Recent posts

#31

Forum-Related / Re: Suggestions & Problems

Last post by Geremia - February 07, 2026, 03:47:28 AM

Screenshot of the standard view

It looks like you have it sorted by ascending date, whereas the mobile one sorts the books by descending date. Click the third button from the right in the upper right corner to change the sort.

#32

General Discussion / CBDC - It Begins: This Is Thei...

Last post by justjeff - February 07, 2026, 03:29:36 AM

by Whitney Web

This video examines how neoconservative power did not disappear after the Cold War or the War on Terror, but instead rebranded itself through technology, privatization, and the language of innovation. Using Peter Thiel as a central case study, the discussion traces how Palantir emerged directly from the wreckage of the Pentagon's post-9/11 Total Information Awareness program—an openly unconstitutional mass-surveillance initiative designed to predict crimes before they occur. Though Congress publicly defunded TIA after widespread backlash, its core architecture survived through privatization, with intelligence veterans, DARPA officials, and longtime neoconservative operatives quietly guiding Palantir's creation and early development for the CIA.

The conversation goes further, showing how "pre-crime" logic has expanded beyond intelligence agencies into emergency services, policing, and domestic governance through companies like Carbyne, whose board once included Jeffrey Epstein–linked figures and intelligence veterans from the U.S. and Israel. The deeper argument is not simply about surveillance, but about power: how predictive algorithms replace due process, how compromised elites are elevated rather than punished, and how blackmail—once run through human networks—has increasingly been automated through data collection. In this framework, Epstein is not an anomaly but a symptom, rendered obsolete by a system that no longer needs personal coercion when digital lives can be harvested, analyzed, or fabricated at scale.
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Here, we transform original content from interviews, lectures, podcasts, and keynotes featuring Whitney Webb to provide viewers with a more immersive and engaging experience. Our goal is to educate and inform as many people as possible about Whitney Webb's unique economic insights and critiques of global capitalism.
We also strive to make Whitney Webb's ideas more accessible to individuals with hearing impairments by providing professional transcriptions for the majority of our videos.
By enhancing the original content with cinematic editing, improved clarity, and added context, we aim to amplify Whitney Webb's message and help more viewers understand the economic and social issues she addresses.

upload_date: 20260207

#33

Forum-Related / Re: Suggestions & Problems

Last post by justjeff - February 06, 2026, 03:36:47 PM

Yes, sorted differently, and it looks quite different, though I would expect the formatting to look different.

Screenshot of the standard view:

vs
Screenshot of https://isidore.co/calibre/mobile

#34

Forum-Related / Re: Suggestions & Problems

Last post by Geremia - February 06, 2026, 04:48:04 AM

Not sure this is a problem, but I just tried the non javascript page for the book list, and noticed that the list is different than the main list.

Do you mean it's sorted differently for you?
It looks the same for me.

#35

Forum-Related / Re: Suggestions & Problems

Last post by justjeff - February 05, 2026, 09:34:19 PM

Not sure this is a problem, but I just tried the non javascript page for the book list, and noticed that the list is different than the main list.

[Alphabet's new motto "Do the right thing" is better.]

#36

Forum-Related / Re: «The World Brain: Google's...

Last post by justjeff - February 05, 2026, 01:29:24 AM

Google changed their former, rather unusual motto, "Don't be evil"

That's only half of the first principle of natural law (Wuellner, S.J., Summary of Scholastic Principles p. 382):

A. Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided (as far as possible).
B. Do the necessary good; avoid evil, confer 336 [="The primary and unifying principle of the law is: Do the necessary good; avoid evil." (p. 335)]

Alphabet's new motto "Do the right thing" is better.

That is a fair point, but I think the red flag warnings for Google are still warranted.

A couple of links:

Google's Earth: how the tech giant is helping the state spy on us
We knew that being connected had a price – our data. But we didn't care. Then it turned out that Google's main clients included the military and intelligence agencies. By Yasha Levine

How the CIA made Google
Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet—

The CIA's In-Q-Tel is Investing in Startups That Can Predict the Future

Of course Google & the various other tech companies funded by the CIA & Pentagon and so on have had a lot of positive impact on the US & on the world, but consolidating so much power in the hands of so few is obviously a very risky proposition. GMail, Google Earth & even the internet itself all owe their existence largely to government funding. But should we trust the government with all of our personal and financial information?

The Chain of Issuance: The People and Patents That Built The Financial Surveillance Network
The patent hoarding developers and investors associated with PayPal and Google who built the first iteration of e-commerce and digital advertising have turned to the blockchain to fulfill their vision of total financial surveillance and the circumnavigation of government-issued money.

This guy is happy for the funding:
The spy who invested in my start up: technology and national security

On the other hand, how easy would it be for a government that goes off the rails to control its population with tools like the Ortho Orb, if it or similar biometric tools are required for internet access & financial transactions?

Worldcoin: Sam Altman's Crypto Tool for Technocracy?

Universal proof of human, finance and connection for every human.

Yes, all tools can be used for good or evil but putting such tools in the hands of politicians and their elitist collaborators gives them something akin to absolute power over everyone else, and that isn't usually conducive to molding moral leaders. The saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, undoubtedly has some underlying truth that it expresses. Or so it seems to me.

#37

Forum-Related / Re: Is there a way to adjust t...

Last post by Geremia - February 05, 2026, 12:28:03 AM

I updated the default forum time zone to be UTC, but you can change it to your local timezone.

#38

Forum-Related / Thank you.

Last post by justjeff - February 04, 2026, 11:27:27 PM

Thank you.

That did in fact fix it.

#39

General Discussion / Re: AI poised to be the indust...

Last post by Geremia - February 04, 2026, 11:25:29 PM

far fewer would be needed

Intelligent, moral humans would be needed.

In his book, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlett has some excellent counterpoints to the arguments that have historically come up regarding industrialization taking away human jobs. The dire predictions about the drastic reduction in jobs never turned out to be correct in the grand scheme of things. They certainly might cause job losses in some places, but would result in job gains and a greater standard of living for more people.

His book contained many examples of that counterintuitive fact. My father-in-law's situation was a striking example of that phenomenon. He was a carpenter as a very young lad after WWII. The carpenters union fought against the use of power tools on the job. Using electric saws and drills would reduce the number of carpenter hours needed to build a home, quite obviously. But they lost that battle, and it turned out that far more carpenters had jobs after those time saving tools boosted their productivity. The relative cost of homes dropped, allowing more people to purchase new homes, or to have older ones renovated or expanded.

Interesting example.
Yes, technology is morally neutral, but its use isn't.

#40

Forum-Related / Re: «The World Brain: Google's...

Last post by Geremia - February 04, 2026, 11:13:43 PM

Google changed their former, rather unusual motto, "Don't be evil"

That's only half of the first principle of natural law (Wuellner, S.J., Summary of Scholastic Principles p. 382):

A. Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided (as far as possible).
B. Do the necessary good; avoid evil, confer 336 [="The primary and unifying principle of the law is: Do the necessary good; avoid evil." (p. 335)]

Alphabet's new motto "Do the right thing" is better.