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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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Premature Internet Activists

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TOMORROW (Feb 14) in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and SATURDAY (Feb 15) for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

"Premature antifacist" was a sarcastic term used by leftists caught up in the Red Scare to describe themselves, as they came under ideological suspicion for having traveled to Spain to fight against Franco's fascists before the US entered WWII and declared war against the business-friendly, anticommunist fascist Axis powers of Italy, Spain, and, of course, Germany:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_Denial/fBSbKS1FlegC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22premature+anti-fascist%22&pg=PA277&printsec=frontcover

The joke was that opposing fascism made you an enemy of America – unless you did so after the rest of America had woken up to the existential threat of a global fascist takeover. What's more, if you were a "premature antifascist," you got no credit for fighting fascism early on. Quite the contrary: fighting fascism before the rest of the US caught up with you didn't make you prescient – it made you a pariah.

I've been thinking a lot about premature antifascism these days, as literal fascists use the internet to coordinate a global authoritarian takeover that represents an existential threat to a habitable planet and human thriving. In light of that, it's hard to argue that the internet is politically irrelevant, and that fights over the regulation, governance, and structure of the internet are somehow unserious.

And yet, it wasn't very long ago that tech policy was widely derided as a frivolous pursuit, and that tech organizing was dismissed as "slacktivism":

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Elevating concerns about the internet's destiny to the level of human rights struggle was delusional, a glorified argument about the rules for forums where sad nerds argued about Star Trek. If you worried that Napster-era copyright battles would make it easy to remove online content by claiming that it infringed copyright, you were just carrying water for music pirates. If you thought that legalizing and universalizing encryption technology would safeguard human rights, you were a fool who had no idea that real human rights battles involved confronting Bull Connor in the streets, not suing the NSA in a federal courtroom.

And now here we are. Congress has failed to update consumer privacy law since 1988 (when they banned video store clerks from blabbing about your VHS rentals). Mass surveillance enables everything from ransomware, pig butchering and identity theft to state surveillance of "domestic enemies," from trans people to immigrants. What's more, the commercial and state surveillance apparatus are, in fact, as single institution: states protect corporations from privacy law so that corporations can create and maintain population-scale nonconsensual dossiers on all the intimate facts of our lives, which governments raid at will, treating them as an off-the-books surveillance dragnet:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Our speech forums have been captured by billionaires who censor anti-oligarchic political speech, and who spy on dissident users in order to aid in political repression. Bogus copyright claims are used to remove or suppress disfavorable news reports of elite rapists, thieves, war criminals and murderers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd describe the fights over tech governance in 2025 as frivolous or disconnected from "real politics"

This is where the premature antifascist stuff comes in. An emerging revisionist history of internet activism would have you believe that the first generation of tech liberation activists weren't fighting for a free, open internet – we were just shilling for tech companies. The P2P wars weren't about speech, privacy and decentralization – they were just a way to help the tech sector fight the entertainment industry. DRM fights weren't about preserving your right to repair, to privacy, and to accessibility – they were just about making it easy to upload movies to Kazaa. Fighting for universal access to encryption wasn't about defending everyday people from corporate and state surveillance – it was just a way to help terrorists and child abusers stay out of sight of cops.

Of course, now these fights are all about real things. Now we need to worry about centralization, interoperability, lock-in, surveillance, speech, and repair. But the people – like me – who've been fighting over this stuff for a quarter-century? We've gone from "unserious fools who mistook tech battles for human rights fights" to "useful idiots for tech companies" in an eyeblink.

"Premature Internet Activists," in other words.

This isn't merely ironic or frustrating – it's dangerous. Approaching tech activism without a historical foundation can lead people badly astray. For example, many modern tech critics think that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes internet users liable for illegal speech acts, while immunizing entities that host that speech) is a "giveaway to Big Tech" and want to see it abolished.

Boy is this dangerous. CDA 230 is necessary for anyone who wants to offer a place for people to meet and discuss anything. Without CDA 230, no one could safely host a Mastodon server, or set up the long-elusive federated Bluesky servers. Hell, you couldn't even host a group-chat or message board:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Getting rid of CDA 230 won't get rid of Facebook or make it clean up its act. It will just make it impossible for anyone to offer an alternative to Facebook, permanently enshrining Zuck's dominance over our digital future. That's why Mark Zuckerberg wants to kill Section 230:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna486

Defending policies that make it easier to host speech isn't the same thing as defending tech companies' profits, though these do sometimes overlap. When tech platforms have their users' back – even for self-serving reasons – they create legal precedents and strong norms that protect everyone. Like when Apple stood up to the FBI on refusing to break its encryption:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute

If Apple had caved on that one, it would be far harder for, say, Signal to stand up to demands that it weaken its privacy guarantees. I'm no fan of Apple, and I would never mistake Tim Cook – who owes his CEOhood to his role in moving Apple production to Chinese sweatshops that are so brutal they had to install suicide nets – for a human rights defender. But I cheered on Apple in its fight against the FBI, and I will cheer them again, if they stand up to the UK government's demand to break their encryption:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g288yldko

This doesn't make me a shill for Apple. I don't care if Apple makes or loses another dime. I care about Apple's users and their privacy. That's why I criticize Apple when they compromise their users' privacy for profit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

The same goes for fights over scraping. I hate AI companies as much as anyone, but boy is it a mistake to support calls to ban scraping in the name of fighting AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's scraping that lets us track paid political disinformation on Facebook (Facebook isn't going to tell us about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

And it's scraping that let us rescue all the CDC and NIH data that Musk's broccoli-hair brownshirts deleted on behalf of DOGE:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/how-to-access-important-health-info-thats-been-scrubbed-from-the-cdc-site/

It's such a huge mistake to assume that anything corporations want is bad for the internet. There are many times when commercial interests dovetail with online human rights. That's not a defense of capitalism, it's a critique of capitalism that acknowledges that profits do sometimes coincide with the public interest, an argument that Marx and Engels devote Chapter One of The Communist Manifesto to:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

In the early 1990s, Al Gore led the "National Information Infrastructure" hearings, better known as the "Information Superhighway" hearings. Gore's objective was to transfer control over the internet from the military to civilian institutions. It's true that these institutions were largely (but not exclusively) commercial entities seeking to make a buck on the internet. It's also true that much of that transfer could have been to public institutions rather than private hands.

But I've lately – and repeatedly – heard this moment described (by my fellow leftists) as the "privatization" of the internet. This is strictly true, but it's even more true to say that it was the demilitarization of the internet. In other words, corporations didn't take over functions performed by, say, the FCC – they took over from the Pentagon. Leftists have no business pining for the days when the internet was controlled by the Department of Defense.

Caring about the technological dimension of human rights 30 years ago – or hell, 40 years ago – doesn't make you a corporate stooge who wanted to launch a thousand investment bubbles. It makes you someone who understood, from the start, that digital rights are human rights, that cyberspace would inevitably evert into meatspace, and that the rules, norms and infrastructure we built for the net would someday be as consequential as any other political decision.

I'm proud to be a Premature Internet Activist. I just celebrated my 23rd year with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and yesterday, we sued Elon Musk and DOGE:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-opm-doge-and-musk-endangering-privacy-millions

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/13/digital-rights/#are-human-rights

Image: Felix Winkelnkemper (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acoustic_Coupler.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #eff #malcolm gladwell #section 230 #copyright #copyfight #privacy #code is speech #napster #creative commons #premature antifascist #trustbusting #antitrust #al gore #nii #national information infrastructure hearings #demilitarization #information superhighway #clicktivism

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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TIMOTHY SNYDER

APR 10

READ IN APP

Trump has an obvious weakness that makes America weak. He places the American economy at risk for the sake of a personal foible, a visible vulnerability.

All his adult life, Trump has been ripping people off. That is his modus operandi. Rather than a conscience, he has the habit of displacement. It is not that he is ripping people off. Everyone else is ripping him off.

As he has aged this has grown into an vulnerability. He actually seems to believe that everyone is ripping him off. He makes no distinction between himself and the government. And he has no grasp of how any significant policy actually works. This means that anyone who has access to him and understands his vulnerability can generate a self-destructive American policy.

An easy example of this, before the tariffs, was Ukraine. Somewhere Trump got the idea that Ukraine was ripping off the United States. And once the idea was in his head, he was its slave. He kept repeating that the Ukraine owed the United States $350 billion.

This made no sense. The assistance in question was aid, not a loan. The value of the aid was about a third of what Trump claimed. Most of the military aid came in the form of spending inside the United States. And of course the Ukrainians have paid. They have fulfilled the entire NATO mission by themselves in holding off a Russian attack. They have suffered enormous losses of all kinds. And they have shared intelligence and innovations with the United States. But none of that matters to Trump. Once he is told that he is being ripped off, he is helpless, and others must suffer.

We don't know now, though it is not hard to guess, who told Trump that Ukraine was ripping him off. The Russians have a keen sense of psychological vulnerabilities, and they have been paying close attention to Trump for a long time.

Trump also cites the made-up number of $350 billion to justify tariffs. He claims that Europeans, curiously, somehow "owe" the United States that exact same amount. Trump believes that if Americans buy more from another country than residents of that country buy from us, that is a loss, that he personally is somehow being ripped off. And so when the United States formulated tariffs on the whole world last week, the operating principle was that all trade deficits -- cases where we buy more than we sell -- should be eliminated.

This is nonsensical. There is no state of nature where countries buy and sell the exact same amount from one another.

Imagine a party where people are freely talking to each other. Then someone jumps up on a table and insists that in every conversation each speaker should use the exact same number of words as the person with whom he or she is in dialogue. What would happen then? Every conversation would grind to a halt, because an artificial planned equality of words is not how conversations work. An artificial planned equality of the value of imports and exports is, by the same token, not how trade works.

There is a much injustice in international trade. And there is much to be said for a thoughtful trade policy that protects or encourages certain industries. Manufacturing is of inherent value. But none of this will arise from the hurt feelings of an oligarchical president.

Because Trump's policy is based on personal vulnerability, it is erratic. If someone makes him feel more vulnerable than he was already, he will stop. He will not, for example, impose tariffs on Russia, because he is afraid of Russia. On the other hand, if someone convinces him that he has won, then he will also reduce the tariffs, as has just happened. If he no longer feels that he is being ripped off, then he yields. Until the moment when his feelings change.

To a person which such a obvious vulnerability, everything seems out of control. And so control is the only answer. Everyone is acting to rip me off. And so I must establish control by calling them all out, and making them deal with me from a position of weakness and ridicule. And so now the United States -- so goes the theory - will now negotiate individually with every single country of the world. We have broken agreements with many of them, and now we will sign new agreements, which will probably be worse: we lack time now, and patience, and focus. And we can never get back the trust of our closest trade partners.

The same is true in domestic policy. By establishing the tariffs, Trump thinks that he is creating leverage for himself against American companies. They will all have to come to him personally to seek the "carve-out," the exception, that will allow them to continue to trade in world markets and function as they had before. And so Trump can enjoy feeling less vulnerable as he tries to bully companies. But this amounts to central planning, and of a particularly irrational sort: one that depends upon one man's feelings. Investing inside the United States no longer means what it once did. And this will not quickly change.

We all have our foibles, our whims, our vulnerabilities. But when one person has unchecked power, irrationality becomes unchecked. Donald Trump thinks that everyone is always ripping him off. If he were the president in a normal situation, this would be a minor problem. But in a situation in which he has gotten away with an attempted coup, in which the Supreme Court has told him he is immune from prosecution, in which members of his own party rarely challenge him, in which Congress no longer sees the need to pass laws, and so on, in which too much of the media normalizes him, Trump's vulnerability can bring about the destruction of the country.

