Man of the Century: Mattias Desmet
Alcides Perez turns 100 years old in 2025
Celina Perez turns 95 in 2025
71 year marriage! They are Blessed!
Traveling from London to Paris via the Eurostar is one of Europe’s most iconic and efficient journeys. However, if your trip falls on a busy holiday travel day, it’s important to plan strategically to ensure a smooth experience. Here’s a detailed guide based on my recent journey to help you make the most of it.
Preparing for Departure: Arriving at St. Pancras International
St. Pancras International Station, the gateway to the Eurostar, is bustling on any given day but can feel like a hive of activity during the holidays. To avoid stress, plan to arrive at least one hour before your train’s departure time. This allows you ample time to clear security, check in, and find your platform without rushing.
Keep in mind that long lines are the norm during peak travel periods. Use any extra time to explore the shops or grab a last-minute coffee. But don’t linger too long—the Eurostar waits for no one!
Onboard the Eurostar: Snacks, Comfort, and Time Awareness
Once aboard the Eurostar, you’ll be treated to a fast and comfortable ride, but come prepared with your own snacks. While there is a café car onboard, the most popular items, like baguettes and sandwiches, often sell out quickly during busy travel days. Pack something portable like sandwiches, granola bars, or fresh fruit to stay fueled during the roughly 2.5-hour journey.
It’s also important to remember that there’s a one-hour time difference between London and Paris. You’ll lose an hour when you arrive in France, so plan your schedule accordingly—particularly if you have dinner reservations or evening plans in Paris.
Arrival at Gare du Nord: Traffic Awareness
When you arrive at Gare du Nord station in Paris, you’ll step into a city alive with holiday spirit—and, unfortunately, holiday traffic. If you’re staying in a central neighborhood like Saint-Germain-des-Prés, plan for a 30-minute cab ride via Uber or taxi. The congestion can be intense, especially during peak travel times, so factor this into your itinerary.
Alternatively, if you’re feeling adventurous and not weighed down by heavy luggage, Paris’s metro system is an efficient way to navigate the city. However, after a long journey, a cab ride is often the more convenient option.
Final Tips for a Smooth Journey
1. Book Your Tickets Early: Holiday trains sell out fast, so book your Eurostar tickets well in advance for better prices and preferred times.
2. Travel Light: Navigating crowded stations and traffic is much easier without bulky luggage.
3. Check Your Arrival Plans: Have your hotel address handy and confirm transportation options ahead of time to avoid delays.
4. Stay Calm: Crowds and delays are inevitable during the holidays, but patience and a positive attitude will make the journey much more enjoyable.
Traveling from London to Paris on the Eurostar during the holidays can be a bit hectic, but with proper planning, it’s still a magical experience. As you settle into your hotel in Paris and begin to explore the city of lights, the hustle of the journey will fade, leaving you with memories of adventure and anticipation. Bon voyage!
We are delighted to have received this photo where Elon Musk who will lead the Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy, joins President Donald J. Trump, his son, the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Robert Kennedy while eating McDonald hamburgers. We visited Trump Doral recently only to pay $35 for a hamburger stamped with the TRUMP logo...
Our 2025 resolution is to eat ONLY that which we can afford and that is definitely NOT a TRUMP hamburger!
Janet Yellen’s Department of Treasury has enacted and, with its last gasps, is still attempting to enforce a new surveillance law of questionable constitutionality. Directed at small businesses, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) mandates a federal-level business registry requiring even more sensitive information than typical state-level business registrations.
Fortunately, there is some reassurance with incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and legal action against CTA is (for now) gaining if not winning. But gambling on these offramps is risky in light of the crippling fines for non-compliance and the quickly approaching deadline.
Treasury is implementing its desired federal business registry through its new Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and will include the full legal name, date of birth, home address, and passport/license/ID number of all “beneficial owners” of a business. (Nearly all of your personally identifiable information, placed in a government database that certainly won’t get hacked.)
FinCEN’s reporting website went live on 1 January 2024. Owners of the euphemistically-termed “reporting companies” must submit their reporting data by 13 January 2025, or face $591/day fines and up to two years of prison for willful failure to comply.
Despite Treasury claims to the contrary, there is little practical evidence (e.g., direct-mail letters, phone calls, emails, ads, X videos, etc.) that the Department has made sincere attempts to inform businesses of this requirement. Many business owners might not know about it, especially those without a full-time accountant to warn them.
Perhaps this is because Yellen’s Treasury does not clearly define which businesses qualify as a “reporting company”: FinCEN’s applicability flowchart terminates only in “No” or “Maybe.” The “exemptions” table permits a more edifying process of elimination: CTA does not apply to the government, banks, insurance companies, large corporations, etc.
Worse than the daily fine for non-compliance is, arguably, the cost of complying. The law’s name includes “transparency,” but FinCEN’s database will be exempt from FOIA. We the people will not have transparency into this database, but the database asks business owners to be even more transparent than they have already been with their state registrations (which are in the public domain). This is not transparency; it’s domestic spying on those who submit to it. Such a database could be used as a backdoor visibility an individual’s side sources of income, or to monitor the firearms industry.
The Treasury’s vague applicability rules and bankruptcy-inducing penalties, outsourced to FinCEN to administer, seem designed to funnel honest business owners into a surveillance trap. FinCEN and CTA could be obliterated by the court-ordered injunctions any day now, but Treasury (and by extension, the Department of Justice) will get their hands on peoples’ juicy personal and business data a la the Lois Lerner scandal in the meantime.
Peter McIlvenna, a UK-based free-speech advocate and host of Hearts of Oak, spoke about FinCEN and the CTA at a September 2024 symposium of the American Freedom Alliance, and subsequently wrote about it with unique and important insight. Mr. McIlvenna warns us from the global frontlines of a censorious, surveillance-oriented government; and he considers CTA to be a brick in the primrose path toward total state control.
Incidentally concerning is the spurious stated purpose of CTA. We are told that warrantless surveillance of law-abiding business owners is required to prevent crimes – such as money laundering – facilitated by anonymized LLCs. But Secretary Yellen’s press release does not cite historical crimes or specifics about LLC business registration abuse. We are just to take Yellen’s word at face value – because that worked so well for her with “transitory inflation.”
In reality, there are high-profile examples of LLC-facilitated money-laundering crimes illustrating that law enforcement goes for years without prosecuting these criminals.
Nothing substantive has come of Jacqueline Fine-Breger’s stunning February 2023 testimony to a joint meeting of the Arizona House and Senate Elections Committees.
Ms. Fine-Breger spent 42 minutes walking through four years of investigations into the Sinaloa Cartel’s use of LLCs to launder drug money into real estate purchases, facilitated by Arizona government’s failure to prosecute and alleged involvement.
In Maine, the Maine State Police and Governor Mills have declined for over a year to act on overwhelming investigative evidence from local sheriffs, The Maine Wire, and the Department of Homeland Security regarding the CCP-linked Triad Weed criminal organization’s use of LLCs to re-purpose hundreds of houses across the state for cultivation of black market marijuana.
To any common-sense observer, these would be key targets for an effort to curb illicit uses of LLCs: criminal, foreign entities using business registrations to obfuscate drug propagation and profit. Of course for the Biden administration, the answer is never prosecuting the unlawful; the answer is always to spy more on the lawful.
The odd numbers associated with the CTA/FinCEN initiative – 13 January deadline vs. 1 January; $591 daily fine vs. $500 or $600 – reflect this law’s long and troubled past. The CTA was enacted in 2021 (following a 2020 veto by President Trump, and a subsequent Congressional overturning of his veto). As originally written, the per-day non-reporting fine would be $500. But inflation since just 2020 has adjusted that value to $591 – according to the same Treasury Department responsible for the inflation! Let that sink in.
