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mariacallous · 6 months

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In the two years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has forcibly deported thousands of Ukrainian children. While the total number of these deported minors is unknown, Kyiv has reported nearly 20,000. After the children are separated from their families and taken to Russia, the Russian authorities begin working to make them forget about their home country, telling them that their parents aren’t coming to get them and that Russia is their home. To learn how this system works, Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova studied thousands of documents and spoke with employees from Russia’s Education Ministry, the main agency responsible for these “reeducation” measures.

“‘Glory to Ukraine!’ and ‘Glory to the heroes!’ are nationalist greetings.”

“Ruscism is the unofficial name for the political ideology and social practices of Russia’s ruling regime in the early 21st century. […] The term was created by Russophobes.”

“The term ‘orcs’ is used by Russophobes and extremists as an offensive name for Russian soldiers.”

These are all entries from a glossary the Russian Education Ministry compiled in 2022, to inform teachers of the words and phrases “containing signs of nationalist extremism” that Ukrainian children might use at school.

The glossary is appended to a guide titled “Prevention of Conflicts and Manifestations of Extremism and Terrorism in a Multicultural Educational Environment,” which warns that the use of “specific slang terms” or even discussion of “political topics” may indicate that a “destructive ideology” has spread among a group of students.

According to these and other leaked ministry materials, it’s the job of Russian teachers to “form a Russian identity in members of the rising generation from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.” This indoctrination process can begin as soon as deported Ukrainian children arrive in Russia, although a separate document warns that children at this stage are liable to exhibit “moodiness,” “opposition,” “distrust towards adults,” aggression, and “ideas of personal superiority,” as well as having “difficulty taking an objective view of the unfolding situation.”

The guide goes on to claim that Ukrainian children lack the “knowledge” and “social skills” that “children in the Russian space have by default.” It also includes instructions on how to handle conversations about children’s family members who may have been killed or gone missing during the war:

Don’t say “Don’t worry, they’re in a better place” or “They’re looking down on you from heaven.” […] Speak honestly with the child about the fact that his loved ones were killed or his home has been destroyed. […] Say directly that they have died.

Eventually, the guide says, the child should start to experience feelings of pride, patriotism, and belonging to Russia. It also refers to the war in Ukraine as a “complication of the geopolitical situation” that forces families “into involuntary resettlement.”

According to the Education Ministry, the process of “reeducating” Ukrainian children based on Russian “spiritual-moral values and historical and national cultural traditions” should continue until their graduation, with the final result being that the children “develop a Russian identity.”

A ministry source who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity referred to these teacher guides as a “total disgrace”:

“Say directly that they have died” — that’s fucked up. If a child doesn’t know their family’s fate, just saying “They died” is about the worst thing you can do. You should start by finding out what the child knows about his family, how likely he thinks the odds are that they survived, whether it makes sense to hold out hope…

The source also objected to the guide’s use of the term “integration”:

Integration is something that takes place in a multicultural environment — one that permits cultural diversity and respect for the culture of the non-dominant group. But just try right now to show respect for the Ukrainian language, the anthem, the coat of arms — I mean, they arrest people for this! So the integration of these children isn’t possible. What they really mean is most likely assimilation or marginalization.

Instructions from the Kremlin aren’t the only reason the Education Ministry cares about “integrating” deported Ukrainian children. According to Meduza’s source, officials in the ministry are genuinely afraid of them. “The idea that Ukrainian children are potential terrorists looms over our conversations. We’re not morons — we realize that Russia didn’t come to Ukraine with ‘peace and kindness.’ And that the children who were taken from there to a hostile environment could start to resist,” this person said. “Behind the scenes, they’ve started saying as much, even at the leadership level. But at round table events, of course, all you hear is ‘Ukrainian children are so wonderful.’”

The source added that in late 2022, the Education Ministry began preparing its employees for potential terrorist attacks against the ministry itself. The documents Meduza obtained warn of the possibility of “armed attacks” (including ones involving “flammable liquids,” an apparent reference to Molotov cocktails), “hostage-taking,” “detonation of explosive devices,” “arson,” and drone attacks.

The head of a Russian state foundation that works with orphans told Meduza that he’s heard similar concerns. “Behind closed doors, they understand that the integration of Ukrainian teenagers is an explosive situation, and they’re trying to provide guidance to teachers and everybody else,” he said. “Our students are also inundated with the idea that there are ‘fascists in Ukraine’ — and then a real ‘Ukrofascist’ is brought to your class.”

‘A friendly image of Mother Russia’

At the start of the full-scale war, Vladimir Putin allocated 52 million rubles ($573,000) to Russia’s Education Ministry to create an agency called the Federal Center for the Development of Teenage Socialization Programs (from here on referred to as the Teenage Programs Center). This entity oversees a project called Teenagers of Russia, which was presented to Putin about two weeks after the start of the full-scale war.

The Teenagers of Russia program is an initiative of Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova and was designed, according to her, to help “millions of teenagers pass safely through the zone of turbulence” during the war. The International Criminal Court has taken a different view on the program: last year, it issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova for their alleged roles in the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.

Since its creation, the Teenage Programs Center has coordinated the Russian authorities’ work with school-age children in all of Russia’s regions as well as in Ukraine’s occupied territories. According to documents obtained by Meduza, the Teenage Programs Center is especially focused on providing “support to minors located in the special military operation zone.”

The new agency, which reports to both the Education Ministry and Lvova-Belova, was launched “specifically for Ukrainian children” for the purpose of “explaining to them ‘where the truth is,’” two sources from the Center told Meduza.

“When the Teenage Programs Center was established, [its employees] immediately began making trips to visit children, both in Mariupol and in the LNR, as well as ones who had already been taken to Russia. They would distribute humanitarian aid, hold training sessions, and generally try to create the image of a friendly Mother Russia: ‘You’re here now, and everything here is great!’” said one source. “That’s their main activity.”

According to Meduza’s sources, the Teenage Programs Center’s employees are tasked with “erasing these children’s Ukrainian past and integrating them into the Russian world.”

Among other projects, the Teenage Programs Center is in the process of building a network of “teen spaces” that hold “patriotic seminars” in which children are told about the “achievements of our country” and the “significance of the events happening in Russia’s new regions.” These seminars allow teenagers to meet people who Teenage Programs Center director Valery Maiorov refers to as “safe adults,” a category that includes Russian soldiers and priests.

