#and they’re calling for the ERADICATION of a made up ideology to group all of a minority

[cutevirgo]

violence is always the correct answer when it comes to fascists and those who wish horrific violence on others :)

[chivalry-in-debate]

We shouldn't give fascists a place to live. As in, you shouldn't let people who are bigots into fandom spaces, aesthetic cultures, or social media platforms.

By saying "If you like (thing that has nothing to do with fascism) you're a fascist dni", you're willingly giving fascists a place to stay, and letting them take a perfectly innocent subculture in the process.

Case in point: punks

Facists, ever since punks and punk activism, including lgbt and racial punk activism began to rise, took a liking to the punk aesthetic. They liked punk clothes, they made them feel powerful. So, they wore punk clothes.

This started to give the punk scene a bad look (for obvious reasons), and ordinary people started to confuse good punks (not facists) with bad punks (fascists), and there was a massive movement to completely eradicate fascism from punk spaces, resulting in what you may know as the doc martens "shoe lace code" in which white supremacists wear white shoelaces on doc martens, as well as the "Nazi punks fuck off" t-shirts, signs, and patches for jackets.

This movement was very successful.

So why, then, op, are you explaining this to us?

Well, little children, in my old age you learn to recognize patterns and use them to your advantage.

On: Cottagecore

The want to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere is not inherrently harmful. The want to look at pictures of cows, grow your own food, tend to your own animals, is not inherrently harmful. The aesthetic of cottagecore, and the ideals that go with it, are not inherrently harmful. This is cottagecore. The want to be a farmer, a nomad, or a polite witch in the middle of the woods.

People who reblog photos of flowers and cows are not colonizers. They don't colonize new land, they aren't inherrently facist by wanting to live unbothered in the middle of the woods.

Now, there are people, however, who actually buy and tend to land, either as a result of cottagecore, or they already did this before they got into cottagecore. These people are not inherrently harmful either. However, for these people, I suggest that you do research to find the specific group of original owners of the land by contacting the most nearby native government official, or by extensively looking it up, in order to ask them how to be respectful to it, if they would like you to pay rent, or if they want it back. Preferably do this before you purchase the land, but you can also do so after.

All of the above that I have said is the essence of cottagecore without the fascist taint. This is cottagecore. This is how it should be.

But op, you're still just telling us things, you're not making an argument you're just presenting contextual evidence!

Oh, how observant of you! Yes, I'll get to that right now.

What you, yes, you should do, is the following:

Don't call people facist for interacting with cottagecore, participating in it or being interested in it. Why? Because, dear reader, most all people in cottagecore aren't fascists.

The people that ARE the problem, are people who don't think that colonizing native land is wrong. By telling people that they're bad people for posting cottagecore, you're completely ignoring something. The bad thing that they agree with isn't cottagecore, the bad thing that they agree with is colonization.

If these people listen to you, and completely stop interacting with cottagecore, instead of understanding that colonization is wrong, they'll just find a new aesthetic, and they won't learn anything.

Instead of targeting cottagecore, which is an aesthetic, not a political ideology, target colonizers and facists within those groups. Within all groups. Facists don't deserve a place to live in ANY space. Not aesthetic spaces, not fandoms, and certainly not safe spaces.

(p.s. if any natives want to add anything that I missed, go ahead.)

[adeliriouswanderer]

American Fascism, Racism, and the Trump Cult

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on policy or politics. Quarantine has left me with what seems like an infinite amount of time to reflect on our countries current state of affairs—and as cliché as this sounds, it feels as if we are living in dark times indeed.

Since our current regime began in 2016, all of the progressive policies of the Obama era have been eradicated by an egotistical fascist. Far-right and white supremacist ideologies are being pushed as the new normal by those who fear that their position of power is being threatened by minorities and anyone left of center. A center that is very quickly skewing farther and farther right on the political spectrum. Folks who hold these far-right ideologies have historically been threatened by people of color, folks who identify as LGBTQIA, feminists, women’s rights champions, and others who voice opinions that are different than the rights self-absorbed narrative. Especially when these folks attempt to find seats at the decision-making table.

Our current regime fears these opinions so much that they attempt to silence anyone who speaks out against their clearly fascist policies and statements by convincing their base that our voices and opinions are being incited by “fake news” or as Trump loves to call it, the “lamestream media”. This regime has convinced it’s cult-like followers that any media coverage that does not stroke the ego of the POTUS or any coverage that speaks out against his archaic, and often false views/statements, are untrue accusations and that he is being unfairly targeted. Trump continuously lies to his base and the American people, and when he is called out on his lies, both he and his base scream fake news. The POTUS has convinced his base that democrats are sheep to the media who are trying their best to undermine all of the “great” work he is doing for Americans. Despite Trump not keeping his promises to his base, they still follow him with what feels like a Jim Jones cult mindset.  Take this video where trump easily brainwashes his followers into ignoring how his he is lining his and other billionaires pockets by attempting to convince his base, who largely consist of poor/working-class white folks, that they are the “elite”:  

They see no wrong in Trump's behavior. How is that Trump has convinced millions of people to blindly follow his every whim? You see, as badly as it pains me to state this, Trump is not the cause of these deeply rooted, bigoted, ideologies. They have been around since the founding of America. Like a festering cancer that sometimes quietly goes into remission, but is still there, waiting for the body to become weakened so that it can make a reappearance. Folks have long held onto their bigoted ways, Trump simply gave a platform where these ideologies could be voiced and he emboldened those who held them to speak out louder than ever. After having a president in office that championed for the rights of minorities, the right was fearful of being forgotten and worried that their ideologies would be silenced. This fear ultimately led right-wing voters to vote for and blindly follow anyone spoke out in favor of their bigoted beliefs. And trump happened to be the loudest and most aggressive at the time. The right touted his down to earthiness and non-political way of speaking. Trump is praised for “telling it like it is” because for a while, at the turn of the century, white folks seemed partly scared to fully voice what they really thought about anyone who wasn’t white and straight. That’s not the case anymore.

I find it appalling that in 2020, I can scroll through the comment section on any article related to race and find a plethora of comments written by white right-wings and conservatives insinuating that there is no race problem in America. They state racism does not exist; they unquestionably believe that there is a level playing field between white folks and people of color, and that white privilege does not exist.  Much like Social Darwinist, these folks believe that people of color and folks experiencing poverty are inherently responsible for their less than status in society. That they’re lazy and unwilling to pull themselves up by the bootstraps because it’s more convenient for them to live off of the government-- like the infamously stereotypical welfare queen, a term coined in 1974, by George Bliss of the Chicago Tribune in his articles about Linda Taylor.

These folks fail to realize that people of color and people experiencing poverty are a result of systematic and institutional racism designed to enslave people of color and keep them from sitting at the decision-making table. Further, they don’t understand how poverty rolls off the back of parents and onto children—how hard it is for children to break intergenerational cycles. Take Kaitlin Bennet, the infamous gun girl of Kent State. She hosts a youtube channel where her main “goal” is to “expose the corruption and demoralization” of the “liberal left.” In this following clip, Kaitlin states that there is no racism in America because she is surrounded by people of color on a daily basis, as if their very existence is somehow justification as to why racism doesn’t exist. She states that some lives are inherently more valuable than others and that those who are experiencing homelessness should get a job. When Kaitlin realized she had couldn’t win a baseless argument against two obviously educated college students, she had to resort to personal attacks against James's sexuality. She’s edited out the word racist or racism from her videos because apparently those words demonetize her youtube videos and she loses money for including those words. 

Let’s break down one of the systems that these folks so eagerly deny and blindly ignore-- the prison industrial complex. In the 80s, Reagan turned the metaphorical “war on drugs” into an actual initiative that was put forth by a seemingly racist governmental body whose aim was to create a caste system to ensure people of color would never rise out of poverty. While Raegan solidified these new forms of discrimination against people of color, it was Nixon who set the stage for the systematic incarceration of black and brown people through his Southern Strategy. As civil rights activists worked to dismantle the Jim Crow laws of the south, Nixon and other politicians began to create a strategy that would ensure votes from whites who aligned with both the conservative republican party and the left-leaning democratic party.

The “Southern Strategy” was ultimately a political movement that aimed to garner votes from white Americans from both sides of the political spectrum by antagonizing racialized fears in the white populace. The campaign painted an image that portrayed people of color as deserving of being poor and uneducated-- it pathologized them as criminals and deserving of their second-class place in society because they simply could not rise above their uncivilized ways. Michelle Alexander states:

The racialized nature of this imagery became a crucial resource for conservatives, who succeeded in using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden progress of African Americans.

This campaign ultimately led to Reagan’s 1982 War on Drugs, and his later establishment of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which were enacted through his Anti-Drug Abuse Act of1986. After Raegan’s enactment of AABA, the numbers of incarcerated black and Hispanic men skyrocketed creating an overpopulated prison system that led the way for privatization. Republicans laid the foundation for mass incarceration of people of color, and democrats solidified the systemic discrimination and oppression that would soon follow a person who was formerly incarcerated throughout their life.

The Clinton (D) administration enacted laws banning drug offenders and felons from receiving public assistance in the form of financial aid or food stamps, denying them the ability to public housing, and stripping them of their right to vote. These combined laws on part of both democrats and republicans led to the creation of a caste system that created a populace of second-class citizens, who were stripped of their most basic rights—this group was disproportionately made up of people of color. Less than 5% of the world's population, has nearly 25% of the world's incarcerated population. Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S population and 31 percent of those incarcerated for drug use—Latinos make up an additional 18 percent of the total U.S population and account for 20 percent of those incarcerated for drug use. It is important to note that crime is equally distributed between all races, but the impact of policies of the 1980s and 1990s has been anything but evenly distributed-- black men are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than white men and nearly a third of young black men are under criminal justice system control.

These laws have persisted throughout the last three decades and allow for a system that systematically discriminates against an entire sub-group of individuals. When formerly incarcerated people are released from prison they have very little support from institutions designed to provide help to the most vulnerable populations in the U.S. They typically can not get into public housing and private landlords can legally turn them away citing their criminal history as a reason. Formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive federal financial aid to further their education-- and if they do manage to pay for school, most jobs will not even look at their resume, much less hire them because of their felon status. Further, formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive public assistance benefits such as food stamps. A lack of social support leaves these individuals at a high risk of reoffending just so they can survive in the outside world, which ultimately locks them into a brutal cycle of flowing in and out of the prison industrial complex.

It seemed like during the Obama era, there was hope; a hope that our country could heal from our divisive history of viewing anyone other than white straight cis men who are most valued, followed by white straight cis women, as something other than less than. Because, let’s be honest, many folks along all lines of the political spectrum have never fully respected the opinions and lives of people of color, LGBTQIA folks, immigrants, etc. We have been and still are, just tolerated. That’s why Obama was a breath of fresh air. He attempted, and sometimes succeeded, in eradicating archaic policies like the militaries don’t ask don’t tell policy, championed for the rights of minorities and immigrants through bills like DACA, attempted to ensure those who were poor had access to health care. President Obama launched the My Brother’s Keeper initiative on February 27, 2014, to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people could reach their full potential. These were just a few of the many ways Obama worked to level the playing field for those who were not born into the western version of the genetic lottery. 

What is it going to take to heal our country and end these systems of violence against black and brown people? When are we going to step up and not give media attention and not vote in folks who are so clearly bigoted to positions where they can continue to marginalize already vulnerable populations? When will this hate for those viewed as other, less than, die out? Is this our new reality for the unforeseeable future? The biggest question of all is: when will the right figure out that Trump doesn’t have any of their best interest in mind? When will they realize that he’s sitting on one of his many gold toilets and shitting on America?

