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thatfeministkilljoy · 5 years ago

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This September 20 to 27, we rise up in peaceful, non-violent rebellion with a single message: ACT NOW on the climate and ecological crisis! This week of climate action is in solidarity with and in support of Halifax Youth for Climate Action/School Strike 4 Climate HFX. We strive to work in solidarity with Mi'kmaw Water Protectors in Mi'kma'ki and all Indigenous peoples facing continued threats to their rights and sovereignty. Throughout the week, rebels will support youth strikers as we demand a livable future. Youth strike leaders have asked XR not to plan our own NVDA (non-violent direct actions) in HRM during the week. However, there will be plenty of events, marches, talks, trainings, street fairs, parties, and other actions! XR international has called for a wave of NVDA on October 7th, so we will ask Rebels to postponed NVDA until then. SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: FRIDAY SEPT 20: --2 EVENTS!- Interfaith Gathering and CLIMATE CHANGE RALLY - to honour the victims of climate change 12 noon, Grand Parade Square on Barrington. organized by concerned citizens of Halifax - see event info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/757366544721018/ and then the YOUTH NATIONAL DIE-IN: (Friday Sept 20) meeting at 3:30 pm at Mumford Bus Terminal. (then going together to the secret Die-in location.) The Die-in will happen simultaneously by youth activists across Canada. ----------------------------------------------------------- SATURDAY SEPT 21: ART-BUILD at Quinfest, 11-3pm on Quinpool Road - info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2883491621724951/ ALSO: Community WATER WALK in Tatamagouche - meet at 9am at the Snowmobile Club on Warwick Mtn Rd in Tatamagouche. email [email protected] for more info. https://www.facebook.com/events/509054906558892/ Also SATURDAY SEPT 21: XR talk: 'Heading for extinction and what to do about it'. 3:30 to 5pm, Halifax North Memorial Library on Gottingen Street. https://www.facebook.com/events/2527129914043648/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUNDAY SEPT 22: COMMUNITY GUERRILLA GARDENING - building a vision for the future- we will grow what we want to see in our city. 10am and on - location TBA bring tools and prepare to help! event: https://www.facebook.com/events/400851284162650/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- MONDAY SEPT 23: XR talk: 'Heading for extinction and what to do about it'. Halifax Central Library: Lindsay Children's Room, 3-4:30pm https://www.facebook.com/events/393807141516263/ Also MONDAY SEPT 23: OPEN MIC HOUSE CONCERT: 7pm: 2539 Agricola St. fundraiser for STOP ALTON GAS legal fund https://www.facebook.com/events/647018249123691/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TUESDAY SEPT 24: BAKE SALE! fundraiser for Water Protectors, Stop Alton Gas legal fund 11-4pm Dalhousie Campus - McCain building lobby organized by Our-Time and The Loaded Ladle https://www.facebook.com/events/309870626524761/ ALSO on Tuesday: David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis -Climate First Tour, in support of youth strikers across the country - They will ask people to come to the rally on the 27th! 7pm Dalhousie Arts Centre - $14 to $26 tickets at: https://www.climatefirsttour.ca/ ------------------------------------------------------------- WEDNESDAY SEPT 25: PAINT THE TOWN! 3:30pm, meet at Halifax Central Library the youth want to create messages and art about the need for climate action - should be fun! ALSO 6pm FILM SCREENING: Standing Rock Parts 1 and 2" "Sacred Water" and "Red Power" directed by Michelle Latimer, 2017, 110 minutes) at the Khyber Centre for the Arts. Part of the Radical Imagination Film and Discussion Series: https://www.facebook.com/events/2388849514688109/?active_tab=about ----------------------------------------------------------- THURSDAY SEPT 26: PARTY FOR THE PLANET! Concerts, poster making, and Sustainable Market all day - 9am to 9pm Granville Mall - Duke and Granville St https://www.facebook.com/events/376133056655045/ ALSO: Whose Water Is it, Anyway? Book launch and public Talk with Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians - Maude will ask people to come to the big rally on the 27th! 7pm, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic https://www.facebook.com/events/2125092891119826/ --------------------------------------------------------- THE BIG BIG DAY: FRIDAY SEPT 27: GENERAL STRIKE - EVERYONE NEEDED! IF YOU CAN ONLY ATTEND ONE EVENT, THIS IS THE ONE! 11am meet at Victoria Park (Spring Garden and South Park St) The marching route will cover some distance, so bring your signs, your voices and your walking shoes! Most of all, bring your neighbours, your friends and your family. PLEASE COME!! HELP THE YOUTH DEMAND CLIMATE ACTION NOW!! WE NEED YOU. WE NEED YOU. are we getting the point across? STRIKE FROM WORK/TAKE THE DAY OFF - PLEASE COME!! ALSO ON SEPT 27: Non-Violent Direct Action training Halifax Central Library, BMO room https://www.facebook.com/events/457763944833521/ ----------------------------------------------------------- Sunday Sept 28 and Monday 29: and a cherry on top of the week: The Deanery Project offers solutions: NATURAL BUILDING EAST ECOLOGICAL BUILDING DESIGN CONFERENCE: funding may be available - please ask them if needed. https://www.facebook.com/events/371864056695348/ ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: More events are welcome! Send a message to this page, or register your climate action event on the http://novastrike.earth/# website and we'll add your event to the list! Please try to choose a date/time that will compliment the current schedule. The more action the better. Thank you! This date has been chosen by Greta Thunberg, Climate Strike Canada, School Strike 4 Climate Halifax, 350 .org, Earth Strike and many international climate movements. Contact the youth organizers at: https://www.instagram.com/schoolstrike4climatehfx/ [email protected] twitter @ss4cHFX If you've been waiting for the right time to come together with hundreds or thousands of fellow humans to pull us all away from the brink of senseless destruction and back towards a future where we care for this planet and each other, where decision-makers prioritize life over greed, this is it! We need all hands on deck! If you're young and want a future, if you're old and want to do your duty, if you're an organizer, lawyer, artist, musician, builder, crafter, speaker, caregiver…anyone and everyone else - this is our time to stand together with love in our hearts for this world, and rage against its senseless destruction. Be sure to join this event, share it widely, invite your friends, talk to the groups that you are involved in - your church, your union, your clubs - if we all stand together, we can win the future we deserve! Governments must ACT NOW to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025. Time is running out. At this point in history we have three choices: to die, to survive or to thrive. Glaciers are melting, permafrost is thawing, sea levels are rising, and hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes because of climate breakdown. In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, the collapse of civiliZation is a distinct possibility. We are in the face of unprecedented flooding, wildfires, thawing, species deaths and harsh consequences for marginalized communities in Canada, and widespread heatwaves, water shortages and resource-related conflicts in the wider world, especially the Global South. BUSINESS AS USUAL Our Federal Parliament, HRM council and dozens of municipalities have declared a climate emergency, but the decision-makers are not taking the decisive actions required by the crisis. The current plan to ramp up fossil fuel infrastructure and burn carbon past 2050 is an alarmingly insufficient response for halting climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. By then it will be too late. Our current economic system rewards the exploitation of people and planet. Our house is on fire, and politicians are ignoring the science as they encourage new pipelines, airports, fracking and oil-sands extraction, with billions in taxpayer money flowing into fossil fuels, all while trampling Indigenous rights. Meanwhile, politicians in power continue to refuse solutions, like a green new deal for a fair and rapid transition to safe, responsible energy. It is only by adopting meaningful measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025, protecting biodiversity, upholding UNDRIP, and making ecocide law that the government can show itself to be on the right side of history - in the pursuit of Climate Justice. In line with the urgency of reports from the IPCC and IPBES, we remind the government of the need to ACT NOW. In the past, Canada has been a leader and trendsetter to other major democracies. If we can show leadership now, the resulting chain reaction across the world will be crucial for securing the future. LEARN MORE EXTINCTION REBELLION Extinction Rebellion is a non-violent, international movement that aims to achieve radical change to minimize the risk of human and animal extinction and ecological collapse. We invite everyone, and every part of everyone, to join us for this week of beautiful, decentralized rebellion. Visit https://Rebellion.Earth to learn more about our demands, who we are and our theory of change. Sign up to XRNS here: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-extinction-rebellion-nova-scotia This event takes place on UNCEDED, and UNSURRENDERED Territory of the Mi’kmaw People. We are all Treaty People and have responsibilities to each other and this land. More info on the Peace and Friendship Treaties: http://mikmaqrights.com/negotiations/treaties Follow the School Strike 4 Climate HFX school strikers here: https://www.instagram.com/schoolstrike4climatehfx/?hl=en or email the Youth Strikers here: [email protected]

LINK TO FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

@allthecanadianpolitics @nspoli

#long post #very long post #climate change #halifax #nova scotia #nspoli #cndpoli #my posts

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100dad · 3 years ago

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Why I sold my Businesses in 2019

I get this question a lot and the truth is there isn't just one reason. It was several factors that all came together at what I felt was the perfect time. To put this into perspective, this was not our first offer. We have had regular offers since 2014. Some were good and some were ridiculous. By 2019 I was pretty confident I could sell at any point and time.

At the same time RCS was eight years old, AG was six years old and FBV was three years old. I started them from scratch with zero customers and zero employees, and had built them to a modest size. We weren’t focused on aggressive growth, we were focused on taking really good care of our clients, keeping the business profitable, and not stretching our resources thin. We had zero debt, paid for all our inventory when we received it, and had cash reserves. The business was running well. At the same time, we were getting to the point where we needed to consider borrowing money to grow. To continue to grow the business at this point would have been expensive. We were a two-truck company and were soon going to need a third truck, a third driver, and a layer of management to help run the company because I was being stretched too thin. The cost to pick up customers can be very expensive, especially on the market and vending applications. I had a couple accounts in the pipeline that would cost us almost 100K in new equipment. That’s 100K in cash just to buy the equipment to install into two customers. I was preparing to spend a couple 100K on equipment, people, assets, and inventory. On top of the need at that point to grow more to generate more income. Which would have meant a salesman and even more cash out the door to buy more equipment for the new accounts. No, don’t feel sorry for me. This is just how business runs and I was in an industry that while profitable, requires a tremendous upfront cost to service customers and you make your money back in the long run. We were just on the bubble for our current resources and borrowing was realistically the next step to do that.

I should mention I hate borrowing. I started my career in 2007. I saw the good times for a few months and then I saw the economy completely buckle. I saw good long-standing businesses going under. Not because they did anything wrong, but because their customers disappeared. There was little they could do and that was before they needed 15 trucks all with big payments. They also needed to buy to 50,000 sq. ft. warehouses, and they leveraged their inventory and everything else because that was the smart move. But then there were no more customers, and they still had the big mortgage, they still had to pay for the stockpile of inventory and equipment, and they still had to make 15 truck payments. They could reduce payroll, but they were stuck with debts and that was the end of a lot of businesses from 2008 to 2012. They did not run the business into the ground. The economy collapsed. I watched a lot of good business owners brought to their knees during this time. At the same time the people with no debt and cash were making a killing. Buying businesses and real estate for pennies on the dollar. But no one could take bank loans to make that happen. You had to have cash. All that to say I am really against debt for that reason... I live happily knowing if everything goes to crap I’ll be fine. My cars are paid for, my house is paid for, my business is debt free… everything can go bad and I’m still okay.

