Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

The word to sum up 2019 has been decided. (Well, its two words.)

Spurred on by societys growing disquiet with reprehensible behaviour, the Macquarie Dictionary has crowned cancel culture as its word of the year.

By the dictionarys definition, cancel culture means: the attitudes within a community which call for or bring about the withdrawal of support from a public figure, such as cancellation of an acting role, a ban on playing an artists music, removal from social media, etc., usually in response to an accusation of a socially unacceptable action or comment.

Its origin and usage can be linked to the Me Too movement, which was 2018s word of the year.

So far this year, weve cancelled people like Israel Folaufor his comments against homosexuals. Alan Jones got the C-word treatment for his tirade against New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern.

Death doesnt excuse you from cancellation: The revealingFinding Neverland documentary about Michael Jackson had society questioning the King of Pops status in pop culture.

Every year, a group of about eight are tasked with the job of finding the word that perfectly encapsulates the culture of the previous 12 months.

A term that captures an important aspect of the past years Zeitgeist an attitude which is so pervasive that it now has a name, societyscancel culturehas become, for better or worse, a powerful force, the committee said in a statement.

Runner-up words included eco-anxiety (a strong emotional reaction to climate change and the environment), thicc (a curvaceous figure), and coffice (a mix of cafe and office, where a worker sets up shop for the day and probably nurses a small flat white for several hours just to use the free wifi).

Literary lovers who have strong opinions on what words should get attention (and which shouldnt) can throw their vote behind their favourite 2019 word, through the peoples choice awards.

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Macquaries word of the year calls out bad behaviour - The New Daily

We are setting up a live streaming/video channel to do things like reviews of books, interviews, and then eventually we will do staff meetings as well.(1)

But while it was once limited to something like Facebook live, with Restream we can go out to YouTube Live, Mixer, and Twitch, all at once.(2)

You never want to have a dud, because we are a nonprofit and we are wasting donor money if we create a dud, so I used those services for a few weeks to try and get the feel for how successful channels are managed. Aside from big personalities like Ninja, Mixer also highlights various "streamers" to get them exposure on their main page and one time they had a blonde lady who seemed to be doing nothing but whispering into a microphone. Then she changed what I assumed was a "pop" filter (called such to reduce the impact of consonants like "p" and "b" which come across as explosive when recording) to something else.

She wasn't changing the pop filter because she was worried about recording, she was changing the cover to give listeners a different "feel." It was streaming ASMR.

ASMRASMR is an acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. I've probably known about it since 2012 or so but hadn't known the name and I basically ignored it because it seemed made up. I already debunk food nonsense, chemophobia hype, and supplement claims, there is no reason to go after apparently pleasant women who think they are helping others relax.(3)

And they are almost all women, which is strange. But are they helping, or is this also a placebo? And does it matter?

Just like supplements or organic food or supernatural claims of the u-shaped curve of endocrine disrupting chemical cocktails, ASMR proceeds from a kernel of truth. Do you like the sound of a gentle flowing stream? Okay, sure. That doesn't mean you will like living next to raging rapids. And to some people the world around them is often a raging river so they want a sensory way to feel like they near a babbling brook. ASMR has some foundation even if how it is implemented seems silly; the same way science knows the microbiome is important, but not how or why it works so buying into expensive yogurt or Dove soap marketing is stupid.

So from a science and health point of view, it may bepointless, but that may not be a bad thing.

Being pointless or even absurd can be beneficial

On the evening I began researching this, I went outside with a projector and a screen and watched a movie despite it being far less hassle to watch a movie in my temperature controlled living room. In that sense, my behavior was pointless, and yet I paid for a projector, a screen, and a movie to do so, with multiple opportunities along the way to realize it was easier to watch a movie in my house. Just like some people watch pointless advertisements so people get paid to make videos of them folding towels.

Absurd might be also watching someone talk for 10 minutes about blank videocassettes they have no interest in, and yet that is what Rhodri Marsden liked. ASMR was a realization that finally gave him an answer why he liked watching shopping channels but not buying anything; "The more gentle and redundant their explanations are, the more pleasure I get."

Absurd is often the case when people simply don't share your interest. Someone might find it absurd that I stayed up until 2:30 AM to beat the "Frostpunk" video game on a weekday when I could have paused it at any time but I rationalized it that I wanted to write a review. However, game reviews are not an official program of Science 2.0, the way agriculture and medicine are, making that a suspect argument. I didn't even get the game for free.

I am more likely to fall asleep during a NASCAR race (the drone of the engines) than I am watching Bob Ross paint, yet he's wildly popular decades after he died for the same reasons many ASMR proponents claim it works for them. He is soothing.

I do wake up for the crashes during NASCAR races.A lot of NASCAR fans have told me the same thing. It's anecdote but over time I assume fans have trained themselves to fall asleep during NASCAR races, and so they swear by them.

Is it real, or is ASMR a way to "medicalize" something simple for legitimacy?

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response itself is just a jumble of words that have an air of truthiness but don't really mean anything. Sure, we can map other words to it if we try but if I say brain cancer, you know what brain and cancer are. Meridian is instead Traditional Chinese Medicine mumbo-jumbo, just like chakra or ch'i or whatever other mystical nonsense tries to sound quasi-biological.

Some people in America do love to believe that peasants in the Far East know something magical about health, so they will buy into Meridians and then dangerous and adulterated supplements to "optimize' this made-up system while hucksters laugh all the way to the bank.

Just because a chart with a human body can be created does not make it science or medicine.

By KVDP - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989443

This does make it seem like a whole lot of Americans who have no real issues to worry about are medicalizing "life".Practitioners have to pretend believe ASMR is some kind of automatic response to a made-up part of our bodies that is impacted by these sounds.

And many people, maybe Americans are worse about this than other cultures, love to legitimize their interests. There are people whose families have been in America for a hundred years who say they are Italian, there are more people in New York claiming to be Irish than there are actual people in Ireland. And we love to medicalize everything, we take more medication than any country in the world by far. We also have the highest adult science literacy, so obviously we love science and medicine and know a lot compared to places like Europe. Even the most overt anti-vaccine or anti-GMO zealot knows just enough science to be wrong; they know it because they want to validate their beliefs against science, so they do real work to accomplish it.

It is no surprise a scientifically literate culture would want to medicalize a way to de-stress before going to sleep that is basically free. And it is no surprise people feel like they are cliinically stressed, when almosteveryone else is claiming some kind of condition. Though celiac patients are a tiny fraction of the public, the gluten-free fad became a $5 billion industry because a bunch of people who wanted to feel like they had something important claimed it made them feel better, even if physiological effects never show up on tests.

It is a condition if you say it is, and you'll get the Internet cancel culture after you if you say otherwise.

ASMR doesn't seem to have all that medical legitimacy desperation, it is just people who want to sleep better.

Is ASMR actually just sexual pretending to be about stress?

