#anti sports betting

[victorclays]

this may not be a very hot take or whatever but i dont think celebrities should endorse gambling apps. Sports gambling or any other gambling.

it just feels sinister watching all these people with all that money... telling people that have not even a fraction of the wealth, people who will most likely never, have that much wealth, to gamble what money they have away on fucking sports betting and shit.

It makes me feel gross everytime i see one of the ads. Just makes me so so uncomfortable.

[singaporehelmet]

you dislike... oscar piastri and charles leclerc? out of ALL THE DRIVERS there? ... wow?

well, yeah.

i dislike a few more, sure, but i don't like those two either. if you like them, it's not a problem! i respect everyone else's opinions. apparently you don't, because you felt the need to go out of your way to come to my inbox and drop me that anon message.

next time, just scroll, unfollow me or block me. it's not that deep and it is that easy!

[msclaritea]

More proof. Pissy is as pissy does. The thread is full of childish insults, the usual tool of high tech trolls. The #NFL and #siliconvalley really fucked up, trying to use A list actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, in their attempts to gaslight the American public. Using Christ, using religion, as a joke and a prop, is the epitome of being anti-Christian.

[battleangel]

Gambling Addicts Suicides = Billions for the NFL

Per fherehab.com, gamblers have the highest suicide rate, proportionately, of any addiction. While there are more drug and alcohol addicts (about 25 to 30 million in the US) as opposed to 10 million or so pathological gamblers, a larger percentage of gamblers attempt or complete suicide.

Per Google, up to half of people in gambling disorder treatment have suicidal thoughts, and about 17% have attempted suicide. A 2018 Swedish study found that people with problem gambling had a suicide mortality rate that was 15 times higher than the rest of the population. According to studies, people with gambling disorder have the highest suicide rate of any addiction disorder, with one in five attempting suicide.

A gambling addict is five times more likely to die by suicide than a drug addict or alcoholic — thank god online sports betting and betting apps are now ubiquitous and you can bet on every play, every down in every NFL game!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I wanted to discuss an addiction that is fairly invisible compared to other addictions like drugs, alcohol, opioids and food — gambling.

You can't see that someone has gambled themselves into debilitating debt or bankruptcy.

There is no visible weight gain, change in physical appearance, behaviors, mannerisms or behavior like there is with other addictions.

If the gambling addict doesn't disclose their addiction, unless you somehow have access to their financial records, or unless their addiction gets to the point where it costs them their job or their residence — there is no way you would know they have a gambling addiction unless they tell you.

Unlike liquor, fentanyl, cocaine, percocet, vicodin, oxycontin, junk food, fast food and other addictions which have visible markers — gambling addiction doesn't.

Gambling addiction is the most invisible and the most deadly addiction.

Gambling addiction has the highest rate of suicide.

That is why I wanted to discuss and examine what the NFL has done in terms of exploiting gambling addiction for profit during the last day of Mental Health Awareness month.

The NFL is literally profiting off of gamblers' addictions, misery, depression and suicides and I don't see much discussion around it.

Restless, desperate, depressed, suffering, irritable, in debt, broke, broken down, suicidal — exactly the type of gamblers the NFL covets, creates, endlessly preys on and exploits.

The 2020 CBA doesn't involve a financial agreement for the players regarding compensation for online sports betting on NFL games and fantasy football.

The players are the ones being betted on and moved around as pawns in peoples fantasy leagues, they're the ones incurring the permanent brain damage every single season and assuming all the risk yet getting exactly zero of the reward as it is set up in the CBA to go exclusively to team owners unlike say television deals and rights which players share a part of the revenue with the league.

Online sports betting now that it is allowed inside NFL arenas as of 2023 is expected to explode in further popularity — the players will see exactly zero additional revenue from this.

Per MSNBC.com:

"But the rise in sports gambling on the internet and phone has accelerated the prevalence of gambling addiction. The ease with which people can access online sports gambling platforms is frightening. The states love it, as they are getting dollars from the gamblers. Nor is there any effort to restrict its visibility, the way tobacco ads have largely been banned. These sportsbooks bring in billions a year, while millions of lives are ruined. They depend upon compulsive gamblers, sucking them dry while misery mounts not just for themselves, but for their friends and families. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence and big gambling data, there are different types of bets that can be offered every few seconds while watching games in real time.

Much of the growth has been in the online betting platforms that offer a dizzying number of wagers that change minute-to- minute. A flood of advertising, technology that allows for one-click betting at home, and nearly unlimited betting options during games have collided. In the past five years, there has been an explosion of online sports betting apps from companies like DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars. Focus on gambling disorders has historically been minimal in the United States. This is in part because people with gambling disorders have been viewed as foolish or lacking willpower. We equate the ability to hold onto money and win money with success and equate losing with greed."

Per CNN.com:

"Many states naively or some other way went about legalizing sports betting without adequately estimating the costs on problem gambling resources," said John Holden, an associate professor of management at Oklahoma State University who studies sports gambling regulation."

They estimated the costs on problem gambling — they want people addicted to gambling.

The NFL wants this because its billions more in revenue for them and, remember, the most recent 2020 CBA does not allocate any revenue that the NFL generates from online sports betting and fantasy football to the players that are sacrificing their bodies and minds to make the NFL that money.

So, the NFL reaps all the rewards while the players are the ones on the field taking all of the risks and not making a single solitary dime and we are talking about billions in revenue.

Talk about a slave plantation when 70% of the players are black and 0% of the owners are black yet black men only make up 6% of the US population.

Modern day slavery.

Per CNN.com:

"Many recovering gambling addicts feel helpless against the constant barrage of advertising encouraging betting on games.  "We consider it to be predatory advertising because it's incessant and it glamorizes gambling," Grondin said."

Its incessant, glamorizing, ubiquitous and being done in partnership with the NFL so the ads are relentlessly shown during games and parlays and betting lines are discussed by analysts during the pre-game show.

The ads and marketing are literally inescapable, just like a stalker and true predator — predatory.

Per CNN.com:

"Regulators are wary of how tightly they can curtail messages in gambling advertising without running afoul of First Amendment protections on commercial speech. "A lot of state regulators have big First Amendment fears," Holden said. "No one wants to fund litigation or lose a Supreme Court case over gambling."

The First Amendment is being used to protect predatory advertising targeting vulnerable gambling addicts that have a suicide rate five times higher than alcohol & drug addicts?!

That's freedom of expression?!

Per CNN.com:

"In most states, the legal age for sports betting is 21 years old. But ads during games, in stadiums, and with star athlete sponsors normalizes sports betting for kids and teenagers, critics say. The United Kingdom last year banned top athletes and celebrities from appearing in ads endorsing or promoting gambling to try to curb underage gambling. That's unlikely to happen in the United States."

The United States of capitalist excess, exploitation, overconsumption, materialism, consumerism, addictions, compulsions, disordered behaviors, binges, highest individual debt in the world, highest cost of living, glamorizing addictive behavior, spend spend spend, buy buy buy, shop till you drop, money makes the world go round, money buys happiness, retail therapy, hey you never know, publishers clearing house, $100k pyramid, lets make a deal!, dystopian game shows reality shows & competition shows, dying to gamble, dying to win, bankruptcy, foreclosures, repossessions, evictions, overcompensating, impressing people you want to know, kissing ass, keeping up with the joneses, obsessions, adrenaline rushes, vicarious thrills, dying to feel alive, chasing down highs, monotony of modern life, cubicle slave, worker bee, 9 to 5 drudgery, the excitement of winning your parlay, beating the odds, beating the system, coming out on top, becoming a millionaire, quitting your day job, instantaneous wealth, everybody else is doing it, seductive ads, predatory ads, alluring ads, compelling ads, Jamie Foxx, Gronk, Kevin Hart, Draft Kings, FanDuel, hot blondes, Buffalo Wild Wings, filling up your empty existence, finally winning at something, distractions from the constant drudgery of daily life, beating the doldrums, not totally up to luck & chance, using knowledge of football to beat the odds, finally getting rewarded for all these years of being a fan, makes watching the games more interesting, being more invested as a fan, threatening a players life for fucking up your parlay, sending death threats to a running back with a season ending and potentially career altering injury for fucking up your parlay, dehumanization of the players, dehumanization of the self.

