#I live in a country that's committing war crimes and human rights violations as we speak. it's sanctioned heavily because of that.

[salvation-within-the-void]

The prime minister of the UK has just confirmed that he will change the law to allow the conservative party to forcibly deport immigrants to Rwanda.

The SUPREME COURT of the UK found this policy unlawful, the government were told they CANNOT do this.

Their response? Change the law

This policy is a threat to the lives of refugees who fled here seeking support and asylum, as a country we should be kind and welcoming. Instead these poor people are being sent straight back into the instability and violence they risked their lives to escape.

Rwanda has a history of being used to 'sweep refugees under the rug', having signed a similar deal with Israel. The supreme court found that Rwanda has previously violated laws protecting immigrant against refoulement, as it has sent people back to the nations they fled. Directly violating international treaties and violating the rights granted to refugees and asylum seekers.

Sunak also stated that he will not allow the European human rights court to block this policy and will revisit any treaties that may act as "obstacles" to this policy.

They are trying to get out of THE INTERNATIONAL BILL OF HUMAN RIGHTS! The refugge system in Rwanda is so unsafe that this is a human rights issue! And our government want to violate those rights for thousands of immigrants they are determined not to help.

These people are hell bent on making life miserable for refugees. The deputy chair of the conservatives stated the government should "ignore the law and start the flights anyway".

Rishi Sunak is also introducing "emergency legislation" in order to force this through parliament and the courts.

Where have we heard that before?

These are the same emergency powers that allow laws to be passed without parliamentary votes. The same emergency powers that enabled the "war on terror" so the UK and US could commit war crimes. The same emergency powers used by the nazis to legitimise the holocuase

This is facism! Plain as day.

I am very very worried for the future of my country and the future of this world. Facism is not on the rise, it is here. We must watch very very closely, at home and abroad, so that we can act accordingly and protect ourselves.

[queerbrownvegan]

Ecologies of collapse in Palestine 🇵🇸 

I don’t think we can solve the climate crisis if we can’t even decide whether or not Palestinians are going through a genocide. 

I’m afraid the [dominant] environmental movement has failed to clearly define what it means to liberate the world from an oppressive system. Removing a part of the apparatus is not systemic change. 

People have turned their backs on the United Nations 🇺🇳 for trying to call attention to the several human rights violations happening and that Israel’s government must be held accountable. Brazil 🇧🇷 government has named the incident one of the world's most terrible war crimes. Turkey 🇹🇷 has filed a lawsuit in international courts to hold the war criminal accountable. France 🇫🇷 has called for a ceasefire. None of these governments are innocent either, but it begs the question, why can't our governments take a stance against genocide?

Despite the rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism, we must continue to fight alongside our Muslim & Jewish communities, calling for an end to genocide. Critiquing an oppressive government should not be seen as antisemitic. Consuming ourselves to victimhood and weaponizing tears over the bloodshed of bodies blown up is a tool of the oppressor. A ceasefire includes the return of hostages. Validation of the count of death in Israelíes is also recognized. I don’t think many of the people asking for Free Palestine are not saying that both sides can’t grieve, but when it comes to weaponizing grief and tears to prohibit critiquing of a government, that is the issue. Media platforms are heavily censoring accounts while also perpetuating misinformation. When it comes to holding the government accountable, it seems that it can never be the case because one’s country is purely ethical and just does not exist where the majority of oppressive governments have conducted genocide, violence, and displacement under business. 

Many of you were never on the same page with liberating the world nor my work. Many of you saw Indigenous communities as museums for your curiosity and inspiration for your spiritual journeys to repackage to people who lack depth in their relationship with the land. Many of you committed to Black Lives Matter because you extracted from Black culture for your benefit and recognized you weren’t as racist as your neighbor or friend. Many of you committed to LGBTQ+ movements only to know that your rainbow started in the US and ended in the US, but anything deemed othering is unattractive. Many of you became feminist under the guise of equality but for only those who looked like you. 

But may we also have grace for those who are scared to speak up because their employers, friends, or opportunities are at the line, which could further cause them to be deprived in an economic system where people choose their ability to live and die. I’m not angry at you, nor do I know your situation, but I know my situation has allowed me to say I’ve already lost things I thought I wanted, but I’m still alive. Isn’t being alive the most sacred thing to ourselves that we don’t wish to be taken?  It wasn’t a billionaire, corporation, or institution that kept me grounded and alive. It was my community that made sure I survived.

Remember, we can solve the climate crisis by bringing awareness to the horrors unfolding in Gaza.

[chimaeraonwards]

i found this article and now im wondering, how are we supposed to trust any of these western news sites now and in the future?

i live in a country where the news has been crucial in exposing governmental corruption, human rights violations, child exploitation, and even assassinations. i have seen how journalism has shaped movements, uplifted the voiceless, and informed the public on issues that impact them and their lives. i know journalists who put their personal safety on the line to let the world know the stories that should be told. good journalism is beautiful and life-changing.

the way that these western news sites have spread proven falsehoods has put a stain on the profession. they are a disgrace to actual journalists around the world, especially to those on the ground in Palestine - the very same journalists who are being killed by the bombs that the western news tries to justify.

am i saying that news agencies in other parts of the world are free from flaws? heck no! in fact, i highly suggest you research who actually owns the news in your country and other places in your region or have a look at the 2023 World Press Index and see where each country lies. if you're not sure what I mean by "who actually owns the news" i suggest watching John Oliver's video of the Sinclair Broadcast Group where he breaks down how a corporation can impact news coverage.

it is how the western media was so ready to spin the narrative in Israel's favour and openly support lies like "the 40 beheaded babies" without any evidence or fact-checking that is so appalling.

those lies have detrimental effects. it has played a role in the manufacturing of consent for genocide and lets people justify the further atrocities committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government.

journalists have a duty to speak the truth and be the voice of the people - not to be mouthpieces of the powerful.

i believe that there are many journalists in western media who are frustrated that they cannot speak the truth and my heart goes out to them. i cannot imagine being in their position. i admire the journalists who stood up for the truth even though they likely got fired or reprimanded for it.

you might say that maybe their hands are tied and they can't report the news in an objective and fair manner because of the people up top. and that comes back to my initial argument, how can i know to trust them in the future? it feels like a betrayal to the people.

these news sites need to be held accountable. in my opinion, there needs to be an overhaul in industry on a global level with proper transparency and checks and balances, we cannot continue to accept and live like this.

[i-cant-sing]

I just want to take a moment as someone from Israel-in Israel. A woman in Israel.

I do not agree with what my country is doing. I do not agree with the violence and atrocities we commit. But just like Americans, we can be against a war our country is fighting.

Yes, if Israel stops this war, the war is over. It is not equal.

But we cannot ignore what Palestine has done, also. I have lost family. Many people I know have lost family. I am fortunate in that I was not ever taken, I am far from the border, but I know someone who lost a sister. When her body was recovered, she had been raped. This happens on both sides, as women are seen as property of the state. But it does not excuse it. There is no excuse in raping women. Not even for freedom, as how can you achieve freedom through violating women?

I understand it muddies waters to say that there is violence on both sides. There are atrocities on both sides. We like to pretend it is one sided as it makes it easier. But it isn't. You can be the country in the right and still commit war crimes.

I understand if my words are seen as unwelcome here. But I wished to see it acknowledged, the pain that has been brought, not always justly. War is simple, but it is also complex. Trauma goes back generations, it grows roots and takes hold. The fear of the Israeli people for another holocaust is perhaps not well founded, but it is real in our minds. It will always be. The hatred we faced for something not of our doing by Palestinians was real. Our response does not become justified, an overreaction is not justified. But it was real. Their hatred for their land being taken was real-but their reaction to us was not justified. Not in the beginning.

I suppose i am trying to point out the suffering we face as a reminder that we are not our country. I do not enjoy seeing myself and my family and friends vilified in media because of where we live-where we were uprooted to because our family was murdered and our homes taken from us. But I understand our government does evil, now. But we are not our government. Even if we wished to speak up for Palestine, we would be branded terrorists. The things done to innocents is never justified, on either side.

This isn't a war because for a war, both countries should be able to have somewhat similar resources to defend themselves. It's a fucking massacre, a genocide, a cold blooded murder.

Look at Israel's military budget, that gets US aid. Now compare it with Palestine.

Your suffering, the death of your loved ones, your pain, its not invalidated, but it certainly will never compare to the pain of Palestinians.

I understand that this is Israel's government that's behind all this, but you guys are the ones who voted for them. So you should come out and begin protesting for Palestine, even at the cost of being labelled as "antisemitic" or "hamas sympathiser". If Holocaust survivors were to be here, do you think they'd stay silent? People of Israel chose and voted their government officials who now don't even consider Palestinians as humans, so... sorry to say honey, but yall are also responsible for this genocide.

Water, food, fuel, electricity, even donations and trucks carrying MEDICAL supplies have been cut off or prevented from reaching Palestinians. Is that happening in Israel rn? Didn't McDonald's just promise to supply food to the Israle armed forces??