ASMR proponents and participants say it is not sexual but when ASMR proponents talk about tingling all over their bodies or having a "brain orgasm" that lends itself to a certain sexuality.

And participants can pretend they have no idea it might be sexual but, ummm...

When participants dress up as a flight attendant and stroke tea bags, it's also easy to draw a link.

This constant yammering would actually make me crazy on a plane. I want flight attendants to not be seen after five minutes into an overnight flight and I bet they feel the same way about me, so what is this if not fantasy? What is next, a nurse?Sure, anything you want, really.

So it at least pretends not to be sexual.

But I am not the target market, most especially because I am not part of the following demographic.

Is this for rich white people who want therapy more than an hour a week?

If you want to find a demographic constantly flitting from fad to fad, look to rich white people who need to occupy themselves.

When you see pictures of people exposing their naked rectums to Sol - sorry, we have to use medical terms for idiocy to legitimize them so let's call it perineum sunning - it's going to be a white person with money to burn.

In the ASMR video below both "organic" and "cacao" are featured prominently, and the author says Happy Earth Day, which may be an indicator of the demographic that are most "helped" by this - wealthy white people. What does organic have to do with anything in sensory perception?(5)Even highly paid organic industry economist Chuck Benbrook never tried to claim organic beans sounded better than conventional, and a lot of his methodologies look like they were created on a dare.

Is America really that stressful or are we so rich we need to invent new pathologies?

Giant swaths of culture are racing to note how awful their lives are. On one fringe we have a "special snowflake" problem, who like to claim victim status, and on another people who see themselves as saviors. We can talk about the poor but being poor is relative. In America, poor people can afford to be fat. Tell someone in a developing country you are poor and fat and they will laugh at you. A poor family in America lives in more square footage than the same size middle class family in France.

I grew up poor, we were poor in a rural community where 30 percent of the public lived below poverty, I do not recommend it, but growing up that way means I have perspective people with existential dread about life may lack. They are searching for answers, and think the answers may be found in sunning their buttholes or listening to someone crinkle teabags on the Internet or buying Non-GMO Project water.

If people throwing around words like "gestalt" and "zeitgeist" for effect were the end of it, fine, but along with Snowflakes, we have Saviors, so we can't just be limited to arguments about whether or nor an emotional support dog gets to sit next to us in a restaurant, the Savior side will hit us with talk of trigger warnings and calls for social authoritarian control of speech if we dare to object.

In ASMR's defense, I have not seen any of them call for any of those things. No one claims if it isn't covered by health insurance, they are oppressed, no one seems to feel like they need us to legitimize it the way vegans get so preachy.

That attack mentality is why organic food shoppers are so annoying, and ASMR simply avoids that cloying posture. They feel like if it works, there is no downside because no one is penalized. And that is better than supplements or environmental groups who manufacture problems they can claim to solve.

So ASMR is not as weird as you might think, unless it is, because what it is must remain entirely subjective. There is no forced ASMR video filming industry, nor are proponents claiming you will get cancer or ruin the environment if you don't participate. It may not be scientific, but so what? When the weather warms and I head outside to watch a movie I am not doing anything any less pointless than someone watching a YouTube video or NASCAR race to help them sleep is doing.

The benefit to being the apex predator, running the world, is we have it so good we can do pointless things.

NOTES:

(1) I've done them in the past because I think it's valuable for the public to be able to see how scientists and writers talk about topics, especially given persistent claims by activists that Science Is A Vast Corporate Conspiracy.

Anyone who has watched any of my meetings know that is not true. We argue, we joke, sometimes we're boring, sometimes we have great ideas, but no one controls what scientists think. It's more like herding butterflies than the secret manipulation environmental groups, organic food trade groups, and chemophobes (often the same) try to portray to raise money.

"Science is a corporate conspiracy" sells and they don't want to spoil that. We have to refute it so often we now just wear it on t-shirts.

(2) Literally the only one missing now is Facebook Live, because while they won't let me use a social media tool like Hootsuite to post to my personal page, they will only let me broadcast video to my personal page. We can't have live streaming on Science 2.0 or Scienceblogs or Science 2.0 Europe unless we do them individually, despite those being far more traffic than Twitter or video sites.

(3) Maybe chiropractors, since in Maine they provide 33 percent of the funding behind the anti-vaccine movement there, much as they did in California in 2015. And though they have never let an employee attend one of their special conferences where they talk about cracking the spines of infants and worshiping discredited former MD Andrew Wakefield, I will continue to try.

(4) Just like a gurgling stream and raging rapids, I wouldn't be able to sleep at an actual NASCAR race.

(5) Earth Day was created to celebrate the 100th birthday of Lenin and the biggest supporters of it today are staunchly opposed to feeding poor people in other countries, yet these are cacaco beans grown in other the same countries white environmentalists in America are all Malthusian about not helping.

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ASMR - It Isn't As Weird As You Might Think, Unless It Is - Science 2.0

This article represents a continuation of my series titled China, America and Russias Game of Influence in Africa, published on this page on 10 July, 2019, which was followed by The Road to Sochi 2019 Russias Influence in Africa published on 2nd October, 2019. This articles focus is on USA-Africa relations. 2019 marks the 400thanniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in USA. As Nikole Hannah-Jones reminds us in her highly acclaimed piece, titled Our Democracys Founding Ideals were False When They Were written Black Americans have Fought to Make Them True, published in the New York Times Magazine of 14th August 2019, In August 1619, just twelve years after the English settled Jamestown, Virginia, and one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates [who] had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship. The arrival of that first batch of African slaves marked the beginning of the relations between United States which was then still a colony of Britain and Africa, that was relatively free of colonial exploitation. Thus, the relations between the USA and Africa were born in adversity and fear.

United States -Africa relations can be divided broadly into three phases: Pre-Cold War; Cold War; and Post-Cold-War era. Although the beginnings of the Cold War can be traced to the time when the former Soviet Union refused to participate in the Marshall Plan for Europe, its crystallization for the developing countries occurred, when John Foster Dulles, then US Secretary of State, famously remarked in 1956 that Non-alignment was immoral and opportunistic. He was reacting to the emergence of the Non-alignment Movement (for developing countries) after its founding conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955. From that perspective, I date the Cold War experience for Africa from 1956 to 1991when the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist. One may notice that virtually all African countries gained their independence during the Cold War era. In other words, African countries reclaimed their freedom at the peak of the intense ideological rivalry between the USA and the former USSR.