Make the NFL plantation 100% white owners richer and richer off of the backs of their 70% black slaves...

Per APA.org:

"People can gamble around the clock from anywhere and, increasingly, at many ages, including teenagers and even young children who are well below the legal age for gambling. Starting young carries a relatively high burden of psychological distress and increased chances of developing problems. The National Institutes of Health has agencies dedicated to problem alcohol use and drug use, but there are no official efforts aimed at problem gambling, and there are no federal regulations against advertisements for sports betting.

An estimated 96% of people with gambling problems have at least one other psychiatric disorder. Substance use disorders, impulse-control disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders are particularly common among people with gambling problems."

The sports betting & fantasy betting ads target and exploit people who already struggle with impulse and self control and encourages them to make risky bets, bet impulsively and to lose whatever self control they have and bet with Draft Kings now now now every play every down how many yards how many catches how many forced fumbles how many interceptions how many pass break up attempts how many first downs how many QB rushes how many QB hurries how many sacks how many tackles for loss.

Every imaginable stat at your fingertips, the NFL's dream, and an addictive bettor's worst nightmare...

Per APA.org, "Vulnerability is high in people with low incomes who have more to gain with a big win."

Targeting the working poor already being exploited by capitalism just like the alcohol, fast food, soda, snacking and credit card rewards companies do.

Per APA.org, "Unlike rewards given after every repetition of a behavior, this type of variable ratio reinforcement, or intermittent reinforcement, exploits a cognitive distortion that makes a gambler view each loss as one step closer to a win and can lead to very rapid adoption of a behavior that can then be hard to extinguish. Animals exhibit the same patterns."

Psychological exploitation, psyops, psychological warfare.

Per APA. org, "As many as 90% or more of people with gambling problems never seek help. Nower has proposed three main pathways that can lead to gambling problems. For one group of people, habitual gambling pushes them to chase wins until they develop a problem. A second group comes from a history of trauma, abuse, or neglect, and gambling offers an escape from stress, depression, and anxiety. A third group may have antisocial or impulsive personalities with risk-taking behaviors."

Recall this from earlier in my article: "An estimated 96% of people with gambling problems have at least one other psychiatric disorder. Substance use disorders, impulse-control disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders are particularly common among people with gambling problems."

And this from the above quote from APA.org: "A second group comes from a history of trauma, abuse, or neglect, and gambling offers an escape from stress, depression, and anxiety."

This is a complete and total set up to target vulnerable populations already more susceptible to gambling addictions with predatory ads — the NFL, Draft Kings & FanDuel are partially responsible for the deaths of gambling addicts that are committing suicide at five times the rate of alcohol and drug addicts and they could give a fuck less.

APA.org:

"In 2023, at its peak, according to news reports, the betting platform FanDuel reported taking 50,000 bets per minute. Sports bettors trend young: The fastest-growing group of sports gamblers are between 21 and 24 years old, according to an analysis by Nower's group of data from New Jersey, which legalized sports gambling in 2018. Compared with other kinds of gambling, the in-game betting offered during sports games is highly dependent on impulsivity, Nower said.

There are opportunities to place bets during the game on everything from who will win the coin toss to which quarterback will throw 100 yards first to how long the national anthem will last. And impulsivity is particularly common in younger people and among sports fans caught up in the emotion of a game, Nower said.

About 14% of sports bettors reported thoughts of suicide and 10% said they had made a suicide attempt, she and colleagues found in one New Jersey study."

And gambling addicts have a suicide rate five times higher than alcohol and drug addicts — five times! And the NFL could give less than a fuck.

Per APA.org:

"Because of gambling on mobile phones and tablets, there's no real way to keep children from gambling on their parents', friends', or siblings' accounts. And they're being bombarded with all these advertisements. This is a recipe for problems among a lot of young people."

"We educate our kids in our school systems about alcohol use, drug use, drinking and driving, and unprotected sex," Derevensky said. "It's very difficult to find jurisdictions and school boards that have gambling prevention programs."

The NFL likes to get them while they're young and vulnerable and easy to exploit — just like Pop Warner.

Some observations from NFL Reddit:

"If you just do it on your phone you may not fully appreciate the consequences or realize how much you are actually wagering. At a certain point it just feels like another addicting cell phone game. Which is exactly what the gambling companies want."

"Simmons, etc. frame parlays as a "smart guy" way to play but if you look at it from a business perspective the books have a much higher take rate on parlays which is why they are getting promoted so much. So it's pretty much a lie. But smart gamblers don't do any of the things that would be advised on podcasts. They might sweat individual bets but also generally understand that bad beats are part of life, they are not wagering emotionally on or against teams that they dislike for whatever reason. Also the online books will start limiting you as soon as you win, so it's basically a waste of time if you are trying to be a "smart" gambler..."

This instant gambling, 'take out your phone and bet right now!' ubiquitous exploitative mantra in every ad and during every game is so fucking predatory and exploitative — just like the NFL — who is making billions off of gambling every single season.

For the NFL, the more addicts, the more suicides, the more lives ruined, the better.

More NFL Reddit observations:

"A lot of people consume the NFL through the lens of fantasy (people like to own their friends) and gambling (people like the thrill of winning/losing money), so the NFL is now dependent on those to sustain interest in the sport as a whole. We're going to see more gambling and fantasy content in the future."

"It has increased football's hold on people. Along with fantasy, it's a reason to follow all of the games as opposed to just your team's games."

"I know so many people that would have never gambled if it weren't so accessible and heavily promoted."

"It's ruining sports, it's ruining watching sports with people. We all know guys whose lives basically revolve around their daily bets."

The NFL revels in creating future gambling addicts and future suicides — just like their current players quietly developing CTE and later committing suicide decades after they finish playing.

The NFL makes billions upon billions with online sports betting and fantasy football with an audience mostly made up of men — who develop gambling addictions at double the rate of women — yet they cant significantly and seriously fund any studies on gambling addiction yet gambling addicts commit suicide at five times the rate of alcohol and drug addicts?

$6 million is what the NFL contributed to sports betting research in the same year they made over $3 billion from online sports betting. Do the math.

Just like the NFL's reluctance to acknowledge CTE and fund research into it, the NFL refuses to seriously commit to funding research on gambling addiction because of how massively they are benefitting and profiting from gambling addicts to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

Just like their stance on CTE for decades, the NFL doesn't want to know.

The Supreme Court legalized online sports betting in 2018 and it is legal six years later in over 38 states — legal, instantly accessible on mobile phones, apps and tablets with ubiquitous and predatory ads with ultra famous athletes and celebrities from Gronkowski and Kevin Hart to pregame analysts endlessly spouting off about parlays, prop bets, over/unders, spreads, picks, who's going to score next ad nauseum.

