The PSR / Baywolf Press ensure full-range non-aligned (very deliberately impartial) academic publishing services • handling of manuscripts (articles, books, raw research data), with peer review • full-service development of periodicals and books • we operate in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French • we also offer a venue for Lusophone-related material in other languages ~ no linguistic or 'ideological' cordon sanitaire (thus, German, Italian, the entire fully unexpurgated Scandinavian / and Slavic (e.g. Czech) zone, Finno-Ugric zone, and more, are 100% fine with us: send us manuscripts) • la revue PSR et Éditions Baywolf offrent une palette de services en langue française: examen par des pairs & appui rédactionnel pour monographies, anthologies d'essais, et recueils d'études savantes • in all publishing matters, contact us on-line.

Notifications: (1) The PSR / Baywolf Press systematically apply Human (100% biological Human, 100% non-AI, not 'automated') referee and editorial scrutiny for all submitted materials [*] •  (2) We discourage, unless verifiably warranted by research program real-time on-site and task-splitting needs (and even then we reserve right of scrutiny), papers that feature one prominent Project 'Lead' author and a 'rack' of up to 17 or even more 'co-authors' whose factual contribution is frankly 'unclear' [as in the now utterly famous "I was part of a team ..." / "Okay, so not hands on. Got it. Thank you"]; (3) We recommend reworking presentations that ideologically dodge broad and based (fully 'grounded') scholarly and intellectual debate, and promote ideologies at the expense of core scholarship • (4) The PSR will prudentially drop a manuscript, immediately breaking off peer review and launching a data review, as soon as we detect a manuscript 'co-authored' by a 'Generative AI' -- in such "LLM-hallucination" cases, our position equals our categorical refusal to deem 'valid' any legislation, lawsuit, or judicial ruling where 'co-authoring' by an LLM chatbot is involved [**] • (5) The PSR has implemented protocols to mitigate such trends as 'citogenesis', 'citation sorcery', and circular 'citation laundering' deployed for rapid cumulative ('scattershot') publication and 'timely' funded 'advocacy' -- not to mention 'citation cartels' (implicit agreements by groups of colleagues to routinely cite each other's work [whether relevant or 100% irrelevant] in every paper a member of the cartel publishes [in a pattern exquisitely analyzed as ' "economically" reciprocal behavior'] -- really, what is one to say or do, in the context of Clarivate (Thomson Reuters) partly excluding, on such grounds, the entire field of 'Mathematics' from Impact Factor listings (see e.g. Van Noorden 2013, Catanzaro 2024, for overall analysis; in even broader contexts see for instance the work on 'for-hire [mercenary] influencers' by Marit Hinnosaar [University of Nottingham] and Toomas Hinnosaar [University of Nottingham Economic Theory Centre]) • (6) We advise authors / entities to seek alternatives to Gmail,; we cannot guarantee that our replies to any Gmail account will in fact be delivered. The issue is Google-side, not at our end. The PSR will not seek to address, technically, issues arising from intra-corporate / inter-corporate turf / ideology wars or overt / covert social 're-programming'. We do 'Scholarship''. We do NOT 'play The Ideology Game'. We shall not comply with arbitrary, time-wasting, politically rigged algorithms and 'silencing' purportedly justified by scripted, faceless, boilerplate (always identical political vocabulary), anonymous, and legally dubious "Community Standards". Please, respect this. If needed seek tested, stable e-mail alternatives: e.g. free (basic), modular, encrypted Swiss Protonmail. Then re-contact us •

[*] We pick our way carefully through the forest of "naked gobbledygook sandwiches" (as in Wiley Journals allegedly 'peer-reviewing' and approving over 11,000 papers that simply were fake -- involving the use of professional cheating and pay-for-play author-name services; AI-driven random 'word-shuffling' to ensure prescribed 'originality'; nonsensical 'neo-terminologies'; word salad density-maximization techniques, etc.). Yes, we also oppose commonplace approaches such as "when the observations don’t fit the [politicized] narrative, it is time to change the observations". Many if not most of these fatal deteriorations in scholarship can still be mitigated by expert editors deeply familiar with the relevant subject matters, aware of the writing styles of well known individual sumbitters, and merciless in terms of calling out obvious inconsistencies that Artificial (Intelligence) cannot even remotely sense. So, we fight. We are fully aware that this entire thing is not just a scam any more, but a vast Idiocracy industry. Like cheating on student essays. Idiocracy: "Secretary of State: 'But "Brawndo's got what plants crave!" ' -- Attorney General: It's got e-lec-tro-lytes!" (full formal double-palmface required). Or Google:AI Overview: " 'You can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness [to prevent your cheese sliding off your pizza]; 'According to geologists at UC Berkeley you should eat at least one small rock per day ... Dr. Joseph Granger suggests eating a serving of gravel, geodes, or pebbles with each meal, or hiding rocks in foods like ice cream or peanut butter'; 'Doctors recommend smoking 2-3 cigarettes per day during pregnancy' (25 May 2024, 9:36 PM); generally, "high quality information" from "trusted [fact-checker checked] sources" that are free from 'misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and mistruth'.

[**] A person presenting Generative AI material and claiming to have submitted an article, written a book, drafted a piece of legislation, presented a court motion, or produced an analysis, did none of those things. That person submitted nothing, wrote nothing, drafted nothing, produced nothing. A lifeless algorithm did the work. Just like when a human 'ghost-writer' does ALL THE WORK. Plus, as Dr. Adrian Liston (Editor-in-Chief of Immunology & Cell Biology) aptly put it, quite recently, "Generative AI is very good at making things that sound like they come from a human being. It doesn’t check whether those things are correct ... It is like an actor playing a doctor on a TV show – they look like a doctor, they sound like a doctor, they even use words that a doctor would use. But you wouldn’t want to get medical advice from the actor." Furthermore, an AI (LLM) digital actor regurgitating reassembled and tossed-salad lines of boilerplate script can all too easily be programmed to obey Government censorship laws (unlike a principled actual Human). We do not care whether the AI is ChatGPT or 'Sara' or any other dispenser of "appropriate answers" relying on compartmentalized 'guardrail libraries' of "trusted [i.e. properly propagandized] knowledge". But, then you know: "MISSING CONTEXT: 'Independent' fact-checkers say this information could mislead people." Really? Oh, really?

Urgent Operating Advisory: The PSR / Baywolf Press underwent an unplanned but necessary technical upgrade of all hardware and a very thorough adjustment of IT services, plus a partial change of IT providers. Transition fully completed. As a result we are running c. 2.5 weeks behind original August-September 2024 schedule. The Summer 2024 issue of the PSR is almost ready for release -- will ship in October 2024. We now also feature backup e-mail addresses for contacting the PSR. Please use our standard psr@maproom44.com and CC (copy-mail) your e-mail to both secure alternates. Easy enough. This was done to ensure 100% continuity regardless of 'global' issues. Our alternates are, right now : portuguese_studies_review@protonmail.ch (Switzerland) and baywolf_press@protonmail.ch (Switzerland).

Recently Published PSR / Baywolf Press Edited Volumes, Vol. 6 (in stock)

Bruno Martins de Castro, Sirleia Maria Arantes & Vanda Lúcia Praxedes, eds., Escravidão e liberdades na América Portuguesa e no Império do Brasil (Peterborough/Toronto: Baywolf Press, 2024). ISBN 978-0-921437-62-8. Full digital access >> available << to Lusophone Studies Association members as part of standard membership package. Printed volume purchase: click blue button.

Forthcoming PSR / Baywolf Press Releases

Luciana Marino do Nascimento & Luciano Mendes Saraiva & Simone Vieira Nieto Blanco, eds., América Latina em Revista (Collection of studies). ISBN no. or PSR Vol. / Issue no. to be allocated. Release format to be allocated. Preliminary TOC to be posted as soon as the organizers approve the final list.