There were three significant developments in USA-Africa relations during the pre-Cold War era. The first was the decision to repatriate some African ex-slaves to, and settle them in present day Monrovia in 1822 during the tenure of President James Monroe for whom the Liberia capital is named. The second was President Franklin D. Roosevelt insistence on guaranteeing sovereignty for those nations still controlled by colonial empires. Roosevelts advocacy was consonant with the zeitgeist (spirit of the time) and provided inspiration, in more ways than one, for the first generation of African students who were studying in the US and Europe at that time and who later became leaders in their countries: It inspired them to organize Pan-African conferences abroad; to launch pro-independence movements in their respective countries; and to emphasise the inextricable link between the struggle by African-Americans for their civil rights and for the independence of African countries. The third was the pressure exerted by the US on Britain, France and Israel to end their brief occupation of the Suez Canal which had been nationalized by the Gamal Abdel Nasser regime in Egypt. United States action impelled Britain and France to accelerate their decolonization process.

It is difficult to overstate the impact that the Cold War era had on the nature of the relations between USA and Africa. In as much as the competing ideologies framed the contest and context of the Cold War, United States appeared to find more comfort in cultivating ties with some abhorrent regimes in Africa, who claimed to be anti-communist: DRC (Zaire) under Mobutu; Somalia under Barre; Apartheid regime in South Africa; and Liberia under Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, who President Reagan called Moe during a State Visit to Washington DC. More significantly, on the great issues that confronted Africa at that time, the general view was the United States was on the wrong side of history: US equated every liberation movement in Africa with a communist movement; resisted sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, instead promoted the idea of constructive engagement as an alternative to the global economic sanctions and divestment campaign against the Apartheid South Africa regime; and showed distrust for, and reluctance to engaging with, the Organisation of African Unity (the precursor of African Union). On the positive side, the USA supported a number of agricultural research institutes in Africa; dispatched many professionals under the Peace Corps programme to teach in Africa; and offered scholarships and training opportunities for the second generation of Africans students those who came to study in the US shortly after their countries independence. On their graduation, they returned to their countries to assume high positions in government, business and academia.

The Post-Cold war era has been marked by five distinct US policy orientations towards Africa. First has been United States interest in conflict management in Africa. This was first evidenced by US launching of Operation Restore Hope that was later transmuted into a United Nations approved and US-led Unified Task Force in Somalia from December 5, 1992 to May 4, 1993. Then, there was an effort to create an African Crisis Response Initiative during the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s. That effort was viewed with great suspicion by, and met resistance from, African countries. Subsequently, that initiative morphed, in 2007, into the African Command (AFRICOM) now headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. United States is also currently helping many African countries to combat terrorism, resulting in its enhanced military presence in Africa. The second was the enactment of Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2000, which offered improved market access for African exports into USA, resulting in the growth of USA-Africa trade from US$38.60bn in 2000 to US$61.85bn in 2018. The challenge ahead is what happens when AGOA expires in 2025. Third is the assistance that United States has channeled to Africa through both the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), both created during the tenure of President George W. Bush.

The fourth policy orientation was the launching of several initiatives by President Obama to support governance, economic and social development in Africa. These included the Young African Leaders Initiative (2010), Feed the Future (2010), the Trade and Invest Hubs (2013), and the US Power Initiative (2013) aimed at doubling electricity for Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by US government pledged investment of US$7billion and private sector contribution of US$9billion.At the first US-Africa Leaders Summit held in 2014, President Obama announced $7billion for financing exports to and investment in Africa. However, these amounts pale in comparison to the estimated US$33billionthat China had committed to financing Africas power sector alone by 2016 (the last year of the Obama administration), by which time, US had committed just US$3.1bn of the $7billion for the power initiative. Not a few African policy makers and analysts of US-Africa relations remain disappointed that the funding for the Power Initiative was not significantly augmented and no follow-up mechanism for the summit was proposed. The fifth policy orientation is that the Trump Administration has proposed increases in defence spending and reduction in development aid for three years in a row 2018, 2019 and 2020.

At the same time, the Trump Administration has also launched a Prosper Africa Initiative which aims to deepen trade and investment ties between USA and Africa.The US government convened the first roundtable discussion between its senior officials on trade and investment and foreign ministers from six African countries in New York in September 2019.

African countries need to grow out dependence on aid. At the same time, the probable termination of AGOA combined with a reduction in US aid and increased military footprint in Africa mean that the manifestation of US power in Africa will be felt more in its military presence than in development support (aid and trade) to the region. The US is well placed more than the two other powers to help African countries through a variety of soft power resources and would do worse than framing its actions in Africa as countering China and Russias influence.

Otobo is author of Africa in Transition: A New Way of Looking at Progress in the Regionwhich was nominated for the Grand Prix of Literary Associations Award 2018.

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From fear to freedom and friendship: U S Africa relations - Guardian

The major centre-right and centre-left groupings were always going to have a tough election, the question was on what scale?

When the results came, it was clear they had lost their combined majority in the European Parliament as voters shied away from the mainstream. But they still held more than 43% of the vote.

The mainstream blocs lost votes to the Liberals, Greens and nationalists, creating a new, fragmented reality for the European Parliament.

Turnout was at its highest since 1994, with some observers suggesting this was due to more young people voting.

The centre-right European Peoples Party (EPP) and centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) have long held more than half the seats in Parliament between them. That is set to change.

The sense of an end of an era was symbolised in Germany, where the centre-right Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel polled just 29% of the vote their worst-ever performance in European elections. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) came a poor third with 16%.

Official projections, based on exit polls, now suggest the EPP and S&D will lose 83 seats, bringing their share down to around 44%, from a comfortable control of more than half the previous parliament.

The centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), is heading for big gains, with its share rising from 67 seats to 107. That is largely because the newcomer-party of French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to join up and could play a kingmaker role.

Outgoing ALDE group leader Guy Verhofstadt hailed a historical moment and a new balance of power.

Many member states, from the Nordic countries to Portugal, saw a rise in the Green vote.

And while they may have come second in Germany, the Green party is being hailed as the big winner there, doubling its vote share to 21%, incomplete results showed.

The Greens captured the zeitgeist while the other parties struggled to put together a coherent environmental policy, said Berlin correspondent Jenny Hill.

Around one in three people under the age of 30 voted Green. In the run-up to the vote, 90 influential YouTubers urged followers to vote for parties that took climate issues seriously. They told voters to avoid the far-right AfD, which they said denied climate change was even happening.

In France, green group Europe cologie Les Verts (EELV) is on course to come third with 13%. Both Mrs Le Pen and Mr Macron have emphasised their green credentials. Mr Macron wants to shift to green technology and energy while Mrs Le Pen said her brand of localism was good for the environment.

In Portugal, the green PAN party (People-Animals-Nature) is on course to win its first ever seat in the European Parliament, possibly even two.

The Greens have won an historic second place in Finland but in Sweden, home to climate activist Greta Thunberg, they have gone into reverse. They are projected to poll 11%, down almost 8%.

In Ireland, early exit polls give the Green party 15%.

This was to be the election that sparked a right-wing force to seize the agenda in Europe. It has not quite happened.

The two dominant nationalist figures in France and Italy won the national vote.

Matteo Salvini, whose right-wing nationalist League party is predicted to win over 30% of the Italian vote, is hoping to found a new grouping, the European Alliance for People and Nations, with the support of a dozen other parties.

