eXile

https://exiledonline.com/big-brothers-george-orwell-and-christopher-hi… "That’s the thing about Orwell’s Imperialism: it’s perfectly ordinary stuff, distinguished only by the socialist persona he invented to speak it. As an example of literary dissembling, Orwell belongs with the great forgers. But as a man of ideas, he is truly beneath contempt. His ideas are simply the hatreds of his nursery, hidden by an elaborate self-glorifying backstory."

Taibbi's partner at the time posted a response to these allegations. https://exiledonline.com/about-those-exile-smears/ A brief excerpt from Ames' piece: "How do you respond to something so blatantly dishonest? A number of media contacts have told me that Lally shopped this hit piece around to multiple publications, but it was rejected for this very reason." It's worth noting that the women who worked for the Exiled are still around, and when this came out they confirmed that the events depicted in the Exiled book were satirical. This was an attempt to hijack the #metoo movement without anyone actually making an accusation.

> There's not a lot of papers saying nice things about a mafia oligarchy state unless they've been paid to do so There was one, called "The Economist in the year X" for all X such that whichever combination of oligarchs, mafia and security services are in power happen to be friendly to Western business interests. > The economist has firmly located itself in an economic and socially liberal policy position They are the voice of Empire and always have been. http://exiledonline.com/exile-classic-the-economist-the-worlds-sleazie…

He did not win the Nobel Prize in Economics because there is no such prize. It's The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. http://exiledonline.com/the-nobel-prize-in-economics-there-is-no-nobel… Just imagine the ridicule if instead of the Turing or Shannon awards we'd have the ACM Prize in Computer Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel, or the IEEE Prize in Electrical Engineering in Memory of Alfred Nobel. BTW, here's a great paper by George Akerlof and Paul Romer who both won the prize: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Looting.pdf

I love The Exile's summary of Byron. Excerpt: > With fame, money and sex settled, he had to find something else to fight, and, like any honorable man, he chose to fight his own people. And that was how Byron the sentimental poet of graveyards and lost loves became the Satanic joker all England loved to hate. http://exiledonline.com/lord-byron-the-exiles-patron-saint/

No, we're not, at last not in the original meaning. Nerd used to mean someone obsessed and therefore knowledgeable about something (book nerd, comic nerd, or... The War Nerd[1]). Later geek took over that meaning and nerd moved towards someone socially awkward but smart. Owning a smartwatch, reading a best seller novel, or watching a blockbuster doesn't make anyone a nerd. Not any more than wearing aviator sunglasses makes me a pilot. Which is actually what nerd tends to mean now, a style, a fashion fad inspired by the original. Ironically, yet also completely predictably when you think of it, the original demographic is starting to look down on the nerd interests of yesteryear. You can read very dismissive (and downright insulting but that's a given) comments about anime and computer gaming on 4chan of all places. [1] http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/

They're great against a low-tech adversary, but against serious ballistic or (some) cruise missiles, they're just slowly-moving seaborne apartment blocks. Good writeup here: http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die…

A more current war nerd article http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-china-joins-the-yacht-club/ The DF 21 is basically unstoppable, best long term solution inho is putting drone carriers underwater

Actually, the IRA typically issued warnings beforehand -- soon enough to evacuate, but too late to find the bomb. I've heard it described as a calculation to minimize civilian deaths that might stiffen British resolve. The best description I have seen is here: http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/

Ayn Rand, it seems, didn't like that libertarians were concerned in any way with how to provide collective resources. She idealized a lack of concern with others and one role model of hers was a man named William Edward Hickman who killed and dismembered a 12 year old girl. >“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’” http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-wing-follow… Ayn Rand was an eloquent proponent of sociopathy.

Has been the case for decades: http://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/ >The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.” >But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.

Taken from https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-more-than-yo… "There are whole websites for this: How To Convince Your Shrink You Have ADHD [0], How To Get Your Doctor To Prescribe You Adderall In Five Easy Steps [1], et cetera. But I can’t imagine most people need them. Just talk about all the times in your life that you had attention and concentration problems, and if your doctor asks you a more specific question (“Do you often lose things?”) you give the obvious right answer (“Wow, it’s like you’ve known me my whole life!”). Aren’t psychiatrists creepy wizards who can see through your deceptions? There are people like that. They’re called forensicists, they have special training in dealing with patients who might be lying to them, and they tend to get brought in for things like evaluating a murderer pleading the insanity defense. They have a toolbox of fascinating and frequently hilarious techniques to ascertain the truth, and they’re really good at their jobs. But me? At best, I can have a vague suspicion you’re not telling the truth. And how many patients genuinely in need of treatment do I want to risk accidentally rejecting just so I can be sure of thwarting you? A lot of 100% honest psychiatric patients’ stories are pretty unbelievable, really, and I don’t want to have to treat every patient like a convicted murderer. Unless you give me some specific reason to doubt you, I start with the assumption that you’re telling the…

