Dionysian King:  Carpenter in Babylon

David Yearsley

 August 14, 2026

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On a Sunday evening in February of this year, I attended the premiere of a new German/French documentary called “The Spirit of the Organ.”  The screening took place in Kino Babylon, an arthouse cinema on the ground floor of a building from 1929 on Rosa-Luxembourg Square in a funky neighborhood in former East Berlin now in the inevitable process of Brooklynifying.

The Babylon also boasts of being the only movie house in Germany with its original organ still in position as it was first installed. The console is tucked into the lower-left corner of the auditorium, beneath the stage and at the same level as the theater’s seats.

When I arrived for the movie that Sunday evening, the notorious American organist Cameron Carpenter, who lived for some years in Berlin and continues to perform there regularly, was busy at the instrument.  His modified, wide-wale Mohawk hairdo and form-fitting sequin-studded attire is instantly recognizable—his playing too.

Over nearly two decades, I have praised Carpenter’s outlandishly adventurous, eye- and ear-poppingly virtuosic talents, on some occasions also pillorying his wrecking-ball attitude to the history of the organ and to aesthetic approaches that diverge from his own.

As his Babylon prelude to the evening’s program, Carpenter was bungling his way—from memory—through a Trio Sonata by J. S. Bach. With a group of movie-goers gathered around at close quarters to admire his four-limbed fluency, Carpenter began cycling through the same passage. From my seat a dozen rows back, I could tell just in his posture and distracted performance that he probably wanted to be elsewhere. Carpenter is a gifted improviser and before too long he had pulled out of the turbulence of live performance and landed the piece at or near its intended destination.

After an introduction by an emcee to the rest of the evening’s proceedings, Carpenter stayed on the Wurlitzer’s bench to accompany the cataclysmic closing section of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. from 1928. This silent comedy concludes with a massive storm. Carpenter rode its winds with enormous panache, unleashing torrents of hilarious, artfully terrifying mayhem. The Bach had been a bust, but when the house was full and its attention focused on the moving image, Carpenter’s Keaton killed.

The featured documentary that I had come to see was less a well-edited and edifying argument about the spirit of the organ, than a stitched-up series of episodes and encomiums from famous organists, a few eccentrics, and enthusiastic representatives of a new generation of students thrilled, as so many young people have been over centuries, by this musical machine that has for so long seemed miraculous to so many. Carpenter appeared shortly in this film too, urging organists, as he always does—if also in more tempered tones than his brasher, younger self—to burst the shackles of tradition and pursue unfettered creativity.

But Carpenter didn’t seem free that evening, even if his genius surfed confidently on the gusts of Keaton’s.

Over two decades, Carpenter has been intent on tearing down traditions and cutting the organ from its lifeforce: wind. Electronics was for him the answer, first in the Virtual Pipe Organ, then in an even more ambitious portable (if you have a tractor-trailer at your disposal) project: the International Touring Organ.

The later initiative proved unsustainable. The dream evaporated under economic realities.

But it had not disappeared at the start of the pandemic, when Carpenter took his music to the people of Berlin, putting a more modestly sized electronic organ on a flatbed truck and airing his flamboyance in housing projects and parks.

Carpenter has styled himself a “smasher of cultural and musical taboos.” His tremendous musical abilities coupled with a linguistic sharpness and intellectual seriousness that flirted with dark humor made him a kind of Marquis de Sade at the court of the King of Instruments. It was an image he cultivated by characterizing his sexuality “as radically inclusive”—a provocative inversion of woke discourse that also parallels his heterodox approach to performance and a repertoire that reimagines organ classics, helps itself to symphonies, and romps with video games and movie music.

At Babylon Kino it was back to pipes—real, not virtual, though fewer than a thousand. That’s not many when compared to the thousands of virtual sounds once at his fingers and feet and compared to the large concert hall instruments he still plays.

More dark matter than supernova, Carpenter now seems to be searching out a new way through the musical universe that he so vibrantly, sometimes perhaps even viciously, energized.  Perhaps it is merely a result of aging; the engines of culture must take their energy from the young. Carpenter is now forty-five years old.

That his resolve might be ebbing could also have to do with the difficulty of sustaining his inimitable form of critique through performance, and the ensuing chaos at the keyboard and beyond. His creative art is fundamentally a destructive one. In his accompaniment to exuberant Keaton comedy, Carpenter seemed not simply to be responding to the images, but was conjuring them himself, enspiriting them with the breath of his organ art. It was if he were creating the destruction that we were watching on the screen, and I couldn’t help but hear and see in that paradox a metaphor for his mode of music and career-making.

