Two Great Writers on Substack

Professors Karim Bettache and Peter Beattie are writing a Substack called "bettbeat."

"On this Substack, Peter and Karim will be able to express their more radical views that they usually have to keep to themselves when moving around in their academic spaces. When reading their articles be prepared for left-leaning, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist views put into words.

This link is an interview of them by Anne Ruthwertheim.
Here are some reference links for Karim:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/contributors/karim-bettache-phd
https://sgps.cuhk.edu.hk/profile/professor-karim-bettache/

And for Peter:
https://icsin.org/faculty/peter-beattie
https://cuhk.academia.edu/PeterBeattie
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Beattie-2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWH3hRWsy2c

From their introduction:

"On this Substack Peter and Karim will try to make academic theory on social issues (e.g., racism, colonialism, climate change, socialism, capitalism, etc) accessible to a broader audience. In fact, they are staunch supporters of the idea that academics should move out of their ivory towers and use their knowledge to help create a better world. In other words, they believe that academics should also be activists.
If you know anyone in your vicinity that may be interested in such views, please ask them to sign up on bettbeat.substack.com (https://bettbeat.substack.com/)! Also please help them share their articles on your Twitter, Facebook or any other social platform. Peter and Karim need your help as they are not very active on social media because they hate its racist, imperialist algorithms!"

Actually, they are doing quite well, with almost 5,000 subscribers!

Here is one of their recent posts, written by Prof. Karim Bettache:

Israel: The Billionaire Elite's Laboratory for Global Domination
The world gets a masterclass in constructing a society that satisfies every depraved impulse of absolute evil while marketing itself as civilization's last hope against barbarism - BETTBEAT MEDIA - OCT 26, 2025

Here are a few selections - you should read the whole thing AND SUBSCRIBE!

"For seventy-five years, we have been fed the mythology of Israel as a beleaguered democracy surrounded by barbarous enemies. This is perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign in modern history. Israel is not a democracy under siege—it is a laboratory. A testing ground where the techniques of surveillance, control, torture, abuse and extermination are perfected before being exported to every corner of the globe where capital seeks to crush resistance... And the capitalist class found the perfect laboratory for testing the technologies and techniques they would later use to control their own populations."
"Gaza is not an aberration—it is a preview. The surveillance systems monitoring Palestinian movements are the same technologies tracking dissidents in New York, protesters in Paris, and whistleblowers in London. The artificial intelligence sorting Palestinians for elimination is the same software determining which Americans lose their jobs, which Europeans lose their benefits, which humans everywhere are deemed expendable by algorithmic efficiency." "The billionaire elite understood this from the beginning. They never intended Israel to be a stable democracy—they designed it to be a laboratory for testing the limits of what their own populations would tolerate. Every technique perfected in Palestine—from algorithmic surveillance to algorithmic assassination—eventually makes its way to Amsterdam, Paris, New York, and Berlin."
"Those who choose resistance must understand that they are not merely supporting Palestinian liberation—they are challenging the entire architecture of global domination that the billionaire elite have constructed around the Israeli laboratory. This is why solidarity with Palestine becomes so quickly a criminal offense: it threatens not just one colonial project but the entire system of colonial capitalism."
"The path forward requires abandoning the mythology of democratic reform and embracing the reality of revolutionary transformation. The institutions of liberal democracy cannot be captured back from the billionaire elite because they were designed to serve capital over humanity. They cannot be reformed because they are functioning exactly as intended. They can only be replaced."
"This replacement will not come through electoral politics or institutional change. It will come through the construction of alternative systems of power based on human need rather than capital accumulation. It will require the creation of independent media, autonomous communities, and revolutionary organizations capable of challenging not just individual policies but the entire logic of capitalist domination."

Now go back and read my post on Imagine an economy devoid of debt!

This practice of the Zionist entity using Gaza for its testing ground for total population control isn't really new news, but it would be to most readers. And to make matters worse for citizens in countries receiving Zionist surveillance and control systems, they also send their police (even from New York!) to the Zionist entity for training!

There was an interesting post by Ismaele on Geopolitiq about the nature of money:
Giorgio Agamben: Money and Memory
This article translated by Ismaele at geopolitiq
Giorgio Agamben writes: "If currency is first and foremost the repository of memory..."

