In Washington, D.C. — WASHINGTON: As many as 3 gunmen attack Navy Yard, 6 dead – Politics Wires – MiamiHerald.com

From Cairo — Tarek and John are on hunger strike | Justin Podur — Two Canadians detained by Egypt’s interim government (ever the optimist, I am putting off the day when I may be forced by time to call it a “ruling junta”) have gone on a hunger strike.

Rather than cover the second-hand news for the rest of the afternoon (unless someone really wants me chatyping and doing the social network pass-along furiously (and offers sponsorship to do it), I’m inclined to continue reading Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin: Ben Judah: 9780300181210: Amazon.com: Books.  As the numbers on this blog climb, I feel it incumbent upon myself to read as if in the ivory tower — with concentration and patience enough to better see what I feel I have been seeing.

Related: Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin by Ben Judah – review | Books | The Guardian 6/27/2013.  The author, Luke Harding, has had a young career as a Kremlinologist and has gotten a couple of books out of it: Expelled: A Journalist’s Descent into the Russian Mafia State, which is due here quite soon, and Mafia State: How one reporter became the enemy of the brutal new Russia.

Never mind autocrats: any conflict involving integrity and power also involves a lot of thinking about the management of surface, sub-surface, and compartmented information.  Neither countries nor persons may wish to “let it all hang out” (God forbid) but the development beyond copyright, patent, and basic proprietary business concerns of extended secrets-keeping societies bodes ill for humanity.  The dignity of man, if there is to be any, demands to know the substance of true states of affairs.

The cuckoo and two peacocks, one in the brig, another in Ecuador, the last in Russia may have been a bit screwed up about the relationship between their empowerment, their observation, and their views, but taken together and with a continuously emerging global intelligentsia, the idea that mankind will live like a happy idiot in a cave managed and fought over by supertechnologists has a particularly enslaved and hideous aspect to it.

Related and also cued around this place: Brazil and 12 Monkeys.

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