#Seed Subsidy

[umangharyana]

रबी फसलों के लिए सरकार का बड़ा तोहफा, किसानों को मिल रही 50% सब्सिडी पर बीज

किसानों को आत्मनिर्भर बनाने की दिशा में उत्तर प्रदेश सरकार की नई पहल लखनऊ। उत्तर प्रदेश के किसान रबी फसलों की तैयारी में जुट गए हैं। इस बार राज्य सरकार ने खेती को सस्ता और लाभकारी बनाने के लिए किसानों को गेहूं, चना, जौ और सरसों जैसे रबी फसलों के उच्च गुणवत्ता वाले बीज 50% सब्सिडी पर उपलब्ध कराने की घोषणा की है। क्या है बीज सब्सिडी योजना? प्रदेश सरकार की यह पहल किसान कल्याण मिशन के तहत शुरू की…

[farmerstrend]

Inside KALRO’s Mkulima Shops: The Impact of KALRO’s Certified Seed Distribution

Discover KALRO’s Mkulima Shops across Kenya, offering certified seeds, climate-smart seedlings, and agricultural resources to boost farm productivity and sustainability. Mkulima Shops by KALRO provide farmers with affordable access to clean planting materials, certified seeds, and expert knowledge for improved crop yields and climate resilience. Boost your farm’s output with certified seeds from…

[redbatchedcumbermayned]

It all started under a duvet held up by an oar

Not so long ago I emailed Chris Tester, the voice of Heinrix van Calox in Owlcat’s recently released CRPG Rogue Trader, and asked if he would like to sit for an interview with me. Having some experience in interviewing people I like, most famously Oscar winner and all-around sweetheart Eddie Redmayne, this was not a completely nerve-wracking endeavour. And within a day of sending my email, Chris said yes. And what a pleasure it was interviewing him: Chris was so generous with his time, that the agreed upon 30 minutes turned into 50 minutes as we brushed upon many topics from his start as a theatre actor to his first voice-over role in a video game to his recently discovered hobby of playing D&D. Of course, we also spoke about all things Warhammer 40k, his new found fame brought on by voicing Heinrix and the insights he could share about the character.

I will publish this interview in three parts over the next week in text form and with the accompanying audio file (the audio quality is not spectacular but tumblr limits uploads to 10MB). If you quote or reshare, please quote me as the original source.

Part 2 of the interview

Part 3 of the interview

Fran: Thank you very much for taking your time.

Chris Tester: That's no problem. No problem at all.

F: So then let's start. You graduated in 2008.

CT: I did. Yes.

F: You started out as a stage actor. Did you always want to become a stage actor or an actor in general? Tell us a bit about your career.

CT: I always wanted to be a stage actor. Yes, as soon as I knew that I wanted to be an actor, which probably wasn't until I was a teenager. But yeah, my first passion was always the stage, and that was kind of borne out in my career. I would have been open to TV and film of course, if it had come along, I'm a huge fan of TV and film as well, but I never got an audition for any TV or film work.

I think I literally did about three short films in my 10, 12 years of actually professionally acting, and it is one of those industries where the more you do of one thing, the more you seem to find yourself doing the same thing to a degree. So yes, watching Shakespeare from an early age was one of my first passions.

And that was what first planted the seed of wanting to do it myself. The whole aspect of live performance is still something that I'm very passionate about. Up until 2020, when the world changed, I was trying to do two or three theatre shows a year, but since 2020, I haven't been near a stage and I doubt right now, especially with the way that the UK theatre scene is going, that I'm going to be back on stage anytime soon. I am resigned to that, but at some point in my career, I know I will be on stage again, because I can't live without it, but only for the right thing, both financially, but more importantly, creatively.

F: Your production company is currently on hiatus?

CT: I was the producer of a theatre company, which was run and was the baby of the director of the company, a guy called Ross Armstrong, who's one of the most talented writers and directors that I've ever worked with. I was helping out with a lot of the administration stuff so that he could still put me in plays. Instead of creating my own work because I'm not a very good writer or the best writer in the world, I support those people who will write me good parts. So yes, it is currently on hiatus, but never say never, we would always be looking to get back. It's difficult right now. It's difficult for all of us, because arts council subsidy, that way of being able to fund stuff, is drying up. We were doing a national tour of the UK when we were doing that [with the support of a subsidy]. There's even less money, there's even more people. I won't bore you with anything more than that, but it's kind of tough. We'd like to come back, but in the right way, and that's tricky to negotiate.

F: It's always hard as a stage actor to earn a living.

CT: Well, I've been spoiled by voice-over as well, and whereas when I was in my 20s and 30s then you're all about your art. And of course, I'm still all about my art, but I'm also about my wife and my cat and the mortgage and the bills and wanting to have nicer things to a degree as well. I've come to terms with that and voice-over does facilitate that as well as it opens you up to different roles and working with different people. So, I can't complain.

F: It's quite similar with making a living as a writer, because with a steady income you get used to a certain standard of living and once you have obligations and bills to pay, I think the stress on your mental health being creative and having all the stresses of regular life thrust upon you brings with it a challenge.

CT: It's a cliche we can very easily fall into: if I'm suffering, then it means I'm an artist. And that's not necessarily very true. It very often means that the art that we create only reflects one aspect of our lives, and it's usually a very tortured one. I am also about having wider experiences and broadening myself out. Whereas I think when I was in my twenties, I was thinking a bit more like: Oh, I'll experience the world and life through my art and just purely through my art. Whereas now necessarily I need to have a life outside of it as well, and then I can justify like I have the life so that I can feed my art or not, whatever. You know, I'll be a better artist by having a bit of a life outside of it. Maybe.

F: But that's what your twenties are for.

CT: Yeah, indeed.

F: Doing the crazy stuff, doing the band stuff 

CT: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, there was certainly an aspect of that in my twenties.

F: So, what brought you to voice acting or voice-over work initially?

CT: Money. Video game stuff is kind of sexy and cool, and I'm a gamer, so that's important. Before I was a video gamer, I was a board gamer and off the back of that, I was a voracious video gamer, partly because I wasn't very good at team sports at school. I was always the person who was picked last in the football team. So that becomes part of your identity for better or worse. But video games, I was pretty good at, not amazing, but I was pretty good at, and I enjoyed it. And it gave me a different form of escapism as well, and off the back of that I always had an interest in them. 

So, the very first voiceover job was a video game: Dark Souls, which is quite a big franchise. At that time, I was your very typically jobbing actor. My acting agent came in and said: I got something for you. And so, I went in with that. But it was only in 2016, 2017 that I realised it was something that you could actually do yourself. People had recording studios at home and they were contacting people directly, not just going through agents. Because I'd basically written to the same 20 voice agents in the UK, mainly in London for like eight years in a row and not received anything. So, you keep knocking on those doors hoping. 

Before I'd even graduated from drama school, I'd burnt a CD and made these cases with my headshot on it and sent them all off at what at the time felt like great personal expense and didn't get anything for eight years in a row.  So, I was a bit like, I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I don't really know what, because I'm doing these workshops and getting good feedback. Then I found out through a couple of online courses, that there were ways and means of doing it myself, and that was a bit of a game changer for me, and within six months of having started, I was earning more through voice work than the bar job and the box office job that I was doing combined. Within six months, I was kind of like: “I gotta quit because I'm actually holding myself back from things.” So that was quite a big shift.

