#Non-Violent Conflict Resolution

[raffaellopalandri]

Happy Birthday His Holiness!

As a Buddhist Priest, I send my best wishes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama for His Birthday. May Your teachings of a loving, compassionate, and happy life continue to inspire us and spread. May Your wisdom, Your messages of peace and hope, and Your kindness bring more light into this world to everyone and every living being. A Beacon of Peace and Compassion Today, we celebrate the 89th…

[nevvaraven]

I see the appeal of violence for all final battles I really do, but have we considered…..dance off?

[anam-mana]

Tips for “Good-Aligned” Astarion Romance/Approval

I see a lot of people saying they find it difficult to romance Astarion on more good-aligned play throughs (though bg3 doesn’t have an alignment system but you all get my drift).

I was able to do so fairly easily, on my first play through as a goody two shoes (or as much so as a Dark Urge can get) and I noticed some things that may have made it easier to do without sacrificing any in character goody-two-shoes decisions.

And this is the biggest one. Be nice to him, and be incredibly patient with him. Even though he occasionally expresses disgust with you acting “sweet”, overall being a saccharine ball of love to him wins you way more points than you’ll lose by being kind. He values positive personal interaction way more than he values agreeing with your decisions,

He does actually approve of some good decisions: petting owl bears and feeding an urchin in Baldur’s Gate being some examples. And more than that, he REALLY approves of tricking your way into peaceful resolutions, to the point where I have gotten many inspiration dice from him simply for avoiding conflicts. Also, any time you have a chance to support someone’s free will, do it. He varies from not having an opinion to approving in most of these cases. So really lean into those good actions he tends to approve of, though I admit they usually are later in the game.

Sometimes he’ll disapprove of the steps you take to make it to a good choice, but approve of the outcome. This applies to things like the hag quest, where you can lose approval but win it back at the conclusion, or through the non-violent path with the Orthon where he disapproves if the peaceful conversation but approves way more of the outcome than he ever disapproved of the conversation.

Be willing to disagree with him, and challenge him, even when it does get you disapproval, because, frankly, the push and very interesting unique dialogue he has with goody-two-shoes PC’s he’s in love with can be fascinating and informative, even if it means running into some bumps here and there.

Remember that this is just some tips for people who find the prospect of keeping Astarion approval high on a good play through daunting or challenging. I know I see a lot of memes and such that make it appear that only evil and/or grey characters can really get into this romance when I’ve seen firsthand that it is just as cool and possible with even the goodest of beans, so I wanted to share. But it is not, IN ANY WAY, meant to be a guide on how one should romance him. There are multiple paths to romance that can be played differently to create very custom PC/Companion ship dynamics in this game, and I encourage you to explore whichever narratives will be the most fun or fulfilling to you personally.

[codenamesazanka]

rant. this was a vent in response to the final chapter, but the anime reaching the heteromorph riot arc got me all whiny again. embarrassingly personal.

On "Peaceful Resolutions" + general heteromorph riot arc stuff

When I was in elementary school - I forget what age - there was a snow day. Children love snow days. Me, my younger sibling, and my grandmother went outside to play. We wanted to use the neighborhood hill to sled. Unfortunately, it was already being used by some older kids. Middle schoolers only a few years older than me?

They didn't want to share the hill. So they pushed and shoved us. They threw snowballs at us. When I cried for them to stop, they laughed. When my grandmother, who didn't know English, who spoke only Chinese, yelled at them to stop, they laughed, and mocked her. "Ching chong ching chong." After that, no matter what me or my sibling said in English, they pretended not to understand and just kept chanting slurs. There is nothing more frustrating than screaming out your pain that you know people can hear and understand, and having it fall on deaf ears; more than that, your pain is enjoyment for them.

Was this discriminatory incident resolved peacefully? Well, me, my sibling, and my grandmother cut our snow day short and went home. Our retreat was 'peaceful', but I guess the incident wasn't exactly resolved.

Would attacking them back helped? No, of course not. (And not that we could. We were two elementary kids and an elderly woman. Understand that bullies nearly always purposefully target those weaker than them, ones who can't fight back without negative consequences.) Indeed, things would've just escalated. But we didn't want to retaliate. We didn't want revenge. We just wanted them to stop.

Did we do anything about it? No, it was just some kids being mean. A very minor thing (even as the incident, only one among others, continues to destroy our perception that this neighborhood was ever safe for us, truly our home. But my town had an active neo-nazi gang that liked to vandalize houses and slip posters into newspapers, so it was never going to be safe.) We didn't know our neighbors well because of language barriers, because we stood out as a Chinese family in a largely white neighborhood and people didn't talk to us much either. We wouldn't know how to alert the parents of these kids. And we thought, even if we did complain - a non-violent method of action - they might just find us annoying. They might hate us more. What if the language barrier leads to more confusion and conflict? We didn't want to risk it. We kept our heads down and let the incident go. My family became more reluctant to go out, to let me and my sibling outside to play. We maintained the peace.

