“
Regardless of the overall state of the economy, there is now a large enough elite made up of new multi-millionaires and billionaires for Wall Street to see the group as "superconsumers," able to carry consumer demand all on their own.
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Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism)
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In the Mirror World, conspiracy theories detract attention from the billionaires who fund the networks of misinformation and away from the economic policies—deregulation, privatization, austerity—that have stratified wealth so cataclysmically in the neoliberal era. They rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma—but the rage never seems to reach those targets. Instead it gets diverted into culture wars about anti-racist education, all-gender bathrooms, and Great Replacement panic directed at Black people, nonwhite immigrants, and Jews. Meanwhile, the billionaires who bankroll the whole charade are safe in the knowledge that the fury coursing through our culture isn’t coming for them.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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Billionaires think that anything goes, are enamored of geoengineering, and detest nothing so much as simple but unpleasant solutions (such as paying taxes and living quietly).
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Thomas Piketty (Capital and Ideology)
“
although i had been told my whole life that money couldnt buy you happiness, it was certainly clear to me that it could provide some desirable upgrades
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
“
Donald Trump and his ilk are eating the poor for breakfast, yet the poor keep voting for the billionaire elite ... turkeys voting for Christmas.
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Joe Dixon (The Irresistible Rise of Mediocre Man: The War On Excellence)
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i had nothing to lose, and so much to gain. i felt free and alive.
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
“
A mere billionaire is a nobody among the princes of high tech. In spite of their pretensions to social equality, many of this crowd are among the most class-conscious elite bigots the world has ever known.
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Dean Koontz (Devoted)
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A great movie hero is JOKER. Man, we fucking hate that Batman motherfucker. Anyone who wants to take him down is obviously one of the good guys! So, a sleazy billionaire playboy – a member of the super-rich elite – is supposed to be the hero of the people. Get to fuck!
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David Sinclair (The War of the Mind: Understanding Inflation and Alienation)
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the elite use socialism as a consolidation and control mechanism. Allen describes Socialism as "a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world." He points out that this is accomplished, "first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations" and then combining them all under the "United Nations." Socialism, in practice, is tyranny. It is control by the wealthy individuals who control the state. It is always oppressive, because they must use terror of some kind to create restrictive laws which ensure their control.
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Mark M. Rich (The Hidden Evil: The Financial Elite's Covert War Against the Civilian Population)
“
According to a 2006 study, 90 percent of China’s billionaires (calculated in Chinese yuan) are the children of Communist Party officials. Roughly twenty-nine hundred of these party scions—known as “the princelings”—control $260 billion.54 It is a mirror of the corporatist state first pioneered in Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized political force. Today, this collaborative arrangement can be seen in the way that foreign multinational media and technology companies help the Chinese state to spy on its citizens, and to make sure that when students do Web searches on phrases like “Tiananmen Square Massacre,” or even “democracy,” no documents turn up. “The creation of today’s market society was not the result of a sequence of spontaneous events,” writes Wang Hui, “but rather of state interference and violence.
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Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism)
“
The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them. . . .
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
“
Unless that elite soon comes to recognize the value and the importance of all of Russia’s citizens, to honor both their civil and their human rights, Russia is ultimately fated to become today’s northern Zaire, a land populated by impoverished peasants and billionaire politicians who keep their assets in Swiss bank vaults and their private jets on runways, engines running. Tragically,
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Anne Applebaum (Gulag)
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I started tracking billionaire wealth in my home country, India. Back in 2010 anger against the new wealth elite was growing, and my first parsing of the Forbes lists helped explain why. Although India is relatively poor, billionaire wealth had soared to the equivalent of more than 17 per cent of gross domestic product, one of the highest shares in the world, with most of the gains accruing to a narrow set of families in industries prone to crony capitalism.
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Ruchir Sharma
“
A billionaire plutocrat is now sitting in the White House. Democracy has been overthrown. A right wing coup d’état has taken place. The Confederacy has defeated the Union. Racist Nazis are now running America, calling themselves “patriots”. They are the enemies of the People, the enemies of America, and the enemies of the world. The time has come to get rid of the global elite and their brainwashed right wing puppets. The time has come for the people to take control of their own destiny. We need to reboot the world.
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Ranty McRanterson
“
Social networking is the most brilliant manifestation yet of the elite’s bread and circuses paradigm. Whereas Caesar had to spend a fortune putting on shows for the plebs, the modern Caesar get the plebs to entertain themselves on Facebook, and it doesn’t cost him a cent. In fact, he can become a multi-billionaire out of it. What a result! The elite must always ensure that the masses are too preoccupied to ever think about the appalling world they live in; to confront the realisation that they are degraded second-class citizens in a two-tier society.
