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EXCLUSIVE: Las Vegas teen looks forward to 2022 while recovering from rare J&J vaccine reaction – KTNV Las Vegas

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) Emma Burkey has been on a miraculous road to recovery after so much uncertainty. The Las Vegas teenager is improving leaps and bounds while recovering from a rare but devastating side effect of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.

Burkey suffered seizures and blood clots after taking the one-shot J&J vaccine in March of last year. The odds were suddenly stacked against her.

"I had three brain surgeries along with some other surgeries, and all of the doctors said I shouldn't have made it," Burkey told 13 Action News.

RELATED STORY: Las Vegas teen fighting for life after receiving J&J vaccine, family friends say

But Burkey persevered through months of treatment and physical therapy at Loma Linda Hospital in California. She has since regained some movement in her legs and hands, now able to do simple things herself.

"Taking off my jacket was a really big deal," she said. "I just want to be able to do more things that normal people wouldn't really think about."

Burkey's mother Kathy says the family has had to make huge adjustments, including taking out another mortgage for a new home to accommodate her daughter's mobility. But week by week, Kathy says, Emma gets better and better.

"She has our 100 percent attention," Kathy Burkey said of Emma. "We are living for her at this point in time. We want to get her 100 percent."

Burkey's case was one of half a dozen similar reactions that prompted federal regulators to suspend the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for 10 days in mid-April, before a review determined the benefits outweighed the rare risk of blood clots. As of December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 54 similar cases out of more than 15 million J&J doses administered.

RELATED STORY: Las Vegas teen learning to walk again after rare COVID-19 vaccine reaction

What happened to Emma has shaken confidence in the vaccine for the Burkey family. The believe the J&J vaccine should be taken off the market.

Burkey herself says she believes each individual should make their own decision about getting the shot.

"Don't feel like, because you have to," Burkey said. "Get one because you feel it would help you and your family. Make sure you don't have any health problems involved."

With a new year underway, Burkey has some goals in mind.

"Walk different places," she said. "Get a job would be really nice. That way, I could just feel more independent, like I was before."

Her family and her faith have kept Burkey grounded, with support from her church. A GoFundMe has already raised tens of thousands of dollars to help with medical costs.

"I'm thankful for everyone on how they've helped me get better and donated to me and sent me kind words," Burkey said.

Pastor Heiden Ratner says hes optimistic about Burkeys future.

Theres a scripture in the book of Genesis that what the enemy meant for evil, God can turn for good, he said.

If youre interested in helping out the Burkey family in continuing with her recovery, find a link to their GoFundMe page here.

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EXCLUSIVE: Las Vegas teen looks forward to 2022 while recovering from rare J&J vaccine reaction - KTNV Las Vegas

Patriots 2022 opponents: New England will visit Green Bay, Las Vegas next season; 7 of 17 games against playo – MassLive.com

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

The end of the NFL regular season means that the Patriots list of opponents is set for next year.

New England will play eight home games and nine road games next season after hosting nine games at Gillette Stadium this year. Among the highlights are the Patriots first-ever trip to Las Vegas to face the Raiders and their first trip to Green Bay since Nov. 2014.

In addition to their six games against divisional opponents, the Patriots will battle the AFC North and NFC North in 2022. That group of games includes trips to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Green Bay and Minnesota and home dates with Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago and Detroit. New England will also face off with three teams that finished second in their divisions: the Colts (home), Cardinals (road) and Raiders (road). The matchup with Arizona is the extra 17th game that was introduced this year.

In total, the Patriots will play seven of their 17 games against teams that made the playoffs in 2021, including five on the road. Theres also the possibility they play a home game in Germany, according to multiple reports.

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Fire crews train with burning home in southwest Las Vegas – KTNV Las Vegas

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) If you see a smoke plume Thursday afternoon in the southwest part of town, it might be part of a live-fire training exercise with county firefighters.

Clark County Fire Department is doing the training at a home donated to the agency at 10165 Hinson Street, not far from Interstate 15 and Silverado Ranch Boulevard.

A class of 25 rookie firefighters undergoing Fire Academy training will participate in the exercises from 8 a.m. to around 3 p.m.

The entire house is expected to be set on fire around noon.

On occasion, we are fortunate to have community partners donate homes slated for demolition to us for training purposes, said Fire Chief John Steinbeck.

"This is an invaluable resource for our Fire Academy because it allows our firefighter recruits to get first-hand experience fighting fires under different conditions within a highly-controlled environment.

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Fire crews train with burning home in southwest Las Vegas - KTNV Las Vegas

What is racial invisibility, and how do white people benefit from it? – The Guardian

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Where are you from?

There are few other questions in Australia that help shed a light on the overlapping and contradictory sense of sovereignty and belonging between Indigenous people, white people, and non-Indigenous people of colour.

For many, it exists as a safe topic of small talk. Where are you from? Where do you work? Where did you go to school? Whats your favourite footy team?

For Indigenous people, it is the gateway question that all relationality stems from. Where are you from? Where are you connected to? Who are you connected to? Are we connected? What are our responsibilities to each other? It highlights the importance of connection and responsibility between people and place and all things within it.

There is another usage as well, though one that generally exists between white people and anyone who doesnt look sufficiently white or Indigenous (in the eyes of a given white person at least). It goes something like this:

White person: Where are you from?

Non-white, non-Indigenous person: Melbourne.

White person, confused: No, no. I mean, where do you really come from?

It is a question that very clearly asserts its purpose: People who look like you dont come from here. White people come from here. So, where do you really come from?

It isnt always said with malicious intent; sometimes white people are super excited to learn about other or exotic cultures. The underlying meaning is still the same, though you cant be from here. White people come from here.

There is something uniquely perverse about being Indigenous in these lands and watching white people offer (or withdraw) this conditional acceptance. It is right up there with being told to love it or leave by those who support the ongoing destruction of the country they claim to love.

And therein lies the uncomfortable truth. They do not love this country, its land, its waters and its people. They love an imagined white nationalist state called Australia.

An exploration of the question where are you from? serves as a powerful disruption to those who love to say, well, were all boat people anyway! or even those who dream of a day where we can all come together and be just Australians!

Its important here to point out that most white people in Australia dont like being called white. If youre white and youre reading this, Im sure youre starkly aware right now that I have been naming whiteness. You might like that Im doing it or you might not like it, but I bet youve noticed it.

It is still not a common occurrence in Australia for whiteness to be named.

It was common within western literature that the terms people and white people were readily interchangeable, but with white people falling out of fashion, that meant that white became only people.

But they still kept all the racialised adjectives, classifications and slurs for everyone else.

In white Australia, this means that white Australians stopped being white Australians and became just Australians.

To clarify, I dont mean just Australians as in Australians who are primarily concerned with justice. Quite the opposite in fact. Just Australians as in Australians who arent anything else; as in, Australian is all they are and all they have ever been. Always was and always will be.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Australian history might astutely ask me through their computer screens: Surely, you cant be serious? If theres any people in Australia who get to be just Australian its Indigenous people?

Well, I am serious and, please, dont call me Shirley.

So, where does this sense of belonging come from for white people? And why do they feel they have the right to offer or withdraw conditional Australian-ness to others?

To answer this, it might be worth reminding people that among all of the races that white people have imagined into being over the past few centuries (anywhere between three and more than 60 different races have been articulated by white academics and pseudoscientists over the years), including their own, Indigenous is not one of them.

It is not a name derived from a place, like Australian or Chinese or even European or African, and it is not a racialised colour descriptor like white, black, yellow, red or brown, nor is it one of the many other labels used to separate humanity into races.

It is a classification, like migrant, immigrant, refugee, or settler-colonial.

Since abandoning the term white, many white people have taken to referring to themselves as immigrants, but that is not very accurate.

Think about what we expect of immigrants (and migrants and refugees too) upon arriving in a new country to endeavour to fit in, to assimilate, to learn the language and follow the laws of the land.

In that sense, white people are not immigrants to Australia. They are settler-colonials.

Settler-colonials have no such expectations for themselves, and do not tolerate any expectations placed on them from others. They are the ones who get to make expectations for themselves and for others.

They take their sovereignty with them wherever they go, whether its to establish a new colony or just to go on a holiday. They expect their language, their culture, their institutions to take pride of place over everything else that was going on before they got there.

They do not assimilate into the culture that was there before them; in fact, they find the very idea so laughable as to be offensive.

They do not respect the land, the law or the people.

Becoming just Australians allowed white Australia to ignore all of these uncomfortable truths and retreat into its own mythology of itself as laid-back, welcoming, easygoing, hardworking, fair dinkum and true blue.

This act of deracialising whiteness, while continuing the racialisation of everyone else, has created what is often described as the invisibility of whiteness. This invisibility leaves whiteness unnamed but ever present. It is the unspoken norm from which everyone else deviates.

It is why generations of people were taught that when a newspaper refers to a 23-year-old Sydney man that man is probably white, because if they werent, it would have said a 23-year-old Aboriginal man living in Sydney.

Racial invisibility has been great for white people. It let them keep the land, the law, the status quo and all the power, while not having to be reminded of the white supremacist means by which they attained them and which they employ every day to justify keeping them.

Thats why many white people think it is the ultimate goal, and the ultimate gift, to bestow on others the blessing of racial invisibility.

Many do not realise that the benefits of racial invisibility only benefit white people. For everyone else, it just makes it harder to identify and articulate the mechanisms by which white supremacy continues to deny belonging and opportunity to those of us it deems as other. It also seeks to rob us of our identities as well.

For Indigenous people, it seeks to rob us of our sovereignty.

Many immigrants similarly do not appreciate this competing sense of belonging, and think that in order to effectively assimilate, then they too need to deny Indigenous sovereignty and strive to attain that temporary and conditional settler status.

But none of these behaviours are mandatory whether Indigenous, immigrant, migrant, refugee or settler-colonial. Our actions and our values are not bound to any of these prescribed labels against our will.

We may grow up accepting them as our own just normal worldview, but as we grow, we have a choice to accept the status quo or to reject it.

To stand for justice or for just us, when us is the dominant culture, is a choice.

There is nothing stopping anyone from supporting Indigenous calls for sovereignty, or for aspiring to have a sense of belonging in this country that aligns more with the Indigenous sense of belonging than the colonial concepts of ownership and coercive control.

When Australia Day rolls around and you hear white people talking about how they wish we were all just Australians, ask yourself: is that what justice sounds like to you?

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What is racial invisibility, and how do white people benefit from it? - The Guardian

Extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 turn their attention from national to local politics – Here And Now

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

One year since insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, investigators are still learning about who these people are.

Some were members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, white nationalist organizations and right-wing militias, while others had no connection to extremist groups at all.

Digitally, they tend to live in an echo chamber of conspiracy theories, misinformation and lies not just about the 2020 election but also COVID-19, masks and vaccines.

NBC senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny, who has been covering misinformation and extremism for years, says the rioters initial high from Jan. 6 fizzled out for a few months once those who stormed the Capitol were identified and arrested en masse. Plus, former President Donald Trump was banned from social media and then left office. Intense media and public scrutiny plagued these extremists and sent them underground, she says.

But extremists picked up steam again after encouragement from far-right leaders like Steve Bannon, who instructed his podcast audience to take back the country village by village meaning at the local level, she says.

This go-local tactic has now been taken up by extremist groups across the board, she says. Since theres no national election, these groups have pivoted their attention to controversial issues vaccines, race, education and culture wars that engender empathy or relationships with more mainstream conservatism, Zadrozny says.

Shes seen this play out in communities across the country and points to a specific example in the Pacific Northwest, a place she says has been a hotbed of extremism. The far-right group Patriot Prayer based in Vancouver, Washington, spread a rumor saying a student was facing arrest for failing to wear a mask at school.

The lie was picked up by the Proud Boys, who went to three schools in protest. Those three schools had to go into lockdown for students and staff's safety, she says.

In October, a far-right group flooded a school board meeting in Douglas County, Colorado, to oppose mask mandates.

We've been seeing this all over the country, Zadrozny says. Proud Boys showing up at school libraries to protest so-called LGBTQ books, things like that just over and over again.

Extremists have gotten savvy about joining alternative online platforms and even creating their own in order to communicate, she says. A recent ProPublica investigation found that extremist content on Facebook grew significantly between the election and in the insurrection. And despite a crackdown by a lot of these big social media platforms to ban extremist content since Jan. 6, extremists continue to bolster alternative digital ecosystems such as Gab or Parler.

If banned from Youtube, which is often the case, Zadrozny says shes seen white nationalists sustain their movement by starting and monetizing their own streaming services.

These surrogate platforms push extremist groups deeper in the interweb thus making it harder to track their movements, she says.

In the year since Jan. 6, extremists have been able to adapt and survive. This hasnt surprised Zadrozny, but rather continuously shocks her, she says. Staying alarmed by their actions is important, she says, in order to not settle and believe extremist violence is our new normal.

I think it's important to always realize that this is violence, she says, and online violence begets real-world violence.

Julia Corcoranproduced this interview and edited it for broadcast withChris Bentley.Serena McMahonadapted this interview for the web.

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Extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 turn their attention from national to local politics - Here And Now

What reformed extremists taught me about preventing another Capitol insurrection – The Boston Globe

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Last January, the world watched the stunning spectacle of the US Capitol violently attacked by . . . Americans. Yet, there are many reasons to fear that a similar type of insurrection could be repeated. There is evidence that strategists who promoted the Capitol attack were doing so to buy time for carrying out a total overthrow of democracy by subverting the electoral process. My focus here, however, is not on the suits the strategists hiding behind closed doors but on the boots, the people so stirred by conspiracy theories and Trumps Big Lie about a stolen election that they committed violence.

In nations not at war, political violence usually comes from the fringes. But right now we are facing something new: 18 percent of Americans surveyed in a recent poll agreed that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country. That 18 percent translates to roughly 46 million adults. Of course, only a fraction of those who claim to support violence would be willing to risk imprisonment to carry it out. But that fraction could grow, or not, depending on how the nations leaders respond to this challenge.

The individuals who answered the call to invade the Capitol are now, rightly, facing legal consequences. Some will face jail time; few will be incarcerated for long. Whats likely to happen to them, and to us, when they are released?

Some people manage to leave violent movements and reintegrate into mainstream society. For two years, Ive been part of a research team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health investigating how and why. What were beginning to learn is that many of the former violent extremists we interviewed including jihadis, white-identity violent extremists, and others refer to underlying social and emotional difficulties as important factors in their radicalization. And those factors are at least as important as intellectual endorsement of theories of racial or religious supremacy.

While jihadis and white nationalists have very different ideologies, the psychological motivations driving them are often remarkably similar. Many of the former terrorists in our sample attributed their capacity to disengage from these violent movements more to emotional factors than to intellectual ones: support from their families, finding a new sense of purpose through work (including counseling others trying to disengage), developing trusting relationships with prison personnel or probation officers, and strengthening other types of prosocial relationships. They also referred to experiences that complicated their inhumane views of the enemy such as a Muslim persons explanation of what it felt like to be a member of a hated minority group as a child. Some have referred to their racist views as a kind of addiction.

For over 20 years, Ive been interviewing jihadis, white-identity violent extremists, and Serb nationalist war criminals, in an attempt to discover what motivates them and how to prevent further acts of violence. One commonality is that the claimed rationale for violent extremism such as the wish to protect ones people from perceived injustice often masks a deeper fear of being outclassed, outnumbered, or humiliated by some other. To be clear, these fears are often based on perception, not reality, and are no justification for heinous acts of hate. But by studying them we may be able to find effective ways to stop violence before it starts.

Diversity racial, ethnic, gender, and other sorts is most distasteful to those who are innately authoritarian, a latent trait shared by about a third of the population. When theres more diversity or multiculturalism than authoritarians can bear, theyre prone to becoming overtly racist and even violent. Importantly, many studies show that the feeling of sociocultural threat is a driver of conspiracy theories, authoritarian movements, and racist violence. The most important driver for the insurrectionist movement, according to polling by political scientist Robert Pape and his team, is the unfounded fear that African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.