In France Marine Le Pens National Rally party formerly the National Front is heading for first place with 23.5% of the vote, narrowly ahead of President Emmanuel Macrons centrist grouping, which got 22.4%.

Turnout was reportedly high in areas where her party has previously done well and also in areas where support for the anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow-vest) movement is strong. Mrs Le Pen has changed her position on EU membership, saying she now wants to stay in the bloc.

But after that the nationalist surge appears to fall away.

In Germany the far-right AfD is predicted to get under 11%, up from 7.1% five years ago, but down on its general election showing in 2017.

In the Netherlands the Freedom Party of Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has lost all its seats in parliament. Much of his vote appears to have been taken over by another populist party, Forum for Democracy.

Results in Spain give new far-right Vox party getting only 6.2% of the vote, down from the 10.3% it achieved in Spains national election only a month ago.

Far-right and Eurosceptic parties are currently split between three groupings in the European Parliament: the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); and the two far-right groupings, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) and Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF).

In the UK a new anti-EU party, the Brexit Party, is heading for victory at the expense of the Conservative Party, while pro-EU Liberal Democrats are taking votes from the traditionally centre-left Labour party.

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Election results: What we know so far - Stock Daily Dish

As the lovely New York spring of 1977 turned into the worst kind of New York summer, I did two things over and over again: I watched Robert Altmans mid-career masterpiece 3 Women, at a theatre in midtown, and I read Joan Didions astounding third novel, A Book of Common Prayer. Released within weeks of each other that year, when I was sixteen, these two revelatory pieces of art shared a strong aesthetic atmosphere, an incisive view of uneasy friendships between women, a deadpan horror of consumerism, and an understanding of how the uncanny can manifest in the everyday. Reading and watchingit wasnt long before Altmans and Didions projects merged in my mind, where they constituted a kind of mini-Zeitgeist, one that troubled, undid, and then remade my ideas about how feminism might inform popular art.

After falling under the sway of A Book of Common Prayer, I turned to Didions first two novels, Run River (1963) and Play It as It Lays (1970). (All three novels were reissued in November, as part of a handsome volume from the Library of America, Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s.) Run River, published when Didion was not yet thirty, was conventional in a way that reflected not the fascinating slant of her intractably practical mind but, rather, her formidable ambition: writers wrote novels, so she wrote one. Still, the book, which is set in Didions home town of Sacramento, is not just a reflexive or academic exercise. Its protagonist, Lily Knight McClellan, is a kind of ruined Eve living in relative wealth in an Eden that the next generation will want no part of. Lily cries, drinks, cheats on her rancher husband, Everett, and aborts a child, because she cannot forgo the comfortable loving fictionsthe story of being a wife and thus socially acceptable, according to the rules of her tribe. What no Didion heroine can entirely reconcile herself to is the split between what she wants and what a woman is supposed to do: marry, have children, and keep her marriage together, despite the inevitable philandering, despite her other hopes and dreams. Didions women have an image in mind of what life should look liketheyve seen it in the fashion magazinesand they expect reality to follow suit. But it almost never does. In Didions fiction, the standard narratives of womens lives are mangled, altered, and rewritten all the time.

Play It as It Lays also centers on a woman failing to live up to social expectations, and it comes as close as any book has come to representing what repression does to the soul. In this slim novel, where sometimes a few words constitute a chapter, Didion gives shape to ghosts, the ghastly, and the ephemeral. Maria Wyeth, a sometime B actress, suffers a number of misfortunes, including the birth of a disabled child, but what makes her still the best known of Didions early heroines is how she queers the image of American womanhood even as she presumably lives it, in her nice house in Los Angeles, a city where failure, illness, fear... were seen as infectious, contagious blights on glossy plants. Maria feels an existential gnawing in her bones, a dread she can never quite shake, but instead of clinging tighter to the rules she has presumably been taughtpolish the furniture, make an apple pie, prepare her husbands Martini as he rolls up the drivewayshe makes a list of the things she will never do: ball at a party, do S-M unless she wanted to,... carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills.

Play It as It Lays was published not long after the Stonewall riots, in New York, at a time when there were few stories about gay male life out there, representing. The book, which features a significant gay male character, could be read both as a metaphor for queernessthe girl who doesnt fit inand as an early, un-camp depiction of the fag hag, a woman who questions convention by avoiding it and finds safety in the company of gay men. I admired Play It as It Laysthere isnt a closeted gay adolescent on the planet who wouldnt identify with its nihilism played out in the glare of glamorous privilegebut it didnt thrill me like A Book of Common Prayer, which has a full-bodied pathos and yearning that Didions other early fiction lacks or suppresses.

When A Book of Common Prayer came out, the country was still drunk on Bicentennial patriotism; 1976 had given us a big dose of pomp and ceremony. Over the receding jingoistic din, Didions voice told another story, about womens inner lives formed in a nation that was, as Elizabeth Hardwick put it, in a 1996 essay about Didion, blurred by a creeping inexactitude about many things, among them bureaucratic and official language, the jargon of the press, the incoherence of politics, the disastrous surprises in the mother, father, child tableau. The first three items listed have to do with language generally and rhetoric specificallyhow we fashion the truth, and why. In Didions noveland in most of her fiction, including her 1984 masterpiece, Democracybelieving that empirical truth exists is like believing that the water in a mirage will satisfy your thirst. What interests her is why people still want to drink it. Certainly Charlotte Douglas does. Charlotte is the person whom the books narrator, Grace Strasser-Mendana, is referring to when she says, at the start of the novel, I will be her witness. When I first read those words, that long-ago summer, I was struck, as I am now, by the feminist ethos behind them: I will remember her, and therefore I, too, will exist.

I had grown up with the art and politics of such early heroes as Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Ntozake Shange, but Altmans potent film and A Book of Common Prayer were the first works I encountered that embodied the second-wave white feminism that mattered to me as well. Not that Didiona graduate of Berkeley and a staffer at Vogue during the age of Eisenhower, who was already writing pieces steeped in originalitywas part of the feminist movement. In her 1972 essay The Womens Movement, she objected to several of the movements tendencies, including its invention of women as a class and its wish to replace the ambiguities of fiction with ideology. It was clear from Didions writing that not only was she allergic to ideology, which she avoided like a virus in most of her work, but her ways of thinking and of expressing herself were unlike anyone elses. In a 2005 essay in The New York Review of Books, John Leonard recalled how startled he was, in the sixties, by Didions syntax and tone: Ive been trying for four decades to figure out why her sentences are better than mine or yours... something about cadence. They come at you, if not from ambush, then in gnomic haikus, icepick laser beams, or waves. Even the space on the page around these sentences is more interesting than could be expected, as if to square a sandbox for the Sphinx. Still, in A Book of Common Prayer, Didion tried to close the gap between herself and others, to write about the responsibility inherent in connecting.