F: Somewhere you said, you started out under a duvet and with an oar.

CT: Yeah. On my website, I do have an image of it. [Dear reader, I could not locate this elusive photo] I literally had to take the duvet off my bed and put it into the living room, which was the quietest space in my then shared flat. I also had to wait until after one flat mate had watched TV and another one had used the table that had their washing on it. One of my flat mates had stolen an oar from some night out and that was perfect in order to be able to erect it over my head and the duvet as a frame. 

I did probably the first four or five months of voice recording like that. Probably about 10, 15 voiceover jobs that I actually got paid for, I was using that because it worked well enough. Since then, I've gone through various different iterations of a setup in the bedroom, to a setup in the hallway, to my current setup. In 2020 we moved to our first house, and this is the spare bedroom which I've had converted into a studio, which means my cat can be here asleep on me or near me getting fur everywhere, but it's fine. I can thrash around and I've got natural light to work in at the same time, which I find quite important. [Pictured below Chris' current setup.]

F: Very pretty. That's good. Guide us through a typical day of yours, if you like.

CT: Oh, sure. I mean, there is no typical day. And yet, and yet, and yet. A typical day for me is, because I am spending the vast majority of the day sitting in this room or somewhere close to this room, because I may need to record at short notice, because the vast majority of jobs are quite short notice. My priority is exercise for mental health more than anything. I've got some weights at the bottom of the garden, and I will get up first thing, and I will go there and I will do that after breakfast. And that's my minimal routine of physical activity done. 

And then I'll come back, and this is so rock and roll. Now what I do is, I spend like an hour on LinkedIn. And that's what you dreamed of as a creative person. Isn't it as an actor? I spend time on LinkedIn regularly every day, because it's a really good networking place for a lot of my types of work, and first thing in the morning, I'm a bit mentally sharper. So that's when I come up with a quick post that may be inspired by a bit of content that I've made elsewhere. That probably takes about 20 minutes and then I spend another 45 minutes to an hour engaging with people and saying hi and introducing myself and asking questions, whether that's with video producers or game developers or documentary makers or pretty much anything and everything. There are a lot of people who are active at that time. And so I do it.

And then after that, if I already have some recording lined up, then I'll prioritise mid-morning, because I've warmed up physically a bit more then, and I'm focused. So, you're going through the scripts, annotating the scripts, recording the scripts, editing the scripts. But then there could be live sessions at any time within that as well. I try to keep hours from nine till six. But occasionally, like with Rogue Trader, that was recorded at various different times of the day because we had people in New York, we had people in mainland Europe, and we had people in the UK. So all different time zones, so that can happen at any time. 

And then I try to do other kinds of bits and pieces of marketing whenever I've got free time to. I do use really exciting productivity hacks, like time blocking. Again, not something that as a creative individual, I was like: Oh God, this gets me so excited, because it doesn't, but it works. It's finding a system that works for you, but still has a certain kind of flexibility and fluidity. I'm trying to make sure that I get outside of the house, and that kind of stuff. 

Recently, over the last year, I’ve started doing audiobooks as well. That long form type of thing is quite nice to be able to dip into because sometimes you don't record for two, three days. You don't get the work. Nothing’s coming in. So, you’re marketing, but it kind of connects you back to the performance side of things to go: I can do a few chapters and you know, that kind of thing. So that's probably it. I try to formalise it, but you know, every voice actor’s day is radically different. There are people, some of the biggest names, going into different studios every week or every day. I very rarely, despite being based in London, I very rarely go into external studios. Like I would say 99 percent of the work I just do from home.

F: So how do you find the right voice for the specific type of voiceover work you do, maybe start with how did you find Heinrix's voice?

CT: Thankfully, Owlcat sent through quite a detailed casting breakdown. So, you get a picture, and that's pretty crucial, as well as a short bio, in terms of the background of the character, but not too much, because you have to sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. But even if you do sign an NDA, I think developers are always slightly hesitant of giving you too much info about the game because things could still be changed. But I think I did get a picture of Heinrix, if not in the first audition, then certainly on the second one. From that you immediately think about the physicality and what might affect the voice, and there was also some direction in terms of what they were looking for. Anybody who has heard the character and me, they do not sound radically dissimilar. There's not a transformative process that I needed to go through, other than his sense of authority and the space that he takes up and the sureness that he has in that he has a kind of divine right from the emperor, so that level of confidence being brought through.

The other part of the audition was about the void ship [the Black Ship] that he'd been raised in and the horrors that he'd seen. And you as the actor have to do the detective work to go like this is showing another side, the more vulnerable side, the side that underpins all of his life choices up to this point. It's essentially playing the opposite to a degree. So it was kind of knowing when to let those elements bleed through a little bit. I think I had probably about a page worth of scripts, quite a lot of script actually to audition with. 

But I don't like to listen back to it a lot, because I think you get into your head. My biggest thing is stage work where it's ephemeral. You say it once and it could be different the next night. The whole point is that there's no one definitive way of doing things. Not quite the same with voice acting, where it's being recorded and you've got to get used to hearing it back. But I try not to overthink it. Just like record it two or three times with different impulses and then review and go like, those two seem pretty contrasting. I'll send those along and hope and then never hear anything back unless I do.

[thecreaturecodex]

Briarpatch

"Rose" © Sandra Duchiewicz, accessed at her deviantArt here

[It's been a long while since I posted a unique monster intended for the Age of Monsters campaign. And clearly there's still interest--my precis for that campaign, and the article about how the Mythos deities fit into it, are still getting likes.

Briarpatch is a character whose seeds (hah) have been planted in several other entries, such as Dr. Shiny and the Vermilion Mother. My inspirations came from all over the place. The sexy, spooky plant girl art of Sandra Duchiewicz was always something I wanted to incorporate. There's a growing idea in ecological and archeological circles that plants domesticated humans as much as the other way around. And I wanted to make a version of Poison Ivy who is genuinely evil.]

Briarpatch CR 27 NE Plant

This woman is beautiful, but alien, with chlorotic skin like the surface of a diseased leaf, and flower petals in place of hair. A collar of brambles grows from her neck and extends into long, thorny vines. She has piercing yellow eyes and an appraising expression.

The Elder Goddess Shub-Nugganoth has many epithets, but her most famous is “Black Goat with a Thousand Young”. In truth, her spawn number far more than one thousand. The creatures known simply as dark young are the most common of her progeny, but unique individuals are her offspring as well. One of these is Briarpatch, a green woman laden with occult intelligence and a profound disgust for urbanization. It is Briarpatch’s goal to see cities crumble and mortal civilizations reduced to decentralized subsistence farming once more, and she is going to use plants as her tools to achieve this.