Now, anon, imagine this-

Your country is being bombed, what for? You're not even sure exactly at this point. You've been kicked out of your home, which was then bombarded. your dad's business? All gone, his money, tears sweat, were all for naught. You've been shifted to a refugee camp, and you've been moving from one camp to another for many years because you're constantly hearing airstrikes. You've lost many of your siblings, family, friends. Every night that you go to sleep, with your mother making sure that all of remaining family members are sleeping together, so that in case something happens, you're all dead and no one has to live in pain to mourn for others. Your entire childhood is gone now because you've witnessed such horrible conditions, death is almost always a certainty, and you're struggling for basic necessities such as drinking water, food, etc. Almost all of your family is dead, you were one of the "lucky" ones who didn't die under a pile of rubble. You're grown up now, and you're thinking of leaving this hell by educating yourself and applying to a university outside of Palestine but oh oh! Well, the passing rate is incredibly low, less than 1% of students pass a test which is graded by an occupying force. The doctor who onec treated you is now breaking down becase she lost her entore family in the airstrike while she was helping victims of the same airstrikes, but she doesnt have time to mourn them or wven bury them because the hospital is understaffed nd theres way too many trauma patients in the triage that need her. Oh and look, your best friend was just shot in the back of the head. What for? He was just walking down the street. And the little kid you saw yesterday? Well he was body slammed to the ground by the occupying force's police and taken into custody where he was forced to confess to a crime he never committed, WAS TRAUMATISED AND TORTURED and was never even given a fair trial before he was locked up for more than 2 decades, after which this kid, now an adult has developed schizophrenia. As for you, you thank your lucky stars because you passed your test somehow but oh no. You're suddenly being taken into custody by the occupying force for "suspicious activity and links to a terrorist organisation".

Shall I go on?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: The War on the West | Real Time with Bill Maher

New Rule: For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an "outpost of Western civilization" like it's a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every goddamn liberal precept that Liberals are supposed to adore.

Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please somebody, stop us before we Enlighten again.

And since one can find all these concepts in today's Israel and virtually nowhere else in the Middle East, if anything, the world would be a better place if it had more Israels.

Of course, this message falls on deaf ears to the current crop who reduce everything to being only victims or victimizers, so Israel is lumped in as the toxic fruit of the victimizing West. The irony being that all marginalized people live better today because of western ideals, not in spite of them.

Martin Luther King used Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" to help shape the Civil Rights Movement. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its core to Rousseau and Voltaire. Kleisthenes never showed up for a sexual harassment seminar, but without him there's no democracy. The cop who murdered George Floyd got 21 years for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, an idea we got directly from John Locke, who no one in college would ever study anymore because he's so old, and so white, and so dead, and so Western.

Yes, that's how simple the Woke are. It's never about ideas. If it was, would they be cheering on Hamas for their liberation? Liberation? To do what? More freely preside over a country where there are no laws against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia, honor killings or child marriage. This is who liberals think you should stand with? Women there should be so lucky as to get colonized by anybody else.

And for the record, the Jews didn't "colonize" Israel or anywhere ever, except maybe Boca Raton. Gaza wasn't seized by Israel like India or Kenya was by the British Empire. And the partitioning of the region wasn't decided by Jews, but by a vote of the United Nations in 1947 with everyone from Russia to Haiti voting for it. But apparently, they don't teach this at Drag Queen Story Hour anymore.

Now it is true that for too long we didn't study enough Asian or African or Latin American history. But part of the reason for that is, frankly, there's not as much to study. Colleges replaced courses in Western Civ -- boo! Eyeroll! Dead white men, am I right? -- they replace that with World Civilization classes, which is fine in theory, but what it meant in practice is you read queer poetry of the African diaspora instead of Shakespeare. And I'm sure there's value in both, but as usual, America only ever overcorrects.

And so, we're at this place now where the words "western civ" became kind of a shorthand for "white people ruined everything." But they didn't ruin everything. No, they didn't live up to their own ideals for far too long and committed atrocities. But people back then were all atrocious, not just the white ones depending on who had the power.

But it was the western Enlightenment that gave rise to the notion that the law of the jungle should be curbed. Henry David Thoreau. John Stewart Mill. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Three-named dudes. It was all about three-named dudes. Three-named dudes like that were the OG social justice warriors. The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and yes Philadelphia, are what make life good for most people in free societies today. That the individuals have value, and even the powers that be must submit to the rule of law. That punishment should not be cruel and unusual. That accused people get a trial. That there is such a thing as a war crime.

Why is it that every other culture gets a pass, but the West is exclusively the sum of the worst things it's ever done? You think only white people colonized? Historians estimate that the very non-western Mr Genghis Khan killed 40 million people, and that was in the 13th century. He single-handedly may have reduced the world's population by 11%. On the other hand, he kind of made up for it, because he was such a prolific colonizer of vaginas that today an estimated 16 million people are his direct descendants.

So, stop saying "western civilization" like it's a contradiction in terms. It's not. You're thinking of "moderate Republican."

==

The people who snarl "western civilization" went to elite universities with air conditioning where they used their MacBook Pros and iPhones on extensive Wi-Fi networks.

[gayhenrycreel]

you are not exempt from bad media literacy

this includes me, you, and everyone else.

multiple of the blogs i follow reblogged a post saying this;

"the israeli population is genocidal"

both of them interpreted this as

"part of the israeli population is genocidal"

you see how these are entirely different sentences? people will be intelligent media analysts and still have biases that will have them reblog a clearly xenophobic post just because of the actions of the israeli government.

if i said "the american population is genocidal", you would rightly call me out. america commits genocide, but many americans are leftists, queer, muslim, black, indigenous, jewish, etc and suffer from the actions of america.

some americans are genocidal, as are some israelis, because they are both people and people can have fuckass opinions, but ask yourself;

if its okay to say this about foreign countries, would it also be okay to say about america or other western nations?

if no, you are xenophobic. this is not your fault unless you choose to continue being xenophobic. you, like everyone else in the west, were taught that you live in higher society and your country, especially america, is exempt from evil.

you, like everyone else on earth, are fully capable of being a good person, meaning not some vague "person who is good", but rather a person who does good actions. one of these good actions is admitting your biases and putting conscious effort into not letting them dictate how you treat people. be aware of your biases. by result of existing in a prejudiced society, some of your thoughts are going to be horribly bigoted. thats okay, just acknowledge that thoughts are thoughts, not reality.

before people attack me and call me a zio, israel is not the only example of westerners being xenophobic due to not understanding the difference between foreign governments and foreign people. russians are not evil, they live under a dictatorship. it makes me deeply uncomfortable when americans say russians hate ukraine, because they are trapped there and being drafted and are not actually putin.

russian and israeli civilians are the people who can help ukraine and palestine the most directly. they can and do protest directly against their governments, who try to suppress their protests.

i hate all militaries but we must remember that soldiers and cops are not interchangeable. many soldiers do volunteer to kill innocents, just like cops, but many are literally forced to murder people.

drafting is a violation of human rights and is forced labour. when a soldier does something bad willingly, thats just a soldier being a bad person, but you cant say that russians are all evil just because they cant escape drafting. im saying this for a reason. i actually once saw an american claiming that russian civilians are evil for being drafted.

there is no such thing as a binary. no good vs evil. no male vs female. no antizionist vs zionist (seriously the definition is so flexible its an identity label rather than political at this point). no trans vs cis.

countries can not be entirely evil, because civilians live there. we all hate north korea, and the people there are being starved and tortured.

when people say "x country is entirely evil" they are, typically a westerner, probably about to say the most racist shit about chinese civilians youve ever heard.

governments are bad. some are worse than others, but when a nation commits war crimes its because of the government. sometimes some people encourage it, but saying the entire population supports genocide is inaccurate and xenophobic.

no demographic is a monolith.

not queer people, not poc, not russians, not israelis.

absolutely no ones political beliefs is defined by their skin, place of birth, gender, sex, or anything else.

[thatuselesshuman]

Oc Questionnaire Tag

I'm bored as hell so stealing an open tag from @the-golden-comet for a monster of a Questionnaire

Your Questions:

Pick 3

Uh so Zero's gonna yap today since I formally introduced him yesterday

1. Five Things that make you happy?

"Hmm, I guess I like a nice sweet date, soft blankets, and music. Running is also nice, since I can run for hours and pass the time. What could the fifth thing be... Oh, Five is nice as well. He, for whatever reason, likes to drag me to whatever new bar he found in the city. "

2. If you could save just one other person who would it be?

"Five. He's the only one who makes an effort to talk to me, whether I want him to or not."

3. Tell us one of your funniest jokes.

"I don't tell jokes like that. Mine are mostly passing quips. The actual jokes are Five's job."

4. Where would you like to visit?

"I think the mountains east of Selim would be nice. I've never been out of the country except for missions, and the mission where I leave the country are few and far between. When I do leave, it's usually to converse with our ally."

5. When do you usually go to sleep?

"Whenever I have the time allowance. Sometimes I go days without sleep."

6. Are you a jealous person?

"Not usually."

7. Have you committed a crime?

"I like to say that my existence is a human rights violation, so..."

8. Do you have a chore you absolutely hate?

"Cleaning up blood. It gets everywhere and stains everything. What's worse is that I can just barely sense the blood, so I never clean it correctly."

