#and democracy is about the fall of the berlin wall and how its not all peachy keeny yet but it COULD be one day soon

[violentdevotion]

72, 401, and 311 and topic erm. idk ❤️

your past:

you reminisce on the past a lot but maybe you should and its good practice to think about the bravest things you've done, even if it was hard at the time.

your present:

fireproof [reversed] genius.com says the songs about a connection between two people and how it can die out so reversed means the opposite. maybe your resilience (fireproof) comes from the people around you (cause nobody saves me baby the way you do)

your future:

there's a lot to be optimistic for in your future. I think this and fernando work really well hand in hand. there's a lot to be hesitant about and think hard on but goodness will come for you because you need it to

[mariacallous]

April 12, 2019, Updated at 12:22 a.m. ET on April 15, 2019.

In the end, the man who reportedly smeared feces on the walls of his lodgings, mistreated his kitten, and variously blamed the ills of the world on feminists and bespectacled Jewish writers was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy looking every inch like a powdered-sugar Saddam Hussein plucked straight from his spider hole. The only camera crew to record this pivotal event belonged to Ruptly, a Berlin-based streaming-online-video service, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of RT, the Russian government’s English-language news channel and the former distributor of Julian Assange’s short-lived chat show.

RT’s tagline is “Question more,” and indeed, one might inquire how it came to pass that the spin-off of a Kremlin propaganda organ and now registered foreign agent in the United States first arrived on the scene. Its camera recorded a team of London’s Metropolitan Police dragging Assange from his Knightsbridge cupboard as he burbled about resistance and toted a worn copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.

Vidal had the American national-security establishment in mind when he narrated that polemic, although I doubt even he would have contrived to portray the CIA as being in league with a Latin American socialist named for the founder of the Bolshevik Party. Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno announced Thursday that he had taken the singular decision to expel his country’s long-term foreign guest and revoke his asylum owing to Assange’s “discourteous and aggressive behavior.”

According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration.

We don’t yet know whether Romo’s allegation is true (Patiño denied it) or simply a pretext for booting a nuisance from state property. But Assange’s ties to Russian hackers and Russian intelligence organs are now beyond dispute.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 cyberoperatives for Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate for the General Staff (GRU) suggests that Assange was, at best, an unwitting accomplice to the GRU’s campaign to sway the U.S. presidential election in 2016, and allegedly even solicited the stolen Democratic correspondence from Russia’s military intelligence agency, which was masquerading as Guccifer 2.0. Assange repeatedly and viciously trafficked, on Twitter and on Fox News, in the thoroughly debunked claim that the correspondence might have been passed to him by the DNC staffer Seth Rich, who, Assange darkly suggested, was subsequently murdered by the Clintonistas as revenge for the presumed betrayal.

Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and, as an official in Donald Trump’s Cabinet, an indirect beneficiary of Assange’s meddling in American democracy, went so far as to describe WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” For those likening the outfit to legitimate news organizations, I’d submit that this is a shade more severe a description, especially coming from America’s former spymaster, than anything Trump has ever grumbled about The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Russian diplomats had concocted a plot, as recently as late 2017, to exfiltrate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, according to The Guardian. “Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the plan—including the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions.” The plan was scuttled only because it was deemed too dangerous.

In 2015, Focus Ecuador reported that Assange had aroused suspicion among Ecuador’s own intelligence service, SENAIN, which spied on him in the embassy in a years-long operation. “In some instances, [Assange] requested that he be able to choose his own Security Service inside the embassy, even proposing the use of operators of Russian nationality,” the Ecuadorian journal noted, adding that SENAIN looked on such a proposal with something less than unmixed delight.

All of which is to say that Ecuador had ample reasons of its own to show Assange the door and was well within its sovereign rights to do so. He first sought refuge in the embassy after he jumped bail more than seven years ago to evade extradition to Sweden on sexual-assault charges brought by two women. Swedish prosecutors suspended their investigation in 2017 into the most serious allegation of rape because they’d spent five years trying but failing to gain access to their suspect to question him. (That might now change, and so the lawyer for that claimant has filed to reopen the case.) But the British charges remained on the books throughout.

The Times of London leader writer Oliver Kamm has noted that quite apart from being a “victim of a suspension of due process,” Assange is “a fugitive from it.” Yet to hear many febrile commentators tell it, his extradition was simply a matter of one sinister prime minister cackling down the phone to another, with the CIA nodding approvingly in the background, as an international plot unfurled to silence a courageous speaker of truth to power. Worse than that, Assange and his ever-dwindling claque of apologists spent years in the pre-#MeToo era suggesting, without evidence, that the women who accused him of being a sex pest were actually American agents in disguise, and that Britain was simply doing its duty as a hireling of the American empire in staking out his diplomatic digs with a net.

As it happens, a rather lengthy series of U.K. court cases and Assange appeals, leading all the way up to the Supreme Court, determined Assange’s status in Britain.

The New Statesman’s legal correspondent, David Allen Green, expended quite a lot of energy back in 2012 swatting down every unfounded assertion and conspiracy theory for why Assange could not stand before his accusers in Scandinavia without being instantly rendered to Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, as Green noted, going to Stockholm would make it harder for Assange to be sent on to Washington because “any extradition from Sweden … would require the consent of both Sweden and the United Kingdom” instead of just the latter country. Nevertheless, Assange ran and hid and self-pityingly professed himself a “political prisoner.”

Everything about this Bakunin of bullshit and his self-constructed plight has belonged to the theater of the absurd. I suppose it’s only fair that absurdity dominates the discussion now about a newly unsealed U.S. indictment of Assange. According to Britain’s Home Office, the Metropolitan Police arrested Assange for skipping bail, and then, when he arrived at the police station, he was further arrested “in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States.”

The operative word here is provisional, because that request has yet to be wrung through the same domestic legal protocols as Sweden’s. Assange will have all the same rights he was accorded when he tried to beat his first extradition rap in 2010. At Assange’s hearing, the judge dismissed his claims of persecution by calling him “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.” Neither can his supporters.

A “dark moment for press freedom,” tweeted the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden from his security in press-friendly Moscow. “It’s the criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency,” intoned The Intercept’s founding editor Glenn Greenwald who, like Assange, has had that rare historical distinction of having once corresponded with the GRU for an exclusive.

These people make it seem as if Assange is being sought by the Eastern District of Virginia for publishing American state secrets rather than for allegedly conniving to steal them.

The indictment makes intelligible why a grand jury has charged him. Beginning in January 2010, Chelsea Manning began passing to WikiLeaks (and Assange personally) classified documents obtained from U.S. government servers. These included files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. State Department cables. But Manning grew hesitant to pilfer more documents.*

At this point, Assange allegedly morphed from being a recipient and publisher of classified documents into an agent of their illicit retrieval. “On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist [Chelsea] Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Networks, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications,” according to the indictment.

Assange allegedly attempted to help Manning do this using a username that was not hers in an effort to cover her virtual tracks. In other words, the U.S. accuses him of instructing her to hack the Pentagon, and offering to help. This is not an undertaking any working journalist should attempt without knowing that the immediate consequence will be the loss of his job, his reputation, and his freedom at the hands of the FBI.

I might further direct you to Assange’s own unique brand of journalism, when he could still be said to be practicing it. Releasing U.S. diplomatic communiqués that named foreigners living in conflict zones or authoritarian states and liaising with American officials was always going to require thorough vetting and redaction, lest those foreigners be put in harm’s way. Assange did not care—he wanted their names published, according to Luke Harding and David Leigh in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. As they recount the story, when Guardian journalists working with WikiLeaks to disseminate its tranche of U.S. secrets tried to explain to Assange why it was morally reprehensible to publish the names of Afghans working with American troops, Assange replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” (Assange denied the account; the names, in the end, were not published in The Guardian, although some were by WikiLeaks in its own dump of the files.)**

James Ball, a former staffer at WikiLeaks—who argues against Assange’s indictment in these pages—has also remarked on Assange’s curious relationship with a notorious Holocaust denier named Israel Shamir:

Shamir has a years-long friendship with Assange, and was privy to the contents of tens of thousands of US diplomatic cables months before WikiLeaks made public the full cache. Such was Shamir’s controversial nature that Assange introduced him to WikiLeaks staffers under a false name. Known for views held by many to be antisemitic, Shamir aroused the suspicion of several WikiLeaks staffers—myself included—when he asked for access to all cable material concerning ‘the Jews,’ a request which was refused.

Shamir soon turned up in Moscow where, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, he was offering to write articles based on these cables for $10,000 a pop. Then he traveled to Minsk, where he reportedly handed over a cache of unredacted cables on Belarus to functionaries for Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, whose dissident-torturing secret police is still conveniently known as the KGB.

Fish and guests might begin to stink after three days, but Assange has reeked from long before he stepped foot in his hideaway cubby across from Harrods. He has put innocent people’s lives in danger; he has defamed and tormented a poor family whose son was murdered; he has seemingly colluded with foreign regimes not simply to out American crimes but to help them carry off their own; and he otherwise made that honorable word transparency in as much of a need of delousing as he is.

Yet none of these vices has landed him in the dock. If he is innocent of hacking U.S. government systems—or can offer a valid public-interest defense for the hacking—then let him have his day in court, first in Britain and then in America. But don’t continue to fall for his phony pleas for sympathy, his megalomania, and his promiscuity with the facts. Julian Assange got what he deserved.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Inside the 'irregular warfare' campaign fascists are conducting against America

Thom Hartmann

June 5, 2024 9:48AM ET

Trump lies that the guilty verdict against him — by a jury of his peers that his own attorneys picked — is an illegitimate, politically motivated show trial.

Trying to help Trump destroy Americans’ faith in our democracy and its justice system, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesman today said of Trump’s trial:

“If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious.”

Hungary’s dictator Viktor Orbán and Italy’s neofascist Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, both also argued that Trump is the victim of political persecution.

Right wing media commentators and Republicans in Congress have leaped at the opportunity to echo Putin and Orbán.

This sort of propaganda is called “irregular warfare” (IW) — warfare by means outside of troops, bombs, navies, etc. — and the US used to be an expert at it. Typically, irregular warfare involves the use of propaganda, proxies, or people willing to betray their own country.

READ: Liberals are being way too cynical about Trump's conviction

Irregular warfare is part of how the US and western Europe brought down the Soviet Union (although that system also disintegrated from within under the weight of its own corruption and rot), with propaganda systems like the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Europe.

A keen observer of this process was an irregular warfare leader based in East Germany at the time. Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin supervised spying and propaganda operations within East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he moved to Moscow where, in 1999, he became the head of the Russian government and is now the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin.

Having been on the receiving end of US and western European propaganda efforts, Putin dedicated himself to turning the tables on us, since the democratic example of America (and other western nations) is a thorn in his autocratic side. And he’s had considerable success, including helping get his man Trump into the White House where Donald then handed a western spy over to Putin’s Foreign Minister Lavrov in a secret Oval Office meeting during his first month in office.

Two months later, US intelligence had to pull another spy out of Russia because they had evidence Trump had given his name to Putin as well. Trump may well represent the single most successful irregular warfare program Putin has ever run against America.

On July 31, 2019, as Trump was ramping up his 2020 campaign, he had another of what by that time were more than 16 private, unrecorded conversations with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car.

The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies” across the world) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Fourteen months later, The New York Timesran a story with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted American spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by President Donald Trump himself.

Also in 2019, when the international press verified that Putin was paying the Taliban bounties to kill American service members in Afghanistan (and 4 had already died as a result), Trump refused to demand the practice stop, another possible sign that Putin ran him, not the other way around.

As The New York Times noted at the time:

“Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence... But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.”

Instead of stopping Putin from offering the bounties, Trump shut down every US airbase in Afghanistan except one (there were about a dozen), intentionally crippling incoming President Biden’s ability to extract US assets from that country in an orderly fashion.

Today, Republicans — particularly House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and committee members Cory Mills (R-FL) and Michael Lawler (R-NY) — have used the resulting chaos and associated American and Afghan deaths as a political club to beat up President Biden.