Understand that it doesn't really matter what an discriminated minority does to resist discrimination - the perpetrator can find any act of resistance inappropriate. That is their prerogative by being in the position of power.

Shoji saved a girl, gave the community peace by preventing them from having to grieve her death. His village then bashed his face with a hoe for daring to resist and break the norms of the village, for daring to touch the girl to save her life.

A third party, of course, can come and resolve the incident by de-escalating everything. But for my incident, it was not me that this third party needed to stop. We did not engage in violence. It was the older kids. And had I retaliated - idk how, as a child; tackle them? - to protect my grandmother, my younger sibling - that would be self defense, likely because I wanted the bullying to stop and had to resort to violence when nothing else worked; because I feared the violence they were about to do to us more than my fear and reluctance to engage in violence in the first place. Maybe self-defense is too strong a word here for schoolyard bullying, but the principle is the same.

(It wasn't just schoolyard bullying, obviously. There were other incidents, from when I was younger, when I'm much older. This incident is one that I feel is less revealing/personal/vulnerable to tell.)

There was no peace in that incident that wasn't broken by the perpetrator to begin with. Not that the peace was peaceful for us in the first place. Bringing about true peace is solely on stopping the perpetrator, and ultimately on dealing with the root cause.

“Discriminatory incident” is so vague. An incident can be anything. “Peaceful Resolution” implies responsibility on all parties. What we're told isn't 'Shoji stops the bigots nonviolently'. (Also: The bigots are afforded this. Villains must be put down with violence, but not the people throwing rocks and spraying pesticides on children. I'm of course of the opinion that violence shouldn't be used to stop bigots or Villains except as a last resort, but the manga has demonstrated that no Hero ever stopped a bigot using the same methods they use on Villains. Why is that?) It isn't 'Shoji saves victims of hate crimes'. Judging by Shoji's own statements and how the heteromorph arc plays out, a peaceful resolution is stopping both the heteromorph victim (who may or may not be lashing out - in response to the hate crime) and perpetrator - If anything, more stopping the heteromorphs.

I’m going to suggest that rarely, heteromorphs ever actually retaliate with violence. True, the heteromorphs we see (Shoji, ordinary lady, Koda's mom) aren't part of the rioters but are we to believe all these rioters are people who react with violence every time, and it's their first solution? When they stopped the damn riot themselves because they didn't want to hurt the healthcare workers? (and even the riot wasn’t purposeless, indiscriminate violence - they were solely there to retrieve Kurogiri). Pig Nose guy says he's been beaten up for no reason, so he's already at the receiving end of violence that justifies self-defense, but we can assume he didn't actually lash out any of those times because he's the one who stops everyone, feeling so bad about just the idea of hurting someone.

I can’t say that’s 100% canon that none of the heteromorphs ever lashed out (and of course ‘statistically’ some of them must have), but overall, for most of them, it’s a legitimate assumption to be made. The heteromorphs from the Jeda or 6/6 incidents were fully massacred. Shoji and Spinner were children - Shoji was on the ground, getting bashed in the face with a farming hoe wielded by an adult. Spinner got sprayed with pesticides for walking outside and became a hikikomori, saying that he accepted being a ‘lizard freak’, he was ready to give up. (And he only took action when the extraordinary moment of Stain getting on TV made him realized he hated this suffocating world where Heroes failed him, never protected him.) Ordinary Lady never lashed back out at her attackers. Koda’s mom had to be protected by Koda’s dad.

Even the PLF agitator - his wound is a long deep scar on his head - a head injury that would’ve thoroughly incapacitated him, if not kill him. It is likely not the wound of someone hitting back with self-defense as if the PLF agitator was the one attacking someone and they were fighting back for their life.

These are the ‘Discriminatory Incidents’. What does a peaceful resolution look like, here?

The heteromorphs at the hospital aren’t there to get revenge. They’re there because they’ve been pushed into a corner and probably have become afraid for their lives, their future. During a national crisis where Heroes order civilians to go into hero-guarded shelters, these shelters had the audacity to refuse heteromorphs, leaving them out on the streets, vulnerable to the dangers of jailbreakers and lack of resources.

The peace was broken first by discrimination. The heteromorphs probably took Spinner’s call to action as a life preserver. Heroes had refused to protect them during the collapse of the state; and so they likely found truth in Spinner’s word that if Heroes win the day, nothing will change. They weren’t there to hurt anyone at the hospital - they were there to take back Kurogiri.