Some organizations are finding ways to fight extremism by addressing these emotional factors. Moonshot, an organization that works to end online harms, uses Google ads to redirect individuals searching for information about hateful ideologies or violent extremist groups. Moonshot has found that these individuals are more receptive to messages such as anger and grief can be isolating which offer meditation apps or mental-health support than they are to counter-narratives that offer intellectual arguments against hate. In the period surrounding January 6, 2021, more than 270,000 Americans clicked on Moonshots ads offering counseling.

Another organization, Boston-based NGO Parents for Peace, responds to helpline calls from individuals worried about a family members radicalization. Since the presidential election, the organization has been flooded with requests for help. A lot of the work involves helping families find therapists, strengthening family ties, and providing emotional support.

We face a grave and continuing threat of political violence. Leaders who condone or endorse political violence, either implicitly or explicitly, should be held accountable and condemned by people across the ideological spectrum. We know from former extremists that certain strategies have been effective at reducing or even preventing violent behavior. Perhaps surprisingly, the most effective strategies dont involve persuasion or debate. Sometimes compassion, empathy, and connection can convert someone who is on the precipice of violence.

Jessica Stern is a research professor at Boston University and a senior fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

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What reformed extremists taught me about preventing another Capitol insurrection - The Boston Globe

January 6: State of DC one year later – Southern Poverty Law Center

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

The battle for social justice and voting rights continues in the shadow of Jan. 6

by Dwayne Fatherree

When an armed mob of then-President Donald Trumps supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent the transfer of power to then-President-elect Joe Biden, Susan Corke had not yet assumed her new role as director of the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project.

I started at the SPLC on Jan. 19, Corke said. I was sitting at home preparing for the job and watching the horror of that day unfold. I knew that this changed everything.

Like most Americans that day, she was also aware that the damage done was more than physical.

It created this existential crisis for our democracy that we would be dealing with, and fighting against, Corke said. And the danger to our democracy has never been more grave.

That sense of gravity has not diminished since the failed coup attempt, the violent insurrection that left five dead and more than 140 police officers injured. Time has also failed to bring an end to the efforts to subvert our democracy, with more than 400 state legislative proposals to restrict voting rights and, in some cases, allow partisan politicians to overturn election results.

Invariably these actions seek to restrict access to the polls for voters of color. Additionally, the once-a-decade reapportionment process has seen new voting district maps drawn across the South that underrepresent Black and Brown voters, ensuring that Congress, legislatures and local governmental bodies will be far less likely to match the demographic makeup of their constituencies.

Caren Short, a senior supervising attorney with the SPLCs Voting Rights Practice Group, said serving as a watchdog during the current push to dilute the political power of Black and Brown residents is a top priority as redistricting maps make their way through state legislatures and local governments.

As 2022 begins, were focusing on one of the foundations of democracy: redistricting, Short said. We are working to ensure that everyone has fair and transparent representation in their cities, counties, state and federal representatives.

Corke and Short are not alone.

Jan. 6 has had a lasting impact for so many of us fighting for democracy and racial justice, said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC. It clarified the larger societal schism in our country. We witnessed that day, and for the last several months, that a significant number of Americans believe that the use of force was justified in overturning the 2020 elections.

As the nation marks the first year in a post-Jan. 6 world, the key question raised that day remains: Can the American experiment in democracy survive an assault from within?

Emotionally, it has sparked fear and anxiety for many Americans, Huang said. For others, it has provoked anger and resentment. We seem to be at a pivotal crossroads where the future identity of our nation is at stake, and that challenges everyone, regardless of ideology.

For Lecia Brooks, chief of staff at the SPLC, the sight of the Capitol being desecrated is still fresh in her mind.

One year later, I can vividly recall the feelings I had watching the takeover of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, Brooks said. It was a mix of shock, foreboding.

The contrast between the extreme military presence during the protests outside the White House in the wake of George Floyds death the previous summer and the comparatively deferential treatment given to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists was not lost on Brooks.

As throngs of angry, mostly white Trump supporters forced their way into the building, I became angry, she said. I kept thinking, this would not happen if these were Black folks. They would have been stopped long before breaching the door. Seeing mobs of people carrying Confederate flags and donning antisemitic messages mixed with Trump signs and the American flag was terrifying. I kept waiting for them to be stopped.

But they werent, not for hours. After swarming the Capitol Police, the rioters took to the halls of Congress, rifling through offices and desks as they sought members of Congress who had already been evacuated from the building. Finally, Trump issued a video expressing his love for the invaders. He told them to go home, with no mention of arrest or repercussions. And they did.

More disconcerting was the way in which some law enforcement officers charged with protecting and defending the Capitol were accommodating the rioters, Brooks said. Ive never seen anything like it. Im still haunted by what I witnessed on the livestream. Im even more angry that, a year later, the coordinated incursion on our democracy has been minimized. I know it can happen again. Next time, they may be successful. I truly believe our democracy is at great risk of being overthrown.

It is the specter of a next attempt to subvert democracy that keeps Eric K. Ward, executive director of the Western States Center and a senior fellow with the SPLC, moving forward. A former punk rocker from Los Angeles, Ward has seen violence at the hands of white nationalists as well as the police who were supposed to protect the public.

In the 1980s, it was volatile, Ward said. The counterculture in L.A. was super-volatile. There were neo-Nazis who just came to beat up on people. There were police who would be waiting for us outside to beat up on anyone.

Those intense moments served as a crucible, forming Wards desire to fight for justice. And, although not a direct correlation, he said he can see the same divide, the same divisions facing youth today.

In this moment, the question isnt going to be called on democracy, Ward said. The question has already been called. The white nationalist movement and its coalition is declaring that democracy has no place in the trajectory of America. We have to show that it does work, and it is true. There is no neutral position on that, either. You participate in democracy, or you are handing America over to the white nationalist movement at this point.

Corke points to the work of the SPLCs Intelligence Project as one way to stem the growth of the extremism that is infecting American politics. The group of investigators and analysts monitors hate and extremism the groups, the movements, the extremist and white supremacist leaders exposing them to the public and, in doing so, holding them accountable.

We also are looking to better understand hate and extremism as a danger to democracy and inform Congress, the administration, the media and the American people on the digital and financial landscapes of hate, Corke said. So, were providing a fuller picture of what is happening, and providing some actionable recommendations for what can be done.

One aspect of that effort is to focus on preventing hate before it becomes a hate crime. The SPLCs partnership with the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University seeks to identify those who might be vulnerable to radicalization farther upstream and put effective resources in the hands of teachers, parents and other caregivers who can head off the radicalization process.

The research so far has found that parents or teachers who spent only seven minutes reading the SPLC/PERIL guide were more than 80% more likely to recognize the signs of radicalization. Additionally, more than 80% felt they were prepared to intervene effectively with their child or student.

The SPLC is seeking to address these conflicts and tensions with practical solutions, Huang said. First, we create educational resources that help people understand these threats to our democracy and the importance of standing up in its defense. Second, we are monitoring and disseminating information about the actors who threaten communities of color, the LGBTQ community and others by tracking hate and extremist groups. We are working with partners to create tools that help young people, their families and communities prevent radicalization. And, of course, we are suing state legislatures that are seeking to limit voting rights and to discourage civic engagement. The SPLC is deeply committed to protecting the institutions of our democracy and to strengthening the practices that enable everyone to participate and vote.

The fight for accountability in the wake of the attempted coup of Jan. 6 is ongoing. More than 700 people have been criminally charged, with about 50 of those cases already adjudicated.

The biggest legal splash thus far, however, is not a criminal case. In addition to handling those criminal prosecutions, Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racines office filed a civil suit last month naming the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, as well as more than 30 individuals, as defendants. The suit is seeking unspecified damages for the harm, destruction and death during and after the Jan. 6 attack.

Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine speaks about an announcement related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol during a press conference at House Triangle on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14, 2021. (Credit: Sipa USA/Alamy Live News)

The lawsuit is in keeping with Racines initiative as president of the National Association of Attorneys General, where he has focused on the fight against hate and extremist groups.

In leading up to my presidency, I focused on what I thought was the single most important issue in the United States of America, Racine said. And that's the actions of domestic terrorists and those who would support them, all around hate. So the initiative certainly informed me a lot about what needed to be done in order to deter hateful groups from feeling as though they could act in any unlawful and violent way that they chose.

Racine said that criminal charges would be filed where appropriate, but he discovered over the years that the most efficient way to shut down an organization that espouses hate is to hit it in the pocketbook. Previously, the D.C. police chief testified before Congress that the physical damage from the attack would cost about $8.8 million not counting injuries, deaths or other trauma inflicted on that day. Beyond that, holding the groups identified as leading the most violent portions of the failed coup accountable is Racines first and largest concern.

Subsequent to the Jan. 6 event, three police officers died by suicide and dozens more are suffering significant mental health trauma, he said. (That includes) former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who bravely fought off the insurrectionists even as they were yelling, Take his own gun and shoot him. They beat him with flagpoles. They stun-gunned him with a Taser or some other shock gun. He had a heart attack and a concussion. He is a father of three. And can I tell you in 2016 he voted for Donald Trump, as if that matters.

He was fighting for democracy that day, Racine said. Thats what this lawsuit is all about our freedom.

The solutions to these monumental challenges lie with each and every citizen, Ward said.

I think I would first make sure I belong to an organization in my community, Ward said. It doesnt have to be a political organization. But within that organization you have to bring this topic, the insurgency, up for conversation. Maybe this article is the article you use to have that discussion. And that organization you belong to has to do one thing. It doesnt have to do everything right, but it has to figure out one thing it can do.

On a more basic level, Ward said that one of the strongest defenses against extremist thought is community.

You don't have to have political conversations with your neighbors, but get to know them and get to know your block, Ward said, One of the ways that these types of authoritarian insurgencies make breakthroughs is they convince us that we are divided, right? They use ideology, because it's easy to show ideological divide in any situation. But what we forget is, beyond our ideology, its likely that most of our values are very much aligned and we dont know that.

The third key Ward offered is to persevere.

We have to prepare ourselves mentally for a hard time, but we cant get into the despair. Were going to see lots of highs and lows in this period, just like in the midst of the civil rights movement. We think about the civil rights movement as a period of moral clarity and high energy, but it was a very hard period in American history. This will be, too. So I guess the third thing Ill come back to is that despair is the only unforgivable sin.

Brooks summed up her approach to fighting the current social and political battles in two points.

Professionally, Im working with my colleagues at the SPLC to ensure that the insurrectionists are held accountable and that the record of what really happened is not lost to a disinformation and denial campaign being pushed out by the former president and his supporters, Brooks said.

Personally, I pray.

Photo at top: Barricades surround the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., one year following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. (Credit: Pete Kiehart)

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January 6: State of DC one year later - Southern Poverty Law Center

The fascists among us – WBUR

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

As 2022 has begun its 365-day stay in the American house, its time to focus on the most important threat in the coming year: the fascist assault on democracy.

The historically literate no longer holster the f-word to describe the 21 million Americans who would reinstall Donald Trump via violence. Trumps sock puppets may prattle about a ragtag band of misfits that stormed the Capitol last Jan. 6. But misfits dont boast a cheering section that could populate Massachusetts three times over. And only those of stunted vocabulary use ragtag (untidy, disorganized, or incongruously varied in character) to describe the insurrections tidy, organized arm: Trumps behind-the-scenes machinations to steal the election procedurally.

Fascists justify bloodshed over ballots on grounds that their Dear Leader was robbed in 2020. That belief was adjudicated as lunatic in 60 court cases, sometimes by Trump judges, and by multiple, even Trump-friendly, election probes. But to the true believer, the lack of solid evidence simply confirms how well hidden the rigging was.

Take the retired, pro-Trump firefighter who told The Atlantics Barton Gellman that the insurrection was the work of Antifa, U.S. Special Forces, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. His evidence for what would be historys most bizarre alliance came from a retired general, who said the mob looked like Special Forces, and that a square shape concealed under one rioters coat could only be Pelosis laptop.

If Rip Van Winkle awoke amid such fact-free superstition, hed swear he was watching the Salem witch trials.

Generals who didnt disgrace the uniform warn that 2024s presidential election could trigger another uprising, aided by traitors within the military. Few Americans bother with New Years resolutions these days. But thwarting wannabe Mussolinis, military and civilian, requires real patriots, as opposed to MAGA poseurs, to resolve the following in 2022.

Their utopia is a white-nationalist America, secured at gunpoint.

Resolved: to recognize that the enemy may sit next to you at the Rotary lunch. Gellman, who researched anti-democratic violence globally, says its practitioners tend to be men in their 20s and 30s, poorly educated and unemployed. But the Jan. 6 insurrectionists had a mean age of 42, when most people are paying the mortgage, not breaking and entering into federal buildings. They were white-collar and schooled.

So what put them in a traitorous funk? They are much more likely to come from a county in the United States back home in which the white population is in decline, Gellman says. Similar racial fear infects the 21 million violence-supporters, who agree overwhelmingly with the proposition that the rights of people of color are exceeding those of whites in todays society.

Whites own more wealth than Blacks, live in healthier neighborhoods, and are less likely to be killed by police for such heinous crimes as traffic stops or to be busted for drug abuse, despite using at similar rates to Blacks. So anxiety that woke stupidity (condemned by smart progressives) somehow jeopardizes white equality is akin to believing that a fat man in red came down chimneys last month. But its in keeping with fascisms historical racism.

Resolved: to support unforgiving law enforcement and defense measures when fascist belief crosses into criminal deeds. Seven hundred-plus face charges for Jan. 6. The military will discipline service members who like extremist social media posts. Those military men worried about anti-democratic revolt within the ranks call for intelligence-gathering to ferret out mutineers and propagandists of disinformation and for detailed planning for the next insurrection.

Prosecutors meanwhile should take a cue from Karl Racine, attorney general for the District of Columbia, who has reached into the past for an anti-fascist hammer. Racine exhumed the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act to sue the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their roles in planning and executing Jan. 6. President Ulysses S. Grant signed and used the Act to exterminate the KKK.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland should heed Racines example. The facts and precedent justify charges of seditious conspiracy against the insurrectionists. If Garland needs a back brace, stiffening his spine to unleash legal hell on the conspirators, Joe Biden should give him one.

Resolved: If Republicans stall federal legislation enforcing voting rights, support federal and private lawsuits against GOP state laws that torpedo those rights. Many such state laws empower partisan legislators to hijack election oversight and discard even fair results. Superseding federal legislation may be doomed. So anti-fascists should cheer Garlands suit against Georgias voting restrictions.

Whatever public concern galvanizes you climate change, the pandemic, poverty it should take a back seat to stopping Trump-y fascists, whose hero was indifferent or hostile to solutions for those matters. Their utopia is a white-nationalist America, secured at gunpoint. Even Trump acolytes who havent divorced reality recognize a fascist bridge too far. Hence Donald Trump Jr.s frantic text to his dads chief of staff as people were dying at the insurrection: Hes got to condemn this shit ASAP.

Not for nothing did It Cant Happen Here, Sinclair Lewiss 1935 novelized, fascist dystopia, suggesting it damn well could happen here, become a bestseller during Trumps reign. That suggests the last resolution.

Resolved: come Nov. 8, to vote against any GOP quislings who refuse to condemn their partys demons or who mouthwhataboutism diversions.

So that it wont happen here.

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The fascists among us - WBUR

Zeitgeist Unique Piece By Armin Strom: Pure Resonance …

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

There is a word in the German language that is so specific that other languages have just adopted it instead of creating a new word with the same meaning: Zeitgeist. You may have a loose understanding of what the word means but struggle to define it clearly. Zeitgeist broadly means, the general beliefs, ideas, and spirit of a time and place. Which unfortunately still doesnt make it very clear what zeitgeist is.

That is because it is specific to the popular sentiment of a very specific time and place, such as the prevailing ideas in the American South during the civil rights movement or the modern work culture found in Japan during the asset bubble of the late 1980s. Each time period and location has a broadly accepted or influential set of ideas and beliefs driving the culture forward. This is the zeitgeist.

It is always changing with the culture, cannot be perfectly predicted, and, as many philosophers argue, cannot be accurately described until after it is over and assessed from outside itself. This is why keeping your finger on the pulse of the here and now, understanding where culture is moving, and knowing what influences will matter is an artform perfectly encapsulated by one singular word no matter your country of origin.