Trump also took an axe to the Voice of America — an institution viscerally hated by Putin for half a century — appointing a rightwing hack and friend of Steve Bannon’s to run the organization, who promptly fired the heads of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia and shifted their coverage away from defense of democracies. According to The Washington Post:

“He ousted the diplomats and media professionals on oversight boards and replaced them with low-level Trumpists from other government agencies. … “Having driven off the American media professionals at VOA, Pack went after the more than 70 foreign journalists who work for the organization, refusing to support the renewal of their U.S. visas as they came up. He claimed to be acting for security reasons and insinuated, on no evidence, that some of the staff were spies. … Now, they are being forced to repatriate, in some cases at personal risk. A VOA report in late August said 15 were returning home and another 20 had visas that will expire by the end of the year. “They weren’t Pack’s only targets. He attempted to fire the board and cut off the funding of the Open Technology Fund, an organization that supports Internet freedom initiatives, such as tools to circumvent firewalls. A court blocked the firings, but the fund was forced to suspend 49 of its 60 projects. Among those affected were journalists and activists resisting government crackdowns in Hong Kong and in Belarus.”

The damage to the Voice of America continues to this day as most of Trump’s people are still there; just three months ago, The Hill ran an article titled “Putin’s influencers? Why is taxpayer-funded VOA spreading his propaganda?”

But Putin’s efforts at irregular warfare against the United States have extended far beyond his apparent manipulation of Donald Trump to betray spies and kneecap American anti-fascist propaganda programs.

The Irregular Warfare Center was created within the US Department of Defense in 2021 by Congress; in their January 23, 2024 report “Russian Information Warfare Strategy: New IWC Translation Gives Insights into Vulnerabilities” they show how Putin’s efforts have had considerable success recruiting average Americans within the US. For example, as one of hundreds of Putin’s early efforts to help Donald Trump become president, they note that the year of Trump’s election:

“On 21 May 2016, two protest groups faced off in Houston near an Islamic cultural center to demonstrate competing opinions on Texas’ future. Both groups, one which was protesting the perceived Islamization of Texas, and the other in support of the Islamic community, had been organized on Facebook pages. At first glance, this seemed like a normal and innocuous part of the U.S. political process. “Unbeknownst to most participants, however, both Facebook pages had been created by Russian actors seeking to exacerbate political discord in the United States. This event was not an isolated case; it was a part of a coordinated effort by Russia to meddle in the U.S. elections, both in the social media space and in the physical domain.”

Another example was the promotion of Putin’s assertion the month before he invaded Ukraine in February, 2022 that the US and Ukraine were running bioweapon labs in that besieged nation. As NBC Newsreported in March, 2022 as the invasion was moving ahead full steam:

“Boosted by far-right influencers on the day of the invasion, an anonymous QAnon Twitter account titled @WarClandestine pushed the “biolabs” theory to new heights… “Much of the false information [about the alleged biolabs] is flourishing in Russian social media, far-right online spaces and U.S. conservative media, including Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.”

When viewed in context, Putin’s successes at irregular warfare against the United States, designed to tear our society apart, have been quite breathtaking.

During the summer of 2020, as Trump and Biden were squaring off for the election that year, in the small Oregon town of Klamath Falls about 200 locals showed up downtown with guns, baseball bats, and whatever other weapons they could find around the house. They were in the streets to fight off the busloads of Black Antifa marauders they believed Jewish billionaire George Soros had paid to put on a bus in Portland and was sending their way.

Of course, George Soros had done no such thing and there were no busloads of Black people. But the warnings were all over the Klamath Falls Facebook group, and, it turns out, similar Facebook groups for small towns all over America, apparently as part of another Russian disinformation effort.

From coast to coast that weekend white residents of small towns showed up in their downtown areas with guns, rifles, hammers, and axes prepared to do battle with busloads of Black people being sent into their small white towns by George Soros.

In the tiny town of Forks, Washington, frightened white people brought out chainsaws and cut down trees to block the road leading to their town. In South Bend, Indiana police were overwhelmed by 911 calls from frightened white people wanting to know when the “Antifa buses” were arriving. And in rural Luzern County, Pennsylvania, the local neighborhood social media group warned people that busloads of Black people were “organizing to riot and loot.”

Similar stories played out that weekend from Danville, California to Jacksonville, Florida, as documented by NBC News. It was both a successful test of using social media to create mass panic among credulous Trump followers and, perhaps, a planning session for the violence ABC News documents Trump is trying to gin up if he loses this fall.

One of Putin’s greatest recent IW successes came last July when Federal District Judge Terry Doughty, a hard-right Trump appointee, blocked federal agencies from informing social media companies about Russian and other efforts to spread disinformation on their platforms. In March of this year four Republicans on the Supreme Court granted cert and the case was heard; we’re awaiting the ruling which could come any day.

The issue may be moot: Russia is now moving their efforts to promote Trump and encourage civil strife in the US away from their own trolls posing as Americans, now using instead Trump-aligned US-citizens and congressional Republican influencers.

These include using rightwing media commentators, average citizens active on social media, and even members of Congress who’ve bought into Russian propaganda from issues around Ukraine to vaccines to the alleged theft of the 2020 election (and “planned theft” of 2024). As the Irregular Warfare Centernotes:

“[F]uture Russian foreign-targeted OIEs [Operations in the Information Environment] appear to be shifting toward proxy operations, including semi-independent and strategically-chosen influencers on social media, rather than using a directly-controlled team of professionals, as was the case in 2016 with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “troll factory” that worked to interfere in the U.S. elections.”

This possibility of Trump (and thus Putin) seizing control of US intelligence agencies should he be elected is freaking out former senior U.S. intelligence officials. The headline at Raw Story says it all: “Intel officials 'very concerned' about Trump's intentions for spy agencies.”

The simple reality is that Russia has been using IW techniques in Putin’s war against America — particularly in his efforts to reinstall Trump in the White House — for over a decade and those efforts are now being amplified on a daily basis by Republicans in Congress, rightwing media outlets, and some of our largest social media companies.

With the ability of our government to work with social media and news outlets to combat Putin’s irregular warfare handicapped, and the possibility that Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court will further handcuff the Biden Administration’s efforts, the possibility increases that Russia’s useful idiots could succeed in helping Trump prevail this November.

And the election season is now just beginning. Buckle up: to paraphrase Trump’s invitation to January 6th, this is going to get wild.

READ: Liberals are being way too cynical about Trump's conviction

[reallynervousconnoisseur]

Mathias Polligkeit: The Philosopher Charting Democracy's Future

BERLIN—In an era marked by political upheaval and the rise of authoritarian populism, Mathias Polligkeit stands out as a leading thinker in the relentless pursuit of democratic integrity. A scholar whose work deftly straddles the worlds of political science and philosophy, Polligkeit has become a crucial voice in dissecting the complexities of modern governance.

From his office at the University of Potsdam, where books line the walls and windows look out onto a city that has itself been a crucible of history, Polligkeit reflects on the state of democracy today. "We are living in a time of great challenge, but also of great opportunity," he says, his words measured, his gaze steady. "The very fabric of our democratic institutions is being tested, and we must rise to meet that test."

Polligkeit's journey into the realm of political thought began in the tumultuous years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, an era when Germany was grappling with its reunification and the world was witnessing the collapse of Soviet communism. For Polligkeit, these events were not just historical milestones but catalysts that ignited his passion for understanding how political systems work—and sometimes fail.

In his seminal work, "The Architecture of Democracy," Polligkeit examines the structural foundations of democratic governance, arguing that true democracy is more than just a system of government; it is a lived experience, constantly evolving, shaped by the people who participate in it. He warns against complacency in democratic societies, emphasizing that democracy's survival hinges on active, informed citizenry and robust institutions that can withstand both internal and external pressures.

Polligkeit's philosophy is grounded in the belief that democracy is a fragile construct, one that requires vigilant maintenance. He is critical of what he calls the "erosion from within"—the gradual decay of democratic norms and values that often goes unnoticed until it is too late. "Democracy does not die in darkness," he contends, "it dies in apathy. When citizens disengage, when institutions become complacent, that's when democracy is at its most vulnerable."

His critiques are not just theoretical; they are rooted in a deep concern for the practical realities facing democracies worldwide. Polligkeit frequently cites examples from across the globe, from the polarization gripping the United States to the democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. He sees these as cautionary tales, evidence of what can happen when societies lose sight of the core principles of democracy.

Yet, Polligkeit is not without hope. In his recent lectures and writings, he has begun to sketch out a vision for what he calls "democratic resilience." This concept involves fortifying democratic institutions against both traditional and emerging threats, from autocratic leaders to misinformation campaigns. It also means fostering a culture of civic engagement, where citizens feel empowered to participate in the democratic process and hold their leaders accountable.

"Democratic resilience is not just about defending against attacks," he explains. "It's about creating a democracy that is vibrant, inclusive, and adaptable—one that can thrive in the face of change and adversity."

Polligkeit's ideas have gained traction in academic circles and among policymakers, who see his work as a blueprint for navigating the complex political terrain of the 21st century. He has been invited to speak at conferences around the world, his insights sought by governments and NGOs alike.

But for all his accolades, Polligkeit remains humble, driven by a sense of duty rather than ambition. "I see my work as a call to action," he says. "Democracy is not a given; it is something we must continually fight for, protect, and renew."

As the sun sets over Berlin, casting long shadows across his office, Mathias Polligkeit returns to his desk, ready to continue his work. For him, the fight for democracy is far from over. And in that fight, he has become one of its most eloquent and steadfast champions.

[goh0117]

The Impact of Fake News and Propaganda on Social Media Activism: Unraveling the 5G-COVID-19 Myth

In the dynamic realm of activism and protest, the integration of social media has become both a catalyst and a challenge. As we navigate the intricate relationship between social media, activists, and the dissemination of fake news and propaganda, a pressing question arises: How do misinformation and propaganda, exemplified by the 5G-COVID-19 myth, impact the use of social media by activists and protesters? To unravel this complex web, we will explore various forms of activism, critique the concept of 'clicktivism,' and scrutinize the implications of digital citizenship. But first, let's delve into the global contexts that have seen social media emerge as a powerful tool for change.

The Global Dynamics of Activism & Protest

Activism and protest have undergone a transformation in the digital age, finding new avenues for expression and mobilization through social media platforms. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, we contemplate how these historic events might have played out differently if social media had been present. Social media, as highlighted in TIME magazine in 2011, has become a powerful tool for 'everyday activism,' 'subactivism,' and 'culture jamming.'

Digital Citizenship and Civic Cultures

The concept of digital citizenship extends the traditional notions of civic participation to the online realm. In the words of Marshall (1992), all members of a political community have certain rights, and the internet, much like education, has the potential to promote democracy and civic duty. The role of media, encompassing not only traditional outlets but also social media and pop culture, becomes crucial in shaping civic cultures. The question emerges: does the internet truly afford us the opportunity to learn about citizenship and civic duty?

Alternative & Activist Media in the Digital Age

Leah Lievrouw (2011) points out that there are unprecedented opportunities for expression and interaction among activists, facilitated by new media tools. Social media allows activists to build and sustain communities without geographical restrictions, gain visibility and voice, resist dominant views, and present alternative perspectives legitimately. The concept of 'networked publics' is crucial in understanding the digital authoring and distribution tools that social media provides.

Case Study: Hong Kong Protests

Examining the role of social media and messaging apps in the Hong Kong protests provides a real-world example. The Wall Street Journal highlights how online protests facilitated and aided offline movements. The Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the Anti-Extradition Protests in 2019-2020 demonstrated the power of social media in mobilizing and organizing protests for civil rights, freedom, and democracy.

The Mobile Witness & Networked Events

The emergence of the mobile witness, characterized by eyewitness accounts through videos and photography, has become a significant aspect of protests and movements. Social media, with its ability to bring the collectivity of shared events to the forefront, has transformed how we perceive and engage with global events. From the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States to the England Riots in 2011, social media has played a pivotal role in shaping narratives.

The Infodemic: 5G and COVID-19

In the midst of these digital transformations, misinformation and fake news have become rampant. The rumor linking 5G technology to COVID-19 serves as a poignant example. A research team led by Elaine Nsoesie investigated the spread of COVID-19 misinformation using epidemiological techniques. They found that the myth of "COVID-19 and 5G" spread faster than other rumors, indicating a global misunderstanding of 5G technology.

