Synchromysticism

" Synchromysticism:
The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance."

- Jake Kotze

July 14, 2019

The Elephant/Pig in the Room?

I've got nothing against reasonably honest capitalism, but I can't stand so called "vulture capitalism" such as Antony Loewenstein writes about in his book 'Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World', which I bought in 2014 after hearing Antony give a talk in 2014 at the Byron Writers Festival.
It's an eye-opening book, but really no surprise if like me, you've read Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine'.
The book can probably be summed up in this passage below from the postscript.
I admire journalists like Antony who write up their adventures in countries where you could end up with a bullet through your head, or murdered for your troubles.
I could never risk my life like that to bring such stories to the page
Antony Loewenstein at the 2014 Byron Writers Festival
It's only taken me five years to finally read the book from cover to cover.
It's the type of book I find a slog to read, but after I get through it, I'm glad that I did take the time to read.
Andrew West Griffin wrote about a dream he had about the young journalists coming up through the ranks these days, "One powerful dream that happened on Sunday morning, July 7, 2019 (7/7) was detailed in an email I sent to myself so I would not forget.
In summary, I was looking at a stage and I saw white, young people - young journalists, apparently - standing in front of a line of white elephants.
I took this to be a symbol for the Republican Party.
And these young people, who had been idealists and determined to report the truth had given into a Borg-like conformity, afraid to dig and report the truth.
As Hunter S. Thompson once said, "Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."
No doubt about it.
I criticized the media gatekeepers for years.
Now I have found my niche and am quite happy, even if journalism is put by the wayside for a spell and I devote my days to writing books, which I'm already starting to do.
And I must say that I am much happier, although the dreams remain unsettling (in last night's dream, I was approached by a person in an office building, handed a business card and offered a writing job. I was hesitant ...)
But I digress ... characters named "Shaggy" and "Zedlar" (Rip Torn's name in Men in Black was "Zed") were in this dream and they were all about protecting the power structure that runs pretty much everything.

I know all about it.
How could you not?
Yes, Red Dirt Report is winding down.
I have serious mixed feelings about it.
I created it 12 years ago this past week - July 4, 2007."
The Red Dirt Report: Another Blog Bites the Dust/That's All Folks?
And while I would hardly put Andrew into the same league of journalism as the one Antony is in, I praise Andrew for trying to fight the good fight.
In many ways us ignorant readers are half of the problem when it comes to supporting these corporate pirates when we feed them and their schemes our dollars by buying the cheap sweatshop produced goods that line the shopping malls.
As well as writing books and newspaper articles Antony also makes docos like -
DISASTER CAPITALISM 
Antony's other books include 'My Israel Question' (which I bought also in 2014, but am yet to read) and 'The Blogging Revolution' and he is the co-editor of the books 'Left Turn' and 'After Zionism', and is a contributor to 'For God’s Sake'.
His latest book is 'Pills, Powder, and Smoke'
.
Well, that's not all yet folks ... but it's looking pretty grim the way the criminals are carving up the planet to make a buck for themselves or trying to at least.
Ironically, the day I finish reading the above book, I see this news story in the national news feed -
Australia's last millet broom factory tries to resist sweeping changes in consumer culture

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