Many of my recent posts have been quite dystopian. Watching the bombs fall on Gaza and listening to the war criminals from Israel speak on television and travel unhindered to the USA and the UK makes a man wonder about human nature.

Sometimes honest observers take a too idealistic view of the past.

I’ve recently read George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) set in 1829-1832. The financial sector in England was nearly as corrupt then as in today’s USA. Society and public opinion nearly as stupid and parochial as the US media. At this time, the Triangular Trade in human slaves was just coming to an end. In fairness to England, they were among the first to outlaw slavery in modern times (1834) and even allotted a fleet to the west coast of Africa to hinder the slave trade.

Continue reading Corruption and venality: is it worse today? at uncoy.

A young lady in England attacked Balfour’s portrait, hanging in Trinity College, Cambridge. She did a heck of a job.

Like many of you I abhor the destruction of art work to make a political point. The removal of historical monuments and statues, I also oppose.

But in this case, the targeting is exact. It is Balfour.1

In the comments, TarquiniusSuperbus notes:

Good for this protester, and very courageous! And what is so wrong about being anti-Israel anyway ? Israeli Zionist Jews are anti-Christian, anti-Druze, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti anyone else who is not a Jew. Let’s face it, Zionist Jews are the most hateful people on earth.

That’s awfully blunt but not far off the mark. Charles Manson was close competition but he’s no longer with us.

1. There’s no lord prefacing Balfour’s name above.

Continue reading Are all art vandals criminals? Balfour’s destruction at uncoy.

In the comments to US billionaires biggest losers in 2022 – Forbes — RT Business News, Pravda 2000 perceptively notes:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however, far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are.

Continue reading Cycle of Class Struggle at uncoy.

In the comments to ‘Push for unipolar world ‘turning ugly’ – Putin — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union, Paul Haeder marshalls some strong arguments against capitalism:

Capitalism can grow externally in terms of wars, foreign interventions and militarized accumulation. In fact, as UC Santa Barbara Sociologist William I. Robinson describes, global capitalism has become dependent on war-making to sustain itself. Or it can grow internally by intensifying privatization, destroying labor rights, human rights and environmental protections within existing capitalist markets in order to open up more avenues for profit. In this interview, Robinson describes it:

For 530 years now, since 1492, we’ve had outward expansion – constant waves of colonialism and imperialism, bringing more and more countries, more and more people into the system. Now every country- every community on the planet- is integrated directly or indirectly into global capitalism.

Continue reading How contraction creates growth at uncoy.

In the comments to Congressman Perry Gets Phone Back From FBIe, there’s an interesting discussion about how best to resist tyranny. The FBI confiscated a sitting Congressman’s mobile phone in plain daylight in the same week where their armed band of over one hundred raided the home of an ex-President of the United States. Portal exhorts that “Time to disband the American Gestapo.”

AGuy scoffs at resistance, recommending going off the grid alone:

LOL You’re that guy going to do a citizens arrests for Hilter & Himmler in NAZI germany. Its just not going to happen.

I recommend Plan B: Go Galt, Build a homestead with the means to provide all of your basic needs. Be ungovernable & not dependent on the system.

In turn conhopco points out the obvious: “You can run, but you can not hide!” in-the-ether makes explicit the logic implicit in Joe Louis’s warning.

Continue reading You can run, but you can not hide – When to resist at uncoy.

An astonishing new poll from Pew Research Center suggest half of Americans now favour active censorship. In comments, Let Them Eat Rand notes:

At least a whole lot of people can now answer the question of what they would have done in Germany as the Nazis came to power — resist, or be a good German.

The answer to that question we now know is very little. As Goebbels noted, the masses are easily led. Even in a country like the United States with a tradition of free speech, it appears free speech can be more or less suppressed both socially and legally within a single generation. What’s worse is how few people seem to care.

“If it keeps us safe from [Terrorists | Trump | Republicans | Libertarians], then I agree. I don’t need free speech.” I’ve heard this grovelling for safety by censorship in these words from at least four adult North Americans in the last year.

Continue reading Pew Poll suggests half of Americans now support Government Censorship at uncoy.

Top Google Engineer Zach Vorhies left Google in 2019 and wrote a book about why: Google Leaks: A Whistleblower’s Exposé of Big Tech Censorship:

As a senior engineer at Google for many years, Zach was aware of their bias, but watched in horror as the 2016 election of Donald Trump seemed to drive them into dangerous territory. The American ideal of an honest, hard-fought battle of ideas — when the contest is over, shaking hands and working together to solve problems — was replaced by a different, darker ethic alien to this country’s history.

Apparently already in 2016 Google was rewriting its algorithms to make sure searches smear Donald Trump and praise Hillary Clinton. WB at Zerohedge notes:

In 2016…

Typed “Donald Trump” into Google and all the search results were anti-Trump.

Continue reading How Google Interferes with Elections at uncoy.

There’s been a lot of wild speculation in the Western media about what kind of atrocities the Taliban will impose on fellow Afghan citizens. More lucid commentators make a good point about the development of every kind of nation, including and specifically the United States. Arch Bungle explores historic context:

Today there is no knowing the nature of this new Taliban patriotic government but it will reveal its spots in the next week or two.
I believe that Afghanistan under the Taliban will follow the same evolutionary cycle that almost every state in the world must follow to reach modernity and some semblance of utopia:

There will be many atrocities, barbarities, injustices and tragedies during the next few years, perhaps decades under the Taliban, just like there always is when new states are formed.

However, as long as the West (and everyone else too!) stays the hell out of that region the Afghan state will eventually modernise, along with the corresponding improvements in human rights and quality of life.

Continue reading How bad will the Taliban government in Afghanistan be? at uncoy.

How governments allocate and manage arts projects is a mysterious science.

splash image for pourquoi je danse – see video at bottom of post

This week the Ontario Arts Council announced OntarioDances.ca a program to connect dance companies with dance presenters.

For some reason there are only nine theatres included:

• Burlington Performing Arts Centre (Burlington)
• Capitol Centre (North Bay)
• Centre for the Arts – Brock University (St. Catharines)
• Flato Markham Theatre (Markham)
• The Grand Theatre (Kingston)
• Living Arts Centre (Mississauga)
• Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts (Oakville)
• The Registry Theatre (Kitchener)
• River Run Centre (Guelph)

Why just these nine? Where are the other theatres who get money from the Ontario Arts Council or Canada Council?

Continue reading OntarioDances.ca but no website at uncoy.

dr ben goldacre bad pharma

Bad Pharma, a new book by Ben Goldacre, looks into the research practices of big pharmacy. Apparently any negative information about new drugs is systematically suppressed even in the academic environment:

In 2010, researchers from Harvard and Toronto found all the trials looking at five major classes of drug…: were they positive, and were they funded by industry? They found more than 500 trials in total: 85% of the industry-funded studies were positive, but only 50% of the government-funded trials were. In 2007, researchers looked at every published trial that set out to explore the benefits of a statin….This study found 192 trials in total, either comparing one statin against another, or comparing a statin against a different kind of treatment. They found that industry-funded trials were 20 times more likely to give results favouring the test drug.

Continue reading (Published) cell phone research indicates no radiation at uncoy.