So I’ve been away for the last few weeks, first visiting family for the first time in a long time, and now at a conference put on by The Claremont Institute. I’ll be back to full speed (on both the Substack and Unraveling w/Jocko) in couple of days, but in the meantime I had a fun interaction yesterday.

Over the course of the previous few installments, we’ve seen that the lower classes of English society were viewed with a mixture of contempt and paternalism, disgust and pity, suspicion and fear by their social betters. Like black slaves in later years, the English poor were described as dirty, lazy, ugly, conniving, lustful, gluttonous, as well as a potentially dangerous source of rebellion and disorder - in short, the personification of animality, dissolution, and chaos. Far from being uniquely English, this view of society’s dregs has been common in civilizations around the world, since time immemorial. By the mid-1600s, there were still very few Africans in colonial America, but the stereotypes that would later attach to Negroes and become synonymous with anti-black racism were already in place, waiting to be passed on to them by the poor whites whose place they were to take at the bottom of society.

As NATO meets to discuss the tension on the Russian border to Ukraine, and the papers fill with denunciations of Putin’s aggression, I still find it useful to return to the framework I developed in Crashed for analyzing the intersection of geopolitics and economics and the rise of Russia as a challenger. This framework consists of three basic propositions.

The tense stand off on Columbia University campus between student protestors, the university administration, counter-protestors and law enforcement, has become the object of passionate engagement and moral opprobrium across the United States and far beyond. It has sparked movements on campuses across the country and repressive efforts including the deployment of armed police. The issues at stake are Gaza, Israel, the political culture of the United States, norms of behavior and free speech on campus, allegations of anti-semitism, islamophobia and basic issues of control. But at Columbia, at least, the struggle is also about political economy. Indeed, to a surprising degree, questions of political economy are at the heart of the protest. At the same time, it is widely believed that financial anxieties are also influencing the cack-handed response of the University administration.

I will be reading my own verse as well as assorted 20th-century material. (I apologize for paywalling this earlier—that was a scurvy trick. Poetry is for the people!) This is a private event. Please do not share or publicize. Email qulturewar@proton.me

"Without continuity, there is no change."

When “The Anarchist's Design Book” was released in 2016, I knew there would be hate mail. I get a pile of it whenever I write a book, pen a magazine article or film a video. I accept this; it comes with the territory. And after 33 years of writing, the barbs are mostly ticks off a possum’s back.

Publisher’s note: Happy Saturday, a day for weekend classes, writing negative Yelp reviews, and Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. This post originally appeared on the Lost Art Press blog in 2016 and last year. We hope you enjoy it.

Sveiki atvykę į pirmajį audio mini serialą mano Substack kanale. Kadangi tai pirmas mano postas čia, turėčiau papasakoti, kam kuriu šį kanalą ir kodėl jus kviečiu prie prisijungti, bet padarysim kitaip - aš kelsiu pirmąsias savo audio serijas, jūs jas paklausysite, gal net pakomentuosite, o tada bus aiškiau matyti. Ir jums ir man:)

Pilnas epizodas prieinamas prenumeratoriams - rėmėjams. Ačiū, kad remiate🙏

Professor Julie Moore was fired from Taylor University in what has become a pattern at far-right Christian schools.

We're having a quick chat after we watch "God and Country"

Words by Rosa Kumar

On the day of his execution, Bhagat Singh was reading Lenin. He would mark his place in the book by folding the top of the page. Indian Marxists would often cite this act, saying they need to open his book and continue from the page he left off. Today, communism is a prevalent ideology in the politics and government of southern India. However, the roots of communism in India can be traced back over a century. In the 1920s, the ideology of communism spread across British-occupied India like wildfire. The anxieties surrounding this new communist movement were deeply felt by colonial authorities – leading to conspiracy cases and mass arrests. From the Peshawar conspiracy cases to the split of the Communist Party of India in 1964, India has a long and complex history with the political ideology of communism. In the latest Brown History Newsletter, Nav Ezhilan looks at the history of radical leftism and its impact on Indian society.

New Year, New Strategy

How could I accuse a face such as this?

Martin Scorsese embraces the death of cinema—and thrives

Television for NPCs

The former "Celebrity Apprentice" talent handler on what he saw behind the scenes.

A discussion with the attorney and "Really American" legal host Ethan Bearman

On this day in 1945, Dorothy Parker had writer's block

(plus, please keep scrolling for a very important poll)

Will there ever be a Secrets of Great British Castles season 3? How much of a boss was William Marshal? What is my favourite beer? And other pressing questions...

I have a good one to start you off...

One day in early August in the fourth century AD, something strange happened in Rome. Those who were outside braving the heat, walking on the Esquiline Hill would have glanced at the sky to notice a curious cloud formation - very different certainly from the compact cloud cover typical of snowfall - and would have been astonished to see snowflakes drifting down to earth – in the heat of summer! Some may have fled to escape this manifestation of divine wrath while others may have tentatively stretched out a hand to catch them and see them evaporate like real snowflakes. Someone noted and recorded the event.

Somewhere in the Negev Desert, Mount Sinai, at dawn on a day of the 13th century BC: "Moses, go and speak to the children of Israel! Tell them that they must make a wooden Ark of Acacia, its length of two and a half cubits and its width of a cubit and a half “,

"I used to write long-winded descriptions...in a kind of cipher shorthand which I am now unable to read even with a magnifying glass…"

"I started with paper, pencil and binoculars."

The machine tool industry is heavily concentrated geographically. A handful of countries located in Western Europe and East Asia account for almost all the global exports, Germany and Japan being the world’s two undisputed leaders. Considering that the machine tool industry provides the production base for all the other manufacturing industries, including the military, the vast quantitative and qualitative regional disparities in machine tool production have far-reaching strategic consequences.

In August 1999, President Yeltsin appointed his FSB Chief Putin as the new Prime Minister. Same day, he named this little known man as his official successor. Yet, there was a problem. To become a president, Putin had to go through elections which he could not win

自由嘅靈魂，你奈我唔何

I disappeared one month ago in an all too similar fashion as Anne Heche. I am here to share my journey into hell with only a limited amount of my friends and supporters.

Yes, there was a life-size female doll hanging from the chandelier

Cionci Article

A translation of Adriano Romualdi's essay

A study of the Deep State's immolation of a Catholic president in masonic sacred space

A Lesson in the Eternal Vigilance Required to Secure Liberty in Each Generation

Musk has a plot to transform America that’s more reminiscent of the supervillainry of a Marvel or DC film than a business plan. Last night this plan took a big step forward—and now America is at risk.

Decades after the last licensed Nintendo Entertainment System cart, NES games still get released. This list—which excludes prototypes/localizations of first-gen NES titles—ranks 1,401 indie games.

Tudor London as you've never seen it before (unless you read Part 1).

TV pioneer has four plaques within a five-minute Soho/Covent Garden walk.

Across much of the world, men and women think alike. However, in countries that are economically developed and culturally liberal, young men and women are polarising. As chronicled by John Burn-Murdoch, young women are increasingly likely to identify as ‘progressives’ and vote for leftists, while young men remain more

Religions are like species and language. They can be categorised into common clusters, with shared origins, which then fission into sects. By tracing religious evolution, Lance Grande reveals how our culture goes back millennia. In this review, I outline Grande’s fascinating insights about conquest, patriarchy and the afterlife, then raise questions for further research:

The REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

How Quesnel, B.C. Went Crazy Over a Local Woman’s Reading Choices

A definition, tested

Ruminations on Creators and Critics

Is this really the start of the year?

The real history of England's patron saint