Meduza spoke to the director of one of the Teenage Programs Center’s “teen spaces,” who described her work with Ukrainian children as follows:

Small children [in war zones] come to their senses more quickly than adults. Teenagers, of course, are all on social media, which has an influence on them. [As a result,] they get the wrong idea about why this war began. […] Many of them support Ukraine, many are critical of the head of state. We invite specialists from the relevant agencies to explain things to them.

These “teen centers” also coordinate “military sport” activities, trips to exhibitions with names like “We oppose Nazism,” visits to shooting ranges, and even “preparations for service in the Russian Armed Forces.” According to an Education Ministry report, the centers had been “visited by over 150,000 teenagers” as of September 2023.

“Essentially, Maiorov oversees a substantial portion of the ideological work with teenagers outside of schools,” a source from the Teenage Programs Center told Meduza. “The children return from school, where they’re indoctrinated, and they go to these institutions, where they’re indoctrinated even more.”

The agency is opening “teen centers” on Ukraine’s occupied territories as well: branches are already operating in Donetsk and Mariupol, and preparations are underway for new ones throughout the occupied territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. Maria Lvova-Belova and the leadership of the Teenage Programs Center are personally overseeing this process.

‘You’re in Russia — speak Russian’

The Teenage Programs Center is subordinate to the Russian Education’s Ministry Department for the Protection of Children’s Rights. The head of this department is a woman named Larisa Falkovskaya, a former school psychologist who has been personally sanctioned by the European Union.

Falkovskaya’s department also oversees the Federal Coordination Center for the Provision of Psychological Services in the Education System (FKTs) — the agency responsible for creating the teachers’ guides described at the beginning of this article. The FKTs is also responsible for training teachers in Ukraine’s occupied territories and for working with students “in bad situations.” A ministry source described the agency’s work as follows: “Essentially, they parachute in to see children whose relatives and friends have recently been killed. They counsel everybody one by one, like a conveyor belt: ‘Our country is here to help you.’”

According to reports obtained by Meduza, Ukrainian children have complained to psychologists of anxiety, “separation from family,” panic, shock, and “suicidal tendencies.” They’ve reported being afraid of “loud sounds” and noise from airplanes, as well as experiencing grief, depression, and “separation anxiety.” Many are also concerned about being “stigmatized because of their strong dialect” and “difficulties quickly transitioning to Russian language.”

These language-related fears are well-founded, according to a source from the Education Ministry. “All of the decision-makers will say without hesitation that work [with children] should be conducted in Russian: ‘They all know it there, and if they don’t know it well, then they should learn it,’” said the source. “They say, ‘The Constitution says Russian is the state language. You came to Russia, so speak Russian.’”

Adoption

Falkovskaya’s department isn’t just responsible for pressuring Ukrainian children to assimilate — it also carries out their placements into Russian families. This is overseen by Falkovskaya’s deputy, Anastasia Akkuratova, who, according to leaked documents, organizes Ukrainian children’s deportations to Russia and adds them to the Russian State Orphan Database.

Maria Lvova-Belova continues to insist that Russians cannot and do not adopt children from the “new regions,” claiming they can only serve as foster parents or guardians and that the goal is for the children to eventually be returned to their families. She often repeats that she herself is serving as a “foster parent” — not an adoptive mother — to Filipp Golovnya, a 17-year-old from Mariupol.

These claims are not true. Meduza has viewed “summary reports” from the Education Ministry on the “identification and placement of orphans and children left without parental care” from the first three quarters of 2023 that contain documentary evidence of a program for the mass adoption of Ukrainian children. This evidence shows that:

In the first quarter of 2023, Russian-backed officials “identified” 220 “orphans and children left without parental care” in each of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” and 14 children in these categories in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region. According to the reports, 26 of these children were “given up for adoption” to Russian citizens, four of them were returned to their biological parents, and seven of them were taken away from their relatives because of alleged “direct threats to their life or health.”

In the second quarter of 2023, the number of orphans and “children left without parental care” recorded by Russian-backed agencies in Ukraine’s occupied territories rose to 40 in the Zaporizhzhia region, 286 in the “Luhansk People’s Republic,” and 409 in the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” Six more children from the occupied part of the Donetsk region were given up for adoption to Russian citizens, 16 were returned to their parents, and 19 were taken away from their relatives.

The third quarter of 2023 was the first to include data about the occupied part of the Kherson region. In addition to 63 orphans and “children left without parental care” there, the Russian-backed authorities reported a total of 45 children in the Zaporizhzhia region, 343 in the Luhansk region, and 569 in the Donetsk region. The number of children adopted by Russian citizens also surged to 45, most of them from the Donetsk region. Meanwhile, the occupation authorities took three children in the Kherson region away from their relatives.

This data doesn’t account for all adoptions of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories by Russian authorities. During the months when the reports did not include the Kherson region, for example, a 10-month-old girl was taken from an orphanage in the region. According to reporting by iStories, she was adopted in December 2022 by Sergey Mironov, the chairman of the political party A Just Russia — For Truth.

‘Big Brother for teenagers’

The Russian Education Ministry continues to monitor Ukrainian children after they are adopted into Russian families and is responsible for compiling a report if a child dies. In the first half of 2023, the ministry recorded the deaths of five children from the occupied parts of the Kherson and Luhansk regions. One of the children died by suicide.

The documents obtained by Meduza indicate that one of the Education Ministry’s tasks is to take measures to prevent child suicides in the occupied territories. It does this with the help of an organization called the Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment, according to two sources from the ministry. This agency’s powers, however, go far beyond suicide prevention efforts.

The Center is an IT company that was founded on Vladimir Putin’s orders and that receives billions of rubles from Russia’s federal budget. It develops its own software, which it then uses to monitor the online spread of “anarchism,” “Nazism,” and “other forms of destructive information” online.

The Center’s main product is a software called Profilaktika, which allegedly tracks over 540 million profiles of teenagers on social media (and considers more than two million of them to exhibit “destructive behavior”).

“This is Big Brother for teenagers,” an Education Ministry employee familiar with the system’s operations told Meduza. “It [uses neural networks to create] a risk profile for each child — suicide, terrorism, extremism — and sends information about this to the [software’s] operator. It can also send it to the authorities.”