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Adam Weishaupt (Resurrection: The Origin of a Religious Fallacy)
“
Speculators, meanwhile, have seized control of the global economy and the levers of political power. They have weakened and emasculated governments to serve their lust for profit. They have turned the press into courtiers, corrupted the courts, and hollowed out public institutions, including universities. They peddle spurious ideologies—neoliberal economics and globalization—to justify their rapacious looting and greed. They create grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge citizens into crippling forms of debt peonage. And they have been stealing staggering sums of public funds, such as the $65 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that have been unloaded each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.21 They feed like parasites off of the state and the resources of the planet. Speculators at megabanks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the weak from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their own shareholders. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They only manipulate money. They are no different from the detested speculators who were hanged in the seventeenth century, when speculation was a capital offense. The obscenity of their wealth is matched by their utter lack of concern for the growing numbers of the destitute. In early 2014, the world’s 200 richest people made $13.9 billion, in one day, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index.22 This hoarding of money by the elites, according to the ruling economic model, is supposed to make us all better off, but in fact the opposite happens when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and corporations, as economist Thomas Piketty documents in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.23 The rest of us have little or no influence over how we are governed, and our wages stagnate or decline. Underemployment and unemployment become chronic. Social services, from welfare to Social Security, are slashed in the name of austerity. Government, in the hands of speculators, is a protection racket for corporations and a small group of oligarchs. And the longer we play by their rules the more impoverished and oppressed we become. Yet, like
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Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion)
“
Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.
”
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
The loud rasp of leather yanked through Carson’s belt loops sent her attention to his torso.
“What are you doing?” London’s panicked gaze shot to his face.
“I don’t have a collar on me.”
“I am wholly disinterested in being collared.”
“One weekend, London.” He grasped one of her hips with his free hand. “If you’re disappointed at any time, you can walk. I’ll never speak of it again. Our work together will go unaffected. No one—and I mean no one—but us will know.”
“Would you put that in writing?” Her eyes filled with mischief.
Priceless. London lured him toward a lightning storm. He could play. Hell, nothing appealed in the moment more than a weekend playing with London. Yes, this is what he wanted. Now he needed to know if she was willing.
“I’ll do one better.” He snaked the belt around her waist until the leather rested against her hips.
“I’m not a notch on a belt.”
“You could never be a notch, London Chantelle. You’re the whole belt, sugar.”
Her face softened, and the playfulness in her eyes died. He recognized the deliberation behind them, the wonder if she’d be safe, here and at work. London needn’t have worried. She might get scared, but mutual satisfaction was the only way his brand of sexual fulfillment worked.
“Say yes or no.” He pressed his torso to her corseted body, the last space between her body and his obliterated. “But say yes.”
“What will happen if I say yes?”
“What you want. What you’ve probably always wanted.”
Her eyes misted with a surprising vulnerability. “Yes.
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Elizabeth SaFleur (Untouchable (Elite Doms of Washington, #2))
“
As Christopher Caldwell observed in a New York Times essay, The Democratic Party is the party to which elites belong. It is the party of Harvard (and most of the Ivy League), of Microsoft and Apple (and most of Silicon Valley), of Hollywood and Manhattan (and most of the media) and, although there is some evidence that numbers are evening out in this election cycle, of Goldman Sachs (and most of the investment banking profession). . . . The Democrats have the support of more, and more active, billionaires [than the Republicans]. Of the twenty richest ZIP codes in America, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 19 gave the bulk of their money to the Democrats in the last election, in most cases the vast bulk—86% in 10024 on the Upper West Side.4 Wall
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David Horowitz (Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America)
“
And after generations of redistributive progressive income and inheritance taxes, the economic elite was losing its lead. Income in America during the mid-1970s was as equally distributed as at any time in the country’s history.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
During the previous eight years of Republican rule, this conservative corporate elite had consolidated its power, amassing enormous sway over the U.S. government’s regulatory and tax laws.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
The results of these efforts became visible in 1980. At the top of the ticket, Reagan, a movement conservative, overwhelmingly defeated Carter. Conservatives, whose obituaries had been written by the liberal elite just a few years before, were stunningly resurgent. The upset reverberated at every level, including the Senate, where four liberal marquee names, George McGovern, Frank Church, John Culver, and Birch Bayh, were all defeated.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
the John M. Olin Foundation in 1953, Olin embarked on a radical new course. He began to fund an ambitious offensive to reorient the political slant of American higher education to the right. His foundation aimed at the country’s most elite schools, the Ivy League and its peers, cognizant that these schools were the incubators of those who would hold future power.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
To Sanders, the path to reform is through confrontation with elites. Rather than talking about an entire nation struggling together to restore the US economy and shared prosperity, and rather than seeking to negotiate a better settlement with business leaders (if only they saw that progressive change was in their interests!), Sanders’s movement is about creating a “political revolution” to get what is rightfully ours from “millionaires and billionaires.” His
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Bhaskar Sunkara (The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality)
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A night in the elite’s world of pleasure.