I want to live in a country where equity is at the forefront of our minds; where people strive to ensure all of their neighbors have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or class. We must continue to use our voices to speak up for the oppressed and vulnerable, and VOTE for folks who believe in an equal and just society. Will 2020 usher in voices into the political sphere that are representative of folks from all walks of life, or will it be the same bullshit we’ve had for nearly 244 years since America was founded? 

[thestrippershateyou]

(All of these comments were deleted, btw. Because there’s nothing more cowardly then making sure I get a whole bunch of victim blaming in my inbox that they then promptly delete rather than face any backlash for it. But that’s why screengrabs exist, right?)

(Edit: These comments are only sometimes showing up on my computer but not at all on my phone. I don’t care if they weren’t deleted. It’s still cowardly to hide them in replies and not in more public reblogs.)

I didn’t make this blog for radfems. I have stated NUMEROUS times that I made this blog because I needed a place to store the couple hundred screengrabs I had of whorephobic people. I had a file once of them and it was just taking up space. I had hundreds of examples of people saying the most awful things about sex workers. I’d talk about racism and some racist who disagreed with me would go “Oh, a stripper? Someone put a cock in its mouth. It’s got no place in this conversation.”. I’d try to talk about Bernie Sanders and someone would go “No one cares what the whore thinks. Why can whores even vote?”. Hell, I remember once I just commented on a silly little Buzzfeed article saying how cute some bralettes were and someone goes “But you’re a stripper. You’re not allowed to wear clothes. so who cares what you think?”. 

This blog was for THAT. It wasn’t anything to do with radical feminism. I knew radfems existed obviously because all sex workers with any sort of online presence know what a threat they are and to be mindful of them. But this blog had nothing to do with them, wasn’t for them, and wasn’t trying to reach them.

Then they came anyway. Like the fucking parasites they are, they came anyway. They started reblogging my screengrabs talking about how this was why sex work needed to be eradicated. They saw a happy sex worker getting mistreated for being a sex worker (often by women, none of my screengrabs are from any of my customers) and claimed that this was why sex work had to stop instead of why stigma had to be fought. They started victim blaming me. They started acting like it was my responsibility to stop this by giving up the first and only job I’ve both enjoyed and been able to hold for longer than 8 months. 

At one point I shared a Jacq the Stripper comic that didn’t mention radical feminism but was about people saying their ideology was more important than a sex worker’s lived experience. Red umbrellas (symbolic of the Red Umbrella Project, a group built to share sex workers’ stories) were in the comic. And the radfems came at me en masse. They started making false accusations that Red Umbrella is a trafficking group and I’m a trafficker for supporting them. They started claiming that I wanted children to do sex work. At one point my phone;s autocorrect stuck the word “kids” in a sentence (I typed “you thin k sex work is” and it corrected to “you think kids sex work is”) and, despite that making no sentence within the sentence or subject at hand the radfems spent 30 hours straight calling me a pedophile, directly asking me how many little girls I had bought, and claiming that me (a rape victim) being triggered over being called a child rapist was proof that I was, in fact, a pedophile. All this while they were still reblogging all my shit to twist for their personal agenda rather than admit the stigma was what I was trying to combat. 

Because a sex worker isn’t allowed to feel pain unless it can benefit someone else. 

And NOW they’re trying to act like I made a fucking blog JUST to pick fights with them. Now they’re trying to act like I’m bringing THIS on myself just like they tried to act like I brought the whorephobia on myself. Just like every rapist who says “well just don’t be around men if you don’t want it to happen” and ever sexual harasser who says “well just don’t leave your house if you don’t want it to happen”, they’re telling me that I should just have to stay off social media entirely. It’s MY responsibility to not be harassed, threatened, dehumanised, and abused instead of their responsibility to not do those things. 

Please tell me how radical feminists are at all different from abusive men,

[eve-is-a-terf]

Transwomen make up, like, 0.2 percent of the population. Including them in feminism literally does not hurt feminism or women.

including males in feminism waters it down and makes it less effective. gender ideology in general is inherently antithetical to feminism. i have a question, would you say that "all lives matter" as a response to anti-racism is harmful and racist?

However, the anti-trans sentiment of the radfem movement has lead them to partner with the likes of the ADF and the FRC, and has made them vulnerable to recruitment tactics among the christian right and white supremacists, the groups with the money often behind anti-trans policy campaigns.

that's horrible that any supposed "feminist" would ally herself with the far-right. since GOP-ism is incompatible with feminism, let alone radical feminism, those women are complete sell-outs and not representative of the whole.

Partnering with them and sympathizing with them is doing women active harm.

agreed. so is eroding women's rights through gender ideology though.

why on earth would you tie gender identity ("woman") to sex ("female"). You guys are exactly saying that a specific sex, female, determines a gender identity, woman

no we aren't, that's the point that TRAs commonly miss. WE DON'T BELIEVE "WOMAN" IS A GENDER IDENTITY -- WE DON'T BELIEVE IN GENDER IDENTITIES AT ALL.

And if you want to eradicate the idea that sex determines gender and gender identity as well as norm presentation, then why are you up in arms with people challenging these norms and identity labels by gender-bending?

because trans people are NOT challenging gender norms, they're reaffirming them. trans people push the idea that you can "feel" like a gender, as well as try to "pass," both of which reaffirm gender roles

And I want to clarify something

my bad, i meant to clarify that part but i wrote this in two sittings and forgot lol. we can abolish gender roles, and gender roles are not tied to sex.

You guys insist that "woman" and "female" mean the exact same thing. That is tying a gender identity to sex

like i said above, we do not believe woman is a gender, therefore we are not connecting gender to sex. radfems/gendercrits believe that gender and sex are two distinct things. gender is applied to sex via the patriarchy but as gender is a social construct, it is not inherently tied to sex.

The idea that gender identity must conform to sex is a patriarchal norm

the idea that gender identity must exist in the first place is a patriarchal norm. and there's where libfems and TRAs go wrong... they presume that gender identity must always exist, and so to ~challenge the patriarchy~ they decide to mismatch what gender roles they follow compared to their sex. but that is not challenging the patriarchy at all! (as stated by every internet definition of radical feminism,) we call for a radical reordering of society. not just a performatively woke denial of reality. the fact that you think radfems/gendercrits even believe gender exists tells me you're misunderstanding its theory.

Because "female" is inherently exclusive

no it's not. "female" is inclusive of over half the population. the only people it's exclusive of are males, who don't deserve to be recognized as female anyway. (sidenote: i do believe in some cases it's ok for genetically male people with DSDs to go about as women so long as they aren't harming anyone)

If you actually believe that people can defy the roles ascribed to them based on sex, then you would support the idea that someone can be born male and identify with the opposite gender identity

no, because identifying with the opposite gender identity is NOT defying gender roles, it's just choosing to comply with a different set of them. that does nothing to dismantle the patriarchy. you can't identify as female if you're male, you can only identify with a misogynistic caricature of a femaleness.

If a person fulfills the socially "incorrect" role for their sex, they’re directly undermining that argument that there is an inherent way to be and an inherent difference between "males" and "females."

yes, they are. if a tomboy decides to come out as trans because they've always felt masculine, it sends the message that boys are masculine; i'm a boy because i'm masculine; i'm not a girl because i'm masculine; girls can't be masculine. the true way to undermine gender roles would be to acknowledge that you're masculine but still female!

I hold that "woman" is a broader gender identity and not a comment on someone's original biology or their functions, sex, or appearance.

what about women who've never heard of "gender identity." are they still women, or are they ignoranceisblissgender or something? the only definition of woman that encompasses every woman alive is human female.

gender-based oppression

what the hell is gender-based oppression? i'm assuming it's elements of sex-based oppression and/or homophobia that TRAs have packaged up prettier? also i'm not sure how identity politics is related to gender-based oppression? (i read the post and thought it was interesting though)

TERF: You can always tell who is a real woman. An aesthetic female eyebrow has an arch and fuller, shapely lips, thin jaws that come to a delicate v, and thinner noses with a slight upturn.

Me: So... not women:

TERF: Look. These are things that determine differences between males and females. It's scientific and real and fact, which means it can't be biased. I don't make the rules. This is simply what is more feminine.

Me: Feminine? So now, not only are we conflating "woman" and "female," but also "feminine" and "female." And you didn't stop to consider that there might be something inherently misogynistic and racist in what's considered "feminine"?

[newstfionline]

Headlines: Sunday, October 4, 2020

UN chief: World is living in ‘shadow of nuclear catastrophe’ (AP) U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Friday that the world is living “in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe,” fueled by growing distrust and tensions between the nuclear powers. The U.N. chief told a high-level meeting to commemorate the recent International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons that progress on ridding the world of nuclear weapons “has stalled and is at risk of backsliding.” And he said strains between countries that possess nuclear weapons “have increased nuclear risks.” As examples, Guterres has expressed deep concern at the escalating disputes between the Trump administration and China. Relations between the U.S. and Russia are at a low point. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are feuding over Kashmir, and India just had a border skirmish with China. And North Korea boasts about its nuclear weapons. Without naming any countries, Guterres said programs to modernize nuclear arsenals “threaten a qualitative nuclear arms race,” not to increase the number of weapons but to make them “faster, stealthier and more accurate.”

America’s education sector is facing job losses ‘you do not want to see’ (Yahoo Finance) The education sector is shedding jobs, and analysts worry that that they may never come back. “You’re seeing state and local governments cutting back on teachers, you’re seeing even in the private sector, the number of education workers cut back,” Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told Yahoo Finance’s First Trade. “That’s a function of state and local budgets … state and local government budgets are really being strained and that is going to hurt teachers, health workers, safety workers.” The education industry is officially looking at a loss of around 355,000 jobs since February, the BLS report stated. Even private education was hit with a 69,000 loss in jobs, the report noted. These jobs include teachers and professors and staff at private schools and colleges.

Trump COVID infection thrusts world in uncharted territory (AP) News that the world’s most powerful man was infected with the world’s most notorious disease dominated screens large and small, drawing shock, sympathy and some barbs for President Donald Trump. The outpouring from world leaders and flagging markets Friday left little doubt that Trump’s illness will have global implications—even if they’re still unknown. The positive test reading adds to investors’ worries, especially about its effect on the Nov. 3 election between the Republican president and Democrat Joe Biden. U.S. stock futures and most world markets fell on the news as did the price of oil. From India to Qatar to Mexico, world leaders were quick to offer official sympathy from the top, many in the form of tweets directly to Trump, while something approaching schadenfreude bubbled up from elsewhere. Trump is the most prominent on a growing list of powerful people who have contracted the virus, including many who were skeptical of the disease.

Amid pandemic challenges, houses of worship show resiliency (AP) The coronavirus pandemic has posed daunting challenges for houses of worship across the U.S., often entailing large financial losses and suspension of in-person services. It also has sparked moments of gratitude, wonder and inspiration. In the Chicago suburb of Cary, Lutheran pastor Sarah Wilson recorded a sermon aboard a small plane piloted by a congregation member. The video that went online showed a high-up view of idyllic landscapes. “It was very spiritual,” Wilson said. In New York, Episcopal priest Steven Paulikas heard from someone in France who watched a service via Facebook. “I loved your sermon,” was the message. “It’s a new experience for me,” said Paulikas, of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. “People I’ve never met before, from different states and countries, are joining us online.” Such positive experiences are not uncommon. Clerics nationwide say they and their congregations responded to the pandemic and resulting lockdowns with creativity, resiliency and invigorated community spirit. Financially, there’s no simple summary of how houses of worship have fared through six months of pandemic. Revenue at Wilson’s church, St. Barnabas, has been stable even as it resorted to drive-in parking lot services. Paulikas says giving is up 19% at All Saints’. But in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, offerings fell, according to chief operating officer Betsy Bohlen. Social service outreach remains vigorous, however. Bohlen said $25 million has been raised for a COVID-19 emergency fund.