I was unaware of Levine before posting the link, which I think is a fair enough story, rather than a "hatchet job", btw. Having looked now, though, I'd say "interesting" rather than "ridiculous." See, for example "Exposing The Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?" [1] - which gloriously headlined article seems to have broken the story of the Koch brothers' involvement in the Tea Party and other astroturf campaigns, back in 2009. Also worth a look is the claimed list of other post-eXile scoops at exiledonline [2] Same for The Exile itself - "tabloid" seems a little mild. - Vanity Fair on The Exile [3]: > In its time The Exile was arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia, and Ames and his staff had paid for that fact, or at least for the fact that they were arrogant reprobates, many times before. Columnist Edward Limonov, the 66-year-old political provocateur in whom the Federal Service officials were particularly interested, filed his copy from prison for two years after being convicted of possessing arms, which he admits he intended to smuggle into Kazakhstan in an effort to incite a coup there. Writer Kevin McElwee, an American expatriate, had both legs broken when he was torn from the side of a building he was scaling to escape an angry mob of Muscovites, an incident that had nothing to do with anything he’d written—McElwee, The Exile’s film reviewer, was just a rambunctious drunk. On another…

> firing hundreds of anti-ship missiles The War Nerd stated it clearly: https://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-di…

Hilariously, this is the husband of Washington Post person "Anne Appelbaum", a noted historian and alleged "dingbat" [1] who, among other things, can be relied upon to give strong cover to her husband's racist BS. Appelbaum and Sikorski are big anti-Russia types, and cursory glances at their social media feeds shows how thirsty they are for war, and how willing they are to send others' children off to do it. (Much as I dislike the guy, Sikorski's probably right about the US doing the pipeline bombing [2].) [1] https://exiledonline.com/anne-applebaum-is-a-dingbat/ [2] https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-rese…

War Nerd podcast has good interview this week discussing http://exiledonline.com/45wn84klrz/?name=rwn_ep_288_0708211.mp3

Summers is probably one of the worst economists/apparatchiks America has ever had. His achievements include: * Working with the Reagan administration to promote supply side economics. * Advising post soviet states on a transition to a market economy which led to finanicial crisis, a 60% collapse in GDP, a spike in suicide rates and the privatization of state assets at firesale prices and the creation of an oligarch class. * Working to de-regulate CDSes and derivatives. * Calling Africa under-polluted. * Attributing women's underrepresentation in math and science to natural genetic inferiority. http://exiledonline.com/larry-summers-a-suicidal-choice/

Apparently it's too soon for criticism? I'm not sure what fads have to do with it, other than fads being convenient to minimize or dismiss; this piece of elegant sandpaper is for example six years old: http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely…

Something about Malcolm Gladwell really didn't sit right with me after learning about his tobacco industry connections (http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-tobacco-industry-shill/). Reading this guy's response to Gladwell's cultural theory of plane crashes sealed the deal for me: http://askakorean.blogspot.hk/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplan…

For an utterly different take on Nkunda,see here:http://exiledonline.com/nkunda-is-nkool/all/1

You're talking like Kazakhstan is a functional democracy. http://exiledonline.com/the-massacre-everyone-ignored-70-striking-oil-…

This reminds me of this old War Nerd piece, "This is How the Carriers Will Die": http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die…

Probably to get additional tax exemptions on property taxes of the land they own [0] [0] http://exiledonline.com/property-taxes-are-for-parasites-billionaires-…

Koch family were not bad off.. http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch-industries-how-stali…

To the NSA, presumably: http://exiledonline.com/read-yasha-levines-introduction-to-the-crypto-…

See also: http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life…

http://exiledonline.com/how-meg-whitman-failed-her-way-to-the-top-at-e… http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/undoing-meg-whitmans-ebay/ Third cause successes can hide failures rather well. Companies can succeed despite their absolutely atrocious leadership - not because of it. Both she and Carly Fiorina were two of the worst things that could've happened to eBay and HP respectively (Meg Whitman for both). They are nasty pieces of work. Balmer is another example - he is single-handedly going to destroy a $200 billion dollar corporation and no one is stopping him. Hell they'd save a lot of money by making me CEO :D.

I liked malcolm gladwell a lot more before I found out he is a big tobacco shill. http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-tobacco-industry-shill/

I've never heard of this until now. Reading the article people have mentioned below: http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life… Well, it's a really badly written article, full of "association" but I can't really find anything damning, just a bunch of innuendo, which could be invented about most any sufficiently prolific journalist. I've read a lot of Gladwell's writing -- the only main theme I can find is that he just tends to write articles that fly in the face of received wisdom. That's his whole shtick. He plays devil's advocate. So obviously, if he defends unpopular positions, you can read into that all you want, but I don't see any real evidence that it's ideological or driven by corporate support. It's just his writing style, and you can probably find just as many counter-examples.

random source from the Wikipedia article: http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life…