iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Dissent's fall issue is out today and it is just wall-to-wall bangers. The special section on tech and the left begins with this killer essay by @simontorracinta.bsky.social and the lose-lose situation we face in the US economy dissentmagazine.org/article/arti...

If the most wide-eyed estimates of labor market disruption made by the likes of Amodei turn out to be correct-and it is precisely these sorts of predictions that undergird the forecasted demand for computational power that the hyperscalers are racing to meet-then, absent any compensatory job growth, the scale and speed of social dislocation will make the slow-motion disaster of Rust Belt deindustrialization look quaint. Conversely, in the likely event the demand turns out to be lower than predicted, it will lead to a sharp pullback in investment and financing. Given the opaque cat's cradle of financial ties between hyperscalers, Al labs, chipmakers, and financial institutions, a recent report by the Bank for International Settlements has predicted that such a bust could cascade down the Al supply chain and strike at the foundations of the U.S. economy, inducing major recession. As if that wasn't enough, given recent changes in Nasdag rules, should a series of planned IPOs of Al firms go ahead, index funds in the retirement portfolios of tens of millions of U.S. households will be directly exposed to a potential crash in a historically unprecedented fashion. Either way, the shockwaves will be extreme. Yet on both
sides of the wager, it seems, the house wins.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

And, as much as I respect Robeson and his experiences, I don't think one person's single remark can ever "say it all" - or even everything about his own experiences. Here are some notes from Robeson's biography by Martin Duberman, about Robeson's visit in 1949. That says something too, I'd say

"But at the same time [as being celebrated], Robeson himself felt some uneasiness over his inability to locate Jewish friends from previous visits to Moscow. Eisenstein had died in 1948. Solomon Mikhoels, the actor-director Robeson had known, admired, and played host to when he, along with the Jewish writer Itzik Feffer, had visited New York in 1943, had been found brutally murdered on January 13, 1948 (on Stalin's personal order, it later turned out), his body smashed and mutilated. At the time, Mikhoels's "mysterious" death had been widely mourned in the Jewish community, and the following month Robinson had participated in a memorial meeting for him in New York. But where was Itzik Feffer? Finally, on the eve of Robeson's departure, [353] his persistent inquiries
produced Feffer (who, unbeknownst to Robeson, had been arrested on December 24, 1948. Feffer was brought, unaccompanied, to Robeson's hotel. Paul later told his son pledging him to silence during his lifetime that Feffer, through mute gestures, had let him know that the room was bugged. The two kept their talk on the level of superficial pleasantries, while communicating essential facts through gestures and a few written notes. Mikhoels, Robeson learned, had been murdered by the secret police; other prominent Jewish cultural figures were under arrest; there had been a massive purge of the Leningrad Communist Party and of many in the Moscow Party, and Feffer's own likely fate (here he drew a hand across his throat) would be execution (three years later he was shot). According to Peter Blackman, in the days that followed, Robeson never once verbalized any distress but in perhaps an indirect signal- he did ask Blackman to "stick around" during the rest of their stay in Moscow, saying he wanted someone he knew with him. Blackman also recalls Robeson's caution him to watch what you say because
they"_-the Soviet Party "think you are a nationalist." "Nationalism," like
"Cosmopolitanism" and "Zionism," had becom…

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Back to Harrington, when the interviewer asks him about the organization role played by Paul Sigmund and Gloria Steinem, he says they knew [they did!], but you have to understand that the CIA was a place at the time where there was a cohort of Cold War liberalism that took its liberalism seriously