I will admit I did try to hire a few people to step up and actually run my businesses. I attempted to train and hand over the reigns, but none of them were capable. Either for lack of motivation, lack of integrity, or simply lack of natural talent needed to be a small business executive. So combine the failure of me to hire a quality manager on top of the complete and utter fear of debt, tied into the need to take debt on… The clear decision from a pure business standpoint was I had taken this business as far as I was willing to take it as a solo owner and executive.

On the personal side, a dad has to factor in his family. Financial stability, what is next for my career. Will the family be okay if I were to sell? We were. Financially we are 100% debt free. The house has been paid off for a few years. Retirement has been funded, our kids’ college is funded. We have a solid cash reserve.

As far as a future career goes, I’m 32 years old. I have about seven ideas a minute for new businesses. Most of them suck, but a few are good. We know as a family I will always be able to do something to at the very least generate a living income. Realistically more than just a living income. I have always wanted to dabble in real estate. Buying and holding commercial properties and rentals. Maybe a beachfront house to rent out since we live in a beach town. Now we have the cash to make that happen. We can buy properties and/or fund the next business idea with cash. And of course a 100% DAD forum has been on my mind for a couple years. So being able to invest the resources and time into creating content for the brand feels almost like a calling.

We talked it over as a family and one of the thoughts that went through our heads was the ability to travel. I don’t mean vacation… but really travel. Explore the country and really get to dig deep into the vast array of geography and history our country has to offer. That was always kind of this nice fantasy to be able to do for us and now it is a real possibility. Again I go back to timing. At this point in our lives our kids are three, six, and nine. By the time we leave in the spring the three year old will be four. So from the kid perspective the nine year old is not yet in his preteen or teenage years where it would be harder to rip him away from his social roots and the youngest will be old enough to actually remember a good amount of what he sees. We really felt like one to two years on the road at this stage of our lives, while we are young and our kids are at good ages, is really an opportunity not many people get. It would be a real regret in our lives if we did not seize that opportunity.

So from a business standpoint. We were on the brink of the next big reinvestment and restructuring of how we operate. The timing lined up there. The valuation for our business was strong and I felt the valuation would actually decrease once we needed to incorporate management and grow because of the extra expenses the business would require to operate. We have been on a strong run economically. I’m not Nostradamus, but typically these good economic times correct. It could be next year, it could be in five years. But there was always the risk that we could correct next year and selling would be less advantageous. In normal circumstances that would not be an issue since we were in a good fiscal position. We would just ride out the bad times. But we wanted to travel and build the 100% DAD brand. So that would really affect the ability to do so and if we waited another four or five years for things to turn around then our oldest would be a teenager and the others would be 11 and nine. Those are much bigger bodies to store, feed, and otherwise travel with.

Timing is important. It seems like all things are coming together. So we took action. Negotiated the sale of our biggest assets and prepared for the experience of a lifetime.

Follow 100% DAD on Social: Instagram: @100Dad Facebook: @100Dad TikTok: @100Dad YouTube: 100% Dad Twitter: @The100Dad

#business #smallbusiness #exit strategy #retirement

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opedguy · 4 years ago

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EU Meddles in Russia’s Internal Affairs

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Feb. 8, 2021.--European Union members Germany, Poland and Sweden declared a Russian diplomat in their countries “persona non grata,” essentially following former President Barack Obama’s leading in expelling Russian diplomats from their countries. But like Obama, Brussels-based European Commission, led by 62-year-old President Ursula von der Leyen will find out quickly that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t easily intimidated by Western officials, including the United States. EU’s 73-year-old Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell met with 71-year-old Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Feb. 5, demanding the Putin release Navalny from jail. Arrested in Moscow Jan. 18 and sentenced to two-years-eight months in a Moscow court Feb. 2, the U.S. and EU demand that Navanly be released. Navalny led a clandestine network of dissidents seeking to topple Putin.

Think of the colossal hypocrisy to the U.S. Senate tomorrow essentially trying 74-year-old former President of “incitement of insurrection,” because some knuckleheads went ballistic, staging a riot armed with cell phones, not Kalashnikovs or Molotov Cocktails. Yet 81-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her House impeachment managers led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) want to haze Trump one last time in absentia, a grotesque Kabuki theater for all the Trump-haters to get their jollies. When you consider that Biden and EU demand that Putin immediately release a known dissident who’s open about toppling Putin, it can’t get more hypocritical than Trump’s being impeached for the second time. Evicting Russian diplomats does nothing other than push the world closer to the brink. Under Trump there was too much peace for Democrats and the press to handle.

Booting out Russian diplomats in the EU accomplishes nothing, other than hiking natural gas and petroleum prices. “We have informed the Russian ambassador that a person from the Russian embassy is asked to leave Sweden,” Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linda wrote of Twitter. “This is a clear response to the unacceptable decision to expel a Swedish diplomat who was only performing his duties.” Engaging it tit-for-tat retaliation with diplomatic personnel turns the clock back on international relations. EU officials didn’t have to take such a harsh stance on Navalny, someone known as a dangerous dissident working in a clandestine insurgency to topple Putin’s government. What would the EU do to any activists seeking to topple the Brussels government, including the European Commission and European Council? Yet when it comes to Russia, the U.S. and EU demand Navalny be released.

Over his 20 years reign, Putin has engaged in a number of crackdowns on Russian dissidents unhappy with his authoritarian rule. But unlike the U.S. or EU, democracy didn’t last too long under former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev or Yeltsin, both of whom wanted to experiment with more freedoms for Russian citizens. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Dec. 24, 1991, the Russian Federation experimented with democratic reforms called “perestroika” and “glasnost,” attempting to make overtures with the West, especially the United States. Watching relations with Moscow deteriorate, there’s no Trump left on the world stage that can get along with authoritarian leaders. Trump was crucified by Democrats and the U.S. press for trying to get along with foreign dictators. Rather than praise Trump for his uncanny ability to get along with America’s new-and-old foes, he was persecuted.

Putin sent a loud message to Washington and Brussels that if he has to go back to what’s left of the Warsaw Pact or, new alliances with China, Iran and North Korea, he won’t hesitate to make new friends and business partners outside the West. Germany complained about Putin’s decision to expel European diplomats, insisting it ‘was not justified in any way.” Instead of reacting defensively, the EU should stop meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. U.S. and EU officials are in no capacity to challenge Putin on the world stage in hot spots around the world. If Putin’s invasion of Crimea taught Western officials anything, Putin wouldn’t stop defending Russia’s geopolitical interests. Putin didn’t like watching a CIA-sponsored coup take place in Kiev Feb. 22 while he was handcuffed hosting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. No one in the EU wants to challenge Putin militarily.

EU lawmakers stepped over the line blasting Putin for arresting, charging, convicting and sentencing dissident Alexi Navalny. When the EU has a politician that differs from Brussel’s dictates, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Poland’s Andrzej Duda, they apply maximum pressure to seek conformity. When the EU, backed 66-year-old German Chancellor Angela Merkel or 43-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron’s proxy war in Syria topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, they spent millions creating the worst humanitarian crisis since WW II. With 500,000 dead and 15 million Syrian displaced, it practically broke up the EU. Orban and Duda didn’t want to take hordes of Syrian refuges into their countries. Brussels’ immigration quotas on the U.K. drove Britain with the Brexit vote out the EU. EU officials must decide whether meddling in Russia’s internal affairs is worth the consequences.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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yasbxxgie · 4 years ago

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The COVID-19 pandemic signals that civilization has breached a major ‘tipping point’ that could pave the way for a dangerous new era of interacting ecological emergencies.

Scientific evidence accumulated over the last five years suggests that the pandemic didn't come out of the blue, but is a direct consequence of industrial civilization's breaching of key ‘planetary boundaries’—these are important natural ecosystems needed to maintain what scientists describe as the ‘safe operating space’ for human survival on the planet.

The more we destabilize those boundaries, the more this safe space for human habitation shrinks—and COVID-19 suggests that the world economy is now entering a volatile new phase of chronic instability due to not just one crisis, but the interaction of many crises including climate change, resource bottlenecks, food system failures and civil unrest. It is the escalating synergy between these crises, each of which is experiencing its own tipping points, which points to the risk we are crossing a planetary threshold in the global system.

This verdict doesn’t come from new data, but from applying a systems lens to understand the massive amount of data we already have. I assessed the evidence in a major report for the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, a British think-tank which has led on the European Commission’s CONVERGE project, among other things.

Pandemic: a symptom of civilization itself

Prior to 2020, warnings from public health experts of an incoming global pandemic had accumulated over the last few decades. All of them have based their diagnosis on examining the risks posed by the relentless expansion of industrial civilization.

One of the latest warnings in 2016 from the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework published by the National Academy of Medicine, identified the main drivers of pandemic risk as continued population growth, increasing food production, closer transport ties due to globalization, and the expansion of urban areas into natural wildlife.

Numerous studies have similarly pinned the heightened risk of a pandemic on such expanding industrial processes. And many have noted that intensifying climate change plays a compounding role, by forcing disease-hosting species out of their traditional habitats.

There could be up to 600,000 unknown “zoonotic” virus species—hosted by animals—circulating in wildlife which could potentially spread to humans, the transmission of which is made more likely due to how industrial expansion is driving climate and land use changes. “Climate change means more zoonotic emergence risk—and no, mitigation doesn’t seem to reduce that, even if we stay under 2 degrees,” said Professor Colin J. Carlson of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science Security on Twitter. “It’s coming no matter what we do now.”

One of the other biggest drivers of the increasing risk of pandemics is tropical deforestation, also a result of accelerating industrial expansion. New research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic not only spurred greater illegal forest clearing in tropical countries—especially Brazil—during lockdown measures; but in turn is increasing the risk of disease outbreaks. “Zoonotic diseases, public health, economy, agriculture, and forests may all be reciprocally linked in complex positive and negative feedback loops,” wrote the authors, describing a self-reinforcing cycle of “emerging threats to nature and society.”

There is no evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was triggered by deforestation or climate change. But it did seem to emerge from wildlife-to-human transmission in China, which has become more common in the context of a rapidly expanding urban society.

Five years ago, an international team of scientists identified deforestation and land-use change as among four planetary boundaries which civilization was already at high risk of crossing, out of a total of nine.

Other planetary boundaries we were on the brink of breaching at that time included the rate at which species extinctions, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus into the environment due to industrial agriculture. The further we breach these and other planetary boundaries, the greater the risk of irreversibly driving the Earth into a less hospitable state for humanity. Now scientists warn that at the current rate of deforestation, industrial civilization faces a 90 percent chance of collapse within the next two to four decades due to the devastating impacts on key ecosystems.

The COVID-19 crisis, I argue, urgently needs to be reframed. It’s not just ‘a pandemic.’ It’s a direct consequence of industrial civilization’s continued encroachment across planetary boundaries. As urban civilization along with its tightly-coupled global transport networks continue to expand and penetrate the biosphere, it is exposing more people to greater numbers of different virus habitats, which is what helped trigger the global pandemic.

Multiple tipping points

The systemic consequences of the pandemic have also been unpredictable and wide-ranging, exposing deep-seated structural fragilities within interconnected social, economic, and health systems. The public health crisis is now amplifying, and being amplified by, multiple simultaneous breakdowns.

