Warning: this post is kind of long.
I like to avoid psychological terms, because I am skeptical regarding the epistemology of psychology* – but, to simplify the rest of this posting, I am going to freely use a term: “Sociopath”/Sociopathic.
One reason the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex* does the stupid things it does, is because it’s able to keep its mistakes secret. If you really want to lose track of $600 billion, like the pentagon has, the best way to do it is to classify the research, then lose the paper-work.
The Boy Scouts of America have booted a transgender boy. Because, uh.
The Obama administration is – brilliantly – punishing Russia for “hacking” the US election by censuring a few intelligence officers and forcing them to close a “luxurious 45-acre compound” in Maryland.[1]
In a bit of contract negotiation, the NYPD, which is required to deploy body cameras on cops, has announced that it’s going to take another six months just to negotiate the contract with the police union.
Because, once you’re a billionaire, your political views matter. They should matter. Right?
The book “Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Spy Ring” is worth reading for those of you who are interested in spy-craft. He has nothing to do with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and therefore everything to do with the American’s failure to listen to their signals intelligence analysts who had cracked the Japanese PURPLE code system and were desperately trying to warn the state department that something was coming over the horizon.
Over at warisboring (one of my favorite blogs) there’s an article about the drone pilot who is collecting so much footage of the police brutality at Standing Stones Camp.
Adam Curtis’ video “Bitter Lake” has an interesting little aside about some unexpected effects of geo-engineering in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It raised the water table, which raised salinity closer to the surface of farmlands, which had the result of killing certain crops, but not others.
… but “Fuck his highness Vajiralongkorn of Thailand.”