We have thousands of years of political theory and indeed great literature to instruct us on this point: too much power brings out the worst in people -- especially among the worst of people. As the founders understood, the purpose of the rule of law, of checks and balances, of regular elections, is to prevent precisely such a situation. Allowing our republic to be compromised has many costs, for example to our rights, and to our dignity. But it also has costs in a very basic economic sense. When you elevate the mad king, you elevate the madness.

#timothy snyder #thinking about...

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riflesniper · 6 months ago

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spent enough time cooking up this guy behind the scenes and now i feel like i can toss him out here now. this big boy is aegis :3 a sapient mech that ran from his makers to a resistance militia, who plopped a gay little pilot (green) into his hands. more details below the cut

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his storyline takes place a few centuries in the future, where a small-scale war has kicked up between a newly socialist canada and a dystopian oligarchical US. aegis comes from a particularly powerful corporation called valkyrie machines, who definitely pioneered sapient AI tech some hundred years prior and definitely didn't just steal the tech from somewhere else before stealthily bribing the actual inventors into a silence or death deal

on the other side of the border is the canadian shield alliance, though most people just call it the alliance or the shield. they've played a lot of roles since their inception that was also some hundred years prior, notably aid programs, disaster assistance, fighting for land back/secure human rights/immigrant protections, scaring corporations into NOT being shitty, better economic policies, etc.

unfortunately the US did NOT like any of that. when canada's economic system is officially changed from mixed to socialist, the oligarchs of the states kick off a race to try and see who can annex it the fastest. fortunately, the shield doesn't give them an inch.

aegis is one of valkyrie's newer warden models; nimble, fleet-footed mechs with sapient AI cores to enhance battle prowess. valkyrie is Very strict about what their mechs and pilots do and don't know, and are not above both executing pilots who try to rebel and wiping AIs whose thoughts stray too far. aegis and his last pilot were able to keep sneaky about their plans to escape, but said pilot was disposed of before it could be carried out, aegis made a break for it on his own, racing from the montana base he was stationed at to the albertan border.

despite broadcasting a plea for the shield to find him, he didn't get out unharmed; valkyrie's air fighters were eventually able to catch up to him before he scaled the wall. they plucked at him for a couple hundred kliks until the shield managed to find him near a small town. a skirmish broke out to claim him, ending with one shield mech being non-fatally damaged and all of the valkyrie fighters being shot down.

aegis, battered from the run, was hoisted to a shield base near calgary for major repairs before being shipped to the edmonton for external repairs and retrofitting. it's here that he's assigned a new pilot; green reinhart, a skilled, kind man with a underlying justice-driven rage to match the heart on his sleeve. a man who would not be killed so easily, not with the transhuman tech that's available. it's here that aegis would actually get his name, and so much more that he never would have had back in the states.

the world was opening up to him now. his pilot wasn't the only one talking to him like he was a person anymore. green gets him a proxy frame to explore with. the two of them spend hours together, on and off the field; perhaps this is the best thing that's could've happened for either of them.

(first image is when they've already been partners for a long while; green's organic body does eventually get killed in a battle, and his transhuman body is activated. im still kinda fleshing out the details, unsure if i'll get much deeper into the socio-political-economic shitshow behind the worldbuilding, since i originally made this guy to just have a gay mech/pilot thing w/ green, but its kinda feeding off the current shitshow of the US wanting to annex canada in this day and age. i gotta focus more of that energy on makin characters WAUGH

if anyones got suggestions for like. videos or audiobooks that Could help add onto the worldbuilding though, im all ears. just keep in mind that i struggle with text only stuff, so audiovisual is heavily preferred)

#sprite.art #ocs #green reinhart #aegis #robot art #robot artist #robot #robots #digital artist #digital art #artists on tumblr #trans artist #mecha oc #mech art #mecha #mouthless

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reveriefluttering · 1 month ago

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not necessarily an info post but just a rant i've been thinking about:

being a magical hero is inherently political.

i've seen people in the community before shying away from "political" topics because they're "not into politics", or political topics make them uncomfortable, or are completely neutral. if you are not a cis, straight, neurotypical, able-bodied, white man; your existence is made inherently political by our oppressors. many of us magical heroes are queer, afab, bipoc, and/or disabled, and our rights are always going to be intersectional.

unfortunately, we're at a point where human rights are being made into "politics" by people who intend to erase our stories. queer people being stripped of their rights, deportations without due process. we're watching history repeat itself each and every day. with each new headline, we find ourselves deeper in a world where we fear for our safety and that of our family, friends, and neighbors.

now we get into where this applies to us magical heroes.

i see many people trying to do good things in their mundane lives alongside their magical lives. whether it's helping individuals, or donating old items. that's great. however, i do feel like there is more that can be done.

do your research into different organizations and support whoever you can, by donating or sharing. share gofundmes. get into mutual aid circles, donate and share whenever you can.

do your research on issues happening around the world and take a stance, spread the word, start meaningful conversations that could incite education and change. keep your eyes, ears, and mind open.

do volunteer work for soup kitchens, animal shelters, or outreach programs.

learn CPR and first aid, get certified. learn your country's sign language or another spoken language.

get in touch with your local community; attend meetings (for example, school clubs); attend fundraising events in your community; support small businesses in your local community and beyond.

if you're religious, attend services where you go to worship. do volunteer work there if you can. read your religion's scriptures and literature and study them.

just try to talk with your neighbors! building an aspect of community is so important in times like these.

and SO much more that i may have forgotten!!

you can be fighting real monsters as well as metaphorical monsters: poverty and homelessness, hunger, ecocide, genocide and war crimes, all created and upheld by oligarchs that want to divide us in order to generate revenue.

you can't pick and choose your battles, whether in your mundane life or in your magical life. you have to fight for everyone or no one at all. neutrality is complicity.

at the end of the day, use your common sense.

please feel free to discuss this and add on if you'd like :)

world issues that need our help

Helpful Resources

Ways To Help

how you can help

Trans Rights are Human Rights

palestine and how to help

#irl magical girl #irl puella magi #mahoublr

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1americanconservative · 4 months ago

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Peter Goodgame

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For three years, Volodymyr Zelensky has been America’s darling, a khaki clad symbol of defiance, pleading for billions in aid and NATO’s embrace amid Ukraine’s self inflicted war.

To many well-meaning Americans, he’s a hero battling overwhelming odds. But behind the curated image lies a far uglier truth, a stooge comedian turned president, propped up by a criminal oligarch, surrounded by cronies, and presiding over a regime of corruption, repression, and broken promises.

This is the real Zelensky, an actor playing a role he’s woefully unfit for, that was proven yesterday in the oval office.

As Ukraine spirals deeper into chaos and its brutally harvested conscript army collapses in retreat, it's important that decent Americans understand who and what this man really represents.

Let's start with Kvartal 95, The Oligarch’s Launchpad, Zelensky’s story starts not in politics but comedy. Born in 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, he co-founded Studio Kvartal 95 in the 1990s with a group of friends that had hit it big by the 2000s, ironically their big breaks were made in Russia, performing in Russian and focusing on Russian and Ukrainian political and cultural life. The key to all this success? Ihor Kolomoisky, a billionaire ukrainian oligarch with a laundry list of crimes, including fraud, money laundering, and brutal violence. Kolomoisky then owned 1+1, the TV network that handed Zelenskys Kvartal 95 a national platform starting in 2012. He didn’t just offer airtime. He bankrolled Zelensky with cash, security, and legal and criminal muscle. This wasn’t mentorship. It was a transaction. Kolomoisky, later sanctioned by the U.S. for “significant corruption,” saw Zelensky as a pawn in his game. By 2019, when Zelensky ran for president, Kolomoisky’s DNA was all over the campaign providing vehicles, lawyers, bodyguards, and a media blitz. Zelensky was never an outsider; he was a "made man"

This is where it gets almost unbelievably bizzare. In 2015, Zelensky starred in "Servant of the People," a hit satire aired on Kolomoisky’s 1+1 channel, where he played a teacher turned president railing against corruption.

Ukrainians, tired of the endemic corruption in the post Soviet state, lapped it up. Then, in 2018, his Kvartal 95 crew decided to turn fiction into reality, registering a political party called, you guessed it, "Servant of the People." It had absolutely no manifesto, no policies, and no plan of action, just a TV title and Zelensky’s face.

Running in 2019, Zelensky promised to end corruption and the Donbas civil war, which had erupted after the CIA backed Maidan Coup, winning in a landslide thanks to Kolomoisky’s media machine. An actor who played a president on TV was now remarkably in the real job.

Zelensky didn’t waste any time handing power to his showbiz pals. Ivan Bakanov, a Kvartal 95 co-founder, became head of the SBU security service with no experience. Serhiy Shefir, another comedy crony, took a top aide role, no experience. And then there’s Andriy Yermak, a film producer turned Zelensky’s right-hand man, now head of the Presidential Office, dubbed Ukraine’s “shadow president.” Yermak, physically and intellectualy towering over Zelensky, controls policy and access, a fixer running the show while the president flounders. These weren’t appointments based on merit. They were loyalty hires, a Kvartal 95 clique utterly unfit for a grossly dysfunctional war-torn nation.

Zelensky’s laughable anti-corruption pledge met reality in 2021 with the Pandora Papers. The leak revealed he and his inner circle,including Bakanov, were funnelling cash to Kolomoisky with Zelensky stashing millions offshore.

Zelensky swore to end corruption and the Donbas war. Instead, he’s delivered more of both, a million lie Dead, the free Media crushed, billions stolen, languages and religion banned. This criminal is no hero. No Churchill. And no friend of America. He should be treated accordingly.

Thanks for reading.

https://x.com/BowesChay/status/1895887898106323076...

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sambhavami · 1 month ago

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Hello!!

Thank you so much for the detailed and amazingly articulate post about krishna, it is a lot to ponder about!! 💕💕

I have some questions I hope I won't bother you too much with them, krishna is my fave and I am always curious to learn about him from different perspectives!

So if you don't mind, I would love to know your overall views and thoughts on krishna, his philosophy, morality and politics! Kinda like a character analysis? It would be amazing to hear you analysis him tho! <3

Again Thank you! <3

Hiya! Krishna’s my lifeblood too! <3 Given the complex nature of the topic, I’ll try my best to keep this brief and still cover the important points since I do have a habit of rambling on when it comes to Krishna!

Krishna, as from the details I mentioned in the last post, had had a difficult childhood. Now, obviously he had a wonderful cohort of family and friends in the villagers of Vraja, so this would not have been emotionally very difficult, just physically maybe more strenuous than your average royal kiddo. This would be true for Balarama too.

As per my understanding, Nanda revealed the truth about his birth as soon as Krishna was old enough to keep his mouth shut. Which meant, despite the general wholesome nature, Krishna grew up lying through his teeth to most of his friends and family. The ministers who had previously supported Vasudeva too remained in close, clandestine contact with him, arming him with reliable information as well as psychological training regarding Kamsa’s oncoming assaults. All of these things definitely prepared his brain chemistry in a very particular manner, stronger than the other princes from the citadels.

Krishna too, as he grew up, helped with turning the rest of the now-suspended parliament ministers to his own side. One of these were Akroora himself, who is convinced with a successful marriage with Kamsa’s daughter. We see that he is already a smart strategist, and can keep a calm head in tense situations (like, the Govardhana).

However, the Kaliya and Govardhana incident invites extra scrutiny onto Krishna and Balarama, and finally after the Govardhana thing, he is forced to come clean to the villagers, soon after which Kamsa sends Akroora to arrest the boys and bring them to Mathura.

Jarasandha obviously then gives Krishna practically a red carpet free-rein to kill Kamsa. It is only after his daughters are driven out of Mathura by the parliament and the international community starts mocking him for it, does the emperor start a military campaign to take over Mathura, this time all-out. Now, Jarasandha is not your typical cartoon villain. In fact, the true expanse of his influence across the subcontinent needs a separate post in itself.

