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Julian Assange has something to say about this.

Edward Snowden has something to say about this.

Reality Winner has something to say about this.

Chelsea Manning has something to say about this.

Woodward and Bernstein had something to say about this.

Joseph Gedeon at the Guardian reports that Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC for stating:

“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions, … You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”

Richard Luscombe at the Guardian reports:

Among those to have been fired, suspended or censured in recent days for their opinions include teachers, firefighters, journalists, politicians, a Secret Service employee, a junior strategist at Nasdaq and a worker for a prominent NFL team.

From the past 10 years, in reverse order (from my Goodreads)

• The Passenger + Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

• Ducks by Kate Beaton

• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

• On Tyrrany by Timothy Snyder

• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Edit: a few more from the past 50 years.

• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

• Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

• Post War by Tony Judt

• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

I’m starting to think that the Nobel Prize for Economics should be renamed the Nobel Anti-Peace Prize.

Basically, there has always been opportunity in disaster. The Shock Doctrine uncovers the methods of those who engineer or wait for crises in order to capitalize on, or pass profiteering legislation in challening times.

I read the Shock Doctrine back in '09. It crystallized the Bush II presidency in such detail and scope that I’ve never been able to forget it.

Things have only gotten worse. Even under Obama. Certainly under Trump and Biden.

The part about Yeltsin firing on his own Parliament was very insightful. Again, setting the stage for Russia’s current exercises of Shock.

Letting enough people die expedites certain forms of problem-solving; particularly those that involve the military, technology, heavy industry, reconstruction, and financial sectors of the economy. When the most expensive things are destroyed — like cities, infrastructure, and the concept of human security — that’s where the fuckiteering begins. Debt loads, overcharging, and profiteering on misery for companies /countries that caused the problems in the first place.

It’s gross.