Early August

1) PostMedia: Not Evil Enough?

Remember 'Canwest Global', Isreal Asper's media giant, it was channel #3 when I was a kid. Asper was a Winnipeg Liberal who basically imported a whole North Dakota TV station in the mid-70s. [It also mostly re-ran US shows too - but it was pretty cool when you only had a dozen channels]. Canwest went through the same horrible complicated mutation every media corporation did during the 1980-90s, a combination of 'leveraged buyouts' and consolidations that left the North American media ecosystem a toxic ocean or right-wing outlets.  Asper dies leaving his horrible neo-con kids in charge (they loved Harper), Paul Godfrey (the owner of the Blue Jays, National Post and Toronto Sun) steps in, so does Goldman Sachs. In 2010 the right-wing Sun Media and neo-con Canwest merge into the monstrous bloated kraken called "PostMedia".

"Media Ethics" is the studying of monsters. My main contribution to the field is the recognition that 1990s 'finalization/leveraged buyout' orgy is what broke the unions, drove out the good reporters and pushed the media landscape to the hard right. That was the 1990s.

https://www.canadalandshow.com/the-conservative-transformation-of-postmedia wrote:In 2015, after the federal election that brought Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to power, Andrew Potter, then editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen, was called to the company’s head offices in Toronto.

There, Lou Clancy — then Postmedia’s senior vice president of content — told Potter that his paper was too “anti-conservative,” according to three sources. When Potter asked for specific examples of coverage that could be improved upon, Clancy could only cite a single editorial cartoon.

Nor was it out of the ordinary for management to use its papers to make election endorsements without the input of editors.

During the 2015 federal election, for example, the Citizen was ordered by Postmedia bosses to endorse the Conservative Party of Canada. This despite its reporting in the years before having led to three Conservatives being put on trial; two of them ultimately went to jail. Still, the paper argued, the party remained the best choice for Canadians. (A month after the election, the members of the Citizen’s editorial board resigned).

In the 2015 Alberta election, the Edmonton Journal — another of the chain’s metropolitan daily broadsheets — was ordered to endorse Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives, after the paper had unearthed a run of embarrassing stories for the ruling party, and in a campaign where it was universally held that the PCs had underperformed.

At Postmedia, this was all par for the course.

But October 2018 was different. October 2018 was the start of something unprecedented.

Several editors at the National Post — Postmedia’s flagship newspaper with an explicitly conservative political mandate, where I reported on media from 2016 to 2017 — were summoned to a meeting on the 12th floor of the company’s headquarters.

There, according to three sources familiar with the meeting, company president Andrew MacLeod told them that their paper — which launched in 1998 to serve as the voice of thoughtful, modern Canadian conservatism, and which many would argue remains so — was insufficiently conservative.

Some of the Post’s marquee columnists, albeit right-leaning, have tended to take a variety of positions on subjects ranging from carbon pricing to socio-cultural issues, and so editors were told the paper had to become more reliable in its conservative politics.

“But really!?” one editorial employee remembers thinking when they were briefed on the meeting. “The National Post not conservative enough?!”

So the neo-con Canwest and right-wing Sun Media merged in 2010 to form PostMedia, in 2018 PostMedia mangers announced an enforced editorial turn to the even further right.

Yep, Dracula is putting in fang extenders, Godzilla is tossing back buckets of GNC 'quick bulk' powders, the mass-shooter is buying yet another assault rifle...
If you want a pretty good (aka boring) anaylsis of PostMedia try: https://www.thestar.com/business/2016/01/30/the-problem-with-postmedia-olive.html


2)  Moderate Orc Voter
There used to be a great article about political parody article about Star Wars but it is lost to the internets...

3) https://twitter.com/Rubber0Cement
A twitter feed of interesting images. I guess it would filed under 'industrial' genre.

4) Fun FACT: In all my years of piracy, I have one website password that I dug up myself. I rooted around a website using Google's "site:" function until I cam across a password list! Today I needed in that site again so I dug it up and it still works!  