Once Kamsa is dead, Krishna refuses a well-meaning request from the ministers to become a ‘King’, the successor of this dictator, and instead reinstates the oligarchical democratic parliament, with Ugrasena at its head (since he was the head before Kamsa took over). Krishna and Balarama are both given honorary minister-ships.

When Jarasandha threatens to invade Mathura with his expansive military force (constituting of armies of multiple kingdoms), at first the newly-reconstructed parliament cooperates. Krishna and Balarama, having had the obedience of the complete Yadava army, are able to hold off Jarasandha at the gates of Mathura. However, after a couple years of this, Krishna realizes that them two brothers are the primary target, and they, along with Satyaki and a few other close Yadava aides, run away from Mathura.

Over the next several years, Krishna and his friends have to hide around in hilly forests, first Mahendra (where they meet and train under Parashurama, near Odisha) and then Gomantaka (some part of Western Ghats) wherein Jarasandha keeps conducting manhunts for them. Once, Krishna tries to seek asylum with King Srigala, the king of parts of the now-Karnataka region. However, Srigala attempts to sell them out to Jarasandha in cover of the night, which makes Krishna kill him and run away into the nearby forest.

It is during this phase that Balarama picks up a drinking habit due to the constant stress, much to Krishna’s annoyance. Their other Yadava attendant also seem to be losing respect for him, as Balarama starts behaving a little unpredictably. This, however, improves a bit later after Dwarika is created.

Over many years, Krishna is able to smuggle a ‘Vishwakarma’-grade architect from near the Mahendra range (Parashurama’s connection?) to the Raivataka-Saurashtra adjacent area. It takes even more time to build up the city itself by the beach and secretly transfer most of the parliamentarians to the new city. Once they are settled in Dwarika, Jarasandha attempts a last attempt to conquer this new city, with the help of the half-Yadava Kalyavana, but Krishna is able to subvert the latter’s attack, leaving Jarasandha to finally back off.

This gives Krishna some international standing, as Jarasandha is forced to acknowledge Dwarika-Mathura’s sovereignty with Krishna at their head. Over the next few years Krishna marries Rukmini, in a failed attempt to pull Vidarbha away from the emperor’s bloc. Next, he also marries Jambavati and Satyabhama, both as a direct result of intra-Yadava aggressions against him.

Over these decades, Krishna’s outlook on life changes significantly, understandably, to the point that many researchers such as Bankimchandra and a few others have theorized that the Krishnas of Dwarika and Vrindavana are two entirely different people. However, other researchers have countered with the fact that those events that he fought through would irrevocably change any person, which is what probably happened with Krishna.

True, his attitude is starkly different, albeit still carrying an older, carefree exterior. We the readers see this new Krishna right as he receives the letter from Rukmini, as he is much more confident, aggressive and much more likely to take more extreme steps to make a statement. The humiliation of Rukmi, the dispute and the subsequent elimination of Bengal’s Paundraka, Assam’s Naraka, and Kashi. Even in the elimination of Jarasandha carried with it such a dramatic abandon, that it can almost not be reconciled with the Krishna of Vrindavana who begged his friends and other elders to not out him to Kamsa before he had ensured that every single thing was in line.

By the time, Krishna aligns with the Pandavas and the Rajasuya yajna was near culmination, Krishna is the most feared person in any room he walks into. So, even though the Jarasandha-aligned royals disliked Shishupala’s elimination in that sabha, but they are unable to say anything, given Krishna’s reputation as well as the immediately preceding turn of events. This incident establishes Krishna as nearly a cult-like figure.

His views on life, politics and morality are also solidified by this time, and we do not see any major change over the next years (maybe a general mellow-out that comes any way with increasing age). He is by this point, unequivocally, in favour of having a dynamic approach on life, hence a lot of his views when collated isolated from the story-context seem to oscillate quite a bit. In general, he does not prefer all out battles, and the collateral damage that it inevitably inflicts. Hence, Krishna always tries his level best to avoid such all-out conflicts, preferring what often seem like ‘underhanded’ techniques.

As for Bhagavad Geeta, which is often interpreted as an all-out pro-war document: personally, it’s a time-and-a-place kind of a speech. Krishna is never truly in favour of wars like the one in Kurukshetra. However, ‘dharma’, as I put in a previous post is defined in MB as ‘whatever benefits the greatest number of people’, and Arjuna backing out some 5 minutes before the beginning of the war, would undoubtedly cause a complete massacre of the Pandava army, given that the other side was lined with hard-hitters like Bheeshma, Drona, Karna, Ashwatthama and even Duryodhana to an extent. Hence, Krishna at that point, setting aside his personal preferences, among other things (mostly upanishadic philosophies), says whatever he feels is needed to drag Arjuna back in line.

His personal life in this time period does suffer from a certain indifference that he shows. The yogeshwara epithet that he earns- dutiful, yet disinterested, probably stems from him having dealt with way too many issues earlier in life. This does him no favours in Dwarika, where things (and his own family too to an extent) spirals quickly out of his control, and ends in the tragedy at the end of the book. He could have most probably prevented it from depreciating to that level, in theory, and yet it was inevitable given his, very justified, involvement in the international politics storming on outside the bounds of Dwarika.

Personally, Krishna’s entire arc is extremely ironic and poignant at every stage, and probably need a entire book to hash out every part of it, and narratively rich enough to still keep us talking, even after some 5000 years, and that’s so wonderful!

I know this was a bit all over the place, and I am really sorry, there’s just too much to put here, and too little space to do it, so if you want just let me know if there's any specific incident from Krishna's life you'd like to talk about! <3

#krishna #mahabharat #asks

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kristallioness · 5 months ago

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If you support Putin and / or Trump - feel free to unfollow me right now. I have some very unpleasant things to say and you're not gonna like hearing this ugly, bitter truth. For others who are like-minded - feel free to reblog this callout post.

Do you know what I've been feeling lately? I feel anger, maybe even fury or rage.

I'm angry that 49.8% of the American population are either completely ignorant, self-centered, arrogant or just plain stupid enough people who simply don't care or didn't pay enough attention during history (or any other kind of) class at school to be able to understand what chaos they're unleashing into the whole world by supporting a narcissistic, oligarchic idiot of a tyrant who's only interested in showing off and admiring himself, making deals that benefit himself, his business(es) and "associates" while everybody else suffers as a consequence since they're too busy having to deal with and clean up after his messes or analyzing the nonsense he's spitting out constantly.

Because Trump can't stand losing and will fight back at every accusation made against him by telling you that black is white. I have no respect or sympathy for any of you who blindly follow and support his ideas 100% like a herd of sheep. (I didn't wanna say 'dumb sheep' cause I would've felt bad for insulting the sheep as a species. Just wanted to bring in the metaphor about their behaviour as a herd.)

Also, I don't take kindly to threats - he's not my president, I don't have to obey his every command. I wish the majority of Europe and the rest of the world would stop groveling at his feet in order not to be in his crosshairs. He's a bully and should be treated as such.

Yesterday (as I was pouring my anger out into this writing) and today (after watching our local news), I feel helpless.

I feel helpless watching how our biggest ally - the United States of America, a supposed powerhouse among the biggest countries in the world - is claiming that it's NOT realistic for Ukraine to take back ALL of its territory and that they DON'T belong in NATO if they want "peace". WHAT.. THE.. FUCK!? What kind of peace are you talking about here? The one where Trump's lackeys (i.e. his appointed ministers) are declaring Ukraine's surrender and are basically giving in to Putin's demands even before any peace / truce negotiations have started?

The only reason it's so unrealistic is because YOU haven't done EVERYTHING in YOUR power to actually help them WIN! (Western Europe deserves some evil looks, too…) Why would you cut off their aid or deliberately hold back on giving them the weapons they desperately need (I'm looking at the Democrats and former President Joe Biden here as well) that would help them force the Russians out of their land?

I know why - because you don't WANT them to win. OR because you're too afraid of what Russia will do when they start to lose, or what'll happen if Russia eventually collapses. You Americans (and Western Europe, for that matter) have developed an irrational fear of a nuclear war due to the Cold War era in the 20th century. Well, what's the alternative - we let Russia take Ukraine, then the rest of Eastern Europe piece by piece, until they eventually reach Berlin and Paris, maybe even London and Madrid…? Then what? We subdue ourselves, learn to speak Russian and Europe becomes the rosy Russian Empire? Guess what - my nation and my people have already lived through this alternative and we're NOT going back to that hellhole.

By forcing Ukraine behind the negotiation table in a weak position without any security guarantees, do you even realize the can of worms that you're opening? This is a bloody (literally BLOODY) green light to Russia and all the other dictatorships in the world that they CAN conquer foreign land by force if they're stronger than their opponents (e.g. how China sees Taiwan).

And now, America ITSELF has declared an interest in taking other lands by force if they don't comply with your demands: (Sarcasm begins.)

Mexico "lost" its gulf (I'll fucking correct anyone who dares call it the Gulf of "America");

Canada should become a new state that's bigger in size than the existing 50 states put together, but go off I guess;

Panama should give away their canal;

Greenland is so rich in minerals that America basically has the "rights" to their land since Denmark "doesn't really own them" and it's for "security" reasons;

Palestine is in such a bad state that the most "sensible" thing to do, of course, is to deport all of its citizens and rebuild it into a fancy American riviera so that they could never go back to their homes…

So, logically speaking, the deal with Putin will be that he gets the whole of Europe and can do "whatever the fuck he wants with them", and America will attack the countries in the Northern and Southern continents to expand their states? (Sarcasm ends.)

I am witnessing how the world order is being changed as we speak and I don't intend to sit in silence. I will continue to donate to organizations and charities that provide Ukrainians the help they need to keep on fighting our battle (the more Russians they kill and the more Russia is crippled, the better for all of us here). Please find my post here with some options for doing that.

As for America - I hope all of you Trump supporters get to witness and actually realize that your own country is burning in hell because of his decisions (and that your opponents put up a damn good fight to keep the entire country from falling into pieces). I remember the last 4 years of his reign far too well, but this time I can't stay this quiet when it concerns the destiny of multiple nations in the entire world, including mine and - to put it nicely - our more sensible and trustworthy allies. Ukraine's blood will be just as much on America's hands as it is on Russia's already if you betray them. The eyes of the entire world are watching you this time, and history will judge you.

TLDR:

As I said in the beginning - haters are welcome to leave any time.

Trump is a tyrant who's about to stab Ukraine in the back and should rot in jail.

Putin is a dictator, war criminal and the sole person responsible for inciting this war of aggression towards a peaceful neighbour ONLY in order to gain power over their land (and his ambitions don't stop there, the rest of Europe is next).

Russia MUST lose this war and pay reparations to Ukraine.

Ukraine is NOT weak (they've been much more fearless and powerful than the US and Western Europe combined together, given the little support they've gotten), they did NOT provoke Russia in any way, they are 100% the victim in this conflict and WE need to do everything we can to help them WIN.

Слава Україні! 🇺🇦 🫂 🇪🇪 (For those who don't believe me - here's a pretty decent article for you to read.)

#StandWithUkraine #Ukraine #America #notmypresident #personal #shards of Kristal

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justforbooks · 4 months ago

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Amazing: of all the books in all the world Mr Free Speech Zuckerberg wants to ban, it’s the one about him

Whether the Meta boss and his ex-lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg are truly beyond awful is neither here nor there. I thought he was done with factchecking

I am as shocked as I am confused that Mark Zuckerberg is going all-out to block a memoir by Facebook’s former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams. I thought information wanted to be free? I definitely heard that speech should be. We know Meta’s revolting oligarch doesn’t write his self-serving public pronouncements, but he should at least make time in his busy Magafication schedule to read them.

