On the Ropes

 

Amongst all the events over the last weeks,  the American Pope gets my nod for making it clear that A I is a huge challenge for his flock and most of the rest of us.  As you may remember, the previous Pope made a strong statement about Climate Change.  And now Pope Leo has issued his encyclible on Artificial General intelligence.

This from the Vatican:

"Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

The opening words of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, summarize its underlying reasons and purpose.

 Pope Leo XIV has taken up the legacy of his predecessor, writing a social encyclical which addresses one of the principal challenges of the contemporary age: artificial intelligence.

Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.

Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell”

In the meantime, The Times reports:

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot Claude, confidentially filed on Monday for an initial public offering, joining what could be a once-in-a-generation, moneymaking moment on Wall Street.

With its I.P.O. filing, Anthropic is expected to be among three high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, along with the rocket company SpaceX and OpenAI, which started the A.I. boom in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot.

Their I.P.O.s, which would be among the biggest ever, could create a tsunami of investment and employee wealth, and mint the world’s first trillionaire in Elon Musk, who owns about 50 percent of SpaceX. 

The public offerings could also flood the nonprofit world with new money, since Anthropic and OpenAI have both pledged a large part of their shares to charity. 

SpaceX’s I.P.O. is expected this month, and OpenAI has been preparing to file in the coming weeks.

And then the other night, the biggest explosion I've seen maybe since Mount Helena, blew parts of Cape Canaveral to Kingdom Come in a so called anomaly.  (Not an unscheduled rapid disassembly)

Blue Origin experienced a fiery setback Thursday when its New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla. 

“I have very little doubt that Blue Origin will get to the bottom of this,” said Stan Shull, the founder of Seattle-based space technology consulting firm Alliance Velocity. “They seem very vision and goal driven, and I don’t expect this to change that, but it’s a setback, and it’s a significant one. 

“It’s going to change the timeline of their hopes and dreams.” 

Blue Origin’s rocket exploded during what’s known as a static fire test, a typical test run before launch to ensure the rocket’s systems are working as expected. Shull described it as filling the rocket with propellant, then briefly firing up the engines. 

On Thursday, “right around the time of ignition, the whole thing just blew up in a very spectacular way,” Shull said. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this before.”

And the damage to the surrounding area is extensive as Blue Origin is warning residents and visitors that debris from the recent rocket explosion could begin washing ashore along Brevard County beaches in the coming days and weeks, prompting safety concerns for beachgoers and environmental advocates. 

So science and rockets and computers are certainly in the news.

But what's not in the news, according to Google AI, is the damage inflicted by Iranian forces on our bases. It is substantially higher than reported:

Yes, damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East is significantly higher than initially acknowledged by the U.S. government. Investigations and analyses—including an extensive review of satellite imagery by the Washington Post and reporting by the BBC—reveal a much broader scope of destruction. 

Asset Destruction: At least 228 structures and pieces of major equipment have been damaged or destroyed across 15 U.S. military sites in the Middle East. [1, 2]

Critical Systems Hit: The strikes heavily impacted key military assets, including destroying multiple Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, satellite communication sites, and an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft. [1, 2]

Soft Targets: Iranian strikes also successfully targeted "soft targets," including hangars, fuel depots, and living quarters (such as barracks and gyms), specifically to inflict mass casualties. [1, 2]

Strategic Relocation: Due to the severity of the threat, U.S. commanders relocated the vast majority of personnel away from exposed bases to avoid mass casualties, leaving many of these sites lightly staffed. 

And so today, Drumph crashes his own cease-fire agreement like the cheap real estate character he is. He, along with his cracker barrel team he assigned to do the negotiating, are treating a 5,000 year old culture like a newbee on the trading block.  And oil futures go back up,  stocks go up or down, while inventories continue their slide.

And Xi looks real good.

And we look worse and worse.

And Pax Americana is on the Ropes.

 

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The Liberal's Conundrum

 

 

 We just came back from Mexico.  This time and for the first time in decades, we went to Merida.  At one time, Merida was one of the richest towns of the world.  It's unique landscape made for creation of many great Haciendas that provided the raw materials for rope for the rigging of the sailing ships of the European fleets of the time.

In 1542 Francisco de Montejo gave the name Mérida to the captured Mayan city T’ho (Tihoo). An early base for Spanish efforts to conquer the Maya, it subsequently became an administrative and commercial center for the Yucatán region. In the 19th century, its economy was based on the processing and export of locally grown henequen, a fibrous plant from which twine and rope are produced. By the early 20th century Mérida became one of Mexico’s most important commercial cities.

