French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, author of works such as The Poetics of Space, is remembered for his articulation of the idea that “scientific investigation is polemical.” Bachelard cautioned that science must stay vigilant not to impede “scientific imagination” by succumbing to “the seduction of the empirical.”

The notion of a scientific consensus on any subject would likely be anathema to Bachelard. He saw science as social and dialogic, an ongoing exercise in robust dialogue and debate.

Today, in a time of rancorous hyper-partisanship fueled by an atmosphere of perpetual crisis, fear and absolutism, poor Bachelard would almost certainly be castigated as a denier. Few people would understand that his use of the word “polemical” was, in fact, a quiet celebration of civility.

We can learn from Bachelard’s example. Civility is not passivity. Science is never “settled” even when it becomes useful to utilitarian ends. Even more than science, viable civil society and socially just political-economic action require powerful democratic debate. But such debate cannot take hold in the face of apocalyptic absolutism, scientific or otherwise.

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CIVIL IMAGINATION vs. POLITICAL CONSUMERISM

In the United States, citizen disillusionment is reflected in Congressional job approval ratings below 20%, as two thirds of Americans consistently express dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.

Voter registration is 78.6%, meaning that 21.4% of eligible voters do not bother to register. Decline to state voter registration is a record high 43% versus only 27% for each party. The non-participation rate among those who are registered to vote is over one third.

The stark reality of these statistics is that half the U.S. electorate has rejected the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of today’s pseudo-politics, creating a de facto crisis of legitimacy.

Open Secrets estimates that nearly $15 billion was spent in the 2024 federal election cycle. This orgy of spending on empty bombast and political spectacle stands in inverse proportion to the shriveling substance of daily civic life.

The devolution of solution-less US politics into permanent consumer spectacle creates partisan voters easily swayed by demagoguery and marketing blandishments rather than effective citizens engaged in their communities. It erodes civil life rather than strengthening it.

Political parties cannot do the work of building civil society. Only citizens can.

REIMAGINING POLITICS

Since 2017, Reimagining Politics has been charting the enormous variety of citizen-driven civil associations in Europe and the Americas that are making profound change, then facilitating connections among them.

One example of new civic models working outside of both parties and government is Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas (VIC–Nursery of Citizens Initiatives) in Spain. VIC’s work doing social mapping of the non-monetary social economy, even in war torn Ukraine, points away from the corrosive partisan noise of consumer politics toward a mature, optimistic and future-oriented politics of community.

There are thousands of alternative civic models such as VIC that exemplify the transformative potential for creating democratic society outside of the monopolistic party-government nexus seen in the US and EU.

Further, Yale professor Hélène Landemore and her associates worldwide are doing pioneering work on various forms of direct democracy that empower “the rule of the many” in lieu of rule by a self-interested class of elected politicians. Their models offer potential connecting mechanisms to empower the native political creativity embodied in citizen-driven politics.

Potential solutions abound, but we need the courage to pursue a different path to counter today’s toxic absolutism, which ends in dangerous political entropy and permanent war at a time of unprecedented opportunity for creative problem solving.

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Traduction française par Darina Fraoun, París

• English language, by Michael

• Spanish language translation by Michael, scroll down

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Il y a environ un mois, j’ai rencontré une femme prénommée Rosey dans le village de pêcheurs mexicain de La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, dans lequel je m’étais retranché pour me consacrer à l’écriture. Rosey, ainsi orthographiée, est son surnom mexicain.

A la tombée du jour, Rosey se rendait à pied à une conférence publique donnée par un couple de Britanniques qui avaient fait le tour du monde à la voile plus de dix ans auparavant sur un catamaran qu’ils avaient construit eux-mêmes fait de bois, de papier et de goudron. Ils étaient venus à La Cruz pour étudier la culture indigène huichol et s’y étaient installés. Ce soir-là, ils présentaient un documentaire sur leur expérience, devant un public nombreux, et montraient comment leur bateau avait été construit.

Rosey trébuchait à chaque coin de rue sur les hauts trottoirs de La Cruz, aménagés pour la saison des pluies, manquant à chaque fois de tomber. Je traversai la rue et me suis hâtai discrètement pour la rattraper, puis je lui demandai si je pouvais l’aider. Elle acquiesça et je la pris par le bras pour marcher avec elle. Je l’ai accompagnée à la conférence et nous sommes devenus amis.

Elle a récemment partagé son histoire avec notre amie commun Alef et moi autour d’un café chez Organic Love, un excellent restaurant fondé par Alef.

L’ACCIDENT

À l’âge de 17 ans, Rosey fut victime d’un accident de voiture dans le Vermont rural qui la plongea dans le coma. Les médecins annoncèrent à sa mère qu’elle ne survivrait pas, mais, contre toute attente, après deux mois d’attente angoissante, elle reprit connaissance. La joie de sa mère s’assombrit lorsqu’elle réalisa que le corps de Rosey était presque entièrement paralysé.

Elle ne pouvait ni parler ni bouger, à l’exception de son index, qu’elle utilisait pour indiquer à sa mère qu’elle avait besoin d’aller aux toilettes. Elle ne se souvenait pas de l’accident. Personne ne savait exactement ce qui s’était passé.

La seule chose dont Rosey se souvenait en reprenant connaissance était le rêve qu’elle avait fait alors qu’elle était encore dans le coma. Dans ce rêve, Rosey voyait son cœur battre à l’intérieur d’un bocal de conserve.