The unusual filing deadline of 13 January 2025 is the result of the legal and ethical tug’o’war between constitutional judges and unconstitutional federal bureaucrats. On 3 December 2024, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ordered a nation-wide injunction against Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice’s (DOJ) enforcement of CTA. Merrick Garland’s DOJ responded on 5 December with a requested stay on the injunction. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court granted a temporary stay on 23 December, which upholds CTA enforcement (for now) with an extended filing deadline relative to the original 1 January deadline. But as of 26 December, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court has changed its mind and vacated the stay, re-instating the injunction.
What does this mean?
It means don’t gamble on Schrödinger's cat.
Incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent must take definitive action against this DOA law. Ideally, Bessent will be inclined, and legally able to, concede or conclude the Texas injunction in the plaintiffs’ favor if this injunction is not already found in their favor. Regardless of how Bessent may support the cancellation of CTA, ideally he will also abolish FinCEN.
Until then, affected business owners must do what they see fit. Submit to CTA, fight it, or both. As Mr. McIlvenna had noted, several business owners and commerce groups have filed lawsuits similar to the one that resulted in the Texas injunction. Lawsuits have been filed through Alabama, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Texas, and Massachusetts. Impacted business owners in states other than these should consider adding their state to the list of dissenting states with legal action.
For so many of the abominations of the Biden administration, we assume that Trump will fix it on Day One. This one will likely take more grassroots elbow grease.
The letter stated that the hackers gained “access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
The department did not specify how many workstations had been compromised or what kind of documents the hackers may have obtained. However, in the letter, it said that the Beyond Trust service has been taken offline and “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.”
The Treasury is working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to investigate the scope of the hack.
The Treasury Department in Washington on March 25, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
WASHINGTON—Chinese hackers remotely breached the U.S. Treasury Department earlier this month, stealing documents from its workstations, according to a letter the agency sent to lawmakers on Monday. The Treasury Department described the breach as a “major incident.”
On Dec. 8, Chinese state-sponsored hackers compromised a third-party software service provider, Beyond Trust, accessing certain unclassified documents, according to the letter by Aditi Hardikar, an assistant Treasury secretary.
The letter stated that the hackers gained “access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
The department did not specify how many workstations had been compromised or what kind of documents the hackers may have obtained. However, in the letter, it said that the BeyondTrust service has been taken offline and “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.”
The department said it was working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to investigate the scope of the hack.
“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” a department spokesperson said in a separate statement to The Associated Press. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”
The incident occurred as U.S. officials continue to assess the scope of the cybersecurity breach from China’s state-backed Salt Typhoon hacking group, which has carried out a wide-ranging espionage campaign since 2022. Last week, a White House official announced that the recent cyberattacks affected nine telecom companies, including Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink.
Officials said in early December that these hackers are still embedded in U.S. infrastructure. AT&T and Verizon said on Saturday that their networks are now secure while Lumen Technologies, which owns CenturyLink, said on Sunday that it has no evidence of Chinese actors in its network.
Chinese hackers have targeted a small number of high-profile customers, according to AT&T and Verizon.
In the wake of the Salt Typhoon hacking campaign, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has urged “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” to immediately stop using regular phone calls and text messages. They should only use end-to-end encrypted communications and “assume that all communications between mobile devices—including government and personal devices—and internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation,” the agency warned.
The hacking group has already successfully targeted now-Vice President-elect JD Vance and now-president-elect Donald Trump, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.
Eva Fu, Lily Zhou, Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Orlando Palma, 73, walks past resident rooms at Mia Casa on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, in North Miami, Florida. Mia Casa, acquired by Miami-Dade County’s Homeless Trust, supports over 120 homeless seniors aged 65 and older with shelter and assistance transitioning to permanent housing.
As rates of homelessness surge nationwide, Florida residents on Jan. 1 gain the ability to sue their local governments for not enforcing a statewide ban on public camping.
House Bill 1365, the camping ban, partially came into effect in October, after Gov. DeSantis signed it into law in March. The law does not affect lawful recreational camping or people who sleep in legally parked and registered cars.
Aiming to crack down on homelessness, the law holds municipalities responsible for ensuring that people don’t sleep overnight on their streets, in their parks or in any other public place. That provision went into effect this fall.
Starting in January, though, failure to do so can result in costly lawsuits for local governments, which could lead to jail time for those experiencing homelessness.
Across both the U.S. and Florida, homelessness is on the rise.
Since 2023, the number of Americans experiencing homelessness has risen by more than 18%, per a recent report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In Florida, that yearly increase was only 2%.
More than 31,000 Floridians were homeless last year, a figure that includes both sheltered and unsheltered homeless people. But since 2022, Florida’s population of unsheltered homeless people — those who sleep outdoors rather than in, say, a shelter — has ballooned by more than 43%, according to the department.
That far outpaces the national average, a 17% increase over the same amount of time.
HUD attributes the overall surge to rising housing costs, natural disasters such as hurricanes, and, in some cities, an inability to house migrants.
On any given night, nearly 17,000 Floridians sleep in public. Of those, 30% are over the age of 55, one of the fastest-growing homeless demographics, alongside families with children.
Municipalities in Florida have been required since October to keep people off the streets. But now, after a three-month grace period, failing to do so could land local governments in court.
What happens now?
Before suing their local government, residents must first provide written notice of any violation of the state’s public camping ban to the governing board of their municipality — often a county commission. The government then has five business days to take “all reasonable actions” to “cure” the alleged infraction.
If it fails to do so, residents can take their municipality to court. Governments, if found guilty, could be ordered to address the concern or could even be fined, says Stephen Schnably, a law professor at the University of Miami who specializes in homelessness.
They’d also be responsible for the plaintiff’s legal expenses.
Because the law doesn’t order the payment of damages, those bringing lawsuits against their governments don’t stand to gain monetarily.
When it comes to enforcement, the law doesn’t specify what, exactly, “all reasonable actions” or “cure” entail. But Schnably wonders to what degree those government actions will be merely “cosmetic.”
“This law perhaps empowers businesses or residents who want a sweep to happen to basically force it to happen,” Schnably said, referencing government sweeps that clear homeless people from public spaces by ordering them to move and, in some cases, taking their belongings.
Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, a union that represents more than 6,500 officers across South Florida’s police departments, agreed with the professor. Asked what he thinks enforcement of the law will look like, Stahl predicted that local police departments will give homeless people as many warnings as possible, moving them along and trying to find them housing.
“Arrests,” said Stahl, “would be a last resort.”
In a written statement to the Miami Herald, the Miami-Dade Police Department noted that the new law “does not create a criminal or civil offense” for law enforcement agencies to enforce. But, it said, county ordinances allow the police to arrest trespassing individuals who fail to leave after being warned to do so by law enforcement.
Even so, Stahl said, trespassing charges normally carry a 24-hour jail sentence, meaning offenders could be back out on the street the following day.
For its part, the city of Miami Police Department told the Herald that it will prioritize helping homeless individuals find shelter. Only if they refuse, it said, would officers “assess the situation” in such a way that prioritizes “public health and safety.”
The hitch:
There’s currently not enough space in Miami-Dade’s shelter system to accommodate the county’s entire unsheltered homeless population. The county is already digging itself out of a short-term crisis housing hole coming into the new year. Camillus House, one of Miami-Dade’s largest shelters, more than halved its emergency shelter capacity recently.
And though the county has made up for that loss by standing up beds elsewhere, its homeless agency, the Homeless Trust, still has a ways to go until it’s able to bring everyone in off the streets, said Trust chairman Ron Book.
But Book sees a light at the end of the homelessness tunnel.
The Trust is working to get approval for 150 tiny homes, capable of housing 300 people, and it’s hoping to bring them online this year. In the coming months, the county will open an emergency “navigation center” capable of hosting 80 people.
Located in Gladeview, the “big box,” as Book described it — a large, indoor space with beds and bathrooms — will host people for short stays, two weeks or less, as they find other housing options.
