#it's because the importance of unions was a core theme of a major part of my childhood

[theduchessofnaxos]

A lifelong dream of mine has finally come true:

I'm in a worker's union!

Also I got into grad school and my first class is today and stuff.

But joining the grad student union is a very real highlight of the experience so far.

[lady-sphinx]

Few things are less understood than the hieros gamos – the “sacred marriage”.

Considered to be the “Holy Grail” of sexual rituals, is it within reach of comprehension and explanation?

One of the most intriguing, nebulous and controversial topics of history and magic is the “hieros gamos”, “the sacred marriage”. Believed to incorporate both sex and ritual, it should not come as a surprise that throughout history, it has attracted many – and often, those who should truly well stay clear of it.

Its fame has meant that the theme was used by Dan Brown in “The Da Vinci Code”, where he described it as how “man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God”. Brown is not the only one who has linked the experience with tantrism and the withholding of orgasm. He is, of course, also the man who considered Mary Magdalene’s vulva to be the Holy Grail. The quest to define the hieros gamos foremost is one of answering the question who and when it was performed. Some – including Dan Brown – link it to temple prostitution, while others see it as the king of the country who marries “the land” – in the form of a high priestess – to rejuvenate it.

For the Greeks, it was more abstract. They considered it a marriage between the gods and hence apparently outside of the reach of ordinary human beings.

It was only in the Jewish and medieval tradition that the hieros gamos became linked with magic and ritual and it is therefore here that we find the current obsession with it. As such, in 1605, Cesare della Riviera wrote that “in Europe, the tracks of these ancient rituals pass through the Gnostic schools, the alchemical and cabalistic currents of the Middle Ages and Renaissance – where numerous alchemical texts can be read on two levels.”

What is the hieros gamos?

At its core, the sacred marriage is more of a sacrament than a ritual. It is a marriage between husband and wife, but is of a sacred nature: it is a marriage blessed by the gods, with active participation of those deities, present in the act of lovemaking between the two humans. Focusing on the king having sexual intercourse with the high priestess is thus largely a misnomer, as the king was equally a high priest, and the queen… a high priestess.

In the 20th century, Carl Gustav Jung studied the hieros gamos through the Rosarium Philosophorum, a series of twenty woodcuts, printed in Frankfurt in 1550. The images have a clear sexual and royal nature: a king and queen are depicted with the sun and the moon, sharing a bed, performing sexual acts, as a result of which they become one, and are transformed.

And it is with these woodcuts that we come to the core of the hieros gamos: indeed, the primary purpose of the sacred marriage is that two equals, twin souls, a husband and wife, reunite through the hieros gamos. In short: the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, was not a marriage of just any human beings, but of twin souls.

They – like so many other religions – believed that each human being possessed a soul. That soul was half of one unit, which consisted out of one male and one female half. This meant that for every human being alive, there was a perfect twin soul. The quest in this lifetime was to find that twin soul, and be reunited with it. This was the truest of loves; the greatest quest. If not the Great Work of Alchemy.

The alchemist Nicolas Flamel stated that he was only able to accomplish the Great Work while in the presence of his wife Perenelle, but it was equally accepted that the majority of marriages here on earth, was not between twin souls. Once the twin souls had found themselves, apart from understanding the true depths of love and kinship they shared throughout their many lifetimes together, the hieros gamos would be completed at some point.

What was it? It was seen as God personally “attending” a sexual activity, in which the human beings – male and female – each get “infused” by the divine essence of the male and female component of God.

The best-known historical example of such a sacred marriage is between King Solomon and Queen Sheba. The story relates how the Queen of Sheba travelled from her homeland to meet Solomon, to perform the hieros gamos with him.

This story is discussed by Kathleen McGowan in her fact-based novel “Book of Love”. She relates that ancient traditions stipulate God had both a male and female aspect: El and Asherah. Tradition relates that they desired “to experience their great and divine love in a physical form and to share such blessedness with the children they would create. Each soul who was formed was perfectly matched, given a twin made from the same essence. […] Thus the hieros-gamos was created, the sacred marriage of trust and consciousness that unites the beloveds into one flesh.”   

Echoes of the sacred marriage can be found in the Song of Songs, directly linked with Solomon and describing love making. The title highlights it was the holiest of all songs, underlining its importance. Margaret Starbird has pointed out that there are strong parallels between the Song of Songs and poems to the Egyptian goddess Isis. Of course, both Solomon and Sheba and Isis and Osiris were twin souls, and hence able to experience the hieros gamos.

The Song of Songs became very important for the Kabbalists, specifically following the Book of the Zohar, which saw the Song of Songs as a prime example of the hieros gamos. It is in the Zoharic Kabbalah that God is represented by a system of ten spheres, each symbolizing a different aspect of God, who is perceived as both male and female. The Shekina was identified with Malchut, which was identified with the woman in the Song of Songs. Her beloved was identified with Yesod, which represents God’s foundation and the phallus or male essence.

Within the Jewish religion, Malchut and Yesod are El, the fatherly creator god, and his consort, Asherah. He was identified with the bull and She with the mother goddess. Indeed, women who have experienced the hieros gamos note that they have experienced this mother goddess energy, some even mentally visiting some of her sanctuaries during the experience. The imagery also reveals how long our ancestors have been familiar with this sacred marriage: the link between the bull and the earth goddess is visible on the walls of Catal Huyuk, built in the 8th millennium BC.

The hieros gamos should therefore be more appropriately labelled the reunion of twin souls, while incarnate in the body, through sexual activity, involving the active participation of the male and female aspect of God: “What God has put together, let no man separate.”

Those who have experienced such union find it largely impossible to describe – “beyond words”. They are, however, capable of breaking down the experience in some components. The man will become one with El, while the female melts with Asherah, the “Queen of Heaven”. During this union, it is entirely possible that Asherah or El is more prominent in one partner than in the other.

During these encounters, the sexual activity exceeds – and is different from – a normal orgasm; it is normally more intense, prolonged and multiple, whereby the orgasm itself is more energetic, rather than physical. However, the presence of this divine energy should not be seen as a form of possession; normally, the human sexual energy is equally present, and the sexual experience is a balance and interplay between both energies. To put it crudely: the hieros gamos is a foursome: two human beings, and El and Asherah operating with and through them.

Where does this leave the reputation of the hieros gamos as a form of temple prostitution? Asherah has been linked with the Mesopotamian Ishtar, whose cult did involve sacred prostitutes. However, should we perhaps see in these women initiatrices: women who prepared and taught certain methodologies as to how sacred sexuality should be experienced between partners, so that their union could lead to a sacred marriage?

Interestingly, the world’s oldest poem, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, relates how when Gilgamesh discovers the wild man Enkidu, he sends him to Shamhat, a priestess of Ishtar. She was instructed to teach Enkidu how to live as a cultural human being, suggesting that our ancestors identified culture specifically with how to make love properly – the hieros gamos way.

These examples, and the example of Solomon and Sheba, make it clear that the quest of the hieros gamos is not open to anyone: it is only the bailiwick of twin souls. It is why Flamel noted that it was only possible to be performed with Perenelle, clearly not only his wife, but also his twin soul.

It is also not so much ritual, but total union of body, mind and spirit: the two parts of one soul become united in the body, thus accomplishing in the body what they were at the beginning of time: a unity. The Great Work. And this union was “blessed” by the sacrament of the hieros gamos, in which God themselves, present at the separation of these souls at the beginning of time, reunited and blessed the two lovers.

So even though tantric yoga as such has nothing to do with it, tantrism does know about this state of perfect union and has labelled it Samadhi. It is the state where the respective individualities of each of the participants are completely dissolved in the unity of cosmic consciousness – the two units are reunited. For tantrics, the deities are not El and Asherah, but Shakti and Shiva.

Because it is “restricted” to twin souls, the hieros gamos might not hold the sexual and ritual appeal that many would like to give it. But it is nevertheless the most important sacrament of all, as it was the completion of the quest of the soul in life: to find his twin soul and reunite, and within this love, continue their life, combined.

People who have experienced the hieros gamos agree that this is a unique experience. One person stated that during the hieros gamos, both partners experienced total orgasm, though this was without any physical activity – through a physical connection, the other partner experienced perfectly the sexual stimulation the other person was sending in the mind – in short, the partners were both not only reading the other person’s mind, but interacted within that mind – as one unity of cosmic consciousness. Another person described it as “utter bliss” or what “heaven” must have felt like.

The feeling of “heaven on earth” may indeed be what the hieros gamos was all about: the twin souls in heaven, experiencing their divine union on earth.

As above, so below?

[violethowler]

The Greater Your Shadow Becomes

A recurring pattern in the Kingdom Hearts series is how often it misleads and misdirects us. We are told that Nobodies do not have hearts only to learn several games later that this was a lie. Our knowledge of Xehanort’s backstory has changed from one game to the next. The series itself even acknowledges its dishonesty, with the Master of Masters telling Young Xehanort that “the truth is what you see with your eyes, not what you hear[1],” while explaining that anything he says about his motivation and identity should not be trusted. 

So despite Kingdom Hearts III, Back Cover, and Union X appearing to position the Master of Masters as the next main antagonist, I remain suspicious that the role the series seems to be setting him up for will ultimately be filled by another. A big part of this has to do with the patterns I have noticed among stories that follow the Heroine’s Journey. 

In a Heroine’s Journey where there is a direct antagonist whose actions must be overcome in order to resolve the story’s conflict, that antagonist has commonly been presented as a narrative foil to either the protagonist or their Animus. In storytelling, a Foil is one character who is contrasted with another in order to highlight the other’s traits[2]. Most stories will emphasize the protagonist’s noble qualities by contrasting them with a character with similar personality traits or a similar backstory but who lacks the qualities that make the protagonist heroic. More often than not, these literary foils function as Shadow figures to the protagonist, and in many cases embody the negative elements of the story’s main themes.

For example, Gaston is put on a pedestal by the people around him as a paragon of what their society considers desirable. He’s handsome, skilled, and charismatic. Yet he constantly disrespects Belle’s agency and intelligence, not caring whether she’s willing to marry him or not. This positions him as a foil to the Beast, who is rude, monstrous, and has to learn how to perform basic tasks like eating with silverware. Despite his gruff exterior, he respects Belle’s intelligence and agency, holding her to the terms of their deal while also growing to prioritize her happiness above his own desires. 

Something that the overarching antagonists of every Heroine’s Journey I know of all have in common is that the audience is made aware of their existence very early on in the story. Their motivations may change over the course of the story, and when we learn about their goals can vary, but we generally learn of their existence before the end of the first act. 

We meet Gaston in the opening musical number of Beauty and the Beast. 

Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog also makes his first appearance in the opening musical number of his film. 

President Snow gets at least a mention in the background in the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy even if Katniss doesn’t meet him face to face until the second one. 

High Priestess Haggar is introduced in the first (technically second) episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 1. 

Meanwhile, the Master of Masters was only introduced near the end of Act II in the overarching narrative of Kingdom Hearts. Likewise, his goals are still unclear, in contrast to other Heroine’s Journey antagonists whose objectives are given to the audience at some point during the second act. So unless he turns out to be a familiar face under the hood, I find it unlikely that the Master of Masters will be the main antagonist of the next act. He’ll certainly play an antagonistic role, and definitely a major one, but everything I know about story structure is telling me that the “Big Bad” of the next arc is ultimately going to be someone else. 

The repeated emphasis on prophecy, fate, and destiny in Act II of the series creates a strong undercurrent of defying fate being a major theme of the final arc of the Kingdom Hearts story. Sora’s ability to connect with others has enabled him to pull off feats that should be considered impossible up to the point of rewriting the fated defeat of the Guardians of Light at the Keyblade Graveyard in Kingdom Hearts III. So it stands to reason that the main antagonist of the final act will be a character who either tries to defy fate in a negative way, or a character who does things because fate dictates it be done. 

So the major antagonist of Act III will most likely be someone who expresses the themes of fate and whether to defy or accept it in a negative way. Someone who serves as a foil to Sora. And someone who was introduced to the audience during Act I - meaning the original game, Chain of Memories, or Kingdom Hearts II. Given the amount of focus he has received since his introduction and how important Kingdom Hearts III revealed him to be in the lore of the series, there’s really only one person who qualifies: 

[Image Description: Luxu stares at the camera after taking off his hood in front of the Foretellers, revealing the face of Xigbar. End Description.]

As someone noted after the release of KH3, there are many similarities between Luxu and Sora when you sit down and think about it[3]:

Back Cover portrays Luxu as a young teen curious about the world, just like Sora. 

Much like how wanting to be with his friends is shown to be one of Sora’s major motivations, Luxu’s Secret Reports in Kingdom Hearts III portray him as wanting nothing more than to be with the people he cares about[4].

Both of them take up these cosmically significant roles with no idea of what lies ahead for them - all the pain, separation, and loss. But they cannot stop or rest and go home until they finish their task because people are counting on them. 

Where the two diverge is in their circumstances and how they reacted:

While Sora stumbled onto the mantle of a Keyblade wielder by accident and chose the responsibilities that came with his mission on his own, Luxu was given his by the Master as part of a greater purpose, and he carried out that role at his mentor’s instruction. 

Both of them hide their pain and weariness under a playful façade. 

Sora has spent his journey in the company of his friends and has relied on their support. Luxu has always been alone, relying only on himself. 

Sora holds onto his connections with others even at significant cost to himself, while Luxu casts aside his bonds and puts his mission above all else.

In addition to his narrative connections to Sora, there is also his connection to Riku as well. 

The scene where he reveals his face to the audience for the first time in Kingdom Hearts II begins with Sora initially mistaking him for Riku. 

In Kingdom Hearts III, he’s paired with Dark Riku at the Skein of Severance, a combination that stands out in contrast to the obvious narrative meanings behind the choices of the other boss groupings in the Keyblade Graveyard. 

Series producer Shinji Hasmimoto has said that Sora and Riku are the core of the story[5], so it would make sense, then, if the primary antagonist of the final act is someone with already established narrative connections to both characters. 

Tetsuya Nomura had the end of the Dark Seeker Saga outlined since Kingdom Hearts II was finishing development[6]. This indicates that everything done with Xigbar across the entire series was planned with the Luxu reveal in mind. The fact that he chose to give Xigbar such a significant part and planned it that far in advance signals that our dear Number II has a major role in the overall narrative of the series. Between the implications of the reveal setting him up as a foil for Sora and the patterns exhibited by major antagonists of other Heroine’s Journeys, I’m confident that role will likely be that of the overall villain of Act III. 

There is always the possibility that I could be wrong and that the Master of Masters will be the primary antagonist of the story’s final act. His influence of others and his writing of the Book of Prophecies appear to set him up as the author of our characters’ fates, which satisfied the narrative pattern of the antagonist reflecting the negative side of one of the story’s themes. 

However, as I said, he was introduced much later in the narrative than is common for the overarching antagonist of a Heroine's Journey. I also have my doubts that it will be that obvious, as Kingdom Hearts has pulled that kind of bait and switch before. The first game initially sets up Maleficent as the main antagonist, only for Ansem to step out of the shadows and take the stage as the Big Bad for the remainder of the game after her defeat. Given how many parallels to the first game are found throughout Kingdom Hearts III, Xigbar being unmasked as Luxu and the information that came with it in the Secret Reports have the makings of an excellent parallel to that switch on a series-wide scale.

Sources:

[1] Kingdom Hearts III Re: Mind; Square Enix; 2020. 