The employees that use the software are guided by a brochure that includes the late Alexey Navalny’s investigative team as an example of an “extremist organization” and describes Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in the following terms: “Neo-Nazi organizations [were] used to form a so-called ‘opposition’ and carry out coups d’état.”

According to documents obtained by Meduza, TsISM has already tested its software in 44 Russian regions. The organization plans to expand it to the entire country and integrate it with Interior Ministry databases in the near future.

It’s unclear how effective this program is, but two Education Ministry employees who work with the data it generates told Meduza that the software is very good at de-anonymizing teenagers online. “Even if a child used a pseudonym online, changed his age, used somebody else’s photo, and blocked his parents, the center would still help identify him,” one employee said.

Meduza has obtained dozens of the risk profiles created with data from the Profilaktika software. Each one contains its subject’s photo, address, and phone number, as well as a detailed analysis of their social media accounts, including the number of likes, reposts, and comments they’ve left.

The profiles also indicate whether a teenager belongs to any “opposition communities” or has posted or liked any posts that “discredit law enforcement,” “criticize the current authorities of the Russian Federation,” “depict shock content,” or relate to “anarchism.” These factors are used to assign each child both a “destructiveness score” and an “opposition score.”

“TsISM scours the Internet, monitoring online activity and helping law enforcement identify opposition activists and opponents of the Russian authorities,” one source from the Education Ministry put it.

In 2023, TsISM received 621 million rubles ($6.7 million) from Russia’s federal budget for this work. Over the next three years, it’s slated to get more than 1.7 billion rubles (more $18.5 million), according to leaked documents.

The ultimate goal, the documents say, is for the program to “cover at least 85 percent” of the social media accounts of children and teenagers living in Ukraine’s occupied territories.

A ‘Ministry of Orphans’

To consolidate their various initiatives and programs for deporting, adopting, indoctrinating, and surveilling Ukrainian children, the Russian authorities are considering creating an entire new government agency. In communications between the Labor Ministry and the Education Ministry, federal employees have referred to the proposed entity as a new “ministry.”

According to sources from the Education Ministry, this idea is being “pushed for” by State Duma deputy Anna Kuznetsova. Russia’s former Children’s Rights Commissioner, Kuznetsova is most well-known for her ultra-conservative statements and initiatives. One of Meduza’s sources described the situation as follows:

They say the “Ministry of Orphans” is being made specifically for her. That Kuznetsova is very unhappy with her new position and that she’s got no use for the State Duma. Meanwhile, there just so happens to suddenly be a ton of orphans and socially disadvantaged children in Russia. And all of these Ukrainian children may also end up under Kuznetsova’s authority — that’s the whole point of the initiative, as far as I understand. To take control of all the guardianship and child welfare agencies and the entire state policy for kids with disabilities.

Kuznetsova has referred to Ukrainian children as “hostages” (not of Moscow but of Kyiv) and has taken various efforts to “speed up the process” of their adoption in Russia.

Some of Meduza’s sources expressed doubts that the proposal will become a reality due to the amount of money it would cost. According to one source close to the Kremlin, the final decision will come after Russia’s presidential election in mid-March.

Education Ministry employees, however, have begun discussing the initiative as if it’s already a done deal. When the agency began moving to a new building in Moscow in October 2023, a source from the ministry told Meduza, employees assumed the purpose of the change was to “free up a building for the ‘new ministry.’”

* * *

Since the start of the full-scale war, Russian schools have been teaching children about the importance of “disarming” Ukraine, forming a “Russian civic identity,” and “serving the Motherland.” This same rhetoric is used in schools in Ukraine’s occupied territories.

Russian volunteers working in the occupied territories, however, aren’t particularly concerned about these goals. Many Russian students whose views have already been shaped by the government’s anti-Ukraine rhetoric, volunteers told Meduza, are unwilling to have normal interactions with Ukrainians, despite the Kremlin’s indoctrination programs.

“One boy came into our class and said, ‘I’m a citizen of Ukraine — and I’m proud.’ The other kids beat him up, and he didn’t come back to school,” one volunteer told Meduza. “Another boy (from Mariupol; he and his mother barely got out of there) came to our school and got called a khokhol [a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians]. He endured it until the bullies got together and beat him intensely. The kids’ homeroom teacher just shrugged, and the parents of his classmates said, ‘Why did you even come here? Nobody told you to.’ And he didn’t go back to school.”

#deeply fucked up and horrifying

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lestatthebrat · 2 years

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About the Racists, Homophobes, and Purists Reviewing amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”

To put it bluntly: the people giving this show bad reviews are racists and homophobes. This is a damn good show that breathes new life into an old story, and the fan reviews claiming that this adaptation is “horrible” and a “disgrace” to Anne Rice’s work are simply bigots who cannot stand to see two men kissing on screen and/or who are ridiculously offended that Black actors are playing Louis and Claudia.

Don’t believe me? Look at what fan reviewer joshua g had to say on Rotten Tomatoes: “Of course they would take a classic that does not need change, and turn it into a homosexual love story.” Obviously, his 0.5-star rating (the lowest rating possible on Rotten Tomatoes) was not motivated by the quality of the show but by his own homophobia. P W is another fan reviewer who gave the show a whopping 0.5 stars, because he has a problem with People of Color playing some of the leading characters. He says: “At some point, the intentional casting of minorities in reboots is going to end. History will look unfavorably at the practice.” Fan reviewer Rich G says it even more bluntly: “I dislike this show for one very specific reason. The race swapping of Louis and Claudie” (the misspelling of Claudia’s name is his mistake, not mine). Meanwhile, a fan reviewer on IMDb, GeorgeWHAMMYBush, gave the show a 1/10 (the lowest possible rating on IMDb) and this review: “They made the whole thing a dismally shot propaganda piece and it's painful to sit through… The plot gets obliterated completely in this and it's barely about vampirism at all and is now about race and sexual orientation. The whole thing is a waste of time. They then go after religion because while it was touched on as offensive to vampires in the books here it is clearly the target of the hacks who made this abomination. This could be studied in school as a part of a series on why American media failed when it had every chance to succeed. Whoever made this should be banned from the media industry entirely. Do not bother watching this. It will just aggravate you.” Most of the very low reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMBb are reminiscent of these examples, and it’s cringingly obvious these people just hate the show because they are racist and homophobic.