Final NFL Reddit Observations:

"Avoiding your addiction is critical to recovery. By advertising constantly, you are more likely to recapture those recovering addicts. Gambling is a psychological addiction so the advertising component is more important."

"I'm sick to fucking death of how sports betting, gambling is spreading like herpes. I didn't have particularly strong feelings until I saw one commercial whose eyes literally lit up with pleasure on opening some gambling app. Something about this new sports betting world arouses such disgust in me I can barely speak. It's spreading into paid partnerships where just using an app 'unlocks' some bullshit offer to start gambling 'risk free'. By far it's some of the sleaziest, most manipulative marketing I've ever seen and I hate it."

"Sports betting is as addictive as drugs and maybe worse because it's been normalized as a leisure activity and some people are sucked in to the promise of free bets and big payouts."

"Having it available on a device everyone owns that fits in the palm of your hand is terrifying."

"Online gambling is a slippery slope into poverty and despair."

"Without fantasy football, people wouldn't be watching half the games they are. They only watch the games because they have money on them. Suddenly they have skin in the game for teams they'd normally not care about. It's incredibly manipulative."

"The one that really frustrates me is the Jamie Foxx commercial where he's playing a piano and says something like 'You'll be watching every pitch, every run, every lap, every catch now'. I mean right there, they freely admit that gambling can lead to compulsive behaviors."

"These companies are absolutely predatory; they are armed with addiction techniques and scientific studies against people who can't defend themselves. It's psychological weaponry."

"I'm so tired of seeing betting/gambling ads. They've become as pervasive as the drug/pharmaceutical ads."

"EVERY PLAY!! EVERY DOWN!!! BET $5 AND GET $1500 IN BONUS BUCKS!! INSTANTLY!"

Predatory exploitative fucks.

They want people disordered, addictive, compulsive, anxious, depressed, empty, listless, lethargic, impulsive, chasing wins, bored, apathetic, despondent, desperate, money hungry, thrill seeking, adrenaline junkies, high on wins, greedy...

Online sports betting & fantasy betting ads are as predatory, exploitative and ubiquitous as pharmaceutical industrial advertising.

Just as obnoxious and unavoidable. Just as transparent and nauseating. Just as disgustingly disingenuous with their warnings tacked on to the very end whether its medication side effects or gambling addiction helplines.

The NFL makes billions from predatory ads every single season while they continue to create, fuel, worsen & endlessly profit off of gambling addictions.

Per The Washington Post:

"The rapid advance of this technology has allowed gambling operators to figure out a lot about customers - when they bet, how much they bet, whom they bet on - and addiction experts maintain that the companies have a responsibility to use that data to help keep bettors from becoming addicts."

But they don't use the technology and customer data to help bettors from becoming addicts — they use it to send notifications to bettors directly to their cell phones reminding them when its time to place a bet making their gambling addictions even worse.

They want addicts — its best for business.

Just like the alcoholic beverage industry, the vast majority of the money made for both the sports & fantasy online betting industries is made via addicts who overspend.

These industries actively court, lure, seduce, convince and use hypnotic messaging and brainwashing tactics to prey on vulnerable individuals susceptible to addictive behavior as part of their very lucrative and hideously disingenuous, cruel and exploitative marketing plans.

Per The Washington Post:

"On the individual level, operators have enough funds to offer tempting cash bonuses for placing initial bets from new accounts. You certainly don't see that kind of offer for, say, new smokers or new drinkers.

"Think about the ads," Maney said. "Every one of these kids is seeing them Facebook, Instagram, every game you watch. If you're a 12-, 14-year-old - the backdrop is DraftKings. Why wouldn't they gamble?"

From "Sports Gambling: Trading On Americas Addiction To The NFL":

"Revenues in the online sports gambling sector are expected to clock in at roughly $11 billion in 2023, which would represent a 72% increase from 2022. The NFL is America's favorite sports league, which is why the kick-off of the NFL season typically triggers a surge in American sports betting activity.

However, the "house" now extends beyond just sports books - state governments have also horned in on the action - collecting an estimated $3.50 billion in tax-related revenue since the start of 2018 as of 2023.

Not surprisingly, that same research also demonstrated that there's a strong correlation between betting activity and game viewership. For example, survey responses indicated that two-thirds of mobile gamblers were more likely to watch a game they'd wagered on.

That's certainly music to the ears of NFL owners. According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), the NFL collects an extra $2.3 billion per year in revenues due to the advent of widespread, legal sports gambling.

Moreover, an estimated 76% of Americans actively follow the NFL, according to research conducted by Statista. The American Gaming Association (AGA) released the results from a recent survey that indicated upwards of 73 million Americans are likely to make a wager focused on the NFL in 2023. According to AGA data, that figure represents an increase of about 60% from 2022.

Within the online sports gambling industry there's two primary heavyweights - DraftKings (DKNG) and FanDuel. FanDuel accounts for roughly 46% of the market, while DraftKings has 25%. Rounding out the top four are BetMGM and Caesars, which control 12% and 7% of the market, respectively.

As of early September 2023, sports gambling has now been legalized in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Just 10 years ago, that level of penetration in the U.S. market would have seemed unthinkable."

More revenue, more money, more billions, more suicides, more addicts, more divorces, more broken families, more depression, more deaths, more destitution, more ruined careers, more debt, more bankruptcies, more foreclosures, more evictions, more repossessions, more ruined credit, more shame, more impulsivity, more bragging about wins & hiding losses, more rehab, more recovery, more pressure on players, more player injuries, more death threats to players, more dehumanization of players, more revenue for the NFL plantation owners & less money to the slaves playing, more wishing death on players with season-ending injuries who fucked up your parlay, less true fandom, less enjoyment of the game, less fun for players, more exploitation, more manipulation, more predatory, more seductive, more legal, more alluring, more exciting, more reason to watch, more investment in the NFL, more adrenaline rushes, more wins to chase, more opportunities to win back your losses, more child addicts, more addicted teens, more casinos in your pocket, more bets on every play every down every game, more anxiety, more substance use disorders.

More fans dying for their gambling addictions, FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM Casino, Caesars, the NFL owners & Roger Goodell...

[busket]

dude I haaaate that trans men are so often used as a gotcha by BOTH sides of transgender debates, as if it doesn't affect us.

anti trans bigots say shit like "well why don't we hear trans men complaining about being trans in sports?" even though we do... trans men are rejected from men's teams for "their own protection" for being "naturally weaker" but then we're exiled from women's teams for "doping" (aka using testosterone for their transition).

you also get trans allies and other trans people being like "(points at trans man) you don't want THIS in you women's bathroom, do you??" as if trans men arent subject to violence from cis women in restrooms too, and framing us as predators in the women's bathroom will only exacerbate that.

we are not just tool for your debate, our safety is on the line. you should only ever say "well what about trans men?" if you're saying it to advocate for us and to stand up for our rights in a compassionate way, alongside the rights of all other trans people, not as a way to be like "ah ha! I bet you forgot about trans men! I've found a hole in your logic!"

[godbirdart]

Bill 29: The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act

Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party are being creepy weird about children again and since this also directly targets people like me [trans people] I have opted to skip the niceties cut scene and get right down to choosing violence.

Seriously, I cannot be the only person weirded out over how creepily obsessed Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party are over trans people. They talk more about trans people than anything else. Just in October they pushed out three anti-trans bills - the above included. For what? There's MAYBE 2000 trans kids out of the 800,000 students in the whole province. It's pretty damn insane they're trying to legalize gender checks on children at all.