Anyway, even if you think the stories in Careless People are untrue – and I don’t, for a single nanosecond – I thought the Meta boss said disinformation wasn’t a thing any more? He recently binned off all his factcheckers to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship”. Yet here we are reading stories of how Meta this week launched an emergency action in the US to ban Wynn-Williams from promoting or further distributing copies of her book. It argued – successfully, for now – that it would face “immediate loss … in the absence of immediate relief”.

Honestly, Mark: TOUGHEN UP! It was only about 10 minutes ago that you were telling Joe Rogan that corporations needed more “masculine energy”. If something’s wrong or dangerous or really seriously harmful, just let everyone keep seeing it – because, freedom – but pop a “community note” on it. As for how you put a community note on a book, my advice to you would be to go and stand outside Pan Macmillan, which bravely published Wynn-Williams, with a little sign saying “context”. Listen, if it’s a good enough bulwark against the risk of genocide in some boring old developing-world backwater, then it should be good enough for you.

The grounds for Meta calling in emergency lawyers to block Wynn-Williams’s book seem to be that she has gone against the terms of her severance. Luckily, none of us has a “non-disparagement clause” against Zuckerberg, who on this evidence and so much more should be disparaged every minute of every day in the countries where he operates, and even in the ones he doesn’t. There’s a lovely bit in the book where his company is said to be “dangling the possibility that it’ll give the Chinese regime special access to users’ data”.

In conversation, I overuse the phrase “the worst people in the world”, but the Facebook/Meta top brass really are up there. Wynn-Williams’s book is that simultaneously satisfying yet horrifying thing – an insider account that shows you that absolutely every single one of the awful things you already suspected apparently really did go on behind closed doors. As did a few you didn’t suspect. I knew Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of “lean in” feminism was bullshit – but I didn’t think it involved female employees being encouraged to lean into her lap/her bed on private planes.

Shortly after turning this offer down, Wynn-Williams nearly dies in childbirth. Once she’s back at work, her male boss tells her she was insufficiently “responsive” during the period. “In my defence,” says Wynn-Williams, “I was in a coma for some of it.” For light relief, we meet a shadowy Zuckerberg aide who supposedly games his boss’s own algorithm so his posts have mega-engagement. Mark’s senior staff all let him win at Catan.

And that’s just the office politics stuff. The hardcore business – what we might call the politics politics stuff – is so much worse. Meta is currently insisting Wynn-Williams was ultimately fired for “poor performance and toxic behaviour”. But it’s amazing to think anyone at Meta could get fired for “toxic behaviour”. I’m sure whatever they’ve done didn’t actively stoke a genocide, like the Rohingya claim that the firm’s negligence did in Myanmar. I’m sure it couldn’t be as bad as betraying vulnerable citizens in exchange for market penetration.

Quite early on in Wynn-Williams’s 2011-2017 stint at Facebook, a US Treasury official tells the Facebook execs they’re two years away from being hated as much as the investment banks. Well, that turned out to be adorably optimistic. I think we all love the cuddly old banks compared to companies such as Mark’s or Elon’s. But, of course, the tech firms are way, way too powerful to care.

Meanwhile, the world’s children have simply been allowed to become hideously and destructively addicted to their products by politicians who either implicitly – or, as is often claimed in this book, explicitly – thank the companies for assisting their electoral success. We non-American outsiders bang on about US gun laws and how unspeakable it seems to us to raise children in a world of active shooter drills and school massacres. But all western countries and plenty beyond have failed to protect children from the known iniquities and poison of social media. Australia alone has just banned it for under-16s. I’ve no idea where Zuckerberg’s children (the first born of whom he apparently asked Xi Jinping to name) go to school. But – like metaphorical crack dealers – many Silicon Valley bosses sent their kids to a specific local Steiner school where it’s all crocheted textbooks and chalkboards and no one is stupid enough to let the little scions near the narcotising horrors of the product.

So on Meta sails. There are words and phrases for these supranational organised enterprises that harm societies and seemingly do whatever they like, and none of them is the nerdily bland “tech firm”. What was it that the Indians used to call the period of chaos and social instability wreaked by the East India Company, the rampaging entity/“honourable company” that I increasingly feel Meta is most redolent of? Ah yes: the anarchy. We live in a modern form of it now, thanks to Zuckerberg and others, and it’s way past time we did more than simply scroll defeatedly on.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Sarah Wynn-Williams #Careless People #book review

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Trump has an obvious weakness that makes America weak. He places the American economy at risk for the sake of a personal foible, a visible vulnerability.

This is nonsensical. There is no state of nature where countries buy and sell the exact same amount from one another.

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 5 months ago

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Vanity Fair's Wild About Harry Mea culpa for launching MeGain Markle & publishing her propaganda

"Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit | Vanity Fair"

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FEBRUARY 2025 ISSUE

Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit

Ensconced in their cozy Montecito mansion, the Sussexes are living the American dream. By all accounts, the love is real. But their foray into moguldom has not always been a smooth ride.

BY ANNA PEELE

JANUARY 17, 2025

The house proved it: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex could have it all. Their Montecito home offered all the fresh promises of a 21st-century California mansion and the cloistering of a gated neighborhood from which they could emerge on their own terms. In the house’s 13 fireplaces, described as “mostly centuries old examples brought over from France,” there was even some European history, stripped of any potentially uncomfortable context.

At $14.65 million for more than 18,000 square feet, half the current median price per square foot in Montecito, Rockbridge was a steal. The oligarch owner’s romantic relationship had deteriorated to the point where he was compelled to offload far below market value, according to a source with knowledge, and the property seemed just right for the duke and duchess, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It was the perfect launchpad for Archewell, their nonprofit and entertainment studio—an approximation of a part noblesse oblige, part aspiring independently wealthy mogul model, one that Elizabeth, Charles, and William rejected by fiat during the January 2020 “Sandringham Summit.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, to benefit Sentebale, at the USPA National Polo Center in Wellington, Florida, on Friday April 12, 2024.PA IMAGES/ALAMY.

This January marks five years since that failed parley. Leaving the royal family has brought tests for the couple—legal, financial, reputational, personal, and practical. Going from divinely chosen (or at least chosen by someone else who was divinely chosen) members of a 1,200-year-old institution to start-up founders in exile is a tough adjustment. But there has also been opportunity. Over many months, Vanity Fair spoke with dozens of people who have worked with and lived alongside the couple to understand the impact they’ve had on their new coastal California community, the challenges of enacting the ambitions of two first-time CEOs, and how their experience with the monarchy foreshadowed some of their current difficulties. (Harry and Meghan declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Harry still works closely with the charities he founded: the Invictus Games Foundation and Sentebale, an organization focusing on “mental fitness” and the impact of poverty and HIV/AIDS in southern African countries. “He has real gravitas when he speaks about his work in Africa,” says someone inside the couple’s circle. And he is free from “Willy,” as well as the future king’s supposed dominion over that continent, as Harry confessed in his 2023 memoir, Spare. “Africa was his thing,” Harry said. Archewell also encompasses Meghan’s efforts to empower and educate young women, like the 40x40 initiative, where for her 40th birthday she asked 40 well-known friends, such as Melissa McCarthy and then first lady of Canada Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, to each spend 40 minutes on Zoom mentoring a woman returning to the workplace in the wake of the pandemic. On March 14 of last year, the fourth anniversary of their flight to California, Meghan rejoined Instagram to announce American Riviera Orchard, a home goods and sundries line. The Sussexes have announced Meghan’s second podcast, though not the title or premise of it. Archewell Productions also recently produced two high-profile Netflix series—a docuseries called Polo, which premiered December 10 and features the world of Harry’s buddy Nacho Figueras, and the reality show With Love, Meghan. The latter is a hospitality endeavor that, according to the Netflix promotional language, “reimagines the genre of lifestyle programming, blending practical how-to’s and candid conversation with friends, new and old.” Three days before her show’s scheduled premiere date of January 15, Meghan announced that the series would be pushed to March 4 “as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California.” The couple has been volunteering amid the crisis in Los Angeles and donating to people displaced by the fires, as well as taking in friends who had to evacuate their own homes.

“They have this naivete and their hopefulness about what’s possible in terms of storytelling and good works and all those things,” says producer Jane Marie, who collaborated with the couple while they developed audio projects at Archewell and later produced a podcast with Michelle Obama. “I wish I had that kind of optimism.”

Optimism abounded as the couple embarked on their Spotify deal in 2020, both for them and for those who were coming in to help do the work. “I thought that I had the role of a lifetime,” says a person who worked in media projects, who was a “fan” going in and eager to make the type of life-changing content Harry and Meghan seemed to want to create. “I thought I was gonna be besties with Meghan and Harry and we were gonna, like, run around the world saving people.”

Interest in the couple was unslakable. But it remained to be seen whether they were actually interesting, beyond Harry’s uniquely difficult upbringing and Meghan’s years of defending herself from shoddy treatment and racism, whether in the British press or from members of her husband’s family. As one former Spotify employee put it, “The thing you’re escaping is the reason you’re compelling.”

Those stories would be meted out in different media: breathless reports of a $20 million Penguin Random House contract (Spare) and $100 million partnership with Netflix (Harry & Meghan). (According to a representative for Netflix, “We don’t disclose our financial deals with talent, but I can confirm to you on the record that the $100M figure is not correct.”) On the August 2022 cover of The Cut Meghan did to promote her first—and only—Spotify podcast, Archetypes, she said, “I’m, like, so excited to talk,” and “It’s like I’m finding—not finding my voice. I’ve had my voice for a long time, but being able to use it.” When repeatedly asked by the interviewer what she wanted to say with her newly free voice, Meghan demurred. “I have a lot to say until I don’t. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song,” she said, noting, “I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking. I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.” (One of the people who spoke with VF for this story says they signed a nondisclosure agreement to be employed by Harry and Meghan.) A person who worked closely with the couple and “loves them” says, “I have no idea what [Harry’s] interests are beyond polo. No clue what his inner life is like.”

The development process was challenging. The former Spotify employee says, “They had this idea to do a podcast because they knew celebrities did them,” a category differentiated between celebrities who get a lot of money to begin podcasting, like Harry and Meghan, and celebrities who get large deals after proving themselves to be capable podcasters, like Smartless’s Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman. The former Spotify employee says Harry and Meghan “didn’t do what celebrities do on podcasts, which is turn on the mic and talk. They wanted a big theme that would explain the world, but they had no ideas.” Someone who worked closely with them on audio projects disputes this version, lamenting that because of Meghan and Harry’s insistence on silence from employees and their own reticence, the public doesn’t know about good projects that had to be abandoned for practical reasons. “It feels like the only story is ‘They didn’t satisfy their contract,’” she says. “It’s not like work wasn’t being done.”

As time passed—it would be nearly two years between the couple’s deal being signed and the premiere of Archetypes—Spotify began applying pressure to produce something (anything!) that people might listen to.

People involved with production say the couple did trial runs on some big ideas, like a This American Life–style show where Harry and Meghan took turns hosting and talking to interesting civilian guests. As Bloomberg reported, Harry wanted to host a series where he interviewed powerful men with complicated stories, like Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. The concept wasn’t just that the men shared challenging early lives; it was that their experiences made them into sociopaths, or so Harry envisioned, one person familiar with the ideation process says. (The person who worked in media confirms there was a “sociopath podcast.”) The person who worked closely with the couple on audio projects recalls Harry saying, “I have very bad childhood trauma. Obviously. My mother was essentially murdered. What is it about me that didn’t make me one of these bad guys?” To implore a season’s worth of world-famous sociopaths to talk about how they developed sociopathy would be what is referred to in access journalism as “a booking challenge.”