9. Tell me an embarrassing childhood story.

"I was sitting in the park with my brother when we were young and I suppose it looked like I was staring into the distance. Well, some lady thought I was staring at her... assets. She stomped over to me and berated me before slapping me across the face for 'lack of manners'. She didn't listen to me when I tried to explain to her that I'm blind."

10. Are you a good person?

"No. I've killed hundreds of thousands of people. My fiancé's parents were killed in war. If she were to see me today, she'd be ashamed to have ever known me."

11. What's the worst thing you've ever done?

"I was raiding an army base and was instructed to kill everyone in sight. The raid was going well, but I then stumbled uopn a room full of children. I killed most of them in their sleep, nice and quick, but one of them was awake and cowering in the corner. For some reason, I couldn't bare to kill her too. I gave her one of my knives and told her to run, and if she ever saw me again, to kill me with that knife."

12. Do you regret it?

"Yes. What I did was not a mercy. She will forever live haunted by what I did instead of in the afterlife with her loved ones. I gave her the painful way out instead of the easy way."

13. What's the quickest way to make you laugh?

"A mirror. My existence is the world's funniest joke."

14. What is your favorite song right now?

"I'm not sure, but what I am sure of is that whatever the Trainees are singing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night sounds terrible. I'm better off giving them a good scare to make them piss themselves so they don't sleep deprive the rest of the Trainees the rest of their lives."

15. Do you sometimes wish to be someone else?

"Occasionally, but that would mean someone would have to be me. No one deserves to have blood on their hands for atrocities they didn't commit."

16. Do you push forward or take time to rest?

"Most of the time I'm not allowed to rest. I can go longer without necessities such as food, water, and sleep, so the General uses that precious time for more missions. I think I get a week or so off every couple of months. Though, now I'm recovering from an injury so I'm training the Trainees."

17. If you had to pick an item of clothing or an accessory to wear for the rest of your life, what would it be?

"My mask. I've already been wearing it for 600 years straight, what's a few more?"

18. What is your favorite drink?

"Five orders me this thing called a 'virgin' Blue Nightlock whenever we go out. I'm not sure what that means, but he swears it doesn't have alcohol in it. It tastes like a blackberry soda."

19. If you were forced to forget one memory, what would you choose?

"Asking my fiancé to marry me. I wish I could forget her entirely."

20. What is a positive thing your worst enemy would say about you?

"I'm the strongest adversary they'll ever face, even if I'm on the tightest leash on the continent."

Wow, that took a while!

@moltenwrites @willtheweaver @wyked-ao3 @katenewmanwrites @agirlandherquill +open tag

[mariacallous]

Oleg Orlov began his career by protesting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. At about the same time, he joined Memorial, Russia’s first and most important historical and human-rights organization—in Russia, the two subjects are organically connected—while it was still an underground, dissident operation. In the 1990s, Memorial emerged into the open and began publishing books detailing the mass arrests and murders committed by the Soviet Union. During the decade I spent researching the history of the Soviet Gulag, I ran into Memorial historians and activists all over Russia, including in their one-person “office” in Syktyvkar and in the spectacular museum, now dismantled, that they built on the site of a former concentration camp near Perm.

Memorial is dedicated to both revealing the truth about the past and preventing that past from repeating itself in the future. Its activists work in archives, but they also monitor human-rights violations in modern Russia. Orlov, who became Memorial’s co-chair, worked especially hard to expose the horrors of Russia’s wars in Chechnya, and the cultural and political destruction that followed. He did so because he wanted to live in a different kind of Russia. Now he will pay a high price for his patriotism.

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the regime shut down Memorial, after 30 years of operation. The same regime arrested Orlov, who had criticized the invasion with the same unsparing language he had used for the previous four decades. “This brutal war,” he wrote in an article, is “not only mass murder of people and destruction of the infrastructure, economy, and cultural sites” of Ukraine but also “a severe blow to the future of Russia,” a country that “is now pushed back into totalitarianism, but this time into a fascist totalitarianism.” Like Alexei Navalny, whose funeral took place in Moscow on Friday, Orlov was extraordinarily brave—brave enough to publish his criticism of the war, of President Vladimir Putin, and of Putin’s regime.

On February 27, Orlov received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for “discrediting the Russian army.” Following in a long tradition of Soviet dissidents before him, Orlov made a courtroom speech, addressed to those in the room and beyond. Joseph Brodsky, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparred in 1964 with a Soviet judge who asked him by what right he dared state “poet” as his occupation: Who ranked you among poets?” Brodsky replied, “No one. Who ranked me as a member of the human race?” That exchange circulated throughout the Soviet Union in handwritten and retyped versions, teaching an earlier generation about bravery and civic courage.

Orlov’s speech will also be reprinted and reread, and someday it will have the same impact too. Here are excerpts, translated by one of his colleagues:

On the first day of my trial, terrible news shocked Russia and the entire world: Alexey Navalny was dead. I, too, was in shock. At first, I even wanted to give up on making a final statement. Who cares about words today, when we have not recovered from the shock of this news? But then I thought: These are all links in the same chain.  Alexey’s death or, rather, murder; the trials of other critics of the regime including myself; the suffocation of freedom in the country; the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. So I have decided to speak. I have not committed any crime. I am being tried for writing a newspaper article that described the political regime in Russia as totalitarian and fascist. I wrote this article over a year ago. Some of my acquaintances thought back then that I had exaggerated the gravity of the situation. Now, however, it is clear that I did not exaggerate. The government in our country not only controls all public, political, and economic life, but also aspires to exert control over culture and scientific thought … There isn’t a sphere of art where free artistic expression is possible, there are no free academic humanitarian sciences, and there is no more private life either.

Orlov continued by reflecting on the absurdity of his case, of the legalistic rigamarole in Russia that conceals the regime’s lawlessness. In fact, the law is whatever Putin dictates. Everything else, the lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, are just there for show, to pretend that there is rule of law when there is not.

Let me now speak about my current trial. When it began, I refused to participate. Thanks to that, I had the opportunity to reread The Trial, a novel by Franz Kafka, during the court sessions. The current situation in our country has a lot in common with the world that Kafka’s protagonist inhabits in the book. We live with the same absurdity and arbitrariness, camouflaged by a formal adherence to some pseudo-legal procedures. Here we are accused of “discrediting the military,” but no one explains what this means or how it differs from legitimate criticism. We are accused of “spreading deliberately false information” without anyone bothering to prove that it is indeed false. The Soviet regime used exactly the same methods when it branded any criticism as lies. Our attempts to prove the veracity of this information are punished as crimes … We are being given prison sentences for doubting that aggression against a neighboring country is being carried out for the sake of international peace and security. This is absurd. Kafka’s hero has no idea, until the end of the novel, of the nature of the accusation against him. He is ruled guilty and executed anyway. In Russia, the accusation is formally announced, but it is impossible to understand it within the framework of law and logic. Unlike Kafka’s hero, we do understand why we are being detained, arrested, sentenced, or killed: We are being punished for daring to criticize the authority. That is completely banned in modern Russia.

Orlov listed a few of the thousands of Russians who have been detained for criticizing the Russian government and the war, and then continued:

In recent days, they have grabbed, punished, and even imprisoned people only for coming to memorials to victims of political purges to pay tribute to the murdered Alexey Navalny, a remarkable man, brave and honest. He never lost optimism and faith in our country’s future even in the extremely hard conditions that had been set up especially for him. The authorities are fighting against Navalny even when he is dead; they are afraid of him even after his death, and they are right to be afraid. They are destroying people’s memorials to his memory. They do this because they hope to demoralize that part of the Russian society that still takes responsibility for their country. This is a false hope. We remember Alexey’s appeal: “Don’t give up.” I will add to this: Don’t lose your spirits, don’t lose your optimism. The truth is on our side. Those who have led our country into this hole represent the old, the frail, the outdated. They do not clearly see the future, only false images from the past, mirages of “imperial grandeur.”

Finally, Orlov addressed the court itself, the government officials and clerks, the judges, and the prosecutors. Of course, he knows, as any student of Soviet history knows, that a single dictator cannot enforce an authoritarian regime by himself. Thousands of  collaborators are required. Orlov’s last words were for them.

Not all of you believed in this repressive system, of course. You sometimes regret that you are forced to participate in all of this. But you tell yourself: And what can I do? I am only following the instructions from my superiors. The law is the law. I am speaking to you, your honor, and the others accusing me: Are you yourselves not afraid? Are you not afraid to watch what our country is becoming, our country that you, too, probably love? Are you not afraid that not only you, but also your children and, God forbid, your grandchildren, will have to live in this absurdity, this dystopia? Do you not acknowledge the obvious truth, that the repressive machine will sooner or later also flatten those who launched it and promoted it? This has happened many times in history … I am not completely sure that those who have created and implemented Russia’s  illegal, anti-constitutional “laws” will face judicial persecution. But the punishment will definitely come. Your children or grandchildren will be ashamed to talk about the work and the deeds of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers. The same will happen to those now committing crimes in the Ukraine. This, I think, is the most terrible punishment. And it is inevitable … I regret nothing.