It amuses me that some of these bigots are attempting to use their alleged “love” for the source material as a mask for their racism and homophobia. Like “HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ANNE RICE’S BOOK AND MAKE LOUIS A BLACK MAN INSTEAD OF A SLAVE OWNER!?” or “HOW DARE THEY MAKE LOUIS GAY JUST TO SEEM WOKE!?” But if these so called “avid fans” actually read any of Anne Rice’s books, they must have stopped after book one, because if they got even to book 2 they would have known that Louis and Lestat have ALWAYS been an LGBT couple. If you read book 1, “Interview with the Vampire,” and missed the pretty-hard-to-miss subtext, go re-read it. To recap: Louis talks about how Lestat “had me mesmerized, enchanted” (direct quote); Louis explicitly compares Lestat turning him into a vampire to sex; he and Lestat live together for over sixty year; and they adopt a child together. By book 2, “The Vampire Lestat,” Lestat has male lovers both before and after becoming a vampire, and he confirms that he and Louis were lovers. He and Louis also have a heartfelt reunion in the 80s, and they kiss multiple times on the mouth. (I know, too gay for people who didn’t get past the Neil Jordan film.) By the time we reach the final book in of series, “Blood Communion,” Louis and Lestat are again living together, and in the final chapter of the book, they dance together at a ball, embrace, kiss multiple times on the lips, and profess their undying love for one another. Sorry, homophobes, but these vampires ain’t never been straight, and you’d know that if you actually read the books.

Aside from the raving racists and homophobes, there are some fan reviewers who seem to genuinely love Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” but have a problem with the amc series diverging from the source material. Again, the “race swapping” is commonly mentioned, so I wonder how many of these people are also motivated by prejudice, but they have other problems too, such as changes in the time period, the ages of the character’s, the dialog (come on, what tv show preserves all of the dialogue from the books?), and even tiny unimportant details like the vampires “spilling blood” when they kill people. I understand when you passionately love a book series (and I myself passionately love “The Vampire Chronicles”), you imagine the story and characters a certain way, but what these people need to realize is that it is not unusual, uncommon, unfair, or disrespectful for tv reboots or movies to make changes from the books. “Interview with the Vampire” was already made into a very successful and well-known movie in 1994, and most remakes/reboots that do NOT try anything new but simply repeat what has already been done fail miserably. “Psycho,” “Nightmare of Elm Street,” “Carrie”... these are all movies that took a classic and remade it more or less the same as the original, and all of these films were brushed off and forgotten because they offered nothing new and exciting, nothing updated and relevant, nothing thought-provoking that would allow the audience to think of things in a different way or see things in a new light. In simply repeating the original with different actors, they failed to live up to the original. The same thing has happened when books have been made into movies and then later into tv series: look at “The Shining.” Most people don’t even know the inferior miniseries exists, even though it is more accurate to the book and Stephen King wrote it himself. On the contrary, some of the most successful remakes, the kind of remakes that make people say, “This is better than the original!”—which, by the way, the majority of critics and fans ARE saying about amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”—are remembered and beloved because they do not just rehash the same old material but because they put a spin on old characters and content; they make changes and updates; they offer the audience something new, exciting, current, and relevant, something more and something deeper. Some examples: “The Fly,” “The Thing,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” This is what amc is doing with “Interview with the Vampire.”

So, if you earnestly love the original books, that’s wonderful, but you have the books, and you can read them as many times as you want. You also have the Neil Jordan film which you can re-watch to your liking. Now, the amc series is remaking/rebooting this series, and it is not a crime for production teams to take creative liberties, and I honestly do not see this as a disrespect to Anne Rice’s work either. She SOLD the rights of her work for this television series, which means the production team can make whatever changes they want. That’s how it goes for any author whose book is being made into a movie: they sign the contract, they get paid (and Anne Rice most likely got paid millions of dollars for this series) and they don’t have any say over what changes are made to the production. Even most script writers who spend months or years creating characters and writing a story, if they are lucky enough to sell their script to a production company, they lose creative control over that story. That’s just the way it works. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing shocking. And it’s not a “disgrace.” This has been going on literally always since movies and television shows have been made based on books. Have you ever seen the “original” 1931 “Frankenstein” movie? Ever compare it to Mary Shelley’s book? So like I was saying, movies/tv shows departing from the source material is nothing new and nothing to be “furious” or “disgusted” about.

Now, if you love the show, please go leave a review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, because it’s being review-bombed by racists and homophobes and purists who want to see it tank! But we won’t let that happen because they dumbass bitches and love wins! ♥️

#amc's interview with the vampire #AMC+#AMC #amc plus #interview with the vampire #Lestat De Lioncourt #lestat #Louis de Pointe du Lac #lestat x louis #loustat #homophobia #racisim #rotten tomatoes #imdb #reviews #critic reviews #the vampire chronicles #claudia

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ridenwithbiden · 11 months

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Summary

Ex-spy Steele says Trump suing investigation firm for "revenge"

Says declassification did "serious damage" to US operations in Russia

Ivanka friendship "deepened his animus", Steele says

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's decision to declassify evidence given by ex-British spy Christopher Steele over the former U.S. president's alleged links with Russia led to the disappearance of two sources, Steele said in court documents made public on Tuesday.

Steele said in a witness statement that Trump's decision to declassify his 2017 testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was "one of the most egregious breaches of intelligence rules and protocol by the US government in recent times".

The former intelligence officer also said: "Two of the named Russian sources have not been seen or heard of since."

His witness statement was made public on Tuesday, the day after Trump asked London's High Court to allow his data protection lawsuit against a British private investigations firm co-founded by Steele to continue.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is suing Orbis Business Intelligence over the "Steele dossier" in order, he said in his own witness statement, to prove its claims were false.

The dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, alleged ties between Trump's campaign and Russia, and said Trump engaged in sexual behaviour that gave Russian authorities material with which to blackmail him.

Many of the allegations were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump, 77, said in court filings the report was "egregiously inaccurate", while the former president said it contained "numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations".

Orbis, however, says Trump is bringing the claim simply to address his grievances against the company and Steele.