The here and now is the zeitgeist. And thats why Armin Strom chose this word as the name for its newest piece, which represents an addition to the history of the brands incredible Resonance Clutch Spring technology.

Armin Strom Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist marks the five-year anniversary of the launch of Armin Stroms patented resonance technology and focuses on the brands ideals and commitment to innovation in watchmaking. It does so by going back to the roots of watchmaking while remaining entirely cutting edge.

Armin Strom Zeitgeist on the wrist

After five years and four models featuring resonance, Zeitgeist represents a return to form and a chance to remind us why resonance is such an incredible achievement for any watchmaker.

The Resonance Clutch Spring always has been at the core of this model family and the Zeitgeist puts it on full display. The entire aesthetic of the Zeitgeist has been pared back from that of the Mirrored Force Resonance, the original model, yet it makes sure to highlight the resonance technology.

Armin Strom Resonance Clutch Spring (in red)

Zeitgeist has an open dial with partially cutaway movement architecture allowing a better view into the mechanical core of the watch. With clean, blasted plates cut from German silver a rich patina will develop over time, helping the caliber to feel vintage and historic even with the very modern Resonance Clutch Spring on display. But that was the point: to highlight technology that is the most advanced and fastest resonance architecture in a wristwatch, synchronizing more quickly than any resonance watch on the market.

The dial layout is the same as the Mirrored Force Resonance with a large dial displaying the hours and minutes and two subdials for seconds, each subdial running in sync in opposite directions to emphasize the resonance phenomenon at work. The Zeitgeist does away with everything that isnt needed, leaving only three outlined dials.

The hour and minute hands have been skeletonized, as have the bridges supporting the second hands and the balance bridge.

The entire area beneath the dual balances and Resonance Clutch Spring is cut away to allow the mechanism to seem to float in space, giving a more three-dimensional feeling to the phenomenon. The case is part of the most recent design direction, minimizing the styling codes to a more subdued aesthetic, the engravable tombstone at the bottom of the case is now merely a small protrusion from the bezel. These reductions serve to emphasize the movement and technology, the true goal of this Zeitgeist unique piece.

The Resonance Clutch Spring and the phenomenon of resonance is becoming the core of Armin Stroms pursuit of technical innovation, which is a primary goal for the brand. The new Caliber ARF21 ZG reminds everyone that Armin Strom is serious about creative horological problem solving. As the dial is cut away we can now see how thanks to a heart-shaped cam, while the reset pusher connects both displays of seconds and realigns each hand.

This feature is designed to help highlight the synchronization that resonance brings. Resonance (which is when two or more vibrating systems interact to trade small amounts of energy and eventually settle into a shared frequency) allows the twin balance wheels to sync up after a shock. However, after a shock the two second hands may have deviated from being perfectly aligned so once it is back in resonance the wearer can press the pusher at 2 oclock to realign them.

When the movement is out of resonance, you can watch the Resonance Clutch Spring at work, slowly tugging on each balance spring and in turn each balance so that they drift back together. The Resonance Clutch Spring, a patented and scientifically proven device guaranteeing resonance, is attached to the end of each balance spring to transmit vibrational energy. It flexes and deforms as each balance oscillates to synchronize each frequency much more quickly.

Armin Strom Zeitgeist from the back

Never before has this mechanism been as visible as on the Zeitgeist: with the cutaway movement the entire assembly can be viewed from either side, drawing your eyes to the mechanical show. As this piece aims to reintroduce resonance to Armin Strom fans and the uninitiated alike, Zeitgeist a perfect format for maximum impact. The exposed mechanics of both the Resonance Clutch Spring and the caliber as a whole make it clear that this is a highly technical and finely crafted timepiece.

The differences to the new Caliber ARF21 ZG are in service of highlighting resonance, but also honoring the old masters who first discovered resonance principles, creating some of the first examples more than two centuries ago. Christiaan Huygens, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and Antide Janvier were instrumental in documenting and researching the resonance phenomenon and employing it in some incredible horological machines. Due to the limitations of the time it fell out of favor, but proved a very useful tool for achieving consistency of rate.

Armin Strom Zeitgeist

Now Armin Strom takes cues from the masters to create its innovative Zeitgeist. The use of German silver is a nod as is the rear of the movement, a mashup of modern and classic aesthetics with a large symmetrical base plate and a grand sonnerie-style winding ratchet system that feels entirely from the old world. The mainspring barrels and skeletonization, on the other hand, feel incredibly new.

When combined, the movement synthesizes the inspirations for Armin Strom and makes it clear that the brand isnt going to be stuck in the past, nor is it going to abandon tradition entirely. The Zeitgeist is a representation of the beliefs and ideals of the brand in this time and place, speaking to the wider watchmaking industry.

Watch brands are finally becoming aware that they cannot solely focus on tradition or innovation because it leaves so much opportunity on the table. The brands seeking to combine and use the interplay of classic, modern, and futuristic will be the ones poised to take the industry into the next decade and beyond.

We are nearing the end of 2021 and the direction from Armin Strom moving forward feels like a good one. Im guessing (and hoping) it will influence others too. Im a huge fan of Zeitgeist and disappointed that it is (thus far) a unique piece, but Im confident that there could be some future model inspired by the ideology of this piece.

Armin Strom Zeitgeist on the wrist

One lucky collector is going to own a piece of resonance history,that is sure, and Im excited that Armin Strom is making such an effort to reintroduce these ideas for their next decade of watchmaking.

Even though it will just resynchronize, lets break this watch down!

For more information, please visit http://www.arminstrom.com/en/kollektion/resonance/resonance-zeitgeist.

Quick Facts Armin Strom ZeitgeistCase: 43 x 11.55 mm, platinumMovement: manually wound Caliber ARF21 ZG, 80-hour power reserve, 25,200 vph/3.5 Hz frequency on dual balance wheels with Resonance Clutch SpringFunctions: hours, minutes, dual seconds with seconds resetLimitation: unique piecePrice: CHF 160,000 / 150,000 / $170,000

A Synchronistic Technical Tour De Force: Armin Stroms Mirrored Force Resonance

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What Is A Resonance Movement? The Watches TV And Armin Strom Explain (Video)

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Zeitgeist Unique Piece By Armin Strom: Pure Resonance ...

How the Fashion Industry Contributes to Society & Change

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Last Updated on March 26, 2021 by Carla Jonas

Beauty may only be skin deep, but the impact of sartorial statement goes beyond the surface. Its easy to turn your nose up at fashion and dismiss it as something trivial and superficial. But, in actuality, the fashion industry contributes to society andleaves a footprint on the planet.

This is a reductive reaction, and one that is founded more in ignorance than reality. Just like how some people write-off sports as silly games with no meaningful impact on the world, fashion falls victim to the same attitude.

However, like sports, there is so much more than fun and frivolity to fashion. Fashion is personal. And the personal, as second-wave feminists convincingly argued, is political.

Fashion is more than amped up dress up for adults. Its a reflection of who we are and what we believe. Thefashion industry contributes to society by allowing us to express ourselves, our creativity and our beliefs to the world.

Think this is a lofty claim? Then you dont know fashion. Read on to find out just howfashion industry contributes to society and change in general.

We already pointed out that fashion reflects ideological shifts in our society: the suffragette movement saw skirts getting shorter and clothing in general became less cumbersome.

What is Zeitgeist? Its the defining mood or spirit of a specific era in history as displayed by the beliefs an ideas of that time. So, how does this relate to fashion?

In the 1970s, free love was seen in free-flowing clothing and hair. The disgruntled youth of the 90s expressed themselves with grunge style. Pick any era, and you can see how the fashion reflects prominent schools of thought.

But fashion does more than reflect: it can change society. It can act as an impetus to affect the dynamics of the world as a force that makes things move or occur more swiftly.

After all, whether or not you choose to use fashion as an art form, one would be hard-pressed to deny that fashion is a form of self-expression. And self-expression is a kind of art.

Even your decision to slip into sweatpants and your favorite worn-out oversized tee is a form of self-expression: Youre saying that comfort is your kingdom and that you are shedding the shackles of more high-maintenance style, if only for the night.

Your decision to not keep up with trends speaks toward your beliefs, just like not voting speaks to your political beliefs. You cant get away from what your style says about you, and because it can say so much, it can be a driving force of change, not just a reflection of it.

Take, for example, the death of the white wedding. While many brides still wear white wedding dresses, it is by no means a necessity. In a desire to freely express sexual liberation, many women decided to wear different colored and more seductively styled wedding dresses.

Designers have also made it their mission to use their labels to express their beliefs, in hopes they can affect change in the world through style. Some designers use only sustainable sourced materials to make their clothing: clothing that is meant to reflect the diversity of the world.

Other designers create chic, sexy dresses to promote fearless and unapologetic femininity. And others create style that promotes and reflects a more conservative world-view.

Fashion is not a baseless and frivolous part of our society. It is one of the most obvious and tangible means to track and affect societal change.

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How the Fashion Industry Contributes to Society & Change

The Populist Zeitgeist | Government and Opposition …

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Populism seems to become stronger the more intellectuals criticize it.Footnote 2

SINCE THE 1980S THE RISE OF SO-CALLED POPULIST PARTIES HAS GIVEN rise to thousands of books, articles, columns and editorials. Most of them are of an alarming nature, as these new populists are generally seen as a threat to liberal democracy. Though authors are not always sure what exactly characterizes these parties, they do agree that parties like the Austrian Freedom Party (FP), the French National Front (FN), or the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) are populist. Another point on which most commentators agree is that populism is understood as a pathological form, pseudo- and post-democratic, produced by the corruption of democratic ideals.Footnote 3 German scholars in particular consider right-wing populists, in line with the theory of Erwin K. Scheuch and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, to be a normal pathology of western democracies.Footnote 4

The aim of this article is to make a threefold contribution to the current debate on populism in liberal democracies. First, a clear and new definition of populism is presented. Second, the normal-pathology thesis is rejected; instead it is argued that today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist.Footnote 5 Third, it is argued that the explanations of and reactions to the current populist Zeitgeist are seriously flawed and might actually strengthen rather than weaken it.

In the public debate there are two dominant interpretations of the term populism, both are highly charged and negative. In the first, populism refers to the politics of the Stammtisch (the pub), i.e. a highly emotional and simplistic discourse that is directed at the gut feelings of the people. In more prosaic terminology, (p)opulists aim to crush the Gordian knots of modern politics with the sword of alleged simple solutions.Footnote 6 Though this definition seems to have instinctive value, it is highly problematic to put into operation in empirical studies. When is something emotional rather than rational, or simplistic rather than serious? Moreover, sloganesque politics constitute the core of political campaigning, left, right and centre.

In the second meaning, populism is used to describe opportunistic policies with the aim of (quickly) pleasing the people/voters and so buying their support rather than looking (rationally) for the best option. Examples are lowering taxes just before elections, or promising financial advantages to all people without any additional costs. But who decides whether policies are sound or honest, rather than populist or opportunistic? As Ralf Dahrendorf perceptively noted, the one's populism, is the other one's democracy, and vice versa.Footnote 7

Despite the fact that both interpretations of populism are widespread, and seem to have some intrinsic value, they do not go to the core of what is generally considered as populism in the academic literature. In fact, both phenomena are better covered by other terms: demagogy and opportunism, respectively. While conceptual clarity and definitional consensus are not much closer within the academic community, most definitions of populism have at least two points of reference in common: the elite and the people.Footnote 8 In other words, populism says something about the relationship between the elite and the people. John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira have summarized this key relationship clearly and forcefully: the people versus the powerful.Footnote 9 But this still leaves the question of what populism is: an ideology, a syndrome, a political movement or a political style?Footnote 10

I define populism as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volont gnrale (general will) of the people.Footnote 11 Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. Elitism is populism's mirror-image: it shares its Manichean worldview, but wants politics to be an expression of the views of the moral elite, instead of the amoral people.Footnote 12 Pluralism, on the other hand, rejects the homogeneity of both populism and elitism, seeing society as a heterogeneous collection of groups and individuals with often fundamentally different views and wishes.

Though populism is a distinct ideology, it does not possess the same level of intellectual refinement and consistency as, for example, socialism or liberalism.Footnote 13 Populism is only a thin-centred ideology, exhibiting a restricted core attached to a narrower range of political concepts.Footnote 14 The core concept of populism is obviously the people; in a sense, even the concept of the elite takes its identity from it (being its opposite, its nemesis). As a thin-centred ideology, populism can be easily combined with very different (thin and full) other ideologies, including communism, ecologism, nationalism or socialism.Footnote 15

Populism is moralistic rather than programmatic.Footnote 16 Essential to the discourse of the populist is the normative distinction between the elite and the people, not the empirical difference in behaviour or attitudes. Populism presents a Manichean outlook, in which there are only friends and foes. Opponents are not just people with different priorities and values, they are evil! Consequently, compromise is impossible, as it corrupts the purity.Footnote 17

Contrary to other definitions,Footnote 18 populism is here not defined on the basis of a special type of organization, i.e. charismatic leadership, or as a special style of communication, i.e. without intermediaries. While charismatic leadership and direct communication between the leader and the people are common among populists, these features facilitate rather than define populism. Indeed, the current success of populist actors cannot be separated from the general trend towards strong party leaders and more direct communication between party leadership and party supporters, which has developed over the past decades.Footnote 19

It is important to note that although this definition is broad, and open to many usages, this does not mean that all political actors are (at every time) populist. Despite the move towards a more catch-all profile, the ideological programmes of most mainstream parties still accept the pluralist worldview of liberal democracy. In fact, many of the quintessential contemporary populists do not always use a populist discourse. For example, the Flemish Block (VB), which now claims to say what the people think, initially referred to the people as the intellectual proletariat,Footnote 20 while the late Pim Fortuyn openly acknowledged that his lifestyle and some of his views were far too progressive for his supporters, i.e. the people.

A lot has been written about the vagueness of the term the people in the usage of populists. Some commentators have argued that the term is nothing more than a rhetorical tool that does not truly refer to any existing group of people. Others have given a class interpretation to it, arguing that populists mean not all the people but only a certain class segment.Footnote 21 Paul Taggart rightfully rejects the class interpretation, and tries to clarify the use of the term the people by introducing an alternative term, the heartland. According to him, the heartland is a place in which, in the populist imagination, a virtuous and unified population resides.Footnote 22

The concept of the heartland helps to emphasize that the people in the populist propaganda are neither real nor all-inclusive, but are in fact a mythical and constructed sub-set of the whole population. In other words, the people of the populists are an imagined community, much like the nation of the nationalists.Footnote 23 At the same time, the notion of the heartland does not overcome the main problem of the people, its vagueness. It is as unclear, and has consequently been used differently from populist to populist, even within one country. For example, for the British Conservatives the British heartland used to be Middle England, while the extreme right British National Party refers to the native British people.

What is often clearer is who and what populists are against. In liberal democratic systems, where political parties are the main actors in the process of representation, it comes as no surprise that in the propaganda of populists, anti-party sentiments play a prominent role.Footnote 24 In an often implicitly Rousseauian fashion, populists argue that political parties corrupt the link between leaders and supporters, create artificial divisions within the homogeneous people, and put their own interests above those of the people. However, as populists are reformist rather than revolutionary,Footnote 25 they do not oppose political parties per se. Rather, they oppose the established parties, call for (or claim to be) a new kind of party; i.e. they express populist anti-party sentiments rather than extremist anti-party sentiments.Footnote 26

To clarify the concept further, let's briefly look at various misunderstandings about populism. Although populists can be emancipatory, they do not want to change the people themselves, but rather their status within the political system. Populists (claim to) speak in the name of the oppressed people, and they want to emancipate them by making them aware of their oppression. However, they do not want to change their values or their way of life. This is fundamentally different from, for example, the (early) socialists, who want(ed) to uplift the workers by re-educating them, thereby liberating them from their false consciousness. For populists, on the other hand, the consciousness of the people, generally referred to as common sense, is the basis of all good (politics).