Ofc, some people are waving it off saying "No! It's just for the trans kids!! >:C". Nah mate. If your kid is a slight bit too effeminate or masculine or just plainly doesn't fit the Gender Roles, you bet their ass is getting reported by faculty members acting in bad faith. Hope you aren't aiming for sport scholarships in college / university👍

Some people are also whining about trans people having "athletic advantages" again so lemme say here: I have cis friends who played girl's rugby in high school. They were VERY capable of decimating the boys. If your cis kid can't measure up against a trans kid, that's just a straight up skill issue. get good maybe? lmao

This ain't the time to take the moral high road. If Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party want to throw the tiny 0.3% of Albertans under the bus in the name of snatching authority over kids' bodily autonomy, then yeah I Will stoop to their level and be a dick about it because that shit is unhinged freak behavior. They keep saying trans people are out to get their kids but girl... the call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE

[demonstars]

what actually happened I'm lost

so heres the timeline of events: spreen was offered a spot in riestra, an argentinean football team, and he was registered in the local sport register (so he got one of those "member" cards for football). this was meant to be more or less a marketing strategy and for spreen to get to live the dream of participating in an actual football match; he played less than a minute in one of riestra's matches for the liga (tourney?) back in november of last year. Since then, everyone and their mother have been angry about it, the fifas/other teams because they feel like spreen is "Disrespecting" the game, and thw AFA started an investigation regarding possible speculation and bets surrounding spreen's playing, which never got anywhere. nevertheless the team and spreen were made to "apologize" to the other team for the "disrespect" of involving the match into a marketing scheme and also riestra was sanctioned with like the value of 1k tickets sold (20 million argentinean currency). and NOW the AFA made it so spreen or anyone in his position can't play anymore (allegedly because there was an irregulation with the registry and players are meant to be exercising lot more before playing the field, BULLSHIT). and they named the fucking bill anti spreen.

[rotzaprachim]

essential reading.

Opinion - There is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive. - by Peter Beinart

 And perhaps one day, when it finally becomes hideously clear that Hamas cannot free Palestinians by murdering children and Israel cannot subdue Gaza, even by razing it to the ground, those communities may become the germ of a mass movement for freedom that astonishes the world, as Black and white South Africans did decades ago. I’m confident I won’t live to see it. No gambler would stake a bet on it happening at all. But what’s the alternative, for those of us whose lives and histories are bound up with that small, ghastly, sacred place?

"In 1988, bombs exploded at restaurants, sporting events and arcades in South Africa. In response, the African National Congress, then in its 77th year of a struggle to overthrow white domination, did something remarkable: It accepted responsibility and pledged to prevent its fighters from conducting such operations in the future. Its logic was straightforward: Targeting civilians is wrong. “Our morality as revolutionaries,” the A.N.C. declared, “dictates that we respect the values underpinning the humane conduct of war.”

Historically, geographically and morally, the A.N.C. of 1988 is a universe away from the Hamas of 2023, so remote that its behavior may seem irrelevant to the horror that Hamas unleashed last weekend in southern Israel. But South Africa offers a counter-history, a glimpse into how ethical resistance works and how it can succeed. It offers not an instruction manual, but a place — in this season of agony and rage — to look for hope.

There was nothing inevitable about the A.N.C.’s policy, which, as Jeff Goodwin, a New York University sociologist, has documented, helped ensure that there was “so little terrorism in the anti-apartheid struggle.” So why didn’t the A.N.C. carry out the kind of gruesome massacres for which Hamas has become notorious? There’s no simple answer. But two factors are clear. First, the A.N.C.’s strategy for fighting apartheid was intimately linked to its vision of what should follow apartheid. It refused to terrify and traumatize white South Africans because it wasn’t trying to force them out. It was trying to win them over to a vision of a multiracial democracy.

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Second, the A.N.C. found it easier to maintain moral discipline — which required it to focus on popular, nonviolent resistance and use force only against military installations and industrial sites — because its strategy was showing signs of success. By 1988, when the A.N.C. expressed regret for killing civilians, more than 150 American universities had at least partially divested from companies doing business in South Africa, and the United States Congress had imposed sanctions on the apartheid regime. The result was a virtuous cycle: Ethical resistance elicited international support, and international support made ethical resistance easier to sustain.

In Israel today, the dynamic is almost exactly the opposite. Hamas, whose authoritarian, theocratic ideology could not be farther from the A.N.C.’s, has committed an unspeakable horror that may damage the Palestinian cause for decades to come. Yet when Palestinians resist their oppression in ethical ways — by calling for boycotts, sanctions and the application of international law — the United States and its allies work to ensure that those efforts fail, which convinces many Palestinians that ethical resistance doesn’t work, which empowers Hamas.

The savagery Hamas committed on Oct. 7 has made reversing this monstrous cycle much harder. It could take a generation. It will require a shared commitment to ending Palestinian oppression in ways that respect the infinite value of every human life. It will require Palestinians to forcefully oppose attacks on Jewish civilians, and Jews to support Palestinians when they resist oppression in humane ways — even though Palestinians and Jews who take such steps will risk making themselves pariahs among their own people. It will require new forms of political community, in Israel-Palestine and around the world, built around a democratic vision powerful enough to transcend tribal divides. The effort may fail. It has failed before. The alternative is to descend, flags waving, into hell.

As Jewish Israelis bury their dead and recite psalms for their captured, few want to hear at this moment that millions of Palestinians lack basic human rights. Neither do many Jews abroad. I understand; this attack has awakened the deepest traumas of our badly scarred people. But the truth remains: The denial of Palestinian freedom sits at the heart of this conflict, which began long before Hamas’s creation in the late 1980s.

Most of Gaza’s residents aren’t from Gaza. They’re the descendants of refugees who were expelled, or fled in fear, during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. They live in what Human Rights Watch has called an “open-air prison,” penned in by an Israeli state that — with help from Egypt — rations everything that goes in and out, from tomatoes to the travel documents children need to get lifesaving medical care. From this overcrowded cage, which the United Nations in 2017 declared “unlivable” for many residents in part because it lacks electricity and clean water, many Palestinians in Gaza can see the land that their parents and grandparents called home, though most may never step foot in it.

Palestinians in the West Bank are only slightly better off. For more than half a century, they have lived without due process, free movement, citizenship or the ability to vote for the government that controls their lives. Defenseless against an Israeli government that includes ministers openly committed to ethnic cleansing, many are being driven from their homes in what Palestinians compare to the mass expulsions of 1948. Americans and Israeli Jews have the luxury of ignoring these harsh realities. Palestinians do not. Indeed, the commander of Hamas’s military wing cited attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in justifying its barbarism last weekend.

Just as Black South Africans resisted apartheid, Palestinians resist a system that has earned the same designation from the world’s leading human rights organizations and Israel’s own. After last weekend, some critics may claim Palestinians are incapable of resisting in ethical ways. But that’s not true. In 1936, during the British mandate, Palestinians began what some consider the longest anticolonial general strike in history. In 1976, on what became known as Land Day, thousands of Palestinian citizens demonstrated against the Israeli government’s seizure of Palestinian property in Israel’s north. The first intifada against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which lasted from roughly 1987 to 1993, consisted primarily of nonviolent boycotts of Israeli goods and a refusal to pay Israeli taxes. While some Palestinians threw stones and Molotov cocktails, armed attacks were rare, even in the face of an Israeli crackdown that took more than 1,000 Palestinian lives. In 2005, 173 Palestinian civil society organizations asked “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.”