Nuno Vila-Santa & Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, eds., Sebastian of Portugal: The Making of a Renaissance King [provisional registered title]. Collection of studies. Extensive appendices of unpublished transcribed archival documents. Illustrations, graphics, and maps (Peterborough/Toronto: Baywolf Press, 2025). ISBN 978-0-921437-63-5.

Current Calls for Papers, 2024-2025

The Lusophone Studies Association (LSA) Call for Papers, for the 2025 "LSA in Porto" Conference. The extended deadline for paper or panel proposals / suggestions, as widely requested, is 1 October 2024.


The PSR / Baywolf Press Our Standing General Call for Papers, 2024-2025 continues. We may also announce further specific Calls for Papers later this year (2024). These calls will be shaped by our publishing stream. Innovative proposals shall receive editorial priority and support ('innovative' as to, e.g.: method, data, analytical technique, findings and cross-application, multi-level interpretation -- conventional as well as visualization-rooted [maps, exploratory visuals, striking or first-ever expressions of complex datasets], new spatio-temporal approaches challenging established scholarly & ideological trends, unpublished / neglected documents, transcriptions of unknown or barely publicized archival / museum / private collection / heritage fund / hitherto restricted or suppressed or classified [recently declassified] sources).

The PSR Honours Its Long-Standing Board Member and
Associate Editor Prof. José C. Curto (CAAS Lifetime Achievement Award)

The Portuguese Studies Review offers heartfelt congratulations to Dr. José C. Curto, its Associate Editor, on receiving the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to African Studies and CAAS. It goes without saying (but must be said) that no one else we know matches the criteria of this award more excellently than José C. Curto, both in outstanding scholarship and unselfish sustained service to the profession. Please join us and follow the link below, for details.

The PSR Draws Attention to the LSA Prize Program
for Graduate Students and Post-Doctoral Scholars

The LSA is thrilled to confirm that Francisco Mangas (photo below) won the Pedro da Silva Prize for Graduate Students, for 2023-2024. As part of the prize, he was awarded $1000 (CAD) and the opportunity, after peer review, to be published in the Portuguese Studies Review (Winter 2023 Issue, https://maproom44.com/psr/31_2.html). Francisco Mangas licenciou-se em História pela FLUP em 2014 e terminou, em 2016, o mestrado na FCSH-UNL com uma tese sobre o abastecimento cerealífero a Lisboa durante o século XVI. Trabalhou como bolseiro do CIDEHUS-Universidade de Évora num projeto sobre a “desestruturação dos grupos mercantis Alentejanos” no final do Antigo Regime. Encontra-se na fase final de doutoramento sobre a presença cigana em Portugal durante a Época Moderna, na U. Porto e no CITCEM. For details about the LSA Graduate Student and Post-Doctoral Prizes, see:

Our Core Editorial Policy

The PSR will simply not 'exclude', on any side. Let us be beyond crystal clear. Freedom of speech, freedom of research, freedom of analytical conclusions, freedom of carefully and independently presented and analyzed data, plus genuine (not just cosmetic) plurality of thought and viewpoints -- all those are for us a keystone. Not even remotely negotiable. Under any circumstance whatsoever, legal or financial or ideological. In this respect, we presumably have an "actively combative and aggressive attitude", which presumably constitutes some sort of "endagerment" or other. Whatever! We categorically oppose the notion that free speech "has to stop" and that people, including core researchers, cannot be allowed to "directly speak ...". Thus we also oppose Bill Gates, who oddly appears to have deemed free speech an "unsolvable problem" and a 'threat' . We likewise oppose the notion that free speech is a rare 'privilege' to be granted or whimsically denied by faceless bureaucrats, and 'cancelled' whenever it 'displeases' various ideologues. Free speech and free research are vital for Humanity. We point-blank refuse to 'police' anyone's "cognitive infrastructure" or carry water for this or that ideology. Enough is enough, already. Fully Human informed & independent & constantly inquiring thought refusing to "be quiet" is key to checks and balances. Only rational and genuine innovation (NOT a political teleprompter screed) can ensure Earth's collective future (such as it might be). That requires opposing ideological control of research -- the frenzy-grip of a sterile 'consensus and compliance racket'. In this, we follow the ancient lay-lines of calm individual probity -- as for instance in הַשְׂכָּלָה, if you want -- even though the PSR is not yoked to any tradition: we are cross-rooted into all anyway.

We distrust and abhor, fundamentally, all 'censorship Ecosystems' on all political sides. Plus the connected tools. All the way down to BA+JD-extension venal lawyers (a deliciously Dickensian "Snitchey and Craggs, Barristers and Solictiors LLP, or Dodson and Fogg LLP"; Charles Dickens, The Battle of Life and Pickwick Papers ). And further down to survival-desperate 'fact-checkers-for-hire' hungry for political dry-rations. 'Censorship Ecosystems' are an ancient story. They have been derided and their duplicity and double-standards exposed throughout entire centuries, from the turbulent present back to Dickens, and across all classic Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese satirists (plus legions of other covert and overt critics and meme-makers), back to Juvenal (Roman) and Greek stage comedy. And Socrates ... So, nothing personal. We just track patterns. There have always been those who shout at all who disagree -- aka dissidents -- that they better "remain quiet" ("I say you be quiet when 'I' speak, okay? That’s what I say. [Seems like] a good idea!”?) and that they should worship "Consistent Consensus Storytelling". The shouters and 'cancellers' demand what is unacceptable -- mechanical Obedience. They demand "Maul halten und weiter dienen." Quite Jesuit, in fact -- that whole notion that provable data are 'legitimately' censorable whenever some ideological machinery (Left-Right-Left-Right, keep step) 'deems' them 'harmful'. That notion that Obedience = Greatest Good. That 'Doubt' = 'bad'. That 'Merchants of Doubt' must be silenced and punished. In our view, all scholars possess the societally indispensable Sovereign Citizen Right to speak -- freely and honestly. Just as they must fully expect to be contradicted, FREELY, in an UNCENSORED and public forum. Party-Line "Conversations" are tragically debilitating. Social mind-fog. 'Party Line' / "Democratic Centralism" is a functional equivalent of all previous 'Temple' / Politburo / Central Committee / Era of Judges / Three-Four-Letter 'Agency' indoctrination Potages-du-Jour -- de facto just a variant of earlier Theocracies. Apt to quagmire entire populations in a ritualistic echo-chamber of self-immolating 'approved talking-points.

Yes, we are fully aware of all the moth-eaten 'eternal' talking points about 'young people': "... when they’re reading a whole load of stuff [sic] and receiving a whole lot of stuff [sic] … I think it’s really messing with their minds in a big way" (e.g. Tony Blair, 6 Sep. 2024). So, purportedly, much less information is needed, and much less reading (/humour on/ analphabetism as a possible 'Governing Class' solution? /humour off/). Sounds like what might be uttered by the versatile and shallow Mr. Snevellicci from Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens). "... in the profession ever since he had first played the ten-year-old imps in the Christmas pantomimes; ... could sing a little, dance a little, fence a little, act a little, and do everything a little, but not much ... always wore a smart dress, and came on arm-in-arm with a smart lady in short petticoats, -- and always did it too with such an air that people ... had been several times known to cry out 'Bravo!' under the impression that he was somebody". Like so many politicians endorsed by pop-singers in lingerie. So, Pharrell Williams for instance is quite right -- make up your own mind, always do your own research (which, apparently, one is not supposed to do). 'Endorsements'? No one is interested in those or in the old musical lingerie show -- or in Censorhip-compliant Storytelling (Propaganda). The issue of course is that no Supporters of Censorship really want to have any Censors censoring the speech of the Supporters' 'allies', cohorts, acolytes, inner group members, paymasters, funding agencies, benefactors, advertisers, so-called influencers, 'agents of change', etc. It always is -- and always has been -- only the Other Side that must be censored. Quaint -- double standard.[†] If one 'permits' free speech only when one is "winning" but one politically 'cancels' free speech as soon as one begins losing, one is doing merely what has been already done for millennia. It is what the Inquisition did, way back. Down to 'we are not accountable for anything -- we do not oppress or silence or execute anyone' (heard THAT before?): The Whole of Society does it for us -- contrived 'deniability': "La Inquisición .. un tribunal eclesiástico ... que no podía ejecutar la sentencia de muerte que ella misma había dictado, de ahí que "relajara" a los reos al brazo secular que era el encargado de la ejecución, conduciéndolos al lugar donde iban a ser quemados ...".