Q: Yes.
I just wondered to what extent they were aware at that
moment in time where the money was coming from. Harrington: I think that they both were. What I tell some people is that what you have to remember is that in the 1950's, number
one, most liberals were Cold War liberals.
That is to say, they were for collective security against Communism, supported NATO, supported the original sending of troops to Vietnam, supported the
war in Korea, and that sort of thing.
Even somebody like Jimmy Wechsler, who had fought valiantly against Joe McCarthy, on those
issues would have been for peace, would have been for disarmament.
But when push came to shove, he supported that kind of stuff.
The CIA, in that period, for somebody like Gloria, who was a liberal, was--not on the dirty tricks side, but on the other side, was a liberal--it's ideology was Cold War liberalism. Actually, the CIA, in a crazy way, in the Eisenhower-McCarthy years, was to the left
of any of the institutions of the federal government ideologically

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This is where Steinem was very active - a witting partner of the CIA to send students to international events. This is how she explained it in 1967:

Miss Steinem said she had become convinced that Ameri can students should participate in the World Youth Festivals after she spent two years in
India. "I came home in 1958 full of Idealism and activism, to dis- cover that very little was being done," she said. "Students were not taken seriously here before the civil rights movement, and private money rcceded at the mention of a Communist youth
festival."
Hears of Funds Miss Steinem said she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Asso- ciation, who told her CIA. money might be available to finance American participation in the seventh postwar festival, scheduled for Vienna in the
summer of 1959. The former association offi-
cers had had ties with the C.I.A. while serving the asso- ciation, which last week con- ceded it had laken money from the intelligence agency since
1952. "Far from being shocked by this involvement I was happy to find some liberals in govern- ment in those days who werc far-sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival," Miss
Steinem said. She noted that

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

In Harrington's case, as this interview shows, he wasn't willing to take U.S. government fund that he thought would have strings attached, and he got the money from his mother. "Thank God," he says, because otherwise "I'd have spent the rest of my life explaining why I took money from the CIA."

Harrington: I went to the Vienna Youth Festival and originally the sort of Anti-Communist Committee, which Gloria Steinem and Paul Sigmund led, which then later turned out to be CIA related--I met Gloria later on, but a guy from the committee, who I met at UCLA,
offered that they would pay my plane fare. I then had to check it out with the committee of the Young People's Socialist League,
which I was then the oldest member because I was thirty.
It was
decided that--we all assumed it was State Department money.
As I say, we knew that the government was fooling around, but we just
assumed it was State Department money. I remember I then said, "I'll accept the ticket if you understand that I will have nothing
to do with your committee in Vienna and I will only work with the
International Union of Socialist Youth".
Thank God, they then
turned me down.
I say, "Thank God", because if they hadn't, I'd
have spent the rest of my life explaining why I took money from the CIA. Fortunately for me, I went to Vienna on money I borrowed from
my mother, which is considered to be politically okay

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Here's some of the New York Times reporting from the time. On the one hand "Soviet hand seen in Vienna rally" and, on the other, "U.S. Urges Youths to go to Red Fete". Why? To encourage a challenge to the official "line," in ways that would be beneficial to US interests in the long run

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Perhaps you're wondering if the IUS was as Communist-dominated as reported. Basically, yes. Look at this pamphlet, for example, from the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR

Information bulletin showing a star in Moscow with lines extending out to the rest of the world, saying "May our Friendship Grow"

IN THIS ISSUE:
From the editors
WE STAND FOR PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE Ver wust be excluded from the life of society
Activity of the Committee of Youth Organizations
of the USSR
Praternal ties are growing stronger
In the ranks of the WFDY
The Festival as a fine basis for cooperation Students also stand for friendship
Friendship through acquaintanceship
INDEPENDENCE AND EQUALITY TO ALL PEOPLES
•
Cooperation and disinterested aid
Union of equals
Committee of Youth Organizations of the Ukraine
WE STAND FOR AN INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
"People, we must know more about each other, more"
Conference of future architects
International voluntary work camp Children of different nations
Seminar for medical students
"International University"
Peace, atom and young people
The language of art is the language of friendship
Sports strengthen friendship
Until we meet again Short information about some member-organizations
or the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSE
Komsomol
V.I.Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization
Trade Union
"Spartek"- voluntary sports society
Red cross and red crescent societies of the USSR
Creative youth organizations
Young architects commission
Friends of nature Photo section of the CYO of the USSR
A few words in conclusion