As time passed—it would be nearly two years between the couple’s deal signing and the premiere of Archetypes—Spotify began applying pressure to produce something (anything!) that people might listen to. The former Spotify employee says Harry came to the Los Angeles office once and asked for a cup of cocoa. There was none in the office, so employees scrambled to obtain some. An idea was pitched to Harry—what if he reviewed a hot chocolate every week while chatting with a different friend?—which he and his team considered and rejected. Another concept was that Harry would “fix” something every week, ranging from a flat tire to global warming. “He wanted to do a podcast about disabled people who compete in the Invictus Games,” the former Spotify employee says. “But there’s no crossover between the audience who would listen to that and people who want to hear about Harry’s life.” (Harry and Meghan did produce a 2023 Netflix docuseries called Heart of Invictus, which significantly underperformed Harry & Meghan.)

The former Spotify employee says it was challenging to engage Harry, and a person who interviewed for a job with the couple says, “I just felt like he kind of didn’t want to be there doing that at this time.... My expectation was ‘charming receiving line.’ And it was clear he wasn’t that person. At least that day.” And at least in the context of a hiring manager: A person who worked on an event during Harry’s book tour says he has the “greatest manners I’ve ever seen. Hands down. Like I can’t believe his knees are as supple as they are. He was getting up and down anytime somebody walked into a room.... He was unfailingly kind and friendly to everyone.”

During the interview, the potential employee says, Harry’s attitude was either “Well, why should I do this?” or “Why are we doing this?” The interviewee says they wondered, “Didn’t Spotify pay you a lot of money to do this?” The person inside the couple’s circle says, “He looks like the kind of guy who would, frankly, happily work for charities for the rest of his life and would be very happy if Meghan made all the money and he didn’t need to.”

On his self-titled podcast, Bill Simmons described his own experience working with the Sussexes at Spotify. “The Fucking Grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” Simmons said. “I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.… Fuck them. The grifters.”

Harry and Meghan became increasingly nervous about how their content would impact them. Marie says, “I can say that they had really great ideas for shows, interesting pitches, interesting guests. But them as the deliverers or either of them as the hosts of these more kind of edgy ideas would have been like…they would have had to move again. I think it’s a combination of self-censorship for good reason and the corporate powers that be that run podcasting that don’t know what that is [to create valuable shows]. In combination, those things make it really hard to make good stuff.” The person who worked in media projects imitates the thought process behind any decision about the couple’s projects: “Well, he has a million things that he has to protect, and he has the book, and they have the documentary, and they don’t want to make the queen upset, and their public image.…”

That source says the idea for Archetypes came from another employee—not Meghan—though the employee didn’t own any of the intellectual property. Archetypes began production in January 2021. Though the former Spotify employee says the initial expectation was that Archewell would handle production for the series, the process took so long that Spotify’s studio Gimlet was called in. A source familiar with the production of Archetypes says this required additional cost to and resources from Spotify, though a current Spotify employee refutes that the extra support was a burden. (Virtually the entire Gimlet team would be laid off in the year following Archetypes’s release, but employees blame mismanagement at Spotify rather than any individual project.)

The former Spotify source says, “Archetypes was complicated as a podcast concept. You had to explain what the archetype was, then why the woman embodied it, but also how it wasn’t true about her. Every episode was like, ‘This is my friend who has been called that archetype but is not that archetype.’” These archetypes—actually stereotypes—included diva (Mariah Carey) and bimbo (Paris Hilton and Iliza Shlesinger). As for those “friends,” there was an expectation that Meghan would be able to use her personal Rolodex to book the show, the way hosts like Simmons and the Pod Save America guys do. The person who worked in media projects says the assumption was, “Meghan’s gonna be on the phone with the pope tomorrow.” The former Spotify employee says in addition to Taylor Swift, they heard rumors that Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion were asked to come on the show and declined. (Other people who worked on the podcast also say they heard those names mentioned, though a source close to the situation says Megan Thee Stallion’s team knew nothing about any request.)

According to the source in media projects, Meghan would agree to provocative ideas and then walk them back. In one episode, she wanted to actually say the word bitch because, as the source remembers Meghan saying, “You hear it all the time.” It ended up with Meghan calling it “the B-word.” An episode titled “Slut,” intended to center on how trans women’s sexuality is used against them, was retitled “Human, Being” by Meghan and had to be completely reimagined late in production. “Every episode got more and more watered down and further away from actual conversation,” the source says. “It felt like very Women’s and Gender Studies 101 taught in 2003.” (Though the Spotify contract has widely been reported as worth $20 million, two sources told VF such deals are generally not paid out in lump sums; in other words, the couple would not likely have received the full amount without meeting benchmarks beyond making one 12-episode season of a podcast. Spotify does not comment on deal terms.)

The issues extended into the actual workplace. Terry Wood, an executive vice president at Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, was brought in to be what Meghan would later call her “right hand” when Archetypes won a People’s Choice Award in 2022. The source familiar with the production of Archetypes describes Wood’s anger, saying that she yelled at Spotify staffers when Meghan changed her mind about episodes. (Wood did not respond to VF’s request for comment.)

The source who worked in media projects says Meghan’s own relationships with employees tended to follow a familiar pattern. She would be warm and effusive at the beginning, engendering an atmosphere of professional camaraderie. When something went poorly, often due to Meghan and Harry’s own demands—such as a teaser for Archetypes being released five months before the show premiered and before there was any tape to promote—Meghan would become cold and withholding toward the person she perceived to be responsible. The source says it was “really, really, really awful. Very painful. Because she’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment.” In practice, they say, that manifested as “undermining. It’s talking behind your back. It’s gnawing at your sense of self. Really, like, Mean Girls teenager.” Marie had a different experience with Meghan: “She’s just a lovely, genuine person,” she said.

The person who worked in media projects read stories in the tabloids about Meghan “bullying” palace aides and couldn’t imagine such behavior actually happened. After working with her, though, this person realized, “Oh, any given Tuesday this happened.” While it beggars belief that Meghan actually shouted at a palace aide, as has been reported, a person who interacted with her professionally says, “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice. [It’s] funny that people don’t differentiate between the energy of being yelled at and literally somebody screaming at you.”

Two sources say a colleague with ties to Archetypes took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet altogether. Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan. The person who interacted professionally with her says, “I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better.” They added, with the soggy laugh of a plebe rendering judgment on the Duchess of Sussex, “But who am I to criticize Meghan Markle? She’s doing great.”

It’s hard to imagine how someone who seems so earnestly intent on being kind and engaging in world-improving (if also brand-building) activities could wind up engaging in revanchism with people so below her in status. A partial answer might be found in an episode of Archetypes in which Meghan interviews Mindy Kaling, who assumed Meghan was popular as a child. While attending Immaculate Heart Catholic school in Los Angeles, Meghan tells Kaling, “I never had anyone to sit with at lunch. I was always a little bit of a loner and really shy and didn’t know where I fit in. And, and so I just became, I was like, okay, well, then I’ll become the president of the multicultural club and the president of sophomore class and the president of this and French club. And by doing that, I had meetings at lunchtime. So I didn’t have to worry about who I would sit with or what I would do because I was always so busy.” (It brings to mind Swift’s “Mastermind” lyrics: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless.”)

In other words, Meghan was a good person trying to do good things in spite of—and at times because of—unkind people. The person familiar with the production of Archetypes says at least one employee who had a terrible experience got a handwritten thank-you note and gift from Meghan. Is it any surprise that a sense of victimhood and righteousness could continue to exist in a person who had been treated so horribly by the press and her husband’s family? (Not to mention those little B-words at Immaculate Heart.) That people whom Meghan may have perceived as enemies or interlopers—members of the loathsome media, or insiders at the palace, or people who actually knew how to make a podcast, or her pitiable father and half sister selling her secrets and history to tabloids for cash—might have seemed more powerful than her in some way, despite her immense fame and wealth and privilege? And then whatever happened to them, well…they shouldn’t have gotten between Meghan and her good work. As Harry knows, trauma can warp your perspective.

Spare, Harry’s best-selling and beautifully written (by J.R. Moehringer) memoir, chronicles the prince’s lonely former life with MRI-level self-examination—if not always top-tier self-awareness. Harry recounts an anti-poaching trip to Namibia in which he insisted on sleeping outdoors despite his team telling him, “We just saw proof that there are lions out here, boss.” Harry claims everyone with him—including a bodyguard, local police, a ranger, and Namibian soldiers who were all there to protect him—went to bed in their tents or trucks rather than staying up to ensure he wasn’t eaten by lions in the night. The book also discusses in great detail Harry’s issues with his family, opening on his reunion with now King Charles and Prince William, who in addition to “beloved brother” Harry describes as his “arch nemesis,” possessing a “familiar scowl” and “alarming baldness.” It doesn’t get more flattering for Willy in the ensuing pages.

At an event in 2023, someone privately asked Harry if he’d heard from his family. He said he hadn’t. This person asked Harry if he thought he was going to, and he said he hoped so. “That’s sort of what made me so sad,” the source says. “His hope seemed very genuine. And I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, no.’ ” The source believed Harry hadn’t absorbed the gravity of what it would mean to sell millions of copies of a tell-all book about a famously insular and circumspect family in the middle of a years-long public relations crisis. “The power of the written word, and the power of the narrative…” this person went on. “I don’t know if that’s something he understood while he was doing it.”

In addition to painting Dorian Gray–style personal portraits of family members, in Spare, Harry accuses the offices of his brother, father, and Camilla of briefing the press against Harry to distract from or trade away negative stories about themselves. Harry sued the publisher of the Daily Mail for libel for publishing an article in 2022 that said Harry tried to conceal his efforts to obtain taxpayer-funded security, but the prince ultimately dropped the case, and a judge ordered Harry to pay the Mail’s publisher nearly 50,000 pounds in legal fees.

Harry is currently involved in two other lawsuits that further alienate him from his home country and its tabloid media. He is moving forward with an invasion of privacy case against Sun publisher News Group Newspapers, which follows a settlement from Mirror Group Newspapers for a phone-hacking charge. But more isolating is the suit regarding state police protection for him and his family when they are in Britain, which Harry, Meghan, and their older child, Archie, were stripped of when they left the UK in 2020. There are clear dangers to the family’s safety—a person who worked closely with them says strangers take Lyfts to their house, and in 2023 the couple was involved in what a spokesperson called a “near catastrophic car chase” with paparazzi. (There were no injuries, collisions, or charges filed.) The person who interacted with Harry in 2023 also described a “very scary paparazzi situation” after employees at the hotel where Harry was staying allegedly tipped off photographers to his presence. Nevertheless, the High Court in London twice struck down the UK lawsuit. Harry is appealing.

According to someone familiar with Harry and Meghan, the legal case was at least part of the reason Harry didn’t attend the June wedding of his longtime friend Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster. The source says if he’d come back for the event, it could have imperiled his claim that he needs government-funded protection. “‘Well, you were here in May and you were absolutely fine attending a wedding,’” the source says, imagining the response in court. “So I’m sure a lot of the decisions about time in the UK are also being made based on how it looks for the case.”

Of course, there’s also Willy. The source says that after invitations went out, Harry and Grosvenor had a conversation. (Vanity Fair has also reported that Harry may not have formally been invited.) The source says they discussed Harry’s discomfort at the thought of being re-mired in the familial claustrophobia of Windsor turf. “It suddenly becomes all about the brothers, and did they look at each other, and how close were they stood?” the source says. Which is exactly what happened at Charles’s 2023 coronation and their uncle Lord Robert Fellowes’s funeral in August.

You can imagine the Zapruder-footage-level scrutiny by the press. The source says they miss Harry, or at least the person they pretended he was in their papers. “I think with a lot of the reporters they like the version of Harry that they helped create,” they say, describing how they would reminisce about when Harry would come over and pal around with them. “Yes, but he also, when you left, would make fun of you all behind your backs and hated you guys.”