Other housing options, including an Overtown complex to house 20 women, roughly four-dozen beds at a Riverside church and a repurposed Cutler Bay hotel capable of housing 130 low-income seniors, stand to clear up space in the county’s shelter system for those still on the streets.
All of this, stressed Book, is being done to avoid constructing an outdoor encampment.
Read it online: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/1365
House Bill 1365 empowers counties to create “encampments,” designated outdoor spaces in which homeless people can live.
In a memo circulated earlier this year, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s office characterized those encampments as being “fraught with concerns,” citing inadequate standards of care, the exclusion of individuals with substance abuse challenges and potential safety concerns arising from combining different homeless populations.
“We’re working,” said Book of the rush to stand up new beds, “so that our community doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago,” when homeless encampments were far more common than they are today.
“HB 1365 is an opportunity,” Book yelled defiantly at a recent Homeless Trust board meeting, “for us to step up our game.”
This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
This story was originally published January 1, 2025, 5:00 AM.
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, long a fixture of popularity and political triumph in Miami-Dade County, is ending the year on unfamiliar ground.
For much of 2024, she fielded allegations that her office has strayed from its duty and metes out lopsided justice.
A judge blasted her prosecutors for recklessness and potential misconduct.
The Florida Bar opened investigations into four of her attorneys.
Online and in person, courthouse insiders ridiculed her office.
Following tips from crime victims, their families and sources in the legal community, Miami Herald reporters exposed deception, misconduct and deficient policing in a selection of controversial cases.
When these cases landed at the State Attorney’s Office, Herald reporters found that victims were failed.
A sex trafficking victim’s case was dropped when she turned up dead in a canal.
A wealthy boater escaped serious consequence for two years in the death of a teenage girl.
Complaints about a gymnastics coach’s inappropriate conduct with young girls were initially dismissed without investigation.
A grieving mother whose mentally ill son was shot and killed by a police officer was sentenced to a year in jail for violating a restraining order filed by the officer.
A murderer confessed and was given immunity from prosecution — but no one told the victims’ parents.
Reporters spent the year fighting for public records, interviewing frustrated families and conducting scores of interviews to tell these stories.
This embarrassing chapter for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office opened with one judge’s attention-grabbing order in March.
Circuit Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson threw two state prosecutors off a death penalty resentencing case for misconduct.
“It was the kind of order that gets everyone’s attention in the criminal justice system,” one of Fernandez Rundle’s top chiefs, Jose Arrojo, told the Herald.
The order was followed by unceasing criticism. Defense attorneys were emboldened.
“Now is the time for the state attorney to acknowledge her office’s failures,” the Miami chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers declared in March.
The following month, the statewide organization issued its own statement, declaring that “the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has lost sight of its ethical obligations to the citizens of Miami-Dade County and its duty to the rule of law.”
On a Miami-Dade judicial blog frequented by defense attorneys, judges and prosecutors, hundreds of criticisms were lobbed, mostly anonymously.
“The [State Attorney’s Office] is a joke and their discovery practices are criminal,” one commenter wrote. Another claimed,
“The [State Attorney’s Office] is a disgrace and corrupt.”
In court filings, too, attorneys disparaged her office.
“The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has recently come under scrutiny for its toxic culture and the ethically questionable actions of certain senior prosecutors in discharging their duty to the citizens of Miami-Dade County,” one motion in April read.
Fernandez Rundle declined to sit for an interview with Herald reporters to discuss this year’s highs and lows, dispatching Arrojo instead.
He said the criticism has been unfair, and noted that judges disagreed with many of the cases Miami defense attorneys pointed to as improper.
“You take a person or two or three, and a case or two or three, and then paint with a very, very broad brush and say this is evidence of an officewide problem that’s been going on for many years,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s an accurate representation.” Nevertheless, Arrojo, an ethics expert tapped by Fernandez Rundle earlier this year, said the state attorney is taking a “fresh look at how we’ve been doing things.”
The main outcome: Prosecutors will be getting some retraining on how to properly follow the laws.
The State Attorney’s Office also has expanded a review into past cases prosecuted by Michael Von Zamft, the senior trial attorney Wolfson threw off the case.
Von Zamft, now retired, declined to comment for this report.
Von Zamft remains under investigation by the Florida Bar, as do his co-prosecutors in the death penalty resentencing, Stephen Mitchell and Joshua Hubner.
Hubner has since left the office. Prosecutor Khalil Quinan also is under investigation by the Bar, a spokeswoman confirmed to the Herald, but she could not provide details.
Mitchell, Hubner and Quinan declined comment.
In a 14-page response to questions from the Herald, Fernandez Rundle’s office said it had a series of successes this year, and downplayed the controversies.
In a county with 2.6 million people and thousands of arrests each year, her office said it had “secured convictions at trial in approximately ten homicide cases, approximately five sexual battery and assault cases, and many other serious felony cases.”
The statement also conceded that due to chronic under-staffing, inexperienced prosecutors are handling major cases and heavy caseloads.
A broader look at the office’s performance shows concerning patterns.
Of 638,872 criminal charges in the past 10 years in Miami-Dade County, the overwhelming majority — 71% — were dropped, abandoned or otherwise not prosecuted, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement criminal history reports.
Statewide, that figure was 39%.
According to the same FDLE data analysis, 40 percent of the charges statewide in that time period led to convictions, including plea deal convictions.
In Miami-Dade, convictions were just under 16%.
For cases that went to jury trial, Miami-Dade’s conviction rate consistently falls behind Broward and the rest of the state, data shows.
In five out of the last 10 state budget years, Miami-Dade had the worst jury trial conviction rate in the state, according to yearly reports from the Office of State Courts Administrator.
In its written statement to the Herald, the State Attorney’s Office pointed out flaws and errors in the FDLE’s data analysis, which offers the public a dashboard view — though quirky and imperfect — of each county’s performance.
The office pointed to statistics for the 2022-2023 budget year from the Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator that showed Miami-Dade tried more than 221 cases - more than any other jurisdiction in Florida. (Miami Dade is the largest.)
Of those, 129 resulted in jury convictions.
In response to a request for the most recent annual report showing case outcomes, the office sent data to the Herald but could not vouch for its accuracy, because it came from the county’s outdated computer system.
The office offered myriad reasons why cases in Miami-Dade result in relatively few convictions, including come-and-go tourists, reluctant or fearful victims, no-show witnesses or police officers, and slow lab or police reports.
Fernandez Rundle’s office also said it can be hard to win when lawyers on the other side are really good.
“While we employ some of the most gifted and competent lawyers to be found anywhere in this country, to their credit, we are also engaged in an adversarial process with a highly sophisticated and competent defense bar.
All of these factors influence the prosecution of cases in our jurisdiction.”
Miami Herald reporters investigated some of the year’s most troubling cases, following tips from people alleging miscarriages of justice.
Miami-Dade police officer Danny Torres, left, wraps his arm around the neck of Miami Dolphins star receiver Tyreek Hill in this photo capture from the Miami-Dade police body camera footage of its officers’ controversial Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, traffic stop of Hill near Hard Rock Stadium. Miami-Dade County Police Department
Happy New Year. Now stand back, please.
Florida’s new law protecting first responders from people “impeding, threatening, or harassing” them goes into effect Jan. 1.
The new law, dubbed the “Halo Law,” was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in the spring after legislators passed the bill earlier this year.
What the first responder law says
The new law, Senate Bill 184, says that individuals must stand at least 25 feet from a first responder who verbally warns them to back off while the responder is working.
Under the “Halo Law,” if you fail to comply with the request to move back and are perceived to be harassing or impeding first responders, you could face a second-degree misdemeanor charge.
The charge could include jail time of up to 60 days. You could also be fined $500.
“Harass,” as defined by the new law, is to “willfully engage in a course of conduct directed at a first responder which intentionally causes substantial emotional distress in that first responder and serves no legitimate purpose.”
Who is a first responder?