My comment: The problem with Europe is that they have no collective Purpose. They have a monetary union, meaning less problems in settlement between their various members, but lack a fiscal union with a true central bank, all because there's no purpose for EU to exist. They remain, as all of history reveals, the "warring tribes of Europe," too many divergent cultures on too-small a land base. If they could get over that, stop hating Russia and find a coherent purpose for their existence (including Russia), they could actually have a meaningful existence. A reversion to their old currencies is thus a retrograde move. All that does for them is to allow each little fiefdom the opportunity to print their way out of debt and set up currency-barriers against their neighbours. It's time to start realizing this: Money is Information, not "memory." Yes, memory is information, but not all information is memory. Not all information is money, but ALL money is information, even "cash" which is a portable account-value not tied to a specific institution. This reversion to old currencies appears to be part and parcel of the demise of the EU, due to 1) their lack of foresight; 2) their ongoing plans to attack Russia; 3) their ongoing proxy-war against Russia via Ukraine; and 4) their inward turn toward isolationism alla Trump, whom many of them emulate. This path has no good outcomes. And a comment on one of Scott Sumner's posts claimed that yes, money is information, and you can convert that information to real money: cash! No, cash is just portable information.

Another great post by brettbeat: The racial allegiance of Bernie Sanders: How colonial beneficiaries always stay on-code.

"History will record that when genocide returned to the world, America's most prominent progressive provided its moral cover. That is Bernie Sanders' true legacy: not the fighter for justice his supporters imagined, but the colonial beneficiary who stayed on-code when his people committed the ultimate crime."

Meanwhile, in the kitchen this week:
For most cooking, I make things up instead of reading recipes. It's like at the cooking contests, you open the box and make use of what's in it.

First off was Green Thai Curry with Rabbit - this is the basic Thai curry with the green curry paste, some leftover cooked rabbit, peas, broccoli, fish sauce, brown sugar, coconut milk, served with Jasmine rice.

Green beans with Tarragon and Sour Cream

Time for dinner and I have a handful of long green beans, some round, some flat, final pickings from the greenhouse. I cut off the ends, pull them through a bean-slicer and cut those strings into about 2" lengths and simmer until tender in a bit of water with a sprinkle of tarragon. Drain off excess water, stir in a big spoonful of sour cream, and serve!

Brassicas Curry

Some late pickings of brassicas made a nice dish.
I had a small head of broccoli and a medium one of purple cauliflower from the fall garden. Stems were peeled and cut into small chunks, and flowerets split into small heads. While cutting these, a small SS bowl with some butter was floating in a pot of simmering chicken stock to melt. The brassica pieces went into a bowl, some Madras curry power was mixed into the butter and poured into the bowl of brassica pieces, and blended in. This mixture went into the top of an SS steamer with about 3/8" water in the bottom for steam (about 1 cm). You don't want too much water, but watch is doesn't go dry. Steam until veggies are cooked enough. Turn them out into a serving bowl. In the bottom of the steamer there should be some water with some veggie drippings. If the water is inadequate, pour in some of the chicken stock, just enough so you can make a gravy with a spoon of corn starch. When this is done, pour over brassicas in the bowl and stir in. Ready to eat!

Georgian Chicken with Walnuts and Garlic

I'm trying to recreate the Georgian chicken with walnuts and garlic with leftover BBQ chicken. The real Georgia, not in USA. In the non-stick pan I put some Greek olive oil, fresh-ground black pepper and some finely-chopped walnut pieces. Mise en place is a finely-chopped large garlic clove. Heat up the oil, pepper and walnuts until they've bubbled for a while then toss in the garlic, cooking a bit more to create the garlic oil. Add your meal-size amount of cooked BBQ chicken (about 100 g/person) and some chicken stock and simmer a few minutes, stir in some blending flour to make a gravy. Serve with fried rice: Ben's Converted fried in Greek olive oil then simmered until done.

Mac & Cheese with Ham and Peas

Basically, you make mac & cheese with half the protein content from coming from ham and peas therefore less cheese. You cook the macaroni, of course, not out of a box of KD. In this one, along with the peas, I had a few small branches of broccoli with their buds trimmed off to make "tiny peas" and the peeled stems cut to pea-size. Since there was some cooked pumpkin in the fridge, some of that went in also. A bit of Herbs de Provence and to go with the pumpkin, a tiny bit of cinnamon. Ham, peas, broccoli simmered with a bit of chicken stock, pumpkin stirred in later with a bit of milk and blending flour to thicken, when the macaroni done, it is stirred in along with a raw egg and the whole pot poured into a backing dish, topped with slices of Swiss cheese, and baked 17 minutes in the Breville combi oven, on high-mix and 350 F. One-dish meal!

Leave a comment! This is a re-direct to my Substack page.

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