[bnhaobservation]

Ramblings about BNHA chap 384

So chap 384 is here…

…and it has plenty of things worth talking about because the previous chapter and this one sprung quite a bit of debates.

So we start with Machia rampaging against AFO and Hawks confirms Shinsou was sent to brainwash Machia so that he would fight with them and Mt. Lady is protecting Machia because, if AFO manages to land a blow on Machia the brainwashing will break down.

In short the heroes had agreed to use Machia as a weapon against AFO and his men.

In BNHA Machia is considered a human, his not-human look tied to his Quirk.

Now… I guess it vary from country to country but currently, in many countries, you can’t force prisoners to fight for you. In some countries you can’t even force them to do labor. You can imprison them, restrain them, stop them from hurting others but you can’t force them to fight your wars or to hurt/fight other criminals or activities which can be life-threatening.

If you do, you commit a crime, aka something villainous.

So what the heroes are doing with Machia is, by a part of the world, considered a crime, because Machia is a prisoner and the heroes are forcing him to fight in their war against his consensus (where Gentle Criminal and Lady Nagant agreed to it).

In other parts of the world, prisoners have no rights or very limited rights so they don’t get a say on how they’re used.

And of course, in the middle of all this comes the readers’ opinion as they can agree or disagree with their country’s choice on how to handle prisoners.

The ‘it’s okay to brainwash Machia’ debate fundamentally comes down to this, to which rights do you think a prisoner should have (and yes, I know there’s a part of the fandom who view Machia as subhuman but, technically, in the BNHA world he’s human so that’s the setting the manga is showing, a human prisoner forced to fight against his will).

There will never be a consensus in this debate in the net because, even though maybe we’re all talking in English, we come from different countries and we bring on the table different beliefs and what I see as a crime and a violation of human rights might be perfectly fine for someone else.

BNHA will address the matter keeping in mind the Japanese readers, so what really matters is how Japan sees the whole thing.

Interconnected to this debate there’s another debate, the ‘it’s Shinsou’s Quirk Villanous’ debate.

That’s possibly a little more easy to solve because Shinsou’s Quirk… is just a Quirk. It’s not a heroic or a villainous Quirk, it’s a Quirk. It has no will of its own. It’s the use Shinsou makes of it that’s heroic or villainous. Shinsou’s Quirk is the equivalent of a knife, you can use it to cut meat for the starved or to cut a person with the purpose to kill them.

The knife has no will, claiming the knife is the one heroic or villainous is taking away the responsibility from the human who’s using it.

And the same goes for Shinsou’s Quirk. Like all the Quirks Shinsou can use it to help people or to hurt people. Shinsou decide and it’s him who’s heroic or villainous. And knowing if the use of his Quirk in this specific case is heroic or villainous comes from what we decide in the previous debate.

Regardless of the decision, it still won’t make the Quirk heroic or villainous, it’ll just make Shinsou heroic or villainous.

So let’s go back a little and see if the story gives us some clues on how we’re meant to see the use of Shinsou’s Quirk in such situation.

Premise.

In Japanese prisons labor is mandatory, rather harsh and very underpaid. Still, I couldn’t find info about them forcing prisoners to… personally go fight other criminals, or risk their lives or something like that. Maybe it’s done, maybe they can be dragged on the field and used as human shields or sent to do jobs that require putting your life on the line, things like that.

All this to say that Japanese readers might be less against using Machia than readers of other countries who’re against forced labor. We can’t tell for sure though.

I come from a country which has very different beliefs so for me it’s ten layers of wrong but the story isn’t written with me as reader in mind. It’s written with Japanese readers as target in mind.

Still, overall, I get the feeling Horikoshi knows he’s toeing the line of what’s acceptable for his readers because AFO calls in how this is something he would do (therefore not a heroic thing but a villainous thing).

AFO opens a debate on what’s being done, a debate that would have no reason to exist if the thing weren’t questionable, if the heroes could just shut him up by telling him that it’s standard practice to handle prisoners like that, to force them to fight against other Villains.

The morality of the heroes has been discussed through the whole series, and this is another case in which heroes are toeing the line between right and wrong, by doing something that’s clearly not standard practice and judged good, like how Tartarus had plenty of accusations of human right violations or how the hero public safety commission is depicted as secretly offing heroes who commit crimes, or how Endeavor was abusive with his family and so on.

The heroes in this story aren’t a paragon of virtue so, just because they’re heroes, we’ve no insurance what they do is morally right.

Therefore… how does the story handles the whole thing? Is Horikoshi trying to say using Machia is villainous or is he trying to paint it as heroic?

We’ll see it in a moment.

Since he’s at it, AFO figures it was thanks to Shinsou’s Quirk he couldn’t figure out the Aoyama were lying.

And now… let’s start with the good, totally awesome part of the chapter.

IT’S GREAT TO HAVE MACHIA REALIZE AFO IS A JERK WHO ONLY USES PEOPLE. IT’S SOMETHING I WAS REALLY HOPING WOULD HAPPEN!

I mean, it’s actually weird he didn’t notice it sooner, since AFO had no problems in saying so to the whole league in chap 337 comparing his so called friends to a 100-yen lighter, with Dabi catching up and calling AFO’s friends ‘friends to spare’, implying he’s basically sees them as mere pawns in a game.

I mean, if those are AFO’s inspiring speech, I don’t get why whoever would want to be truly loyal to him.

If this is the premise, if this is how AFO usually talks about his friends, Machia, who’s an old friend, should have known it by a lifetime, really and should have decided to remain with him regardless because toxic relationships are, sadly, a thing that exists.

So Machia realizing it only now comes as… a bit too late but whatever. It’s still great. I like it. I totally want Machia to decide to side for the heroes, it’s a great choice. Only… as usual the execution is so rushed it fails to deliver well why Machia changed his mind, all for the sake of a surprise twist, and for a quick removal of the previous debate.

But let’s go with order.

Why Machia changed his mind and decided to go against AFO? When did he have his epiphany? Did the heroes went to him and explained him how much of a jerk AFO is?

Nope, that was never in their plans, they always planned to brainwash him, never to sway his faith in All for One.

Machia, in fact is in the middle of a crisis, because he complains AFO has abandoned him.

When? Back when he left him on the mountain only for Shigaraki to find?

The scene is shown but apparently nope, it’s supposedly when Machia figured out AFO possessed Shigaraki during the previous war and escaped leaving Machia behind (chap 295), at least that’s what the images and the fact that Machia claims Shigaraki talked with AFO’s voice and has his smell seem to imply.

Machia complains about how he trusted AFO’s words and waited for him while the other never came back and abandoned him and… this doesn’t really work well.

For start AFO never said he would come back but that his successor would. Machia in chap 239 recognized Shigaraki as AFO’s true successor, not as AFO, and accepted to serve Shigaraki.

From that moment on, Machia is Shigaraki’s underling, not AFO’s, for Machia’s own decision.

AFO abandoned Machia in Shigaraki’s care and Machia knew. Still he remained loyal to AFO, even if the latter had given him away, without seeing this as abandonment.

The flashback shows us a scene straight from chap 295, when AFO possessed Shigaraki’s body end escaped from the battleground, leaving Machia behind, Machia being aware that, although the body is Shigaraki’s, his master should actually be inside it because the body, all of sudden had All for One’s voice and scent.

Now AFO is supposedly being a genius (this is not my speculation, if you look at AFO stats he’s ALWAYS given superior intelligence. He’s an S+ for crying out loud! There are only 3 characters who has stats close to him, which are Yaoyorozu Momo, Yagi Toshinori and Nezu and they’re S not S+!) but he evidently left his brain in suspended animation or something like that because in that scene from chap 295, when Spinner, loyal follower of Shigaraki, points out they’re leaving behind Compress, Machia and Himiko, his oh so smart reply is that Shigarakia has lost to OFA and Endeavor so he should pay for that loss for AFO’s sake (gone is the time in which he smartly would tell Shigaraki it was all for Shigaraki’s sake, manipulating him into thinking he cared for him, now let’s give everyone a real piece of his mind and about how he doesn’t care about anyone else but himself). Of course he doesn’t just say it while Spinner can hear but also while Machia, with his superior hearing, could hear.

Which is stupid because in that moment they weren’t escaping leaving the others behind to punish Shigaraki but because their situation called for it… because it would be stupid to leave valuable allies behind if they could be retrieved, so no reason to give such a response. Any person with a ounce of brain and the healthy wish not to have his underlings rebel would have said ‘we can’t save them now, we’ll come back for them later’.

And they should have come back at least for Machia as he’s a great asset!

And again, this isn’t just me, Machia alone did a lot of damage in the past war and was almost unstoppable for most of the time.

So okay, Machia could have taken this as abandonment but… should he have held it against AFO?

In chap 221 Gigantomachia was presented as ‘loyal to a fault’ to AFO and also as a simple guy, compared to a dog (also due to his dog Quirk).

This sort of characterization leads people (characters and readers) to expect he would remain loyal to a fault despite AFO leaving him behind. That he would rationalize AFO had no other option but leave him (which is true as, back then, he was tied down and so weak he couldn’t move). After all even in the story the heroes believed they would need brainwashing to covert Gigantomachia to their cause, that without it Machia wouldn’t betray AFO.