But Shoji framed the whole thing as revenge, as being avengers. He accused the heteromorphs of being violent and non-peaceful, without ever naming the first act of violence on the part of the non-heteromorphs. He didn’t want to risk the heteromorphs’ hard-won reputation and status (“You’ll set us back 30 years.* They’ll target your children.”) He wanted the heteromorphs to do what my family did - kept our heads down and let the incident go. Maintained the peace.

Shoji said that those who hurt the heteromorphs weren’t justified, but he then says “there has to be a better way”. We never find out what this was, beyond the vague ‘Shine bright’.

(I shined bright, too. I was a straight-A student. I did extracurriculars - piano, viola, art, softball. As did my sibling. My family were hard-working citizens. My mom worked two jobs. I hate telling these details, because they don't matter. My worth as someone who doesn’t deserve to face discrimination does not and should not depend on my grades or trained skills, how pleasant or cool I seem to someone. None of that matters to the people who wanted to hurt us because they simply saw being visibly Asian American as the offense.)

We don’t find out how Shoji’s better way works in the final chapter either. Just that he resolved the incidents ‘peacefully’. Because he wanted to solve discrimination peacefully. As do everyone, oppressors and the oppressed. But ‘peace’ often means something different to oppressors, and something different to the oppressed.

(Did Shoji resolve the heteromorph riot peacefully? Not really. He shouted a lot to the crowd, but he also fought Spinner (ah, you might say - well, Spinner was using violence! Shoji has to react to that with punching as well! Yeah. That's what I mean.) Koda had birds shoved someone off a building.)

Shoji’s better ways - I will assume it’s stopping the blood cleansings. That is a noble goal. It is a necessary and vital goal. And so, how? How does he cover the large areas of rural land, so that he’s there to stop these hate crimes? How does he know when something will happen? Is it a campaign and community-level action? Uraraka’s tackling of Quirk Counseling is a ‘project’, widespread and implemented on a macro level. Shoji’s efforts are on what’s implied to be individual incidents. But putting that aside for now, I will assume “resolving” is talking down the perpetrator. I will assume it’s protecting the victim while negotiating with the person holding the weapon.

Peaceful implies that he does so without violence (as he should! As a Hero Law Enforcement of the State!); but a blanket label of ‘peaceful’ also implies stopping the other party (the victim) asking them to stand down as well.

I just think - during my Discriminatory Incidents, how can anyone have me stand down, have stopped me, when I haven't done anything in the first place? And if I did have to be stopped from engaging in self-defense, that's not a resolution. That's a save. That's someone saving me from the violence, saving me from having to resort to violence.

Heroes save people. There's no question of 'peacefully' when they fight villains to save people. There’s no framing of ‘peacefully’ when they do so. But it seems heteromorphs are not allowed the same language of ‘peacefully’ and 'save'.

-

tl;dr. idk. the heteromorph mini-arc’s writing and message is awful.

-

*re: “set us back 30 years.” I know we don’t know exactly what happened 30 years ago, but we can guess - and so I don’t think guessing one of the named massacres is too wild. From my own experiences, the murder of Vincent Chin was about 40 years ago. I grew up with Vincent Chin as a horror story.

Being told that, due to whatever actions I was doing, would set back all that progress Asian Americans made since then is just cruel and wrong and illogical in all ways. Vincent Chin didn’t deserve to be murdered whatever he did 40 years ago, and he deserved to have his murderers be brought to real justice. The sheer injustice of that case is objective. There is no way someone can tell me that I’m setting time back to when the murder of Vincent Chin happened, that I would be causing injustice like that again, I’m responsible for any more murders that happen, and have that be in any way true.

Related— On Bnha's apparent ideal of "a hero is someone who is willing to suffer in silence" and "we'll get it right next generation!"

From Asian American Dreams, by Helen Zia:

The reaction within the Detroit area’s small, scattered Asian American population was immediate and visceral. Suddenly people who had endured a lifetime of degrading treatment were wondering if their capacity to suffer in silence might no longer be a virtue, when even in death, after such a brutal, uncontested killing, they could be so disrespected.

[...]

Vincent was part of an entire generation for whom the immigrant parents had suffered and sacrificed. Other Asian Americans also found a strong connection to the lives of Vincent, Lily, and David Chin. Theirs was the classic immigrant story of survival: work hard and sacrifice for the family, keep a low profile, don’t complain, and, perhaps in the next generation, attain the American dream. For Asian Americans, along with the dream came the hope of one day gaining acceptance in America. The injustice surrounding Vincent’s slaying shattered the dream.