A “first responder” as defined by the law includes a law enforcement officer, a correctional probation officer, a firefighter or an emergency medical care provider.
Reaction to the new law
Some law enforcement officials have applauded the new buffer zone law.
“You can video law enforcement officers, that’s your constitutional right,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, an advocate of the new law, said in an NBC6 report. “But you’ve got to stay out of their way while they’re doing their jobs.”
But the ACLU’s Florida chapter opposed the bill because its members believe it could criminalize bystanders and empower police to shield themselves from public scrutiny.
“SB 184 has nothing to do with what its title suggests,” ACLU Florida posted online.
“This bill is all about preventing bystanders from being able to observe with their own eyes an officer’s excessive use of force and record those images — with their cell phone or other device — for the public to see. The purpose and effect of this bill is to decrease police transparency and accountability by ensuring that there are no eyewitnesses or recorded evidence of any excessive use of force.”
[Videos within the Miami Herald Article worth watching!]
Videos of police cuffing Tyreek Hill spawned outrage
Several passerby heading to the Miami Dolphins’ season opener in September filmed and posted videos to social media of Dolphin wide receiver Tyreek Hill in a run-in with Miami-Dade police just outside Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.
Hill, who was heading to the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, was ordered out of his black McLaren 720 S and detained on the ground next to his sports car by Miami-Dade police. Officers said they stopped him for speeding.
Videos showed officers cuffing and pinning Hill to the ground.
After the public’s videos went viral, police quickly released their body cam footage that showed Officer Danny Torres yanking Hill by the back of his head from his car, pinning him to the ground with a knee, and cuffing Hill. Torres was placed on paid administrative leave.
The two citations against the Dolphin star — a $129 fine for a seat-belt violation and a $179 fine for careless driving — were dismissed in November when the ticketing officer, Manuel Batista, didn’t show up in court.
January 1st, 2025... This Day in History
The Need for Reform
Before the Julian calendar, the Roman calendar was based on a combination of lunar and solar cycles, which led to frequent discrepancies and confusion. The Roman calendar was not synchronized with the seasons, resulting in discrepancies between the actual position of the Earth in its orbit and the dates on the calendar. This system had been manipulated for political reasons, further distorting the calendar’s reliability.
The Shift to the Julian Calendar
When the Julian calendar was implemented on January 1st, 45 B.C., it marked a dramatic shift from the previous system. The reform introduced fixed months, with January and February moved to the beginning of the year. The calendar aligned with the solar year, helping to ensure that the seasons and the months were in harmony. The year length of 365.25 days was close enough to the actual solar year to make the Julian calendar more accurate than its predecessor.
The new system was initially adopted across the Roman Empire and soon spread throughout Europe and beyond, as the Roman Empire expanded its influence. Though the calendar still had small inaccuracies—mainly due to the slight discrepancy in the length of the year—its design was a major improvement in terms of regularity and predictability.
The Legacy and Transition to the Gregorian Calendar
The Julian calendar remained in use for over 1,600 years and served as the foundation for the modern calendar system. However, the slight inaccuracy in the length of the year (365.25 days versus the actual solar year length of approximately 365.2422 days) led to a gradual drift of the calendar with respect to the seasons. By the late 16th century, this drift had accumulated enough to cause problems, particularly with the calculation of important dates like Easter.
The legacy of the Julian calendar, however, continues to influence the structure of timekeeping today. The basic framework of the 12-month year with 365 days, the leap year, and the division of the calendar into months and weeks was established by the Julian calendar. Even though the calendar was reformed, the Julian calendar’s original innovations laid the foundation for the global timekeeping system we rely on.
The introduction of the Julian calendar on January 1st, 45 B.C., was a momentous event in the history of timekeeping. Julius Caesar’s reform, which standardized the way we measure the passage of days and months, helped to unify the Roman Empire and set the stage for the calendar systems used in modern times. While the Julian calendar was eventually replaced by the Gregorian calendar, its principles remain embedded in the way we structure our lives. The calendar’s enduring legacy highlights the lasting impact of Julius Caesar’s vision for a more accurate and consistent method of measuring time.
The History of the Panama Canal
The idea of a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans dates back to the early 16th century, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that serious efforts were made to construct one. After the French failed to complete the canal project under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the United States took over the endeavor in the early 20th century. In 1903, following the separation of Panama from Colombia, the U.S. secured a treaty with the newly formed Republic of Panama to build and control the canal. The construction, which took a decade and involved significant loss of life, was completed in 1914.
The Torrijos-Carter Treaties
The decision to transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama was the result of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, signed in 1977 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos. These agreements outlined a timeline for the gradual handover of the canal, which would be completed by the end of 1999. The treaties were a significant diplomatic breakthrough, as they addressed the long-standing issue of Panamanian sovereignty over the canal, while ensuring the continued operation of the waterway.
While controversial at the time, the treaties represented a shift in U.S. foreign policy toward recognizing Panama’s right to control its own territory. The agreements also included provisions for the maintenance and operation of the canal by both countries, with the United States continuing to have a role in the security and functioning of the waterway, even after the handover. This landmark deal was a step toward fostering better relations between the U.S. and Latin America.
The Handover of the Canal
On December 31, 1999, the long-awaited handover took place in a ceremony attended by both U.S. and Panamanian officials. The transfer of control was a moment of national pride for Panama, symbolizing the country’s full sovereignty and its newfound control over one of the world’s most strategic waterways. The event was seen as a culmination of Panama’s fight for autonomy and a testament to the diplomatic efforts that led to the peaceful transition of control.
The Legacy of the Canal Handover
The handover of the Panama Canal has had lasting effects on both Panama and the broader world. For Panama, the canal is not just an economic asset, but also a symbol of national pride and sovereignty. Since the handover, Panama has used its control over the canal to bolster its economy, improving its infrastructure and increasing its status as a key player in global trade. The canal remains a crucial maritime route, and Panama continues to benefit from the tolls and revenues generated by its operation.
For the United States, the handover was a recognition of the changing geopolitical dynamics and the importance of respecting the sovereignty of nations. While the U.S. still maintains a strong relationship with Panama, the event marked the end of an era of direct control over a vital global asset, reshaping the U.S. role in Latin America and signaling a new phase in the post-Cold War world.
The official handover of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, marked the end of nearly a century of U.S. administration and was a momentous event in the history of both nations. It was a symbol of Panama’s sovereignty, a testament to successful diplomacy, and a sign of evolving global relations. The canal continues to serve as a vital international trade route, and Panama has prospered in the years since, demonstrating the lasting significance of the transfer. This historical moment not only changed the course of Panama’s future but also reshaped the geopolitical landscape of the Western Hemisphere.
The Challenge of Electric Lighting
Before Edison’s breakthrough, lighting was primarily provided by candles, oil lamps, and gas lamps. These methods were not only inefficient but also dangerous, particularly gas lighting, which could cause deadly fires or explosions. The search for a safer and more reliable form of illumination was a critical challenge for scientists and inventors of the time.
Edison’s work on the light bulb stemmed from his earlier efforts to improve telegraphy and telephony. He understood the potential of electricity and was determined to find a way to make it accessible to the public. Many inventors had attempted to create a practical electric light, but none succeeded in creating a cost-effective, long-lasting bulb. Edison’s genius lay not only in creating the filament that could burn for hours but also in developing a vacuum inside the bulb to prevent the filament from burning up too quickly.
The First Public Demonstration
Edison’s first public demonstration of the electric light bulb took place at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he had established his laboratory. On that December evening in 1879, he illuminated the room with his newly designed bulb, impressing onlookers with its brilliance. Unlike other bulbs that had been attempted before, Edison’s bulb burned brightly for hours, creating a safe and reliable source of light. This demonstration marked the beginning of a transformation in how people would illuminate their homes, businesses, and streets.