Populism is not necessarily opposed to technocratic measures, particularly if they can help to do away with (established) politicians. Indeed, one of the most successful populist movements, Social Credit in Canada, argued for a largely technocratic regime. In their view, the people should be consulted about the broad parameters of policy while experts should produce mechanisms to bring this policy about.Footnote 27 What is central to this view is that the experts do not alter the wishes of the people; they should just ensure that the people's wishes are implemented in the best possible way. This trust in experts, and the simultaneous distrust of politicians, can also be found in the ideas of contemporary populists, most notably Silvio Berlusconi and Pim Fortuyn.

Finally, some popular views in the literature need nuance rather than rejection. Firstly, various authors have argued that populism is reluctantly political.Footnote 28 I believe that this statement needs further qualification to be fully accurate. If one looks at certain populist actors, such as Filip Dewinter (VB) or Jrg Haider (FP), one cannot seriously argue that they are reluctantly political. They dont even necessarily claim this themselves. Rather, the heartland of the populist leaders is reluctantly political (see below).

Secondly, much of the literature argues that populism is a phenomenon of (social) crises. With respect to the recent populist movement, the alleged crisis is the result of the transformation to a post-industrial society, as well as the inadequate way in which social democracy has tried to deal with it.Footnote 29 Perhaps crisis is too harsh a term, but the populist heartland becomes active only when there are special circumstances: most notably, the combination of persisting political resentment, a (perceived) serious challenge to our way of life, and the presence of an attractive populist leader. However, what sets the populist heartland apart from other protest-prone groups is their reactiveness; they generally have to be mobilized by a populist actor, rather than taking the initiative themselves.

In the following analysis I will focus primarily on the populist Zeitgeist that has been characteristic of liberal democracies since the early 1990s. Examples will be drawn mostly from political parties in Western Europe, and at times also from Australia, New Zealand and North America.Footnote 30

Obviously, the phenomenon of populism is hardly new to politics in liberal democracies. Indeed, the US People's Party of the late nineteenth century is considered to be one of the defining populist movements. Even in post-war Europe there have been various populist phenomena: most notably the Italian Common Man's Front of Guglielmo Giannini (late 1940s), the French Union for the Defence of Merchants and Artisan of Pierre Poujade (late 1950s), the Dutch Farmers Party of Boer (Farmer) Koekoek (1960s), or the Danish Progress Party of Mogens Glistrup (1970s).

While all these parties are generally categorized at the right of the political spectrum though they are far from identical in ideological terms in the period between the late 1960s and the early 1980s the populist critique came mainly from the (new) left. The main actors were the militant students in 1968, the New Left and New Social Movements in the 1970s, and the Green or New Politics parties in the early 1980s. In classic populist fashion, the early Greens despised politics and the political elite. In all ways ideological, organizational, and participatory they presented themselves as the exact opposites of the established parties. At the same time, Green parties represented the people as a whole, often championing the common sense and decent values of the people.Footnote 31

Today, populism is again mainly associated with the (radical) right. The most noted examples of contemporary populists in academic and media articles are radical right parties like Jrg Haider's FP, Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN, or Pauline Hanson's One Nation.Footnote 32 Increasingly, non-radical right parties are also included in the category of right-wing populism, most notably Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia or Pim Fortuyn's LPF.Footnote 33 This is not entirely illogical, because of the right's focus on the nation and the radical right's nationalism. The step from the nation to the people is easily taken, and the distinction between the two is often far from clear.Footnote 34

However, populism can also be found on the (radical) left.Footnote 35 One of the most (in)famous left-wing populists in post-war Europe is the French former businessman Bernard Tapie, who had a scandal-ridden political career in both the mainstream Socialist Party and the outsider Radical Party. Left-wing populism is generally strongest among outsider parties, such as the (East) German Party of Democratic Socialism, the Scottish Socialist Party, or the Dutch Socialist Party.Footnote 36 These left-wing populist parties combine a democratic socialist ideology with a strong populist discourse. They present themselves no longer as the vanguard of the proletariat, but as the vox populi (voice of the people).

In the United States populism has deep roots in mainstream politics, going back to the nineteenth century.Footnote 37 While populism has traditionally been associated most strongly with the Democratic Party, Republicans have been known to use it as well. In the last decades various observers have claimed the importance of populism in both the victory and the defeat of American presidential candidates, ranging from Reagan to Clinton and from Bush Jr to Gore.Footnote 38 In addition, various third-party candidates have run successful populist campaigns, most recently Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

While populism has been less prominent in mainstream politics in Western Europe, the last decade or so has seen a significant change in this. Various mainstream opposition parties have challenged the government using familiar populist arguments. For example, during the 2001 UK parliamentary election campaign, Tory leader William Hague referred to the New Labour leadership as the condescending liberal elite. He also frequently used the term metropolitan, arguing that the New Labour elite in London was completely out of touch with the feelings and concerns of the English people in the country (i.e. Middle England).Footnote 39 This is similar to the classic populist distinction between the corrupt, metropolitan, urban elite and the pure, indigenous, rural people.Footnote 40

That populism is neither reserved for the right-wing nor for the opposition can be seen, among other places, in Great Britain. As Peter Mair has forcefully argued, Tony Blair's New Labour has been a champion of mainstream populism, both before and after taking power.Footnote 41 Indeed, an interesting example of the broad and varied use of populism can be found in the struggle between the Labour government and the Countryside Alliance. Both use strong populist rhetoric: While the Alliance argues, similarly to former Tory leader Hague, that the Labour government are an alien(ated) elite that threatens the way of life of the (real) English people, Labour presents itself as the champion of the (true) English people against the privileges of the (upper class) elite.

Another prime exponent of left-wing government populism is Steve Stevaert, former vice-premier of Flanders and current leader of the Flemish Socialist Party. After having been criticized for his gratis politics by Flemish-nationalist leader Geert Bourgeois, who quoted an American legal scholar in support, Stevaert answered: I understand that Geert Bourgeois likes to support his standpoints by authority arguments, but I rather base myself upon the wisdom of the people.Footnote 42 His party colleague Frank Vandenbroucke, then minister of social affairs and pensions, even openly called for a left-wing populism with foundations.Footnote 43

In conclusion then, at least since the early 1990s populism has become a regular feature of politics in western democracies. While populism is still mostly used by outsider or challenger parties, mainstream politicians, both in government and in opposition, have been using it as well generally in an attempt to counter the populist challengers. Indeed, leading left-wing (vice) prime ministers, like Tony Blair or Steve Stevaert, have voiced some of the most pure examples of contemporary populism. This raises the question why western democracies are faced with this populist Zeitgeist now.

In finding the answer to the question of why so many people support populist ideas and politicians today, a first avenue to take is so obvious that it is often ignored: we should not a priori dismiss the charges anti-political establishment actors formulate.Footnote 44 Maybe the arguments of the populists are true and that could explain why they are so successful.

First of all, are the elites today more corrupt than they were before the 1990s? Obviously, this is a difficult question to answer, given that corruption is not just a contentious concept, it is also by definition a shady affair on which it is hard to get reliable, comparative data. According to most experts, the existence of party-related corruption is hardly new. What may be new, however, is the likelihood that a scandal will be produced once the evidence of corruption has been exposed.Footnote 45

Secondly, is it true that the people and the elite today stand further apart than they used to do in the past? According to Klaus von Beyme, (t)here are many tendencies in modern democracies which strengthen the separation of a political class from its basis, such as public financing of parties, monopolization of political activities, the co-operation of government and opposition.Footnote 46 It is particularly the latter aspect, i.e. the process of cartelization within European party systems, that has received a lot of attention from both academics and populists.Footnote 47

It is also true that politicians of all parties have become more similar sociologically (middle class) and politically (moderate).Footnote 48 At the same time, this can be said of the electorate too, though to a somewhat lesser extent. So, while accepting the continued social biases of legislative elites, it seems unlikely that the social distance between the bulk of the elites and the bulk of the citizens has increased significantly over the past decades.Footnote 49 In conclusion, though there is certainly some truth to the claims of the populists, perceptions seem to be more important than facts.

This change in perception is undoubtedly closely related to the changed role of the media in western democracies. Even if we only limit ourselves to the post-war period, we can note significant changes in the importance, role and range of the media. In short, more important than the actual increase in sleaze and corruption in politics, is thefdifferent way in which politics is reported upon in the media (i.e. a focus on the negative and sensationalist elements of news). There are two main reasons for the change in the way (much of) the media report upon politics today: independence and commercialization.Footnote 50

Traditionally, most of the western media were tightly controlled by political parties; often newspapers were part of the individual subcultures. This already changed somewhat with the introduction of radio and, most notably, television even though in many countries the established parties originally held a tight grip on public broadcasting. Since the late 1960s most media have gained increasing if not total independence from political parties. At the same time, public media (most notably television) has been challenged by private media, which has led to a struggle for readers and viewers and, consequently, a focus on the more extreme and scandalous aspects of politics (not just by the tabloid media). This development not only strengthened anti-elite sentiments within the population, it also provided the perfect stage for populist actors, who found not just a receptive audience, but also a highly receptive medium.Footnote 51 As one commentator noted with reference to the Austrian case: Haider needed the media and they needed him.Footnote 52

More positively, and perhaps paradoxically, another reason why people have become more receptive to populism is that they have become better educated and more emancipated.Footnote 53 As a consequence of the egalitarianism of the 1960s, citizens today expect more from politicians, and feel more competent to judge their actions.Footnote 54 This cognitive mobilizationFootnote 55 has led citizens to stop accepting that the elites think for them, and to no longer blindly swallow what the elites tell them.

This also explains why contemporary populists profit so much from their role as taboo breakers and fighters against political correctness.Footnote 56 Political correctness and taboos are hardly new phenomena in liberal democracies, although one might argue that they have been more strictly enforced in recent years (most notably with reference to racism). But because of the emancipation of the citizens, they have become contentious issues.

For decades, authors have noted a development towards apolitical or non-ideological politics in western democracies.Footnote 57 This development has been most pronounced in the former consociational democracies (e.g. Austria, Belgium, Switzerland), which have given rise to some of the strongest populist challenge(r)s. As these countries have become largely depillarized since the late 1960s, they transformed into depoliticized democracies,Footnote 58 in which administration has replaced politics (in modern parlance: governance instead of government). Not surprisingly, it is here that the populist call for the repoliticization of the public realmFootnote 59 and their role as taboo breaker have found the most receptive audience.

Finally, there are a variety of broad developments that have altered societies and politics in western democracies, and often beyond, which have also had an effect on the fate of populism. As these are well-documented, I will only shortly note their relationship to populism. First, the development toward a post-industrial society has dealigned many voters, increased the importance of divisions, and thereby created space for new, less ideological parties.Footnote 60 Secondly, the end of the cold war has changed the political relationships both within and towards liberal democracies. Most importantly, democracy has lost its arch-enemy, to which it was always compared favourably, and real existing democracies are now being increasingly compared unfavourably to the theoretical models. Thirdly, globalization, whether actual or perceived, has become presented as a serious limitation to the power of national elites.Footnote 61 Moreover, while mainstream politicians tend to explain the negative economic developments as inevitable consequences of globalization on the one hand, they also claim the positive economic conditions as the results of their own economic policies, on the other. They thereby weaken their main argument against the populist challenge, i.e. that a complete primacy of politics is unrealistic.

Several of these factors combined, most notably the changed role of the media and the emancipation of the citizens, have also led to a demystification of the political office. More and more citizens think they have a good understanding of what politicians do, and think they can do it better. While this does not necessarily mean that many people also actually want to do it better, by actively participating in various aspects of political life (see below), it does mean that the relationship between the elites and the citizens has changed significantly, and possibly irrevocably, over the past decades.

Max Weber has famously distinguished three types of authority: traditional, legal and charismatic.Footnote 62 Liberal democracies have overcome the traditional type with the notable exception of constitutional monarchies and real, i.e. legal, authority is meant to be based on competence. Indeed, it was on the basis of their presumed competence that politicians (most notably ministers) used to be held in quite high esteem in western democracies.

The emancipation of the citizens, as well as other factors mentioned above, has undermined the elite's competence, or at least the citizens perception of it,Footnote 63 and thereby also their (legal) authority. Consequently, more space for the third type of authority emerges: charisma. And while charismatic leadership is not the same as populist leadership, there are important similarities, and it should not be surprising that populists will be among the main winners of this shift to charismatic authority (see also below).Footnote 64

Much of the academic and political reactions to the populist challenges have involved calls for more or real democracy. Just look at the burgeoning literature on all kinds of more or less new types of democracy, such as deliberative democracy, digital democracy, e-democracy.Footnote 65 At the political level, the following statement by Romano Prodi, the EU Commission president, is exemplary: People want a much more participatory, hands on democracy. They [want to be] fully involved in setting goals, making policy and evaluating progress. And they are right.Footnote 66

At a conference on democratic disillusion in Paris, on 11 October 2002, Philippe Schmitter pointed to the schizophrenia among the elites of the established parties, who try to both close and open the political system. Indeed, one sees a combination of cartelization, i.e. closing of the party system by cooptation of challengers, and democratization, e.g. the opening of the political system through the introduction of elements of direct democracy (e.g. referendums) or e-governance.

However, deliberative democracy or a participation revolution were the answers to the populist demands of the New Left, the New Social Movements, and the Green and New Politics parties. But there is a fundamental difference between these populists and the current populist Zeitgeist. This can best be illustrated by the heartland, i.e. the interpretation of the people, that the populists refer to. The populism of the New Left referred to an active, self-confident, well-educated, progressive people. In sharp contrast, the current populism is the rebellion of the silent majority. The heartland of populists like Berlusconi or Haider is the hard-working, slightly conservative, law-abiding citizen, who, in silence but with growing anger, sees his world being perverted by progressives, criminals, and aliens.

In short, the contemporary populist revolt is in many ways the opposite to that of 1968 and further. While the populists of the silent revolution wanted more participation and less leadership, the populists of the silent counter-revolution want more leadership and less participation.Footnote 67 As Robert Dahl has argued

it is an all too common mistake to see democracy simply as a matter of political participation, and to assume that if some people in democratic countries say they value democracy it must be because they receive enjoyment or satisfaction from actually participating in political life. And if it turns out that they do not particularly enjoy participating in political life and do not engage much in it, then it might seem to follow that they do not care much about democracy.Footnote 68

The current heartland of the populists does support democracy, but they do not want to be bothered with politics all the time. Indeed, nearly a half-century of surveys provides overwhelming evidence that citizens do not put much value on actually participating themselves in political life.Footnote 69 True, they want to be heard in the case of fundamental decisions, but first and foremost they want leadership. They want politicians who know (rather than listen to) the people, and who make their wishes come true.

The heartland of contemporary populism is thus focused primarily on the output and not on the input of democracy. What they demand is responsive government, i.e. a government that implements policies that are in line with their wishes. However, they want the politicians to come up with these policies without bothering them, i.e. without much participation from them.

In contrast to popular misperceptions, the populist voters do not strongly favour any form of participatory democracy, be it deliberative or plebiscitary. Indeed, one of the few empirical analyses into the democratic views of supporters of populist parties concludes: supporters of populist parties are not systematically supportive of expanding democratic processes.Footnote 70 Indeed, one could argue that populists (both leaders and followers) support referendums mainly as an instrument to overcome the power of the elite. They see it as the only possibility left to ensure that the wishes of the people are reflected in the government's policies.

But the current plebiscitary transformation of democracyFootnote 71 does not only fail to solve the perceived crisis of democracy, i.e. the populist challenge, it can actually strengthen it. By using a similar, popular democratic discourse to justify the changes, the critique of the populist actors is legitimized.Footnote 72 More importantly, these actions raise the expectations of the populist heartland. And when these expectations are not met, which has been the case in most instances,Footnote 73 the populist protest will be even stronger. Consequently, dissatisfied voters will prefer the original over the copy, as Le Pen has famously remarked, given that the copy has already proved to be untrustworthy.