The city is a base for trips to several Mayan sites, including Chichén Itzá, Kabah, Mayapán, and Uxmal. Many colonial-era buildings, including the Casa de Montejo (1549) and the cathedral (begun in 1561), are also tourist attractions, as are the city’s ornate henequen-era mansions.

Except for going to one of the many water holes (cenotes) that formed after the meteor strike, we didn't go anywhere.  Instead we stayed at a henequin era Hacienda about 25 miles away.  Having been restored over the last several years  to a state of grandeur by a friend of a friend, we were guests.

Our room was a gigantic reproduction of the glory days of Merida.  The walls were thick and well painted. The ceiling was 20 feet high.  (their strategy for dealing with the afternoon heat). The grounds were lush and well manicured. Hacienda Petac has been around for about 400 years.

With the great food and the remarkable Mayan service, We disconnected pretty good. 

And it gave us time to reflect on the situation we find ourselves in.

This from Democracy Journal: 

"In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford observed a close connection between the holding of extremely conservative, system-justifying values and authoritarian tendencies. They took a multi-methods approach, conducting structured interviews and administering questionnaires and projective tests to countless samples of American adults. Among other things, they observed that people who endorsed statements like “America may not be perfect, but the American Way has brought us about as close as human beings can get to a perfect society” were also more likely to express prejudice, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic sentiments.

Ever since the Democratic Party first took a strong leadership role on the issue of civil rights for African Americans in the 1960s, authoritarian tendencies have consistently predicted support for Republican presidential candidates. 

Whatever the proximal psychological causes, we are bearing witness—all over the world—to the rebirth of extreme right-wing movements that thrive under conditions of anxiety. These movements promise a return to “traditional” (often religious) values, a curtailing of reproductive and other rights of women (as well as sexual minorities), and a revival of nationalistic (often ethnic) pride and the “restoration” of national boundaries, along with a dismantling of the “administrative” welfare state and the imposition of illiberal reforms and vindictive immigration policies. 

It is worth recalling that Adorno and his colleagues identified nine characteristics of the authoritarian syndrome : 

(1) aggression against those who deviate from “the norm,”  

(2) submission to idealized moral authorities,  

(3) uncritical acceptance of conventional values,  

(4) mental rigidity and a proclivity to engage in stereotypical thinking, 

(5) a preoccupation with toughness and power, 

(6) exaggerated sexual concerns,  

(7) a reluctance to engage in introspection,  

(8) a tendency to project undesirable traits onto others, and  

(9) destructiveness and cynicism about human nature. 

These characteristics provide an uncanny description of Drumph. 

It  is as if he has been doing authoritarianism by the book. 

And that is my point.

We are not dealing with a Man.

We are dealing with something far more sinister.

So forget Drumph and his acolytes.

And remember Robert Frost’s admonition that “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” Even though this is not a quarrel. It is a struggle.

And some would argue that Liberals would be better off “owning” the struggle in this historical moment. That rather than playing out our own internal contradictions, we should try to become as fully aware of them as possible.  

But I suggest we take their stage masks off, turn on the house lights, and see clearly their elaborate but thread-bare costumes. We look behind this curtain of lies.

Those who make up the current regime are a cast of thousands in the presentation of a civil drama that intends to distract and even mesmerize those who would watch it as anything other than a sick play which moves from one scene to the next so that your energy is spent hating the characters instead of removing the producers and their hired directors and light men. 

For there is wealth behind every line as the audience follows the plot and the characters perform.

The recent return to space by the voyagers on Artemus can remind us that we all live on our Earthship.

For our Conundrum is our Salvation.

And the Obstacle is the Path. 

 

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From a Firehose

 

 

If you feel like you've been drinking from a firehose, join the club.  

Just this month alone, the US is now bragging about bombing a 5000 year old civilization back to the stone age, and in so doing has caused the almost closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rocking energy prices and fertilizer shipments to the West.  Eight million or so have demonstrated in the NO Kings protest against the most corrupt, vile, undemocratic administration in the 250 year history of our Republic. It just goes on and on.

But last night, we  saw the AI Doc.

This from Wikipedia:

"The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a 2026 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell. It is produced by the Academy Award–winning teams behind Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang) and Navalny (Shane Boris and Diane Becker)."