5) Paywall Tip: A well-timed use of the STOP button on your browser can defeat some paywalls that post the article and then hide it. There used to be a FIREFOX extensions that allowed me to just remove the offending paywall screens.

6) Information wants to be Free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis.  

7) Doing some house-cleaning this weekend and came across a rotting ziplock bag with a strange plastic device. It looked like a large lighter. It was bear-spray. When the first whiff hit me I started venting the room, when Steph started coughing I hustled her out immediately, for the next 1/2 hour our tear-ducts and mucus membranes got a work out.  

8 ) Movie Recommendation: Accidental Spy (2001). Watching Jackie Chan is exhilarating, even when the plot is nonsense made even worse but an American re-cut, it doesn't matter. Chan is one of the great living professional entertainer. Naked Jackie Chan running through a Turkish bazaar doing stunts to prevent an R-rating or the Defibrillater fight(!) is pure pop cinema.  And I could watch unarmed people beat-up gunmen all day long.  Jackie Chan and I go way back to the old Comics North tape-trading days and I have seen most of the major J.C films up to 1995's Rumble in the Bronx when he dropped off my radar.

9) Robbie Martin (sister to Abbie Martin) show recommends Cornel West appearance on Joe Rogan.  Both West and Rogan are "huge fans of the late, great stand-up comedian Richard Pryor.' So am I.
If someone wants to discuss this video. I will watch it.



10) Conspiracy Theory 101: The John Birch Society. If you don't know what the 'Birchers' are, you don't know the largest and most political influential 'Conspiracy Theory' in US history. Most Americans 'conspiracy theorists' don't know about the 'Birchers' because their own theories are sub-products of the Birchers. The Bircher theories have spawned everything from the New World Order, the Illuminati, fluoridation, UN depopulation agendas, the war on christmas, ect..... Much of the populist side of the 'libertarian' movement is based in Bircherism. If you are interested in 'Conspiracy Theory' than researching the most successful American 'conspiracy theorists' is great way to sort out the 80% of modern theories that are just modern Bircherism.

7 )  Ugh.  Hope you're ok & there's no lingering effects?  Was that a long forgotten item or something that was inadvertently left by someone years ago?

8 ) Jackie Chan and Comics North.  Wow.  It's been literally decades since I've experienced either one.  Jackie is certainly a consummate pro.  The abuse and damage that guy has taken while performing over the decades is absurd.

9 )  The last Joe Rogan I watched was awhile ago when Graham Hancock returned to discuss his new book.  I may give it a watch in the next week or so.

10 )  awww man....another rabbit hole?   Well, I think I'm allergic to conspiracy theories anyways...I always have some type of bad reaction...  

So I started watching the Joe Rogan video. I have to say I've been honestly surprized by how much I've been enjoying it. I didn't know Joe Rogan loved animals in a honest way like Richard Pryor did. So I ended up pausing the video and watched a few clips on him talking his animals or talking about animals with other people and after that he seemd much more human to me and it is also one of the reasons why I enjoy Richard Pryor.

The content of this interview is fairly heavy and intellectual. I have watched the first 45 mins of it and I've enjoyed it.

7) Steph said the Bear Spray came from her mom.

9) With two votes, I will give the video a shot. Robbie Martin described it as a strangely "spiritual" video which caught my attention since he tends to be pretty skeptical.

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11) Illuminating the "Dark Side" of Emerging Technologies https://t.co/xiTDRBB5yl
'Future prediction' articles are always fun and this one is on the criminals uses of optical cloaks, 3D-printed weapons and synthetic biology

12) Right now the most radical conspiracy theory is that there is no conspiracy around Epstein

13) I'm up to 1995 in the 'Woolsey Watch'. The US came pretty close to shutting down the CIA this year. In the early 1960s, JFK famously threaten to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" in the New York Times,  the mid-70s post-Nixon era saw the Pike and Church commissions expose many CIA wrong-doings, and the mid-1990s had the same spirit. Post-9/11 these eras seem hard to imagine.