Another misperception is that populist voters resent the establishment because they are different. Populism is neither about class, except perhaps the rejection of the political class,Footnote 74 nor about social representation or paritary democracy. Supporters of populist parties do not want to be ruled by the man in the street in socio-demographic terms. Just look at the flamboyant individuals that lead most of these movements; one can hardly say that Pim Fortuyn was an average Dutch citizen!Footnote 75 What the populist supporter wants is the problems of the common man to be solved, according to their own values (often referred to as common sense), and they accept that this will have to be done by a remarkable leader. Or, in the words of Paul Taggart, populism requires the most extraordinary individuals to lead the most ordinary of people.Footnote 76 Incidentally, it is in this exceptional character of the leader of some, but definitely not all, populist movements that charismatic leadership plays a role.Footnote 77

Interestingly, the populist leader is not necessarily a true outsider. People like Berlusconi, Fortuyn, or Haider were, already before their political career took off, well connected with sections within the economic and political elites, without being truly part of them. But rather than a counter-elite,Footnote 78 which better fits the textbook populist, they would be best described as outsider-elites: connected to the elites, but not part of them.

Many observers have noted that populism is inherent to representative democracy; after all, do populists not juxtapose the pure people against the corrupt elite?Footnote 79 As argued above, I disagree with this view, and believe that both the populist masses and the populist elites support true representation. In other words, they reject neither representation per se, nor the lack of social representation. What they oppose is being represented by an alien elite, whose policies do not reflect their own wishes and concerns.Footnote 80

In the populist mind, the elite are the henchmen of special interests. Historically, these powerful, shady forces were bankers and international financiers (often alleged to be Jewish). But in contemporary populism a new class has been identified, that of the progressives and the politically correct. This new class theory originated within North American neo-conservative circles of the 1980s.Footnote 81 In the following decades populists from all ideological persuasions would attack the dictatorship of the progressives, or in Fortuynist terms the Church of the Left.

Rather than representative democracy, populism is inherently hostile to the idea and institutions of liberal democracy or constitutional democracy.Footnote 82 Populism is one form of what Fareed ZakariaFootnote 83 has recently popularized as illiberal democracy, but which could also be called democratic extremism. Despite all democratic rhetoric, liberal democracy is a complex compromise of popular democracy and liberal elitism, which is therefore only partly democratic. As Margaret Canovan has brilliantly argued, populism is a biting critique of the democratic limitations within liberal democracies.Footnote 84 In its extremist interpretation of majoritarian democracy, it rejects all limitations on the expression of the general will, most notably the constitutional protection of minorities and the independence (from politics, and therefore from democratic control) of key state institutions (e.g. the judiciary, the central bank).Footnote 85

To a large extent, populism draws its strength from the confused and often opportunistic democratic promises of the political elites. In this age of egalitarianism the defence of the elitist aspects of liberal democracy becomes more and more like political suicide. Consequently, politicians left, right and centre are emphasizing almost exclusively the importance of the popular aspects, i.e. the democratic side. Typical are the debates about the (alleged) gap between the citizen and politics (note the homogeneous categorizations) or the democratic deficit in the European Union.

In most countries these debates started among the political elites, without any indication that the masses were much concerned about them. However, after years of reading and hearing about dysfunctional national and supranational democracies, more and more people have become both sensitized to the problem, and convinced that things can and should be better. The problem is, can they be better (i.e. more democratic) within the system of liberal democracy? As soon as more radical demands are made, the answer from the mainstream politicians is often that they are not feasible because of constitutional provisions or international commitments. Thus, a vicious circle is created, which can only be broken by either giving in to the populists, and creating a more populist (and less liberal!) democratic system, or by resisting them, and instead explaining and defending the democratic limitations of the liberal democratic system.

The aim of this article has been to make a threefold contribution to the current debate on populism in liberal democracies. The first contribution has been a clear and original definition of populism, which can also be employed in empirical research. I have defined populism as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volont gnrale (general will) of the people.

Secondly, the normal-pathology thesis was rejected, and instead it was shown that populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of contemporary western democracies. I have called this the populist Zeitgeist. True, most mainstream parties mainly use populist rhetoric, but some also call for populist amendments to the liberal democratic system (most notably through the introduction of plebiscitary instruments).

Thirdly, I have argued that the explanations of and the reactions to the current populist Zeitgeist are seriously flawed. Much of the recently proposed solutions have been inspired by the populist critique of the New Left in the 1970s and 1980s, which differs fundamentally from that of the 1990s (in supply and demand). In sharp contrast to the earlier period, contemporary populists favour output over input and leadership over participation. Consequently, these reactions are not just flawed, they can become counter-productive, i.e. strengthening the populist challenge rather than weakening it.

So, are politics in liberal democracies destined to stay populist for ever? Hardly! True, there are some structural tensions within liberal democracy upon which populists can feed. But populism is also episodic;Footnote 86 not just the individual movements, but the whole dynamic. When explicitly populist outsider groups gain prominence, parts of the establishment will react by a combined strategy of exclusion and inclusion; while trying to exclude the populist actor(s) from political power, they will include populist themes and rhetoric to try and fight off the challenge. This dynamic will bring about a populist Zeitgeist, like the one we are facing today, which will dissipate as soon as the populist challenger seems to be over its top.

However, because of the structural changes, and the consequent move away from legal authority and toward charismatic authority, as well as the demystification of politics in Western liberal democracies, populism will be a more regular feature of future democratic politics, erupting whenever significant sections of the silent majority feels that the elite no longer represents them.

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The Populist Zeitgeist | Government and Opposition ...

The chosen family isn’t working like we thought it would – LGBTQ Nation

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

I was in my twenties the first time I heard the concept of the chosen family, and its hard to overstate how much it resonated with me.

Yes! I thought. Forget my biological family, I want to spend my life around people who love and accept me for who I am the family I choose!

Related: Activism is the secret to Megan Rapinoe & Sue Birds relationship

Then again, Im gay, and Id come from a conservative Catholic family with parents who had an extremely difficult time with my being gay. Plus, this was the 80s and early 90s, at the height of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, and Id seen so many people with the disease cruelly judged or rejected by families who claimed to love them.

It didnt help that this was also the height of the pro-family conservative movement and that term, pro-family, had been coined specifically to reject LGBTQ people and our rights.

In other words, at that point in my life, almost every time I heard the word family, it was literally defined as an institution that excluded me.

In a way, my gay friends and I had no choice but to create our own families build our own 28 Barbary Lanes from the Tales of the City books. Some, like the drag families featured in the landmark documentary Paris is Burning, even featured literal parental figures drag mothers.

And trust me, those chosen families saved a lot of lives.

But thirty years later, the landscape of the chosen family looks different to me. For one thing, most biological families are far more accepting of their LGBTQ members now at least in America and Western Europe.

This has mirrored my own family, which went on to become very gay-supportive. Not long ago, pre-COVID, my elderly father laid down the law with the other folks at his retirement home: he refused to sit with anyone who didnt support same-sex marriage.

But the concept of the chosen family itself also never really lived up to its hype.

The idea definitely went big-time. Friends and Sex and the City defined the late 90s zeitgeist, not Leave it to Beaver or Little House on the Prairie.

In fact, culturally speaking, Id say we LGBTQ folks completely won the family argument, and the prevailing message in mainstream American entertainment is now way beyond even that of Friends and Sex and the City. The new message is fairly consistent: the cool people leave their families and go off to have exciting (if neurotic) single lives in the city, while the boring, stupid people get married and have kids.

Basically, the traditional family is oppressive and dysfunctional an outdated paradigm that should be mocked and rejected. In its place, we should all now assemble our own families of choice.

But even though we won the argument, Im not sure we won the war. Without the bonds of culture and tradition, how strong are chosen families anyway? Do they really last?

I think about my own chosen family from back in my twenties. At the time, I thought wed be tight forever.

But things changed. Some members of my circle both gay and straight had kids and their children became their top priority. In other cases, people changed cities or took in aging parents. We all moved on with our lives and hey, my husband Michael and I eventually left America to travel the world as digital nomads.

Im still friends with most of my chosen family from way back when in some cases, very good friends. And as world travelers, Michael and I have since made another solid circle of close nomad friends.

But I see now that the role these people play in my life isnt really the same as family.

As for the larger LGBTQ community, people dont seem to be any less lonely and isolated than before we started boldly forging all these chosen families. In fact, theres some evidence that coming out makes a gay person more depressed, not less.

In fact, all Americans seem more lonely and anxious than ever.

And, sure, there are a lot of obvious reasons for Americas current epidemic of anxiety and alienation economic pressures, cynical TV executives and political operatives, and (especially, IMHO) social media, which is literally designed to turn people into frustrated addicts.

But Im increasingly convinced the deconstruction of family is also at least part of the reason why America is so messed up.

Its a very strange thing, being old enough to see an obscure fringe belief you once completely identified with and totally championed go on to become a dominant cultural belief and suddenly youre able to see that, along with its essential truths, the concept also contains some real flaws and limitations.

Sure, the concept of the chosen family has been great for the privileged class, and the young and attractive people who have the money or connections to shield themselves from the brutalities of life. Now they have even more resources to focus on themselves and their own personal happiness.

But what about the elderly? The disabled and the neurodiverse? Addicts? The misfits and oddballs? And children? When chosen families go mainstream, and everyone is picking and choosing their family members, what happens to the folks who take more than they give? Are they simply on their own the responsibility of an impersonal government?

Let me be very, very clear about one thing: I think for a very long time, traditional families in America completely failed their LGBTQ members. They failed women too. Many families are still failing these groups. In traditional countries and cultures, the problem is far, far worse than in America.

It also must be said: despite having been treated so poorly by family, many LGBTQ people and women do the lions share of caring for elderly parents. Ironic much?

I also hope it goes without saying that I acknowledge that some families and family members are so toxic and abusive that they should be completely rejected.(At the same time, it feels to me like some people are now defining toxicity and abuse so broadly that the terms sometimes feel meaningless and some of these folks have ended up pathologizing frustrating-but-normal human interaction. But your mileage may vary.)

Where has my reassessment of family come from anyway?

More than anything, it was that decision Michael and I made to leave America. Before I knew it, I was confronted by something I truly hadnt expected namely, when it comes to family, America is a massive outlier compared with the rest of the world. Outside of the United States, most people have a completely different relationship with their relatives.

They also seem, well, happier. Theres always the danger that Im seeing the rest of the world through rose-colored glasses. And families in the rest of the world are definitely changing too becoming less traditional, less tightly woven over the decades.

But not nearly as fast as in America, where massive, sweeping changes have happened in only a few generations.

The rest of the world also really does seem to be far less anxious and neurotic than my home country.

As a result, Ive come to think that maybe family isnt the oppressive, horrible, irredeemable, dysfunctional institution I once thought.Or, rather, yes, maybe it is, some of the time especially for LGBTQ people, women, and, frankly, anyone who feels different.But there are also benefits to the family that I didnt appreciate back in my twenties benefits that simply arent replicated by a chosen family.

Living for months at a time in countries like Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Romania, and Czechia, Ive heard many local friends talk about their families that vast, complicated network of relatives who are an integral part of their daily lives.

Everyone complains about the obligations and responsibilities they feel toward this tangle of people, and weve definitely heard people express frustration and exasperation over what seems like genuine slights and real injustices.

But Ive heard so many good things too so much actual love. In the best-case scenario, theres always someone looking out for you. And no family member is ever left behind.

And since theyre talking about extended families, the messages they receive are often surprisingly diverse. After all, even more conservative families tend to have an eccentric aunt or a free-thinking uncle.

For better and for worse, the bonds of culture and tradition really are strong. Amid these interconnected family relationships, people gain a real sense of identity and a feeling of rootedness even if, yeah, they probably lose some personal freedom. Life is definitely less about self-expression.

This leads me to what may be the real problem with American families: unlike the rest of the world, American families underwent a massive social change in the 1950s from a rich, complicated extended family model, to a smaller nuclear one.

One father, one mother, and their kids preferably living in the suburbs.My own biological family minus extended relatives a few years back.

It makes sense this change happened in America, because Americans see themselves, first and foremost, as individuals. I couldnt see this when I lived in America, but now that Ive left, this sense of American individuality feels so overwhelming that its almost hard to put it into words.

And the nuclear family did give many Americans a new kind of freedom and a lot more opportunities, at least for white men.

It was also great for the American economy; its a big part of the reason why America is a superpower right now. After all, all those individual white families had to have their own house and a lot of their kids got to have their own bedroom too. And they had to fill all those rooms with stuff.

Corporations loved the nuclear family because it was an opportunity to sell more things to Americans and make even more money.

But in the end, the nuclear family ended up being absolutely terrible for American society. In a way, it was the worst of both worlds creating an emotionally stifling environment while depriving people of any sense of identity or culture. I think the nuclear family was worse for women too, isolating them from what had previously been, yes, a blatantly unfair social order, but also a rich social network of female interaction and respect.

In what universe does it make sense for a couple and, often, mostly the mother to raise their newborns almost entirely alone?

Maybe this is what LGBTQ people like myself were really rebelling against back in the 1980s: not family per se, but the nuclear one.

But in a way, the chosen family wasnt so much a rebellion as it was the natural next step, after nuclear families, in an increasingly individualistic and self-centered America. And, of course, it was a way for corporations to make even more money. Now every single person needed to fill their whole house or apartment with things.

Like the nuclear family, chosen families also came with huge limitations.

Look, the extended family model is far from perfect. And even now, some form of the chosen family still has a place in the world.But things arent black-and-white. I see now that traditional family networks evolved the way they did for a reason.

So whats the solution? How do we make American families functional again?

First, I think progressives need to stop with the wholesale demonization of all things family-related. In Hollywood, it may be emotionally satisfying for writers who feel misunderstood by their own families to ridicule them, but its simplistic and patronizing. And when radical leftists say really stupid, politically disastrous things like Abolish the family! more moderate progressives need to be very clear and say, Thats a kind of bigotry, and these people dont speak for me.

The rich, complicated social networks Ive witnessed in other countries seem more interesting to me now than yet more trite smugness about how horrible and oppressive family is.

Its hard to overstate how stupid this meme is, politically and otherwise.

As for conservatives, well, they need to start actually supporting families financially, I mean, with policies like paid parental leave, and affordable child care, housing, and health care.They can also start to see that egalitarianism is good for everyone. Lets face it: conservatives bigoted, exclusionary pro-family rhetoric is a big part of the reason America is now in the mess its in.

The childrens author Judy Blume once wrote a book titled Places I Never Meant to Be. That title describes the way I feel right now. How in the world did I someone who couldnt wait to replace his biological family with his newly chosen one become this person who is now saying, Hold on now! Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But here I am. Life surprises you. Ive surprised myself.

In the end, the chosen family didnt solve all of societys problems, and it even created new ones. Who knew?

But Americans still have a choice. We can now pick and choose from the best of both models.It would be nice if this time we finally got the answer right.

Brent Hartinger is an author and editor, and the Brent in Brent and Michael Are Going Places, a couple of traveling gay digital nomads. Subscribe to their free travel newsletter here.

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The chosen family isn't working like we thought it would - LGBTQ Nation

News From Nowhere If the Greens are to have a future they must listen to their past – thedailyblog.co.nz

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

THE TRAGEDY OF THE GREENS corruption by neoliberalism is that they simply cannot grasp how completely theyve been seduced. At its heart, the problem is one of generational experience and perspective. The younger generation of Greens, the ones currently in control of the organisation, simply have no experiential connection to the zeitgeist out of which their movement was born. Their entire adult lives have been lived in the shadow of the neoliberal revolutions of the 1980s and 90s. What came before the revolution has been dismissed by its architects and disciples as existing outside the realm of common sense. Those who preach the values and aspirations of those pre-revolutionary times offer news from nowhere and no one is listening.

They could, of course, learn the origin stories of radical environmentalism by entering imaginatively into the historical circumstances out of which it was born. Historians do this all the time. Watch Mary Beards television series on Ancient Rome and it will soon become clear how thoroughly an intelligent and inquisitive human-being is able to not only comprehend, but also inhabit, the past. Beard talks of being captured by the history of the Roman world from the moment she read Tacitus chilling judgement of his own people: They make a desert and they call it peace.

The problem with the generations that have grown up in the 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan destroyed the post-war social-democratic settlement, is that they have been convinced the past has nothing useful to teach them.

Like the early cartographers who wrote Here Be Monsters in the blank spaces of their maps, the neoliberal ideologues tell frightening tales about the times before their Year Zero. Anxious to dissuade those contemplating their own voyages of historical discovery, they warn that only bad and mad things lie beyond the well-charted shorelines of the present. Sadly, they have been remarkably successful. The past remains one of the very few foreign countries that millennial influencers have no interest in visiting not least because they do things differently there.

