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"We probably have no duty to like Beethoven or hate Coca-Cola, but it is at least conceivable that we have a duty to distrust the state."
-- Anthony Burgess
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/04/120604fa_fact_burgess
Limited to 25 posts/day? When did that happen. Lame.
A very real and disturbing new trend has taken off in conflict-ridden Syria, where rogue opposition groups, many of whom are already associated with the al-Qaida terrorist brand, are using Facebook to post the names, phone numbers and residential addresses of pro-Assad government supporters. At the end of these posts, the terrorists then leave a note of encouragement for other opposition members to "go and kill them".
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-armed-facebook-targeted-killings-679.html
Of course this is criminal.
"Material Support for Terrorism": Under the wording of US statutes, Facebook itself is a guilty party.
The story follows Dusty, a yoga instructor from Colorado, who is on a desperate rescue mission to save her crazy brother Derek, a conspiracy theorist who is convinced Osama bin Laden is still alive, despite having been buried at sea. In Afghanistan, Dusty falls in with a team of NATO special forces on a secret assignment. Turns out Derek is not so crazy after all, and that Osama has returned from his watery grave and is making an army of zombie terrorists. When the group crashes headlong into the growing zombie apocalypse, Dusty and the troops must find and destroy the root of the zombie insurgency before it infests the rest of the world.
Papers Please Dept.:
Elizabeth Moon, author of an extensive corpus of Science Fiction, opines for the BBC: "If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached -- a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals. It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.
"The dirty secret of American politics is that, for most politicians, getting elected is just not that important. What matters is post-election employment. It's all about staying in the elite political class, which means being respected in a dense network of corporate-funded think tanks, high-powered law firms, banks, defense contractors, prestigious universities, and corporations. If you run a campaign based on populist themes, that's a threat to your post-election employment prospects. This is why rising Democratic star and Newark Mayor Corey Booker reacted so strongly against criticism of private equity -- he's looking out for a potential client after his political career is over, or perhaps, during interludes between offices. Running as a vague populist is manageable, as long as you're lying to voters. If you actually go after powerful interests while in office, then you better win, because if you don't, you'll have basically nowhere to go. And if you lose, but you were a team player, then you'll have plenty of money and opportunity. The most lucrative scenario is to win and be a team player, which is what Bill and Hillary Clinton did. The Clintons are the best at the political game -- it's not a coincidence that deregulation accelerated in the late 1990s, as Clinton and his whole team began thinking about their post-Presidential prospects."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/its-not-about-reelection-bill-clintons-80-million-payday.html
One meets his destiny often on the road he takes to avoid it.