We defend what follows below, on behalf of ALL 'Left' and 'Right' (whatever those monikers actually mean, by now -- which is NOT much, really, given the prevalent trend of constantly and arbitrarily shifting goalposts, 'permitted' expressions, mandatory 'speech', etc. in essence, institutionalized lying and existential coercion on the grandest possible government- and corporate-sponsored scale). Thus we defend (A) the Natural Right to ask all and any questions freely, (B) the Natural Right to 'doubt' -- and crucially (C) the Natural Right to 'do one's own research' and publish it -- FREELY. This does not mean that we disregard crucial standards of meticulous scholarly quality.(‡) On the contrary. It simply means that we oppose ALL politicized and ideologically dictated 'cancelling' / 'de-platforming' / distorting / 'selective [faked] prosecution' [politicized persecution] of research, data, and individuals. We oppose any 'totalitarian' (aka 'Whole of Society' / 'Whole of Government') visual, textual, factual, conceptual, symbolic saturation of Everything by any dominant (typically usurpatory and self-proclaimed, self-praising, and self-adulating ) Ideology. Instilled under the 'usual' political pretexts -- a Dictatorial impulse to silence all and any speech that 'Party Organs' deem “dangerous”, "hostile", "hateful", "against The Official Narrative", or "anti-'Establishment' "]. With, of course, infinitely elastic, Multi-New-Speak, vague and ever-shifting yet 'legally enforceable' arbitrary words, expressions, modes of 'thought', 'approved attitudes', and political 'rules' -- an impulse aquaplaning wildly under 'false flags' of 'tolerance, civility and safety' [Salut Public]. George Carlin tagged this, very aptly, as “[de facto] Fascism [or any other Absolutism / Totalitarianism / Dictatorship / Neo-Feudal Corporatocracy] pretending to be manners”.

[†] Contradicted, courteously and expertly -- not punitively 'de-banked', 'deplatformed', 'de-contracted', censored, 'handled' through covert 'switchboarding' of data / research / analysis, schematically 'labelled', 'milk-shaked', ritually forced to 'embrace' verbal dogma, criminalized, 'suspended' from professional existence (for two years, ten years, 'Eternity'), 'charged' on bogus pretences, and show-trialed. Indicted for 'felony' and fraudulently 'sentenced'. Told to 'remain silent', in a dictatorial KGB / NKVD voice -- "We are not here to hear what you have to say -- just answer the [scripted] questions that establish your guilt, Comrade! Now! Obey! Submit! Down! Grovel! Sit down!". One must of course understand that we are not talking about /sarc on/ 'anything anyone has actually done, intended to do, intends to do, or will do' /sarc off /. We are just /sarc on/ 'exploring scenarios' and 'talking theoretically' / sarc off /.

(‡) The number of published scholarly papers known to have been officially retracted by authors or major journals, because the works ultimately proved to be sub-par / utterly 'compromised', was c. 40 in the year 2000. In 2022, the annual total was at least 5,500 -- a 13,650% increase. Add to this spectacular scandals, coming to dramatic resolution in 2019-summer of 2023, for instance at the highest levels of Stanford University and other prominent establishments. Chronologically these tracked back to the late 1970s-1990s and early 2000s, with discipline-wide ripples in terms of impaired chain-of-citations. This in turn imperilled entire segments of scholarship. Our fiduciary duty as publishers is to stand on guard. Against 'paper mills', 'ideological coercion', 'authorship-brokering' -- with 'team authorships' advertised more or less for overt sale. Against error-riddled 'automatic writing' by chatbots and against politically-driven "re-imagining" of data, and records. On guard, also, against well-acknowledged 'replication crises' -- the fact that many research papers cannot be corroboratively replicated. Some of this "dizzying house of Narrative mirrors" is about as 'Real' as the concrete-3D-printed fake-bronze equestrian statue of Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany to 2021). It collapsed under its own slight weight and under simple weather effects in mid-September 2023. For better or for worse -- we do not judge. By contrast, the notorious bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (121 CE - 180 CE) still exists today (even though the Later Roman Empire was as hollowed-out by utter Party-Line and pseudo-elite corruption as most societies are today). What can one say? "... das andere Mal als Farce"? (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon [New York: Weydemeyer, 1851-1852]). This metaphor speaks, further, to the fact that it is unwise to turn into 'cancelled' pariahs all those who rationally oppose some Grand Cult, Grand 'Science' That May Not Be Debated, an Even Grander Ideology, etc.. Like ENRON or FTX, those Grand Things tend to collapse, miserably and abruptly. Especially if one takes int account, e.g., experiments like the one performed by Hazem Ibrahim, Fengyuan Liu, Yasir Zaki, Talal Rahwan, "Google Scholar is Manipulatable," arXiv:2402.04607v1 [cs.CE]: "Citations are widely considered in scientists' evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of ~1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar to examine instances of citation fraud on the platform. We survey faculty at highly-ranked universities, and confirm that Google Scholar is widely used when evaluating scientists. Intrigued by a citation-boosting service that we unravelled during our investigation, we contacted the service while undercover as a fictional author, and managed to purchase 50 citations. These findings provide conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk, and highlight the need to look beyond citation counts."

An additional Editorial Reflection on what really matters in 2024-2025

"Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. ... Totalitarianism ... does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit ... the truthful recording of facts ..." (George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," Polemic, January 1946).

A revista PSR deseja, a todos, saúde, veracidade, e PAZ nos anos de 2024-2025 -- preferíamos que seja assim. Dentro dos limites da Plena Razão, nas coisas humanas. Ninguém possui o Saber Absoluto, nem o Estado, nem o Partido Supremo [a 'Suprema'], nem os Juristas da Suprema [simplesmente o novo Santo Ofício Eletrônico da Inquisição], nem a Colectividade Social (uma cadeira vazia na cerimónia de entrega dos prémios filosóficos -- pois o premiado não obteve uma autorização da polícia ['visto de saída' ou 'visto de trânsito'] e do Superior Tribunal para sair [ou deslocar-se] do país [regime político]: que pena!). Tudo, qualquer conhecimento -- sem exceção político-partidária -- pode e deve ser questionado. A censura e a restrição arbitrária à liberdade de expressão promovem em última análise condições de absurdo total (uma incoerência profunda digna de Kafka). It is, at this time, clearer than EVER that freedom of speech and freedom of research are under deliberate and concerted and programmed legal, political, ideological, financial, and existential attack by governments, judiciary systems, lawfare machineries, and ideologists of every stripe. Thus, never throw away scholarly integrity just for the sake of 'correctly' filling some ideological or Party digital compliance forms. Scholarly integrity is intrinsically worth far more than psych-nudging 'Approved Speech Ratings' assigned by State, or Party, or Bank, or 'System' (or 'Inquisition'). Core scholarly integrity is on an ultimately higher level of Human probity than even 'factual honesty': “... the idea is to try to give [in one's work] all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another ... ” (Richard Feynman, Commencement Address at CalTech, 1974). In other words, real probity resides in freely allowing other Humans to document, to present, to examine, to question, to interrogate all data very carefully, with an open and calm and rational mind that is deliberately and by core principle not subservient to any sort of 'allyship' or any sort of groupthink. "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth" (Albert Einstein [1879-1955], 'Letter to Jost Winteler', Winterthur, 8 Jul. 1901, item no. 115 in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1,The Early Years, 1879-1902 (English Translation Supplement), tr. by Anna Beck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 176-177). As Einstein in fact verbatim put it: 'Authority gone to one's head' -- i.e. 'authority' falsely deeming itself '100% infallible' by law, decree, mandate, or 'consensus'. Such purported 'authority' is 'Science™' whittled to ultimate venality and politicized corruption, to a risibly politicized or worse -- legislated -- claim that one, or one's Party-of-Allegiance, a priori and by virtue of mandatory legislated 'allyship' knows all there is or ever was to know -- and that all else is just an irrelevant and allegedly 'stupid' distraction preventing 'those who "really know"' from 'getting "very important things" done by any means necessary'. It is programmed unseeing, hubris, peak arrogance, manifest ideological exclusion, and complete condescension.