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Olivia Hayle (Think Outside the Boss (New York Billionaires, #1))
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Ciara has confirmed every single one of my suspicions about Opate Match and their clientele. Like so often when you market something for the elite, this is what you get. Shallowness and superficiality. Certainly not true love.
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Olivia Hayle (Saved by the Boss (New York Billionaires, #2))
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Opate Match. We’re small, but we deliver love to New York’s elite. Started by Vivienne Davis twenty-five years ago. Now sold by Vivienne Davis, two days ago.
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Olivia Hayle (Saved by the Boss (New York Billionaires, #2))
“
Conservative elites first turned to populism as a political strategy thanks to Richard Nixon. His festering resentment of the Establishment’s clubby exclusivity prepared him emotionally to reach out to the “silent majority,” with whom he shared that hostility. Nixon excoriated “our leadership class, the ministers, the college professors, and other teachers… the business leadership class… they have all really let down and become soft.” He looked forward to a new party of independent conservatism resting on a defense of traditional cultural and social norms governing race and religion and the family. It would include elements of blue-collar America estranged from their customary home in the Democratic Party.
Proceeding in fits and starts, this strategic experiment proved its viability during the Reagan era, just when the businessman as populist hero was first flexing his spiritual muscles. Claiming common ground with the folkways of the “good ole boy” working class fell within the comfort zone of a rising milieu of movers and shakers and their political enablers. It was a “politics of recognition”—a rediscovery of the “forgotten man”—or what might be termed identity politics from above.
Soon enough, Bill Clinton perfected the art of the faux Bubba. By that time we were living in the age of the Bubba wannabe—Ross Perot as the “simple country billionaire.” The most improbable members of the “new tycoonery” by then had mastered the art of pandering to populist sentiment. Citibank’s chairman Walter Wriston, who did yeoman work to eviscerate public oversight of the financial sector, proclaimed, “Markets are voting machines; they function by taking referenda” and gave “power to the people.” His bank plastered New York City with clever broadsides linking finance to every material craving, while simultaneously implying that such seductions were unworthy of the people and that the bank knew it. Its $1 billion “Live Richly” ad campaign included folksy homilies: what was then the world’s largest bank invited us to “open a craving account” and pointed out that “money can’t buy you happiness. But it can buy you marshmallows, which are kinda the same thing.” Cuter still and brimming with down-home family values, Citibank’s ads also reminded everybody, “He who dies with the most toys is still dead,” and that “the best table in the city is still the one with your family around it.” Yale preppie George W. Bush, in real life a man with distinctly subpar instincts for the life of the daredevil businessman, was “eating pork rinds and playing horseshoes.” His friends, maverick capitalists all, drove Range Rovers and pickup trucks, donning bib overalls as a kind of political camouflage.
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Steve Fraser (The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power)
“
As a New York Times poll later showed, over three-quarters of its supporters identified as Republican. The bulk of the remainder felt the Republican Party was not Republican enough. Finally, although many of its supporters were likely political neophytes, from the start the ostensibly anti-elitist rebellion was funded, stirred, and organized by experienced political elites. On closer inspection, as the Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol and the Ph.D. student Vanessa Williamson observed in their 2012 book, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, the Tea Party movement was a “mass rebellion…funded by corporate billionaires, like the Koch brothers, led by over-the-hill former GOP kingpins like Dick Armey, and ceaselessly promoted by millionaire media celebrities like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
In 2007, according to the IRS, the richest four hundred taxpayers had an average income of more than ten thousand times the average income of the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers. Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson made $2.4 million per hour in the year 2010. That’s as much as a worker making $50,000 a year would make over the course of her entire forty-seven-year working career.10
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Christopher L. Hayes (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy)
“
Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise.
”
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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Love was a liability. I just couldn't allow it in my world.