Carpenter must know that positive energy is a more marketable commodity, easier to sell back to the grid through Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. No organist is more positively ebullient than Anna Lapwood. She has 4.2 million YouTube followers. Carpenter has some six thousand. Lapwood’s platform power helps her sell out cavernous churches and concert halls and has yielded a series of briskly-selling recordings on the SONY label. She plays on organs with and without pipes, the latter for an upcoming Arena Tour. (More on her next week.)

After Carpenter’s brilliant turn beneath the silver screen at the Babylon, he acknowledged the thrilled applause of the audience with a curt bow and stern countenance, then strode quickly down the side aisle. He looked tired and disgruntled, not boosted by his performance but beleaguered.

I had hoped to catch him in the lobby and introduce myself personally for the first time, but I couldn’t find him. He was either keeping a low profile or had fled the scene of his minor missteps and wind-powered triumph.

David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.

From Bread and Circuses of the Romans to the World Cup of the Globalists: A Saga of Hegemony 

Omar Ramahi

 August 14, 2026

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Photograph Source: Javier Perez Montes – CC BY-SA 4.0

What has changed since the times of the Romans when coliseums were built for entertainment and amusement? The answer: only the architecture. The objectives live on, but on a much grander scale.

“Bread and circuses” is a term that came from the Latin panem et circenses, coined around 100 AD by the Roman poet Juvenal. Despite what has reached us about Juvenal, his intentions and his political savvy and vision, the coinage was a brilliant realization that the Roman Empire’s construction of coliseums was used to divert their non-slave subjects from participating in political and economic discourse that would have chipped from the privileges of the courtiers and nobilities of the Empire.  Without food, the population would revolt since death and hunger are impossible to accept. However, the challenge that tyrant regimes are faced with (tyrants, by definition, are cruel, oppressive and unjust) is ensuring filling the two intake cavities in the human being that matter the most to the ruling elite—the stomach and the brain. The coliseums of the Roman Empire can be found across its expansive domain, and considering the significant expense of building such structures, the Romans must have understood their immense value in distracting and “entertaining” their subjects.

Historically, and for most people, filling the stomach related to alleviating hunger. Juvenal’s coinage could have implied that “circuses” captured the intricate system that we now call entertainment in all its aspects. Psychologists and linguists have a range of definitions for the word “entertainment”. Since entertainment may lead to addiction, yet another plausible definition for entertainment is sedation. Since modern definitions of entertainment can be expansive, possibly divergent, and at times contradictory, the contextualization of “circuses” as a form of entertainment may not be helpful here. Nevertheless, the definition of a circus should be broadened to include any activity that has an objective like that of the Roman circuses. These definitions largely converge to imply a process that leads to elation or emotional fluctuation which may take different and sometimes opposite manifestations. One may be entertained by a movie that is full of drama and sadness or may be entertained by a movie that induces laughter and joy. Yet, others may be entertained by sheer violence, from the soft type to the extreme.

Circuses or their modern connotation of entertainment are activities that are mostly gutted of any value to the human being. They can be considered as distractions or diversions that occupy one’s time that otherwise would be occupied by carrying out a value-based activity. Recreation is often conflated with entertainment, but the two are distinctly different. Watching a football match for two hours adds no value to a human being but largely adds significant value to sponsors of the match which caters its commercials to manipulate the brains of the viewers to buy their products, some of which can be very harmful.

Then comes the grand circus of them all, i.e., The World Cup. An international circus of a grand magnitude. Unlike those of the Roman Empire, this circus is managed entirely by a globalist organization with far reaching influence and power, primarily because of a budget larger than that of several countries combined, harbored by classic Swiss secrecy that provides fertile grounds for high corruption.  But this circus has a much more devastating effects than the diversion and distraction that the Roman’s circus was intended for. The globalists behind this global circus are creating a global impact, a very negative one indeed. An impact that cuts across social life, political life, economics, and the environment.