Tropical Storm Gamma gaining strength as it heads toward Mexico (ABC News) Tropical Storm Gamma is gaining strength Saturday morning and now has winds of 65 mph. The storm is moving northwest at 9 mph and is about 75 miles south of Cozumel, Mexico. On the current forecast track, Gamma will make landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula later Saturday and then begin to weaken. The main threat right now for Gamma in Mexico will be the 15 inches of rain that will be possible in some areas, which could produce life-threatening flash flooding near where the storm makes landfall.

Maduro looks to crypto (Foreign Policy) In a speech this week, embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro floated the idea of using cryptocurrencies to skirt U.S. sanctions. The announcement came as Maduro unveiled a new anti-sanctions bill, which will examine the possibility of using cryptocurrencies in both foreign and domestic trade. In 2018, the Venezuelan government became the first in the world to launch a cryptocurrency, the oil-backed petro, as a way to evade sanctions. However, it is not available outside Venezuela, and cryptocurrencies have numerous problems that have so far made them highly inefficient for trade purposes.

Macron Vows Crackdown on ‘Islamist Separatism’ in France (NYT) President Emmanuel Macron of France on Friday outlined measures designed to rein in the influence of radical Islam in the country and help develop what he called an “Islam of France” compatible with the nation’s republican values. In a long-awaited speech on the subject, Mr. Macron said that the influence of Islamism must be eradicated from public institutions even as he acknowledged government failures in allowing it to spread. The measures include placing stringent limits on home-schooling (for medical reasons only) and increasing scrutiny of religious schools, making associations that solicit public funds sign a “charter” on secularism. While these measures would apply to any group, they are intended to counter extremists in the Muslim community. “Secularism is the cement of a united France,” he said, calling radical Islam both an “ideology” and a “project” that sought to indoctrinate children, undermine France’s values—especially gender equality—and create a “counter-society” that sometimes laid the groundwork for Islamist terrorism.

30 Years After Reunification, Old German-German Border Is a Green Oasis (NYT) While the militarized border that split Germany for 38 years has disappeared more readily than the persistent economic and political differences between the two parts, a faint 870 mile-long scar remains. It is green. After a long-running battle between landowners, government authorities and environmentalists, the federal government announced last month that the entire former border zone would be designated a nature reserve. Once an insurmountable obstacle—especially to the people in the East—crossing the strip has now become a literal walk in the park.

Two killed, 25 missing as drenching rain hits parts of France and Italy (Reuters) Two people died and 25 people were missing in France and Italy after a storm hit border regions of the two countries, bringing record rainfall in places and causing heavy flooding that swept away roads and damaged homes, authorities said on Saturday. The storm, dubbed Alex, ravaged several villages around the city of Nice on the French Riviera. Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi called it the worst flooding disaster in the area for more than a century after flying over the worst-hit area by helicopter. Television images from both countries showed several roads and bridges had been swept away by flood water and numerous rivers were reported to have burst their banks.

Venice deploys flood barrier for first time as storm drives up tide (Reuters) Venice deployed its long-delayed flood barriers for the first time on Saturday as forecasters warned that storms could combine with high tides to inundate the city. The network of 78 bright yellow barriers that guard the entrance to the delicate Venetian lagoon started to lift from the sea bed more than three hours before the high tide was scheduled to peak. Officials will be hoping the controversial, multi-billion-euro flood defence system, known as Mose, will mitigate the pending storm. Designed in 1984, Mose was due to come into service in 2011, but the project was plagued by the sort of problems that have come to characterise many major Italian construction programmes—corruption, cost overruns and prolonged delays.

Nagorno-Karabakh says 51 more servicemen killed in fighting with Azerbaijan (Reuters) Nagorno-Karabakh said on Saturday that 51 more servicemen had been killed in the war with Azerbaijan, a sharp rise in the death toll from a week of fierce fighting.

China holiday: Millions on the move for Golden Week (BBC) Hundreds of millions of people in China are marking this year’s National Day holiday with gatherings and quick getaways. National Day, which marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China, coincides with this year’s Mid Autumn Festival. It is estimated that 550 million people will travel domestically during the eight-day holiday referred to as “Golden Week”. It’s thought that 13 million passenger trips were made on Thursday—the highest figure since February, according to state media. Last year seven million people travelled abroad to destinations such as Thailand but with restrictions in place across the world, many countries are out of bounds for travellers.

“Hellish conditions” (Foreign Policy) Thousands of Ethiopian migrant workers are being held in squalid prisons in Saudi Arabia after they were expelled from neighboring Yemen at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released on Friday by Amnesty International. The detainees including pregnant women and children. Detainees interviewed by Amnesty described being held in overcrowded cells with inadequate access to health care, food, and water. Several had experienced or witnessed others beaten or electrocuted by guards for complaining about the conditions. Ethiopian State Minister Tsion Teklu told The Associated Press that as many as 16,000 Ethiopians could be held in Saudi prisons, adding that the foreign ministry was working to repatriate 300 people each week.

[wearyewe]

I’m once again completely unable to sleep. Whatever follows, and I’m hoping it’s somewhat lucid, comes from living as a Jewish person in America with white-skin who is not Black or African American. They’re thoughts as a Jewish American who only recently found out that I am directly related to Jews who were slaughtered and thrown into a ravine in Babi Yar because my (great-)uncle never told anyone his family didn’t just stay in Ukraine. We didn’t find out until after he died. I’m not even sure if he told his wife. I’m sure I’m not the only Jewish person who owns this story. It isn’t shocking to me that someone who lost all their relatives and friends but somehow escaped just didn’t talk about it after they survived. I’m still struggling with this. I feel like I’m claiming something that I shouldn’t claim.

I’ve always been someone who has to figure out why people believe what they do. It led me to study philosophy, it led me to law school, it’s led me study more about Jewish history (yes that includes Nazism, yes that includes Israel) and religion, and it’s me to learn about white supremacy, racism, anti-Blackness, America’s original sin of slavery and African American bondage, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and so many other -isms and phobias that I can’t begin to list here. Do I know everything? No. Anyone who ever claims they do is lying to you. But I make it my business to figure out why to learn why people hate my people so much that they tried to burn us from the earth over and over and over again. Why they gathered up my cousins, ordered them to bring their money, valuables, clothes, and linen on pain of death, drove them to a ravine, made them unpack their belongings and valuables into separate piles, undress, ordered them into a ravine, made them lie down on top of other Jews who had already been shot and then kill them one by one by one. The soldiers walked over their dead bodies to get to the next Jew to kill them. 

I’m still struggling with this.

This is now my personal story, and it’s made it that much harder to study what happened and to live around people who ignore antisemitism except when it’s to use it as a comparison or to frame as incidental. It’s made it that much harder to deal with non-Black Jews who excuse what is currently going on because they are deluded to think that they’ll be safe. That non-Black Jews are safe even as we hear the President use antisemitic dog whistles like “the liberal media,” “the elites,” and “globalists.” The Jews working in the White House are even more delusional to think that they’re safe because they “know what’s in his heart.” I could not care less what’s in someone’s heart. It matters to me what someone’s actions and words show. 

Jews, we will never be completely safe if we don’t stand up against anti Blackness. That includes within our communities. That includes acknowledging that while antisemitism still exists, it operates fundamentally differently than anti Black racism in the U.S. Jews are not thrown into jail at an exponentially higher rate because they’re Jewish for the same crimes as non-Jews. African Americans (Jewish and not) are though. Jews are not followed around stores because we’re stereotyped as being criminals. African Americans (Jewish and not) are though. Jews are not afraid of being shot in the street or while driving a car by a police officer because we are Jewish. African Americans (Jewish and not) are though. Jews are not forced to see statues and monuments and schools in recognition of people who started an armed rebellion because they didn’t want to give up owning our ancestors and family. African Americans (Jewish and not) are. This isn’t necessarily because Jews are privileged over African Americans, it’s because we function differently within white supremacist ideology (and again, African American Jews exist at the crossroads).

We Jews are parroting what white supremacists say and believe when we are anti Black. I do not say this to claim that the Jewish community would not be anti Black but for our exposure to White supremacist culture and assimilation. That would be asinine and would allow us unaccountability for any personal responsibility. I know that part of being Jewish in the diaspora is to keep our heads down and not rock the boat because we know what could happen. I grew up playing the “which gentile would help hide me” game too. We stay silent out of fear of the inevitable mobs and pogroms. But if we continue to remain silent? It’s just going to get worse. Being silent and hoping for the best is not an option anymore.

Those people who are marching against statues of Confederate “heroes” are being removed and taken down? They don’t just hate African Americans. They explicitly hate Jews. To my African American friends? White supremacy will never be fully eradicated if antisemitism is not entirely eradicated. Antisemitism is the cornerstone belief of white supremacy; without it, their ideology falls apart. And to my African American Jewish friends? Please know I’m here for you, to listen, and to be whatever you need me to be.

White supremacists believe that Jews make up an international conspiracy that controls the government. That’s not hyperbole. White supremacists literally believe this to the point they don’t have to state they’re talking about Jews. Instead, they use “the New World Order,“ communists, Marxists, or other euphemisms. When they use these words, they only mean Jews. Eric K. Ward explains this better than I ever could:

White nationalists in the United States perceive the country as having plunged into unending crisis since the social ruptures of the 1960s supposedly dispossessed White people of their very nation. The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for White supremacist ideology. White supremacism—inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South—had been the law of the land, and a Black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? For that matter, how could feminists and LGBTQ people have upended traditional gender relations, leftists mounted a challenge to global capitalism, Muslims won billions of converts to Islam? How do you explain the boundary-crossing allure of hip hop? The election of a Black president? Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education, and even Washington, D.C. It must be brainwashing White people, rendering them racially unconscious.

What is this arch-nemesis of the White race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews. Jews function for today’s White nationalists as they often have for antisemites through the centuries: as the demons stirring an otherwise changing and heterogeneous pot of lesser evils. At the turn of the twentieth century, “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”—a forgery, first circulated by Czarist secret police in Russia in 1903, that purports to represent the minutes of a meeting of the international Jewish conspiracy—established the blueprint of antisemitic ideology in its modern form. It did this by recasting the shape-shifting, money-grubbing caricature of the Jew from a religious caricature to a racialized one. Upper-class Jews in Europe might have been assimilating and changing their names, but under the new regime of antisemitic thought, even a Jew who converted to Christianity would still be a Jew.

The antisemitic slogans the marchers in Charlottesville were using was not incidental. Not only are Jews placed as being this invisible supernatural power that is controlling the levers of power, but also that when we are read as being the same as White gentiles, it’s further “evidence” of us infiltrating and destroying White culture. When Trump said “rewriting history,” whether he meant to or not, he was referencing Jewish control and power "subjugating” and erasing White culture. When the white supremacists were shouting “Jews will not replace us,” “You will not replace us” (NB these two phrases mean literally the same thing to them), “Heebs will not divide us,” and “the goyim know,” they meant that Jews are actively controlling PoC and Muslims to replace them in what they believe is only their country. When they call it “Fake News” or “the liberal media” they mean the Jewish media. 

When non-Jewish PoC and other minorities say that the Jews are a group of overlords who are actually responsible for or behind any number of social ills, they are parroting white supremacy. And they are shielding white supremacists from any sort of responsibility. After all, how can they be responsible when it’s the Jews and not them who are truly behind it? When non-Jewish PoC and other minorities ignore that antisemitism is at the center of white supremacy, they ignore that white supremacists hate us the same, if not more in some cases, than them. White supremacists have attempted to create alliances with non-Jewish PoC to solve “the Jewish problem,” (look for Jack McLamb) but they would never work with Jewish people to solve anything unless it was murdering us to stop the NWO.

