My interests: Journalism, Politics, International Relations.
1 - The New Yorker is the best magazine in the English-speaking world. They employ very good writers. If you like deep insightful long stories, try to get it.
2 - Without The Guardian, British democracy is utterly fucked. The Brits just don’t know it. Most UK papers are owned by shady characters such as Jonathan Harmsworth. The Brits even have a paper (The Independent) owned by a Russian mobster (Evgueni Lebedev). The Guardian’s non-profit structure gives it more freedom that most UK papers. They often investigate stories the rest of the UK press just won’t touch: Paradise Papers, Panama Papers, Cameron’s tax evasion, etc…
3 - The two best newspapers in France are Le Monde and Mediapart, hands down. Mediapart is a non-profit. Le Monde journalists have special rights and can’t be removed by shareholders. These 2 newspapers are more independent than the rest of the french press.
4 - The Financial Times is the favorite newspaper of elites worldwide. CEOs. Billionaires. Millionaires. Presidents. Prime Ministers. Everyone reads it. And honestly, it’s very solid. The information is always extremely reliable. The FT is also the most expensive newspaper on the planet. But they sometimes publish free stories.
5 - The editorial section of the Wall Street Journal is directly controlled by Billionaire Rupert Murdoch. The WSJ is the jewel of his global media empire. Fox News and the New York Post are for influencing the masses. WSJ editorials actually allow him to have influence over US high income readers.
6 - If you read WSJ editorials, Rupert Murdoch’s ideas are very simple. Labor unions must be crushed. Corporate concentration is good. Netanyahu is a brave man. US military spending is good. Unions should be restricted by tough laws. Environmental rules are bad. Slash taxes on large corporations. Of course, he doesn’t write it openly. But this what virtually most of the WSJ editorial content boils down to.
7 - Many talented reporters work for the Wall Street Journal and end up deeply ashamed of it. It feels like prostitution. Many would much rather work for The Financial Times, New York Times or ProPublica. Rupert Murdoch employs great reporters at the Wall Street Journal simply because he needs them to acquire credibility in order to influence readers through his WSJ editorials.
8 - The best coverage of Silicon Valley is an online newspaper called The Information. If you want to know what Meta or Microsoft are really up to, read The Information. Most of their readers are wealthy investors and tech executives who seek exclusive information.
9 - When it comes to television and radio, public media (PBS, BBC, NPR, CBC) is often more professional, more serious, than corporate media. PBS or CBC make outstanding documentaries. Stuff US/Canadian private networks just wouldn’t make.
10 - Generally speaking, journalism that you pay for is better than journalism you don’t pay for. This is a general rule, not a law of physics. There are exceptions. The Daily Mail has subscribers. It’s largely non-sense. I wouldn’t trust anything written in it. ProPublica is free. They do quality investigations.
11 - AIPAC is powerful. But there is limit to their power. There was an intense AIPAC campaign to stop the President Obama from signing a nuclear agreement with Iran. He defeated them .
12 - Most Trump tweets aren’t written by Donald Trump. They are written by a dude named Dan Scavino. He is behind 90% of his tweets. Most americans have no clue who Dan Scavino is. They wouldn’t know him if they met him in the supermarket.
13 - Having a lot of resources is a curse. Countries that have natural ressources (Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Russia) tend to be highly corrupt and exploited by a small elite. It’s simple. The elite can take control of the oil fields, the gas fields, the mines. Just sell ressources. Shoot protesters. No need to invest in anything else. It’s much better to live a country with limited resources (Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland). Lack of resources force the elites to invest in science and education. The most unlucky country in Africa is Congo. It’s full of diamonds, forests, oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, rare earth. So Congo has suffered horribly because of that. In fact, it’s still being looted.
14 - If you want to transform an authoritarian regime into a democracy from within, the number 1 tool you need are powerful labor unions. Powerful unions can basically go on a general solidarity strike and shut down an entire economy.
15 - Everything Barack Obama predicted would happen if the US didn’t sign the nuclear agreement with Iran actually happened. Trump left the agreement. Iran started enriching nuclear fuel. Then a major war happened.
16 - Many Middle Easterners are very tribal. Most Israelis see themselves as Jewish first, Israeli second. Syrian druzes think of themselves as Druze first, Syrian second. Many lebanese Shias see themselves as Shia first, Lebanese a distant second. And so on. Their loyalty often lies more to their tribe than to the State they actually live in.
17 - Imperialism was bad. But imperialism didn’t actually cause instability in the Middle East. The most stable period was actually Ottoman Imperialism. For 5 centuries there was commerce and peace. Then, there was the British/French empire. Apart from some episodes of violence, it was stable. But when imperialism ended, it was basically a mess. Jews vs Arabs. Christians vs Sunnis. Arabs vs Persians. Jews vs Shias. Arabs vs Kurds. Alawis vs Sunnis. To this day, many of them have this tribal mindset.
18 - Saying “we don’t speak with terrorists” is completely dumb. Many terrorist organizations later became peaceful. Many terrorist leaders later became statesmen. It’s wrong to say “We can’t make any peace with those who hands are stained with blood”. Get out of here with that non-sense. If you truly want peace, seeking only decent leaders means you aren’t going to find anyone at all. Criminals make peace. This isn’t Scandinavia.