So this is no fly by night outfit. And despite the firehose of gluttony and ignorance we see in our daily political existence, this movie might very be the scariest movie you'll see this year.  (or any year)

This from KQED, 

"Roher gathers the interviewees into three broad groups: the terrifyingly pessimistic ones, the naively optimistic ones and the CEOs who are casually working on something that may or may not spark humanity’s demise. (Well, three out of five of them, anyway: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei all appear. Mark Zuckerberg declined to participate and Elon Musk apparently backed out at the last minute.)

The worst AI predictions are presented first. Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, calmly talks of the “abrupt extermination” of humanity. Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari calls AI “a deadly threat.”

Center for Humane Technology President Tristan Harris — one of the most measured commentators in the movie — also shares some truly sobering views, the worst of which is that he knows active AI researchers who “don’t expect their children to make it to high school.” It doesn’t help matters that machine learning researcher Shane Legg follows this with the assertion, “The really powerful systems are coming and they’re coming soon. (clip)

In his conversations with Roher, Sam Altman talks a good game about the safety protocols that OpenAI has in place. Given his company’s highly controversial new contract with the Department of Defense, his words will either ring hollow or serve as comfort, depending on your viewpoint. For his part in The AI Doc, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei simply says, “Am I confident that everything’s going to work out? No, I’m not.” Hassabis is even more vague: “If something is possible to do, humanity is going to do it,” he says.

The feeling I left The AI Doc with is that the future of AI is overwhelmingly — and unfortunately — out of the hands of everyday people. "

That's just not just scary,  that's undemocratic.   

After the movie, we went down to our favorite italian restaurant and bar on the corner.  There we ordered our usual meal of Kale Salad and Meatballs on Polenta.  We were still  working on digesting the movie when the food arrived.   Next to us at the corner of the bar were two 40ish males  One of them was in High Tech and the other was in Property Management.  The conversation went on long enough for me get a couple of doubles in.  But they were moved by the movie.  My partner was moved.  And my hair went from being on fire to whatever the plasma version of that is. 

I told my story about how I have spent most of my adult years (after my Armadillo daze) working in Renewables trying to deal with the existential challenge that humanity faces with Climate Change.  How I built the first commercial wind farm in Texas, how I served as Chairman of the Electric Utility to adopt renewable energy goals that far exceeded the tepid goals of most organizations, how I lobbied the PUC for an energy only payment protocol ultimately creating an economic environment such that rosy red Texas has more Wind, more Solar, and more Storage than any other state.  And even with the R's trying to stop the train, the tracks are laid.

I didn't mention that I had been blogging about it for 22 years now. 

But I did tell them that I no longer think that Climate Change is  the primary existential challenge of humankind.  Oh it is, but it's like a meteor that  is way out in deep space but clearly heading our way.  The AI meteor is in our solar system.  And there are billions and billions of dollars and other currencies being spent right now as the race for  artificial general intelligence (AGI) dominance goes into overdrive.

According to  Google AI, 

As of early 2026, true AGI does not exist. Current research focuses on improving large language models (LLMs) to handle more generalized reasoning, though they still fail at complex, novel tasks that humans easily solve. It also says,  Development of AGI brings significant risks, including ethical issues regarding AI safety, job displacement, and alignment with human values.

Global investment in artificial intelligence is currently witnessing an unprecedented surge, with projections indicating that it will reach roughly

$1.5 trillion in 2025 and exceed $2 trillion in 2026. This massive influx of capital is driven by a global race to build AI infrastructure, specifically data centers and hardware, with total annual investment expected to grow by over 40% annually.

 

Global military expenditures reached a record high of approximately $2.7 trillion in 2024.

At 40% annual growth, AI investments will eclipse our war investments by next year.

We cannot drink from the Firehose.

We must point our efforts elsewhere. 

My brother Frank would say: 

You can't worry about your Dandriff,

When you are dying of Cancer.

Something else got him. 

 

 

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Where the Future Is

 

Most of my immediate family goes to Idaho to ski about this time of year leaving me at home to piddle around and stay up late reading or writing early into the morning.  My current mind challenge is trying to get my hands around the spectacular growth in Artificial Intelligence in the last  year and the resource and political  implications of it all. 

