I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Far beyond official Washington, we would seem to be witnessing a fraying of the bonds of empathy, decency, common purpose. It is becoming a country in which people more than disagree. They fail to see each other. They think in types about others, and assume the worst of types not their own.
This nation of tanned, toned, comatose vegetables is choosing to cash in its chips and spend them on the VIP Cabana at the pool, where they can be fed $10 soy-chai-mocha-lattes by legions of McVassals — instead of forging the path towards a better tomorrow.
Unlike R.J. Reynolds, Pfizer, or Bank of America, the U.S. populace lacks the access to public officials required to further its legislative goals
ideas, instincts, and intuitions: Obama Admin creates 'secret' internet for dissidents abroad.
The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting…
Fascinating. The question that occurred to me as most pressing is What happens if such a device is deployed within the borders of the United States? Then what?
Source: MSNBC
The Man Behind Judgement Day
An in-depth piece from Killing the Buddha, including an interview with Harold Camping. Fascinating. I’ll leave it at that.
All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire.
A Country Without Libraries by Charles Simic (via infoneer-pulse)
This is a tragedy and a travesty. The rate at which America continues to devalue literacy and education as a whole is staggering.
(via infoneer-pulse)
Source: nybooks.com
She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day.