[callimara]

As someone who hates violence from the bottom of my heart and always though that peaceful resolutions for conflicts is the best thing to do, I can't genuinely believe how non-palestinian people want them to resolve this only with peace.

Like, in the past they tried to do things by the name of peace and pacifism only for getting slaughtered by the IDF. If peace didn't work back then, it would NOT work again.

EXACTLY!!!

I'm so sick of western media asking Palestinian reps why they couldn't have protested peacefully WHEN THEY LITERALLY DID, YOU GUYS JUST DIDN'T COVER IT!!!

Why is it that when Ukraine fights back against Russia and anti-Russian sentiments among Ukrainians civilians are high, they have a psychologist say that hate is a completely normal and healthy response to oppression, but when it's Palestinians fighting back against Israel, they're called violent and barbaric and need to be more "civilized"?

The double standards are double-standarding.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I love how by seing how they each dealt with the boy we can see a bit of Cecil's, Carlos' and Tamika's parenting style.

Cecil is the supportive one, except he is very supportive no matter what. He might visibly and clearly disagree, like he does in relation to the boy holding the knife, but he won't verbally express it trying to find ways to be supportive and maybe redirect the kid: via giving him dinno chips and asking him gently to think more about his plan. In fact while the narration likely didn't help, Cecil sorta off acomplishes a goal, the boy does consider who he wants to stab and makes an action plan.

Tamika is a well researched mom, she read all the books in non-violent conflict resolution with kids but has none of the experience so she follows the rules, rarely making her owns (excluding the one that saved her: making a shield while speaking) and also not actually allowing the kid to participate (listening to the boy's reasoning and going from there).

Carlos is Carlos so his method is to create a hypothesis based on what he knows and present it to the kid/test it. Except not all theories work out in the end and maybe is the huge amount of times being right but be isn't really preparated to deal with a second hypothesis.

[hapalopus]

The Goblin Emperor is a political drama/fantasy of manners set in a steampunk-inspired world where elves, goblins, and other races don't quite live in harmony.

Following the assassination of most of the Elvish royal family, the exiled half-elf/half-goblin boy Maia suddenly becomes emperor. Thrust into this world of systemic violence, political intrigue, and staunch etiquette, Maia draws on his kindness and strict moral code to survive new foes and maybe gain some new friends.

You will probably like The Goblin Emperor if you have a soft spot for sad little guys, if you relate to eldest daughters and/or chosen ones, if you're autistic about worldbuilding, if you fantasize about being loved without the embarrassment of having to ask for love, and/or if you enjoy non-violent conflict resolution and an unwavering commitment to hope.

Here's the Goblin Emperor audiobook.

Here's the Goblin Emperor pdf.

Here's the fan wiki, which explains the lingo and worldbuilding.

Your local library can definitely fetch a physical copy for you.

[ladyluscinia]

I am of course hugely fond of the crew bonding into a stronger community and embracing Izzy as one of them. Love that they are demonstrating their conflict resolution skills and mutual support, and love even more that they do the main foundational work in the absence of the captains - first during the breakup boat era with the trauma bonding and saving Izzy's life in direct defiance of Edward, and then resolving their divides and trust issues after chasing off Edward (and by extension Stede) in 2x04.

It is SO good to see them becoming a unified front who can push back against the bosses (especially since per comedy rules Stede & Edward are probably not going to stop being self-centered no matter how democratic the ship gets 😆).

But I will say it's still very funny when people give them credit for overcoming their strong negative feelings for Izzy, because like...

I don't think those were really a factor, guys 🤣🤣🤣

The show has thrown a bit of a complication into my theory of socially acceptable mutiny in S2 (which I will probably look at more once the season wraps up), but that's mostly because the rules of "how piracy functions" are not a priority for canon to establish. I'm threading together jokes into a watsonian social system because that's fun for me. 🤷‍♀️ So even though my particular explanation is going to have to adapt, the underlying joke still rings true - the mutiny against Izzy is a disproportionately violent response to what he's doing.

Or to put it another way... Yeah, they try to murder him because they don't want to work for him (or, as several of them say, for Black Pete 😆), but it's not really anything personal. Just business.

Meaning that once he's removed from captaincy, he's back to just being a coworker who's kind of a dick. They're not friends leaving S1, but they probably don't hate him?

(Also like the Navy Plot is a lot of things but it was not a reckless endangering of the crew.)

Plus in Izzy's mind, the vast majority of his side of the conflict in S1 is rooted in either 1) Edward leaving him in an ambiguous position of non-authority by refraining from acting as Captain of the ship despite the fact everyone thinks Edward has captured them until 1x07 at least, or 2) Izzy's fairly reasonable belief that all of these guys are going to die when Stede does and are particularly stupid prisoners, not fellow crew.

