Tea at Trianon: Conspiracy Analysis

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Conspiracy Analysis

Has Edward Snowden told us anything new? To quote:

Seven years ago, during the Bush regime we learned that [the government] "has been collecting information on every phone call made in this country" — Government Monitoring About 200 Million Americans' Calls. Why is anyone surprise by what Edward Snowden has revealed?

From cryptogon.com we learn that his revelations are simply part of a "program, which has been known for years, [that] copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis" — PRISM Is Just Part Of A Much Larger, Scarier Government Surveillance Program. From the same source, we learn of Naomi Wolf's growing suspicions — My creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be ...

This "leak" could be simply a way of prepping the public for an even more dystopian future, since, as my alma mater's Michael S. Rozeff notes, "there is not a rock hard super-majority that is against the surveillance state" — The Machinery of Oppression.
(Read entire post.)

julygirl said...: From my limited experience with FaceBook and Twitter and reading people's accounts of their boring daily activities, it is hard to imagine anyone having to sift through what is communicated on the internet, or phone for that matter...; June 19, 2013 at 6:13:00 PM EDT