But okay, Machia was held captive for a month, he had time to think over and could have realized AFO betrayed him, and indeed in this chapter we learn Machia, while brainwashed, expressed deep anger over being betrayed…

Too bad we never, ever were shown any of that as Machia disappeared from the plot and, until the previous one, he is only mentioned in the following chapters. This is… not great because a good plot twist, to be believable in the narrative, doesn’t have to be just something the readers want to happen but something that’s foreshadowed, constructed. It must be surprising but not out of nowhere (think at the Touya reveal and at how it was carefully constructed).

But this isn’t the end of it because Machia is now rampaging claiming he was abandoned but… AFO just made an attempt at freeing him, which proves he hadn’t completely abandoned him and indeed AFO could use it to claim it’s a misunderstanding, that he wanted to save Machia but couldn’t do it previously. But no, AFO’s super intelligent brain is on holiday so he says nothing to defend himself from Machia blaming him for his abandonment.

Meanwhile Machia’s brain is on holiday too because okay, AFO deserved to be splattered under a mountain… but siding with the heroes who didn’t even try to bribe him into joining their side but just wanted to use him as a human weapon? Who would jail him back as soon as the war has ended because hey, he’s a villain who caused countless deaths?

I get the idea might be he still would get a chance at getting rid of his grudge by getting rid of AFO but still… unless the idea is that he’s going into suicidal mode for the pleasure of squashing AFO, this is not a bright choice from Machia’s part. He would have more chances to a better life if he still were to side with AFO, who, as said before, still made an attempt at freeing him therefore wasn’t really wishing to leave him jailed for life.

So we jumped from extremely-loyal-Machia to angry-Machia without the story easing us into this.

I mean, we could have had a moment in which Machia mused on how Shigaraki cared for his allies while AFO didn’t, we could have had Machia begging his master not to leave him when AFO left the battleground, we could have had a scene in which Machia mulled over what Spinner and AFO said but no, we had nothing of the sort. For the sake of a quick surprise plot twist, we gave up on the building of said plot twist.

It feels, at best, like a rushed job.

And then the story addresses the whole was it evil to brainwash Machia or not… by not addressing it. Basically, although we keep on having confirmations they brainwashed Machia, as soon as Machia freed himself the first time, Shinsou called off the thing because… he realized Machia was already angry enough against AFO on his own. No need to brainwash him if the big guy already wanted to smash the man below a mountain.

And we know this is meant to be the ‘answer’ to his Shinsou’s Quirk a villainous Quirk (really, Shinsou, it’s just a Quirk, what matters is what you do with it) because Shinsou mentions how everyone felt his Quirk was a villainous one but hey, his Quirk can’t control a person’s heart… which I guess is meant to imply that since now Machia wants to smash AFO on his own… it makes things okay.

This is… a not-answer.

Having Machia conveniently feel he’s okay fighting AFO (without the heroes noticing) so Shinsou, who was instructed to brainwash him and did it a first time, doesn’t do it again, doesn’t address the problem at hand, it simply gives the story a convenient way out of the problem by all of sudden making brainwashing useless.

So this chapter stumbles into two of the most recurring complains that started to be often moved to BNHA after the Paranormal Liberation Arc War.

Things happen without building up (Machia deciding he wanted to betray AFO) and there are no consequences for actions/decisions taken (the heroes decide to brainwash Machia but, guess what, it’s not needed anymore, so it’s not done, let’s put the debate on a shelf because the thing didn’t happen).

This bit could have been so awesome with a decent built up, we could have had Shinsou, for example, deciding that yes, he was ordered to brainwash Machia but didn’t want to and try to reach out for Machia, leading him to realize he was manipulated. They could have connected on how they were possibly perceived as villains even before Machia became one, just due to his looks, and how Shinsou is perceived as a potential villain due to his Quirk, and decide they both would rise above this.

Machia could have talked with Shinsou about how AFO didn’t value people while Shigaraki did value his teammates, which might have promoted further pondering on how Shigaraki isn’t completely evil as AFO for example, and might have humanized the villains more in the eyes of the heroes.

We could have gotten some Machia’s backstory, because characters in a story actually need to be characterized instead than remaining a little more than mob characters.

We could have gotten more on Shinsou, on how he was trying to use his Quirk for good, how he absolutely didn’t want to use it for villainous stuff. But no, it didn’t happen.

If using Shinsou’s Quirk in such setting was ultimately villainous or not, in the end is not really addressed, just evaded with a ‘but it didn’t happen due to lucky circumstances’.

And Machia didn’t really get character development more an abrupt turn that, had it happened in a fanfic, would have likely be called OOC without building up.

Hawks insists no one wants to read a story about a Demon Lord… but… hum… actually we are? He’s part of the story, without the villain you don’t have the hero. And it’s not like there are no people who wouldn’t want to read a dark story in which the hero loses and the villain win. The key here is that very few people want to be part of a story in which the bad guy win if they’re not on the bad guy’s side.

But reading a story with a bad ending? Tragedies have been around from ancient times and people had read them.

“Devil Man” is still a classic, even in Japan. But whatever, let’s move on and focus on… the journalists who decided they want to show the heroes’ struggle to the world.

While Gentle’s video gets always more visual, the journalists want to document what’s going on. One is a journalist who, in the past, met Deku and is impressed by his growth… the other is the journalist who attacked Endeavor in the press conference and that now claims she’s there to address a private grievance.

I take she wants to see the heroes atone for what happen by beating up AFO.

The journalists talk about how there are more (heroes) like Midoriya… no, really?

I mean, Midoriya is the main character in the story, we know that, but in-story he’s just a hero among many, one that’s not even a lot popular because only the guys at U.A. should know he has OFA.

They talk about how, while some heroes retired, the ones who remained chose to do so… or were forced to do so. And this is true, do?

So we switch to talk about something else. -_-

Something else being the news all around the world saying Japan has lost but they instead want to show there’s who’s still fighting there and how ‘this story will be told whether they claim victory or taste defeat.’.

I wish they would stop talking about stories/tales… because it’s too much, it causes the dialogue to not feel natural.

Whatever.

The journalists’ plan is to show the heroes’ story regardless of how it’ll end so as to unify the people around the world and make the world smaller.

Maybe it’s just me but this as a WW2 vibe.

We’re then shown plenty of people watching the battle (among them the movie only characters and again they talk about a story, saying they can let the people watching them know the story isn’t over yet because let’s toss the word story as much as possible. -_-

Anyway with this the chapter ends. It has good ideas but the work feel… rushed. Maybe it’s just me.

[theeblackademic]

We Charge Genocide and Black Women’s Political Subjectivity

My initial interest in the Civil Rights Congress’s We Charge Genocide was sparked by the list of petitioners and their bold decision to charge the United States with violating international law. The 265 document evidences the endemic nature of racial violence in the American South and goes as far as to detail United States’ complicity in institutional Black death. The case was presented to the United Nations General Assembly in December 1951 with the signed support of notable figures such as Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, William L. Patterson, and Charlotta Bass. Already familiar with the threats against Black protesters during the early Cold War, I was smug in the audacity of the ninety-three petitioners and wanted to know more about the political subjectivities that brought them to risk their lives and livelihoods by participating in this act of treason. When I first discovered the appeal, I tried to understand the list of petitioners by noting the occupations and organizational affiliations of the ones that I recognized. After toiling over some less-recognizable names, I realized that several Black women appeared more than once the document: as petitioners and witnesses to the acts of racial violence listed in later sections of the indictment. Disappointed by their impersonal recognition, I committed myself to finding out more about these women and the ways that their signatures were more than marks of witness. In what follows, I offer a rough summary of the geopolitical context that prompted We Charge Genocide and weighed on its Black woman signatories. In closing, I also explain the motivation for and direction of my current research into one petitioner: Amy Mallard.

The Pot and the Kettle: The Genocide Convention. The barbarity of World War II had brought 51 countries together in defense of international peace, security, and human rights. In this, the United States worked to assert itself as a leader in the fight for freedom and democracy among its constituents and went as far as to host the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, California—the convention that would lead to the United Nations founding charter. By December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly had developed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (or Genocide Convention) which defined genocide and all acts that would thus violate the international law. This international contract, signed by the United States, both obligated contracting parties to intervene against all signs of genocide and provided the Civil Rights Congress with a comprehensive code to which the United States may be held. Using the language of the Genocide Convention, We Charge Genocide directly applies the the articles against genocide to the realities facing the Black American south. With this translation, the Civil Rights Congress presented a litany of cases from 1945 to 1951 exemplifying Black genocide and organized under the tenets provided by the United Nations. These cases were accompanied by detailed accounts of the United States’ involvement (or lack thereof); ultimately revealing the ✨hypocrisy✨ of the leading nation.