White supremacy is dependent upon not only portraying African Americans as lesser and inferior to Whites but also portraying Jews as foreign interlopers who are at once subhuman and supernatural such that they control everything. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have white supremacy without both, and we can’t eradicate white supremacy without fighting against antisemitism and anti Black racism.

[cutevirgo]

violence is always the correct answer when it comes to fascists and those who wish horrific violence on others :)

[thumbkenya76-blog]

Tech Content Needs Regulation

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It may not be a popular perspective, but I’m increasingly convinced it’s a necessary one. The new publishers of the modern age—including Facebook, Twitter, and Google—should be subject to some type of external oversight that’s driven by public interest-focused government regulation.

On the eve of government hearings with the leaders of these tech giants, and in an increasingly harsh environment for the tech industry in general, frankly, it’s fairly likely that some type of government intervention is going to happen anyway. The only real questions at this point are what, how, and when.

Of course, at this particular time in history, the challenges and risks that come with trying to draft any kind of legislation or regulation that wouldn’t do more harm than good are extremely high. First, given the toxic political climate that the US finds itself in, there are significant (and legitimate) concerns that party-influenced biases could kick in—from either side of the political spectrum. To be clear, however, I’m convinced that the issues facing new forms of digital content go well beyond ideological differences. Plus, as someone who has long-term faith in the ability of the democratic principles behind our great nation to eventually get us through the morass in which we currently find ourselves, I strongly believe the issues that need to be addressed have very long-term impacts that will still be critically important even in less politically challenged times.

Another major concern is that the current set of elected officials aren’t the most digitally-savvy bunch, as was evidenced by some of the questions posed during the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica hearings. While there is little doubt that this is a legitimate concern, I’m at least somewhat heartened to know that there were quite a few intelligent issues raised during those hearings. Additionally, given all the other developments around potential election influencing, it seems clear that many in Congress have been compelled to become more intelligent about tech industry-related issues, and I’m certain those efforts to be more tech savvy will continue.

From the tech industry perspective, there are, of course, a large number of concerns as well. Obviously, no industry is eager to be faced with any type of regulations or other laws that could be perceived as limiting their business decisions or other courses of action. In addition, these tech companies have been particularly vocal about saying that they aren’t publishers and therefore shouldn’t be subject to the many laws and regulations already in place for large traditional print and broadcast organizations.

Clearly, companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t really publishers in the traditional sense of the word. The problem is, it’s clear now that what needs to change is the definition of publishing. If you consider that the end goal of publishing is to deliver information to a mass audience and do so in a way that can influence public opinion—these companies aren’t just publishers, they are literally the largest and most powerful publishing businesses in the history of the world. Period, end of story.

Even in the wildest dreams of publishing and broadcasting magnates of yore like William Randolph Hearst and William S. Paley, they couldn’t imagine the reach and impact that these tech companies have built in a matter of a just a decade or so. In fact, the level of influence that Facebook, Twitter, and Google now have, not only on American society, but the entire world, is truly staggering. Toss in the fact that that they also have access to staggering amounts of personal information on virtually every single one of us, and the impact is truly mind blowing.

In terms of practical impact, the influence of these publishing platforms on elections is of serious concern in the near term, but their impact reaches far wider and crosses into nearly all aspects of our lives. For example, the return of childhood measles—a disease that was nearly eradicated from the US—is almost entirely due to the spread of scientifically invalid anti-vaccine rhetoric being spread across social media and other sites. Like election tampering, that’s a serious impact to the safety and health of our society.

It’s no wonder, then, that these large companies are facing the level of scrutiny that they are now enduring. Like it or not, they should be. We can no longer accept the naïve thought that technology is an inherently neutral topic that’s free of any bias. As we’ve started to learn from AI-based algorithms, any technology built by humans will include some level of “perspective” from the people who create it. In this way, these tech companies are also similar to traditional publishers, because there is no such thing as a truly neutral set of published or broadcast content. Nor should there be. Like these tech giants, most publishing companies generally try to provide a balanced viewpoint and incorporate mechanisms and fail safes to try and do so, but part of their unique charm is, in fact, the perspective (or bias) that they bring to certain types of information. In the same way, I think it’s time to recognize that there is going to be some level of bias inherent in any technology and that it’s OK to have it.

Regardless of any bias, however, the fundamental issue is still one of influence and the need to somehow moderate and standardize the means by which that influence is delivered. It’s clear that, like most other industries, large tech companies aren’t particularly good at moderating themselves. After all, as hugely important parts of a capitalist society, they’re fundamentally driven by return-based decisions, and up until now, the choices they have made and the paths they have pursued have been enormously profitable.

But that’s all the more reason to step back and take a look at how and whether this can continue or if there’s a way to, for example, make companies responsible for the content that’s published on their platforms, or to limit the amount of personal information that can be used to funnel specific content to certain groups of people. Admittedly, there are no easy answers on how to fix the concerns, nor is there any guarantee that legislative or regulatory attempts to address them won’t make matters worse. Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly clear to a wider and wider group of people that the current path isn’t sustainable long-term and the backlash against the tech industry is going to keep growing if something isn’t done.

While it’s easy to fall prey to the recent politically motivated calls for certain types of changes and restrictions, I believe it’s essential to think about how to address these challenges longer term and independent of any current political controversies. Only then can we hope to get the kind of efforts and solutions that will allow us to leverage the tremendous benefits that these new publishing platforms enable, while preventing them from usurping their position in our society.

Source: https://techpinions.com/tech-content-needs-regulation/53580

[secretsquirrelmrl]

Secret Squirrel Makes War Much Easier On The Population Of The World.

  Secret Squirrel has seen the horrors of the day developing, emerging, evolving, war being very much like the Alien Xenomorph. He's seen two ridiculous fat men circling,taunting and screaming at each other, (Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un) threatening nuclear war. This displeases Squirrel enormously since Squirrel has pondered and noted that Trump and Kim Jong Un are both working towards and want war, nuclear war evidently. Squirrel has pondered, "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! I'm doomed! I'm DOOMED! They taught me up here in school, I have to crawl under a desk, and sniff Rhoda's behind! I don't HAVE a desk, and Rhoda's in Montreal! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! I'm DOOMED! I'm DOOMED!" Yes, this displeases Squirrel very very much.     Well, what of war? Total war became the norm only a few centuries ago.  In medieval times, with exceptions, wars were between combatants.  Civilian populations were left to themselves, except perhaps to raid their farms for food.  In wars of conquest destroying producers and productive assets was counterproductive. As I say, there were exceptions.   One was the Mongols, who eradicated entire populations.  They valued empty pasture over settlements. In ancient times armies could be quite brutal, but the term "total war" came into use to describe the difference between modern and medieval war, which had become the norm. The American Civil War was total war on the North's part.  The civilian population was deliberately targeted, most notably in Sherman's march to the sea.  One northern newspaper editorialized: “When the rebellious traitors [Southern secessionists] are overwhelmed in the field . . . it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes.   They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers, and the rags of children.” Another paper “calls .  . for the punishment of all individuals at the South, by hanging, and the confiscation of everyone’s property. ”  Richmond “must be laid in ashes.”  Baltimore “must become a heap of cinders and ashes”  and “its inhabitants ‘ought either to be slaughtered, or scattered to the winds . . .” Virginia and Maryland “deserve to be laid waste and made desolate.” The fire bombing of Dresden in WWII was designed to terrorize the civilian population of Germany by killing many of them.  Likewise that atomic bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It's sometimes claimed that democracies don't go to war with each other.  Nonsense.  When they do, total war is the norm. When kings ruled the lands wars were between them, for limited objectives.   They paid from their own treasuries (though at times augmented by taxation of the people).  Citizens were otherwise irrelevant, except for those young who might callously picture war as an adventure and enlist (or be shanghaied) into the military..  Trade went on mostly as usual even across national borders. In democratic systems the entire populace is theoretically responsible for the war, having elected the leaders.  Propaganda is put forth to convince them of the rightness of the cause.  The industrial capacity of the nation is commandeered for war production.  The people are to not trade with the enemy.  They're expected to hail the combatants as heroes, and castigate the other side's combatants as cowards. Some recent wars don't quite fit the pattern, only because they have been relatively small.  It may be total war in Afghanistan, but with a voluntary military many Americans can see such actions as remote and irrelevant to their daily lives. total war.........According to Karl von Clausewitz, war is "the continuation of politics by other means"....some would say a failure of politics, but then obviously throughout the ages, politicians have most definitely been utter failures much as they still are yet today. The war is the way to conflict, more serious socio-political conflict between two or more groups. It is perhaps one of the most ancient of all international relations, even if it becomes a phenomenon particularly with the beginning of civilizations. It is the organized confrontation of human armed groups, with the purpose of controlling human or natural resources, or disarmament, submission and, where applicable, destruction of the enemy, and are produced by multiple causes, among which tend to be the maintenance or replacement of power relations, resolve economic or territorial disputes. In political science and international relations, the war is a political instrument, to the service of a State or another organization with political purposes. The word war has Germanic origin, "werra", which means fight, discord, tumult. And the term refers to the struggle or armed conflict between two or more Nations or sides of one nation; as well as combat, dissent among two or more people. The war has been a habitual means of problem solving among groups throughout our centuries. A war begins when you leave the dialog and appears violence; all with the aim of submitting to others, which is transformed into "enemy" to our will. A war unfold a series of ideological, political, social, economic, and military; many are the reasons for it include the lust for power of the person or group, own a territory, religious or moral issues, etc. When a war takes place as well know groups loaded weapons, that today have evolved and are more dangerous for humanity; Science and technology allows the use of new weapons and materials, nor can forget the refinement of methods of espionage and logistics systems and communication. There are many consequences bringing the wars, one of them are great human and material, serious losses and serious political and economic disruptions sometimes lack of food, medicines, clothing and housing, among other consequences. The war can refer to many types, we have the civil war, which occurs between opposite sides of a country; the world war, which is a military confrontation involving countries from different continents; the holy war, where religious grounds into action. Chemical warfare, where there is the use of chemicals that can disperse over wide expanses in the form of dust, gases, vapors or aerosols, damaging the health of the living being and the environment; nuclear war, which refers to the use of nuclear weapons; the dirty war, where it is employed coercive or violent illegal actions by the State or paramilitary groups, among others. The war can be described as an armed struggle between two or more States, or between areas of the same country (civil war). Also called war the violent opposition between two or more people by different interests. What triggers a war are many, but most of the conflicts of humanity had origin in religious issues, as for example, the Crusades, or territorial expansions, such as the expansion of the Roman Empire, the conquest of America or the first world war. Other crucial issues of wars are the ambitions of power, or economic causes. Two world wars events to mankind in the 20th century and determined the creation of the United Nations, to try to settle international conflicts and not become armed clashes. However the war is as old as man and threat with accompany him in his time on earth while it lasts. If not war, then what? What are nonviolent alternatives to war? The technology and methodology of war has developed over several thousand years, particularly accelerating in the last century. The United States has numerous military academies and war colleges (for a list see here) and spends about $600 billion each year for weapons development, military training, and maintenance of a massive war machine. The world currently spends over one trillion dollars each year on military might. Sadly thence we see that war is a business,big business, and good for business. We also note that income tax was first started by William Pitt The Younger, to fund his Napoleonic Wars...and income tax and wars have continued to this day.  Now I mentioned are there alternatives to war..well let's consider the 1965 Italian movie, The Tenth Victim....In the near future, big wars are avoided by giving individuals with violent tendencies a chance to kill in the Big Hunt. The Hunt is the most popular form of entertainment in the world and also attracts participants who are looking for fame and fortune. It includes ten rounds for each competitor, five as the hunters and five as the victims. The survivor of ten rounds becomes extremely wealthy and retires. Scenes switch between the pursuit, romance between a hunter and a victim, with a narrator explaining the rules and justification of the Hunt. Now consider Trump and Kim Jung Un running about just trying to kill each other...........well the two obese lards would certainly run about, run themselves thin, hiding no doubt.......and then, consider this, would either be actually willing to die for their respective countries, to go out and THENSLEVS risk death for either of their obese,jaded and somewhat mental ridiculous and warped views and sentiments? Hardly likely is it.  Consider substituting a Tamagotchi War, Tamagotchi was invented by Aki Maita for which she won the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics. Tamagotchi is a keychain-sized virtual pet simulation game. The characters are colorful and simplistically designed creatures based on animals, objects, or people. Beginning with the 2004 Tamagotchi Plus/Connection, a second wave of Tamagotchi toys emerged, featuring a different graphic design by JINCO and gameplay which elaborated upon the first generations. However, the story behind the games remained the same: Tamagotchis are a small alien species that deposited an egg on Earth to see what life was like, and it is up to the player to raise the egg into an adult creature. The creature goes through several stages of growth, and will develop differently depending on the care the player provides, with better care resulting in an adult creature that is smarter, happier, and requires less attention. Gameplay can vary widely between models, and some models, such as TamagoChu, require little to no care from the player. For its current 2 decades, Tamagotchi has gained popularity worldwide....Consider them placed in a room,in a mansion with all needs provided and the first who's Tamagotchi dies, looses...that and their life. Again it's THEM isn't it, neither would like to risk themselves. WAR would be preferred by both.    The how to satisfy their needs for wars,them NOT getting killed................and nobody getting killed at all? Would that be acceptable? To Them probably not, but how's about you consider Squirrel's solution to not having a messy war, by still having a war...of sorts.     Now consider this........Paintball is a game developed in the 1980s in which players eliminate opponents from play by hitting them with dye-filled, breakable, oil and gelatin paintballs, or pellets, usually shot from a carbon dioxide or compressed air (Nitrogen) powered “paintball marker”. The game is regularly played at a sporting level with organized competition involving major tournaments, professional teams, and players. Games can be played on indoor or outdoor fields of varying sizes. A game field is scattered with natural or artificial terrain, which players use for tactical cover. Game types in paintball vary, but can include capture the flag, elimination, ammunition limits, defending or attacking a particular point or area, or capturing objects of interest hidden in the playing area. Depending on the variant played, games can last from seconds to hours, or even days in scenario play. The legality of paintball varies among countries and regions. In most areas where regulated play is offered, players are required to wear protective masks, use barrel blocking safety equipment, and game rules are strictly enforced.MilSim ("Military Simulation") is a mode of play designed to create an experience closer to military reality, where the attainment of specific objectives is the most important aspect of the game. MilSim addresses the logistics of combat, mission planning and execution, and dealing with limited resources and ammunition. Players are typically eliminated from the game when struck by paint. For aesthetic reasons, MilSim often uses airsoft guns rather than paintball guns, as their prominent hoppers appear unrealistic, however Airsoft pellets, being smaller caliber and fired at higher velocity, have an increased risk of player injury if the scenario involves high rates of fire or close range. With the advent of shaped projectiles, such as the First Strike, and the resulting development of magazine fed markers, a considerable increase in range, accuracy and MILSIM realism was gained. Functionally speaking, magazine-fed markers are no different than any other paintball marker, with one exception. Instead of paintballs being gravity fed from a bulky hopper, which sits above the marker, shaped projectiles (or paintballs) are fed from a spring-loaded magazine from the bottom of the marker. The caliber of both the gravity fed and magazine fed markers are the same (.68 caliber) and the velocities are also generally the same. The increased range and accuracy of the shaped projectile comes from the higher ballistic coefficient that the shaped projectile has, and the gyroscopic spin imparted onto the projectile from a rifled barrel and fins on the projectile itself. Magazine fed markers and shaped projectiles have allowed marker designs to more closely approximate the styling and functionality of actual (real steel) firearms, which intern has given paintball a better avenue to compete with Airsoft in the MilSiM environment.    You are getting Squirrel's idea now aren't you. You see each nation sends a properly appointed etc PAINTBALL TEAM.....to fight it out to the finish, according to the rules, whilst being watched and monitored. In the end, with the last man standing, untouched, THEIR team and nation etc would be the winner, and the desired,required outcome, be it territorial, technological or whatever would be fulfilled. Well, how's about that eh! Whot! Beats the mess,the destruction,the horrors, the caracsses of the populations,the destruction that is war! Much better all round isn't it.    But would Kim Jung Un and Trump go for it, or would they and do they prefer............war...of any and all kinds...........think now. But here, Squirrel has provided an easy and painless and much less messy alternative to war. Secret Squirrel, MRL, MP, Dunny On The Wold, Minister For Re-Deranged Re-Engineering.