Debunking the 5G-COVID-19 Myth

Despite the fear surrounding 5G technology, it does not cause COVID-19. Researchers emphasize the need to understand how misinformation spreads to counteract it effectively. David Starobinski, a professor at the BU College of Engineering, clarifies that 5G is an evolution, not a revolution, in communication technology. The spread of such myths underscores the importance of transparency from researchers and institutions.

Criticisms and Challenges in Social Media Activism

The article concludes by addressing criticisms of social media activism, including the concept of 'clicktivism.' While some argue that it fosters a lazy form of activism, research suggests that it has the potential to create awareness and draw attention to overlooked issues. Additionally, the notion of 'subactivism' is explored, recognizing its importance in everyday democratic participation.

Conclusion

As social media continues to shape the landscape of activism and protest, it is crucial to navigate the complexities of fake news and propaganda. The case of the 5G-COVID-19 myth highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of digital citizenship and media literacy. Activists must harness the power of social media while remaining vigilant against misinformation, ensuring that the digital realm remains a force for positive change in the world.

See you guys in the next one!

References:

Bakardjieva, M. (2009) "Subactivism: Lifeworld and Politics in the Age of the Internet," The Information Society, 25, pp. 91-104, viewed on 20 November 2023.

Dahlgreen, P. (2009) "Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication, and Democracy," Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, viewed on 20 November 2023.

Ito, M. (2008) "Introduction' in Kazys Varnelis (ed.) 'Networked Publics," Cambridge: MIT Press, viewed on 20 November 2023.

Lievrouw, L. (2012) "Alternative & Activist New Media," London: Polity Press, viewed on 20 November 2023.

Massumi, B. (2009) "National Enterprise Emergency: Steps Toward an Ecology of Powers," Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), pp. 153–185. doi: 10.1177/0263276409347696, viewed on 20 November 2023.

Tufekci, Z., & Wilson, C. (2012) "Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square," Journal of Communication, 62(2), pp. 363-379, viewed on 20 November 2023. <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01629.x>

Nsoesie, E., Cesare, N., et al. (2020) "5G Doesn’t Cause COVID-19, But the Rumor That It Does Spread Like a Virus," Journal of Medical Internet Research, viewed on 20 November 2023. <https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2021/5g-doesnt-cause-covid-19/>

[cyberbenb]

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović: Lessons from Croatia for Ukraine

On May 19, 2023, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, the former president of Croatia  (2015-2020) talked about lessons from Croatia for Ukraine at the International Conference “Forward and Upward: Reforming Ukraine during the War” organized by the NGO “VoxUkraine” with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

We are grateful to Viktoriia Ahapova for transcription of the speech 

Similarities between Ukraine and Croatia

Croatia’s past is much like Ukraine’s present. But I hope that our future will soon be the same and I hope that Ukraine will soon be where Croatia is today. When I look back at the 1990s, I see how much we have accomplished. Our neighbors in Central Europe had somewhat of an easier way because they did not have war. Croatia was undergoing multiple processes of transition: transition from a war-torn economy, country, and society to a peace-time country, economy, and society; from an authoritarian system under communism to a democratic system; and from a centrally-planned to a market economy. These processes had to happen very fast. Along that, there was another transition — from almost denial of the right to exist into full recognition of our country. 

Historical context

When Croatia was part of different state structure, we kept our statehood by having our parliament (which was not democratically elected until the 1990s), and a viceroy who governed Croatia. There were attempts to restore independence. A lot of people know about the Prague Spring but not so many know of the Croatian Spring, which evolved approximately at the same time, and was unfortunately crushed by the communist authorities. 

In the early 1990s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the external circumstances for our independence became favorable. We started the process again. However, at that time, most of the international community thought that Yugoslavia should be kept together as if it had existed forever. Yugoslavia indeed played a role as a non-aligned country during the Cold War. But at that time, it had already lost its geopolitical significance and it was impossible to stop the process of self-determination of nations that existed as Yugoslav republics. The 1974 [Yugoslav] Constitution gave all of us the right to self-determination including secession, but Serbian leadership at that time declared that we had consumed our right to self-determination by staying in Yugoslavia. Therefore we had difficult times following our first democratic elections. On May 30, 1990, the first Croatian Sabor, the Parliament that was democratically elected, came into power. At that time, we were not internationally recognized. We had to fight for our right to exist. However, we were able to secure the recognition.

On June 25, 1991, we declared independence but we were forced by the international community to impose a moratorium on independence for a few months. The moratorium expired in October 1991. Meanwhile, the rebellion of part of local Serb communities, supported by the so-called Yugoslav National Army, had already developed and culminated in a full-fledged war towards the end of 1991 with the battle for Vukovar, which was very similar to Ukraine’s battle for Mariupol. Vukovar fell, but it essentially defended the rest of the country and stopped further Serbian aggression in Croatia. Then, in January 1992, Croatia finally received international recognition. A UN peace keeping mission was deployed as the result of the continuous attempts to start negotiations during most of the early 1990s. At that time, the conflict in Croatia became a frozen conflict with occasional skirmishes, with people still dying along the front line. But we were determined not to become another case like Cyprus. And we kept saying to the international community that we were determined to reintegrate the occupied areas. During that process in the 1990s we were building the military, the foreign service, and other state institutions. Institution-building under conditions of war is a very difficult process. In the 1990s, the occupied territories amounted to about 1/4 of our country and we were preparing to take them back. We started with smaller limited operations, and then in 1995 we carried out two major operations: “Lightning”, to liberate and reintegrate Western Slavonia, and “Storm”, during which we liberated and reintegrated the biggest occupied area that was popularly known around the world as the Krajina. The remainder of the occupied territory (Eastern Slavonia region) was peacefully reintegrated in 1998.

About the war economy

Throughout the years of war, we actually did not have a war economy. We were pursuing the path of the transition along the lines that I mentioned in the beginning, and we were incredibly driven and motivated. When we declared our independence, we also declared that we wanted to join NATO and the European Union. Most people, especially in the international community, thought it was impossible. Our disadvantages were the challenges that we had in the 1990s: fighting for the right to exist and institution-building under conditions of war. 

Because of the war, Croatia was getting little, if any, foreign investment — mostly from people who trusted Croatia for personal reasons, who once lived there or just wanted to help. We also missed the EU assistance for countries in transition that existed at that time, such as the PHARE program, because we were deemed politically ineligible. The number of displaced persons in Croatia and refugees from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the height of war in our neighboring country amounted to about 1 million, which equals a quarter of our population. We cared for the refugees in most part with our own resources, placing them in homes, hotels etc., and not in refugee camps. Financing of this process put a huge strain on the economy. 

 Croatian experience of reintegration

With the liberation of occupied areas, we needed to complete several processes. Most of the territory was mined and for people to be able to go back to work on their land, to resume normal lives, these areas had to be demined. The reintegration process is very difficult in terms of reconciliation. People had been there during the times of occupation, and a number of them supported the occupiers or they even fought against Croatia. Those who remained in the liberated territories had to be reintegrated as well. Reconciliation is a very difficult process, where you have to give people back their jobs, pensions and homes, even if they had fought against you. This is something that Ukraine will also be facing while reintegrating the occupied areas. Croatia can share a lot of experience on good practices, but also on the things that we did not do so well. 

Privatization process and corruption

Before 1991, we were mostly a centrally-planned economy, and most of the companies were state-owned. Thus, the privatization process was necessary, but it was not done in the best possible way. In large part, it was non-transparent, and there was corruption and nepotism involved. The economic strategies of the then political leadership relied on the old-fashioned thinking that “we just need several hundred families or people who would carry the process forward.” A lot of companies were just destroyed because they were taken over by people who had no idea of how to develop them and move the economy forward. Corruption was an overwhelming problem, as well as war. We had to deal with them simultaneously, especially in the process of European integration. 

Development of institutions 

We continued to open Croatia to the world, to invite investors and to develop conditions for safe and secure investment in Croatia, as well as to pursue the European integration process, aligning our legislation with the acquis Communautaire, and most importantly, implementing it. We started building the appropriate institutions, paying much attention to the criteria that we had to fulfill. First, the Copenhagen political criteria of stable democratic institutions, stable and impartial judiciary, etc. Second, the economic criteria of full conversion and being able to withstand the competitive pressures of the common EU market, which is much larger than Croatian economy. 

Then, there were direct criteria for building institutions. This is an area where we could have done much better, and which you need to keep in mind throughout the process. Once you accede to the European Union, you are going to start losing a lot of people not only because of the freedom of movement since your citizens will get the opportunity to study and work in the EU, but simply because with the accession you will have to send a number of your civil servants to Brussels. And they will leave for Brussels because the economic advantages of living in Brussels will still be greater than living in Ukraine. Therefore, you need to make sure that after accession you have the proper institutional frameworks because this isn’t just about harmonization of legislation. Implementation of the adopted laws is even more important. You need to have proper structures in place, and people who are knowledgeable and experienced enough to carry the process forward. The further you go, the more complicated the process becomes. The process of Croatia’s EU integration was more complex and complicated than for any other country before us. Perhaps on your path forward there will also be additional criteria that will deal with the consequences of Russian aggression against Ukraine, among them reconciliation and resolving open issues. This is the path to stability, peace, and prosperity not just for Ukraine but for the whole neighborhood. 

European integration

By the end of the 1990s, Croatia was not really a darling of the international community or of the EU. We were perceived by many as a semi-autocratic state. [But one must keep in mind that we were a country that had just emerged from communism and had not had the time to develop free institutions before we had to start fighting for our bare survival, a country who sometimes had to act against the will of the international community to overcome the impasse of occupation and failed peace negotiations.] However, since 2000, with the change of government, Croatia fully opened to the world, and the world opened to Croatia.

We were determined to apply for EU membership. We were discouraged and dissuaded by many who were saying “You’re not ready, don’t even try to do that because the result is not going to be positive”. However, we soldiered on. We were so committed to prove that we were willing and able to do it that when we applied in 2003 and received the questionnaire, we filled it out in a record time — in just a couple of months [Ukraine filled such a questionnaire as well in April-2022 — editor], and ultimately started the process against all odds and against the expectations of many.

However, sometimes you face unpredicted hurdles. In our case the start of negotiations was postponed several times. The EU demanded our full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). One of the indictees from Croatia was on the run. We were told that “Unless you arrest and deliver the person to the court in the Hague, which is the only meaning of full cooperation with ICTY, you’re not going to start negotiations”.

Ultimately, the process was resolved, and we started negotiations on October 3, 2005. I was the head of the state delegation for negotiations and led the process until I left the government. ‘Negotiations’ is a very misleading term because much of the process is about determining the time framework for the adoption and the implementation of the acquis, and you negotiate about very few issues, such as exemptions, or funding that you are going to receive from the EU (and I am certain that there will be additional reconstruction funding for Ukraine). The process can get complicated by factors out of your control. There were 32 chapters of the acquis when we negotiated. We presented our negotiating position for the first chapter that we opened: it was about education, which had already been aligned, and thus we had no objections and stated that we would fulfill our obligations before the date of accession; we did not ask for any exemptions or transitional periods, etc. It took the EU about six months to agree to their common position that they accept our position. 

Accordingly, you need to have people who will be your allies in this process, who will be driving the process forward. You will have to work politically. Please don’t be shy to ask for advice and learn from other people’s experience. To us, it was immensely important to have our colleagues from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries share their own experiences with us so that we could avoid the mistakes they had made and use their best practices. We stand ready to work with you and share our experience because out of all the member states that have acceded the European Union so far, Croatia is the closest and most experienced to what Ukraine will be dealing with.

Advice for Ukraine from Croatia

There are many lessons learned in this process, and one of the most important is using accession for the advantage of your own country — Ukraine. The best way forward is not to try to convince with words, but to demonstrate what you have done, and to focus on Ukraine and what needs to be done in Ukraine and for Ukraine. The EU accession is ultimately about creating a better life for everyone in a better Ukraine, so use the process to your own advantage. Whatever you do, always keep in mind that you are doing it for yourself – not because Brussels demands something, but because you want a better life for Ukrainians: better institutions, more transparency, a stable and competitive economy, and a stable legal system fighting against corruption. 

