The aftermath of terror

AFTERMATH OF TERROR

All good news in this section, including one of the best articles on national security I’ve read in a very long time — Lydia Wilson reports the sordid truth of the “countering violent extremism” industry and the governments that have no interest in finding out what actually motivates terrorism. How many people died in the War on Terror? The total death toll may be 5-6 million. There’s never been proper accountability for the role played by corporate media in the War on Terror — because the media is incapable of holding itself to account. And the War on Terror was corrupt right from the get-go.

CONSEQUENCES

For a long time I’ve been interested in the social ramifications of basing a society’s values on economic worth. Here’s a new take: why are we so interested in losers when we’re told to love winners so much? Hypocrisy really is important: why so many “religious” leaders don’t live their Christian beliefs, and what’s so wrong about it. The global housing market is broken — it’s not just Australia. And it will have generational ramifications. Amid a major gas price spike in Europe, European MPs suspect the Russians of manipulating prices. And their comes a point when attempting to compromise is self-defeating. America went past that point a long time ago.

LOCAL NEWS

Frank Brennan picks over the legal detritus from Clive Palmer’s attempt to force WA open to COVID. Angela Smith on the capitalist fetish of customer care. And Rachael Weaver has an essay on the currawong that is well worth a Meanjin subscription.

THE ELECTRIC NIGHTMARE

How Facebook inflicted troll farm content on tens of millions of Americans. Latest hot take from freedom advocates: fact-checking is censorship. At the Wall Street Journal, trying to retain journalistic rigour in the face of extremist op-eds and Murdoch’s malignant influence. The site my be down but the technology is there: site offers to insert anyone’s face into deepfake pornography (I say anyone, we know that really means “any woman”).

IN THE LAB

From the Marvellous What We Can Do These Days department: we can levitate (small) stuff with acoustics. And there might be some really useful applications. The robots will take our jobs, but not quite so fast: robot productivity growth is slowing (Business Council responds: maybe if they cut their wages and impose more workplace “flexibility” things will improve). The secret of Stradivarius is finally revealed (if there was indeed a secret). And dark matter detection researchers may have detected dark energy instead — if it’s not a fluke (if you don’t understand the difference between dark energy and dark matter — and why should you, they’re only 95% of everything in the universe — this article actually explains it pretty well).

FINALLY

Which one are you? Cats that don’t want to see the vet. For those wondering, I’m number 3. (Bonus content: dogs not wanting to go to the vet either).