But last night, I was watching (actually binging) a new civil war series called the Gray House.  At around 3:00 having had enough of the spymaster story of the Confederate White House apparently named Gray House, I did my oral care and hopped into my solitary, super comfy bed.  Often, when I sleep alone, I like to leave NPR on as company and as an aural filler.  I lit the essential oil candle and turned off the bed lights behind the headboard, laid my head down, and then heard something about Drumph having just made a statement on his Truth Social account that he and Bebe just bombed Iran. 

I jumped up, flipped open my mini, and watched my normal center left news networks and yup, right there from Mar a Lago, was the POTUS in a white USA baseball cap telling the Iranians and the rest of the world that he is giving them a chance to be free; but for now to stay in doors because there is going to be a lot of bombs out there. 

And now, that's all there is on our media and will be for a while.  Most of the actual pictures come from Al Jazzerra right now.  The Fairmount in Dubai got whacked by a drone, and the Navy took some shots on their 5th fleet.  But we got our man, or at least the Israeli Air Force did.  And Khamenei, their supreme leader is now officially a martyr. We apparently also got a school full of young girls.

And now the Revolutionary Guards are warning of an intense offensive to come.

In the meantime, the Pentagon is trying to force the creators of Claude to allow their AI to not be restricted by their terms of service regarding AI homicide.  The Justice Department excluded FBI reports that Drumph forced a teenager's head onto his mushroom which she bit, and then he socks her with his fist. And we can't forget that the EPA just rescinded the endangerment finding regarding CO2 and its regulatory foundation for climate change policy.

All of this while the warnings regarding AI go unheeded:

Industry warnings regarding AI have escalated significantly as of February 2026, ranging from immediate economic disruption to long-term existential threats. High-profile executives and researchers from

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have reached a consensus that AI risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war.

Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei,  warned in May 2025 that AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially spiking unemployment to 10–20% within five years.

In late February 2026, Jack Dorsey’s Block announced plans to cut over 4,000 jobs—nearly half its staff—citing AI-driven productivity gains.

 Financial institutions like Citigroup have cautioned that AI implementation may lead to higher unemployment and deflation. Some analysts warn of a "vibe coding" shift that could render traditional software roles obsolete.    

 This from Wikipedia:

Experts disagree on whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) can achieve the capabilities needed for human extinction. Debates center on AGI's technical feasibility, the speed of self-improvement,^[7] and the effectiveness of alignment strategies.^[8] 

Concerns about superintelligence have been voiced by researchers including Geoffrey Hinton,^[9] Yoshua Bengio,^[10] Demis Hassabis,^[11] and Alan Turing,^[a] and AI company CEOs such as Dario Amodei (Anthropic),^[14] Sam Altman (OpenAI),^[15] and Elon Musk (xAI).^[16] 

 In 2022, a survey of AI researchers with a 17% response rate found that the majority believed there is a 10 percent or greater chance that human inability to control AI will cause an existential catastrophe.^[17][18] 

In 2023, hundreds of AI experts and other notable figures signed a statement declaring, "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".^[19] 

Following increased concern over AI risks, government leaders such as United Kingdom prime minister Rishi Sunak^[20] and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres^[21] called for an increased focus on global AI regulation.  

Researchers warn that an "intelligence explosion"—a rapid, recursive cycle of AI self-improvement—could outpace human oversight and infrastructure, leaving no opportunity to implement safety measures. In this scenario, an AI more intelligent than its creators would recursively improve itself at an exponentially increasing rate, too quickly for its handlers or society at large to control.

Something tells me that Drumph and his DoW boy wonder have a plan for Iran.  And it probably came from Claude. ( or one of his brothers)

And sooner than you think, our boots on the ground may not be leather.

I told my grandson that all my life I've wondered where the future is.

And now it's here. 

And it's just like the movies. 

 

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Il Duche

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were at a memorial for a friend of a friend yesterday.  It was held in a west Austin country club right on Lake Austin with a great lap pool and work out facilities. It had survived the long freeze well.  Gene Anne, the woman who had passed, was married to John the Oncologist.  

So as you might imagine, there were a lot of Doctors there including my partner. It was a Civil affair, not a Priest or a robe in site. Doctors, lots of Doctors.  

We were talking to David, one of my favorites because he actually was on the basketball team at UCLA in the late sixties during those glory days.  Coach Wooten told him to get a good education and he did.  As we chatted, we talked about retirement, but he couldn't imagine it, not right now, not while we have this dictator in our country.   