Même plongée dans le coma, elle comprenait qu’il s’agissait d’un message lui annonçant qu’elle survivrait mais elle était incapable de parler pour raconter cette incroyable histoire avec qui que ce soit.

La rééducation fut longue et laborieuse. Durant les premières années, elle dut réapprendre même les mouvements corporels les plus élémentaires. La parole constitua un défi immense.

Aujourd’hui, Rosey peut marcher et parle assez bien, mais elle boite, a des problèmes d’équilibre et parle lentement, parfois avec des expressions faciales inhabituelles mais aussi attachantes qui font désormais partie de son langage visuel.

Plusieurs années après le début de sa rééducation, un ami de la famille suggéra, au cours d’un dîner, que Rosey et sa mère, une sorte de thérapeute new age avant l’heure, consultent un chaman huichol au Mexique pour accélérer sa guérison.

KAUYUMARI

Le chaman huichol des montagnes de la Sierra Madre, à proximité de La Cruz, ne parlait pas anglais et ne connaissait ni le nom de Rosey ni son histoire. Il ressentit son énergie et fit circuler ses mains autour de sa tête et de son corps.

Il lui expliqua que sa puissante vibration énergétique était due à l’esprit de Kauyumari, un cerf bleu, descendant du soleil, et l’une des quatre principales divinités huicholes (les trois autres étant le Maïs, le Peyotl et l’Aigle).

Lorsque le chaman parla de Kauyumari à Rosey, elle se souvint immédiatement qu’elle avait fait une sortie de route cette nuit-là, sur une route isolée du Vermont, en tentant d’éviter un cerf. Elle vit au Mexique avec sa mère, depuis cette rencontre avec le chaman, survenue il y a presque vingt ans.

LES SOUVENIRS REVIENNENT

Rosey est née en Californie et a grandi entre New York et le Vermont. Ces dernières années, sa mémoire est revenue avec force, et elle s’est illuminée lors de notre conversation au cours de laquelle elle partageait des épisodes fascinants de son histoire familiale. Elle utilise ces récits pour reconstruire le fil de sa propre vie.

Rosey m’a raconté, par exemple, que son grand-père, né à Manhattan, fut une figure de proue du mouvement politique anarchiste aux États-Unis. Il partit pour la Californie du Sud et y fonda l’une des premières communautés anarchistes de l’État, d’où le fait qu’elle soit née sur la côte Ouest plutôt que dans le Vermont, d’où sa mère est originaire.

Elle m’a fait part de plusieurs anecdotes formidables de ce genre. Je lui ai donc suggéré d’écrire un livre, ce à quoi elle pensait déjà. Bien que cela requiert une grande énergie et une concentration immense, Rosey commence à se sentir à la hauteur de ce défi.

Peut-être la croiserez-vous bientôt lors d’une séance de dédicaces pour ses mémoires à succès. Ce sera à coup sûr un livre capable de faire résonner en nous le battement de nos propres cœurs anarchiques.

ESPAÑOL

Corazón en una jarra Mason

La anarquía de memoria y emoción

6 marzo 2018

por Michael Meurer

Hace aproximadamente un mes, conocí a una mujer llamada Rosey en el pueblo pesquero mexicano de La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, donde estoy escondido tratando de escribir. Rosey es su apodo mexicano, incluida la extraña ortografía.

Rosey caminaba al atardecer hacia una presentación pública de una pareja británica que navegó por el mundo hace más de una década en un catamarán de fabricación propia hecho de madera, papel y alquitrán. Vinieron a La Cruz para estudiar la cultura Huichol indígena y se quedaron. Esta noche, estaban compartiendo un documental sobre sus experiencias con una audiencia considerable y mostrando cómo se construyó su barco.

Rosey tropezaba y casi caía de los altos bordillos, diseñados para la temporada de lluvias en La Cruz, en cada esquina. Crucé la calle y en silencio me apresuré a alcanzarla, y luego pregunté si podía ayudar. Ella dijo que sí, que yo podía tomar su brazo y caminar con ella. La acompañé a la presentación y nos hicimos amigos.

Recientemente ella compartió su historia con nuestra amiga común Alef y conmigo mientras tomando un café en Organic Love, un maravilloso restaurante iniciado por Alef.

EL ACCIDENTE

A los 17 años, Rosey sufrió un accidente automovilístico – cuando manejaba sola – en la zona rural de Vermont que la dejó en estado de coma. Los médicos le dijeron a su madre que no viviría, pero después de dos meses agonizantes, recuperó el conocimiento. La alegría de su madre se vio atenuada al darse cuenta de que el cuerpo de Rosey estaba casi completamente paralizado.

No podía hablar ni mover nada que no fuera su dedo índice para indicarle a su madre las necesidades del baño. Ella no recordaba el
accidente. Nadie sabía exactamente lo que había sucedido.

Lo único que Rosey recordó al recuperar la conciencia fue un sueño que tuvo mientras estaba en estado de coma. En este sueño, Rosey vio su corazón latiendo adentro de una jarra de Mason.

Incluso en coma, sabía que este era un mensaje que le decía que viviría, pero ella no podía hablar para compartir la historia extraordinaria con nadie.

La rehabilitación fue lenta y larga. Durante los primeros años, incluso los movimientos corporales rudimentarios tuvieron que volverse a aprender. El habla fue un desafío enorme.

Hoy, Rosey puede caminar y hablar razonablemente bien, pero cojea, tiene problemas con el equilibrio y habla despacio, a veces con expresiones faciales inusuales pero entrañables que se han convertido en parte de su vocabulario visual.