To me, A Book of Common Prayer was feminist in the way that Toni Morrisons Sula, published four years earlier, was feministwithout having to declare itself as such. But, whereas the two friends in Sula live inside their relationship, Didion wrote about a woman trying to enter into a friendship and a kind of love with another woman who is ultimately unknowable. A sixty-year-old American expatriate living in the fictional Central American city of Boca Grande, Grace inhabits an atmosphere of opaque equatorial light. Boca Grande, a sort of ersatz movie set, has no real history; its airport is a way station between more desirable destinations. A stomping ground for arms dealers and rich people with offshore accounts, Boca Grande is as good a place as any for Grace, who has cancer, to live and die. Not once during the course of the novel does she ask who will remember her when shes gone. Grace, who shares some of her creators moral rigidityIn order to maintain a semblance of purposeful behavior on this earth you have to believe that things are right or wrong, Didion told an intervieweris always looking out, rarely looking in. In a way, by moving to Boca Grande, Grace sought to escape life, or, at least, the life she was supposed to have as an American woman. And yet it followed her across the sea, in the real and ghostly presence of Charlotte, who died before Grace began telling this story.

Born in Denver, Grace was orphaned at a young age: My mother died of influenza one morning when I was eight. My father died of gunshot wounds, not self-inflicted, one afternoon when I was ten. Until she was sixteen, she lived alone in her parents former suite at the Brown Palace Hotel. Then she made her way to California, where she studied at Berkeley with the cultural anthropologist A.L.Kroeber, before being tapped to work with Claude Lvi-Strauss, in So Paulo. But make no mistake: her pursuit of anthropology was not the result of an intellectual passion, or any kind of passion. I did not know why I did or did not do anything at all, she says. After marrying a tree planter in Boca Grande, Grace retired (quotation marks hers) from anthropology. She gave birth to a son, and was eventually widowed and left, she says, with putative control of fifty-nine-point-eight percent of the arable land and about the same percentage of the decision-making process. Graces inheritance makes her the head of the household, but money isnt everythingit isnt even a start, when your real interest lies in something other than profit and waste. The flesh and the spirit are on Graces mind; her terminal illness no doubt contributes to our sense that, for her, the day is a long night filled with questions about being, questions she attaches to her memories of Charlotte.

Referred to by the locals as la norte-americana, Charlotte, during the brief time that Grace knows her, is a perfect denizen of Boca Grande. Pretty, ginger-haired, she seems to have no past, though she has an intense interest in the past, which spills over to the present and infects the future. She believes in institutions and conventionality, but they dont believe in her. She has a daughter, Marinmodelled on Patricia Hearstwho has disappeared after participating in a plane hijacking. Charlotte fills that absence with invention: she makes up a version of Marin who is forever a child. Charlottes husband, Leonard, isnt around much, either. When asked about him at one of many cocktail parties, Charlotte says carelessly, He runs guns. I wish they had caviar. That Charlotte is a mystery to Grace is part of the story: what sense can be made of a woman who spends half her time at the airport, watching planes take off for other places? Grace tries to shape these fragments and images of Charlotte into a coherent whole because she loves her, though she has no real language to express that love and Charlotte isnt around to receive it.

A Book of Common Prayer is an act of journalistic reconstruction disguised as fiction: a Graham Greene story within a V.S.Naipaul novel, but told from a womans perspective, or two womens perspectives, if you believe Charlotte, which you shouldnt. In a review of The Executioners Song, Norman Mailers 1979 book about the Utah murderer Gary Gilmore, Didion writes, of life in the West, Men tend to shoot, get shot, push off, move on. Women pass down stories. This is true of life in Boca Grande, too. Grace wants to pass down what she knows about Charlotte and, thereby, what she might know about herself. And yet some of the drama rests, of course, in what she cant know. After marrying, Grace says, she pursued biochemistry on an amateur level. The field appeals to her because demonstrable answers are commonplace and personality absent. She adds:

I am interested for example in learning that such a personality trait as fear of the dark exists irrelative to patterns of child-rearing in the Mato Grosso or in Denver, Colorado.... Fear of the dark is an arrangement of fifteen amino acids. Fear of the dark is a protein. I once diagrammed this protein for Charlotte. I dont quite see why calling it a protein makes it any different, Charlotte said, her eyes flickering covertly back to a battered Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalogue she had received in the mail that morning in May.... I mean I dont quite see your point.

I explained my point.

Ive never been afraid of the dark, Charlotte said after a while, and then, tearing out a photograph of a small child in a crocheted dress: This would be pretty on Marin.

Since Marin was the child Charlotte had lost to history and was at the time of her disappearance eighteen years old, I could only conclude that Charlotte did not care to pursue my point.

Also, for the record, Charlotte was afraid of the dark.

Facts dont necessarily reveal who we are, but our contradictions almost always do: its the warring selfthe self thats capable of both caring for others and intense self-interestthat makes a story. And if Grace is drawn to anything its a story; narrativeinvestigating it, creating itgives her something to live for. Part of what so captivates me about A Book of Common Prayer is that, on some level, its a book about writing, which captures Didions love of cerebral thriller-romances, such as Joseph Conrads 1915 tale Victory or Carol Reeds 1949 film version of Graham Greenes The Third Man, in which a man tries to piece together the story of his friends life. But the dominant ethos of the novel is one that Didion discovered as a teen-ager, while reading Ernest Hemingway. Writing about Hemingway in this magazine in 1998, Didion noted:

The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining, a way of moving through but not attaching, a kind of romantic individualism distinctly adapted to its time and source.

Charlottes failure is that she attaches. She cant move through in the way that Grace can, or believes she can. Charlotte has her own stories to tell, but how can you give force or form to a piece of writing when youre immune to veracity? You can only write fantasy, tell the world not who you are but who you want to be. Charlottes fantasy includes the conviction that her strange and troubling family is a family. In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind, Didion noted in her wonderful 1976 essay Why I Write. Theres no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion. Charlotte composes several Letters from Central America, with a view to having The New Yorker publish her reportorially soft, inaccurate work, but the editors decline. Charlottes ineptitude doesnt keep us from rooting for her, though, because, despite it all, she doesnt complain and never loses heart, and how many of us could do the same, if, like Charlotte, we loved a child who couldnt love us, or married a man who was indifferent to our pain? Graces sometimes smug responses to Charlottes high-heeled strolls into political and emotional quicksand are more upsetting than Charlottes mistakes, because Grace believes she knows better, when, in fact, no one does. What Charlotte teaches Grace, directly and indirectly, is that, no matter how much you want to tell the truthor, at least, your truththe world will twist and distort your story. Didion closes her most lovelorn and visceral novel with Grace saying, with sad finality, I have not been the witness I wanted to be.