But in the United States, Palestinians received little credit for trying to follow Black South Africans’ largely nonviolent path. Instead, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s call for full equality, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return home, was widely deemed antisemitic because it conflicts with the idea of a state that favors Jews.

It is true that these nonviolent efforts sit uncomfortably alongside an ugly history of civilian massacres: the murder of 67 Jews in Hebron in 1929 by local Palestinians after Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, claimed Jews were about to seize Al Aqsa Mosque; the airplane hijackings of the late 1960s and 1970s carried out primarily by the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Yasir Arafat’s nationalist Fatah faction; the 1972 assassination of Israeli athletes in Munich carried out by the Palestinian organization Black September; and the suicide bombings of the 1990s and 2000s conducted by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, whose victims included a friend of mine in rabbinical school who I dreamed might one day officiate my wedding.

And yet it is essential to remember that some Palestinians courageously condemned this inhuman violence. In 1979, Edward Said, the famed literary critic, declared himself “horrified at the hijacking of planes, the suicidal missions, the assassinations, the bombing of schools and hotels.” Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American historian, called the suicide bombings of the second intifada “a war crime.” After Hamas’s attack last weekend, a member of the Israeli parliament, Ayman Odeh, among the most prominent leaders of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, declared, “It is absolutely forbidden to accept any attacks on the innocent.”Tragically, this vision of ethical resistance is being repudiated by some pro-Palestinian activists in the United States. In a statement last week, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which represents more than 250 Palestinian solidarity groups in North America, called Hamas’s attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” that proves that “total return and liberation to Palestine is near” and added, “from Rhodesia to South Africa to Algeria, no settler colony can hold out forever.” One of its posters featured a paraglider that some Hamas fighters used to enter Israel.

The reference to Algeria reveals the delusion underlying this celebration of abduction and murder. After eight years of hideous war, Algeria’s settlers returned to France. But there will be no Algerian solution in Israel-Palestine. Israel is too militarily powerful to be conquered. More fundamentally, Israeli Jews have no home country to which to return. They are already home.

Mr. Said understood this. “The Israeli Jew is there in the Middle East,” he advised Palestinians in 1974, “and we cannot, I might even say that we must not, pretend that he will not be there tomorrow, after the struggle is over.” The Jewish “attachment to the land,” he added, “is something we must face.” Because Mr. Said saw Israeli Jews as something other than mere colonizers, he understood the futility — as well as the immorality — of trying to terrorize them into flight.

The failure of Hamas and its American defenders to recognize that will make it much harder for Jews and Palestinians to resist together in ethical ways. Before last Saturday, it was possible, with some imagination, to envision a joint Palestinian-Jewish struggle for the mutual liberation of both peoples. There were glimmers in the protest movement against Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, through which more and more Israeli Jews grasped a connection between the denial of rights to Palestinians and the assault on their own. And there were signs in the United States, where almost 40 percent of American Jews under the age of 40 told the Jewish Electoral Institute in 2021 that they considered Israel an apartheid state. More Jews in the United States, and even Israel, were beginning to see Palestinian liberation as a form of Jewish liberation as well.

That potential alliance has now been gravely damaged. There are many Jews willing to join Palestinians in a movement to end apartheid, even if doing so alienates us from our communities, and in some cases, our families. But we will not lock arms with people who cheer the kidnapping or murder of a Jewish child.

The struggle to persuade Palestinian activists to repudiate Hamas’s crimes, affirm a vision of mutual coexistence and continue the spirit of Mr. Said and the A.N.C. will be waged inside the Palestinian camp. The role of non-Palestinians is different: to help create the conditions that allow ethical resistance to succeed.

Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.”

Israel, with America’s help, has done exactly that. It has repeatedly undermined Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through negotiations or nonviolent pressure. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and began working with Israel — albeit imperfectly — to prevent attacks on Israelis, something that revolutionary groups like the A.N.C. and the Irish Republican Army never did while their people remained under oppression. At first, as Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, has detailed, Palestinians supported cooperation with Israel because they thought it would deliver them a state. In early 1996, Palestinian support for the Oslo process reached 80 percent while support for violence against Israelis dropped to 20 percent.

The 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the failure of Israel and its American patron to stop settlement growth, however, curdled Palestinian sentiment. Many Jewish Israelis believe that Ehud Barak, who succeeded Mr. Netanyahu, offered Palestinians a generous deal in 2000. Most Palestinians, however, saw Mr. Barak’s offer as falling far short of a fully sovereign state along the 1967 lines. And their disillusionment with a peace process that allowed Israel to entrench its hold over the territory on which they hoped to build their new country ushered in the violence of the second intifada. In Mr. Shikaki’s words, “The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis.” As Palestinians abandoned hope, Hamas gained power.

After the brutal years of the second intifada, in which Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister from 2007 to 2013, worked to restore security cooperation and prevent anti-Israeli violence once again. Yet again, the strategy failed. The same Israeli leaders who applauded Mr. Fayyad undermined him in back rooms by funding the settlement growth that convinced Palestinians that security cooperation was bringing them only deepening occupation. Mr. Fayyad, in an interview with The Times’s Roger Cohen before he left office in 2013, admitted that because the “occupation regime is more entrenched,” Palestinians “question whether the P.A. can deliver. Meanwhile, Hamas gains recognition and is strengthened.”

As Palestinians lost faith that cooperation with Israel could end the occupation, many appealed to the world to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their rights. In response, both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked diligently to ensure that these nonviolent efforts fail. Since 1997, the United States has vetoed more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. This February, even as Israel’s far-right government was beginning a huge settlement expansion, the Biden administration reportedly wielded a veto threat to drastically dilute a Security Council resolution that would have condemned settlement growth.

Washington’s response to the International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate potential Israeli war crimes is equally hostile. Despite lifting sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on I.C.C. officials investigating the United States’s conduct in Afghanistan, the Biden team remains adamantly opposed to any I.C.C. investigation into Israel’s actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which was founded in 2005 as a nonviolent alternative to the murderous second intifada and which speaks in the language of human rights and international law, has been similarly stymied, including by many of the same American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction South Africa. Joe Biden, who is proud of his role in passing sanctions against South Africa, has condemned the B.D.S. movement, saying it “too often veers into antisemitism.” About 35 states — some of which once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing companies that boycott Israel. In many cases, those punishments apply even to businesses that boycott only Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians have noticed. In the words of Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian American political scientist, “Palestinians have lost faith in the efficacy of nonviolent protest as well as the possible role of the international community.” Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, cited this disillusionment during last Saturday’s attack. “In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support and international silence,” he declared, “we’ve decided to put an end to all this.”

Hamas — and no one else — bears the blame for its sadistic violence. But it can carry out such violence more easily, and with less backlash from ordinary Palestinians, because even many Palestinians who loathe the organization have lost hope that moral strategies can succeed. By treating Israel radically differently from how the United States treated South Africa in the 1980s, American politicians have made it harder for Palestinians to follow the A.N.C.’s ethical path. The Americans who claim to hate Hamas the most have empowered it again and again.

Israelis have just witnessed the greatest one-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. For Palestinians, especially in Gaza, where Israel has now ordered more than one million people in the north to leave their homes, the days to come are likely to bring dislocation and death on a scale that should haunt the conscience of the world. Never in my lifetime have the prospects for justice and peace looked more remote. Yet the work of moral rebuilding must begin. In Israel-Palestine and around the world, pockets of Palestinians and Jews, aided by people of conscience of all backgrounds, must slowly construct networks of trust based on the simple principle that the lives of both Palestinians and Jews are precious and inextricably intertwined.