What Happens at Home, Stays at Home: The Ego War. Amid the international solitary that formed the United Nations, geopolitical tensions between the United States and Soviet Union bubbled into what we now recognize as the Cold War. The beginning of this feud arguably began in 1947 and produced several posturing contests spanning decades; including the Space Race and the gold metal men’s basketball game at the 1972 Summer Olympics. This ego war placed the Unites States under a microscope from the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies) and created precarious opportunity for Black Americans who intimately knew the flaws of their nation. By 1951, the McCarran Act, the Smith Act, and several other federal statutes had created an ideological gag order in the United States that equated Black protest to subversion. Anyone willing to betray their nation with criticism was obviously colluding with with the Eastern enemy. Those accused were often members, or suspected members, of the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) and faced imprisonment, deportation, and other forms of intimidation. However, Civil Right Congress and members had long been marked by the federal government for collaborating with CPUSA on Black issues and including known CPUSA members in its ranks. For these organizers, the harms of enduring racial violence outweighed the consequences for treason and collusion. And so, despite the risk, the Civil Rights Congress took advantage of global stage set by the geopolitical image war and used We Charge Genocide to air the United States’ dirty laundry.

What Now? The mixed-membership of the Civil Rights Congress and the associated risk inspired my first attempt to unravel Black women’s signatures in We Charge Genocide. The stories and political careers of Claudia Jones, Charlotta Bass, and Beah Richards led me to further investigate the audacity of signature as a political act for We Charge Genocide’s Black woman signatories. All three women were connected to the petition but only two signed. All three held with varying degrees of Communist Party affiliation but faced drastically different consequences for their political choices. In what was originally meant for a greater dissertation project, I continued my investigation of We Charge Genocide’s Black woman signatories by gathering what I could of the circumstances that brought the names of lesser-known Black women to the document—particularly the Black widows. My current project focuses on the political subjectivity of Black widowed petitioners and the ways that their contributions are oversimplified, by the Civil Rights Congress, as responses to acts of genocide committed against their loved ones. Most of their names merely follow the account of their husband’s death with the phrase “Mrs. ______ is a signer of this petition.” As the only exception among the repeated women, Claudia Jones (unmarried) is noted as a self-representative for her accused violation of the Smith Act. Considering the ways that Black women’s political action is often read through their relation and care for others—typically Black men—I am interested in the political subjectivities of Black widowed petitioners beyond their roles as wives and mothers. From my focus on Amy James Mallard, I bring forward several racial and gendered attacks that are distinct from her identity as a wife and are undoubtedly embedded in her political act of signature—like being wrongfully charged with her husbands murder. My hope is to imbue Amy Mallard’s signature (and that of other Black widow petitioners) with more self-advocacy than implied in its original context; and ultimately to contribute to a shift where Black women are regarded as political subjects capable of acting on their own behalf.

January 1949. Amy Mallard (widow of Robert “Duck” Mallard), escorted by Ohio businessman Joseph Goldwasser, with her children Doris Byron Mallard and John Mallard. Photo taken outside of Toombs County, Georgia courthouse for the trial of William “Spud” Howell and Roderick Clifton.

To find out more on the life and legacy of We Charge Genocide, click here.

[thxnews]

Blinken Addresses UN Security Council Meeting on Ukraine

The Exact Transcript of the Speech

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thank you very much.  Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for focusing the Security Council on this critically important issue.  And Mr. Secretary-General, thank you for the moral clarity that you’ve shown in dealing with Russia’s war against Ukraine. We’re grateful to have been able to welcome President Zelenskyy to this council table, and we thank him.  We thank him for reminding us yesterday, today, and every day what’s at stake in this conflict, not just for Ukraine, not just for Ukrainians, but for all of us. Fellow council members, two weeks ago I was in Yahidne, a small Ukrainian town about two hours north of Kyiv.  Russian forces seized the village in the first days of the invasion.  They went door to door, rounding up residents at gunpoint, marching them to the local elementary school, where Russian soldiers had set up a command post.  Then, soldiers forced more than 300 civilians – mostly women, children, and elderly people – into a basement not fit for human habitation, just a few small rooms, no windows, no circulation, no running water.  The soldiers held residents there for 28 straight days, using them as human shields, before fleeing when Ukrainian defenders arrived to liberate the town. In Yahidne, two residents took me into the basement where they and others had been imprisoned.  My guide said that they were packed together so tightly that they could barely breathe.  There was no room to sit, let alone lie down.  When they cried out to their captors that people were sick and needed medical care, a Russian soldier yelled back, “Let them die.” My guide pointed to two handwritten lists of names on the basement wall.  One was for the villagers that Russian forces had executed, the other for the people who died in the basement.  The oldest victim was 93 years old; the youngest 6 weeks old.  The Russians only allowed the removal of bodies once a day, so children, parents, husbands, and wives were forced to spend hours next to the corpses of their loved ones. I begin here because from the comfortable distance of this chamber, it’s really easy to lose sight of what it’s like for Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression.  This is what happened in just one building, in one community in Ukraine.  There are so many others like it.  In the last week alone, Russia has bombed apartment buildings in Kryvyi Rih; it’s burned down humanitarian aid depots in Lviv.  It’s demolished grain silos in Odesa.  It shelled eight communities in Sumy in a single day. This is what Ukrainian families are living through every day.  It’s what they’ve experienced for 574 days of this full-scale invasion.  It’s what they’ll endure tomorrow, and the day after that, for as long as Russia wages its vicious war, a war that President Putin openly declared from the outset is aimed at erasing Ukraine from the map as a sovereign country and restoring Russia’s lost empire. In this war, there is an aggressor and there is a victim.  One side is attacking the core principles of the UN Charter; the other fights to defend them.  For over a year and half, Russia has shredded the major tenets of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international humanitarian law, and flouted one Security Council resolution after another. Let’s review.  First, Russia’s invasion itself violates the central pillar of the UN Charter – respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations.  Second, Russia’s committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine on an almost daily basis.  Third, Russia continues to engage in reckless nuclear saber-rattling, announcing that it’s stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus and continuing to use Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant and its employees as a shield for its aggression, risking catastrophic consequences. Fourth, Russia is weaponizing hunger.  Thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the secretary-general and Türkiye, approximately 33 million metric tons of grain reached global markets, driving down food prices around the world.  Nearly two-thirds of the wheat exported though that deal went to developing countries.  Not only did Putin pull out of the deal, but Russia is now mining Ukraine’s fields, bombing its ports and rails, burning its silos.  As a result, Ukraine’s wheat exports will likely fall by 2.8 million metric tons this year.  That is the equivalent of 5.5 billion – 5.5 billion – loaves of bread trapped in the world’s breadbasket. Russia, meanwhile, on track for a record year of grain exports.  The hungrier the world is, the more Moscow profits. Fifth, Russia is using Iranian drones to attack Ukrainian civilians, drones that Russia procured from Iran in violation of Security Council Resolution 2231. Finally, just last week, Russia hosted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.  Putin said that they discussed ways to cooperate militarily.  While Kim pledged the DPRK’s – and I quote – “full and unconditional support,” end quote, for Russia’s war of aggression.  Of course, the transfer of arms between Moscow and Pyongyang would violate multiple resolutions of this council.  It’s hard to imagine a country demonstrating more contempt for the United Nations and all that it stands for – this from a country with a permanent seat on this council. President Putin is betting that if he keeps doubling down on the violence, that if he’s willing to inflict enough suffering on enough people, the world will cave on its principles and Ukraine will stop defending itself.  But Ukrainians are not giving up, for they’ve seen what life would look like if they submit to Russian control.  It’s that basement in Yahidne.  It’s families having their children torn away from them and deported to Russia, children taken away from their parents and deported far away.  It’s the rubble of Mariupol.  It’s the mass graves of Bucha. We are not giving up, either.  Indeed, since we were last here, a growing number of countries have come together to try to forge a different way forward.  In June, over a dozen countries met with Ukraine in Copenhagen to discuss the path toward a just and lasting peace, one that upholds the United Nations Charter and its core principles.  Two months later, more than 40 countries, including many members of this council, carried forward that discussion with Ukraine in Jeddah.  President Zelenskyy has put forward a 10-point plan for such a peace.  President Putin has put forward nothing. Now, some argue that continuing to stand with Ukraine and holding Russia accountable distracts us from addressing other priorities, like confronting the climate crisis, expanding economic opportunity, strengthening health systems.  That is a false choice.  We can and we must do both; we are doing both.  We must work together to tackle the global challenges that are affecting our people, meet the Sustainable Development Goals, invest in a world where all people have an opportunity to reach their full potential. The United States is the world’s leading contributor to these efforts.  And as President Biden told the General Assembly yesterday, we will continue to do more than our share to answer the imperatives of our time.  At the same time, as President Biden has made clear, we must continue to shore up the pillars of peaceful relations among nations, without which we will be unable to achieve any of our goals.  That’s why we must send a clear message, not only to Russia but to all would-be aggressors, that we will stand up – not stand by – when the rules that we all agreed to are being challenged – not only to prevent conflict, instability, and suffering, but to lay the foundation for all that we can do to improve people’s lives in times of peace. I opened by sharing the horrors that I saw in Yahidne.  Let me close by telling you what else I saw that day in Ukraine.  I saw volunteers rebuilding homes that had been razed by Russian bombs, farmers harvesting fields, people reopening businesses, citizens clearing mines and unexploded ordnance, children returning to schools.  In short, I saw a nation rebuilding and reclaiming its future.  That is the right of all members of our United Nations.  That’s what we defend when we stand up for the international order: the right of people not only to survive, but to thrive, to write their own future.  Our people, Ukraine’s people, the people of all nations get to write their own future.  We cannot, we will not let one man write that future for us.  Thank you.   Sources: THX News & US Department of State. Read the full article

[romanmigracs]

I don’t think you understand what is at stake, here, do you?

