Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Post No. 3,368 - Some interesting reading/viewing

I found these interesting and/or useful, so I am posting them in case anyone else also does: 


And also: 

  • “Renee Good was murdered and that needs to be acknowledged”   by Richard J Murphy   https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/01/09/renee-good-was-murdered-and-that-needs-to-be-acknowledged/   and   “What Was Jonathan Ross Thinking When He Killed Renee Good? [Psychiatrist's Shocking Insight]”   by Dr Russell Razzaque   https://youtu.be/3tR3jPRYEsQ   “In this video, I take a close look at Jonathan Ross's mind at the moment he killed Renee Good. A psychiatrist explains what may have been going through his mind during this tragic event. The media missed some important details, but this video gives you a deeper understanding of Jonathan Ross's thoughts at the time of the crime.”   
  • “Octavia Butler on N_z_ Germany and Resistance Today”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/Le-DiO4CwXg   “When Octavia Butler was writing “Parable of the Talents” — a novel set in 2032 about a far-right regime intent on making America great again — she needed to understand how fascism takes hold in a democratic society. So she went back to N_oz_ Germany.   But she didn’t study the N_oz_s. She studied the Germans.   As she wrote in 2000: “I was less interested in the fighting of World War II than in the prewar story of how Germany changed as it suffered social and economic problems, as H_tol_r and others bludgeoned and seduced, as the Germans responded to the bludgeoning and the seduction and to their own history, and as H_tol_r used that history to manipulate them.”   What she found was that resistance failed in Germany not because Germans were uniquely evil, but because they were trapped inside stories about themselves that made H_tol_r’s rise seem legitimate — even inevitable. The lies they already believed about their identity and their history made it almost impossible to see what was happening until it was too late.   “I wanted to understand the lies that people have to tell themselves when they either quietly or joyfully watch their neighbours maimed, spirited away, killed.”   Butler called her Parable books “cautionary tales”. When a student asked her what the answer was, she said: “There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers — at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”   And on studying history: “The past is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes. To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.”   We are trying today to read fascism, authoritarianism, defiance, and resistance. So we need to learn the alphabet.”   Read her full essay:   “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future by Octavia E. Butler”   https://commongood.cc/reader/a-few-rules-for-predicting-the-future-by-octavia-e-butler/   
  • “Where Are the Slave Ships? Exposing the Dangerous Lies of Pseudohistory”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/BjVUSbwA-i8   “The question “Where are the ships?” is making rounds, and it’s not as innocent as it sounds. It’s a calculated tactic used by denialists like Dane Calloway to distort the history of the transatlantic slave trade, erase its victims, and sow chaos for clicks.   In this video, we take the pseudohistory head-on:   (1) Highlighting the overwhelming evidence, from SlaveVoyages.org to archaeological finds like the Clotilda;   (2) Explaining why no one should fall for the dangerous grift of “just asking questions”;   (3) Showing why honest history, grounded in rigorous research and evidence, is a shield against misinformation in this post-truth era.   We owe it to the tens of millions of enslaved people and their descendants to protect and preserve the truth. Let’s stop the noise and focus on what matters.”   
  • “The Difference Between a Loyal Opposition and Resistance | A Dispatch from the High Castle”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/eTZW-kSCV0s   “What’s the difference between a loyal opposition and resistance? And why does it matter right now?   A loyal opposition accepts the legitimacy of the system it works within. More than that - it reinforces it. Every time it plays by the rules, it signals that the rules are legitimate. Every time it treats its opponents as normal political adversaries, it confirms that normal politics is still happening. Every time it channels your energy into approved outlets - vote, donate, call your representative, wait for the next election - it tells you and everyone watching that those outlets still work.   That’s not a criticism. That’s what loyal oppositions do. They’re how normal politics functions. They provide accountability, they offer alternatives, they keep the system honest. When the system is basically sound, a loyal opposition is exactly what you want.   But resistance is something different. Resistance is what happens when the rules stop working - when legal channels fail, when institutions get captured, when the system itself becomes the source of abuse. Resistance doesn’t reinforce the structure. It operates against it.   In this video, I refer to the resistance dynamics at play in American history - from the New England patriots who spent a decade petitioning before Lexington, to the antislavery movement that worked within legal channels for seventy years before building the Underground Railroad.   The Democratic Party is a loyal opposition. That’s not cynicism - that's what the institution is designed to be. If you think the system is still basically sound and just needs better people running it, that might be enough for you.   But if you’re looking to them for resistance, you might be waiting a long time. And worse - you're going to be learning the wrong lessons about what resistance actually requires.   Confusing a loyal opposition with resistance isn’t just a mistake. It's fatal to any meaningful opposition.”   and    “Democrats say they can’t do anything because Republicans control Congress. Is that true?”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/1PwmiG7ABl0   
  • “Who's Afraid of Thomas Paine? Almost everyone, it turns out”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/zfwsSZG1mw0   “Common Sense turned 250 this month. Everyone’s claiming him — John Roberts in his year-end judiciary report, Jamie Raskin pushing for a memorial on the Mall, Heritage Foundation posting about his “libertarian” vision.   None of them are giving you the real Paine. No one in power ever has.   Ten years ago I found a letter in an archive that changed how I came to understand how this worked. John Page, head of Virginia’s Committee of Safety and Jefferson’s best friend, described getting handed Common Sense on a Williamsburg street in January 1776. He took it (probably to the Raleigh Tavern) and edited it for Virginia readers. Cut the opening sections where Paine attacks inherited authority itself — where monarchy is sin, heredity is absurd, and legitimacy flows from reason and character rather than birth or accumulation. Kept the parts that made Britain look dangerous and expensive.   Why cut that? Because Paine’s logic didn’t stop at kings. If inherited advantage doesn’t confer the right to rule, the questions keep going. Virginia's enslaver patriots had built an entire ideological architecture to make bondage fit inside a philosophy of liberty. Paine’s reasoning threatened to unravel it. So Page made sure ordinary Virginians got the argument for secession without the reasoning that might make them ask what else it applied to.   They’ve been filtering him ever since. Used him when useful — Washington had The American Crisis read to troops before Trenton. Discarded him when not — he died a pariah in 1809, six people at his funeral.   Roberts quotes Paine while building legal architecture for executive immunity. Raskin wants a statue, which turns Paine into a destination, a closed question. Both are doing what Page did: picking which parts serve their purposes.   Franklin reportedly said, “Where liberty is, there is my country.” Paine answered: “Where liberty is not, there is mine.”   That’s not a quotation for a plaque. It’s a test.”   

 


Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and   may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical  BPM  because   #KindnessIsThePoint   

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear   

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2025     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/  




 

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