Varios años después de la rehabilitación, un amigo de la familia sugirió durante una cena que Rosey y su madre, una especie de terapeuta de la nueva era antes de que se convirtiera en la corriente principal, deberían visitar a un chamán huichol en México para acelerar su recuperación.

KAUYUMARI

El chamán huichol en las montañas de la Sierra Madre a las afueras de La Cruz no hablaba inglés y no conocía el nombre de Rosey ni su historia. Él sintió su energía y movió sus manos alrededor de su cabeza y cuerpo.

Él le dijo que su fuerte vibración de energía era el espíritu de Kauyumari, un ciervo azul que descendió del sol y es una de las cuatro principales deidades huicholes. (Las otras tres deidades son Maíz, Peyote y Águila).

Cuando el chamán le contó a Rosey acerca de Kauyumari, ella inmediatamente recordó que había rodado su automóvil esa noche en un remoto camino rural en Vermont mientras se desviaba para evitar golpear a un venado. Ella ha estado en México con su madre desde este encuentro con el chamán hace casi 20 años.

DEVOLUCIONES DE MEMORIA

Rosey nació en California y creció en Nueva York y Vermont. El corriente de su memoria ha venido volviendo en los últimos años, y se puso muy animada durante nuestra conversación al compartir historias de su fascinante historia familiar que está utilizando para reconstruir la narrativa de su vida.

Rosey me dice, por ejemplo, que su abuelo, que nació en Manhattan, una vez fue una figura destacada en el movimiento político anarquista en los Estados Unidos. Él fue al sur de California y fundó una de las primeras comunas anarquistas del estado cual es la razón que ella nació en la costa oeste en lugar del Vermont, estado nativo de su madre.

Ella compartió varias anécdotas maravillosas como esta, y le sugerí que escribiera un libro, algo en lo que ella ya había estado pensando. Se requiere mucha energía y concentración, pero Rosey está empezando a sentirse a la altura de la tarea.

Quizás veas ella pronto en una firma de libros por su memoria de mayor venta. Seguramente será un libro que nos ayude a encontrar el pulso latente de nuestros propios corazones anárquicos.

ENGLISH

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Spanish language version, translation by Carla Alvarado, México City

French language version translated by Darina Fraoun, París

Greenland is in the news. In order to stay on top of the cultural zeitgeist, shouldn’t Emily meet an Inuit boyfriend in upcoming Season 6, land a huge PR contract for Agence Grateau with a globally famous Norwegian winter wear brand and move to Nuuk for a few episodes? Maybe she can help Antoine launch a new Maison Lavaux fragrance, Soirée de Mattak, to liven up those long Arctic nights?

A Canadian friend is already sharing story ideas. “Each week, Emily has to outrun a polar bear, deal with vicious seals, etc. One week, while on a hunting trip, she accidentally uncovers a lost village of Viking ancestors. And of course, she will have her regular favorite coffee house in downtown Nuuk. Another week, there will be conflict and romance when some high officials from DC show up, and Em is wooed by somebody close to the US President.”

In a world that seems more chaotic daily, why not give Emily a little artistic license to have some Arctic fun, lightening viewers’ emotional load in the process?

And what if, from her perch atop today’s 24/7 global streaming industry, something more than escapism is already going on with the confection that is Emily?

AMBIENT MEDIA

Writing in the November 2020 New Yorker, Kyle Chayka, author of the column “Infinite Scroll,” says:

By the end of its second episode, I knew that Netflix’s new series “Emily in Paris” was not a lighthearted romantic travelogue but an artifact of contemporary dystopia.

Light hearted Emily as “dystopian”?

Like many other cultural commentators, Chayka has devoted considerable attention to deconstructing Emily in Paris, especially the show’s ubiquitous use of cell phones and social media simulations not just as accessories, but as key elements of story, describing the series as “a shining beacon of banality.”

Springboarding off a famous 1995 essay by architect Rem Koolhaus titled “The Generic City,” Chayka characterizes the show as an example of “ambient media” and shares Koolhaus’s insights on the phenomenon as embodied in modern cities, including Paris as presented in Emily.

"Koolhaas argues that globalization has caused a mass homogenization that leaves modern cities feeling like an airport, “a trance of almost unnoticeable aesthetic experiences.” [T}he “pervasive lack of urgency and insistence acts like a potent drug,” inducing “a hallucination of the normal.” [T]he hypnotic quality of ambient content creates a false sense that whatever it presents is a neutral condition, a common denominator, though it is decidedly not.

Chayka is not alone. Articles and analyses with conflicted titles such as “The ‘Meta-emptiness’ of Emily in Paris” or describing Emily as “Nosferatu in Jimmy Choos” and calling the show “deeply annoying and yet highly watchable” are legion. The show is an avatar of the times and also a ratings juggernaut. Within one week of the Season 5 premiere, Collider gushed:

Emily in Paris has surged back to the top of Netflix’s global charts following the debut of Season 5 on December 18, delivering one of the platform’s most widespread performance spikes of the year. [T]he series secured the No. 1 position across a massive range of territories within days of release, including major markets such as the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Canada, the UK, and dozens more.

EMILY’S AMBIENT POLITICS

To the casual viewer, Emily appears to be scrupulously apolitical. Every episode is a lively montage of dishy personal gossip, lover’s trysts, breakups, job crises, a steady thrum of gay and lesbian tinged sub themes and sparkling quick cut video montages of Paris, Rome or Venice, whichever city is serving as backdrop of the moment. Social media popups dot the screen every minute or two carrying messages that serve as the connective tissue between characters and plot lines.