This is WAAAYYY bigger than Russia. Even Russia’s nuclear arsenal is not the biggest concern, here (although it is certainly not negligible).

Russia led by Putin has nullified international treaties they signed, committed massive amount of war crimes, violated human rights systematically, kidnapped children, shot down a passenger plane with international passengers, caused grain prices to rise so that Third World countries are at the brink of a famine, toyed with blowing up more than one nuclear plant, flooded a valley with people living in it, caused unnecessary death of civilians and military personel and vast material distruction. All in hopes of material gain and for hunger of power. Putin’s goverment has bet the farm to commit genocide in Ukraine. Putin has tried to utilize international energy trade as a weapon, and his minions have threatened the international community with attacks on information cables in the seabed and rattled the nuclear sabre.

Everyone, NOT JUST PUTIN, are waiting to know, whether such transgressions are punishable? Everyone. Jury is stil out. Does the international community stand in support of the values they have declared to protect? Or are they just big words that vanish, when push comes to shove? Putin clearly objects to such international values and has very deliberately violated against them all to make a point.

If he is driven out of Ukraine and Russia needs to oust him and show remorse of what they have done, international treaties such as Declaration of Human rights and the Geneva Convention will grow stronger. Everyone will see that violating international agreements will bring no benefit and a clear, physical punishment from the international community. Even for a dictator of mighty Russia. Even to the richest man of the World. No-one is bigger than all the people in the world. No-one will dare challenge them all at once. If the people of the World choose to cooperate. IF.

If Putin, after doing all of this that he has done, “saves face”, it is the end of the international community as a whole. Then it is (again) a free-for-all every-man-for-himself -scenario. The one with the nukes gets to do what he wants. So, everyone will get themselves a nuke or two. Everyone allies with the biggest and strongest, not the one who they like, not the one who will keep the world safe. Everyone just allies with the guy with the biggest guns.

Time for human rights, time for fair trade, time for international treaties on climate change and collaboration in the polar regions are over. Every little pesky country will try to get nukes and bigger powers - US, China, UK, Germany(!), India - are forced to shed their thin veil of peace.

Putin declared that sovereign countries between Russia and US should be divided into spheres of influence and lose their independence. They caused Finland to join NATO and Sweden has applied too! These are countries that previously believed in non-alliance and buffer zones between great military powers. Believed in assertive military power, defence without projection of power abroad. This is bad enough, it is a death of a dream. It is not like Finland thinks that US is this saint of a giant. We know full well they can - on a bad day - invade a country to rid them of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist. US sometimes disguised their bad behaviour quite poorly, but at least they tried to disguise it. Putin makes no real effort to even disguise his actions. He wants his approach to be out in the open, he wants this to be the way of the world from now on. He wants to return to imperialism - not just for Russia but for all of the world. He believes that in the chaos that ensues, Russia and his mafioso ways will find prosperity.

The World either wants that. Or we don’t.

We shall see.

[mentaltheatre]

Human Rights in a Cold War

I’m trying to sum up in this message some issues that need to be brought to the attention of any intelligent individual and to prevent countless victims of a “global warming” phenomenon you might not be aware of yet. It happens that a quest for global security of our brilliant but military side blinded leaders exposes democracy as a sham, a hoax. Living in a EU / NATO country I would have expected of myself to cheer for the western victory. And I cannot. The compromise the enlightened occidental nations do for security is the annulment of human rights for any individual that has a mind of his own and might not do what is expected of a sleeper, a dulled and dumbed drone, when there is a need to manipulate him/her. One can be crushed (and maybe forcibly reprogrammed) even when is only privately / silently disrespecting an entity / a doctrine / an institution / a system (a structure of relationships, a set of behaviors) he is unaware that he should follow / obey, or unaware of the threat posed by a group of interests not aligned with his own. High profile individuals are themselves targets of pressure they cannot avoid or overcome. This is a monstrous crime that currently cannot be prevented or punished. Intelligence (CONTROL) services put as all in danger. There is no law, no international mechanism to support de-escalation whenever there is a conflict of interests. Human rights are a total joke to them. It is their job to violate them because it is their job to humble / degrade any individual they do not / cannot fully control as a means to do it. There will always be war. Covert, and when the entities involved have too much to lose, openly and publicly lethal. We need all the aggressors, that are currently acting with impunity (in the interest of national security or for profit) and use the lack of understanding, lack of regulations, lack of protocols, lack of institutions, lack of laws to protect rights the public isn’t even aware of their relevance, made responsible. Intelligence on their actions will not be destroyed and will one day be made public. They will be judged. Entire regimes will be seen as evil / ruled by madness or ignorance through crime, even if now they can pose / impose themselves as enlightened democracies … Please promote SCIENCE, logic, reason, understanding of human nature, intelligence, diplomacy above demagogy, politics, strategic interests, military strength, though control.

At some point in the future the arms industry will become, probably abruptly, BANKRUPT. We will witness a moment of viral planetary commitment, perhaps the most important turning point in the evolution of humanity, a coalition of intelligence based on principles of sustainability and economic and social development, of understanding, planning and problem solving, inhibiting narrow-minded interests (narrow minded / closed minded superiority, need for superiority, makes an individual forfeit individual “open minded” intelligence, belief in the ascendance of reason, raising AWARENESS, favoring building and maintaining intension and intention on the needed topics / tissue / infrastructure / biological and technological resources of interest) that maintain military / technological superiority / of inhibition and control resources as a political / geostrategic weapon. From a legislative point of view, it will become illegal to inhibit intelligence through methods other than education, diplomacy, INTELLIGENCE, and I mean the perception of the environment, understanding, raising the level of consciousness on the relevant or missing parts, generation of solutions. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE (by force / “superpowers” / psychological tricks / the tactic of making the target the victim of a hidden interest group — difficult to identify — unregulated — outside the jurisdiction of the entity forced to justify itself “legally” — of interests that can annihilate it/ power play/ transformative experiences / thought control), COGNITIVE / PHYSIOLOGICAL DEGRADATION, CORRUPTION / CANCELLATION OF DISCERNMENT, will be sanctioned globally. We will only ARBITRATE conflicts and police, peacekeeping, equilibrium, between individuals and institutions / interest groups / peoples undermined by their own “imperfect” nature, by flaws not fully understood (used for leverage) or whose awareness is obscured / occulted by cleverly designed COUNTERINFORMATIONS (imposed under influence), and where the negative effects (COLD WAR) are not yet prevented / repaired by respected mechanisms / protocols / institutions, with the necessary international authority.

[amaditalks]

If the Israeli government wanted the hostages back, they would be behaving in a way that prioritized their safe return, including a negotiation. Nothing in the bombardment or the ground assault on Gaza is geared toward hostage return or apparently even the end of Hamas missile strikes. Nor does the Israeli strategy make sense if we believe there’s a goal of eliminating Hamas. The broad and seemingly indiscriminate killing and destruction in Gaza is not only failing to eliminate enough key players of Hamas to affect change, it’s also going to further radicalize Gazans who were not previously supporters of Hamas, but will now be willing to give them allegiance, because they are seen as the only defense against Israel’s war crimes, and the people willing to avenge the 8000+ dead Gazans, many of whom were children. 

And yes, Israel is committing war crimes and multiple violations of international law, and that’s true every day, even when they aren’t dropping bombs. 

I appreciate the desire to remain patriotic when your country is “responding“ to something as horrible as October 7. And by no means am I suggesting that Hamas’ October 7 actions did not necessitate some response. But the rhetoric coming out of the Israeli government and its actual actions do not align with what its supporters are claiming its intentions to be, and if Israelis aren’t able to see that, then any chance of anyone else applying pressure to end the bloodshed is limited.

Furthermore, the appalling and indiscriminate death that Israel is creating in Gaza is making Jews in the diaspora increasingly unsafe. We are facing outrageous antisemitism because people cannot and will not separate us from the outrageously horrible human beings Israelis inexplicably allow to remain in power.

If Israel were prioritizing the release of the hostages, they would be negotiating a swap, or a ceasefire to get them released. If Israel were prioritizing the elimination of Hamas, they would be at the UN asking for international pressure on Qatar to allow the apprehension and extradition of its leadership that’s living in luxury in Doha, to stand trial in The Hague,  but they can’t do that, because as soon as they appeal to the authority of international community, they would also have to submit to it, and Bibi would be in the dock in the ICC right alongside the leaders of Hamas, and he knows it. And every Israeli should know that by now too.

It’s well past time for all of us to be operating in the same reality.

If you're sitting here calling for a ceasefire maybe look up the record of every other time Israel did a ceasefire. Who always broke it first? Because it wasn't Israel. What you're asking for when you're saying you want a ceasefire is for Hamas to have the opportunity to do this again. Call for them to release the fucking hostages instead.