“They are so hot for each other,” according to a person who worked closely with the couple. “Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?”

But who is the real Harry, now that he’s been released from the zoo in which he was raised? By one telling, the person who interacted professionally with Meghan says he’s socially marooned beyond his nuclear family. “She was up-front about the fact that Harry hadn’t made many friends yet,” the source says of Meghan’s assessment of her husband. The person who worked in media projects with the couple also has a guess. “I think Harry doesn’t know what he wants because he grew up in a fishbowl, and so he doesn’t know what real life really is,” they say. “I think he probably wants to be left alone and be able to go kiss babies every once in a while but not have to worry about money. I don’t think he wants to be famous the way Meghan wants to be famous.”

Harry and Meghan are, in the estimation of everyone Vanity Fair spoke with, deeply in love. “They are so hot for each other,” the person who worked closely with them said. “Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?” When Harry is solo, the person inside the couple’s circle says, “he’s very personable, he’s very at ease with people, quite like Diana... he just has this way of, like, making people feel very comfortable.” When he’s in public with Meghan, “there is a circus,” the source says. “He’s so protective of her because people are so nasty to her.... It’s a whole different experience.”

Harry has explicitly drawn parallels between his wife and his late mother. “My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry wrote in a 2019 statement about Meghan’s treatment by the press. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

While Harry is vigilant about Meghan’s safety, the person who worked closely with them says Meghan’s role in their dynamic is caregiver and facilitator; she’s the one who makes things happen. “Pre-Meghan,” says the person familiar with the couple, “Harry would just pop in [to the palace press office], ask a few questions, and leave, like he was a little bored but also very keen.” It’s almost impossible to imagine today’s Harry willingly engaging with the media in search of purpose. The source who worked with Harry and Meghan says, “I can picture him meeting Meghan and being just a deep breath of, like, ‘I’ve been so exhausted, and you make everything so easy.’... I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever, but it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him in a way.”

It’s easy to imagine a folie à deux emerging from the singular blend of circumstances: a need to believe in each other and the primacy of their relationship in the face of shared trauma and the real obstacles they encountered as they idealistically endeavored to break the wheel, while occasionally breaking the spirits of those tasked with executing their shared vision. “You don’t” tell them no, the person who worked in the couple’s media projects said. “I left because I couldn’t live with myself anymore.”

This intracouple permission to stray from other people’s realities may have led to some of the points of contention that people bring up when questioning Meghan’s fidelity to emotional truth above literal truth: her assertions that she neither googled Prince Harry nor looked up the etiquette for meeting the Queen of England and didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy until the ride over.

“Meghan is the type of woman who would check a menu out online before going to a restaurant to pick what she was going to eat,” says Tom Fitzgerald, a fashion and cultural commentator who, with his husband, Lorenzo Marquez, comprise the brand Tom and Lorenzo. (A resident of Montecito who ate lunch in the same restaurant as Meghan said the server told her Meghan had called ahead to ask about the privacy of the seating arrangement.) “So the idea that she didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy for the queen, I just didn’t find it particularly believable, because [based on] everything she ever told us about herself, I cannot imagine that she went into meeting the royal family completely cold, with no research whatsoever.” Fitzgerald also points to Meghan’s repeated claims that she was forced to wear neutrals during her time in the palace in order to avoid upstaging or competing with Queen Elizabeth and other senior members of the family, noting that Meghan’s wardrobe is now primarily composed of that palate.

A royals reporter believes that Meghan assumed her husband’s vision rather than researching the job of being a royal, and the reporter has a more positive view of the folie. “Oh, that’s such a good idea for a successful marriage,” the reporter says. “It’s a terrible idea for a job, but...if you’re joining this big network of people, you’ve got to see this through your husband’s eyes, be your husband’s advocate in it. And it’s no wonder this relationship works, even if the family business part of it fell apart.”

It’s a charming (if Freudian) dynamic—a husband and wife who organize each other’s lives and well-being, who flirt and hold hands and want the world to be a better place, even to the exclusion of evidence that suggests their well-meaning way of disrupting institutions is not always the best approach. That instinct to do things as Harry and Meghan believed they should be done, rather than how they are typically accomplished, was exacerbated during their time as senior working royals. It led to conflict with Harry’s family and palace staff, the reporter says, because Harry “doesn’t understand himself. He doesn’t understand a monarchy. His family didn’t do a very good job of inculcating him into the family legend partially because he didn’t care; partially because he was just kind of abandoned at the age of eight.”

However, the couple’s regal charisma while effortlessly changing the world has been showcased to great effect on their most successful reimagining of monarchy x Markle: Harry and Meghan’s common royal tours, to Nigeria in May and Colombia in August. “Invictus Games for sure is a very clear product, a brand, an organization that Harry spent a decade building, which is why in many ways I think the Nigerian tour worked,” says Elaine Lui, the celebrity commentator behind Lainey Gossip. “When they appear together in non-Invictus circumstances, that’s when people are like, I’m not really clear what they’re representing here.” That’s contrasted with an actual royal tour, when individuals are acting on behalf of the sovereignty and its various causes; or, as Lui points to, an independent actor like Angelina Jolie, who went to places like Afghanistan and Ukraine with the backing of the United Nations Refugee Agency. (In September, Harry appeared in front of a small group at the United Nations in New York to highlight issues in Lesotho, one of the countries where his charity Sentebale focuses its efforts.) Lui says, “She could leverage the history and the reputation of a very established philanthropic organization to say, ‘Hey, I’m lending my celebrity to this cause and in raising this awareness, we can actually attach the effect or the results to the UNHCR.’ ” With the gauzier parts of Meghan and Harry’s tours—what Harry called the “reasons to meet the people at the heart of our work”—Lui says the question is how are they helping anyone, and how is Archewell distinguishing itself from any other foundation? After raising more than $13 million in 2021, according to public disclosure forms, the charity grossed $2 million in 2022. The nonprofit has not yet shared its 2023 or 2024 revenue. “Yes, it has them as spokespeople,” Lui says. “But they haven’t had yet—because it’s still quite new—a track record of being able to make philanthropic achievements independent of the palace.”

How complete that independence is is another point that rankles people about Meghan and Harry. If you still use a title and descend upon commonwealth or developing countries and let little girls curtsy to you, as one did to Meghan in Colombia, it doesn’t seem like you’ve totally left the monarchy behind. It also doesn’t give you a lot of room to critique it.

The Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan litigates in painstaking detail Harry’s and Meghan’s mental health declines as she was bullied at the very least in sight of, and by many accounts at the behest of, an imperialist establishment. Yet this doesn’t seem to sour them to the idea of participating in a hereditary bloodline. In the doc, Harry says that during their last week as working senior royals, the couple, ruing the circumstances of their exit, kept telling each other, “We would have carried on doing this for the rest of our lives.” When Charles ascended the throne after Elizabeth’s death, the couple’s children became Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Some people familiar with the production of Archetypes and Harry’s book tour said they were instructed to address the couple as sir or ma’am, though the request was dropped in one instance after the person pushed back. (Other people say they were encouraged by Harry and Meghan to call them by their first names.) “I think ultimately it’s cachet and sets them apart as different and special,” the source familiar with the couple says. “In the US, success, money, fame, all of that stuff exists out here. But a blood title, it’s few and far between.” (Many members of Meghan’s current inner circle—which includes Kaling; Figueras’s wife, socialite Delfina Blaquier; Tracy Robbins, the fashion designer and wife of Paramount Global co-CEO Brian Robbins; and parenting influencer and activist Kelly McKee Zajfen—are basically living by the rules of “American aristocracy,” according to Lui. They “stay behind the scenes…wield their power quietly…[and] look down on people who are very public, too thirsty.” On the other hand, all of the aforementioned are slated to appear on With Love, Meghan.)

A Black studies scholar who is also an African American woman noted the way racism is discussed in Harry & Meghan: as the one-off actions of Princess Michael of Kent wearing a blackamoor brooch to a brunch where Meghan was present, or the distant colonialism that still furnishes the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the jewels in the family’s tiaras, or Harry saying that the royal family merely had “unconscious bias.” “It’s a very common discursive move,” the scholar says. “Locating racism in individual bad actors or locating it in the past.... Queen Elizabeth becomes a kindly grandmother. She’s in the back of a car [or] her carriage, under a blanket. There’s that story, which is really kind of sweet that Meghan tells in the documentary, but [it] can’t connect that with the larger ideology of England—and thereby Queen Elizabeth—being like, ‘We are the natural rulers of the world.’ And that includes the segregation of people of color.” The cultural critic says this framing makes it so Meghan and Harry “can tell the story of being victims of the system, but it’s all about them being disenfranchised from whiteness and white privilege.”

The couple repeatedly expressed frustration in Harry & Meghan that Meghan wasn’t tapped as an asset for upholding the crown’s international interests in an era when Prince William was tasked with expressing “profound sorrow” for the “appalling atrocity of slavery” during a tour to Jamaica. As historian David Olusoga says in the docuseries, “Part of what makes the inability of the palace to defend Meghan an even bigger disaster is that the center of the argument for the monarchy in this country is the commonwealth. The commonwealth is 2.5 billion, mainly Black and brown people. Here was a woman who looked like most of the people in the commonwealth.” Harry speaks shortly after and says the palace and its denizens “have already missed an enormous opportunity with my wife and how far that would go globally.” The source familiar with the couple says it’s important to note that Harry isn’t an anti-monarchist. “He just didn’t like the way things were run within the institution,” he says. “His issues are about people and behaviors, not tradition.”

The source, who is also a person of color, defends Meghan’s right to want a piece of the empire for herself. “If I was in the same position and I was treated the way I was by the institution, it wouldn’t stop me from still feeling that that title is mine and deserved,” they say. “If anything, it would feel like you’re giving in to the pressure to exclude you in the first place. So actually it would probably make me want it even more. Damn well I’m going to slap it on my kids’ names too.”

Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, John Carradine, Kirk and Michael Douglas, Jonathan Winters, Gwyneth Paltrow, Adam Levine, Jimmy Connors, T.C. Boyle, Leonardo DiCaprio, Neil Young and Daryl Hannah, Michael Keaton, and of course Oprah are among the many celebrities who have peacefully coexisted with other locals in Montecito, an unincorporated part of Santa Barbara County. When a Montecitan’s labradoodle ran up to a child and licked their ice cream, the kid’s father—Kardashian affiliate Scott Disick—ran up to the pet owner with concern; not because he was upset that the cone was ruined but to reassure the person that the ice cream was vegan and wouldn’t upset the dog’s stomach. Katy Perry has, per usual, had some legal real estate issues, and Ellen DeGeneres has become unpopular for her immaculate, usually off-market flips that have supposedly driven house prices up. “I think everyone, including the A-list celebs, would prefer that it’s not on the map like it is,” the Montecitan says. It’s a place where no one would ever “bother” a famous person beyond saying hello at the coffee shop, as they would to anyone else. One resident says Montecito’s defining characteristics are “quiet” and “neighborliness.”

The prince and “the starlet,” as the Montecitan calls her, have become local villains, according to several people who spoke with VF. They attribute the increase in housing prices to them as much as DeGeneres and point to out-of-towners coming in, driving too fast, and taking up all the street parking by local trails like the one Meghan was photographed hiking on while Harry was in the UK for Charles’s coronation. You can’t just walk into Lucky’s for dinner anymore. While the Montecitan says neither he nor his friends have ever met the couple (two others mentioned Harry biking in town), they popped up in the video for DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s vow renewal, and the Montecitan saw photos of Harry playing polo at a nearby field, which will also be featured in Harry’s Netflix docuseries. Meghan’s Netflix project was filmed at a house near theirs.