Amidst this constant “communication” among characters, overt discussion of political parties, candidates, elections and even current events are completely absent. In one episode, viewers learn that French First Lady Brigitte Macron follows Emily on Instagram after liking one of her posts about a feminine hygiene product. Em encounters Macron in a restaurant and gets permission to take a selfie with her, which is presented as an unalloyed good. This is as political as things get.

The intentional absence of politics is doubtless part of Emily’s appeal. The New York Times reported in 2023 that 65% of Americans feel “exhausted” when thinking about politics, while only 16% trust the federal government. Emily offers safe haven from toxic political fatigue.

That does not mean that Emily in Paris is missing a political dimension. Its studied apolitical-ness may be the ultimate populist political statement and a key source of the show’s strength among viewers.

THE POWERFUL MARKETING OF LOVING TO HATE EMILY

The common denominator of all marketing and advertising at all times and in all places is the promise of “magical transformation.” Buy our clothes, drive our car, drink our beer or champagne, and your life will be magically transformed.

This promise of magical transformation has a storied pedigree stretching from Marco Polo’s exotic tales of travel over the Silk Road to China, to medieval trade “fayres” (fairs) across Europe to troupes of early American patent medicine peddlers acting as itinerant carnival hucksters.

From the earliest days of the fayre, there were singers, musicians, acrobats, stilt walkers and assorted fools, archery contests and generous sharing of ale, mead or grog. The main goal has always been commerce, but merry making and entertainment were used as advertising to attract and hold a crowd.

In 2026, the fayre continues via globally wired consumer capitalism. The 24/7 virtual celebration of capitalist bounty co-exists with putatively representative democracy only to the extent that such theoretical artifacts as citizens’ political agency do not interfere with marketing. The highest form of citizenship is not consumption itself, and certainly not voting, but a condition of unremitting availability as embodied in social media.

Whether in Paris, Rome or Nuuk, Emily and her cohort of cross generational friends and clients live in an existential state of availability. In “24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep,” Art critic Jonathan Crary describes a Pentagon project originally designed to develop a “sleepless soldier” that has now morphed into a quest to produce a sleepless consumer who is always available online to consume and produce “content.”

In the new regimen of “cognitive bio-capitalism,” Emily and Co. are not just ahead of the game, they’re living in the future.

In purely literal terms, Emily is above all else a show about lux marketing of top international brands promising transformation of one kind or another. Emily’s career at Agence Grateau has evolved to the point that scarcely an episode goes by without multiple product placements. In its fifth season, these product placements are so ubiquitous, they’re an integral part of every story. Global brands from Fendi to Miu Miu, Baccarat to Louis Vuitton, and Prada to lowly McDonald’s (dans le style français) are paying up to $1.1 million for a "scripted placement” of a few seconds or minutes.

Rem Koolhaus notes that the branded homogenization of modern cities is punctuated by “periodic stagings of uncertainty,” which in Emily has become the primary plot device. This is the case because the show so perfectly reflects the inner logic of modern capitalism at a historic moment when marketing has overwhelmed politics. The elusive promise of magical transformation is immanent as long as one stays wired to the digital fayre 24/7. To disconnect is to suffer a form of digital death.

Whether viewers are “hate watching” Emily or simply enjoying an idealized escape from the daily grind, it is worth noting that the show has its finger on the public pulse in ways most self-proclaimed politicians do not. As media critic Willa Paskin notes, even Emily’s harshest critics inadvertently confirm that the show is “the only piece of pop culture that could break through the relentlessness of the news.”

As for the Season 6 move to Greenland, please be patient and keep your parka ready while my Emily in Greenland pitch works its way through Netflix marketing channels.

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Regrettably, and in spite of the recent change of pitch in the 24/7 noise reverberating through media echo chambers worldwide, I believe that little has changed beyond surface atmospherics.

The paywall has been removed from the article through year’s end for those who are interested in the subject.

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“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Niels Bohr

Lame duck president Joe Biden approved Ukraine’s use of U.S. long range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) weapons against Russia November 17th. The British government followed suit. These complex weapons systems cannot be launched without U.S. assistance on the ground in Ukraine. Biden’s authorization was a de facto declaration of direct war against Russia by the U.S., and by extension, its NATO allies.

Two days later, Nov. 19th, Ukraine fired six of the missiles into Russian territory.

Russia retaliated to the escalation Nov. 21st by hitting a Ukrainian military facility in the city of Dnipro with a nuclear capable ballistic missile with multiple warheads, known as “multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles,” or MIRVs. It is the first time since their development in the 1960s that MIRVs have been used to strike an enemy.

The New York Times reports, “Mr. Putin is intent on driving home the chilling message that America risks nuclear war as it expands its support for Kyiv.”

The Times also reports that by internal Kremlin political standards, Putin is a moderate. Hardliners in the Russian government and military are arguing forcefully for a stronger response.

The Future of Life Institute has created a video simulation illustrating the global impact of a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, with 5 million estimated fatalities from the explosions themselves and the nuclear winter that would follow. Any semblance of recovery would take decades if it were possible at all. It is also likely that nuclear armed allies on both sides would quickly join the conflict.

Click the image below to see a video simulation.

If nuclear war can be avoided in Ukraine, are there any viable solutions for minimizing or eliminating future risk?

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On November 16th, lame duck President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine’s use of long range U.S. missiles to strike hundreds of miles inside Russia. The Ukrainians dutifully fired a first round of the new weapons into Russia three days later, Nov. 19th.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is simultaneously telling anyone who will listen that the Biden administration plans to push out as many weapons as possible to Ukraine before the January 20, inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump so that Ukraine can continue fighting through 2025 irrespective of what Trump does.