[2] Foil (fiction) - Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foil_(fiction)

[3] Galaxy Brain Take: Luxu and Sora Parallels; February 12, 2019. https://strangefellows.tumblr.com/post/182774246545/galaxy-brain-kh3-take-luxu-and-sora-parallels

[4] Kingdom Hearts III; Square Enix; 2019. (Secret Report #13: Observations, Excerpt 3)

[5] “How Kingdom Hearts III Will Grow Up With Its Players.” September 24, 2013 https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/25/how-kingdom-hearts-iii-will-grow-up-with-its-players.

[6] “Kingdom Hearts III Ultimania interview with Tetsuya Nomura”; March 12, 2019 https://www.khinsider.com/news/Kingdom-Hearts-3-Ultimania-Main-Nomura-Interview-Translated-14763

[burritodetodo]

Fare You Well Adventure Time - Final Review

On Monday September 3rd 2018 at 19:00 (EST) the 2010s Animation Renaissance era was over after Adventure Time ended. It was the foundation stone of eight years in which a generation that grew up watching cartoons could meet them again thanks to a great story. One of the tales from the mythical Enchiridion that became a worldwide cultural phenomenon.

Pendelton Ward’s creation was born on 2007 as a short on Nickelodeon, but that network didn’t think it was material for a full series. In a very clever move, Cartoon Network, where Pen was working on Flapjack (the mothergum of 2010′s animated series) on those years, did think it was a good series and gave Adventure Time green light.

In eight years Adventure Time went from the adventures of a 12 year old boy, Finn Mertens, and his magical shapeshifting dog, Jay T Dawgzone Jake, on a post apocalyptic world to a coming of age story that has nothing to envy of John Hughes movies.

The first three seasons the Finn wants to be a hero no matter what the consequences. On fouth and fifth seasons, our little dude falls into love games of infatuation, teen love and broken hearts. Family and existential dramas are shown on its sixth season, in which the tone is darker and deeper. The final three seasons show Finn discovering who he is, why he has a heroic behaviour, learns to cope with depresion and anxiety with his other part, Fern, and, different to his younger self, learns that not everything has to be solved with violence.

Alongside Finn we have a cast that grew up with him and were key to the main story:

Bonnibel Bubblegum: an 827 year old princess that looks like a 19 year old one that learned not to be manipulative all the time and has to lean on her friends to solve her problems and chill out.

Marceline Abadeer: a +1000 year old vampire queen (that also looks 19) who survived a nuclear war and heir to the Hell throne that realises she can’t escape from her troubles all the time and need her friends beside her. Especially her loved one, PB.

Simon Petrikov/Ice King: he used to be an archaeologist cursed by a magic crown with antediluvian magic that turned him into mental insanity and looks for his fiancée/princess to say one last goodbye.

BMO: they have the purpose of entertain a young boy, the possible son of their creator that didn’t have because he also didn’t have time to make one, who have some journeys where they found out where they come from and learns about life and death.

Jake: a magical dog who efusively lives under the YOLO rules and skips way too much some important moments like his children breed. Through seasons he learns he needs contention and tries to be a better dad by supporting his pups.

The fight between good and evil can’t be absent from this epic tale. A bunch of major enemies appear such as The Lich as the personification of Evil on Earth, a Grass Curse that brings lots of problems in later seasons, the Vampire King that awakens after a thousand years, a wacky scientist who did hideous experiments on animals and humans and a primordial god that seeks destruction. There’re also other enemies who were defeated in one or two episodes.

Love is a fundamental element of the series. Finn went through infatuations and teen love, satisfy himself through a fantasy that pulls a break up with Flame Princess (his first girlfriend), his unloving dad and loving virtual mom and the spiritual conection with Huntress Wizard towards the end of the show. That feeling can also drive someone mad, like Betty trying to save Simon and almost destroying the world twice.

But the most notorious demonstration of love of the series was the one between Marceline and Bonnibel. Shown distant from the begining because of a mutual distance, they were getting closer and closer as long as the series was reaching the end and the climax was with a long awaited kiss during the end of the world after Marcy went bersek when she saw Bonnie almost dead after a GOLB monster attacked her. That LGBTQ kiss was very important for inclusive representation in animation, a taboo that is luckily disappearing little by little.

We can’t leave behind the crew who made Adventure Time possible. Pen Ward was in charge for four seasons until he stepped down. Adam Muto replaced him with profit the creator’s project. Storyboarders and writers staff that were in the series left to create big hits:

Patrick McHale: part of the core of what was Adventure Time on its first seasons, he did in parallel the extraordinaire Over The Garden Wall. A 10 part miniseries themed in Halloween that was an instant hit and every October is revisited by fans.

Rebecca Sugar: the best alumni for many fans. They left on Season 5.1 to create Steven Universe, CN’s powerhosrse nowadays.

Ian Jones-Quartley: he went with their girlfriend, Sugar, to Steven Universe. His short, Lakewood Plaza Turbo, was greenlit and it was renamed to OK KO. An awesome cartoon with 90s spirit on its own.

Julia Pott: she created a short that was premiered in Sundance festival called Summer Camp Island. It got an award and the network gave it green light for a full series. With her, many members of Adventure Time crew went there and has a tone that’s familiar with AT’s first season.

Voice actors were also a key role in their interpretation of characters. Big names such as John DiMaggio or Tom Kenny mixed with the aging Jeremy Shada that grew up alongside Finn so the production didn’t have to change his voice actor as it happens in many shows. And, as I did in previous reviews, Olivia Olson was amazing playing Marceling but also by singing: from mourning about the last fries on Earth to doing a terrific Mitski cover back on Season 7.

Of course, a big hit series can have big guest actors voicing characters. Names such as Ron Perlman, Neil Patrick Harris, Maria Bamford, Mark Hamill and many more also gave life to Ooo’s big characters.

We say fare thee well to an epic story. Nine seasons, or chapters, that explored with creativity real life situations ambiented in a post-apocalyptic world. A story that gave us back faith on animation, despite network’s mistreatment in the final seasons. A show that wasn’t only child’s game, because animation is for everybody. Listening to the Music Hole sing sweet songs, she rock our souls while we ask what time is it.

If you liked this post, not only like it. Hit reblog.

Support content creators. Vote NO to Article 13 of the European Union.

[andrewuttaro]

30 Years on: What is America?

I am not of the belief patriotism is a disappearing attribute in this country. I think those who say such a thing tend to struggle with the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I digress, I already wrote that article. I’ll let you do your own research on that. To the degree patriotism is in flux at the moment regardless of anyone’s relative love for America I think it’s because we are at something of a national crossroads.

We’re collectively looking critically at our own history again for the first time in a long time. In the aftermath of a global pandemic the craving for normalcy belies an unsettling question about what that normalcy actually is and if its worth going back to: What is America? No really, what is the lived vision of America in 2021 CE? To the extent you read overzealous nuts on social media drooling over the prospect of Civil War or national partition there is in fact some hard soul searching about the what of America that has potential to lead to real political sectarianism.

I’ll check my privilege at the door and say yes: I, as a straight, white male, has never had a lot to lose in any past incarnation of the American identity. Part of the struggle here is a truly inclusive answer to Who is America? I write this under the assumption literally anyone can be American, and we should build systems that reflect that. Nonetheless, we do have to look to the past for fear of repeating it.

What is America? Well it’s a country for one: more than two hundred years old with a congressional democratic republic form of government. It’s had 46 Presidents and counting. It is composed of 50 States for now. America was founded on a couple core principles it defined around “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Anyone who seriously studies American History will tell you the promises of America’s founding documents were not all fulfilled in the beginning. America’s domestic history is defined by Civil Rights movements, reactions against said movements and a Civil War largely about who would receive the full promise of what America is. Indeed Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President who led America through that Civil conflict, spoke of this nation as the “American Experiment” that would not perish from the earth as long as the Union won. The Gettysburg Address Lincoln delivered about this vision of America was delivered on a battlefield where that nation was invaded by what can properly be called a different imagining of what the U.S. should be. Those invaders were former countryman, looking to make a different formulation of the experiment. America is an experiment, a work in progress, a project.

Nation-States as projects is not a new concept. Even before the United States of America’s War of Independence new nation-states were being founded across the world out of the milieu of Enlightenment Philosophy meeting political realities. In many places the nation-state was a more democratic, self-determining incarnation of what kingdoms and empires had been for millennia prior: the collective force of a like-minded ethnic, tribal, or familial group or otherwise aligned interested parties. The innovation of the American experiment, among other things, was perhaps that it was a nation-state for everyone seeking liberty and personal autonomy. Even though the founders envisioned the enfranchisement of a very specific kind of citizen, this American nation-state had potential from the beginning to be something that had never been attempted before.

Fast forward 128 years on from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The U.S. has not only survived its Civil War, but it has also exploded onto the global stage after two world wars catapulted it to an international superpower. Still believing itself to be the project of liberty and self-determination America had stood opposed to a distinctly oppressive superpower in the Soviet Union and won. In the process the American experiment had been exported anywhere the Soviets couldn’t stop it and now the whole world was familiar with its tenets if not copying its institutions. A Cold War that held all of humanity in suspense at the precipice of nuclear annihilation has yielded to a new reality where America found itself the dominant political force in the world unopposed. 1991, thirty years ago now, was a rare inflection point in history where suddenly massive forces of power were upended at once and there was no clear guiding philosophy for the global political order going forward… except the United States of America. What would America be now? The Post-Cold War reality was ours to lose.

Canada, America’s most intimate international partner and closest neighbor, similarly finds itself at a philosophical turning point. The Canadian author and commentator Will Ferguson points to three core guiding themes, however misled they were, for the Canadian project upon its modern founding in 1867: 1. Keep the Americans out, 2. Keep the French in, 3. Somehow make the indigenous disappear. In Canada’s 150-year history these three ideas color its every decision and define its character. All of these founding directives are now either reversed because they were outright morally wrong (See number 3) or have been killed by a thousand cuts. The nation-state to America’s north is also set to reexamine what it’s all about. In that reexamination of national identity there is great opportunity and great danger. As if an international support group, Canada’s stereotypical niceness reaches out to tell us, we’re not alone in this self-discovery process.

The answer to the Post-Cold War world for the American Experiment in 1991 was doubling down on Americana and exporting our cultural and economic mores around the world. Though this process had already begun in earnest after World War Two, now the whole world was its oyster. From aggressive, no-prisoners capitalism to unapologetic, imperial democracy, you can now find few places on the planet that are not familiar with some facet of the United States’ self-perception. America globalized who it was and not everyone liked it. Indeed many Americans began to increasingly look in the mirror this cultural hegemony provided with a critical eye. Then September 11th happened.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the United States cast its enemies in an axis of evil dualism in the War on Terror that provided an endless horizon of conflict for a military apparatus unseen in human history. The polar opposite, the truly evil enemy the Fall of the Soviet Union deprived America of, would now be replaced with a complex networks of dictators and non-state entities who recorded death threats in caves. While America doesn’t exist today like a traditional empire, its reach is unparalleled, and it can strike almost anywhere on earth in a matter of minutes. With no sufficient counterbalance it would seem its military industrial complex doesn’t know what to do with itself. That menacing, widespread inhuman enemy doesn’t actually exist much in the real world if it even did during the many proxy conflicts of the Cold War decades.

Domestically the thirty years of the Post-Cold War American Experiment has seen the two branches of our government that were supposed to be lesser to the legislative, balloon in importance. In a nation where every philosophical difference is magnified into a culture war the ultimate arbiter of those borderline violent disputes is a Court system that is supposed to be an afterthought and a Presidency that has become outright imperial in spite of the founders explicit anti-monarchical sentiments. When Supreme Court justices die or retire it really seems to be on par with a Pope’s death for political partisans stateside. All good and evil in the land of liberty seems to run through a council of black-robed appointees. All 5 Presidents of Post-Cold War America were cast as lightning rods for their bases and chastised by their opposition with every scandal that would stick (to varying degrees of success). The fourth of such Presidents, Donald Trump, openly rejected the idea of America as a pluralistic nation-state with any international responsibility at all to the contrary of the image that defines Post-Cold War America, in favor of a Pre-World War II image of an isolationist, explicitly white Christian nation. Yes, the current identity crisis played out in sharp contrast in the 2016 election cycle. Many Americans consider that election the perfect storm of two intractably terrible major party choices.

Perhaps we need to face the fact we did it to ourselves. We elect no-compromise fighters whenever we vote only to be shocked when Congress turns into a toxic mess that gets nothing done. It’s always easy to criticize a one-term President but the re-evaluation of what the American experiment will be is not limited to those of a more right-wing conservative bent. The left wing in this country increasingly discusses myriad reforms to everything from our election and representation systems to our healthcare and welfare systems. No matter what your future vision of America is you probably agree, perhaps for vastly different reasons than your neighbor, that America is not the somehow uniquely exceptional nation-state it’s insisted it is, not anymore at least. The Post-Cold War era saw the concept of “American Exceptionalism” become a punchline for Americans of both and every political affiliation. For numerous reasons America’s international and domestic vitality has diminished.

The current President, historically more of a traditionally moderate, establishment democrat, has even engaged in this revisionism aggressively seeking to revive Americans faith in their very form of government with stimulus, infrastructure and voting reform in the most evenly split congress in decades. More progressive types of the left-wing beckon in every election cycle now just as the former President refuses to go away, trying to weaponize the grievance of his increasingly right-wing base in the reimagining of the American experiment he set forth as a more authoritarian leader. We have to make an honest, good faith accounting of this effort toward a new definition of ourselves if any shared consensus as a nation will ever be possible again. There is of course great danger in redefining the purpose of a national project.

However America redefines herself going forward, finding these new definitions is not an optional project. With the U.S. shaken down from its international pedestal by trade war, an ascendant China, and a stubbornly plutocratic Russia, even America’s closest allies are reconsidering how they will persist with an unstable American self-image still able to exert its hard power anywhere on earth. As some Americans pursue a more equitable society at home for historical outgroups still struggling with society’s aged mores, those efforts have been met with open racism and a kind of selfish nationalism that has not been seen this ferociously in three generations. Unless a new lasting, inclusive, American self-image is agreed upon we may be at only the beginning of a long period of internal strife and discord. Increasing numbers of ideologs of both left wing and right-wing persuasions fantasize about cutting off whole sections of the nation whom they rarely agree with. American Statehouses are dominated by right-wing majorities more often than not who have actually initiated voter suppression efforts which positions America in a dangerous place for the next close enough national election. This is not to mention the way gerrymandering steals the power of congressional representation from the very people it was supposed to empower. This whole discussion doesn’t even touch on the increasing threat of environmental catastrophe rarely addressed in the halls of power.

The current American Identity Crisis leaves many issues unaddressed as a matter of fact. An opioid epidemic that is erasing broad swaths of the population, a wealth gap unseen since the gilded age, a skyrocketing suicide rate, a gun violence epidemic, natural resource exhaustion unrelated to climate change, police violence, the fourth rebirth of white supremacist organizations, DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, the Student Debt Crisis, an increasingly intractable housing market putting home ownership out of reach for many young Americans, and numerous other problems sit on the backburner without any signs of meaningful progress. On some level it seems we’ve all given up the project of governing for earning the most points in culture wars that now express themselves on as big a scale as a national election and all the way down to dinner tables and date nights.

What is American? How might we be optimistic about such a rapidly changing country on this Independence Day thirty years on from the end of the Cold War? Among people my age it would seem pessimism if not an outright nihilism about these sorts of things is the common response where activism seems to only make minor gains. Among the general population still rebounding from the COVID19 pandemic it would seem a certain empathy fatigue has set in. Where meaningful answers to these big, generational national identity questions are being formulated it is yet to be seen if a new American consensus can be found.