The pandemic has forced an already unsustainable global economy into a state of paralysis. Economic modeling shows that all options lead to economic contraction and a reduction in GDP. If we let the virus spread uncontrollably, we face the devastating impact on health care systems amidst millions of hospitalizations, leading to economic collapse. Periodic lockdowns, too, have dire economic consequences. And even countries in East Asia that have protected most lives and livelihoods face what the World Bank calls a “triple shock” from the pandemic, the economic impact of containment, and reverberations from global recession.

Given economic research showing that over the last century the global economy is experiencing increasingly larger and slower recessions, the pandemic appears to be amplifying this pre-existing trend.

Perhaps the most significant yet understated impact has been on the global oil industry. Prior to the pandemic, some experts were forecasting that by 2020 fossil fuels would face a crisis of plummeting demand, while others predicted a supply crisis of escalating costs amidst ever diminishing returns. In hindsight, the pandemic has dramatically worsened both these processes, precipitating the largest oil price collapse in history. There is now a risk that long-term shut-ins could lead a significant percentage of oil reserves to experience permanent damage, suggesting that global oil production may well be experiencing a turning point this year.

The danger is that this unfolding energy crisis will, too, have complex societal consequences that are difficult to anticipate. With so much of the last decade of economic growth fueled by the shift to US shale oil and gas, the pandemic not only threatens to accelerate industry bankruptcies, but to provoke deepening recession and a global debt crisis that could particularly afflict oil producers.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is driving up levels of global hunger, as well as straining food supply chains—a crisis that could be worsened due to the effects of an oil crisis on our fossil fuel-dependent food system.

All these crises would be greatly amplified by climate change, where our ability to detect potential tipping points is inherently ambiguous. Eight years ago, scientists recognized 2020 as the critical year before which we needed to reduce carbon emissions to keep global average temperatures below the upper safe limit of two degrees Celsius.

It’s 2020, and emissions have continued rising overall, despite the pandemic’s dampening effect. And cutting-edge research around planetary boundaries suggests that human activities over the next decade or two will be pivotal in determining whether or not we trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks that could lead to a worst-case ‘hothouse earth’ scenario.

The global system is therefore experiencing multiple, simultaneous crises—the pandemic, energy, the economy, food, and climate change. These crises are not separate, but inherently intertwined. As they intensify, they converge and amplify one another. Left unchecked on a business-as-usual trajectory, this could become a system-wide self-reinforcing feedback process.

When a whole system experiences multiple, simultaneous tipping points, the very structure and architecture of that system comes under strain, and is pushed into a transition toward a new state. My research suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is a signature of this process. Civilization’s breach of planetary boundaries is now triggering multiple interconnected crises which are shrinking the safe operating space for human survival. And it could either result in breakdown—or breakthrough.

Toward the next system

That’s why our report recommends a simultaneous whole system transition across multiple sectors. As governments continue to think about 'COVID-19' recovery plans, they need to join the dots and realize that economic prosperity, public health and ecological health are deeply intertwined.

To avoid the next pandemic, the next climate crisis, the next resource bottleneck, we need a World War II-scale transition to a ‘lifeboat economy’: an economy that thrives by protecting public health and planetary life-support systems. Markets cannot thrive when they degrade their own ecological foundations.

That requires a paradigm shift in economics: moving away from profit for its own sake, toward redesigning markets so that they meet public needs and nourish ecosystems. Governments are going to have to accept that a future of declining GDP may be unavoidable. Far from doom and gloom, this opens up an opportunity to rethink our addiction to endless growth linked to material overconsumption, and to embrace the mounting evidence that a good quality of life is available to all within planetary boundaries even with dramatically lower GDP—as long as we are ready to change.

Integral to that is a strategy to address the frontline driver of future pandemic risk, which also contributes to around 15 percent of global carbon emissions: deforestation. Driven largely by expanding industrial agriculture, there isn’t a single major food commodity that escapes deforestation. Currently, the predominant approach (for instance in the EU) tends to single out one commodity—palm oil. But this makes little sense given that beef production is the world’s number one driver of deforestation. It also creates a danger that if we shift away from palm oil, this will displace demand onto other oilseeds which, however, are less efficient and more land-intensive—which could drive even greater rates of deforestation.

To solve this, we therefore need a more consistent approach to stop deforestation across all commodities. One way to do this is to scale-up approaches which are beginning to work. In Malaysia, for instance, the rate of deforestation has fallen year on year for the last 5 years largely due to the impact of its own national certification scheme, MSPO—which is the world’s first mandatory sustainable palm oil scheme. According to Glen Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, although far from perfect, such schemes have been so successful in dropping deforestation from over a million to less than 250,000 acres per year, that they could be used as a “blueprint” for how to achieve the same in the Amazon.

The imperative, in other words, is to further incentivize, strengthen and support those locally-enforced schemes which are working, while focusing penalties on intransigent producers. One mechanism to incorporate this combination of carrot and stick could be realigning trade deals so that ecological restoration is at their foundation, rather than simply an afterthought. Trade would open access to Western markets for producing countries on condition of meeting core targets on domestic sustainable production.

Simultaneously, the full potential of the ‘Green New Deal’ opportunity must be recognised. Recent research reveals that just $2 trillion could transition the entire continental United States to a 100 percent solar, wind, and battery storage system, provided at marginal near-zero cost, opening up opportunities to transform entire industries across mining, manufacturing and agriculture while creating millions of jobs.

Governments can support this transition by gradually winding down incumbent fossil fuel industries. This would mitigate economic shocks as the industry declines, while retraining oil workers so that they can move into new renewable industries and emerging sectors.

As the Bank of England’s little-understood ‘Ways and Means’ facility proves, all this can be sustainably financed. Instead of printing money by borrowing it into existence from private banks, which tends to inflate asset bubbles and increase inequality, authorities can create their own money debt-free to support productive investments in the great transition.

Taken together, this programme of structural change can protect our societies from the consequences of overshooting planetary boundaries, and pave the way for the emergence of an ‘ecological civilization’—a civilization that enables the conditions of life to thrive within planetary boundaries.

[h/t]

#@vice #vice #vice news #covid-19 #covid 19 #coronavirus #ecology #fossil fuels #planetary boundaries #ecological civilization #tipping point

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andrewuttaro · 4 years ago

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Why USL is the future of American Soccer

Following domestic professional soccer in the United States can be really difficult at times. Beyond the streams, mechanics, and rules of the sport itself the politics and power dynamics of the leagues and supporters can leave one being yelled at on social media for reasons they don’t understand. To be honest it took me about two years after I started watching the domestic club game to fully understand why American Soccer twitter is angrier than normal twitter. There is no quick way to bring you up to speed so I’m going to see if I can do it in a paragraph before explaining why I think the family of leagues known as United Soccer League (USL) is the future of the Men’s Pro game here in America.

In most countries around the world each national federation oversees a system of Promotion/Relegation between the different levels of their domestic club leagues. The US Soccer Federation (USSF) works very closely with Major League Soccer (MLS) to keep that league solvent and therefore doesn’t care to implement Pro/Rel here and provide its owners with a “undue risk to their investment”. That is, on a nuts-and-bolts level, what makes the domestic game here so contentious. There are several other issues related to what one might call “Open Soccer” that orbit this central point. Additionally outside of MLS with its Top-Flight designation (Division 1) it is generally viewed as though the entire domestic club system here is built in a counter-competitive way to benefit those who buy into MLS and nobody else. From a financial standpoint that’s a tough point to argue with given the lifecycle of non-MLS Soccer clubs in this country. So that’s why American Soccer twitter is a mess other than just when the Men’s National Team sucks.

USL is often heaped in with MLS’ business model by the wide array of groups I’ll use the shorthand “rebels” for here. Rebels see the franchise model MLS (and every other topflight professional sports league in North America uses but don’t mention that to them) uses as a damper on American Soccer at best and a latent capitalist drain on the sport at worst. The problem with that belief is that USL’s leadership has, for almost a decade now, professed a much greater interest in the Open Model than MLS has ever dared. Jake Edwards, the USL President, a former English footballer in his own right, speaks favorably about the myriad ways he wants to open up competitive pro soccer in America at any opportunity. In addition to calling Pro/Rel a mid-term goal for his leagues, he has spoken of his determination for an inter-league trophy, helped build up an academy system for USL independent teams long before MLS was preparing to pull their support, and has even spoken to FIFA and the USSF about getting a CONCACAF Champions League spot for USLC. He’s done just about everything a lower division league President can do to “open soccer” apart from abolish expansion fees, market territories, and talk smack to the Federation.

So why are this nation’s soccer rebels married to the nascent National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) as the only acceptable pro soccer option for their pure view of the game? Yes, I understand the difference between a club and a franchise though most fans of sports the world round will not find it to be a meaningful distinction for their own entertainment. Forgive my bluntness. My soccer life has been a real roller coaster the last four years. My hometown Rochester Rhinos went on hiatus in 2017 and have only looked likely to return recently. The seasons without them have blended together in a mesh of insistence on amateur teams, revulsion from MLS, insistence on USL, acceptance of MLS, and finally just exhaustion with this crazy niche community of sports fans. And before you go there, rebels; no, I don’t blame my team’s troubles solely on “the MLS business model”. The sport sucks in this country not just because there is a way for some people to make money off it.

So here’s a fair shake for the rebels: the appeal of true sporting independence is enticing. When you watch the game oversees there is a charm to the idea little fourth tier Wycombe United could fight there way up the pyramid by pure sporting merit. Market forces poison the sport there too, just in less destructive ways for a variety of reasons. I also greatly respect the idea independence allows clubs to craft a product that is truly unique and exciting for local fans. When every other team in MLS is called something FC and exists 300 miles away from you there is something really cool about a local team with your colors and your own kids on it. The “economic justice” argument rebels often make about solidarity payments and the like are all too compelling and financially at least, the deck really is stacked against more locally-minded clubs.

All that said, independence for the sake of independence and “fighting the good fight” as if you’re on a religious crusade is not a good look and actually hurts your argument in the end. When we’re regularly dealing with issues bigger than soccer along the lines of Black Lives Matter and a profoundly sexist Federation that still refuses to pay the women fairly, it’s a little trite for one to speak of Pro/Rel as an inherent good that must be fought for at all costs. The struggles of the NWSL and the dominance of the Women’s National Team is still an afterthought in this country and you’re telling me I have to protest the franchise system like its British Rule of India? You’re losing the forest for the trees at that point.

USLC recently enticed NISA’s most appealing, community-focused brand in Oakland Roots SC to join the USL ecosystem. The move spawned rebel think pieces and twitter threads the world over. When Oakland made the NISA Fall Final versus Detroit anyone who was anyone on the Rebel Front felt the need to cheer for Detroit because traitors! After the collapse of the new NASL in 2017, USL poached numerous formerly independent minded teams from the rubble and though rebels will tell you NISA doing that with the amateur ranks is not poaching its really a moot point. We’re talking about the difference between the league controlling you’re IP and you telling them what to do with it and you owning your IP and telling yourself what to do with it. Some rebel arguments just rapidly descend into splitting hairs so finely that it seems more like a popularity contest than a really substantive fight. If most US Soccer rebels really wanted to have the substantive discussion that needs to happen they’d be a lot more open to the USL ecosystem than they seem to be. But no, it’s just easier to hiss at the Oakland Roots.