Reactions to Biden’s new missile authorization range from dire warnings of nuclear war by top Kremlin military leaders to boastful celebration by Blinken.

Wherever one falls on the spectrum of reaction to this senseless escalation, it is a striking and emblematic decision by Biden & Company.

The last four years of the Biden regime have been a public exercise in quotidian evil. Biden and his cadre of bland neocon foreign policy advisers tend to escape detection as the nihilistic monsters they are because they are masters at acting as if their actions are nothing out of the ordinary, as if the most unhinged decisions endangering millions of lives are perfectly normal.

One is tempted to use Hannah Arendt’s description of colorless Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as embodying a phenomenon she famously described as “the banality of evil.” It certainly fits.

But there is something more going on with Biden in his capacity as the latest and least principled avatar of the neocon regime that has been slowly, relentlessly tightening its political grip and strangling the remnants of democratic life out of the nation since 9/11.

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In the 2024 U.S. election spectacle, the delirium is in full bloom, driven by the same debilitating language and imagery of apocalyptic crisis from top government authorities and their allied media syndicates that triggered widespread “autocratic violations of democratic norms” during the Covid pandemic.

In addition to the possibility of direct U.S. war with Russia over Ukraine, Iran over Israel and China over Taiwan, today’s stream of crises includes the continued announcement of an average 1.4 new Covid variants monthly (72 since 2020); a global Monkeypox “health emergency”; a global “climate crisis” causing “extreme weather”; dozens of varieties of bird flu effecting over 100 million poultry; the attempted assassination of ex-president Donald Trump; a palace coup at the White House to replace president Joe Biden; 10 major cyber attacks in 2024; the “largest outage in the history of information technology” (CrowdStrike, July 2024), which also exposed vulnerabilities in local election systems across the country; human displacement by Artificial Intelligence; and a record $35 trillion national debt as of July, 2024.

Public health experts have identified a new psychological condition called “crisis fatigue” caused by what they describe as an ongoing “polycrisis”, which is, in turn, producing “compassion fatigue”.

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But…Kammie got new shoes!

She be stylin’ bitches. She a celebrity. We be having so much fun when gurlfriend got herself some nukes.

https://www.news.reimaginingpolitics.org/p/the-unbearable-smugness-of-kamala

Within the Democrat friendly confines of ABC’s studio inside the august sounding National Constitution Center in historic Philadelphia, Ms. Harris was brightly lit for the cameras while wearing an offsetting “signature black power suit” and subtle cosmetics “chosen to do the job” rather than distract, per Elle’s instant fashion analysis. Media pundits immediately declared that she had won on both style and coherence.

Trump looked and sounded as exhausted, harried and angry as Harris and her handlers hoped he would. He was also relentlessly fact checked by the self important moderators in real time, while she was not.

There were no uncomfortable questions about Harris’s role in the coordinated two year cover up of President Joe Biden’s decline and the subsequent palace coup that brought her the nomination without the trouble of facing 15 million primary voters. Nor were there probing questions about her contradictory past positions, about a wave of unchecked immigration from the Southern border, about the Biden-Harris administration’s authoritarian vaccine mandates, which Ms. Harris has carried into her campaign with Covid vaxx mandates for employees, about wars raging in the Middle East and Europe as the U.S. prepares to escalate Ukrainian proxy attacks inside nuclear armed Russia.

After the debate, Ms. Harris spoke to a group of supporters to tell them it had been a “good night,” but that hard work lies ahead because “the race is tight.” This election, she assured them, was a choice between “a new way forward” and the bitter divisiveness of the past embodied by Mr. Trump, as if she had not been in office the past four years.

The debate showed Trump at his worst. Several national polls have already swung in Harris’s favor! Yet Harris’s description of the race as “tight” is also correct, and she is redoubling her efforts to take the fight to Trump.

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My previous articles examining how this happened and it’s consequences are linked below.

Today, in the final weeks of another multi-billion dollar presidential election carnival, voters are offered a choice between “lite” and “full” versions of the new authoritarianism.

Both candidates and their deposed predecessor, Joe Biden, appeared today at a ceremony to mark the anniversary of 9/11 and to offer the public what Susan Sontag described as “nihilism for the masses.”

This slide into nihilism cannot be reversed by elections. Democratic self-governance requires an engaged, informed and active citizenry that rejects the inherently totalitarian logic of politics as performative, top down spectacle.

THE SEEDS OF CITIZEN DRIVEN DEMOCRACY

Documenting a nascent revolution in citizen’s democracy.

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With elderly “Joe” Biden finally facing a national primetime television audience of 51.3 million Americans for an extended 90 minute debate June 27th, and with his dementia and physical fragility too obvious for his handlers and media enablers continued denial, the nation’s new favorite parlor game is guessing the exact medical nature of Biden’s affliction.

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It’s official. Regime media want “Joe” Biden gone, replaced by a candidate who fits their West Wing aesthetic of the US imperium.

In its capacity as the nation’s “newspaper of record," the New York Times issued a court proclamation Friday, June 28, 2024, the morning after the first presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and Mr. Biden, announcing the need for the elderly president to abdicate the throne.

The news quickly spread throughout the kingdom, with august columnists at most of the nation’s leading newspapers feigning, in lockstep, a lachrymose rending of garments. The lavishly choreographed cry that the king had fallen was echoed across the fruited plain, as if his lengthy history of dementia and physical decline were a sudden revelation.