To say that 'free speech is dangerous, that free speech [and by impeccably logical extension 'free research'] cannot be possible in a democratic country' -- and that such research is radically 'dangerous' -- is an egregious 'Newspeak-style' conceptual perversion of the notions of 'free', 'democratic', 'freedom'. Same as saying that one does not "have anything against slanted coverage" [scholarship, teaching, data, etc.]. All that is a calibrated and deliberate direct frontal assault against all essential foundations of research, intellect, knowledge, of all questing and querying. Plus, fact-free 'feelings' are neither science, nor scholarship. The verbal / intellectual blade, here, very simply, cuts in all applicable directions. Whoever wields the blade of argument. It is just an artifact. It is not sentient. It does not pass the 'Turing test' even remotely. So how about 'unslanted' coverage and plain and honest untampered access to uncensored data (at the very least those that can quite lawfully be deemed 'public')? Calm. Courteous. Open. Public. Period. Finis and done away. Those who prefer such plain and critical and fundamental and straight honesty of course will by definition be labelled an 'ignorant' blip in a packet of "poor souls who are looking for some answers." Amusing. Very. The PSR simply will duly and with perfect and consistent courtesy publish all sides that offer high evidence-based standards. This is genuine 'inclusiveness', without any discrimination (as legislated, correct? -- 'This is Who We Are', correct? -- 'rule-of-law', correct?), without any censorship (quite inconvenient to some), equally (very inconvenient to some). We do not really care what the '[approved] optics' might be.

Some, for some very strange reason, detest any such and similar broad inclusion and equality with genuine plurality of speech. They ostentatiously prefer and advocate, in total self-contradiction, ideologized Censorship in order to protect 'Democracy' and 'Freedom' and 'Free Speech' and 'Whatever'. "Curiouser and curiouser" (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chap. 2). " 'Oh, you can’t help that', said the Cat: 'we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.' -- 'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice. -- 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn’t have come here' ” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chap. 6). Perfectly characterizing current (2024) dynamics (even those pretendedly 'rule-of-law'): “ 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' -- 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' -- 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be Master – that’s all' ". I.e. " 'It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill Clinton). Yes, all of us have understood quite well the 'Magic Kingdom' issue of "which is to be Master" loud and clear. Message received, understood, 10-4. And not complied with. Issue of 'optics'? “The crisis of meaning only becomes a problem when society becomes resigned to it, accepts a condition of meaninglessness, and seeks to dispossess humanity from the insights and truths it learned through the ages” (Füredi Ferenc, Hungarian-Canadian, 1947 - ). At the PSR, we might not be aligned with the thought-lifepath of Füredi (neither are we with that of George Monbiot and many others, for that matter), but we are fully open to all thoroughly documented lines of research -- the very best research is like a rōnin (浪人, 'wave-man') blade: no lord, no master, thus no dogma. Research that mandatorily must reflect and comply with prescriptive dogma ('compelled speech') in order to be 'socially acceptable' [which has nothing to do with real Society but only with bureaucratic dictate plus funding cycles] potentially is not research -- it is a just an 'echo-chamber' of Party-Line reprints. Inflationary, in a very economic sense. More and more of the same intellectual 'currency' / 'scrip' is being printed until it loses all conceivable value. Hyperinflation. Adding further dogma-asserting units ends up adding zero genuine data, zero forward-looking knowledge. The Eulerian-intersection logic becomes sheer nonsense, as all sets converge on 'permitted' thought only, because nothing else may legally be uttered. The problem is that all fervid ideologies based on 'compelled thought' eventually run out of their hallucinatory Printed Mojo 'scrip' (i.e. intrinsically worthless pseudo-currency tokens) -- 'scrip' that all too often is at the level of a middle school 'science model' of Cooties (2014 movie) amplified through Fort Chicken Elementary billionaire Agitprop -- plus a dash of 'Party Line' Lysenkoism. It always ends thus. History is a Harsh Mistress. Does not forgive, does not forget -- no matter how much one Censors. Trying to 'walkback' what one did or said will never work. The best of well researched and well documented history is mercilessly forthright rōnin reasoning. Always watch the other side of the mirror -- Master Miyamoto Musashi [Niten Dōraku] (宮本 武蔵, c.1584 – 1645) knew that quite well.

..

If everything has to be 'approved' by a Totalitarian Mob, Inept Bureaucracy, or the 'State', and 'exclusively' distributed through 'trusted [Agitprop] media channels' subservient to whatever version [1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 5.0, whatever] of 'Current Central Ideology', and if the right to publish 'must be deemed a specific "privilege" granted by the 'State', a "social license" (Australia)', then there is ZERO point in co-operating in any conceivable way. Find other ways. VERY calmly turn away. WALK AWAY and simply keep walking, NEVER to return. Refuse, on all counts and fronts. Atlas Shrugged. 'Lie flat, let it all rot' (Pacific Rim youth maxim-- (摆烂, 破罐破摔, 삼포세대, or very aptly 躺平的韭菜不好割, i.e. a 'Good Soldier Schweik and very Central European Soft Power Ironic Mentality, easily 'Global' by now -- see below on this page). "Lying Flat ['Quiet Quitting'] is King"! sounds like a very good resistance idea. Thus far, at least, THEY cannot arrest one for Quiet Quitting. This resistance movement is already tanking birth rates on a Planetary scale (which is what was presumably intended in the first place, we suppose). But there is more: loyalty cannot be compelled by 24/7/365 frenzied Total Eyeball Surveillance and 'compelled speech decrees' from above, under the ferule of a corrupt Judiciary. Every sensible dog owner will tell you that this will ruin the dog, forever, not train it -- plus, there is not enough automaton-'loyal' and fiercely indoctrinated enforcers. When one needs 20 'punishment battalion' enforcers at the back of every single 'wrongspeaker', plus life-sentence jail for the slightest 'wrongspeak' (Canada), things will collapse. Have no illusions. NO ONE is obligated to give even a tiny fraction of their best, or even moderately co-operate, under such 24/7/365 'thought-crime' compulsion. Elite 'experts' disagree, of course. Who cares? Entire past empires collapsed in pursuing entirely similar regulatory delusions. (Akhenaton, anyone? Elagabalus, anyone?). Just archaeologically quaint ruins are left today. People walked away, disengaged, ditched the plaited baskets in which they were ordered to carry clay to improve fortifications and 'rescue the Empire'. Yes, Atlas Shrugged. And shrugged again, twice, three times, and multiple times.