What are things you know because of your personal interests that most people have no idea about ?
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“crazy” is what White-religion automatically deems Indigenous-religions, what Scientism automatically deems meditation, etc: it is usually just cultural-programming’s prejudice.
I happen to hold that there are 2 fundamentally-distinct domains that human-history has to be considered in, separately, in order to be able to understand anything properly in history:
the profound collective-unconscious level, with its myths, its archetypes, its currents, its trashing-the-world-for-sake-of-its-egos-and-identities level…
& the SurfaceMind level, of details that we pretend are the “causes” in history.
The most-perfect example of the deeper level’s action controlling our history … is that assassination of some guy which started WW1: it didn’t need to happen at the originally chosen place, it only needed to happen, & humankind’s unconscious-mind made it happen, even acting through complete-bullshit level of “mere coincidence” ( the guy being shot from a cafe, or something, after the hit-man had missed the original hit-location’s time, or something like that )
Therefore, the scientifically-testable-predictions in various religious-traditions, like “ecological collapse of both terrestrial & marine food-webs, lots more earthquakes & storms” is absolutely inevitable when it is dropped-into the original Industrial Revolution of the Roman Empire, because once humankind ( the category, on ANY world ) gains that, original Industrial Revolution, then Newton et al become inevitable, one “Age” later.
& once that later Industrial-Revolution cascade happens, … then ripping-out the until-then Climate, & altering plate-tectonics’s forces with the immense ice-removal ( thereby multiplying the earthquakes expression, during that ClimatePunctuation ) … all that becomes inevitable for the toddler-with-nukes species who’s living on that world.
IOW, that scientifically-testable-prediction can be dropped into ALL worlds who hit the original Industrial Revolution, and it will come true, inevitably in either all, or in nearly-all, of them.
The fact that that scientifically-testable-prediction happened to be in the Christian bible’s “book of Rev” doesn’t matter to me: it matters whether it tests-to-be-true.
Empiricism.
White medicine does authority-based-medicine-that-identifies-as-evidence-based, & Scientism is the same thing, only in Academia.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nindia.2015.148
White medicine is adamant that Ayurveda is only delusion, baseless “woo”.
NO amount of evidence will ever have any power to falsify that ideological axiom that White medicine stands on.
Here is an article, which became a chapter-in-a-book, calling-out medicine for being authority-based-medicine, while identifying-as evidence-based medicine ( but they didn’t have the spine to call it industrial/professional gaslighting, as I do )
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25433
So, is it “crazy” to claim that evidence backs Ayurveda’s 3-fundamental-metabolisms & 4-composite-metabolisms, as White medicine adamantly insists it is “crazy” or “woo” to claim??
XOR is it in contempt of integrity to disallow evidence, because one’s ideology prohibits that, while gaslightingly identifying as evidence-based knowing, of any kind?
HERE ARE OVER 8000 SCIENTIFIC-PAPERS WITH “AYURVEDA” IN THEM, THAT WHITE-MEDICINE IDEOLOGICALLY-DISALLOWS:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ayurveda
Also search for Prakriti for some that are missing from that set, but not many, if you want the evidence based medicine.
All this to say that human-reality is SOOO deeply-complex in cause-effect relationships, that the sorts of things that the person you’re calling “crazy” may well be accurately describing a set-of-forces that is simultaneously beneath-our-notice and violating-our-prejudices, and be both accurate & precise in its being true, to some significant degree.
Finally, here’s a treasure, from the Christian book of Rev, that has nothing to do with religion:
John of Patmos, the Rev guy ( different from the gospel guy: totally different writing-style ), wrote of being given the Book of Truth, to eat…
so, he ate it.
It was syrupy-sweet in his face, but bitter in his belly.
Why?
Because superficial-truth, apparent-truth, ideological-“truth”, mere-idea-truth is syrupy-sweet, in one’s face,
but completely digested experience-induced-understanding is bitter, in one’s belly.
That bit in their bible was giving us one of the most important & profound PSYCHOLOGICAL truths around … and apparently nobody recognized it for what it was.
It wasn’t just “religious nonsense” as many held all to be, it was incisive required-for-growing-up Truth, of the psychology domain, right there, for all to have.
But it was seen only through “religious” glasses, & therefore rejected, even though its truth is both testable & obvious, once one has understood the meaning for what it is.
Wisdom once instructed us: “1st seek to understand…”
That consistently is true, though it also is true that once one has true understanding, one does have to act, to cut-from-our-world disinformation & machiavellianism, & narcissism…
The dimensions-of-human-evil that I’ve found testably-exist are, so-far:
Contrast that with the psychology-profession’s “Dark Triad” of narcissism/machiavellianism/psychopathy, & you see they outright reject many of the dimensions I’ve found testably-are dimensions of human-evil.
( yeah, that-too is specialized-knowledge that few would know, IF one takes it to be knowledge, as I do, … or as bunk, as Establishment does.
Empiricism, however, isn’t established-majority’s rule: it is Objective Truth’s rule!
Muhahahaha, eh? : )
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A simple yes would have sufficed.