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“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse...” – Thomas Jefferson, 1791

US politics in 2024, as reflected by the Uniparty in Washington, DC, looks as remote and disconnected from the currents of everyday life as the royal court of King George III at the time of the American Revolution.

All of the nation’s major institutions, from Congress to news media to the presidency, have suffered a historic loss of public confidence, with approval ratings as low as 7% for Congress in 2022.

Those who think the country is “on the wrong track” hover between 75-85%, while nearly 70% believe the Ukraine invasion will lead to nuclear war with Russia. As of August 2023, more than 55% opposed further funding for Ukraine. After the horrific October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s immediate counter declaration of war, direct armed conflict between the US and Iran now looms as a possibility.

Yet nothing seems to change.

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Are we getting our money’s worth, or does this orgy of spending have an inverse relationship to the health of US democracy?

You be the judge. Links follow for two early 2024 ad samples, one each from the Biden and Trump campaigns.

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“I don’t need to Google myself.” Nicki Minaj

Our dear friends at the International Monetary Fund recently published a blog post about the need to “uproot finance as we know it” in the name of (drumroll please) “financial inclusion.”

They tell us with alarm that over one billion people on the planet remain “unbanked.” God forbid these poor wretches don’t have a bank account or a Visa card at 30% interest, let alone a lengthy credit history! Something must be done to get them profitably integrated into the financial system.

The answer?

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A decision is expected within the next few weeks on whether to honor a U.S. Justice Dept. request for extradition originally filed in June 2019. Assange is in such poor health, possibly near death, he has not been able to attend the hearings, even via video link.

Why has the US has been seeking Assange’s extradition for over a decade, long before the filing of a formal request in 2019? The Guardian perfectly summarized the core issue at stake in the Royal Court’s final Assange hearings.

Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed?

Many people no longer remember, or never knew, the story of how and why Assange founded Wikileaks, let alone its mission nor how it became so controversial. The NY Post offers a succinct primer for those who want to refresh their memories.

U.S. government pursuit of Assange at the executive branch level really began in 2010, when Wikileaks released over 400,000 secret files about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in what is considered to be “the largest document leak in US history.” Over 92,000 of these files were released to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, who subsequently published large swaths of the leaked information.

Although Wikileaks and Assange were already in the crosshairs of US security agencies, the size and scale of the 2010 leak set off alarms throughout the US security state, especially the Pentagon, which immediately designated Wikileaks as a “threat to national security.”

The vast trove of information exposed US war crimes, secret prisons and torture centers, a secret airline to shuttle Iraqi prisoners from one torture center to another, often outside the country as part of the CIA (and Pentagon) program of “Extraordinary Rendition,” and secret death counts of as many as 100,000 civilian casualties.

Here is a 2010, CBS News report on the documents leak.

THE APACHE HELICOPTER GUNSHIP VIDEO

The video linked below from the 2010 document release (Access restricted to adults, sign into YouTube required.), shows 2007 footage of a US Apache Hellfire helicopter gunship firing on and killing Iraqi civilians on the ground. It was one of the most sensational pieces of information in the entire document release, shocking war weary US citizens.

Although there is still confusion about total casualties, at least 13 adults were killed, including two Reuters journalists. Several other adults were injured, and two children were shot, one of whom later died.

WARNING: Graphic content

THE ESPIONAGE ACT

Initial attempts to prosecute Assange during the Obama administration centered on bogus sexual assault charges in Sweden and a secret US deal with the Swedish government to extradite Assange to the US if he returned to Sweden to defend himself.

When Swedish prosecutors dropped the charges, the Obama administration began investigating ways to prosecute Assange under the controversial and legally dubious Espionage Act, enacted in 1917 to criminalize dissent against World War I.

The Espionage Act is so extreme and constitutionally tenuous, it laid dormant for years, even under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during the War on Terror. It was revived and used aggressively by the Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers under the statute than all other previous administrations combined.

Yet even Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately concluded that it was impossible to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act without also prosecuting their mainstream media allies who had published leaked material, such as the NY Times and the Guardian.

It was the Trump administration, under CIA Director Mike Pompeo, that ultimately charged Assange in May 2019 on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for “conspiring to obtain classified material” going all the way back to the 2010 document release.

Pompeo was triggered when Wikileaks published leaked documents in 2017 exposing the CIA’s cyber warfare programs “to monitor and remotely control newer cars, smart TVs, personal computers, web browsers, and most smartphones.” The publicity was so bad that Pompeo hatched a deranged covert scheme to have Assange assassinated.

Ironically, Pompeo pursued Assange with the full support of Democrats, who were angry that he had leaked thousands of incriminating emails exposing illicit activities by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Connor O’Keeffe of the Mises Institute summarizes the hypocrisy and constitutional danger of the Assange prosecution.

The reason Assange has been in various forms of custody for almost twelve years is not because he committed any real crimes but because he has embarrassed the political establishment.

Today, that same political establishment is feigning outrage over the alleged murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, as well as the ongoing imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow, all while it maneuvers to throw a Western journalist into solitary confinement for the rest of his life for daring to break truly incriminating stories.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald offers a succinct analysis on the dangerous illegitimacy of the century old Espionage Act being used to prosecute Assange for his journalism.

TORTURING DEMOCRACY

Although I was aware early on of the work being done by Assange and Wikileaks, the importance of their journalism was thrown into sharp relief for me when I published a series of articles in 2014 and 2015 at Truthout detailing the elaborate suppression of photographic evidence documenting endemic torture in US prisons and torture centers in Iraq.

