Podcasts about potemkin

Grabler, Jochen www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, Studio 9

Informativo de primera hora de la mañana, en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital Radio. Informativo de primera hora de la mañana, en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital Radio. Hoy hace 2 años: Griñán no entró en prisión tras suspender la Audiencia de Sevilla la pena por su enfermedad. Hoy se cumplen 1.218 días del cruel ataque e invasión de Rusia a Ucrania. 3 años y 111 días. Hoy es viernes 27 de junio de 2025. Día Internacional de las Personas Sordociegas. El 27 de junio se celebra el Día Internacional de las Personas Sordociegas, con el objetivo de visibilizar a las personas que en todo el mundo presentan esta discapacidad física y sensibilizar al resto de la población para que brinden su ayuda y de esta manera colaborar para que tengan mayor autonomía y mejoren su calidad de vida. 1706.- La Guerra de Sucesión obliga a trasladar la Corte de Madrid a Burgos. 1801.- Tras la batalla de Alejandría, los franceses capitulan en Egipto ante los ingleses y regresan a Francia. 1905.- Se amotina la tripulación del acorazado ruso Potemkin en Sebastopol, y el buque se refugia en el puerto rumano de Constanza. 1946.- Se hunde en aguas de las islas Baleares el submarino español C-4 tras chocar con el destructor Lepanto. Mueren sus 60 tripulantes. 1957.- La empresa española Seat pone a la venta el popular modelo "Seiscientos" (600). 1967.- Primer cajero automático en una sucursal de Barclays Bank en Enfield (Reino Unido). 1977.- Josep Tarradellas, presidente de la Generalitat de Cataluña en el exilio, se reúne en Madrid con el presidente del primer Gobierno de la democracia española, el centrista Adolfo Suárez. 1989.- La Cumbre de presidentes y jefes de Estado de la CE acuerda en Madrid iniciar el proceso para la Unidad Económica y Monetaria a partir del 1 de julio de 1990 e impulsar una acción exterior común. 2011.- El Congreso de los Diputados aprueba la reforma de las pensiones en España, que retrasa la edad de jubilación hasta los 67 años. 2018.- El Supremo confirma el procesamiento de la cúpula del "procés" por rebelión. Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro; Zoilo y Ladislao Rey. Sánchez responde a Trump que España es un país "soberano" y le recuerda que la política comercial se negocia con la UE. El Tribunal Constitucional avala la ley de amnistía con la mayoría de los magistrados progresistas. Sánchez ve "una magnífica noticia" el aval del Constitucional a la amnistía y Feijóo lo tacha de "ilegal" y "vergüenza" Illa, Junts y ERC celebran el aval del Constitucional a la ley de amnistía y piden al Supremo aplicarla: "Toca cumplir". La débil renta familiar coloca a Canarias como segunda peor comunidad en gasto de los hogares. El gasto medio por persona y año en País Vasco, el más alto, fue el 18,7% superior al nacional, este en 13.120 euros, mientras que Extremadura, con el 15,4% menos, y Canarias, con el 13,3%, son última y penúltima; las familias más pobres se dejan el 63% en vivienda, agua, electricidad y alimentación. Clavijo ve “indecente” que las comunidades no colaboren con los menores migrantes y avisa de que intervendrá la Fiscalía "Sería ilegal", "lo tendrían que "pagar en los tribunales", advierte el presidente canario. Los salarios en hostelería se incrementarán 264 millones en tres años tras el convenio de la provincia tinerfeña. Sindicalistas de Base reconoce que el convenio de estabilidad en tres años ha supuesto una "revisión salarial fuerte" El sector de la hostelería contabiliza 1.771 millones de euros al año de masa salarial en la provincia de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 825 millones en lo relativo a los alojamientos y 946 millones de restauración. Tras el acuerdo alcanzado con la reforma de su convenio colectivo (2025-2028), esa cifra se verá incrementada en más de 80 millones de euros anuales en los próximos tres años. El 27 de junio de 1943 nacía Carlos Mejía Godoy, cantante y compositor nicaragüense. El Cristo de Palacaguina.

Bienvenidos a La Diez Capital Radio! Están a punto de comenzar un nuevo episodio de nuestro Programa de Actualidad, donde la información, la formación y el entretenimiento se encuentran para ofrecerles lo mejor de las noticias y temas relevantes. Este programa, dirigido y presentado por Miguel Ángel González Suárez, es su ventana directa a los acontecimientos más importantes, así como a las historias que capturan la esencia de nuestro tiempo. A través de un enfoque dinámico y cercano, Miguel Ángel conecta con ustedes para proporcionar una experiencia informativa y envolvente. Desde análisis profundos hasta entrevistas exclusivas, cada emisión está diseñada para mantenerles al tanto, ofrecerles nuevos conocimientos y, por supuesto, entretenerles. Para más detalles sobre el programa, visiten nuestra web en www.ladiez.es. - Informativo de primera hora de la mañana, en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital Radio. Informativo de primera hora de la mañana, en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital Radio. Hoy hace 2 años: Griñán no entró en prisión tras suspender la Audiencia de Sevilla la pena por su enfermedad. Hoy se cumplen 1.218 días del cruel ataque e invasión de Rusia a Ucrania. 3 años y 111 días. Hoy es viernes 27 de junio de 2025. Día Internacional de las Personas Sordociegas. El 27 de junio se celebra el Día Internacional de las Personas Sordociegas, con el objetivo de visibilizar a las personas que en todo el mundo presentan esta discapacidad física y sensibilizar al resto de la población para que brinden su ayuda y de esta manera colaborar para que tengan mayor autonomía y mejoren su calidad de vida. 1706.- La Guerra de Sucesión obliga a trasladar la Corte de Madrid a Burgos. 1801.- Tras la batalla de Alejandría, los franceses capitulan en Egipto ante los ingleses y regresan a Francia. 1905.- Se amotina la tripulación del acorazado ruso Potemkin en Sebastopol, y el buque se refugia en el puerto rumano de Constanza. 1946.- Se hunde en aguas de las islas Baleares el submarino español C-4 tras chocar con el destructor Lepanto. Mueren sus 60 tripulantes. 1957.- La empresa española Seat pone a la venta el popular modelo "Seiscientos" (600). 1967.- Primer cajero automático en una sucursal de Barclays Bank en Enfield (Reino Unido). 1977.- Josep Tarradellas, presidente de la Generalitat de Cataluña en el exilio, se reúne en Madrid con el presidente del primer Gobierno de la democracia española, el centrista Adolfo Suárez. 1989.- La Cumbre de presidentes y jefes de Estado de la CE acuerda en Madrid iniciar el proceso para la Unidad Económica y Monetaria a partir del 1 de julio de 1990 e impulsar una acción exterior común. 2011.- El Congreso de los Diputados aprueba la reforma de las pensiones en España, que retrasa la edad de jubilación hasta los 67 años. 2018.- El Supremo confirma el procesamiento de la cúpula del "procés" por rebelión. Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro; Zoilo y Ladislao Rey. Sánchez responde a Trump que España es un país "soberano" y le recuerda que la política comercial se negocia con la UE. El Tribunal Constitucional avala la ley de amnistía con la mayoría de los magistrados progresistas. Sánchez ve "una magnífica noticia" el aval del Constitucional a la amnistía y Feijóo lo tacha de "ilegal" y "vergüenza" Illa, Junts y ERC celebran el aval del Constitucional a la ley de amnistía y piden al Supremo aplicarla: "Toca cumplir". La débil renta familiar coloca a Canarias como segunda peor comunidad en gasto de los hogares. El gasto medio por persona y año en País Vasco, el más alto, fue el 18,7% superior al nacional, este en 13.120 euros, mientras que Extremadura, con el 15,4% menos, y Canarias, con el 13,3%, son última y penúltima; las familias más pobres se dejan el 63% en vivienda, agua, electricidad y alimentación. Clavijo ve “indecente” que las comunidades no colaboren con los menores migrantes y avisa de que intervendrá la Fiscalía "Sería ilegal", "lo tendrían que "pagar en los tribunales", advierte el presidente canario. Los salarios en hostelería se incrementarán 264 millones en tres años tras el convenio de la provincia tinerfeña. Sindicalistas de Base reconoce que el convenio de estabilidad en tres años ha supuesto una "revisión salarial fuerte" El sector de la hostelería contabiliza 1.771 millones de euros al año de masa salarial en la provincia de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 825 millones en lo relativo a los alojamientos y 946 millones de restauración. Tras el acuerdo alcanzado con la reforma de su convenio colectivo (2025-2028), esa cifra se verá incrementada en más de 80 millones de euros anuales en los próximos tres años. El 27 de junio de 1943 nacía Carlos Mejía Godoy, cantante y compositor nicaragüense. El Cristo de Palacaguina. - Sección de actualidad con mucho sentido de Humor inteligente en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital radio con el periodista socarrón y palmero, José Juan Pérez Capote, El Nº 1. - 🎙️ Sección en el Remate con Pepe Rodríguez – Director de Capital Radio Gran Canaria. En este episodio tenemos el placer de conversar con Pepe Rodríguez, director de Capital Radio Gran Canaria, un referente en el periodismo radiofónico de las Islas. Hablamos sobre su trayectoria, el papel de la radio en la era digital, los retos de la comunicación en Canarias y su visión del panorama mediático actual. Pepe comparte anécdotas, reflexiones y nos abre una ventana al funcionamiento interno de una emisora que apuesta por la información rigurosa, el análisis independiente y el compromiso con la sociedad canaria. - Entrevista exclusiva al abogado, economista y asesor experto en criptomonedas Esteban García Gonzales del bufete especializado en criptomonedas Lytae Veteres Lytaeveteres.com , quien se conecta en directo desde Madrid donde se encuentra representando a clientes del nuevo escándalo crypto en emerger con epicentro en Canarias : FX Winning. Cientos de afectados contabilizados , más de mil listones en pérdidas y muy poca cobertura informativa , un programa imperdible con jose Figueroa Garcia y Miguel Angel González Suárez! - 🎙 Alberto Díaz Jiménez | Voces del Archipiélago Libre. Únete a una conversación sin filtros con Alberto Díaz Jiménez, activista y referente del independentismo canario. Analizamos la actualidad política, social y cultural de Canarias desde una perspectiva crítica, soberanista y comprometida con la autodeterminación del pueblo canario.

Heute vor 120 Jahren meuterten vor Odessa im Schwarzen Meer die Matrosen des Panzerkreuzers "Potemkin". Verdorbenes Fleisch hatte das Fass zum Überlaufen gebracht.

Darrell Castle discusses how thoroughly, completely, and totally the American people have been lied to and how Joe Biden's diagnosis of metastasized cancer is evidence of those lies. Transcription / Notes: THE OPPOSITE OF DEMOCRACY Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today's Castle Report. This is Friday the 23rd day of May in the year of our Lord 2025. This is Memorial Day weekend which is a time we are supposed to pause and remember those who fell in battle throughout the 250 years of America's existence. Just a three-day weekend for most people but for some a sad time and a reminder of lives that could have been. The purpose of this report today is not to discuss Memorial Day but to discuss how thoroughly, completely, and totally we have been lied to and how Joe Biden's diagnosis of metastasized cancer is evidence of those lies. The lies I just mentioned are of such profound importance because they go to the very heart of this Constitutional Republic or what the Democrat Politicians often refer to as “our democracy.” The lies were not just the usual wink of a politician's eye as if to say you know what I mean, right. No, these lies were not subtle and they were designed to systemically and ruthlessly mislead us as to the condition of Joe Biden and to deceive us in order to place an unelected cohort in the office of president of the United States. Every institution and every person that vouched for him and told us that he was sharp as a tack and that he ran rings around everybody should lose all credibility and should never be believed or trusted again. When he was a non-campaigning candidate in 2020 apparently just sitting at home while others did the work and spoke for him most of us knew something was wrong. He was elected anyway or was he.  Now, with this open deception I suppose it's OK if I say publicly, no, that election was not fair it was stolen. How do I know that, well, I don't but these people apparently lie about even the fact that their candidate is not the real candidate but who knows. I just know now without a doubt that the entire four years of his presidency was a complete lie and a fraud against the American people and their guarantee of the ability to freely select leaders. We could see the confusion in his eyes—his inability to complete a sentence—his stumbling walk—his falling asleep at critical moments, his shaking hands with ghosts. To point these things out was just pandering to extremists or cruelty, or worst of all, disinformation. We all saw it, but they covered it up. The White House staff insisted that he was sharp as a tack behind closed doors. Jake Tapper, who now spends his time selling his book refuting everything he once said was different when the machine he once worked for had power. Back in those days he told us that he knew the man and never saw any evidence of decline.  The sycophant media told us he was more engaged than ever. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, blamed a cold or a childhood stutter for the fact that he couldn't make a 10 minute speech and remain coherent. This was warfare conducted psychologically against the American people and against common sense. The old quip—who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes became reality instead of just a clever line. Leaked memos and emails from the White House admit the issues he suffered from and the treatment including stimulants used to keep him going. Whoever was exercising power in his place wanted desperately to keep it. He became, in effect, a Potemkin president or kind of like a movie set which is designed to confuse and hide the reality that the great naval battle just filmed was fought in a small swimming pool. Every decision made during his entire presidency is now in question. When I say in question I really mean discredited and invalid. The $93 million green energy spending scam-- the 1500 last minute pardons—the open borders admitting known criminals from the prisons of the world...

Es war ein feierlicher sogenannter Aufstellungsappell am Donnerstag in Vilnius. Die Panzerbrigade der Bundeswehr ist in Litauen in Dienst gestellt worden. Über die deutsche Brigade spricht Host Anna Engelke mit Marco Seliger. Für den Journalisten der NZZ und Bundeswehr-Kenner hat das eine historische Dimension. Erstmals seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg werde deutsches Militär mit einem Kampfverband außerhalb Deutschlands dauerhaft stationiert. Dies sei „tatsächlich im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eine Zeitenwende“. Die Brigade der Bundeswehr soll bis Ende 2027 einsatzfähig sein. Laut aktuellen Umfragen stehen bis zu 90 Prozent der Litauer der Stationierung positiv gegenüber, erklärt Seliger. In ihrer Perzeption seien die deutsche Brigade und das deutsche militärische Engagement im Rahmen der Nato ihre Existenzversicherung. Allerdings gebe es Zweifel, ob Deutschland - wenn es zum Schwur käme - sein Beistandsversprechen einhalte. Kai Küstner fasst die aktuelle Lage in der Ukraine zusammen. Auch nach dem Telefonat der Präsidenten Trump und Putin gebe es nicht das geringste Anzeichen für eine Bewegung Richtung Feuerpause. Kai spricht mit Blick auf Friedenshoffnungen von “Potemkin'scher Diplomatie” Putins, weil vieles darauf hindeutet, dass er echte Verhandlungsbereitschaft nur vortäuscht. Während die EU ein 17. Sanktionspaket verabschiedet hat, scheint US-Präsident Trump den Druck auf Moskau nicht erhöhen zu wollen. Kai erläutert auch, was hinter der Aussage Putins steckt, in der Grenzregion zur Ukraine eine Pufferzone schaffen zu wollen. Lob und Kritik, alles bitte per Mail an streitkraefte@ndr.de Alle Folgen von “Streitkräfte und Strategien” https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast2998.html Das ganze Interview mit Marco Seliger https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/Seliger-Paradigmenwechsel-in-der-deutschen-Sicherheitspolitk,audio1879272.html NSA-Report zu russischen Cyberangriffen https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/4193749/nsa-and-others-publish-advisory-warning-of-russian-state-sponsored-cyber-campai/ Link zu neuer Staffel von “Killed In Action – Trauma Bundeswehr” https://1.ard.de/Killed_in_Action_1 Stefan Niemann über NATO-Manöver an der Ostflanke auf tagesschau24 https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-1469548.html