I dont think its necessary to read chronologically through the Library of America volumewhich, in addition to the novels, includes Didions seminal essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979). Almost any page of this invaluable book will take you somewhere emotionally and offer a paramount lesson in the power of Didions voice. Some readers came to Didion later in her careerthrough her National Book Award-winning memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), about the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, for instance, or Blue Nights (2011), about the death of her daughterand its interesting to go back and explore the origins of the impulse that drives those memoirs. Indeed, in The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion confesses a Grace-like tendency to try to distance herself from the unfathomable through writing and research: writing, for her, can be a means of controlling the uncontrollable, including grief and loss.

A story thats as interesting as the ones Didion tells in important works like A Book of Common Prayer is how she found and developed that authoritative literary voice. In her review of The Executioners Song, this daughter of California wrote:

The authentic Western voice... is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature, the reason being that to truly know the West is to lack all will to write it down. The very subject of The Executioners Song is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience, a nihilism antithetical not only to literature but to most other forms of human endeavor, a dread so close to zero that human voices fadeout, trail off, like skywriting. Beneath what Mailer calls The immense blue of the strong sky of the American West... not too much makes a difference.

So whats out there in the blue? What words can we try to grab and shape as theyre fading away? How can we describe intimacy, or the failure of intimacy, without getting too close to it? Part of Didions genius was to make language out of the landscape she knewthe punishing terrain of Californias Central Valley, with its glaring hot summers and winter floods, its stark flatness, its river snakes, taciturn ranchers, and lurking danger. Those extremes affect the way you deal with the world, she said in a 1977 interview. It so happens that if youre a writer the extremes show up. They dont if you sell insurance.

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Joan Didions Early Novels of American Womanhood - The New Yorker

Zeitgeist translates as Spirit of Time and the Zeitgeist brand philosophy is to absorb the essence of interconnectedness that the Zeit Geist movement portrays and through that reflect the dominant global influences of streetwear, catwalk, culture, music and art of our time.

Based in Cape Town South Africa, the Zeitgeist brand was launched by design innovator Maxine Ginsberg and her dedicated team to take streetwear for men to the cutting edge and beyond. Maxine is the founder and owner of the company and her family has been involved in the South African Fashion Industry since 1905.

Original design and constant innovation is very important and capsule collections are done and updated all the time using the best in internationally sourced fabrics and trims. Production runs are limited to maintain exclusivity and to allow new stock to be introduced continuously so that the collection refreshes several times within a season. Zeitgeist regularly takes part in fashion showcase like South African Menswear Week.

The brand has through its strong online presence created a dedicated following of fans including celebrities, models and musicians. Zeitgeist is primarily aimed at men but due to high demand the collection has unisex pieces that also cater for women and a ladieswear range is being launched in the near future. The Zeitgeist customer is not a fashion follower but rather a first adopter and as such a free thinker that knows exactly what he wants and definitely not part of the pack.

Zeitgeist manufactures all garments within a 75km radius of their headquarters in Cape Town South Africa. This enables factory workers to stay employed and retain skill sets in an industry that has lost over 85 000 jobs to imports in the last 10 years. In many instances the workers are sole breadwinners and come from dire socioeconomic backgrounds where gangsterism, drugs, violent crime and abuse are the norm. It also allows for a much greener footprint as fabric and garment transport is kept to a minimum.

Find Zeitgeist on Facebook under https://www.facebook.com/ZeitGeistZA/ and on Instagram under https://www.instagram.com/zeitgeist.mw/ for the most up to date looks.

Contact: 082 567 9454

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This NBA season, Im trying something new. Im going to write a daily piece that highlights everything bettors and DFS players need to know for that nights slate. For more on what to expect, read the inaugural piece.

On Wednesday I finished 3-6 for -2.9 units. While I dont want to get sucked into the past, I think its worth reviewing things each day.

The best way to do that is to look at closing line value (CLV), which is just measuring whether the line you bet moved for or against you by closing.

It ended up being a pretty mediocre day for CLV, although it looked better at times. The Rockets were up at -8 for the entire day but got bet down at the last minute to -7. The Jazz moved from +1.5 to a pickem or even favored after it was announced Rudy Gobert was playing, but late action pushed it back.

Anyway, the only game I lost value against the closing line was in the Lakers-Pelicans game, which moved down a half point.

Overall, it was a frustrating night. I think my process was right on my main writeup of Rockets-Heat with impending Miami regression and Jimmy Butler out, but I was apparently wrong about the Jazz, which I bet pretty hard. I have been expecting more from this Jazz team all season.

They havent been crazy disappointing or anything; theyre still above .500 and look to make the playoffs. But there are some concerning things about this team. The defense has been just fine better than expected even but the offense has been a problem. Its not really shooting; theyre 13th in eFG% while 20th in offensive efficiency overall.

The main issues have been turnovers and their shot profile, the latter of which is most concerning. Theres some data that suggests while shooting numbers are especially volatile early in the season (and in small samples anytime), a teams shot profile is a fairly sticky thing. After a month or so, if a team is taking mid-rangers at a high rate or getting to the rim a bunch, thats likely to stay the same for the season.

That makes sense: Shot profiles mostly come from personnel and scheme, which dont change unless theres a major injury or coaching change, whereas on-courtperformance can be very luck-based.

And the Jazz have been weird:

Maybe that reverts once players get more used to each other adding in any primary ball-handler (Mike Conley in this case) is a shock to a system but maybe it doesnt.

And if it doesnt, it potentially lowers their ceiling long-term, even if they still remain fine in the regular season and push toward the playoffs. It also potentially makes them more vulnerable on a night-to-night basis, especially if they get down.

I know it might get old to hear about shot profiles, analytics and the Moreyball movement in basketball constantly, but its a defining part of the current NBA zeitgeist for a reason. Math is important. And when youre consistently taking non-optimal shots, you are not the best version of yourself.

Anyway, enough about the Jazz and Wednesdays games. Lets get to todays huge 12-game slate (were skipping the Celtics-Nets early game) and find some angles.

Note: For updates, see the chat at the bottom of this post.

YTD Record:

Lets run through a couple angles Im eyeing.

What a way to start off the post-Thanksgiving holiday: betting on the New York Knickerbockers.

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Friday NBA Predictions, Picks & Betting Odds (Nov. 29): Can the Lakers Slow the Wizards Offense? - The Action Network

Sorella founders Heather Sanders and Brittney Turnerhosted a mentorship event and design program at their storefront on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles for the 11#GirlsTour by Sorellaambassador winners.#GirlsTour by Sorella has grown into a nationwide campaign to drive awareness of female empowerment on a mass level by giving new opportunities to young girls across the country.The day was jam packed with different activities for the ambassadors to participate in, including getting to know the power duo behind Sorella, a design workshop, and a campaign photo shoot, shot byJasper Soloff, the young photographer responsible for iconic covers like Iggy Azalea for Galore, DJ Khaled for GQ, amongst others.Voguesays he is capturing the cultural zeitgeist in all of its glory.