Unlike many evil creatures of a druidic nature, Briarpatch does not disdain farming. Far from it; she believes humanity exists to serve plants, and that by distancing themselves from the soil, they have betrayed their roots. As such, she both exalts farming and farmers while simultaneously using domestic plants as weapons. Sometimes this is as elaborate as encouraging farmers to plant crops that will use more water and resources than the environment can support, forcing governments into subsidies and increasingly desperate acts to avoid famine. Sometimes this is as simple as distributing seeds of man-eating plants mixed in with garden plants or birdseed. Briarpatch’s cult includes a number of neutral farm-folk, who see her as salvation to their local communities, even as the nation-states that collect their taxes suffer as a body with a parasite does. Her cult often refers to her as the Pale Lady, especially among outsiders.

Briarpatch’s domain is the Forest of Veils in eastern Ustalav, and she communes and coordinates with the mythos horrors that live there. She is allied with the Vermillion Mother and Diceid as a coven of divinities obsessed with invasive species and reshaping ecosystems. She and the Vermillion Mother have a sexual relationship, and treat Diceid as something like a nephew or son. Briarpatch has an entitled personality and considers herself Shub-Nugganoth’s favorite child. She is convinced that if she does enough to deform society in the Inner Sea region, her mother will favor her with a promotion and transform her into an emissary Great Old One, similar to the relationship between Yog Sothoth and Tamir at’umr. Whether this ambition is achievable or is merely one of the Pale Lady’s delusions is hard to say.

Briarpatch rarely participates directly in combat, but when she does, she is a terror to behold. Due to her occult origins, she has access to a wider array of spells than a typical green man. She uses these to inflict overwhelming euphoria or grotesque physical transformations. Sometimes both simultaneously. If she actually wants to kill, rather than toy with her victims, she combines powerful area of effect spells with her tendrils and thorns. Briarpatch is acutely aware that she can still be slain permanently, and will retreat from a battle that turns against her to recuperate and plan revenge.

Briarpatch CR 27 Variant eruphyte green man XP 3,276,800 NE Medium plant (augmented, shapechanger) Init +16; Senses darkvision 60 ft., greensight 60 ft., lifesense 60 ft, low-light vision, Perception +30, thoughtsense 60 ft.

Defense AC 54, touch 36, flat-footed 41 (+12 Dex, +1 dodge, +13 insight, +12 natural, +6 armor) hp 663 (34d8+510); regeneration 20 (deific or mythic) Fort +34, Ref +23, Will +24 Defensive Abilities wilderness insight; DR 15/epic and slashing; Immune ability damage, ability drain, daze, electricity, petrification, plant traits, stagger; SR 37 Offense Speed 40 ft., climb 40 ft. Melee 2 slams +46 (1d8+21/19–20 plus 1d6 acid and absorb magic), 6 vines +46 (2d6+21 plus grab) Ranged 6 thorns +41 (2d6+21/19-20) Space 5 ft., Reach 5 ft. (30 ft. with vines) Special Attacks absorb magic, constrict (2d6+15), grab (Colossal), thoughtspear (17d8, DC 39) Spell-Like Abilities (CL 26th; concentration +37) Constant—pass without trace, speak with plants At will—plant growth, transport via plants 3/day—summon plants 1/day—awaken Druid Spells Prepared (CL 20th; concentration +33) 9th—antipathy (DC 32), extended control plants (DC 32), foresight, greater siege of trees, rival’s weald (DC 33), telekinetic storm (DC 32) 8th—euphoric tranquility (DC 31), horrid wilting (DC 31), mass cure serious wounds, stormbolts (DC 31), sunburst (DC 31) , vinetrap (DC 31) 7th—quickened cure moderate wounds, heal (DC 30), greater scrying, transmute metal to wood, waves of ecstasy (DC 30), waves of exhaustion 6th—antilife shell, greater dispel magic, green caress (x2, DC 30), mass inflict pain (DC 29), primal regression (DC 29) 5th—baleful polymorph (DC 29), cure critical wounds (DC 28), death ward, quickened ray of enfeeblement (DC 24), synapse overload (DC 28), extended thorn body, wall of thorns 4th—arboreal hammer, command plants (DC 27), confusion (DC 27), dispel magic, explosion of rot (DC 27), freedom of movement, strong jaw 3rd—cure moderate wounds (DC 26), excruciating deformation (DC 27), protection from energy, quench (DC 26), spike growth (DC 26), thorny entanglement (DC 27), vampiric touch 2nd—alter self, barkskin, fog cloud, harvest season, resist energy, warp wood (DC 26), wilderness soldiers 1st—cure light wounds (DC 24), entangle (2, DC 25), faerie fire, longstrider, snowball (x2), touch of the sea 0—create water, detect magic, guidance, light

Statistics Str 44, Dex 35, Con 40, Int 35, Wis 36, Cha 33 Base Atk +25; CMB +42 (+46 grapple, +44 sunder); CMD 85 (87 vs. sunder) Feats Combat Reflexes, Craft Staff, Craft Wondrous Item, Defensive Combat Training, Diehard, Dodge, Endurance, Extend Spell, Greater Spell Penetration, Improved Critical (slam), Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Psychic Sensitivity (B), Quicken Spell, Spell Focus (transmutation), Spell Penetration, Stand Still Skills Acrobatics +44 (+48 jumping), Appraise +26, Bluff +40, Climb +54, Disguise +40, Diplomacy +40, Fly +30, Intimidate +43, Knowledge (arcana) +46, Knowledge (geography, history, religion) +41, Knowledge (nature) +46, Linguistics +19, Perception +30, Sense Motive +42, Spellcraft +46, Stealth +44, Survival +42, Swim +35, Use Magic Device +44 Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Daemonic, Druidic, Infernal, Mi-Go, Sylvan, Zern, telepathy 100 ft.; speak with plants SQ bardic knowledge +29, change shape (Colossal or smaller tree [tree shape]), deific, green empathy +45, occult gifts

Ecology Environment any forests Organization unique Treasure staff of heaven and earth, belt of physical perfection +4, headband of mental superiority +4 (Knowledge [arcana], Use Magic Device], amulet of mighty fists +4, wings of flying, bracers of armor +6, ring of the ecclesiarch, ring of mind shielding, rod of empowered spell (normal), deliquescent gloves, 11,000 gp worth of material components and miscellaneous treasure