Yes, the whole intricate Corpus Iuris Civilis (enacted from 529 to 534 CE in the reign of Emperor Justinian I) was the product not of a civilization at its robust peak, but of one panically starting to circle the drain rim into visibly necrotizing judicial and bureaucratic rot and decay amid intricate ('Byzantine') laws -- regulation- and detail-obsessed, subserviently fatuous 'behaviour shaping measures' designed to stiffen a System that already was in very palpable systemic rigor mortis (Stiff Person Syndrome). Failed 'Novus ordo seclorum'. So many 'Great Powers' fell not by the hand of any conqueror or invader, but due to an astounding 'expert' rot at the core -- promoted by rulers and administrators who had lost all touch with any even remotely conceivable Reality, amid an orgy of nepotist, clientist, and Party-Line incompetence. Among all those who intuited this in the past (and actually dared put it in writing) was Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī (1332 – 1406 CE, 732–808 AH). He tried to warn and educate -- and for his pains was arrested and thrown in jail in his very old age. Among other, he dared to openly point out that "... at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments." The patterns that Ibn Khaldūn perceived are fully at play right now. What worried him should worry us, every night.

Perfect previous 'systemic' image? Roman Empire, Third Century CE. Having traversed the long monetary path from the Gold Aureus to the Silver Denarius (with less and less 'silver' in it -- 0.5 % silver by 268 CE ['enforcers' and 'loyal' troops being paid in 'coin' worth little or nothing at all -- just monetary scrip garbage), the 'System' spun from bad to worse: (a) mandatory price controls under Emperor Diocletian (242/245 – 311/312 CE) (mismanagement of inflation and 'solving the thing' by price-control 'edicts' [acknowledged by wise historians to have been "an act of economic lunacy" that rhetorically deflected blame from The System and blamed the "greed of merchants" [most of them actually productive people, unlike assorted 'equity' administrators and bureaucrats] for policy collapses predictably caused by economic ignorance and wishful moralizing by career ceremonial parasites]), (b) desperate 'adjusting' of history through manifestly laughable propaganda, (c) full-blown ceremonial autocracy and government by 'rescript' (i.e. mandates, Emergency Powers), (d) fanatically persecuting designated 'domestic dissenters' and blaming them for all 'Systemic' lunacy and systemic venality, (e) restricting social and economic mobility and judicially tying producers to territory ('fifteen-minute "Global villages", anyone?). A material symbol of all that Collapse? The 'Roman Silver Treasure' (c. 350-353 CE) of Kaiseraugst (Augusta Raurica) in Kanton Aargau, Switzerland. Until it was accidentally back-hoe found in the 1960s, no one even remotely bothered to retrieve this high officer's or bureaucrat's personal stash of yummy ceremonial goodies. Simply, no one even cared any more. The whole glitzy charade was just not worth additional and even minimal effort. There is no viable Future in ideologically enforced 'Total Commitment' to prescriptive cults that, no matter how blatantly flawed, simply may never be criticized. Humanity deserves better than living inside a Clown-World parody. Scholarship deserves better. Human sentience deserves better. Censorship and ' "Community Standards" deletion' does not make a 'System' stronger. The stinging and utterly vicious and deligtful irony is that, by imposing mandatory speech and thought, Party-Line 'Systems' in fact busily cut the very branches on which they still manage to sit, precariously. When all think (purportedly) the same, chances are that no one is thinking at all, for fear of stepping out of lucrative Party Line. Then -- the magnificent yet really worthless Treasure of Augusta Raurica serving as testimony -- individuals just turn their backs on a moribund 'System', first one by one -- then as a magnificent social avalanche. 'Agents' with 'agency' merely go through the motions, yet truly withdraw knowledge, skills, inventiveness, initiative, practical experience -- "we pretend to work, bureaucrats pretend to pay us". Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha ..... Atlas Shrugged. Universities and academic publishers must wake up now, radically, before it is too late, and shoulder a public duty -- not to yield to mandatory or 'fashionable' ideologies or politicized corporate agendas. Thus, our utter detestation of and supreme contempt for all ideology-driven censorship (and all of its instruments). Ultimately, dissenting opinions of high evidentiary value cannot just be shout- and doxx-crowd and court-'deleted', like some marionette NPCs in a sub-standard but lavishly government-funded video game. All this will whiplash with a vast intellectual kinetic energy. That kinetic energy is The Future. Why? The cognitive dissonance and the degree of scripted official lying are simply off all historically attested scales. Not just 'now' or 'perhaps', but 24/7/365 -- every impeccably documentable day after single day.

Recent LSA Conferences

The Lusophone Studies Association (LSA) International Conference "Women, Gender and Intersectionality in the Lusophone World' took place 29 June to 2 July 2022, at Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal. The public part of the Conference site is archived and remains web-accessible as data-of-record relevant to professional profiles and development (i.e. scholarly meetings, records of academic activity and participation). 


The Lusophone Studies Association (LSA) International Conference "The Lusophone World and its Diasporas" took place last year. June 28 to July 1, 2023 at York University, Toronto, Canada. For a compact vignette of the Conference on YouTube™, by CMC TV (Correio da Manhã TV Canadá), see here ►. The public part of the Conference site is archived and remains web-accessible as data-of-record relevant to professional profiles and development (see here ►). LSA Members have access to archived features (video record of sessions):

Endowed Prizes for LSA Conference Papers

The Lusophone Studies Association (LSA) is pleased to draw your attention to our two committee-adjudicated prizes for 'best paper', associated with the LSA Conferences: a Graduate Student Prize and a Post-Doctoral Prize, each in the significant amount of $ 1,000.00 CDN. For details, please consult the following link (blue target):

The PSR and Baywolf Press Support a 4 D's Framework -- Doubt, Dissent, Debate against Dogma

What does this mean? Firstly. we align, at this point, with those principles and underpinnings that are the MOST protective of genuine plural freedom of speech and have been endorsed by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars and by the Presidents of various Colleges and Universities across the United States. Some of the supporting universities include Duke, Cornell, Notre Dame, Rutgers, the University of Pittsburgh, the entire University System of Georgia (as per updates introduced by the Board of Regents and by Chancellor Sonny Perdue), the Arizona Board of Regents, the University of Houston System, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas Systems, etc. So, yes, the PSR holds and always will hold that: (a) free speech is a cardinal virtue of higher education; (b) colleges should aspire to a diversity of opinion; (c) the need for intellectual diversity is absolutely paramount and not negotiable. Viable future-oriented scholarship will not really proceed -- CANNOT EVEN EXIST -- in a 'Struggle Session' atmosphere of ever-escalating 'ideological purity checks' & 'politicized litmus tests' & programmatic 'oaths / affirmations of conformity'. Good research ≠ 'Consensus' or 'Party Line'. It ≠ 'Democratic Centralism'™. Ideological Vanguardism tends to become -- and has done so for millennia of recorded history -- a politically corrupt process. It eventually subverts the scientific method.Thus, it promotes societal entropy and cascading system-failures. It also is a self-destructive and artificially fostered Nonsense Point. A wise Human Being will prudently consider and examine contrary ideas -- they may prove useful. To filter thought according to ideological 'alignment' and 'mandate', i.e. to suppress ('cancel', censor) reseach regardless of actual quality, is (a) Humanity-hostile, (b) fraudulent.

To idolize and impose a mechanical politicized 'discourse' -- "... [always] incorporating [correct-Speak] into any storyline or genre" is an abysmally failed but unfortunately always revived societal Playbook. All such adherence to 'correct Thought', 'correct Speak', 'correct Identity', 'correct Messaging', 'correct Origin' [it used to be correct "Proletarian Origin" in the old "People's Democracies" of the East, but that has now faded in favour of "post-Worker Parties" and "post-Worker Origin"] is just sloganistic партийность. Deployed in a 'go-to-guide' / Talking Points Leaflet style. In ample awareness that "hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. Meaning that 'facts' no longer signify anything, but are just 'Messaging' and a 'Generative Lens' set in place to 'defeat resistance to the uptake [of Ideology]'. Instead of 'Generative Lens' one might just as well say Generative AI (e.g. Midjourney) and gleefully 'generate' 'reseach articles' such as the now retracted and world-famous “Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway”, at Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology. Complete with full-color 'Sciencey' visuals, nonsense 'scientific' pseudo-terms (e.g. “Iollotte sserotgomar,” “testtomcels,” “dissliced”, and “sterrn cells” -- really!). Schematics and 'terms' "not rooted in any known biology" [as per the staff Retraction Notice]. Those 'Persuasion Frameworks' (PFs) to 'develop' the "trust [of] the already trusting and persuade those with more malleable opinions"? I.e. 'targeting those deemed 'easily manipulable'? Such as children, youths, plus adults demoted by a self-mesmerized Ideology Vanguard to mere 'naughty child' status? Already the Jesuits, plus many others way before them, did THAT. Most fundamental scholarly advances in the past were accomplished by dissidents disagreeing with official Truth™ and in opposition to those holding the "commanding heights of education".

