By David Bromwich Here’s part of the way that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently defended his decision to stop production of the F-22 Raptor, the U.S. Air Force’s giant boondoggle of a fighter jet. “Consider,” the secretary of defense said, “that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of… Read More How serial war became the American way of life (2009)
By Nick Turse / TomDispatch Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened to unleash the armed forces on more American cities during a rambling address to top military brass. He told the hundreds of generals and admirals gathered to hear him that some of them would be called upon to take a primary role at a time when… Read More On the Precipice of Authoritarian Rule
How are professors hired or fired? It’s based on their knowledge productivity—this is how the idea of the “knowledge worker” and “knowledge economy” emerges. This is the thing that really interests me as a philosopher: that the gold standard, the epistemic norm is expertise; it’s no longer wisdom or something broader that everyone is thought… Read More Can the Humanities Be Saved?
the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exists: Hannah Arendt NB: The author asks: If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live… Read More A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0
Dragged by her hair, incessantly punched and kicked, stripped naked, wrapped in an Israeli flag, sexually humiliated in her own language (lilla hora, “little whore;” hora Greta, “Greta whore”), threatened with gassing (revealing detail, this), uniformed guards all the while taking “selfie” photographs as they stand next to her laughing and jeering: What is this about,… Read More This is how the ‘most moral army in the world’ treated Greta Thunberg / The Liberal Abandonment of Greta Thunberg
NB: The USA emerged as the leading global hooligan after World War 2. Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan: a long story, documented by Alfred McCoy. Venezuela is the latest chapter in American empire building. It will meet the fate of their intervention in Vietnam. Their Armed forces know how they had to leave in… Read More Trump’s saber-rattling in Venezuela / Venezuelan Coup Leader María Machado Vows To Privatize Oil: US Corporations Will ‘Make a Lot of Money’
The US allowed Netanyahu to create four key loopholes in the deal to ensure Israel can continue its Gaza genocide – regardless of the ‘ceasefire’ agreement. NB: The US/UK/Israel bloc is a murder machine which will not stop its genocidal actions until they have wiped out the Palestinian population. The whole world’s population is assumed… Read More The Truth About Trump’s ‘Peace Plan’ for Gaza: permanent slow motion genocide
They make a desert, they call it peace: These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth & indigence with… Read More The shameless racists who perpetrated Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland
Adam Tooze: Chartbook This year marks the 80th anniversary of 1945. Given the turmoil we are living through, it is tempting to look both backwards and forwards for orientation. As one of the tailgunners at a conference last week at Columbia University commemorating the 1945 moment, I was asked to give 15 minutes of remarks… Read More The future of the world economy beyond globalization – or, thinking with soup
Lily Jamali At OpenAI’s DevDaythis week, OpenAI boss Sam Altman did what American tech bosses rarely do these days: he actually answered questions from reporters. “I know it’s tempting to write the bubble story,” Mr Altman told me as he sat flanked by his top lieutenants. “In fact, there are many parts of AI that… Read More ‘It’s going to be really bad’: Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley
After the truth-shower 