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TG 1884: U.S. Congress Gets Set To Punish Georgia Voted For Having Voted The Wrong Way

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss the so-called MEGOBARI Act (Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia's Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence), which the U.S. Congress is on the brink of passing as punishment for Georgians for having voted the wrong way.

00:46:06
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The Gaggle Music Club: Debussy’s La Mer

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is La Mer by Claude Debussy (The Sea: Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra). Completed in 1905, the work is an orchestral masterpiece, and Debussy's greatest large-scale instrumental work.

Debussy had long been fascinated by the sea and water imagery in poetry, painting and Japanese art. Debussy himself grew up in Paris, not by the sea — in fact, he admitted: “I was destined for the seashore only in my imagination.” Debussy took inspiration from the paintings of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet, as well as Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (he kept a print in his study, and it was used on the cover of the first edition of La Mer). Debussy was also an admirer of the Symbolist poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire, both of whom often used water as metaphor.

Debussy began composing La Mer around 1903, working on it intensively through 1904–1905. It should come as no surprise that he was nowhere ...

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Live Chat
Monday Night At The Movies: "Memento" (2000)

Join Gagglers for "Memento"!
The screening starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp.
Share all of your thoughts, comments and criticisms on the Live Chat.

01:53:26
TG 1973: Trump's Strange Fixation On Taking Back Bagram Air Base

George Szamuely discusses President Trump's recent demands, backed by threats, that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan return Bagram air base to the United States, and wonders what may be behind them.

00:28:10
September 21, 2025
The Gaggle Book Club: "Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism And The Rise Of The Jews" By Albert S. Lindemann

Each week, The Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Albert S. Lindemann's "Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews." Published in 1997, "Esau’s Tears" is a fascinating account of the rise of modern antisemitism that focuses not merely on the hatreds of antisemites but also on the social tensions created by rapid Jewish advancements in the fields of finance, the professions, academia and politics. Lindemann argued that there was no point in writing yet another book presenting Jews as passive victims of hate-filled antisemites. Instead, he sought to show that some antisemitic perceptions had a “kernel of truth”...

Lindemann,_Albert_S._-_Esau’s_tears___modern_anti-semitism_and_the_rise_of_the_Jews,_1870-1933-Cambridge_University_Press_(1997).pdf
September 21, 2025
Monday Night At The Movies: "Memento" (2000)

Dear Gagglers:

Monday is, and has always been, a profoundly depressing day. That's why we have decided to add a little bit of fun to it.

On Monday, Sept. 22, we are holding another film screening. Gagglers can watch a movie and, as they do so, offer comments, random thoughts, aesthetic observations and critical insights in the Live Chat.

We will be screening the winner of The Gaggle's "films featuring an upended whodunit" poll: Christopher Nolan's haunting "Memento," starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Ann Moss.

The film will starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp. Please join us.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_in_0_q_memento

See you at the movies.

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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