One of the principal reasons for the neoliberals success is that their own ideologically-inspired break with the post-war world was strengthened immeasurably by the natural inclination of young people to dismiss the world in which their elders were raised as hopelessly pass. Ordinarily, such youthful disdain is reserved for the fashions, art and music of the recent past so lacking in the manifestly superior tastes of the present. What the Neoliberals merged so successfully, however, was this essentially harmless generational scorn with their own deep ideological hostility towards the ideas and institutions of the entire modern era.

When Baby Boomers like Catherine Delahunty and Sue Bradford condemn the younger generations of Greens for abandoning the foundational beliefs and principles of the Green Movement, all these younger Greens hear is an ideological version of Taylor Swift cant hold a candle to Joni Mitchell. Or, Where is your generations Godfather? Wheres your Catcher in the Rye? Your Sergeant Pepper? Social-democracy, the Club of Rome, Rachel Carson, Earth Day 1971: Catherine and Sue might just as well be touting the virtues of a dusty vinyl version of Greatest Hits of the 1960s and 70s. Okay Boomer.

Lacking a firm grasp of recent history, the generations at the end of the alphabet do not understand that while their parents and grandparents might have laughed at the RSA Generations stuffy conformism, and marched against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and Apartheid sport, they had nothing but admiration for the extraordinary structures of social care which these earlier generations had built. Moreover, they were full of gratitude for the fact that their own lives would be fuller and more prosperous as a result. The Boomers grew up in the shadow of fascism and genocide. They knew what the generation preceding their own had beaten back and they loved them for it.

Discouraged from accessing the past, the younger Greens will struggle to understand the extraordinary exhilaration of encountering their own movement for the first time. New Zealand was the first nation to encounter a green political party. Inspired by the Club of Romes Limits To Growth, the Values Party spoke, for the first time, of constructing a future guided by humility and restraint. To hear Tony Brunt and his successors talk about limiting economic growth, and expanding the time in which people could simply be themselves, was to envisage a world beyond tomorrow. This was news from a somewhere humankind had yet to reach.

The worst crime against History which the Neoliberals have committed, however, is to convince young people that the past was a stinking cesspit of privilege, prejudice and oppression. That their ancestors were monsters wiping out indigenous peoples even as their axes and machines laid waste to the forests, lakes, rivers and streams which had sustained them for millennia. By painting the past as a hellscape of irredeemable horror, the tiny fraction of one percent who lord it over the rest of humanity, Paul Simons loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires are robbing us of the means to rescue the future.

Is there horror in the past? Is it full of murder and rapine? Of course it is but no more than the horror that daily disfigures the present. Nor are evil deeds all that the past has to show us. Amidst the horror there is heroism. Amidst the murder and rapine there is also empathy and courage, creativity and love.

Human-beings do not suffer injustice meekly, they rise against it again and again and again. Down through the centuries reformers and revolutionaries have dreamed dreams and seen visions. Slavery was abolished. Women were enfranchised. Children were removed from coalmines and cotton mills.

When the armed constabulary invaded Parihaka in 1881, not all Pakeha cheered nowhere near all. In the end, Apartheid fell. Eventually, gay sex was decriminalised. The past is not simply a catalogue of horrors. It is also an endless source of inspiration and hope.

The Neoliberals would shut the younger generations off from that hope and inspiration. The neoliberals would have us believe that this is as good as it gets. They have almost convinced James Shaw and Marama Davidson that the future can only be reached with tiny steps. On a warming planet that is rapidly running out of time, that is deadly advice.

Catherine and Sue, and all those who stand with them, are right: this is no time for tiny steps. Humankind has made giant leaps before all the way to the moon. But the booster rockets that push us towards the future are fuelled by the knowledge of what human-beings have achieved in the past.

Clio, the Muse of History, is traditionally depicted perusing the book of humanitys past glories. At need, however, she will put down her book and take up a sword.

Never has that need been greater.

Only when we remember who we are, where we have come from, and what we have achieved, will we find the strength to drive Clios liberating sword through neoliberalisms black and befouling heart.

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News From Nowhere If the Greens are to have a future they must listen to their past - thedailyblog.co.nz

Lapid: Israel will face increasing allegations that it is an apartheid state in 2022 – Cleveland Jewish News

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned on Monday during an online press conference that one of the greatest threats Israel faces in the new year will be charges of apartheid by U.N. groups with sports the first area affected. Their effort will be to get organizations to take Israel out of sporting and cultural events, he said.

To counter this expected trend, Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs would devote considerable resources in 2022 to countering those efforts, he said.

The concern here from the foreign ministry is that you have three or four different legal proceedings in which allegations of apartheid have been made and that at least one of them may end up endorsing these allegations, Yuval Shany, professor of international law at Hebrew University and research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told JNS.

He said Israel faces charges of apartheid at 1) the U.N.s Commission of Inquiry, which has an open-ended mandate to look into allegations of Israeli discrimination; 2) the Geneva-based U.N. Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which is reviewing a Palestinian Authority complaint against Israel accusing it of apartheid; and 3) the International Criminal Court (ICC), where certain Palestinian groups have submitted allegations concerning Israeli practices in the West Bank being a form of apartheid.

All of these tracks are aimed essentially at obtaining a legal, or quasi-legal, finding that Israeli practices amount to systemic discrimination or a form of apartheid in international law, he said.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, told JNS that the Commission of Inquiry is the primary threat. The commission was established by the Human Rights Council following Israels 11-day conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip last May. Neuer said it has become standard practice for the United Nations to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes after each round of fighting, but this time the commission is unprecedented in its scope.

It will investigate so-called systematic discriminationmass discrimination within Israel and the territories, he said. Its quite clear that its going to accuse Israel of apartheid. This inquiry has no end, meaning it doesnt last six months or a year. It will be reporting twice every year.

Neuer said the new mandate in which the commission is authorized to continuously investigate Israel is inspired by the zeitgeist in America where accusations of systemic discrimination have become the fashionable trend. He sees the focus on racism as a modern form of anti-Semitism, noting that Jews have been attacked throughout history as being opposed to whatever society identified as the highest virtue. Today, in 2022, anti-racism is the highest virtue, and so its not accidental that Israel is accused of being intrinsically racist, he said.

Shany, who noted that the apartheid charge has been leveled at Israel for some time, wouldnt speculate as to why its gaining momentum now. He agreed that its possible that the political temper in the United States is a contributing factor but said its probably a combination of many reasons.

Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and head of its program on law and national security, told JNS that Israels opponents have at least one practical reason for pushing apartheid charges.

She said the two reports that will be produced by the Commission of Inquiry and the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination are designed to push the new ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to prioritize the investigation against Israel started by his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. Khan is more pragmatic than Bensouda, she noted, and based on his own comments, Im not sure he would like to put our case at the top of his priorities, she said.

So this would be an attempt, first, to push him into pursuing the investigation and, second, to try to persuade him to include in the investigation also claims about apartheid because apartheid is one of the crimes against humanity included in the Rome Statute, she explained, referring to the treaty that established the ICC.

Of course, more generally, its part of the campaign against Israelto try to get more countries, organizations and companies to boycott Israel, to divest from Israel under the whole idea of the BDS movement, she said.

She doesnt see a way to stop these U.N. bodies from condemning Israel, noting that the United Nations has appointed South African Navi Pillay, known for her hostile views to Israel, as head of the Commission of Inquiry. She said its a disturbing development. Apartheid had been considered going too far, and now theres an attemptit might succeed, tooto put it within legitimate criticism against Israel. I think thats very bad for Israel.

As for Lapids belief that sports and cultural events would be the first target, Shany agreed that Lapid was right in pointing out that this is going to put wind in the sails of the BDS movement and basically render cultural, educational, sports relations with Israeli counterparts as politically unacceptable in the eyes of increasing segments of the population.

Neuer went further. He said in the United States, during the recent Gaza conflict, legislators like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) condemned Israel. (She had tweeted: Apartheid states arent democracies.)

During that time, Jews in America were being attacked on the streets in Los Angeles, in New York and elsewhere, and that was in connection with the war that was happening in Israel, said Neuer. Accusing the Jewish state of being an evil apartheid state is a means to delegitimize and demonizeand even physically attackJews. I think this cannot be underestimated. Exclusions from certain international bodies would be only the tip of the iceberg.

The post Lapid: Israel will face increasing allegations that it is an apartheid state in 2022 appeared first on JNS.org.

Originally posted here:

Lapid: Israel will face increasing allegations that it is an apartheid state in 2022 - Cleveland Jewish News

What’s New on DVD in January: The French Dispatch, Her Smell, Martial Arts Classics, and More – TheWrap

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

New Release Wall

Wes Andersons latest film, The French Dispatch (20th Century Studios), was such a dizzying, fast-moving, visual feast that it begs to be viewed again on physical media, if only to pause on each impeccably art-directed frame to catch details you missed. In that context, the movie could be about anything, really, and wed just be content to look at it. But it does happen to be about the golden age of American literary magazines, full of archly drawn intellectuals, all of whom are portrayed by a stunning roster of A-list stars delivering Andersonian dialogue in the deadpan manner weve all come to know and love.

Also Available:

The Addams Family 2 (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) The sweethearts of creepy and ooky return in an animated family feature.

Antlers (Searchlight Pictures) Guillermo del Toro produced this atmospheric horror film starring Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, and a mysterious forest entity (see: name of movie).

Last Night in Soho (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) Anya Taylor-Joy shares a consciousness with Thomasin McKenzie in this psychological horror film from Edgar Wright.

Spencer (Neon) Pablo Larrains moving a-few-days-in-the-life biopic of the late Princess Diana allows Kristen Stewart to shine, yet again, as one of her generations best actors.

New Indie

Elisabeth Moss isnt playing Courtney Love in Her Smell (Gunpowder & Sky), and her fictional band isnt Hole in this harrowing exploration of rock stardom and addiction. Then again, shes not not Courtney Love, and that band is basically Hole, but who cares, really? Moss tears it up and delivers the kind of raging, aggressive, obnoxious, tender, and sorrowful performance for which actors usually find themselves nominated for this or that award. If you can handle being inside this characters tortured head for 135 minutes, then maybe youre the one whos Courtney Love.

Also Available:

Broadcast Signal Intrusion (Dark Sky Films) Harry Shum Jr stumbles onto a sinister 90s video conspiracy.

Ida Red (Saban/Paramount) Melissa Leo is a terminally-ill woman in prison who turns to son Josh Hartnett for help.

This Games Called Murder (Kino Lorber) Ron Perlman as a shoe designer (!) in this dark, violent satire about life as we know it.

Zeros and Ones (Lionsgate) 2021 action drama from Abel Ferrara, with Ethan Hawke as a soldier on a mission.

New Foreign

Between Jackie and Spencer, director Pablo Lorrain made Ema (Music Box Films), a dance-drama hybrid starring Mariana di Girolamo and Gael Garca Bernal as a couple dealing with the emotional reverberations of the adopted child that they returned years earlier. Mixing Lorrains visual and emotional styles with a driving reggaeton beat, this one-of-a-kind musical makes a unique entry in the filmography of a fascinating contemporary stylist.

Also available:

The Dry (RLJE Films) Eric Bana is on the hunt for answers to a murder case gone cold.

Escape from Mogadishu (Well Go USA Entertainment) Diplomats find themselves trapped in the middle of a Somali civil war in South Koreas Oscar entry.

Golden Voices (Music Box Films) A Russian couple, both voice actors, move to Israel and find their careers on the rocks.

Hive (Zeitgeist Films) Acclaimed drama from Kosovo about a single mother struggling to keep her family together.

The Man with the Answers (Artsploitation Films) Two young men, one Greek and one German, hit the road and find love in this LGBTQ drama.

Memory House (Film Movement) Folklore, contemporary politics, and magical realism swirl through Joao Paulo Miranda Marias Cannes Film Festival hit.

Only the Animals (Cohen Media Group) A French murder mystery in the snow. As smart as Fargo, minus the laughs.

Roh (Film Movement) Quietly shattering horror from Malaysia about a strange, prophetic girl who points a family to their doom.

Saint-Narcisse (Film Movement) Canadian queer punk icon Bruce LaBruces latest involves identical twin brothers looking for, and finding, love in an unlikely place.

Sleep (Arrow Video) David Lynch, Franz Kafka, and Grimms fairy tales are the reference points for this psychological horror film from Michael Venus.

Weathering With You (GKIDS) A young boy in Tokyo meets a girl who can change the weather in this fantasy anime from director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name) now making its North American 4K debut.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Film Movement) Three womens lives intersect in this acclaimed film from Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car).

New Doc

Garrett Bradleys searing, poetic documentary Time (The Criterion Collection) examines the inequities of the U.S. prison system, particularly as they apply to Black men, through the decades-long struggle of Fox Rich and her ongoing efforts to get her husband out of jail. Its a beautiful portrait of love, of parenthood, and the ways in which people can build new lives for themselves when the system is seemingly designed to crush them.

Also available:

ABBA Forever: The Winner Takes It All (Wienerworld) A charming documentary about the most beloved pop band in the world, and just in time for their first album in 40 years.

Dick Johnson Is Dead (The Criterion Collection) The loving and inventive story of a filmmaker who helps her aging father prepare to die.

The Great Postal Heist (Cinema Libre Studio) A fiery documentary about the struggle of a 30-year post office clerk and the downsizing of the oldest federal agency in the U.S.

Little Girl (Music Box) Thoughtful and gentle documentary about an 8-year-old transgender child named Sasha.

Moments Like This Never Last (Utopia) A look into the world and career of the late street artist Dash Snow.

Try Harder! (Greenwich Entertainment) The stress endured by, and pressures placed upon, students vying for spots at elite colleges will make you wonder why anyone bothers.

New Grindhouse

Whether youre a newcomer or an old-school fan of kung fu cinema, youre going to love Shawscope Volume One: Limited Edition Box (Arrow Video). This limited edition box set showcases a dozen titles from the godfathers of Hong Kong martial arts filmmaking, the Shaw Brothers. You get King Boxer (aka Five Fingers of Death), Mighty Peking Man, The Five Venoms, and more, all restored and remastered, with fresh subtitle translations and bonuses like original mono audio tracks, interviews, deleted scenes, and alternate versions. Its a feast.

Also available:

Arrebato (Altered Innocence) Late-70s Spanish horror classic championed by Pedro Almodvar is, as you might imagine, a mind-altering trip.

The Awakener (Shout Factory) A Brazilian agent tries to fight political corruption and winds up with a fight on his hands.

The Card Player (Scorpion Releasing) Dario Argentos 2004 internet serial killer thriller is a late career high.

Disciples of Shaolin (88 Films) Another classic 70s Shaw Brothers martial arts mindbender, starring Sheng Fu.

The Djinn (RLJE Films) A mute boy makes a wish and winds up with a monster in his home.

Double Walker (Cranked Up) A young womans ghost is on the hunt for the person who killed her.

Final Justice (MVD Rewind Collection) Walking Tall king Joe Don Baker stars in this 80s cult classic (MST3K approved!) about a Texas sheriff battling the mafia.

Halloween Kills (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) Michael Myers stabs more people and turns the community of Haddonfield against itself.

The Midnight Swim (Yellow Veil Pictures) Sarah Adina Smiths debut feature is a mysterious story about a bottomless lake, a missing mother, and the daughters who embark on an incredible journey.

Shock (Arrow Video) Mario Bavas final film, a 1977 masterpiece of psychological horror, lives up to its title.

Street Fighter (Mill Creek Entertainment) Jean-Claude van Damme breaks out of the video game into live-action kicking alongside Raul Julia in this new steelbook edition.

The Superdeep (Shudder/RLJE) This Russian thriller follows a research team who find more than they bargained for when they decide to burrow into the earth.

The Toolbox Murders (Blue Underground) The driller-killer exploitation classic gets the 4K treatment.

An Unquiet Grave (Shudder/RLJE) A man asks for his sister-in-laws help to bring his late wife back from the dead.