Yes, there you have it.  If a aging Doctor in a swanky West Austin Tennis Club knows, I guess most of us know it. Like David, We probably try to avoid thinking about it.  

This North Carolina professor knows it too.

Donald the First: Trump the dictator has arrived 

We have launched a war against Venezuela — apparently because we can. We have provided no justification, no rationale, no candor. Their oil, we claim, is now ours. We’ll sell it and, Donald Trump explains, the “money will be controlled” by him. If the Venezuelans don’t bend quickly enough to our command, we’ll kill more of them. It’s like a video game to us. You know, like blowing up the boats. The U.S. military has proven its mastery — in an illegal and blatantly unconstitutional and brutal cause. 

Next, Trump explains, “we’re going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” If we “don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.” Cuba and Mexico are, perhaps, after that. As Stephen Miller oozes — who is going to stop us? It’s a real world out there. “You can talk about international niceties, but we live in a world governed by strength, by force, by power,” Miller says. The strong, apparently, take what they want and the weak, in turn, bear what they must. (I think the ancient Greeks said that.) The Western Hemisphere is reportedly ours. So is any other nation that has anything we want. The only limit is Trump’s moral compass. Imagine, if you can.

ICE continues to terrorize Democratic cities — killing a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis, because, in this new era, that’s how you look manly, lethal. (a ICU nurse would follow her) We advertise for agents on TV. Give ‘em signing bonuses. Le mercenaire. 

The president of the United States extorts like Al Capone. 

Universities, law firms, corporations, media folks, researchers, artists, nonprofits, cities (Democratic ones), states (blue ones) and countries (weak ones). If you don’t do what he wants, he’ll bring bombers and gunships to your shore to see if that changes your mind. Maybe he’ll take the money, or maybe he’ll give it to his family. 

The corruption is so outlandish, we’ve quit keeping track. A surpassingly gutless House and Senate bless the effort. Their only apparent actual oath is to Donald J. Trump. A supine Supreme Court utters immunity. There is, literally, nothing beyond his power. And if there was, he could hire goons to do it and then pardon them.

We have fretted, as a nation, over whether Trump would become a dictator. 

He has. 

Donald The First. 

Anyone who thinks he and his crew will surrender power is three shades past delusional. At least the mystery is gone. The only question is whether he will be cabined, suppressed, rejected — legally — by the constitutional democracy he seeks to undo. That will require an actual Congress, resolute state governments, faithful and independent federal courts, but, most of all, a massively engaged, courageous and patriotic citizenry. It’s not yet clear whether we can manage to deliver these undoubted and foundational requisites. I wish I knew the answer. I do know it’s the most important question we face. 

Maybe that we’ll ever face.

Surveying my home — a state that I love and that counts for the nation — the North Carolina Republican Party must now denounce President Trump. If they don’t, all Tar Heels, citizens and officeholders, must abandon the party. This day. 

There could be no stronger proof that an institution is unfit to govern than the continued embrace of Donald Trump — the gravest single threat to constitutional democracy in American history. No patriot can support dictatorship. And no honest human can any longer pretend that’s not what is happening here.

* Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Last night at dinner, we talked about it.  We talked about the horrible movie made for Il Duce's wife. We talked about how the Europeans don't like us anymore.  We talked about how screwed up we are with Canada and Mexico.  I said we now have a dictator and everyone just simply agreed and we went on about our holidays.

The Atlantic says:

President Drumph prosecutes his political opponents; deports immigrants, including some here legally, to foreign prisons without due process; solicits tribute payments from corporations and foreign governments; deploys soldiers to American cities that are not, in fact, in civil-war-level chaos; and puts his name and image on government buildings that quite obviously don’t belong to him.

So, a question: What do you call this form of government? Authoritarian? Kleptocratic? Totalitarian? Fascist?

A Dictatorship 

Read it from the man who lived it. 

“The definition of fascism is the marriage of corporation and state ” Il Duce said.

It is the core concept of

corporatism, where the state and large private entities form a symbiotic partnership to control the economy and society. 

And the best of us demonstrate against it. 

But we are like indoor cats chasing a laser beam

that came from space to change our elections. 

And we eat our canned gourmet meals.

And play on our high rise kitty condos.

And crap in our self cleaning internet connected sandbox.

And in the distance I hear drumming.

and Minnesota is on my mind. 

