I came across this today while looking for a free screen-capture tool:

‘One of the most useful image editing tools is “Obfuscate”. It pixelates a custom region on the image, and this is very useful for not displaying a part of an image’.

Obviously a software feature destined for huge success, and something that will be a must-have in the Christmas, sorry, Winter Solstice stockings of ISIS, the New York Times, Mossad, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, Fox News, Russia Today, the Barclay Brothers, Hamas, and Benyamhin Netanyahu. (The last of these is the latest spelling of record: it may be subject to change over the next 36 hours).

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a global scandal called Obfusgate, in which every last bit of expectorated right/left/Islamist/globalist/neoliberal/socialist/feminist/mysogynist propaganda sputum was all revealed to be nonsense?

In the contemporary media set, separating the tweet from the naff is well night impossible. So I offer this thought tonight – inspired by a Hungarian friend who talks copious amounts of common sense.

We live in a world of Big Powers. Since some time around the 15th century, we always have: but the difference now (and it is a new, crucial difference) is that today’s opposing powers have access to – and manipulation skills in – global media that previous Nazis could only have enjoyed wet dreams about.

The biggest armies facing each other across the Great Divide in 2014, I would contend, are Western materially obsessed Neliberals, and Islamic religiously fanatical Inquisitors. They are equals, but only in the sense that their agendas are equally pernicious, their beliefs equally insane, their supporters equally shadowy, their followers equally deluded, their goals equally illusory, and their tactics equally suicidal.

Cutting across this divide – and sometimes confusing us – are the megalomania of Brussels, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, and Rupert Murdoch. But comparatively speaking, these gargoyles are relatively peripheral to one key question: who is bankrolling all this madness?

As Woodward and Bernstein were told time and time again, “Follow the money”. Cutting to the chase, the two biggest sponsors of antimatter are the bankers and the Saudis.

However, the biggest flawed assumption is that the two are mutually exclusive. In a contemporary climate where so many flags are false, global banker power and Arab royalist muscle switch sides (to gain advantage) with alarming alacrity.

Very little is as it seems. Nothing is certain. We live in an age of rage and confusion. Interrogate everything you read, hear and see to the nth degree. Do not conclusion-jump. Do not passively accept. Be wary of far-fetched conspiracy theory.

Focus instead on the core of all things: given motive, means, track-record, and culture, does this interpretation seem probable or even likely?

It’s hard work. But better to work hard than to accept that this is only the queue for the showers, and no harm can come to you.