Odds and Ends: January 2019

NinaIllingworth February 1, 2019November 17, 2022 Allende, Asasata An Autobiography, Assata Shakur, blog, Books, Can't You Read, Chavez, Chile, Chomsky on Anarchism, Essays, Griftopia, Henry Kissinger, Imperialism, Internet Freedom movement, liberalism, Loaded, Maduro, Matt Taibbi, Nina Illingworth, Noam Chomsky, Odds and Ends, Patreon Blog, pig empire, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Reviews, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, settler colonialism, Seymour Hersh, Site Updates, Surveillance Valley, The Price of Power, Tumblr, Venezuela, WD7, white moderate, Yasha Levine

Editor’s note: as I mentioned in my last Odd and Ends update, once I decided to move my less-formal writing offsite and on to my Patreon Blog and the Can’t You Read Tumblr page, I essentially got locked into posting a monthly recap of this material here on ninaillingworth.com. In an effort to further reduce somewhat trashy or worthless posts here on this website, I decided to also include any notes about site updates that might have accumulated over the past month at this time. Let’s dive in:

On My Writing Progress Last Month

Frankly, this past month was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me; after struggling mightily to churn out about fourteen-thousand words in December of last year, my output surged up to somewhere just over twenty-eight thousand words in January. More importantly (at least to me, personally) I can say with some confidence that I noticed a general improvement in the quality of the work I was producing; particularly in my offsite writing on Tumblr. Unfortunately however, because a lot of the work I was doing here on the main site represented dense, heavily-researched material that ate up most of my time, I was unable to make even a single Patreon blog post this month – so I’m still struggling to turn the exact formal/informal writing split I want to offer, into a reality.

On Correspondence, Comments and Site Updates

Objectively, I’m still losing my ongoing war against personal anxiety as it pertains to answering my emails; especially since several completely unhinged people from “the internet” have used the Contact page to find my email address and reached out in an effort to continue arguments I blocked them on Twitter to avoid. I have however been answering the comments on my Facebook updates, and I’ve tried to reply to a few more of them here on the website; baby steps folks, please bear with me. It has also come to my attention that my comment spam filter is set on “church lady” and thus a few comments with extremely innocuous words like “damn” in them have been immediately sent to the bin. As I’m sure regular readers are aware, I’m not even remotely concerned about the periodic use of vulgarity here on this website and this filter is largely designed to auto-trash comments by angry internet fascists looking to pick a fight. Sadly, that means I can’t really afford to take the filter off but I’ve gone back and approved a bunch of your comments that were trashed and I’ll do my best to check for innocuous comments the filter sends to the bin more often in the future; let’s say at least once a week.

In terms of Site Updates, there wasn’t much going on this past month; I added nine new books to The Library and brought the Giant Russia Theory page up to date. I should also take this opportunity to thank the folks over at nakedcapitalism.com for featuring a couple of my articles in their daily links posts this month and the poor, heroic bastard that tried to post my latest study of mainstream media retractions, corrections and broken bombshells about Russia, into a room full of angry Bircher liberals on r/mormonpolitics of all places – keep fighting the good fight my brave and patient friend.

January 2019 Offsite Writing

Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine discussion: includes a quote, a brief (1,000 word) review of the book and some expanded thoughts on the possible perils of the “Internet Freedom” movement.

Assata Shakur, Injustice & the white liberal moderate: includes a quote from and a quick review of “Assata: An Autobiography” as well as a medium-length discussion (1,200 words) about the U.S. Justice Department’s attempts to frame Shakur and the lack of solidarity for marginalized people offered up by the western, (primarily) white moderate or “liberal.”

Chomsky on Anarchism by Noam Chomksy discussion: includes a quote and an extremely brief (500 word) look at why Chomsky is as important as ever as a left-wing thinker, but somewhat suspect as a moral compass.

Some Thoughts on the Concept of Western Settler Colonialism in the work of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: contains a quote from Dunbar-Ortiz’s excellent “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” and a short (800 word) discussion about the origins of the American Revolution as seen through the lens of Settler Colonialism.

Confidence Game: the fifth post in a series looking at Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History“ this post includes a quote, and a short (900 word) discussion about understanding the modern fraud economy by examining the pervasive, even all-encompassing criminality that surrounded the 2008 financial meltdown and the ensuing U.S. foreclosure crisis.

“Backyard” Déjà Vu: features a quotation from Seymour Hersh’s scathing anti-biography of genocidal American warmonger Henry Kissinger, ““The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House” as well as a longer (1,500 word) discussion comparing the disturbing similarities between Nixon’s fanatical quest to topple the Allende government in Chile and the ongoing, decade-and-a-half U.S. crusade to topple the Chavez and now Maduro governments in Venezuela.