This falls on the heels of a summer campaign that Sorella started; Heather called on young girls and teenagers in aPSA, posted to her more than1.5 million Instagram followers, igniting a viral social media campaign,#IAmGirlsTour, asking girls to explain why they should be chosen for this social good initiative. The #GirlsTour program then recruited the top 12 girls based on causes theyre aligned with, their passion to give back to their communities, and their love for fashion and entrepreneurship,in an effort to provide them with the tools they need to become influential leaders and gain great mentorship.

Meet the #IAmGirlsTour Ambassadors 16 year-oldKendel Vanterpoolfrom Washington D.C., 16 year-oldPhoenix Rosete-Wright, 18 year-old UCLA studentMilan Spellmanfrom New Jersey, 16 year-oldDarly Murrayfrom New York City, single mom and make up artistKayla Farleyfrom San Diego, FIDM student and New York nativeAshley Jean-Baptiste, and LA natives 20 year oldJasmine Ward, USC StudentElinor Elbaz, 22 year oldShivani Chandra, South Central nativeMaria Diaz, and spinal cord injury survivorJustice Campbell. Saturdays festivities started with an informative and interactive panel about Heather, Brittney, and the rise of Sorella. The girls then broke off into groups to participate in a design session, that will ultimately be used as an upcoming #GirlsTour merchandise drop before the end of the year. The culminating moment of the day was when the girls got swagged out in Sorella to take a social media and #GirlsTour campaign photo shoot with Heather and Brittney that will be used into 2020. Additional highlights included writing notes to be included in Sorella gift bags for underprivileged girls of theGirls Today, Women Tomorrow (GTWT)charity program, a non-profit organization that mentors teenagers, who will build an ongoing relationship with the ambassadors and the Sorella brand.

AMBASSADOR SPOTLIGHT:

Kayla Farleyis a thriving single mom, makeup artist and model. Her ability to juggle multiple tasks makes her a perfect #IAmGirlsTour Ambassador.

Justice Campbellis a young woman from Compton who was paralysed at a young age and told she would never be able to walk again. She defeated all the odds by regaining her ability to walk and has been taking the world by storm ever since.

Sorella is already known as home to the widely popular #GirlsTour movement, which is driven by a cult following of girls who come from all across the nation to take photos in front of the iconic pink #GirlsTour murals and frequently wear the empowering #GirlsTour collection. Based on Girls Tour the womens movement #GirlsTour was created to represent and encourage strong women, working women, and independent women of all ages, colors, and sizes. Empowering women all over the world to not only be confident and have a vision but to also be a dope girl with style and hustle.

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On the face of it, the distasteful occurrences in Maharashtra may seem just another episode in Indias manipulative politics rather more elaborate than we may have known thus far. But there are aspects to it that suggest a significant tipping point may have been reached after six years of an undifferentiated paradigm.

If a striking turn of phrase may be excused, it is conceivable that therightwing bullet trainmay have come to be halted in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

The coming apart of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its longest and most steadfast ally the like-minded Shiv Sena paradoxically at the coincident moment of the resolution of the Ram temple agitation and the reading down of Article 370 suggests the beginning of the evacuation of Hindutva politics.

This evacuation seems now to be replaced by a reinstatement of an aspiration on behalf of the BJPs allies, most notably, the Sena to re-foreground their objective regional identities and agendas.

Understanding the Shiv Senas revolt

The revolt of the Shiv Sena may have been ostensibly grounded in the truthful or not truthful reneging of the hitherto dominant nationalist party on a promise the Sena claims it had made to them about sharing the chief ministers post in Maharashtra. But, what is more likely is that this was the Senas moment to reoccupy its pride of political place in the area and constituency of its birth and making, given that the land of the Marathas remains its only authentic space for political existence and control.

The Shiv Sena, contrary to allegations being levelled against it for having now abandoned its Hindutva soul-force, can well answer that its role in achieving the resolution of the Ayodhya dispute, such as that resolution is, and in the revocation of special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir are firmly on record. Thus, the Sena may now feel that it can turn to the peoples concrete issues with a clean conscience, without being branded a convert to any doctrinaire secularism.

It may be recalled that the Shiv Sena which historians know to have been in large part a creation of the Congress in the 1960s put in place to counter the then left wing, unionist dominance in Maharashtra had gone on to support the Internal Emergency of 1975, back the candidature of the Congresss A.R. Antulay, followed by lending support to Pratibha Patil and later Pranab Mukerjee as presidential nominees of the Congress. This was a record that set it apart from its Hindutva ally at crucial points in recent times.

Post the reading down of Article 370, an achievement that the BJP sought to exploit chiefly and brazenly during its election campaign in Maharashtra, the Sena could see that the dividends of that plank did not yield the fruit the Hindutva lobby had much hoped for. Nor was it oblivious to the ignominious defeat of a stalwart turncoat like Udayanraje Bhosle in Satara at the hands of a competing Maratha party like the NCP on the back of a concerted campaign on farmers distressful issues.

Taken all together, the Sena cannily read the altering zeitgeist of politics on the ground and astutely grabbed the moment to distance itself from an erstwhile paradigm now yielding diminishing returns. If that is understood and accepted, the Senas willingness to do business with the secular Congress and NCP may not seem such a shocking turnover.

On the other side, there is much heartburn, especially among Congress people, at the thought of tying up with the Sena given the apprehensions of how this may affect the prospects of the Congress among the minorities in Kerala and elsewhere. And yet, a more thoughtful application of mind may have suggested to the Congress that this was indeed a moment to fracture the Hindutva lobby and debilitate its pan-Indian hold in the days to come. Not entirely as weak an argument as it may have seemed to those used to more ossified notions of ideological purity.

Together with the Congress, the astute doyen of Indian politics, Sharad Pawar, may have come to see the moment as one which afforded the secular parties a chance to re-assume a lost constituency and begin to nibble at the other bastions of the ruling BJP by returning their politics to matters of pressing livelihood among the bulk of Indias dispossessed.

As to the charge that the new coalition partners took too long to come to an understanding, let us recall that Angela Merkel in Germany needed over two months of negotiations with several different political formations to arrive at a government; and that, months after the recent elections in Israel, government formation is still underway. The lesson is that wherever politics is too diverse and fractious, this sort of thing must be accepted as inevitable to democratic decision-making. Thankfully, neither Germany nor Israel have any provision for presidents rule.

These signals can already be seen to be received with greater attention by other allies of the BJP in other states. That the Lok Janashakti Party and the All-Jharkhand Students Union in Jharkhand have chosen to go on their own steam into the elections there is a pointer to a shift that could well betoken the inauguration of realignments of consequence, with repercussions likely in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the days to come.

That even the Samajwadi party in Maharashtra has not hesitated to join the opposition camp strengthens such a reading of how things may shape up before long on a wider and more effective scale.