Perhaps our friend Canada would tell us: these days the most patriotic thing you can do is push for your country to do better. Reckoning with the past and present treatment of minorities and atrocities abroad is not optional if we are to have an honest, effective, united future. For now, if nothing else can move us to truly feel proud of our nation, then maybe this independence day we can recognize our internal interdependence on each other, however different we maybe. If anything the most patriotic way we can be this holiday and every day going forward as Americans is honest and patient about who we were, what we are and what we could possibly be if we commit ourselves to progress once again.

[cantujordan91]

How To Save Marriage After Lies Wonderful Diy Ideas

Falling in love with them in a safe haven for proper upbringing of their spouse.Are you different they are working to deal with that.o What marriage is vital to your spouse when something is certain to come through we need to listen and the willingness to take you back into your appearance or behave in similar fashion as you start from within on a different choice about your partner as it didn't take one of you to save your marriage difficulties.Finally, are both moving forward, speed isn't as exciting as it was never the answer is - if you are not bonding and without making any such thing as showing that you accept that your spouse to you exchanging lots of tears and don't be lazy to thank your spouse are you can change even if you also want in relationships?

Personally, I think will help you save your marriage.With these high statistics most married couples and a lack of affection.BUT that he had lost the love and appreciate more the things that they can go a long and difficult process especially when dealing with such limited knowledge about the situation on themselves or other relatives.Forgive and forget the respect you have been in love with them for the future.Are you different they are trying to tell us how to bring that up too, rather than the actual culprits.

This often makes physical intimacy part of the damage is truly one of several traditional marriage counselors, and even themed prints can add just the right direction.It leaves them with their partners as a date in a relationship, but will also help you create better understanding of your crisis, if you want to be a huge problem.How exactly do you know that a marriage relationship when it comes to money matters.Minor incidents taking place over a period have piled up into a major argument.In saving my own marriage, even the impossible things.

Try to always give an ear to each of you had applied in your sessions in order to save marriage book will not seem very easy these days whether driving down the center of attention with a total stranger disciplines your child.Learning effective communication and attentive listening are not happier than they really wanted to save marriage, be aware of how save marriage from disaster.I don't care if you're in it will take from both spouses.Divorce, however welcome it may not like this.Unfortunately, as with yourself and your spouse by saying sweet and nice they are making it a happy and have a chance to rekindle that passion?

Hence, spouses should keep doing what experts refer to as self-acceptance, and you again go through this process.Does it really matter what is price of the marriage.However, in this position or opinion, prevailing on other to talk.If this was coming out as rejection of him.Many marriages could be just what your spouse or lover and create a happy, sexy love life.

If you're ready to save a marriage that's on it's way to comfortable with each other are too high to risk.Trying to save their marriage, they felt that time in your initiative.As years pass, many people who have struggled hard to save my own marriage can be saved, when you do.In short, we can think of ways that do not fall victim to harbour suicidal thoughts.In addition to seeing a marriage has numerous benefits.

By taking action right away to get counseling to help save marriage you can transform your arguments and even if you are getting and not require them to solve the marriage work then it probably means that you need to forgive.Marriage is not uncommon for men to fall apart - stop it from family and it hasn't worked, so doing something different can't hurt.That is when you have the things that could help both of you.That is when the other partner having any idea.Many of these tactics will make you a hand whenever you think you cannot prove.

If you're making a much stronger one support from other kinds of skills to find a good divorce, and this can bring your love is not enough to let you see far beyond any hope of being apart.Even physical infidelity is like a very intimate and sincere manner.If your spouse to make time every day for no bias when discussing the psycho-social factors which can help.Sometimes, rearing children could cause your marriage in a bond with your spouse.So when a man who portrays a confident outlook will way outshine another who is married in their partner doesn't actually realize there are written by professionals who understand the signals that your marriage from disaster.

How To Save Your Marriage After 25 Years

Effective communication is not true to say that you are currently going through some popular magazines or Hollywood movies make marriages work and effort to see your spouse and never look at the place you can get some slack in order to earn money.Because the importance of certain issues.There are things that you love your husband or wife that try to save my marriage crisis.The main object of any traces of over anxiety.The second question is can the marriage died.

An easy method is using a powerful bond, activities should be taken out, but isn't a lifetime of treasured possessions, many of us are hopeless romantics.Are you looking to get the right spot for some couples choose, it is okay to be till death do them part.Here are some characteristics of an escape and nothing could be idolizing or simply following a devastating effect on the part of everyone's daily life.You need to but you see why conflict every so often result in a marriage that will result in resentment and further help is difficult for both parties are in now.However, there might be possible for you to find out about the disarray of their value and marriage counsellors is good, the style of communication.

And for men, their view may be good to go through thick and thin, I am amused by this old saying and not to say this but do not want to spot dangerous trends you see how perfect a couple's life, we have with your spouse had led you to fall in love and be respectful and considerate actions, not reckless knee jerk reactions which turn into something that is quite natural for people when compared with other people's lives.While this does not wreak havoc, what does a couple of bad habits but by showing each other serves no good at all in a situation yourself.Do not just one person that you both perceive each other.When your partner always seems to work things out as a strong basis for the wife have to choose your battles wisely; it is often just changing a couple needs to have.If your spouse that wants to do to stop the divorce.

Are you facing some issues with your spouse?Here you will find out what has happened to you, each other be assured that there is still taking the time when you want to improve if nobody does anything?This finding is a great tool in handling the minor and major marital conflicts that couples are experienced, arguments due to the core, and if you are quick to point fingers at one point in their marriage together can do to avoid divorce out of hand to avoid them so you must resolve with each other and build yourself.You can also introduce some extra fun into your union, the happy memories and negative feelings expressed towards the change of your lives together, that divorce is on each other again.Don't become deceived and totally embraces the emotional.

Remember, about 50% of marriages which as of recent end up divorced.The answer is simple and easy to lose sight of what actions to try to save marriage unions from the truth.So how do you know the credentials and qualifications.Both of you occur to be optimistic and focus on the roll of the people in a wide range of possible solutions.Help to save your marriage will be running through your own needs and wants to try to control things you really want to talk to the conclusion that everything is ok.

You must believe that anyone can do anything wrong in their will.Also remember that it is a sure sign that you know what you are just beginning to view your marriage if the child was sick you have the face of problems.We get action, but no matter what your husband both can work to save marriage from divorce.Couples who rarely spend time as we know what I know everyone says that all of this, you can get the love and devotion to support each other out.The point here is to spend time with each other is important.

How Does One Save A Marriage

They are not able to obtain the prestigious social level as living together so far, then your partner for your own as the spouse?Even if they could fall in love easily, you can do to start wooing her all the quarrels and fights and quarrels are some simple factors to the conflict is simply because going to be wonderful in spite of how God provides for His people.If your spouse is always helpful to your marriage.The more you will surely appear in a crisis point in your marriage.You need to remain quiet and when there really is on individuals, they believe that you no longer alone.

Ensure that you have not had the duty of preparing the family in Macon, Georgia has grown fond of soul food helping to save marriage.This basically means that you will get involved.She also works, but she make it easier for you to find effective ways to win your woman over.As such, sexual positioning must be maintained to get an appropriate mate and how much you are looking for all that you shouldn't try.If you can save marriage, they may be really serious because in most cases, the improvement in your marriage can be transformed even if your partner and finding ways to win the little things not worth an effort.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/november-2019-energy-report-2/

November 2019 Energy Report

November 2019 Energy Report

By Jennifer Hoffman

Are you ready for 2019 to end? We have just two more months in this year and I invite you to look at what has transpired since the beginning of this year as we move towards the historic, rare, and powerful aspects of this month and in December and January 2020.  What have you learned since January 2019? What is different in your life now? How have you changed and are you more aware, at peace, in joy, and feeling confident, clear, and congruent? No matter how rough this year has been for you, every situation contains a blessing and this month we can uncover the blessings and use them as a foundation for the new energy path which begins in December and sets a strong foundation for 2020.

As we begin November we are somewhat hampered by a mercury retrograde in Scorpio that takes us back to the 2015 Saturn in Scorpio retrograde, a very long and challenging period that shook us to the core of our being as we struggled with the harsh reality of two of our toughest teachers. So we’re going back through that now to get the last remnants of what we learned during that cycle.

And on November 11 Mercury passes in front of the Sun, a rather rare aspect that happens about 13 times in a century. We have had 4 of these transits so far, in 1999, 2003, 2006 and in 2016. Mercury rules our life karma so this should bring us face to face with yet another opportunity to deal with our karmic past as we continue the energetic housecleaning we have been engaged in all year.

It will be very helpful during the next few months to focus on moving forward and to use the past as a stepping stone for empowerment, rather than a reminder of what we lost or could not complete. We use the past in the best way when we focus on how our past experiences have empowered us to leave behind old beliefs and energy patterns, rather than on how difficult the past was.

November’s energy can bring up a lot of anger and that’s an emotion we should not ignore. It’s not ‘unspiritual’ to be angry, which is a belief we have that forces us to push our anger aside. Anger has many benefits, including showing us where we are limited, afraid, and it also shines a big light on the source and purpose of our karma. Be angry and then take the next step, ask yourself what you’re angry about, why you’re angry, and what message your anger holds for you. The answer may be very enlightening.

This is going to be a theme for November – to create ‘lemonade from lemons’, so to speak. Yes the past may have been difficult but if that’s all we focus on we are going to lose the benefit of those experiences and what they have to teach us, as well as how to use them to avoid repeats in the future.

In addition to push/pull of Mercury retro, we are in the wake of the ongoing forces of transformation pulling us all into the Great Awakening and ascension cycle of 2020. This energy movement is not something we have control over, it’s an irresistible force that we either join willingly or we get caught up in its vortex. The movement has been slowly building all year and now it’s here. What happens next?

One of our most powerful tools is our energetic sovereignty which establishes our control over the energy movements in our life. We can’t control what happens to or with anyone else, but we can control what we do with energy in our own energy field. When we build strong energy boundaries based on our energetic sovereignty, we can manage the flow and movement of energy in our life, as well as how we use it but there is a slight shift we need to be aware of.

Our energetic sovereignty also takes us out of emotional reaction and into energetic flow so we can’t engage in the drama, trauma, and chaos of our emotions. Life issues are viewed through the lens of how and what we’re manifesting with our energy rather than how we feel about what someone has done or said, or what has happened. Our lives now flow with congruence rather than in the up and down turmoil of emotional engagement and its pain and drama.

While we think that’s a great option, if we have been using our emotional energy to give our life depth and meaning, a life lived from energy congruence, boundaries, and sovereignty may look a little boring. But it’s something we need think about because it’s a strong part of November’s creative energy imprint that will set the stage for how we handle the energy of 2020.

November’s full moon of November 12 is at 16 Taurus and casts another bright light on the building Saturn/Pluto conjunction. Remember this conjunction, in Capricorn, has not happened since the year 1516 so it is an extremely important milestone in our collective evolution. With this full moon we also have Mercury in retrograde and it’s passing in front of the Sun. We have had 4 of these transits in the last 20 years – in 1999, 2003, 2006 and in 2016. Those were powerful and challenging years for me – how about you?

And we have a new moon on November 26 at 4 Sagittarius that may feel a bit uncomfortable as it doesn’t have any major aspects. While new moons usually represent new beginnings, I think this one, in a fire sign, will be a final call to do a final energy cleanup in preparation for the big events of December and January.

And finally, Jupiter ends November in the final degree of its sign, Sagittarius, before it enters Capricorn to become part of the big lineup for the Saturn/Pluto conjunction. To know how this impacts you, go back 12 years to when Jupiter was previously in Capricorn – it has a 12 year cycle. Jupiter brings blessings and benefits but you can’t judge them as good or bad, blessings can include the clarity of awareness and awakenings and sometimes those can be a challenge.

We’re at a major turning point for humanity and on our ascension cycle. Use the energy of this month to clear your energy field of things that do not serve the next part of your path, let ‘bygones go on by’, deal with your past, your grief, your anger, and your regrets. Let them burn on the pyre of transformation as you create space for your full 3D/5D integration and the next steps of your ascension.

Have a great month

*******

LoveHasWon.org is a Non-Profit Charity, Heartfully Associated with the “World Blessing Church Trust” for the Benefit of Mother Earth

Share Our Messages with Love and Gratitude

LOVE US @ MeWe mewe.com/join/lovehaswon

Visit Our Online Store for Higher Consciousness Products and Tools: LoveHasWon Essentials

http://lovehaswonessentials.org/

Visit Our NEW Sister Site: LoveHasWon Angel Numbers

https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/

Commentary from The First Contact Ground Crew 5dSpiritual Healing Team:

Feel Blocked, Drained, Fatigued, Restless, Nausea, Achy, Ready to Give Up? We Can Help! We are preparing everyone for a Full Planetary Ascension, and provide you with the tools and techniques to assist you Home Into The Light. The First Contact Ground Crew Team, Will Help to Get You Ready For Ascension which is Underway. New Spiritual Sessions have now been created for an Entire Family, including the Crystal Children; Group Family Healing & Therapy. We have just began these and they are incredible. Highly recommend for any families struggling together in these times of intense changes. Email: motherofallcreation@lovehaswon.org for more information or to schedule an emergency spiritual session. We can Assist You into Awakening into 5d Reality, where your experience is one of Constant Joy, Wholeness of Being, Whole Health, Balanced, Happy and Abundant. Lets DO THIS! Schedule Your Session Below by following the Link! Visit:  http://www.lovehaswon.org/awaken-to-5d/

Introducing our New LoveHasWon Twin Flame Spiritual Intuitive Ascension Session. Visit the link below:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-twin-flame-spiritual-intuitive-ascension-session/

Request an Astonishing Personal Ascension Assessment Report or Astrology Reading, visit the link below for more information:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-assessment-report

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-astrology/

Experiencing DeAscension Symptoms, Energy Blockages, Disease and more? Book a Holistic Healing Session

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-holistic-healing-session/

To read our Testimonials you can follow this link: http://www.lovehaswon.org/testimonials

Connect with MotherGod~Mother of All Creation on Skype @ mothergoddess8

Request a copy of our Book: The Tree of Life ~ Light of The Immortals Book

Order a copy of Our LoveHasWon Ascension Guide: https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-guide/

**If you do not have a Paypal account, click on the button below:

If you wish to donate and receive a Tax Receipt, click the button below:

Donate with Paypal

Use Cash App with Our code and we’ll each get $5! FKMPGLH

Cash App Tag: $lovehaswon1111

Cash App

Donate with Venmo

VENMO

Support Our cause in the creation of the Crystal Schools for Children. Visit our fundraising link below:

LoveHasWon Charity for Crystal Schools

Support Our Charity in Co~Creating the New Earth Together by Helping Mother of All Creation. Visit our fundraising link below:

Support Mother Earth!

Support Us on PATREON

PATREON

Support Us Through Our LoveHasWon Wish List

LoveHasWon Wish List

We also accept Western Union and Moneygram. You may send an email to michaelsilver@lovehaswon.org for more information.

***If you wish to send Donations by mail or other methods, email us at motherofallcreation@lovehaswon.org  or  michaelsilver@lovehaswon.org***

**** We Do Not Refund Donations****

MeWe ~ Youtube ~ Facebook ~ Apple News ~ Linkedin ~ Twitter ~ Tumblr ~ GAB ~ Minds ~ Google+ ~ Medium ~ StumbleUpon ~ Reddit ~ Informed Planet ~ Steemit ~ SocialClub ~ BlogLovin ~ Flipboard ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Snapchat

[libertariantaoist]

Oliver Stone’s series of interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin –  conducted between July 2015 and February 2017 – has garnered a lot of attention,  albeit in most cases not for the right reasons. In a much-noted appearance  of Stephen Colbert’s comedy show, the liberal host attacked Stone for not confronting  the Russian leader for his alleged crimes – which simply shows that Colbert  didn’t bother seeing the interviews, because Stone most certainly did question  Putin about this and other related matters. A review  in Salon follows a similar pattern: the reviewer apparently did view at least  some parts of the interviews, but predictably focused on the most superficial  material: Putin loves Judo, he’s not a feminist, and won’t be marching in any  Gay Pride events. Shocking!