A Lasting Legacy
The invention of the electric light bulb is one of the defining moments of the modern era. Edison’s work revolutionized industry and daily life, making electric lighting widely available to the public and triggering an era of mass electrification. Over the following decades, the widespread adoption of electric lighting transformed urban life, extending the day well into the night and enabling longer working hours and safer environments.
On December 31st, 1879, Thomas Edison’s demonstration of the electric light bulb marked the beginning of a new era. His innovation not only illuminated the world in a literal sense but also helped usher in the modern age of electricity. The widespread use of electric lighting revolutionized daily life, transforming everything from the workplace to the home. Edison’s invention remains one of the most important technological achievements of all time, and its impact continues to shape our lives today.
And now for the news:
The incident unfolded early Jan. 1. Police near the site of the overnight attack in the French Quarter of New Orleans, La., on Jan. 1, 2025.
Ten people are dead and dozens of others are injured after a vehicle plowed into a large crowd in New Orleans, officials in Louisiana’s most populous city said on Jan. 1.
The vehicle was driven into the crowd at approximately 3:15 a.m. local time on Canal and Bourbon Street, officials said.
A man drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street, New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told a press conference.
“This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could,” she said.
Officials declined to answer questions.
They said that the man, who has not been named, opened fire on police officers after crashing his truck. Two officers were hit and are in stable condition at nearby hospitals.
The man killed 10 people, officials said. At least 35 others were rushed to area hospitals with injuries.
The man was struck by bullets fired by officers and died, officials said.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the incident as a terrorist attack. The FBI confirmed it is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.
The White House said that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the attack. Attorney General Merrick Garland has also been briefed, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
“My heart is broken for those who began their year by learning people they love were killed in this horrific attack, and my prayers are with the dozens who were injured, including the New Orleans Police Department Officers who risked their lives to save others,” Garland said in a statement.
Cantrell said she had been in contact with the White House and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
“A horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning,” Landry wrote on X. “Please join Sharon and I in praying for all the victims and first responders on scene.”
Alethea Duncan, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in New Orleans, said that an improvised explosive device was found and that testing is underway to determine whether the device was viable.
People have been urged to stay away from an approximately eight-block radius as the investigation unfolds.
The location is near where the city’s New Year’s parade wrapped up on New Year’s Eve and just blocks from the Caesars Superdome, which was set to host the Allstate Sugar Bowl game later on Wednesday.
MIAMI LAKES January 2025 Newsletter
Introduction of our new Council; Finance Department Excellence; Tree Canopy; Veterans Resource Center; Farmers Market; Upcoming Meetings & Events
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Mattias Desmet and Aaron Kheriaty: Understanding the Age of Loneliness
[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] America is facing an epidemic of loneliness, and it’s as bad for people’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, says U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy.
In the past two decades, there’s been a marked rise in suicides and “deaths of despair.”
What’s fueling these trends of social fragmentation, isolation, and atomization? And how are they linked to broader political and social trends?
In this episode, two of the world’s leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology join together with me for the first time.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a former psychiatry professor and director of the medical ethics program at the University of California Irvine Medical School. He’s the author of “The New Abnormal.”
Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology at Ghent University and author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
*Big thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Patriot Gold Group. Check them out here: https://ept.ms/3sr5LhH
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Aaron Kheriaty, Mattias Desmet, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Aaron Kheriaty: It’s great to be with you, and it’s great to be with my new friend, Mattias.
Mattias Desmet: Likewise. Happy to be with you, Aaron. Jan, thanks for having us on.
Mr. Jekielek: You were together in a session here at this Brownstone Conference this year, and you brought up the issue, and this is something we’ve both talked about in previous interviews I’ve talked about with both of you, is this issue of loneliness. And as the years have gone on, I keep thinking about it as a foundational issue. So I want to start by discussing that. And of course, atomization is this concept that comes from that. So maybe let’s start with you, Aaron. You actually mentioned that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said himself that there was this crisis or a huge epidemic of loneliness, which is very much the case.
Mr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Murthy is a man with whom I have many disagreements, but on this point, he was absolutely right. It was announced in 2018, somewhere around then, that there was this epidemic of loneliness in the United States. And he wasn’t just using that word metaphorically to describe a social phenomenon. He was looking at it as Surgeon General from a health-related phenomenon and looking at robust data that loneliness produces negative health outcomes on the same level as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, that this epidemic of loneliness was as serious in terms of compromising Americans’ physical and mental health, as was heart disease, cancer, and the other things that the surgeon general traditionally pays attention to.
In connection with that, there were a couple of researchers at Princeton, Case and Deaton, who were doing a lot of work around that time on so-called deaths of despair. Deaths of despair are deaths by suicide, alcohol-related illnesses, and drug overdose, which since 1999, had been on the rise, so about a 20-year rise in deaths of despair. Drug overdose deaths in 1999 were 20,000 a year, which is a tragic number.
That had ballooned to 70,000 a year by the year 2019.
Then with COVID lockdowns and our response to COVID, we basically threw gasoline on that fire. After the lockdowns in 2021, that 70,000 number jumped to 100,000 a year.
The same thing happened with alcohol-related deaths, 69,000 a year pre-pandemic to 99,000 a year post-pandemic. And that crisis has continued to worsen.
Tragically, the suicide numbers from the CDC have continued to go up every year.
So basically, all age groups, with the exception of the very elderly, those over the age of 75, all age groups in both men and women have seen marked rise in suicide in the last 20 to 25 years. It has hit adolescent girls especially hard with a tripling of suicide rates among adolescent girls. With all of these tragic, horrifying numbers, there is a devastated family. Behind each and every one of those statistics of a ruined life is this epidemic of loneliness, which is contributing to social fragmentation, isolation, being locked behind a screen, and having fewer face-to-face interactions.
If you asked polling questions from some Gallup data back in the 1980s, if you asked people, how many Americans have someone in their life with whom they can discuss important matters? A family member, a friend, a close colleague at work. A majority of Americans said that they had someone, three out of five, to four out of five. Today, that number is much lower. And you know, this is a proxy. There’s many ways of trying to measure loneliness and social isolation. That study was just one of them.
But I think all of this suggests a profound crisis in society. The causes are complex. Technological developments have certainly played a role, but I would say certain social and ideological developments have also played a role. Like, what’s driving us to embrace this technology? The technology itself is not necessarily alone leading to all of these changes. Why have we as a society pursued the use of technologies in certain ways that lead to these kinds of problems?
Mr. Jekielek: Mattias, you’re looking at this from a different vantage point. Perhaps I'll get you to build on that now.
Mr. Desmet: Yes, I think it’s very interesting to see how loneliness, to a certain extent, is a spontaneously emerging phenomenon. As Aaron mentioned, the use of technology plays a role. It’s very highly correlated with use of technology. The more technology used, the more lonely people feel in a country, which is surprising, of course, because we always believe that technology connects us to each other.
That’s true at the level of the exchange of information, but it disconnects us at the level of the resonating bond between humans. So it destroys the resonating bond to a large extent. So that’s one thing, like it’s a spontaneously emerging phenomenon as a consequence of the increasing use of technology.
What is also very interesting, I believe, is that sometimes it is intentionally created like that is what Hannah Arendt said totalitarian leaders can only seize control in a society where a lot of people feel lonely. They need loneliness. It spontaneously emerged and was used by totalitarian leaders. They just noticed that their propaganda was very efficient because there was a little bit of loneliness. Once people feel lonely, people are very vulnerable to propaganda.
A new type of mass emerged in the 20th century, which Jacques Ellul called the lonely mass. In medieval times, there were also mass formations, but they were physical masses. People had to meet physically in order to experience this kind of group dynamic that I refer to as mass formation.
Mass formation has always existed, but in the 20th century it became stronger because of the emergence of mass media and propaganda, but also because much more people felt lonely. And in this way the propaganda really kicked in, became very successful and led to a new kind of mass, a lonely mass, where people did no longer have to meet physically to form a mass, but could form a mass while they were all sitting in a lonely state in their houses, because they were all infused by the same narratives through the mass media. And the interesting thing is the following.