Both of those problems resolve completely by 1x10. Which in retrospect probably explains a lot of the apparent Izzy-crew relationship shift between S1 and S2 for anyone still not quite clicking on that front.

(Seriously, if you like Izzy in S2 but don't get what changed from S1, try watching S1 again with the things they've made canon about his personality in mind - being in love with Edward, etc. There was a coherent subtext and it's very fun to watch.)

It's really not surprising at all that lingering animosity with Izzy isn't a problem after his short lived time in charge 🤷‍♀️ or that he gets folded into the union. After everything they've been through with Edward they feel he's not on Management's side, and he does advocate for the crew once they are, you know, actually crew.

[macgyvermedical]

I'm 34. Did I miss my opportunity with AmeriCorps? Is there a way to still get involved? And is it anything like the military? Do I have the option to back out of it? Are there paid positions?

If you want to be a Team Leader you can absolutely still be a part of AmeriCorps NCCC. The age requirement is for Corps Members only. You can also do other AmeriCorps programs like VISTA and State and National (many of which do not have age restrictions).

There are military-like aspects to NCCC and some of the State and National programs (PT, uniforms, training, hierarchy, communal living, etc...) but it is decidedly not military. There is a very strong focus on non-violent conflict resolution, so everything in the military that is designed to make people aggressive is basically non-existent. The respect rituals are different campus to campus, but where I was they were very relaxed.

You do have the option to back out, but you forego the education award or end-of-service stipend. Most people stay the whole term unless there's a really amazing opportunity outside of AmeriCorps that can't wait.

They do have paid positions, but they're pretty few and far between. Here is the USAjobs page for NCCC: https://www.usajobs.gov/search/results/?l=&k=NCCC

[onepiecehiperfixation]

Boa Hancock *carrying toddler Perona and toddler Zoro*: Zoro punched a kid named Harrison.

Mihawk*picking the twins in his arms*: Zoro you punched a child? And Perona...?

Boa Hancock: Apparently there was a graham cracker involved. And Perona bit him.

Mihawk*looking at both of his children*: You two punched a child over a graham cracker?

*Perona giggles as Zoro doze off's*

Boa Hancock: They want you to talk to them.

Mihawk: They're 2 years old, what am I supossed to do? Give them a lecture on non violent conflict resolution?

Boa Hancock*passing the bags*: I really don't know.

Mihawk*takes them both in arms*: My children punch other kids great.

[cheetour]

If anybody was wondering, there's a Neopets TTRPG on Kickstarter right now!

The campaign page doesn't include much information about the system, but from u/geekify:

We pulled from a bunch of different systems to hybridize a lot of the mechanics, and to really try to capture the feel of how Neopets plays on the site - hoarding items, mini-games and random events, daily quests, roaming around the world. One of the key things we're playing with is the transmutability of Neopets - apparently Neopians have zero problem with changing form, color, gender, so consequently we've made it a classless system that you can re-spec and morph constantly both physically and intellectually within (some of the plot points are actually served by transmogrifications to blend in better) We've also developed a Pacifism system for handling things non-violently and built out skill trees for handling your conflict resolutions so you don't have to do combat approaches. Plus, it's Neopets, so it's just goofy fun. Professions have things like Dungmancer and Stock Trader among them. (source)

It's a classless, feat-based, d20 driven system that'll be familiar for both 5e and Pathfinder players, but is not specifically either of those systems. (source)

It sounds like it could be a lot of fun!

[smute]

As a German, do you feel like most of the public supports Palestine or Israel? Because from what I see many of the politicians support the Zionist cause so I wonder if the common people share the same sentiments

you're basically asking me which team i think the majority are rooting for but last time i checked this wasn't a sports match. i honestly wouldn't even know where to begin to explain my views on this war to you. however, in case it was a good faith question:

recent polls show that a majority of germans disapprove of the idf's course of action in light of the many civilian deaths. as a german, my impression is that the VAST majority of people are nothing short of horrified by the suffering of palestinians in gaza and only interested in a non-violent resolution that will bring lasting peace. same as the rest of the world. most germans either disapprove of or openly criticize ANY involvement in armed conflict (ukraine being a notable exception), and the vast majority of people (in fact, the majority of the entire world) condemn israeli settlement policy (that includes german politicians across the spectrum) – in fact, just a year ago, a few months before the attack on october 7, the foreign office warned the israeli government of an escalation of the conflict over new settlement laws for the west bank.

that being said, anything bds-adjacent, anything promoting isolation and escalation over dialogue and mutual understanding, any stance that implies or calls outright for the dissolution of the state of israel will be impossibly hard to sell, not just in germany but in the entire west (however you may define that term) and not only because of the historical ties between many israeli jews and the west, but because israel is too valuable an ally in the region. the relationship between israel and germany specifically is of course a very complex one, and it would be naive to assume that german foreign policy re: israel isn't colored by our shared history, but netanyahu's government has long passed the point of what most people here might defend as the limits of a justified reaction to october 7. they also know that hamas aren't resistance fighters. we're beginning to see that public support for israel's security is not unconditional, is my point. the polls i linked above show that the majority of people (87%) want to put more pressure on the israeli government to guarantee access to humanitarian aid for civilians in gaza, and this was in march

[divineorder-ofhumanity]

The divine Order of Humanity is a religion that celebrates and respects all lifeforms.