Special Abilities Absorb Magic (Ex) When Briarpatch strikes a creature with her slam attack, she immediately attempts to absorb one magical effect from the target. Treat this as a targeted dispel magic (CL 20th), with Briarpatch preferring to target effects that prevent his vines’ grapple attempts, like freedom of movement. When Briarpatch absorbs magic in this way, she regains a number of hit points equal to double the level of the spell effect she absorbed. Deific Briarpatch grants divine spells to worshipers. This does not require any specific action on her behalf. Briarpatch grants access to the domains of Evil, Plant, Strength, and Weather and to the subdomains of Decay, Growth, Resolve, and Seasons. Her favored weapon is the sickle. If a druid worshiping Briarpatch chooses to take a domain, the druid must choose the Plant domain, regardless of alignment. Her holy symbol is that of a feminine face made of leaves and rose petals, facing to the left. Green Empathy (Ex) This ability functions as the druid’s wild empathy, save that the green man can only use this ability on plant creatures. A green man’s green empathy check bonus is equal to his HD plus his Charisma modifier (+43 for the typical green man). Occult Gifts (Ex) As the daughter of Shub Nugganoth, Briarpatch has abilities of an occult nature, and blurs the line between plant and aberration. She has the class skills of an aberration, although her total skill ranks are still those of a plant. He gains Psychic Sensitivity as a bonus feat, and adds psychic spells from the Abomination, Pain and Psychedelia psychic disciplines to the list of druid spells she can prepare. Lastly, she gains the benefits of her wilderness insight ability in any environment not subject to a dimensional lock effect, as alien spirits whisper these insights to her as much as natural plant life. In exchange, Briarpatch does not have the green caress aura of a typical green man. Spells Briarpatch can cast spells as a level 20 druid. She does not gain a domain, or other druid abilities such as an animal companion, unless she takes levels in the druid class. Summon Plants (Sp) Three times per day as a swift action, Briarpatch can summon any combination of plant creatures whose total combined CR is 20 or lower. This otherwise works like the summon universal monster rule with a 100% chance of success and counts as a 9th-level spell effect. Thorns (Su) Briarpatch’s thorns are ranged touch attacks with a range increment of 120 feet. A creature damaged by her thorn moves at half speed and can’t take 5-foot steps, fly, or use air walk, either naturally or magically, until the target or another creature pulls out the thorn as a full round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Thoughtspear (Su) Once per hour as a standard action, Briarpatch can direct a blast of disorienting mental energy at a creature within 120 feet. This attack deals 17d8 points of damage, and the target cannot attempt Knowledge skill checks for 1 minute afterwards. A target that succeeds a DC 39 Will save reduces the damage by half and negates the skill disruption. This is a mind-affecting effect and the save DC is Intelligence based. Vines (Ex) Briarpatch can extend up to six thorny vines from her body to attack foes. These act as primary natural melee attacks that deal bludgeoning and piercing damage and have a reach of 30 feet. Wilderness Insight (Ex) Briarpatch gains an insight bonus to her AC and CMD equal to her Wisdom bonus.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization coined CSA in 2009 to describe practices aimed at increasing farm resilience and reducing the carbon footprint of a global food system responsible for up to 37 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, however, observers say that CSA has been usurped by the Gates-led corporate alliance, with programs like Water Efficient Maize for Africa serving as green-painted Trojan horses for industry. “CSA is an agribusiness-led vision of surveillance [and] data-driven farmerless farming, [which explains why] its biggest promoters include Bayer, McDonnell, and Walmart,” said Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biodiversity. “From a climate perspective, it entrenches the global inequalities of a corporate food regime. There’s no system shift at all.” Octavaio Sánchez, the grizzled director of Honduras’s National Association for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture, contends that policies that promote true resilience must focus on regenerating soils through the use of organic fertilizers, crop rotation, and the preservation of native seeds able to adapt to changing conditions. These are the cornerstones of a global agro-ecology movement that has emerged from the seed and food sovereignty coalitions of the past three decades. The peasant-led agro-ecology movement—with La Via Campesina and AFSA in front—rejects the familiar refrain from agribusiness promoters that it is condemning farmers to permanent poverty and stagnation. The movement’s position is supported by both a growing literature of case studies and the development of scientific agro-ecological practices. When Gates Foundation officers were preparing to launch AGRA in 2006, researchers at the University of Essex published a study showing that agro-ecological practices increased yields by an average of nearly 80 percent across 12.6 million farms in 57 poor countries. The authors concluded that “all crops showed water use efficiency gains,” which led to “improvements in food productivity.” The UN’s High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition recommended in 2019 that governments support agro-ecological projects and redirect “subsidies and incentives that at present benefit unsustainable practices,” a judgment based on similar studies undertaken around the world.

[a-sad-mage]

Been a hot minute since I rambled about MaxSteel(2013) and-

What the fuck is wrong with Forge Ferrus-

Excuse my language

But seriously, I know it's been a point of discussion before, like a lot, but why the hell is Forge so hell bent on Steel being evil for the majority of the series????

Like Steel resting wouldn't actually make him evil.

Forge, you half-wit ;

STEEL WAS A FULTY ULTRALINK

Steel, as far as I'm concerned, was an anomaly, the 1 in 1000 product that is not like the others who were all programmed to be loyal to Makano, Steel wasn't. He questioned what they were doing, even if it was Jim that prompted it. Because here's the thing if the seed of doubt wasn't already there, Steel wouldn't have done what he did.

If Steel reset, he wouldn't default to 'glory for Makano' because that isn't a part of his programming.

On top of that

WHY KEEP THE FACT MAX IS HALF ALIEN A SECRET?!

even if Forge wasn't so hostile to Steel, and told them some things, I think at some point, Max and Steel would have questioned why Max had TURBO powers.

Because you can't expect someone to believe 'oh yeah, you were exposed to highly volatile energy when you were younger and now you're body generates the stuff' explanation forever.

Like wtf how dose being exposed to energy just cause ones body to start making it? Because that would imply human experimentation at some point.

And the whole 'we made Jim a promise not to tell you...' thing is also bullshit.

Yes they were trying tk keep there world to someone who subsidy died but I'm pretty sure they would be okay with you breaking that promise if keeping it is doing more harm than good.

WHICH IT WAS

YOU DON'T KEEP A SECRET THAT WILL ACTIVELY HARM SOMEONE OR CAUSE THEM TO SEEK ANSWERS IN A WAY THAT MAY HARM THEM!

you see it 'Uncle Sam Wants You!' Max and Steel go behind Forge's, and subsequently N-Teks back and joins the military for what they think is a raid on Dredds base. Max and Steel trust Colonel because he shows them some respect, and a level of trust Forge hasn't in a while.

And I also think Max’s lack of father figure plays a part in his actions that episode.

Yes I think we all more or less agree on some level that Forge was the closest thing Max had to a dad.

But when your father figure is acting fishy, not trusting you, and seemingly disappointed, and then another older man shows up and gives you a compliment and a pat on the back. Safe to say you're going to latch on the guy being nice than the one being a bit of a diçƙ.

Had Forge been just a wee bit more honest, I don't think Steel, but more importantly, Max would have felt the need to join up with another group.

Tldr: If Forge just communicated like a proper human, then Max probably wouldn't be so traumatized and not get basically groomed that one EP['Uncle Sam Wants You!']

[writerobscura]

The USA

Sorry for the radio silence; I'm still processing how 51% of my country thinks it's okay to elect a bigoted, misogynistic felon to the presidency.

This election is a reminder that half of this country is so fucking hateful that they're willing to elect someone that makes us a laughing stock around the globe while those who bought and paid for his campaign gut democracy.

Are you doing better than you were four years ago? Of course not. You were getting subsidy checks Biden pushed through a Republican congress post-pandemic.

Wages went up for essential workers, and that expense got passed on to you because corporations aren't going to short to their shareholders - and the President can do nothing about that without holding companies accountable to regulation - which our new president has no intention of doing.

The next two years:

My adult children will lose their healthcare when he and his Republican senate quash the Affordable Care Act - but hey, so long as you have a few extra bucks at the end of the month for cigs and beer, what do you care?