As soon as a totalitarian leader or a totalitarian system can use loneliness to seize control of the population, the first thing it will always do, according to Hannah Arendt, is replace loneliness by isolation, physical isolation, meaning that it will try to impose travel restrictions. It will try to prevent people from meeting like Stalin did with more than two persons, because they know if you can use loneliness and replace it by physical isolation, preventing people from meeting physically, then their propaganda will be extremely successful. You have perfect control of propaganda.
So we can see that this atomization of society on the one hand was a spontaneous process. That’s the most important thing I believe. It was a spontaneously emerging process as a consequence of the industrialization of the world, the use of technology. But it was also sometimes intentionally and artificially created by totalitarian leaders.
And then there is this last thing that I would want to add to that, and it is that we really have to try to understand the complex relationship between loneliness and narcissism, because they are related to each other. And that’s the deepest psychological level. That’s the root cause of the phenomenon of the emergence of loneliness in our society, like something that I will try to describe in a tangible way in my next book.
Our modern worldview started to emerge somewhere in the 16th to17th century, when human beings left the religious view of man and the world behind and replaced it by the rationalist, materialist view on man, the world which believed that it’s not so much God that reveals the truth. We have to construct the truth ourselves by observing the world with our eyes and trying to understand the rational connections between the facts that we establish with our eyes. That metaphysical revolution in which the religious-feeling men in the world were replaced by the materialistic-feeling men in the world, basically boiled down to this.
The human gaze, the eyes, the focus changed. It was no longer focused on our ethical awareness and ethical rules and stuff. No, it was focused outwards. We started to believe that the real world is the world that we could observe with our eyes. And that was a moment where we also started to believe at the level of our own identity that we could see who we are in the mirror. We are our outer mirror image, our ideal image.
And that at the same time, immediately, on the one hand, isolated the human being from other human beings because in all human interactions, we were like a few percentages, which was enough to have a substantial impact, more focused on our own ideal image, meaning that we couldn’t see the image of the other anymore. We resonated less with the other because we were more focused on our own outer ideal image and our own ego and that the ego is literally like a superficial shell of your own being.
And if you invest a lot of psychological energy, if you focus your attention on your outer ideal image, you get disconnected from the other because you do not mirror the other’s image anymore and there is no spontaneous emergence of empathy anymore, so the human bones get weaker, the real human bones. That at the same time explains it’s the rationalist-feeling men in the world that led to isolation and narcissism.
Mr. Kheriaty: You could see that in living color as young people are curating and airbrushing their image and projecting it on Instagram. And they can’t experience the real being together with other people in spontaneous, convivial friendship and relationship. You know, young people going to a dance and the whole purpose of the dance is to take pictures and post them. Otherwise, it’s like it didn’t happen, right?
And another thing that happens in that context is that one’s own interior life disappears. And so the possibility for real human friendship, intimacy, and connection that Matthias is describing also disappears because it’s one person’s character armor, which is a psychoanalytic term that the analysts 100 years ago used to describe the narcissistic personality. It was characterized by this hardening, one person’s character armor bumping up against another person’s character armor and society increasingly isolated and then characterized by conflict when people are together or are trying to connect.
The other thing I'll say just to riff on Mattias’ comments about the rise of a kind of rationalism over really the last 500 years is that the philosophy of Karl Marx. And I’m not talking about his economic theories. I’m talking about Marx’s metaphysics, his view of ultimately the world and how we know things and what human beings are. I mean, the first thing he said is basically, there is no such thing as human nature. We are what we make.
And the whole project of rationalism and its kind of apotheosis in the 19th century was that we can recreate ourselves, we can recreate the world, we can recreate ourselves by recreating the world. That was basically the Marxist revolutionary program. And there are no already given elements in the world or in human nature that need to be respected and regarded or treated with a kind of contemplative gaze, everything needs to be subjected to our rationalist control. This leads to a top-down managerialist society of total control and totalizing surveillance.
It leads to extreme ideologies like transhumanism that begin from the premise that there is no such thing as human nature. We could just recreate ourselves and become demigods or bigger, faster, stronger through the use of, let’s say, biotechnology or nanotechnology or other technological enhancements. And this program, I would argue, and Mattias, you could say if you disagree, ends up not being enhanced. It doesn’t actually make us better. It certainly doesn’t make us happier, as the deaths of despair are suggesting.
It ends up being dehumanizing because we aren’t disembodied ghosts in a machine. We are not reprogrammable software. We are human beings. We are embodied, enfleshed spirits, if you will, that need to attend to all those different levels of our humanity, and that need to connect with one another in real face-to-face bodily encounters, where all of my senses are engaged in, and my memory and my imagination are engaged in a real encounter with another person. And these things are stripped away.
And we’re left with one of our senses, the sense of sight or the sense of sound that is being denuded by technology when we’re interacting over Zoom. We don’t have the physical presence of the other person and all the subtleties that go along with that. So we’re in the process of creating this unreal world and then trying to conform ourselves to a kind of virtual unreality that we were never built for. That can only lead to unhappiness and misery and all kinds of downstream social problems.
Mr. Jekielek: I definitely want to talk more about this relationship between narcissism and loneliness. I'd never frankly thought about that at all, but it makes a lot of sense given what you’re just saying. But there’s two things that just struck me. One of them is this spontaneous rise of loneliness through technology. It’s curious that a lot of that, these masses, it’s all mediated. I don’t know if it’s ironic, or just obviously through technology, right? So it’s almost like the connection gets, to use your word, denuded through the fact that a lot of it seems to be mediated through technology. So it makes sense you would prevent physical contact at some level.
The other thing that struck me is this cause and effect question. Is it with the totalitarians taking advantage of the spontaneous rise of loneliness, could it be the cause and effect is reversed, in fact, that the technology itself gives rise to more totalitarian tendencies because of these kinds of behaviors? I'd like to get either of you to comment.
Mr. Kheriaty: I think it runs in both directions. So the technological developments obviously have an impact, but also the ideologies drive the technological developments and the widespread embrace of those technologies. So you think about lockdowns during COVID, which is the most extreme example of what Mattias was describing before. I mean, the 20th century totalitarian dictators from Stalin to Hitler never dreamed of such rigid controls. I mean, they never told people to stay six feet apart. They never told people that they couldn’t go to, you know, couldn’t go outside or go to work.
So the world globally and supposedly free Western democratic societies embraced a level of control and organized loneliness that had never been seen before. And the question is why? And some people have pointed out, well, if the laptop class had not, you know not already had available Zoom technology, then lockdowns never would have been possible. There’s certainly truth to that.
But I think also we have been conditioned for decades into thinking that it’s possible to live a human and humane life, staying in my room and ordering my food from people that I will never actually see, and actually never encountering a real person face to face. Somehow human beings globally had developed the belief that it was actually possible and in some cases even desirable to do that. And I think it’s a very complex question to ask. How did we get to that point where something that would have sounded insane to people 50 years ago was something that was embraced with very few examples of dissent and pushback, at least at the level of cultural elites.
Mr. Desmet: Yes, of course. How did we get to that point? Maybe this first, like if you look at it through the lens of just a medical emergency situation necessary to save people’s lives, then the lockdowns have nothing to do with totalitarianism. But I think it’s clear that you have to look at it through a different lens as well, at least, and see it in a in a wider project where they want to introduce 15-minute cities, a digi-cosmos where people don’t have to leave their house anymore, where they can travel to China or anywhere in virtual reality. Then you see a different picture emerge, of course.
Exactly how did we come to this point where people do accept this? That’s a very good question. It was clear that the human bond had already become very painful for most people. Most people felt lonely, most people suffered from anxiety. I believe 25% of the world population deals with the psychiatric disorder, which almost always is part of a social problem, a problem in the connection with other people.