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-india-fights-alone-narrative-wars-western-gaslighting-and-a-missed-opportunity-13891339.htmlFrom the 1st of May until the 20th I was traveling in the US, and thus had to depend on western media (mostly Twitter/X) for news about Operation Sindoor and the aftermath. It was self-evident that there was no point in reading things like the NYTimes, Wapo, the Economist, etc. because one look at their headlines confirmed that they were “manufacturing consent”.Soft PowerGiven the difference in X posts that I read in the US and those in India, I think the algorithms were deprecating posts for me in ways that are hard to detect. In other words, there is a narrative war where India has no say, but lots at stake. India's soft power is seriously wanting. Joseph Nye, the academic who popularized that phrase, passed away this week: following in his footsteps, it behooves India to make a concerted attempt to improve its story-telling.It faces an uphill battle, because Western, especially American, media has shown an ability to gaslight at scale in three major stories in the recent past: the COVID panic, the “Trump-is-a-Russian-stooge” meme, and the “Biden is mentally sharp as a tack” story. They are good at it, have no love lost for India, and so India needs a long-term plan to get its own propaganda story out, for instance developing an Al-Jazeera-style global footprint or an X-style social medium.The entire Western narrative, for self-serving purposes, continues to be against India, for good reason: they do not wish to see India grow into a peer-level competitor at the G3 level. In this, both China and the West are of one mind, and it shows. Besides, the West has every incentive to try to block India from becoming a major arms exporter: they would prefer India to continue to be one of the biggest importers, preferably from them.Narrative warfare is a Western specialty, as I said in Information Warfare, Narrative-Building: That Kind of Warfare. In addition to kinetic warfare, India needs to up its game here too. Narratives have real-life consequences.The Pakistanis have been quite successful in their own narratives, riding on Western media: here is an example from the Nikkei (which owns the Financial Times) from a Pakistani journalist. This is typical of the stories created by Pakistanis and amplified by western media: basically that India took a major hit, with five or six high-end aircraft downed by Pakistani/Chinese weaponry. The story was repeated so many times that it essentially became the Truth.A step change in aerial warfareMy personal belief is that India won a victory on the ground and in the air, humiliating Pakistan, attacking it at will and exposing its Chinese armaments as below-par. Some thoughtful neutral experts support this view: See Calibrated Force and the Future of Indian Deterrence. India also demonstrated surprising competence in the new age of electronics-based warfare. It may no longer be expensive fighter jets (and by extension, aircraft carriers) that tilt the balance, but missiles, drones and integrated air defense.This must be emphasized. There are periodic step-functions in warfare that render earlier, victorious technologies/processes less valuable: this is similar to disruptive innovation, where the ‘insurgent' firm nullifies the apparent advantages of the ‘incumbent' firm. Often that means a point of inflection. An example is the arrival of the longbow in medieval times that made hitherto unstoppable heavy cavalry stumble. Another is the arrival of air power itself.Today there may be another point of inflection. Experts have suggested that warfare going forward will be software-driven, including drone swarms that can autonomously reshape their formations (reminiscent of the murmurations of flocks of starlings). Presumably, there will be plenty of predictive AI built in as well. Given India's poor track record in software products, it was generally assumed that India would not do so well in such a new environment.In reality, there appears to have been a clever integration of indigenous and imported technology to create an “iron dome” of sorts against Pakistan's Chinese missiles, of which an advanced variant, PL-15, was apparently shot down intact.More interestingly, it appears that Lakshya and Banshee drones were programmed to masquerade as Rafales, Sukhois, etc. by emitting their radar signals, thus attracting enemy fire towards themselves. This might explain the claims of five or six Indian aircraft shot down by Pakistan, whereas in reality they may have simply shot down the phantom, mimic dronesThe implications are large: in effect, India was able to attack Pakistan at will: video evidence shows significant damage to terrorist sites in the first round, and to military sites in the second round, including to key Pakistani air bases, as well as, it is said, the entrance tunnel to the nuclear storage facilities in the Kirana Hills. Indian air dominance appears to have forced the Pakistanis to beg for US support to suggest a cessation of hostilities.This skirmish was proof in the heat of battle for India's indigenous weapons, especially the BrahMos (although of course that is a joint venture with Russia). It may result in a number of serious queries from prospective customers especially in Southeast Asia, who will be interested in battlefield performance against Chinese missiles and aircraft. This would be a win for India's arms industry.Conversely, there is a singular sore spot: fighter jets. For a variety of reasons, most especially the fact that the Kaveri engine has not been allowed to complete its testing and development phase, India is still dependent on others for advanced fighters. And this is just fine as far as they are concerned, because the Americans want to sell F-35s, the French want to sell more Rafales, and the Russians want to sell Su-57s.Here's a twitter comment by a military historian who suggests that India's fighter jets are inadequate. He deleted his further comment that indigenization is fine as industrial policy, but it doesn't work for advanced weaponry. This is a typically sniffy attitude towards India, which is grist to the mill for the Chandigarh Lobby's successful efforts to trash local weapons and gain lucrative middleman deals for foreign weapons.Strategic Dilemma: To push on or notThere is also a strategic dilemma. India has an unfortunate habit of wasting its soldiers' hard-won victories at the negotiating table due to bad political calculations. The epitome of this is of course, Indira Gandhi's 1971 give-away of 93,000 Pakistani PoWs in exchange for essentially… nothing. There is some reason to wonder if something similar happened in 2025 as well. A tactical victory was possibly converted into a stalemate, and the old era of hyphenation and the nuclear bogey has returned.What we saw in 2025 was that the Pakistanis were taken by surprise, and India had a massive advantage. But now that cat is out of the bag, Pakistanis and Chinese will regroup and figure out corrective tactics. Thus India has, to use an American expression, “shot its wad”, and the element of surprise is gone forever.The end game for India is the dissolution of Pakistan into four or five statelets, which, one hopes, will then concentrate on Pakistani Punjab as the root of all their troubles. In that case, they will keep each other occupied, and India can live in peace without regular terrorist attacks. Of course, that may be a pipe-dream, given the Ghazwa-e-Hind formula many entertain, but the collapse of the Pakistani state is anyway desirable for India.Should India have continued its offensive? Forget the murky issue of the nuclear assets in Sargodha. Should India have moved the Line of Control forward into some areas, perhaps into Gilgit-Baltistan (with Sharda Peeth and the Kishenganga) and up to the Jhelum River in Pak-occupied Jammu and Kashmir? The problem though, is that once you start moving past the border posts, you have hostile civilians to contend with, and your supply lines start getting stretched.Even though it is tragic to let go of an opportunity to thrash an enemy that's on the back foot, and Pakistan will inevitably use the truce to rearm itself and come back ever stronger (the Treaty of Hudaybiyah is not a meme in the Islamic world for nothing), it is not clear to me what India could have done to militarily make the LOC irrelevant and make Pakistan implode, especially in the context of American pushback.The role of the USWhy was there pressure from President Trump? One of the things I observed during my US stay is the total absence of DOGE and Elon Musk from the headlines after Trump's 100 days, very contrary to their ubiquity early on. Similarly, the security implications of Trump's recent embrace of Syria's President Al-Sharaa contradicts Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's views on Syria as evidenced by her tweets. Further, there are U-turns on tariffs.This means Trump is being mercurial as ever. Furthermore, there might be something to the idea that his family's embrace of crypto may have endeared Pakistan – which is making noises about supporting crypto at scale – to him. All this is red-pilling many about Trump. Indeed, he may be allowing short-term, commercial considerations to drive policy, which may return to haunt the US: that is exactly what Clinton, Bush, Obama et al did with respect to China.On the other hand, there are longer-term considerations, too. Pakistan is essentially a Potemkin nation, which has no particular reason to exist, other than it is being propped up. Initially, it was a British project for the Russian Great Game; then it was taken over by the US Deep State in order to fend off the Soviet Union. Pakistan was a “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA) according to Obama if I remember right, and earlier it was a member of CENTO and SEATO.The IMF loan to Pakistan, approved in the middle of the hostilities, is not surprising, either: this has happened before. In a way, it is a complicated money-laundering activity. Funds from somewhere (possibly Qatar) are channeled to Pakistan, which then buys American arms. Thus the Deep State Military Industrial Complex is the winner.With the end of the Afghanistan wars, Pakistan offers no obvious geographic and strategic value to the US. Unless, of course, the target is no longer Russia, but India. Perhaps in anticipation of its being a check on India, the US had helped Pakistan nuclearize, according to this archived article from the NYTimes: US and China Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb, from a time when it was possibly more truthful. I am indebted to Brahma Chellaney for this link.This may suggest that Pakistan's nuclear ‘assets' are not theirs, but are managed by American crew. On the other hand, though, the greater possibility is that such assets are loaned by China. Pakistan is a fantastic force multiplier for China.Abhimanyu SyndromeThe bottom line, then, is that India is on its own: sort of an Abhimanyu Syndrome, with nobody to help. The most obvious ‘friend' is Japan (because of the China threat), but it is severely constrained by American red lines: see how there was not a murmur from the Quad after Pahalgam. India's very possible rise is in fact encouraging other powers to put it down: grow so much, but no farther.There really is no alternative for India but to industrialize, manufacture everything possible for its large internal market, and increase the level of strategic autonomy in everything it makes: no more dependence on third parties, which may feel free to use kill switches, or deny spares or components at will. In this round, India did surprisingly well with indigenous technology, and it has articulated a strategy of escalating deterrence. To put teeth into this, innovation at home must continue.Here's the AI-generated podcast about this episode from notebookLM.google.com: 1975 words, 22 May 2025 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

American taxpayers may have flown Donald Trump to the Middle East, but he's not there to negotiate on behalf of our strategic or national interests—he's on the prowl for goodies, and happy to make policy changes in return. Like, the new Syrian president offering a Trump Tower in Damascus: Zap, sanctions on Syria are over. Or the jumbo jet-giving Qataris requesting that Trump go 'easy' on Iran: 'Not a problem, no sirree.' Sorry to all the hawkish Trump voters out there who thought he'd deliver a maximum pressure campaign on Tehran. Plus, Russia's Potemkin peace talks with Ukraine, and another installment from ICE's cold-blooded deportation campaign. Michael Weiss joins join Tim Miller. show notes Details on Qatar's 747 that no one wanted and is now being 'gifted' to Trump NYT on Trump's expensive mini war vs. the Houthis that achieved nothing (gift)  Rep. Garcia confronting Kristi Noem about Andry, the gay makeup artist The Triad on the new Afrikaner refugee who has thoughts about Jews 

Čo všetko je schopný urobiť premiér tejto krajiny aby zakryl svoju neschopnosť riešiť reálne problémy Slovenska? Premiérskou témou je kvalita života na Slovensku a od toho Fico neustále uteká, hovorí bývalá premiérka Iveta Radičová. Podľa nej sa premiér Fico dnes už ani netají snahou zmeniť režim na Slovensku, vládnuť krajine však zjavne nevie. Reč bude aj o zásadnej zmene chorého zdravotníctva.Pri príležitosti osláv konca Druhej svetovej vojny navštívil slovenský premiér Moskvu a tam rokoval priamo s Vladimírom Putinom, ktorý dnes vedie vojnu na Ukrajine. Opozícia v tom má jasno a označila to za akt vlastizrady a kolaborácie s nepriateľskou mocnosťou. Medzitým ako sa slovenský premiér klaňal vládcovi Kremľa, sa však štát, ktorý vedie - či by ho aspoň viesť mal, rozpadá doslova v priamom prenose.Stav verejných financií sa napriek opakovanej konsolidácií, ktorá nám zvýšila dane a zhoršila služby štátu, príliš nezlepšil no a to nás čaká ešte ďalšie uťahovanie opaskov. Zatialčo vláda siahla na daňové bonusy na deti či šikanuje podnikateľov bizarnou transakčnou daňou, sama sa ukromniť odmieta. Ministrom rapídne narástli platy, šéf rezortu vnútra objednal pre policajtov kávové uniformy a počítače za tritisíc no a pod rukami PPA nám tu rozkvitli penziony - nepenzióny.Namiesto riešenia reálnych problémov sa ale vládna koalícia neustále zaoberá sama sebou, utočí na média či mimovládny sektor no a dokonca vedie ľúty boj za práva extrémistu Bombica či konšpirátora Kotlára..Asi najlepšie úpadok štátu definoval šéf NKÚ, ktorý v rozhovore pre Aktuality povedal, že ministerstvo zdravotníctva ovládli lobisti a štát v oblasti zdravia na verejný záujem jednoducho rezignoval. Kam teda smeruje Slovensko pod touto vládou? Podari sa Robertovi Ficovi uniesť krajinu z Európy a dokedy sa vôbec dá tento Potemkin - vydávaný za štát, ešte predstierať a imitovať modernú a funkčnú demokraciu? Naozaj práve toto voliči chcú a stačí im to? No a kde je silná, jednotná a najmä zmysluplná alternatíva politickej opozície? Témy pre bývalú premiérku a profesorku sociológie Ivetu Radičovú.Stále častejšie som svedkom "úteku od slobody," kde mnohým ľuďom je sloboda na príťaž. Máme v sebe veľký potenciál prispôsobovania sa, ktorý v nás táto vládna garnitúra živí vetami typu: Nechajme Rusa, veď on raz odíde. Nie, neodíde. Keď raz príde, buď ho pošlete preč alebo zostane - v našich hlavách, " hovorí expremiérka Radičová. Počúvate Ráno Nahlas, dnes s bývalou premiérkou a sociologičkou Ivetou Radičovou. Pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.

Čo všetko je schopný urobiť premiér tejto krajiny aby zakryl svoju neschopnosť riešiť reálne problémy Slovenska? Premiérskou témou je kvalita života na Slovensku a od toho Fico neustále uteká, hovorí expremiérka Iveta Radičová. Podľa nej sa premiér Fico dnes už ani netají snahou zmeniť režim na Slovensku, vládnuť krajine však zjavne nevie. Reč bude aj o zásadnej zmene chorého zdravotníctva.Pri príležitosti osláv konca Druhej svetovej vojny navštívil slovenský premiér Moskvu a tam rokoval priamo s Vladimírom Putinom, ktorý dnes vedie vojnu na Ukrajine. Opozícia v tom má jasno a označila to za akt vlastizrady a kolaborácie s nepriateľskou mocnosťou. Medzitým ako sa slovenský premiér klaňal vládcovi Kremľa, sa však štát, ktorý vedie - či by ho aspoň viesť mal, rozpadá doslova v priamom prenose.Stav verejných financií sa napriek opakovanej konsolidácií, ktorá nám zvýšila dane a zhoršila služby štátu, príliš nezlepšil no a to nás čaká ešte ďalšie uťahovanie opaskov. Zatiaľčo vláda siahla na daňové bonusy na deti či šikanuje podnikateľov bizarnou transakčnou daňou, sama sa uskromniť odmieta. Ministrom rapídne narástli platy, šéf rezortu vnútra objednal pre policajtov kávové uniformy a počítače za tritisíc no a pod rukami PPA nám tu rozkvitli penzióny - nepenzióny.Namiesto riešenia reálnych problémov sa ale vládna koalícia neustále zaoberá sama sebou, útočí na média či mimovládny sektor no a dokonca vedie ľúty boj za práva extrémistu Bombica či konšpirátora Kotlára..Asi najlepšie úpadok štátu definoval šéf NKÚ, ktorý v rozhovore pre Aktuality povedal, že ministerstvo zdravotníctva ovládli lobisti a štát v oblasti zdravia na verejný záujem jednoducho rezignoval. Kam teda smeruje Slovensko pod touto vládou? Podarí sa Robertovi Ficovi uniesť krajinu z Európy a dokedy sa vôbec dá tento Potemkin - vydávaný za štát, ešte predstierať a imitovať modernú a funkčnú demokraciu? Naozaj práve toto voliči chcú a stačí im to? No a kde je silná, jednotná a najmä zmysluplná alternatíva politickej opozície? Témy pre bývalú premiérku a profesorku sociológie Ivetu Radičovú.Stále častejšie som svedkom "úteku od slobody," kde mnohým ľuďom je sloboda na príťaž. Máme v sebe veľký potenciál prispôsobovania sa, ktorý v nás táto vládna garnitúra živí vetami typu: Nechajme Rusa, veď on raz odíde. Nie, neodíde. Keď raz príde, buď ho pošlete preč alebo zostane - v našich hlavách, " hovorí expremiérka Radičová. Kto sme, k akým hodnotám sa hlásime a kde patríme, to je podľa nej dnes absolútne kľúčová téma politiky. Počúvate Ráno Nahlas, dnes s bývalou premiérkou a sociologičkou Ivetou Radičovou. Pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.

V brunejskom sultanáte, kde neplatia žiadne civilizované pravidlá, by sa to azda dalo, ale tu - v európskej krajine, je to čistý Potemkin, kritizuje vládny zámer výstavby nemocnice v Bratislave poslanec KDH Peter Stachura. A ako sa dokázala ficova vláda vyrovnať s neobvykle ostrou kritikou zdravotníctva z dielne NKÚ?Zdravotníctvo, to je téma, ktorá i podľa opakovaných prieskumov trápi Slovákov asi najviac zo všetkého. Niet divu. Napriek tomu, že do systému nalievame čoraz viac miliárd, jeho úroveň sa prakticky vôbec nezlepšuje, ba práve naopak. Asi najvýstižnejšie - a na základe hĺbkových kontrol, to pomenoval šéf NKÚ. Podľa neho ministerstvo zdravotníctva ovládli lobisti súkromných finančných skupín a štát rezignoval na verejný záujem i záujmy nás - pacientov. No a premiér - namiesto toho, aby si zo zdravia občanov spravil kľúčovú agendu svojho vládnutia, vsadil na podporu konšpiračných teórií vládneho splnomocnenca Petra Kotlára.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, dnes o slovenskom zdravotníctve. Hovoriť budeme o výstavbe koncovej nemocnice v hlavnom meste Slovenska - Bratislave. Tá sa síce začala už za bývalého socialistického režimu, no ani za takmer 40 rokov "slovenského" kapitalizmu, nemocnica stále nijako neexistuje.No a ako si má verejnosť preložiť slová šéfa Najvyššieho kontrolného úradu, ktorý - v Aktualitách, na základe hĺbkových kontrol, hovorí o absolútnom rozklade systému solidárneho zdravotníctva na Slovensku a jeho ovládnutí parazitujúcimi lobistickými záujmami?Čo s tým a dá sa táto chobotnica ozaj veľkých peňazí a čisto privátnych záujmov vôbec rozpliesť? No a prečo premiér namiesto boja s lobistami radšej podporuje taženie antivaxerov? Téma pre poslanca KDH a lekára Petra Stachuru. Vypočujete si však aj slová šéfa LOZ Petra Visolajského a predsedu NKÚ Ľubomíra Andrassyho.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.