The Economic and Environmental Impact

Industry experts estimate that between 18 to 23 million official World Cup jerseys (licensed) will be sold netting three major sport equipment/apparel companies an estimated 2.4 billion USD. This is aside from the non-licensed jerseys whose number is estimated to range from 30% to 70% of the licensed ones, which would equal an additional 6 to 14 million jerseys. Thus, a conservative estimate is that approximately 30 million jerseys were made. These jerseys are made of polyester and nylon, materials that are non-biodegradable and can persist in the environment for hundreds of years.  The psychology behind a chid in a “third or fourth world country” yearning to spends more than US$120 to wear a shirt sporting the number of Messi, Ronaldo or the flag of a certain country is complex but is effective and brings huge financial gains for clubs, players and sports apparel hegemons. This phenomenon is pronounced in economically challenged countries but not in technologically advanced and economically prosperous countries. One would typically sport a symbol that carries deep personal attachment or inspires a feeling of strong loyalty, but the marketing psychology is based on suppressed identity syndrome rather than nationalism and loyalty. For instance, Moroccan kids love to sport their country’s jersey yet are willing to sacrifice their life crossing the sea to Spain, a football rival. Saudi fans are known for being fanatical in support of their country and sporting its team’s jerseys, yet no one turned out to greet their defeated World Cup team. Identifying with a “champ” or an individual that bears no resemblance to one’s real identity, wellbeing, home, country, culture, politics, religion, etc., is a phenomenon that reflects a subverted identify that the World Cup stakeholders have exploited brutally and brilliantly.

While shuttling between matches, the private jet of the president of FIFA, a globalist organization that is the epitome of corruption, generated over 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent. When adding the travel of fans from around the world to attend the matches which were spread over the expanse of North America, the Time Magazine estimated that the 2026 FIFA World Cup generated 7.8 to 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent. This carbon footprint is more than double the emissions of the 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar.

“Unite the World”

With unlimited cash, FIFA must have hired the most brilliant marketing firms to create and market a grand illusion that would strengthen the appeal of this major circus and make it palatable socially and politically. With vast marketing budget, harmful products can be turned into “cool” and “hip” products. (World Cup is typically sponsored by “soft drinks” producers.) That is why marketing is all about psychology.  “Unite the World” was the catch phrase FIFA adopted for its 2026 grand circus. This theme was featured prominently in commercials showing a group of friends lounging together in a home to watch the game and cheer their teams, while enjoying drinks and food. But this World Cup signature commercial is deeply flawed: one would only invite close friends to one’s home. It is highly unlikely that an Argentine would invite an English to watch the Argentina-England match, let alone to cuddle together and enjoy food and drinks in a loving and congenial atmosphere while cheering the two teams! Such commercials while imbecilic and deeply deceptive, claim that the match will unite the world. The reality is that the World Cup is divisive politically and culturally. Whether originated out of benign or sinister intentions, the World Cup has roots in France, a country that is arguably the birthplace of modern nationalism and all its divisive and jingoistic manifestations.

Arab countries while heavily reeling from the colonial enterprise that divided their domain into colonial political states (rather than nation states), approached the World Cup with even higher divisive attitude. The infamous Sykes-Picot plot, which started as a sinister colonially mischievous scheme to fragment the Arabs into colonial political fiefdoms, has been solidified with a booster dose every four years. Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, etc. believed themselves that they represent different nations simply because the Europeans composed the nation’s template for them and left them with the freedom (as “independent” and “sovereign” nations) to fill the boxes of the template with a flag, national anthem, national bird, etc.  This is like the prisoners when given an hour to walk in the prison courtyard. The guards don’t stipulate the path the prisoner take leaving the choice to the “independence” and “freedom” of the prisoners.

The semi-final match between Argentina and England brought old hatreds and political rivalries between the two nations to the forefront. Argentines took advantage of their defeat of England to rehash the Falkland war hostilities. The feud between these two nations was put on display for all the world to see, even for those who had no clue what the Falklands war was about.

Cultural Diversity or Cultural Hegemony

The half-time show, which was unconventionally stretched À la American style, featured Madonna, Shakira, BTS and Justin Bieber, all of whom are singers and performers whose life, manners, values, shows, and behavior on-and-off stage are divergent to those of most people of planet earth. Football superstars who do not represent any specific culture but only the sport of football, were brought in to provide an international appeal, but also to spice up the half-time show escorting Madonna and her cast of demons into the pitch. If the Times of India estimates are good, then the eyes of the 1.75 billion audience were most likely fixated on Madonna’s pornographic-style dress, legs, body and gestures. While some cultures may view certain dances as full of intense artistic expressions and rhythms, the vast majority may view them as sexually provocative and outright vulgar and dirty.

Only few years ago, Shakira’s belly dance including her costume was viewed by the host country as “dirty dance”. Now it is hailed as an artistic expression demonstrating cultural diversity and embracement. Let us remember that the football match is supposed to be rated G (general audience) not NC-17 (adults only). Unless the NC-17 rating has become more palatable in recent years to make watching pornographic gestures a daytime family experience.