For Ukraine, one of the biggest challenges is to re-establish that integrity and get the trust of the international community to be able to invest in all the processes of reconstruction, rebuilding, demining, creating new technologies, new industries, etc., the basis for your future economy.

Always explain the process to Ukrainian citizens. Negotiations are also an education and information campaign. You need not only to keep citizens on board for eventual accession, but also to prepare them for what they can expect from future EU membership. How they can make the best of it for themselves. For some, the changes and transition can be overwhelming, especially in the rural areas and traditional industries where people tend to cling to the old practices. It is important to note that the EU does not want to destroy the tradition, but preserve it, while introducing new practices that respect health, safety and other standards, as well the principles of good governance.

My second piece of advice would be never to take ‘no’ for an answer. Do not argue but proceed with what you want to do. Had we listened to the colleagues from the EU in the early 2000s that we were not ready to apply and start the process, who knows whether we would be a member of the EU even today. I think that at that time we caught the last train. Today Russia’s aggression changed the geopolitical situation in the EU to a more favorable environment for enlargement, not only for Ukraine’s fight for EU accession but also for the countries in Western Balkans. Don’t say that you are ready, but demonstrate that you are ready to take the necessary steps forward and always insist that your progress will be followed by the appropriate formal steps towards EU membership.

My next piece of advice — please, use any assistance that you can get. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice. Don’t think that anybody’s trying to patronize you. We just have so much experience that we are ready to share with you.

Finally, always expect the unexpected. There will be hurdles that you have not foreseen. So be creative in this process. We will be working together with you to help you, to push the accession process forward, to dissipate whatever enlargement fatigue has developed around Europe. In my case, pushing is not just for Ukraine, but also for my own neighborhood — the countries in the Western Balkans because I do believe that a united Europe gives us all the best preconditions for lasting peace, security, stability and prosperity. A strong European Union will be a stronger actor on the world scene. By strengthening our common policies and by strengthening the Union with new members, I believe that the European Union can really become one of the main actors on the world stage that drives forward rules-based societies and rules-based economies. That it can be the biggest area of peace and prosperity in the world.

I look forward to the moment when we will welcome Ukraine as a full EU member.

Prepared by VoxUkraine

[drean-ann]

SIMPLE STONE CAN LAST FOR 10.000 OF YEARS,...NOTHING HAPPENDS TO IT.....FROM SHAPLES MATTERIA,...INTO QWARTZ, WATER, IRON, METAL,...ELEMENTS FROM MENDELEJEV SYSTEM....NUCLEAR WE ARE....EVERYTHING IS NUCLEAR....THAT IS INOUGH,...THE MATTERIA CRISTALISED UNTILL NOW....ACCORDING TO QUANTUM PSYCHICS EVERYTHING IS BUILD FROM ELEMENTS...HAS ROLE OF WORK, SO IT IS A TYPE OF ENGINE....IN THIS CONDITIONS, ENVIROMENT IT IS BETTER TO HAVE ROLE OF WORK BECOUSE IT WILL RESIST LONGER OVERLOADS...NUCLEAR WE ARE,...THERE ARE MASSIVE OVERLOADS HERE, EVERYTHING HAS ITS WAIGHT DONT BE STUPID...AND HERE JUST RAINS ...EVERYTHING IS MAGNETISED,...EVERY ELEMENT, EVERY PARTICULE HAS ELEKTRON NEUTRON POZYTRON....MAGNETISED MATERIA POLARIZES WITH NEGATIVE POTENTIAL AND WE DONT FALL DOWN... WHOLE PLANETS ARE GRAVITATING THIS WAY IN SPACE....PLUS AND MINUS EQUALS, ...BETVIN IS 0 AND IT FLOATS...IN 0 GRAVITY....FIRE BURNS UP...POSITIVE POTENTIAL WAS POINTED UP,..NEGATIVE POTENTIAL WAS POINTED DOWN ..SO NOTHING WAS TOUCHING IT SELVE...EVERYTHING IS POLARISED THIS WAY . ..ITS MY IDEA ...THIS AND I FROSE NEGATIVE POTENTIAL AND EVERYTHING BENITH US ...I HAVE POINTED NEGATIVE VECTORS INTO FREESE....THERE WAS NOTHING BENITH US.....GOT BETTER IDEA?? THEN IT STAYS ...SIMPLE STONE CAN LAST FOR 10.000 OF YEARS....NOTHING HAPPENDS TO IT....WE ARE ALL LIVING IN THE SAME WORLD...WE THINK SIMILAR....SUPREMACY OF THE UNIVERCE....MIND OVER MATERIA....THE MATTER IS ETERNAL, BUT WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WONT WITH IT....BUT WE ARE DYING...SO QUESTION IS...FOCOUS....AT THE BEGINNING STONES HAD IDEA HOW WORLDS SHOULD BE LIKE...THEY CHOSED HUMANS TO HELP THEM BUILD THEIR WORLD...I REMEMBER EMPERORS,...WE WHERE UNITS NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MISTAKES...BUT THEN INSANE RA STARTED TO EXTERMINATE LIVE, SENSE, LOGIC,...TO TAKE EVERYTHING FOR HIMSELVE,...WOMANS, WEALTH, GOD, LIVE.....I THINK THE EXTERMINATION OF LIFE IS HAPPENING FRM THE BEGGINING. ...WHAT IF ONE PLANET IS POPULATED,...NO OXYGENE ANYWHERE. ...TURKS...WONNA PROVE THAT EVERYBODY'S FUCKED??? DO YOU SEE OLD PEOPLE??? ALL OF THEM, EVERYBODY ARE FUCKED. ...I WANDER WHO BUILTED ALL THIS, I NEVER HEARD ABOUT ANYBODY. ...I DONT SEE GENIOUSES, MUSICIANS, ARTIST WHATEVER YOU NAME IT. ....EVERYBODY ARE FUCKED ..CONSERNS EVERYBODY,...BE CAREFULL IT'S HAPPENING NOW. ....THE HUMANS KIND HISTORY TAKES ABOUT 2MINUTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS ABOUT. ...IT'S NOT EVEN A SENTENCE. ....FOCOUS. ....NOW WE HAVE DEMOCRACY, BEFORE THAT THERE WAS KAPITALISM, THE GOVERMENT DOESNT CARE ABOUT OUR OPINION, THE DEMOCRACY IS A LIE,...BEFORE THAT THERE WAS COLD WAR IN POLAND, FIGHTS WITH POLICE STAN WOJENNY W POLSCE, BERLIN WALL. ....BEFORE THAT THERE WAS KOMUNIZM AND THERE ŁAGRY AND KOŁHOZY PART OF THE EXTERMINATION, BEFORE THAT THERE WAS FASHIZM, RASIZM, KANIBALIZM STALINIZM MARKSIZM SOCJALIZM NAZIZM,NATIONALIZM DEHUMANIZACJA. ....MONKEYS ARE DISCUSTY UGLY AND STUPID, THEY ARE EATTING PARSITES, MONKEYS HAS HANDS, EVERYTHING ELSE 4LEGS,....THERE ARE NO ANIMALS, THERE IS BEEF. ....BEFORE THAT THERE WAS SLAVORY AND CUTTING HANDS WHEN YOU STILL SOMETHING,THEY WHERE MAKING SOAP FROM HUMANS IM SORRY ANYWAY. ...BEFORE THAT THERE WAS EVOLUTION, THRU ALL THE EVOLUTION ANIMALS KILLED THEMSELVS AND EAT EACH OTHERS LIVES. ...BEFORE THAT THERE WAS BIG BANG. ...THIS IS OUR HISTORY. ...EVERYBODY FOR THEMSELVES. ...ON EARTH LIVES PROPABLY 7,6 MILIARDS OF PEOPLE, WHOLE PLANET IS POPULATED, SO IF IN ONE TOWN LIVES 300.000 PEOPLE THEN IN ALL TOWNS ON WHOLE GLOBE PROPABLY SOMETHING LIKE THIS, ..I THINK I KNOW WHAT TO DO. ...2000 THOUSENDS YEARS HAS BEEN PASST....I DONT REMEMBER MORE....YOU HAVE GOT A TEMPO, GOTTA ADMMIT....BUT IT'S GOOD...I RATHER 7 MILIARDS OF PEOPLE THEN RA,...TURKS....AND THEIR HOLY WAR...I WROTE A BOOK,...WHERE IS DESCRIBED THE NEXT STEP FOR HIMANS KIND...IT'S COLLED..."Dobrze, że to śnieg pada a nie planety spadają". ....EVERYBODY BELONGS TO GOD. ...))).... I THINK SO. ....EVERYTHING BELONGS TO GOD. .. ))).....

[bring-it-all-down]

Much has been said about the Black Sails finale and its statement of the show’s themes, so I’d like to focus instead on the penultimate episode, specifically the following speech Jack gives as he’s headed back to Nassau with the goal of killing Flint:

The result ahead of us promises to be a victory of a different sort. A true victory. Freedom...in every sense of the word. How many men in the history of the world have ever known it? How remarkable a moment is this? How fortunate are we to be standing on the threshold of it?

I think this speech really gets to the heart of the show: it’s ultimately about what it means to be truly free. While this notion of freedom is discussed in Flint’s unparalleled final speech about dragons, it’s perhaps in 4.09 that we get the fullest exploration of freedom.

There has obviously been a lot written on the subject of freedom throughout human history, and rather than foolishly attempt to summarize thousands of years of philosophy, I’m going to refer to one of my favorite understandings, written by W.E.B. DuBois:

I dream of a world of infinitive and valuable variety; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human variety in height and weight, color and skin, hair and nose and lip. But more especially and far above and beyond this, is a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of difference, topped with freedom of soul to do and be, and freedom of thought to give to a world and build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each effort to stop this freedom of being is a blow at democracy—that real democracy which is reservoir and opportunity” (The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History, pg. 165.)

DuBois here notes three central elements of freedom: the physical (“to do and be”), the mental (“thought and dream, fantasy and imagination”), and the generational (“give to a world and build into it”). The first two components of freedom are understood by much of Western political philosophy through the terms “negative liberty” and “positive liberty” (coined by Isaiah Berlin), freedom from external threats and freedom to engage in philosophic activity. To these conceptions, DuBois adds a third that all the white dudes who conceived of the other two wouldn’t be concerned with: central to achieving them is the recognition that every individual owes prior and future generations their efforts to maintain liberty, that liberty is not just a theoretical principle but an action.

Turning now to episode 4.09, I think we can begin to understand how each of these three types of freedom overlap.

To start, the conflict of the episode deals with negative liberty. Silver and Flint to some degree know that if one catches the other with the chest, there is a chance they will be killed, and Silver wants the chest to ensure that Woodes Rogers does not kill Madi. In short, they are fighting for their survival, their physical freedom.

Moving on to the flashbacks between Flint and Silver, we begin to see the connection between negative liberty and positive liberty. First, because Silver and Flint are equals without the same political obligations to each other as they have to the crew, the people who serve them and who they serve in turn, they can be honest with each other. Silver recognizes this in telling Flint: “The men...I have to manage how they see me...But for pride to be an issue between you and I, well, I think we’re playing past that by now.” Because they, at that point, have physical/negative liberty with each other, they are then allowed to pursue mental/positive liberty, that being the revelation of their true selves. 

However, Flint becomes aware that this physical liberty is an illusion because Silver is unwilling to meet him equally in their pursuit of positive liberty: 

You know my story. Thomas, Miranda, all of it. Know the role it played in motivating me to do the things that I've done, the things I will do. It has made me transparent to you. Not only that, but when I told you this story, you insinuated yourself into it. The latest in a line of ill-fated partners, situating yourself such that...were you and I ever to come to blows, I'd be forced to hesitate before doing you any harm.

Thus Silver actually has a physical advantage over Flint, negating any semblance of Flint’s physical liberty in their relationship. Through Silver’s attempts to kill Flint in this episode and in the finale, we see that without both physical/mental (or negative/positive) liberty present in any relationship, neither will exist; you cannot have one without the other.