Israel desperately needs a genuinely Jewish and Palestinian political party, not because it can win power but because it can model a politics based on common liberal democratic values, not tribe. American Jews who rightly hate Hamas but know, in their bones, that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is profoundly wrong must ask themselves a painful question: What nonviolent forms of Palestinian resistance to oppression will I support? More Palestinians and their supporters must express revulsion at the murder of innocent Israeli Jews and affirm that Palestinian liberation means living equally alongside them in safety and freedom.

From those reckonings, small, beloved communities can be born, and grow. And perhaps one day, when it finally becomes hideously clear that Hamas cannot free Palestinians by murdering children and Israel cannot subdue Gaza, even by razing it to the ground, those communities may become the germ of a mass movement for freedom that astonishes the world, as Black and white South Africans did decades ago. I’m confident I won’t live to see it. No gambler would stake a bet on it happening at all. But what’s the alternative, for those of us whose lives and histories are bound up with that small, ghastly, sacred place?

Like many others who care about the lives of both Palestinians and Jews, I have felt in recent days the greatest despair I have ever known. On Wednesday, a Palestinian friend sent me a note of consolation. She ended it with the words “only together.” Maybe that can be our motto.

[melinoelliones]

You and Abby were never the closest, if anything Mel made you despise the girl, so how did you end up in her bed?

MINORS DNI/AGELESS BLOGS DNI/ANTI DC DNI/18+

Kinktober 2023 Masterlist

Warnings: Fingering, cursing, praise, enemies to lovers if you squint, pussy eating, cum eating!! fem reader

1.5k words

This was so rushed, please forgive me Abby lovers, I am one of you I promise, I will do better next time!!!! I have many more Abby pieces comin.

“Well would you look at that, your underwear is soaked yet you said you hate me”? The girl chuckled, never taking her eyes off of you as you scowled. “You think you’re funny?”, “Not really, but I do think I know a girl begging for my touch when I see one”

You and Abby were never the closest to each other, you met through Manny but only really had very surface level conversations. Yet here you were, in the room they shared down to your intimates with her while Manny left to grab food, who would’ve guessed.

“You can just give in you know”, “I bet that's what you’d want” you spat, her eyebrows rising in shock as a smirk emerged on her face, “Spicy one aren’t ya, I like that, but let’s see how long it lasts huh?”.

Before you could even get a word out she was already on top of you, her knee between your legs, pressing ever so softly on your sensitive core resulting in a small moan from you. 

“Oh, you like that?” Abby teased, shifting her weight onto that knee to help soothe the ache, your eyes avoiding hers. “Oh c’mon, no need to be so shy” she cooed, your face heating up as hers moved closer.

“Who said I’m shy?” you stuttered, your cheeks heating up slightly, “hmm I don’t know, the fact that you can’t even look me in the eye says enough dontcha think?”. Abby always had that effect on you, you always tried to brush it off but yet it always came back, she made you overly nervous but you always found yourself gravitating to her, even if Mel warned you about her.

Before you could even think of a rebuttal Abby shifted back to sit on her knees, her happy trail on display as your eyes wandered her body. All she had on was a pair of boxer shorts and a sports bra but fuck she looked so good, almost effortlessly. “Like what you see?”, “Oh, shut up” you sighed sarcastically, rolling your eyes as she smoothed back her signature braid before placing herself between your thighs, her knee still wet from your underwear.

“Abby I~” “Don’t worry, I’m here” she reassured, trailing sweet kisses along your inner thighs, nibbling down on your pillowy skin as it melted at her touch. She knew it was your first time, you guys had discussed it while Manny was there, that may or may not have been the reason why he suddenly was ‘so hungry’ and ‘needed to go get everyone food’.

You felt as her kisses inched closer and closer to the source of the burning heat between your legs, your heartbeat fastening with every passing second before you felt her fingers tug at the fabric covering you. “Let's take these off, is that okay?” she asked, wanting to make sure you were still up to this. 

She observed you hesitate slightly before nodding, it wasn't as if you didn’t want this, it was actually quite the opposite but the nerves were still there. “Just like that?” she smiled sincerely, entangling damp thin fabric around her fingers, sliding them off to reveal the sopping messing before her, it almost glistening as she took a breath.

“Fuuck, well would you look at that” she groaned, shaking the smirk off her face as she dived right in, coating your slick folds in her saliva before placing her soft lips around your clit, the warmth from them sending the softest of shivers down your body. 

Abby lapped her tongue around your throbbing bud, sucking on it every so often as to never neglect it, “I~It feels so good” you moaned, earning yourself a chuckle from her against your skin. “Oh I bet it does” she grumbled against you, pulling away to look at your heated face.

“You’re basically dripping” the girl grinned, using her forefingers to part your lips as she took in the sight of your precum leak out from you, her eyebrows furrowing in desire as she took in the sight before her. She wanted nothing more than to absolutely devour you whole, tongue fuck you till your body had nothing else to give, but maybe not for your first time.

“I’ll take it slow okay?” she glowed, slipping a single digit into you with no effort, your body taking her so well. She took her time with you, slowly gliding it in and out of you, “Abby please” you whined wanting more.

“Please what? C’mon you got it, tell me what you want” she looked up at you, she wanted to hear you say it, say how much you want her to fuck you with more fingers, one was never enough was it. “I can’t help you if you don’t”. 

Swallowing your pride you spoke up, “P~Please, Abby I need more”, “as you wish princess” she teased, wasting no time in sliding another finger in, bringing another whine from you to the surface, turning her on even more. She loved the sound of your needy voice asking her for anything, she knew that took a lot.

Your body attempted to toss and turn as while filled you with her fingers, she was knuckles deep as her tips grazed your sweet spot. Holding your hips with her spare hand you cried, “Abby I’m so c~cl” “hang on for me” she cut you off, not wanting you to cum like this.

“What are yo~ fuuuck fuck” you mewled, rolling your head back into the pillow as she latched herself back onto your swollen clit, flicking the tip of her tongue against it before suckling on it. The girl was almost as heated as you at this point, her eyes half lidded while taking care of you.

Abby chuckled to herself as she felt your hands against her head, pulling her into you as close as you could, at this point you were desperate for her to help you reach the end. “Aha, easy tiger” she growled, the vibrations of her words helping you edge closer and closer.

Your body was at its limit, your hips rolling against the girls fingers as she fastened the pace of her fingers, practically pounding at your sweet spot as you choked out pure curses and whimpers, “go on, I know you wanna” she murmured between breaths, knowing exactly what you needed.

As if on cue you came, the burn in your stomach cooling itself off little by little as you painted her fingers white with your release. “Atta girl” she praised you, slowing down the pace of her fingers just enough to let you ride out your orgasm, also not wanting to let any of your arousal seep out.

Abby rose to her knees as she watched your body relaxed below her, your eyes full of nothing but lust and high as they met hers, you were just perfect. “Well would you look at that”, she announced, burrowing her digits in your sensitive cunt one last time to catch every last drop of you, rising them up to show you before sucking you off them. She was now hooked on the taste of you, even if it was the first time, not that you’d want any other conclusion of course. 

As you attempted to sit up your thighs trembled, knocking you back down sharply. “Easy there, I got you” she cooed, helping you back against the headboard whilst settling beside you, pulling the covers over the both of you as you thanked her.

“I think it’s only right that you get a taste too” Abby smirked, pulling your face towards her till your lips met. With your pride already down the drain you took the first move, slipping your tongue into hers, she was not expecting for you to take that leap. A moan from you rolled into her mouth whilst as she deepened the kiss, not wanting to let you to have all the fun, the flavour of you coming from her mouth sending you into overdrive.