[therisingtithes]

The Reeducation of Rare Pepe

On The Transferrence of Communicative Abuse, and The Phases of The Moral Turn

I didn’t plan on writing this one. 

First of all, my fiction has been kicking me in the rear lately, so I haven’t been doing a lot of long-form blogging because I know I’ll get so intensely focused on its premises that it’ll take four hours or more to craft one piece and I could use that time literally finishing a short story right now. 

Second, even the thoughts I had about the last few PBS Idea Channel videos were overwhelmingly boiled down to ‘wow!’, even when I had questions to ask. Like, what do Bee Movie technical memes say about diligence? Doesn’t Westworld essentially include the premise that one doesn’t ‘find’ a self, but that the act of making one directly proceeds nihilism? Why does everyone automatically assume that artificial intelligence will be the future state of Rawls’ original position even though not only did Mike explicitly state that systems bear their designers’ biases but recent digital history has proven that those biases are literally self-maintained and self-replicating institutional kyriarchy with a side of mismanagement? (Okay, that last one is less of an interesting tangential discourse and more of a heavy frustration, but still.)

And then there was the fact that I didn’t really want to talk about something related to this for a while. 

(By this I don’t mean ‘Pepe’, but the looming threat of white nationalism in the wake of the Trump administration.) Because we’re going to talk about things like this a lot. And it will be tiring, and it will be valuable for all actors in this discourse to be well versed in pacing themselves. 

And because I already wrote one of the myriad pieces you’ll see online about punching Nazis. Hell, I have a Twitter bot, if anyone cares. 

And I want to be sure: I think it was a less than ideal way to engage with the discourse. 

I am not saying I don’t agree with punching Nazis. Or that the post did a bad job of illustrating why one should punch Nazis. 

I’m saying it because there is so much room to talk about why one should be willing to physically resist white nationalist speech, among other speech acts, 

namely the fact that there is a moral, philosophical, and legal framework that already exists to challenge violent speech acts, 

but in order to empower violent speech acts, it’s so underutilized by the existing power structure that people literally have said that they didn’t know it existed. 

So I want to talk about Pepe as backdrop to answer one of @mikerugnetta‘s final questions at the end of the latest PBSID video: 

... can you ignore those extremists, as the Rare Pepe Directory people suggest? 

But... I don’t care about Pepe. Or at least I don’t think I do? I care about the history of the swastika, a bit, but people have been split on how to proceed with that as well. So I’m not asking if we can ignore their treatment of Pepe. 

I’m asking if one can, or should, ignore extremist speech acts at all. 

a. There’s A Rule For This Sort Of Thing (And It’s Already Broken) 

It’s worth opening with the acknowledgment that it is perfectly politically possible for the United States, like other nations, to not be in the position of having to ask itself how white nationalist extremism and fascist sympathy came to fester in its space. 

In fact, legally, the United States has an antidote for just this kind of problem. It just hasn’t refined that antidote or bothered to adequately administer it in quite some time. 

That antidote is the fighting words doctrine. 

One of the things that I found most alarming in the growing discourse about the threat of white nationalism in the West is that many people seemed to look over the irony that there is a philosophy-of-language idea called hate speech but that it is legally unobserved for not being a solid enough concept to critique. That is, many people insisted that there is no hate speech legislation in the United States, and that the fact that there is none means not that the US is legally incapable of being critical enough to punish hateful speech acts, or that the US can become so legally incapable, but that hate speech is not a real speech act. 

You know. The speech act that has uniquely identifiable characteristics, like the intent to dehumanize, incite prejudicial action against, or threaten imminent violence upon a marginalized individual or group? 

Not real. 

Which means that when a man writes an article within which he argues that it may be a valuable question to ask how much better the world would be if the US eradicated Black people, it as a result is minimized to the status of merely ‘an idea’ - or worse, ‘just words’.

Part of that difficulty, of course, is directly related to Americans’ strict--and, resultingly, quite lax--understanding of harm. R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul and Snyder v. Phelps both seem to lean toward the notion that what constitutes a violation of fighting words doctrine is whether those words actually lead to violence. That is, words are only fighting words if people do fight. 

But it’s because no one has ever had any more serious conversations about institutionalized violence against marginalized groups that very few have considered the impact of simply the threat of inciting discrimination can have. 

What’s interesting is how it proves the philosophical weakness of the present approach to freedom of speech in general--that the legal limitations that are observed regularly have such a privilege because we are clear about what kinds of things have consequences upon their uttering, but when those consequences affect the lives of others in long and harrowing ways, we are slow to actually engage. 

This is the crux: no idea is worth more than a life unless that idea values life. There are lots of ideas that constitute no value, and we have no problem challenging their value publicly. But when those ideas are fundamentally about the destruction of others, they are not merely of no merit--they are considered intensely unjust. Some statements are not ‘ideas worthy of debate’, they are threats to persons. Suffice it to say in comparison that if an agent of ISIS writes a blog post which says that they wish to destroy America, the intelligence community doesn’t head up their briefings by first going ‘Let’s hear them out first’. Treating ideas such as white nationalism as defensible speech on the merit of being speech means that it is defensible to commit any speech act on the merit of it being a speech act, which the law already doesn’t permit. But more deeply, to argue that a person’s dessert of dignity under the law is debatable as a result of their identity is already a lie--your Constitution says so--so is arguing that they shouldn’t have it any more legally or morally defensible? 

If a group says something to signal to marginalized people that they are viewed as lesser, as physically disposable, as people whose physical destruction is in fact a moral imperative to that group’s political ends, then as a rule their act is concerned with an incitement to violence. If it being imminent is the primary concern, then a threat would only be illegal if they acted on it immediately, and would only be punishable if the victim actually suffered. 

If it’s not true for small threats, why is it true for large ones? 

That is the thing which we are not ignoring: the threat of consistently looming violence, the threat of a widening conspiracy to commit violence and prejudice, a threat which is at the root of every related connection of violence which is born from it. 

In some US states, the crime of calling a bomb threat is penalized by twenty years in prison and a fine of $50,000. 

In the month of January 2017, there was an undeniably concerted increase in bomb threats made to Jewish centres across the United States. 

That spate is therefore punishable. But that spate is directly related to festering antisemitism. And that antisemitism can so fester precisely because it cannot be observed for what it is: an incitement to prejudice and violence against a marginalized group of people. 

b. The If/Then on Nazi Pugilism Theory And Praxis 

It should follow immediately, then, that discourse on punching Nazis should be equally punishable, no? 

That if talking about the destruction of socially marginalized groups is an offense to open communication and the dignity of all men, then talking about breaking the noses of those who talk about such aforementioned destruction is equally offensive? 