Cultures, by definition, are different from each other, otherwise, it is a singular culture.  When one narrow culture that can only be found in Hollywood and Bollywood movies supported by globalists the likes of FIFA attempts to impose values on the majority, it is no longer entertainment, artistic expressions, or instruments to “unite the world”, but pure cultural hegemony, if outright cultural decimation. Those performers reflect cultural norms acceptable only in the pockets of the West and possibly partly by its cultural sphere (such as pockets in South Korea, India and Thailand, to name only few examples). The penetration of the half-time show with hedonistic and satanic expressions, and vulgarity infused with extreme sexual and pornographic expressions was alarming and could have never been planned in the spirit of the all-too familiar and ostentatious ruse of collectivism that allegedly defines world bodies such as FIFA. To veneer the half-time culturally disruptive show with benignity, goodwill, charitable spirit, and philanthropy, FIFA brought in no other but children, especially from Africa, to sinisterly decorate their pitch with. Afterall, who doesn’t like children? The whole sale satanic vulgarity was packaged as if it was done for the children of the world. Here is FIFA’s statement: “The FIFA World Cup 2026™ Topps Final Halftime Show will support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund to expand access to quality education and football opportunities for children worldwide.” This is straight out of the Rockefellerian playbook to cover a mischievous financial enterprises with a philanthropic gloss.

The irony is that this grand FIFA circus is taking place while the host country is an accomplice to the genocide in Gaza that cut severely the lives of more than 20,000 Palestinian children and malnourished hundreds of thousands of other children. One can imagine Fascist Italy hosting a grand global circus while carrying out the genocide in Libya that resulted in the death of 50,000 to 70,000 Libyan civilians during the Italian concentration-death camps in the 1930s that created the template for the follow up Nazi concentration camps in Europe.

Whereas the Romans were concerned with feeding the stomachs of their subjects, the globalists, or the true modern borderless empire, focuses on controlling their subjects. The “bread” has become associated with vulgar and satanic profit and hegemony rather than satisfying instinctive hunger. The mounting pressure on most people around the globe to make a liveable wage exacerbates the mental anguish and social pressure that makes the multitude gravitate towards a more distractive sedating experience, the grandest of which is the World Cup.  So, not to offend other entertainers who may provide genuine artistic expressions to improve our lives, the World Cup can be classified as sedative-entertainment.

The World Cup has become a grand circus with severe negative impact on everything humans care for.

‘Starwashing’: How Space Companies Use the Greenwashing Playbook While Engaging in Environmentally Damaging Practices


Marissa E. Yingling, University of Louisville

 August 14, 2026

From launchpads to low Earth orbit and beyond, space companies and their affiliates are deploying a familiar marketing tactic – with a new twist. In a space economy projected to reach US$1.8 trillion by 2035, they sell space exploration narratives by appealing to a desire to expand humankind beyond Earth – while downplaying or omitting the negative repercussions for Earth and the space environment. Welcome to the age of starwashing.

You may have heard the term greenwashing, which describes when companies falsely claim that their practices or products are more environmentally friendly than they are, or when their green efforts are insignificant compared to their harmful environmental practices.

Some examples range from auto companies claiming that dumping cars into oceans benefits fish to plastics companies asserting that their products are more easily recycled than they are.

Today, greenwashing often disguises the true nature of corporate activity by appealing to the increasing number of people who care about environmental sustainability.

But greenwashing practices don’t end with those who care about the Earth. As a social work researcher interested in the consequences of commercialism both on and off Earth, I’ve studied how space companies are using similar strategies. Instead of appealing only to a sense of environmental responsibility, however, they also appeal to your sense of cosmic wonder. I call this practice starwashing.

Starwashing can also appeal to an interest in learning about life’s origins, Earth’s place in the universe, or the desire for humans to explore places beyond our planet. For example, positioning a space-related idea, activity, product or policy as a benefit to “all humankind,” even if it could damage Earth or the larger cosmic environment, would be starwashing.

For the benefit of Earth?

Blue Origin is a leading space technology company. Its mission states that it aims both to colonize space and “restore and sustain Earth.”

The company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, envisions building space habitats that could house billions as a solution to environmental catastrophes on Earth. He’s also outlined a vision for moving industry off Earth, most immediately to the Moon.

Bezos’ other company, Amazon, has a carbon footprint larger than dozens of nations, including Ireland, Bolivia and Norway. At face value, moving some of Amazon’s activities into space to lessen its carbon footprint may seem environmentally desirable.