The Vampire Lovers (Scream Factory) Vintage gothic horror from the legendary Hammer studios, the brand you trust for lady vampires with extravagant eye shadow.

The Way (Gravitas Ventures) A woman on death row undergoes a spiritual transformation.

New Classic

Dad Cinema doesnt come any more entertaining than The Great Escape (Kino Lorber Studio Classics), making its 4K debut. This eminently watchable saga about a real-life WWII POW-camp prison break has wit, stakes, suspense, and one of the great sausage-fest ensembles ever assembled, including Steve McQueen (instantly achieving icon status, with the help of a very cool motorcycle), James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, Donald Pleasance, Charles Bronson, and David McCallum.

Also available:

Akira (Funimation) The anime touchstone that influenced the genre for decades to come makes its North American 4K debut.

All My Sons (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson star in this noir drama, based on the Arthur Miller play, about crime and consequences.

Breaking In (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Bill Forsyth (Local Hero) directs John Sayles late-80s crime comedy about an aging burglar (Burt Reynolds) trying to teach a novice (Casey Siemaszko) the robbery ropes.

The Celebration (The Criterion Collection) One of the highlights of the Dogme 95 movement was this blistering drama about a family reunion where all the painful secrets of the past get aired in public.

China (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Japan invades China, but the movie is more interested in Loretta Young falling in love with Alan Ladd.

Corinth Films Historical Drama Collection (Corinth Films) Get your European historical drama on with these five contemporary classics: Within the Whirlwind, Calm at Sea, The Chronicles of Melanie, Remembrance, and Habermann.

The Crime of the Century (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) B-movie classic involving an ex-con exposing the titular misdeed.

Dancing With Crime / The Green Cockatoo (Cohen Media Group) Innocents get mixed up with murder in this double feature of classic British thrillers.

Double Door (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) 1934 family drama about rich New Yorkers in the grip of a matriarchs domineering ways.

Expresso Bongo (Cohen Media Group) The movie that launched the pop career of British icon Cliff Richard, and yes, its got lots of bongos, daddy-o.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema V (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Hard-boiled is the new happy with these vintage downbeat classics: The Midnight Story, Outside the Law, and Because of You.

Gambit (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) If you can get past Shirley MacLaines semi-yellowface (her character is Eurasian), she and Michael Caine have fun with this twisty comedy caper.

Golden Earrings (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) A spy finds love in this WWII drama starring Ray Milland and Marlene Dietrich.

A Hard Days Night (The Criterion Collection) The Beatles became movie stars with this one, and its no wonder. (Now in 4K.)

Impasse (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) 1969 World War II action film with Burt Reynolds hunting for hidden treasure in the Philippines

Journey to Shiloh (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Seven men go on a cross country trek to fight the Battle of Shiloh in this 1968 Civil Warthemed western (which features one of Harrison Fords earliest screen appearances).

Juice (Paramount) A new 4K steelbook highlights Tupacs acting debut, which charges up this teenage crime drama that also features a young Queen Latifah.

Laughing Heirs (Kino Classics) 1933 Max Ophuls comedy about a wine estate heir who wont inherit a thing if he touches a drop of alcohol.

The Lover (Capelight Pictures) Jane March and Tony Leung Ka Fai star in the Marguerite Duras adaptation that had arthouse audiences coming back for more forbidden love-affair action; when it was released in 1992, it was one of the first Western films since Sessue Hayakawas silent-screen heyday to present an Asian man as a sexual romantic lead.

The Mafu Cage (Scorpion Releasing) Karen Arthurs oddball cult film with Carol Kane, Lee Grant, and a house full of primates.

Marias Lovers (Kino Lorber) Nastassja Kinski has a lot of men on hold in this romantic drama from Andrei Konchalovsky.

The Naked Ape (Code Red) A 1973 experience of a film with live-action and animation exploring the evolution of humanity. (Features a postThe Rifleman Johnny Crawford and a pre-Dallas Victoria Principal, both game.)

The Piano (The Criterion Collection) Jane Campions masterpiece, starring Oscar-winners Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin, alongside Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill. (Now in 4K.)

The Pink Jungle (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) James Garner and George Kennedy fight for diamonds and a woman in South America.

The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Walt Disney Home Entertainment) The one that started it all, just so you know who to blame. (Now in 4K.)

Red Angel (Arrow Video) Yasuzo Masumaras searing 1966 anti-war film still packs a wallop

Rich and Strange (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Early Alfred Hitchcock drama about a couple who find that an inheritance leads to more trouble than they expected.

The 7th Dawn (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) William Holden leads a cast of characters caught up on opposing sides of a Communist insurgency in Malaya after World War II.

Shake Hands with the Devil (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) James Cagney fights with the I.R.A. against British forces in this 1959 historical drama

The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection (The Film Detective) Even before Basil Rathbone famously took over the part, the legendary sleuth was already a cinema staple in these four British features from the 1930s.

Sparrows (MVD Visual) New restoration of a 1926 social-issue drama starring Mary Pickford.

Three Women (Kino Classics) Not to be confused with the Robert Altman film of the same name, this silent Ernst Lubitsch drama concerns a mother and daughter involved in a love triangle.

Through the Decades: 1960s Collection (Mill Creek Entertainment) A dizzingly varied collection of films in one 60s-themed box the highlight is Arthur Penns Mickey One, an existential-neurotic-jazz gangster drama with Warren Beatty, but theres lots to enjoy here, including Who Was That Lady?, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum-Yum Tree, Good Neighbor Sam, Lilith (starring Beatty and Jean Seberg), Baby, the Rain Must Fall, Genghis Khan, The Chase, Luv, How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life), and Hook, Line and Sinker.

Through the Decades: 1970s Collection (Mill Creek Entertainment) Youll want this assortment for the two Barbra Streisand movies (The Owl and the Pussycat and For Petes Sake) and the rollicking Jane FondaGeorge Segal heist comedy Fun with Dick and Jane, but theres plenty more to enjoy here, including A Walk in the Spring Rain, $ (Dollars), The Anderson Tapes, Brother John, The Horsemen, early Stephen Frears comedy Gumshoe, and The Stone Killer.

New TV

Naysayers might have originally decried the series as a gimmicky spin-off from a beloved movie franchise, but here we are at Cobra Kai: Season 3 (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) with Season 4 new on Netflix and the show continues to build an audience while cleverly retweaking everything we thought we knew about the iconic characters played, then and now, by Ralph Macchio, William Zabka, and the rest of this talented ensemble.

Also available:

Billions: Season 5 (CBS/Paramount) The battle of wills in the world of high finance never ends!

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Liberation Hall) A priest on trial for heresy in this 1958 TV adaptation of the Thornton Wilder novel starring Hume Cronyn and Judith Anderson and directed by Robert Mulligan.

Inherit the Wind (1999) (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott remake the classic play and film for TV.

Go here to see the original:

What's New on DVD in January: The French Dispatch, Her Smell, Martial Arts Classics, and More - TheWrap

Five design trends set to visually shape 2022 – It’s Nice That

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Intense, Retina-searing Colours

If there ever was a visual riposte to uncertain, challenging times that manifested through the reflective microcosm that is the world of design, then the recent rise in the use of dramatic, eye-searing colours was definitely it. Intense gradients and blazing hues showed up across advertising campaigns, album and book covers, identity systems and editorial design that made it almost impossible for the viewer to look away.

It was no coincidence that we felt the need to go full-tilt bright last year in some of our colour choices. Hope and optimism go a long way, and colour as a visual identifier of this sentiment seems like a choice many people and organisations will continue to make, says Jason Little, co-founder and executive creative director of For The People, who designed the identity for the Sydney Film Festival 2021. Its like theres all this pent up energy waiting to be released, and this is definitely an avenue to express it.

We cant wait to be safe and free again, so we pour that intention, that hope into our work and the colour choices, says Zuzanna Rogatty, senior designer at Collins. In a way, this ballsy use of colours also points towards a clear intention to make brands unignorable, Zuzanna explains. I hope it is actually a movement, a characteristic of the zeitgeist, a colour uprising, and not only a trend.

The use of provocative, complex hues is definitely here to stay. Theres always a long tail to these things, right? says Jason. While its been brewing gently for a while, lately, colours have become emblematic of the current, get-up-and-go creative landscape, and it promises to be something well see a lot of in 2022. Jason adds: And maybe the late majority and big tech will be right in this space by 2024, who knows.

Continued here:

Five design trends set to visually shape 2022 - It's Nice That

10 Watches We Hope to See in 2022 – gearpatrol.com

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

The year ahead holds some interesting possibilities for the watch world. Each year sees watch brands celebrate any anniversary with a round number, but 2022 marks a big one: the iconic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak turns 50. This and other factors suggest that the already white-hot category of sport-lifestyle watches represented by the Royal Oak will further heat up in 2022.

The Royal Oak created a new genre of watches in 1972 by offering a steel luxury watch with a sporty style more so than a sporty purpose. Watches with similar traits (integrated bracelets, prominent bezels, polygonal shapes, etc.) like the Patek Philippe Nautilus followed, along with an army of wannabes. This type of watch will be in the zeitgeist even more in 2022 than it already is.

The year ahead will see Royal Oak designer Gerald Genta's own Royal Oak auctioned, Patek Philippe is expected to replace its outgoing 5711 with a new Nautilus, and the Vacheron Constantin Overseas has an anniversary of its own. But what does this mean for the industry in general? Aside from much fanfare from those brands, we expect the concept to trickle down to more affordable brands, as we've already seen it begin to.

The year won't only be about the Royal Oak, though, as we expect other trends to continue: it's about time for green dials to follow blue and go mainstream; and shrinking median watch sizes may settle around 39-40mm. Can we expect more balance between vintage reissues and fresh, forward-looking designs? Watch consumers are surely starting to itch for that.

The year ahead will hopefully be full of interesting watches, and even surprises (we like those). To whet your horological appetite, below are some of the watches we'd like to see and some of what we expect in 2022.

The Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711 is discontinued, but it would be insane for Patek to simply stop making one of the most successful watches of all time at the height of its popularity. The Nautilus collection, however, lives on, and there'll have to be some new version with a new reference number to replace the 5711 eventually. We don't expect it to be a radical departure.

Expectation for the outgoing 5711's replacement will be part of the general zeitgeist of 2022. It's perfectly plausible, however, that the brand will stay silent for a year or longer on whatever it's got in store for the collection, and simply let the hype build.

There are a few reasons to expect something new from the Vacheron Constantin Overseas. Firstly, the Overseas' progenitor, the "222" from 1977, has its own 45th birthday in 2022. Secondly, the Overseas is Vacheron's answer to the Royal Oak and Nautilus, but it doesn't have the same overinflated prices, hype and availability issues, and it therefore has the chance to fill a market niche.

What can we expect from the Overseas? The upgrades the line got in 2016 are still looking fresh, but they leave a gap between 37mm and 41mm sizes. A 39mm automatic version (ok, maybe some with variations or complications, too) would be in-line with current tastes and trends. To make it more than just a new size of an existing model, vintage cues that reference the 222 would help it feel more special and deliberate.

Yes, the Porsche Design brand is also turning 50 in 2022, and its catalog is wide open to include a reissue of its inaugural product: the world's first all-black watch.

Though Porsche Design hasn't leaned in to the rest of the industry's vintage reissue bonanza and remained resolutely modern in its designs, the anniversary presents an opportunity. A reissue would be cool, but we'd be equally happy with a modern interpretation perhaps with relatively "vintage sizing." The brand recently seems more open to smaller case sizes as evidenced by its 39mm Sport Chrono.

Only a couple Rolex watches remain that haven't yet gotten the latest movement upgrade. With a compelling backstory and a pretty funky look for the brand, the Milgauss remains one of Rolex's most distinctive watches. It's about time for it to get some love and attention.

While the people fantasize about amazing new Rolexes, like a "Coke" (black-and-red-bezel) GMT Master II or even a titanium Yachtmaster, modest and very subtle tweaks and upgrades to existing watches are generally what you can expect. Rolex's 3230 movement for the Milgauss would be the minimum we'd expect, but something like a new colorway (there are currently two) would make an even bigger splash.

We're just going to keep hammering at this until we get it: for god's sake, Tudor, a Black Bay Fifty Eight GMT is a no-brainer! Will hit happen? We think eventually it will. The simple formula of the Black Bay GMT in the Fifty Eight's 39mm size would be celebrated, but Tudor regularly surprises us. We might not get exactly what we want this year, but we can't help but dream.

Someone pointed it out recently: Omega hasn't yet brought much green to its sport watch collections. Everyone else is doing it, the trend seems set to continue, and the brand hasn't been afraid of color in the past, so why not?

Although the Seamaster Planet Ocean might seem like a good candidate, with a precedent of colorful iterations, it'd be particularly cool to see it on the more versatile Seamaster Diver 300m. It's pretty well established that just about any watch that also looked good when it got a blue treatment can also look great in green, and the Seamaster Diver 300m fits the bill.

For Only Watch 2021, Girard Perregaux teamed up with Bamford Watch Department on something rather unexpected. It was like a reissue of the funky LED driver's watches the brand made in the 1970s, but with a very modern case in carbon fiber and titanium.

The one-off creations for the Only Watch auction often portend future releases, so it seems possible that Girard-Perregaux has something like a collection in the works in a more accessible execution such as stainless steel or titanium. It would fit the industry's general vintage reissue trend but sure would be interesting to see from the prestigious brand otherwise firmly rooted in mechanical watchmaking.

A while back, Citizen released some of its very cool and affordable Promaster "Fugu" dive watches with automatic movements. Unfortunately, they were only available in certain regions, and not in others like the United States. We thought they'd arrive eventually, but we're still waiting.

It's currently hard to find any automatic watches on Citizen's US site (aside from a couple weird, high-end ones) despite that the brand owns Miyota, one of the biggest producers of automatic movements in the world. Citizen has the chance to fill a market niche and compete with Seiko dive watches, and maybe this will be the year we'll finally see it happen.

This is the last thing about integrated-bracelet watches, I promise. The IWC Ingenieur collection was last overhauled in 2017 to reference its conservative 1955 roots, but the resulting dressy watches don't add much to the brand's catalog. Why not bring back the Ingenieur of 1976?

Redesigned by Gerald Genta (him again) with all the sporty style that made the Royal Oak successful (and introduced the same year as Patek's Nautilus), the Ingenieur gives IWC the chance to offer something hip with legitimate provenance at a competitive price.

Shortly after I pleaded with G-Shock to offer an online watch customizer, news emerged on G-Central that the company's financial report mentioned plans for such a program "starting with Japan." The program is called "My G-Shock," and we can only hope that we'll see it more widely available in 2022 with all the models, colors and options we dream of.

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10 Watches We Hope to See in 2022 - gearpatrol.com

10 Fascinating Trends to Watch in 2022 – gearpatrol.com

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

These days, it seems, bad news is painfully easy to find. The good stuff often takes a bit more digging. Thats where GPs expert writers and editors come in, keeping their fingers on the pulse of the industries they cover to tap into all the exciting product news breaking now and waiting for us on the horizon.

With that in mind, we tasked our teams with ID-ing the most interesting trends in their areas of expertise, and wow, theres lots to celebrate and anticipate. Just a few examples to whet your appetite: microdosing mushrooms or LSD is becoming a legal way to level out, you can order coffee beans via text message, digital audio quality has never been better, and holy crap a lot of rad EVs are coming this year.

So hey, quit the doomscrolling and do some pleasant perusing of whats good in outdoors, fitness, style, wellness, food & drink, home, tech, audio, motoring and watches below. It wont erase the bad news, but it just might make things easier to ride out.

They say threes a trend, right? In that case, we are officially declaring the outdoor industrys push toward endemic recycling incorporating factory scraps into new products just that. The micro movements inspiration is, of course, Cotopaxi. The seven-year-old Salt Lake City-based brands colorful packs and jackets are legendarily scrap-sourced, with 94 percent of its products containing repurposed, recycled or responsible materials. More to the point, it has an entire series dubbed Remnant, currently composed of 21 different bags made with fabric sourced from other companies larger production runs.

