A tentative thread on the Biden speech

Adam Curtis once leaned heavily on the book 'Everything was forever, until it was no more' by Alexei Yurchak - a slightly odd book about the way that language in the Soviet Union slowly degraded.

Instead of confronting reality, the job of propagandists, indeed of all official discourse, was to stitch together a series of recognisable banalities.
Ideas that once were essential parts of the concrete social project of the Soviet Union - building a worker's state - were now invoked in whatever context needed.
Thus, you could praise the 'trenchant labour of the workers' when discussing the publication of a new edition of technical guidelines for building tractors.
The incredible brittleness of this cut-and-paste discourse meant that no-one in the Soviet Union was able to process, let alone alter, the decay of the Union and its increasingly unstable economic system.
So when the end came, it came as if in a dream. It suddenly made just as much sense for the Soviet Union not to exist as it made for it to have existed for decades.
Today, Joe Biden - who has not without justice been compared to Brezhnev - stands reading a speech that is in essence the same as those made by Soviet functionaries.
No sentence bears any resemblance to the previous one, as it does in an argument, but only makes sense as a series of moderately recognisable cliches.
The point of the speech is not to refer to the world, but to refer to the system of symbols that historically legitimated the American political order.
These symbols - the american dream, opportunity, prosperity, liberty, justice, community, unity, hope - have little reality today. But that doesn't matter.
They are mere symbols, signifiers without signified. They refer to nothing but themselves. This is discourse as a hall of mirrors.
Likewise, Joe Biden is not a politician, he is a mirror: a mirror which reflects the platitudes America tells itself in order to sleep at night.
But, as Jean Beaudrillard warned us, in order to see what we want to see in the mirror, we have to hide our second-self behind it. To see 'unity' we have to hide division. To see 'prosperity' we have to hide poverty.
Hiding these things is not just a function of Joe Biden's rhetoric, but of the social project which he *does* reflect: the overwhelming need to put the populist project - which however imperfectly does reflect real division and poverty - in its box.
How long, we should ask, can America hide what it needs to hide in order to see unity? How long until those second souls, currently trapped behind the mirror, have their revenge?

More from Biden

"Ban" is a verb meaning to "officially or legally prohibit" something. If the Biden administration is not approving new fracking permits, how is that not "officially or legally prohibiting" new fracking permits?


The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.

But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.

If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.

So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.

In other words, he lied.
1. Ben Rhodes’s comment dismissing the concerns of former political prisoners and US hostages in Iran regarding Rob Malley’s potential appointment as Iran envoy is deeply unprofessional and offensive. As my own story illustrates, not everything is about partisan DC politics.


2. In 2016 I was a Princeton graduate student who excitedly supported the JCPOA and the new era of Iran-US diplomacy it was meant to usher. Such was my optimism that I actually went to Iran for dissertation research. That’s when my nightmare began.

3. I was arrested by Iranian security forces and held hostage in Evin prison-away from my wife and infant son-for more than 3 years. The regime knew I was innocent and told me so. It took me 40 months in Evin to comprehend what had happened to me.

4. As a political prisoner I’ve likely had more intensive contact with Iranian hardliners than most Iran watchers in the US, especially US govt officials like Mr. Rhodes and Malley. I believe the insights derived from that experience have a unique value.

5. I support strengthening the nuclear deal, but am convinced the JCPOA of 2015 is well-intended yet inadequate. Simply lifting pressure against Iran and allowing it to benefit from economic integration produced NO further incentive for the regime to change its behavior.

You May Also Like

राम-रावण युद्ध समाप्त हो चुका था। जगत को त्रास देने वाला रावण अपने कुटुम्ब सहित नष्ट हो चुका था।श्रीराम का राज्याभिषेक हुआ और अयोध्या नरेश श्री राम के नेतृत्व में चारों दिशाओं में शन्ति थी।
अंगद को विदा करते समय राम रो पड़े थे ।हनुमान को विदा करने की शक्ति तो राम में थी ही नहीं ।


माता सीता भी हनुमान को पुत्रवत मानती थी। अत: हनुमान अयोध्या में ही रह गए ।राम दिनभर दरबार में, शासन व्यवस्था में व्यस्त रहते थे। संध्या को जब शासकीय कार्यों में छूट मिलती तो गुरु और माताओं का कुशल-मंगल पूछ अपने कक्ष में जाते थे। परंतु हनुमान जी हमेशा उनके पीछे-पीछे ही रहते थे ।


उनकी उपस्थिति में ही सारा परिवार बहुत देर तक जी भर बातें करता ।फिर भरत को ध्यान आया कि भैया-भाभी को भी एकांत मिलना चाहिए ।उर्मिला को देख भी उनके मन में हूक उठती थी कि इस पतिव्रता को भी अपने पति का सानिध्य चाहिए ।

एक दिन भरत ने हनुमान जी से कहा,"हे पवनपुत्र! सीता भाभी को राम भैया के साथ एकांत में रहने का भी अधिकार प्राप्त है ।क्या आपको उनके माथे पर सिन्दूर नहीं दिखता?इसलिए संध्या पश्चात आप राम भैया को कृप्या अकेला छोड़ दिया करें "।
ये सुनकर हनुमान आश्चर्यचकित रह गए और सीता माता के पास गए ।


माता से हनुमान ने पूछा,"माता आप अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर क्यों लगाती हैं।" यह सुनकर सीता माता बोलीं,"स्त्री अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर लगाती है तो उसके पति की आयु में वृद्धि होती है और वह स्वस्थ रहते हैं "। फिर हनुमान जी प्रभु राम के पास गए ।
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.