Categories Government
"The empire needs both faces. Without the murder face, it could not exist as an empire. Without the grinning face, the public would never consent to the murder
The Biden inauguration event is going to be a star-studded celebration spanning an unprecedented five days, a giddy orgy of excitement at a murderous oligarchic empire having a new face behind the front desk after promising wealthy donors that nothing will fundamentally change.
This comes at a time when Americans are now reporting that they trust corporations more than they trust their own government or
when pundits are gleefully proclaiming in The New York Times that “CEOs have become the fourth branch of government” as they pressure the entire political system to smoothly install
\u201cCEOs have become the fourth branch of government,\u201d said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to hold the country together.\u201d https://t.co/V8x34qbhlh
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) January 15, 2021
when the leading contender for the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division is an Obama holdover who went from the administration to working for both Amazon and
The Prospect and The Intercept have learned that Renata Hesse, a former Obama Justice Department official who then went on to work for Google and Amazon, is a leading contender to head up the DoJ Antitrust Division.
— David Dayen (@ddayen) January 15, 2021
1/ Allison claims that the government had been "Captured by tunnel-visioned autistic scientists" [Tweet later deleted]
2/ "It’s time the scientists went back to their labs and hobbit holes and left Earth to the humans."
https://t.co/R6gc4MRZOM
It\u2019s time the scientists went back to their labs and hobbit holes and left Earth to the humans.
— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) December 2, 2020
They have delighted us long enough. https://t.co/kceoE8qeDi
3/ "The swivel-eyed scientist John Edmunds [...] These scientists are not trustworthy."
https://t.co/LeEjSfHvJW
@BBCr4today has been talking to the swivel-eyed scientist John Edmunds. Thumps radio.
— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) October 13, 2020
Edmunds started off advocating herd immunity in March - why not press him on that?
Now he wants the hardest possible lockdown.
These scientists are not trustworthy.
4/ "[...] those shifty government scientists"
https://t.co/oTtVeVtBlA
Why can\u2019t we have David Paton doing the TV briefings rather than those shifty government scientists? @cricketwyvern https://t.co/hHZ1T47loT
— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) October 12, 2020
5/ Deputy CMO Jonathan Van-Tam is "revolting".
https://t.co/9cyJdZcjDZ
How revolting are those men with their matey \u201cJVT\u201d and \u201cSteve\u201d?
— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) October 20, 2020
It\u2019s a game to them. Destroying people\u2019s lives with pointless lockdowns for what?
And Manchester looks to have passed the peak of this swell. Epic stupidity.
Rather than debate that question here (or in another forum), I'm making it an assignment. Specifically, I'm asking my Quantitative Security students to determine if it belongs in our coup/attempted coup datasets.
[THREAD]
A core goal of this course is to introduce students to how Large-N data on violence and security are created.
We put WAY TOO much emphasis on estimators & software (Stata v R 🙄); not enough on the quality of the data going into the analysis.
First, what happened? @johncarey03755 offers a succinct
Second, I'll ask the students to read some of the recent pieces that say the event was NOT a coup attempt.
These include...
...detailed twitter threads by
Let me try this again\u2026 What would it look like if this were a coup (failed, in progress, or otherwise)? 1/n
— Kristen Harkness (@HarknessKristen) January 7, 2021