Though the title of this article may lead you to believe I’m a USL fanboy, I too really just want a compelling, local product to cheer for that won’t fold in three years. USL including USL-L1 and USLC (and perhaps sooner than you think a USL topflight league as well) is the future of American Soccer whether we like to admit it or not. USL is altogether organized and operated in a way that not only spurns the cold protectionism of the MLS but gives local brands a way to survive for the long term. Though a team like Indy Eleven started its life in NASL 2.0, it hasn’t exactly been altered unrecognizably by its participation in Indy Eleven. And don’t think its suffered for having come from a more independent minded league: the Eleven have been rather competitive big shots in USLC since they arrived. The way forward here isn’t unyielding factions, its accepting compromise.

MLS has abandoned USL. We’re on the brink of MLS pulling all its reserve (two) sides and other support from the USL ecosystem. I sincerely believe this partnership was the only thing holding Jake Edwards and USL back from being truly revolutionary. Once the ink is wet on “MLS Next” and USL has nothing but “independent” clubs within it, they will begin into all of the aforementioned Open Soccer reforms. They may even think about allowing for a semi-franchise option to allow greater autonomy for clubs with a fan ownership model (Looking at you Chattanooga FC & Detroit) as far as it can fit within the Pro League Standards. It would be a shame if a club that has built its brand around being defiant against anybody who disagrees with their purest opinion in Detroit City FC is sitting outside a three rung pro/rel pyramid in a couple years with their arms crossed just because they have to license some intellectual property to a couple Englishmen in Tampa. And if that bit about the Pro League Standards (PLS) comes across as a massive oversight of this article then I have news for you: your problem is with the US Soccer Federation, not USL. Everyone has a problem with the Federation and if everyone came together on their issues the voices for change would be a whole lot stronger. Instead we’re wasting time painting four letter curses on banners in front of MLS, how about you swallow your pride long enough to create a real coalition.

I realize there is no scenario here where nobody’s feelings are hurt but I really think there is no reason USL cannot be the rallying point for all soccer lovers in this country who realize Major League Soccer has lost their way. There is a very good probability that within the next five years USL could have a topflight league with a two to three rung pro/rel pyramid beneath it with a very liberated form of open soccer in place. USL could fulfill all the American Soccer Rebel’s naughtiest fantasies before the end of this decade save for a few minor roster rules and licensing agreements. The thought of it excites me, especially if my own Rochester Rhinos find their way back into full existence in the USL ecosystem at some point in the next couple years. Once you know everything that USL hopes to do in the near future with MLS pulling its support there really is no reason to not be excited about what they could do to build a far more enticing form of Pro Soccer in this country. USL is the future of domestic club soccer in American.

And for the record, I think Oakland Roots knew this. I think its why they weren’t as standoffish with the USL as their more thick-skulled NISA brothers and sisters. But I digress, God forbid we work together to create the future we want for the Pro game in this country. Working together doesn’t seem to be the theme of any part of American Life at the moment, eh?

Thanks for Reading.

#USL #soccer #Promotion/Relegation

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news-ase · 4 years ago

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asoenews · 4 years ago

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years ago

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I Promise I am Drunk

SAT JAN 04 2020

So... Trump killed a guy a couple days ago. A guy named Quassem Soleimani, who was the top military commander of the Iranian military... who got snuffed in Baghdad, literally out of the blue, by an airstrike.

Now, Soleimani was a sworn enemy of the U.S., and also a fairly brilliant commander who was responsible for a lot of underhanded stuff going on over there that’s killed a lot of our soldiers over the years as we’ve been occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan... for nearly two decades.

But, he was also kind of helpful in our fight against Isis and... well, honestly I don’t have much of a grasp of all the inside baseball that’s been going on over there these past twenty years, but suffice it to say... this guy was a top level official, of a foreign country (rather than some stateless terrorist group) and... nobody was briefed about this... execution... before it went down.

Essentially, what happened was... Trump was furious over the holidays about having been impeached, and impulsively decided to have this guy killed in order to change the headlines, and, I guess start a war, so that he’ll get reelected.

But this was such an over the top, out of left field move to make, that nobody has any idea exactly what’s gonna happen next. It got, “#WWIII,” trending as the number one hashtag on Twitter for two days, though... which is really saying something.

I’ve been googling, “WWIII,” “WW3,” and “world war three,” on a fairly regular basis, since Bush took us into Iraq, back in March of 2003... just to see if anybody was taking seriously the threat of a third world war and... surprisingly, it’s never popped up on the first page. Even where it has popped up, it’s usually in reference to some game, or movie or something... never as a serious worry, or even speculation about an actual third world war.*

So for, “#WWIII,” to be trending number one on Twitter, on January 2nd and 3rd... tells you what a singularly insane move this was on Trump’s part.

Not that it’s going to trigger World War 3, however... because we’re just not on the brink of it, these days.

If you bar the use of nuclear weapons by anybody... as you would, because everybody knows it would lead to the entire planet being an inhospitable hellscape for thousands of years... then you’re talking about a conventional war on a global scale and... nobody’s in the mood to do that, right now... especially with the major aggressor being the United States.

We have overwhelming air and sea superiority over, pretty much the rest of the world combined. And our ground game is also... pretty much unstoppable.

Cyber warfare would be the best option for any nation, or alliance of nations looking to cripple our military infrastructure... as we are notoriously weak on that front.

Jamming and spoofing the GPS signals coming in from our satellites is ridiculously easy, and would not only kill most of our power grid, but disable most of our tanks, planes, ships, and missiles.

But it could also lead to the collapse of modern civilization around the globe, and... nobody really wants that right now either... if it can be avoided.

Luckily, Iran is not stupid. They are a very large, tech savvy nation, with intelligent leaders who know what’s up... not only in the Middle East, but on the global stage.

Everybody involved here, both our allies, and Iran, and their allies... know exactly what the problem is, in this moment in history, where this man, Soleimani, has been killed, in... what would normally be considered an act of war.

The problem here, is the same problem those AI bots trying to keep the economy stable, identified a while back... it’s Donald Trump, specifically.

America didn’t do this. He did this... all by himself, because he was upset that his country is trying to remove him from office.

Now, the next passage of my entry here is gonna be difficult to articulate without tripping any NSA warning flags, but...

That Old Testament passage about an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, also appears in the Quran.

At any rate, I predict that Iran’s most likely response, will be to help Mr. Trump to truly become another Abraham Lincoln... and another John F. Kennedy.

Trump may feel that this would be too high an honor... having only just been granted inclusion to the elite club that only Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton had membership. So... he will bashfully resist.

But, Iran will insist that he has truly earned the right to join this other club, of more well respected Presidents as well.

Will they get their way?

I... don’t think that question is really the point here.

The point is that this pathological rule breaker, just graduated to... executing a high level commander of a nation we were not at war with... for no justifiable reason.

And this means, the days of three rallies a week, and golfing every weekend at his favorite resort... are over. From now on any rallies, and any golf outings are gonna have to be locked down tighter than a Space Force space station on red alert.

And given that these are the only two activities he has to nourish his ego and soothe his frazzled nerves... that’s gonna take an even bigger toll on his fragile mental health than impeachment could ever hope to... and the impeachment trial is still gonna happen... in an election year!

So, even if Iran does not get their way, Trump is almost certainly gonna go so nuts that he orders a nuke strike somewhere... which will be ignored, but trigger his immediate removal from office... which will lead to his immediate imprisonment... and then... you know.

* The one exception to this was, oddly enough, John Titor, who appeared in the early 2000s, as the only person online in this period talking about World War Three... saying that in his timeline it happened around 2013, as the eventual result of the Y2K disaster, which happened in his 2000, and lead to a tyrannical American President taking power. The actual WW3 in his account, was a short war in which small tactical nukes, launched by China and Canada, took out a couple power centers in the U.S.

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linuxgamenews · 6 years ago

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City of the Shroud release date and Linux

Chapter one of City of the Shroud the real-time tactical RPG will release Chapter one August 9th on Mac and Windows, but what about Linux? We reached out to Abyssal Arts to see what is going on with the launch. So back in 2016 there was a lot of excitement around City of the Shroud. There is also still and active Demo available for Linux as well. But will we have native support at release?

Linux support update:

"We aren't planning a Linux port at the moment, but not for lack of liking Linux (I'm tempted to try it out, especially since Unity makes builds for it). The issue is that we have no experience with Linux (using or porting). Wnd when we tried to port it over a while back. We couldn't find enough testing support to guarantee that a Linux build would be on-par with the Win/Mac versions. Since it's the only platform that's ever had a crash-bug, for example. I'm debating putting an unofficial/untested Linux beta branch up on Steam, but with the console ports, our six-person nights/weekends team is going to be stretched a bit thin, and I wouldn't want to promise something we couldn't reliably deliver."

So clearly Abyssal Arts want to release a Linux build. But there is concern about a stable release. And apparently getting enough testers for the build. Which should not be a problem. Being that we have had a Linux demo build available since 2016. The interest is definitely there. I have also emailed the developers back with encouragement. Which means we do not have confirmation, but we do have solid interest. So here's the deal, gamers who play chapter one before development on chapter two commences. Will impact City of the Shroud’s story. And also influence decisions about who lives, dies and rises to power. As well as the ultimate fate of a city under siege. Iskendrun’s collapse seems inevitable as the nobility continues to neglect the poorest citizens while pursuing an unsustainable conquest of neighboring countries, bringing the city to the brink of bloody civil war. Faceless evil looms, increasing tension among the people and widening the division between the city’s five political factions. City of the Shroudcombines tactical RPG elements with classic fighting game. Inputs that result in intense, devastating combos that play out in real-time. Down, left, up, right – the game’s Combo Wheel draws inspiration from the traditional d-pad to promote think-on-your-feet strategy in new ways.

City of the Shroud | Release Date & Story Trailer (Windows and Mac, Linux is unsure)

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Players must choose their foes carefully, though. Future chapters of Iskendrun’s story will see political shifts based on allegiances sworn by members of the community, as well as their decisions within those factions. While it’s possible to revisit decisions and story branches by replaying the game. Every decision has permanent consequence. As only the first playthrough of each player will contribute to the narrative direction of subsequent chapters. Become a part of history: join City of the Shroud’s writers and community. While they craft this tumultuous tale together. “How do people react when everything is complicated, when it’s all a moral grey area?” said Keaton White, founder of Abyssal Arts. “We want to see what choices the community makes and create a cycle where we take the base material they give us and weave it into a coherent narrative. The story has only begun – the players will finish it.” City of the Shroud will be available in English for $19.99 USD / €19.99 on Steam. Purchase includes the whole game, with each of the four chapters coming out every few months via free updates to allow time for the team and players to craft the story. And hopefully somewhere in the mix, Linux support? For more information, please visit City of the Shroud’s official page or follow Abyssal Arts on Twitter and Facebook.

#city of the shroud #tactical #rpg #linux #gaming news #abyssal arts #ubuntu #mac #windows #pc #steam

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edgedestroyspt2-blog · 8 years ago

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NITW THOUGHTS: THE TERROR OF BANALITY [SPOILERS, DUH]

SO. THIS GAME GAVE ME A LOT OF THOUGHTS AND I’M TRYING TO ORGANIZE THEM. Couldn’t log into my old tumblr so I literally made this one just to do this haha. (you can catch me on twitter at just edgedestroys)

I’m gonna get spoiler heavy here with some theories so if you haven’t played yet, you’ve been thoroughly warned. Lets get into this.

My thoughts are probably going to be really stream of consciousness and messy here so bare with me but WHEW. NITW. Let’s talk. Upon finishing the game I was left very [??????????] about it, a LOT of questions and I hate uncertainty, I hate loose ends and my brain does moon-gravity-only tony hawk’s pro skater combos to try to make sense of uncertainty. When I exit a game like NITW and feel like “what the heck just happened wait what” I look for theories to help me sort what I’ve seen out but here I’ve kinda had to work a lot out on my own. NITW towards the end felt very A and B, not A to B with the supernatural but before I get to that let me back up and say the Young Adult Existential Dread Terror Of Growing Up Collapse Of Small Town Idealism Generational Gap Decay Horror Simulator parts of the game were so well written. SO. Well written, the writing and dialog of this game freaking SHINES with such lived-in relatable personality. If you want to skip reading about my thoughts on the real life stuff and go right to my thoughts on the supernatural stuff, just go to the *****

I felt myself painfully drawn to Gregg as a character and his relationship with Angus. The talk Mae and Gregg have after the knife fight really hit home with me. Much of Gregg’s fears I still have even though I’m almost 6 years older than him. It feels to me for sure like my boyfriend takes the mundaness of adult life in stride, doing the Real Job, being responsible, having his shit together (not to say he’s boring, just better at adulting than me), while I’m still being dragged kicking and screaming into that mature life even at 26 years old. Sure I manage to pay my bills but it’s in spite of still hanging on to naive and frankly childish ideals for a more free/fun life. I’ve faced very real panic of being afraid that I’d screw things up with my boyfriend (also like Angus, his butt is nice).

Mae obviously is incredibly relatable too, the money problems, the anxiety and depression and dropping out of college, feeling like you should be the one to be that success story for your family, the uncertainty of adulthood, hell even at 26 that shit freaks me out especially with our current sociopolitical climate. My mom has helped me a lot in the past, both in morale and financially. The game didn’t specifically talk about this (at least in my current playthrough experience) but the generational gap themes definitely leave it open to discussion, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past thinking things like “when will I get my shit together, she won’t always be there to catch me when I fall, I can’t keep doing this to her, I can’t keep her afraid that I can’t stand on my own when she’s gone”. Bridging that gap is scary as hell, I find myself depending on illustrative commission work because honestly I never manage to keep retail jobs, I have a ton of social anxiety and there’s a barrier there for me in the “here just convince strangers to buy shit” role and considering I never finished getting my BFA in graphic design which is already an already oversaturated market... I have a pretty solid recipe for uncertainty in the Future Financial Stability department. I’ve never really publicly talked about this before but good lord this game is ruthless and earnest in picking open those wounds and making you think about them.

At this point if you’ve played the game though, you probably already know about all that, the terror of being a young(ish?) adult, the gen gap, the discord between baby boomers and millennials, the metaphors of society and capitalism and the small town idealization leading to community decay, the futile sacrifice of xenophobic paranoid dads to try to maintain a halcyon lifestyle built on a collapsing foundation... etc etc, we know how that goes at this point, what I REALLY wanted to talk about is the supernatural stuff... or what felt to me like a lack thereof and what took me a few hours of thinking to really grasp.

*****

So when I finished NITW that ?????????? feeling stemmed a lot from feeling like I didn’t think the dots for the supernatural elements were really connected, the dreams, the dusk constellations, the ghost musicians, the huge spirits you encounter when you assemble the ghost band in the dreams, the cat god, the lovecraftian elder god creatures, the eldritch horror that both was at the bottom of the hole and in Mae’s mind, standing as metaphors for mental illness and socioeconomic decay, all of that felt so “how did I get here, how do these tie together???” to me. I had a pretty rushed playthrough so I know I’ve missed some story elements that I already know about but still. I didn’t miss the news article about the hallucinogenic fumes from the mines so I know the theory is floating that Mae hallucinated a lot of the supernatural but let’s operate under suspension of disbelief for a second.

Throughout the game I felt like it was preparing me for some Huge Paranormal Showdown™, like some kind of fusion of The Legend Of Korra and Final Fantasy. I’d pieced together this narrative in my mind that I was learning about all these Dusk Constellations with my old teacher because I’d go into the Spirit World and summon those spirits I was experiencing in my dreams to fight a very literal Apocalyptic end of the world that the DadCult was helping facilitate in tandem with the mechanizations of a void left in the wake of a god figure leaving us behind to figure our shit out ourselves. But in the end you just find a bunch of paranoid middle aged community members in robes afraid of change, trying to preserve their idyllic vision for Possum Springs through their sacrifices which, depending on how you think those hallucinogenic fumes and Mae’s mental illness may shape her perception of the world, may be the realest weird thing that happens in the game. I didn’t get the big Armageddon Ghost World Summon Spirit Battle For The Fate Of The Universe, just some old assholes in a mine my friends and I buried alive (Not to downplay the importance of Mae coming to grips with her mental illness and the whole “maybe I don’t need to survive forever but I will for now” moment there) and that left me, I don’t want to say disappointed, but definitely not sated.

After a lot of thought, something started to emerge to me about all of this, a lot of people talk about how this game’s mythos and plot all are a metaphor for how scary being an adult is, suburban collapse, the very real terror of mental illness, the economic and social ruin of generational divides, etc. But one thing I haven’t seen people talk about yet is I think this also is meant to make you think about how scary The Mundaneness Of Life is. If you really think about it, people thrive on escapism and fantasy, being “normal” is scary as hell to people, the idea of living an “unextraordinary” life. Banality is freaking TERRIFYING to most people I think. And I think the ending of this game really forces you to just sit with that discomfort. Here’s this generation that was raised to have a wild imagination, you spend the game getting deeper and deeper into this supernatural world while still clinging onto childhood and irresponsibility and it brings reality crashing the heck down on you. You don’t get Mae becoming this vivid magical JRPG hero glowing with overlimit powers battling The Void Of The Cosmos for the fate of the world, you just bury some old assholes in a mine then go have band practice and pizza with your friends. The cognitive dissonance of the comedown from this imagined grandiose hero role into real life is visceral as hell and coming to grips with how bland real life is compared to the fantastical visions we like to imagine for ourselves actually kind of hurts. Like, pretty bad depending on how into that kind of stuff you are. And I think despite initially being disappointed by this Wild Ass Spirit Battle not happening (tbh I still am a little because damn it’s set up for that so freaking well), it exposes the brilliance of the writing for this game. I’m in the goddamn furry fandom haha, I know a thing or two about how hard people thrive in escapism and living in an imagined world more interesting than the banality of real life. If you think about it, one of the most devastating coming of age stories you could tell is “no kid, you have to grow up and you’re not going to be a magical warrior saving the universe from unspoken evil, real life is boring as hell”. That shit is thick and scary as heck.

I recently read a behind the scenes article for Lost Constellation where the creators talk a lot about loss as a theme in the sense of finding that “something” to hold onto when you lose faith in religion and I think that makes the idea of being mundane is scary as a plot device all the bigger in NITW. You basically meet god in Mae’s dreams and he says “peace out assholes I’m sick of you asking me questions, you figure it out” and you think, “oh shit, what now?” You bury the dadcult, go play music with your friends and after having this perception that you’re on the brink of fighting a huge supernatural battle you just go back to normie life in your rundown town falling apart on a decaying foundation of social norms and economics that are on life support that isn’t effective. You’re thrust out of the fantasy of childhood, into the reality of adulthood and you have to find that “something” to cope with just being a dang average ass not magical boring ass person. “At the end of everything, hold on to anything”; everything isn’t literally the world or universe, it’s the shift in your perception of it and the death of the idea that you’re greater than yourself in a fantastical way; anything is whatever you can hold onto in your average ass life that makes you happy despite being forced to acknowledge you aren’t a magical hero that will fight evil instead of filling out your tax returns and knowing your dead end job won’t merit you the legacy of a mystic warrior.

Yeah, I would’ve loved that spirit world summon battle for sure but if you think about it, that’s probably the easy way out of the woods. There’s a soul crushing heaviness to facing reality and despite my beefs with the pacing at the end and the connection of the supernatural dots not being spelled out for my idiot ass, I can’t do anything but praise the hell out of the NITW team for making the sacrifice of not holding my hand and babying me through what I wanted to experience to feel something, but rather shoving me into what I didn’t realize I maybe needed to really feel something. Being mundane is freaking scary as hell and the way they force you to grow up into it and face it leaves you feeling something deep deep down few other games I’ve played have made me feel. I think maybe the most spiritual/supernatural thing about NITW is how it asks you how you will cope with the void left when you leave the supernatural behind.

#Night In The Woods #NITW #Theory #Ending #Spoilers #Game Theory

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my-one-love-is-music · 8 years ago

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These Wings Are Made to Fly Ch. 9

This is the second to last chapter of this fic. I feel like this story has come from a good place and will resolve appropriately in any case. But for now, enjoy the current update. ^.^

(Also I've been considering making a twitter as a place to give more frequent updates about my writing schedule or have a more casual place to interact with my readers so if that's something that you'd like, don't hesitate to let me know!)

Also on AO3!

The hours passed quickly in the Statesmen headquarters and Eggsy had used his time to get his things settled in the room that had been provided for him, which was much larger than he expected and not at all unwelcome. Abe had kept pretty close to him when they travelled down to the residential floor, but had left him to his own devices when he opened the door and passed over the key, telling him that he’d be waiting in the hallway if he needed anything.

Eggsy took the time to set his suitcase on the luggage rack provided and even went so far as to shower in the private bathroom which was more than he ever expected to get when he arrived. He did force himself to avoid lying down on the bed, because he knew that as soon as he did he would be asleep now that the exhaustion from his overnight flight and being awake all day was catching up to him.

He took the time to send a report back to Kingsman and confirm that he’d made it to Statesmen and was safely tucked away in their headquarters. He had just finished typing up the information about the lead that he’d gotten and sent that on when a knock came at the door.

“Yes?” he called, slipping his tablet back into his suitcase.

“Galahad, sir? We have a car ready for your departure to the hospital. The staff will be expecting you shortly,” Abe answered.

Eggsy grabbed his umbrella and the keys to his room and slipped out into the hallway. He locked the door quickly and pocketed the keys waiting for Abe to lead him to the car. He eyed his umbrella once before turning down the hallway without a word, long strides eating up the distance between him and the lift while Eggsy hurried to keep up.

The ride to the hospital was quiet, but thankfully short. As much information as the lessons at Kingsman had given him and prepared him to face any number of situations, it hadn’t taught him how to navigate the waters of awkward interactions with agents from other organizations. He’d have to suggest adding that to the curriculum for the new trials for Kingsman agents that Merlin would no doubt be holding soon.

Abe parked in a car park next to the large hospital and killed the engine. They walked out of the garage and over to the hospital entrance, passing through the doors easily.

“I’ll wait over here until you’re done. We’ve only received permission for you to go in and see him so they won’t let me pass.”

“Right,” Eggsy nodded. He watched as Abe made himself comfortable in one of the seats before making his way to the reception desk where a man gave him a kind smile.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

“Evening. My name is Frederick Jones and I’m here to see my father, Thomas Jones,” Eggsy said, hoping that he looked the part of a bashful and nervous son wanting to see his father and not a complete stranger who would immediately draw suspicion.

“Yes, yes! Let me just page the nurse who’s been assigned to take you back to his room. We’ve all been looking forward to you coming here. It’s not every day that we have such an interesting case. And with a foreigner no less!”

Eggsy felt relief flood his veins and returned the worker’s grin with a tentative smile of his own. The receptionist continued to talk on and Eggsy dutifully listened.

“Mr. Jones?” a woman spoke up at his elbow. He looked towards her and she held out her hand to direct him to a set of double doors. “If you’ll just come this way, I can take you to see your father.”

Eggsy nodded and followed her into the clean, well-kept hallways beyond.

“We were worried when he first arrived in the hospital and we had no way to contact the family, but were more than relieved when we received your request looking for your father. He’s been in relatively stable condition after the surgery and has healed up nicely so far, though it will take a bit more time before he’s fully recovered. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to have had any memory problems and seems to have his wits about him like the trooper he is.”

She paused, handle on the doorknob of a row of identical doorways. Eggsy was thrumming with nervous energy and excitement. He was more than ready to get through that door and see if this person was actually Harry. His Harry. As much hope as the information the nurse had relayed had given him, he couldn’t let himself be convinced until he saw who was sitting in the bed beyond this pointless piece of wood.

“We made sure that he was roused before coming to fetch you so he should still be up and awake, but do try to be mindful of his injuries in that he is healing. I know that both of you are going to be quite excited to see each other.” She turned the knob and pushed the door open before stepping aside.

Eggsy couldn’t see who was in the bed beyond as he was faced with a short entryway and he took the time to close the door behind him so that they wouldn’t be disturbed. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, nearly collapsing with relief at the sight that he was greeted with. Harry was sitting there and had been watching him intently at first, scowl visible on his face, but fell away immediately as soon as he caught sight of Eggsy.

Eggsy rushed to his side and clutched at his hand that wasn’t connected to the IV. “God damn it, Harry,” he whispered, already on the brink of tears after a handful of words.

Harry hushed him and pulled his hand free to cup the side of Eggsy’s face. He smiled gently and rubbed his thumb across the skin. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“I’d hope so. Especially after I came all this way to find you. To be honest, I didn’t think that it would be this easy, but I’m glad that it was with how much I missed you.”

“I am glad that it’s you here who’s come to fetch me rather than Merlin,” Harry conceded.

Eggsy reached behind him and pulled the chair up next to the bed so that he could sit down. He gave himself a minute to look over the bandages that were covering Harry’s left eye, but aside from that he didn’t look any worse for wear. The nurse had said that he was recovering nicely.

“Don’t think that me being here is going to let you off the hook. Everyone’s waiting for you to come back and Merlin expects you to take up the role of Arthur upon your return.”

Harry groaned. “He does, does he? I never wanted to be Arthur and he knows that. Why would he put me in that position?”

“Consider it him getting back at you for going missing after you got shot in the head and not being there to help us defeat Valentine and his plot to cripple the world’s population. Plus, Kingsman has hardly any agents right now and we need someone to lead the organization as it works to get its feet back underneath it. And since you’re the only person left with the most experience besides Merlin…”

Harry winced. “The news that I’ve managed to round up with my limited abilities has not sounded pretty.”

“Just think of it like what happened in the church, but with the entire world.”

Harry sighed. “I can imagine what the cleanup is like for that.”

“Well, you’re going to be doing much more than just imagining it when we get you back to England.”

“What if the two of us just settled down here in Kentucky? I’ve found the southern hospitality to be quite welcoming and the food wonderful for the stomach. No one back home has to know.”

“Sorry, Harry, but I can’t do that. I came here to bring you home and I’m not about to give up my spot as a Kingsman agent when I was already out of the running once before.”

Harry let his head fall back against the pillow. “And I’m sure that Merlin is tracking your movements regardless.”

“Even if he wasn’t, I doubt the Statesmen would allow me to join their organization or would be entirely welcoming to have a rouge Kingsman agent fucking around in their country.”

Harry’s brow furrowed and he looked over at Eggsy with a frown. “Statesmen? You’re working with them?”

He nodded. “Merlin made arrangements for them to brief me here and they were the ones that got a drop on your location in this hospital. So it’s really thanks to them that I got here so quickly. Who knows where else you would’ve gone off to without me. I’m certain you probably don’t have any of your things or the means to get back to England from here.”

Silence fell between them and the beeping of the machines seemed to fall away into the background as they looked at each other. Eggsy kept his eyes on where Harry’s hand was now clutched in his own.

“How did you even know that I was alive?”

The softness of Harry’s voice took Eggsy off guard and he looked up to see a special kind of vulnerability in his eye as he watched his reaction. Eggsy allowed himself a small smile.

“Well for one thing, I always assume that you’re tougher than it seems and that you couldn’t have died from that shot because damn it all if you wouldn’t let yourself get taken out so easily. And for another thing, something that you’re very obviously forgetting about and the reason we came together in the first place, my wings. They didn’t change at all like what happened to Mum after Dad died. So I knew. I knew that you had to be alive and were out here somewhere kicking like your life depended on it.”

“I wish that I could kiss you right now,” Harry murmured.

Eggsy squeezed his hand. “Later. My bed back at Statesmen is more than enough for two people. That is, if you can get discharged today?”

“Considering I’ve been in a stable condition since the surgery and haven’t had any other problems, I don’t think that the staff will keep me now that my son has come to collect me. I’m sure that they’ll recommend instructions for the healing process from here and give me requirements in finding a doctor in England to care for me as I work to make a full recovery. As long as I have the medical records, it’s nothing that the Kingsman medical staff will have any problems with managing.”

A short knock sounded before the door was pulled in and the nurse from before walked in. Eggsy didn’t even bother pulling his hands away from Harry’s, knowing that to her it would simply look like a son finding comfort in his father, but to Eggsy it was a lover finding comfort in the fact that his soulmate was still alive and was there.

“Everything going okay in here?” she asked with a smile.

Harry nodded. “Yes. My son and I were just catching up about the events over the past few days and were wondering if it would be possible for me to be discharged now that I have someone to care for me and monitor my condition.”

She nodded happily. “Your doctor left me with some directions if that were the case. We were hoping that this reunion would let us send you home. As you know, and we’ve told you multiple times, your healing has been stellar and we have no need to keep you here any longer and your condition is more than sufficient for flying. Since you will be going back to the U.K., do you have a doctor that we can send your files or would you like us to send them with you?”

“I’ll take the files with me, thank you. To avoid the risk of them getting lost if anything else.”

She nodded. “We can have a copy of your records ready when you complete the discharge forms. Now, you will need to find a doctor that has experience in dealing with head injuries and facial surgeries. We’ll send a recommendation in getting a pain medication prescription, but with your progress so far, there is a high probability that it won’t be needed. Just give me a minute to remove your IV and shut down the rest of the medical equipment and then you can get dressed and head down to reception to fill out your forms.”

Eggsy watched her move around to the other side of the bed and bend her head over Harry’s arm in order to carefully remove the needle in his arm. She pulled a piece of gauze and medical tape from her scrubs and placed it over where blood had come to the surface. She then turned to the machines and gradually shut them off down while removing the wires and patches from around him.

“There you are,” she said, pulling the last thing free and stepping back. “I’ll leave you to get changed and when you’re done just head down to reception and they can take care of you.”

Harry nodded and the two of them watched her leave. He pushed the blankets off of his legs and Eggsy stepped back to give him space to stand. He managed to get up without a problem and move over to where his suit had been piled. Eggsy could see some of the dried blood stains and was surprised that it still seemed to be in one piece. And then his attention zoned in on the back of his medical gown and the fact that Harry was very obviously not wearing anything underneath.

He felt his throat go dry and looked towards the other side of the room and let himself relax when he heard the bathroom door shut. He walked over to the window and pulled the curtains aside to look out at the sidewalk and the people who were walking by far in front of the building. He was glad that there was so much space between the sidewalk and the windows of the ground floor to offer the patients some privacy if they wanted to allow some natural light in.

He turned at the sound of the door being pulled open to find Harry looking somewhat better now that he was wearing a proper suit again. “Shall we go, then?” he asked.

Eggsy nodded and followed him from the room as they made their way back down to the main area. He spotted Abe as soon as they were through the doors and Eggsy took a seat next to him, letting Harry take care of the paperwork on his own since he’d come up with his own identity during this whole fiasco. Abe said nothing as they watched Harry chat amicably with the receptionist and scratch his signature on a handful of forms.

Looking far too proper for the state of his suit, Harry walked back to the two of them as they rose to meet him. Abe led the way back to the car park and Harry took the backseat while Eggsy sat himself up front with Abe again. He hoped that would help to keep their relationship a bit more discreet.

“I’m going to operate under the assumption that he is more than willing to stay in your room and we don’t need to prepare an additional room at headquarters. Do you have an idea of when you’ll be heading back to England?”

Eggsy willed himself not to flush, but knew that he’d failed as his cheeks heated up. “I’ll get in contact with our operator back at Kingsman as soon as we get back to headquarters and let him know that I’ve found our missing agent. From there he’ll most likely book us plane tickets for tomorrow in order to get us back as soon as possible.”

Abe nodded as he pulled into the underground car park below the Statesmen headquarters. “I’ll inform George. He’ll probably want to meet with you before you leave tomorrow so be ready for that debriefing session.” They walked over to the lift and rode it to the residential floor. “I’ll leave you two to get settled. If you need anything else, the phone will connect you directly to me.”

Eggsy nodded. “I’ll inform you when I’ve received flight information.” He pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door, letting Harry walk in first before shutting the door behind him. He turned to find him standing right behind him and stepped back against the closed door as he crowded into his space. Harry raised his hands and cupped the side of his face, pulling him in for a gentle kiss. Eggsy sighed into the contact and gripped Harry’s arms, holding him close.

He pulled away and leaned their foreheads against each other. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Harry said, looking deeply into his eyes. “I thought that I’d never be able to see you again and that was the last thing that I wanted. I’d waited so long to find you that it would’ve been a crime to leave so soon.”

“I’m glad that you managed to survive. Now,” he said, squeezing Harry’s arm and stepping away. “I need to contact Merlin and let him know that you’re alive and well.”

Harry groaned, but followed Eggsy further into the room. He sat down on the bed and watched Eggsy take a seat at the small table and pull a tablet out of the suitcase, tapping out several commands and getting to work. After a few minutes he set the tablet aside and turned to look at Harry.

“I’m sorry that I don’t have a change of clothes for you at the moment. We might be able to get something better for you to wear tomorrow. Unless one of my suits would happen to fit you.”

“I might be able to wear one of your shirts and possibly the pants, but I don’t want to risk damaging your Kingsman uniforms.”

Eggsy nodded and moved to say something else when a ringing emitted from the tablet. He lifted it and rolled his eyes before swiping.

“What? Do you need to actually see him before you’ll believe me?” Eggsy asked, irritated.

“Yes. Now just show me that he’s fine,” Merlin said, voice filtering strangely through the speakers.

Eggsy flipped the tablet around and aimed it at Harry.

“Still in one piece, I see,” he said tightly, but the relief was unmistakable.

“Still alive, yes. I’m assuming that you’re going to have Eggsy and I on a plane back tomorrow morning?”

“I’d be stupid not to. I need you two back here to help get Kingsman back off its feet. Now get something to eat and get some sleep. You have an early flight tomorrow.” Merlin immediately cut the call and Harry fell back on the bed.

“Can’t argue with that, I guess.”

Eggsy chuckled and set the tablet aside before pulling off his suit jacket and leaning down to undo his shoes. “I’ll call Abe later. For now, I just want to lay down with you for a while.”

Harry smiled and pulled off his own jacket as Eggsy crawled onto the bed. He joined him quickly and wrapped him in his arms, closing his eyes and letting the world of dreams take him once again, Eggsy’s familiar scent finally quieting the restlessness that he’d been unable to escape since he woke up in the hospital.

#hartwin #kingsman #molim writes #fic: these wings #update #penultimate chapter

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feimineach · 8 years ago

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In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. To Toni Morrison’s prescient admonition we, with due respect, add academics and academic administrators. So, in times of dread, artists, academics, and administrators must never choose to remain silent. With this letter we mean not to be silent. We mean too, as Morrison notes, to “do language.” It is after all what we do. While many see Donald Trump’s executive agenda as an extension of increasingly visible right-wing extremism, his administration has quickly proven to be chaotic. Again, and still following Morrison, we mean to begin to gather wisdom that can come from chaos in order to practice an outloud response to the silences and exclusions this new presidency is imposing. As a reminder, in the first week of power, Donald Trump issued an order to halt the flow of information to the public from government agencies. We are inspired by government workers and their supporters who pushed back, launching a cascade of twitter feeds that functioned as a refusal to be silent about administrative efforts to shut down scientific findings and facts about climate change and the anthropocene period we ushered in and in which we are living. Of course, there is no way to confirm if these are “real” accounts – that is, run by government employees in the shadows – but their existence suggests a robust war of information and a tactic of resistance. Trump has repeatedly castigated certain outlets and journalists for unfavorable reporting, including The Washington Post which he referred to as “dishonest” and “inaccurate.” Since becoming President, he has ushered in an era of state control over the media, going so far as to handpick his preferred media outlet, Fox News. He continues to exercise tight control over the press through choreographed briefings, increasingly limited access, revocation of credentials, and outright bans. There is little doubt, based on these moves and others, that Trump is working to establish authoritarian rule in the U.S. With his recent Executive Order banning Muslims from entering the United States, indicating a preference for Christian immigrants and refugees, Trump has signaled the collapse of separation between church and state. Trump’s settler nationalist version of autocracy continues to be heteropatriarchal, avidly racist, deeply misogynist, relentlessly xenophobic, and gleefully homophobic. He and his inner circle are anti-planet and anti-humanity, and they embody every precept of white nationalism. Already Trump has violated the Constitution and fostered human rights abuses, and it is only week two. While we are unsurprised by the silence of many in establishment politics, we are surprised by the silence on these matters from university leaders across the United States. As people nationwide take to the streets and airports, social media and the press, and the offices of their elected representatives, we ask where are our academic administrators, beyond tepid bureaucratic statements that, by and large, maintain the status quo of limited engagement in the political sphere? We are on the brink of, perhaps already in, a constitutional crisis. Where is the courage? If Morrison is right, and we believe she is, then there is no better moment for the leaders of universities to speak out on issues relevant to our students’ lives and our educational mission: freedom of speech, academic freedom, religious freedom, the right to assemble, the right to a free press, LGBTQ rights, QTPOC rights, migrant rights, constitutional rights of all kinds, human rights violations, immigration, authoritarian rule, and more. Our students – even those who are undocumented and at immense risk – are not remaining silent, nor are many of us on the faculties of public and private institutions despite cautions from legal counsel that we not be political (sic). But do our university leaders really expect us to be silent? Do academic administrators themselves really want to remain silent while those at greatest risk and those newly rendered vulnerable (the list grows each day) speak up and while an avowed white nationalist sexual predator seeks to undermine the tenets of higher education as well as the foundations of democracy? We cannot help but be reminded of theologian Martin Niemöller’s oft-quoted and widely circulating anti-Nazi statement. We cannot and will not be silent in the face of executive roundups and creeping fascism. Nor should our leaders. In asking university administrators to speak out, we are asking that they reflect on the critical role of universities to make sense of and to intervene in the world, and especially in the vital messy politics of our time. We are asking that administrators – most of whom are highly paid and enjoy tremendous racial and gender privileges – see beyond carefully crafted public responses to broader external challenges, and act with courage even if it means threats to their job security. (Former acting attorney general Sally Yates knows something about this kind of valor.) The role of universities has long been to foster curiosity and inquiry, free and critical thinking, free speech and expression, and also dissent. It is to teach students about the responsibilities and privileges of living in a diverse and constantly evolving democracy, and to encourage a lifelong commitment to learning about and intervening in the world. It is to teach facts alongside tools for interpreting and measuring the truthfulness of those facts. It is to encourage our students and each other to ask hard questions and take ethical positions on matters of grave consequence, such as democracy, borders, histories, knowledges, and the value of human lives and of the earth. Not only is the future of higher education at stake in this current political moment. So too are the lives and livelihoods of many of our students, including those most at risk from Trump’s discriminatory and likely unconstitutional executive orders. These include undocumented students, queer students, international students, Muslim students, students with disabilities, and others. To be very clear: many people will suffer and die as a result of Trump’s malignant policies. Academics and administrators, listen to your students and those being made vulnerable on our campuses and home communities. Be responsive to their immediate and long-term needs. Be prepared to continue to teach those whose education may be interrupted by bans, detentions, or deportations. Maintain tuition levels even if students must access classes from out of state. Think of ways to meet the needs of students from mixed-status families whose housing and food needs may shift dramatically in the coming days. Speak against climate change deniers. Speak and act against xenophobic and racist executive orders. Keep student, faculty, and staff records confidential. Keep ICE and Border Patrol off campuses. Teach, and support those who teach, about autocracy, fascism, settler colonialism, climate change, rights, justice, and dissent. Set up and support legal clinics on your campuses. Teach threatened knowledges. Vigorously defend and practice freedom of speech. In the face of chaos in the White House and a swiftly changing political landscape, we understand there may be genuine fear and confusion about the best way to support students, staff, and faculty. Concerns about retaliation are legitimate, especially in states like Arizona that are generally hostile to public education. We also recognize that universities are organizations with corporatized structures, stakeholders, reputations, and profits — these attributes may work against commitments to social justice. Yet they are still institutions of higher learning and, while we can, we should continue to treat them as such. We are reaching out now, inspired by Juana María Rodríguez, as we, too, believe “in virtual connections, touching through text.” We write this open letter as multiply-situated tenured feminist scholars with the relative privilege to speak. We fully understand that not every scholar and teacher or even university administrator can refuse silence, given academic hierarchies, contingent and precarious status, and fears of retribution. We make no claim to speak on behalf of others here, but we do hope our words can help to break open institutional silences fostered by this current state of emergency. We ask you to let this text “hum in your hands” and to do what you can to speak up and act. Now. In solidarity, Monica J. Casper and Adela C. Licona #BridgesNotWalls #NoBanNoWall #NoRegistry #EducatorsForandWithUndocumentedStudents_Staff_Families #SayHerName #BLM #NativeLivesMatter #NoDAPL #TransLivesMatter #ReproductiveJustice #ClimateChangeIsReal #NoAlternativeFacts #FreedomofExpression

Open letter to university presidents, provosts, and governing boards: Monica J. Casper and Adela C. Licona: @thefeministwire

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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Conspiracy theories and the left

Charlie Warzel, BuzzFeed News, Feb. 12, 2017

Just after 3 a.m. last Friday morning, Huffington Post contributor and progressive advocate Alex Mohajer set to work on a brief investigative project on Twitter. Pulling together red marker–circled articles, graphs, and screenshots from numerous financial websites, he rifled off 16 tweets with prosecutorial zeal and one ambitious goal: to build a compelling case linking Donald Trump to Russia’s $11 billion sale of its oil giant, Rosneft.

“It’s getting harder to ignore growing evidence that Trump was involved with Russian oil deal,” Mohajer wrote after compiling his tweets into a longer Twitter Moments thread. “CONCLUSION? Koch-backed front cos financed climate deniers/alt-right, took control of govt while Trump diverts attn for Exxon, Koch, Rosneft,” he wrote. A minute later he offered a hedge: “ALTERNATIVE CONCLUSION: I am bat---t crazy and need some sleep! Good night world. I will be curious to see if others are able to confirm.”

Mohajer wasn’t wrong to assume that others might try to confirm his tweetstorm. Since the election, he’s emerged as one of a number of vigilante investigators dutifully entering evidence into Twitter’s court of public opinion in hope of exposing corruption in Trumpland. Now that Trump is exercising his presidential power, the tweetstorms are intensifying--and growing ever-more conspiratorial. Unlike their more fantastical Infowars analogs, these vigilante investigators steer clear of explicit allegations, hewing instead to grave insinuations. Their evidence is almost exclusively rooted in already-published reporting; they sift through the tea leaves of unconnected media stories, raising questions yet to be answered by the professionals.

Call it the Alex Jonesification of the left or the rise of the Blue Detectives--the pure id of a strand of conspiratorial thought of the left and the anti-Trump movement. It’s intriguing and eyeroll-inspiring all at once, but for the #resistance crowd it’s a mooring force. Most of all, it’s an effective messaging tactic: It’s designed to go viral, to spark outrage--and perhaps even action.

If you spend enough time online, you’ll see Blue Detectives springing up everywhere. Two weeks ago, Google engineer Yonatan Zunger wrote a post on Medium that went viral. In it, he laid out a succession of “raw news reports” suggesting that the haphazard rollout and enforcement of Trump’s refugee ban across the country “was the trial balloon for a coup d’etat against the United States.” But as some, including Slate, have pointed out, Zunger’s post sometimes elides fact in favor of intrigue: His suggestion that the Department of Homeland Security could become a force loyal to the President alone, for example, does not acknowledge that DHS Secretary John Kelly was reportedly unaware of the administration’s immigration order until just moments before Trump signed it.

On Twitter, especially, the Blue Detectives are increasingly active in theorizing that Trump and his associates are involved in a dizzying multidimensional plot--and, crucially, are always 10 steps ahead of the American public. Perhaps the most infamous example comes from technology and business strategist Eric Garland’s “game theory” tweetstorm, which suggests a cunning on the part of the Trump administration and Russia to distract, dodge, and outwit the American public while bolstering its coffers and power.

Meanwhile on Twitter, writers with a flair for what could be true and a good sense for their audience have taken those investigations well past the brink of what they know. The most effective of the bunch is Adam Khan, a former marketing consultant and tech guru turned Twitter investigator. Khan, who goes by the handle @Khanoisseur, is an indefatigable presence on Twitter. Each day he monomaniacally strings together observations, charts, and images into detailed tweetstorms that rack up thousands of retweets. None of them make news, but they raise questions and do attract eyeballs.

The images--mostly screenshots from deeply reported coverage of Russia and the Trump organization--are frequently annotated with red type, arrows, and lines that encourage the reader to follow Khan’s logic.

Khan--who wrote an e-book on how to gain followers and influence on Twitter--uses the social network because he sees it as a direct line to journalists and big thinkers. He views his job as building flow charts of publicly available information to raise the big questions. “I’m not manufacturing anything new,” he told BuzzFeed News. “But I’m taking this piece of reporting from this journalist and showing clearly how it aligns with something else out there. And put together, I think it shows there’s a bigger story. If nothing else, I hope my work leads to more people doing their own investigative journalism.”

Just after the election, Khan quit his freelance consulting job to pursue the Trump investigations full-time. He has so far raised nearly $14,000 on GoFundMe in support of this effort. If he raises enough money, he may write a book.

Recently, Khan riled the tech world with a 23-tweet thread musing about possible ties between Russia, Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and some of the startups in which he’s invested. “The more I dive into Russian-backed/Kushners’ data collection efforts, the more I’m convinced there’s a bigger strategy,” Khan tweeted with a link to a different thread on the Kushner brothers’ investments. “Trump potentially has his own shadow NSA,” he further mused. Left unsaid, a crucial caveat: Kushner investments, made via a venture capital company called Thrive, do not appear to give the Kushners operational control of the companies in which they invest. The thread checks all the boxes of the viral anti-Trump conspiracy: It’s well-researched, endlessly intriguing, and unsupported by evidence.

The internet has historically been a near perfect incubator for conspiracy theories. Not long after the attacks of 9/11 average citizens flocked to Blogspot accounts dedicated to vigilante investigations of the events leading up to that day. The same happened after Hurricane Katrina, with blogs launching serious amateur analysis of the collapse of New Orleans’ levees. A decade ago, conspiracy-minded bloggers made major contributions to reporting around everything from George W. Bush’s National Guard service to intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Once these sorts of efforts were largely confined to obscure message boards, little-known blogs, and occasionally AM talk radio. Their prominent voices tended to be volatile fringe figures who’d rarely appear in public. More recently--particularly with the advent of the Trump era--they’ve attained much greater visibility. Today, the work of the Blue Detectives and those on the far right is amplified and extended by same-minded people sharing what they want to believe--a byproduct of the social media echo chambers that birthed “fake news.” Once peddled by anonymous tinfoil hat–wearers, even utterly unfounded conspiratorial musings are now disseminated by tech employees, opinion journalists--and even some of the left’s well known voices.

Take former United States Labor Secretary Robert Reich--a regular on cable news and a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. Two weeks ago, after a planned visit turned riot by Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, Reich penned a blog post about the event titled “A Yiannopoulos, Bannon, Trump Plot to Control American Universities?”

In their coverage of the riot, far-right outlets including Breitbart News had suggested the Trump administration pull federal funding for the school. Reich’s response took a conspiratorial page from the far right, suggesting that “the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Breitbart were in cahoots with the agitators in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.” While not a tweetstorm, Reich made his case in a familiar bulleted list. “Hmmm. Connect these dots,” he wrote before rattling off six semi-related points connecting Yiannopoulos to Breitbart and then the Trump administration. “I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here,” he concluded.

The post is a textbook example of a Blue Detective conspiracy musing. It’s a bit ridiculous, but not quite out of the realm of possibility. It attempts to use well reported information to “connect the dots” and raise an ultimately unanswerable question. And it ends, like so many Blue Detective theories, with a self-effacing nod to readers: Yes, I know how crazy this sounds.

In person, Reich is more cautious about shifting the political discourse toward conspiracy theories. “That fringe stuff is out there more and more, and that’s dangerous,” he told BuzzFeed News last week. “If we become a conspiracy society, we all carry around a degree of paranoia and that’s not healthy for democracy. And that’s why transparency is so critically important--we now have a responsibility to call a lie a lie.”

This desire for transparency is a key engine of the Blue Detectives. Its emergence is a side-effect of the rise of the Upside Down conservative media, which, along with its “alternative facts,” audience, and interpretation of the truth, has created two opposing political realities. With basic facts in dispute, efforts by the anti-Trump #resistance to monopolize truth have manifested in a peculiar role reversal. While the far right is building a media ecosystem that looks and feels a lot like the mainstream, some on the left are beginning to resemble the more conspiratorial fringes of the far-right.

But the emergence of the Blue Detectives is also a pointed critique of the mainstream press. The message: The media isn’t doing its job, so we’ll do the legwork for them. Adam Khan agrees.

“No question there was a huge failing among the media during this last election,” Khan said. “There’s so much to be chased down in a Woodward and Bernstein manner and so my job is to ask the questions for others to answer. To ask ‘Why? Why isn’t anyone else pursuing this angle?’” Khan believes without the right pressure and grassroots investigations from people like him, Trump will only claim more power. “There’s a need to apply more pressure to the press,” he said. “It’s sad, but if that’s what it’ll take to get the accountability, we’ll do it.”

Members of the Upside Down media are paying attention, too. “It’s even happening to people who have reputations in the media for being pretty normal,” new right blogger and Twitter personality Mike Cernovich told BuzzFeed News. “I saw this great meme the other day that said if there’s ever a terrorist attack in America under Trump the left is going to go full Infowars. And I think that’s totally true.” For Cernovich, the rise of the left’s conspiracy-theory tendencies is an opportunity to appeal to a broader audience.

“They’ve adopted that fringe-level mentality aggressively,” Cernovich said. “People on left are making themselves look ridiculous and so I see it as an opportunity to look reasonable by comparison.”

#conspiracy theories #Alex Mohajer #left and conspiracy theories #Blue Detectives

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myeclecticcollectorblazeus · 5 years ago

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PoolStanding beside an approving Donald Trump at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded the media unmask the whistleblower whose report about the president’s alleged abuse of power dealing with Ukraine sparked impeachment proceedings.American news organizations resisted the pressure, but—in a 2019 re-play of “Russia, if you’re listening”—Kremlin-controlled state media promptly jumped on it.Shortly after Sen. Paul tweeted out an article that speculated in considerable detail about the identity of the whistleblower—with a photograph, a name, and details about the purported political history of a CIA professional—Russian state media followed suit. Russian Media Cheers Trump’s Moves in Syria: ‘Putin Won the Lottery!’As if on cue, the Kremlin-controlled heavy hitters—TASS, RT, Rossiya-1—disseminated the same information. But unlike Rand Paul, one of the Russian state media outlets didn’t seem to find the source—Real Clear Investigations—to be particularly impressive, and claimed falsely that the material was published originally by The Washington Post.This was the most egregious, but certainly not the only example of Kremlin-funded media cheerleading for Trump’s fight against impeachment as proceedings against him unfold with growing speed. As a chorus of talking heads on Fox News have picked up on Trump’s talking points, which is predictable—they’ve also been echoed across the pond, albeit with a tinge of irony. “Have you lost your minds that you want to remove our Donald Ivanovych?” asked Vladimir Soloviev, the host of the television show Evening with Vladimir Soloviev. Russian experts, government officials, and prominent talking heads often deride the American president for his Twitter clangor, haphazard approach to foreign policy, clownish lack of decorum, and unfiltered stream of verbalized consciousness. But all the reasons they believe Trump “isn’t a very good president” for America are precisely their reasons for thinking he is so great for Russia. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client whose regime teetered on the brink of collapse only to be saved definitively by Trump’s chaotic approach to the Middle East, recently said that “President Trump is the best type of president for a foe.” The Russians heartily agree. The Trump presidency has been wildly successful for Russia, which is eagerly stepping into every vacuum created by the retreat of the United States on the world stage.“They say Trump is making Russia great. That’s basically accurate,” pointed out Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a prominent fixture on Russian state television. “The chaos brought by Trump into the American system of government is weakening the United States. America is getting weaker and now Russia is taking its place in the Middle East. Suddenly, Russia is starting to seriously penetrate Africa... So when they say that Trump is weakening the United States—yes, he is. And that’s why we love him... The more problems they have, the better it is for us.”Since the current administration is proving to be beneficial for the Kremlin, the Russians are openly contemplating various strategies and conspiracy theories, designed to undermine President Trump’s political opponents. Russian state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov named Joe Biden as “Trump’s most dangerous rival" and urged Trump to “keep digging in Ukraine for the sweetest kompromat of all: Proving that Ukraine—not Russia—interfered in the U.S. elections."Russian conspiracy theories have been reverberating throughout the Trump administration, boosted by Konstantin Kilimnik and Paul Manafort, repeated by President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The Russians anticipated an easy victory and the Kremlin-controlled state media pre-emptively rejoiced back in May 2019 when state TV host Evgeny Popov boisterously declared that “Trump already won” and “Ukraine buried Biden as a candidate.” But what was contemplated as a winning strategy backfired spectacularly when Trump bought into that Russian theory. Through Giuliani, Trump pressured Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Biden, and—thanks to a whistleblower’s initial report on a highly problematic phone call Trump made to Zelensky in July—a formal impeachment inquiry began. As the evidence of abuse of power continues to mount, the beleaguered commander in chief is reduced to attacking the messenger. Trump repeatedly demanded that lawmakers and the media reveal the identity of the whistleblower, even though congressional testimony from multiple witnesses now being made public repeatedly and consistently supports the original allegations.Russian experts and analysts are openly hoping that the impeachment proceedings will have a side effect that would greatly benefit the Kremlin: “Impeachment will turn into the hunt for Ukrainians” and cause a serious rift between Kyiv and Washington. RIA Novosti columnist Ivan Danilov writes: “Some witnesses and sources of information, on which the charges against Donald Trump are based (and for which he, in fact, faces impeachment) are ‘Americans of Ukrainian descent’... At the same time, supporters of the current president are already demonstrating a clear willingness to use their background as the proof that they are ‘traitors to America.’ It isn’t as evident now, but after several months of actively promoting the thesis ‘Ukrainians are Clinton’s agents and the enemies of the United States, who are trying to overthrow Trump,’ a significant part of American society and the political elite will want nothing to do with Ukraine or the Ukrainian leadership, nor will they harbor any warm feelings toward the Ukrainian diaspora.”Danilov quotes Fox News, Glenn Beck, and The Federalist to demonstrate that a case against Trump is ultimately going to turn into a case against Ukraine. The possibility of undermining bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and its ongoing fight against Russian aggression sounds like a wonderful bonus for the Kremlin, especially since—for a change—anti-Ukrainian agitprop is now being made in America. Although rattled by the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, Russian state media remains optimistic. Olga Skabeeva, the host of 60 Minutes, the most popular news talk show in Russia, predicted: “A Republican majority in the Senate won’t allow the president whom we elected, wonderful Donald Trump, to be sent off. It’s impossible. He has 90 percent support in the Republican Party.” Russian news reports are assuring their audiences that while impeachment is likely, it won’t result in Trump’s removal from office and will have no effect on the presidential elections in 2020. Russian media outlets are forecasting that swing states and the Electoral College will assure yet another victory for Donald Trump, which suits the Kremlin to a “T.” Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do ListRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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