“This situation — exploding wealth inequality combined with harsh austerity, little hope for improvement and a growing sense of irreversible national decline — cannot possibly be sustained for long without some serious social unrest.”
-Glenn Greenwald on the importance the government places on the National Surveillance State, given the disturbances likely in the pipeline.
Category: briefly noted
short notes from my reading
The U.S. Army reported that 32 soldiers committed suicide during the month of July, the highest number since figures started being released in 2009.
–Harper’s Weekly, linking to the Washington Post
“Moral power cannot be bought in the market or forced with military might. It has to be earned.”
-Lobsang Sangay, newly elected Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile
“Though Perry and others urged attendees to fast, concession stands sold nachos and smoothies throughout the seven-hour event.”
-Harper’s Weekly Review on Rick Perry’s prayer event in Texas
“When you prop up (read: bail out) the institutions causing the crisis, instead of reinventing them, the crisis will deepen.”
-Umair Haque, on why this is not a market correction
“It is telling indeed how virtually all political good news — all national celebrations — now involve America’s ability to kill the latest Bad Guy.”
-Glenn Greenwald on war cheerleading, and the sacred defense budget
“Tibet is now one of the biggest lead-smelting regions in the PRC”
-From a report on lead-poisoned water in Qinghai province, bordering Tibet
Burning Pakistan
Bush Gifted
Obama Granted
-Pakistani protest sign
“The public, regardless of party, overwhelmingly opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But elected officials of both parties are hell-bent on conspiring to bring the programs to an end. They seem to have come to grips with a fact that the public has not: their tenure in office depends on carrying out the wishes of oligarchical elites.”
-Jane Hamsher, on the death of the Democratic party, and democracy itself
“What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives – its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security – in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise.”
-William Deresiewicz, in The Nation