DISASTER X

Students asked what the apocalypse might look like. I always answered: "You should know. You are living it". To be more exact, we have had three large apocalyptic stages: (1) the development of cities and states; (2) the industrial revolution; and, (3) WWII. We are well into the post-apocalypse.

HYPOCRISY is so constant and ubiquitous, that one has to wonder whether it is just present in our culture, or is instead one of the foundations of "Western culture" and "Western civilization". I have encountered no other culture where hypocrisy is the norm, so routine as ours. #anthropology

Note to academics: when speaking of capitalism, remember to automatically call it "neoliberalism" (or don't get published). Also, assume everything is "resistance" to "neoliberalism". Finally, never define anything. #anthropology

Blocked again on X, just for saying that the only regret that Ilhan Omar should entertain is not having pelted a hammer at Trump's head.

If a #CivilWar breaks out in the US, the US dollar will be virtually worthless in the US itself. Americans would be wise to start stockpiling Canadian dollars, before it's too late.

Breaking News: China announced the world’s largest trade surplus ever, almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, as its exports flooded global markets.

The only value in this story is this: DON'T BE A COMPLIANT LITTLE IDIOT LIKE THIS GUY. It's amazing how yielding everyone is, as if made of gelatin. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

One of the disastrous, enduring impacts of Covid is that it further taught people to be fearful of the authorities and to be numbed into paralysis. As a result, Americans are not really fighting back against #ICE or #Trump like one might expect from a serious opposition.

Remember when all the US-based #Venezuela war lobbyists all proclaimed that "once Maduro is gone, the whole regime will crumble"? That didn't happen. Also, oil companies are not rushing in to "take" the oil. And now Americans are being warned to leave immediately. Not what "victory" looks like.

For those of you with accounts in Telegram (gutter that it is for neo-Nazis and assorted right wing lunatics...much like X), I have started a new channel: ANTHROPOLOGY against FASCISM & EMPIRE t.me/anthro_again... #anthropology

#Trump seeking to monopolize #oil is increasingly looking like senile imperialism--just a little short of: "I've cornered the market on horse-drawn carriages!". Between coal and oil, he's stuck in the past. www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/c...

Locked out of Twitter/X for a whole week now, starting today. It was based on the flimsiest of algorithmic logic, a product of calculated hysteria and intentional miscomprehension. That truly is the platform of fascist totalitarians, a mere version of Truth Social now.

Remember when you all dutifully quoted that "genius," David Harvey? The same one who argued that "the age of #imperialism is over" and event went into "reverse"? #Trump and #Venezuela proved him wrong. urpe.org/2018/01/11/a...

The failure of @concordia.ca to recognize, support, or validate years of research and teaching on imperialism, and on building a specifically Canadian #anthropology, now comes at a high cost...to the institution, its faculty, and especially to students. Enforced blindness and active marginalization.

As for #anthropology in North America, talk about imperialism was mostly shunned, unless it was reduced entirely to US militarism and nothing more. An entire superstructure was built to prevent people from thinking the thoughts and having the ideas that they desperately need today to confront #MAGA

Canadians really are slow to wake up, it has to be said. Now I imagine everyone @Concordia is claiming their courses are "all about empire and imperialism," using the most tenuous and highly theoretical of arguments to draw links that their students will never follow.

For 20 years I taught courses explicitly about imperialism @Concordia, advocating for a Canadian #anthropology. The reward? Total marginalization, relegated to the status of fringe academic. Now everyone in Canada is talking about imperialism, and defending Canadian sovereignty.

Seeing Caribbean people cheering #Trump's attack against #Venezuela is a depressing reminder of how people schooled in the periphery think as if they are mentally American. The same is true in Canada for that matter. Laughing as the bully/massa beats one of your own to death.

If actually "convicted" in US courts, watch as the next Democrat in the White House will refuse to "pardon" Maduro. Book it. The Democrats are the fakest opposition to #Trump. #Venezuela

Only one goal can suffice now: the total destruction of #Trump and his MAGA. The US is a criminal, terrorist, and imperialist regime, and people in #Venezuela suffer because of Trump's attempt at global dictatorship.

I never again want to hear #MAGA imperialists airing their gripes about imaginary "globalists" and the threat they supposedly pose. The only real threat is MAGA, and #Venezuela is the last word on that subject.

