"This is a complete other conversation really, but of course I do find it appalling the way the ABC has been attacked by this present government, stacking the appointees to the board so it's become a political thing. You're actually saying 'if you say this on the ABC news we're going to cut your budget', which is essentially what Tony Abbott did. That's fascistic.

"Having an independent ABC and having a strong arts and cultural community is really important. Because there's more to life than economics; the economy – I don't know why it's the be-all and end-all of everything, to quote Shakespeare."

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/jul/23/hugo-weaving-on-macbeth-hollywood-and-tony-abbotts-fascistic-cuts-to-the-abc

See also: fish in a pond...

To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.

I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe.What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.

We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.

Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/neoliberalism-mental-health-rich-poverty-economy

Frank Zappa: "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables & chairs out of the way & you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre."

See toon at top...

If there are two things that one is likely to hear from college faculty today, they are that 1. Students are too careerist, and 2. We need a more democratic society. They worry about the growing utilitarian cast of education in general, as well as the remnants of hierarchy, authority, paternalism, and inequality in today’s society.

What they generally don’t see is the deep underlying connection between these two phenomena. A familiarity with Tocqueville’s essential Democracy in America would prove enlightening.

Tocqueville expresses wonder and awe at the activity of the Americans that he encountered during his visit to the United States in 1830-31. In contrast to the relative complacency of people in their social roles in aristocratic Europe—where no amount of work, effort or activity could move one either from the ranks of the aristocrats to the commoners, or vice-versa—Americans live daily with the awareness that their station in life is one of variability, potential, and fragility. The result was a society that was, by appearances, industrious, but more deeply riven with anxiety. Thus, Tocqueville was moved to call this condition one of “restlessness,” or “inquietude,” the inability to be “quiet” or still or in a state of quiescence.

In one of his justifiably most famous chapters, Tocqueville describes the resulting social state. Chapter 13 of Part 2, Volume II of Democracy in America is entitled “Why the Americans are so Restless in the Midst of their Prosperity,” which begins:

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords, it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.

The chief reason for this contrast is that the former do not think of the ills they endure, while the latter are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it.

I think often of this passage, having taught at three extraordinarily prestigious and famous institutions of higher learning—and having witnessed daily exactly this “cloud” upon the brows of our highest-achieving students. Far from being complacent and self-congratulatory about their membership in America’s (and, increasingly, the globe’s) elite, they are anxious and perturbed, worried about their prospects for “success” and whether they will measure up to others who are similarly blessed with such advantages—while staying ahead of those who are aiming to overtake them from below. 

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-democracy-dies/

What is defined here is the deplorable neo-fascist attitude swimming in socio-psychopathy... in which success is measured on how many people you've walked over (or killed) in order to be top dog... It's more common than we realise.

Constantine entered Rome on 29 October.[171] He staged a grand adventus in the city, and was met with popular jubilation.[172] Maxentius' body was fished out of the Tiber and decapitated. His head was paraded through the streets for all to see.[173] After the ceremonies, Maxentius' disembodied head was sent to Carthage; at this Carthage would offer no further resistance.[174] Unlike his predecessors, Constantine neglected to make the trip to the Capitoline Hill and perform customary sacrifices at the Temple of Jupiter.[175] He did, however, choose to honor the Senatorial Curia with a visit,[176] where he promised to restore its ancestral privileges and give it a secure role in his reformed government: there would be no revenge against Maxentius' supporters.[177] In response, the Senate decreed him "title of the first name", which meant his name would be listed first in all official documents,[178] and acclaimed him as "the greatest Augustus".[179] He issued decrees returning property lost under Maxentius, recalling political exiles, and releasing Maxentius' imprisoned opponents.[180]

An extensive propaganda campaign followed, during which Maxentius' image was systematically purged from all public places. Maxentius was written up as a "tyrant", and set against an idealized image of the "liberator", Constantine. Eusebius, in his later works, is the best representative of this strand of Constantinian propaganda.[181] 

read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great

Morozov expresses skepticism about the popular view that the Internet is helping to democratize authoritarian regimes, arguing that it could also be a powerful tool for engaging in mass surveillance, political repression, and spreading nationalist and extremist propaganda. He has also criticized what he calls "The Internet Freedom Agenda" of the US government, finding it naive and even counterproductive to the very goal of promoting democracy through the Web.[9]