Some states will be able to seize the medical records of women and mothers and use those records to fine or put them in jail (abortion, IVF, getting your trans teen the care they need) - but hey, none of those things affect you personally, so fuck 'em and hey, women aren't even human, am I right you newly registered voting Gen Z fellas?

College debt, infrastructure repairs, social programs - kiss all that goodbye because fucking the planet up is a small price to pay so you can get gasoline for under $2.99. Oh, and that Latino spouse? All it takes is one call from a disgruntled 'Murican and our new INS will be there with 'post-citizenship deportation review' papers.

Wars? How easily everyone forgets that Ukraine is at war right now because your guy failed to help him when Russia flooded his country with separatists. You think he's going to stop arming Israel? Where's the money in that?

Xenophobia may have worked when the USA was 100% self-sufficient in the 1900s, but it cannot be done in this day and age - but hey, going back to the old days is what it's all about, right?

Living in a hurricane or natural disaster prone state? You better pray to whatever G*d you worship that nothing happens in the next 2 years because the Pubs have the Senate and the presidency - no more FEMA funds and 'emergency handouts.'

Tariffs instead of taxes on the rich? Zero-sum situation. Guess how many companies import basic things just to make the shit you eat and use daily? Monsanto is no longer an American company, most farmers in the USA 'import' their seed, though because lack of corporate regulation has allowed them to destroy all farms that don't use their seed. While we're on the subject of tariffs, any foreign company can say, "We just won't sell to you, America." What's the backup plan? Oh, right, he has none.

Prices will rise, wages will stagnate, tariffs won't work, so guess who gets billed for that deficit? Not the wealthy—they spent billions electing this assclown, and there's no way they're investing one damned penny in the rest of us.

But hey, they know you can take it because you voted to have all this...You voted for all of the above at the expense of literally half your fellow countrymen.

If Kamala won, you would've lost NOTHING. Your worst case scenario under her presidency is that you would've been running in place financially while those you consider morally or racially beneath you, might've been gotten ahead a few steps.

So yeah, 51% of my country would rather watch it all burn down than suffer anyone they consider less of a human being, be given an equal chance.

[thoughtlessarse]

Record numbers of business representatives and lobbyists had access to the UN’s latest biodiversity talks, analysis shows. In total 1,261 business and industry delegates registered for Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which ended in disarray and without significant progress on a number of key issues including nature funding, monitoring biodiversity loss and work on reducing environmentally harmful business subsidies. The number is more than double the 613 present at the UN’s previous biodiversity conference in 2022. Overall, the number of attendees increased by 46%, making Cop16 the largest UN nature conference yet, although business and industry increased disproportionately. Industry groups working in pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, agrochemicals, food and beverage processing and tech all had more people registered to attend, according to the analysis by DeSmog. Some question the influence that these companies might have had on the outcomes of the summit negotiations. Sectors with the greatest increases included food and beverage processing (up 460%) and tech (up 333%). The presence of agrochemical, pesticide and seed companies increased by 40% and 24% respectively since Cop15. “We certainly saw a stronger lobbying push for policies that favour agricultural productivity, and that clashed with the conservation goals and the position of civil society,” said Oscar Soria, director of the Common Initiative thinktank. There was also a 25% increase in biotech representatives, who Soria said were “aggressive in pushing back on progress related to digital sequencing information (DSI)”. This was the voluntary agreement to make companies share profits from commercial discoveries derived from nature’s genetics. “Seems all of a sudden the private and business sector woke up and now they’re trying to defend their interests,” he said.

continue reading

[dailyanarchistposts]

Down On The Farm

The foot and mouth ‘epidemic’ in Britain was a massive abuse of animals and the land, caused by the pursuit of profit. Infected swill from schools, probably arising from the cheap imported meat schools use (cost-cutting before children’s health), was fed to pigs. Infected and disease-free animals were taken to large agri-business holding stations. The weak or unwanted were sold in local markets, spreading infection. The rest were transported hundreds of miles to fattening stations and mixed with other animals even though it is well known that livestock transported long distances are very susceptible to disease. Some were exported to Europe (after being infected), others sold after fattening to the abattoirs and then into the food chain. This industrial agriculture is forced upon farmers by a capitalism that must offer ever-cheaper goods to survive and the greed of the supermarkets for profit and market share. What is truly amazing is that foot and mouth disease cannot infect humans and does no more harm to animals than minor sores and milk that can’t be used. It wears off after a few weeks. In the 19th Century and abroad farmers simply let the disease burn itself out after killing very few animals. Why is it different in these islands? Because the supermarkets will not buy infected meat and farmers will not pay to feed a cow that even temporarily produces no milk. Foot and mouth was not a natural disaster, it was an economic disease, killing profits but of no harm to animals or humans. One million healthy, disease-free sheep were killed to protect the profits of the supermarkets and large agribusinesses, the ultimate indictment of capitalist profit motive and methods of organization. Globalisation and free trade are forcing intensive farming methods on farmers with disastrous consequences. In 1999 200,000 farmers in Europe gave up the unequal struggle and big business moved in. 10 companies worldwide control 60% of the international food chain. Four of them control the world supply of corn, wheat, tea, rice and timber. Massive subsidies, paid for by taxes on wages and non-agricultural businesses, swell the profits of the biggest farms and agricultural businesses, usually owned by large multi-national corporations – in the US, a total of $22bn. While western capitalism demands subsidy worth $362bn per year, the farmers of the rest of the world share just $18bn – if they can’t compete, they are accused of inefficiency by western ‘experts’ and legislated out of existence or driven to the wall by ‘free and fair’ competition.

Farmers are made more dependent on the multinationals by the fact that seed varieties (along with all forms of life) can now be patented and by being patented turned into private property. If farmers buy Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soya beans they have to sign a contract committing themselves to use only Monsanto chemicals, not to save any seed for replanting (one of the basics of sustainable agriculture) and be prepared to allow representatives of the company on to their farms for up to 3 years after the purchase to check this. In order to enforce these ‘Technology Use Agreements’ in the US, Monsanto have employed the Pinkerton private detective agency (famous for their violent strike breaking activities on behalf of US capital), they have named and shamed ‘guilty’ farmers in local radio station adverts and even opened a telephone hotline for people to dob in offenders. The fact that 475 farmers in the US and Canada broke their Technology Use Agreements and were sued by Monsanto is probably one of the reasons it developed ‘terminator’ technology, a technique where genes are inserted into a plant which render its seed non-viable; from the corporations point of view a great improvement — from ‘economic sterility’ to biological sterility. Monsanto is suing one farmer from Canada for growing seed without a license, when what actually happened was that his oilseed rape crop had been contaminated by pollen from GM crops on nearby farms. Of course the real aim of terminator technology is the untold sums of money to be made from stopping ‘Third World’ farmers from saving and sharing their seeds and making them dependent on high tech seed from the multinationals.