Secondly, it is a treacherous mantra to claim, for purposes of propaganda, that “emotional truth [aka abnegation of evidence-based thought] is as important as the literal truth”. Important for whom? Cui bono? To whose profit? No grand talk about 'misinformation, mistruth (arguably the most ridiculous term ever contrived ), disinformation, malinformation, denialism' will justify the fact that it is societally destuctive to 'cancel' valid voices whose only 'fault' is that they do not propagandize, in a breathless show of prescribed loyalty, an 'approved and curated Narrative'. Ideas, data, never become 'valid' by being 'decreed', 'mandated' or 'endorsed' by corporations, bureaucrats, Ministers of State, milli - billi- trilli- onaires, or 'Advertising'/PR. Whether or not ideas / research 'align with the purposes and objectives of a Bank' is utterly irrelevant to scholarly validity or value. The issue also is NOT whether data / thoughts are 'hurtful' or 'disturbing' or 'deemed incorrect'. One may 'deem' 'whatever' one wants -- Deeming and Proof have always been two very different things. When scholars self-censor -- so as to get published, and also out of existential fear of ideological 'employment cancellation', we are at a systemic Full Break Point. Especially if the self-ceonsored (or even worse, 'authority'-censored) data and analyses are in fact fundamentally valid, critically important, and candid. A Break Point " ... at which discussion can no longer continue because people cannot agree"... .
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Rational freedom of speech, thought, and core (i.e. indispensable) Human research unfortunately is under vast regulatory, institutional, legislative, and 'media'-owner attack. The defence of free speech is thus NOT an obsession or a Police-analyzable 'fixation', and it is NOT 'toxic'. 'Free speech' is functionally useful, and essential for any kind of even minimally forward-looking society. "If all think the same, no one is actually thinking at all". Reality as such turns vacuous. Shelves in school libraries suddenly look quite empty -- because everything printed before a Mandatory 'Year Zero' Reset Date (e.g. 2008 and earlier) had to be removed for being 'incorrect', "irrelevant", "inaccurate", "harmful", "not suitable", "of no discernible literary or scientific merit; poorly written or presented", "information ... factually inaccurate or obsolete" (all of which is decided solely by year of publication and a political agent 'opinion' -- "just following orders" ["ein Befehl ist ein Befehl"]). And the fate of those books that were "miswritten"? Stunning neologism, by the way, this "miswritten" thing. Given how much labour and commitment it actually takes to write a well researched book, one wonders how a book could be "miswritten". The system apparatchiks who make a solemn determination of "miswritten" have typically never 'written' even one book (unless they hired an underpaid ghost-writer). But, of course, the "miswritten" "mistruth" must of course be destroyed, 'cancelled', 'responsibly' too -- "... under ... [approved] environmental recycling guidelines". It is, you know, a MUSTIE (acronym for the master-guide Peel District School Board (Canada) book-sifting protocol -- Misleading – Unpleasant – Superseded – Trivial ("of no discernible literary or scientific merit; poorly written or presented") -- Irrelevant – Elsewhere). A template quite in line with an apocryphal quip from The Good Soldier Schweik (Švejk): "Ein Befehl is ein Befehl, das ist kein Knödel, das muß man gehorchen!" ('An order is an order. That's not just a dumpling. One must [MUSTIE] obey that!').The hypocrisy is massive. "Misinformation", "disinformation", or "malinformation", or "mistruth"? All these neologisms (and ever more, more! More! MORE! 450 voltage! EXPERTS and 'TRUSTED SOURCES' say the hesitancy subject needs more! 600 voltage! MORE! MORE IDEOLOGY! MORE SLOGANS! 1200 voltage! MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER!) are a rather hysterically sinister "Milgram Experiment". And if one does not 'obey'? "Ihre Papiere, bitte"? "Ausweis, bitte’? "Digi-ID sofort und richtig präsentieren"? How about, satirically: "Die Aufforderung 'Ausweis, bitte' ignorieren, und noch einmal die Taste ENTER drücken". The Good Soldier Schweig = Schweik = Švejk would presumably agree ['Silent Soldier' if one knows solid street-level vernacular German and Yiddish and thus all the grungy/grokking finesse of former classic European satire]. Of course, the parody is double-edged, like all useful parody: "Wer schweigt, stimmt zu!" / "Quem cala, consente".►

One can explore the iconic figure of Švejk, generally unfamiliar to many English readers and anyway part of 'all that "harmful" literature before 2008' (MUSTIE), in the anti-war work of Jaroslav Hašek, Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války [The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik in the Great War [1st World War], 4 vols. (1921-1923); subsequent vols. 5 and 6 by Karel Vaněk; vastly Bowdlerized (i.e. "non-threatening" ') English translation by Paul Selver (1930) [the worst existing 'translation'], then Cecil Parrott (1973) [poor, but fairly 'unabridged'], then Zdeněk Sadloň and Emmett Joyce [moderately acceptable]; further also used as a scathing knock-on platform for apt critique of East European Communism and Systemic Marxism [Josef Jaroslav Marek, Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka po druhé světové válce (The Fortunes of Good Soldier Schweik after the Second World War)]. The German translation was a favourite book of Bertolt Brecht. One of the books burned [environmentally 'cancelled'] by none other than the National Socialists in 1933. Yes, one of those bunches of words bound between two covers that can"give people ideas" and thus presumably must be banned as 'seditious'. Nothing has changed in hundreds of years, in this respect. Shadows. Of Radicals. Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) (Florence, Italy) as a controversial even if revered 'social-street-gang' enforcer of extreme expiatory ► 'Justice and Purity'-- and then a would-be urban ►Tyrant in his own right. Shadows. Of Rationalists. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) being burned alive by the Supreme Inquisition while hanging upside-down ('cancelled' for the sake of Dogma Consensus) [Photo: Monument to Giordano Bruno, 'Potsdamer Platz Station' in Berlin]. Are you quite SURE "this is who WE are"? In the name of 'Love' / 'Inclusion'? "We love your soul but to save the soul we must burn your body"? Other-thinkers must be "formally deprogrammed"? Please, quit that drama and the 'signalling' red robes and dresses! Remember that ► 6 July 1415 (burning ['cancellation'] of John Hus at the stake, alive -- Jan Hus (1370-1415), critic of a 'fiscally advanced' Indulgences system: a 'structural sin offset' Ponzi engine of fear-driven fundraising), sparked a sudden ► social and combat revolution. 'The Germanic Empire' and the Papacy lost quite a bit, to 'deplorable peasants' not keen on 'expiating' through endless purchases of sin-tax "salvation vouchers" (Purgatory 'Social Credits'). ►

Shadows of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) ► gazing at the stars. How "Dare You" speak, of course, against any PR-powered 'juvenile Prophets' or any Deified 97% Consensus! That would imperil "confidence in The Political Class". Shadows of ALL dissident and keenly thinking Rationalists. Yes, we know -- the mechanical answer is of course banging the benches in loud Consensus, and shouting "Prop, Prop, Prop, Prop"! Sure. On the WRONG side of any conceivable balanced scholarship. Well, so, for the sake of just an easy random selection: "Why do you laugh, Comrades? What, who, do you laugh at?" (Jozef Yuzovskiy [Burstein] [1902-1964], On Theatre and Drama, vol. 2, "Who do you Laugh At?" [Izvestia, 12/01/1940]). Or Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol [1809-1852], "What are you laughng at? You are laughing at yourselves ... That's just like YOU! [i.e. 'This is who you are']" (The Inspector, 1836).