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
“
Look more closely at these prosperous ideopolises and the picture becomes even more familiar. The symbolic embodiment of all this innovative postindustrial economic activity was none other than Frederick Dutton’s countercultural hero, hymned now as the very embodiment of the New Economy. Youth radicalism became the language in which the winners assured us that they cared about our individuality and that all their fine new digital products were designed strictly to liberate the world. Remember? “Burn down business-as-usual,” screamed a typical management text of the year 2000 called The Cluetrain Manifesto. Set up barricades. Cripple the tanks. Topple the statues of heroes too long dead into the street.… Sound familiar? You bet it does. And the message has been the same all along, from Paris in ’68 to the Berlin Wall, from Warsaw to Tiananmen Square: Let the kids rock and roll!3 The connection between counterculture and corporate power was a typical assertion of the New Economy era, and what it implied was that rebellion was not about overturning elites, it was about encouraging business enterprise. I myself mocked this idea in voluminous detail at the time. But it did not wane with the dot-com crash; indeed, it has never retreated at all. From Burning Man to Apple’s TV commercials, it is all over the place today. Think of the rock stars who showed up for Facebook billionaire Sean Parker’s wedding in Big Sur, or the rock ’n’ roll museum founded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen in Seattle, or the transformation of San Francisco, hometown of the counterculture, into an upscale suburb of Silicon Valley. Wherever you once found alternative and even adversarial culture, today you find people of merit and money and status. And, of course, you also find Democrats.
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Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)
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[Long Life]
This famous writer has died at 92
And that legend journalist,
The darling of authorities and mainstream media,
Has died at 95.
This pious religious man
Has died at 96,
And that billionaire,
Known for his countless charities and charitable deeds
Has died at 96 also…
The veteran and shrewd politician,
The former president of that country,
Has died at 95 as well…
And the same questions that dawned on me
Ever since I understood the oppression & filthiness
Of what the elites, authorities, and those in power are capable of,
Begin ringing in my ears once again:
Can anyone aware of the ugliness of what is going on live a long life?
Is it a coincidence that most people, writers, and artists
Who enriched my awareness and world died prematurely
Or died, literally or metaphorically, by suicide, assassination, or in prison?
Can a shred of awareness fell upon us without defeating the body and the soul
Cell by cell and one organ after another causing a premature death?
I also wonder have the writers, journalists, religious men, and politicians
Who lived long lives enriched truth and justness,
Or have they gotten rich at the expense of the above
to live long lives up to 92, 93, 94, 95, & 96?
And by biggest questions of all:
Is there somewhere, in some world, in some place,
a dagger of awareness that stabs without the killing the stabbed prematurely?
[Original poem published in Arabic on December 31, 2022, at ahewar.org]
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Louis Yako
“
even though Black and brown people are disproportionately poor, white Americans constitute the majority of low-income people who escape poverty because of government safety net programs. Nonetheless, the idea that Black people are the “takers” in society while white people are the hardworking taxpayers—the “makers”—has become a core part of the zero-sum story preached by wealthy political elites. Whether it’s the more subtle “47 percent” version from millionaire Mitt Romney or the more racially explicit Fox News version sponsored by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, it works. In 2016, the majority of white moderates (53 percent) and white conservatives (69 percent) said that Black Americans take more than we give to society. We take more than we give.
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Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
“
Trump is not an anomaly. He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family—which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality—are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.
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Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
“
Amelia Boone (TW: @ameliaboone, ameliabooneracing.com) has been called “the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing” (OCR) and is widely considered the world’s most decorated obstacle racer. Since the inception of the sport, she’s amassed more than 30 victories and 50 podiums. In the 2012 World’s Toughest Mudder competition, which lasts 24 hours (she covered 90 miles and ~300 obstacles), she finished second OVERALL out of more than 1,000 competitors, 80% of whom were male. The one person who beat her finished just 8 minutes ahead of her. Her major victories include the Spartan Race World Championship and the Spartan Race Elite Point Series, and she is the only three-time winner of the World’s Toughest Mudder (2012, 2014, and 2015). She won the 2014 championship 8 weeks after knee surgery. Amelia is also a three-time finisher of the Death Race, a full-time attorney at Apple, and she dabbles in ultra running (qualified for the Western States 100) in all of her spare time.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