Nothing in the preceding paragraph should be taken to mean that we see large capitalist farmers in the US and Canada as being somehow victims of the corporations. Like large scale industrial farmers everywhere they are part of the corporate food production system of which GM is the latest stage: they exploit wage labour (although labour on farms is drastically reduced by the industrialisation process large scale industrial farming exploits wage labour massively in the chemical industry, machine production, transportation etc) and happily produce for the global market and act as a market for every new agro-chemical or GM seed produced. But already complaints of crop damage due to herbicide drift are starting to increase as the sprays farmers growing Roundup Ready GM use drifts onto the crops of farmers growing ordinary plants.

[secularbakedgoods]

Last month, the African Centre for Biodiversity released a report that sought to answer a question: Is Zambia’s food system collapsing? The country is suffering through one of its worst-ever droughts. Nearly half of maize under cultivation has been lost, while the price of this staple food has risen by 30%. More than six million Zambians, from a population of 20-million, are at risk of acute food shortages and malnutrition.

This was not part of Bill Gates’ vision. Successive Zambian administrations have been among the most enthusiastic adopters of the kinds of policies recommended by the Gates Foundation. The country is a poster-child for Agra’s drive to industrialise African agriculture, having implemented in 2009 a new subsidy programme to incentivise farmers to switch to commercial seeds and intensive fertiliser use. More than a million farmers did.

But, instead of increasing yields, the new approach simply increased farmers’ vulnerability to climate shocks like the current drought, the new report concludes. The use of hybrid seeds and imported fertilisers has degraded the soil, making it difficult to grow anything else; and the push to replace subsistence crops with cash crops, which then failed, means that farmers and their families are going hungry.

“We used to grow diverse crops,” said Mary Sakala, a Zambian farmer and chairperson of the Rural Women’s Assembly, which commissioned the report. “But now governments and agribusiness have pushed farmers into monoculture that depends on inputs. Their programmes have made us all vulnerable.”

(Simon Allison, The Continent)

[acti-veg]

TIL that most wild bird seed (in the US at least) is not vegan. Many brands use beef suet to coat seeds and make them stick together in bird feeders. I bought a bird feeder to hang in my yard and realized to late that the bird food I bought contains beef fat. Looking up other options online returns many results that contain beef suet as well. I'm looking into making my own vegan suet cakes for birds, but a word of warning for other vegans wanting to buy birdseed!

That does seem to be a US thing, I’ve looked at a few of the brands at supermarkets here in the UK and some European chains, and the only ones that contain suet are the ones marketed as suet feed or ‘feed with suet.’ They’re not all vegan though, oyster shell grit seems to feature on a few, and other ‘seafood’ type ingredients.

This is only an educated guess but the U.S. does have a massive animal waste and offal supply to get rid of though, it’s the same reason milk powder is in everything, everywhere - plentiful supply and very cheap because of subsidies (funded by the taxpayer) and because it’s a waste product. This may well be a symptom of that.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has a line about the state of small-scale agriculture in America these days.

It’s drawn from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which shows that as the average size of farms has risen, the nation had lost 544,000 of them since 1981.

“That’s every farm today that exists in North Dakota and South Dakota, added to those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, added to those in Nebraska and Colorado, added to those in Oklahoma and Missouri,” Mr. Vilsack told a conference in Washington this spring. “Are we as a country OK with it?”

Even though the United States continues to produce more food on fewer acres, Mr. Vilsack worries that the loss of small farmers has weakened rural economies, and he wants to stop the bleeding. Unlike his last turn in the same job, under former President Barack Obama, this time his department is able to spend billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives passed under three major laws since 2021 — including the biggest investment in conservation programs in U.S. history.

The plan in a nutshell: Multiply and improve revenue streams to bolster farm balance sheets. Rather than just selling crops and livestock, farms of the future could also sell carbon credits, waste products and renewable energy.

“Instead of the farm getting one check, they potentially could get four checks,” Mr. Vilsack said in an interview. He is also helping schools, hospitals and other institutions to buy food grown locally, and investors to build meatpacking plants and other processing facilities to free farmers from powerful middlemen.

But it’s far from clear whether new policies and a cash infusion will be enough to counteract the forces that have pushed farmers off the land for decades — especially since much of the money is aimed at reducing carbon emissions, and so will also go toward large farming operations because they are the biggest polluters.

The number of farms has been declining since the 1930s, in large part because of migration from rural areas to cities and greater mechanization of agriculture, which allowed operators to cultivate larger tracts with fewer people. Over time, the federal government abandoned a policy of managing production to support prices, prompting growers to become more export-oriented while local distribution networks atrophied.

The last half-decade has been more disruptive than most. First came a trade war against China under former President Donald J. Trump, which drew retaliatory tariffs that cut into U.S. exports of farm products like soybeans and pork. Then came the pandemic, which scrambled supply chains and sapped farm labor, leaving crops to rot in the fields.

After Congress cushioned the blow with relief for farmers hurt by pandemic disruptions, things started to turn around. Even as the cost of supplies like fertilizer and seed rose, so did food prices, and farm incomes increased. In 2023, default rates on farm loans neared record lows.

“Farm balance sheets are the healthiest they’ve ever been in the aggregate,” said Brad Nordholm, the chief executive of Farmer Mac, a large secondary market for agricultural credit. “The tools available to American farmers to have a more predictable return, even when commodity prices change and input prices change, is greater than it’s ever been before.”

But wholesale crop prices are expected to decline over the coming year. Rising interest rates have made it more difficult to finance planting and harvesting, borrow for an expansion or just get into agriculture — especially since land values jumped 29 percent from 2020 to 2023.

That’s especially true for the smallest farmers, who are far less likely to be tapped into Department of Agriculture assistance programs and are more vulnerable to adverse weather, labor shortages and consumer whims.

“I think in some ways they’re in a worse position than before the pandemic,” said Benneth Phelps, executive director of the nonprofit Carrot Project, which advises small farmers in New England. “We see a lot of farmers making hard decisions right now about whether to stay in or get out, because they’ve run out of steam.”

That’s where the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law come in.

The laws have collectively provided about $60 billion to the Agriculture Department, which has parceled it out across a variety of priorities, from relieving farmers’ debt to paying them to reduce their carbon emissions.

The biggest chunk — about $19.5 billion — has breathed new life into subsidies to encourage conservation practices that improve the land, like cutting back on plowing and planting cover crops to sequester carbon in the soil. Some of the programs had shrunk in successive Farm Bills, which are five-year legislative packages that covers most agricultural subsidies, and about two-thirds of farmers who applied each year got nothing.

The new funding has added 16,000 recipients over the past two years. Preliminary data shows the expansion is allowing smaller farms to take part.

[vibinwiththefrogs]

What's the Deal with Cotton?

For @rangerofthesouth , I don't work with cotton but we just went over all this in my field crop class and how we grow cotton feels very bizarre? Keep reading below for stuff on GMOs and cotton farming.

As far as I can tell cotton is probably one of the most technology-intensive crops we grow in the US. Not necessarily physical technology as in equipment, but gene technology (GMOs), breeding, and chemical use. It has all the standard things used on it that other industrial row crops have, such as herbicides, fertilizers, and pesticides. But it also has GMO traits and needs to be treated with plant growth regulators (PGRs), and defoliant before harvest.