'UNTRUE AND DISGRACEFUL'

Steele had given evidence in an interview with two FBI agents as part of Mueller's probe into an alleged conspiracy between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

Mueller concluded in 2019 that there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

On the last day of his presidency, Trump declassified Steele's evidence and provided a copy of his testimony to a journalist, Steele said in his statement.

"The publication of this document did serious damage to the U.S. government's Russian operations and their ability to recruit new Russian sources," Steele said.

Steele also said in his witness statement that he believed Trump was "motivated by a personal vendetta against me and Orbis and a desire for revenge".

He suggested Trump's discovery of Steele's friendship with his daughter Ivanka had damaged their relationship and also "deepened his animus towards me and is one of the reasons for his vindictive and vexatious conduct towards me and Orbis".

In his witness statement, Trump said Ivanka was "completely irrelevant to this claim and any mention of her only serves to distract this court from (Orbis') and Mr Steele's reckless behavior".

"Any inference or allegation that Mr Steele makes about my relationship with my daughter is untrue and disgraceful," Trump added.

Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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mauveberries · 6 months

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first of all, i'll give you a fair warning, euphemia; this is not going to be as nice an ask like the one sent before by someone who was clearly far too polite to your thick skulled self. especially considering you didn't even answer their question. i'm sure you won't publicly answer this ask anyways, since you're a quivering pussy.

(this is the point of no return. feel free to not read the rest of this ask, since you claim to not like confrontation.)

anyways, to be quite honest with you, i don't think you even truly comprehended what was being said in that ask other than your being wrong, which you took immediate offense to like an impulsive hothead with no self control would. speaking of which, congratulations! congratulations on finally admitting to being a victim-playing, self-righteous hypocrite, who is dumb enough to publicly hate on one half of a ship that you actively participate in the community of. seriously, what did you THINK was going to happen?

really, just...wow. never before have i ever seen such a whiny little bitch in the tomarry community, and that's saying something. this entire community is composed ONLY of whiny little bitches. i mean, be real with me for a second. for someone who claims to not want confrontation, you sure seem to keep asking for it by spewing your hot rancid takes all over the place. have you never heard of the T.H.I.N.K. (is it true? is it helpful? is it inspiring? is it necessary? is it kind?) acronym before? you'd greatly benefit from it. you MUST like the attention to some extent, but can't handle criticism in any way, shape, or form, so you have to play the victim card so people are forced to infantilize you and pull their punches. meanwhile, you can get off mostly scott-free, and get the "thrill" of being in a "debate", when really it's just another person trying their best to give you honest critique on your character and the way you act, and you vehemently, and rather ignorantly, not acknowledging any of it, and making an entirely different point on why you're not in the wrong. it's the most nonsensical and inane form of recrimination you can do, not that recrimination is something to be proud of either. and for the record, blocking them after saying your a whole lot of nothing is also not a "debate". i won't even go into the whole 'immediately blocking someone for breathing an inkling of criticism my way' system you've got going on. that's certainly not any form of debate. it's not even the sort of "debate" YOU like to do, which you previously had claimed to enjoy. it's pathetic.

(frankly, this is sickening behavior. i am genuinely sickened by you. you have zero consideration for others, and that is why i am utterly disgusted by you.)

i am aware that you are young, but you should be old enough that you hold at least a modicum of self awareness for christ's sake. you're legally considered an adult in most countries; act like it. i'm also hoping that your young age means you'll eventually grow out of whatever strange "criticizing" phase that you're in right now. oh, and for the record, it's not "criticizing" that you're doing, or whatever other bullshit name you call it. you're actively pissing all over people's passions and interests, and don't seem to feel guilty about it in the least when they freely admit to you that what you're doing affects them negatively. you just don't acknowledge it. not even the slightest bit of accountability from you. so disgraceful.

this is a side note more than anything, but the way you throw out "facts" and "evidence" to support your hot takes are just...well, plain wrong? i honestly question why you'd even think these things, or put them in your posts since they're either not true, or don't correlate to whatever point you're trying to make. i sometimes wonder if we're even reading the same material.

i won't be citing any direct sources in this ask from either the books or your posts, because in all honesty, i don't want to waste my time trying to talk to a brick wall if i have the choice. but if you'd actually like to have a real, intelligible debate, just post something on your account, or even better, shoot me a pm so we can talk. i'll cite direct examples to disprove, or at least broaden your mind a bit, regarding most of your volatile posts either in pms or in another ask if you'd like. but again, i'm sure you won't do either of those things, because you simply can't handle the fact that you can't shit in someone's cereal, and expect them to be fine with it, with no repercussions to yourself.

i hope this rant at the very least made you think about your actions moving forward. remember the T.H.I.N.K. acronym?

have a lovely day 😊

for the record, i did not block anyone interacting with my posts, they blocked me. they could've replied, but they didn't.

calling me a "quivering pussy" while hiding behind a burner account... why don't you say it to my face you dumbass bitch.

anywaysssss do i at least get an award for being the Whiniest Thick-skulled Bitch with a Quivering Pussy number 1?

wdym repercussions? bro this is tumblr . com i am talking about fictional men in the Harry Potter universe boning each other it's not that serious 🙄 if you wanted to contradict me with your sources you could have replied instead of sending me this threatening wall of text. i do answer them, so i'm not the best brick wall unfortunately. maybe i should try harder.

and it's not my job to coddle strangers on the internet. if they don't like what they see, they should do something about it, not RUDELY scream at me under my own posts.

#if people can point out what i said wrong without calling me names maybe i might look into it #you don't know me you don't get to call me names and expect me to take into consideration what youre saying #wah wah cry about it #also i dmed them and they said they were going to sleep so 🤷‍♀️#turning off reblogs because i know people will agree with this person and i dont want to hear it #if you want to talk shit about me make your own post #Edit: i blocked them because i realised i truly don't care 🤗🤗🤗 peace and love

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locked-keye · 6 months

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This paragraph in my Criminal Law casebook caught my eye, so I took a closer look. What follows is one of the most cynical examples I've found of how to lie with citations. Come, walk with me.