Our avowed skepticism [no, that is not a 'dirty' word] is somewhat along the lines of Shakai chōsa no uso: Risāchi riterashī no susume [「社会調查」のウソ： リサーチ・リテラシーのすすめ] (The Lies of Social Research), by Professor Ichirō Tanioka [谷岡一郎] (Tōkyō : Bungei Shunjū, 2000) -- overt statistics as often quite deceptive and simply serving the interests of entrenched bureaucracy and well-paid revolving-door politicians. We thus espouse a New Humanism, a new Scholarly Rationality, and Pro-Humanity (Pro-People) practice. Therefore we oppose Censorship. Censorship has always been a sign of systemic collapse and Political Class panic. A brutal solution of 'last resort' -- because way too many things have become a manifest and perfectly documentable lie. Just like when one is actually losing a real and hot war while shouting that "Total Victory is Imminent". Censorship and Enforcement thus become the last trenches of System Defence. Mandatorily limiting thought to one authorized worldview is of course a perilous societal course of action. It is fraught with haunting and brutal historical / archaeological precedents and dire warnings -- from 3,500 BCE ( at least, if not more) to the Present. It holds clear and present dangers for all Humans, into all imaginable futures. Historical example desired? Fernando Álvarez de Toledo the 3rd Duke of Alba (1507 – 1582). Low Countries. Sixteenth century. The 'Council of Troubles' (i.e. Crisis Management Think Tank and Star Chamber) which thereafter became utterly infamous and abhorrently corrupt -- aka the Government-Terror 'Council of Blood'. Context? The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak. The Nederlandse Opstand (1566 – 1648, 81 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day). The Sea Beggars [a 'Basket of Deplorables' -- "N'ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux" (as per Charles de Berlaymont, Lord of Floyon and Haultpenne and Baron of Hierges, 1510 - 1578) ]. And as cinematized political farce, La Kermesse héroïque [Carnival in Flanders] (1935, dirs. Jacques Feyder and Arthur Maria Rabenalt, from a novel by Charles Spaak [1903 - 1975]). Guess who ultimately lost, in a very bad way, after 81 years and innumerable instances of manifest judicial malfeasance and of punitive / confiscatory brutality by The Authorities? The System did.

Yes, sure, corporations and governments can buy "fact-checker-certified Truth", for fiat (printed) currency equivalents of the ancient silver Akkadian šiqlu (also mithqal, ref. مثقال‎, ref. ثَقَلَ, ref. 𐤔𐤒𐤋, cryptic ref. "Mene, mene, teqel u-farsin"; 11 to 9.8 - 9.5 / 7.2 grams of silver, historically devalued to as little as paltry 4.5 grams), from vastly-overpaid ideological 'PR managers of "information threats" '-- as always. So very ancient, all of it. But only at severe societal cost. Yes, do let us talk here about Yuval Noah Harari. It is difficult to say whether he genuinely loves or fears the notion of Planet Earth being ruled by "inorganic entities" that "don’t breathe; they don’t have emotions". Pseudo-entities (Golem) that do not display or possess (for now) any genuine 'intelligence'. As Harari is alleged to have said, whether with alarm or with approbation, "It’s very practical: today when you apply to the bank for a loan and the bank basically lets an algorithm design your fate, and the algorithm says ‘No, don’t give this lady a loan.’ And you ask the bank why, and they say they don’t know; the algorithm said no ... Even the people who designed the algorithm don’t understand the decision that it is making.” Either way, what one is confronting here is a mind-blowing confession of Human disempowerment. Total deprivation of the celebrated and much desired "agency". Just like with the Irish Senate (Seanad Éireann) and Pauline O’Reilly: "when one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the Common Good.” So, the exact same words as used by Danton, Roberspierre, Napoleon, Joseph Fouché, Stalin, Pol Pot (pseuds. "99", "Phem", etc.), Mussolini, and many other 'luminaries'. Government as the Comité de salut public (1793) and then the ominous, far-worse-than-the-Inquisition Comité de sûreté générale (whatever term / acronym one might want to deploy -- KGB, DGS, SNB, NKVD, Cheka, StaatsSicherheit, Okhrana, Political Police, 1984). For a literary impression set in a not-all-so-fictional late nineteenth century, read e.g. Umberto Ecos' sarcastic and brilliant The Cemetery of Prague. With all its imagery of corruption and official nonsense, amid comically shady dealings by Special Investigators, Special Agents, Special Prosecutors, etc. Summa summarum, we at the PSR are not even remotely willing, unlike Stephen Colbert of CBS (5 March 2024), to celebrate being "ready for the machines to tell us what to do" and not ready, like mindless children, "for the big machines that make big decisions programmed by fellows with compassion and vision." That is propagandistic and easily spotted baby-talk. For one, we have 0% trust, research-grounded, that 'programming fellows' have either compassion or visoin, and we have 0% trust, research- and intelligence-grounded, that the so very 'good fellows' are agenda-free and corruption-free.

"Act uprightly, and despise calumny; dirt may stick to a wall, but not to polish'd marble." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1914 aggregate edition, no. 4, p. 11) . With full attribution, so that it could not be said that the printed words were NOT uttered so -- which is a favorite game of dime-a-dozen 'fact-checkers' who lack any qualification whatsoever, not even the proverbial cheap and universal BA + JD)..

"A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1914 aggregate edition, no. 20, p. 12) . With full attribution, so that it could not be said that the printed words were NOT uttered so -- which is a favorite game of dime-a-dozen 'fact-checkers' who lack any qualification whatsoever, not even the proverbial cheap and universal BA + JD)..

"No workman without tools, nor lawyer without fools, can live by their rules." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1914 aggregate edition, no. 395, p. 40) . With full attribution, so that it could not be said that the printed words were NOT uttered so -- which is a favorite game of dime-a-dozen 'fact-checkers' who lack any qualification whatsoever, not even the proverbial cheap and universal BA + JD)..

