Category: Silicon Valley

The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us. Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us. Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us. And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.

The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth

Substack’s success shows readers have had enough of polarised media

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Substack’s success shows readers have had enough of polarised media

Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who in October resigned from The Intercept, the online media platform he co-founded, citing “repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity”, has between 20,000 and 40,000 paid subscribers to his newsletter, each contributing at least $5 a month. Once Substack has taken its standard 10 per cent cut, and after payment processing fees, I calculate that Greenwald is left with between $80,000 and $160,000 a month, or about $1m to $2m a year. Not bad for a mere hack.

“It’s a lot,” Greenwald tells me. “It’s obviously way more money than I’ve ever made in journalism before, or than I ever thought I would make.”

If only I could write, still.

Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office’s covert internet operations program

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office’s covert internet operations program

Republicans were told social media surveillance of protests was prompted by the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in response to Floyd’s death. That video was not part of the briefing for Democrats.

Water wars loom amid climate collapse & plans for unprecedented imperialist destruction

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Water wars loom amid climate collapse & plans for unprecedented imperialist destruction

While Harris clearly had a Freudian slip in that she rather flippantly revealed an unacknowledged truth about foreign policy — which is the fact that oil is the reason why America remains at war — it seems that from her perspective as a driver of imperialist machinations, this was a benign statement given our current situation. It appears to now be common sense among the imperialist technocrats that for capital to be preserved in the face of the climate crisis, wars are going to need to be waged for increasingly scarce resources like water, and that these wars will need to be tied into the near-future economic developments within the imperial center.

The Magic of Israel

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Now you see it, now you don’t BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 13, 2021

The popular narrative of plucky little Israel prevailing over hordes of bloodthirsty Arabs has captured the Western imagination even though it is manifestly false in almost every detail. But Israel’s greatest accomplishment might well be something else, it’s ability to make things disappear. It plausibly all began in June 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a lightly armed but well identified US naval vessel cruising in international waters under a large American flag. Fighter bombers and torpedo boats sought to sink the ship, destroying the lifeboats so no one would escape. In the engagement, 34 American military personnel were killed and a further 171 wounded, before a heroic defense by the crew managed to save the vessel. President Lyndon Johnson, who said he would rather see the ship sink than embarrass his friend Israel, started a cover-up which has lasted to this day. There has been no legitimate court of inquiry into the attack and when the ship’s captain received a Medal of Honor for his heroism, it was awarded secretly in the Washington Navy Yard rather than openly at the White House. Israel and its legion of apologists certainly know how to make potential embarrassments disappear.

The Magic of Israel

Palantir – UK Gov’t sued for selling critical NHS database to foreign power

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

At TruePublica, we took the view that Britain should not be ‘world-beating’ at being the most surveilled nation of any Western democracy in the world. For five years we reported with our partners that state surveillance and the ending of privacy was a matter of public interest, not a political plaything for some politicians to line their pockets with.

Palantir – UK Gov’t sued for selling critical NHS database to foreign power