Because I’m inclined to insist that it is. Philosophically speaking, it should be equally criminal to punch, or discuss the right of punching, a Nazi. 

... hence the loop? Observe, as a result, that said loop is not closed! That if I should be punished for discussing the moral right to punch a Nazi, then the Nazis should already be in cells, already emptying their pockets of the same thousands that I don’t have! And if they’re not, and not going to be, then the moral bankruptcy of holding me accountable for challenging other people’s lack of moral accountability is visible in neon. 

(This loop also exists re: discussing white nationalist speech as hate speech. Inevitably someone will say that this means that saying that Nazis shouldn’t have the right to threaten people removes their free speech, which means I want to deny people rights, which has already been stated above as the reason we’re here--ignoring that there is already a philosophical, moral, and legal framework under which white supremacist speech is indefensible.) 

There is an antidote for widening abuse against marginalized groups for some time now, and it is visibly apparent that it will spread more rapidly and more violently in the coming periods. If you’re really going to tell people that it is more of a moral nonstarter to wish to physically resist violent ideology than it is that violent ideology can intimidate and prejudice and not be considered fighting words uttered in public, then the flaccidity of free speech ordinance makes its efficacy in protecting others moot. 

That is to say that, in order to avoid a chilling effect placed on actual racist speech and their speakers by punishing it as fighting words, you have instead enacted a chilling effect on Jews and Muslims, among so many other marginalized groups. Which signals less that you care about preventing chilling effects in general, and more that when pressed to choose the system is empowered by its biases to prioritize the prejudice of Jews and Muslims (among so many other marginalized groups) and delegitimize the imminence of threats of violence against them. 

If that system cannot rightly protect Jews and Muslims,  and if MLK’s words that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” can even be considered worthy of debate,  then it must reasonably follow that any law, or enactment of law, which delegitimizes the imminence of threats of violence against marginalized persons must be broken. 

And that means that one should be able to say that they want to punch a Nazi until and unless the law finally penalizes white nationalist hate speech. It means that one who is opposed to the political idea that destroying people of colour would be good for society should not stand for being punished for saying they’d punch a Nazi before white nationalists are punished for their hate speech. 

Not that they should never be punished. Only that if a system doesn’t punish a consistent trend of terrorism, then its decision to punish those who oppose it is nothing but another arm of terrorism. 

It also means, though, that in the wake of a threat of violence, one should be willing to physically resist aggressors precisely because the law is unjust, and as such will not defend marginalized people in such an instance. 

c. The Phases Of The Moral Turn 

A brief segue--not really a segue, because we get to the meat of engaging with unjust systems and their objects--into a critical tool I have become fond of applying. 

Think of every moral and political act that one takes as the turn of a game called Civic Activity. 

Your opponents are those whose moral and political decks--the ideologies which they value and stand for--are so at odds with your own and their goals that the act of their play puts them in a position for you to counter. (This is a moral principle in general; it is neither left nor right, neither moderate nor extreme. Political acts interact with opposing acts and their actors.) 

In a trading card game like Magic: The Gathering, considering the ideal moment, the proper layer, within which to play a card is the strategic foundation upon all the complexity of its play is based. At some moments it is a matter of whether the card can be legally played--sorceries are available only at particular points in one’s turn, for instance. At most others, though, it is a matter mostly of effectiveness--the awareness that if you do not pay close attention to the state of the field of play, do not know deeply the best moments to play certain cards, or forget to ideally act in those moments, your best shot will be lost, and it will cost you the progress required for victory. 

There are, then, phases of a moral turn. At its simplest, it is knowing not only what kinds of actions are played at what ‘speeds’--phone calls and social media awareness are cantrip instants, but some other acts cost more and must be played only upon their triggers, like the commitment to voting--but also knowing that one has a moral responsibility to play the best card for the best moment at any moment where victory is not assured. 

If the state of the field of play then threatens to disenfranchise and physically abuse marginalized people, and if the opponent has had a very good turn to establish their foothold on such a field, 

then one of your essential best plays is any play which counters the loss of marginalized lives long enough for you to remove the enchantments and equipments they have played to promise such losses. 

It means not only challenging and undoing the legal structures that threaten marginalized people. It means confronting enemy plays which threaten to imminently cause such harm. It means being willing to stand in front of the people who wish harm, and it also curiously means being willing to physically resist them. 

Now, in this analogy there is a clear difference. In Magic terms, there is a difference between ‘target creature cannot attack’ and ‘tap target creature; this creature doesn’t untap during its owner’s untap step’. There is also a difference between these two and ‘destroy target creature’. 

In the real world, people cannot be regenerated. 

So by the most basic assumptions of ideal play, any action which can tap people who wish to cause harm should be taken before they cause harm. It follows that, if you can assess such a threat early on in the turn, before they have even begun to cause harm, you should take that action if you can, so no harm can ever be done. 

The state of play encourages white nationalists to publicly preach tenets of their ideology which specifically delegitimize the concerns of people of colour, among other marginalized groups. 

What is your best play,  and when shall you deign to make it? 

d. End Step 

So, to close: we cannot let hateful speech continue to be played in a landscape if we want that landscape to value and protect marginalized people. A system which ignores obvious harm to others on the part of white nationalist fighting words possesses no power to then use that system as a defense from resistance without tacitly confessing to valuing white supremacist terrorism. 

... oh right I should mention Pepe, shouldn’t I? Argh. Okay, I’ll say this much: 

Much of the things Mike says about Pepe and polysemy are things I have thought for some time without finding words for, and I’m sure even smarter people than Mike have written reams about the transition of the swastika long before today. But I am not sure, to that final question, whether it is valuable to ignore their extremism precisely because others are not. Others are being rallied by such extremism, which is deliberate and well-crafted to a fearsome degree. 

I guess my question is that it is not enough to try to redeem Pepe, but to find ways to confront the Pepes that are simulacra of truly terrible people. Those people will continue to rally, after all. Unless those people and those Pepes can be rightly considered unjust speech actors and unjust speech acts respectively, we will continue to have this problem of what worth it has in pop culture discourse and how we should respond to it. 

This is not the same as countering their speech, of course, and I can see attempts to ‘reclaim the Pepe’ as potentially valid. But I’m also valid because while I care about the discourse, I don’t care about Pepe. I can’t talk to you about how to ‘separate’ what are simply multiple frames of one character, because I don’t care enough about that character or those frames to see them as such distinct creative objects; and seeing as I didn’t care for the meme at its inception, I can’t say I’d miss it if it died as a result of its present association. Neither of these things are true of my critical assessment of the swastika, something fundamental to some people’s understanding and practice of faith. 

I will say that I do think it’s just overwhelmingly hard to do. Its growth as a meme is directly related to its prevalence as a white supremacist symbol; if it weren’t Pepe, some other anthropomorphic memetic would have taken its place. Would you really want to imagine it? A parallel universe where we lost Doge instead? Nah, I’m good, fam. 

Which means that it would probably better, to preserve the purity of the character as designed, to... put it out of its misery. To acknowledge that the rot has spread, tell Pepe goodnight, and move on. Because as long as there is a Pepe, and as long as that Pepe is beloved, people will corrupt it knowing that it will remain visible in pop culture. They’ll do it for spite. And this conversation will live longer than we are. 

Either ideas mean things or they do not.  If they do, either they are stated with an intent toward action, or they are not.  If they are, any idea which is stated with an intent toward devaluing people of colour with an intent to guide imminent prejudice and violence is indefensible. 

But then citizens have to challenge so much more speech acts than just Pepe, and because history hasn’t been challenging these speech acts, this mess persists. 

[libertariantaoist]

Donald Trump remains blinded — willfully or not I cannot say — by his absurd narrative of America as an aggrieved nation. It’s a narrative that will stimulate the growth, rather than the diminution, of government power.

As he told this week’s national prayer breakfast, “We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually.” He repeated this claim several times at a later photo op at the White House. It of course was the dominant theme of his presidential campaign: the United States is the 99-pound weakling into whose eyes everyone kicks sand. The only way to stop this abuse, we were told, is to elect Donald Trump. Now that he has assumed power, he says, he will keep his promise and restore respect to the United States.

His opening days as president have been marked by Trump’s idea of getting tough with allies and adversaries and cracking down on would-be immigrants and refugees who happen to have been born in the wrong Muslim-majority countries.

At the prayer breakfast he pledged to fix the world: “The world is in trouble, but we can straighten it out, okay? That’s what I do — I fix things.” Straightening out the entire world hardly signals a radical rethinking of postwar U.S. foreign policy and a switch to something more modest for the sake of “America First” — quite the contrary. Even if Trump’s objective were possible, it would take a far more powerful, more militaristic, more intrusive, and more expensive government than the one we labor under at present. So would his aim to “eradicate [“radical Islamic terrorism] completely from the face of the Earth,” as he promised in his inaugural address.

But in fact the theme that unifies most of Trump’s policy positions is wrong: America is not the aggrieved party. It is not everyone’s chump. It’s the abuser and the bully. Trump either doesn’t know this or he does but realizes that no one ever won power by telling the public, “Elect me and we still stop victimizing the world.”

One can see Trump’s aggrieved-nation shtick in nearly everything he says. America, according to Trump, has been abused by  Muslims, by trade partners (especially Mexico and China), by free-loading allies, and more. Weak leadership made this possible, he says. Strong leadership — the kind only he can provide — is the cure.

But in every case the story is the opposite of the one Trump tells. Violence against American noncombatants — unjustified as it is — has been a response to decades of direct and indirect U.S. government violence in the Middle East and elsewhere. Islamists from Osama bin Laden on down have said it. (They don’t say they hate us for our freedom.) Even American officials have acknowledged this, though they rarely say it outright in public. After World War I the Arab world (like others) hoped the United States would block the European colonial powers’ designs on the region. Instead the U.S. government acquiesced in England’s and France’s plans even as some Americans looked to supplant the old imperialist powers as the dominant force in the Middle East. In the ensuing years, Arab hope turned to ashes as America sided with corrupt autocrats, cynically used secular and religious elements as expedient, and backed Israel’s ethnic cleansing and land confiscation in Palestine.

Trump shows no signs of understanding the U.S. government’s century of provocation; on the contrary, he promises to double down on the so-called “war on terror,” pledging to those assembled at the prayer breakfast his war “may not be pretty for a little while…. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it [‘radical Islamic terrorism’] and to confront it viciously, if we have to.” The first special-forces operation on Trump’s watch just took place in Yemen, resulting in the deaths of women and children, including the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen and cleric killed by a drone strike in Yemen ordered by President Obama, and sister of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, an American teenager also killed by a drone strike in Yemen. (Needless to say, none of these victims were accorded due process.) Trump honored the one American military Navy SEAL killed in the badly planned operation, but did not acknowledge the deaths of noncombatants. Yemen, by the way, is where the U.S. government is helping Saudi Arabia wage a genocidal war, benefiting al-Qaeda in the process. Obama initiated the policy, but Trump has yet to mention, much less terminate, it. He’s not likely to do so because the Saudi targets, the Houthis, are said (erroneously) to be agents of Iran, which Trump has in his sights.

Trump would say, no doubt, that attacks on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are justified, no matter how ferocious, because they intend to harm Americans. But since they intend to do harm to Americans because of what the U.S. government has done to their societies, this answer is invalid. Moreover, it is self-defeating because U.S. attacks, especially the deaths of noncombatants, will likely provoke further terrorism against Americans. Trump, who presents himself as an out-of-the-box thinker, has yet to question the establishment story and understand what Ron Paul pointed out in his 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination: “They’re over here because we’re over there.” (Paul was referring to the 9/11 attacks. Since 2001 the few terrorist acts in the United States were committed by U.S. citizens said to be inspired by Islamist groups. Terrorists have not infiltrated the United States, although Trump would have you believe otherwise.)