So many people, like many young people in Japan, don’t have sex anymore. Many young people just prefer virtual reality over in-person contacts and conversations. It is something that is very enticing, the use of your mobile phone. Mobile phones are our major addiction and the most dangerous one definitely in our era. You can see how throughout the last two, maybe three centuries, the social fabric deteriorated step after step. The introduction of television and radio reduced the number of in-person contacts we had, maybe by 50% or more, and then the introduction of the internet with another 30%.
The disappearance of the physical labor of working together in a physical way also destroyed the direct contact between human beings. Then you start to understand how suddenly people who just because of their blind belief in this rational system, in this rationalist worldview, and their blind striving towards rational control and manipulation of nature in general and society.
These people started to feel that maybe the next step could be taken and that we slowly got used to the fact that maybe it was better for everyone that people stayed in their houses from now on, better for nature, better for climate change. and better because it will protect you from dangerous viruses. So that’s indeed the situation we find ourselves in now. If we do not start to really think about how we can escape it, I believe humanity might end up in a very well-organized prison.
Mr. Jekielek: It’s a bizarre thing to think about, and that is a very dark future.
Mr. Kheriaty: There’s a real lack of intellectual humility today. Behind these converging ideologies and converging uses of technologies, there is a lack of self-awareness and understanding that the world is enormously and beautifully complex and complicated. The hyper-rationalist ideology says, no, we can figure everything out and then we can put the really smart people into positions of permanent power.
They can, in a top-down sort of managerialist control, organized fashion, tell everyone what to do, and figure out all the dangers and minimize them, and refine all the pleasures and maximize them. And it’s a very naive view of the cosmos and of the world that we live in and the immediate lived environment, which is enormously complex beyond our reckoning and beautifully beyond our ability to fully comprehend it.
So science, and I should say, and I’m sure Mattias would say the same thing, that both of us are fans of science as a process for discovering more and learning more about the natural world. And I’m not opposed to technology as a way of managing our lives in the environment, but to put those things at the service of human beings. To put those things at the service of the actual complex world we live in is going to require a very different path we are going down now.
Mr. Desmet: It is the strangest thing. But in the beginning, scientific discourse initially was a fine example of truth-telling and truth-searching. It was a small minority of people who went against a dominant discourse, which hadn’t become in many respects a dogmatic religious discourse. So this small group of people went against it and that’s exactly what truth speech does. It destroys a common illusion.
But as science as a consequence of the first scientific discoveries became dominant in society, a scientific discourse slowly became dominant. And that’s what always happens with discourses that become dominant. It got perverted, of course, because people started to use scientific discourse to make a career, to earn money, and the discourse got perverted. That’s what always happens.
Most discourses start as truth speech and they turn into the opposite, into a fake discourse. That is something that happened in science. Somewhere along the road, what science the academic world produces has nothing to do with truth speech. Sometimes it happens, exceptionally. Let me add one more thing to that.
Another very important phenomenon is the following. Like as soon as science emerged and in its wake the rationalist, materialist human being in the world emerged, people started to believe that rational understanding should be the guiding principle in life, that we should not think in the first place about whether something we did was good or wrong in a moral and ethical context.
No, we started to think about what was the smartest way to do things. So as rational knowledge accumulated, our ethical awareness declined. The combination of the two is extremely dangerous because rational knowledge accumulation of natural, rational knowledge makes you more powerful. It gives you more power.
At the same time, if your ethical awareness declines you have the recipe for evil. That’s what happens. The first thing you could see was that these western countries who had this scientific knowledge at their disposal started to colonize the world and started to use it to oppress others.
Mr. Kheriaty: Auschwitz itself was a hyper-rationalized environment of hyper-efficient death, as were the atomic bombs that we built during World War II as maybe premier examples of what you’re describing there. And I think we’ve moved now, especially in the context of institutionalized science and higher education, moved away from authentic science and the ideal of science as the disinterested and self-skeptical pursuit of knowledge and hypothesis and testing and refutation.
We’ve moved away from science into an ideology that I call scientism, which is different from science. Scientism is the non-scientific claim smuggled through the back door that science is the only valid form of knowledge. That claim contradicts itself, because science is not the only valid form of knowledge. It’s a metaphysical claim that attempts to hide itself.
But the exclusion of moral knowledge, the exclusion of religious, spiritual, moral, metaphysical perspectives, the diminution of the humanities, of the arts and of literature and so forth in the context of what’s really important in our education system. All of this points to a kind of totalitarian conception of science where science attempts or people attempt to monopolize what counts as knowledge and rationality in the name of science. And of course, when you do this, you can anoint whoever you want to be the spokesperson for science, bringing the unassailable conclusions down from on high.
And you get people saying, people in positions of authority in our society saying absurd things like, I am the science and he who questions me questions the science, which no real credible scientist says such an absurdity. It’s important, so as not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, that we draw this distinction between science as a method and as a way of life almost, as a mindset and a particular pursuit that is good, and scientism, which is hardened into an exclusionary, monopolistic ideology that has actually nothing to do with the disinterested pursuit of truth and everything to do with deploying power in a very authoritarian way.
Mr. Jekielek: Is it a foregone conclusion that, you know, as the rational view of the human being or perhaps the universe entirely grows, the moral view declines? Or can there be a synergy?
Mr. Desmet: A rational view is completely opposite to an irrationalist view. That’s a strange thing. Rationalism is the illusion that ultimately you can grasp the essence of the world of nature and everything around us in rational categories, but that’s not true. Science rejected that idea. The essence of things always transcends rational understanding. The strange thing is as soon as you fall prey to that illusion as soon as you fall prey to the belief that through your rational understanding you will be capable of controlling and manipulating everything you will be capable of becoming god.
For instance, read Yuval Harari’s book, Homo Deus. That’s rationalist. It is the belief that in the end you will be capable of understanding, controlling, and manipulating the essence of life. This rationalist illusion always leads humanity into complete absurdity of totalitarian systems. It leads to complete irrationality. If you’re really loyal to rational understanding and walk the path of rationality, step by step, you will soon arrive at the end where you will see the limit of rational understanding and say, here we have to move on.
Here we have to find a new way of knowing, which is what Einstein talked about. It’s this sixth sense where Samurai culture talked about. It’s where everyone knows that real knowledge transcends rational knowledge. So that’s something extremely important, I think. I consider myself to be very, very rational, but I’m not a rationalist at all.
Mr. Kheriaty: There’s an aesthetic dimension to science. Einstein himself talked about seeing the truth of his theory of relativity and his great contribution to science and embracing it not because he had irrefutable experimental proof for it. That actually came later. That was some experiments done at the University of Washington having to do with light being bent by gravity that confirmed his theory. But he embraced the theory initially because he said it was beautiful. Not because he had an irrefutable experiment, because it was beautiful. Because it was intuitively elegant.
Because, as he liked to put it, God did not play dice with the universe. It was almost a mystical intuition. Then you can ask, how do we have the scientific method, but how do good scientists generate good hypotheses? You stop and think about that for a moment, right? The process of generating a good hypothesis, something that hasn’t yet been demonstrated by an experiment, that has to involve but some non-rational or supra-rational, intuitive, feeling toward, empathetic, something with the subject that you’ve been studying that most scientists probably couldn’t put it into words and describe it to you or it probably would be difficult to teach unless you’ve got a knack for this sort of thing.
Mr. Desmet: You need sincerity. That’s something that Einstein literally said in a foreword of a book by Max Planck. He said, many people think that science is born from rational thinking. It’s not. It’s born from a capacity for einfühlung, which is a German term which means feeling into what you observe. In a speech he gave at an American university he said, the best starting point for science is cosmic religious awareness.
Mr. Kheriaty: Yes, that’s right.
Mr. Desmet: As you said, relativity theory was not born from experimenting or rational considerations. It was born from a certain intuition, from a certain feeling for aesthetical sublime theory.