So it turns out, cotton is a perennial plant. So if the weather is right it will just keep growing into something of a bush/tree sort of thing. But when grown as a crop they get treated with PGRs to slow/stop vegetative growth and to trigger reproductive growth (aka, the flowers that form into cotton bolls). Link to a picture of a guy with cotton not treated with PGRs on time below.

There's multiple kinds of GMOs. The big ones are traits added for herbicide/chemical resistance in the plant (such as Roundup Ready), and then there's pest resistance which usually is the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) trait. Bt is a bacteria that will infect insects if they feed on the plant, killing them off or deterring them. As far as I'm aware the big GMO crops in the US are soybeans, corn, and cotton; As well please note cotton production is very different across the world, I'm strictly speaking about the US.

What kind of crazy about pest resistant GMOs though, is it was touted around as an end to pesticides for a while. There was a quote I heard somewhere though that goes something like "if you're in a war and you have weaponry but the other side has evolution, the other side is going to win". Basically, insects started developing a resistance to Bt. And so different types of Bt traits keep getting stacked on one another to keep it effective, and currently we're up to 3 stacked Bt traits (see chart below, its from my class lol). Only the upper most trait on this chart is still effective, the others aren't.

What's nuts about this, is that cotton farmers are paying for every stacked gene even if they're ineffective. According to my prof a bag of conventional untreated cotton seed is ~$100, while GMO cotton is ~$600 a bag. The price of cotton off the field is really bad too, as far as I last heard its $0.70/1 lb. There's more numbers than this but as you can imagine with chemical applications, gas for equipment, and fertilizer, its looking not profitable. And so the US cotton industry is hella subsidized and there's so many government programs to keep it alive because many farmers cannot survive growing cotton without the subsidies.

I don't know a whole lot other than this because I've only just begun looking at cotton, but here's some questions and things I'm thinking about. First, clearly we need a whole system change because everything conventional ag brings out to stop the pests and weeds causes resistance development; chemicals and genes are helpful technologies, but only when used carefully within other non-chemical pest management strategies. We're currently deepening a major environmental and agricultural crisis with ag chemical usage. Second, I really want to look more into the legal side of things with government crop subsidies and insurance because it really seems to be the core things propping up all this for multiple crops (corn and soybeans included). And then, what would cotton look like in an alternative agricultural system? Personally I've only ever seen it as a conventional row crop.

[perestroika-hilton]

Following quote is from gleaning the welfare fields this is just a really nice succinct history of peasant revolt under communism

"Resistance to State Extraction during the Socialist Period (1959-1978)

The current character of rural resistance has its roots in the socialist era. This cycle of struggle begins in 1959, the first year of the Great Leap Famine, when a rupture occurred between peasants and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had developed widespread support in the countryside to various degrees over the previous three decades. Many members and even leaders of the party came from the peasantry, and the CCP’s guidance had proven successful at winning struggles against local elites that poor peasants had already attempted unsuccessfully on their own. Peasant support grew throughout the 1950s as CCP policies (such as land reform and cooperativization), coupled with the end of civil war, led to improvements in living standards.

All this fell apart with the return of famine in 1959, following the first year of the CCP’s Great Leap Forward campaign.[12] Many peasants soon began to regard the party-state as an alien, extractive and oppressive force, and to act individually or collectively against it by hiding grain from state collectors, stealing from collective fields, looting granaries, going to cities to demand food,[13] and in some cases taking up arms and engaging in local “power seizures.”[14]

The post-Leap retreat to more conservative agrarian policies (partial decollectivization, restoration of markets) mitigated peasant unrest, but the damage was done. Henceforth it would be more difficult to mobilize peasants for mass campaigns or even everyday work. The inefficiency that Dengists[15] and liberals alike attribute to the nature of collective production in general actually stemmed, in this case, from peasants’ resistance to state extraction and what they interpreted as alien, often irrational attempts to control the production process. In the 1970s (following more moderate recollectivization in the mid-1960s), many peasants again pushed for partial decollectivization, and others welcomed the Dengist state’s forced decollectivization in the early 1980s—less because of peasants’ inherent individualism or “petty bourgeois mentality,” and more because they wanted less extraction and more control over production.[16]

 

Resistance to Price Fluctuations during the Period of Transition (mid-1980s to early 1990s)

The early 1980s was a golden age for most Chinese peasants, comparable to the 1950s in optimism and surpassing it in terms of livelihood. Several decades of peace and gradual improvement of food intake combined with post-1968 improvements in rural health care managed to double life expectancy between 1949 and 1980. Meanwhile, two decades of collective projects to improve rural infrastructure (bringing new land under cultivation, expanding irrigation systems, building roads, etc.) and state modernization of agriculture (mechanization, production of agrochemicals and high-yield varieties of seed and livestock) finally came to fruition in the late 1970s.[17] This was coupled with the first significant state increase in prices for agricultural products, supplemented by subsidies for peasant entrepreneurs who reorganized their household farms and privatized collective equipment to specialize in certain commodities, leading to the most rapid increase in agricultural productivity and income that China had seen since the Ming Dynasty—especially for those able to benefit from the entrepreneurial subsidies available from 1978 to 1984.

By the mid-1980s, however, a combination of new factors caused these increases in productivity and income to decline. The increase attributable to modernization on tiny plots of land soon reached its limits. The state then decreased its subsidies and price controls for agriculture as part of its general strategy of marketization, and in order to balance the budget and lower the price of food for urbanites. These changes spelled disaster for peasants who specialized in certain cash crops when prices fell below the cost of production, leading to the first significant round of peasant unrest in China since the Great Leap Famine,[18] beginning in the late 1980s.

There is little data available on this sequence of struggles due to media censorship and the preference of researchers to focus on either decollectivization or anti-corruption struggles, but it is memorialized in Mo Yan’s novel The Garlic Ballads.[19] Based on news reports and interviews, the novel recounts a 1987 uprising against the falling price of garlic and the government’s refusal to buy the surplus, after local officials had encouraged peasants to specialize in garlic and then pocketed the state subsidies, alongside fees they had charged for farming a cash crop instead of grain. If this case is any indication, the marketization of agriculture at this time was already intertwined with local state corruption, which became the focus of peasant resistance in the 1990s.

 

Resistance to Local State Expropriation in the 1990s and early 2000s

It was during this period that many young peasants began migrating to coastal cities for temporary jobs, incentivized by expropriation in the countryside and increasing employment opportunities in the Special Economic Zones, both occurring just as returns from modernized small-plot agriculture had reached their limits. The struggles of peasants thus bifurcated into the rural struggles dealt with here, and the struggles of ruralites as proletarians, including conflicts in the wage relation and riots against social exclusion discussed in “No Way Forward, No Way Back” (also in this issue).

Despite frequent news reporting and a sizable academic literature, the only attempt at a comprehensive history of rural struggles in China since the 1980s is a pair of articles by Kathy Le Mons Walker published in the late 2000s.[20] The following sections center on summarizing information from those articles, supplementing it with other sources and engaging critically with Walker’s analysis.