We firmly believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs or wants of the few or one.

This is not a religion that seeks to put itself above any other. Nor shall the order proselytize or try to convince others that they must join.

Complex logo design showing the earth, sun, and moon, revolving around around several colors, with magenta, yellow, and cyan in the centre.

Simplified logo with three circles to represent the earth, sun, and moon.

The order has an open and standing invitation to anyone who wishes to learn more or visit a meeting.

Members are encouraged to help others if they are able to do so, with kindness and respect to their fellow humans.

There are no requirements or stipulations to receiving aid. Everyone, regardless of their circumstances, is entitled to partake in the equal sharing of resources and services.

Human Rights are a pinnacle of our beliefs. As resources and means to do so exist, every person is entitled to housing, healthcare, food/drink, transportation, and education. All of the highest quality as allowed by available resources and labor.

The second pinnacle is pacifism. War is a practice that is in direct opposition to the order of humanity. It is an immature and barbaric practice that is largely used to conquer and subjugate other populations.

Conflict should be settled peacefully, and all parties should come to an understanding that benefits all.

On individual basis, a person is perfectly within their rights to use violence as a last resort in self defense. However, this is explicitly on the basis of interpersonal conflict and should never be broadly applied to any group or population. Individuals are encouraged to seek non-violent means of coming to a fair and equal resolution.

All workers own their own labor. It is their bodies that do the work and thus they are the ones who decide for their individual selves the rules of their work. No person shall be held in a job that harms them or distresses them.

Bodily and mental autonomy is a human right. From birth, all humans are their own person with their own thoughts and feelings. They are entitled to live a life free from coercion, manipulation, violence, and suffering.

Every person has the right to do as they please, so long as they do not harm anyone else.

Likewise, slavery or indentured servitude is considered an act of violence and in violation to the bodily autonomy of the person.

No one person is above or below another. All people are in equal standing. Respect for for your fellow humans is a must.

Children should be highly revered and taken care of. They should be free to pursue all manner of happiness.

Education is important, but learning should not be forced. Forced learning usually leads to lack of interest and ultimately that knowledge is lost.

Instead a love of learning should ideally come naturally, and the methods of learning should be equally natural. Practical skills should be taught in equal measure to maths, language, and history.

Disability likewise should not be a barrier to life and learning. The disabled are to be treated as equitable and equal as any abled person.

Accessibility should be a contributing factor in the design of infrastructure so as to best accommodate people across the abled spectrum.

There is not one particular deity that is required of this religion. Atheists are welcome and encouraged to feel at home here. Moreover, all people are welcome to bring their heritage, culture, and religious beliefs.

Diet is highly subjective and culturally diverse. There are no dietary restrictions, so long as the food and drink was created and harvested sustainably and with respect to the resources of the earth.

Animals share this planet with humans in equal measures and deserve the same respect.

Animals that are to become food should be given the best quality of life, and allowed to live that life for as long as possible.

For animals that are commonly eaten, they should be killed quickly and humanely, without pain and with great reverence to their sacrifice.

No part of an animal shall go to waste. Meat, bones, skin, and more shall be used for as many applications as possible. Anything that cannot be used should be respectfully buried or burned to ash.

It should be understood that all life is sacred and we all live in the great cycle of life and death.

No life should be taken for granted.

Plants likewise are living beings too, and should be treated with respect. Proper care should be taken in cultivating a rich wealth of diversity in nature, and that diversity should be maintained and carefully tended to ensure that the natural ecosystems of earth can thrive.

In respect to our planet, garbage should be maintained to a minimum. Items should be made to last as long as possible, and disposables should either be easily recyclable or compostable, if they are not reusable. Plastics, likewise, should be kept as minimal as is safely possible.

It is understood that it may not be possible for every single person to apply every single aspect of the above to their lives. But it is requested that people try their best to meet these standards as much as is safe to do so.

Treating one another, and our planet, with kindness and respect is something all people should strive for.

Moreover,

The Divine Order of Humanity recognizes that the cycles of life and death are not stagnant nor linear.