In January 2011, Morozov published his first book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (ISBN 978-1586488741). In addition to exploring the impact of the Internet on authoritarian states, the book investigates the intellectual sources of the growing excitement about the liberating potential of the Internet and links it to the triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War.[10]Morozov also argues against the ideas of what he calls cyber-utopianism (the inability to see the Internet's 'darker' side, that is, the capabilities for information control and manipulation of new media space) and Internet-centrism (the growing propensity to view all political and social change through the prism of the Internet).[11]

In March 2013, Morozov published a second book, To Save Everything, Click Here (ISBN 1610391381). Morozov's critique of "technology solutionism," the idea that, as Tim Wu put it, "a little magic dust can fix any problem" is timely and potentially valuable. But Wu, whose own work is severely critiqued by Morozov in To Save Everything,[12] goes on to dismiss Morozov's book as "rife with such bullying and unfair attacks that seem mainly designed to build Morozov’s particular brand of trollism" and "a missed opportunity" to actually discuss the issue.[13] Morozov believes that technology should be debated alongside debates about politics, economics, history, and culture.[14]

About Internet libertarians, Morozov told The New Yorker: "They want to be ‘open,’ they want to be ‘disruptive,’ they want to ‘innovate.’ “The open agenda is, in many ways, the opposite of equality and justice. They think anything that helps you to bypass institutions is, by default, empowering or liberating. You might not be able to pay for health care or your insurance, but if you have an app on your phone that alerts you to the fact that you need to exercise more, or you aren’t eating healthily enough, they think they are solving the problem.”[15]

read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Morozov

As some recent article in a European newspaper tells us:

"We should treat the Silicon Valley with the same suspicion than Wall Street" 

Evgeny Morozov The university condemns the discourse of digital companies that camouflages "a new form of capitalism."

In your book, you criticize the speech from companies in Silicon Valley, which you call "solutionism." How would you describe in a few sentences, and what threat does it weigh? 

The solutionism is the tendency of some players, specifically entrepreneurs and companies in Silicon Valley, to claim that they know how to solve major political and societal issues. This is for example the tendency to rely on applications, devices self-tracking [the act of collecting oneself of personal data on its activities], various sensors increasingly present in our daily lives to solve societal problems. The main danger is that we depend on a few companies to address issues that we used to resolve collectively through the state or other collective actions. 

"We depend on companies to address the issues we used to collectively solve" 

The technologies are not neutrals, they also redefine the problem they are addressing. If you are tackling climate change, for example by following exactly how much energy you consume in your home, if you try to stop the obesity problem by assuming that it is only after bad habits the part of the individual, you get to set aside larger social and political factors. Obesity is not just because people are eating unhealthy foods, it's also because the food companies have too much power, because we do not regulate advertising aimed at children, because in the United States for example, the infrastructure is not designed to promote walking. It is a vast array of factors that are forgotten when one technology is the default tool to guide the actions of an individual.

Le Monde

What better than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, which means nothing, to conclude that competition [Cannes festival] imprint of death and mourning, who reminded almost daily to festival-goers the absurdity of the human condition? For his second feature film, after The Snowtown, Australian director Justin Kurzel grabbed Macbeth. The Scottish play is here adorned with darker colors, barely lit, glowing bloody.

Learn more abouthttp://www.lemonde.fr/festival-de-cannes/article/2015/05/23/macbeth-conclusion-sanglante-pour-competition-funebre_4639404_766360.html#frmJ8EukAvvLSmjm.

Meanwhile the opening of the competition was a certain Mad Max: 

In a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, two rebels just might be able to restore order: Max, a man of action and of few words, and Furiosa, a woman of action who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/

Insanity is humanity's noxious gift to the world.... See toon at top.