As the kiss started to heaten up you both jumped, the noise of the door unlocking snapping the two of you out of the trance, a trail of saliva still connecting you to as she pulled back. Shouting emerged as you heard the door open and close, “Aye sorry I took so long, I couldn’t cut in line this tim~” Manny cut himself off, his eyes darting straight to the soiled underwear on the floor, then to the both of you huddled under Abby’s sheets.

“Am I interrupting somethin~” “no you’re fine we were just er, chilling” the girl protested however Manny was no idiot, “right….. Well, foods on the counter” he laughed, backing away to the kitchen. “Just to let you know, you’re a bad fuckin liar” he jested, plopping himself on his bed with no care in the world.

Abby had no intention of letting him get in the way of what you guys were doing, the curtain on her bedframe had more than one use and she intended to show you, the night was only just beginning.

[communist-ojou-sama]

I can't wrap my head around the impulse to send you apologia about this so called "anti-gacha" stuff when you've made a clear and reasonable stance.

Particularly given these folks are likely in the US where sports gambling apps have absolutely blitzed most of the country, and forced major broadcasters including controversy-averse Disney to lend the ESPN branding to a gambling platform and every major sports league to rewrite their old blanket bans on player sports betting after they hopped in bed with Draft Kings and Fan Duel.

Gacha-games aren't free of sin I suppose, and maybe I'm wrong about where these anons live, but to single gachas out in the current environment as a key driver or even a major concern as opposed to state-run lotteries or the fact most problem gambling orgs are funded by a share of gambling revenues really indicates a preoccupation with something other than gambling as a whole.

Thank u! Yeah it seems to me that gambling is becoming more ubiquitous everywhere with traditional schemes for cash circulation throughout the economy failing but the only time people feel comfortable mobilizing shame, specifically, is when it comes to popular east Asian mobile games. It certainly doesn't feel like an attitude motivated by genuine concern to me...

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jess Piper at The View from Rural Missouri:

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the national average maternal mortality rate is 22 deaths per 100,000 live births. Missouri’s average maternal mortality rate is about 10 times higher. In 2020, 85 Missouri mothers died. Related: We had a lot riding on Amendment 3 in Missouri. It was our attempt to overturn Missouri’s cruel abortion ban. I am a woman and I have daughters and granddaughters. I also believe that every person should have the right to make decisions about their own body. We all deserve bodily autonomy.

I helped with the work and hoped for the best. Missouri was the first state in the nation to completely ban abortion after Roe fell. Our AG at the time, Eric Schmitt, couldn’t get in front of cameras quick enough to sign away the rights and the bodies of Missouri women and girls. The abortion ban had no exceptions for rape or incest — it claimed to have an exemption for “the life of the mother” but you and I know that exemption doesn’t work. Candi Miller, Amber Thurman, Josseli Barnica, and Nevaeh Crain prove that “life of the mother” exemptions are worthless. These women died because they were denied the care they needed. Some of these women lingered in anguish and pain while left for dead…in a hospital where they could be treated. They were denied abortion care. Legal care that has saved the lives of countless women since 1973.

We had to gather 180K signatures to put abortion on the ballot. We gathered over 380K signatures. It was on the ballot in November and it won. Missouri women and allies fought and won back bodily autonomy. We won! Can you guess what happened next? The Missouri GOP immediately vowed to overturn the will of the people as soon as they come back into session in a few weeks. Crazy right? They must not understand how constituent-led ballot initiatives work. You can’t just undo what the people have done…right? Right? Wrong. Let me take you for a little walk down memory lane in Missouri politics. If you’ve read my essays for a while, you know that Missouri has had a GOP supermajority for 22 years. Over two decades. You might also remember me saying that Missourians haven’t elected a Democrat to a statewide position since 2018.

However, in that same time period, 2018-2024, we expanded Medicaid and passed an anti-gerrymandering initiative called “Clean Missouri.” We voted down Right to Work. We passed both medicinal and recreational weed. Missourians voted for a higher minimum wage and guaranteed sick leave. We legalized sports betting. We legalized abortion. And then we elected a Republican Governor and a GOP supermajority into the House and Senate who plan to unravel the initiatives we voted for. What in the actual hell are we doing? Why are Missourians voting for progressive initiatives and then voting for those who will not honor their vote? What is going on? A lot. I have a difficult time explaining it myself and I live in the belly of the beast. Rural Missouri.

[...] Mary Elizabeth Coleman also said she would do everything in her power to ensure Missourians have “another chance” to vote on abortion. Another chance to vote on what we just voted on? What does she mean? She means that Republican lawmakers in Missouri have already pre-filed bills to overturn the will of voters. Just like they did with Clean Missouri. Republicans won in that instance and Clean Missouri, our anti-gerrymandering initiative, was overturned. That is the same way they plan to overturn the abortion amendment we just passed. Missouri citizens must gather thousands of signatures to put an initiative on the ballot. Lawmakers do not have to collect even one signature to oppose a constitutional amendment and put it back in front of voters. But, here’s the absolute dirty truth: lawmakers can trick voters by using inflammatory rhetoric or by using “ballot candy.”

[...] They won’t stop even when we force their hand. They won’t stop even when we take it to the ballot and win. They will never stop eroding our rights and our vote. The best thing we can do now is alert everyone we know about what the Republicans have planned for the abortion amendment. Talk to your neighbors and friends and relatives. Overturning the will of the people? It’s baked in here. It’s a red state tradition.

Jess Piper is on fire with her calling out the Republican obsession of overturning the will of the people, such as the Missouri GOP brazenly trying to overrule the will of the voters who voted for abortion rights-protecting Amendment 3.

[tendie-defender]

These are semi automatic "assault rifles" although the term is made up, this is what the left wants to take. I actually don't care what you call them, at all, as long as you don't call them "modern sporting rifles". That term is a pathetic attempt at the gun movement trying to placate the left.

I dont own these rifles for sport, I don't hunt with either of these rifles although I could. All 3 of these rifles are owned because they're effective against two legged predators at varying distances. I own these rifles incase someone or a group of people intend to kill me or my loved ones. These rifles are owned specifically to defend myself against humans.

Let's not mince words.

Every attempt at banning them only makes me buy more and more. No legislation will make me give them to you, no tragedy will ever make me anti gun. Each shooting I see in the news makes me want to buy more and train harder to be more effective against the evil in this world.

These guns don't make me a psychopathic killer. I'm not a violent person but I'm also not an idiot who believes the world is a safe place. As the world gets increasingly more dangerous look for better and better tools to defend myself and my family. As the government gets more corrupt and the economy crashes I hedge my bets with effective self defense tools and the skillset to effectively deploy them.

My guns aren't a threat to anyone that isn't trying to kill me. So you can cry, you can protest and you can even legislate, these are mine and you'll never get them. They're absolutely no danger to you unless you're someone who means me harm and tries to kill me.

How many people need to die before I turn in my guns? There isn't an amount. What do my guns have to do with shooting rates in this country? Do you advocate chopping off your penis to help prevent others from raping?

Tweet and post away, vote away, protest and cry.

They're still mine.

[dogsredarchive]

Russo-Japanese War - Japan 2011 Earthquake

The war in Golden Kamuy, specifically the battles of 203 Meter Hill and the Battle of Mukden, takes place chronologically before the first chapter and is used in many character flashbacks to build character backstories. This makes those two events 3D in terms of how many characters we can see the perspectives of. The war is essential in creating the anti-war theme of the manga.