Change is part of this cycle and no two cycles are ever alike.

Order members are encouraged to be mindful that there is little in this world that is predictable.

Please take care to prepare for the unexpected, and embrace whatever comes with love and respect.

[bestworstcase]

I enjoy a lot of your posts and while I know she's not your focus any thoughts on Sienna "The Hero Queen" Khan?

truly think killing sienna off is THE weakest narrative decision in the story to up to this point and likely to remain so through to the end—which isn’t an unpopular opinion necessarily but whenever i’ve encountered this sentiment coming from other people, it’s generally predicated on the feeling that she was super cool (true!) and deserved more screen time on that basis. whereas i tend to think about it more in terms of the purpose her death served to the wider narrative of the white fang plot arc and if that purpose was realized, and i think the answer to that is no.

the white fang plot arc was always going to fall rather flat bc of the vocabulary problem—in essence, they tried to explore what ‘violence’ means in the context of civil rights activism and tripped because the binary non-violent/violent language applied to the narrative is inadequate to articulate the actual ideas being expressed, and the storyline would have been better served by a model focused on the tactical value of offensive vs defensive methods and the sharp divide between tactical violence to further specific, narrow goals (sienna) vs violence as the end in itself (adam)—BUT, the killing of sienna khan is the structural flaw that causes the storyline to collapse.

the point of killing sienna is to illustrate why adam is wrong (he refuses to differentiate oppression from merely being denied something he wants, and consequently inflicts violence on his notional allies as readily as he does his actual oppressors). taken in isolation, the beat accomplishes what it’s meant to do and in that sense it’s ‘successful.’ however, it also removes the key narrative argument for tactical violence from the story at precisely the moment when that argument most needs to be put forward (i.e. the culmination of adam’s corruption of the white fang), leaving it represented solely by ghira’s respect and support for sienna’s leadership of the white fang. even with all other factors being ideal—which they aren’t, but for argument’s sake—i do not think this is enough to develop the narrative arc to its intended resolution. and indeed the white fang plot arc ultimately fizzles out.

i think the stronger choice would have been to structure the entire adam-vs-sienna conflict as a schism. this takes some reconfiguring of the arc as a whole but isn’t difficult to accomplish; i think the most significant change to the set up is for one (or both) of the albain brothers to be genuine—for what they tell ghira early on about adam’s splinter group going rogue and sienna’s white fang repudiating his actions and moving to intervene to be entirely true. meanwhile ilia and her little enclave of adam loyalists can be in menagerie with the goal of supplanting the albains, who remain loyal to sienna.

setting the pieces up this way serves two purposes. first, it brings the question of violence as means vs violence as ends to the forefront from the beginning; and second, it allows for a much greater degree of narrative clarity with respect to the belladonnas being pacifists who support, rather than condemn, sienna’s more violent methodology. the latter reason is something that already exists in the narrative—ghira is quite vocal in his support for sienna’s leadership and his stance that her activism is worthy of admiration regardless of his personal discomfort with violence—but it’s a lot punchier and a lot cleaner if the locus of the conflict in kuo kuana is about the belladonnas allying themselves directly with sienna’s white fang against an attempted coup by adam’s splinter group.

with this setup the blake-vs-ilia conflict and its resolution can still unfold more or less as in canon; it simply allows for, again, a greater degree of clarity regarding what is wrong about ilia’s choices if blake is aligned with sienna’s white fang throughout.

anyway, all of that builds toward adam making an attempt on sienna’s life—but in the context of his splinter group being a minority of the white fang, so she isn’t betrayed by her personal guard, and thus the result is an explosive skirmish probably ending with sienna injured and carried to safety by her remaining guards. you still get all the shock and bloodiness of adam’s coup, you still get hazel’s utter disgust with the betrayal, but you also get to keep sienna herself, and the part of the white fang that still answers to her, on the board.

& from there it becomes very easy to weave sienna and her faction into the confrontation at haven academy, because the belladonnas—working with very limited information about what is happening in mistral—bring a force of their own to intercept adam’s splinter group. you can just bring in sienna’s faction to pincer adam’s, then either portray the reclamation of the white fang as a joint effort by the belladonna faction and sienna’s faction or structure the resolution more along the lines of “the white fang is fully back under sienna’s leadership, and ghira is starting up a second organization to focus on separate but similar goals, because activism is complex and having multiple, ideologically diverse activist groups working in tandem is better than putting all our eggs in one basket.”

also she’s cool and deserved more screen time jkgdjfbsjs

[ingek73]

Israel is a rogue nation. It should be removed from the United Nations

Mehdi Hasan

One rogue nation cannot declare war on the UN itself and continue to get away with it

Following Mehdi Hasan

Notifications off

Tue 15 Oct 2024 15.53 BST

Over the past year, Israel has launched attacks on multiple countries and occupied territories: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

Yet countries and territories aside, Israel has also targeted one specific organization with a series of unprecedented rhetorical and violent attacks.

