Via The Awl - A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum, dissecting those awful banner ads that appear too frequently in the margins of "reputable" news sites, Clickbait that lures you onward and downward into the abyss that has become the internet.
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A thought experiment along the ilnes of "If you could go back in time and stop world War 2 by killing Hitler"... but instead, we'll only back a couple of decades to George W. Bush. We don't need to look to the deep past for villains. Now, the consequences of the Iraq War - unjustly, arguably illegally instigated - have been well documented. They include (by some estimates) over a million casualties, many of which were civilian - women and children. Other consequences include the destabilization of the Arab World, it's unlikely that Egypt, Syria and Turkey would have faced the revolutions they faced without the US's intervention, and it's arguable that the current rise of ISIS and Islamic Fundamentalism in large part was fueled by the power vacuum left in Saddam's absence.
So, knowing the consequences and ongoing catastrophes that have resulted from the Iraq invasion, if you could go back in time and Assassinate George W. Bush, would you? Would you take it into your hands to take one life to save a million? Or is it too uncomfortable to recognize that in many - even most - of the world's narratives, we are the villains?
Something to think about. Because Democracy is failing, and very soon we all may well be looking back to the "good old days" of Bush...
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I've been on his page for quite a while, and am in full agreement. Psychology and Psychiatry have become overrun with quick fixes and special interest lobbies that make them pushers of the worst kind, creating addicts from children solely to enslave them to big pharma. My opinions count for nothing. His, however, have some weight...
Link: http://curiousmindmagazine.com/harvard-psychologist-says-adhd-largely-fraud/
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From the moment you read the headline you knew he wasn't a terrorist, there was nothing about the attack - driving a car into pedestrians, stabbing a police officer - that even remotely suggested Terror or that he was an "Islamist Extremist". And, sure enough, a few days later, headlines - or rather - bylines, appearing much lower in the paper, appear that seem to retract it. But the damage is already done - people remember headlines, not bylines or retractions.
But why Terrorist? It's an obvious misdirection - his name, appearance (petty prejudices come into play here) - despite his being born in the UK anyone who kills another person and looks vaguely Middle Eastern or African must be a Terrorist. Not true. Terror is convenient, it objectifies the enemy, gives them a color - a place (over there), a cause, it avoids any uncomfortable discussions about somebody who clearly fell through the cracks, someone disillusioned, despairing, hopeless, the terror in this lies in the fact that this is an overwhelming reality for a large number of Britons, and these attacks - futile gestures of resistance directed against a political process that has for decades now disenfranchised overwhelming segments of the population, against a political system that has seen the rich grow even astronomically richer and govern those who've become increasingly poorer, are not predictable or stoppable under the current governance.
Blame, shift accountability, deception, misdirection, for many the original headline will stand in their memory as the events that actually transpired, and the train will continue to derail...
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- Category: Ideas & Questions