The practice makes both environmental and business sense, which may explain why at least three other prominent brands have somewhat mimicked it. First theres Nemo Equipment, which assembles the Chipper Reclaimed Closed-Cell Foam Seat aka butt pad from leftover sleeping pad foam. On a larger scale, youll find Fjllrvens Samlaren collection. Named after the Swedish word for gathering, the very limited series features unique color combinations, including a Pink-Air Blue Knken pack, which we are crossing our fingers comes back in stock.

Most recently, we have Arcteryxs ReBird program, a sweeping effort to rethink sustainability that includes an initiative to collect end-of-roll materials and upcycle them into new products. This stuff seems to sell out even faster than Samlaren does, perhaps because it truly doesnt skimp on performance: the lightweight, ski-ready Rush Jacket Rebird features Gore-Tex Pro Most Rugged, after all. That fabric is so high-performance, its no wonder Arcteryx isnt letting an ounce of it go to waste.

As curious creatures, we humans been tracking ourselves for a pretty long time. We've created almanacs, cave paintings, the Manpo-kei and more to document our exploits, bringing ever-better technology to bear with every passing year.

Until recently, breaking down our bodies activities has been fairly hands-on: the pedometer, the wireless heart rate monitor, the accelerometers embedded in phones all record various data, but they still demand a degree of user engagement. The advent of Fitbit and its ilk introduced passive tracking monitoring biometrics in real time, with minimal effort, to hone our pursuit of physical perfection (or something like that). And now, thanks to brands like HidrateSpark and Whoop, were seeing a truly friction-free movement on the horizon.

The HidrateSpark PRO sets hydration goals, employs an LED smart sensor to record water intake and glows to remind you when its time to take a swig, pretty much autonomously. The Whoop 4.0 with Any-Wear clothing technology is more advanced but just as unobtrusive. Users can hide the sensor pod on various points of their bodies to track physical activity, heart rate, stress levels and more. The unit never turns off charge it on the go with the battery pack, and digitize your metrics, 24/7. Theres no screen, no buttons, no effort (other than the initial setup, and, well, your workouts).

Different as they are, both products signal the dawn of a new era in fitness one where we can comprehensively keep tabs on our bodies, without breaking a sweat.

GORP Takes to the Streets

Arcteryx, Salomon, Patagonia, Snow Peak, And Wander, The North Face. Do these brands sound familiar? Probably so if youre prone to long, treacherous hikes across rough terrain. But for fashion-minded folks, these labels represent a new subset of the industry growing with each passing season: GORPcore, an adaption of the acronym for good ol raisins and peanuts, a popular snack mix people take on the trail.

XT-6 Trail Running Shoes

$190.00

The term encompasses technical outerwear for city-oriented types. No, the conditions in a place like New York City cannot compare to the Pacific Northwest, where trails like the Alpine Lakes or the Badlands are located, but youll find people wearing the gear within city limits nonetheless. The trend can be traced back to the early 2010s, when trendsetters turned their attention toward the elderly or the unknowingly boring for inspiration. Then, it was normcore, embodied by gray sneakers, high-end chinos and crisp, plain shirts. The TL;DR of it all: think of someone dressed head-to-toe in humbly priced pieces, or a designers rendition thereof.

Now, a $339-dollar Arcteryx jacket outweighs a silky bomber by a well-known Maison; fleeces are fighting suit jackets off the shelves; Salomon sneakers are converting lifelong Nike and Adidas loyalists. It's a signal that function and form can not only coexist in the menswear space, but drive the conversation.

Microdosing Goes Mainstream

Lets break microdosing down into its two parts: micro, meaning small, and dosing, a reference to the way you dole out a certain substance over time. The word has upended the medical and psychedelics industries respectively over the past half-decade, but it's all coming to a head now.

Substances once perceived as mere gateways to hallucinogenic (often great, occasionally bad, sometimes horrible) trips like mushrooms or LSD are now breakthrough therapeutic treatments in their own rights, capable of aiding those battling depression, PTSD or addiction with one to 10 percent of the amount needed to trip taken daily for a mild, nearly unnoticeable impact. Over time, though, consistent ingestion can lead to transformative change.

Psilocybin, the compound in mushrooms that triggers trips, is still fully illegal in almost every state. Oregon, in late November 2020, became the first state to legalize it for medicinal use. In Denver, Detroit, Somerville, Massachusetts and Oakland, California, psilocybin mushrooms are merely decriminalized, essentially meaning the police cannot enforce laws against possession or consumption.

In Texas and Pennsylvania, bills to further research the compounds potential to treat mental illnesses are nearly law. Plenty of research has already confirmed the likely upsides of both mushrooms and LSD, but professional, state-level assessments could convince even more states to pass similar, medicinal-first legalization plans. That could save thousands of lives, and help millions establish healthier habits and exist with less anxiety, new research reveals.

Sandbagging, Microwaves and Convenience

If describing food as "convenient" sounds a bit like a dog whistle (lazy, bad), know that, as of 2022, it's not. More time at home means more time in the kitchen and, after a year-plus spent indoors, no one should be ashamed to admit they could use a little more help.

The Everyday Set From Anyday

Help like Fellow's new text-to-order coffee bean service, Drops, which asks that you reply to a text with a number indicating how many bags you want. David Chang, self-proclaimed master of the art of sandbagging in the home kitchen, played a part in a pair of new releases: an absurdly good instant noodle released under his Momofuku line and cookware meant not for the stovetop, but the microwave.

Shit, a podcaster came up with a new dried pasta shape to optimize sauce carrying capacity. Making convenient also good isn't entirely new. (Ever heard of an Instant Pot? How about air fryer?) But it's easy to argue we've never seen low- and high-brow merge quite like this.

If you're not a gamer, you probably didn't know there's a whole product category dedicated to gaming furniture and accessories. Brands like Razer and Secretlab have dedicated their entire existence to help gamers achieve win after win.

Embody Gaming Chair

$1,795.00

In the past couple years, we got hints that gaming would become more pronounced outside of the gaming sphere. Razer made a mouse to help with the recent surge in working from home, and Herman Miller released a gaming chair with Logitech G.

In 2022, gaming gear continues to extend far beyond these niche brands, entering almost every aspect of the cultural zeitgeist and becoming more approachable. Mavix released an entry-level gaming chair to complement its pricier options, maintaining its gamer-friendly features minus the huge investment.

And if there's one release that solidifies the category's staying power, it's Ikea's Uppspel collection. The line was designed in collaboration with Republic of Gamers, an Asus-owned brand dedicated to PC gaming. It's filled with stuff to make gaming more comfortable, from chairs to desks, and while no one needs gaming-specific furniture, it's just a hint at what's to come.

The March of the Microchips

For decades, devices that compete on the open market have shared some very, very similar components inside. Until Apple's M1-chip initiative brought to its apex with the new MacBook Pros Mac and Windows computers alike ran on the same Intel chips. In the land of smartphones, meanwhile, virtually every Android phone, from Samsung or Google or LG, has historically had a Qualcomm chip of some sort at its heart.

Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro

But the times are changing. Apple's M1 chip is the loudest example, but this past fall Google announced it's heading in the same direction with its "Tensor" chip that powers the Pixel 6. Amazon is already on its third generation of in-house Graviton chips, used to power the computers at its cloud data centers. Tesla is preparing to produce its own chips as well. Facebook ("Meta," if you must) is on the war path too.

What does this mean? For you, the humble end user, the direct effects may not be completely clearly microchip related. On the upside, a device that's designed as one piece from silicon to screen can reach new heights of efficiency. That means better battery life, more horsepower and less bulk all at the same time.

On the downside, cross-compatibility could take a nosedive. Devices that used to share some common DNA increasingly won't. This could leave developers in the lurch to prioritize one evolutionary path over another. As if they aren't under enough pressure to do so as it is.

From a broader perspective, it illustrates a world-historical concentration of capital in the hands of tech mega-giants. Companies that once made their bones running goofy college websites or delivering books through the mail have ascended to architecting products on a scale that, just decades ago, required the cooperation of entire industries. That kind of centralized planning comes with its benefits, but not all of them are for you.

The Commoditization of Lossless Audio

Audio quality took a big hit in the '90s during the age of Napster and the iPod when compressed digital files (which take a lot of details out of the music, especially on the high and low ends) were all the rage. But over the past four decades there's been a steady resurgence of high-quality audio, largely thanks to old-school analog formats (like vinyl) becoming en vogue again and, more recently, lossless audio becoming easily streamable.

Last year was a banner one for lossless audio. The two biggest music streaming services on the planet, Apple Music and Spotify, both announced lossless streaming tiers. While Spotify's service has yet to appear, Apple's lossless tier made waves by rolling out to all paying Apple Music subscribers at no extra cost. Now you can stream lossless (or CD quality) for $10/month, which is half the price that some legacy lossless streaming services (like Tidal) are charging.

This move by Apple subsequently forced the hand of every other lossless streaming service out there Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz and Amazon all lowered the barrier of entry to their lossless streaming tiers. Now it's not only easier than ever to listen to high quality music streams, but it's also affordable.

An EV for Everyone

So far, buying an EV has meant buying a Tesla or buying a not quite-as-good alternative to a Tesla that is expensive and not that conducive to most peoples lifestyles. But an avalanche of EVs will enter the market in 2022 many on new dedicated EV platforms. And if youre in the market for a new vehicle, there should be an EV that meets your needs.

Luxury options will increase dramatically. Want range and performance? The Lucid Air will deliver more than 500 miles of range and 1,100 horsepower. Want that performance from an off-road EV? The Hummer SUT arrives very soon, and it will accelerate as quickly as a Porsche in WTF mode with off-roading specs that beat the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Just want the luxury car you would have bought but electric? Stay tuned for new offerings from Mercedes, BMW and Audi that are just that.

Want an electric truck? You can hop on the Rivian bandwagon with the new R1T or keep things a bit more traditional with the Ford F-150 Lightning arriving next year. Want something relatively affordable? The VW ID.4 is out. And Nissan, Toyota, Subaru, Kia and Hyundai are launching electric crossovers. Oh, and the starting MSRP for that F-150 Lightning is under $40,000 before the potential tax credit.

Hurdles remain for mass-adoption EVs charging infrastructure isnt where it needs to be yet if you dont have a Level 2 home charger but the right option should be out there if youre willing to leap into the future.

Lean, Green Machines

While 2021 wasn't the first year we noticed a trend toward, shall we say, a more "verdant" timepiece, it was certainly the year in which the green watch firmly took hold. As horological veteran William Massena once explained, the watch world is on a roughly three-year product development cycle, so while entirely new models take quite a while to develop, habillage, or "dressing up" is much quicker and easier to execute. (Read: Take that watch that already exists and make it green! Because everybody else is doing it!)

While it would've perhaps been unthinkable just a few short years ago and certainly 20 or 30 years ago watches with colored dials are back in a big way. Something that isn't black, white or silver or, heaven forbid, blue! seems like it might just be the next big thing. Rolex launched a new series of "Stella" dials in their Oyster Perpetual line, and for the first time (perhaps ever), an OP became nearly impossible to buy at retail. Then came a green Datejust with what looks like either pot leafs or palm fronds on it (depending how much weed you smoke), and the entire Internet lit up.

Patek did the same thing, turning its 5909 annual calendar into a lean, green machine (and making it in steel, no less), which earned the timepiece a spot in our GP100. (The brand did the same for a short, final run of the famed 5711 pure unobtanium if there is such a thing.) Who knows what's next? If green is "in," anything seems possible. Is this the end of boringly bland watch dials a window into a brighter future? Color us intrigued.

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10 Fascinating Trends to Watch in 2022 - gearpatrol.com

Single-payer health care is back on the table at the California Capitol – Capital Public Radio News

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

This week, California lawmakers will take up the latest attempt to get all state residents covered under the same health plan an idea referred to as single payer health care thats been sparking debate at the Capitol for the past five years.

Under the new plan, dubbed CalCare, all Californians would be insured by the same entity and would be able to access any doctor, regardless of network. Supporters argue that this will reduce price gouging and give all residents equal access to care.

AB 1400 is sponsored by the California Nurses Association, who first introduced single payer legislation in 2017. At the time, the proposal had an estimated $400 billion price tag and no funding source.

After it failed, an Assembly committee gathered to discuss options for reforming the states health care delivery system. The committee put together recommendations for how to make coverage more affordable and accessible for all Californians, which informed legislation that emerged in the following years.

The new proposal would create a tax to fund the single payer option. The tax would apply to companies earning more than $2 million, businesses with 50 or more employees and individuals making more than roughly $150,000 a year.

Carmen Comsti, lead regulatory policy specialist with the nurses association, says the tax will generate somewhere between $160 and $170 billion annually.

We are talking about ensuring that everybody gets comprehensive benefits without copays or deductibles, Comsti said.

Opponents argue that a single payer system eliminates choices for those who might prefer to stay on a private plan, and that legislators should work instead to make sure everyone is insured and that all coverage is affordable a model often referred to as universal health care.

A coalition that includes the California Association of Health Plans, the California Hospital Association and the California Medical Association issued a release about the new proposal.

Californians need and deserve a stable health care system they can rely on at all times, especially now, wrote coalition spokesperson Ned Wigglesworth. We urge the Legislature to reject this legislation that will risk the health care of the residents of our state when they need it most.

The coalition also voiced concern about the proposed tax structure being an economic burden to California families.

Comsti said the taxes are necessary to reform an unsustainable system.

Were already paying for all the costs of healthcare in California, she said. With single payer health care, we could pay less overall.

Gov. Gavin Newsom was a supporter of single payer health care during his campaign, but more recently has been an advocate for options that build off the current system.

Assembly Health Committee Chair Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa) announced Thursday that he will vote to move the proposal forward, citing frustration with high drug prices, insurance company profits, claim denials and other woes of the current, fragmented health care system.

People are angry, Wood told CapRadio. They're frustrated, they're scared to get sick and the system is broken.

Wood said the proposal has a ways to go and that he will put his concerns in writing for the bills author, Ash Kalra (D-San Jose). He said the primary reasons single payer has failed in the past have been cost, and opposition from health plans and other business interests.

He said its important to keep discussing all potential solutions, even if they dont ultimately cross the finish line.

For me, no is not the answer, Wood said. We're going to have to resolve this and we're going to have to make improvements in the system because it's not going to go away.

Wood is also pushing his own bill, AB 1130, which would establish an Office of Health Care Affordability to analyze spending across the health care system and propose ways to cut costs related to plans, hospitals and prescription drugs.

To move forward, AB 1400 must pass the health committee by Jan. 14 and pass the Assembly by Jan. 31.

CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.

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Single-payer health care is back on the table at the California Capitol - Capital Public Radio News

Grant will help improve access to health care – Washington Daily News – thewashingtondailynews.com

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Danzig

Access East, Inc. recently announced it has been awarded a four-year, $795,000 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Rural Health Care Services Outreach program. Access East, in partnership with Vidant Beaufort Hospital, a campus of Vidant Medical Center, along with the Beaufort County Health Department and Agape Community Health Services, have established the Beaufort County Rural Health Outreach Consortium. The consortium partners will implement the Rural Health Access Program with a focus to improve access to care and care coordination in Beaufort County.

The consortium is committed to establishing a stronger health network for all residents of Beaufort County. The goals of the program are to increase access to care, improve self-management of chronic disease, connect residents to needed resources and decrease emergency department usage for non-acute/emergent care by connecting residents to a primary care provider.

Vidant Beaufort Hospital offers a mobile wellness unit the Community Health Improvement Coach that will travel to locations throughout Beaufort County offering free health and wellness screenings. The goal is to provide much needed screenings in rural communities in hopes of catching chronic disease in the earliest stages.

The rural health access program also provides a community health worker and benefits advocate who will be a vital asset to those enrolled in the program serving as a liaison between health/social services and participants to facilitate access to supportive services and primary care providers. Program enrollees will receive health education, case management services, and link program participants to services to address social determinants of health.

Our programs at Access East have strengthened the resources to improve health service delivery for the past 20 years throughout eastern North Carolina, said Shantell Cheek, director of uninsured programs for Access East and director for rural health access program. We are looking forward to seeing the impact this program and its related services will have to improve the health and quality of life for the residents of Beaufort County.

Grant will help improve access to health care - Washington Daily News - thewashingtondailynews.com

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