Mr. Kheriaty: So real science, not so much the fake nonsense that it’s turned out in our so-called peer-reviewed journals today, but real science and very significant contributions to our understanding of things, is perhaps not as far apart from art or even religion as our contemporary ideologies might have us think.
Mr. Jekielek: I want to build on this concept of sincerity that you mentioned. It seems to me like a lot of things boil down to people acting with sincerity and figuring out what that means in this strange technology, lonely, mediated world that we live in. And there seems to be, at least to my eye, a significant lack of that. And you seek it, you know it when you see it, and you go after it because you’re missing it. What do you mean by finding sincerity?
Mr. Desmet: Somewhere in the beginning of our conversation, I referred to the fact that loneliness and narcissism are actually two branches of the same tree, that they are both a consequence of human rationalist hubris that automatically this rationalism leads to two things like interconnected things uh loneliness of disconnectedness and narcissism and in the in detail like what we’ve seen throughout the last 200 years is a triumph of the ego like the ego became more and more powerful in the world that means this this identification of the human being with its own outer socially rewarded ideal image.
So that ego emerged, became stronger and stronger throughout the last centuries. And sincerity is exactly the act through which you punch a hole in your ego. Literally, speaking sincerely means that you reveal something, that you show something that doesn’t match the ideal image. It is something people usually hide behind their outer ideal image and you can almost feel that physically.
My next book talks about that. You can almost feel it physically. Sometimes you are in a social situation and you feel that everyone is buying into something and you do not agree. It doesn’t feel right to you. If you take this courageous decision to articulate what you feel, you know two things. You will destroy your ideal image in that group. You will say something that destroys the socially shared ideal image. That’s really the act. You feel it almost physically in which you push something that resonates in your body through the outer ideal image. You literally punch a hole in your outer ideal image in your ego.
Then the effect is that there is usually if the other people can open themselves a little bit can put aside their own prejudices and and and clinging to social ideal images and stuff if they can open a little bit you will see how the words that you articulated from your resonating strings of your body go through the whole and father’s ego and make them resonate and that. And that’s why sincerity is the only remedy for a society sick of lies, propaganda, manipulation, and deception.
Mr. Kheriaty: The possibility for that relies on a more ancient philosophical doctrine that all of us participate in. The Greek word was logos, which sometimes would be translated as a shared rationality, but it’s sometimes translated as word, order, reason, intelligibility. All of us participate in a transcendent logos that allows us to communicate with one another, to engage in a shared, sincere pursuit of truth, and allows us to communicate that and to share that in a non-coercive way, that the authentic pursuit and finding of truth does not happen through coercion. It doesn’t need the methods of propaganda.
When the light of my intellect sees that 2 plus 2 equals 4, or Mattias demonstrates for me a proof of the Pythagorean theorem, and the light goes on, and I see that it must be so, that light of truth compels my intellect, but without forcing my will. It’s compelling, but in a way that respects my freedom.
I think the contemporary crisis that we are currently facing in the world, aspects of which we sort of touched on in this interview, is also an opportunity because many people are hungry for that. Many people have grown kind of sick and nauseated by a steady diet of propaganda that somewhere deep inside intuitively they know is not right, even if they feel that they have to parrot these falsehoods. And that act that you described so beautifully of taking off the mask and sincerely speaking the truth, which may be very simple in a particular situation.
It may be just stepping out of a group and saying, no, we can’t do that, that’s wrong, that’s not okay, because that’s not what we do to people. Or just speaking some simple moral truth that everyone in the room ought to know, but no one is acknowledging for whatever reason, because of institutional or social forces or ideological forces that are getting in the way. That’s very attractive. People are hungry. If courageous people begin trying to live in that way, that will grow. People will find one another. We can then begin to create small communities of people who are trying to live differently.
Mr. Desmet: Yes, I agree. We have to practice the art of sincere speech with the same perseverance as the Samurai practiced in martial arts, step by step, growing, and becoming stronger. It was as Mahatma Gandhi did it, step by step every day, trying to become more sincere. Try to practice the art of sincere speech. I was wondering, Aaron, would there be something we disagree about, do you think? Could we find something?
Mr. Kheriaty: I don’t know. Maybe if we started talking about God, we might find some disagreements. We haven’t gone there yet, but we'll definitely have to do this again.
Mr. Desmet: By the way we could come back to logos. Also very interesting is the greek concept of parrhesia, bold speech in a public space, which is always very risky. The ancient Greeks said the one who speaks the truth might be hated. There is a good chance of that because he destroys the illusions where people find their stability, so they will be angry with them. But the ancient Greeks said if there is nobody anymore who lives up to the ethical duty of parrhesia, of speaking out these painful truths in public space, then society is ready for the plague.
Mr. Jekielek: Should we give a homework assignment to all of us here as to what is sincere?
Mr. Kheriaty: Jan, we’ve also talked about the issue of government censorship. I’ve talked about it in relation to totalitarianism, that the starting point for all totalitarianism is the prohibition of questions and the prohibition of dissent and the monopolizing of what counts as knowledge by the ideology and then excluding people who voice dissenting opinions. And at the end point of that process, the external concentration camps and mass surveillance and secret police are no longer necessary because people have so internalized the ideology that a perfected totalitarian system wouldn’t require those external sort of forcible methods of conformity because everyone is informing on everyone else, and everyone’s surveilling everyone else.
Mr. Jekielek: Everyone’s controlling themselves to not do that.
Mr. Kheriaty: Right. They are self-censoring. A practical homework assignment would be to notice the times when you don’t say what you think. I’m not advocating that you say every thought that comes into your head all the time in every social situation. Obviously, there’s discretion and there’s propriety. But I think we have gone very far down the path of getting to the point where in certain social situations, we almost never say what we think on really important matters. We restrict ourselves to trivialities.
We need to recognize when there may be moments where, no, this is a time for me to actually say what I believe to be the case. It may feel a little bit risky and it may have negative social consequences, actually. But in a society where no one does that, we are ripe for misery and we’re perfect fodder for authoritarian rulers to exercise totalitarian forms of control. So push back against self-censorship. Notice when you’re biting your tongue simply to go along, to get along, and find ways here and there strategically to try to push back against that and to engage in the kind of sincere speech that Mattias described so beautifully.
Mr. Jekielek: Mattias, a final thought we finish up?
Mr. Desmet: It’s just as simple as that, I think, that every time you speak sincerely,you inevitably will go through the dark night of the soul to use a concept of the great mysticist.
Mr. Kheriaty: John of the Cross.
Mr. Desmet: Yes, John of the Cross. Thank you. It means that if you speak sincerely, you will inevitably lose something in the world of appearances. And you will win something in the real world. You have to accept that and go for the real world.
Mr. Jekielek: Mattias Desmet, Aaron Kheriaty, such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Kheriaty: Thank you.
Mr. Desmet: Thanks for having us.
Happy New Year 2025!
We have chosen Mattias Desmet at the Man of the Century, a truly influential author, Psychology Professor, whose book The Psychology of Totalitarianism resolved many issues of our own history.
We are the VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM, as Cuban Americans we lived -at least for me- the first decade of the take over a free people by REVOLUTIONARIES who murdered, expropriated, violated the rights of the people, and in the process DESTROYED THE DREAMS of our ancestors.
All that had been built and or created, to include family structure... taken away without regard to laws or a Constitution...
If you have not, read The Psychology of Totalitarianism and read the transcript of the video that discusses how loneliness is affecting our ability to cope...
America is facing an epidemic of loneliness, and it is as bad -if not worse- than smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day... In the past two decades, there has been a marked rise in suicides and 'deaths of despair!'
This message includes the 'Miami Lakes Elected Officials' in the HOPE that Professor Mattias Desmet is invited to visit our Town. We have offered to host him. Imagine the opportunity to have a lecture by one of the most brilliant minds and the cathartic experience for our Municipal Society...
My birthday is on 01-05... MAKE MY DREAM COME TRUE!