I think it's very possible that the 2011 Earthquake could be used the same way. I think Yataro Gonohe being the first we truly see the perspective of, should build a foundational theme of moving on after losing what feels like everything. I think his line, "Does the world even need ice hockey," is at the very center of this theme. In the wake of a disaster, your passions take the second stage. But those skills gained from the sport can help in disaster situations, as we see Yataro saving his grandmother's life by carrying her to safety.

For us non-Japanese readers we don't notice how telling it is that Tomakomai is not mentioned, even though that is where the story is primarily located. What is interesting is that the largest tsunami wave hit Hakodate in the middle of the night, which is between Hachinohe City (Where Yataro was on the day of the earthquake) and Tomakomai. I think it's very likely that other school rivals like Sameoh High and hockey teams in Hakodate will have characters explored using the earthquake as something all the characters in the series are connected to.

The fact that Rou, Haruna, and the team members of Oino-Kami do not show up at all during the Earthquake is something temporary. We see very little of the war in Golden Kamuy at the beginning, but as more characters are introduced and their roles become more prominent, we see more and more of the Battle of 203 Meter Hill and Mukden. We also learn more about the main character, Sugimoto, as we can see a glimpse of his final moments with Toraji. The earthquake has to come up again. ESPECIALLY if Oino-Kami wins the next championship, I can for sure bet on the fact that if they do, a theme of "did they actually win through merit" will be brought up as their rival schools were damaged in the earthquake and tsunami. The characters may not even feel like they deserve the win.

[princess-of-the-corner]

I think Shoto’s Scar Theories would probably be (in order of most believable to least believable):

Quirk Accident - Shoto’s, like, 6 or something when this happens. Within a year of Quirk Manifestation is probably when the most personal Quirk related injuries happen to kids. When they are still figuring out control. Plus, in CC, depending On how popular Toya is, the public might know about his issues with his Quirk, and draw conclusions from that. This theory is the most widely accepted.

Quirk Accident (Roughhousing) - Those who believe Shoto’s scar was caused by one of his siblings, but again, most think it was an accident.

Villain - No one heard anything about a major villain attack on Endeavour’s family, but if it involved injuring a kid (and possibly the guy’s wife?) it makes sense they wouldn’t want to publicize this. At least one person tried to start a public betting ring on which villain gave Shoto his scar. This was regarded widely as in poor taste, and said person was buried in lawsuits.

Rei - at least a few people somewhat correctly guess Rei gave Shoto his scar, connecting the time of his injury to her hospitalization. Reactions range, but only one reporter was stupid enough to ask Enji, to his face, if this was true. That interview never made it to air (the reporter likely didn’t either).

Endeavour - really only popular among those with hardcore anti-hero sentiment, like Stain followers. Most dismiss this immediately, because Endeavour is a Hero, and there’s NO WAY a Hero could be a child abuser! Rarely escapes its specific corners of the internet.

Then, of course, the Crack Theories:

It’s just makeup

He has a terrible skin infection

Its actually a Tattoo

Shoto was just Born With It (ignore all photographic evidence otherwise)

He did it on purpose so he would look cool

What Scar?

-

Yeah exactly like!

I think the ‘they got attacked by some villain’ thing would be the most popular theory given Rei’s mental health issues. Like the public doesn’t know about the larger aspect of what’s going on with Rei’s mental health so there’s this assumption that it was a new thing rather than a slow decline.

And sure. She could have intense guilt blaming herself for something accidental. Whether it be just general ‘my baby got hurt’ parental guilt, the ‘I looked away for five minutes and something went wrong’ guilt, or even something like the tea kettle but more genuinely accidental, that could bring guilt. But enough for a full mental hospital check in? Especially as time goes on and she stays there?

But trauma from some villain attacking her and her kid(s)? That’s the sort of thing where someone would need to be in a mental health facility for a while. So yeah I think this is probably the assumption.

other notes:

the public knowledge on the kids’ Quirks is somewhat spotty. Again, while the kids haven’t avoided the media entirely, they’re pretty low-key. So while there may be some information about their Quirks, they don’t know all the details. I think at most they’d know what Element the kids can create, but not much else (ie: they know Toya can make Fire, but not that he got Ice Resistance instead of Fireproofing)

Some of this gets more known later down the line(in CC at least) when Toya and then later Shoto make it to high school and start showing off their own skills and drawbacks. Fuyumi and Natsuo get a lot less attention, though both did participate in UA’s Sports Festivals during their time so there’s at least confirmation about them using Ice.

So yeah that might not fully factor into everyone’s perceptions at first.

[shieldedbythunder]

conor bb! paris 2024 olympics are coming soon so imagine a thundershield au where steve and thor are popular olympic athletes for their respective nations (usa for steve and maybe one of the nordic countries for thor). not sure what athletic discipline they'd both be fit to compete against for the gold, but i'm thinking something that really shows off their perfect bodies like swimming, wrestling, weightlifting, or gymnastics.

YESSSS, I always enjoy athlete AUs for these two!!

For Steve, I LOVE to think of him in gymnastics - the perfect sport for being ripped and bendy. I mean

Look at him.

But with both him and Thor to consider, I think wrestling would be the best bet for them to compete in, especially with all that close body contact 😏. There'd be an instant spark watching each other train - Steve starts blushing thinking about Thor pinning him down, and Thor's eyeing Steve's ass without an ounce of subtlety, giving a cocky little smirk every time he's caught staring.

Not that Steve can't give as good as he gets. Thar night, Thor gets a couple of pics in his DMs of an ass to die for, perfectly framed in a jockstrap, with Steve saying they'll be a fair consolation prize for when he gets the gold. In response, Thor sends a POV picture of his body and the hefty tent beneath his bedsheets, grinning when Steve sends a pic of his jockstrap on the floor. They go on texting and sending increasingly risque photos for another hour or two before Steve finally invites Thor up to his room. To "exhange tips", as he later tells an icy looking Coach Fury with a perfectly innocent look.

The supposed anti-sex beds turn out not to be a problem - not when they have the table, the window-sill, the kitchen counter, the shower, the walls, and of course, the floor, where they have all kinds of fun applying their wrestling holds in a new context 😈

It's a close match when they finally get around to their final match. Even though they're both laser-focused on winning, they still wish each other the best, sharing a last little smile as they wait poised to begin wrestling. In the end, Steve just edges Thor out for the gold, but Thor's absolutely delighted for him and is still proud to get the silver. Besides, he's already got Steve's number and a visit to the states lined up to help improve his technique for their rematch 😉. The pics of them hugging after their match quickly go viral, with people already speculating about new sporting power couple, but for now, Steve and Thor are happy just kicking back in a hot tub with a glass of champagne, savouring their victories and their new relationship.

[jiminy-crickets]

"fandual sports network"........ now listen I know we are ALL anti sports gambling, but fucking hell "fan dual sports network" seems particularly insidious, like... yeah its "just" bally renamed, but yappers are disseminating information, about team performance, injury status, trends, etc... information that people who are sports gambling use to decide what they are putting money on, and how much and.... i think a sports gambling company having any amount of sway over the contents of programming (the kind of sway that you get by ya know... holding naming rights) can only lead to bad things.

yes today it's just the naming rights to the network, but how long until they control what the talking heads can and can't talk about to try and obscure facts from gamblers who would use it to educate their bets?

and WHILE I'M AT IT, i really hate whatever the hell biz nasty is doing over on TNT where he like publicizes "his" bets (which are fucking absurd) as like... entertainment?? like HUH??????