Great asshole exposure here:
Yes, Assange is an asshole in other ways, but in this case, it’s the BBC that’s the asshole, along with other Western establishment “journalists.”
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And let’s not forget all the stories that were cut out by 325 CE by the fledgling male-focused Christianity. Most of the stories about women were erased from the collection. What we see now as the “unerring word of God” is quite man-made.
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There’s a gospel of Mary Magdalene from Ethiopia I think. She was a major figure for some of the early churches. Even the Pauline rant about women shutting up in church is a late addition to the text not written by him. It’s undermined by the fact that the addressees of the epistles are frequently women. And the fact that perhaps his most significant disciple and the one who carried on his preaching was St. Thecla.
ETA there’s a bible (not bike autocorrect!) book of St. Thecla too
Iirc she was credited with a bunch of miracles and was a very big deal in some of the early churches.
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That had to hurt…
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(to be clear, that quote is Trevor Wowk talking, not me!)
(and ye gods, that dude creeps me out, seriously)
Well, heck, it’s probably in the Apocrypha or some other of them chapters what crazy ol’ Emperor Constantine had edited out… blah blah cutting room floor blah blah blah:
er maybe John What’s-His-Name from the 1500s:
… though my guess is that Wowk seems an unlikely candidate for esoteric Bible study, given his wholehearted pursuit of late stage capitalism, in one of the worst scenarios I can imagine.
I have certainly heard the outline of this debate in many places [and not just inside some Dan Brown novel], discussed here and by no means the last word in biblical scholarship:
Wow, this is cool! Thanks for posting. This is all new to me.
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How can we convince them the disaster is here already, so that they’ll go ahead and leave?
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I was curious what this was because it seemed obvious by the clip; it’s the same Western right wing extremist rhetoric being repeated again. In a 48 minute interview he spends like 1 minute flexing whataboutism to highlighting things done wrong in Europe, and the Twitter clip leans on him saying because they have Facebook they have free media in the country as a zinger. It’s pretty weird to celebrate it when Tucker Carlson says the same thing a lot.
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It’s not surprising, he’s the leader of the main right wing party in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan don’t seem to have any official left wing or social liberal representation in their parliament, which is a warning sign that they aren’t a functioning democracy. The current accusations of an unfree press are in relationship to that.
I am not going to do the tankie thing of supporting any pro-putin or pro-china politician because they oppose western imperialism, because it’s imperialism that is the problem and Russia, China and most of their allies are still imperialist. Azerbaijan is not an exception.
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OMG. They said the part I always think about:
Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed in time.
I always think about it in terms of, wouldn’t it just be easier to make sure we don’t get to that point? Scary that they’re thinking about it in this other context. 
Even if they succeed in making robot workers, someone needs to maintain the robots. Those maintenance staff will basically have all the power…they (the oligarchs) won’t be able to escape their own lack of real world, necessary skills.
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It is weird in the larger context, but nonetheless, broken clocks are right twice a day, etc. It’s still good to hear the BBC called out on this point, no matter who’s doing it.
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I don’t disagree with that! I only even watched the whole interview from that clip curious what else he said - which is sort of the problem with right wing populism having such a strong footing on that point that neoliberals refuse to budge on. Someone did the same thing I did and came away saying “that guy know’s what’s up the Armenians blew up their own churches!”
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Maybe the goal of those of us still in touch with our own humanity (and relative sanity) is to just get as far away from these people, as fast as possible, in the most permanent way workable. And become generalists comfortable in quotidian reality.
Those rich elite guys’ discussion with Rushkoff is a profanation of everything it means to be a fully conscious human being. Money may insulate the wealthy from consequences and problems… for a while. But not forever.
As a friend reminded me many years ago, all stores of value are vulnerable and subject to change, theft, etc. And of course, all human lives end. (He’s an MD and sees more of that than I do.)
Even someone who chooses her/his/their consciousness to be fully uploaded/digitized is one data corruption, one power failure, one hack, one botched update or backup, one catastrophe away from likewise being… bricked, for lack of a better term.
No escape, indeed.
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Or one corporate cost-cutting measure, to increase value for stock holders and top executive payouts.
(Even if they bend laws to allow a digitized human to own property, one kill -9 thiel fixes that problem.)
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Yep, who holds the software owners responsible after you’re dead? It was a huge plot hole in this series:
Though I did find that series kind of fun overall.
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It’s been renewed for a second season, and they apparently just wrapped up filming last month. Hopefully, the next season will unravel a bit more about what is going on.
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Words fail me:
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