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Here, for example, is the first edition of the NSA News, from 1947. Note that in the US case many of the students on American campuses were veterans, a bit older than a "traditional" undergraduate and with wider exposure to the world. The NSA grew and grew and was a big deal in US politics

The NSA News, with the headline "American Students Organize" "750 U.S. Students Meet to Create National Group"

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Chapter 5 is about "marginality" theory, which is the least known in the US but quite influential in Latin America, often in Catholic circles pre-liberation theology; the idea was that the poor were marginal to democratic structures and needed integration through gov't action

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Donald Trump busy building a FIFA World Heritage site

A photo of the East Wing of the White House in a state of destruction/construction/mess

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Dave Zirin wrote a new biography of Howard Zinn, and reading it (along with Martin Duberman's not-particularly-old biography) led me to a new Grand Unified Theory of Zinn newrepublic.com/article/2137...

Zinn's historical analysis resembles this populist frame rather than, say, the class politics of Karl Marx. Writing in A People's History more than 40 years after he read the Ny Committee's reports, Zinn explains World War I as having arisen from the fact that "American capitalism needed international rivalry-and periodic war--to create an artificial community of interest between rich and poor, supplanting the genuine community of interest among the poor that showed itself in sporadic movements." A conspiracy of elites. A dishonest government led to catastrophe by business interests seeking profit. The victims: common people, who otherwise are in broad agreement about how the world could be made better. That is the core of Zinn's historical model, and Nye would
have recognized it.

That same pattern of analysis, shoehorned in again and again, is responsible for what is probably the worst passage in A People's History: his account of the U.S. Civil War. Zinn calls the Civil War "not a clash of peoples ... but of elites." It was "not over slavery as a moral institution ... the northern elite wanted economic expansion ... the slave interests opposed all this; they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and prosperous way of life impossible in the future." There are elements of truth here, of course. The North was also racist, it had businessmen with interests, it was not merely waging a war of righteous emancipation. But, again, Zinn is too reductive. There was moral and political outrage about slavery in the North. Troops, Northern and Southern, understood what the war was about. The Thirteenth Wisconsin Infantry, in 1862, declared that it was "as plain as the noon-day sun" that the South's "infamous rebellion" was "a war of, by, and for Slavery," and a Confederate Brigade agreed: "any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks ... is either a fool or a liar." There are times when Zinn should have
listened more to "the people."

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I’m in England at the moment and the depths of this drought are really astonishing; London’s only rainless July in recorded history; farmers’ fields were harvested weeks ago to salvage what they could www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A picture from the train window showing some thickets of dry grass by the track, a brown dry field and a blue nearly cloudless sky

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Chapter 4 of the book analyzes the "culture of poverty" debates - their origins as research in Mexico, the influence on the War on Poverty in the US, Oscar Lewis's research in Cuba at the end of his life - and the ways the idea was variously taken up by radicals, liberals, and conservatives

It's the Anakin-Padme meme; Anakin says "The Culture of Poverty Thesis is an indictment of the capitalist system, not the lives of the poor," Padme says "So we're going to use it to change the system, right?"; Anakin stares at her wordlessly, she says "right?"

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Dissent's most-read article in 2025 was this one by Zoe Hu about Andrew Tate; this paragraph is still as sharp as it gets dissentmagazine.org/article/mr-l...