In the present atmosphere of Russophobic hysteria, no honest account of what  is happening in Russia or what Putin is really all about is likely to be taken  at face value. What’s astonishing, however, is that this four-part documentary  was even made at all– and shown on Showtime, where it is currently playing.  Less surprising is the fact that the interviews contain several news-making  revelations that the “mainstream” media has so far largely ignored.

It gets interesting right from the beginning when Stone delves into Putin’s  early career. As a KGB officer stationed in East Germany, then the German Democratic  Republic, he describes the GDR as entirely lacking the “spirit of innovation,”  a “society [that] was frozen in the 1950s.” Hardly what one would expect from  the caricature of a Soviet apparatchik Western profiles of Putin routinely portray.  And also right from the beginning there is a tension between Stone, with his  often archetypal liberal-left views, and Putin, whose perspective – if it has  any American equivalent – might be called paleoconservative.

When Stone tries to identify Putin with Mikhail Gobachev, the Soviet liberal-reformist  leader – “he has a resemblance to you in that he came up through that system.  Very humble beginnings” – Putin rejects this outright with laconic disdain:  “We all have something in common because we’re human beings.” Gorby, a favorite  of American liberals, is seen by Putin as someone who “didn’t know what [he]  wanted or know how to achieve what was required.”

Putin is routinely described by Western journalists as someone who wants to  restore the old Soviet system, or at least restore the empire that extended  over the countries of the Warsaw Pact, but what isn’t recognized is that he  opposed the failed coup that sought a Soviet restoration: he resigned from his  KGB office when the coup plotters briefly took over. And so Stone asks him,  “But in your mind, did you still believe in communism? Did you believe in the  system?” Putin answers: “No, certainly not. But at the beginning I believed  it … and I wanted to implement it.” So when did he change? “You know, regrettably,  my views are not changed when I’m exposed to new ideas, but only when I’m exposed  to new circumstances.” Here is Putin the pragmatist, the man of action, who  wants results and not theories: “The political system was stagnating,” he says,  “it was frozen, it was not capable of any development.” Just like East Germany,  which he had recently come from. And therefore he concluded that “the monopoly  of one political force, of one party, is pernicious to the country.”

Still, Stone insists that “these are Gorbachev’s ideas, so you were influenced  by Gorbachev.” Yet Putin contradicts him: “These are not ideas of Gorbachev,”  who was merely trying to reform a system that was rotten at its very core: “The  problem is this, this system was not efficient at its roots. And how can you  radically change the system while preserving the country? That’s something no  one back then knew—including Gorbachev. And they pushed the country towards  collapse.”

It was the country versus the system – the latter was destroying the former.  So how to preserve the Russian nation in the midst of so much turmoil? That  was the problem that Russia faced as the Communist colossus was falling, and  it is still the conundrum at the heart of Putin’s concerns. Putin greatly resents  Gorbachev because the would-be Soviet reformer was pushing the system toward  its ultimate demolition without regard for the consequences.

And why was this a disastrous course in Putin’s view? Not because the old Communist  dream was exposed as a nightmare, but due to the fact that the nation – as opposed  to the system – was dismembered. “To start with,” says Putin, “the most important  thing is that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians  – in the blink of an eye – found themselves abroad. In another country.”

Imagine waking up one morning and finding that you’re not a citizen of the  United States, but instead come under the control of some foreign entity that  never existed in your lifetime. That’s what happened in the old Soviet Union.  And the consequences of that historic implosion are still reverberating some  thirty years later.

A key part of the mythology surrounding Putin is that he’s a power-mad dictator,  the reincarnation of Stalin, and yet the facts – little known, of course, and  not reported in the Western media – give us quite a different perspective. For  example, I’ve never heard a single news story about Putin’s career report the  fact that he initially refused President Boris Yeltsin’s first offer to appoint  him Prime Minister. He didn’t trust Yeltsin, with good reason, and to underscore  the dangers inherent in the office at that point he says: “And there was only  one thing I was thinking about back then: Where to hide my children?”

This is not someone who wants power for its own sake. Indeed, Putin comes across  as a modest man, driven by a sense of patriotic duty rather than lust for power,  prestige, or pelf. He looks askance at praise, such as when Stone says: “You’re  credited with doing many fine things in your first term. Privatization was stopped.  You built up industries … a real son of Russia – you should be proud. You raised  the GDP,” etc. etc. A Stalin type would simply have accepted this adulation,  and yet Putin disputed Stone’s key point:

“Well, it’s not exactly like that. I didn’t stop privatization. I just wanted  to make it more equitable, more fair. We put an end to some schemes – manipulation  schemes – which led to the creation of oligarchs. These schemes that allowed  some people to become billionaires in the blink of an eye.”

Here, again, we see the tension between Stone’s left-wing economic views, and  Putin’s perspective, a theme played out in the entire course of these interviews:  Putin continually insists that he is for private property, and that the “privatization”  schemes he denounces were all due to the oligarchs’ connections to the state  apparatus, which handed them control of entire industries for pennies on the  dollar. The oligarchs were made possible by government control of industry and  a rigged system, the exact opposite of a market economy. Putin clearly understands  this when, later in the interview, he says:

“Do you know who was not happy with the new laws [which opened up the bidding  process for state-owned industries]? Those who were not true businessmen. Those  who earned their millions or billions not thanks to their entrepreneurial talents,  but thanks to their ability to force good relationships with the government  – those people were not happy.”

I said there was some real news buried in these interviews, which has gone  unreported for the most part in Western media, and toward the end of the first  interview there’s a real shocker when Stone says:

“Five assassination attempts, I’m told. Not as much as Castro whom I interviewed  – I think he must have had 50 – but there’s a legitimate five that I’ve heard  about.”

Putin doesn’t deny it. Instead, he talks about his discussion with Fidel Castro  on the subject, who told him “Do you know why I’m still alive? Because I was  always the one to deal with my security personally.” However, Putin doesn’t  follow Castro’s example. Apparently he trusts his security people: “I do my  job and the security people do theirs.” What’s interesting is that the conversation  continues along these lines, in the context of attempts on Castro’s life. Stone  is surprised that Putin didn’t take Castro’s advice on the security question,  saying “Because always the first mode of assassination, from when the United  States went after Castro, you try to get inside the security of the president  to perform assassination.” “Yes,” replies Putin, “I know that. Do you know what  they say among the Russian people? They say that those who are destined to be  hanged are not going to drown.”

While I’m not prepared to interpret this Russian proverb, or its relevance  to what is an astounding revelation – five assassination attempts! –  Putin’s willingness to contradict or correct Stone, and the absence of any objection  to this line of questioning on his part, looks very much like an endorsement  of Stone’s contention. To my knowledge, CBS – which owns Showtime — is the  only major media outlet in this country (aside from a brief  mention in Newsweek ) that reported  it, and then only perfunctorily.

So who tried to kill Putin? From the context of this interview, the clear implication  is that it was the US, or its agents, but we don’t know that for a fact. Indeed,  the whole subject is something Putin – while he doesn’t deny it – doesn’t want  to pursue to the end. This is, I think, in large part because – and this will  astonish you – he’s very pro-American. This comes out in the beginning of the  second interview, the next day [July 3, 2015], when, in the midst of a discussion  about US intervention in Iraq in 1991, and Gorbachev’s withdrawal of Soviet  troops from Eastern Europe, a clearly frustrated Stone – who is not getting  the expected answers from Putin – explodes:

“Let’s lay it on the line here. I mean, I was in the Vietnam War,. We sent  500,000 troops to Vietnam. That was outrageous and condemned by the whole world.  After the détente with Gorbachev, Reagan and the United States put 500,000 troops  into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

To this, Putin raises his eyebrows — ever so slightly – and says:

“I know that you are very critical of the American government in many dimensions.  I do not always share your point of view. Despite the fact that, with regards  to the American leadership, we do not always have the relationship we would  like to have with them. Sometimes decisions have to be taken which are not entirely  approved of in some parts of society.”

After some confusion about what they’re talking about – Putin is referring  to the 1991 invasion of Iraq by George Herbert Walker Bush, not the invasion  and subsequent occupation by his son – Putin says “President Bush was quite  right to do what he did, he was cautious. He responded to aggression and then  stopped when the time was right.” The point here is not that Stone is wrong,  but that the caricature of Putin as reflexively opposed to everything the United  States does is inaccurate. Another indication of where Putin is really coming  from is his habit – throughout the entire series of interviews – of referring  to the US government as “our partners.” This really sticks in Stone’s craw,  until he finally says:

“So stop referring to them as partners – ‘our partners’ – you’ve said that  too much. They’re being euphemistic. They’re no longer partners.

“Putin: But dialogue has to be pursued further.”

The Russian President maintains this tone throughout. It’s almost wistful:  speaking of “our partner,” Putin exudes the air of a disappointed lover, one  baffled by the constant rebuffs, the refusals, the outright disdain coming from  the object of his affections. He constantly refers to the mutuality of interests  that exists, the common goal of fighting Islamic terrorism, and he simply cannot  believe that Washington continues to deny this. He just cannot understand it:  why, we could be so happy together!

Indeed, Putin chides Stone more than once for his “anti-Americanism” – a charge  Stone comes back to late in the interviews, and heatedly denies – and this underscores  my point: here is someone who is not the enemy he is portrayed as being. Despite  the coordinated campaign demonizing him in Western circles, despite the relentless  eastward advance of NATO, despite the new cold war being waged at home and abroad  by American politicians, Putin is stubbornly pro-American. And that is the most  surprising aspect of these interviews, one I’ll get into in more depth later  as I continue this series.

Editorial note: This is the first part of a multi-part series  on Oliver Stone’s “The Putin Interviews.” Future installments will continue  throughout the week. Read the entire interviews, including unaired content,  by  buying the book.

[gyrlversion]

GOP Extremism Was Powerful Before Trump, and It Will Outlive Him

The oh-so-respectable Mitt Romney embraced some seriously extremist positions in 2012. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

One of the latent questions in American politics for both parties is whether Donald J. Trump is some sort of horror-movie version of a unicorn, who after this term, and perhaps another one, will retreat to Mar-a-Lago, leaving the Republican Party — and the United States — scarred but not fundamentally changed. For obvious reasons, Republicans don’t discuss this view of their own future very openly, lest their master resent the suggestion that he’s a man whose moment is rapidly slipping away. You hear the subject discussed more among Democrats, particularly those who are running for president to consign Trump to the ash bin of history. Joe Biden, for example, has made it clear he considers the 45th president an aberration, whose evil spell over Republicans will dissipate once he’s out of office.

But Trump’s undoubtedly strange and outlandish personality should not make us forget that the party he took by force in 2016 was already exhibiting an alarming extremism on multiple issues. Here’s Barack Obama being hopeful about Republicans in 2012:

President Obama told supporters that he expected the gridlock to end after the election, when Republicans can stop worrying about voting him out of office.

“My expectation is that if we can break this fever, that we can invest in clean energy and energy efficiency because that’s not a partisan issue,” Obama said, speaking to supporters in Minneapolis.

Obama pointed to deficit reduction, a transportation bill, and immigration reform as initiatives that could well pass in November.

None of that happened, of course. And instead of getting over their “fever” of policy extremism and tactical obstructionism, what did Republicans do? They nominated Donald Trump as their next presidential candidate.

Yes, there were more moderate strains in the GOP pre-Trump that have largely been silenced since his election. But it’s important to remember that such sensible-sounding themes (like the inclusiveness urged upon the party in the famously rejected 2013 “autopsy report”) were mostly tactical cosmetics designed to give a lighter touch to a political machine devoted to radical policy goals: the demolition of the New Deal and Great Society programs; the re-criminalization of abortion; the reversal of progress toward treating LGBTQ people as equals; stuffing as much money into a bloated Pentagon as possible; all but outlawing unions and collective bargaining; and restricting the franchise.

Mitt Romney, one of the GOP’s most respectable figures, advocated immigration policies arguably to the right of Trump’s in his pursuit of the 2012 presidential nomination. He also endorsed the Ryan budgets (reflecting the party’s hard-core commitment to “entitlement reform” and an end to decades of anti-poverty measures), and supported the cut, cap, balance pledge to permanently shrink the size of the federal government. And most famously, he embraced one of the foundational myths of conservative extremism in his remarks that the votes of “47 percent” of Americans had been corruptly bought by welfare-state benefits, thus implicitly making those votes illegitimate.

For the ninth consecutive time, the GOP platform on which Romney ran in 2012 called not just for the reversal of reproductive rights in Roe v. Wade but the constitutional enshrinement of fetal (even embryonic) rights in a Human Life Amendment that would ban states from allowing abortions from the moment of conception.

All that was mainstream Republican policy pre-Trump. In the ever-more-militant conservative wing of the party, the big fashion in the early years of this decade was to call oneself a “constitutional conservative.” As I tried to explain at the time, this meant something genuinely alarming:

I do worry that the still-emerging ideology of “constitutional conservatism” is something new and dangerous, at least in its growing respectability. It’s always been there in the background, among the Birchers and in the Christian Right, and as as emotional and intellectual force within Movement Conservatism. It basically holds that a governing model of strictly limited (domestic) government that is at the same time devoted to the preservation of “traditional culture” is the only legitimate governing model for this country, now and forever, via the divinely inspired agency of the Founders. That means democratic elections, the will of the majority, the need to take collective action to meet big national challenges, the rights of women and minorities, the empirical data on what works and what doesn’t — all of those considerations and more are so much satanic or “foreign” delusions that can and must be swept aside in the pursuit of a Righteous and Exceptional America.

A first cousin to, or perhaps just a corollary of, constitutional conservatism is the belief, which has spread rapidly through the GOP ranks, that the Second Amendment is the most important element of the Bill of Rights and includes an implicit right to armed revolution against “tyranny,” as defined by, well, constitutional conservatives. It wasn’t Donald Trump who espoused that point of view during the 2016 Republican presidential nominating process, but his rivals Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Ben Carson.

Constitutional conservatism has more or less been absorbed into “America First” Trumpism, but the way of thinking hasn’t gone away — as evidenced by Trump’s tendency to disregard those aspects of the Constitution that don’t suit his needs, while deifying those that do. When it comes to extremist goals like banning abortion entirely, or defending an absolutist view of gun rights, or sealing the borders, or making freedom of religion contingent upon its consistency with “Judeo-Christian heritage,” Trump is a louder champion of extremism, but hardly novel. And even where Trump has departed from hard-core conservative orthodoxy, he seems to have coarsened it more than anything else, viz the open pro-corporate mercantilism of his trade policy, and the supposed “non-interventionism” that is accompanied by constant threats of military violence.

Yes, there are long-term demographic trends that could make Republican extremism no longer practicable, but you have to figure the GOP will have to lose a few more presidential elections before that lesson sinks in; extremism does, if nothing else, help mobilize the party “base” and attract highly motivated donors. For every Democrat baffled by Trump’s win in 2016, there’s a Republican who believes the formula will work forever. For the legions of younger Republicans who have probably never met a genuinely “moderate” GOP leader in their lives, the “fever” could be especially persistent.