As William T. Cavanaugh discusses in The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, blaming terrorism on Islam (even “radical Islam”) blinds Americans to the political roots of violence, specifically, U.S. neo-imperialism in the Middle East. How comforting it is to dismiss a large group of people as under the spell of a barbaric medieval religion rather than own up to the cruelty of one’s own government. Of course for Trump, evading the truth better fits the aggrieved-nation narrative.

Trump’s narrative is reinforced by Steve Bannon, perhaps his closest adviser. Bannon, whom Trump has named to the National Security Council, has often said that the West is in a war with Islam.  USA Today reports that in a January 2016 interview, Bannon said, “To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise.” The year before he said, “Some of these situations may get a little unpleasant. But you know what, we’re in a war. We’re clearly going into, I think, a major shooting war in the Middle East again.” (Also in 2016 he said, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t we? There’s no doubt about that.” Trump also has an animus toward China, which is bolstered by his top economic adviser, Peter Navarro.) Like his boss, Bannon’s got a thing for war. (Also see this.)

In Trump’s worldview, it’s not only terrorists who menace us. The foreigners with whom Americans trade also take advantage of America, especially but not limited to Mexico and China. But as has been said many times in response, trade yields expected net benefits to both parties or it does not take place. So Trump’s take on trade is based on a blatant fallacy. (Again, who knows if he really believes his own nonsense or if he says it because he knows few people understand even the most basic economics?) Suffice it to say that China and Mexico are not “raping” us, as Trump would have us believe. That he would equate voluntary transactions with rape should have won him only ridicule on day one of his campaign. That it did not speaks volumes. If anyone is harmed in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements it is the countries on which the U.S. government imposes draconian, unlibertarian intellectual-“property” restrictions that prevent indigenous competition with American corporations.

Even when Trump has a valid target  — NATO — he gets the story wrong because he cannot let anything detract from his aggrieved-nation shtick. NATO is not a collection of countries enjoying U.S. protection while free-riding off American taxpayers. Rather, it’s a multilateral facade for unilateral American foreign military and political intervention, that is, a tool of the American empire. NATO, particularly its inclusion of former Soviet republics and allies, also has been key in provoking Russia, something Trump doesn’t mention. Again, America is not the aggrieved party. (See more here.) We should note also that Trump has backed off his criticism of NATO and that even if he withdrew, American military spending would not go down. Trump plans to increase the military budget.

Finally, immigration. Trump thinks that people who come to the United States (unless they’re the “right” kind of people) do us harm. This is belied by every study. Immigrants (whether or not they have government papers — a matter that should not concern libertarians) make society better in all sorts of ways. But that is not the ultimate justification for freedom of movement. The ultimate justification is the natural right of the people to move in search of better lives. Trump doesn’t know or care about that, so he’s sticking to his promise to build a wall near the Mexican border. While he’ll be violating the rights of individuals who wish to move to the United States, he’ll also violate the rights of American landowners along the border. Trump’s wall cannot be built without eminent domain (land theft), which he is long on record as favoring. He has tried to get government to take private land for his own enterprises, and he applauded the Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling, which said takings for private use were constitutional.

As one can see, Trump’s aggrieved-nation narrative is a call for more powerful government across a range of issues. Those who were hoping that Trump would make the state a smaller presence in our lives should now realize how wrong they were.

[jesseturri]

Thoughts on Violence and Punching Nazi’s

“When confronted with someone who literally thinks blacks are subhuman and should be killed off en masse, what is the appropriate response? […] Simply treating someone as an equal participant in the public sphere legitimates them. And given that they are speaking boldly in public, they are not susceptible to public shaming — indeed, they take great pride in violating the taboos of acceptable opinion, believing it to be a brave and noble act.”

The above paragraph comes from a blog post written by Adam Kotsko in regard to Nazi and alt-right leader, Richard Spencer, recently being punched while giving a TV interview.

I tend to think of myself as an aggressive peacemaker, and take a position (based mainly on my personal religious convictions) of being anti-death toward all humans; i.e. I reject most of the reasons put forth for why we should kill humans, especially the punitive reasons. That said, I am also distrustful of very abstract totalising moral platitudes; case in point: someone claiming they’re “non-violent.” I don’t use that label for myself anymore (although I used to). I’m not “non-violent.” I participate in some degree of violence daily. I think Whitehead is right that “whether or not it be for the general good, life is robbery.”

I think Adam does a really good thing in his blog post attempting to draw attention away the universal moral platitude of “non-violence-no-matter-what” to instead focus on particulars; Spencer’s ideas are inherently violent/deadly to a few very specific groups of people,  and thus these ideas should be squelched. The metaphor I often use here is when a doctor does all she can to eradicate an isolated instance of cancer we certainly do not condemn the doctor for doing all she can to physically eliminate the disease. But make no mistake, chemo-therapy is physically violent and destructive! For me the question we need to ask is not violence or no violence, but where to draw the line with use of violence…? And that’s a very hard question because each situation is so different, and many times there is no neutral concept of “peace” that both sides can agree to.

It’s hard to say how I (a hetro, middle-class white guy) would act in this situation. Obviously, Spencer’s hostility is not pointed in my white-guy direction (unless we count my 1/8 slice of Jewish heritage), but for minorities, people of color, the people this guy wants to violently oppress, it’s not so easy to call for “peaceful,” “loving” resolve; Spencer’s words essentially serve as the first punch. Defense is necessary. Would I tackle or punch him to make him stop talking? Maybe, if I was mad enough, I can’t say for sure. I DO think the punch IS symbolic in that it conveys a powerful message which communicates that this sort of hateful ideology is not tolerated and it WILL be resisted forcefully, and I’m glad this person did what they did. However, I have made a personal decision in my life to not use lethal violence (I think white men in this country have done enough killing! We should disarm ourselves and give up our power to kill and oppress.) and to try my very best to restrain myself when it comes to physically assaulting people who attack me, therefore I’m forced to think a bit differently about solving problems. So could the powerful message that this punch sent have been communicated another way, a way that is less physically violent? Perhaps. Maybe by using my body as an impediment, sacrificially (in the sense of inviting physical violence to be done to my person, but falling short of inflicting it on the other), forcefully, and deliberately lodging it between Spencer and the Camera, standing toe to toe with him, fearless in his face, forcing him to stare into the eyes of the other, and simultaneously obstructing the camera’s view so his message is not heard; I might even go so far as to smash the camera itself, or grab a trash can and continuously smash it on the sidewalk right next him, or rip the pepe pin off his lapel or spit in his face (or sneak up behind him and piss on him while he’s talking (now that would be humiliating, insulting and funny!). An alternative (but equally as provocative and illegal) symbolic act like this, executed in this particular situation, might have sent the equally forceful message of: “shut the fuck up!” But perhaps not. Who knows.

As I’ve written before, I would never dream of condemning a person who felt that they had no choice but to take another human life, or resort to physical violence to defend them self. If I ever found myself in a “kill or be killed” situation I would do all I could do to protect my loved ones, there might be physical violence (and maybe even enjoyment if I got the upper hand), and someone may indeed die. However, the only person I would feel guilty-less about sacrificing is myself. Again, as per my personal religious convictions, I feel that I am compelled to stand up for and die for what I love and believe in, but when it comes to degrees of violence that I inflict on other humans in particular situations, I do have to draw the line somewhere…we all do.

Thoughts on Violence and Punching Nazi’s was originally published on TURRI

[gibsongirlselections]

Want to Fight Racism? Let’s Cancel Planned Parenthood

It’s 2020, baby. Names are getting scraped from buildings, statues are toppling, a bunch of stuff is catching fire, and you could get canceled tomorrow. A new day has dawned. We can giddily destroy even the dead on the guillotine of moral indignation. And with each head that rolls, an understanding grows that all people, living or otherwise, can be condemned and done away with should they not meet the fresh, improved ethos of the Great Progressive Edict. Nothing and nobody is safe in our quest to sanitize our scatological society. Not even, it appears, Margaret Sanger.

As of Tuesday, the renowned feminist and progressive founder of Planned Parenthood is getting the boot from the organization’s Manhattan clinic, where her name has long been associated with the building. The official reason is that they can’t seem to gloss over her dirty history of racist eugenicism anymore, so now they’re going to disown her.

It’s an interesting plot twist, because Sanger is the founder of the place. It’s also interesting because Planned Parenthood is still in operation and nothing has really changed from the way she ran things back in the early years.

It’s tempting to concede, at least, some logical consistency to the folks over on the left. After all, in the same way they’ve demanded the erasure of George Washington—despite his founding of the country—they’re finally acknowledging aloud that Sanger wasn’t merely a strong-headed, clear-eyed woman looking to give her fellow females a shot at escaping oppression. As pro-lifers have said for decades, Sanger was an unabashed eugenicist with a blatant record of racism. Like Alexandra DeSanctis wrote in National Review, “She promoted birth control as a means of limiting low-income and minority groups and proposed a regime of mandatory sterilization for those she deemed ‘feeble-minded.’”

Who was feeble-minded? Well, to her, probably a lot of people who had perfectly fine brains. And certainly black people were included in that assessment. She famously excoriated them as “human weeds” who were “to be exterminated.” Until recently, Planned Parenthood has had pretty good success in brushing that little ditty under the rug.

Yet in response to those who have refused to ignore it, Sanger apologists have chosen to shape those nasty intricacies into a narrative that paints her as a complicated woman whose whimsical interest in eugenics didn’t actually have anything to do with her commitment to providing birth control to the black women of America. There was a gulf between her two worlds of interest that simply couldn’t be bridged.

Of course, not even Sanger believed that. Justice Clarence Thomas made this evident in a piece at First Things, pointing out that Sanger “believed that birth control was an important part of the solution to these societal ills. She explained, ‘Birth Control … is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method’ of ‘human generation,’ ‘and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science.’ Sanger even argued that ‘eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment’ could not ‘succeed’ unless they ‘first clear[ed] the way for Birth Control.’”

But Planned Parenthood doesn’t want to be a racist organization anymore, so now they’re taking the tremendously redemptive step of, well, changing a name (which wasn’t even on the building). “The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” they told black people.

Except, obviously, they’re not really going to do that. Instead, as a means of rectifying past wrongs, they’re going to keep contributing to reproductive harm within communities of color. Margaret Sanger may have been fired, but make no mistake: she’s still working there. Black people aren’t getting any sort of recompense in this.

The black pro-life movement has been saying it for years: Sanger’s efforts in what she called the “Negro Project” have resulted in fewer people of color. The project, for those unfamiliar, was based on a Malthusian hope of reeducating the women—specifically in African-American communities—on the kind of lives available to them without children. Why? Certainly not to help them discover better lives. Why would Sanger care about “human weeds?”

She just wanted to have fewer of them. She got what she wanted, too. Now, over one third of all American abortions happen to black babies, despite the fact that black women comprise less than 15 percent of our population. Indeed, the rate of growth in black communities is slower than among most other major U.S. race and ethnic groups.

Now that Planned Parenthood has distanced itself from the ideology of its founder, they’re in the clear. Never mind that the premise of their entire existence is the ideology of a woman who saw people as something to be manipulated and rooted out. This is what the left is trying very hard to do everywhere: eradicate history, start fresh—a society cut off from its source and advancing toward the sun.