Some have suggested that young men are drawn to Tate because they suffer from a "loneliness epidemic." For what it's worth, Tate believes this too, having derided women in his videos for not understanding the interpersonal isolation that men experience. Yet it should be said that men go to Tate not to alleviate loneliness but to intensify it, making it synonymous with power. They accept his premise that life pits the strong against the weak, that social antagonism is a universal condition. They forgo mutual recognition or vulnerability within their relationships, which instead are stacked and arranged for maximum value and extractive potential. It is lonely at the top. It is lonely
everywhere else.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

The corner where Corey Ruiz was killed by police has been blocked off by the community and turned into a memorial. There’s a vigil at 5pm. Leaving people out of the photo to protect privacy

Flowers and chalk remembering both Tony Robinson (killed 2015) and Corey Ruiz (killed this week)

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Chapter 3 of my book in meme format: I describe the origins of dependency theory in the 1960s and its Cardoso v. Frank branches. Frank's form of anti-imperialism, and his personal behavior, leave him institutionally adrift. Cardoso...well...he's the future president of Brazil

It's the "Hello, Human Resources meme" with the suave guy labeled as Fernando Henrique Cardoso saying "dependency theory: associated dependent development" (lady at desk responds: "Aww, you're sweet") and the uncouth one labeled Andre Gunter Frank saying "dependency theory: development of underdevelopment", and the lady calls Human Resources

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I was recently far enough from light pollution that I was able to show my children the night sky for what was effectively the first time. One is nearly 15 years old. We stayed up and made up silly stories about constellations, as is our birthright as human beings

The night sky full of stars and the band of the Milky Way, with silhouettes of palm trees in the foreground at right

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Jeff Isaac has written the piece I needed today: "What to Eugene Debs was the Fourth of July?," on Debs, the tradition of patriotic dissent, and the spirit of revolution possible in the 4th dissentmagazine.org/article/euge...

It has been regarded as a patriotic duty for Americans, on the 4th of July, to apostrophize Liberty and to select from the vocabularies of all languages eulogistic words to describe its value and its glory, and when words failed to express those essential attributes of liberty which made life itself an inferior blessing, bonfires have blazed, cannons have belched their thunder, banners have waved, drums have throbbed, and bugle blasts have called the people to assemble and rejoice together over God's inscrutable decree in bestowing upon Americans blessings denied to all other peoples, kindreds, and tongues since time began. Nor do I doubt that on this anniversary such exhibitions will be repeated, but it will be a hollow mockery. The stage will be gorgeous with scenery for the play of
liberty, but liberty will be absent-only its ghost will appear, only its
"canonized bones" will be present.
-Eugene V. Debs, "Liberty's Anniversary," July 4, 1895

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Gotta reregister again and I can't tell you how much it cracks me up that the Hoover Institution asks for your pronouns

It's the Hoover Institution Library & Archives registration page, including name questions and then preferred pronouns

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

In this interview that I did with David Bateman and Julie Suk about our democratic crisis, Bateman made a point that totally changed the way I think about constitutional reform in the US, and it's one that you may find particularly relevant today dissentmagazine.org/article/decl...

Bateman: We have probably the most difficult-to-amend Constitution in the world. Every additional state has made it more difficult, because it increases the number of veto points. On the other hand, we amend the Constitution all the time through the courts. And the courts have an enormous amount of flexibility, because we recognize that court decisions are the mechanism through which we accommodate our short, unspecified Constitution to the vastness of the American empire and the American state. The court uses this power, and we give it the power, because we see amending the Constitution itself as such an impossible task. If you raise the idea of amending the Constitution through the regular Article V path, people will laugh in
your face.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Oh, OK, I get it. The last ten years do make a lot more sense now

A prop model of a Sentinel from The Matrix attacking the top of a building. The Sentinels are squid-like with long metal tentacles that resemble the UFC cage construction at the White House

Photo of a sinister black metal arc rising over the White House, with a crane in the center and an American flag. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images, attached to news articles, not my photo, just my little joke)

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I know that part of engaging with this sort of thing is to prove that we're the smart kids in class and that there's really no point to doing that here. But technology affects society, and therefore faith, and so Popes have literally been pontificating about it for ages