This brings us to what I’ve decided to call generational freedom, though I suppose it could also be called communal freedom. In this episode, the concept of generational freedom is brought up in relation to both Jack and Madi. First, we see it in Jack’s conversation with the man he chose to navigate him to Skeleton Island:

Jack: You sailed with Avery.

Old man: Long time ago.

Jack: 20 years? More, even, maybe?

Old man: More, aye.

Jack: Mm-hmm. You do know where you're going, yes? No, seriously, I've got quite a lot riding on this.

Old man: One day, you'll leave the account. Take a wife, father children. See less and less of the sea until she becomes like a painting hanging on the wall, static and irrelevant to your daily existence. But she'll keep on calling you. And when she does, you'll step into that painting and feel the swell beneath your feet. It'll all come back as if it were like yesterday.

Jack: Is that so?

Old man: I've watched you and yours handle the account since I and mine left it. Accomplish things that no one I ever sailed with could dream of. From what I've overheard, if you reach Skeleton Island, might mean the end of the governor. Maybe keep the account alive a little while longer. Is that so?

Jack: That and more.

Old man: Then I'll take you to it. Hold on to this for as long as you can, for all of us who once had it...and walked away.

In this conversation, we see the generational connections within piracy. The old man sailed with Henry Avery, the person most responsible for establishing the current status of piracy in Nassau, and he is conversing with the person who will usher Nassau into a new era. He is careful to remind Jack of this link and of how unseverable it is; no matter how far away Jack gets from piracy, he will never be able to leave it fully behind. There is some sense of owing his existence in this world to Avery and all those who came before him, a debt he must repay with his actions (namely, removing Woodes Rogers and continuing the life of piracy in Nassau).

Immediately after this conversation, we get Woodes Rogers’ bargaining with Madi. He offers her an ultimatum: accept his treaty or he will kill Silver and all of Silver’s crew, which includes many of Madi’s people. Madi rejects his ultimatum with one of the most poignant speeches in the show:

The voice you hear in your head, I imagine I know who it sounds like, as I know Eleanor wanted those things. But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women and children who'd lost their lives to men like you. Men and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them and this war, their war, Flint's war, my war, it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight, to save John Silver's life or his men's or mine. And you believe what you will, but it was neither I nor Flint, nor the Spanish raider who killed your wife. That, you did.

Because of her existence as a former slave who had lived in hiding for most of her life, Madi most fully understands generational freedom. She knows that the supposed freedom Rogers’ treaty offers her and her people is not actual freedom because it fails to address the unfreedom of her ancestors, of the rest of the enslaved people in the Caribbean, because she knows that freedom will never be achieved on the terms of the oppressor. She knows that she owes this war to every victim of England’s empire and that it is the only way to achieve what DuBois calls the opportunity to “give to a world and build into it.” 

This episode thus introduces the idea that “freedom every sense of the word” depends on one recognizing one’s duty to one’s community that consists of not just its current members, but its past and future members. Complete freedom is achieved when one begins to fight to protect the freedom of those who do not yet exist. Madi understands this about freedom, as does Flint, but despite Silver’s insistence that he and Flint are true friends and equals, he is incapable of grasping the generational component of freedom and he therefore ensures that physical and mental freedom, too, will fall outside of his grasp.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

Angela Merkel - various reports

             More than a week since Germany's election, the momentum is clear. Germany's next government will most likely be a coalition of three parties:  the Greens and the Free Democrats, led by a Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This is not written in stone just yet, but its likelihood is strengthened because Germany's conservatives are now weakened. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives look anemic after hemorrhaging an unprecendented numbers of voters at the ballot box. Last month's election results were the conservatives' worst ever. Voter behavior has changed here in Germany. Tonight, we focus on the consequences. What does it mean for the driving power of the European Union when Germany's conservatives are no longer a political force to be reckoned with?  How do you ease the existential worries at NATO or within the transatlantic world if Germany's conservatives are no longer a reliable partner with power? 

            Germany is marking the 31st anniversary of re-unification. It was on this day in 1990 that a treaty reuniting the former East and West Germany went into effect following the fall of the Berlin Wall a year earlier.               This year's ceremonies are being held in Halle in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Starting with a church service attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and other dignitaries. After 16 years as Chancellor, this is the last Unity Day event Merkel will attend in her official capacity. 

             What legacy does German Chancellor Angela Merkel leave? DW's Max Hofmann (Head of News & Current Affairs) discusses what's at stake in the 2021 German election with international guests. Guests: Naledi Pandor, South African Foreign Minister Gurjit Singh, former Indian ambassador to Germany Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister, economist and author.

             She's one of the world's most powerful women. But, after deciding to give up office, Angela Merkel will soon leave her leading position in German and international politics. Foreign correspondents look back on Merkel's 16 years as chancellor. Eight correspondents from eight nations look back — including Pascal Thibaut of France, US journalist Patrick Donahue and Jun Nojima of Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, who considers Angela Merkel a guardian of Western democracy. Others warn against exaggerating Merkel's influence. What they all have in common is that they have followed the chancellor for years, even to the produce section of her local supermarket. The fact that, as one of the world's most powerful women, Merkel sometimes does the shopping herself, probably says a lot about her personality. A report by Robert Richter.

[arcticdementor]

Hindsight may very well be 20/20, but with that caveat out of the way, some events truly come across as historical in their importance even as they play out in realtime. We might not know what the results will be, but we can feel that something quite big is happening. Watching the fall of the Berlin wall was one such moment in recent history, and watching the twin towers fall was another one.

The retreat from Afghanistan should not have made the list, or least not the top of it. Yet, it has clearly already made its way there, being widely seen as something truly momentous by most if not all the people observing it. The reason it shouldn’t have had those same connotations as the fall of the Berlin wall is because it was not only planned in advance and decided upon by the 45th president, not the 46th, but because almost everyone at this point wished for the war to just end. But it is how it has ended that has really thrown back the curtain and shown the world the rot festering beneath. The Soviet Union was dying in 1989, when it completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. It still managed to do so in an orderly fashion, with a symbolic column of russian APCs crossing the bridge over to Uzbekistan. The leader of the war effort, one Colonel-General Gromov, symbolically rode in the very last BTR, and then proclaimed to the gathered journalists that there wasn’t a single russian soldier behind his back.

The American withdrawal, by contrast, is a grotesque spectacle, laid bare to the eyes of the world in realtime thanks to the wonders of modern technology. The Soviet attempt at braving the graveyard of empires could, if one was charitably inclined, at least be construed as some form of tragedy (”we tried to help, but in the end, we accomplished nothing”), and the russians did their best to make the entire thing appear somewhat dignified and solemn. Thirty years later, the scene is closer to a black form of comedy. The American consulate was evacuated by helicopter, about one month after president Biden referred to just such an evacuation from Saigon as an example of how Afghanistan and Vietnam were not comparable. The entire government collapsed within a matter of hours, not months. Throngs of people gathered around the airports, desperate to escape; American authorities had no more guidance to offer american citizens stuck in Afghanistan than to ”shelter in place” and then presumably ask the Taliban for a visa once regular flight traffic resumes. Desperate people even clung to the airframes of departing cargo planes before falling to their deaths, like a grim re-enactment of frozen and starving german soldiers trying to escape by clinging to the last planes leaving Stalingrad.

…

There may be a deeper aspect to this than a lot of people might perceive at present. On the level of pure geopolitics, the utterly embarrassing debacle of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan can only serve to make China more bold in any future confrontation over Taiwan. The American eagle is faltering, and its rivals will not sit idly by for long. But this is probably the lesser of the big consequences of Afghanistan. There is another, much more significant implication of the collapse of the American project here, one with much more acute bearing on the immediate future of American society itself. To understand why, it’s useful to reflect on a certain political and historical point made by Carl Schmitt in his by now nearly hundred year old essay, whose english name is often rendered as The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. The essay is well worth a read in full today, and the reader might be surprised (or maybe not) at how relevant many of the descriptions of the ongoing political crisis in 1923 may seem to us today, nearly a hundred years later. The most relevant passage, however, deserves to be quoted in full:

”In the history of political ideas, there are epochs of great energy and times becalmed, times of motionless status quo. Thus the epoch of monarchy is at an end when a sense of the principle of kingship, of honor, has been lost, if bourgeois kings appear who seek to prove their usefulness and utility instead of their devotion and honor. The external apparatus of monarchical institutions can remain standing very much longer after that. But in spite of it monarchy’s hour has tolled. The convictions inherent in this and no other institution then appear antiquated; practical justifications for it will not be lacking, but it is only an empirical question whether men or organizations come forward who can prove themselves just as useful or even more so than these kings and through this simple fact brush aside monarchy.”

What Schmitt is saying here is very important, and it might very well end up being the true cost of the Afghanistan debacle. Every ruling class throughout history advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating claims can take many different forms and may change over time, but once they become exhausted or lose their credibility, that is pretty much it.

…

What Schmitt is saying is that when the legitimating claim for a particular form of elite is used up, when people no longer believe in the concepts or claims that underpin a particular system or claim to rule, the extinction of that particular elite becomes a foregone conclusion. Once Napoleon came along, it became increasingly impossible to actually believe (or at least effect a suspension of disbelief) that kings were born to rule and had a right to rule. As such, the only argument kings were left with in order to be tolerated by their own subjects became practical in nature: look at how useful this king is, look at how well his administration runs, look at how much stuff you’re getting out of letting him sit on the throne. But once you are merely left with practical arguments of that kind, as Schmitt rightly points out, your replacement becomes a question of simple empiricism. The moment someone more useful is found – like, say, a president – out you go, never to return. The replacement of Louis XVI with a republic was a world-shattering event. The fall of his nephew, Louis Philippe I, in favor of another republic, was a mere formality by comparison. By the time of his fall, not even Louis Philippe himself believed in kings being some sort of semi-divine beings. Certainly almost none of his subjects did.

…

Moreover, on a more practical level, the war in Afghanistan became another sort of crucible. In very real terms, Afghanistan turned into a testbed for every single innovation in technocratic PMC governance, and each innovation was sold as the next big thing that would make previous, profane understandings of politics obsolete. In Afghanistan ”big data” and the utilization of ever expanding sets of technical and statistical metrics was allowed to topple old stodgy ideas of dead white thinkers such as Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, as ”modern” or ”scientific” approaches to war could have little to learn from the primitive insights of a pre-rational order. In Afghanistan, military sociology in the form of Human Terrain Teams and other innovative creations were unleashed to bring order to chaos. Here, the full force of the entire NGO world, the brightest minds of that international government-in-waiting without a people to be beholden to, were given a playground with nearly infinite resources at their disposal. There was so much money sloshing around at the fingertips of these educated technocrats that it became nearly impossible to spend it all fast enough; they simply took all of those countless billions of dollars straight from the hands of ordinary americans, because they believed they had a right to do so.

…

Put plainly: managers, through the power of managerialism, were once believed to be able to mobilize science and reason and progress to accomplish what everyone else could not, and so only they could secure a just and functional society for their subjects, just as only the rightful kings of yore could count on Providence and God to do the same thing. At their core, both of these claims are truly metaphysical, because all claims to legitimate rulership are metaphysical. It is when that metaphysical power of persuasion is lost that kings or socialists become ”bourgeois”, in Schmitt’s terms. They have to desperately turn toward providing proof, because the genuine belief is gone. But once a spouse starts demanding that the other spouse constantly prove that he or she hasn’t been cheating, the marriage is already over, and the divorce is merely a matter of time, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

I suspect we are currently witnessing the catastrophic end of this metaphysical power of legitimacy that has shielded the managerial ruling class for decades. Anyone even briefly familiar with the historical record knows just how much of a Pandora’s box such a loss of legitimacy represents. The signs have obviously been multiplying over many years, but it is only now that the picture is becoming clear to everyone. When Michael Gove said ”I think the people in this country have had enough of experts” in a debate about the merits of Brexit, he probably traced the contours of something much bigger than anyone really knew at the time. Back then, the acute phase of the delegitimization of the managerial class was only just beginning. Now, with Afghanistan, it is impossible to miss.