on a seagull poo–like texture when mixed into cold water. Amelia saved my palate and joints by introducing me to the Great Lakes hydrolyzed version (green label), which blends easily and smoothly. Add a tablespoon of beet root powder like BeetElite to stave off any cow-hoof flavor, and it’s a whole new game. Amelia uses BeetElite pre-race and pre-training for its endurance benefits, but I’m much harder-core: I use it to make tart, low-carb gummy bears when fat Tim has carb cravings. RumbleRoller: Think foam roller meets monster-truck tire. Foam rollers have historically done very little for me, but this torture device had an immediate positive impact on my recovery. (It also helps you sleep if used before bed.) Warning: Start slow. I tried to copy Amelia and did 20-plus minutes my first session. The next day, I felt like I’d been put in a sleeping bag and swung against a tree for a few hours. Rolling your foot on top of a golf ball on the floor to increase “hamstring” flexibility. This is infinitely more helpful than a lacrosse ball. Put a towel on the floor underneath the golf ball, lest you shoot your dog’s eye out. Concept2 SkiErg for training when your lower body is injured. After knee surgery, Amelia used this low-impact machine to maintain cardiovascular endurance and prepare for the 2014 World’s Toughest Mudder, which she won 8 weeks post-op. Kelly Starrett (page 122) is also a big fan of this device. Dry needling: I’d never heard of this before meeting Amelia. “[In acupuncture] the goal is not to feel the needle. In dry-needling, you are sticking the needle in the muscle belly and trying to get it to twitch, and the twitch is the release.” It’s used for super-tight, over-contracted muscles, and the needles are not left in. Unless you’re a masochist, don’t have this done on your calves. Sauna for endurance: Amelia has found using a sauna improves her endurance, a concept that has since been confirmed by several other athletes, including cyclist David Zabriskie, seven-time U.S. National Time Trial Championship winner. He considers sauna training a more practical replacement for high-altitude simulation tents. In the 2005 Tour de France, Dave won the Stage 1 time trial, making him the first American to win stages in all three Grand Tours. Zabriskie beat Lance Armstrong by seconds, clocking an average speed of 54.676 kilometers per hour (!). I now use a sauna at least four times per week. To figure out the best protocols, I asked
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
While most investors blame bad jockeys for startup failure, some see slow horses as the main problem. For example, billionaire entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel says that “all failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” Paul Graham, founder of the elite accelerator Y Combinator, likewise holds that having a compelling solution to a customer’s problem—a strong horse—is the key to success: “There’s just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you’ll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don’t do. And if you don’t make something users want, then you’re dead, whatever else you do or don’t
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Tom Eisenmann (Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success)
“
The bleak predictions of broad unemployment and unrest have put many of the Silicon Valley elite on edge. People who have spent their careers preaching the gospel of disruption appear to have suddenly woken up to the fact that when you disrupt an industry, you also disrupt and displace real human beings within it. Having founded and funded transformative internet companies that also contributed to gaping inequality, this cadre of millionaires and billionaires appear determined to soften the blow in the age of AI.
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Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
“
The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them. . . . Everyone is fighting a battle [and has fought battles] you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox. 2 Wealthy “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” —James Cameron
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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How it is possible for the offspring of a billionaire and a person living in poverty to be born with an equal chance in life? I do not view this as fair. Wealth should not be a deciding factor in who is and who isn't more important.
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James Thomas Kesterson Jr
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There has never been a billionaire who wasn't a crook.
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James Thomas Kesterson Jr
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That the very fact that it’s impossible for a working man or woman on $50,000 to get into the White House is the clearest proof that America is a plutocracy run by and for the rich. The American President is a billionaire plutocrat. What more needs to be said? No rational person would ever attempt to bandy words with us. The facts are irrefutable. If you support Donald Trump, you are a supporter of the rich elite, and you are acting against your own interests, just as the white Confederates were supporters of the super rich plantation owners, and acting against their own interests.
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Joe Dixon (The Ownership Wars: Who Owns You?)
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there was no such thing as favors, so i needed to incentivize him
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
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despite the tech elite’s rhetoric of building a new society, nothing much has changed, unless you count the creation of the new generation of Silicon Valley billionaires as progress.
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Jane F. McAlevey (A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy)
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Murray in the face of growing controversy over his 1994 book, The Bell Curve, which correlated race and low IQ scores to argue that blacks were less likely than whites to join the “cognitive elite,” and was loudly and convincingly discredited. The Manhattan Institute fired Murray over the controversial project.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
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Bluff and perception are much more important than actual truth and circumstance.
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
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conspiracy theories detract attention from the billionaires who fund the networks of misinformation and away from the economic policies—deregulation, privatization, austerity—that have stratified wealth so cataclysmically in the neoliberal era. They rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma—but the rage never seems to reach those targets. Instead it gets diverted into culture wars about anti-racist education, all-gender bathrooms, and Great Replacement panic directed at Black people, nonwhite immigrants, and Jews. Meanwhile, the billionaires who bankroll the whole charade are safe in the knowledge that the fury coursing through our culture isn’t coming for them.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)