Friday, September 26, 2014

Providence

“Sixty is not a bad age—unless in perspective, when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with mixed feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then; and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a fine fellow one used to be. I have observed that, by an amiable attention of Providence, most people at sixty begin to take a romantic view of themselves. Their very failures exhale a charm of peculiar potency. And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but—so to speak—naked, stripped for a run. The robes of glamour are luckily the property of the immovable past which, without them, would sit, a shivery sort of thing, under the gathering shadows.”
~ Joseph Conrad, “The Inn of the Two Witches” (courtesy of Lance Mannion)

“Be prepared to see something that you will not like,” Freud told his doctor. He opened his mouth. It was cancer. Freud started to plan how to die... Bohemian Boy Born and Bred on the bank of Morava River who escaped to Vienna

Sting of Betrayal: George Soros and Cristina Kirchner Wolf Street. A tad overwrought but the general point holds

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ex-GSA Executive Jeff Neely Indicted for Fraud. “Jeff Neely, the General Services Administration executive viewed as the ringleader of the lavish spending on a 2010 training conference in Las Vegas, was indicted on five counts of fraud on Thursday by a federal grand jury in San Francisco. The 59-year-old former head of region nine of the Public Building Service faces charges of making fraudulent reimbursement claims and false statements, according to an announcement from United States Attorney Melinda Haag of Northern California and GSA Office of Inspector General Special Agent in Charge David House.”

The United Kingdom Nearly Died for Margaret Thatcher’s SinsBob Kuttner, American Prospect
Australia’s Prime Minister Gives a Master Class in Exploiting Terrorism Fears to Seize New Powers Glenn Greenwald, Intercept. Really sad to see what is happening in Oz. It was a bastion of (comparative) sanity when I lived there ten years ago. Of course, they did elect Tony Abbot.