But canceling George Washington for owning slaves centuries ago does nothing to end racism today. To do that, we have to halt the wrongs we’re committing against blacks now. And canceling Margaret Sanger for her nasty eugenics obsession won’t stop the tragic gutting of black communities. Though ending Planned Parenthood certainly would.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., astutely noted that the damage to America’s black community can only be rectified with the end of what Sanger started:

My grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., once said, “No one is going to kill a child of mine.” Tragically, two of his grandchildren had already been aborted when he saved the life of his next great-grandson with this statement. His son, [Martin Luther] King once said, “The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety.” How can the “Dream” survive if we murder the children? Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother decides his or her fate.

Step away from the carefully crafted messages of Planned Parenthood’s PR professionals, and look at Sanger for who she clearly insisted she was. Once you do, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the entire fabric of her organization is interwoven with her expansive, explicitly racist view of humanity. Yes, her name has been scrubbed in New York. But her ghost yet haunts the halls of that Manhattan clinic, nodding approvingly as black lives—which matter at any age—are cut short. Statements and blind eyes aren’t enough anymore. If Planned Parenthood earnestly wishes to do its part to mend what they’ve broken, they’ll close up shop altogether.

Emma Ayers is an editor and reporter in the Washington D.C. metro area. She has no Twitter for you to follow.

The post Want to Fight Racism? Let’s Cancel Planned Parenthood appeared first on The American Conservative.

[gedwimora-arc]

Reposting this instead of just reblogging this from Regulus’ main bc it’s Very Long and I originally made the choice to not cut it because of its importance, which was fine for his main but on here it’s a bit much imo. So naturally I’ve had to repost in order to cut.

Something that’s very important to me and I don’t budge on is Regulus’s continued attachment to his family and connections in the elitist pureblood society. There’s a few reasons for this, which I’ll go into here.

1. Life is Messy

Did Regulus grow thanks to his exposure to the darkest parts of his community, the reality behind their beliefs and his views become less bigoted over time? Yes. But the fact he no longer views muggleborns as filth doesn’t eradicate a lifetime of indoctrination, a need for human connection, a justified fear of rejection, still loving your family even when they’re awful, or utterly pragmatic needs like business partnerships. He’s not Sirius or Andromeda, for Regulus utterly removing himself from the society they were raised in is not an option. Life is messy and sometimes you’re the liberal-ish gay cousin at christmas dinner trying to fend off war flashbacks because your baby cousin just said the word “lake”.

Regulus – like Draco – became a Death Eater at 16 and in canon died at 18. By the end of the second war Regulus is 36. He saw and did terrible things at an incredibly young age, then had to totally restructure his whole world view alone with no one to really talk to about it and rebuild his entire life– all while dealing with the physical, psychological and social consequences of his actions. While it doesn’t take him long at all to mellow out, it does take him longer to defrag his ideology and figure out what the hell he does believe now and how to express those new beliefs accurately. Basically the man’s a mess and that’s really to be expected.

2. Portraying the Spectrum

I also feel it’s very important to have people who fall more on the “Bad Side” who are well, not so bad. While on paper these topics are very black and white in reality they’re not always so clean cut. Something I’ve always hated about Harry Potter is that until about the last 2 books there’s basically not a single “Good” Slytherin even mentioned let alone seen. Yes there are people like Severus who are there from the start, but he’s not revealed to be a “Good Slytherin” until the very end, the rest of the time he’s portrayed as one of the worst ones. This always just pissed me off so much, it’s just such an unnecessary and trite demonization of a whole group– worse, a group of children. Yes it’s the most likely place for the Dracos of the world to end up, but that doesn’t mean every single child who was ever sorted into it is a Death Eater in the making. But we never see those Slytherins and it really, really pisses me off.

Regulus is not a “Good Person” in the sense he was always secretly good and eventually ~~broke free of the evil mind control and is now Pure again~~. I hesitate to even call him a good person honestly, even though his last and only canon acts speak to someone who is unwavering good and self-sacrificing. In his youth he genuinely believed in some truly terrible things but he had his own inherit limits and morals he could not sacrifice even for his family and their beliefs. That’s important, not everyone on that side is a Bellatrix, and while being less awful than Bellatrix doesn’t exactly earn you a medal it does speak to the spectrum. He’s not the best, but he’s definitely not the worst.

By the time the first war is over Regulus is on a knife’s edge at the near perfect center of the spectrum between acceptance and bigotry. He’s proof that a Slytherin coming from the most stereotypical, toxic pureblood upbringing with all the classic Slytherin traits can still buck a lot of the script and actually manage to not be a complete bastard.

3. Never Burn Bridges You Could Still Use

In true Slytherin fashion, we come to a manipulative, Game of Thrones-y  reason. This is one of the key reasons for him IC and also one of the things I think can be difficult for people to get or swallow. Where most people likely feel that the only correct option would be to pull a Sirius and disown the family– that they themselves could never stomach putting up with all the heinous things these pureblood types say and cannot imagine someone who doesn’t believe it doing just that for any reason– the fact is that’s not always the right move, and that there are people who can do it just fine.

Regulus isn’t a fool. He’s the well-educated, intelligent son of a rich, prominent pureblood family with lots of connections all over the place in the wizarding community who got sorted into the “win or die trying” house. Publicly renouncing half or more of those connections is frankly a terrible idea for him to do on so many levels. He loses a LOT of power, access and leverage he could actually use to do things that could actually be a boon in the long run. While unlike Severus he wasn’t –and likely doesn’t become a spy ( though that is up for debate )– those connections could be vital for his continued survival and provide a means of keeping tabs on enemies.

Why on earth would he run around making enemies of everyone he could still use? How does that help anyone? Especially when he’s already mastered the art of placating and maneuvering these types of people.

4. Love, Sentimentality and Loyalty are just as Powerful Weaknesses as Strengths

Something we actually get from canon is that Regulus is an unquestionably loving, loyal and compassionate person. When he has Kreacher take him to the cave he drinks the potion, he sacrifices himself. This is not something someone who is not at their core compassionate, empathetic and loving does. He saw the effects the potion had on Kreacher, he heard what he had gone through, and when the time came he refused to make the elf go through that again.

“And he order– Kreacher to leave– without him. And he told Kreacher – to go home– and never to tell my Mistress– what he had done– but to destroy– the first locket. And he drank– all the potion– and Kreacher swapped the lockets– and watched … as Master Regulus … was dragged beneath the water … and …”

“[…] that Regulus changed his mind … but he doesn’t seem to have explained that to Kreacher, does he? And I think I know why. Kreacher and Regulus’s family were all safest if they kept to the old pure-blood line. Regulus was trying to protect them all.” “[…]  I’ve said all along that wizards would pay for how they treat house-elves. Well, Voldemort did … and so did Sirius.” […] I do not think Sirius ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human’s …

This core of kindness and empathy is both what ended up causing him to defect and also what keeps him tied to what family and friends he has left. It’s hard, especially when you are so loyal and loving to cut out people who you’ve known your whole life, who you love and love you back. Bellatrix is a monster she’s easy to cut out but Narcissa? How could he really cut ties with one of his only living relatives, who’s likely his favorite cousin? Who is herself a fiercely loving and loyal woman? It would take a lot for him to finally cut ties with his loved ones still in the purist community and it’s frankly one of his greatest failings.

5. No One likes a Former Death Eater

The cruel fact of the matter is that regardless of your reformation most people will not accept or acknowledge it and treat you like you are still a monster. Regulus could try – and does try– to integrate more with the mainstream, but it’ll always be met with mixed success at best because he was a Death Eater. Unless he moved to a different country, it’d be difficult to really start over again completely with any real solid success. The majority of the wizarding world socially ostracizes him while still engaging with him on a business and political level because of his status. The only people who still want to have a cuppa with him are all in the same boat as him, bigots or purist sympathizers.

He’s human, and however much he’d like to gripe about people and wanting to be left alone forever to become a hermit he craves interaction, especially since he himself is an intensely social extroverted person. If he cuts these people out of his life he basically has no one to talk to anymore and he’s left totally isolated, which would frankly lead to much worse and dangerous places for him.

6. Someone here has to be the Voice of Reason

Having literally no one in that community who isn’t a total nightmare is asking for trouble. Not only because it allows the toxicity to stew and intensify unchecked but it also means no one is there to try and help the younger generations break free of the cycle. If he just left like Andromeda and Sirius he’s just making it worse by removing a more moderate voice from the communal discussion. It’s not even about trying to show them the error of their ways, that’s in fact a terrible way to go about things with people like this. It’s about diluting the toxic ideology, providing the less dangerous paths and laying out the framework that can act as the basis for someone else’s journey out of the quagmire.

For example, when looking at cults and hate groups, the worst way to reach those people is by trying to point out everything wrong and arguing with them, it only entrenches them more. You make more progress by staying close and quietly slipping in the information and tools they need to work things out themselves. Telling someone they’re in a destructive cult will get you nothing, but telling them about this book you read about some terrible cult and all the signs of one you learned from it and isn’t that just wild? These people are bad news huh? Here give it a read yourself– Is far more effective in the long run.

By being there he acts as a moderate, neutral adult figure who the children can both model and look to for support. He’s much safer than most of their families and willing to be the sounding board for their own debates and give advice from a place of having literally been right where they are now. He can act as a mid-point between the extremely insular and toxic pureblood community, the mainstream wizarding world, and thanks to his time in hiding, the muggle world for purebloods looking to escape or just broaden themselves.

[restoreamericanglory]

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New Post has been published on http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/freedoms/the-great-silencing-youtube-caves-to-a-left-wing-censorship-mob/

The Great Silencing: YouTube Caves to a Left-Wing Censorship Mob

Whether you’re the biggest Steven Crowder fan on the planet or you find his videos juvenile and unfunny, what happened to him (and thousands of other YouTube creators) last week should chill you to the bone. The platform upon which Crowder, an online comedian and political commentator, makes his living has decided to de-monetize him. Not because they took a careful, thorough look at his content on their own, but because they couldn’t take the heat generated by a left-wing mob intent on censorship.

That mob was ignited by Vox writer Carlos Maza, a “lisping queer” (in Crowder’s estimation) who decided he’d had enough of being mocked and laughed at by the conservative and his audience. As part of something called the Vox Adpocalypse, Maza went on a Twitter storm against Crowder, demanding that his enemy be censored and de-platformed for making fun of his homosexuality.

And, after taking a reasonable stance for a day or so, YouTube ultimately gave in. They didn’t throw Crowder off their platform, but they de-monetized his videos. In other words, someone will still be making money off of Louder with Crowder; it just won’t be the guy whose name is in the title.

Now here’s what’s really smarmy about Maza and his buddies at Vox. Only a couple of days after this successful mob attack on their ideological enemies, they walked off the job. That’s right, at the same time that they were trying to steal the livelihoods of those they disagree with, they were trying to milk Vox for more money. And now they’re on strike, having proven their worth to the left-wing site by eradicating conservatives from YouTube. Well, conservatives and anyone else unlucky enough to get caught up in this censorship roundup (that group already includes historical Nazi documentaries and even progressives who talk negatively about white supremacy).

Oh, and there’s this: Maza isn’t even satisfied.

“Demonetizing doesn’t work,” he whined on Twitter. “Abusers use it as proof they’re being ‘discriminated’ against. Then they make millions off of selling merch, doing speaking gigs, and getting their followers to support them on Patreon. The ad revenue isn’t the problem. It’s the platform.”

In other words, things won’t be right with the world until a guy like Steven Crowder actually has no place to reach viewers. All because he made fun of Maza’s lisp and his homosexual, socialist agenda.

YouTube ought to be ashamed of itself for caving in to this madness, but we’re not even slightly surprised. We are at the beginning of a sinister threat to free speech, and the major tech companies who control our most visible online spaces are going right along with it. It’s only going to get uglier from here.