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy" (Franz Kafka, 1883-1924). NB: With the 'new bureaucracy' doing its very best to morph into a 'hereditary [pseudo-elected] bureaucracy'. 'Mission creep' and 'neo-feudalism'. Like the various ministeriales of the early Middle Ages. Result? Digital Panopticon Insane Tyranny [but very Lucrative] (as discussed for instance in a very old non-digital framework by Michel Foucault in Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison [Paris: Gallimard, 1975]). Party-Line Bureaucrats (recently for the larger part on the 'left' rather than the 'right' [whatever such labels-of-convenience even remotely mean today]) utterly love the no-checks-and-balances Total Control and No Questions model. It is their fundamental raison d'être -- for they have none other. Like all the otherwise really unemployable arbitristas of the eighteenth century. What we have here is a historical hallmark of every Official(ized) 'Managing Class' -- Ministeriales Palatii, or any other historical variant of such structurally-shaped / devoted 'executives'. One might even think here in terms of a dynamic similar to the classic Mamluk & Ghulam model -- a fully alien(ated) enforcer cohort rooted in purchased / manufactured / youth-group-reared echo chamber loyalty to a Patron / Funds-Dispenser / Power-Idea and 'Cause'. One can very easily parse this in many ways. Let us run here a few candid quotations (there are tons and tons more of the same -- just mildly depends on one's linguistic agility). Thus "Plekhanov once said to me about a critic of Marxism . . . : “First, let’s stick the convict’s badge on him, and then after that we’ll examine his case.” And I think we must stick the “convict’s badge” on anyone and everyone who tries to undermine Marxism, even if we don’t go on to examine his case" (reminiscences by Николай Владиславович Валентинов, born Вольский [1890-1964], for instance in «Встречи с Лениным» [1953] and related works such as «Малознакомый Ленин»; «Ранние годы Ленина»). Which goes well wit: "There could be no life for him [a Bolshevik] outside the ranks of the Party, and he would be ready to believe that black was white, and white was black, if the Party required it. In order to become one with this great Party he would fuse himself with it, abandon his own personality, so that there was no particle left inside him which was not at one with the Party" (Георгий Леонидович Пятаков [1890, Черкасский уезд, Киевская губерния - 1 Feb. 1937, ironically enough executed, at night, for 'ideological deviationism (Trotskism)' on grounds of ст. 58-1а, 58-8, 58-9, 58-11 УК РСФСР, 'rehabilitated' in 1988 {which is sort of useless once one is shot dead}]). Which (the Pyatakov blue text) is of course not new or Revolutionary at all. Already St Ignatius of Loyola (thus the Jesuits) wrote exactly the same, word for word: "We should always be prepared, so as never to err, to hold that the white which I see is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it" (St Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises (1548, yes, 1548 CE), No. 365). Ouch. So, Pyatakov (Георгий {Юрий} Пятаков) plagiarizes St Ignatius, at a distance of 372 years? That is RICH! But then, of course: 'You don't understand! Please educate yourself It's a MUSTIE!."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary [funding, gravy, progress through the ranks, officer stripes, vacation, cottage-in-the-country (dacha), Party 'validation', medals, awards, 'incentive points', 'affirmation', your-photo-on-the-bulletin-board, company/Party vehicle, Great Star Order of the Achieving Achievement of Achievement in Congruence with Party Messaging and PoliOptics as Approved by the Latest Revision of the Approved Ideology and its Eternal Classics at the Umpteenth General Party Assembly] depends on his not understanding it." (Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked in 1934 (see James Gregory. ed., Upton Sinclair's "I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked" [ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994]) (Purported 'straw man' argument according to 'fact-checkers' [Snopes etc., of course], etc., etc., etc., etc. , etc. Whatever -- Left, Right, Left, Right, Centre, Shmenter, and ALL The Rest. Applies right aross The Socio-Historical Spectrum and then some. No comment required. Just imagine! Horrible! If one loses the 'equity perks of 'allyship' and automaton allegiance and "consensus" and Oath of Conformity and Ideological Litmus Tests', it is "doubleplusungood" [George Orwell]. Sheer "social economics" and CW [Cognitive Warfare 3D]).

"We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious Party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, 14 Aug. 1926 [CW34:144-145]). (Usefully paired with: "They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics." ["The Ethics of Elfland," in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton]. One presumably should add something like ... lost my old childlike faith in Judges, Justices of the Peace, So-Called 'Law', Attorneys General, Governors, 'Representatives', Unions, Universities, Faculty Associations, Deans, NKVD Officers, 'The Party' ('mandated' Democratic Centralism), Public Health 'Officers', 'Human Resources', Fact-Checker 'Experts-for-Hire-Without-Credible-Expertise', 'The Police', Philanthropy, Banks, 'Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel LLC, Barristers and Solicitors', Disney, etc., etc., etc.)

"There is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you" (Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 [1532]) (Very many people, today, fail to comprehend this -- instead, they wish to deploy the full force of utterly corrupt partisan-stacked Law to ensure they will only hear what they demand to hear: endless dopamine-fix 'validation'. No comment. As to all other things, we have just one answer -- and it is not 'rude speech': the answer simply is 'Galileo's Middle Finger' -- the middle finger of his right hand (yes, the finger that one also uses to 'flip a birdie'), in an ornate receptacle at the Museo Galileo, Firenze, Italy)

"The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it [i.e. the BS] " (Alberto Brandolini) (The BS Asymmetry Principle. NB: The required amount of personal and financial energy, we would argue, grows by several orders of magnitude if the producers of the relevant (or rather irrelevant) BS are socially anointed 'prophets', officially deified 'Experts' or 'Voices', 'trusted sources' (anonymous, of course), Talk Show hosts, System- / Party-beholden 'influencers' and 'webfluencers' and 'journalists', and those with friends who are so fabulously rich that they could buy entire other Planets or Orbital Fabricaria if there were some on bargain-basement sale, nearby. Of course, the deified 'Voices' deem that they can simply 'terminate' a 'conversation' that is "not respectful" (i.e. not servile and obedient ) by walking out, switching off the Zoom / cute SkyEye Viewscreen, sending in Order-Enforcers, or activating Punitive Drone Swarms. In the long run, this it NOT going to work. Simply, NOT. Neither in SciFi, nor in Reality. Should one pity those willing to elevate BS over sober historical, source-based, tactical, strategic, technical, etc., knowledge (we did not say analysis -- analysis these days is for PR-sale)? We are not going to comment. We wish to add, though, of course borrowing and Satirically redirecting a quotation, thus: precision, rationality, and apolitical exactness are "a game-changer, like the Archimedean fulcrum, with the potential to shift ... [un]logics ... to ... functional praxes of [exactness]-affirming care for ... [non-tampered data], human others, and planetary co-habitants [even though they might be execrably 'deplorable' 'Other'-thinkers and thus deniers and Heretics and no-trial-required 'thought-criminals'"]. Yes we signalled we are redirecting -- but such redirecting has become so ubiquitous today that we might be legitimately excused for doing one itty bitty of that (people even get full-on PhDs for doing the exact same on a massive scale, and then progress to very exalted ideological and University and political positions).]

"Do you teach 'Rhetoric'? O Vettius, what a mind of iron / You need, when a crowded class slays ‘the cruel tyrant!’ / For, whatever they’ve just read, sitting, each in turn / Replicates standing, chants the same thing in identical lines. / Such stale Greens are simply DEATHLY SUFFERING for the poor teacher." (Decimus Junius Juvenalis [c. 55 CE (fl. before 100 CE)-ex. after 127-138 CE] [banished and exiled poet, 'cancelled' by the decrepit Imperial Cancel Culture], The Satires, Book 3, Satire VII: 150-215: 'Nor Do Teachers Of Rhetoric'). ("Mr. Bauer realized how topical Juvenal was, how he dealt at length with such phenomena as arbitrary government, tyranny, corruption, the degradation of public morals, the decline of the Republican ideal and the terrorizing acts of the Praetorian Guards. (...) In a second-hand bookshop I found an 1838 translation of Juvenal with an extensive commentary, twice the length of the translated text itself, written at the height of the Romantic period. Though its price was more than I could really afford, I bought it. I read all of it very intensely, as if it was a detective novel. It was one of the few books to which I persistently held on throughout the war [WWII] and beyond, even when most of my other books were lost or sold on the black market" [Heinrich Theodor Böll, (1917–1985), What's to Become of the Boy? -- Or, Something to Do with Books [(orig. 1981), trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984)]

"On juge mieux de certains faits et de certains principes quand on les voit en dehors du cadre où ils se meuvent habituellement sous nos yeux ; le changement du point optique terrifie parfois les regards ! " ([Maurice Joly], Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, [Geneva, 15 October 1864] [Brussels: Mertens et Fils, 1864]). Funny how ANCIENT all that 2024 'Generative Lens' pseudo-sophisticated rhetoric actually is. This is a shoe that pinches on the Left as well as on the Right. The power of a 'reframing' ("changement du point optique") is basically a ''physical phenomenon' -- it is NOT a politically monopolizeable property. That is why 'meme-inverting' as well as 'slogan-inverting' fundamentally works, as biting satire. This why politicians and ideologists are so afraid of so-called 'disinformation super-spreader memes', so afraid that they put people behind bars for 'committing satire', with million-dollar fines and jail sentences longer than those that many criminals get for the vilest murder.

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