CULTURE & HISTORY

ED CURTIN—Billy Bush chuckled and pointed to a spot in the river where the fast water hit a big rock and turned back to create a whirlpool. “There you are,” he said, “that’s an eddy. Eddys always run contrary to the main current, so you’re in good company.” The man laughed, which made the boy laugh. Then the man told him that he was not really a hermit but lived in the old farmhouse up the hill near Brown’s sheep farm but that he found it amusing that people created this legend about him and so he played along. He said he had once been a philosophy professor who came from the city to his sister’s country house to be alone and think and write while his family stayed in the city. Since he was only here off and on and loved to wander through the woods down along the river people had for some reason come to create a legend about him. “I have found,” he said, “that people are so afraid of being alone that they create weird stories like the one about me being the Hermit of the Esopus to scare themselves to death.”

A set of rare videos documenting the unusual, often epic, architectural and urban treasures to be found in New York City.

THE SAKER—The EU has a major problem: it is run by a comprador class which is entirely dependent on the United States.  Okay, that by itself is not the problem I am referring to.  The problem I am referring to is one we could call the problem of the decapitated chicken: a decapitated chicken can run without a head, but it sure does not know where it is running or why. This happens to all comprador classes when their beloved masters suddenly vanish. This is exactly what happened to the European ruling classes when Trump came to the White House: they “lost their head” and they began running all over the place, obviously achieving nothing.  Now that the Neocons gave Trump the boot, the EU rulers are desperate to show the new US leaders that they only hated Trump, not the USA, and what better way to show your complete submission than by barking at the Asiatic Mordor of the East known as “Russia”?

Towards the end of the interview Harari was asked whether he was an optimist or pessimist about where we’re headed. He answered by stating that there are things we can do to improve the situation, “although there is nothing inevitable about it”. Expressing doubts about the belief that science and technology will inevitably create a better world, Harari affirms that the science and technology guarantee only one thing. And this thing is power: “Humankind is going to become more powerful. But what to do with this power? Here we have all kinds of options. If you look back in history, sometimes people use power very wisely, and very often they misuse their power. One of the most important forces in human history is human stupidity. We should never underestimate human stupidity. When you combine the limitless resource of human stupidity with amazing new powers that humankind will gain in the 21st century, this can be a recipe for disaster”.

ED CURTIN—Then the orange-halo-headed Trump was paraded in.  To his followers he was the savior who would re-redeem the country from the devilish divinity Obama, the false prophet.  He would drain the swamp. Desperate middle-Americans revered this NYC real-estate tycoon and reality TV star who for years was nothing but a running joke among those who actually knew who he was.  It didn’t matter to his congregation.  Not in the slightest. That he gave to the rich and screwed the middle-class and the poor, increased the military budget, waged secretive wars via drones and private mercenaries didn’t matter a bit.  He was a religious figure. To Hillary Clinton’s and Obama’s acolytes, he was Satan himself, and for four years the anti-pageant play was presented by the corporate mainstream media to exorbitant box office receipts and ratings. God and Satan fought in the ring for the ultimate fighting championship.