VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY

THE SAKER—The Belarussian authorities have declared that “hundreds” of men (supposedly Russians) have been sent to Belarus with nefarious intentions.  Lukashenko has since officially confirmed that he got this info from the Ukrainian SBU. The men themselves were described as terrorists, insurgents, members of the “Wagner” PMC, subversives, etc. and their goals were described as killing Lukashenko, triggering a new “maidan” in Belarus, create chaos, etc. Frankly, the Belarusian authorities never got their story straight and, frankly again, this really makes no difference at all. 

GODFREE ROBERTS—China is home to four of the world’s five largest unicorns, led by Alibaba’s Ant Group, which has a US$150 billion valuation. The total value of all known unicorns in the world is US$1.9 trillion, equivalent to the GDP of Italy. Vehicle sales rose 15% in July. Sales of sedans, SUVs, and commercial vehicles increased to 2.08 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. Tesla’s made-in-China cars are quality market leaders while Tesla’s US-made vehicles are scoring the lowest for quality. The average passenger car in China gets 37.2 quality complaints per 10,000 cars over the last quarter. Over the same period, Made-in-China Model 3 only received 0.7 complaints – topping the chart.

UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE, ALL IMAGES, CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS…

YASHA LEVINE—From the start of the dot com boom, Silicon Valley and America’s political elite has done a great job of marketing the Internet as a totally new type of technology — a utopian system that’s removed from American imperial and business interests. Google? Facebook? Apple? eBay? These companies aren’t extensions of American imperial power. No way! They’re neutral technological platforms involved in connecting and empowering people. They’re serving users with digital democracy, regardless of their nationality or politics. They’re post-ideological and post-historical!  For a long time a lot of people believed this sales pitch. Even Silicon Valley bought into its own hype. 

FRANK SCOTT—As the nation sinks more deeply into financial, mental and spiritual blight, we find major outlets of thought control blaring idiocy about Russian threats to our invader forces in foreign countries by allegedly offering payment to the native population to kill them. Such thoughts would never occur to people who have suffered tens of thousands of deaths at their hands and whose governments have been destroyed by them, at least not to the brilliant American foreign policy makers who need to have their heads examined by a proctologist. These Russian monsters are also conducting assaults on our fictional democracy, thus endangering the multi-billion dollar electoral marketing orgy which started right after the last carnival chose a barker and will continue until the next circus selects a clown.