V brunejskom sultanáte, kde neplatia žiadne civilizované pravidlá, by sa to azda dalo, ale tu - v európskej krajine, je to čistý Potemkin, kritizuje vládny zámer výstavby nemocnice v Bratislave poslanec KDH Peter Stachura. A ako sa dokázala ficova vláda vyrovnať s neobvykle ostrou kritikou zdravotníctva z dielne NKÚ?Zdravotníctvo, to je téma, ktorá i podľa opakovaných prieskumov trápi Slovákov asi najviac zo všetkého. Niet divu. Napriek tomu, že do systému nalievame čoraz viac miliárd, jeho úroveň sa prakticky vôbec nezlepšuje, ba práve naopak. Asi najvýstižnejšie - a na základe hĺbkových kontrol, to pomenoval šéf NKÚ. Podľa neho ministerstvo zdravotníctva ovládli lobisti súkromných finančných skupín a štát rezignoval na verejný záujem i záujmy nás - pacientov. No a premiér - namiesto toho, aby si zo zdravia občanov spravil kľúčovú agendu svojho vládnutia, vsadil na podporu konšpiračných teórií vládneho splnomocnenca Petra Kotlára.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, dnes o slovenskom zdravotníctve. Hovoriť budeme o výstavbe koncovej nemocnice v hlavnom meste Slovenska - Bratislave. Tá sa síce začala už za bývalého socialistického režimu, no ani za takmer 40 rokov "slovenského" kapitalizmu, nemocnica stále nijako neexistuje.No a ako si má verejnosť preložiť slová šéfa Najvyššieho kontrolného úradu, ktorý - v Aktualitách, na základe hĺbkových kontrol, hovorí o absolútnom rozklade systému solidárneho zdravotníctva na Slovensku a jeho ovládnutí parazitujúcimi lobistickými záujmami?Čo s tým a dá sa táto chobotnica ozaj veľkých peňazí a čisto privátnych záujmov vôbec rozpliesť? No a prečo premiér namiesto boja s lobistami radšej podporuje taženie antivaxerov? Téma pre poslanca KDH a lekára Petra Stachuru. Vypočujete si však aj slová šéfa LOZ Petra Visolajského a predsedu NKÚ Ľubomíra Andrassyho.Počúvate Aktuality Nahlas, pekný deň a pokoj v duši praje Braňo Dobšinský.

THE POTEMKIN PEACE PLAN by The Charles T. McDowell Center for Global Studies and Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center

In copertina: Dziga Vertov Tra fabbriche ghiacciate, proiettori rotti e manifesti d'avanguardia, nasce il cinema sovietico. Questa puntata racconta la stagione più esplosiva e visionaria della storia del cinema: quella in cui il montaggio divenne linguaggio, pensiero, ideologia. Con Ejzenštejn, Pudovkin e Vertov al timone, la settima arte si trasformò in arma rivoluzionaria. Dalla fondazione della Sovkino al trionfo de La corazzata Potemkin, fino al pugno di ferro del realismo socialista, esploriamo l'epoca in cui il cinema non voleva solo raccontare il mondo, ma cambiarlo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Conservative and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell recently published his nine ‘Milestones' to fix Britain's many problems. We go in depth on these with Douglas for the latest episode of The Current Thing, as we discuss: -How to fix Britain's legal and illegal migration problem -Why the ‘Boriswave' happened -How Tony Blair's legacy ruined Britain -Why we have ended up with radical left ‘activist judges' -Why the cabinet system of government is a ‘Potemkin charade' -How ministers can take back control from the Blob -Why we need a ‘moral awakening' -Why he is sceptical about the imminent threat of civil unrest -His take on Reform UK and the Tories -Why he is still optimistic about Britain And loads more The full version is only available to paid subscribers, so click here: https://www.nickdixon.net/p/douglas-carswell-how-to-fix-britain Get all full episodes with top guests, join Nick's private chat group, and of course support the podcast and help us save Britain, all for just £5 by going to nickdixon.net Or make a one-off donation here, thanks: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/nickdixon Nick's links Substack: nickdixon.net YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nick_dixon X: https://twitter.com/nickdixoncomic

In this episode, the Goods from the Woods Boys are THRILLED to welcome comedian John-Michael Bond back to Disgraceland for an extremely funny episode. We start in our own backyard as Sam and Rivers investigate Kanye West's recent casting call for a VERY controversial music video right down the street from Disgraceland. We finally try out the original Red Bull from Thailand and Rivers talks about the new local villain from his hometown Facebook page. Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' for You" is our JAM OF THE WEEK! Give us a listen, folks.  Follow John-Michael on TikTok @JohnMichaelBond, on Instagram @JohnMichaelsMistakes, and on Twitter @BondJohnBond  Follow the show on all the socials @TheGoodsPod   Rivers is @RiversLangley  Sam is @SlamHarter  Carter is @Carter_Glascock  Subscribe on Patreon for the UNCUT video version of this episode as well as TONS of bonus content!  http://patreon.com/TheGoodsPod   Pick up a Goods from the Woods t-shirt here:  http://prowrestlingtees.com/TheGoodsPod

1925: El Acorazado Potemkin y La quimera del oro Miremos hacia atrás. Cien años. Mil novecientos veinticinco fue y será siempre un año extraordinario y determinante para el cine. Ese mismo año estrenaron en el mundo El acorazado Potemkin y La quimera del oro. La primera, obra del realizador soviético Sergei Eisenstein, es un ejemplo claro del poder del lenguaje cinematográfico y de cómo su ejercicio es un arte en sí. Mucho se debate sobre si es la obra cumbre de Eisenstein, pero tenemos claro que es una película que se ha estudiado, se estudia y se seguirá haciendo en escuelas, cursos y talleres de cine de todo el mundo. La segunda es la película que el británico Charlie Chaplin escribió, dirigió y protagonizó para unir en una sola historia, un western atípico pero ejemplar, a la tragedia y a la comedia. Se trata de una historia que también eleva al lenguaje del cine al nivel de arte puro. Pero también y a su manera, muestra algunas grietas peligrosas del sueño americano. Dos obras cumbre del cine se estrenaron hace cien años: El acorazado Potemkin y La quimera del oro. Para comentarlas desde el amor puro que tenemos al cine invitamos a este episodio al crítico Sergio Huidobro, profesor cinematográfico, tallerista y amigo de Cinegarage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listeners-we're sorry! We uploaded this episode but it disappeared off the podcast distributor for some reason. -The left half of the country, and a good portion of the right, is defenseless against covert narcissism. They're treating Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a poor bullied little boy, and castigating Trump and Vance as "bullies." This is the biggest moral reversal of the current Trump era. -As children pay for the crimes of their abusive parents, so do normal, tough men pay for the crime of setting limits and boundaries. The reaction to the oval office meeting this week shows more than half the country will turn on their own president working in their own interests. It's a pure form of Cluster B reversal that should be preserved in amber for posterity. -Potpourri due Moquerie takes on Wisconsin's ban on the words "mother" and "husband," troons gone wild who still get called ladies in headlines, and deviant demands to Kenyon College to venerate trannies above all other gods. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Carnevale Trump si è mascherato da pollo ed ha telefonato a Putin credendo di essere il cuoco e non la pietanza.Da quell'equivoco sono nate una serie di fantozziane c(or)azzate Potemkin, da far sganasciare i polli, secondo cui il mafioso e il suo sguattero firmerebbero un trattato di pace che vale più di un rotolo di carta igienica sul quale presumibilmente verrà scritto. Però tutto sommato non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere e il Presidente Coccodè potrebbe aver reso un enorme servigio al futuro dell'Europa, decretando lo smantellamento della Nato e costringendo gli struzzi nelle cancellerie europee a tirare fuori la cresta dalla montagna di sabbia per guardare in faccia la realtà, senza il supporto di occhiali di colore fucsia o arcobaleno.

Language Failure: How Words Shape Our RealityA Long-Form Summary of the PodcastOpening Hook: The Illusion of RealityImagine walking through downtown San Francisco. On your phone, you see pristine streets and a bustling city. But when you look up, the reality is starkly different—crumbling infrastructure, vacant storefronts, and widespread urban decay. This isn't an episode of Black Mirror; it's what happened in 2023 when San Francisco created a Potemkin village—a facade meant to impress foreign dignitaries while hiding the city's deeper issues.This phenomenon isn't just about urban aesthetics; it signals something deeper: the failure of language to accurately reflect reality. When we manipulate language, we manipulate perception, and when perception detaches from truth, society begins to collapse.The San Francisco example proves that we know what a functional city looks like—we can manufacture an illusion of order when necessary—but we don't maintain it. Instead, we mask the problem rather than solving it. This mirrors the broader theme of the podcast: language, like infrastructure, is breaking down, and instead of repairing it, we disguise its failure with illusions.The Problem: The Breakdown of RealityWhat happens when our words and perceptions no longer match reality?We see this in:Infrastructure decay: Baltimore's bridge collapse, failing subway systems, and deteriorating roads.Media and distraction: Instead of addressing problems, we divert our attention—scrolling through TikTok instead of engaging with real-world issues.Social and political discourse: Headlines inflame emotions, but we rarely engage with the underlying facts.We live in a loop of anxiety and escape, toggling between existential threats and dopamine-fueled distractions. This is not just modern life—it's a historical pattern that has preceded societal collapse before.Historical Warning Signs: Orwell, Cuenco, and the Soviet UnionMost people remember 1984 for its themes of surveillance and thought control. But Orwell also illustrated a world where physical reality itself was decaying—the elevators don't work, the food rations shrink, and yet, the Party insists everything is improving.Michael Cuenco builds on this idea in his 2021 essay, Victory Is Not Possible, arguing that today's culture wars function in the same way as Orwell's language control. The ruling elite isn't just lying—it's actively shrinking language, making dissent impossible because people lack the vocabulary to express opposition.The Soviet Union offers another chilling parallel. Adam Curtis's documentary, HyperNormalisation, explores how, in the USSR's final years, everyone knew the official narrative was false—record-breaking harvests were announced while store shelves were empty. But rather than resist, people played along, creating a world where fantasy replaced reality.The result? A world where illusions become more real than facts. People, exhausted by the gap between truth and propaganda, retreated into cynicism, vodka, and pop culture.Today, we are experiencing a similar detachment from reality—not through authoritarian control, but through semantic drift, emotional manipulation, and digital distractions.The Mechanism: How Language Becomes UntetheredHow does language lose its connection to reality? Through concept creep and false logic.Concept Creep (Semantic Drift)Words broaden in meaning, diluting their original precision.Example: Trauma once meant a physical wound (1850s), but by 1895, William James and Freud extended it to psychological wounds. Today, it describes any discomfort—I was traumatized by cold coffee.Hyperbole and Semantic InflationOveruse weakens terms: Abuse now includes neglect, fascism is applied to trivial disagreements, bullying can refer to mere criticism.Example: Courage once meant facing real danger, but now can mean avoiding offense.Semantic InversionWords flip in meaning—what was once good can become bad and vice versa.Example: Freedom increasingly means freedom from reality and consequences rather than actual agency.When words become unanchored from objective meaning, they create ideological vacuums—leaving us drifting like astronauts in space, weightless, disconnected, and incapable of grappling with reality.The Ladder of False Logic: How We Convince Ourselves of LiesThe Ladder of Inference, or false logic, explains how we trick ourselves into believing distorted realities:Observable Facts – A politician says, Education is declining despite higher spending.Selected Data – You focus on a single phrase that confirms your bias.Interpretation – This sounds like something a dictator would say.Assumption – They must have a hidden agenda.Conclusion – They're trying to destroy public education.Belief – They are evil and must be stopped.Action – Post an outraged rant online, comparing them to Hitler.Each step takes you further from reality—until your worldview becomes purely ideological, detached from objective facts.At this point, we are radicals—not because of some external manipulation, but because we self-radicalized through unchecked emotional reasoning.The Philosophical Root: Kant's Detachment from RealityMatthew Crawford critiques Immanuel Kant, arguing that his philosophy set the stage for modern detachment from reality.Kant suggested true freedom means acting according to self-imposed rational laws, independent of external influences.This led to a view of reality as subjective—where internal logic overrides external truth.Instead of grounding ourselves in the real world, we live in a mental space station, floating free but becoming increasingly weak and incapable of dealing with reality.Astronauts in zero gravity may enjoy their detachment, but their bones and muscles deteriorate. Likewise, the more detached we are from reality, the weaker our ability to engage with it becomes.Contemporary Crisis: The Illusion EconomyModern financial markets and politics operate not on productivity or value, but on perception and emotion.Stocks rise and fall based on optimism, not output.Presidential campaigns are waged on vibes, not policy.Social movements focus on interpretations rather than material outcomes.In San Francisco, the government hid homelessness rather than solving it. This is how language manipulation replaces action.When words detach from material reality, truth becomes contingent, and society drifts into ideological orbit.The Challenge of Re-Entry: Reclaiming RealityHow do we return from orbit and reconnect words with truth?Verify personally – Base beliefs on direct observation, not media narratives.Reality-check assumptions – Climb down the ladder of inference before reacting.Resist semantic drift – Demand precision in language.Closing: The Fight for TruthWe are at a turning point. We can either continue floating in ideological orbit, or we can re-enter reality.Re-entry is painful. It requires effort, humility, and engagement with the material world—but it's necessary.In the next episode, we'll explore specific tools for resisting semantic drift and maintaining a clear connection to reality.Until then, stay grounded.

In this episode of Spirit Box, I'm joined by the multitalented Carl Abrahamsson, a photographer, a writer, filmmaker, and magician deeply embedded in the world of esotericism.We discuss his latest book, Meetings with Remarkable Magicians: Life in the Occult Underground, which explores his encounters with some of the most fascinating figures in contemporary esotericism, offering unique insights into their practices, philosophies, and influence on modern occult culture.Carl shares his creative journey, from his early influences—shaped by avant-garde art and music—to his academic work on Aleister Crowley's influence in cinema. He provides insights into his experiences with notable occult figures, including his time with the Church of Satan and his connections to Kenneth Anger and Genesis P. Orridge.In the Plus show, we delve into the role of artists as vessels for magical currents, the impact of psychedelic experiences on art, and the necessity of holistic approaches to modern challenges. Along the way, we touch on everything from the power of old films to the importance of trusting one's inner voice. We also explore the evolving landscape of occult publishing, the mainstreaming of esoteric thought, and the importance of creativity as a means of self-discovery.Join us for a wide-ranging conversation on magic, creativity, and the ever-changing nature of the occult underground.Show Notes:Carl's websitehttps://www.carlabrahamsson.comMeetings with Remarkable Magicians: Life in the Occult Undergroundhttps://www.amazon.com/stores/Carl-Abrahamsson/author/B0773LJ92XCarl's Substackhttps://thefenriswolf.substack.comPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/vanessa23carlLucifer Risinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yc24lIdb_8The Holy Mountainhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avTOLTUqf1w&rco=1Sergei Eisensteinhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Sergey-EisensteinBattleship "Potemkin" by Sergei Eisensteinhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bkBbrdyywEisenstein on Joycehttps://www.nova-nevedoma.com/eisenstein-about-joyce/Kenneth Angerhttps://www.anothermag.com/design-living/14890/cult-filmmaker-kenneth-anger-on-his-relationship-with-the-occultAnton LeVayhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Anton-LaVeyGenesis P. Orridgehttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/15/genesis-p-orridge-obituaryKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmasonMusic by Obliqkahttps://soundcloud.com/obliqka

Did you know that Joseph Stalin could sing with perfect pitch? Or that he was so scared of his wife that he would hide from her in the bathroom? Did you know that Peter the Great liked to surround himself with naked dwarfs? Did you know that Catherine the Great—long smeared as a nymphomaniac—was actually a lovelorn monogamist? Or that King Herod's genitals once exploded with maggots? Most historians bore you with dry accounts of battles and treaties, and it's hard to remember any of it. But not Simon Sebag Montefiore, who writes 900 pages that you cannot put down. Sebag is one of the most important historians alive today. His many books, like Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great & Potemkin are essential to understanding power, politics, revolution, dictatorships, and above all, human nature. While most of Sebag's books are biographies of people, Jerusalem is a biography of a city—a city, as he writes, that is “the house of the one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions, and the only city to exist twice in heaven and on earth.” The book takes you through Jerusalem's 3,000-year history, from King David to Bibi Netanyahu. It is a must-read. It has sold more than a million copies, and it has just been reissued in paperback. With the ceasefire deal underway in Israel and with Trump a few weeks into his second presidency, we could not think of a better person to talk to than Simon about this moment and how to understand it.  Header 6: The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Edition No64 | 24-11-2024 - Russia stands accused of firing the first intercontinental ballistic missile to be used against an adversary at war. The horror is even starker, as the missile was not used against military objectives, but fired indiscriminately into an urban centre. Dnipro in Ukraine. When we strip way all the fluff of geopolitical jargon, we can see Russia as a nuclear armed, terroristic entity that learned its statecraft of trauma and threat from the Mongol Horde and not Europe. ---------- SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's frontline towns. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras ---------- - Russia's deployment of an ICBM armed with conventional warheads against Ukraine marks a significant and alarming escalation. - This unprecedented action suggests Russia may have depleted a substantial portion of its conventional missile arsenal, compelling it to resort to strategic reserves. - The use of such an expensive and complex weapon, typically reserved for long-range nuclear deterrence, underscores the challenges Russia faces in sustaining its military campaign. But also suggests that the informational and psychological benefits far exceed the military impact, to justify the use of such a munition. - This type of ICBM is known for its lack of precision in conventional warfare – underscoring Moscow's role as terrorist, willing to cause indiscriminate trauma. - This appears to be a desperate attempt to project strength yet highlights Russia's difficulties in subduing a smaller nation committed to defending its sovereignty. - It's bizarre Russia compromises some of its most guarded technology to Ukraine and partners, just for brinkmanship and signalling. - The strike was an elaborately staged attempt to demonstrate escalatory dominance — the ability to outbid the west in the retaliatory ladder all the way to nuclear war. But again, this may be another Potemkin façade of a strategy. All teeth and no bite. ---------- NEWS SOURCES: https://kyivindependent.com/what-is-russias-oreshnik-missile-and-what-happens-next/ https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/vladimir-putin-war-ukraine-russia-intercontinental-missile-us-b1195343.html https://mickryan.substack.com/p/russias-oreshnik-missile-attack-on https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-launches-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-at-ukraine/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/russias-rumoured-icbm-launch-is-raising-the-stakes-in-ukraine/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/22/what-is-ballistic-missile-russia-ukraine-war-irbm-icbm https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-launched-icbm-ukraine-war-putin-rcna181131 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/21/russia-fired-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-at-dnipro-says-ukraine ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND: Save Ukraine https://www.saveukraineua.org/ Superhumans - Hospital for war traumas https://superhumans.com/en/ UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukraine https://unbroken.org.ua/ Come Back Alive https://savelife.in.ua/en/ Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchen https://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine UNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyy https://u24.gov.ua/ Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation https://prytulafoundation.org NGO “Herojam Slava” https://heroiamslava.org/ kharpp - Reconstruction project supporting communities in Kharkiv and Przemyśl https://kharpp.com/ NOR DOG Animal Rescue https://www.nor-dog.org/home/ ----------