It is not just that the elite class is incompetent – even kings could be incompetent without undermining belief in monarchy as a system – it is that they are so grossly, spectacularly incompetent that they walk around among us as living rebuttals of meritocracy itself. It is that their application of managerial logic to whatever field they get their grubby mitts on – from homelessness in California to industrial policy to running a war – makes that thing ten times more expensive and a hundred times more dysfunctional. To make the situation worse, the current elites seem almost serene in their willful destruction of the very fields they rely on for legitimacy. When the ”experts” go out of their way to write public letters about how covid supposedly only infects people who hold demonstrations in support of ”structural white supremacy”, while saying that Black Lives Matter demonstrations pose no risk of spreading the virus further, this amounts to the farmer gleefully salting his own fields to make sure nothing can grow there in the future. How can anyone expect the putative peasants of our social order to ”trust the science”, when the elites themselves are going out of their way, against all reason and the tenets of basic self-preservation, to make such a belief completely impossible even for those who really, genuinely, still want to believe?

…

I find it very likely that most future historians will put the date of the real beginning of the collapse of the current political and geopolitical order right here, right now, at the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just as with any other big historical process, however, many others will point out that the seeds of the collapse were sown much farther back, and that a case can be made for several other dates, or perhaps no specific date at all. This is how we modern people look at the fall of the french ancien regime, after all. Still, it is quite obvious that the epoch of the liberal technocrat is now over. The bell has well and truly tolled for mankind’s belief in their ability to do anything else than enrich themselves and ruin things for everyone else.

How long it will take for their institutions to disappear, or before they end up toppled by popular discontent and revolution, no one can know. But at this point, I think most people on some level now understand that it really is only a matter of time.

[abecat]

One of the many sketches I’ve done this summer, trying to figure out how to teach the figure drawing/character design class online. Of course, these indulgent drawings are just for me, but they help me think about the biopolitics of figure drawing in the current moment (of pandemic, of political unrest, of collective trauma)

First some background: From late modernism onwards, the whole enterprise of  academic figure drawing becomes highly suspect. As I understand it, the french academic tradition (that spread through Europe and into the US) established the educational standards of anatomy and naturalistic rendering, with the aim of training artists in the creation of highly emotional images. These images would be used by the state to form cohesive and durable nationalist identities: cheesy neoclassical paintings that drew a connection between France’s III republic to ancient Greece and its idealized concept of democracy. Like Uncle Sam in America’s WWI, these neoclassical mascots have one purpose above all: to rouse the spirit in service of the sovereign (emperor, corporation) for easy manipulation. Now, dear person reading this, you may agree with the project of building a national imagery regardless of how “ahistorical” these pictures may be. But you have give modernist their due: the worst excesses of these canons were embarrassingly in evidence during the Third Reich, with its obsession over "perfect” bodies for a “perfect” race.

So drawing state-sanctioned “perfect” bodies is out of the question, but modernist didn’t really delivered us from sin either. There are just too many examples of asshole “genius” artists who thrived on a predatory relationship to their subjects (Gaugin and Picasso, anyone?) It seems that the emancipatory gesture against the naive bourgeoise taste could not extend to the issues of gender and race inequalities. Postmodern artists, aligned to feminist, queer and anti-colonial projects, thrived on these active biopolitics, engaging them to draw attention to injustice, to deal with false consciousness and internalized opression, and to express long-repressed lust. The question become not whether we should do figure drawing, but who and why should do it. I find the question to be eminently just and interesting, but just as often, paralyzing.

In this context, a class “Figure Drawing/Character Design” may look, from the outside like a puzzling idea. It is like a bad recipe that mixes modernis-postmodernist unresolved issues with total capitulation to market forces. Anime? Cartoons? Caricatures? Stories? And all of it mixed with figure drawing? How can this be insightful?

Figuring the potential for insight in this class, given this context I sketch here, has been my challenge for the last five years. I could simply say that there is a market for it, that students/audiences like it, that gaining skills is pragmatic, that people have been drawing “characters” from prehistory... and just move on feeling justified. But that wont do.

One day I will write something scholarly about this, but here is a sketch of why I think this class has the potential for insight: Character design and figure drawing exist in the context of a complete immersion in capitalist communication technologies. After giving ourselves a moment to mourn the fall fo the Berlin Wall (if that’s your jam,) we must understand that our existence in this soup of capitalist communication technologies has the effect of diluting the membrane that trap us in our bodies. The concept of “Character Design” as something that can be learned and practiced by anyone (the putative project of art education) means that we all have the right toy around with the body. Paradoxically, the fact that we all are here shouting in social media, telling our stories and drawing our traumas, attenuates some of the inequalities that made modernist and postmodernist so anxious. Character Design is a conversational tool, a shared language that a huge mass of “content creators” use to talk about The Other, and by extension, The Self.

To put it clearly, drawing characters reveals a deep longing for The Other - an enormously human need for proximity and validation (just ask Henry Darger). But because, in the “old, real world” The Other is prickly and hurts (and we hurt them), we must negotiate. Like transitional objects, these characters facilitate the exploration of new shared realities, new embodiments.

Here is the secret you should know: every character I draw is me. Is not a portrait of me, is not a realistic or idealized version of me. It is me extending my being into matter, exploring other bodies, and making those explorations have real stakes thanks to erotic, violent or tender psychodynamics. In every choice I make about the design of my characters I detect, after the fact, the longings, traumas and hopes to form my personality. For example: all this skinny catgirls I’ve been drawing since Im 12 (way before I knew what the internet and furry or anime was) are intimatel related to life-long struggle with body dysmorphia. As I draw a crispy ribcage, I can feel the sharp angles as if they were mine, to mention one example.

The figure component of the class comes into play in a very specific way: the ritual of drawing a nude model in person is a perfect illustration of the shared responsibility for reality formation among people. Nude models, who must stay still and never turn their heads around to scan the room, depend on all artists in attendance to hold the world together, to perceive and refigure what the model can’t see. It is a powerfully intimate dynamic in which the model imposes a moral contract. The model says “ you see me naked and I hold you responsible for my well being, as I remain in this vulnerable position, all in service of this ritual that transcends us both.” To bring storytelling and character design into the mix (that is, to bring the vulnerability revealed by design choices, as in the case of my anorexic catgirls), is to up the ante. I’ve seen it in the room: both artist and model disrobe, the model by putting themslves, nude, in the hands of us artists in attendance. The artists by revealing their current negotiation with The Other through their characters.

And now I gotta teach this remotely. The model is not available, and so the stakes feel lower, less challenging. As I was drawing these characters using cheesy nude photos I found on some website, I realized that I missed the sacred contract, the confessional dimension of drawing like this in the figure drawing room. I guess I’m writing all of this precisely because I feel the need to confess.

[mariacallous]

On the first day of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner met with then-Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk. As Melnyk later recounted, Lindner didn’t simply decline to supply Ukraine with weapons or disconnect Russia from the SWIFT payment system, as Ukraine had a “few hours left” of its sovereignty. It became clear he was preparing to discuss the future of a Russian-occupied Ukraine with the puppet government that would be installed by the Kremlin. This reflected a general attitude: The West at the time thought it would be easier if Ukraine simply surrendered.

An uncomfortable truth about Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine, so plainly obvious that it’s usually overlooked, is that it became possible not only because it was conceived and carried out by the aggressor but also because it was allowed by bystanders. The biggest blow to democracy on a global scale was not the war itself but the fact that—despite all “never again” claims—European and Western countries in general agreed and accepted beforehand that another European nation might be deprived of its sovereignty, freedom, and independent institutions, and it might find itself militarily occupied. (If this isn’t how they felt, then they wouldn’t have evacuated their embassies in Kyiv.)

So far, the West has been having a good war in Ukraine—above all, because its present course still allows the West to behave as if the war is not its own. The West’s political discourse, rationalized in the ivory tower language of non-escalation and nonprovocation, is still basically about how best to ensure that exposure to the continued risk of military aggression and death is restricted to Ukrainians. In a basic sense, the West has always been afraid of a Ukrainian victory.

There are three central reasons for that fear. The first is the West’s profound non-revolutionism. Ukraine is now bearing an unthinkable price for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called Friedliche Revolution (or Peaceful Revolution) of 1989 that was so much celebrated in Germany. It was famously called Die Nachholende Revolution, the “catch-up revolution,” by the de facto German state philosopher Jürgen Habermas—a term that symptomatically reveals the basic Western understanding of Eastern Europe’s role after the collapse of the communist bloc. The only task the region was assigned was simply catching-up with the West regardless of its actual historical experience. The ongoing war shows that this catch-up revolution became a catch-up regression into complacency, mirroring the general trajectory of the West after the proclaimed “end of history.”

Ukraine’s victory over Russia would indeed mean a genuine revolution for the West. It would require, foremost from Europe, a radical transformation. Eventual European Union and NATO enlargement are necessary—but only what lies on the surface. That is the same reason why the European Union couldn’t accept the political outcomes of Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution of 2014. As a political marketplace—or agora, in ancient Greek—reclaimed by its citizens, the Euromaidan revolution dragged Europe back to its roots of democracy, justice, anti-oligarchy, and freedom. In its revolutionary nature, Euromaidan was so fundamentally European that it turned out to be too European for today’s EU. Ukraine appeared to be a test that Europe failed to pass. But Euromaidan is not just a story of an exciting revolutionary past; it has allowed Ukraine to survive and effectively resist Russia’s atrocious war of aggression today.

In reality, Ukraine has experienced three Euromaidans—all different but driven by the same political intention. The first one in 2014 was a revolutionary Euromaidan, which successfully opposed an authoritarian bloody assault on society. The second one in 2019 was an electoral Euromaidan, which elevated to the presidency a person capable of maintaining the state during an existentially critical moment. And the third one was a war Euromaidan, when the whole country became one armed revolution opposing Russia’s military invasion in February 2022. The juxtaposition of the first and the last is pivotal—in 2014, the Euromaidan social movement was against an internal oppressor, the state repressive apparatus seized by a criminal autocrat; in 2022, the Euromaidan movement unified with the state to resist an external military oppressor. The history of the Euromaidan thus demonstrates that revolutions can improve the state in a progressive direction, away from authoritarianism—indeed, this is exactly why Russia launched a war of annihilation against the country.

The second reason the West cannot come to terms with a Ukrainian victory over Russia is because of its own colonial legacy and its current post-colonial position. The West has effectively shifted its experience with colonialism to the past and maintains a blind eye toward colonial experiences in other parts of the European continent. This is motivated in part by a bad conscience as well as the West’s own self-recognition and direct involvement in these ongoing experiences of oppression. Europe’s East is invisible in the Western post-colonial discourse precisely because it is so central.

Long regarded as a periphery between Western and Russian metropoles, Eastern Europe has struggled with Russian imperialism for decades at the very least—and in some cases even centuries. But after World War II, the West’s dominant approach toward Eastern Europe was best expressed through Germany’s misnomer Ostpolitik, in which the actual East was avoided to actively deal with imperial powers in Moscow. And when the EU established its Eastern European policy, called the Eastern Partnership, it was described as a policy toward outlying “neighborhoods.” The countries of Europe’s post-Soviet East were assigned a functional role of borderlands or buffer zones that provided huge benefits for the EU in terms of various supplies and resources while exposing those states to Russian revanchism. Despite intending to overcome the historical division of Europe and political isolation of its East, the EU indulged in its repressed colonial mindset and separated itself from the so-called under-civilized, second-hand Eastern Europe.

But Europe is a strange thing—its center lies in its East, exactly where the fate of the whole continent and much beyond is currently being decided on the battlefield. The unwillingness of former Western metropoles, Berlin and Paris in particular, to recognize and accept the full-fledged agency of post-Soviet European countries, determined by a usual post-colonial habit, actually explains constant foot-dragging and weapons delivery delays to Ukraine. A central issue here is the right to violence and who deserves it, which has always been decisive for the history of colonialism. From a hegemonic viewpoint, it is the colonized who are not supposed to be equipped to apply violence—much less to win. It is only the colonizers who are allowed to fully possess and dispose of the right to violence at their own discretion.