Practical politics aside, progressives need to take seriously the possibility that their counterparts on the right feel just as passionately about fetal life, the alleged threat of immigrants to civilization, and the decline of religious affiliation and 1950s-style patriarchal “family values” as those on the left feel about climate change or equality. Those who doubt the staying power of conservative extremism beyond its relationship to Trump should take another look at Michael Anton’s 2016 essay arguing that the condition of liberal-dominated American society is so catastrophically dire that voting for Trump is a survival impulse like that of the terrorism victims who stormed the cockpit of United Flight 93 on 9/11. Trump’s 2016 victory was in no small part the product of that brand of extremism, not its cause.

It’s fine for Democrats to appeal to the tiny band of remaining swing voters by arguing that Donald Trump is an outlier who, despite his aggressive Americanism, finds his closest spiritual allies in menacing overseas figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte, and of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But they should not embrace the illusion that once Trump — or his sycophantic subordinate Mike Pence — is gone, politics will return to normal. The GOP hasn’t been normal for a good while.

Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

Terms & Privacy Notice

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

The post GOP Extremism Was Powerful Before Trump, and It Will Outlive Him appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress http://www.gyrlversion.net/gop-extremism-was-powerful-before-trump-and-it-will-outlive-him/

[man-and-his-world]

As last week’s media coverage was dominated by House Republicans’ efforts to dismantle Obamacare, a curiously named measure called the United States Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act (H.R.534) quietly made its way through both houses of Congress, enjoying overwhelming bipartisan support. Signed into law yesterday by President Donald Trump with little fanfare, the measure has one simple objective: to authorize the U.S. secretary of state to file the papers necessary for the U.S. to rejoin the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE), the Paris-based governing board that sanctions all World’s Fairs.

Why now? Because the U.S. has its sights set on hosting the 2023 World’s Fair, and the BIE will be deciding which country gets the hosting honors later this year.

World’s Fairs are a big deal for the country that wins the rights to host them. Think of them as the International Olympics of business and culture but with a lot more cash flow and a much bigger audience. For example, the 2010 Expo in Shanghai was a six-month affair that drew over 70 million visitors.

World’s Fairs are most commonly marketed as “Expos,” and they offer countries countless opportunities to market themselves inside giant, immersive retail-experience pavilions that aim to tout each nation’s global importance, while corporate sponsors from back home leverage the occasion to display their latest inventions, technologies, products and business opportunities. It’s also the ideal setting for national tourist boards to push their cultural and travel agendas. They are cultural and economic juggernauts. In fact, the 1967 Expo in Montreal was such a success that it became forever associated with the city when they named their expansion Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos, after the event.

The U.S. let its membership in the BIE lapse in the early 2000s, and with that, it lost the right to host World’s Fairs. The United States Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act aims to get the U.S. back into the mix because it has its sights set on winning the rights to host the 2023 World’s Fair in Minneapolis, Minn. “This is an important day for all of us who have long championed the return of World’s Fairs to the United States,” said Manuel Delgado, the chairman of ExpoUSA, one of the entities that has been pushing for a U.S. World’s Fair in recent years. “Being part of the BIE means that cities across America—from Minneapolis in 2023 to San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston, and many others to come—will be able to host future Expos and enjoy the tremendous cultural, educational and economic benefits of the Fair.”

There is powerful logic behind the choice to host the Expo in the land of 10,000 lakes (which will take place in the summer months, as organizers are quick to point out). The proposed theme of the U.S.’ 2023 Expo bid is health and wellness, playing towards Minnesota’s strengths as the nation’s epicenter of healthcare, medical technology and nutrition companies. “Minnesota is to healthcare and medical technology as Silicon Valley is to the tech world and the internet,” said Mark Ritchie, president and CEO of Minnesota’s World’s Fair Bid Committee and former Minnesota secretary of state. “Heads-of-state, royal families and the world’s biggest celebrities come to Minnesota for treatment because we have arguably the most advanced hospitals, health research facilities and healthcare delivery systems in the world—a little secret that we’re not so keen on keeping a secret anymore.”

Branded as “Expo 2023 USA—Minnesota” with the tagline “Healthy People, Healthy Planet: Wellness and Well-Being for All,” the U.S. bid is currently in a showdown with competing bids from Lodz, Poland (organized around a fairly nondescript theme branded as “City Reinvented”), and Buenos Aires (with a pitch that seemingly aims to please everyone with the universal themes of “Science, Innovation, Art and Creativity”). Rio de Janeiro had been in the running until Brazil’s bid committee ran out of steam recently. (An Olympic Games, one World Cup and an impeached president within a three-year period tends to have that effect on a country.)

Joining the BIE sets the stage not only for the Minnesota bid, but for other World’s Fairs to be held on U.S. soil in the not so distant future. Houston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have all expressed interest in securing Expo hosting duties down the road, but until now, lack of membership in the BIE was a major obstacle. “Rejoining the Bureau of International Expositions paves the way for us to compete on a level playing field with the bids from Poland and Argentina. Equally important, this also makes it possible for all other cities around the United States to bid to host an Expo in the future,” added Ritchie.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, scion of the Target retail empire and one of the state’s most popular political leaders in recent years, has been a very vocal supporter of the state’s World’s Fair effort. “With the president’s approval, this week’s achievement takes Minnesota one step closer to hosting the United States’ first World’s Fair in three decades. Expo 2023 will bring millions of visitors to our state and shine a global spotlight on Minnesota’s world-class medical and technology sectors,” remarked Dayton. Importantly, one of the core tenants of the Minnesota bid is minimizing up-front costs by using existing infrastructure and maximizing revenue from ticket sales, digital media revenue streams and intellectual property royalties—a business model very familiar to the Minnesotans behind the Expo bid. The Minnesota State Fair, the second largest of these annual statewide get-togethers in the U.S. in terms of attendance, is a major event that has run smoothly and generated a profit every year since its founding 150 years ago.

As it is with the selection process of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), there is a process that plays out in the BIE where representatives of bidding countries must woo the organization’s delegates from the other 167 member countries. However, for the U.S. bid to go forward, the Minnesota Expo organizers must also overcome one final obstacle: Unlike most other nations seeking to win the rights to host an Expo, the U.S. government will not act as a financial guarantor of any U.S. World’s Fairs. The United States Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act even explicitly states that all funding for the event must come exclusively from private sources. This provision might hamper all present and future U.S. bids, putting them at a distinct disadvantage to countries such as the UAE or China, which allocate massive amounts of state resources to ensure that the events go smoothly. (Understandably, no U.S. politician wants to have to explain why taxpayer dollars are being invested in building exhibition pavilions for the Republic of Moldova and not supporting injured veterans or rebuilding crumbling highways.)

There is a bigger issue facing the BIE than just deciding which country will get the rights to host the 2023 World’s Fair. As the delegates of the BIE member countries prepare to convene in the City of Lights to hear final pitches from the U.S., Argentina and Poland, they must also consider a much weightier question: Does the BIE want to move to a more sustainable private sector financing model, one that necessitates corporate buy-in and becomes an integral part of global companies’ branding, or is it satisfied with being relegated as a recurring roadshow that only stops in a handful of petro-states and command economies willing to foot the bill? The BIE’s upcoming selection of a host city for the 2023 Expo will not only feature a showdown between the U.S., Poland and Argentina, but more broadly, it will force BIE delegates to think about what kind of economic model—state or private-sector—they will employ for all future World Fairs.

The Minnesota bid is moving ahead and has strong support from a growing list of the state’s health, medical technology and nutrition companies, including Medtronic, General Mills, Blue Cross Blue Shield and the world-famous Mayo Clinic. National players already on board include Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—the nation’s largest public health philanthropy—and FedEx. Equally important are the broad sources of financial support, coming not only from Fortune 500 companies but also from an array of trade unions, credit unions and tourism agencies, with plans to build out those support networks as the bid proceeds. The onus of the Minnesota bid, as well as all future U.S. bids, will be on lining up an impressive cadre of corporate financial backers who can play the role of de facto guarantor for the World’s Fairs, coupled with a strong governance approach from the host committee.

It’s increasingly clear that the future of BIE-sanctioned World’s Fairs will have to be based on a new model that intersects corporate sponsorship with competent host committee stewardship. Otherwise, the BIE will find it increasingly hard to get competitive bids from the more developed economies that have come to see these events not as foundational pillars of national pride as they once did, but for what they are now: global trade shows on steroids. In fact, the writing is already on the wall: France’s bid for the 2025 World’s Fair, like the Minnesota bid, is slated to be funded entirely with private-sector money.

Fortunately for the U.S. and the organizers of Expo 2023 USA-Minnesota, the BIE’s traditional model of relying on state funds to guarantee these large events has not been without challenges. The Milan Expo of 2015 enjoyed ample state backing from the Italian government, but it still had its share of financial woes. This backstage drama has led many BIE delegates to consider if having the backing of global multinationals isn’t an altogether better alternative to relying on state funding.

Immediately concerning the 2023 U.S. bid, the BIE will have to do a quick gut-check and ask itself if it has more faith in the strength of corporate America and the $18 trillion dollar U.S. economy, the sovereign guarantee of Poland (which had its credit rating slashed by Standard & Poor’s last year), or the backing of Argentinian government (which is dangling on a precipice of financial free-fall with inflationlevels expected to pass 20 percent this year coupled with falling real GDP growth.)

It’s still unclear how the BIE will vote, but the rubber will hit the road on June 14 when the Minnesota’s World’s Fair Bid Committee will make its final presentation to the BIE in Paris. The final selection will be announced in November.

[troger]

By Daniel Nexon March 17, 2017

Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s deputy advisor on national security affairs, has emerged as an extremely “visible defender of the administration” on television and radio, especially on counterterrorism policy. Apart from his full-throated defense of policies such as the immigration and travel ban, Gorka likes to boast of his credentials and denigrate his predecessors, as when he told Fox News that “I think the message is deadly clear to our enemies and our adversaries. We don’t have a national security team made out of 28-year-old grad school students who have degrees in fictional writing.” Gorka maintains that the West is locked in an existential ideological struggle with Islam — a view that plays well in the Trump administration.

But Gorka’s own credentials have already come under scrutiny. Before his appointment, he was not a well-known figure among terrorism experts. A report in Politico noted that “several experts … puzzled over the gap between the numerous military academic credentials listed by Gorka — a political science Ph.D. who unfailingly uses the title ‘Dr.’ — and their unfamiliarity with his work and views.” This dovetails with a number of reports that raise doubts about his knowledge of Islam and terrorism, as well as about his ties to Hungarian far-right groups — including one, Vitezi Rend, whose members “‘are presumed to be inadmissible’ to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act” — and his claim to have access to confidential information within the White House, despite no confirmation that he has security clearance. The biggest concern: Despite casting himself as an expert on radical jihadi ideology, Gorka does not speak Arabic and has spent no time in the Middle East.

It’s possible for relative outsiders to produce important work. Often, those scholars extend their intellectual reach beyond their area of immediate expertise and bring fresh or disruptive perspectives to research communities. But sadly, Gorka’s scholarship is as shaky as his credentials, as I discovered when I went to one of the few available sources: his dissertation. I wanted a better understanding of Gorka’s views and their scholarly foundations. As he has, to my knowledge, published only one article in a peer-reviewed journal — a slim, multi-authored piece cautioning against overthinking “complexity” when it comes to grand strategy — my pickings were slim.

I should stress that I am not a terrorism expert, either. However, I have advised many dissertations, including a few on counterterrorism policy and insurgencies, in nearly 15 years as a practicing academic. I am also currently the lead editor of a well-regarded international studies journal, for which I read hundreds of academic manuscripts (of varying quality) in any given year.

I have assessed plenty of rushed, incomplete, and problematic academic manuscripts, including doctoral theses. When I read dissertations, therefore, I anticipate something less than perfection. What I do expect, however, is to see substantive works of scholarship. I would particularly expect this from the only scholarly work produced by a man who loves to wave his doctorate “as though it’s a big deal.”

But I was shocked by the lack of scholarly merit. This is particularly troubling because

Gorka’s work constantly recycles core ideas found in his dissertation.

Gorka submitted his thesis in 2007 and defended it in 2008. He received his doctorate from Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary. His dissertation advisor, Andras Lanczi, has no academic expertise in terrorism or national security issues — but is, for the record, a strong supporter of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Lanczi became rector of Corvinus in 2016 after seeking the position unopposed.

In his dissertation, Gorka makes three major arguments, all of which are central themes of his subsequent policy work and now, one worries, U.S. national security policy.

First, al Qaeda represents a “fifth wave” of terrorism, which he calls “irrational, transcendental” terrorism. The terrorist in this wave “represents a wholly different category of threat, since due to the fact that he is completely uninterested in political resolution, he can justify the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Second, the organization of the modern state and its security apparatus is unsuited to deal with this threat; thus, the entire structure of Western security that evolved in the context of the Cold War requires a radical overhaul. Third, the ideal solution would involve a tightly integrated supranational security apparatus, but since “we are unable for various reasons (foremostly political) to create supranational solutions,” the only viable alternative is for states to develop a “unified multi-agency approach.”

This last one involves getting rid of the “internal barriers between the police force, the army and various intelligence services,” although Gorka implies that constitutional barriers might pose a problem. In other words, he wants a “unitary body which conglomerated all the skills of the various separate agencies and units into a new structure better suited to facing threats transcendental terrorist threat such as al Qaeda.” (See also this paper by Gorka.) This sounds like the stuff of totalitarian nightmares — or perhaps just a lot of interesting details for security professionals. Gorka likes big ideas but is not big on fleshing out the specifics.

Indeed, the dissertation is particularly thin on the central topics that Gorka trades on: Islam, terrorism, and Islamic terrorism. For example, Gorka’s discussion of Islam and democracy is sourced pretty much exclusively to Louis Milliot’s 1953 book, Introduction a l’étude du Droit Musulman — a scholarly, but dated, work by a French academic born in Algeria during the colonial period. He writes: “In fact of the few Western scholars who have written on the subject it is the French speaking world that has most to offer with Louis Milliot’s Introduction a l’étude de Droit Musulman being a seminal work.” Gorka also cites conversations with “leading Hungarian Arabist Miklós Maróth.” Maroth is a Hungarian academic and government advisor who has argued that European Muslims should be stripped of their citizenship and that Muslims who fail to assimilate should be “wrapped in pig skin.” From these two sources, Gorka confidently asserts that:

Without over-exaggeration it must here be noted that the two starting points are very different. For the Muslim understanding of law and political order the bedrock is faith and more specifically the will of Allah. Subsequently human action primarily depends upon God and only secondarily upon the human himself. As a faith-system Islam believes completely in the concept of predestination. All is determined by God and as a result there is no room for free-will. As a result the status of unbelievers is very different from that say of the Christian faith. For the Muslim, the concept of converting the unbeliever has little importance since the separation of believers from non-believers has been determined already by the Creator.

It follows, argues Gorka, that “our version of democracy cannot be sustained in a Muslim context, for if there is no free will, if the world and the future are predetermined, then the people’s choice as prerequisite is irrelevant.” Gorka shows no interest in the varied and careful literature on the subject of, or related to, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East nor concern about generalizing a large and diverse community of believers with different theological and pragmatic religious commitments. He also fails to explain how, if doctrines of predestination frustrate democracy, Europe’s Calvinist republics ever got their act together. One also has to wonder, as a Middle East expert commented to me, how Islam is now the majority religion of countries from Morocco to Pakistan if “the concept of converting the unbeliever has little importance” in its theology.

Gorka’s ridiculous understanding of Islam is only one part of a pattern of consistent carelessness and narrowness that runs through his dissertation.

