All posts by John Eden

About John Eden

What a long strange trip it's been! Born in the southland 70-some-odd years ago... Been here and there, done this and that - from flying airplanes in southeast Asia and teaching children in southeast Georgia to digging carrots in Oregon and growing bamboo in Georgia. Been on the Way for half my life and finally realized that the Path is the destination, that no-path as path means you can't be off the path, and that 'gone beyond all aversion and attachment' means enjoying everything. I live on a little piece of earth just south of the Altamaha River and just east of Trail Ridge in the homeland of the Creek Nation and the Longleaf/Wiregrass ecosystem, about 50 miles from the Atlantic coast. I look for love in every sunrise, peace in every sunset, and beauty in the moonlight through the pines.

A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism

Over the edge...

A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism | Democracy Now!

This is chilling. I’m deleting my account soon… please contact me via comments here or email — john.feden@gmail.com—

–Read on:

www.democracynow.org/2018/8/1/a_threat_to_global_democracy_how

So the very act of arguing against the crazy amplifies the crazy. It’s one of the reasons that Facebook is a terrible place to deliberate about the world.

If we really want to limit the damage that Facebook has done, we have to invest our time and our money in institutions that help us think, that help us think clearly, that can certify truth, that can host debate—right?—institutions like journalism, institutions like universities, public libraries, schools, other forms of public forums, town halls. We need to put our time and our energy into face-to-face politics, so we can look our opponents in the eye and recognize them as humans, and perhaps achieve some sort of rapprochement or mutual understanding and respect. Without that, we have no hope. If we’re engaging with people only through the smallest of screens, we have no ability to recognize the humanity in each other and no ability to think clearly. We cannot think collectively. We cannot think truthfully. We can’t think. We need to build—rebuild, if we ever had it, our ability to think.

— from the interview.

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia —the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era | Democracy Now!

Over the edge..., , , , , ,

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & thestories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era | Democracy Now!
“— Read on www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession

“Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done…”

Chomsky has such a clear take on all this. Sure, the Russians may have interfered- they routinely do that everywhere. Trumps collusion may be an issue but surely there are larger concerns.

He’s also great on the immigration issue, which they address in the beginning of the same interview. He points out that it’s our meddling in Central American countries that has created the problems in the first place.

Another larger concern which never makes it into the media or the national political dialog: the Empire is at the root of most of the international issues that the media skims over the top of, pitching sound bites that don’t make the power structure mad.