American Riviera Orchard—which on Instagram has a logo styled with a royal-looking crest and written in Meghan’s perfect calligraphy and is known internally as ARO—is located in Montecito. Though an 1898 book published by the Southern Pacific Company rail line states, “The Montecito is known as the American Riviera,” today that honor is understood to belong to Santa Barbara; no one Vanity Fair spoke with had ever heard Montecito referred to by the name. “It’s such a kind of hucksterism,” one resident says. “It’s just finding every way she can to monetize something.” And in doing so, bringing more attention to the place where the Sussexes say they want to be left alone. “I still think they’re the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet,” the Montecitan says. “They moved away from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, and all they do is try and get in the press in the United States.” Lui says the most common criticism she hears about Meghan (though she notes it’s true of Harry as well) is “you can’t cherry-pick the good parts and leave out the bad parts” of fame. However, she points out, “all celebrities do this. ‘Don’t take photos of me. Oh, but here, let me step out, conveniently, and get papped. Only give me good reviews of my movie or my album. And if you don’t like my music, I’m gonna post on Instagram that you’re so shitty as a reviewer.’ ”

Whether American Riviera Orchard will be well-received—or received at all, at least in name—remains to be seen. On August 31, the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the trademark application: “Registration is refused because the applied-for mark is primarily geographically descriptive,” the response read. In other words, you can’t claim a place. (Tell that to Queen Victoria.) The same day, according to the New York Post, the office reportedly received a complaint from storied pear purveyor Harry & David regarding the similarity in name to its Royal Riviera line. As far as the substance of the brand, Lui says Meghan’s first lifestyle effort, The Tig, was popular in Lui’s circle in Toronto while Meghan was filming Suits there. However: “American Riviera Orchard to me is giving 2014. It’s not giving 2024,” she says. “Fame arrests you at the moment it arrives. And I wonder if that is your health-and-wellness-lifestyle version of that, where she had to suspend The Tig and quit it the moment that she became Harry’s girlfriend, then fiancée, and then his wife. American Riviera Orchard is maybe picking up from where The Tig left off.”

The source familiar with the couple says, “I think there’s one thing that no one could take away from Meghan is how hard she works, how much effort goes into everything that she does. Ultimately that’s all she needs. And I think that’s why American Riviera Orchard probably will be a massive success. Even if in two years’ time it doesn’t exist anymore and she’s on to the next, it will have that moment. There’ll be no way that you can say that it wasn’t successful.”

A few years ago a rumor began circulating around the book world about another prospective project for Meghan. This story, which a person with knowledge confirms the broad details of, was that Meghan’s team had a conversation with a publishing house to gauge interest in the idea for a potential book. The concept, for which there was no written or formal proposal, was post-divorce. Not a general book on life after marital dissolution, or one about Meghan’s past experience. (She was married to producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 to 2014.) This book—this notion of a book, really—might center on a post-Harry divorce. Not that there was actually one in the works! Just…if this a priori divorce ever came to be, would this publisher theoretically be interested in a book that took place in its aftermath? Another source with knowledge says, “If that’s true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa.” No offer was ever made, and no manuscript was produced. After all: There was no divorce.

The source familiar with the couple says Meghan’s metabolism for campaigns that she can move on from—Archetypes, the ephemeral 40x40 mentorship program, the forthcoming lifestyle line and show, the wisp of a possible book about a divorce that might never happen—are part of why she’s better suited to celebrity outside the palace. “The royals don’t work like that,” the source says. “How many years has Kate been talking about early childhood development, like 11 now, 12? We still haven’t really seen anything.” (Princess Catherine launched Shaping Up, a campaign focused on “increasing public understanding of the crucial importance of the first five years of a child’s life.”)

In that time, Meghan has gone from star of a syndicated cable series to paradigm-changing princess to her husband’s conduit out of royal life to the founder of a hybrid charity–Hollywood start-up. She has earned as much faith in her own force of will as a sovereign might have from believing that they were anointed by God to lead.

As for what she’ll do with that power, look at what it means for her to make the world a better place, which she and Harry genuinely seem to want to do. Jameela Jamil, Chrissy Teigen, and Omid Scobie, the author of Finding Freedom (about Harry and Meghan’s time in and departure from royal life) and Endgame (about the ensuing years within the Windsor dynasty), have all publicly discussed Meghan unexpectedly reaching out during difficult times in their lives and offering solace, even though they weren’t close. Lui sees it as something Meghan took from her royal years, just as Harry has taken his impeccable manners and the ability to patronize the fuck out of a charity. “That’s what they do,” Lui says. “They bless you with their royalness, and that’s the gift. It’s not like Princess Diana was ever best friends with all the people that she visited in the hospital.”

“I think that they don’t know what ‘change the world’ means,” says the person who worked in media projects. “They want to be people who are looked at as people who want to change the world.” Maybe that’s why Meghan has continued—on Nick News, in The Tig, on panels, on Archetypes, in Colombia in August—to bring up the story of writing a letter to Procter & Gamble about a sexist soap ad, taking credit for them changing the spot so that it no longer suggested women should be the ones doing dishes. Procter & Gamble declined many requests from VF to confirm that Meghan was the impetus for the switch, and in 2021 the company partnered with Archewell with the goal of “elevat[ing] the voices of adolescent girls to ensure their point of view and lived experience is heard at the tables where decisions are made.” Whether or not Meghan’s letter is what prompted the change, the fact that more than 30 years later she continues to speak up about having spoken up suggests it’s the kind of mission she aspires to. Marie, who has worked with many celebrities, says of the Sussexes’ aspirations, “I think it’s actually better than where most people start out.”

To point out the modesty of that world-bettering feels like contributing to the essential problem of Harry and Meghan: No matter what they do, they just can’t win. (If, I guess, you don’t count the overwhelming portion of their beautiful lives that exists outside of Daily Mail headlines and blog comment sections.)

If Harry’s burden is the soft oppression of no expectations, Meghan’s might be the opposite: the betrayal of not living up to an unachievable ideal. “I think the whole world was waiting for her to be that person, and then she never jumped,” the source who worked in media says. “Diana walked amongst land mines. Meghan couldn’t even say the word slut.”

Anna Peele is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her culture writing looks seriously at subjects that are sometimes considered frivolous. Anna spent the first eight years of her career as an editor at men’s magazines, where she wrote a widely read Esquire cover story of Miles Teller

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#vanity fair #5 years after Megxit #Harry Windsor #Sussex Article #american hustle #meghan markle #Prince Harry #Archewell #archeFRAUD #spare us #worldwide privacy tour #brf #like a spare #Montecito #harry and meghan #with love meghan #Wild About Harry mea culpa #Youtube

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darkmaga-returns · 5 months ago

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President Joe Biden sat down with MSNBC propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell for an Oval Office exit interview, where he persistently lied about major initiatives of his presidency and the state of politics during his term.

Along the way, Biden was aided by the dangerously uncurious bootlicking of O’Donnell who never once pushed back on anything Biden said, and at times praised him and made emotional appeals to his decades of failed public service.

‘An Oligarchy Is Taking Shape’

In the interview, O’Donnell referenced a portion of Biden’s farewell address where he warned of an “oligarchy” taking shape.

“You issued the warning about the power of the tech-industrial complex, an echo of President Eisenhower in this very room in his farewell address, warning about the military-industrial complex,” O’Donnell said. “And you said that an oligarchy is taking shape that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. How does this oligarchy affect people out there who’ve never used the word ‘oligarchy’?”

“If the decision is made that the multi-billionaires — the super, super wealthy, the wealthiest people in the world — begin to control all the apparatuses from the media to the economy, then who do I get to fight back for me?” Biden replied.

But Biden’s response displays a clear misunderstanding of whose political allies are run by oligarchs — even though Biden himself was on the receiving end of their wrath.

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myelkajou · 2 months ago

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bon mwa eritaj ayisyen! toujou sonje ke ayiti kapab, e pèp ayisyen pral! 🌺

important to remember that silence isn’t just cowardice, but also compliance. respect haitian sovereignty, and support positive HAITIAN-LED initiatives if you care for haitian people like many of you claim to. any monetary contribution counts, and a single share could pass over so many waves—but feel free to share any individual links yourselves.

here, you’ll find the most comprehensive link to read up on & keep informed by. but here are also some quicker, condensed graphics (one & two). in essence, the roots beneath the forest of issues that many speak so ignorantly about today, goes back to the seeds sown by the first colonizers where they called "the new world". it goes back to the systems of oppression that they've created, and left behind for their descendants to foster over the centuries, to today—which has sprouted into rampant anti-blackness/indigeneity alongside anti-haitianism in the caribbean-latam (as well as beyond the region), apartheid & ethnic-cleansing, religious colonialism through stigmatizing indigenous practice [vodou] to push missionary work in its place—and, like it can't get any worse, destabilization & foreign occupation disguised as “intervention”. *all* urged by core group (the u.s., france, spain, germany, canada) and unsurprisingly endorsed by our own “siblings” in the region who allow themselves to be used as pawns to violate our sovereignty, states of caricom & latam. and, of course this violence wouldn't permitted without the illegitimate puppet governments who pride themselves on being haitian yet their actions say everything but, seeing that all they really care about is clawing onto power & blood money—who've been installed by core group, elites of either mulatto or purely european settler origin, and foreign oligarch families that began settling on the island long ago. at the end of the day, they all join forces because they all want a piece of the same pie; a haiti without haitian people, and to suck our lands dry.

descending from people who've resisted comes with a hefty price, and it's one that we will continue to refuse. this is the work they won't tell you about on the island.

grown in haiti operates from jakmèl, with the intentions of giving back to our land. they train/work with haitian farmers to restore the soil and replant trees, while also reviving and protecting indigenous ecosystems. click here if you'd like to make a donation, and scroll to the bottom of the page for their socials.

lakou tanama makes a home in many areas on our island, with the hopes of expanding to our diaspora—using afro-indigenous practices to nourish communities & offer support to people who've been heavily impacted by the rise of the organized violence. click here if you'd like to donate.

the haitian association of psychology continues to assist the growing wave of people right in the center of, or nearest to the calculated violence—who've been experiencing mental health difficulties as a result of the following issues; abuse, displacement, food scarcity, illness & injury, and inadequate resources. click here if you'd like to make a donation, and click here to reach their fb page.

the fontaine foundation operates from the capital, providing healthcare, education, and a promising future for those in the belly of the beast. click here if you'd like to make a donation.

haiti diaspora 360 sees to the self-sufficiency of displaced families drawn to the nearest southern departments of haiti, while trying to get as much of their youth in school as possible. click here if you'd like to make a donation, and click here to reach their website.

mouvan peyizan papay, operating from central plateau, focuses on sovereignty; supporting farmers there in plato santral (where haiti's agricultural market is strongest), providing education & legal aid, plus putting together logistics—altogether decreasing reliance on foreign assistance. click here if you'd like to read more, see the progress being made & donate.

cojeha, operating from the northeast department, serves as a center that empowers & provides opportunity to the haitian youth there, as well as the communities that they come from. click here if you'd like to read more, see the progress being made & donate.

otrah, by and for trans haitian people in haiti, is accepting donations to foster a safer space for the community, especially queer youth. they’re working on destigmatizing hiv, as they they provide diagnostic & treatment care for it. click here if you'd like to make a donation.

p4h global is involved in many ways—with our agricultural movement in the north (as well as the canals/bridges), strengthening haitian educators, assisting those displaced in the capital & the nearest surrounding areas, helping migrants at the colonial border, and even waste management projects. if you'd like to make a donation towards any of these, click here.

#ayiti #ayisyen #kiskeya #kiskeyen #kreyòl #hands off haiti #free haiti #haiti #haitian #caribbean #creole

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troger · 1 month ago

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The $400 million gifted jet from Qatar and the late night Taylor Swift posts are designed to distract you from what happened on the first overseas trip of Trump's second term.