The Demands of the Common Good 78. But a further point needs emphasizing: Any adjustment between wages and profits must take into account the demands of the common
good of the particular country and of the whole human family. 79. What are these demands? On the national level they include: employment of the greatest possible number of workers; care lest privileged classes arise, even among the workers; maintenance of equilibrium between wages and prices; the need to make goods and services accessible to the greatest number; elimination, or at least the restriction, of inequalities in the various branches of the economy--that is, between agriculture, industry and services; creation of a proper balance between economic expansion and the development of social services, especially through the activity of public authorities; the best possible adjustment of the means of production to the progress of science and technology; seeing to it that the benefits which make possible a more human way of life will be available not merely to the
present generation but to the coming generations as well.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Still very proud of the opening paragraph to this review I wrote in 2019 newrepublic.com/article/1559...

Warnings of a crisis of liberalism have become commonplace, as it is assailed by an illiberal right on the one side and a socialist left on the
other. The situation is plain, and it is at least partially self-inflicted. Liberalism has missed opportunity after opportunity. It is not merely the tepid response to the financial crisis. One critic warns that already in the '80s there were "fresh and full disclosures of poverty" and "the decay of rural industry and population," yet liberals made no serious
proposals for reform. "The old laissez faire individualism," he reasons, "was still too dominant." Nevertheless, he holds, there is the possibility of renewal. The cause of liberty can be advanced through social reform, through a more robust welfare state, through attacks on monopolies and unearned property. The writer is the social scientist
J.A. Hobson. The year is 1909.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

That doesn't sound like the CIA I know, thought I, so let me check the reference. And here it is! Looks like a human intelligence conversation in which the source is making a point about collective leadership rather than "one man makes all decisions"

INFORMATION REPORT
INFORMATION REPORT
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY This material contains Information affecting the National Defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title
18, U.S.C. Secs. 793 and 791, the transmission or revelation of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by 25X1
SECRET
COUNTRY
SUBJECT
DATE OF INFO.
USSR
REPORT
Comments on the Change in Soviet
Leadership
DATE DISTR.
NO. OF PAGES
REQUIREMENT NO. RD
REFERENCES
This is UNEVALUATED Information
SOURCE EVALUATIONS ARE DEFINITIVE. APPRAISAL OF CONTENT IS TENTATIVE.
MAR 2 19525X1
2
25X1
25X1 1. Even In Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western Idea of a dictator within the Communist, setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organi- zation of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin, so that it will be safer to assume that developments in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets to stream-
line their power organization.
The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the Communist dictatorship since the
death of Stalin 2. There will not be a dramatic purge. Inasmuch as the MVD has already been cleaned up and the Party and the Army have not been in the hands of Malenkov's favorites, there can be expected only a normal replacement of officials In the reorganization of the top-level administration of the Party and the Govern-
ment. 3. It is hard to draw any parallel between present events and those of the 1920's "
when Stalin was ascending to power.
There is now no organized opposition inside the Party or in the Soviet Union in general. As the …

"..g
SECRET
-2- as the Communist leaders were unable to keep this promise, particularly because of accelerated war preparations, they had to find a scapegoat,
and thus Malenkov resigned. 6. Bulganin Impressed those who had worked with him in the State Bank, In- cluding a famous expert on banking, with his high intelligence, mild manners, and capacity to learn in a very short time the most special
and difficult problems. 7. It 1s difficult to anticipate any withdrawal from the Soviet foreign policy line unless there are concessions from the West with regard to the ratification of the Paris agreements. There 1s a possibility that a continuation of discord among the Soviet leaders may lead to a soft- ening of the Soviet position and to a recognition by Molotov of his Incompetence in the conduct of foreign relations. The Soviet leaders however, have recognized that the balance of power has changed in favor of the West. They are now endeavoring to change this balance as can be seen from the shift to accelerated war production, and the attempts to
disrupt Western unity.
The aggressiveness of the Chinese Communists may also be a part of the endeavor. A stiff position on the part of the west toward the USSR probably favors the continuation in vower of the more
stiff elements in the Soviet leadership.
25X1
25X1
25X1
SHOREE