Yes, the United Nations. We have all witnessed Israel, in effect, declare war on the UN.

Consider the record of recent weeks and months:

Israel’s prime minister, while standing on stage at the UN general assembly, denounced the body as “contemptible”, a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile”.

Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UN shredded a copy of the UN charter with a miniature paper shredder while also standing at the podium of the general assembly, and later said the UN headquarters in New York “should be closed and wiped off the face of the Earth”.

Israel’s foreign minister falsely accused the UN secretary general of not having condemned Iran’s attacks on Israel, declared him “persona non grata in Israel” and announced that he had “banned him from entering the country”.

The Israeli government actively obstructed a UN-mandated commission of inquiry trying to collect evidence on the 7 October attacks.

Israel’s parliament is in the process of designating a longstanding UN agency, Unrwa, as a “terrorist organization”.

The Israeli military has bombed UN schools, warehouses and refugee camps in Gaza for 12 consecutive months, and killed a record 228 UN employees in the process. “By far the highest number of our personnel killed in a single conflict or natural disaster since the creation of the United Nations,” to quote the UN secretary general.

The Israeli military is now also attacking UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. According to the UN, “five UN ‘Blue Helmets’ serving with UNIFIL in Lebanon have been injured as Israeli forces inflicted damage on UN positions close to the ‘Blue Line’.”

How is any of this OK? Acceptable? Legal?

Perhaps the biggest question of all: how is Israel still allowed to remain a member of the UN? Why has it not yet been expelled from an organization that it is relentlessly and shamelessly attacking and undermining? Sure, there are other human rights abusers that remain card-carrying members of the UN – Syria, Russia and North Korea, to name but a few – but none of them have killed UN employees en masse; none of them have sent tanks to invade a UN base; none of them have “refused to comply with more than two dozen UNSC resolutions”. It has been more than 60 years since any country in the world dared make the UN secretary general himself “persona non grata”.

To be clear: it’s not as if there isn’t a mechanism for expelling a UN member state. Article 6 of the UN charter says:

“A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”

Now some might point out that no member state has ever been expelled from the UN under Article 6. Plus, the United States, which has vetoed over 50 UN security council resolutions critical of Israel since the early 1970s, would never allow such a “recommendation of the Security Council” to be made.

It’s a valid objection. History, however, teaches us that there are workarounds to security council vetoes. As the international law professor and former US state department adviser Thomas Grant pointed out in October 2022, while making his own case for expelling Russia from the United Nations in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, “UN members on two occasions in the past have judged a particular Member delegation no longer fit to sit at the organization’s table. On both occasions, the UN improvised a solution.”

In 1971, socialist and non-aligned nations in the Global South voted in the UN general assembly to recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and thereby replaced the representatives from the Republic of China (Taiwan), which had been a founding member of the UN. ROC was out, PRC was in – and it was the general assembly, not the security council, that decided it.

Three years later, relying again not on the UN charter but its own “rules of procedure” as the human rights lawyer and former UN official Saul Takahisi has noted, the UN general assembly “voted to refuse to recognize the credentials of the South African delegation” and “barred South Africa from participation in the Unga” until 1994.

Oh, and the two main reasons cited by the UN general assembly for suspending South Africa’s membership? Its practice of apartheid against the indigenous Black population and its illegal occupation of neighboring Namibia. Sound familiar?

Crucially, as Thomas Grant has written, “the move against South Africa followed no precise procedural pathway in the UN charter or existing UN practice” and the UN showed how “an improvisatory ethos prevails, when the member states judge a matter important enough that they must act.”

So what is more “important” for the UN member states right now than attacks on the UN itself by a single member state? On the UN’s authority, personnel, headquarters and charter? On Saturday, 40 countries issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s brazen and ongoing assault on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon but talk is cheap. UN member states need to act.

The Israeli government may want to pretend that the United Nations, and the general assembly in particular, is irrelevant, impotent and filled with antisemitic bias, yet Israel only exists today because of a UN general assembly resolution. The country’s own 1948 Declaration of Independence makes seven different references to the United Nations, all of them super-positive and ever-so-grateful.

So evicting Israel from the UN, or at least suspending its participation in the general assembly as a first step, would send a powerful message – both to the people of Israel and to the rest of the world.

That the authority of the United Nations still matters. That the lives of UN staff and peacekeepers also matter. And that one rogue nation cannot declare war on the UN itself and continue to get away with it.

Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo