Everything is always getting better everywhere, all the time (#pangloss #progress).
OH: A: What do they do in an MBA? B: Oh, it’s simple! These are people who take courses where they practice how to manipulate other people.
— Lea Verou (@LeaVerou) May 30, 2015
What Eric Holder and the DOJ are saying here that once you reach a certain size, like HSBC with its global economic reach, you are effectively above the law and beyond criminal prosecution. Such drivel from the head of the US Department of “Justice” just months after issuing the largest fine in US corporate history to HSBC was never going to pass without harsh judgement from media commentators.
Too big to jail? by Joel Benjamin (4349 words).
In labor’s favor is the fact that the IMF has violating its Articles of Agreement by lending for military purposes. As soon as its last loan was disbursed, Poroshenko announced that he was stepping up his war against the East. This brings the IMF loan close to being what legal theorists call an Odious Debt: debts to a junta taking power and looting the government’s Treasury and other assets in the public domain, leaving future governments to pay off what has been stolen.
Michael Hudson: Ukraine’s “Operation Vulture” and Labor Protests by Yves Smith (980 words).
Another thing I‘ve said before is that the IMF is a prime example of why we should steer away from supra-national organizations. We can’t make them run for our own benefit, they invariably end up being run for the benefit of the few, because their inherent lack of transparency and democracy makes them an irresistible target for sociopathic individuals, who seek control, not democracy, and for the elites whose interests they invariably end up representing.
Austerity, Economics and Religion by Raúl Ilargi Meijer (1977 words).
The sad truth is “probably” for the simple reason most want to be spoon fed garbage.
Robo-Journalism Will Produce 1 Billion Web Stories in 2015 (This Isn’t One of Them); McJournalism Coming Up by Marc Chandler (863 words).
Many of the recent criticisms that have been leveled at Hersh's reporting on the killing of Osama bin Laden have revolved around how difficult it would be to keep elaborate "conspiracies" secret. "Hersh's stories seem to become more spectacular, more thinly sourced, and more difficult to square with reality as we know it," writes one critic at Vox.
But the cover-up of the bombing of Cambodia is as spectacular as it gets. And Hersh's 1983 accurate claim that it was Kissinger who presided over the conspiracy comes from one single source: Ray Sitton.
Lessons From the Thinnest of Seymour Hersh’s Thinly Sourced Claims by Greg Grandin (2110 words).
If I had a dollar for every person over 40 who told me my generation sux I would have just enough to buy a house in the economy they ruined.
— happy hoe (@irlkazzandra) May 30, 2015
Austerity is a lie. This is not a recession, it's a robbery. pic.twitter.com/Nko4JRek2Z
— UtopianFireman ☭ (@UtopianFireman) May 31, 2015
Our Grim Meathook Future
The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.
Full Text Of The Grim Meathook Future Thing by Joshua Ellis (460 words).