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book in meme format: I describe the Italo-Argentine sociologist Gino Germani's quest for a modernization theory that would help with national development, and how its elite orientation undermined its political promise but produced our ideas about populism

The Moe-tosses-Barney meme, with drunk Barney in panel 1 labeled "Fascism" and Moe's toe as "modernization theory", Panel 2 has satisfied Moe labeled as Gino Germani, and in panel 3 Barney reappears behind Moe

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Chapter 1 discusses how the Ford Foundation thought about its actions when it started investing in Latin America: confident in its formula of anti-Communist modernization--linked not to infrastructure projects but to the development of a group of well-educated elites and academic institutions

It's the Pam from The Office meme, with the pictures labeled "Westernization" and "modernization", "The Ford Foundation needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture"; Pam is labeled "Cold War social science" saying "They're the same picture"

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Your humble servant has a written a book about the social science of poverty in Cold War Latin America and the contexts that shaped its creation, from international sources like the Ford Foundation to dictatorships across the region. The book is in production and will be ready at the end of 2026

Book cover shows an alleyway in a Rio favela, the black and white photo has been given a bluish tinge; my name is upper left, the title of the book "Poverty of the Imagination" is at lower left and at right, in reddish text is the subtitle "The Cold War and the Social Science of Development in Latin America"

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Found this newspaper clipping tucked inside a book. It’s a complaint about US researchers parachuting in to South America and not staying enough time to do good work. “Use local knowledge,” it urges. The article is from 1942

A newspaper clipping on a desk titled “Fly by Night” research hit by South Americans

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The left's theory of anti-fascism--one I have believed and continue to want to believe--is not as robust as I would like it to be

If Austrians are so unhappy with their lot in life that they would prefer fascism to liberal democracy, a hundred years after the Nazis marched into Vienna, then they frankly need to get out more; what they cannot do is claim, by any global measure, to be suffering to the degree historically viewed as necessary for a people to throw it all away. As a columnist for the left-wing newspaper Der Standard recently pointed out, social science indicates that it is not economic deprivation that primarily drives support for the far right but false perceptions: voters who are doing better than others, objectively, but imagine themselves to be worse off, or are simply anxious about losing their privileged status.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

This book is ~~wild~~, I really did not expect the answer to this question to begin with sixty pages on Lyndon LaRouche

Page proofs of AJA Woods's book "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West"; the cover art is a picture of Theodor Adorno with devil horns and a tail crudely drawn on

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Went back this morning and read @dissentmag.bsky.social's coverage of the Jackson campaign in 1988; I think it is Michael Harrington's "A Case for Jackson" that holds up the best dissentmagazine.org/article/a-ca...

Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign marks a historic breakthrough in American politics. It is the first time that a "social democratic" platform has been presented in the mainstream of American politics and attracted significant mass support. The journal-
istic cliche was, and is, that Jackson's program is "extremist," vague, outrageously expensive. In fact, as a correspondent for the London Financial Times reported, only in Ronald Reagan's America could Jackson's eminently moderate and sensible ideas be seen as far out. Those ideas, on full employment, health, North-South and the like, are familiar to readers of Dissent, members of Democratic Social- ists of America, and the broad democratic left. They are, more or less, what we have been talking about during the past decade and in some cases the people who articulated them for Jackson came from our
world.

His appeal to working people--he is the most pro-union candidate in recent memory- did not always translate into votes but won him very real respect even from many who cast their ballot for another candidate. In Iowa, it is clear that he had an appeal to farm families in small communities that saw few blacks. And, more predictably, he suc- ceeded very well with the new-class vote in the
college towns and urban centers.
Third, Jackson has broken some racial barriers.
Let there be no mistake about it, there was a "backlash," particularly in some of the later primaries. But what is remarkable is that in every state Jackson significantly increased -and some-
times doubled - his percentage of the white vote in 1984. When the campaign began, even though I supported Jackson I felt that the racism of the society would limit him much more than it did in fact. And one of the reasons why he succeeded in this area is that his social democratic class appeal reached across color lines, in some cases moving even
former George Wallace voters.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

First the orcas attacked the yachts and now the dolphins have worked out how to take hostages

Newspaper headline: Dolphins are said to be releasing Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

The closure has apparently been lifted.