The Wikileaks document release of 2010 proved widespread torture and alluded to photographic evidence. There are in fact over 2,000 photos of this torture that have not been released to this day. President Obama stated that these images were so shocking, their release would risk igniting violent anti-American sentiment across the Middle East.

My articles are linked here for those who are interested. Absent the mass Wikileaks document release of 2010, the extent of the torture and the existence of photographic evidence would never have been known.

• Dec. 10, 2014 – The Missing Photos from the Senate Report on CIA Torture

• Oct. 1, 2014 – Confronting Barbarism: ISIS, the United States and the Consequences of Torture

• May 19, 2015 – Torturing Democracy: The Freedom of Information Act and First Amendment Under Assault

PROPAGANDISTS vs. JOURNALISTS

A fourth quarter 2023 poll by YouGov in the UK measuring the fame of various global figures claims that 72% of the world’s population have heard of Julian Assange and know him as the founder of Wikileaks. The poll also illustrates the power of more than a decade of relentlessly negative Western media coverage and anti-Assange government propaganda, with his “popularity” rating at only 15%.

Yet reflecting public ambivalence, a September 2022 Morning Consult poll found that only 24% in the US (17% across the West) believe that Assange was wrong “to make the public aware about U.S. government policies and actions such as surveillance of American citizens.”

It is a striking contradiction. An oppressive, years long government sanctioned smear campaign against Assange has tarnished his personal reputation, yet large majorities still believe he did the right thing.

There are “whistleblowers” and “leaks” of classified information by reporters all the time, yet they seldom provoke the kind of homicidal backlash that has been directed at Assange.

Why?

Glenn Greenwald describes this as the difference between being a propagandist and a journalist. The US security state uses journalists all the time to disseminate information they want in the public sphere. Reporting of officially approved “leaks” by state sanctioned journalists and media outlets acts as a kind of information laundering service, making government propaganda look like news.

By contrast, Assange has practiced investigative journalism at the highest, most consequential level, holding powerful government actors in the security state (The Pentagon, State Department, US intelligence agencies, et. al.) accountable by simply sharing information publicly that they do not want their own citizens to see, even if that information reveals decision making that in a functioning democracy should be debated on constitutional grounds.

SAVING THE FUTURE

The kind of fearless journalism that Assange embodies is going to be needed more than ever during the reckoning that is surely coming over the crimes against humanity that have been committed by Western governments over the last four years.

Whether the issue is pandemic authoritarianism and propaganda, dangerous proxy wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, or transnationalist schemes to consolidate money and power upward, forcing democratic accountability requires courageous reporting.

You can show your support for ending the US extradition of Julian Assange by contacting your Congressional Representatives and asking them to sign onto House Resolution 934, and by visiting the Assange Defense website to subscribe to updates and action alerts.

Assange Defense is working with Julian Assange’s wife, attorney and human rights defender Stella Assange, to maintain political pressure and visibility on Julian Assange’s behalf.

Vital context on the state of the Assange legal battle and the history of state persecution against him is also provided in a recent interview of Stella by journalist Tucker Carlson after his visit with Assange at Belmarsh prison.

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“One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Did you know that if you “identify” as male or female, you are ignoring 72 additional “gender identities”?

In an article published at Medicine Net after being “medically reviewed” by two MDs in February 2024, it is announced that:

“Gender is no [longer] regarded as a binary concept where one can either be a male or a female. It has emerged as a continuum or spectrum where one can identify as any of the gender identities. The idea is to make everyone feel comfortable in their skin irrespective of what gender they were assigned at birth.”

Among my favorite genders to have “emerged” are:

• Abimegender: Associated with being profound, deep, and infinite.

• Colorgender: In this category, colors are used to describe gender, for example, pink gender or black gender.

• Condigender: The person feels their gender only under specific circumstances.

• Esspigender: The individual relates their gender identity with spirits.

• Genderfuzz: More than one gender is blurred together.

• Mirrorgender: Changing one's gender type based on the people surrounding.

I hope this handy guide helps you find your own emerging gender niche, but the article in which they are listed does not discuss whether any of these identities require gender affirming surgery.

The authors note that from eight years to teenage, “Some children will experience a gender crisis…” and “…begin to feel that they are different from the person they were identified to be at birth.” At this point, they “may start to question their gender.”

Irrespective of age, once a person begins to “question their gender,” the available life options get complicated.

WHAT TO DO?

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) issued a set of guidelines for “gender affirming care” in May 2023, based on a study sponsored by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

The JAMA study concluded that “a letter of assessment from a member of a multidisciplinary team” should be required before starting treatment and that “At least 6 months of exogenous hormone therapy before gender-affirming surgery is optimal, but not mandatory.”

JAMA refers to “gender-affirming medical and/or surgical treatment” as GAMST and notes that.

Children and adolescents require a multidisciplinary approach, which considers developmental stage, neurocognitive function, language skills; offers mental health support; discusses risks and benefits of social transition; and includes parental/guardian involvement in GAMST in almost all situations. [Emphasis added.]

The medical providers who offer these kinds of specialized treatments and surgeries are bullish about what they see as an emerging market with enormous upside potential.

A survey by The Insight Partners consultancy in 2023 estimated that the global market for “Sex Reassignment Surgery is estimated to grow from USD 2.90 billion in 2022 to USD 6.26 billion by 2030 [with] a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 10.1% from 2022–2030.”

BY THE NUMBERS

The percentage of people worldwide who identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, gender fluid, non-binary or other alternative sexual orientations is estimated to be 3%. In the US, it is 2%.