"TANGO RINASCITA" ("Tango Rebirth," in Italian) Music by the Paris-based Argentinian band, Gotan Project. I have not been enchanted by a video this much, in a long time. This shows some of the best of humanity, when creolization is allowed to happen. #anthropology

Be careful when watching ANNIVERSARY. Here's why. See the full article at hollywoodfiles.substack.com/p/the-change... #Hollywood #democracy #anthropology

Commercial of "The Change" as shown in ANNIVERSARY (2025). You can find similar motifs in MAGA campaign ads, and in Obama campaign ads. hollywoodfiles.substack.com/p/the-change... #Hollywood #anthropology

Allegedly non-partisan and non-ideological, "The Change" renders *the state* the ultimate party. This is how class dictatorship will be sold to an unsuspecting, desperate America. Video clip from ANNIVERSARY (2025) Full article at hollywoodfiles.substack.com/p/the-change...

Clean, cheerful, upbeat, and seemingly non-ideological and non-partisan: the new face of totalitarianism in the USA. Video clip from ANNIVERSARY (2025) #Hollywood #anthropology #totalitarianism

Review of ANNIVERSARY (2025), a film that speaks to our fall back into totalitarianism. The US right now is very vulnerable to the emergence of a movement like "The Change," as all alternatives seem to have collapsed. See: disasterx.substack.com/p/the-change... #Hollywood #anthropology

Whatever "Western culture" or "Western civilization" might be--if it even exists--it is something that the WORLD helped to make. We learned at least that much from the first generation of post-colonial studies in the 1990s. #anthropology

Which is why junior--if he believed this--would now be telling his father NOT to remove those tariffs on hundreds of items. They are such a "success" after all, right? Also: they did not read the full paper, which details how tariffs increase unemployment and drops in production.

It's astounding what a cesspit of suppression plus selective right-wing boosting that X has become. Even Grok says the suppression is worse now and the platform is degraded compared to pre-Musk Twitter.

Asserting that its forces will attack "drug labs" in #Venezuela, when #Trump has linked to the entire state to drug trafficking, means they will attack all kinds of political targets and then retroactively call them "drug labs".

Typical US propaganda ploys here: robing yourself in borrowed "innocence," to look "humanitarian". The US military has a history of visual imperialism where it casts itself as the global father, doctor, baby sitter, and chief. #Venezuela #Trinidad #TrinidadandTobago #anthropology #imperialism

The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to acquire TikTok and his family could soon own both Paramount and Warner Bros. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

The president announces an arbitrary price hike on Americans because his feelings are hurt by an ad accurately quoting Ronald Reagan’s criticism of tariffs

Congress basically doesn’t exist at this point

It's now three times that my account on #Twitter has been locked. I have never seen this degree of censorship before. What an awful, hypocritical platform, run to uphold the official delusions of a tyrant.

#Trump's signature areas for 2025: * War * Corruption * Domestic militarization * Building dictatorship * Invented emergencies * Higher costs of living #MAGA voted for this. MAGA will be held responsible for all of it.

Everybody is talking about everything except the fact that we are on the eve of a monumental new #war, this one by #Trump against #Venezuela. That war will not be contained and will become regional. People in #TrinidadandTobago should take cover.

First #TrinidadandTobago agrees to support US military intervention in the #Caribbean, and then #Belize agrees to host deportees from the US. What a terrible, squalid time this region is experiencing, with pliant and corrupt leaders who ignore their own people's interests.

I would like to know how much #Trump is paying #Belize to keep people deported from the US. Who provides the shelter, food, and obviously security (since they are to be held against their will, in a country they have never been in before).

#CostaRica ordered that all migrants deported there from the US had to be released, as they were being detained illegally & in violation of their human rights. That failed, so #Trump's stupid #MAGA imperialists went sniffing after #Belize as a substitute. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Just insane. #Belize has signed a "Safe Third Country Agreement" with the #Trump regime, so migrants in the US can be deported...to a country that can't feed or house them, and where they will be detained illegally. www.breakingbelizenews.com/2025/10/19/b...

If I were to ever teach a university course again, of my own design, it would be titled: THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. It would be all about agency, ethics, (ir)rationality, and trying to learn what makes you a human individual.

“Stabilizing Argentina is ‘America First’.” 🇦🇷 🇺🇸