But even if having a fraction of the human population live and work in space one day far in the future were possible, it would not fix pressing environmental crises such as wildfires or climate change in the near term.

Blue Origin also makes misleading claims about its rocket fuel. Its New Shepard rocket, it says, is “for the benefit of Earth,” with the company claiming that nearly all the rocket fuel’s dry mass is reused. Its engine’s combustion results only in water vapor, with no carbon emissions. But water vapor can amplify atmospheric warming that other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide cause, which the statement omits, and on which Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.

Mining the Moon

Companies are also racing to extract resources from the Moon for what some, including Blue Origin, say will enable lunar development by reducing trips to and from the Moon. Other companies aim to harvest valuable resources such as helium-3.

These activities will require more frequent rocket launches, which will increase demand for launch sites that use more coastal land and, potentially, ocean waters.

Such ventures will also affect the environment of the Moon. The lunar surface area is less than the combined surface area of North America and South America, and desirable resources are restricted to certain locations – far from limitless. Prime landing locations are also priceless scientific sites that human ventures could endanger.

At an annual Space Resources Week event in Luxembourg, businesses have publicly discussed how to make mining other celestial bodies, including the Moon, more palatable for the public. While the host has suggested coming up with a word that sounds “more beneficial,” venture capitalists have proposed a marketing campaign to divert the focus from environmental damage off-Earth by espousing space’s promises for pharmaceutical research and wireless connectivity.

A crowded low Earth orbit

Artificial intelligence, referred to by financial experts as a “key” ingredient for space economy growth, is also relevant.

Bezos and Elon Musk both have companies that build and rely on resource-intensive data centers based on land. They’ve espoused plans to construct solar-powered orbital data centers and to help other companies such as Google do the same. They frame these plans as environmentally beneficial because an orbital data center wouldn’t require the same amount of water or electricity as a data center on Earth.

But orbital data centers, made up of satellite clusters, would add to an already-crowded space environment.

Blue Origin has already launched thousands of new internet satellites to keep pace with Musk’s company SpaceX, which has launched tens of thousands of satellites and plans to launch 1 million to power AI data centers. These satellites can threaten Earth-based astronomy, pollute Earth’s orbit with debris and damage the ozone layer when they burn up in the atmosphere.

In February 2026, Musk admitted that terrestrial AI data centers impose unsustainable “hardship on communities and the environment.” But his company continues to build them, and analysts suggest that he took SpaceX public to fund AI ambitions, not space travel. While the SpaceX brand relies on exciting notions of sending people into space, the company leases unused computing power to AI competitors at its Colossus data complex in Memphis, Tennessee, where environmental groups have alleged the center’s emissions violate the Clean Air Act.

Star appeal

Companies sometimes use “stars” – as in celebrities – in these starwashing practices. In 2021, SpaceX partnered with businessman Jared Isaacman, who is now the NASA administrator, to advertise seats on the first all-civilian flight to orbit, Inspiration4. They ran a Super Bowl commercial that showed the Earth reflected in an astronaut’s helmet, accompanied by singer Celeste’s soulful rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Blue Origin transformed celebrities into space tourists to display its launch capabilities. On April 14, 2025, it helped an all-female crew, including pop star Katy Perry, fly to suborbital space for four minutes. While Blue Origin showed off its New Shepard rocket, Perry promoted her upcoming tour.

Benefiting ‘all humankind’

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 obligates nations to explore space for the benefit of all countries as the “province of all mankind.”

SpaceX, for instance, purportedly aims to save humanity from future environmental catastrophes, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, by colonizing the Moon and Mars.

This philosophy bypasses intersecting environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss that are more probable near-term threats to Earth’s inhabitability than the kind of catastrophic asteroid impact estimated to occur once every few million years.

As U.S.-based space companies, principal among them SpaceX, receive billions in taxpayer-funded contracts, their environmental effects both on and beyond Earth will grow. An open question is whether all of humankind will reap the benefits of space, as the Outer Space Treaty asks.

A new movement?

In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew captured the first color photograph of Earth from space: “Earthrise.” It helped inspire the environmental movement of the last century, which included holding companies accountable for greenwashing.

This past April, the Artemis II crew captured the earlier photo’s counterpart, “Earthset.” This image of our blue marble setting behind the Moon captivated people across the world.

Whether it will motivate an off-Earth environmental movement – one that holds space companies accountable for starwashing practices – is yet to be seen.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Marissa E. Yingling is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Louisville.