Indeed, there are voices among political analysts concerned about the seemingly unstoppable rightwing Hindutva putsch against the constitutional republic which argue that the time may have come for not just larger coalitions but some unities as well if the Hindutva forces are to be decisively evicted from dominance.

For the future, a united Congress?

In that regard, one bold idea is that those who came out of the Indian National Congress in yesteryears on issues seemingly not ideological but ephemeral (and, indeed, no longer operative) should consider returning to the parent party. The three obvious cases here pertain to the NCP, the Trinamool Congress and the YSR Congress.

Should this begin to be countenanced, the Indian National Congress, now in the process of a remake itself, can re-educate itself about the value and democratic worth and desirability of devolving political initiatives and power to strong satraps with a full and free remit to consolidate alternative politics based on concrete peoples issues in the areas of their operation on behalf of a pan-Indian Congress bolstered by such unity and devolution.

Likewise, it will be for the many Left parties to revisit the real or unreal contentions on which a united Left came apart, and to work earnestly and with the future of the secular republic in mind to accept the necessity for not just contingent Left unity but the movement towards forging a united Communist Party. One that, learning from the experience of the last five or so years, may shed its anti-Congressism and become a leading force to keep in place the united Congresss secular remake and its lost capacity to run a welfare state.

Much of this, of course is easier said than done. But if not done, Indias secular and democratic political formations may have only themselves to blame should a full-blown totalitarianism come to stay.

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Why the Maharashtra Events Could be a Significant Tipping Point - The Wire

The ruling elites, the sacred establishers of Israels bureaucracy are coming with their knives sharpened closing in on Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. After all it is their state their establishment and not his. This was made clear to Menachem Begin, the man who Bibis father served as secretary, when David Ben Gurion ordered Yitzhak Rabin to fire on the Atalena destroying it, the ammunition in it, and killing many passengers most of whom were Holocaust survivors. The real target had been Begin who made it out alive.

Israel Eldad had warned Begin not to trust the Mapai, the forerunner of the Labor. Menachem, do you really think they will just let you walk in with enough weapons to take control? It is their state not yours and they rather destroy it than hand it over to you.

Eldad was right of course. The destruction of the Altalena led to the fall of Jerusalem since the ammunition and weapons Begin was bringing in would have led to its capture.

When Avichai Mandebilt declared his intention to indict the Prime Minister, he essentially paved the way for the leftist super-structure, Israels Deep State to begin the process of finally wresting control of the country from the street it lost it to when Begin surprised the parochial classes and Laborites in 1977.

True, there have been right wing leaders before, but each eventually bent to the will of the courts and the media, but not Netanyahu he has always been smarter than the left. The street, the disadvantaged, the religious, the settler, the sefardi, they have all sensed Netanyahu was different.

True, Netanyahu has not always acted the way any one group would want, but changed the face of Israel, steering it away from failed policies and turned it into a powerhouse a true global leader. The Prime Minister has been a thorn in the side of the Left, because he mainstreamed positions that were at one time unthinkable, steering a shaky ship after Olmert went down and turned the State around in the face of tremendous systemic opposition .

At the End of Days, a leader will arise that will be a forerunner to Mashiach ben David. This forerunner is dubbed Mashiach ben Yosef, whose whole aim is to safeguard the Jewish people in the Land of Israel in a material sense. His power and ability is to utilize the physical vessels available and harness them for the good of the Nation of Israel while protecting the nation from harm.

The Mashiach be Yosef is also a concept or a movement, represented by thousands of redeemers since the birth of the Zionist movement. This movement has been encapsulated by the State the one which has been uplifted by the current Prime Minister in a way never previously imagined.

Along with Mashiach ben Yosef, there is the Erev Rav named for the mixed multitudes that left Egypt with the Nation of Israel. At the End of Days, it is said that these mixed multitudes will be control of the Land of Israel and ultimately destroy the Mashiach ben Yosef, which is both the leader himself and the physical restoration of the Nation of Israel in the Land of Israel.

Sometimes we think Redemption and we feel the End of Days is sometime in the future, but it seems now we are at that point.

And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplications. And they shall look to me because of those who have been thrust through [with swords], and they shall mourn over it as one mourns over an only son and shall be in bitterness, therefore, as one is embittered over a firstbornson.Onthat day there shall be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddon.Zechariah 12:10-11

The first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Palestine Rav Kook wrote the following in 1904 as a eulogy on the occasion of Theodor Herzls death:

The characteristics of nationalism was prominent in Ahab, who had great love for Israel. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Omri, who founded a city in the land of Israel. Scriptural commentators said: Everyone receives a portion in the world to come. Gilead is mine refers to Ahab, who fell in Gilead. At the height of battle, despite being shot through with arrows, Ahab hid his injury so as not to alarm his soldiers. Such courageous spirit is derived from tremendous, abundant love. He also honoured the Torah, for he outwardly preserved the nations dignity in the eyes of Ben-Haddad. Nonetheless, he did not recognise the value of the Torah and of Gods unique holiness, in which Israels entire advantage lies. Therefore, he followed the ways of Jezebel and the despicable customs of other nations to the degree that they then prevailed over the Zeitgeist.

In contrast, Josiah elevated the spiritual aspect as no king before or after him. As the text testifies, And before him there was no king like him, who returned to the Lord with all his heart and soul and might, in accordance with the entire Torah of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him. To that end, he wanted Israel to have no relationship with the nations of the world. He therefore did not heed the words of Jeremiah, who advised him in Gods name to allow the Egyptians to pass through Israels territory.

Thus, Ahab and Josiah combine the two aspects of Joseph and Judah, the power of the Messiahs of the House of Joseph and the House of Judah. When the people are ready, the distortion of each separate dynasty will be removed, for in the times of the Messiah the two kingdoms will join together and come to fully realise the full potential of their power as a chosen nation. At that time, with this reunification, the mourning [in Jerusalem] will also reach a climax, for what was lost and the distance from true fulfilment will finally be recognised, and the mourning for both Ahab and Josiah will combine and grow exponentially. [This great mourning] will serve as a moral that [both kingdoms] must combine their powers in order to create the balance that will lead to the greatest general good.

What we are witnessing now is the tearing apart of an approach to make way for something far bigger. After all, Bibi and those within the Revisionist Zionist movement tried to balance between a redemptive vision of the state and an out of date nationalism that relied on secular concepts rather than the Torah and Jewish faith. In this case, the Erev Rav were never done away with because in order to destroy them, the Revisionists would have to rely on a force beyond their cognitive abilities. This force is the light of the Mashiach ben David, which is above time and space.

At the End of Days Mashiach ben Yosef falls, which leads to the next stage of the Redemptive process. Of course this comes with chaos and fear, because all of us no matter what camp we have been in, understand that what has been in existence cannot truly continue as is. Netanyahus fall is the fall of the State as we know it.

How the road to the final Redemption will play out now is anyones guess, but one thing is certain it will be a surprise.

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Is this the end of Mashiach ben Yosef? - israelrising.com