FAA tweet announcing closure of El Paso airspace is over

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

A passage from the 1943 OSS psychological assessment of Hitler, for your holiday mo(u)rning www.cia.gov/readingroom/...

PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND RECONSTRUCTION The world has come to know Adolph Hitler for his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints. In the course of relatively few years he has contrived to usurp such tre- mendous power that a few veiled threats, accusations or insinuations were sufficient to make the world tremble. In open defiance of treaties he occupied huge territories and conquered millions of people without even firing a shot. When the world became tired of being frightened and concluded that it was all a bluff, he initiated the most brutal and deva- stating war in history - a war which, for a time, threatened the com- plete destruction of our civilization. Human life and human suffering seem to leave this individual completely untouched as he plunges along
the course he believes he was predestined to take.

Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amuse-
ment. Many people refused to take him seriously on the grounds that "he could not possibly last." As one action after another met with amaz- ing success and the measure of the man became more obvious, this amusement was transformed into incredulousness. To most people, it seemed inconceivable that such things could actually happen in our mod- ern civilization. Hitler, the leader of these activities, became generally regarded as a madman, if not inhuman. Such a judgment, concerning
the nature of our enemy, may be satisfactory to the man in the street. It gives him a feeling of satisfaction to pigeon-hole an incomprehensible individual in one category or another and having classified him in this way, he feels that the problem is solved. All we need to do is to eliminate the madman from the scene of activities, replace him with a sane indivi- dual, and the world will again return to a normal and peaceful state
of affairs.

This naive view, however, is wholly inadequate for those who are delegated to conduct the war against Germany or for those who will be delegated to deal with the situation when the war is over. They can- not content themselves with simply regarding Hitler as a personal devil and condemning him to an Eternal Hell in order that the remainder of the world may live in peace and quiet. They will realize that the madness of the Fuehrer has become the madness of a nation, if not of a large part of the continent. They will realize that these are not wholly the actions of a single individual but that a reciprocal relationship exists between the Fuehrer and the people and that the madness of the one stimulates and flows into the other and vice versa. It was not only Hitler, the madman, who created German madness, but German madness which created Hitler. Having created him as its spokesman and leader, it has been carried along by his momentum, perhaps far beyond the point where
it was originally prepared to go. Nevertheless, it continues to follow his

lead in spite of the fact that it must be obvious to all intelligent people
now that his path leads to inevitable destruction. From a scientific point of view, therefore, we are forced to con- sider Hitler, the Fuehrer, not as a personal devil, wicked as his actions and philosophy may be, but as the expression of a state of mind existing in millions of people, not only in Germany but, to a smaller degree, in all civilized countries. To remove Hitler may be a necessary first step, but it would not be the cure. It would be analogous to removing a chancre without treating the underlying disease. If similar eruptions are to be prevented in the future, we cannot content ourselves with simply remov- ing the overt manifestations of the disease. On the contrary, we must ferret out and seek to correct the underlying factors which produced the unwelcome phenomenon. We must discover the psychological streams which nourish this destructive state of mind in order that we may divert them into channels which will permit a further evolution of our form
of civilization.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Here's Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map in case you want to visually know how big things actually are (to a reasonable approximation)

R. Buckminster's Fuller's Dymaxion Map is a world map that compresses a sphere onto an icosahedron and then unfolds it. The Arctic is in the center and basically have a semi-contiguous map with Australia at left to Antarctica at the right. Greenland, being close to a pole, is, notably, much smaller than in the Mercator Projection

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Let's start with this Chotiner interview with Oona Hathaway, a historian of international law, which I found generally helpful and clarifying. You should read it! So I am genuinely not trying to dunk when I say that I winced a little bit here

Chotiner: It did support numerous coups.
Hathaway: Yeah, absolutely. Look, the U.S. has not got a perfect record. There's no doubt about that, and it has betrayed
its values many times, but this is of a different order. This is just a blatant throwing-the-whole-thing-out and making a claim to be able to use force whenever it
wants.

