The ultimate platitude that describes capitalism.

Capitalism is the democracy of delusion for the powerful, and the illusion of democracy for everyone else.

How's that for a platitude?

Had some issues with the blog template.

You may have noticed some black and white backgrounds, along with some black and white texts, all being messed up.

Anyways, I reverted back to an older and simpler format. We'll see if that works.

Can people finally concede that Israel is the ultimate settler/colonial expression of American Exceptionalism?

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/the-new-era-of-israeli-expansionism-and-the-war-economy-that-fuels-it/

... the war economy provides growth, foreign currency earnings, and political insulation. This creates a structural incentive for permanent mobilization: war sustains demand, shields the government from accountability, and reinforces a worldview in which force is treated as the primary currency of international relations. 

In this configuration, military aggression and territorial expansionism are the mechanisms through which the Israeli economy now seeks to reproduce itself. As a result, Israel’s governing coalition rests on permanent securitization. The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.

For most Americans ... their protests of ICE behavior is often obscured by their lack of knowledge of its evolution.

And, history for that matter.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/continuity-social-control-slave-patrols-policing-ice

For the nearly 250 years of legalized chattel slavery in the U.S., slave patrols were the first formalized system of law enforcement in much of the South. Mandated to serve as a mechanism of control of enslaved and free Africans, slave patrols existed to protect the economic system and super profits that slavery produced. 

Slave patrols operated in the same void between legality and morality that slavery itself existed in, facilitated by established law while also being deeply immoral and grossly inhumane, they enforced the legal but morally reprehensible statutes that severely limited the autonomy, movement, assembly, and education of enslaved people. And, like today’s anti-immigration offensive, they enforced those morally dubious laws in the most violent and morally repugnant ways possible because the focus was not on upholding the law, but legitimizing the racist social hierarchy. 

Slave patrols roamed the Southern roads around plantations and where enslaved and free Africans lived (in some cities, the enslaved in urban areas lived in a separate, segregated area rather than on a land-intensive plantation) all day and at night, looking for Black people to stop and demand papers from. These papers proved the free status or the permission to travel of free and enslaved Africans. They broke into and raided free Africans’ homes, stopped Black people on the street in any context and location, and were legally expected to immediately and violently punish those found without papers. But slave patrollers were also known to reject, steal, or destroy papers that were supposed to keep free people from being re-enslaved, and enslaved people from being accused of escaping and being either sold back into slavery for the profit of the slave catcher, or severely punished as a runaway. 

The practice of surveilling, over-policing, randomly stopping, and demanding documentation of Black and Brown people suspected of alleged criminality is not a unique feature of modern policing. These are the tactics established by the slave patrols that shape all aspects of policing today.

Burn baby burn.

I visited Australia many years ago, as a teenager (that's a story for another day).

Granted it was different than I was used to, in that I grew up in a place where all four seasons existed.

That being said, I don't think then, is like today ...

https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/30/all-the-15-hottest-spots-on-earth-on-thursday-were-in-australia-will-it-become-uninhabitable/

All the 15 Hottest Spots on Earth on Thursday were in Australia; Will it become Uninhabitable?

By Juan Cole for Informed Comment

At times, it can truly feel as though a collapse of sorts is imminent...why?

Well for starters,  the US Empire is heading down this path, what with the ongoing genocide of brown people by Israel,  the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, the threat of attacking Iran ...

Oh and this -

https://liberationnews.org/psl-statement-cuba-is-not-a-threat-end-the-blockade/?utm_source=one_signal&utm_medium=desktop_alert&utm_campaign=liberationnews

I have to remind both those around me (and myself) this is by design. Those in the employer side of the US Empire are afraid,  and they want you and I and everyone else to be afraid well. It's all about the perceived sense of control and dominance. 

Power is the ultimate illusion in this life, be it individual or collective. And that illusion can be as fateful in determining our future as much as us understanding reality.

It finally arrived.

That is, the next-generation sequence/sampler - the AKAI MPC Live 3.

Now I have a huge learning curve, on both the multi-expression pads, and the new MPC 3 workload.

A great deal indeed, but hopeful for what it will lead to.