I am not referring to the highly choreographed, censored, Hollywood version of his Middle East tour. I am not talking about the tepid and inaccurate reporting from failed legacy media outlets, who only repeated his claim of 'hundreds of billions in deals'.

I'm talking about what really happened between the Trump family, the US oligarchs, and the Sunni dynasties which control the Gulf states.

Let's provide some proper grounding. Before departing on Air Force One, the White House informed the most reliable global news agencies, often referred to as 'the wire', that they would not be joining the administration. This marks the first time in US history that journalists from the wire services (like Reuters, Associated Press, UPI, etc) would not accompany the US president on an overseas trip, especially one of this magnitude.

Upon landing, Trump and family, top aides, and the CEOs of at least 20 major companies scurried to make deals as fast as they could. Trump's large adult sons wrangled a few billion out of Qatar and Saudi Arabia for golf course resorts, each.

Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos bowed before Mohammad bin Salman, a man who kidnapped, sexually tortured, and dismembered one of Bezos' journalists, Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi, employed at the Washington Post. The few remaining talented reporters still employed by Washington Post must rest easy at night knowing in the event someone murders them because they dislike their reporting, their boss will kiss their killer's hand. Not exactly a fantastic workplace vibe for a newspaper, but I digress.

To be honest, there is not enough room in this post to describe the torrent of deals happening in that room. We are talking about the 20 most powerful companies on earth, mingling with 20 or so members of the Saudi and Qatari ruling families, all pitching deals to channel oil money into their pockets.

One attendee, the CEO of Blackstone, the company responsible for buying up swaths of single-family homes and rental buildings across the US, and using algorithm to squeeze every penny out of American renters, pitched a monster deal where Saudi Arabia would recycle billions in oil wealth into the financial products made by bundling the rental payments of millions of Americans.

Again, it's a great deal for Saudi Arabia: sell the fossilized dinosaur bones under your feet that you produce for $3 a barrel, sell it for $65 on the market, use the proceeds to raise rents in the US and finance a little terror on the side. What's there not to love?

Elon Musk landed a significant deal with Saudi Arabia to use his Starlink system for aviation and nautical systems. The military industrial complex, the tech CEOs, and the crypto creeps emerged from the summit with ear to ear smiles. It was a spectacle for the ages as the ruling elites of Saudi Arabia sought to greenwash, tech wash, and generally launder their oil wealth into the coffers of America's biggest tech titans.

To be clear, Saudi Arabia is a backward nation of women-hating oil thieves who have nothing but contempt for our democracy and values. They have financed terrorist atrocities across the world, including 9/11. The Saudi sultans and sheiks attempt to spin their countries as reformed and modern by investing in goofy golf tournaments, but every single strip, brick, and building of the 'new Middle East' was built on the backs of chattel slaves from South Eastern Asia.

These Sunni sultans and sheiks, like the Trump family and the Silicon Valley tech bros, are the takers of the world. They contribute nothing. They live solely to extract as much wealth and amass as much power as they can.

And the takers of the world, like the Sunni elite and the wannabe dictators like Trump, share a similar model of the world: that vision rests on holding the makers of society in total contempt. The people who build your cities, farm your food, and generally provide the entire structure and foundation of modern life are deserving of nothing more than squalor, poverty, terror, cruelty, and denied even the basic recognition of citizenship. This is the model of Dubai. This is the vision of Trump's America.

But Trump and his dopey sons aren't the captains of this ill-fated journey. Not by any stretch...

Peep🧐 Trump's little hands holding onto King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud's hand. At first glance, it appears Trump gently supporting an old and enfeebled man. Which is weird, cause he doesn't even hold his own wife's hand. But no, the King has stuck his middle finger right through Trump's palm as he grips his wrists with the other fingers.

Trump is being groomed.

The Saudis played him like a child. They rolled out their silly lavender carpet. They bussed in a McDonald's trailer so bozo could enjoy a Big Mac in the sweltering 110 degree heat while he canoodled with the people who funded 9/11. They adorned him a Toys R' Us gold chain. They even pawned off a rusted jet they were unsuccessfully trying to offload for years.

The only thing the Saudis wanted was the ability to launder their money into America's leading semiconductor technologies and boatloads of our latest weapon systems.

In the end, hundreds of billions of dollars changed hands. The number of hands numbered no more than two dozen. The 77 million MAGA muppets who voted for this traitor were not part of the deal.

(source)

#uspol #fck trump

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lurkiestvoid · 5 months ago

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This Is So Much Worse Than Last Time

Why Democrats and the media are struggling to capture the insanity—and danger—of the new Trump administration.

Alex Shephard

February 5, 2025

There is practically no way to describe what is currently happening in the United States without sounding hysterical, or like some sort of crank—or, maybe, insane. But here goes!

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has seized control of the Treasury Department. He is deciding who the government pays and who it doesn’t. The federal payment system he has access to contains the Social Security numbers and even the bank account information of nearly every American. It also has information about Musk’s private-sector competitors that he can now use for his own self-enrichment. Musk has given a handful of inexperienced young coders control over this sensitive system, where they can—and reportedly have—started to mess with its code. At least one of them is not even old enough to drink. This is a hostile takeover of the finances of the U.S. government. It’s blatantly unconstitutional. It’s a coup. It sounds like the treatment for a Gerard Butler action flick.

That’s not all! Trump and Musk have shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and cut off nearly all foreign aid. This will have devastating consequences for global health, global democracy, and the future of American soft power. Speaking of: Trump has spent the early days of his presidency threatening 25 percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada for no real reason, other than that he thinks a tool that worked more than a century ago will work now. (It won’t.) Even if he doesn’t end up enacting these tariffs—which would likely be a form of economic suicide—he has already likely damaged the future of any trade agreement between the U.S. and its closest allies. He has also pardoned over a thousand violent insurrectionists and now seems ready to fire hundreds of FBI agents who helped prosecute them.

But there’s more! The administration is freezing funding for climate and infrastructure spending despite numerous court orders. Trump just released a ton of water into California’s Central Valley in a publicity stunt. All he accomplished is screwing over farmers who will likely need that water in the summer; it did absolutely nothing to fight the (mostly contained) fires that devastated the state last month. His administration is waging an all-out war against trans people and seems on the verge of all but ending gender-affirming care for minors. As I write this, American planes are flying migrants to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be held in a concentration camp. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—supposedly one of the normal people in this administration!—just reached an agreement with El Salvador where it will accept deportees of all nationalities, including Americans.

I have not mentioned confirmed Cabinet members like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (problem drinker who has been credibly accused of sexual assault) or those who seem on the verge of confirmation, such as Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy (conspiracy theorist, had a literal brain worm, no experience, looks and sounds like a beat-up pleather recliner). Even then, this is just a fraction of the horror that has been unleashed over the last two weeks. As TechDirt’s Mike Masnick put it, the past fortnight has been like “a distributed denial of service attack on people who believe in reality.”

This is all very bad. Saying that it is very bad feels like an understatement. There is an ongoing oligarchic takeover of the U.S. government. Donald Trump’s authoritarian project has never been more threatening and fully realized. Things are already so much worse than his first term. The first time around, the president was stymied by legislative checks, particularly by a handful of congressional Republicans who occasionally emerged to block him, a still embryonic political project that had a dearth of apparatchiks to fulfill his (often insane) requests, and a bureaucracy that often frustrated his unconstitutional overreach and general authoritarianism.

Now the Republican resisters have been replaced by lackeys and cowards (sometimes a combination of both) and his administration is being staffed by fascistic loyalists eager to do his bidding; these loyalists are now engaged in a project aimed at destroying much of the existing civil service, particularly any part of it that was deemed insufficiently pro-Trump. (USAID, for instance, is under fire in part because of the perception that it is a hotbed of Commies; the FBI, famously not a hotbed of Commies, is under fire because it investigated Trump’s attempted coup after he lost the 2020 election.)

All of this (and the litany of horribles I haven’t mentioned) has happened over the course of two weeks. Most of Trump’s nominees aren’t even confirmed yet. There are no signs of a brewing rupture between Musk and Trump. Every sign points to the fact that this is going to get a whole lot worse. Many signs suggest that there may be no coming back from this.

Despite all the full-frontal fascism, the response has been oddly and frustratingly muted. The story of the first Trump administration was one in which the president constantly embarrassed the country and himself. But it was also about a clear manifestation of anger and pushback over his avowed plans (usually tweeted at odd hours) or his trying to implement them and being met with resistance. That resistance hasn’t really materialized yet. If Trump merely talked about building a moat filled with alligators at the southern border in his first term, now there’s a non-zero chance he’ll just do it.

Why has has the response been so muted? There has been a sense since his reelection that much of the public is simply exhausted by an wearying decade of Trump and is doing what it can to tune him out. It’s hard not to blame the populace for taking a break from the daily grind. If you were born toward the end of the last century, it’s possible you’ve never voted in a presidential election without Trump on the ballot. That’s a hellish quarter-century to live through.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, who ostensibly don’t get to take a break from this, have, in characteristic fashion, taken the wrong lessons from his reelection and seem to have spent much of the last two months paying the same consultants who lost the election to tell them how they can be more like Trump. Despite the takeover of the Treasury they are, incredibly, still voting for some of his nominees. (Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, was confirmed as energy secretary with seven Democratic votes on Tuesday.)

In some quarters, a fighting spirit is stirring, and members are starting to sound like the #Resistance Dems of old. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ron Wyden, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have taken on the administration and publicly condemned Musk’s role as a shadow president perpetrating an ongoing takeover of the U.S. government; on Tuesday evening, there was a large protest at the Treasury Department attended by two dozen members of Congress.

Media coverage has somehow been even less inspiring than the Democratic response. During Trump’s first term, the press struggled to find a way to deal with Trump’s admittedly difficult to describe mix of extremism and incoherence. The speed of all of this and the enormity of it is, to be fair, difficult to capture. But there are bigger problems emerging in the ongoing coverage. One is simply that Trump and his cronies are taking direct action against the press, threatening to shut down via lawsuits (or, in the case of National Public Radio, defunding) any outlet that they deem as being critical, and appear to be serious about it. ABC has already settled one lawsuit, while CBS seems ready to settle another—settling both would essentially amount to paying Trump protection money.

But there’s also been the return of an old malady: The mainstream press’s wholesale inability to grasp the magnitude of Trumpian misrule and capture the existential threat he poses. There is also the standard illiteracy and dysfunction among many major outlets that fails to rise to the moment: Over the past two weeks, for example, New York Times headlines have argued that the plain text of the Constitution is actually a matter of partisan argument and that the Treasury system Musk and his Muskrats have taken over is a legitimate means of deficit reduction; Bloomberg somehow found the only liberal legal scholar willing to say that the constitutional order has been resilient against Trump and for some reason published his take, despite it very clearly being incorrect.

Worse still, all of these old problems have been exacerbated by an emerging consensus that the media’s intelligentsia somehow extracted from Trump’s reelection campaign, which is that much of the public thought that their coverage was too sensationalist. And so there has been a palpably strenuous effort to dial things back, at the very moment when Trump and Musk are escalating their war on American life. No one is crying wolf, but the wolves have arrived.

These are facts, I’m afraid: Over the last two weeks, the incoming president has disabled most of the federal government as he figures out how to purge the federal bureaucracy and remake it into an instrument of personal revenge and self-enrichment. To do this, he has empowered the richest person in the world to take control over the federal government’s financial machinery and given him permission to refashion it at the source-code level. To say that seems hysterical. To experience it seems insane. But that’s precisely what’s really happening.

#us politics #current events #uspol news #us news #i tried to preserve links and formatting 🤷‍♂️#anyways it's nice to not be gaslit about this sometimes #cHeCkS aNd BaLaNcEs 🙃#alex shephard #not mine

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