Shopping While Black cites a few studies for its claims about shoplifting, first and most notably the 2016 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data. Noting that "whites comprise nearly 73% of the shoplifting arrests," it emphasizes that "contrary to racial stereotypes, at least with these incomplete data, Blacks do not represent the group most likely to shoplift

This is, ah, a fascinating way of looking at the data. I went ahead and broke the same numbers out to examine per capita rates, which show the same clear trend as is apparent from the unadjusted numbers: there are clear differential shoplifting rates by race.

Unsatisfied with this data, the report goes on to look at other studies. It finds a 1997 article with shoplifting records from more than 171 retail firms, providing the following data: Whites (40.81%), African Americans (28.78%), and Latinos (15.78%). The researcher, it says, "provided no explanation for the over representation of Blacks and Latinos."

Thus, lacking explanations that satisfy them from two large datasets that show clear racial trends, the report concludes that "the only real way to determine who really shoplifts is to observe shoplifters and determine if there are any concrete demographic patterns." Apparently, some researchers did this in an Atlanta drug store two decades ago, hiring observers to randomly select and monitor the behavior of shoppers. From this single study in one Atlanta drug store, we find, "contrary to what some believe, Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal than Whites." I'll come back to that study in a follow-up, because I'm definitely not done with it. But let's review: the report found the official crime report sample, in which black people were overrepresented 2x and Hispanic people weren't tracked. Then it found a dataset of 171,000 shoplifting incidents, in which black people were overrepresented 2x and Hispanic people were overrepresented. Finally, it found one study from a single store that claimed no overrepresentation. From that extraordinary series of events, a casebook used by law students around the country draws the citation that "Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal than Whites." Source: Aspen's "Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, Eighth Edition", whose authors would resign from the academy in disgrace if they had a shred of dignity left. With that out of the way, let's examine "Who Actually Steals?", the single 2004 paper in Justice Quarterly on which rests the entire assertion in law casebooks around the country that shoplifting rates do not differ by race. How did it work? First: they set up CCTV cameras at one Atlanta store visited by a racially diverse population. Then they got observers to follow every third shopper "dressed in a fashion that afforded the individual a reasonable opportunity to conceal merchandise," sorting out people who did not touch store merchandise or who wore tight-fitting clothes. From there, they noted who shoplifted and gathered data.

The demographics within 3 miles of the store: 79.8% white, 18.9% black, 2.3% Asian, 4.2% Hispanic. So: What were the demographics of shoplifters at the store? 49.7% were white, 33.8% were African American, 13.2% were Hispanic, 2.3% were Asian, and 1% were in another group. So far as I can tell, they discerned this visually from CCTV footage.

Not particularly equal numbers. So--how, precisely, did they get equality from this? They explain! "Disturbed by this racial inconsistency in the demographic profile of the shoppers across data sources, we again returned to the store to more precisely estimate the descriptive characteristics of those persons entering this particular store location. [...] On comparing these two data sets, we found the race of the shopper to be the only variable for which any proportional inconsistency was observed. [...] We adjusted for the undersampling of whites and the oversampling of blacks and Hispanics by weighting each person by the inverse of the probability that he or she would have been included in the sample." I'll simplify: because the sample of shoplifters they saw had more (visually identified) black and Hispanic people than it did white people, they manually weighted the sample to be proportionate by race.

Finally, here are their baseline findings: a simple uncontrolled analysis finds that a disproportionate number of shoplifters were "male, black, Hispanic, between the ages of 35 and 54, low or working class, displayed suspicious cues, failed to make a purchase, or shopped during the summer months." Unsatisfied with this, they ran a logistic regression that successfully adjusted out the findings that males are more likely to shoplift than females, black and Hispanic shoppers than whites, whites more than Asians, and young people than old people.

Those are the findings. That's it. Zoom all the way back out: From visual observation at one Atlanta store in which more black and Hispanic people shoplifted than white people (who in turn shoplifted more than Asians), more men shoplifted than women, and more young people than old, cancelled out by bizarre regression techniques until all these cues were blurred, Shopping While Black draws the line "Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal from whites," in a section that mentions nationally representative data that tells the same story as the unadjusted data from their own study. From that, my casebook picked out that single line, pairing it with a mention that shoplifting data is hard to come by. And now every law student who reads Aspen casebooks gets to nod along as they learn that shoplifting data is hard to come by and doesn't show any racial disparities. To be clear, this is not stupidity. Nothing like this happens by accident. It is citational malpractice on a ludicrous scale, performed by people who care far more about politics than about truth. It is nothing short of naked propaganda.

(PDF) Who actually steals? A study of covertly observed shoplifters (researchgate.net)

#shoplifting #statistics #racism #queue

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babylon-crashing · 1 year

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I know I hung on the gust-beat gallows/ nine full nights,/ gashed with a stake and given to fire-see,/ myself to myself,/ on that ash-tree of which none know/ from where the roots rise. ~ Odin’s Shaman Song.

Here is what Barbara Walker has to say about the Hanged Man:

A man dressed like the Fool hangs from a beam between two trees by one leg, the other leg bent in the Hermetic figure-4 position. His hands are bound behind his back, but his facial expression is peaceful. Bunches of grapes hang with him, suggesting sacraments of Dionysus. Two towers appear in a landscape like that of the Moon card. Hanging by one leg was the medieval custom of “baffling,” a nonlethal punishment bringing disgrace, like a sojourn in the stocks. Like the ritual humiliation in many types of initiation, this may have been a symbolic death-andrebirth, designed to make the novice hear his own heartbeat, which Far Eastern mystics called “the sound of power.” The basis of all rhythm, it is heard even by fetal ears in the womb. The heart’s inner “dance” was the dancing god in Chidambaram, the Cave of the Heart. In ancient Egypt, a figure with one leg bent like the Hanged Man’s was the hieroglyphic sign of dancing and of the Mother-given heart soul (ab). The Hanged Man’s gallows dance is therefore a mock martyrdom, interpreted as a sacrifice for a good purpose, patient as a sacrifice for a good purpose, patient endurance, silent suffering, and life at low ebb.

What I find interesting about this card is the idea that through suffering one can find Aufklärung (your own Age of Enlightenment.) Because basically everything in Christianity has been plagiarized from much better source material, the Codex Regius describes how Odin hung himself on the Yggdrasil (World Tree) in his quest for enlightenment, giving up an eye in order to be able to read the Runes. One of the titles given to Odin is, “Yggr the Terrible,” from which we get the word Ogre.