Betrayal (2010) wrote:Since 1991, Senator Moynihan of New York had been arguing that the CIA’s analytical functions should be given to the State Department, its paramilitary capabilities transferred to the Pentagon, spy catching left to the FBI, and the Agency itself given a decent burial. He had put those ideas into writing in an “End of the Cold War” bill. After [April 1994] even some conservatives started paying attention to Moynihan’s proposal.

A week after Ames’s speech, Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican not known as a radical, told Woolsey to his face in an open hearing of the Senate intelligence committee that not one or two, but many senators would support Moynihan’s bill if it were introduced. DeConcini and Representative Glickman, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, were calling the CIA “a cult.”

Senator Dennis DeConcini, the chairman of the committee, exploded in anger at Woolsey,“There is more and more mail coming to me and questions all the time. ‘Why doesn’t somebody eliminate the CIA?', as Senator Moynihan says.’ If you think for a moment that this is a passing feeling—”

14) I'm watching a UFO forum where weird government leaks occur. It's 'forumotion' forum, just like R2N. The obsession is no longer about physical UFOs but now dimensional portals. The best part is 1/2 the people on the forums are 'messiahs' or 'chosen ones' so you can watch the head of an ancient Celtic fairie cult who runs a pro-Trump militia arguing with a New Age messiah who is here to bring Singularity/Disclosure and has contacts to a top CIA scientist and a few alternative energy scams.  The top CIA scientist will even drop by to post cryptic messages!
It is a true microcosm of the USA to me.

15) New RedLetterMedia

Do you ever suffer from a fit of nostalgia and long to hang-out with a bunch of Generation-X guys and watch B-movies on VHS?  
This is the VR simulator for that experience.


I often rely on rule in used bookstores. The original Terminator has "soul", the sequel has "spectacle", enough capital can always buy "spectacle", but "soul" is that weird aspect of art  that can only arise from people pouring themselves into art.  The original film is a 'guerilla' film, great wonky soundtrack, nighttime filimgin LA with no permits, unknown actors, shot and directed by a kid born in Kapuskasing who quit truck driving to go to Hollywood after seeing Star Wars.  The second film is directed by Hollywood icon, "James Cameron". The budget for the first was 6 million, the budget for T2 was 100 million.
Just how much was Cameron invested in the original Terminator? Well he later married both the producer (1985 to 1989) and the lead actress (1997-99)!

17) The UFO groups do give me some crazy food for thought: why not adopt a worldview where you are a "chosen one" integral to evolution of humanity? Since any religion you choose has only the remotest chance of being true, why not adopt one where you have a starring role. This is close to 'Pascal's wager' which says you might as well believe in a religion - so at least you have a chance of heaven. Athesism has no upside - except forcing you to deal with this world instead of pining for the next.


18) Discordanism solves the problem introduced in #17 by making everyone an honorary pope!


19) I've been reading some Sumerian and Babylonian texts and the most memorable incident I've read is a student-scribe complaining about being beaten for his failure to speak Sumerian. To the Babylonians, the Sumerian language was like Latin to Europeans, a 'dead' language' that all the elites knew. Imagine some kid, nearly 5000 years ago, being harassed for not learning a 'dead' language' well enough. School was always a weird torture.

20) Don't go to humanity's oldest texts and except them to reflect some simpler time, you are just thrown into the action:  Elites are making power plays, all these tribes are on the move, tax law and legal debates, dozens of religions, plenty of puns and propaganda you won't get.

21) August is a strange month. The harvest is full, the days are warm, the green has grown until the sun burns it black.  Ancestral fears of academia approaching mixing with childhood memories of hazy August nights that make me smile without reason. In the midst of this august glory, the tribulations of the coming winter press down suddenly and depart.

22) August is named after Augustus Caesar (July was Julius).  The word can also be used as a cool adjective meaning 'Cesare-like': imperial, noble, powerful, usually ancient. "The august beauty of the Moon."

23) The one massive part of growing old is experiencing the lost potential as doors close off. Generally that feeling causes panic, as the German's put it "Tor-schluss-panik" (Door-shutting-panic), but it also can be a real relief too. You get to see yourself more clearly, if you can accept just how pathetic and limited you are. 'Potential' can be a massive intoxicant, a place where fantasy can go wild. Fantasy deforms as much as it inspires.