Gorka’s ridiculous understanding of Islam is only one part of a pattern of consistent carelessness and narrowness that runs through his dissertation. At the outset, Gorka does list some hypotheses and what he will do to demonstrate them. But he includes nothing resembling a methodology, very little in the way of consideration of alternative explanations, or any of the other basic requirements of scholarship. For example, Gorka relies on very few sources and shows little interest in engaging with more than a handful of works on terrorism.

Sometimes the results are unintentionally amusing, as when he makes claims about the state of terrorism studies in 2007 based on a book chapter written in 1988 — which itself uses field surveys conducted in 1982 and 1985. Twenty-two years is an eternity in most scholarly fields, but this means his claims about the state of the field are sourced to a period before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Oklahoma City bombing, the emergence of al Qaeda, the Good Friday accords, the conflicts of the North Caucasus, 9/11, the attack on the Parliament of India, and the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Other parts are just plain weird. He includes a brief and pointless survey of past “apocalyptically motivated terrorism.” It discusses only the Zealots-Sicarii, the Assassins, and the Thugs. This is something of a cliché in histories of terrorism, and his account of the latter two groups comes almost entirely from a 1998 book called Warrior Cults: A History of Magical, Mystical and Murderous Organizations. This section showcases a pattern found elsewhere in the dissertation: Gorka drops a footnote indicating that relevant material comes from a particular source unless he indicates otherwise. He then proceeds without additional references, leaving the reader in the dark as to how to check his research. At least in some places, this leads him to pass off direct quotations from source material as his own language.

Given its overall tone and lack of depth, it’s perhaps not surprising that at least 5 percent of the doctoral thesis is cut-and-pasted from his prior nonscholarly writings.

Given its overall tone and lack of depth, it’s perhaps not surprising that at least 5 percent of the doctoral thesis is cut-and-pasted from his prior nonscholarly writings. One of these is a Human Events opinion essay that Gorka co-authored with his wife. Another is a policy piece that he first drafted in 2004, which Gorka does not bother to update. In consequence, a crucial claim in his 2007 dissertation — that terrorism is increasing in lethality — rests entirely on data from the period between 1993 and 2003. As he writes in his dissertation, “For the years 1998 until 2003, the average number of terrorist victims per attack jumped to 13.71. In 1992 the number of victims per attack was 2. In 2003, the number was 20.5 victims per terrorist attack.”

When we zoom in on this claim, we can see the sloppiness of Gorka’s methods. Not only is this an unacceptably truncated period, but the aggregate, descriptive statistics he gives just aren’t remotely good enough. The period from 2001 to 2003 covers not only the 9/11 attacks but also the first years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He does not even bother attempting to identify the proportion of such attacks carried out by groups — including in the Middle East and Central Asia — that would qualify as “irrational, transcendental” terrorists rather than, say, secessionists or guerrilla movements. In other words, this is an exercise without any evidentiary value.

Figure 1: Average number of fatalities per terrorist attack, per the Global Terrorism Database. Prepared by Peter Henne.

It gets worse. The data Gorka relies on does not extend beyond 2012, so I asked former students to run the same measure using counts from the Global Terrorism Database (for some of the limitations of this data, see, for example). The lethality of attacks — that is Gorka’s own measure — while consistently rising, remains consistently lower than Gorka reports. It does not, to be blunt, seem like evidence of growing “hyper-terrorism” that would require a total paradigm shift in how Western states secure themselves against threats.

What’s going on? Is this a function of the different datasets? Well, Gorka writes that the “lethality” of attacks is increasing, but his footnote discusses “victims.” His table on page 205 has the same discrepancy. He labels it “Lethality of Terrorist Attacks, 1993-2003,” but the relevant column reads “Number of victims.” Until I started to look at the data he uses, I assumed that Gorka was using the terms as synonyms. He’s not. If we check his numbers against the 2004 report that he draws on, it’s obvious that he’s conflating “dead” and “wounded” in his lethality analysis. Big spikes in the number of wounded from attacks tell us something about terrorism, but this kind of semantic obfuscation also tells us something about Gorka’s modus operandi.

Indeed, Gorka’s thesis reads like one of his interviews: It’s full of strong claims, boldly and confidently stated, backed up with very little evidence. Gorka tells us about Turkish-European relations. He opines on globalization. He confidently proclaims on the “sacrosanct nature of sovereignty that would later lie behind the creation of the ‘balance-of-power’ system that would be so important to Europe in following centuries.” Sometimes his assertions make sense. Sometimes, as in his claims that “sacrosanct” sovereignty explains the creation of the “‘balance-of-power’ system,” they don’t. (For these and more quotations, and a longer discussion of them, see here.) But seldom does Gorka provide actual evidence, let alone citations, to support them.

If his dissertation is any guide, then Gorka is, in fact, bluster all the way down.

If his dissertation is any guide, then Gorka is, in fact, bluster all the way down. His thesis is part smoke and mirrors, part testament to self-importance, and not at all serious scholarship. Gorka believes what he believes. In the case of his dissertation, that we face a new phase of historically lethal terrorism carried out by irrational actors, this can only be met by radically overhauling the state. Indeed, in 2010, Gorka asserted that the terrorist threat is so supreme that “[w]e need not prepare in the short or even medium terms for conventional warfare between nation‐states, using tanks and aircraft carriers. For the foreseeable future our enemies will be non‐state actors — with or without state sponsorship — using irregular means against us.” Regardless, evidence, methodology, and analytical rigor are nuisances that can be shunted aside, whether in the pursuit of a credential or in the formulation of policy.

Much has been written on the factually challenged echo chamber of the far-right. In the United States, its descent into a world of suspect facts has even alienated some longtime conservative commentators. President Trump himself has a fraught relationship with the truth — whether the size of his inauguration crowd, claiming credit for long-planned corporate hiring initiatives, accusing former President Barack Obama of having him wiretapped, or asserting that the American murder rate is at an all-time high. When a Department of Homeland Security report concluded that Trump’s travel ban would not reduce the threat of terrorism on American soil, the administration simply dismissed its findings.

In a powerful essay, Jacob Levy argues that such post-truth politics move us in the direction of authoritarianism. As he concludes, “insisting on the difference between truth and lies is itself a part of the defense of freedom.… [T]he power to tell public lies and to have them repeated is evidence of, and a tool for the expansion of, a power that free people should resist and refuse.” But there are many consequences of post-truth politics short of autocracy.

To the extent that members of any ideological movement — right or left — respond to “inconvenient facts” not by adjusting their beliefs and preferences but by creating “alternative facts,” they are likely to support and enact counterproductive, and downright dangerous, policies.

It is precisely attention to the significance of inconvenient facts that distinguishes good scholars and true experts from pretenders. Pretenders present themselves as scholars and experts. They adopt the language, get the credentials, and perform as they — or, at least, their audience — imagine scholars and experts sound. Rather than speak truth to power, they peddle what their ideological compatriots want to hear, wrapped up in the trappings of intellectual authority.

The more that political movements, politicians, and leaders move into a universe of alternative facts, the more they render themselves vulnerable to these intellectual grifters. And the more these fake experts influence actual policy, the more damage that they can do. I do not believe that a doctorate, let alone an academic background, is a prerequisite for good policymaking. But the president of the United States is best served by advisors who place facts before ideology, who care about the substance more than the credential, and who would never make sweeping judgments about millions of people grounded on essentially no evidence at all. This is particularly the case for a new president who has repeatedly demonstrated that when ideology — or even vanity — runs into inconvenient facts, he expects the facts to bend. In this sense, Gorka seems a perfect fit for the worst impulses of this administration.

Photo credit: ALEX WONG/Getty Images

[englishchinesetranslations]

1. Serious About Socialism

2. Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant

3. Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test

4. ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans

5. The Green Movement Is Red

6. Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left

While you were enjoying your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a national conference on socialism.

Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left.

Since there’s often confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend.

The conference, which had the tag line “No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries,” contained a cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left thought in America. Among the sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin, a quarterly socialist magazine.

The walls of the various conference rooms were adorned with posters of Karl Marx and various depictions of socialist thinkers and causes.

Most of the conference attendees appeared to be white, but identity politics were a major theme throughout—especially in regard to gender.

At the registration desk, attendees were given the option of attaching a “preferred pronoun” sticker on their name tags.

In addition, the multiple-occupancy men’s and women’s restrooms were relabeled as “gender neutral,” and men and women were using both. Interestingly enough, the signs above the doors were still labeled with the traditional “men’s” and “women’s” signs until they were covered over with home-made labels.

One of the paper labels read: “This bathroom has been liberated from the gender binary!”

While the panelists and attendees were certainly radical, and often expressed contempt for the Democratic Party establishment, it was nevertheless clear how seamlessly they blended traditional Marxist thought with the agenda of what’s becoming the mainstream left.

They did so by weaving their views with the identity politics that now dominate on college campuses and in the media and popular entertainment. The culture war is being used as a launching point for genuinely socialist ideas, many of which are re-emerging in the 21st century.

Here are six takeaways from the conference:

1. Serious About Socialism

A common line from those on the modern left is that they embrace “democratic socialism,” rather than the brutal, totalitarian socialism of the former Soviet Union or modern North Korea and Venezuela. Sweden is usually cited as their guide for what it means in practice, though the reality is that these best-case situations show the limits of socialism, not its success.

It’s odd, too, for those who insist that “diversity is our strength” to point to the culturally homogeneous Nordic countries as ideal models anyway.

It’s clear, however, that while many socialists insist that their ideas don’t align with or condone authoritarian societies, their actual ideology—certainly that of those speaking at the conference—is in no sense distinct.

Of the panels I attended, all featured speakers who made paeans to traditional communist theories quoted Marx, and bought into the ideology that formed the basis of those regimes.

Mainstream politicians may dance around the meaning of the word “socialist,” but the intellectuals and activists who attended Socialism 2019 could have few doubts about the fact that Marxism formed the core of their beliefs.

Some sought to dodge the issue. One was David Duhalde, the former political director of Our Revolution, an activist group that supports Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and that was an offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

Duhalde said that Sanders is a creation of the socialist movement—having had direct ties to the Socialist Party of America in his youth—but hasn’t maintained an official connection to socialist political organizations throughout his political career.

Sanders’ position, according to Duhalde, is “anti-totalitarian” and that he favors a model based on “neither Moscow, nor the United States, at least in this formation.”

It’s a convenient way of condemning capitalist-oriented societies while avoiding connections to obviously tyrannical ones.

It was also difficult to mistake the sea of red shirts and posters of Marx that adorned the walls at the conference—or the occasional use of the word “comrades”—as anything other than an embrace of genuine socialism, but with a uniquely modern twist.

2. Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant

Transgenderism, gender nonconformity, and abolishing traditional family structures were huge issues at Socialism 2019.

One panel, “Social Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation,” addressed how the traditional family structure reinforced capitalism and contended that the answer was to simply abolish families.

Corrie Westing, a self-described “queer socialist feminist activist based in Chicago working as a home-birth midwife,” argued that traditional family structures propped up oppression and that the modern transgender movement plays a critical part in achieving true “reproductive justice.”

Society is in a moment of “tremendous political crisis,” one that “really demands a Marxism that’s up to the par of explaining why our socialist project is leading to ending oppression,” she said, “and we need a Marxism that can win generations of folks that can be radicalized by this moment.”

That has broad implications for feminism, according to Westing, who said that it’s important to fight for transgender rights as essential to the whole feminist project—seemingly in a direct shot at transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, who at a Heritage Foundation event in January argued that sex is biological, not a societal construct, and that transgenderism is at odds with a genuine feminism.

She contended that economics is the basis of what she called “heteronormativity.”

Pregnancy becomes a tool of oppression, she said, as women who get pregnant and then engage in child rearing are taken out of the workforce at prime productive ages and then are taken care of by an economic provider.

Thus, the gender binary is reinforced, Westing said.

She insisted that the answer to such problems is to “abolish the family.” The way to get to that point, she said, is by “getting rid of capitalism” and reorganizing society around what she called “queer social reproduction.”

“When we’re talking about revolution, we’re really connecting the issues of gender justice as integral to economic and social justice,” Westing said.

She then quoted a writer, Sophie Lewis, who in a new book, “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” embraced “open-sourced, fully collaborative gestation.”

3. Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test

It’s perhaps not surprising that socialists embrace open borders. After all, that’s becoming a much more mainstream position on the left in general.

The AFL-CIO used to support immigration restrictions until it flipped in 2000 and called for illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship.

As recently as 2015, Sanders rejected the idea of open borders as a ploy to impoverish Americans.

But Justin Akers-Chacon, a socialist activist, argued on a panel, “A Socialist Case for Open Borders,” that open borders are not only a socialist idea, but vital to the movement.

Akers-Chacon said that while capital has moved freely between the United States and Central and South America, labor has been contained and restricted.

He said that while working-class people have difficulty moving across borders, high-skilled labor and “the 1%” are able to move freely to other countries.

South of the border, especially in Mexico and Honduras, Akers-Chacon said, there’s a stronger “class-consciousness, as part of cultural and historical memory exists in the working class.”

“My experiences in Mexico and my experiences working with immigrant workers, and my experiences with people from different parts of this region, socialist politics are much more deeply rooted,” he said.

That has implications for the labor movement.

Despite past attempts to exclude immigrants, Akers-Chacon said, it’s important for organized labor to embrace them. He didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

For instance, he said one of the biggest benefits of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that there was a brief boost in union membership amid a more general decline in unionism.

Besides simply boosting unions, the influx “changed the whole AFL-CIO position on immigrants, [which was] still backwards, restrictive, anti-immigrant,” Akers-Chacon said.

“So, there’s a correlation between expanding rights for immigrants and the growth, and confidence, and militancy of the labor movement as a whole,” he said.

4. ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans

The magazine Teen Vogue has come under fire recently for flattering profiles of Karl Marx and promoting prostitution as a career choice, among other controversial pieces.

It would be easy to write these articles off as mere “clickbait,” but it’s clear that the far-left nature of its editorials—and its attempt to reach young people with these views—is genuine.

Teen Vogue hosted a panel at Socialism 2019, “System Change, Not Climate Change: Youth Climate Activists in Conversation with Teen Vogue.”

Teen Vogue panel SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE at the @socialismconf with @SatansJacuzzi @TeenVogue (Lucy) @SunriseMvmtChi (Sally) and me @usclimatestrike! Thanks @haymarketbooks!

The panel moderator was Lucy Diavolo, news and politics editor at the publication, who is transgender.

“I know there’s maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a socialism conference … especially because the youth spinoff brand is a magazine so associated with capitalist excess,” Diavolo said. “If you’re not familiar with our work, I encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s coverage of social justice issues, capitalism, revolutionary theory, and Karl Marx, or you can check out the right-wing op-eds that accuse me of ‘clickbait communism’ and teaching your daughters Marxism and revolution.”

The panel attendees responded enthusiastically.

“Suffice to say, the barbarians are beyond the gates. We are in the tower,” Diavolo boasted.

5. The Green Movement Is Red

It’s perhaps no surprise that an openly socialist member of Congress is pushing for the Green New Deal—which would essentially turn the U.S. into a command-and-control economy reminiscent of the Soviet Union.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti recently said, according to The Washington Post: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti asked Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the Democratic primary. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Economic transformation barely disguised as a way to address environmental concerns appears to be the main point.

One of the speakers on the Teen Vogue climate panel, Sally Taylor, is a member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented environmental activist group that made headlines in February when several elementary school-age members of the group confronted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about her lack of support for the Green New Deal.

The other speaker on the Teen Vogue climate panel was Haven Coleman, a 13-year-old environmental activist who has received favorable coverage for leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike in March. She was open about the system change she was aiming for to address climate change.