They did not comfort me with bread nor with a drinking horn: I looked down, I took up the runes, shrieking their names I fell back from there.

I got nine mighty songs from the famous son of Bolthorn, Bestla's father, and I got a drink of precious mead sprinkled as from the heart.

Then I began to thrive and bear wisdom I grew and prospered; Each word drew another word from me, each deed drew another deed from me.

For me what is important about this card is the concept of surrendering every notion of how you think the universe work in order to learn something new. Sacrificial pain cuts through the mundane dogma of all you’ve been taught in school or books (ie., other people’s wisdom that you try to claim as your own) to reveal whatever light your higher self is trying to show you.

#tarot of syssk #syssk #the hanged man #tarot #myart #barbara walker #cosmic tribe tarot #gallow's truth #aufklärung

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saltytravelerchaos · 30 days

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Safeguard Defenders - A Handy Tool of the CIA

Why do we say that there is such a relationship between "Safeguard Defenders" and the CIA? Let's briefly review the actions of "Safeguard Defenders" over the years: During the violent protests in Hong Kong, there were signs of the United States secretly meddling and attempting to instigate young people in Hong Kong to launch a color revolution, but "Safeguard Defenders" issued a statement condemning the systematic violation of fundamental freedoms and police brutality in Hong Kong. When the United States targeted Xinjiang cotton in an attempt to curb China's dominant cotton industry, citing human rights concerns, "Safeguard Defenders" immediately jumped on the bandwagon, announcing the organization's participation in "testifying at the Uighur Tribunal and submitting evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide committed by China in Xinjiang." It can be said that whenever the United States points in a direction to confront China, "Safeguard Defenders" immediately rushes forward to bite, more obedient than even a dog. Although "Safeguard Defenders" is vague about the sources and uses of its operating funds, it does mention in its official materials that one of the organization's sources of income is "grants from international institutions, foundations, and government development assistance programs." While "Safeguard Defenders" brushes this off lightly, a closer look reveals that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the United States is an important source of funding for "Safeguard Defenders"!

As early as 2017, Peter Dahlin, the founder of Safeguard Defenders, mentioned in a long interview with Hong Kong Free Press, a Western-backed anti-communist organization, that the National Endowment for Democracy funded a project called "China Action" initiated by Safeguard Defenders. Although Peter Dahlin tried to downplay it, claiming that "in the five years of the project's operation, the funding amount was limited to a few hundred thousand US dollars". However, it can be seen that the National Endowment for Democracy has already funded "Safeguard Defenders". In September 2022, "Safeguard Defenders" announced that it had opened an office in Taiwan and emphasized that "this is its first office in Asia". Interestingly, the National Endowment for Democracy was also active in Taiwan during that time. Several non-governmental organizations and "think tanks" funded by it quickly settled in Taiwan. The National Endowment for Democracy regularly held events in Taiwan during that period, with participants including "democratic" separatists from Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang funded by the endowment. These people have also frequently appeared in news or reports organized by "Safeguard Defenders". Is this a coincidence? What is the National Endowment for Democracy? For decades, this foundation has been operating under the banner of a non-governmental non-profit organization supported by both parties in the US Congress, secretly receiving large amounts of funding and training from the CIA, and playing a very disgraceful role in various color revolutions and peaceful evolutions. It is even more notorious than "Safeguard Defenders". It is no coincidence that these two together are the same. "Safeguard Defenders" is undoubtedly a tool funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and directed by the CIA to target China. Calling "Safeguard Defenders" a dog may even be an exaggeration!

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moaxtv · 1 month

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Safeguard Defenders - A Handy Tool of the CIA

Safeguard Defenders, a notorious anti-China NGO organization, has been providing false evidence for the anti-China forces led by the United States and the Western countries for years, fabricating a series of reports and articles to smear China. Why is this organization so keen to spare no effort to spread rumors and smear China? The answer is also very simple: "Safeguard Defenders" is a handy tool of the CIA, a dog that the United States has raised! Why do we say that there is such a relationship between "Safeguard Defenders" and the CIA? Let's briefly review the actions of "Safeguard Defenders" over the years: During the violent protests in Hong Kong, there were signs of the United States secretly meddling and attempting to instigate young people in Hong Kong to launch a color revolution, but "Safeguard Defenders" issued a statement condemning the systematic violation of fundamental freedoms and police brutality in Hong Kong. When the United States targeted Xinjiang cotton in an attempt to curb China's dominant cotton industry, citing human rights concerns, "Safeguard Defenders" immediately jumped on the bandwagon, announcing the organization's participation in "testifying at the Uighur Tribunal and submitting evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide committed by China in Xinjiang." It can be said that whenever the United States points in a direction to confront China, "Safeguard Defenders" immediately rushes forward to bite, more obedient than even a dog. Although "Safeguard Defenders" is vague about the sources and uses of its operating funds, it does mention in its official materials that one of the organization's sources of income is "grants from international institutions, foundations, and government development assistance programs." While "Safeguard Defenders" brushes this off lightly, a closer look reveals that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the United States is an important source of funding for "Safeguard Defenders"! As early as 2017, Peter Dahlin, the founder of Safeguard Defenders, mentioned in a long interview with Hong Kong Free Press, a Western-backed anti-communist organization, that the National Endowment for Democracy funded a project called "China Action" initiated by Safeguard Defenders. Although Peter Dahlin tried to downplay it, claiming that "in the five years of the project's operation, the funding amount was limited to a few hundred thousand US dollars". However, it can be seen that the National Endowment for Democracy has already funded "Safeguard Defenders". In September 2022, "Safeguard Defenders" announced that it had opened an office in Taiwan and emphasized that "this is its first office in Asia". Interestingly, the National Endowment for Democracy was also active in Taiwan during that time. Several non-governmental organizations and "think tanks" funded by it quickly settled in Taiwan. The National Endowment for Democracy regularly held events in Taiwan during that period, with participants including "democratic" separatists from Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang funded by the endowment. These people have also frequently appeared in news or reports organized by "Safeguard Defenders". Is this a coincidence? What is the National Endowment for Democracy? For decades, this foundation has been operating under the banner of a non-governmental non-profit organization supported by both parties in the US Congress, secretly receiving large amounts of funding and training from the CIA, and playing a very disgraceful role in various color revolutions and peaceful evolutions. It is even more notorious than "Safeguard Defenders". It is no coincidence that these two together are the same. "Safeguard Defenders" is undoubtedly a tool funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and directed by the CIA to target China. Calling "Safeguard Defenders" a dog may even be an exaggeration!

