Friday Round-Up 2

• I never saw the show but this article caught my attention because it discusses the fine-line between 'reality tv' and harvesting criminals for entertainment:  CBSA ends participation in reality television show 'Border Security'
  
  
• The real economy of the Western world stalled out in the 1970s so average people stopped wanting to pay taxes. Corporations have never wanted to pay taxes and seriously started pumping anti-tax propaganda during this same time. This caused governments in Canada, Australia and the US to begin legalizing gambling to replace increasing taxation. Gambling is like a funner tax, tax with an element of random chance that fires off some sweet dopamine! Unfortunately gambling is addictive - to the government....
  
  

  My Summary of the article wrote:The Ontario govt. makes $2 billion a year off of gambling and so has become helpless addicted to it. Recently the OGL hired consultants to find new types of gambling and lotteries to attract the "millennial" demographic including an online gambling site (where players are allowed to spend up to $9,999 a week!) and are developing a mobile app for that site so that you will be able to literally gamble anywhere at any time.
  
  http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2016/06/ontario-governments-grotesque-lottery-addiction

  
  
• I had a semi-mystical experience with Capybaras at a petting zoo, so I get Japan's obsession. Capybaras are like beavers mixed with hamsters, and radiate this magical zen quality. I don't like sentimentalizing animals because it does them an injustice - but capybaras test my commitment to that principle.  
  
  Japan's Love Affair With Capybaras
  
  
• This is a Counterpunch interview with a Puerto Rican activist and scholar. The focus is the current austerity crisis but it really serves as excellent leftist/nationalist overview of the US colonies' history.  Counterpunch interview
  
  
• A reminder that we are at 3 minute to midnight on the Doomday clock set up but Bulletin of Atomic Scientist. This is the closest we've been to nuclear war since 1984 or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the US election is over the President will be either Clinton, a woman who seems driven to prove she is just as militaristic and violent as of her male counterparts, or Trump, a male whose ego is so insecure and narcissistic it seems like a personality disorder.
  
  
  
• A look at American Psycho's personal hero: Donald Trump
  

  American Psycho wrote:
  Three-quarters of the way through Brett Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho,” a detective visits Patrick Bateman’s office on Wall Street to inquire about a missing banker. Bateman, who has already told us how he murdered this man, does his best to remain calm. During an uncomfortable silence, he points to a book on his desk ― “The Art of the Deal” by Donald Trump. “Have you read it?” asks Bateman. “No,” says the detective. “Is it any good?” “It’s very good,” Bateman replies.
  
  Bateman frequently tries to resolve crises by invoking Trump’s name or form as one might a god’s (30 times in total). At one point Bateman's fiancée explodes: “Not Donald Trump again… This obsession has got to end!”

  
  
• When you buy all those cheap Chinese products at Walmart where does the $$$ go? The answer is Warcraft. The cash goes to the 'World of Warcraft' movie, bootleg WoW theme-parks and imprisoning political prisoners to farm gold for WoW.
  
  *cyber-farmer-convicts-in-china
  https://roadtonowhere.forumotion.org/t125-cyber-farmer-convicts-in-china
  
  *World Joyland: The Warcraft/Starcraft-themed amusement park
  http://shanghaiist.com/2011/07/15/joyland_the_blizzard_bits.php
  
  *Warcraft's record-breaking opening in China may be the future of Hollywood blockbusters
  http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11924774/warcraft-movie-box-office-record-debut-china-sequel-hollywood-future
  
  "Warcraft made 600m yuan in two days. This has scared the Americans." - Jackie Chan
  
  
• We need a new Steam game - I suggest we choose something from this list
  https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/18/best-coop-games/
  
  

Picture of the Week

I want to be there - I want to be right there
I want to see it with my own eyes
Robbie Robertson - Testimony

Orlando Shooting Supplement

1. ORLANDO SHOOTING DAD A LONGTIME CIA ASSET
   http://www.madcowprod.com/2016/06/13/orlando-shooter-dad-longtime-cia-asset/
   
   Summary: The father is a fiery Pashtun Afghan who is a host on a CIA-funded Afghan satellite channel and had ties to California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who spearheads Afghanistan foreign policy.
   
   Comment: This does NOT mean the CIA planned this - but it is a reminder that US intelligence is always connected to refugee communities that are fighting Russia: White Russian, Cuban exiles, Koreans, Chechens, Ukrainians, ect… All these groups have clear intelligence connections because they were the front-line in America’s global war against Communism and were recruited as such. The Cold War eventually made America a melting pot for some of the most reactionary people on the planet as intelligence assets bought homes in Florida, Chicago and Virgina to raise families.
   
   
2. The Orlando Jihadist (Omar Mateen) and the Blind Sheikh’s Bodyguard (Marcus Robertson)
   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436590/omar-mateen-orlando-shooting-marcus-robertson-blind-sheikh-sharia
   
   Summary: Mateen was attending an Orlando-based "online seminary" run by Marcus Robertson, a former US Marine and undercover FBI agent who rounded up former Florida security guards into a bank-robbery gang during the 1990s and was a bodyguard to the man (the Blind Sheik) who plotted the car-bomb attack on the World Trade Centers, a plot that was essentially an FBI entrapment gone wrong.
   