A third reason why the West fears what Ukraine’s victory would mean has to do with time and the war itself. The “never again” slogan, the EU’s common ideological denominator, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in a perverted sense. Indeed, if one literally accepts the principle that “it should never happen again,” then war is thought of as impossible simply because it’s unimaginable in spite of realities on the ground. The EU has fetishized the idea of peace to the extent that it completely repressed the realities of war—only to be totally unprepared when the repressed came back.

It was exactly that moment of unreadiness that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz famously called a Zeitenwende—an epochal shift, literally a turn of times. In truth, especially in the German case, the proclamation of a turning point hides an intention toward its opposite—that things would be better if they remained as they were. Its real political name is rather a Zeitverschwendung, a waste of time, as it is Ukraine that is now buying time for the West, paying an immense price every day to do so. What characterizes the West’s constant belatedness and inability to act is a time out of joint, to quote William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It’s a profoundly wicked logic that requires another mass grave to trigger the next set of sanctions against an aggressor or deliver a minimal portion of arms to a country in dire need.

There has been so much talk in the EU over the last seven decades of how Europe relates to its history and learned its lessons from the past. But what is history if not the knowledge of time and what time means, the knowledge of how to act in time? If you talk so much about history but at the same time are always too late in your actions, perhaps there is something wrong with the story you present about yourself. Zeitenwende is actually a form of political self-deception that shows how hard it is for the West to really be contemporary, to keep pace with the demands of the present.

A proper understanding of time and place are the basic requirements for any appropriate political action. Violent events like revolutions or wars especially depend on time—if one doesn’t act when needed, then the situation only deteriorates and becomes more violent. As Europe, unfortunately, is already at war, the West will inevitably have to act more decisively and directly. At the moment, it prefers to think the war will drag on in its present form, where there are no boots on the ground from other Western nations. But the actual choice the West is currently confronted with is either to apply all the military, political, and economic means it has without delay to defeat Russian aggressors and restore Ukraine’s borders or to intervene when that aggression has proliferated elsewhere and Eastern Europe has become a battlefield again.

It’s a question of time. And it’s indeed a Hamletian choice.

The time is out of joint/O cursed spite!

That ever I was born to set it right!

[randomvarious]

Scorpions - “Wind of Change” Kuschelrock 6 Song released in 1990. Compilation released in 1992. Pop-Rock / Hard Rock / Hair Metal

From an oral history of the Scorpions' early 90s hit, "Wind of Change," published in 2015 in Rolling Stone:

[Lead guitarist, Rudolf] Schenker: In the Scorpions we have this kind of saying: Love, peace, and rock & roll. The love stands for "Still Loving You." The rock & roll stands for "Rock You Like a Hurricane." And the peace? That's for "Wind of Change."

When it comes to Hannover, Germany's Scorpions, Americans basically know the band for those three songs mentioned above, plus, of course, "No One Like You." But the Scorpions are way more than just a handful of classic rock radio hits. They've actually been around in some form or fashion since nineteen sixty-fucking-five. I mean, think about that. The Scorpions actually predate Revolver, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground. That's really not how anyone actually thinks of them in the timeline of rock history.

But that's because they took a long while to catch on, especially in the States. While 70s-era Scorpions represents the most technically perfect time in the band's tenure, largely because of lead guitarist Uli John Roth's wizardry, it didn't end up translating to American sales. It would take Roth's departure, which ultimately caused a change in the band's overall sound, to do that.

The Scorpions would find a way to adapt throughout the decade of excess by freely indulging themselves in crassly commercial hair metal, unleashing the instant guitar-squealing classic, "Rock You Like a Hurricane," in 1984. But if you know the tried and true hair metal formula, you know that for every few hard rockin' singles that a band pumps out, there's a power ballad to go along with them. And the Scorpions didn't just become known for their brash brand of metal; they could create quite the power ballad, too.

But while most power ballads tended to be about tender romance or sad heartbreak, the Scorpions decided to turn to more important things, like politics. And they were well-equipped for it. Unlike their American contemporaries who never faced a real day of political hardship in their lives, the Scorpions directly experienced the horrifying effects of Germany’s split into East and West. Not only that, but they were also raised by the generation that either subscribed to Nazism or, at the very least, failed to do anything to halt its rise.

So when the Scorpions were afforded the opportunity to be one of the first rock bands to play behind the Iron Curtain in Leningrad in 1988, they jumped at it, with two ideas in mind. One was to acknowledge the absolute terror that their ancestors had wrought upon the Russian people during World War II, showing that they were part of a new, peace-loving generation of Germans who found the actions of their ancestors to be awful and abhorrent (By this logic, US bands should be playing in just about every single country every single day. That goes for English bands, too). The other was to bring an implied message of hope and freedom to people who had been largely cut off from western art and culture. Not that Russians didn't know the Scorpions. Popular western music had been smuggled into the Soviet Union for years, but actually having the people who made that music performing right in front of their very eyes was, symbolically, a very big deal.

The Scorpions' Leningrad shows were so successful that they were invited back to play at the Moscow Music Peace Festival alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Skid Row, and Russian bands Gorky Park and Brigada-S in 1989. It was during this trip that lead singer Klaus Meine was inspired to write both the lyrics and music for "Wind of Change." Because of their adoption of glasnost, the Soviet Union was opening itself up, which generated a feeling of positivity that the Cold War was finally coming to an end.

It just so happened that a few months after the song was written, the Berlin Wall fell, which marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. "Wind of Change" would then appear on the Scorpions' eleventh studio album, Crazy World, in November of 1990, and be released as a single a couple months later. The music video would feature images of the Berlin Wall falling and Germans rejoicing and reuniting after having been forcibly separated from each other for decades.

But contrary to popular belief, and probably thanks to the music video, "Wind of Change" was not about the Berlin Wall or Germany. It was strictly about Russia. The lines,

I follow the Moskva Down to Gorky Park Listening to the wind of change

make reference to the Moskva River, which runs through Moscow, and Gorky Park, a park in Moscow named after author Maxim Gorky. A Russian stringed instrument called the balalaika is also mentioned before the song's guitar solo.

But Klaus Meine was right about the fact that change was indeed coming. He just didn't know how much and how soon. Nevertheless, the world events that conveniently took place not long after "Wind of Change"'s completion would help propel the song to the top of the charts in multiple countries and amass something like 14 million copies sold worldwide. It was the #1 song in the world as it's now cited as the soundtrack to the fall of large-scale global authoritarian communism. And it was also the Scorpions' last real triumph.

But the "official" story about this global hit might not actually be true. A limited series podcast was released just this year called Wind of Change which alleges that the CIA may have actually written the song. A journalist received the hot tip from a trusted ex-CIA confidant and attempted to track down the story. And it's not really all that farfetched. The CIA has been surreptitiously involving itself in the production of pop culture for years with the latest credible allegations coming out of Venezuela. But when confronted with this question of who actually wrote "Wind of Change," Klaus Meine categorically denied the CIA's involvement between fits of laughter. But then again, he could just be gaslighting us all at the direction of the CIA.

Truthfully, in hindsight, this song sounds wistfully corny. And there were probably people who found it corny then, too. I mean, the whole idea of a hair metal band acting as liberators feels absurd, doesn't it? And that "sound that emanates from my electric guitar represents freedom and democracy" schtick feels almost transparently propagandistic. Plus, you can totally picture a bunch of suits in a room trying to figure out how to make a catchy song and someone going, “what if we put in a whistle?,” right? (The Rolling Stone oral history says there was a push and pull between band and label about whether or not to include it)

But what power ballad, political or not, doesn't sound corny today? We can still like this song from an ironic distance, can't we? Despite what we may think of it right now, we have to appreciate the cultural impact it had. Like it or not, it's one of the most important songs ever made. In 2005, the German TV network, ZDF, revealed that its viewers considered "Wind of Change" the song of the 20th century. And maybe its whole "We Are the World" charity single vibe is another reason to think that the CIA wrote it, but still, media, no matter how lame you might think it is, affects people's actions. If it didn't, the CIA wouldn't be in the pop culture business. And a song that aides in world-changing events, regardless of who wrote it and how it sounds nearly three decades after its release, deserves to be written about, don't you think?

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

It’s always been real.

As the final season begins, I’ve been thinking about why Game of Thrones caught on the way it did, when there has been such a wealth of fantastic content in the last few years.

Well, it’s fantastic. The story is dense and rich; the casting and directing is strong. And it’s just a beautiful show. The scenery, the score, the visual craftsmanship from the Red Keep down to the details of Sansa’s embroidery. Really, the worst it could be is okay.

But GOT isn’t just marketable, or even good, it’s a phenomenon. Why, around ten years ago, was that the moment when ASOIAF clicked for enough cultural decision-makers to become an HBO show? I suppose there’s an easy answer from a marketing perspective: if you grew up with Harry Potter, with a mental escape north to an ancient and magical castle, well, you’re old enough for a premium cable subscription now.

But a series can be successful, even excellent, but never quite break out and becoming a cultural thing. Part of that difference is about the context in which it’s consumed. The Sopranos was about a baby boomer’s mid-life crisis, airing when most baby boomers were feeling that crisp first chill of autumn. Battlestar Galactica and The Wire were intentionally in dialogue with the bleak politics of the early aughts – one about what happened when the systems we inherited were disrupted beyond repair and one where those systems worked exactly as intended. Not many early 2010s shows were able to retrofit themselves into the sociopolitical zeitgeist, with the notable exceptions of Homeland and Scandal – often criticized for being too gonzo (or perhaps, actually, for provoking discomfort by having complex female leads).

The Potter generation is also the Millennial generation. Millennials are the children of autumn; our generational mile markers have been one fall after another. The fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Twin Towers, the 2008 financial crash. Off in the background, the melting of the glaciers, and the decline of democracy around the world.

That sense of confusion and urgency, of the gyre ever widening, defines Game of Thrones and ASOIAF from the first couple of scenes/chapters: three hapless guys find the nerve to face something that is totally outside their frame of reference, and the only one who lives to tell the tale gets killed by the apparent protagonist. The most terrifying thing about this world is that most people don’t know how frightening it is. The most dangerous thing about this world may well be the our own human reluctance to dig in and believe a strange and awful truth. Game of Thrones is about life in the shadow of something about to go incalculably wrong.

If you hadn’t read ADWD, then you were surprised in the season 5 finale in 2015. You were probably shocked at the sheer profane misogyny on display during Cersei’s walk of shame. You almost certainly weren’t expecting Jon Snow’s leadership of the Watch – where he, in good faith, practically pleaded with his compatriots to back-burner comfortable xenophobia to face up to an existential threat, some forgotten enemy sweeping down from a distant frozen tundra to rot their brains and turn them against each other – to end because of a criminal conspiracy against him. It feels naive now, to have blinked at all that.

More than many viewers, I have not, subjectively, responded to some of its hardest-to-watch moments as a moral failing on the part of the show or the creators. I think there is a dark streak of violence inherent to the type of hierarchy this setting depicts. It is legitimately difficult to either create or discuss stories which grapple with the reality that everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls. Few, if any, of us allowed ourselves to anticipate a coalition of women taking a desperate world by storm. Game of Thrones was somehow just ahead of this cultural reckoning that we will, with a little luck and a lot of work, be having for years to come.

The world has changed radically during our lives, and it shows no sign of stopping. Maybe one of the great shows of this moment would have to be a narrative where nobody fills the role you expect them to fill. Damn right this show’ll kill Tony Soprano, and Prince Charming, and Big Bad after Big Bad. So will real life. Valar morghulis – some too soon; others not soon enough.

The show’s signature phrase, which seems to have penetrated the culture at large, are the Stark words: winter is coming. This truth is amoral, inexorable, even perversely reassuring in its consistency. Winter must come because the world has not ended. Unless Macumber weeps, unless the heavens fall, winter is always coming.

Until it’s here.