Welcome to another Huge Niblet episode. And yes, it's a bit huge. (You saw the time stamp!) In the A segment, we discuss Hugh Nibley's 1969 diatribe titled Science Fiction and the Gospel as well as the article that likely triggered his rage induced lecture. Then we move into our penultimate Approaching Zion discussion. Following that, we have some excellent news about Gen Z women leaving religion. Enjoy!  Show Notes:  https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/hugh-nibley/science-fiction-gospel/   Sword of Laman:  Approaching Zion, by Hugh Nibley    Books and poems mentioned:    1984 by George Orwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four  In the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose  The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy  Egyptian and Mesopotamian lamentation literature: lamenting lost glories and looking forward to a return of the same under a messianic king Lycurgus by Plutarch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycurgus  Eunomia by Solon:https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_932_solon.html  Republic by Plato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)   Eclogues by Virgil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclogues  Utopia by Thomas More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)  The City of the Sun by Thomas Campenella: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_the_Sun  Nova Atlantis by Francis Bacon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atlantis  Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)  The Commonwealth of Oceana by James Harrington: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commonwealth_of_Oceana   The Adventures of Telemachus, son of Ulysses by François Fénelon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_de_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9maque    Other references:    1984 US Presidential Election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election  Ronald Reagan scandals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Ronald_Reagan_administration  Cry Havoc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dogs_of_war_(phrase)  Utopia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia  Rekhabite/Rechabite/Rekabite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechabites, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Order_of_Rechabites  Joachim of Fiore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_of_Fiore  Benedict of Nursia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_of_Nursia  Mendicant orders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendicant_orders  Potemkin Village: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village  Happy News: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/13/gen-z-women-less-religious/74673083007/  Next Live Show!: Saturday November 23, 2024 at 11:00 AM (Mountain time)    Kang, Lydia; Pedersen, Nate. Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. Workman Publishing Company.  Email: glassboxpodcast@gmail.com  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GlassBoxPod  Patreon page for documentary: https://www.patreon.com/SeerStonedProductions Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glassboxpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlassBoxPod  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glassboxpodcast/  Merch store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/exmoapparel/shop Or find the merch store by clicking on “Store” here: https://glassboxpodcast.com/index.html One time Paypal donation: bryceblankenagel@gmail.com  Venmo: Shannon-Grover-10   

Las derechas y todo su aparato de apoyo decididos a no dejar títere con cabeza convirtieron el fichaje de David Broncano por Televisión Española en una carpeta más de la batalla partidista. Y lo presentaban anticipadamente poco menos que como el acorazado Potemkin de la propaganda. Bueno, pues llegó el día. Broncano hace un programa que parece heredero del teatro del absurdo, donde la gente se reúne para divertirse, pasarlo bien, descubrir personajes muy diversos y donde no parece que se le esté dando la turra a nadie. Esta semana, contra todo pronóstico, ha ganado el derbi.

Siniawski, Adalbert www.deutschlandfunk.de, Corso

David Skripac returns to discusses the road toward global digital neofeudalism. He provides some historical context of empire and believes economics is key for the ruling classes. He has not seen Putin really doing anything different from his Western counterparts, he's been rolling out the same digital biosecurity state. He doesn't feel that we really have a multipolar world order, it's still the same unipolar system. Russia's SMO in Ukraine has been a Potemkin effort, the conflict is being stage managed. He must continue to learn, pay attention, spread the word, resist, not comply, and stay sane! Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack Geopolitics & Empire · David Skripac: Global Neofeudalism, Putin's Potemkin Efforts, & the Myth of Multipolarity #457 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Become a Sponsor https://geopoliticsandempire.com/sponsors **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (use promo code GEOPOLITICS for 15% off!) https://easydns.com Expat Money Summit 2024 (use promo code EMPIRE for $100 off the VIP ticket!) https://2024.expatmoneysummit.com/?ac=8cDxEbJw LegalShield https://hhrvojemoric.wearelegalshield.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Lifting the Veil on Russia's SMO in Ukraine: Is Putin's Response to NATO's Provocations a Potemkin Village? https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2024/08/14/putins-potemkin-village Moving Toward a Global Empire: Humanity Sentenced to a Unipolar Prison and a Digital Gulag https://www.globalresearch.ca/moving-toward-global-empire-humanity-sentenced-unipolar-prison-digital-gulag/5818824 Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified. Are We Witnessing Humanity's March Toward Extinction? Viruses Are Our Friends, Not Our Foes https://www.globalresearch.ca/our-species-genetically-modified-witnessing-humanity-march-toward-extinction-viruses-friends-not-foes/5763670 About David Skripac David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

David Skripac returns to discusses the road toward global digital neofeudalism. He provides some historical context of empire and believes economics is key for the ruling classes. He has not seen Putin really doing anything different from his Western counterparts, he's been rolling out the same digital biosecurity state. He doesn't feel that we really have a multipolar world order, it's still the same unipolar system. Russia's SMO in Ukraine has been a Potemkin effort, the conflict is being stage managed. We must continue to learn, pay attention, spread the word, resist, not comply, and stay sane! Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack Geopolitics & Empire · David Skripac: Global Neofeudalism, Putin's Potemkin Efforts, & the Myth of Multipolarity #457 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Become a Sponsor https://geopoliticsandempire.com/sponsors **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (use promo code GEOPOLITICS for 15% off!) https://easydns.com Expat Money Summit 2024 (use promo code EMPIRE for $100 off the VIP ticket!) https://2024.expatmoneysummit.com/?ac=8cDxEbJw LegalShield https://hhrvojemoric.wearelegalshield.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Lifting the Veil on Russia's SMO in Ukraine: Is Putin's Response to NATO's Provocations a Potemkin Village? https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2024/08/14/putins-potemkin-village Moving Toward a Global Empire: Humanity Sentenced to a Unipolar Prison and a Digital Gulag https://www.globalresearch.ca/moving-toward-global-empire-humanity-sentenced-unipolar-prison-digital-gulag/5818824 Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified. Are We Witnessing Humanity's March Toward Extinction? Viruses Are Our Friends, Not Our Foes https://www.globalresearch.ca/our-species-genetically-modified-witnessing-humanity-march-toward-extinction-viruses-friends-not-foes/5763670 About David Skripac David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Swapping out Biden for Kamala has been such a big mood boost that consumer confidence among Dems and independents is suddenly surging. Meanwhile, Trump keeps having Potemkin press conferences as a ploy to reclaim the narrative. Plus, Bond-style villains have made hating Project 2025 so easy, and the 'suckers and losers' guy again shows that he doesn't respect the troops.  Brian Beutler joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes: Brian's piece on mass psychology Tim's playlist

This week we talk about Chávez, Maduro, and Bolivarianism.We also discuss authoritarianism, Potemkin elections, and the Venezuelan refugee crisis.Recommended Book: Nuclear War by Annie JacobsenTranscriptVenezuela, a country with a population of about 30.5 million people, has lost something like 7 to 9 million people, depending on which numbers you use, to a refugee crisis that began about a decade ago, in 2014, and which has since become the largest ever in the Americas, and one of the top ten all-time biggest outflows of people from a region in recorded history—just under the outpouring of people from Bangladesh into mostly India, which I mentioned in last week's episode, during the country's war of independence from Pakistan, and just above the number of people who have fled Syria over the course of its now 13-year-long civil war.That means Venezuela has lost around a quarter of its total population in the span of just ten years.The spark that lit the fire of Venezuela's refugee crisis wasn't a civil war, but a political movement called the Bolivarian Revolution, which is named after Simón Bolívar, who is renowned and respected throughout the region for leading the area's independence movement against Spain.This revolution was kicked-off by a soldier-turned-polician named Hugo Chávez who has long worked to implement what he calls Bolivarianism across the Americas, which calls for a nationalistic, socialistic state of affairs in which hispanic governments would work together, these governments would own most vital aspects of industry and the economy, according to a social model, it calls for self-sufficiency driven by that state-owned nature—the government reining in the purported excesses of capitalism-oriented competition, basically, and it calls for the elimination of corruption and the expulsion and exclusion of what it calls colonialist forces, alongside the equitable distribution of resources to the people.It's a riff on other socialist and communist models that have been tried, basically, with a South American twist, but it has many of the same implications for day-to-day realities, including the supposition that everything is owned and run by The People, though generally what that means in practice is a pseudo- or full-on police state, meant to keep those outside, enemy forces—which are blamed for anything that goes wrong—from meddling in local affairs, and it also tends to mean a lot of self-enrichment at the top, those in charge of the police state apparatus, and all the state-owned businesses giving a lot of handouts to their friends and family, and generally becoming quite wealthy while the rest of the population becomes increasingly disempowered and impoverished.This isn't the way these sorts of models necessarily have to go, of course, and it's not the way they're meant to go according to their own ideals and tenets, but historically this combination of claimed goals seems to lead in that direction, and in Venezuela's case we've seen that same trend play out once more, the Bolivarian Revolution putting Chávez at the top of a system predicated largely on oil wealth, which allowed Chávez to reinforce his hold on power, the reinforcement including the jailing, threatening, and harassing of political opponents, and keeping the main opposition party mostly out of power, despite their widespread popularity.In 2013, Chávez's Vice President, Nicolás Maduro, stepped into the role of acting president when Chávez had to step aside due to cancer complications. He then won an election that was triggered by Chávez's death by less than 1.5% of the vote, though his opponent claims there were irregularities. The National Election Council carried out an investigation and said that the vote was legit, and Maduro became president later that year.The seeming illegitimacy of that election, though, remains a huge point of contention between the political forces in Venezuela, and in the years since, the government has engaged in what's often euphemistically called "democratic backsliding," which means those in charge are implementing increasingly authoritarian policies in order to maintain control and keep themselves at the top, at the expense of democratic norms and values, like fair and free elections.All of which has been bad for morale and for locals' sense of power within their own governmental system, but this has all been maintainable to a certain degree because Venezuela is sitting on the world's largest known oil reserves, and has thus able to just keep pumping oil, and expanding their own pumping capabilities, and that has allowed them to fail across a lot of other metrics of success, but still keep things afloat, the average person doing just well enough that they had something to lose if they stepped too far out of line—challenging the government in some way, for instance.This increasing mono-focus on oil and similar raw materials, like gold, though, became a huge issue when a series of what are generally considered to be hamfisted policy decisions—including abundant and generous fuel subsidies for citizens and local businesses—that left them with wild levels of inflation that led to an intentional devaluation of the country's currency, as part of an effort to address that inflation, but which ultimately just ended up making things worse.The government also took out a bunch of debt to help increase their oil-pumping capacity, and that combination of debt, a weak currency, and a local economy that had done away with basically everything else except oil left them without everyday fundamentals, including food, alongside issues like burgeoning disease rates, child mortality rates, high levels of crime and corruption, and a whole lot of violence, politically motivated and otherwise.As of mid-2024, nearly 82% of Venezuela's population lives in poverty, and 53% of the population lives in extreme poverty, unable to afford enough food, and slowly starving to death.Maduro seems to have won another election in 2018, though that vote is even more widely considered to be a farce than the one in 2013, and though outside governments like the US supported the ascension of opposition candidate Juan Guaidó, who seems to have actually won, that support didn't lead to any real change within Venezuela—though it did lead to more sanctions by the US and its allies against the Venezuelan government and many higher-ups within that government, of which there were already quite a few, and the weight of these sanctions on their oil industry in particular have made it very difficult to Venezuela to openly sell their oil on the international market at full price, which has further deteriorated their economic situation.There was some hubbub within the Trump administration in 2020 that a military option, like a full-on naval blockade, to keep under-the-table oil deals that dodge US sanctions from occurring, might be on the table, as Maduro was proving resilient to other, less forceful attempts to dethrone him, like the aforementioned sanctions.But nothing came of that, and a few years later the Biden administration offered to ease sanctions on Maduro's government, and to begin the process of normalizing relations between the two countries, if Maduro agreed to have a fair and free election, letting Venezuelans decide whether to keep him or not, but in an actual election, not rigged election, this time.What I'd like to talk about today is how that election played out, and the local and international response to its results.—Some of that promised loosening of sanctions began well before the election, which took place at the tail-end of July 2024—and that allowed Venezuela to reap some profits from selling oil, gas, and gold that would have otherwise been tricky to get onto the global market.But while Maduro made a few gestures at allowing things to be free and fair, and released some political prisoners, as demanded, he figured out a way to justify keeping his main opposition, a woman named María Corina Machado, who has been incredibly popular with Venezuelans, from being on the ballot. So she picked someone to basically serve as a stand-in for her and her party, a man named Edmundo González.Official numbers released by the government indicate that Maduro won about 52% of the vote, and will thus remain in office.According to data and analysis from outside watchdog groups, however, the voter numbers released by the government are highly suspect, the numbers giving every indication that they were falsified.Evidence, including two-thirds of the tally sheets that the electronic voting machines printed out after polls closed on Election Day, provided by González's opposition alliance to some of those watchdog groups and to journalistic entities like the New York Times and Associated Press, suggest that Maduro probably only got something like 31% of the vote, while González, and through him, Machado and her party, received around 66%—a landslide victory, if those numbers are even close to accurate, and there's additional evidence that they are, as that's very similar to the results tallied by an independent exit poll on Election Day.Despite that evidence, the Venezuelan election authority has confirmed Maduro's reelection, saying that González only garnered 43% of the vote, and the governments of Venezuela's allies, like Russia, China, and Iran, have also recognized the results as valid—though to be clear, China, Russia, and Iran are all renowned for their Potempkin elections that have all the trappings of a democratic act, but which are largely ceremonial and always predetermined to some degree, even if they claim to take the will of the people into account. So this is a group of governments that regularly run invalid elections who are vouching for the legitimacy, the apparent validity, of an election that keeps their preferred, authoritarian ally, in power. Do with that information what you will.On the other side, we have a slew of mostly Western nations that have come out against the results, saying, with varying degrees of certitude, that there's abundant evidence these election results were faked, and that González is the actual winner.The US government is included on that list, and many of Venezuela's neighbors—some of whom have recently publicly spoken about their concerns related to Maduro's belligerence in the region, and seeming intention of rigging the vote in his favor—like Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, they've said they want the Venezuelan government to release the full details of the vote, so everyone can see and analyze the totality of data the government is supposedly working from.Some of Maduro's allies and former allies, and some hardcore supporters of his predecessor, Chávez, have likewise told Maduro he needs to release the baseline voter data, to clear things up.Maduro has said, instead, he'll have the country's Supreme Court audit the results, but this is being seen as a sidestep move by Maduro, as the court was recently packed with Maduro loyalists, and is therefore not capable of undertaking an independent review of the data—like other aspects of the country's government, the high court is basically in Maduro's pocket.Maduro is also saying that the US and other long-time enemies of his government are trying to rig the election against him, and that he can't release detailed vote counts because the National Electoral Council is under attack, including cyberattacks, and they're not able to provide those numbers right now because of that aggression—though he's provided no evidence to support this supposed reason he can't make any of this information public.So while it's still not 100% certain what has happened here, it's looking a lot like what happened in the last election, Maduro pulling out all the stops to muddle what information is being released, looking like he's playing ball whenever possible, but within a context in which he can make it look that way without facing any real risk of being challenged, and it would seem that he's leveraged the powers of state, once more, to lock in his position at the top for another six years, minimum.In addition to those international governments and groups calling foul on his actions, we're seeing widespread protests against the government and these alleged results, and in a few cases these protests have become violent—the government supports groups of loyalists called colectivos, giving them weapons and telling them to go attack peaceful protestors, which can spark such violence, though formal police and military forces have also seemingly triggered pushback in some cases.The government is accusing foreign nations like the US, and immigrant groups of causing this violence, saying these are special covert ops to make the government look bad and attack good loyal citizens basically—which is a common authoritarian move in such circumstances—and police and military forces have been rounding up protestors, and hunting them down afterward, arresting thousands of people for what they're calling anti-government or terrorist activities.This has led to a situation in which there are still protests, and the opposition is still pushing hard against these supposed results, but many people involved have been pulling down their social media profiles and not posting photos or videos, because they're worried the government will send people to their homes to black-bag them and take them away, which is apparently happening around the country right now, to folks from the opposition party, but also everyday people who went to a rally or protest.The question, now, is whether the outcome this time around will be any different than it was in 2013, and then again in 2018, when Maduro first stepped into power and when he retook power.Something the opposition has this time, but which it didn't have in those previous elections is Maria Corina Machado—the candidate who was booted from the ballot and who had to select González to run in her stead.Machado has become a public figure of almost religious significance in the country, and her star has arguably only gotten brighter the more Maduro has pushed back against her ability to participate in the formal processes of state.She won 90% of the vote to become the head of the opposition coalition last October, and she's been in politics since 2004, when she promoted a referendum to recall then-President Chávez, and that effort earned her a conspiracy charge.In later years, as she continued to hold various political roles, she was accused of corruption, disqualified from holding public office, accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate Maduro—all of these accusations seemingly false, and only applied to keep her from causing trouble, by the way—and then, after nearly a decade staying out of the spotlight, she became a candidate in that party primary that she won so handedly, which in turn led to her being banned from running for office for 15 years—all of which just seems to have further empowered her with everyday Venezuelans.She seems to be a lot more popular and to hold a lot more sway than Guaidó, the candidate who was held up as the actual victor of the 2018 election, and treated as such by several other governments in subsequent years.Die-hard fans of Machado also seem to have a bit more zeal than Guaidó's followers did, which could mean if the government acts against her or González, as they've threatened to do, and which both candidates seem to be daring the government to do, having shown up in public a few times despite those threats to lock them up or worse, since the election—if something like that happens, that could result in even bigger and potentially more destructive and violent protests, despite her calls for nonviolent opposition against what seems to have been a grave injustice.The world has also changed quite a lot since 2018, and many of Venezuela's neighbors, even those that would have previously stayed carefully neutral in this election, have outright recognized González as the winner, including Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru, among others.This changed world could also bring more support for Maduro, though, as their global allies, the Russias, Chinas, and Irans of the world, in particular, are busily building a collection of relationships with governments that oppose the de facto hegemony of the US and Europe, and that's manifesting in all sorts of ways, including providing resources, trade, and misinformation and military support to other fellow travelers who are holding the authoritarian line against pushback from their democratic and close-enough-to-democratic peer states.There's a good chance there will be more tumult in neighboring nations as a result of all this—most immediately Colombia, as that's where the majority of Venezuelans who have left the country as part of that larger, decade-long exodus, have been going, and there's abundant indication that many people who held out, hoping this election would change something in the country and sticking around on that possibility, are planning to leave, now that Maduro has apparently managed to cling to power.There's a chance this could trickle into other nations' politics, too, as many of those Venezuelan migrants who don't stay in Colombia end up heading north to US borders, and those borders have been at the center of the past several elections, and the new Democratic nominee for president this November, Kamala Harris, was tasked with handling border issues in the country at a truly tumultuous moment for the border. So a surge in new migrants could lead to more criticism of her on that front, as her performance in that role is generally considered to have been not great.The Venezuelan military seems to be standing with Maduro, so far, which means it's unlikely the citizenry will have much of a chance of forcing the government to take them seriously and do anything about this seemingly rigged election, beyond protesting at such a scale and regularity that it messes with their ability to get anything else done, which could, at some point, nudge those in positions of power within the military to take the citizenry's side.This is considered to be unlikely at this point, as Maduro has made sure to tie those leaders to him, giving them all sorts of monetary and business benefits, and arranging the country's military and intelligence apparatuses so that all the agencies and people running them are tasked with watching each other, as much as the other elements they're meant to defend against—again, a common authoritarian tactic, as this can help stave off the potential for coups, no one willing to risk losing their own power to oust the person up top.The most likely outcome, based on how things have gone previously, at least, and how this has played out so far, is probably that this will remain a talking point internationally for a while, protests will continue to bubble up and be tamped-down, periodically becoming violent enough to warrant international news, but then in a handful of months, Maduro will have reinforced his position in power, still further, neighboring governments will be forced to reckon with his staying power and will figure out ways to deal with him, even if not happily, and the exodus of citizens from the country will continue as the economy continues to get worse in most ways, though perhaps bolstered a bit by support from the Russia/China/Iran alliance.All of which will reshape the population and demographics of the region, while causing all sorts of economic ripples globally, as well.Show Noteshttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/americas/venezuela-election-results.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/world/americas/venezuela-election-takeaways.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-election-results.htmlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453znohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/i-can-prove-maduro-got-trounced-venezuela-election-stolen-772d66a0https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/07/31/suspicious-data-pattern-in-recent-venezuelan-election/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-announces-sanctions-targeting-venezuelas-oil-industry/2019/01/28/4f4470c2-233a-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.htmlhttps://www.axios.com/2024/07/30/venezuela-election-biden-trump-responsehttps://theintercept.com/2024/08/02/venezuela-election-maduro-us-sanctions-democracy/https://www.barrons.com/news/venezuela-election-body-ratifies-maduro-s-poll-win-official-39010070https://archive.ph/izdLUhttps://apnews.com/article/colombia-president-maduro-vote-count-venezuela-election-00d399b74300b6d1ed010bed9539a166https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-08-05/venezuelas-political-crisis-enters-uncharted-territory.htmlhttps://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10715https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_refugee_criseshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvarhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarianismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Revolutionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuelahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Venezuelan_presidential_electionhttps://dialogue.earth/en/business/8768-fuel-subsidies-have-contributed-to-venezuela-s-economic-crisis/https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-election-preview-1.7274864https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelahttps://archive.ph/20240726145913/https://www.r4v.info/en/refugeeandmigrantshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisishttps://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-elections-protests-d6e70bd88ee9511298a4850c224a12e2 This is a public episode. 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Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/XKwF1N--a00For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as lay leaders at Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in the Dallas/Fort Worth area pastored by Josh Howerton. But as concerns about Howerton grew, Patrick and Mary found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now, they're dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called “church refugees” feel. In this edition of The Roys Report (TRR), Mary DeMuth joins host Julie Roys to talk about navigating church bewilderment. This is a condition more and more Christians are experiencing today, as scandal and corruption are increasingly seeping into the church. And if you caught the previous TRR podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lakepointe Church. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How much is okay to say, and what is gossip? How do you find another church home when you're dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? These are crucial questions, which Mary—an internationally known author and a repeat speaker at our Restore Conference—admits she is wrestling with. And, as is so characteristic of Mary, she engages these questions with grace, wisdom, and a passion for truth and justice. Sadly, many churches have created a culture where it's not okay to talk about leaving a toxic church. But as Mary explains in this podcast, the church won't get better until we talk about it. Believers must begin to evaluate and process the toxicity in churches—and how we can truly become the Body of Christ. Mary has recently developed a Church Hurt Checklist to help people understand their situation and begin to process and articulate it. Download it free at marydemuth.com/churchhurt Guests Mary DeMuth Mary DeMuth is an international speaker, podcaster, and author of over 40 books, fiction and nonfiction, including The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible and We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. Mary lives in Texas with her husband of 30+ years and is mom to three adult children. Learn more at MaryDeMuth.com. Show Transcript Julie Roys: For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as leaders at a megachurch in the Dallas Fort Worth area. But as concerns about the current pastor grew, they found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now they’re dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called church refugees feel. Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And today, Mary DeMuth joins me to talk about navigating church bewilderment. Sadly, this is an issue many Christians are dealing with, as abuse, scandal, and corruption increasingly seem to be seeping into the church. Julie Roys: And if you caught our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lake Point Church in the Dallas Fort Worth area, where Josh Howerton is Pastor. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. And if you missed our prior podcast, it was a real eye-opener and I encourage you to go back and listen to that. Julie Roys: Today’s podcast is a sequel to my podcast with Amanda, but rather than exposing the issues at Lake Point today, Mary is going to be discussing the aftermath of leaving. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How do you know how much is okay to say? And what is gossip? And how do you find another church home when you’re dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? Julie Roys: These are crucial questions and ones that I know many of you are dealing with today. And so I’m so looking forward to diving into this topic with Mary DeMuth. But first I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Julie Roys: Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. The program equips students with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Julie Roys: Justice has become a key issue in our culture, but more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by His Word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. Julie Roys: And I’ll be teaching a session as well, focusing on the right use of power in our churches so we can protect the vulnerable, rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like-minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and quality. That's because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys: Again, joining me is Christian author and podcaster, Mary DeMuth, and many of Mary from her excellent books like We Too: Discussing the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Church, and also her memoir, Thin Places. Mary also was a guest speaker at our last Restore Conference in 2022, and she’ll be speaking again at our Restore Conference in Phoenix in February in 2025. So we’re super looking forward to that. Julie Roys: But she joins me now to talk about something that’s been a very painful process for both her and Patrick, and that is leaving her church of 23 years, Lake Point Church there in the Dallas Fort Worth area. So Mary, Thank you so much for being willing to talk about what I know has been a really difficult journey. Mary DeMuth: Thanks. I certainly prayed about this conversation and what I’ve noticed in this space is that a lot of people in the middle of it. are not articulating how they’re feeling because there’s this general pressure from churches that you leave that you aren’t supposed to say anything. And I think there’s a difference between, and we’ll talk about this, I’m sure, throughout this episode, but there’s a difference between leaving quietly and running around gossiping about things. Certainly, those are two different things. Mary DeMuth: But I think what we’ve done is we’ve created a culture of silence; you can’t talk about it and literally we won’t get better unless we do talk about it. So that’s one reason why I am having this conversation today, because this is not a completed story. This is a messy story. I’m in the middle of it. Mary DeMuth: I am heartbroken, and I don’t have all the answers. But I wanted to give word to those of you that may be in that same space, that may be hurting and don’t have words to say about it. And maybe I can articulate some of those things for you. Julie Roys: And I so appreciate that. I find that people often are willing to talk about experiences years after the fact, when they’ve worked it all out and they can tie it all up in a neat bow and we can all go, Oh, that’s so nice. And here’s three ways that you can apply this message. But I knew you were going through a really painful thing that it was messy. You’ve been tweeting about it, or I should say posting on X. Julie Roys: You’ve been very open and honest with your pain. And I really appreciate that. And I love the topic. You actually gave me the title for this, about navigating church bewilderment. And I love that word bewilderment because I feel like it really captures the confusion, the real disillusionment, and then the grief and the pain. Julie Roys: All of these things bound up in one. And so we’re going to get to all that and unpack all of that. But I think to understand the depth of it for you and for Patrick, first I have to understand how deeply vested you were in this church. So talk about what this church has meant to you over more than two decades and the roles that you played in it and the community that you had. Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we’ve been there for 23 years, and we immediately started serving the moment we landed there. And we also were the first non-IMB, it was an SBC church at the time, and we were the first non-IMB missionaries to be sent out from Lake Point. Julie Roys: Define IMB for those who . Mary DeMuth: Yes. International mission board. So typically SBC churches send, they don’t really send their own missionaries. They sponsor IMB because all the money comes out of the SBC into this fund for the International Mission Board. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to be actually supported because we believed that people who paid prayed. And so we were not IMB, but Lake Point sent us out. So we were church planters in the South of France for a couple of years. And honestly the leadership there at our church, even though we weren’t going through our church, they were the ones that helped us through a really untenable situation. And our loyalty to that church was because they put us back together when we got back from the field.. Mary DeMuth: So much pouring in and so much love. And so we have been a life group leader for 20 of the 23 years. The only three years we weren’t was when we were in France, planting a church. And then I have run a couple of conferences, interestingly enough, called the Re-story Conference, which was very similar sounding to the Restore Conference. Mary DeMuth: And I also recorded a Life Way study at Lake Point for an audience. And then my husband was an elder at the church for five years. And so we have led mission teams all over the world for Lake Point. We have definitely been in the upper levels of volunteer leadership all these years and have enjoyed a lot of conviviality and fellowship. Mary DeMuth: And I never never. I always bragged about my church. It never crossed my mind that there would be a day that I wasn’t at that church anymore. And so as of December of 2023, we are away from there and making our way into a new space. Julie Roys: And I’ve talked about this on this podcast, but we’re in a house church with, some of the folks in our house church were at their previous church for over 30 years, and the amount of pain and loss and especially when you’re, when you’re our age, early 40s. Julie Roys: That’s it. It’s early 40s. No, when you’re a little bit older and later in life and to be at this point where you’re starting over is not at all where you expected to be, and it’s pretty tough to be there. You retain some of the friendships, but everything’s changed. And it just makes for a really really difficult road that you never planned to be on. Julie Roys: Your church; and this is a lot of the reason behind you leaving, changed dramatically in the last 5 years. Stephen Stroop was your previous pastor. And in 2019, I believe Josh Howerton came in. Your husband actually was on the elder board that approved him, right? Mary DeMuth: Yes. Yes. And we’ve had to work through that as you can imagine, because that’s painful to think about. And just to expand a little bit about the why is the basic reasons why we left. There’s a lot of things. As an author, as a published author and as a speaker, the plagiarism was just grating on me and I couldn’t stomach it, but that wasn’t the main reason. Mary DeMuth: Although it’s still very problematic to me. What’s more problematic is that they don’t think it’s a big deal and they don’t see it as sin, and I just disagree. But the two things that we, the two main things that caused us to walk away, one was we were told by leadership, by upper-level leadership, that there was no place for us to serve. Mary DeMuth: And that was really, that was about a year ago. And so it took us about a year to make that decision. Like we were still serving in our life group, but there were things that God has put in us as church planters. And as me, as an author and an advocate that we have a lot that we would love to be able to offer, and to have that cut off when we feel like we’re in the prime of service right now. We weren’t asking to be paid. This is all volunteer, but we were told we couldn’t. Mary DeMuth: And then the second thing that was kind of the straw was all of the crude words and the misogynistic statements that started around 2022 almost every sermon. And as an advocate for sexual abuse victims and as an advocate for women, I could no longer be associated with that church because it just didn’t, I just couldn’t be associated with it. Mary DeMuth: I have stood in front of the Southern Baptist Convention, and I have spoken and advocated, and I have been chewed up and spit out for it. And if I’m going to a church that is marginalizing women, it does not make sense. And so no place for us to serve, big, huge problem. And then I just couldn’t be connected with a church that had that kind of reputation. Julie Roys: Those reasons are huge. and make an awful lot of sense. The plagiarism as you said, the crude remarks, the misogynistic remarks. And for a lot of folks, if you’re like, what are they talking about? I do encourage you to go back and listen to our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, where we went over a lot of these things that Mary’s talking about that have happened in her church. Julie Roys: I’m sure there’s people listening, and they’re like, okay, that sounds really, really awful. But how do you know when you hit that tipping point? Because I remember talking to you a couple of years ago and me going, Hey, is this really your pastor? I’m seeing some stuff. How is this your pastor? And you’re like we’re serving, and we love our life group. I get it. I totally, totally get it. But how did you and Patrick, how did you get to the point where you’re like, this is the tipping point, no more? Mary DeMuth: We decided we went into this together, so we decided that we both had to have the same decision. We weren’t going to have one of us leave and one not leave. We were going to do this together. So that took a year of a lot of conversations. And we saw those red flags when you saw them. So we’ve seen them, but as you mentioned, the model of Lake Point used to be, it seems to be shifting now, but it used to be church within a church. And so your life group was really basically what you’re doing, Julie. It’s a small gathering of people where there is someone who teaches, and there’s someone who’s the missions coordinator. And there’s someone who, it’s that’s how, like your church is that group. And so we felt a deep, strong connection to our group. And we felt like we were the pastors of that church within a church. Mary DeMuth: The model has shifted. And I don’t know, it has never been articulated publicly, but it seems from the exterior looking in that it’s more becoming a franchise model, which is where you create this mother church, and it can be duplicated like MacDonald’s in any context. Therefore they may not have that idea that it is church within a church anymore. It has to be something replicatable on all other campuses. And so we began to see this shifting of, this is no longer church within a church, which is really what kept us there. We had people we were serving. And then honestly, I just couldn’t stomach sermons anymore. I couldn’t walk into that building anymore. Mary DeMuth: And as everything became a spectacle the longer we were there, it was all about Sunday morning and the spectacle that it had become like a circus, and I could not find Jesus there. And I would sit in the audience. We had beautifully. articulated and performed auto-tuned worship. It was beautiful. It sounded amazing. There was a lot of rah-rah-rah. There was a lot of energy and it felt like Ichabod to me, like to me as a Christ follower, a mature Christ follower of many years, I couldn’t feel the presence of the Lord anymore. And for me, that’s what is the point of going to a church, if that has happened to you? Mary DeMuth: I’m not saying that other people aren’t experiencing the Lord there. I’m not saying that other people aren’t becoming Christians there. They are. And that’s probably the most problematic part of this whole thing is that they are easily able to point to numbers that are flowing in through the front door, ignoring all of us that have left out the back door. Mary DeMuth: And because it is successful, therefore they can just call me names and malign me or people like Amanda and others, and they can dismiss us because look what God is doing. Julie Roys: And Amanda talked about that same thing about the church within a church and even how each of the churches had different women’s ministries. Julie Roys: And I think about it, it was so personal because people are different and they all had different campuses, have different makeup, they have different cultures and now, this franchise model where you go in, you order a Big Mac, and you get a Big Mac. That’s what you’re used to, right? Julie Roys: But is it? And probably our conversation today, we probably don’t have enough time to really delve into this, but this is something I have been thinking more and more about, is it even church if you have a place where it, maybe a Christian organization and maybe a Christian organization that blesses a lot of people but is it a church where you say to members of the body, we don’t need you, we don’t need your gift, and you can’t serve here? If we have a pastor who doesn’t even know people’s names, if we don’t have that kind of shepherding, is it even a church anymore? Mary DeMuth: I’ll back up before I answer that in that I’ve, been overseas and, anyone that’s been overseas and gone to a McDonald’s overseas knows they have different categories. So even franchises like McDonald’s in France has McWine, right? Or McVine. McDonald’s even understands contextualizing the hamburger to the person, and to the people. So that’s an odd thing for me that there would be this idea that you can just, this is the model and we’re superimposing it on all sorts of different economic people and people in different cultures, and we’re just gonna superimpose it there, which seems super weird to me. Mary DeMuth:  On the, is this a church? We have to just go back to simplicity, which is, are we celebrating the Lord’s Supper? Are there sacraments there? Is the word of God being delivered and is it? Mary DeMuth: And then deeper than that, are  disciples being made? because there’s a big, huge difference between converts who hear something. And I think about the parable of the soils, they hear it, they receive it with joy, they have no root and then they walk away. We’re not teaching a theology of suffering in most of these bigger churches for sure. Mary DeMuth: But I think we need to remember that a church is supposed to be a place of koinonia, a place of fellowship, a place where we are iron sharpening iron, and a place of discipleship where people are not just converted, but they are just doing the slow work of people pouring into each other’s lives. That’s discipleship. That’s not a top-down model. That’s not pastor to congregation. That’s person to person. And when a church gets so big for its britches these things can fall through the cracks. Mary DeMuth: Now, Lake Point had done a very good job of doing that discipleship piece through their vehicle of a life group. But as things have shifted, we’re seeing a lot less of that. And again, I haven’t been there for six months, so they could be doing it. I don’t know, but just from my perspective today that’s something that’s been difficult to see. Julie Roys: You alluded to this earlier, this idea of leaving well. It’s hard to leave well and even to define what leaving well is. I will say there was one church that my husband and I ended up leaving and it was over a theological disagreement that we just felt we couldn’t bend on. And at the same time, we felt really pulled to another church. They actually had us come up and explain why we were leaving and gathered around us and prayed for us. Julie Roys: That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen where it was just like, differences and God makes calling you here. We want to bless you as you go. And you’ve met a lot to this church and we mean a lot to each other and let’s just bless each other. It was so beautiful, and I don’t know why this can’t happen more. But usually it’s just a lot of pain and a lot of heartache And when you talk about leaving well, what it usually means to a lot of people, and I’ve heard even Christian leaders talk about this. When you leave well, you just keep your stuff to yourself. Julie Roys: The issues that you had, you suck them under, and you don’t speak about it. And honestly, I think that’s part of our problem in the church is that we don’t talk about our problems. And so we wait till they become a major scandal or crisis. And then they really blow up. And we allow abusive pastors just kind of reign; to continue doing what they’re doing. Julie Roys: So talk about this concept of leaving well. Obviously, you’ve chosen to speak rather boldly about what happened there. I think really from a heart of love and concern for both the church and the people there, not just to vent how you’re feeling. But talk about that and how you’ve come to the decision you have about that. Mary DeMuth: First, I’ll say there’s been kind of  an unholy silence. We were pretty high up and we have not been followed up with, and the very few times we were invited into those spaces, it was difficult. So there is that. I would encourage church leaders to do what your former church did, because I think there’s a lot to be learned. Mary DeMuth: I also need to say that we didn’t leave from a position of canceling and of immaturity. There’s one thing if you’re like a church hopper and you’re like, just running around with a consumeristic mindset like, what do I get in this for me? A lot of people that are leaving churches are being accused of being that. But the ones that I know that have left this church are mature, deep believers in Christ who are seeing so many red flags. Mary DeMuth: And the reason I articulated it was because I was running into people who were brokenhearted and didn’t have words for it. And somehow through the grace of God and through his power and his ability, I was able to say the things that people were feeling so that they would no longer feel alone. I would rather have been silent if the Lord hadn’t put his hand on me. Mary DeMuth: I would rather grieve this alone and quietly, but I have seen a lot of really good conversation and ministry happen because of this. I’m not out to harm the reputation of the church. I will never tell someone to leave a church unless they’re being abused, obviously, that’s their own decision. Mary DeMuth: They have the autonomy to make that decision between them and God. But I do want to be a listening ear and an empath for those who are bewildered at the church they’re going to that no longer looks like the church they used to go to. Julie Roys: So tell me what is gossip because this is what is, this is the word, I’ve gotten called this myriads and myriads of times. But what is gossip? And clearly you don’t believe this falls into that category. Why? Mary DeMuth: It’s not gossip to share your emotions about how you’re reacting to an abuse. That is actually being a lot like Paul. And if you look at the letters throughout the epistles in particular, you see Paul saying things about churches. Mary DeMuth: And so if we’re going to talk about gossip, we’d have to call him a gossip because he was constantly calling out, Hey, listen, those Judaizers, they don’t really have it right. Oh, listen, this Gnosticism isn’t good. And that guy’s having sex with his mother-in-law. These kinds of things are, he’s very clear. Mary DeMuth: These are not untrue things he’s saying. These are actually true statements. And underneath all of that is a desire for the church to be the body of Christ and to be holy. It’s not slander because it’s telling the truth. And it’s always with a desire to see God do good work in the local church. And if she is straying, if you love her, you will say something about it. Mary DeMuth: Now there’s a manner in which you can do that. You can be really caustic. You can speak the truth without love, but we are called to speak the truth with love. And I believe that we have conflagrated speaking the truth in love with gossip, and those are two different things. Gossip intends to harm the reputation of another or of an entity; telling the truth in love tries to help that institution have a mirror and see what’s going on. Julie Roys: The motive is really important, although I always get frustrated when people try to judge other people’s motives because the truth is, you don’t know somebody else’s heart. And that’s something I never do. I’ll talk about actions, but I don’t know someone’s heart. Only God knows the heart. But I know that’s something I constantly check myself about is my desire for repentance? is my desire to see these leaders repent? 100 percent, and I know you well enough to know that you would be absolutely thrilled and would extend grace if the leaders who have hurt you so deeply would repent of their sin and would change their ways. I know that and I’m sure you pray for that, that you and Patrick are praying right now for that. Am I right? Mary DeMuth: Absolutely. That is  underneath all of this, is just a desire to see the local church healthy and to see her lift up the name of Jesus. And we also just want to again put up a mirror of is this representing the kingdom of God or is this representing something else? And that’s what we were coming to find. Patrick and I both were. The kingdom’s upside down. It’s counterintuitive. It’s the least is the most. And the most is the least. It’s not about building platforms. It’s not about being the winner. It’s not about Christian nationalism. It’s none of these. I don’t even like those two words together. Mary DeMuth: It’s not about power. Jesus willingly laid down his power and he considered equality with God, not something to be grasped. He made himself nothing. And when I see a lot of these big churches and not all of them, but a lot of them where it is very male leader centric celebrity driven. And really about, we want to be the coolest people with the biggest numbers. Mary DeMuth: I don’t get it. They’ll point to Acts chapter two. They’ll talk about how many were added to the kingdom on that day. They’ll call that a mega church. It was not a mega church. People were still meeting in homes. So we just have to be careful. I’m not against mega churches. I actually think that there’s a place for them. Mary DeMuth: Over the years, they we have had the benefit of a megachurch that can go into a community and say, oh, you need a church building, here you go. Like they can do some things that a littler church can’t do. So I’m not against the megachurch, but there is something fallible in the model, the consumeristic model, that is causing all of this anguish. Julie Roys: And I’d say the leadership model. Because we have imported a leadership model that’s of the world and done the exact opposite of what Jesus said, don’t be like the Gentiles who lorded over them, but instead, whoever wants to be first should be last, whoever wants to be greatest should be least. Julie Roys: It is the upside-down kingdom, and we’ve forgotten that. We’ve become just like the world, and we count our success the same way as the world. And we’ve seen this going, it’s been going on a very long time, and I think the megachurches get a lot of the criticism because they’ve. been kind of doing it in spades in an awful lot of them and then exporting these values to all the smaller churches who are wannabes, right? Julie Roys: So you even have smaller churches that are trying to do the exact same thing and they think it’s right because it’s successful very much in the American model of success, which is bigger and better. Before we go forward, there is something I do want to ask you, though, and I would be remiss if I didn’t. What was it about what you and Patrick that you were doing that they didn’t want you serving? Mary DeMuth: I don’t know. They just didn’t want us. That’s what’s been hard is, it’s a speculative, I just don’t know. And I’m willing to be talked to about those things, of course. Like if they feel like something that we’re not godly enough or we’re, or I’m too public or whatever it is, I don’t know. Mary DeMuth: But I do know this, I do know this. When we were told this, what we learned was that they had been morphing from a church that had a lot of lay leaders to a higher control situation where only people who are employed by the church could be in charge of ministries. And so, you can control that. If you can control someone's salary, you can control the whole thing. Mary DeMuth: And so we were just told there is no place for you because we’re not on staff. So that’s probably my guess at a reason is that we were not controllable. And the statement made to us is I’ve got 30 other people just like you that are well trained and that have gone, my husband went to seminary, and all that, but will never use them. We will never use them. And basically, you just need to get over it. You will never be used. Julie Roys:  What a waste of resources. Unbelievable. The kingdom is not so well resourced that we don’t need every single person; that God didn’t give gifts every single one of them to be used. Julie Roys: But I will say, I’ve seen this happen before. And the beautiful thing is, people get dispersed, people like yourself and like Patrick, too often churches that are very needy very welcoming. Like Oh, thank God. It’s like Christmas come early, come to Moots, come to our church. And I’m sure you’re experiencing that because I can’t imagine not wanting you and Patrick at my church. It’s just shocking to me. But yeah, that is a benefit of it. It’s the church in Jerusalem getting persecuted. Then they went to the ends of the earth, and we can do that. Julie Roys: One of the things that I’ve seen be a silver lining, if you can call it that, in these sorts of situations is you’re a church refugee, but there’s a lot of other ones out there, too. And there can be a great deal of deep fellowship. And, in many ways, that’s what RESTORE is. It’s a gathering of a lot of not just refugees, a lot of helpers and pastors and people who are allies who just want to know more. But. There’s an awful lot of us there that have been hurt by the church, and there’s just this beautiful, sweet fellowship. Julie Roys: And my understanding is, and Amanda alluded to it in our last podcast, that you guys have served as pastors to these refugees. Would you talk about that sweet group that you were able to love on and pastor through this and just help them? Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we definitely were praying, and we just kept coming upon people. And in particular, people who had been employed but had been harshly fired in very traumatic ways. And we just felt so deeply. I mean for us, it’s sad and we were highly involved and it’s sad, but it wasn’t our job. And so we just had this empathy for those folks. And so we gathered as much as we knew, we put the word out quietly. Mary DeMuth: We gathered people for several weeks and met with them. And these were people that some were still there, and some were not, and some were walking away from Jesus. It was just the whole gamut of a wide variety of people in a lot of pain. And what we wanted to do was just to help them know our first session was called, You are not crazy. We just wanted them to know. that what they had seen and experienced was real and validated by the rest of us. And then we’ve just been walking through Chuck DeGroat's information about narcissism in the church and narcissistic church systems. And then talking about what is a safe person and what is a safe system. And then praying and crying and grieving and giving people the space that they are not allowed to have to get out all this junk that’s inside of us because it’s been so, so painful. Julie Roys: And I want to get to the safe system and the safe person, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening who would like that information as well. Julie Roys: But let’s talk about the feelings first, because when this happens, there is. Again, we talked about bewilderment. There’s just this mix of negative emotions that you don’t know what to do with a lot of times. One is anger and anger in the church has been one of these emotions that we just don’t deal with very well. And I’ve said this numerous times, but this is one that we’ll get. We’ll get thrown back in my face and people say, you sound like you’re angry and I’m like, darn I’m angry. Why aren’t you angry? Why wouldn’t we be angry when these awful things are happening in the church? And yet again, as a Christian, we feel guilty when we’re angry. So how have you dealt with your own anger, and helped others who are dealing with similar anger? Mary DeMuth: The first thing that we did was we process outside of the circle of the church because we needed to know if we were going crazy. Is this normal? Are these things that we’re saying? Is it a big deal? Or are we just being babies? We definitely did that. And then it’s been the prayer of let this anger fuel something beautiful, because I do believe that great movements of God happen because there’s injustice and we are angry at the injustice. Mary DeMuth: I often joke that I write a book when I’m angry, so I must be a pretty angry person at book 52. There’s injustice in this world and our God is righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. When we do the work of making note of people who are being hurt and oppressed and harmed, we are doing the Lord’s work. And so that anger can be a fuel to doing positive things Mary DeMuth:. Now, I also just want to say, it’s okay to be angry. I’m angry and I have been angry and I’m processing that with friends and I’m processing it with my husband and with the Lord. Rightfully so, because I see so many people, to use Mark Driscoll’s frustrating phraseology, the people behind the bus. I’m meeting so many people behind the bus that are getting the bus is backing up over the people. Because not only cause when if you say anything, if you dare to say anything, you will get run over again and again, you will be accused of all sorts of things when really your desire is to see people set free and to open the eyes of people that are being harmed so that they no longer have to be in that system anymore. Julie Roys: And what a great deal of fear these leaders must feel. to behave that way that you have to annihilate people who say anything negative. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with people saying negative things. I just want to make sure if there’s truth in it, that I take it to heart. It’s okay, but in the end of the day, you’ve got to be okay with who you are before your Lord. And those closest to you who will tell you the truth when you’re veering off. That desire to control that desire that you have to shut down negative communication. I can’t imagine living in that much fear that you constantly are doing that. And yet that’s what we see. Julie Roys: And that whole thing about feeling like you’re crazy. So much of that’s because you’ve been told you’re crazy. You’ve been told that because that’s the gaslighting that happens when you say there’s a problem. No, there is no problem. You’re the problem. Mary DeMuth: It’s back to the emperor with no clothes. We all see the naked emperor and only a little kid says he’s not wearing any clothes. And we’re like Oh, yeah, but there’s this like kind of delusional thing or czarist Russia, the Potemkin village. If you know what that is, it was a village that was just set up like a movie set so that when the czar went by he could see that this Potemkin’s village was actually a really cool place, but you open the door, you walk through, it’s just mud and dirt on the other side and some horses grazing in a field. Church is not a Potemkin village. It should never be. It should not be a facade that we are trying to hold up by shaming people who say negative things. The church is a living, breathing organization. It is the body of Christ. Mary DeMuth: God does not need to be defended. He can do just fine by himself. And this fear that you talk about is very real because it’s about human empire. Whenever we build our Roman empire on our cult of personality and our particular views about things and not on the word of God and not on studying the word of God, then we will be threatened by anyone who says anything negative because that will eat away at the foundation of our FACO empire. Julie Roys: Very well said. That is very well said. Let’s talk about grief. And I was reminded of the Kubler Ross Stages of grief. And let me see. Those are denial, which is often where we start, right? When things go wrong, anger, the bargaining we can work this out somehow, right? Depression and sink into that deep depression. This is just so sad. And then there’s acceptance, which is that last one. And it’s not like these are completely linear because what I found is you go through, oh, I’ve worked through to acceptance. No, I haven’t. I’m back at anger again. Julie Roys: Something will happen. it'll put you right back there. So it’s not completely linear, but how have you moved toward acceptance? What does acceptance look like? And maybe that’s a long way off but talk about where you’re at in that whole process. Mary DeMuth: I think a lot of people are in this space. There’s a lot of loyal people and that’s where the bargaining comes in. And a lot of the people I’ve talked to are like, yeah, I never go to that church anymore, like to the services, but I’m here because of my small group and they’re my church. There’s this, that we were in that space for a really long time. We can make this work. This is our church, not that other part is not the church, but it’s all together. Mary DeMuth: So once we got to the decision and made the decision, then the depression set in for sure. And I think I’m still there working my way through it of thinking that I was going to be there the rest of my life. As a person who grew up in a really difficult home and met Jesus at 15 years old, the church became my family. My family was not my family. And the church was the one place where I could go to be loved, to be healed, to be worked, just to work through my salvation with fear and trembling. And so, to walk away from something that you’ve been at the most we’ve ever been at a church is 23. This is the longest we’ve ever been somewhere to walk away from. It felt like I lost my limb. I lost my family, my father’s in the faith, my mother’s in the faith, my aunts, and my uncles in the faith. And then to be villainized for just having eyes to see what the heck is going on, has been devastating, devastating. So I’m still in the grief phase and I don’t cry much about it because I’ve sometimes just shoved it way down deep because I did not ever expect that I was going to have to leave a place I loved so much. Julie Roys: There’s a, I think it’s a short story and I should know the name of it, but it’s about someone, a man who goes to a cemetery and he sees a woman just weeping and weeping, and he’s there to visit his partner who had died. I don’t think he had actually married her. But he realizes in that moment that the person who’s grieving, who’s crying and just sobbing is the richer person. Because they had loved deeply and he had never loved that deeply. And I’ve thought about that, I lost my mother over 20 years ago and she was so special and I never like, I hear some people talk about their mothers, and how difficult or what I never felt that way. My mother was just a joy, but it was so hard to lose her, but it was hard because I loved her so much. Julie Roys: And I think, I’m so grateful for you that you did have that church experience where you were loved so deeply, where you loved deeply, and I’ve got to believe that God will provide that family again. It will be different. And I know I just feel so blessed by our church family that we found in this wasteland or out of the wasteland. Julie Roys: But it’s been really, really special because I don’t have to explain anything to these people. They understand the world I work in. They understand. It’s just, it’s really been a gift. And I think it’s been a gift too. And I know you have adult children. I’m glad I had these adult children because they’re a blessing in ways that they couldn’t be and a support in ways that they couldn’t be when they were younger, when we had to be everything to them. Julie Roys: And I’m glad I’m not dealing with, and I know a lot of people are,  is what do we do for our kids now? And then there’s that pressure to find something for your children right away. And that makes it really hard. But as believers, we are taught, Hebrews 10:25, let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but all the more as the day of the Lord approaches, let us encourage each other and all the more as the day approaches. I have found sometimes that can be used as a club against people who are just grieving, and they’re dealing with a great deal of betrayal trauma at this point. Julie Roys: And now we’re going to hit them over the head and say, you better be in church on Sunday. When they walk into a church and it just triggers, it’s a trigger for them. I believe in fellowship. I believe in the church. I love the church, but I am concerned about the process of helping people reengage after they’ve been wounded so profoundly. Julie Roys: So speak to this process of finding a new church home, or even having the freedom for a period of time to say, I don’t know. I don’t know that I can do that right now. Obviously, there is a danger if we’re out of fellowship for too long. But speak to that person who right now is outside of fellowship and really afraid to reengage with it. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. First, you’re super normal. And if you’ve been wounded in a terrible community, the stakes are pretty high, when you walk in, especially if you’re triggered or traumatized by walking into a building. I don’t know that I could walk into a big church right now. Like I just don’t think I could, I think I would have a hard time with that. Mary DeMuth: So for us, how we went about it and everyone’s going to be different, we did want to land somewhere because we just feel like we’re in that stage of, we want to serve the church. And so for our little parameters, and I think it’ll be different for every person. Ours was, it needs to be local. And we’re hoping that there will be people there already that we’re friends with. Mary DeMuth: And since we’re in a little town, right? So there’s, 1 billion churches and little towns in Texas, right? So we had plenty to choose from so many, and we didn’t even get to all of them, but that was our parameter in choosing a home. In fact, we just officially joined a church yesterday. So it did take some time to get to that place. But I just want to let you know that it’s normal to be scared, to be triggered, to be in pain. Mary DeMuth: Don’t let it stay there. You are wounded in a negative community and the Lord is very frustrating and he asks you to be healed in good community. That’s hard. But a relational wound requires a relational cure, and that’s one reason why Patrick and I have been pouring into people who are hurt because we want to be that safer relationship for people to be falling apart or hurting or ask really blunt questions and be really ticked off. Because I believe people are healed in community when they’re wounded in community. Julie Roys: 100%. And I know when I came through just so much grief and pain and church hurt. I know a lot of people go to therapy and I’m not against therapy, but I was like, I don’t need to talk to this about this with a counselor. It’s just not like that. I need to be in a community where there’s love. I need to see beauty in people like again. And even though I’m afraid to be vulnerable on some levels at the same time, I’m compelled to be vulnerable because I know until you do that, you can’t heal. Mary DeMuth: When we met with the person who became our pastor and there’s a multiplicity of pastors in this particular denomination, but we sat across from him and we told him our story and he just listened, and he dignified the story. And then he said this, he said, we just want to love you. And I just immediately just, I was like, what? you don’t want to use me? Cause we’ve been in leadership positions in the church for so long, our whole adult lives we’ve been in those positions and for him to say, we just want to love you. And that was foreign to me, but that was the beginning of that healing journey. Julie Roys: I had a pastor at one of the churches we visited when we were in this search process. And it was at a very large church I would say it’s probably a megachurch, and we sat across from him and he said a very similar thing. It was really wonderful. And he said, “I think you guys have been wounded deeply, and you need a place to heal. And we do just want to love you. What was interesting is when I came back to him with a follow up email, because part of me is like wait, this is a megachurch. Am I insane? Julie Roys: I’m just like looking at it and being like,  I don’t think this is at all what I want. And then I emailed him. I said, we want a pastor. Would you be able to pastor us? And then he basically declined as nicely as he could; like I’d love to be, but I can’t and I’m like I don’t need a small group leader to try and pastor me. I was just kind of like of course, you can’t because you have the corporation to run. And so that is again a fundamental issue that I do have with the mega church. Julie Roys: One thing I found and I see it here, because I don’t know how many people in the Chicago area who have left Willow Creek and ended up at Harvest. They’re like, wow, di I know how to pick them! They’re going from something that’s become familiar. And if you became a believer at Willow, then that big model, that big service, whiz bang entertaining sermon or inspirational talk, whatever you want to call it. Julie Roys: Although I’ll say at Harvest, he preached he discipled people. I know a lot of people from Harvest that were discipled shockingly by a really depraved pastor. But I see them going from what they’re used to. And it’s almost like when I see people who grew up in a dysfunctional home and thank God you didn’t do this, but they often then replicate that in their own home, or they’re attracted to that same kind of dysfunction in the next home. Julie Roys: And I’ve seen it with churches and I’m just like, why are you going to the same model of church that you just left? And I see that there’s this thought in their head that it’s just the one bad apple. That’s all it is. It’s the one bad apple, but basically there’s nothing wrong with the system. Julie Roys: I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system. So speak to that. Do you think, I know you’ve got some pretty strong opinions now about celebrity megachurches, even though you said some megachurches we’ve seen work. Do you have some thoughts about the model of church and what makes a safe church? Mary DeMuth: Yes. So many thoughts. I’ll start with a story. In the early two thousand, I went to my first Christian writers conference before I was published and on the airplane on the way there, my story flashed before my eyes and I said, Lord I’ve withstood a lot of trials. Like I’ve gone through a lot of trials. Mary DeMuth: And he said clearly to me, you have withstood many trials, but will you withstand the trial of notoriety? And that has stayed in my mind all these years because fame emaciates, fame makes you think that you’re better than other people and that people exist to serve you rather than you equipping the saints for the work of service. Mary DeMuth: And when the systems are in a place, typically what happens is the ego takes over. There’s something deep within the narcissistic system. And in the narcissistic pastor, they have this wound that they can’t fill except by acclaim. And then it’s like a drug, so they have to keep being acclaimed. They cannot have negative things said about them. Mary DeMuth: Therefore, the next thing they’ll do is they will dismantle the elder board, or they will significantly reduce the influence of the elder board that exists or completely dismantle it altogether. They will gather yes-men around themselves who will only say positive things to them that are not in their context that cannot see them do the bad things And who are other megachurch pastors. So there’s just this like cabal of megachurch pastors that are sitting on each other’s boards saying you can do whatever you want and have fun. Mary DeMuth: That system is ungodly and that will cause the fall of many leaders, which we have already seen over and over and over. It’s like a broken record of sameness. It keeps happening. Why? Because I think we are creating a church structure from a pyramid, which if you look in the Bible, the Israelites left Egypt, but were still looking back at it. One person at the top, one Pharaoh at the top, one supreme ruler, and then everybody has to fit into that system underneath that pyramid. Mary DeMuth: Whereas the kingdom of God is the opposite of that. It’s an inverted pyramid. The kingdom is of people that are last to are not acknowledged. And I think we’re going to be super surprised at where they are standing in line and the new heavens and the new earth, the people with all the acclaim are going to be way at the back. The people that nobody knew about that were silently and quietly serving the Lord are going to be at the front of the line. And we’re going to say, tell me your story, I want to learn from you. Mary DeMuth: But these structures cause the downfall of many men who do not have the character to hold up that structure. They’ve been given leadership responsibility without having maturity, and therefore they are stealing sermons. They are harming people with their words. They are demonizing others. They are all sorts of things you talked about last week. They’re doing those things because they have to keep their empire because their ego needs it so badly. Julie Roys: And the other thing is, and we can’t really even go into this, although I know you see this too, because you run your own literary agency, is that the evangelical industrial complex needs these celebrity pastors to function. So they need the publishing companies need the celebrities so that they can publish them, so that the megachurches need the celebrity to fuel their model of that great attractional speaker that can be everything. Which again, does just feed into the narcissism and it attracts the narcissism. Julie Roys: We like the narcissist. And the whole entire moneymaking empire runs on these narcissists and these celebrity pastors. And so it’s not just even the pastor himself who needs to be a celebrity, but it’s this system that needs celebrities. And at some point, Mary we’ve got to deal with this and evangelicalism, or we’re just going to keep doing this over and over and over again. Mary DeMuth: And I believe the Lord is bringing judgment on those systems. And we’re seeing that in publishing as well. I think it’s a broken system. We make these requirements of how popular you are to be able to be an author. In the nineties and before, it was really about can you write a good book? Is it theologically sound? Do you have a good mind? Do you have a heart to minister to others? And now it’s how many social media followers do you have? Which is you can buy those. Mary DeMuth: So what does that even mean? I hate being a cog in the Christian industrial complex, both as an author and as a literary agent, but as an agent, I feel like I’m championing projects that would otherwise not get sold. That are more global voices people that are marginalized and not often given a voice. So that’s why I have a literary agency. Cause I’m trying to have those voices platformed. Julie Roys: Before you go, I want to ask you also about, we’ve talked a little bit about a safe church, but what makes somebody a safe person as you’re trying to process this? Mary DeMuth: A safe person is someone who doesn’t speak initially, who is an active listener. Who doesn’t jump to conclusions, who doesn’t feel the need to defend the church that you are leaving, who doesn’t say things like Hebrew says don’t forsake your assembling together. Those kinds of like cliche, like super cliche oh, you better do this instead of just meeting you in your grief. Mary DeMuth: A safe person doesn’t try to change your state. They come alongside you into your state and they weep alongside. And that to me is so powerful. People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember that you were there with them in the pain. And we’re just willing to say, yeah, that hurts. And, oh, that must’ve been very painful. Just that empathy piece. Julie Roys: And they won’t shame you for deconstructing. They’ll walk with you; they’ll allow you to process. And I hate that when I see that. I see it on social media all the time, people denigrating people who are deconstructing and I’m like, maybe if you didn’t do that, maybe they wouldn’t be walking away from their faith. But again, deconstructing, I think takes a lot of different forms. I think for a lot of people that have gone through it; they’ve come back to a richer faith that stripped of maybe some of the baggage that they had previously. Julie Roys: Before I let you go, because I know a lot of people listening are in this place of just really, really  struggling and in a lot of hurt. And I know you have names and faces for those people too. Would you be willing to just pray for them and what they’re going through right now? Mary DeMuth: I will. And I’m just going to mention, I have a free resource, MARYDEMUTH.COM/CHURCHHURT. And it’s a hundred statements about things that people feel when they’re going through church hurt so that you can share it with a friend and check off the ones that are you, and then have a good conversation about it. Julie Roys: Wonderful. What a great resource. Thank you. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. Okay. Let me pray. Lord, thank you for loving the least of these. Thank you for leaving the 99 and chasing the one. Thank you for being counterintuitive. Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. Thank you for your grace being sufficient for us and your power is made perfect in our weakness. Mary DeMuth: Lord, forgive us for these systems where we are worshiping strength, power, and numbers when that’s nothing to do with your kingdom. Reorient our lives and our hearts to what is your kingdom. Help us to hear your voice in the midst of the madness and the muddledness of what this has become. I pray that you would send friends to my friends who are suffering in the aftermath of spiritual abuse and church hurt. Mary DeMuth: I pray for hope Lord in these kinds of situations, it can feel like a death, and it feels very hopeless and sad. I pray for comfort and pray all of this in your beautiful name, Jesus. Amen. Julie Roys: Amen. Mary. Thank you so much. And how beautiful that even in this you are ministering to others through it. So I am just so grateful for you and for Patrick and for what you bring to the kingdom. And thank you so much for being willing to talk so vulnerably and bravely. So thank you. Mary DeMuth: Thank you. Julie Roys: And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I want to invite all of you to our next Restore Conference in Phoenix in February 2025. Julie Roys: This is one of the most healing gatherings I know of, where you won’t just hear from amazing folks like Mary DeMuth and Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tove, and Dr. David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. But you’ll also meet lots of other people who have gone through similar experiences, and I’ve found that just being in that kind of community is so healing. Julie Roys: And so powerful. So please come. I would love to meet you there. To find out more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. Julie Roys: And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. 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No cultivated meat company has raised more capital than UPSIDE Foods. In 2022, after having already raised about $200 million in previous rounds, the company raised another $400 million in a Series C round with a company valuation north of the coveted $1 billion unicorn status. No company in the space has garnered more media attention, both positive and critical, than UPSIDE Foods. No company has as much volume of cultivation capacity as UPSIDE Foods. No company is as old as UPSIDE Foods, as it was the first startup formed to take this technology out of academia and work to commercialize real meat grown slaughter-free. It's also one of the few companies in the world to have been granted regulatory approval to actually sell cultivated meat, which it did in the US. So it was only fitting that this conversation with UPSIDE CEO Uma Valeti take place in person inside the beating heart of UPSIDE's EPIC (Cultivated Meat Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center) cultivated meat pilot facility in Emeryville, California. I often say that I'm Uma Valeti's first biographer, since I profile him in Clean Meat, but I certainly won't be his last biographer, regardless of whether he succeeds or fails. And the last time I visited UPSIDE Foods, in 2017, when the company was still called Memphis Meats, and I got to enjoy their cultivated duck. At that time, they had only a handful of employees. Now, as 230 UPSIDE employees worked away in the dramatically nicer building that houses EPIC, I first got to enjoy four different cultivated chicken dishes. I tried both chicken that was FDA-approved and grown in smaller cultivators, and chicken that was yet to be FDA-approved, which was grown in 2,000-liter cultivators. Spoiler: they all tasted great, and were easily discerned from most plant-based chicken in scent, flavor, and texture. After the tasting, Uma and I sat down for this frank conversation in which we discussed UPSIDE's past, present, and future. That includes details about the scale and capability at which they currently sit, why they paused their plans for their vaunted Rubicon commercial facility in Illinois, what expansions they're planning on making at EPIC in California, what Uma thinks about the obituaries some journalists are writing for the cultivated meat industry, when he thinks cultivated meat will reach 1 percent market share in the total meat market, and much more.  In this conversation, you'll hear Uma elaborate on how the technology has gone from being decried as impossible to now possible, and what remains to be seen is whether it will now go from possible to inevitable.  It's a fascinating and revelatory conversation with a man who has served in many ways as a face for the cultivated meat movement for many years, even prior to founding this company. Discussed in this episode This episode is the eighth in our multi-part podcast series on cultivated meat. The previous seven episodes include Avant Meats, BlueNalu, Eat Just, Fork & Good, Mosa Meat, New Harvest, and Aleph Farms. Our past episode with New Harvest founder Jason Matheny. A 2013 Washington Post obituary for electric vehicles. Nine states are now phasing out gas cars by 2035, and so are automakers like GM. Uma and Paul both endorse the work of the Good Food Institute. You can see a clip of Paul tasting UPSIDE Foods' duck in 2017 here. Uma is profiled in Clean Meat, which has an updated 2024 paperback edition now out.  Tyson Foods pulled out of its investment in Beyond Meat. Paul couldn't recall the exact name in the live interview, but he was referring to Potemkin villages in Russia. More about Uma Valeti Dr. Uma Valeti is the CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods. Uma earned a degree in Cardiology from the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry, India. After residencies at Wayne State and SUNY Buffalo, Uma completed three fellowships at the Mayo Clinic. He teaches Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University. In 2019, Uma was named a “Global Thinker of the Decade” by Foreign Policy magazine. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and SXSW.

Eva Lopez is one of the top Spanish climbers in history. While she is largely known as one of the world's foremost researchers on training for climbing, she's also a crusher. She was the 5th woman to to climb 8c and in 2013, at 42 years old, climbed her first 8c+, a route she bolted called Potemkin.  In this episode, Eva and Kris discuss the state of Spanish climbing in the 1990's and what it was like watching Josune Bereziartu come into her own during those years. They also dig into the woman vs. woman rivalries that are often played up by the media and why it's less common to see that happen today, and what Josune and her incredible accomplishments mean to climbing history. Check out more here! Join the Secret Stoners Club for FREE. ---------------------------------- Thank you to our partner, Tension Climbing. Tension creates tools to help you elevate your climbing experience. Check out the goods here and use code STONE for 10% off anything but the full Tension Board set-ups, hardware, and gift cards. When you support Tension, you're supporting the team at Plug Tone creating this show.  Written in Stone is co-created with Power Company Climbing. Use code STONE at checkout for 20% off. Details at www.powercompanyclimbing.com/stone

With David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore. In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.David Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter. In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK's first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock'n'Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don't Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David's most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year.Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller.CREDITSYour hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics CentreFind Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked inFind Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and XFind Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we spend time with David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore and ask - ​​Where do Jews really come from? Are they white or people of colour? And how should we deal with the ethnic diversity within Jewish populations, with differences between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews? Questions around whether Jews are white or people of colour has become a fraught issue. In an ideal world (or the ideal for at least most of us in the multicultural liberal west,) it shouldn't matter. However, race, ethnicity and politics have always been intertwined, and this question takes us to some surprising places in the battle of racial politics. In particular, both the far right and now the progressive left are drawing a lot of meaning from the question ‘are Jews white or people of colour?', with Jews seemingly on the wrong side of each of their equations. They are non-white for the far right, and quintessentially white for the progressive left. To help answer this question and more, we have two guests with very different lenses. Our first, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is one of the world's leading historians. He outlines the historical, archaeological and genetic consensus, and any counterviews, on where Jews come from and how Jewish populations have moved through the ages. We also have author, comedian and documentarian David Baddiel to help with the cultural and political significance of this question, and to explore whether Jews are privileged enough to be ‘deemed' white, regardless of their Middle Eastern heritage. BIOSDavid Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter. In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK's first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock'n'Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don't Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David's most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year. Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump's 2024 lies are not just the familiar ones about a 'rigged election' and 'Sleepy Joe.' He's also unleashing a flood of untruths about Biden and his record that gets filtered through the media mill and reduced to background noise. Plus, Putin's Potemkin victory. Glasser joins Tim today. show notes: Susan's most recent column

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 85 How should we describe the system currently used in China? It's the CCP, Chinese Communist Party, so it's obviously a Communist nation, but look at the crazy-rich Asians and the huge corporations there. It's not Uncle Joe's Communism, that's for sure. So, what is it? Whether we want to call it Chinese Communism, Communism 3.0, or Neoliberal Communism, it's a Communist state that's operating with a controlled, Potemkin neoliberal "market" economy. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay spells it out. Join him for a little storytelling with a point! New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/ Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #China #Communism

In this episode, Alex talks the death of Alexei Navalny and about his legacy. He discusses why he was such an important opposition figure to Putin that held a mirror up to the Kremlin's moral hypocrisy. Alex also talks about why Navalny was a complex and controversial figure, and while he was an imperfect opposition figure, he was necessary to unify Russians against Putin's kleptocratic regime. Later, Alex talks about Tucker Carlson's insane compliments about Russian infrastructure and supermarkets. He asks why question — is Tucker a useful idiot or a fellow traveler? Or could be be a bit of both?

Tony Arterburn, DavidKnight.gold — The petrodollar is officially dead, commercial real estate is collapsing in both US & China and Trump's campaign rhetoric about massive tariffs of 60% against China, 10% against other countries. What is mercantilism, and is it back in fashion?Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT

Tony Arterburn, DavidKnight.gold — The petrodollar is officially dead, commercial real estate is collapsing in both US & China and Trump's campaign rhetoric about massive tariffs of 60% against China, 10% against other countries. What is mercantilism, and is it back in fashion?Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT

For this special Americano podcast, Freddy Gray is in New Hampshire with the Spectator US team, Matt McDonald and Zach Christenson covering the chilly primaries. Are both Ron De Santis and Nikki Haley's defeat a foregone conclusion?

For this special Americano podcast, Freddy Gray is in New Hampshire with the Spectator US team, Matt McDonald and Zach Christenson covering the chilly primaries. Are both Ron De Santis and Nikki Haley's defeat a foregone conclusion?

Join Eric, @TimAndrewsHere, @Autopritts, @JaredYamamoto, @EnglishNick67, and Greg as they chat about Potemkin village candidates, secondary syphilis, virtual firings, and much more! This podcast includes the radio show. *New episodes of our sister shows: The Popcast, Radio Labyrinth, Power Pod, The Nightcap w/ Jared Yamamoto, and One Topic are available as well!* “Brought to you by Findlay Roofing”

This week we talk about Indonesia, South Africa, and geopolitical risks.We also discuss the South China Sea, the US Presidential election, and Potemkin democracy.Recommended Book: The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff GoodellTranscriptBy many metrics, 2023 was a tumultuous year.In the latter-quarter, in early October, the paramilitary group Hamas launched a sneak-attack on Israel which kicked off a new round of turmoil directly, on the ground, in the Gaza Strip, where Israel launched a hastily organized counterattack, and that's led to a fresh humanitarian crisis in the Strip, as resident Palestinians have been killed in the tens of thousands, as the Israeli military has sought out and tried to get revenge against Hamas fighters and leaders, but it's also upended the region as Egypt has tried to position itself as peacemaker, while also trying to stave-off the possibility of hundreds of thousands of Gazans being pushed across the border into the Sinai Peninsula, and further north Hezbola militants have engaged in an, at this point anyway, relatively low-key shootout with Israel across the Lebanese border, increasing the perceptual likelihood, at least, of a conflict that increases in scope, encapsulating more of Iran's allies and subsidiary groups, and possible even Iran itself.That component of the conflict has also started to impact global trade as the Red Sea—a channel connecting Asia with Europe through the Suez Canal—has been plagued by gunman and drone and missile attacks by Houthi groups in Yemen, which are also supported by Iran and ostensibly launching these attacks in solidarity with those under-siege Palestinians in Gaza.Further north, across the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which kicked-off in earnest when the latter invaded the former in late-February of 2022, continues apace, though the frontlines in the conflict have remained fairly static for the better part of a year, and the two sides have doubled-down on launching missiles and drones at each other, reorienting toward asymmetric attacks on stockpiles and supply chains, alongside attacks on civilian centers meant to psychologically damage the other side, rather than fixating entirely on ground assaults meant to formally claim or reclaim territory.This conflict continues to shape global alliances and eat up gobs of monetary and military resources, as Russia imports weapons and supplies from allies like Iran and China, and Ukraine receives funding from mostly Western nations, though that support could diminish or even largely dry up, soon, depending on the political meanderings of its allies in those countries in the coming months.The drumbeat toward potential conflict in the South China Sea also continues to increase in tempo as the Chinese military upgrades and reorganizes its infrastructure and leadership, and forced accidents between ships in the area—especially but not exclusively between Chinese and Filipino assets—have become more common as both sides have decided to draw a line in the sand, China wanting to maintain a sense of invincibility and inevitability for its expansionary efforts, and the Philippines becoming more confident in its regional alliances, which are solidifying around efforts to prevent growth and influence-expansion on the part of China's military—including its stated intention to bring Taiwan under its control, by force if necessary, sometime in the next handful of years.There's also heightened concern about conflicts and potential conflicts in the Sahel region in northwestern Africa.A series of recent military coups against elected governments have lent this strip of land the nickname "the coup belt," and a handful of military dictatorships that have emerged from these coups have gestured at creating a sort of rough alliance meant to deter opposition from local democracies—many of which are themselves wary of coups within their own borders, and suffering from many of the variables that tend to make coups more likely, like regional terrorist activity from extremist paramilitary groups, and persistent economic and humanitarian issues.These sorts of conflicts and potential conflicts are examples of what are often called geopolitical risks: things that are problems unto themselves, but which might also reverberate outward, causing even more problems secondarily and tertiarily, and not just in their immediate vicinity, but globally—all of which messes with efforts to plan much of anything, because something could pop up to render the assumptions informing those plans moot at the drop of a hat.Economic crises and resource crises are also common sources of geopolitical risk, but 2024 will be historically prone to another common type: that of democratic elections. And some of the record-number of major elections scheduled for 2024 are truly significant, beyond even the normal risks associated with the potential peaceful handover of power.—In 2024, there will be significant elections in around 50 different countries, with some wiggle-room in that number because some of the elections expected to occur in 2024 may not, and others might pop up as the year progresses. And around 76 countries will have some type of election, inclusive of smaller, regional rather than national races.If these numbers prove even generally accurate, that will make 2024 the most election-heavy year in history, and something like 2 billion people will head to the polls for those top-level elections, and around 4 billion for some kind of vote—these people deciding who will take the reins of some of the world's largest militaries, economies, and populations.In practice, that means we'll see elections in the US, India, Mexico, South America, the 27 European Parliament countries, alongside nations that are up-and-coming in various ways, like Indonesia and Venezuela, and those that have seen a lot of instability of late, like South Sudan and Pakistan.There will be an election in Taiwan that could determine, among other things, and in part, how hawkish a stance its government takes toward neighboring, bristling-with-weapons-and-animosity, China, and the UK will also see a leadership race—one that hasn't been scheduled yet—but if it does happen, that election could flip the House of Commons from the long-ruling Tories to the opposition Labour party for the first time since 2010.The 2024 Presidential election in the United States is already being complicated by a slew of lawsuits, most of them aimed at former President Trump or his allies, Trump having been accused of all sorts of crimes, and who, as a consequence of his connection to the insurrection at the Capital on January 6, 2021, has been banished from the ballots in two states, so far.The Supreme Court will almost certainly determine if those banishments will be allowed stand sometime in the next few months, if not weeks, though the other cases also inform Trump's election run-up schedule, as he'll be in and out of courthouses and may see substantial fines and even potential prison time if one or more of them don't go his way.Republicans have also launched inquiries into President Biden and his son Hunter, and while these mostly look like counterattack efforts from Congressional Republicans at this point, it's possible one them might turn up something real and actionable, so those could also be volatile variables in this election, which will determine whether Trump returns to office and is able to act on his platform of doubling-down on the ambitions of his previous term in office and seeking revenge against those who wronged him, or if Biden will be able to continue his collection of policies, locking things like the Inflation Reduction Act into place, rather than seeing them on the chopping block before they had a chance to really take root.India's elections looks all but certain to go current Prime Minister Modi's way, as he and his administration have been immensely popular, continuing to roll out a series of policies that favor the nation's Hindu majority at the expense of the Muslim minority, and that popularity is bulwarked with efforts and alleged efforts to disadvantage his opponents and anyone else who might criticize him and his accomplishments—including journalists—using the levers of state; and as tends to be the case in such circumstances, another win would provide him and his party another term in office during which they could double-down on what's working, for their constituents and for themselves.Mexico's election in June of 2024 will, for the first time ever, feature two women candidates from the country's leading parties, making it likely the next president will be a woman. This election will also ask voters to elect around 20,000 people to fill vacant and soon-to-be vacant public positions across the country, which is a record for Mexico, and could change the on-the-ground political reality for a huge portion of the country's citizenry.Venezuela's next presidential election hasn't been scheduled for a specific day yet, and it's all but certain to result in another win for current president Maduro, in large part because he's been accused of stacking the deck in his favor in previous elections, and in case that wasn't enough, he's also barred the leading opposition candidate from running, citing alleged political crimes as the rationale, though no one's really buying that excuse, as it's the go-to option in the authoritarian's playbook when you want to ban a popular opponent while making it seem like you're acting to uproot corruption.This election is interesting, though, despite the outcome being basically preordained, because of Maduro's recent posturing surrounding the issue of the Essequibo region controlled and government by neighboring Guyana, which Maduro has recently said should actually belong to Venezuela, alongside the vast stores of oil and gas that have been discovered there in recent years; he's gone so far as to task local companies with exploring the area to assess where the oil wells and mines should be built, and had a referendum asking citizens if they thought the region should be annexed, all the people living there issued Venezuelan citizenship—and while there's reason to believe this is mostly just posturing and he'll ultimately settle for a deal with Guyana's government to somehow profit from those resources, there's a chance things don't go his way and military action starts to look like an appealing means of staying in power while seeming to be sticking around on the country's behalf.Indonesia's general election will be held early in the year, in mid-February, and this election will be important in part because Indonesia is such a huge country in terms of population, and a burgeoning giant in terms of its economy and its diplomatic heft: it boasts an abundance of natural resources and is located along the South China Sea, making it a strategically important ally; but it's also one to watch because the people who have run the country's government until this point have largely been elites who were able to take political, business, and military power during the nation's pre-democratic 32 years of authoritarian rule.The country's current president was the first real outsider to break through that wall of authoritarianism-empowered elites, and he's immensely popular, but hasn't been able to get much done because the rest of the government has been controlled by cronies of those elites.This election could determine the shape of the rest of that government, and the elites are positioning themselves behind a portfolio of new cronies they would also control, while the current president—who's ineligible for a third term in office, and thus won't be running again—has said he intends to meddle in the election, trying to position himself as a kingmaker in this upcoming and future votes, which could help more outsiders break through that elite barrier, and maybe reshape things in Indonesia in a more fundamental way.Russia's upcoming election is a Potemkin vote, current President Putin having jailed his actual, serious competition, and his stranglehold on power and the media in the country ensuring that unless he decides otherwise, he'll be cake-walking back into the Kremlin—elections are a farce in Russia, these days.In Iran, though, where leaders hold some of the same powers over the electorate as Putin, including but not limited to jailing those they think might challenge their influence, there's a chance 2024's election might either force the country's Supreme Leader to clamp down on opposition he doesn't like, hard, in a way that could further alienate an already somewhat alienated public against him and his rule, or, failing that, he might have to deal with a parliament stacked with political rivals who could make his job more difficult.There was some hope amongst Iran's rivals that 2021's election cycle might give those in charge cause for concern in this way, but that ended up not being the case. So this isn't a certain thing, and there's a good chance the higher-ups just decide to double-down on oppression, as that's worked pretty well for them in most regards up till this point. But there's a chance opposition will be able to slip into some positions of relative power, which could then nudge some of the country's behaviors internally, and throughout the region, in a direction the Supreme Leader and his people aren't happy about.The European Parliament election will happen in early June, and will see more than 400 million voters elect 720 people to parliament across the 27 member countries, and this will be meaningful in part because it's such a big, rich, influential bloc, but also because there's been a surge in far-right candidates in some countries, that surge seemingly tied to immigration concerns and the conflict in Ukraine, among other issues of the day.Poland's government, in contrast, moved in the opposite direction, a far-right government that was in the process of locking itself into permanent power replaced by a more center-left leadership.So we could see an EU that doubles-down on what it's been doing, in a sort of generally center-left fashion, or one that shifts somewhat or dramatically to the right, reorienting toward more isolation and less support of neighbors like Ukraine, which would then also go on to influence the outcome of that conflict, among other global happenings.One more election that I think is worth mentioning here is that of South Africa, which will see the ANC party, which has run things since 1994, face its stiffest competition since Nelson Mandela stepped into office and became its first black president.In the decades since, the ANC has never faced a real threat to its governing majority until now, and that means it could be forced to form a coalition with other parties, which could substantially alter the balance of power in the country with the biggest economy in Africa, and one that has suffered from all sorts of corruption issues and problems with infrastructure and spending under ANC's governance.There are countless potential sources of geopolitical risk and turmoil in 2024, including the aforementioned military conflicts, but also things like pandemics, the emergence of new, disruptive technologies, and economic fluctuations that don't align with the models the experts have been working from and basing their policy decisions on.But elections are maybe the most straightforward and direct path toward fundamental change at the governmental level, which is part of why they're so valuable, but also part of why they represent so many unknowns and so much trepidation.Only something like 43 of the 76 countries that'll have elections of some kind this year are considered to be home to fair and free elections, but even those that are mostly just going through the motions have the potential to spark non-vote-related repercussions, so this'll be a year to watch as around half of the human population heads to the ballot boxes and engages in the complex process of both doing democracy in the first place and dealing with the consequences it.Show Noteshttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/business/economy/global-economic-risks-red-sea.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_electionhttps://carnegieendowment.org/2023/10/05/indonesia-s-2024-presidential-election-could-be-last-battle-of-titans-pub-90711https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/2024-election-cycle-starts-iranhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_national_electoral_calendarhttps://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/12/2024-elections-around-world/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-11-01/2024-is-election-year-in-40-countries-and-podcast-elon-inc-launches-next-weekhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_riskhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukrainehttps://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territorial-disputes-south-china-sea This is a public episode. 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Welcome to the Radical Roots of Ethnic Studies, a series of the Dissidents Podcast， with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality. This week we speak with Izabella Tabarovsky, a Soviet Jewish Immigrant who has dedicated her research to exploring the spread of Soviet propaganda throughout the modern world. In this podcast she shares with the Soviet origins of antisemitic & anti-zionist propaganda & tropes, both the right & left's adoption of these ideologies, its influence in today's American media landscape and education system, and how Hamas used the same protocols put forth by the Russians and subsequently the Nazis to justify a Jewish genocide. Coalition for Empowered Education Institute for Liberal Values Podcast Notes: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Potemkin Village Find out more about Izabella, a Senior Advisor at the Wilson Center, and see her most recent media interviews. ⁠How Soviet Propaganda Informs Contemporary Left Anti-Zionism⁠, Izabella Tabarovsky for Tablet Magazine Let Russian Jews Lead, Izabella Tabarovsky for Tablet Magazine The Cult of ‘Antizionism', Izabella Tabarovsky for Tablet Magazine Read Izabella's Afterword for Letters in Black & White

Xi Jinping is coming to town and Gavin Newsom has decided that it's finally time to clean up the city of feces and urban decay: San Francisco. But if you're not a Chinese party apparatchik you're SOL: Gov. Gruesome essentially came right out and said that it wasn't worth the cleanup for you, dear voter. Meanwhile, Nikki Haley calls for a complete and total crackdown on all pseuds and New York's Kathy Hochul gives the editors occasion to discuss the weaponization of free speech and cancel culture. Finally, as always, the editors remind you to read the damn site! Recommended reading: The Rise of Ethical Cannibalism Carving Turkey Away from NATO Christmas Karol

PHOTO: NO KNOWN RESTRICTIONS ON PUBLICATION. @BATCHELORSHOW #Ukraine: Potemkin Peace. Anatol Lieven, Quincy Institute. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-s-blinken-warns-against-potemkin-peace-saying-ukraine-cease-fire-could-legitimize-russian-invasion/ar-AA1c7SOX

Are Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence really running for the VP slot—or a chance to increase their speaking fees? Plus, Trump is still an extortionist, the GOP's not a serious governing party, and Fox created the market for the homeless vet hoax. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence really running for the VP slot—or a chance to increase their speaking fees? Plus, Trump is still an extortionist, the GOP's not a serious governing party, and Fox created the market for the homeless vet hoax. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices