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This is chapter 6 of “The Construction of Reality”, one of the rewards of our 2023 fundraiser. We’ve now unlocked up to chapter 11 (There are 41 chapters in the whole book.) We are c. $1,800 from our final goal and the final reward, an article on the Middle Ages Academic crisis (overproduction and collapse.) Chapters to come include

7. The Ritual (how we create identification)

8. Interaction ritual (how daily life creates identification and personality)

9.The Ritual Masters (How rituals create different types and classes of people)

10. The Ideologues (How identity is tied into story, ideology and meaning)

11. Reign of the Ideologues (How ideology is used to create civilizations and the payoffs for ideologues)

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Federal regulators allow a small cryptocurrency firm to vertically integrate, deregulating the industry just like Sam Bankman-Fried wanted.

A note explaining the retraction of the claim that Hamas militants had specific orders as to “which commander should rape which soldiers” indicates the publication censored itself at the behest of the Israeli government. The Washington Post has quietly removed an outlandish claim by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Hamas battle plans included specific instructions on which Israeli troops should be raped during their October 7 incursion. In the original article, which was published on November 12 and promoted […]

The post Washington Post erases Israeli minister’s farfetched October 7 rape claim at his request first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Washington Post erases Israeli minister’s farfetched October 7 rape claim at his request appeared first on The Grayzone.

That is 100% a lie. They did none of that. All the evidence is available. Nancy Pelosi did not turn down his request for the National Guard on January 6th. And no, unless you are saying that Jonathan Turley represents the “most respected legal minds in the Country” there is virtually no one saying that he’s “fully entitled” to immunity for what he did. MSNBC keeps saying that they won’t show what Trump is saying because “there’s a cost” to them. Actually, there’s a cost to everyone if they don’t. People need to see it and they need to see the arguments against it. Today I saw them put up Liz Cheney’s response to this but not the post itself which didn’t show just how deranged he really is. Trump needs to be seen by everyone in all his glory. What they’re doing now is inadvertently covering for him. They need to stop it.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

So much information has gone under the bridge about the insurrection that I’ve lost sight of some of the more interesting details that flush out what happened on January 6th — and who is responsible. (People like Marcy Wheeler who follow the trials are very well aware, of course.) This piece from June 2021 by Amanda Carpenter came to my attention over the holidays and I thought it was interesting. If you still think that Trump didn’t actually incite the insurrection, this is important to consider: To understand January 6, 2021, we must first look back to June 1, 2020. That was the day Donald Trump delivered a terse Rose Garden speech threatening to deploy the U.S. military to any city or state that “refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents.” The speech was prompted by the protests that began on May 26 in Minneapolis and spread throughout the country after George Floyd was killed by police.

Paul Krugman agrees that things are looking up. Will people recognize it in time or will they continue to blame Joe Biden for the chaos and ugliness that Trump and his cult are creating? Almost four years have passed since Covid-19 struck. In America, the pandemic killed well over a million people and left millions more with lingering health problems. Much of normal life came to a halt, partly because of official lockdowns but largely because fear of infection kept people home. The big question in the years that followed was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news. In the short run, of course, the pandemic had severe economic and social effects, in many ways wider and deeper than almost anyone expected. Employment fell by 25 million in a matter of weeks.

I got my law degree from watching “Law and Order” so I’m not what anyone would call an attorney. But I do find this stuff fascinating. I came across this last night on the presidential immunity question. (That question drives me crazy because it seems so obvious I can’t even imagine how it can be debatable but here we are.) Anyway: A new wrinkle has emerged in former President Donald Trump‘s immunity battle in his federal election interference case, with a watchdog group filing a brief on Friday calling for his appeal effort to be dismissed and for his trial allowed to resume. Trump is currently contending with four criminal indictments at the state and federal levels, totaling 91 criminal charges in all. Among these cases is the federal one brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith pertaining to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, has maintained his innocence in the case.

Our 7th most-read article of 2023.

Originally published August 11, 2023.

You were riding during rush hour.
Why were you riding then? There are way too many cars on the road. If you were commuting, you should have contacted your boss and politely asked to work from 3:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. instead.

You were riding at night or in the early morning.
There’s no way drivers can see you. Remember: if you’re one of those people who rides bikes because it keeps the mental darkness at bay, the best time to do so is in the middle of the workday.

You were riding in the middle of the workday.
The only people who should ride their bikes during the workday are bike messengers, who I also dislike. They weave, they bob—it’s inappropriate. Bike messengers need to do what drivers do: go straight, get pissed off, and hate everyone.

Stephen Miller will be a very important influence in Trump 2.0 Judd Legum talks about the Trump threat in his newsletter today. I thought I would highlight just one little passage for those who think it might be useful to punish Biden and the Democrats by letting Trump have another term. It’s pretty clear it won’t just be the Democrats who suffer at Trump’s hands.

Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies & the team aren't wasting a second of 2024, with RTD signaling that they're already "back to work."

In this series, I explore how US narratives on the ‘China threat’ have become entrenched in Western security communities and how a ‘China threat’ narrative has been constructed by Republicans and Democrats in the United States in an attempt to create a “rally round the flag” effect designed to internally unite a deeply divided America. Continue reading »

We tramped along streets of rubble and twisted girders of metal in Gaza – these had been a home, a school and even a hospital. From one heap of rubble, a sobbing Granny ran up to me – it was winter and bitterly cold. She was camped in a hollow in the bombed out ruin Continue reading »

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is now in the dock facing charges of colluding with foreign forces under the national security law and a separate one for sedition. It will be interesting to hear the evidence, but even before that, the Western press just wants to put Hong Kong on trial. Is Lai guilty or not? I Continue reading »

At the end of this war, Israel will find itself in a worse situation than when the war began. Israel has become a pariah state. Even if Israel is able to realize its goals, which appear to be receding, the country’s situation will be worse than before. Since the moral aspects of this war hardly Continue reading »

Israel’s brutality in Gaza is becoming a true threat to Israel’s survival. When Congress returns in January, President Joe Biden will push the case to deepen American complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza through another US armaments package for Israel. Americans should raise their voice in a resounding no. An arms package for Israel is Continue reading »

The latest Roy Morgan Most Trusted & Distrusted Leaders research has bad news for Anthony Albanese but worse news for Peter Dutton. … and the political class as a whole also has deep problems with Michelle Levine, Roy Morgan CEO, saying that overall trust is down and deep and toxic distrust has increased. Albanese recorded Continue reading »