Tyranny
The Great Schoolmaster
His pupils are everywhere, – Manufacturing ______.
And the inverse:
Who has ‘personnel’ in 130 nations and 900 overseas bases?
Canaries in the Coalmine
the people who own the wealth
Nothing to Hide
Unpacking the nothing-to-hide argument
I’ve Nothing to Hide
The Eternal Value of Privacy
On Propaganda
Brainwashing
They’ve Nothing to Hide:
- Peanut allergies, The Menace of Our Age.
- Vladimir saves NATO and picks ties for it’s members.
- Man-eating Muslims keep No-Such-Agency in the gravy.
- Court rules to Keep it all in the Family (i.e. the meltdown).
- –
- Us annexes Eu to show John Wayne movies in French Cinema.
- Victoria expands her cockle empire, opens Chevron Shop, map?
- Angela opens “Perverts-Haven” a new mobile phone sex corp.
- Edward finds home in the Land of the free (and brave).
Reality Is Not What You Think.
The One Satire Solution
@ Home:
In the Shadow of the Sun King – The new bestseller about how guilt and power never met.
Selling a bank for a hospital is nice. – Wait! what? We already sold the Telecom company for just that. Well at least we didn’t sell the Royal Mail.
Home is Best (is) ~ “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Some 20 years ago, Sagan worried about: 95% being ‘scientifically illiterate’, 10 seconds sound bites representing ‘substantive’ media content, and Dumb and Dumber being the number one video. We, however, in the run up-to the local-elections and our brush with Big-Pharma, might add illiteracy about increasingly sophisticated persuasion technologies.
The iron law of oligarchy
Is Democracy an “Impossibility”?
The “iron law of oligarchy” states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations.
The iron law of oligarchy
Serfs send a memorial to the Emperor
Should MPs respect the will of voters in a referendum?
73% of MP’s say No(thing)
Promise is not a promise, lie is not a lie. (is)
82% want a referendum on continued EU talk (is)
From Republic to SIGDEV
Having finished Les Misérables in 2012,
The National Theater is now showing Camelot
Who watches the watchers?
Power of the narrative, what is true and what is false, controlling the world view.
Who gets to narrate: ‘terrorist’, ‘secret’, ‘national security’ ~ high priests, peeping toms or psychopaths?
Aristotle on money and politics
“Money exists not by nature but by law.” (Nicomachean Ethics [1133b 1)
“For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all.” (Politics Book III VII)
In 2350 years we have managed to come up with “free markets” and “public opinion”, neither of which are free or public. Good luck on the 27th, ~ we are going to need it. As ~
“… elections in many ways resemble an oligopolistic market situation in which voters simply indicate their preference for a particular set of party leaders, while the power of decision-making is with the party-based élite.” © Dr.H.D.Baldvinsdóttir 1999
The Mirror and the Mask
Medusa is live and well but will Barbie or Ken do as Perseus?