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

And here is The Onion's first historical parody (unless there is something missing in the archive); it would have been from 1996 but is presented as being from 1896

Above the fold on an issue of The Onion from 1996, presented as being from 1896. It looks old-timey in font and has a photograph of a man with ornithopter wings struggling to get off the ground. Headlines include "Infant Death Rate Plummets to One-in-Three" "Folly of Flying Machine Claims Life of Fool", "Avenge the Nebraska!"

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

I believe I've found the first "What do you think?", from March 1990. These stock photos were used in almost every subsequent issue, usually represented as UW students. Years later they were replaced with the stock photos still used

A clip from The Onion called "UW Snapshots" "Special 'What do you think?' Edition. There are five photos, four men and one woman, responding to "Hooray for High School: a lot of high school students have been around Madison for sports tournaments lately. Students around campus were surveyed, 'How has the teenagers' presence here affected you?" Sue Valens says, for example, "I enjoy talking with them and meeting them--it's an opportunity to be exposed to people from other cultures."

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

checking in on the principled restrainers over at Tucker HQ

An RT post of Tucker Carlson dung smug face above a post "Terrying sight of Pentagon "MOTHERSHIP SPECIAL OPS COMMAND CENTER" spotted off Venezuela's coast" with the text "Maduro bans gay marriage, abortion, and sex changes; His US-backed replacement wants to legalize them, Tucker explains. Will Americans fight and die for 'GLOBOHOMO'?

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

From the article referenced below: tldr esp. in authoritarian systems, mediocrities and worse tend to go into the secret police b/c those with better performance have better opportunities elsewhere, so secret police gets the dregs who are extra-dependable because the thing they can offer is loyalty

Regimes, on the other hand, have good reasons to ad- mit underperformers to their key coercive unit and to not counteract the self-selection of such officials. From the perspective of leaders, underachievers are beneficial be- cause they must diligently work toward the autocrat's in- terests to retain their career chances. For example, Alexan- dru Drâghici, the former interior minister of Romania, was well aware that his secret police agents "had a fairly low level of training and general knowledge, but that these shortcomings were compensated for by their powerful revolutionary enthusiasm" (Deletant 2005, 304). By con- trast, leaders who assign high-performing officials to serve in the secret police must fear that their subordinates will not execute unpleasant orders. Having lucrative career options, competent officials make unreliable secret police agents, as they are likely to stay passive when the regime
is under attack (Zakharov 2016).

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

welcome to earth! can I interest you in a redevelopment opportunity

a still from the 1996 film Independence Day with a giant alien spacecraft shooting a blue laser into the White House as it begins to explode

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Oof: "Pinochet does not ask the owners of the newspaper [El Mercurio] what they have done with the hundred million dollars, and El Mercurio does not ask Pinochet what he has done with the people--more than seven hundred of them--who have disappeared in Chile after being arrested by the military."

The regime has perfected the tech- nique of identifying themes likely to capture the popular imagination, and of using messages and images to dis- tract the public. Of course, there is nothing new about Pinochet's al- lowing El Mercurio to run up a debt to the government of roughly a hundred million dollars, and thus being able to count on its unconditional support. Pi- nochet does not ask the owners of the newspaper, the Edwards family, what they have done with the hundred mil- lion dollars, and El Mercurio does not ask Pinochet what he has done with the people more than seven hundred of them--who have disappeared in
Chile after being arrested by the mili.

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