Among the many targets of peasant resistance from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, most could be characterized as direct expropriation. These included:

the issuing of IOUs in lieu of payment of cash for crops by local officials, who used the funds for speculative real estate and business deals[…]; cadre diversion of state-allocated inputs for agriculture; the pocketing of TVE [“collective” township and village enterprise] profits by local and mid-level cadres; the imposition by local cadres of a host of ‘illegal’ or ‘unaccounted for’ fines, fees, and taxes to pay for ‘development’ projects and/or for personal use; the forcible confiscation of the land, belongings, and food of peasants who could not or would not pay the extra taxes and fees; the expropriation of arable land without adequate compensation (for highways, real estate development, and personal use, or to attract industrial investors through the creation of ‘development zones’); the issuing of inferior and fake chemical fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and other supplies by corrupt cadres; and finally the pollution of local water supplies by development projects, which has not only angered peasants but affected agricultural production as well.

This expropriation was not mere “corruption,” as both the Chinese state and liberal critics usually describe it.[21] In some cases it resembles proto-capitalist “primitive accumulation” in Marx’s classical sense, because it played a key role in the transition to capitalism.[22] In others, especially more recently, such expropriation might be better understood as specifically capitalist “accumulation by dispossession” in David Harvey’s sense—Walker’s preferred category of analysis.[23] It transferred products of peasant labor into capitalist enterprises and the infrastructure necessary for its operation. It also took the form of capitalist rents, as opposed to the tributary and socialist rents in rural China prior to marketization. Investment in this period often took the form of “collectively-owned” TVEs, but many of these functioned as profit-oriented joint-stock enterprises, while others were eventually appropriated by their managers or cheaply purchased by capitalists. During China’s reintegration into the world market in the 1990s, these privatized TVEs became the initial vehicle through which Chinese and transnational capital exploited local and migrant peasant-workers—the vehicle of their expropriation often becoming the source of their exploitation."

[richardsphere]

Leverage Redemption Log: The Turkish Prisoner Job

So that name feels like a reference to the "Spanish Prisoner" (the original form of what is now known as the "Nigerian Prince" con). --- 2 crooked cops sitting in a car, complaining that there isnt enough crime for them to hit a quota. One of them is playing hexagordle or whatever its called. Guy name Delgado is leaving the house (that was the cartel from the OG series wasnt it?) Rodrigo is walking to his car like he's got shit in his pants. Cops plant a gun. And Rodrigo is about to be sent to prison cause crooked cops. --- Harry is at a courthouse trying to talk to a runaway prosecutor. Harry is already working Rodrigo's case. Its Golf Job Girl! (i dont remember your name, thats not an insult im just shit with names)

Its Harry's turn to run a con. (he still doesnt know how to steal a catchphrase) --- Parker is clicking a pen in a car. Parker is right, surveilance is boring. Operation Bigger Fish is a go!

Parker has stolen the free smoothie (come on man, not cool. This guy is only trying to prevent himself from getting framed by the cops.) Cops have taken the bait, Sophie is playing the "criminal" to be targeted. Harry is playing himself. (Sophie has brought on 2 understudies as bodyguards), also Breanna, why are you putting so many cuts into your camerafootage. Jumping from cam 1 to cam 3 every other sentence. --- Ok so the plan is to leave the cops alone around a bunch of cash and cocaine and let them "help themselves" while hidden cameras roll. Simple plan.

Oh Romero's family problems just chased him down in prison. Time for an improvised jailbreak! --- Plan has changed, tell the two stooges that the drug deal has been postponed, then kidnap Rodrigo in court. We can get the stooges vengeance for their victims can wait until after we ensure their victims dont die in prison.

Breanna has set up a botnet to astroturf up an anti-hotsauce factory protest. (probably based on the Irwindale Sriracha lawsuit. Yes i had to google the city.)

Quick read of the signs, prop department should be proud of the simple Jalapeno sign. Good work!

GolfGirl catches onto it pretty quickly that Harry is about to do a thing. (DAQ protocol engaged) Elliot is in a shared holding with Rodrigo.

The coffee is smoking. Cops are walking down the staircase, Beardy boy has a concious. Or at least is worried this might bite them in the behind. Woman is clearly the mastermind. "i did it by the book for years, it got me nowhere". Ah, so thats how we're playing this episode. The instruments of state-sponsored violence cant be evil only misguided cause what if the government wont give our production company their subsidies no more. (even the "evil cops" episode is copaganda nowadays)

And we frame the protesters for a chemical attack. Because the solution to innocent people getting their lives ruined by cops framing them for crimes they didnt commit is to frame a bunch more innocents for crimes they didnt commit. --- And the team enters in hazmat suits. Romero is having a panic attack/asthma thing.

Turns out the cops, while evil, are actually good at their job and now we have our victim charged with attempted jailbreak.

Harry has to make a tough call, cant get into a high-speed chase with the foodtruck (not only does it compromise elliots entire food-based Lucille army, the Lucille Legion is also not meant for stealth not speed) --- Sophie shows Harry her Eiffel Tower Salesman Trunk, mentions her mentor. (we're seeding more Sophie Lore) Harry has homework.

Covers arent blown, they're recyclable. (Narco in town on mysterious business, Federal officer in jail.) --- Did these bodies get buried in a tic-tac-toe formation normally, or did Breanna make this entire setpiece from scratch in an actual graveyard?

Sophie arrives to let Breanna and Parker "die" in character now that our cops are hooked. Elliot warns us that another hit is coming in the morning. (we're gonna have to kill this guy and set him up with the Leverage Witness Protection Division) --- Elliot reminds Rodrigo that the real bad-guy here is still theoretically the as-of-yet unidentified housing corpo that is bribing a congressman into presuring the cops. (if these people dont get rounded up at the end of episode, it'll all feel sort of hollow)

Elliot pretends to be a fellow gang-member/hitman angry that Rodrigo isnt actually a delgado.

Huh, using a key as a hilt on a shiv. Creative.

Cops are here to break out Elliot and Rodrigo. --- Old gator-zoo abandoned after Katrina. (turns out you dont need ghosts when you have Gators)

"im not a moron i just have a lot of concussions", His constant references to sportsball. Are we really weaving in a CTE storyline in the middle of this Evil Cops story? If so, its a verry nuanced characterdetail to give our crook of the week.

Billy Brainbash is starting to recognise Elliot from somewhere. --- The un-tied boat (untied as in "was never tied" not as in "has had the tie-ing undone") buys us enough time to fake a gator attack without needing to blank their guns.

Ok even if the guns werent blanks we just unloaded them on the "gators" so Sophie is safe.

Flashback shows Breanna making Gatordroids (i mean didnt even need a flashback. The gators were pretty clearly props by the way Elliot dropped them. Or maybe im just getting too familiar with the show) --- Meanwhile our crooked cops are at (presumeably the prosecutor's) stashhouse. Yup its the Prosecutor (McShane really was the smart one.) --- Harry presures the judge to pressure the prosecutor to investigate the Quota's.

Breanna found the Bagmans house. (turns out, cash money takes up a lot of space and only some houses built in the story-apropriate era have enough space between their walls. Add in his area of operation and it narrows down to 1) --- Harry Wilson, Law Criminal. Has a ring to it. (also the "con artist" line gets a 10/10)