[mobiused]

did you ever make that loona lore master post or google doc? it's been so long, icr what it was supposed to be. if not, can you explain the imperialist blah blah blah? does it have to do with yyxy being trapped in the garden? is it like assimilation? also sorry this is already so many questions, but one more: do you ever get mixed feelings about the lore because of the man who created it? i enjoy thinking about it sometimes, it's the reason i paid attention to loona in the first place, but i don't think much about it anymore. not just because it's become stagnant, but truly the girls >>>> the lore and its creator. and BBC. anyway, thank you for your knowledge <3

Mm like I said a while ago, I still haven't made the Loonaverse 101 engagement deck (although I'm very slowly working on it) but in the meantime I do have a masterlist of posts that I've made on it here.

I'll discuss the theme of imperialism below (1.3k)

We see it in all three units in different ways. 1/3 has the aestheticisation of Europe and the issue of Hong Kong. (Ordinarily I'd hate to bring up politics about Vivi's home country but please take this part as dissociated from her and her identity outside of her character; the narrative is inherently political so it would be remiss of me to not mention it when it was definitely the intention.) OEC has specifically Americanisation, and yyxy suffers the effect Christian colonialism.

With the knowledge that the ex-director picked the loona members primarily on how well they served his narrative, it's absolutely intentional that Hong Kong, an ex-colony of the British Empire, until 1997, is featured as key location in the lore; where Vivi meets and frees Jinsoul; where 1/3 go to school, and where they cast the Sonatine spell to locate and save Yeojin. Another key location in the 1/3 arc is the Czech Republic, who is also a state that gained freedom from a communist state (Czechoslovakia) in 1993. This is reinforced with Yeojin's location being Taiwan and not mainland China, and Taiwan becoming democratised in 1996. Notably, all of these states became independent democracies in the 90s, when Vivi's story is set. Interestingly, despite these countries being non-communist when the story is set, and in present day, red stars are included in the Love&Live photobook, as well as a photo of Mao, which feels too strange to accidentally slip in considering how controversial it is.

Heejin and Hyunjin's respective locations are also known for their imperialistic efforts; France colonizing large swathes of Africa and Japan colonizing the vast majority of the Pacific sphere, and both committing horrific human rights violations and war crimes to do so. With regards to Haseul, Iceland doesn't really fit the pattern (I almost consider it a neutral zone? After all it's also associated with Gowon and Olivia Hye, and maybe even Chuu), but if you take The Carol being set in London, it integrates perfectly, with the British Empire joining the other two empires. I think the statement being made by picking these locations is to use 1/3 as a vessel to comment on colonialism (though I feel like nobody has really noticed???) Heejin specifically is shown to be adorned in white and crucifixes all the freaking time.

I think Vivi's character, being an Asian female robot, links a lot to the objectification and dehumanisation inherent to describing the Asian (typically Chinese) work ethic as robotic, lacking autonomy or the capability to think for themselves, and unempathetic. This has been talked about by other people and called roboticism, and is often rooted in sinophobia, but more broadly impacts East Asians on the whole. I think, whilst considering Asian fetishism and how Asian women are statistically considered to be more submissive/servile/docile, and that a robot is also meant to be a servant, there's some uncomfortable implications with that too being that are raised by the narrative. I've talked before about how Vivi is a symbol of 'the other' as a queer robot foreigner, but all these aspects are kind of linked - there is no coincidence the foreign member is also the robot. However, we see that despite Vivi feeling that sentiment of otherisation by existing differently to the other girls; "Why doesn't my heart beat fast too?" (x), our girls never ostracise her, and love Vivi not in spite of but because of her differences - which is central to one of the core messages, that outsiders are unconditionally loved by LOONA.

Odd Eye Circle has superpowers. Two of them are blonde. Their arc is set in Los Angeles. The narrative ties the philosophical idea of the Ubermensch (from Nietzsche) with the classically American genre of Superhero fiction. It's become a hot topic this year (despite pretty much always being true, and definitely at least true in 2017) that American superhero films serve as propaganda for the American military, a known force of imperialism, with Marvel directly working with the Pentagon with its adaptations of comics to films. The idea of the Ubermensch has been famously twisted from its original intentions to promote eugenics and the notion of a master race (I think this bastardisation is also relevant!), but originally was meant to convey the idea of a human who could transcend society to live according to their own, new values, working to save or better humanity, and leave a permanent impact on history. This is evocative of how the OEC members seem to quit school to serve their mission of... doing whatever the hell they did in Girl Front with their superpowers to, presumably, have some impact on humanity, or LOONAs around the world as a whole. The ubermensch is also tied in with the Death of God, that with the existence of humans so above it all (or more broadly, with how far society has progressed without God) there is no need for God anymore, thus He is dead. 'DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS: NOW DO WE DESIRE THE UBERMENSCH TO LIVE.' Perhaps the OEC members are not the only Ubermensch; perhaps all LOONAs around the world get to be Ubermensch.

I think this other quote from Thus spoke Zarathustra is pretty pertinent to the LOONAverse as a whole;

"But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint has not heard in his forest that God is dead!"

Which is evocative of Yeojin and the 1/3 girls being lost in the (very ambiguous) forest, and also being the ones most heavily associated with Europe.

This unit is significantly more sexualised compared to the pure and virginial vibes from LOONA 1/3, reflecting the attitude that American culture is oversexed (though really sexual objectification is of course a problem internationally) which can be seen with the portrayal of Korean-Americans in Korean media (in this SNL clip where the trope is played for laughs - fun fact, this clip gets referenced in Why Not! It's all connected!!!), and more broadly Americans (with Black American characters often being victimised significantly more in these portrayals) in anime - Nikumi from Foodwars is an example, though there are many many more. OEC is a vessel for the ex-director to comment on American society.

yyxy represent the impact of the Catholic Church in Korea, both obviously a vessel for Catholic Colonialism and also a symbol of democracy and anti-fascism. Whilst Korean Catholicism (as well as other denominations) has its origins in the ~17th century, it only saw a big boom in membership after it was freed from Japanese occupation in 1945 by the (obviously Western) allies. There is a LONG history of Korean Christianity which cannot be dissociated from its use as a tool of rebellion from, and coping with Japanese imperialism, nor can its role in the fight for democracy during authoritarian dictatorships in the 20th century be understated, but I think within the context of the story it is meant to be considered in a different light, one that ties more closely into how Roman Catholicism is abused to facilitate queerphobia and other conservative, reactionary attitudes, which is why yyxy choose to leave Eden and disobey God, and religion is portrayed as controlling and abusive within the story. You mention assimilation, and I think it's interesting that the ex-director takes an English name, and has also given them to multiple characters; Vivi, Yves and Olivia Hye (though Yves is technically a French name). This also reminds me of how Japan, during its occupation of Korea, would force Korean people to use Japanese names, and this is a dehumanizing tool used broadly by many colonists. Edit; also that immigrants often adopt names for assimilation purposes, and aren't necessarily forced to change their names.

Just a lot of elements to consider when thinking about what is actually being said with LOONAverses' narrative - the message is far more important than the story.

[f1notebook]

I think I just read 100 comments on F1 posts about Mazepin and only two of them were “👏🏻” . Let me give you some arguments that doesn’t stand :

Sports should be involved with politics -> A war isn’t about politics, it’s about human rights. Russia is committing (Putin) war crimes and violating basic human rights. Stand with Ukraine isn’t very different than #WeRaceAsOne movement.

F1 made a #WeRaceAsOne movement and now they ban a Russian driver because he is Russian -> #WeRaceAsOne (even if it was a joke) was made to support the Black Lives Matters movement, and to condemn discrimination. If you really want #WeRaceAsOne to be applicate, Mazepin won’t have even put a feet in F1 after his sexual assault.

Poor guy he is suffering the consequences of something he has nothing to do with -> Mazepin is suffering the consequences of an act do by someone he and his dad totally support. If you are okay with nations sanctioning Russian (sanction that will have a deeply consequences on the middle class Russians), I think Mazepin can lose his seat and be okay.

Because of a war Mazepin won’t be able to do what he loves the most -> I won’t talk about Russia and all the Ukrainian who are fighting for their lives and can’t do what they love the most too. But, let’s not forget, Grosjean and Magnussen lost their jobs because the team needed money and that’s the only reason their was a place for Mazepin in the first place.

It’s so unfair -> After everything I said I can’t see how it’s unfair. Mazepin only got his job because his dad, with Russian government money, but his seat in a team who was deeply need of money. Mazepin didn’t lost his job because he is Russian, he lost his job and seat because it’s was bought by a society with ties with the Russian government and because his dad is close to Dictator Putin. He literally had dinner with him a week ago. He lost his job because Haas said : “We don’t want to have a relationship with a society hold by a government who invaded a country with no reason and is killing innocent people, civilians, children.” And by ending the contract with this said company, it ends the work contract with Mazepin because they were related.

So no, it isn’t unfair, it isn’t politics getting envolve.

I think I did the all arguments people are having, if you have any other please tell me, honestly I think no arguments is valid to keep Mazepin