[alexsmitposts]

The US is as much a threat to the world as Hitler's Third Reich WASHINGTON IS BUILDING A POLICY EXACTLY TO A TEE THE EXAMPLE OF NAZI GERMANY

I just finished reading "Berlin diary" by William Shirer. (It doesn't necessarily fascinate you, but that's what I'm getting at.) I first encountered this piece in high school. This, of course, is Shearer's description, then a correspondent in Germany, of the rise of the Nazis. Most of this is well known to educated people. The Nazis, who controlled the local press, convinced the German population that the poles threatened Germany — just as Guatemala threatened the United States. It was said that the poles committed atrocities against the Germans. Then the Reich without any reason, with absolute superiority in the air, attacked Poland, bombed unprotected cities and killed a huge number of people. This was the German pattern repeated several times. Many reporters spoke of the smell of rotting bodies, of refugees dying of hunger and thirst. Today, the Reich is endlessly remembered as a model of evil. Remembered. But how is Nazi Germany different from today's United States? The lie is the same. Washington insisted that Iraq was going to get nuclear and biological weapons, that it had poisonous gas. None of this was true. The government, without interference from the media, convinced more than half of the American population that Iraq was responsible for the " nine-eleven "(the events of September 11, 2001-S. D.). Now Washington says Iran is working to get nuclear weapons, and of course that " the Russians are coming." The American press, unofficially but strictly controlled, thoroughly disputes none of this. Having prepared the American public as the Nazis had prepared theirs, Washington launched a brutal attack on Iraq, deliberately destroying infrastructure, leaving the country without electricity and clean water. The slaughter was terrible. But, according to America, the war was supposed to rid the Iraqi people of the evil dictator, bring democracy, freedom and human rights. (Oil turned out to be a completely random thing. Oil is always a matter of chance.) Washington does not close its eyes, leading its campaigns to improve the lives of those people whose most ardent desire is for America to stop improving their lives. To give Afghans democracy, human rights, and American values, the U.S. has for eighteen years bombed, bombed, bombed a largely illiterate population in a country that America doesn't care about. It is a cowardly war in which war planes to exterminate the peasants, who do not have any protection at all. The pilots and drone operators who do this deserve contempt, as does the country that sends them. How many more years will this last? For what purpose? And what is the difference from the German Nazis? The German Gestapo carried out sickening tortures in secret cellars. America is doing the same, holding torture prisons around the world. In them men and, undoubtedly, women, for many days are suspended by wrists, keep naked in very cold rooms, do not allow to sleep and periodically subject to beatings. (The Nazis of any nationality are Nazis and there.) Photos of Iraqis tortured by the Americans in Abu Ghraib show nearly naked prisoners lying in pools of blood. Tell me, please, how does this differ from what was done by the Reich? (More Gory photos are no longer stored online. Many of the remaining ones seem to have been edited.) Gina Haspel, the sadistic CIA chief who tortured Muslim prisoners, resembles ILSA Koch, the notorious Nazi torturer who also worked in prisons. I suppose the victims are easy to find. President trump recently pardoned several American war criminals, saying he wanted to give American soldiers "confidence to fight." This is tantamount to full permission to commit atrocities. The goal of barbaric training aimed at eradicating human decency and mercy is obscene barbarism. Atrocities are what soldiers do. And will do so as long as wars continue, and fiercely denied by the government. (When I was covering the" work "of Force Recon-marine special forces-I saw their motto on the wall:" Smash their skulls and eat their faces.") Perhaps the most famous example of applied approval was Nixon's pardon of Lieutenant Kelly, who ordered the killing of Vietnamese villagers, for which he received three years of house arrest. The Germans wanted an Empire, lebensraum (German. living space-SD) and resources, in particular oil. The Americans want an Empire and an oil whose control allows them to control the world. They go to conquer it all by invasion and intimidation. So America wants to bring democracy and human rights to Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria, which have a lot of oil, and the US has occupying forces in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other parts of the Middle East. What part of Syria does trump occupy? Surprise, surprise! The part where the oil is. Oil for the Americans, land for the Germans. As Shearer points out, the German public was not enthusiastic about the war until at least 1940 — nor is the American public today. But neither the one nor the other has expressed concerns about the horrors that her government brought to the world. What is the difference? The Parallels with the Reich do not end there. Washington is not trying to commit genocide against Jews, blacks or any other group within the country, content to kill those on whom its bombs fall. Trump is not comparable to Hitler. He lacks vision, backbone and, apparently, malice. Hitler was a very clever, very evil man who knew exactly what he was doing, at least politically. The same cannot be said of trump. Nevertheless, Hitler was — and trump is-surrounded by freaks of high militancy. Adolf had Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Reinhardt Heydrich, Julius Streicher, Eichmann. Trump has John Bolton, as immoral and pathologically aggressive as any of the Fuhrer's entourage. Pompeo-a bloated toad-man-bears an uncanny resemblance to Goering. Both he and Pence are Christian Evangelical heretics who believe they are connected to God by broadband. O'brien sounds like Bolton. Everyone wants war with Iran and possibly with China and Russia.

Wikipedia: "US army Soldiers killed between 347 and 504 unarmed people ... among the victims were men, women, children and infants. Some women, like children as young as 12, were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.» For this, Kelly received three years of house arrest — less than the sentence for a bag of methamphetamine-until he was pardoned by Nixon. Many Americans have said — and many still say-that he should not have been punished at all, that we should "take off the gloves" and let the troops fight. Again, that's what trump said. The German Nazis worshipped "blood and soil"**, the land of Germany and the Teutonic race, who, in their opinion, were genetically superior to all others. Americans can't easily worship race. Instead, they consider themselves "exceptional, "" irreplaceable," " shining hail on a hill," "the greatest civilization the world has ever known." The same narcissism and arrogance, a slightly different Foundation. Nazi Germany was, like Nazi America now, distinctly militaristic. The US has hundreds of bases around the world (China has one base outside the country — in Djibouti), they spend an outrageous amount on the armed forces, despite the absence of a clear enemy in the military sense of the word. The US is currently purchasing new missile submarines (Columbia class), aircraft carriers (Ford class), Intercontinental nuclear bombers (B21) and fighters (F-35). Nazi Germany attacked Poland, Norway, Belgium, France, Russia, America and England. America? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria. Supports the most brutal war against Yemen (Yemen is a serious threat to America!). Threatens Venezuela, China and Iran with attack, imposes embargo on Cuba. This is from the latter. Looking back a bit, we have Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, the intervention in Panama, and so on. Millions and millions killed. The third Reich was-and America remains-a major threat to world peace, a real pariah state. Is that something to be proud of?

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang is famous for his plan to implement a universal basic income to help Americans who lose their jobs to robots. And that isn’t the only place tech innovation takes center stage in his platform. He also advocates that your online data be treated as personal property that you can choose (or not) to sell to companies like Facebook. In a Yang presidency, election results would be verified through blockchain (an encryption system best known for shoring up cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin), quantum computing research would be better funded, and a Legion of Builders and Destroyers would have the power to overrule local zoning and land-use decisions for the greater infrastructure good. He is definitely the only presidential candidate talking seriously about fighting climate change with giant space mirrors.

But while the Yang platform can occasionally appear to drift toward a bid for a Hugo Award, experts who study the history and sociology of tech say his enthusiasm for and belief in the promise of technology is actually in step with the way most Americans (and the Democratic party, in particular) approach innovation. To the extent that Yang, a political novice whose credentials are largely built on his history as a successful tech entrepreneur, is polling above people like Kirsten Gillibrand and Bill de Blasio, it could be because he’s done such a good job of speaking to a defining aspect of the American psyche: one that both loves and fears tech. If anything, despite the sci-fi trappings of his policies, some experts said Yang might be a little behind the curve — playing to a vision of the future already looks a little retro in its belief that Silicon Valley hype will match reality.

The American relationship with technology is a complicated one. Research suggests that a majority of Americans — 59 percent in a 2014 Pew Research Center poll — have faith that technological advancements will make our lives better in the future. In 2016, the same organization found that 52 percent of us think technology has already had a largely positive effect on society. Those beliefs have long-standing precedent, said Lee Vinsel, a professor of science, technology and society at Virginia Tech, stretching back to the cults of personality built up around 19th century inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. “There’s an emphasis on technology and how it grows the economy as an unvarnished good,” Vinsel said.

But those top-line numbers can mask some underlying discomfort with the technological tools we allow into our lives. The same polls that show a majority of Americans looking forward to a tech-enabled future also show a distinct lack of enthusiasm for technologies closer to our fingertips. We may expect unspecified “technology” to make our lives better down the road, but 63 percent of us think opening U.S. airspace to drones will make life worse; 65 percent of us don’t like the idea of robots caring for the sick and elderly; and 78 percent of us would not eat meat grown in a lab if someone set it on our plates.

That’s because cycles of techno-hype and disillusionment are a major part of American culture and public policy, said Taylor Dotson, a professor of social sciences at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Usually, politicians and the public see a social problem and decide technology will solve it; then, they discover that the solution comes with a whole new set of issues — which they often expect future technology to solve. It’s like the old Simpsons joke describing alcohol as the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. “Oh, yeah. We see technology in a similar way to that,” Dotson said.

And experts said Yang’s platform taps right into the current American zeitgeist — for example, in the way he is simultaneously grappling with the risks artificial intelligence poses to some job markets, while proposing it as a replacement for other human jobs in other areas. But they also said he’s hardly the first political candidate to look to technology for the answers to societal ills. In fact, the Democratic Party has long considered itself the standard-bearer of scientific expertise, adopting an almost utopian vision of technological innovation since at least the Kennedy years, Vinsel said.

Practically, this means that Democrats have made technology a bigger part of their image over the years. In the 1980s, for instance, “Atari Democrats” wore fancy watches and promoted Silicon Valley boosterism as an alternative to courting labor unions, said Marc Aidinoff, a history doctoral candidate at MIT who has also worked as a junior policy advisor to Joe Biden. That trend continued under Barack Obama, said Mary Ebeling, a professor of sociology at Drexel University. Obama’s technology advisors were heavily recruited from Silicon Valley and many returned there after serving in his administration. And now, it’s not just the Democratic Party pushing tech-based solutions, Vinsel said. At this point, the ideas of technological innovation and economic growth are so linked in the American mind that neither party can step away from tech as a common good without seeming like they are anti-growth.

But Democrats’ tendency to seek solutions in technology for social problems has not always served them well. Ebeling is currently working on a project that explores how adopting electronic health records as part of the Affordable Care Act affected both patients and workers in the medical industry. The electronic records were pushed as a solution to deep-seated problems that weren’t really about technology — boosters promised they’d make healthcare cheaper and solve problems with patient access to consistent medical care. Instead, Ebeling is finding that we spent billions effectively favoring an industry that could never produce the returns it promised. “And lo and behold, by 2019, you have Kaiser Health News reporting on how much harm electronic health records have caused. Literally the death of patients because of medical errors,” she said.

When our faith and enthusiasm in the power of technology hits a wall, the collision happens with all the force of a coyote riding a jetpack. Aidinoff, the former political consultant, thinks we’re in a cultural moment when our belief in the promises of technology are meeting a crushing reality. Since the Cold War, Americans have been assured that the internet and communication networks would serve as liberalizing forces, or as tools to draw repressed countries toward democracy. But since the early 2000s, there have been a string of prominent situations where that ideal wasn’t realized. In the wake of the 2016 election, social media networks have been seen as tools of misinformation and political manipulation. But that wasn’t the first time tech failed us. For instance, dozens of internet cafes were opened in Iraq after the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein, and the internet was seen as being instrumental in the democratization of the country. But, Aidinoff said, that same internet access later ended up being a recruitment tool for extremist groups such as ISIS. Hilary Clinton once spoke about the potential of the internet as akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “But freedom didn’t happen the way it was supposed to,” Aidinoff said.

That’s a problem for a candidate like Yang — and a problem for any party that wants to view technology as a solution to social ills. Someone framing a campaign around technology as a problem solver and powerful force for good is, in some ways, a few years out of date — as anachronistic as Mark Zuckerberg floating a presidential run. In the end, what’s odd about Yang’s platform might be less that it’s calling for cloud seeding or AI social workers — and more that it’s calling for those things at a time when the relationship between Americans and tech could best be described as “it’s complicated.”