An excellent tech-piece in Gawker.

Is the parlimentary regime in Iraq similar to the South Vietnamese government left behind in the wake of the Vietnam War?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/20/sunni-leaders-sectarian-chaos-iraq

Reading's must-read book examines the devolution of educational institutions and the programmatic use of catch-phrases ("excellence") to overtake our understanding of qualities, like skill and knowledge. A devastating short probe into the west's subtle, elemental collapse.

In August 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, potential challenger in the next French elections, was at JFK airport, en route to Germany for a key meeting regarding Greek debt and the saving of the Euro. After his plane was sealed and taxiing for departure, Port Authority Police were requested to stop and detain him by the NYPD. Believing the police had found his missing IMF Blackberry, he was instead accused of rape and returned to NY to face a grand jury. Quickly the case fell apart and now it appears the accuser and the Manhattan D.A.'s office were used in an elaborate trap set by Accor, the French corporation owning the site of the crime, The Sofitel, whose security is managed by one of Nicholas Sarkozy's best friends.

DSK thought that by staying in a French-run establishment it'd be culturally apt to get a blow job from the staff. Now it seems he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Read the hidden time-frame and the strange surveillance decrypt what happened between housekeeper Diallo (5' 10") and Strauss-Kahn (5' 7"). Who was in room 2820? Where is DSK's IMF Blackberry? The beginning of the unravelling...

Edward Jay Epstein's brilliant forensic work in the NYRB.

Societies must deal with anxieties to transform. What do you think would have happened if Ambien were sold during the United States's first depression?

This CDC's new data regarding antidepressants is the true national horror for the United States. 22% of females 40-59 under their spell, only one-third of the severely-depressed actually take these drugs (inferring a majority of users are addicted to the meds), less than a third of single-users have seen a mental-health specialist in over a year. The battle back from the financial depression of the thirties was difficult. How does a nation unaddict itself from a dependence that feeds the Dow directly? This century's depression is like the earlier one, partly mental and partly shared-value. Only this time the mental one is partially anesthetized and growing. Imagine histories they will write of our age. The dulled.

An Anthro-Bio-Chemist, Ott has botanically observed hundreds, perhaps thousands of plants that yield varying amounts of altered states, from a library and research lab in Mexico, recently damaged by arson. For proof of his studies, check out Pharmacotheon. He analyzes many chemical forms, shows inferior paths, and discusses policy and history. Footnotes tell the real story, and are half the size of each chapter. Continuing Gordon Wasson's unusual and maybe ground-breaking constructions of ancient ceremonies utilizing medicinal tools that altered users, Ott writes the only ethnopharmacogosy of entheogenic drugs. A chemical zoom lens into the brain. Volume 2 is delayed, but Volume 1 is a must have.

A man who leads a news conglomerate lies to lawmakers in front of millions. Are humans practicing rampant self-deception?

With so many dark issues ahead for collective human survival, hasn't the time come for a global code above the corporation?

When corruption is so endemic, participants have little awareness of how it all looks from the outside. Here is The Guardian's breakdown of Scotland Yard's Sir Paul Stephenson's resignation letter, Chapter x of the great News Corporation scandal, timed on the eve of the PM's departure for Africa, to achieve maximum shock value in Monday morning news. So jarring was the letter the PM turned his plane around and called an emergency meeting to save his government. The Guardian, which broke the story two weeks ago, remains the paper of record for the affair.