24) https://aroundtheempire.libsyn.com/ep-118-foreign-intel-cia-epstein-feat-doug-valentine
Douglas Valentine cuts through so much of the Trump & Epstein miasma.

The black hole at the center of Trump is the CIA. The CIA owns Trump from his days laundering various mob's money through his hotels. No investigation will ever reveal this because that relationship "is vital to national security". The CIA is America's state-funded 'organized crime' wing. I spend some time of 'alt-right' websites (because they also do some "woolsey watching" in their huge amount of conspiracy theorizing) and you can sense they are spinning their wheels as much as liberals hoping for a 'Russiagate' impeachment. As a valuable CIA assest Trump is untouchable.

Some think it is likely Obama was a CIA asset too but they don't discuss one of the most damning things I've heard on a podcast: that the NSA could read everyone emails - including the Obamas - and it was because they had black-mail material on Obama, that he was allowed to come out of nowhere and become President.

25) It's funny when right-wingers complain that leftists want "FREE STUFF".  Even Trump respects a strong bargaining position - it's how the game is played!  From a purely cynical perspective the demands of the average person should be "$10,000 a month, full local control of police, and a CEO guillotined bi-monthly." That's your starting demand if eventually want to get to health-care or decent wages.

26) "Socialism will be run by random dunces and busybodies for centuries, poorly administering imbecilic plans and viciously attacking rival friend groups, and it will be way better than capitalism. That’s how good it is. Even with morons running it, it will be better." [Don Hughes]

27)My fantasy: Since Trump has already gone around the world forcing NATO countries to spend more on weapons so what happens if this increased military capacity was used to attack the US? The next time American commits the supreme war-crime by attacking a country without UN legitimacy, five jet fighters from every NATO country should attack US bases. They would be killed but the symbolism of the attack would be historical.

Militaries always talk about 'heroism' and 'sacrifice' and 'bravery' but NATO operations have *primarily* about calling in airstrike on peasants.  Here your chance to die fighting something worth fighting.

28) Laurentian has weird stuff lying around, including magazines published by the Canadian Navy, so I decided to flip through it. This was just after Trump was elected and the editorial was about what a unknown, possible dangerous, wild-card he was. It was a cautiously Canadian approach - but their conclusion was that Canada should buy as many weapons as possible so the unpredictable Trump would be happy with us. This is the equivalent of knowing an alcoholic father is coming home, you he like weapons, so to keep him calm so you start scattering knives and loaded guns around.
This is what Trump is to the big men running militaries across the Western world, he is a golden opportunity to buy more and more weapons. So always remember to always thank you local weapon-procuring technocrat for their service and sacrifice on Veteran's Day.

29) An actual moment of Canadian nationalism I can support. I heard a brief mention of this on a podcast and did some digging to find out if it was true. It was.  

The Limits of Alliance: Cold War Solidarity and Canadian Wheat Exports to China,  1950-1963 - Donaghy & Stevenson 2009 wrote:
"Although Canada was a committed member of the western alliance and publically supported Washington, DC's efforts to isolate communist China, Ottawa embarked on large-scale wheat sales to Beijing in the late 1950s in the face of  sustained US opposition. Drawing on a broad range of archival records, this  paper explores the three main factors that encouraged the Canadian government in this course: growing doubts about the wisdom of isolating communist  China; mounting anger at Washington, DC's use of subsidized wheat sales to capture traditional Canadian markets; and a surging sense of Canadian nationalism that sought a distinct role for Canada on the world stage"

During the period of 1950-1963, the country had both Liberal (St. Laurent) and Conservative (Diefenbaker) administrations. Trudeau Jr.'s  American-obedient 'neo-conservative' foreign policy is a continuation of Harper's shift of the country to the radical right.

30) Time is too short. On Monday I will post another "actual moment of Canadian nationalism", one that I have only seen in a book but deserves to be online. I will also watch Joe Rogan over the weekend. Stay tuned for "Mid-August"..... If you are bored this week I recommend scrolling through: https://twitter.com/Rubber0Cement