   Comment: US intelligence is deeply involved with Islamic terrorists in many ways. They train & arm them to fight Russia, get them through customs, overlook their drug-dealing, using them as informants, and sometimes entrap them. The terrorists in turn use and abuse their ties to US intelligence in similar ways.  Marcus Robertson has denied knowing Mateen, but either way, this shows how the shadowy and spooky the world of 'terrorism' can be.
   
   
3. ‘Something is Going On’ – And It’s Worse Than You Thought
   http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/06/16/something-going-worse-thought/
   
   Key Quote: "So we finally unlock the Great Mystery: why oh why does is this administration and the Clinton campaign so reluctant to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism”? Is it because of political correctness and a fear of inciting “Islamophobia”? Don’t flatter them: they’re not above that, when it serves their purposes. But it doesn’t serve their purposes this time.
   
   What they’re afraid of is alienating their allies in the Middle East – not just the jihadists they’ve funded and succored in an effort to overthrow Assad, but primarily the Saudis, the Turks, and the Gulf sheikhs who are all in on the game and are playing it for all it’s worth. And of course there’s the Clinton Foundation, which has received millions in “donations” from the Saudi royals and their satellites."
   
   Commentary: The killer was shouting "Allahu Akbar!" and proclaim loyalty to the 'Caliph' of ISIS, so there is no avoiding the religious aspect even if it might be just him cloaking his child-like rage in Islamic rhetoric. Yet this discussion quickly gets de-railed into PC/anti-PC nonsense and shouting so no one has to point the basic fact that AMERICA is ALLIED to ISLAMIC TERRORISM: US + Taliban versus Russian. US + Al-Qaeda versus Libya. US + ISIS versus Syria. And the US love affair with Saudi Arabia sits at the center of all this jihadist activity.
   Unless this fact is front and center, all other discussion are pointless.
   
   
4. Noor Zahi Salman: Everything You’re Hearing About Me Is a Lie
   http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2016/06/16/61616-sam-husseini/
   
   Summary: Mateen's wife claims that someone in the government is leaking false stories about her, framing her as being an accomplice to the crimes. This is being done to steer the narrative away from the clear fact that this guy was on the FBI's radar, interview by them several times, yet still managed to carry out his attack. By blaming her they hope to make the media and public focus anger on Muslims for not snitching on each other. Noor Zahi Salman has offered to take a polygraph but the government declined.
   
   Comment: Controlling the narrative is vitally important as it 'sets' or 'hardens' in the week after a major event. The fact that all the leaks against the wife are coming from "anonymous officials" is very suspicious.
   
   
5. Before Orlando, Omar Mateen Worked for Human Rights Abusers
   http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/15/before-orlando-omar-mateen-worked-for-human-rights-abusers/
   
   Summary: Mateen spent 9-years working for the world largest private security agency, the  G4S who do everything from running my local landfill to running the Anglo-American Empire
   
   Commentary:

   Information on G4S from my Criminology course:

   
   Military, police and security jobs attract authoritarian personalities that explode into violence more often than average. Mateen would take selfies with NYPD t-shirts and had Marine 'Semper-Fi' stickers on his car.  When I reviewed the evidence on sadist serial killers about 1/3 of them had one of these professions (or pretended to have one of these jobs), because of this I believe these type of organization have a duty to make sure they are not arming and training serial killers and mass shooters.
   
   
6. Israel surveils and blackmails gay Palestinians to make them informants
   Summary: In cultures where homosexuality is taboo closeted man are vulnerable to blackmail and intelligence agencies will exploit this.
   
   Comment: This very vulnerability to blackmail was the reason given by the Canadian government when it purged hundreds and hundreds of possibly gay public employee during the 1950-80s. Since Mateen's sexual orientation is being discussed, it is worth remember the intelligence angles it bring in. Mateen's father commented that his son should not have killed 50 people in a gay bar because ‘God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality’.
   
   
7. Why is the Orlando Murderer’s Gender Not Central to the Story?
   http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/16/why-is-the-orlando-murderers-gender-not-central-to-the-story/
   
   Summary: "It’s no secret that similarities abound among male shooters: lonely and isolated, disaffected and alienated; often failing to forge strong ties with their families and communities. Whether Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook, or James Holmes in Aurora, disturbed young men were the murderers. No one questions that fact."
   
   Commentary: If we accept that this was a lone shooter - 'self-radicalized' with mental health issues - than we find what we find in vast majority of violent crime: a damaged male psyche and its' weakness for revenge/power fantasies to assert itself. It took me 10 years of teaching criminology to finally realize that stresses of masculinity are the ultimate source of most violence, the article I linked to offers real suggestions to address this fact.
   
   
8. All the Headlines that shout this was the "greatest" "largest" "worst" "deadliest" mass shooting in American history
   Commentary: It always seems dangerous to frame the bodycount as a competition, where another mass killer could set a new record. Might some guy want to re-take this title away from a 'queer muslim terrorist' and reclaim it for White America?
   
   
9. Most of the Lives Lost During the Orlando Massacre Were Puerto Ricans
   https://globalvoices.org/2016/06/15/most-of-the-lives-lost-during-the-orlando-massacre-were-puerto-ricans/
   
   Summary: Puerto Ricans were 23 of the 49 killed.
   Comment: We have a soft spot for Puerto Rico on R2N. However this attack came about, one thing is clear: this was the pathetic act of cowardly violence against easy civilian targets. Our condolences to those who lost someone in this attack.