mred:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1154585,00.html

theres a big story in the uk about mmr vaccinations and faulty science at the mo - wrt paid research. the interesting thing is how endemic corruption is - its not just that bush is evil and promoting an angenda - it seems deeply ingrained into the actual fabric of western d'ohmocracy. im not sure if it always was as bad as it seems now or if we are seeing a massive pre-ohmygeddon run-up - analogus to the internet equity boom or whatever.

i can hardly think of an area of life that doesnt seem massively, institutionally, corrupted by lies. science. economy. war. legislature. judiciary. environment. accounting. executive. military. currency markets. mutual funds. equity markets. elections. energy markets. opinion polls. media. banks. they seem not only corrupted to the core, but almost to the point that lying/cheating/deception/bribery/corruption is the actual modus operandi. these functions are presumably the pillars of western society as we know it - but they all seem absolutely broke. broke to the point where we have seen purely self-interested decisions that dont seem concerned about the possibilities of thuosands and thousands of deaths - not just war, but science as well - environment, innoculations it doesnt matter - buy the research, kill people, make money. knowingly. it seems somehow different to pure negligence - say Union Carbide or wotever - if a factory blows up in some 3rd world country, even if it was kinda predictable and perhaps even inevitable given the maintenance budget or wotever. negligence still seems to entail less culpability than pre-meditated decisions - like *knowing* that ssri's can cause children to suicide and *hiding* the evidence (bad enuff of itself), and promoting the drug like crazy - even tho they *knew* that there was no evidence that there was even any upside and supressed that evidence. its not even like they were making any utilitarian argument. its extraordinary. literally, explicitly killing people for profit. and this from the 'health' industry. can u imagine how corrupt u would have to be to agree to lure trusting young parents to your product, trusted with the health of their newborn, u charge them actual $ knowing that your product is at best neutral and could specifically, directly lead to the kids death. thats either an inherently bankrupt system or lots of corrupt people.

it is oftentimes beyond me how society continues to creak along. its becoming increasingly apparent that u cant believe what anyone tells you - not even your doctor, and not even if u believe him/her personally. the question is whether things were always the same, in which case there is some comfort in knowing that the world hasnt exploded yet so maybe it will continue to chug along, or if we have seen actually witnessed a dramatic shift in the balance recently - which mite portend some 'imminent' disequilibria shocks. its kind of difficult to consider the apparent evidence and not at least speculate about whether we have crossed the tipping point. on the other hand, if u look at atlas shrugged for example, ayn outlined this same systemic breakdown more than 50 years ago - hopefully hers wasnt a longer term prediction, but that she actually also saw it as 'imminent' (and was (at least, temporally) wrong). praps we can take comfort in that - somehow the system manages to stay on its feet, despite all evidence to the contrary. on the other hand, if u look at the atlas shrugged dysfunction, and consider the damage inflicted by the power (and the apparently inevitable corruption, cronyism, and incompetence) of the highly concentrated rail industries, and then extrapolate the manifestations of those same problems across *all of* the industries which are equally concentrated today (eg media, banking, accounting, health, retail, auto etc etc), then there'll be a john galt on every corner. or maybe an osama. hopefully more johns.


so thats my rant - hopefully a nice change from the usual 'the shitehouse is corrupt' to a more generalised debate - the system is broke.

oops - ive just seen a news report on gibsons Passion. ive been watching this one for 6 months - it all reads like a script - i dunno whats going on - but it looks a lot bigger than 'just a movie' - it seems almost designed to create a religious war to justify dog-knows-what despite the oft-repeated 'gibsons own money' thingy. so anways, gibson was giving a news/press conference, *actually* smoking a cigarette. lemme repeat 'actually smoking a cigarette.' on stage. when was the last time u saw that shit? im sure that doesnt happen by accident on the eve of a contentious movie's debut. a quick glance at the possible reasons:
1) mel is too cool to care
2) smoking is cool
3) other

looneybomba