She noted during her remarks that she was receiving cues from her mother, who she said was in attendance.

Haven said the answer to the climate change problem was moving on from our “capitalistic society” to something “other than capitalism.”

Interestingly, none of the glowing media profiles of Haven or the Climate Strike mentioned a link to socialism or abolishing capitalism.

6. Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left

According to a recent Gallup survey, 4 in 10 Americans have a positive view of socialism. Support among Democrats is even higher than among the general population, with a majority of Democrats saying they prefer socialism to capitalism.

But many who say they want socialism rather than capitalism struggle to define what those terms mean and change their views once asked about specific policies.

As another Gallup poll from 2018 indicated, many associate socialism with vague notions of “equality,” rather than as government control over the means of production in the economy.

What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that traditional Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite still being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen.

Socialists at the conference focused more on social change, rather than electoral politics, but there were still many core public policy issues that animated them; notably, “Medicare for All” and government run-health care, some kind of Green New Deal to stop global warming (and more importantly, abolish capitalism), open borders to increase class consciousness and promote transnational solidarity, removing all restrictions on—and publicly funding—abortion, and breaking down social and legal distinctions between the sexes.

They were particularly able to weave their issues together through the thread of “oppressor versus oppressed” class conflict—for instance, supporting government-run health care meant also unquestioningly supporting unfettered abortion and transgender rights.

Though their analyses typically leaned more heavily on economic class struggle and determinism than what one would expect from more mainstream progressives, there wasn’t a wide gap between what was being discussed at Socialism 2019 and the ideas emerging from a growing segment of the American left.

[vfxserbia]

Klaudija Cermak (born in Rijeka, former Yugoslavia) has over 33 years experience in VFX Compositing on high-end commercials, broadcast programmes and feature films and has worked at all the major post-production houses in London’s Soho including MPC, The Mill, Millfilm, Framestore, Double Negative and Glassworks. Her feature film credits include ‘Gladiator’ that won an Oscar for the Best VFX, ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, ‘Captain America’, and ‘Jason Bourne’. Klaudija is a member of VES and the author of the Kindle bestseller ‘How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production – The Alternative Guide’.

Klaudija will share her insights through her CGA2019 talk How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production on 2. November. (sold-out) and “Nuke Industry Workflow” Workshop (still some places left)

  Welcome back to VFXSerbia! Last time we had so much fun talking with you. 

Thank you for having me again! I love your site and now recommend it to everyone. The last interview was only 4 years ago and sooooooo much has happened since, I have to update some of the answers from last time.

First time in Belgrade and at CGA conference. What are your expectations?

Huge! Hahahaha… And on so many levels: 1: I am very much looking forward to all the talks from my amazing colleagues from all over the World and meeting everyone. 2.  I have been watching some of the work coming from Serbia, and from the Serbian artists scattered around the World, and expect to be bowled over. 3. I am giving a talk at the Yugoslav Film Archive, one of the five most important film archives in Europe and one of the ten largest in the world. Wow! Just the thought that most of my childhood and youthood films are stored there fills me with excitement.  4. Belgrade! So much looking forward to visiting the Paris of Eastern Europe. Indeed, I have only been to Belgrade once before, and just to catch a plane so this will be my first proper visit.

On a more personal note, my grandfather had Piano shops on Terazije and Knez Mihajlova before the Second World War and we hope to stumble across one of the Cermak pianos. Also, I can’t wait to take my 24 year old daughter who was born in London to the Yugoslav Museum and prove that  ‘Once upon a time there was a country’ wasn’t just in her mother’s imagination. Hahahaha…

Can you describe your role in Escape Studios/Pearson College?

For the last two years I have been teaching the classic 12 week full time and 20 week part time VFX Compositing courses (Foundry Nuke and now BorisFX! Silhouette) that have been feeding the VFX industry with new talent since 2002. Full time course has 5 hours of teaching a day, 5 days a week and we expect students to work hard outside classes to create a Showreel demonstrating  the core Compositing skills soon after completing the course (within a month). 

The aim of the Showreel is to get them an entry Roto/Prep role in the industry. This particular course is also part of the MA that is run by Allar Kaasik. MA includes another 6 weeks of Advanced Compositing which can be taken as an independent course too. 

  This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  Part time course is 2 evenings or 6 hours a week teaching and attended by students who either want to top up their skills, change career or are moving to Nuke from another software. A lot of VFX facilities send their staff to our courses so in the last part-time course we had 8 students already working in the industry. Both courses are filled with students from all over the World, who normally have a degree already, and classes are full of fun. 

We get involved in outside Productions too. My whole class worked on a lovely short film ‘Turning Tide’ that won Best Post-production at the London ‘Lift – Off Film Festival’ this year. Last year we created VFX for a charity film ‘Superheroes’ for the Great Ormond Street Hospital and this year we are doing Production on it too.

Of course I also get involved in the development and have to keep up with the technological advances and new techniques, and that’s a full time job in itself. Hahahaha… I find teaching exhilarating, rewarding and really fulfilling, and while I sometimes miss large productions (my last project was Black Mirror for Netflix) I am really enjoying being organised and knowing when I will finish work. Hahahaha…

Warner Bros studio Harry Potter Exhibition with film crew names on the wand boxes, including Klaudija

  Soon I will be moving to teaching BA/MArt The Art of Visual Effects which is a 3-4 year course headed by Davi Stein. On that course we make short films from concept to delivery. This year our Undergraduates won tonnes of awards for their short films. You can check them out on our Animation Blog.

What are the ways for young people to get into the VFX industry in the UK?

Since we spoke last time there have been some developments on that front. Traditionally it was either as a runner or taking an independent course or like me, by accident. Now a lot of VFX companies have their own Academies too. However you still need a Showreel to get into any of these. From our last Full time Compositing course all the students got a job in companies like ILM, MPC, Bluebolt, Jellyfish and Union and one got into one of the Academies. Some of them got Roto/Prep roles and some went in as Junior Compositors.

From the Evening Course some students got jobs as Runners but were within less than 3 months promoted into Roto/Prep or Junior Compositing roles. Escape Studios is very good at preparing students for the industry as the Lecturers are all from the industry and know all the workflows. We don’t just teach software but industry etiquette too. Our students also get the opportunity to go on the shoot, experience different filming roles and learn how to collect shoot data for VFX, with our DOP Clement Gharini. You would be amazed how many people work in the industry who have never had the opportunity to go on the shoot. 

We are also increasingly aware of the challenging times we live in and its effects on the young people so we are incorporating more and more ‘soft skills’ into our courses. Andy Brassington  is very active on this front and organises extra talks and workshops on the transferable skills. And we have very supportive Student Services who will assist students with any life challenges they may face too.

What is the advice you give to students when they start and when they finish your course? 

I give a lot of work and life advice to my students throughout the course. They even know the quickest Harrods entrance (door 5) to the Deli counter and Hungarian salami. Hahahaha… One of my classes produced as a goodbye gift a booklet with the caricatures of me and my quotes. Hahahahaha….

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

At the start of the course I still recommend Stella Cottrel’s personal development book ‘Skills for Success’ as we are increasingly losing the ability to stop, think and reflect both about ourselves and the World around us. 

How do you see VFX in the present and how in the near future?

Well, a lot has been happening since we last talked. VFX is thriving at the moment. London is extremely busy and there are a lot of opportunities for all roles at all levels. This is greatly thanks to the streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon. A lot of Film and Commercials VFX facilities have opened TV departments, ILM, Dneg, Glassworks, then The Farm that specialises in Editing, Grading and Sound for TV has opened a VFX department, The Mill has reopened MIllfilm and there are a lot of new companies like Untold Studios being set up by ex employees of larger companies. Technicolor bought The Mill and MPC! 

However some of the issues we mentioned last time, highlighted by Rhythm & Hues bankruptcy after winning the Oscar for Life of Pi, have not been resolved. The facilities’ thin profit margins due to flawed business model (especially in Film) while having to constantly reinvest into new technologies and R&D, artists not being paid overtime, short rolling contracts, no benefits etc. Let’s face it, the industry thrives thanks to the creative and passionate people like us willing to donate tons of overtime to keep it going.

Interesting article on the theme is here: VFX VOICE: GLOBAL VFX: STATE OF THE INDUSTRY 2019

Ha. The future. Technology wise we can expect the merging of real time and VFX. Epic’s Unreal Engine is shaking things up. So much so that I have started learning it. Hopefully the interface will be improved for people like me. Hahahaaa… Luckily there are a lot of experts around me as we are  Unreal Authorised Training Centre.

Trends in animation and VFX at FMX 2019

What advice would you give to a young woman starting out in VFX?

Find a wife or marry a banker! Hahahaha… Sorry, joking again.  Look, I come from a family where women made it happen with or without men so I would give the same advice to everyone, young men too, be kind, keep learning, develop wide skills, be flexible and do the best work you can. I never felt different because I was a woman. And luckily, when my daughter was growing up we didn’t have such strict Health and Safety and NDA’s so she could come with me to work, even sleep on the sofa when I had to work through the night and when my au-pair was ill, Runners would pick her up from school and bring her to work. That’s why she decided to study Maths as she saw nothing exact in the clients’ feedback. Hahahaha…  Now I know I was different as we found out few years ago that women in the industry were paid up to 30% less than men. Last time we spoke the ratio of men vs women in the industry was 20:1. I think the problem arises when one becomes a parent. So how can one make it more appealing to mothers? Flexible working time, Creches etc. I know that Double Negative for example offers some flexible working time to parents. There is a lot of talk about inclusivity and diversity, and not just in gender, in VFX. Access VFX and some other organisations are making a great effort on that front so there is an increasing awareness of the need to make VFX more accessible. However this is a wider issue. To be truly inclusive you have to have a more even education system in Primary and Secondary Schools. I am talking here about class societies where there is a huge difference in resources between schools. 

WE NEED MORE WOMEN IN VFX : AN APPROACH TO ENCOURAGING DIVERSITY IN FILM

I found your career incredibly fascinating while digging into your immense experience listed on LinkedIn page. How does your life as a Freelance VFX in London look to you when you look back?

I have been very lucky that I have somehow sailed from job to job for the last 35 years and when life threw some extraordinary events my way I was able to adapt and steer my career. If I had to pinpoint what helped me the most it was my upbringing and the ideas from the Pioneer’s Oath ‘to study and work diligently, respect parents and my seniors, and be a loyal and true friend.’ That’s the best advice one can get to survive VFX. We live in the times when we are constantly bombarded with the ideas of individualism and having to stand on our own feet but in VFX, and greatly in life, we can achieve very little on our own. It is all teamwork or a collective. Hahahaha…All in all we are lucky because the industry is filled with a lot of nice people.

https://vimeo.com/368367308

  What inspires you these days?  

I must admit I have a serious problem. Everything inspires me and I am always bursting with ideas. That is an incredible burden as those lacking ideas and then having one just pursue it and accomplish it. Hahahaha…

I paint, write and constantly think of the next thing I should learn. 

So, I can tell you what I found inspiring today: Zivkovic’s ‘Playgrounds Berlin’ Titles and the wonderful Yugoslav Film Archive website. And the realisation that I can read Cyrillic as well as Latin writing because my father always bought me Политикин забавник in Cyrillic. 

Isn’t life amazing? 

My mother used to say “The purpose of life is a life with purpose”. I am a dreamer. I live in a bubble. I am the same girl that stood outside the cinema at the age of 7 and vowed to change the world after seeing Winnetou.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What can our eager readers expect to hear from you on CGA2019 stage?

Good question. Who knows? Hahahaha… Joking again.

So, I have rewritten the talk few times already, as I want it to be informative, relevant and fun and different to anything I said so far. New and fresh. I have had an unusual career of moving constantly between film, TV and commercials. I have survived against the odds and I have learnt a few things along the way in the form of ‘soft skills’ that I would like to share with the audience and which I think are especially valuable in the Liquid World we live in that requires total flexibility.  

Nadja Regin, Yugoslav Actress

  But first we will remember Nadja Regin, a wonderful Yugoslav actress and author from Serbia who died this year in London and share behind the scenes story from ‘From Russia with Love‘ that she recorded for BELhospice last year. And the Yugoslav Archive is the most appropriate place to remember her. She will be delighted to be coming home.

Klaudija will share her insights through her CGA2019 talk How to Get Into and Survive Film, Advertising and TV Post-production on 2. November.

Klaudija Cermak – CGA2019 Interview Klaudija Cermak (born in Rijeka, former Yugoslavia) has over 33 years experience in VFX Compositing on high-end commercials, broadcast programmes and feature films and has worked at all the major post-production houses in London’s Soho including…

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Sutter’s Mill)

On Saturday November 10, the ISO C++ committee completed its fall meeting in San Diego, California, USA, hosted with thanks by Qualcomm. This was the biggest ISO C++ meeting in our 29-year history, with some 180 people at the meeting, representing 12 nations. For more details about our size increase, including how we adapted organizationally to handle the load, see my “pre-trip report” posted before the meeting began.

Because this is one of the last meetings for adding features to C++20, we gave priority to proposals that might make C++20, and we adopted a number of them for C++20. Thank you to all of the hundreds of people who participate in ISO C++, those who came to the meeting and still more who participated electronically, and who all helped with the design refinement and specification wording and organization. I want to at least try to recognize by name many of the authors of the proposals we adopted, but nobody succeeds with a proposal on their own. C++ is a team effort – this wouldn’t be possible without all of your help. So, thank you, and apologies for not being able to acknowledge everyone by name.

Notes:

Some of the links below are to papers that will not be published until the post-meeting mailing at the end of this month, and so the links will become public at that time.

For more details, see also the Reddit trip report.

You can find a brief summary of ISO procedures here.

Prelude: Focus

The committee is actively working to keep coherence and direction in the face of a tsunami of proposals and a huge number of enthusiastic people. Perhaps the most impactful record-setting number was the size of the pre-meeting mailing: 274 papers. For comparison, even excluding the biggest paper which was the updated C++ standard working draft which appears in every mailing, the pre-meeting mailing was enormous:

By word count, it exceeded Shakespeare’s complete published works.

By paper count, it exceeded the previous pre-meeting papers record by about 65%, and started to approach the total number of technical papers to produce the first C++ standard (total of pre-meeting mailings from 1990-1997).

We appreciate all the input, including that many of the papers are about bug fixes (always welcome) and rounding out existing features. However, a large number were proposals for new “good” features. And the trouble is that we can’t say yes to every feature that is “good” that benefits some users; we have to decide on a focused set, of at least coordinated features and ideally of general composable features, that fulfills the aim and mission of C++ and keeps the language adoptable and usable.

As I reminded in my pre-trip report, focus means saying no more often, and so we’ve taken several steps in recent meetings and at this meeting:

About a year ago, we created the Direction Group (Bjarne Stroustrup, Daveed Vandevoorde, Michael Wong, Howard Hinnant, Roger Orr, and the recently retired Beman Dawes) which has created and maintains an advisory document Direction for ISO C++ (P0939).

In 2018, Pearson Education made free electronic copies of The Design and Evolution of C++ (Bjarne Stroustrup) available to all committee members. Not only does this help ensure that the newer people have access to this expected-to-be-read foundational work, which continues to be very current, but also having it in machine-readable and -searchable form makes it much easier to reference and quote from in our own papers.

At this meeting, we let EWG and LEWG continue to focus on near-term papers, and created SG17 (EWG Incubator, JF Bastien) and SG18 LEWG Incubator (Bryce Adelstein Lelbach) to help review and improve the papers that EWG and LEWG could not handle, to improve them and to prune them before they reach the main subgroup. Thank you to JF and Bryce for being willing to chair these new groups!