And Il Duce is alive. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A New Year

 

 

As the New Year headed our way, my little family made its way to Europe, specifically, the Iberian Peninsula.   Over the years, we have spent the New Year all over the place.  We have done the big cities, NYC, Mexico City, San Francisco, LA/Las Vegas, Austin, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, and now Madrid. And we have done the smallest hole in the walls from "Bernies" in Port Aransas, Texas to Real de Catorce, Mexico.  

In Catorce, we used to celebrate the New Year with 50 or 60 international friends from all over the Globe.

After dinner in El Real, we would go to the top of the Hotel and experience the greatest, most dangerous fireworks extravanganza at close range.  The six inch  firework mortars would suck the air from around you as everyone on that roof realized that this unregulated display was not only top notch, it was also a 7 or 8 on the Peligroso scale.  The finale was a Gyro-Gearloose contraption made of bamboo by an aging  Matehualan craftsman down in the valley.  It would light up and spin and slowly but surely ignite all of its arms and appendages,  spraying rivers of sparks in every direction, and then all of a sudden, the very top crown would ignite, start spinning at high speed, and then lift off into the heavens to the screams of delight from the equally lit crowd.

We would find it smoldering on someones concrete roof in due time. 

But before we made it to Madrid, we spent 4 days in Lisbon. The last time I was in Lisbon, it seemed a little sleepy but well maintained.  Perhaps the most picturesque city in Western Europe, it has grown to become a destination for tourists of all stripes.  The restaurants are many, the Hotels are modernized, and with the shops and views from the hills of Barrio Alto and the history of the Castle of St George and Alfama on the opposing hill to the north, the historic old town is nicely knitted into the larger metro area. 

Just south of Alfama is the back road up to the Castle.  On the way up is a great Brunch place called Dear Breakfast.  Up the hill a little further is the Cathedral of Lisbon and across the street is the Museum of Resistance and Freedom.

It was there that we were reminded of the recent history of Portugal during its fascist period beginning before World War II.  

Portugal's history of repression, particularly under the

Estado Novo (New State) dictatorship (1933-1974) led by António de Oliveira Salazar, was characterized by strict censorship, pervasive secret police (PIDE/DGS) surveillance, torture, imprisonment of dissidents (like at Aljube prison), suppression of free speech, and control over media and political life to maintain colonial power and traditional values. 

This authoritarian rule, a continuation of earlier military dictatorships, ended with the bloodless Carnation Revolution in 1974, which ushered in democracy. 

The Museum WAS Aljube prison.  And many of the inhuman cells were still intact.  The place gave me the eeby-jeebies. The fact that it was just a few yards from the Cathedral of Lisbon was not just a brutal juxtaposition, 

It is a metaphor of the unholy alliance of church and state. 

The Portuguese people have a long history of courage and exploration.  They were the first to navigate the seas beyond the safety of visual reference.  Thus we have Brazil.

Portuguese maritime explorations resulted in numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by the Portuguese on journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration, chronicling and mapping the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies, Canada and Brazil (the West Indies), in what became known as the Age of Discovery. 

And their technology was advanced:

Portuguese nautical science evolved from the successive expeditions and experience of the Portuguese pilots. It led to a fairly rapid evolution, creating an elite of astronomers, navigators, mathematicians and cartographers. Among them stood Pedro Nunes with studies on how to determine latitude by the stars, and João de Castro, who made important observations of magnetic declination over the entire route around Africa.  

Today Portugal and Lisbon specifically is a model of urban design and commitment to that 500 year history of exploration.

But like the US, Western Europe is facing the large movements of peoples as climate change and a new age of political repression collide.  The Trump administration has claimed that around 140,000 people had been deported as of April 2025, and recent figures are closer to 600,000.

And, the number of people in immigration detention in the US has hit an all-time high according to data published by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE).  The data, which comes out every two weeks, shows that as of December 2025, ICE held more than 68,400 people.

And as in the US, the flow of peoples across nation states is also moving those who are seeing their streets and towns change in complexion rightward.

And that explains Drumph.

I'm reading Bruno Latour's book, Down to Earth on climate and politics. In it, he says, "By pulling out of the Paris Accord, Drumph explicitly triggered, if not a world war, at least a war over what constitutes the theatre of operations. 

We Americans don't belong to the same Earth as you.  

Yours may be threatened; ours won't be" 

We made our way to Madrid for our New Year's Eve celebration in a place called Ginger.  

We all wore our funny hats and masks, and blew our little horns. 

For a New Year. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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