er­a­tion...

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