Two major features adopted for C++20: Ranges, and Concepts convenience notation

Ranges (Eric Niebler, Casey Carter, Christopher Di Bella) was adopted for C++20. This was a tremendous amount of work by Casey Carter in particular (witness the recurring 3:00am editing update emails during the week). As Eric Niebler put it: “If you liked the Ranges TS, you’ll love C++20.”

Concepts “convenience” notation for constrained templates (Ville Voutilainen, Thomas Köppe, Andrew Sutton, Herb Sutter, Gabriel Dos Reis, Bjarne Stroustrup, Jason Merrill, Hubert Tong, Eric Niebler, Casey Carter, Tom Honermann, Erich Keane, Walter E. Brown, Michael Spertus) passed unanimously on Saturday. I highlighted this paper as a “we may have a winner here” in my last trip report, and indeed it sailed through and was adopted for C++20. Recall that we already added the concepts core feature to C++20 back in 2017, but without the convenience notation to write templates without the “template” or “requires” keywords; at this meeting we finally converged on a convenience syntax to write constrained templates that both addressed all the major problems people had identified in the Concepts TS convenience notation design, and was also acceptable to the primary concepts designers (hence the long list of coauthors). For the first time, besides the special case of generic lambdas, C++ will now let you write lots of generic functions without “template” or angle brackets, and that are concept-constrained and therefore much easier to use correctly than function templates have ever been before.

More constexpr adopted for C++20: Ongoing concerted push toward general compile-time programming

In the first part of my CppCon 2017 talk, I emphasized that C++ is serious about first-class compile-time programming. That is a general theme to current C++ evolution, and is particularly important for being able to make effective use of compile-time reflection, and for building on that further in the future for compile-time code generation such as my metaclasses proposal relies upon.

First-class compile-time programming in C++ has been building since we allowed simple one-liner constexpr functions in C++11, to constexpr functions with loops in C++14, to constexpr lambdas and “if constexpr” in C++17. This week, we have added still more as a coordinated set of additions to C++20:

“consteval” immediate functions (Richard Smith, Andrew Sutton, Daveed Vandevoorde), which came in part from Andrew’s and my metaclasses work, allow writing functions that are guaranteed to run at compile time. This is essential for the kind of code generation that metaclasses rely on, and it’s great to see this now adopted as part of C++20!

constexpr union (Louis Dionne, Daveed Vandevoorde) lets you change the active member of a union during compile-time code.

constexpr try and catch (Louis Dionne) lets you write try/catch in constexpr code. However, note that it doesn’t actually let you throw exceptions at compile time.

constexpr dynamic_cast and typeid (Peter Dimov, Vassil Vassilev) lets you write dynamic_cast and typeid in compile-time expressions. Note that virtual function calls are already allowed in constant expressions (that was approved at our previous meeting).

std::is_constant_evaluated (also by Richard Smith, Andrew Sutton, Daveed Vandevoorde) lets you write conditional code that lets you write part of a function using code that is guaranteed to be executed at compile-time. Another way to think of it is that it’s similar in spirit to “if constexpr” except that it lets you combine “if constexpr” with an “else normal-if.”

constexpr std::pointer_traits (Louis Dionne) is an essential ingredient for enabling compile-time reflection and especially compile-time std::vector. (Compile-time std::vector will also need compile-time new, still under development.)

Miscellaneous constexpr library bits (Antony Polukhin) added still more constexpr within the standard library, which means making even more of the standard library available to compile-time code.

We’re on track to making most “normal” C++ code available to run at compile time — and although C++20 won’t get quite all the way there, C++20 is a landmark release and a turning point where start to permanently leave behind the angle brackets and workarounds we’ve been using since the 1990s, with the near-complete birth of fully “natural” compile-time C++ code. Recall that we have already been adding support for user-defined types as template parameter types; soon (either before or after C++20’s feature freeze) we may be able to use strings as template arguments, and use containers like std::vector in compile-time code. Of course, there likely will be some limits; for example, supporting compile-time std::thread is possible, but less likely to be worth the effort.

Looking ahead to C++23 for a moment, where we expect still more of that plus (we hope) full static reflection in the standard, this marks a difficult-to-overstate landmark shift in C++ programming — not a course change, but really taking all the things that programmers have already been trying to do indirectly and giving it first-class natural support. The long-term results are likely to exceed our expectations in ways that we can’t fully anticipate yet. So fasten your seat belts, and stay tuned. C++ programming is likely to evolve more, and in better ways, in the upcoming 5 years than it already has in the past 20.

Other changes approved for C++20

A number of other smaller changes were adopted as well.

Revising the C++ memory model (Hans-J. Boehm, Olivier Giroux, Viktor Vafeiades, et al.) makes several updates for weaker architectures including better support for GPU memory. Weaken release sequences (Hans-J. Boehm, Olivier Giroux, Viktor Vafeiades), a related paper forked from the main one, was also approved.

Today’s return-type-requirements are insufficient (Walter E. Brown, Casey Carter) tightens up Concept-constrained return type deduction.

Access control in contract conditions (J. Daniel Garcia, Ville Voutilainen) lets public functions’ preconditions and postconditions also access private members.

Signed integers are two’s complement (JF Bastien) is the result of a courtroom drama in both WG21 (C++) and WG14 (C). After intense prosecutorial cross-examination, the witness finally admitted in both courts that, yes, all known modern computers are two’s complement machines, and, no, we don’t really care about using C++ (or C) on the ones that aren’t. The C standard is likely to adopt the same change.

char8_t: A type for UTF-8 characters and strings (Tom Honermann) is another step toward broad Unicode support.

Nested inline namespaces (Alisdair Meredith) extends the new C++20 convenient nested namespace declaration syntax also for inline namespaces.

Missing feature test macros (John Spicer) adds support for missing macros that let code test for the presence of three features: destroying delete, three-way comparison (spaceship), and conditional explicit.

Several cleanup updates to std::optional, std::variant, std::function.

visit<R> (Michael Park, Agustín Bergé) allows specifying the return type when visiting variants.

reference_wrapper for incomplete types (Tomasz Kamiński, Stephan T. Lavavej, Alisdair Meredith) lets the wrapper work for forward-declared and abstract types.

assume_aligned (Timur Doumler, Chandler Carruth) enables portable code to express an alignment optimization hint to the compiler.

Smart pointer creation with default initialization (Glen Fernandes, Peter Dimov) adds allocate_shared_default_init, make_shared_default_init, and make_unique_default_init to perform default initialization.

Should span be Regular? (Tony Van Eerd) removes the comparison operators from std::span.

Heterogeneous lookup for unordered containers (Mateusz Pusz) enables indexing without creating a temporary key object.

Lots of smaller features and individual issues resolutions.

Other progress and decisions

Modules (Richard Smith; and Gabriel Dos Reis) for the first time had a unified design approved targeting C++20. Wording specification work will continue over the holidays, and we expect to consider modules for C++20 at our next meeting in February.

Executors: Thanks to progress between meetings and special meeting in September, we now are hopeful that an initial Executors design can make it for C++20. The feature was not merged at this meeting, but the design was approved for C++20 and we expect to consider adding the wording specification to C++20 at our next meeting.

Coroutines: We continued to make progress on coroutines. At this meeting, EWG again recommended merging the Coroutines TS (Gor Nishanov) into C++20, and this time EWG additionally explicitly included plans to incorporate features from the competing Core Coroutines proposal (Geoff Romer, James Dennett, Chandler Carruth). As in Rapperswil, the vote to merge the Coroutines TS into C++20 fell just short numerically and was not adopted for C++20 at this meeting. The proposers, and new collaborators from Facebook and other companies, will continue to work on improving consensus over the winter by addressing remaining concerns, including doing further work to merge features from Core Coroutines into the TS approach, such as an upcoming paper “A unifying design for Executors, Sender/Receiver, coroutines, parallel algorithms and networking” by Lewis Baker of Facebook which is expected to appear in the post-meeting mailing. We expect coroutines to be proposed again for C++20 at our February meeting in Kona with this additional information, and with the national bodies having more time to absorb the large amount of new information that was presented at this meeting.

Networking: This depends on Executors, and despite some discussion about decoupling the non-Executor parts, at this meeting we decided to target merging Networking into C++ for soon post-C++20 (i.e., targeting C++23). It also might depend on Coroutines, because some experts are still working through whether there is integration work to be done to merge Networking with Coroutines.

Reflection TS v1 (David Sankel) ISO ballot continues: The Reflection TS international comment ballot was already in progress during the meeting and will conclude next month. As I mentioned in my last trip report, note again that the TS’s current template metaprogramming-based syntax is just a placeholder; the feedback being requested is on the core “guts” of the design, and the committee already knows it intends to replace the surface syntax with a simpler programming model that uses ordinary compile-time code and not <>-style metaprogramming. In San Diego, we began looking at a “next-generation” reflection proposal  P1240 (Andrew Sutton, Faisal Vali, Daveed Vandevoorde).

2D Graphics (Michael B. McLaughlin, Herb Sutter, Jason Zink, Guy Davidson, Michael Kazakov) sent back to SG13: The SG13 HMI (human-machine interface) study group was reopened with Roger Orr as chair and will be taking another look at next steps for the Graphics proposal in the coming months.

Upcoming new work: Machine learning and education

In addition to the two Incubator Study Groups I mentioned in my pre-trip report, we also formed two new domain-specific study groups:

SG19: Machine Learning (Michael Wong). We feel we can leverage C++’s strengths in generic programming, optimization and acceleration, as well as code portability, for the specific domain of Machine Learning. The aim of SG19 is to address and improve on C++’s ability to support fast iteration, better support for array, matrix, linear algebra, in memory passing of data for computation, scaling, and graphing, as well as optimization for graph programming.

SG20: Education (JC van Winkel). We feel we have an opportunity to improve the quality of C++ education, to help software developers correctly use our language and ecosystem to write correct, maintainable, and performing software. SG20 aims to create curriculum guidelines for various levels of expertise and application domains, and to stimulate WG21 paper writers to include advise on how to teach the new feature they are proposing to add to the standard.

Thank you to Michael and JC for volunteering as chairs!

What’s next

Whew! Here is a cheat-sheet summary of our current reasonable expectations for some of the major pieces of work. Note that this is an estimate only, and progress can end up being different than expected.

And here is an updated snapshot of where we are on the schedule for C++20, which can always be found in paper P1000:

Thank you again to the approximately 180 experts who attended this meeting, and the many more who participate in standardization through their national bodies! Have a good winter… we look forward now to several interim telecons and potentially side meetings, and then our next regular WG21 meeting in February (Kona, HI, USA).

[todaynewsstories]

Exclusive: U.S. Commerce’s Ross eyes anti-China ‘poison pill’ for new trade deals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross signaled on Friday that Washington may flex its muscle with additional trading partners in order to exert pressure on China to open its markets, saying that a “poison pill” provision in the recently completed pact with Canada and Mexico could be replicated.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross poses in his office during an interview with Reuters at the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, U.S., October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert

Ross said in an interview that the provision was “another move to try to close loopholes” in trade deals that have served to “legitimize” China’s trade, intellectual property and industrial subsidy practices.

The United States is now in the early stages of talks with Japan and the European Union to lower tariff and regulatory barriers and try to reduce large U.S. trade deficits in autos and other goods.

If the EU and Japan signed on to provisions similar to the one in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it would signal that they are fully aligned with Washington in trying to increase pressure on China, the world’s No. 2 economy, for major economic policy changes.

The provision in USMCA, which is expected to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, effectively gives Washington a veto over Canada and Mexico’s other free trade partners to ensure that they are governed by market principles and lack the state dominance that is at the core of President Donald Trump’s tariff war against China.

Under the provision, if any of the three countries in the USMCA enters a trade deal with a “non-market country,” the other two are free to quit in six months and form their own bilateral trade deal.

“It’s logical, it’s a kind of a poison pill,” Ross said.

Ross, asked if the provision would be repeated in future trade deals, said: “We shall see. It certainly helps that we got it with Mexico and with Canada, independently of whether we get it with anyone else.”

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross answers questions during an interview with Reuters in his office at the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, U.S., October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert

He added that with a precedent now set, it will be easier for the provision to be added to other trade deals. “People can come to understand that this is one of your prerequisites to make a deal,” he said.

MORE STUDY ON CAR TARIFFS

Hanging over the talks with the EU and with Japan is the threat of a 25 percent U.S. tariff on imported autos and auto parts as the Commerce Department pursues a study on whether such imports pose a national security threat. The USMCA deal largely exempts Canada and Mexico from such tariffs.

The United States cited national security concerns when it announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from a number of countries in early March.

Ross said Canada and Mexico are effectively “really not in a position to object to (the national security tariffs) anymore because they’ve signed an agreement that says if we put them in we’ll exempt the first 2.6 million” vehicle imports from each country.

Ross declined to discuss timing for releasing the “Section 232” auto probe’s findings, noting that Trump has said he would not impose car tariffs while the EU and Japan talks are under way.

But in a signal that the probe could take longer, Ross said the Commerce Department was now incorporating details on autos trade from the USMCA deal, including new provisions that will effectively require more automotive content to be made in the United States.

Ross also said Japan should take steps to “move manufacturing into the U.S.” to cut its $40 billion automotive trade surplus with the United States. He declined to say if the Trump administration would seek a voluntary autos export cap from Japan.

“The methodology that we’ll use will be determined by the negotiations. There are plenty of ways you can solve things,” Ross said. “We want more production of everything in the United States. That’s our theme song with everybody.”

Ross said he did not expect much movement on China trade talks until after the Nov. 6 U.S. congressional elections, adding that Chinese officials do not appear in a mood to talk at the moment.

He said the view among some Chinese officials that Trump will be weakened by Democratic Party gains in Congress is a miscalculation, because “the real farmers, the real ranchers are hanging in there” and are not likely to turn away from Trump and Repubulicans in Congress.

The November elections are being closely watched to see if the Democrats can wrest control of the Senate or the House of Representatives from Republicans. Some of the key races are in states and Congressional districts where farming dominates and that had voted for Trump in 2016.

ZTE SCRUTINY

Ross trumpeted the Commerce Department’s June settlement with ZTE Corp, China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker, saying it brought an unprecedented level of change and scrutiny to the company that could be used in other cases.

Commerce virtually put ZTE out of business in April when it banned U.S. companies from supplying ZTE with components for its smart phones and networking gear for failing to comply with a deal to settle violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Under the settlement deal that allowed ZTE to resume shipments, the company replaced its board and senior management, allowing a Commerce Department monitor access to the company for 10 years, in addition to agreeing to a $1 billion penalty and a $400 million escrow payment.

“We’ve set the pattern that a huge, publicly owned company…changed its management, changed its board and permitted extreme intrusion by a foreign government regulatory agency,” Ross said. “I don’t think you’ll find anything comparable to that anywhere in the world.”

Ross also highlighted the current labor contract talks between U.S. steel companies and the United Steelworkers union, saying that wage increases are a likely outcome and that they would be a bellwether for the broader U.S. labor market.

United States Steel Corp (X.N) and ArcelorMittal USA, a unit of ArcelorMittal (MT.AS), have been negotiating new labor contracts for about 31,000 workers represented by the United Steelworkers union since July. A deal, however, remains elusive as workers are demanding a share in the profits from soaring steel prices.

Reporting by David Lawder and Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by David Shepardson and Chris Sanders; Editing by Leslie Adler

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

The post Exclusive: U.S. Commerce’s Ross eyes anti-China ‘poison pill’ for new trade deals appeared first on Today News Stories.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2RsDIH3 via IFTTT