Worldwide, some studies indicate that more than half of millennials believe “that gender exists on a spectrum and should not be limited to male and female categories,” suggesting there may be a strong generational component to gender fluidity.

For as long as I can remember, I have had gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual friends. But over the past 5 to 10 years, I have noticed a shift in their identities from individual to groups. For example, at dinner a few months ago, a lesbian friend worried out loud that something she had said might be offensive to the “trans community.” But who is the “trans community”?

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles estimated in June 2022, that “Among U.S. adults, about 1.3 million people identify as transgender.” They calculated that this is equal to .005 (1/2 of 1%) of the US population. The statistics are similar worldwide.

An acknowledgment of diverse sexual identities that have been suppressed for far too long is a healthy development, but in its current manifestation in the West, it also masks a sense of disproportion that risks warping crucial social and political priorities.

Trans individuals obviously deserve the same rights as everyone else. In recent polls, about 65% of US adults support trans rights. So do I. However, these same polls also indicate that 61% say trans issues have either “gone too far” or “far enough.”

I think what the respondents to these polls are saying is that coordinated efforts by government and global corporations to prioritize trans issues or gender fluidity in the name of DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) ahead of issues with potential life or death civilizational consequences (Nuclear war, immigration, genetic engineering, AI, et. al.) is a distortion of policy priorities and a disservice to the genuine importance of diversity.

At some point, our common humanity and the fate of three millennia of tenuous moral progress as humans becomes more important than arguing over gender identities. Our sensitivity to diversity needs to be contextualized within a larger civilizational framework, or we will lose it all.

WHOSE AGENDA IS THIS?

Simone de Beauvoir was a fierce feminist, but she was also a politically astute existential philosopher who said, “To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.”

Exploring one’s gender identity does not give any individual existential or moral carte blanche, especially when the exploration of gender is being expropriated, distorted and exploited for profit by a globalized, authoritarian medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex so glaringly on display during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today’s medical-pharma complex is a direct reflection of a new ideology of transnational authoritarianism predicated on instilling a politically debilitating sense of permanent crisis and mass confusion, what Bernard Henri Lévy calls “psychotic delirium.”

Hannah Arendt noted nearly seventy years ago:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Be open, but don’t be foolish. The common enemy of each of us and the civilization of which we are part is not thwarted gender identity, but those who would rob us of our common humanity through “division, infantilization and a loss of mythos.”

Imagine, for example, the malignantly infantilized and misdirected energy on display in the video below being educated to maturity and directed against our common enemies rather than one another.

The choice is ours. The time is now.

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With the two oldest presidential candidates in US history likely to be on the ballot in November, the issue of age is more salient in 2024 than in any other presidential election since the nation’s founding.

Were he to win the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump would be 78 years old when he takes office in January 2025, and 82 at the end of his term. As the almost certain Republican nominee, and with 81 year old Biden’s probable dementia already center stage, Trump’s age is also an issue.

However, as a sitting president and Commander in Chief at a time when the US is entangled in dangerous proxy wars against Russia, China and Iran, and given his complex medical history, Biden must, by default, be more visible.

As a candidate for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, then Senator Biden was forced to drop out of the race in September, 1987 after being caught lying about his academic record at university, inventing stories about his activism in the US civil rights movement and plagiarizing speeches by British politician Neil Kinnock, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy.

Less than five months later, in February 1988, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms, one on each side of his brain. One of these aneurysms hemorrhaged, requiring the use of a titanium clip to stop the bleeding. The clip is still in his brain.

The Brain Aneurysm Foundation lists the following possible “cognitive deficits” if a patient returns to “a more demanding lifestyle” after an aneurysm.

• Physical and mental fatigue

• Concentration headaches

• Cognitive problems such as short-term memory difficulties, decreased  concentration, perception problems

• Articulation and speech-delivery problems

• Behavioral changes

• Loss of balance and coordination

• Arm or leg weakness

Given this background, the so called “veepstakes” are no longer a sideshow.

OF CARNIVALS & ELECTION SPECTACLES

Although there is a time honored consensus that the VP candidate is a nearly useless appendage politically, one need look no further than John McCain’s disastrous 2008 selection of Sarah Palin as his VP candidate for a recent election-altering example of why the old rules no longer apply.

Today, most voters believe that VP Kamala Harris is too deeply flawed to serve as president. Only 32% view her positively. She has record low approval ratings that are nearly 20 points underwater, and there is a lingering sense that she embodies an exercise in “box-checking at the expense of political or administrative competence.”

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Here is an excerpt.

The 2020 Super Bowl in a nation that spends $1.25 trillion annually on its military, and in which 30 second TV ads cost $5 to $6 million, was awash in military pageantry to match the calibrated martial violence of the game itself. The entire star-spangled fandango, with F-35 and F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets flying overhead, is fueled by an unquestioning embrace of consumerism packaged in the idiom of pop culture and celebrity fetishism.

In the 2024 Super Bowl, the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers are competing against the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs. Forbes projects the largest television audience in Super Bowl history.

The game is being played at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, a city and state that are the de facto US capitals of legalized gambling and prostitution, thus completing the transformation of the nation’s premier sporting event into a lurid national Rorschach test.

As a gesture of thanks for the enormous upside in customers in the two week run up to the Super Bowl, sex workers at the famed Chicken Ranch brothel 60 miles outside of Vegas are offering a "no-holds-barred orgiastic blowout" to members of the winning NFL team.

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