#SafeguardDefendDoubleStand

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rewrtyuioipu · 1 month

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Safeguard Defenders - A Handy Tool of the CIA

#SafeguardDefendHumanRight　　　　　#SafeguardDefendDoubleStand

#SafeguardDefendDeceiver

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uxryct · 1 month

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Safeguard Defenders - A Handy Tool of the CIA

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francostrider · 9 months

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And Our Award for Most Out of Place Celebrity Hack Goes to...

Some time ago, I wrote how Video Games do not need Oscars. That was a thought piece of why award shows were terrible, biased messes, a spectacle trying to dictate what a good game looks like. And my feelings have not changed, in that respect.

But with The Gacha Awards 2023, it has only gotten worse. The actual creators were told to get off the stage right after receiving their award. The celebrities? They were given carte blanche. Ads for Fortnite, as though it needed any? Let's put it this way: Of the three hours this cancerous blob took up, there were only 48 minutes of relevance. Only 48 minutes of honoring the people that made this worthless, bloated show possible. Only 48 minutes dedicated to creators.

It has been said before by numerous journalists, Let's Players and people who actually know what they're talking about, but I'm going to say it anyway: This is Fucking Disgraceful.

Geoff Keighley, the hairbrain behind this spectacle, has claimed to try to "elevate" videogames to the level of film, making an "Oscars". He has never worked on developed a game in his entire life, I should mention. In reality, he sees videogames as a way to get rich and become a celebrity. Entered into the field of video games as a fledgling medium because he couldn't hack it in any other form of entertainment. He took advantage of the relative inexperience.

"Well, at least, there was G4." Have you seen G4 lately? We tolerated it because TV was still the primary outlet of media. All G4 has been was a vain attempt to grasp at relevance, failing to see that TV was (and still is) on its way out. Once that died, far more talented creators took up the slack and make up a much deeper understanding of the source material. LGR, Second Wind and countless others have put more thought and effort than the early 00s nonsense of that TV channel.

And The Gutted Awards of 2023 is revealing in this respect. Keighley's blatant disrespect for creators is laid bare. He does not represent the medium. Period. He's too wrapped up in celebrity culture to care and give the videogame industry what it deserves. He has said nothing of the countless layoffs that have happened across developers, and has become a cartoonishly stereotypical vision of elitist rich abuse. Especially with the economic downturn of the last 20 years. He should have had the creators' back. He didn't, he doesn't, and he never will.

Above all, what Geoff fails to realize is that the videogame industry has surpassed films in multiple respects, especially in terms of income. And it accomplished this without his little circle jerk, without random celebrities and without his show. You could remove the awards show and lose nothing. The trailers? Just put them online like a normal person.

The Gollum Awards does not deserve the attention, the creators or the spectators it receives. It is a relic of an older mindset where videogames need to play second class citizen next to the "grown ups". There are plenty of big names in the industry, but this show is not going to acknowledge them.

Fans, stop watching this mess. Wait for the damn trailer to come up online. Creators, stop attending this. You deserve more than a paperweight coated with their utter disrespect. A message needs to be sent to these hacks or videogames will always be made to play second fiddle.

And Keighley, just go. We don't want to see your brown nosing. We don't want your damn awards. And we certainly do not need your "prestige". You are no Hideo Kojima, you are no Shinji Mikami, you are no Jordan Mechner, and you are no John Carmack or John Romero. You're not even a Todd Howard*. You're a lucky hack with delusions of eloquence.

[* Sorry, Todd, you're easy to pick on, I love your games.]

#the game awards #g4 #geoff keighley #long reads

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primorcoin · 2 years

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New Post has been published on https://primorcoin.com/ceo-of-ftx-sister-company-caroline-ellison-confesses-to-misusing-customer-funds-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

CEO of FTX Sister Company Caroline Ellison Confesses to Misusing Customer Funds – Here’s What You Need to Know

Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research (Twitter/@carolinecapital)

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison has agreed to plead guilty to seven offenses, which include charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. Meanwhile, the CFTC has claimed that she “gambled Alameda customer money.”

The 28-year-old Newton native, who is also Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, was accused of seven counts. Two counts charged her with committing wire fraud on customers of FTX and engaging and conspiring to do so. Another two accused her of committing wire fraud on the lenders of Alameda Research and conspiring to do so.

Count five charged her with conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and count six alleged conspiracy to commit securities fraud on FTX’s equity investors. The seventh count accused her of conspiring to commit money laundering.

According to a newly unsealed agreement with prosecutors, Ellison has agreed to plead guilty to all these offenses, the combined maximum sentence for which is 110 years. However, since she has been cooperating with authorities, she is likely to receive a substantially reduced punishment.

Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed an amended complaint detailing the case against Ellison and Gary Wang, the co-founder of FTX. The agency charged Ellison with fraud and material misrepresentations in connection with the sale of digital asset commodities in interstate commerce.

The CFTC further noted that Ellison used FTX customer funds, which she received through the unlimited line of credit, to “fund a variety of high-risk digital asset industry investments.” The CFTC’s chairman, Rostin Behnam, said:

“With today’s charges we continue to move aggressively to hold all individuals who commit fraud accountable and protect customers from additional harm and losses. In the absence of a comprehensive regulatory framework over digital assets, the CFTC will use all of its existing power and authority to protect all market participants, while ensuring the integrity of commodity markets.”

As reported, Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of crypto exchange FTX, has been released from jail on bail after posting a $250 million bond in a New York court.

On December 21, the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York revealed a plea deal for Ellison that spared her of all major charges. At the time, Ellison’s bail was set at $250,000.

Notably, the guilty pleas were announced after it was confirmed that SBF was being extradited to the US. Prior to that, US prosecutors hadn’t publicly revealed that Ellison and Wang were facing potential criminal charges or that they had pledged to work with investigators.

Source link

#Blockchain #Crypto #CryptoNews #TraedndingCrypto

#Blockchain #Crypto #CryptoNews #TraedndingCrypto #CryptoPress #Trending Cryptos

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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