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Since the financial crisis of 2008, one of the most revealing spectacles has been the parade of financial elites who petulantly insist that they are the victims of societal hostility:  political officials heap too much blame on them, public policy burdens them so unfairly, the public resents them, and -- most amazingly of all -- President Obama is a radical egalitarian who is unprecedentedly hostile to business interests.  One particularly illustrative example was the whiny little multi-millionaire hedge fund manager (and CNBC contributor), Anthony Scaramucci, who stood up at an October, 201o, town hall meeting and demanded to know:  "when are we going to stop whacking at the Wall Street pinata?" The Weekly Standard now has a very lengthy defense of -- including rare interviews with -- Charles and David Koch, the libertarian billionaires who fund everything from right-wing economic policy, union-busting, and anti-climate-change advocacy to civil liberties and liberalized social policies -- though far more the former goals than the latter.  In this article one finds the purest and most instructive expression of billionaire self-pity that I think I've ever seen -- one that is as self-absorbed and detached from reality as it destructive.  It's really worth examining their revealed mindset to see how those who wield the greatest financial power (and thus the greatest political power) think of themselves and those who are outside of their class.

Wall Street Isn't Winning - It's Cheating The two-tiered justice system: an illustration 9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon  The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality The Quiet Coup "the finance industry has effectively captured our government" What OWS is about + data behind the movement Data privacy is now extinct in the U.S. "The problem that confronts us is that every living system in the biosphere is in decline and the rate of decline is accelerating. There isn't one peer-reviewed scientific article that's been published in the last 20 years that contradicts that statement. Living systems are coral reefs. They're our climatic stability, forest cover, the oceans themselves, aquifers, water, the conditions of the soil, biodiversity. They go on and on as they get more specific. But the fact is, there isn't one living system that is stable or is improving. And those living systems provide the basis for all life." The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich: The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future. We communists are back! is the closing remark of Slavoj Zižeks provocative performance. Our current capitalist system, that everyone believed would be smoothly spread around the globe, is untenable. We find ourselves on the brink of big problems that call for big solutions. Whatever is left of the left, has been hedged in by western liberal democracy and seems to lack the energy to come up with radical solutions. Not Zižek. Interview: Chris Kijne Director: Marije Meerman Production: Mariska Schneider /Pepijn Boonstra Research: Marijntje Denters/Maren Merckx Commissioning editors: Henneke Hagen/Jos de Putter

[Barring unforeseen events, I'm going to leave this post at the top of the page for today and tomorrow, as I think the events it examines, rather in detail and at length, are vitally important and merit much more attention than they've received] The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is.  On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret. The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers.  It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War.  The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.

This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the "graveyard of social movements", the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.  Original interview footage derives from Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Albert, John Stauber (PR Watch), Sharon Smith (Historian), William I. Robinson (Editor, Critical Globalization Studies), Morris Berman (Author, Dark Ages America), and famed black panther Larry Pinkney. 

A University of Zurich study 'proves' that a small group of companies - mainly banks - wields huge power over the global economy. The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them - and created a 'map' of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy. The study found that 147 companies formed a 'super entity' within this, controlling 40 per cent of its  wealth. All own part or all of one another. Most are banks - the top 20 includes Barclays and Goldman Sachs. But the close connections mean that the network could be vulnerable to collapse

As this satellite image from space shows, the Earth is fast becoming a planet of megacities. Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver, Canada. Can human "megacities" learn from insect societies? A team of researchers including scientists from the University of Florida has shown insect colonies follow some of the same biological "rules" as individuals, a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single "superorganism" in terms of their physiology and life cycle. Insect colonies make up a large fraction of the total biomass on Earth. The findings may have implications for human society.

Team India Art n Design (dot) com strives to present select gems from the vast fabric of design - with the sole aim to inspire, impact and trigger that elusive quality of breaking new ground! We bring you a recap of our most popular stories that have left a trail of comments and discussions; garnered compliments and generally endorsed the impact of design in 2016! Get your share of inspiration here...

Yesterday's Sunday Times devoted the lead slot of its front page to a long examination of the effects of the web on the attention spans of teenagers. In the tradition (yes, it is now a tradition) of Nick Carr, the piece concludes that, essentially, our smartphones - and our Facebook and our YouTube and our web in general - are robbing kids of their ability to concentrate. Neuroplasticity! "Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people," the piece notes. "The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain attention."

For thirty years, now, Republicans have been yammering about small government, deficits, the glories of the free market, and the incompetence and wastefulness of government. It's all been a big lie, part of a well funded and cleverly executed coup d'etat, designed to enable the ultra rich and corporations to literally take power out of the hands of government and money out of the pockets of individual citizens.

An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics. Arguably, Tunisians are now freer than Americans. The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it. Millions of telephone records were turned over to George W. Bush by our weaselly telecom companies. Courts allow government agents to sneak onto our property and put GPS tracking devices under our automobiles without so much as a warrant or even probable cause. Mr. Obama thinks this way of proceeding is a dandy idea.

The biggest problem facing direct action movements is that we don't know how to handle victory. This might seem an odd thing to say because of a lot of us haven't been feeling particularly victorious of late. Most anarchists today feel the global justice movement was kind of a blip: inspiring, certainly, while it lasted, but not a movement that succeeded either in putting down lasting organizational roots or transforming the contours of power in the world. The anti-war movement was even more frustrating, since anarchists and anarchist tactics were largely marginalized. The war will end, of course, but that's just because wars always do. No one is feeling they contributed much to it.

With exhibitions of different genres bringing to light a multitude of things unbeknownst to man, the 'World of Feathers' at National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands designed by Kossman.dejong, is a playfully designed showcase of plumage from all over the world, drawing aesthetically culled parallels to influence and inform behavioural types and cultural innuendoes. Check it out here and leave us your views...

I'm an admirer of Caitlin Flanagan's skills as a writer of prose, and I like that she likes to take on topics that others shy away from. But it's always bothered me that the Atlantic lets her write articles that, under guise of book reviewing or some such, make sweeping statements of social trends without any kind of empirical backing or even recognition of the possibility that assertions can be verified or not through data. Fortunately, for the first time ever this blog has an intern, Ryan McNeely, currently pursuing an MA at Princeton and conversant with research methods and facts in a way that Flanagan isn't. I asked him to poke around at her latest article which posits that very young teen girls are spearheading a cultural counterrevolution against a burgeoning hookup revolution. Not surprisingly, there seem to be some problems.

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader." The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years - his last years - are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole. What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968). An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever. Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

I'm genuinely excited today to announce the release of my new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. As of this morning, it is available in bookstores as well as for shipping online. The book focuses on what I began realizing several years ago is the crucial theme tying together most of the topics I write about: America's two-tiered justice system - specifically, the way political and financial elites are now vested with virtually absolute immunity from the rule of law even when they are caught committing egregious crimes, while ordinary Americans are subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest and most merciless penal states even for trivial offenses. As a result, law has been completely perverted from what it was intended to be - the guarantor of an equal playing field which would legitimize outcome inequalities - into its precise antithesis: a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality. This is how I described that development in the book:

In conversation with the recipient of the recent Red Dot design award, a master of narrative-driven creations, whose design philosophy is firmly entrenched in the belief that the user's journey is the bedrock of every design endeavour. Meet Siddharth Bathla, co-founder of Design Factory India as the "Architect of the Month" at India Art n Design(dot)com

When I started writing this essay I thought to summarize my views of hyperconnectivity as they coalesced in the past year, in relation to the emergence of the polytopia project, however as my writing progressed, it appeared that the area that I wished to cover was getting wider and broader, deeper and larger than I had anticipated. I therefore decided to divide the paper into a number (unknown at present) of consecutive essays under the collective title of: the rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization. (please bear with me as I try to disentangle and re-entangle my thoughts on this fascinating topic.)

Architecture and fashion have a long standing relationship; but actually incorporating the textile weave in a building façade is another thing. SPARK's 'pleated' and 'woven' façade for the award-winning mixed-use development Jing Mian Xin Cheng in Beijing demonstrates that depth of experience need not be forgotten despite the speed of the central city's expansion. 'Pleats' of perforated aluminium sheeting and a 'weave' of rippling windows resolve a variety of practical issues, while referencing a textile market that formerly operated on the site. Check it out here…

From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. "The future has no future" is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks.