American Reader.

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Jun 28, 2026

Reader compare mendacious political fabulist Jonathan Freedland, with John Crace of ‘The politics sketch’!

Posted on May 16, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

American Reader comments !

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May 10, 2025

Editor: Reader begin here :

Jonathan Freedland:

Headline: The art of dealing with Donald Trump? Don’t fight him alone.

Sub-headline: This week’s trade deal is a boost for Keir Starmer. But a lasting win will only come by joining forces with other nations to resist the US president’s entire destructive agenda

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/09/art-dealing-donald-trump-keir-starmer-trade-deal

Editor: the final three paragraphs:

…

These, then, are the two strategies available when the Trump juggernaut comes for you. You can seek to cut a separate deal, to protect yourself, as Columbia tried to do. Or you can stand together with all those similarly under attack, seeking to repel the entire Trump offensive, which is what happened after Harvard made its move. So far it is collective action that has got the best results.

Applied to world trade, that would mean a shift away from the every-man-for-himself approach that led to Thursday’s handshakes in the Oval Office, and towards a combined endeavour in which the UK joins forces with, say, Canada and Australia and, obviously, its nearest and biggest trading partner, the EU, to oppose Trump and his prosperity-destroying, self-harming tariffs. More Harvard, less Columbia.

Now, clearly, Starmer’s duty is to protect Britain from a US currently wrecking the global trading system. He took a step in that direction this week. But the greater, more lasting protection will surely come only when the free nations of the world don’t merely try to save their own skins, but instead come together to resist an American president bent on destroying so much that we all value – and not only on trade. Who knows, there may even be another American leader anointed this very week who would give such an effort his blessing.

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Headline: Flattery gets Starmer somewhere as The Donald stays awake to toot tariff deal

Sub-hedline: Flattery gets Starmer somewhere as The Donald stays awake to toot tariff deal

John Crace

Sycophancy stops Trump from dozing off as PM and co hail victory – or at least getting what they could get

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/08/keir-starmer-donald-trump-tariffs-trade-deal-politics-sketch

Editor: Mr Crace has both literary and political talent, and a gift for story telling that evades Mr. Friedland! In the most telling way both Starmer and Freedland are locked in a toxic symbiosis, that resembles black & white television of a long-gone era!

Three days ago, Donald Trump promised an announcement that would be very possibly the greatest announcement in the whole history of announcements. Come Thursday morning, he said the US and the UK had reached a full and comprehensive trade deal.

I guess a lot depends on what you mean by the words “greatest announcement” and “full and comprehensive”. As details of the deal began to emerge, it rather looked as if the UK had managed to negotiate a worse deal with the US than we had even two months ago. One that was hardly transformative. Just reversing some of the damage that had been done to the UK by the US starting a global trade war. Tariffs as a protection racket.

Still, a deal is a deal. These days, Keir Starmer has learned you get what you can get. And it’s more than any other country has got so far. It remains to be seen if others come out of the White House with anything better. But Keir wasn’t the only one who needed a quick result. Trump did, too. He had a reputation to maintain as a deal-maker and Americans were beginning to get twitchy that none had been reached. It wasn’t clear if this was a victory for crack negotiating teams, or a sign that both the US and the UK had been a bit desperate. So both sides were keen to chalk the deal up as a win for themselves.

Editor: Mr Crace literary/political talent continues to bloom, as Mr. Freedland’s looks like and reads like, the precarious chatter of an Economist essay’s of the Micklethwait & Wooldridge era!

Trump’s powers of concentration aren’t all they might be and he finds it difficult when he’s not the centre of attention. Keir did his best to stop the president from flatlining by showering him with flattery. The Donald had been the best. Everyone and everything would be nothing without him.

At this, Trump began to perk up. The US and the UK had been working for years on a trade deal. People had said it couldn’t be done, he boasted. And yet he had done it in a matter of weeks. Truly, he was incredible. He didn’t seem to realise that he hadn’t negotiated a full trade agreement. Just a small side hustle encompassing a few sectors. There was a ripple of applause from the sycophants in the Oval Office when Trump managed to press the right switch to disconnect the call.

The Donald then invited his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnik, to expand a little on the deal. Howie is reportedly a billionaire but he also delivers a pitch-perfect impersonation of a halfwit. It’s hard to imagine him in a room negotiating the sale of a secondhand car. “This was the president’s deal,” he cooed. “If it had been left to me, it would have taken at least three years. He did everything. He is the closer.” Imagine. Howie had just told the entire world he had been out of his depth in a puddle. Truly, the world is fucked if he is one of its masters.

Next up was the British ambassador, Peter Mandelson. Bowing deeply. Full of reverence. Mandy was born for days like these. When all that is required is oleaginous smooth-talking masquerading as sincerity. Truly, The Donald was nothing short of a genius. He wasn’t fit to wipe the president’s shoes. Trump had achieved more than anyone else in the history of the world. Thank you, thank you. We have reached the end of the beginning, he sobbed. Everyone was getting in on the Churchill act this VE Day. Trump nodded. Mandy was right about him.

Back in the UK, Starmer was just starting his own press conference at the Jaguar Land Rover factory. Britain was open for business, he said. No less than the whole future of the UK had been saved. Keir, alone, had altered the course of history. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. Keir had managed all three. This was bigger than VE Day. Bring out the bunting. Drink the pubs dry. We were entering a new era of prosperity.

This wasn’t just a victory for the UK. It was a victory for Starmer personally. Some people had said he should stand up to Agent Orange. Put the phone down. Don’t give in to bullies. But Keir had emerged triumphant. His brown-nosing had achieved the impossible. Which was, er … not quite as good as the deal we had not so long ago. It was time for the king to get out his silk pyjamas, line up the Diet Cokes and the Haribos and prepare for his sleepover with the president. If Keir had to suck it up, then so could Charles.

American Reader.

Queer Atheist thanks Alain Catzeflis for posting the full text of his Financial Times essay!

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Jun 28, 2026

Life & Arts The Weekend Essay. ‘The battle for the soul of Israel’

Posted on September 7, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Queer Atheist on Financial Times SHIT!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 30, 2025

Alain Catzeflis

Alain is former News Editor of the Financial Times, Asia Editor and Middle East correspondent. He is currently a Fellow of the Centre for Welfare Reform

Thursday March 30, 2023

Israel is going through a period of torrid soul-searching. At the heart of this upheaval is a struggle, not between left and right, but between the desire to be safe and a longing to be free, to live in a normal, peaceful democracy. It’s a contest for Israel’s soul.

The hard-line coalition led by fifth-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that accruing more power to the state — by hobbling the judiciary and curbing human rights — is necessary to protect Israel from its internal and external enemies.

Tens of thousands of Israelis, bearing rivers of blue and white Star of David flags, have taken to the streets begging to differ. They see the proposed measures as a crude power grab that would undermine the country’s democratic foundations even further.

Long nights of angry protests were made worse by Netanyahu’s decision to fire his Defence Minister Yoav Galant. The latter said the divisions caused by legislation to neuter the judiciary posed “a clear, immediate and real danger” to the state.

Warnings of serious disquiet in the army’s vital reserve units flashed red. (The last time Israeli reservists rose up in protest was after the invasion of Lebanon in 2006). The Israeli Defence Force are lionized as the embodiment of Zionist values. So when the military speaks politicians sit up.

This week Netanyahu has backed off in the face of these unprecedented protests and a stiff warning by President Joe Biden to drop his judicial reform plans. The Israeli leader told the nation “When there’s an opportunity to avoid civil war through dialogue ..I am taking time out for dialogue”. Call this realpolitik or call it breathtaking cynicism: at least it offers a pause in an incendiary situation.

History matters, as always with Israel. The Jewish state was born out of tragedy, forged in conflict and lives on in a state of perpetual apprehension. This restless search for equilibrium – pushed to its very limits by a manipulative, power-hungry Prime Minister — lies at the heart of the extraordinary events of the past few weeks.

This tension, of course, is not exceptional. Weighing up draconian measures to ward off dangers (real or perceived) against individual freedom and human rights is an occupational hazard for any democracy.

But for Israel the predicament is uniquely acute. The country has been in a perpetual state of belligerence since the first Arab-Israeli conflict when the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition the British mandate of Palestine into two states, one Jewish one Arab.

The residual fear of annihilation – a second Holocaust – is what gives its politicians a wide discretion to act, sometimes to overreact. The generation that was part of the founding of the Jewish state out of the embers of the Holocaust has, by and large, backed its government tough line over the years.

But Israel’s martial approach to what it regards as its existential challenges has not always met with approval at home: the permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the aggressive Jewish settlement programme in the occupied territories have all drawn protests.

But this is different. This latest protests, mostly by a younger generation, may turn out to be a defining moment for this young, embattled country. Netanyahu’s coalition of ultra-nationalists, religious leaders and assorted far-Right rabble-rousers want to neuter the Supreme Court by turning justices into political appointees. It also wants the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) to be able override Supreme Court rulings. Britain is not unfamiliar with this impulse.

Israel’s Supreme Court wields significant power. But Israel is a country with a unicameral parliament, no formal constitution, and an increasingly volatile political landscape. There have been 37 governments in the 75 years since Israel’s creation in 1948.

The judiciary plays a crucial checks and balances role. If it’s not there to hold the ring who will? And you have to ask: what is Israel without a robust and independent judiciary? Countries that slide into dictatorship invariably start out by obliterating the independence of their judges. Is this what Israel’s founding fathers had in mind?

Netanyahu is nothing if not skilled in politics. He is a survivor who knows when to big himself up and when to show the necessary humility. The Jerusalem Post describes him as part Rambo part artful dodger. He drives his opponents crazy by being three steps ahead.

In his most recent attempt to cling to power Netanyahu has allied himself to extremists like National Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The ultra-Zionist has built a legal career defending Jewish suspects charged with terrorism and hate crimes. He has been indicted more than 50 times for incitement to racial hatred.

His role model and ideological wellspring is the late Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971. During a single term in the Knesset Kahane pushed the moral tenets of the country to the limit.

Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view – and he was not alone – demographic trends would lead ineluctably to a non-Jewish majority. To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.”

Leading ultra-Orthodox Rabbis have joined the call for pushing ahead with the coalition’s legal reforms. “By the grace of God, the people of Israel chose a Jewish and nationalistic government that is expected to operate in support of Torah, the people of Israel and the Land of Israel.” This is naked populism by another name. Recent citizenship laws passed by the Knesset methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians and Arab citizens playing to the fear of an eventual Arab majority.

The Israeli leader remains on trial for allegedly providing political favours to tycoons in exchange for personal gifts and positive press coverage—charges he denies. Perhaps he saw these measures as his get-out-of-jail card. Either way “Bibi” has badly misjudged the mood of his country.

Governing Israel – being Israel- is complicated. The story it tells of itself – the socialism of its founding fathers, the kibbutzim, the Holocaust – is essentially a European one.

The reality is more complicated. One fifth of Israel’s citizens are Arab Muslims. But many more – perhaps as many as half – have roots in the Islamic world. They are (like Arabs, Phoenicians, Babylonians) Semites.

Dragging Israel into an exclusively Jewish space where non-Jews are second-class citizens and human rights are sacrificed on the altar of national survival is a recipe for perpetual conflict.

The Palestinian issue has been temporarily silenced. But imagining that it has gone away is foolish and the Israelis are nothing if not realists.

Israelis are united in their desire to keep their country safe. But, perhaps for the first time, they are confronted by the question: at what cost?

This crisis offers a chance to pause and rethink what Israel is and what is stands for. A constitution and a Bill of Rights would go some way to paving the way for a fresh start.

https://www.thearticle.com/the-battle-for-the-soul-of-israel

Political Cynic again!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 28, 2026

Posted on June 28, 2023 by stephenkmacksd

Political Cynic …

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Headline: Europe | Party like it’s 1917

Sub-headlines: Can Ukraine capitalize on chaos in Russia?

Ukraine’s counter-offensive is going slowly

Ukrainians watched with glee as Russia flirted with civil war on June 24th. They had hoped that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow would tie up Russian troops and destabilise Vladimir Putin’s regime. Alas, the insurrection proved short-lived. In recent days, Ukraine’s army has made modest advances in the east. But a counter-offensive that began on June 4th shows little sign of breaking through Russian lines in force any time soon, making some Western officials nervous.

Still, Ukraine has made some hay with the disarray next door. Its army made significant progress in the eastern town of Bakhmut, which Mr Prigozhin’s forces had captured only last month after almost a year of fighting. Ukrainian forces now threaten to encircle Russian defenders from the north and south. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, hailed a “happy day” after visiting front lines on June 26th. Russia responded with a dinnertime missile strike on a popular restaurant in Kramatorsk on June 27th, 30km from the front line. It killed at least eight people, including three children.

The composed Headline, that reads in part ‘Party like it’s 1917’ the maladroit framing, expresses a dull-witted attempt to shanghai Prince’s 1999 best selling Pop Record? call it at best pathetic. Or an attempt to reach a generation of readers, that used to think that The Economist was the reading of choice of Economics Majors? Or for those Oxbridgers or the Pretenders who were aiming for lucrative employment opportunities? The reader has 1, 052 words of propaganda to ingest, digest or just regurgitate, to demonstrate a pastiche of highfalutin Econo-Speak?

Selective quotation of the remainder of the essay reads like more Front Line descriptions, from those ever-present ‘stringers’ who provide the near graphic costs of War?

The aim of the offensive towards Bakhmut appears less to enter the city than to surround it.

The front-lines shifted elsewhere, too. Ukraine’s capture of territory in the western suburbs of Donetsk city was especially important: troops crossed into territory which Russia had held since 2015, during its first invasion of Ukraine.

Some officials suggest that Ukraine may be able to conduct a more significant crossing of the rapidly desiccating Kakhovka reservoir in the weeks to come.

The question is whether the convulsions in Russia will have longer-lasting effects on the battlefield. One issue is the future of the Wagner Group.

Some fighters have indeed gone back to Ukraine, where Mr Putin says they will be absorbed into the Russian forces. Others, including the 2,500 to 5,000 troops who played a role in the mutiny, may join Mr Prigozhin in Belarus.

The second issue is the impact on morale. A spokesperson for the 56th Motorised Brigade, now fighting on the outskirts of the city, says her colleagues had observed new levels of “confusion” among their Russian counterparts since June 23rd. Their befuddlement is understandable.

In angry remarks on June 24th Mr Putin himself drew an indelicate comparison to 1917, a year in which revolution at home contributed to the mutiny of Russian armies in France. Anthony King, a military sociologist at Warwick University, warns against over-egging the effect of Mr Prigozhin’s subversive messaging.

Mr King says he is sceptical that “political shenanigans” will have much of an effect on platoons and companies at the tactical level.

The impact on Russia’s high command, the third question raised by the insurrection, could be more severe.

Sources : The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Both reports cited American intelligence, Mr. King.

On June 28th the New York Times reported that General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine between October and January, had prior knowledge of the rebellion. The same day, the Wall Street Journal said that Mr Prigozhin had intended to kidnap Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, and General Valery Gerasimov, the country’s chief of general staff, during their visit to a region near Ukraine’s border. Both reports cited American intelligence. “Fractures at that command level could have a longer-term effect on the unity of the campaign,” says Mr King.

Sources:

“It is still too early to tell how successful the ongoing counteroffensive will be,” acknowledged General Sir Patrick Sanders, Britain’s army chief, on June 26th, adding “Russia has been a country of comebacks.”

Sources:

A Ukrainian military-intelligence source complains that the country is moving as fast as it can, given the tools at its disposal. “Let me put this as diplomatically as I can,” he says. “Certain partners are telling us to go forward and fight violently, but they also take their time delivering the hardware and weapons we need.”

Political Cynic

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Jun 27, 2026

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/yJdTxHtccW4?start=12s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Jun 27, 2026

Katie talks to current MP and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn about the resignation of Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader who smeared Corbyn as an antisemite, expelled him from the party, and then imposed a pro-war austerity agenda and enabled the Gaza genocide. Katie also talks to Jeremy about his Bill for an independent inquiry into Britain’s complicity in genocide.



Jeremy Corbyn is former Labour Party leader, current Member of Parliament for Islington North, the founder of the Corbyn Project and Parliamentary Leader of Your Party.

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00:00 Keir Starmer’s resignation speech

00:32 “I inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially & morally bankrupt”

03:00 Jeremy reacts: I was appalled

03:29 “If the Party was morally bankrupt why was he so utterly desperate to become part of Labour Party leadership while I was leader?”

Starmer:

06:49 “let’s not have lectures about moral bankruptcy from” genocide enablers

07:50 Starmer lied about relationship with Jeremy

08:05 Jeremy lists Starmer’s economic failures

10:32 Keir Starmer’s worst moments

10:40 Starmer: “Israel has the right to cut off water”

12:44 RAF shared surveillance of Gaza

13:33 Prescribing Palestine Action

15:40 Jeremy’s bill for an independent inquiry into Britain’s role in the genocide

Newspaper Reader offers the New York Times, as the counter evidemce to the assertion of ‘Why the Center Left Is Losing’?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 27, 2026

The Good Fight Club: Why the Center Left Is Losing, the Squad vs. the Median Voter, and How Patriotism Wins Elections

Matthew Yglesias, Claire Ainsley, and Yascha Mounk debate whether progressives have abandoned the working-class voters they once claimed to represent.

Yascha Mounk

Jun 27

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The Biggest Winner: Zohran Mamdani

All the candidates the mayor backed won their primary races on Tuesday, enhancing his political clout in the city and the state.

The big winner in the Democratic primary was Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and he wasn’t on the ballot.

He had backed Brad Lander, a former New York City comptroller, who won a closely watched race against Representative Dan Goldman in a district in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Lander ran to the left of Goldman. Mamdani and his allies, in an aggressive push to expand the power of progressives, had taken issue with Goldman’s support for Israel.

Mamdani’s influence also paid off in the race for the House seat in Brooklyn and Queens that is being vacated by Representative Nydia Velázquez. There, the candidate he had backed — Claire Valdez, a Texas-born democratic socialist serving her first term in the State Assembly — defeated the Brooklyn borough president, Antonio Reynoso, who had been a Mamdani ally.

…

Mamdani’s push to capitalize on his popularity and put more progressives on the ballot strained relationships with the left-leaning Working Families Party and labor unions. It also led to tensions with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, who is in line to become speaker if the Democrats win control of the House in November. Grace Mausser, a co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America chapter, said on NY1 on Tuesday that she hoped that Jeffries had learned this from the results: “Americans are tired of status quo politics.”

…

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Editor: The Cult of Francis Fukuyama will never die! Matthew Yglesias, Claire Ainsley, and Yascha Mounk are the last of the just?

Will you be in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday July 15? I will be interviewing Francis Fukuyama about how liberalism should respond to the postliberal threat. Find out more and get your free ticket here! —Yascha

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 27, 2026

On Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphant ‘Listening Tour’ ? Featuring Sheryl Sandberg.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 26, 2026

gideon.rachman@ft.com on Facebook, the brilliance of Zuckerberg & some other vexing questions. American Writer comments

Posted on October 23, 2019 by stephenkmacksd

Recall Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphant ‘Listening Tour’ ?

Headline: Mark Zuckerberg says extent of opioid crisis was biggest surprise of US tour

Sub-headline: Speaking about his 30-state tour that sparked rumors of a presidential run, the Facebook CEO added: ‘We have a responsibility to remain optimistic’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/10/mark-zuckerberg-opioid-crisis-facebook-america-tour

During which the line of ass-kissers was long, when he lectured that the ‘Opioid Crisis’and ‘a responsibility to remain optimistic’ were his primary concerns. This in the wake of the election of Trump, in 2016, clearly demonstrates that Zuckerberg was politically out of touch and out of his league. Not to speak of his subsequent appointment of ‘Lean In’ corporate hack Sheryl Sandberg to CEO of Facebook. Here is Sandberg celebrated in the pages of Forbes in 2013:

Headline: 10 Things Sheryl Sandberg Gets Exactly Right In ‘Lean In’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/03/04/10-things-sheryl-sandberg-gets-exactly-right-in-lean-in/#35b80fea7ada

The headline writers/editors have gotten carried away and misrepresent Mr. Rachman’s essay, by the way of the headline and sub-headline

Headline:Facebook is the world’s most powerful adolescent

Sub-headline: And like many teenagers, it needs to be set some rules

Mr. Rachman’s accusation:

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was once reluctant to acknowledge the company’s political power — initially rejecting the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election as “crazy”. This attitude may have been naive or disingenuous, but it was certainly not sustainable.

The Guardian published this in November 2016:

Headline: Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?

Sub-headline: The company is being accused of abdicating its responsibility to clamp down on fake news stories and counter the echo chamber that defined this election

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories

All The Free Marketer’s suddenly lose their cherished faith in that ‘Market’ as the ultimate test of viability? Should the reader take the object lesson from the New York Times’ publication of the pro-war propaganda, confected by Judy Miller and Scooter Libby, as an object lesson in reliance of the standards of journalism as practiced by Corporate Media?

Or this proclamation of Zuckerberg’s ‘brilliance’ or just call him a undergrad looking for and ‘rating’ ‘hot women’!:

At 35 years old, Mr Zuckerberg has proved himself to be a brilliant engineer and businessman.

The self-proclaimed ‘Internet Geniuses‘ need to be reminded, in the starkest terms, that they owe their very existence to the U.S. Government. And its invention of the internet! That they used and use to conduct their ‘Revolution in Communication’ . And that they must compelled to follow one of the foundational freedoms of Free Speech guaranteed in the US Constitution. The corporate control of the internet has zero legitimacy, it is a Public Utility, not the playground of the aforementioned Geniuses, and their Corporatist ambitions. An Internet Bill of Rights is radical idea whose time is long overdue!

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/2a1adec2-f3e0-11e9-b018-3ef8794b17c6

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Zuckerberg’s fall from grace, as reported in The Financial Times. Political Observer comments

Posted on March 20, 2018 by stephenkmacksd

Oh my! Recall Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphal tour of America, in which he proclaimed the ‘Opioid Crisis‘ as one of his most pressing political concerns, the other topic I can’t recall. A Politics of Non-Politics? As those Honorary Degrees were presented with great solemnity to The Internet Wunderkind. Or should we just call him an ugly duckling looking for dates?

The anguish of the defenders of respectable bourgeois ‘values’, especially coming from propaganda headquarters of the Free Market Mythology , The Financial Times, reeks of the self-exculpatory, if not utter hypocrisy: nothing new!

‘Shares fall’ is the central concern of this news story’s headline! Profit and Loss the central Capitalist dialectic. How to define that elusive Market Exceptionalism? Its permissible, until its practice offends what remains of the accepted bourgeois norms, that in a perverse way betrays that closely held Neo-Liberal Faith, of its stalwart advocates/apologists: then ‘let the heavens fall’ ! Consider the time lapse between the Zuckerberg triumphalism, to his fall from grace! 21 inch screen black and white TV melodrama.

As the internet is a public utility, overseen by profiteers of all stripes, like television, where was the FCC’s political/civic responsibility in holding public hearings, and writing laws , for Facebook and other internet companies that placed the public’s interest before all else? The FTC is exactly the wrong place for some pseudo-regulation, the pervasive and pernicious Neo-Liberalism rules our politics infected with Market Nihilism! The Free Market Mythology is a prima facie attack on the political responsibility of government, indeed the entirety of the republican tradition, to protect its citizens from the unscrupulous opportunist, in this case, under the cover of an idolatry for an ‘Internet Pioneer’

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/047dd20e-2bba-11e8-9b4b-bc4b9f08f381

Newspaper Reader on the ‘The Walt Disney Version of American History’ !

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 25, 2026

An example of this ‘ersatz methology’ :

The break-up

1776

Twelve score and ten years ago—on July 4th 1776—the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia approved the Declaration of Independence (signing would take weeks: this was before email). The United States of America, as the troublemakers styled their new creation, had already been at war with Britain for more than a year. Good King George III was not the tyrant of American legend, but we grudgingly admit that his insistence on asserting authority and raising revenue in the colonies helped turn protest into revolution.

The Declaration became America’s first great statement of liberal principle, espousing those Enlightenment ideals of natural rights and government by consent. It proclaimed that “all men are created equal”—though many of its signatories owned slaves. With rare exceptions, white women and black people were excluded from voting, as were many poor white men. Indigenous nations were ignored or exploited. The world’s first liberal republic was, in practice, a narrow aristocracy (without the noble titles). But, as George Washington said, the government’s true character would only emerge with time.

Reader: self-congetulation wedded to political mendacity is the primay goal of this attempt at an ersatz Historiography! This reader spent many years reading the political chatter of Micklethwait and Wooldridge, and their magum opus of ‘The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America’ of 2004 , an attempt at an unapologetic for Bush’ The Younger’s The War’s in Afghanistan and Iraq!

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 24, 2026

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xBHuEbp0hrE?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

NEW: Harvard Caught AI Hollowing Out Every Knowledge Worker in America

Brendan Dell

Newpaper Reader posits its like that discarded sandwitch that was left in the back of the refigertor?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 24, 2026

Editor: Stephens makes it easy to track his concluding paragraphs, political chatter via his underlining of what he thinks of as ‘key’ ? Though the final two paragraphs that enshrines Ronald Reagan as primay political actor! Yet in this political moment, what is compelling is the fact of Russian and Chinese ascendency, the utterly unexpected Iranian control of The Strait of Hormuz! Nor the ebbing nature , or better yet the decline of the cult of ‘Jean Monnet The First Statesman of Interdependence’ ?

To exist as a sentient American in the age of Trump is to live in a perpetual cringe — morally, aesthetically, intellectually, politically. If the administration were a play or film script, it would be neither farce nor tragedy but instead a kind of absurdist travesty, “Waiting for Godot” meets “Pulp Fiction” meets “Dumb and Dumber.”

However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.

The same goes for his insult of Meloni, which may be far from the worst of his sins but is also the most emblematic for being at once so utterly unnecessary as well as dementedly self-defeating. That’s us. The same country that freed its slaves, welcomed immigrants, invented airplanes, liberated concentration camps, landed men on the moon and challenged the Soviet Union to tear down this wall now bids to be the global equivalent of the expensively dressed man soiling his pants at a cocktail party.

For 10 years, I’ve watched my former political party work overtime not to cringe; to pretend that the Vesuvius of verbal infamies erupting daily from Trump’s mouth is either unimportant, or hilarious, or calculating and shrewd. Republicans turned their tolerance for the president’s mental goo into a shot-drinking contest — the more you drank, the manlier you were supposed to be. John McCain and Mitt Romney refused to play, to their everlasting credit; other Republicans, less admirably, did so only after Trump had ended their political futures.

But for 10 years, too, I’ve also watched the president’s opponents fail to appreciate the necessity of cringing — by understanding their role in Trump’s rise. The Democrats and their media enablers who, until June of 2024, insisted Joe Biden was fit for a second term (surely knowing, somewhere in the dim recesses of their minds, that this could only help Trump) are complicit. So are the progressives who, on one cultural issue after another, shoved the Democratic Party so far to the left that it became the very caricature of what MAGA-world said it was.

Here, then, is our American challenge: Let’s not be afraid to cringe. Ronald Reagan predicted, correctly, that the Soviet Union would end up on the ash heap of history; now it’s our turn to risk winding up on the ash heap of idiocy.

So let’s not look away from the parts we played in bringing America to this moment. Let’s remember who we once were, because it’s what we may yet be again — if only we feel the sting of our present shame.

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Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber

French journalist

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History

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Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (born Feb. 13, 1924, Paris, France—died Nov. 7, 2006, Fécamp) was a French journalist and politician.

Servan-Schreiber volunteered in the Free French Army forces of Charles de Gaulle as a fighter pilot in 1943 and received the Cross of Valor for his services. In 1947 he graduated from the École Polytechnique. After serving as foreign affairs editor of the Paris daily paper Le Monde (1948–53), he founded and managed (1953–70) L’Express, a moderately left-wing weekly newsmagazine modeled on Time. The publication of L’Express was halted temporarily in 1954 when the magazine printed a top-secret government report. In 1956 Servan-Schreiber was drafted into the army, and the experience formed the basis of his first book, Lieutenant en Algérie (1957; Lieutenant in Algeria), which exposed French atrocities in the Algerian War of Independence. The controversial book was later credited with helping turn French public opinion against the Algerian conflict. In Le Défi américain (1967; The American Challenge) he warned against Europe’s becoming merely an economic colony of the United States. An immediate best seller, the work was eventually translated into more than 20 languages.

Servan-Schreiber was secretary general of the Radical Party (1969–71) and president (1971–75, 1977–79). His Ciel et terre: Manifeste radical (1970; The Radical Alternative, 1970) is a party manifesto. Elected as a deputy to the National Assembly in 1970, he served briefly as minister of reforms in the government of President Valèry Giscard d’Estaing but was ousted for opposing government policy on nuclear testing.

Servan-Schreiber founded the Mouvement Réformateur (“Reform Movement”) in 1972 with Jean Lecanuet and once again served briefly as minister of reforms in June 1974. He was president of the Regional Council of Lorraine from 1976 to 1978, and in 1979 he founded the Groupe de Paris (“Paris Group”), in conjunction with which he published Le Défi mondial (1980; The World Challenge, 1980). He also continued in the 1970s to be associated with the direction of L’Express. From 1988 to 1994 Servan-Schreiber was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States.

Quick Facts

Born:

Feb. 13, 1924, Paris, France

Died:

Nov. 7, 2006, Fécamp (aged 82)

Other publications of Servan-Schreiber include Les Réveil de la France (1968; The Spirit of May, 1969), a collection of editorials examining causes of the student uprisings in France in 1968; Forcer le destin (1970; “Forcing Destiny’s Hand”); Le Pouvoir régional (1971; “Regional Power”); Appel à la reforme (1971; “A Call to Reform”); L’Arme de la confiance (1976; “The Weapon of Confidence”); and Le Manifeste (1977; “The Manifesto”).

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