#anti-centrist anti-contact

[way2manyusernamez]

i hate those posts that are like "regardless of contact stance you should support and love all fellow paraphiles because antis want us ALL dead. [you should get along with people who have a different contact stance from you.]"

on one hand, yes i am pro paraphilia. i don't think attractions by themselves are dangerous. i don't think people should die for their attractions.

but on the other, i don't like pro-c's, i am not tolerant of them, i do not see them as my allies, i don't like that the radqueer/para community has so many of them and i don't like people that are neutral about it. so no, i do not Love and Support pro-c paraphiles.

my impression: these "let's all get along" posts are usually just a neutral or pro contact person trying to get anti-c's to shut up and stop pointing out that actually, maybe we should not accept pro-abuse people into our communities.

[kabillieu]

So far almost all my neighbors are a compete mystery. I've never seen the neighbors directly to the right of us. Our across the street neighbors are maybe a middle-aged lesbian couple? But that's just a guess. We see them doing yard work sometimes. We briefly met our next-door neighbor to our left on move-in day. People are just not outside very much here because it's hot and buggy.

And then there's Jon Lee. She came over right away after we moved in to introduce herself and give us her contact information. Jon Lee is your stereotypical stylish Southern grandma. Makeup on point, wears tunics and leggings, aggressively friendly. She is also aggressively clear about her politics: she is a Democrat and she HATES Tr*mp lol. Hates him. She wears a lanyard with a pin on it that has a cross-out sign over his name. She has multiple anti-Tr*mp signs in her yard. It takes an astounding level of bravery to be loudly liberal (and Jon Lee is almost certainly centrist in her politics, but still my point stands) in this town, in this state. Like, I am not willing to put up election signs this year because I'm not trying to draw attention to my already-mixed race family in the heart of red state country, at least not right now. I guess this makes me a coward.

But Jon Lee is not a coward. Jon Lee has got to be in her 70s, and she is still cutting her own lawn with a push mower. Jon Lee puts seasonally appropriate decorations on the sign that marks our neighborhood. On September first, Jon Lee changed out her summer mailbox for one with autumn leaves on it. And yesterday, Jon Lee put another sign on her front yard. It reads simply "How many more?"

And though this is the first time I've seen her use this sign, I know it's not the first time she's used it. I know that every time there's another highly publicized shooting, Jon Lee has got just the sign for it.

[deathcrushedcorpse]

‧˚꒰🪦꒱༘⋆ ABOUT ME.

. 𖦹˙— my name is DEAD or BUCKSHOT.

𓃦 20 years old. . . it-he prnsᶻ �� 𐰁

+†+ ᥫ᭡ 11-20-21 // MARRIED & MONOGAMOUS.

🪦🐾 you can read my carrd here to skip the extended portion of this post.

𐁔 prof. DX’d w . . . [HC-]DID, social & separation anxiety, chronic depression, autism, paranoid schizophrenia, BPD, DPD, traits of NPD, + a few genuine phobias. these can and will effect how i interact with others. please keep this in mind.

⚰️🪳 . . . i am extremely reactive and unsocialized. i am extremely asocial due to trauma and mental illness, and i am not seeking out relationships of any form with anyone. if we begin to socialize, please be patient with me and understand that i may take hours- if not days- to respond. i do not allow tone tags to be used on me and i do not use tone tags without being asked. if you need them, just ask. i cannot read your mind.

⚰️🫀 . . . despite being a member of a system, i am the only one who will be posting to this blog. for this reason, i may go inactive for extremely long periods of time. if we have developed a friendship, another member of our system will inform you i have left front if needed. the system as a whole has a primary blog, and will give it out upon request.

;; 🐾🪦 BYF.

🐾⚰️ . . . this blog will be used to infodump, discuss, and reblog about my hyperfixations and special interests. these include- and are not limited to- Mayhem, Boyfriend to Death, the history of autopsies and mortuaries, human anatomy, gore, the history of snuff films and the myths behind them, DSBM as a whole, and many more. i also cosplay and may post photos from time to time. i will not place trigger warnings on individual posts, as my interests are grotesque and reading this should be your warning. i am blunt and monotonous in my tone, even through text. i do not like animals and would prefer not to be spoken to about and/or shown them.

;; 🫀🪦 DNI.

⛓️‍💥⚰️ . . . typical DNI criteria, TERF / SWERF, centrist / right leaning / right wing by any means, involved in ship discourse (i do not fucking care), ddlg / varients, MAPs / pedos / zoos (anti AND pro contact, go fuck yourselves), proana / thinspo / fatspo / etc, believe in “endogenic” systems / being a system “without trauma” (go fuck yourself) . . .

🪓⚰️ . . . while i will not be posting explicitly sexual content, i do prefer that you be 18+ in order to interact with my blog. i am a grown adult and will not censor myself for anyone’s comfort. i also do not believe that minors should have access to any form of actual gore and do not feel comfortable discussing such topics around minors . . .

🩸⚰️ . . . do not flirt with me in any way. i am happily taken by my three partners in our husband system, and we are collectively married to our husband system. we do not date outside of our husband system and have zero interest in anyone outside of our husband system. we are completely and utterly devoted to him and him only. i will get extremely aggressive if you break this boundary in any way. respect this or accept your consequences . . .

[taylortruther]

This isn't about gender politics but it's somewhat about politics (?) you can absolutely ignore this if you want btw. I'm not from the US but this whole Brittany thing made me wonder, do people in the US actually cut their friends off if they don't align with their views on politics or is this just like an internet thing? Don't get me wrong I know all about Trump and wouldn't support him either, but we got our own share of awful politicians in my country (way worse I'm afraid) and unless someone's a full on bigot or just a complete asshole about it, we don't really cut people off. If they can have an objective and calm conversation with me about it then we're good. Obviously my closest friends have similar political views as me, but I don't think I've ever cut someone off because they showed their support through an instagram like (?). I don't know anything about Brittany though so this isn't about her specifically, she could be the devil I just wouldn't know, but it's not like she's out there with a maga hat campaigning with him (which is where I would definitely draw a line). I'm asking just in general. The whole discourse made it seem like agree to disagree just isn't on the table which like fair but it made me curious.

i'd say the vast majority of people don't cut out family or very close loved ones, and it's a very typical american experience to avoid talking about politics at the dinner table, or at work, or whatever, so you can maintain relationships. but i will say trump has been an extremely polarizing figure - trump and vaccines have been huge issues that have really affected A LOT of people's personal relationships over time. like it's become way way way more common to hear stories about couples divorcing or breaking up, or people limiting contact with parents, specifically because of political differences or vaccine differences.

i feel really lucky that my parents are democrats and understand the political climate, because i haven't had to make the choice to cut them off or limit my interactions with them. and for issues we agree on, we don't fight, we can discuss and i can usually change their minds lmao.

personally, i wouldn't want to be publicly associated with a trump supporter, but it's not super unusual that taylor has republicans in her circle. i think most people do unless they are ardent liberals or leftists. i have the ability to pick those people out of my life, for the most part! i think the closest situation i'm in is a friend whose bf/soon to be fiance is a republican, but he's at least anti-trump. she's my most centrist/apolitical friend, so it's not entirely unsurprising.

[beardedmrbean]

It wasn't the usual end to a day out walking in the countryside.

On Thursday, journalist Riham Alkousaa was on a hiking holiday, walking with a group through the mountainous wooded region of Saxon Switzerland, in the eastern German state of Saxony.

But when she got back to her hostel, she found that police officers were waiting for them.

Someone had called the police, saying that "a group of foreigners" had been spotted.

The caller reported them as migrants who were supposedly trying to cross the border from nearby Czechia illegally.

But Ms Alkousaa was out walking with a registered German hiking club whose members are mostly Syrians living in Germany.

She is an award-winning journalist who works for Reuters. Originally from Syria, she is a German citizen, who graduated from Columbia University in New York. For the past 10 years she has worked for many German and American publications.

The Syrians she was hiking with all work or study in Germany legally.

Saxony police told the BBC that a German citizen contacted regional police on Germany's emergency number 110, having spotted the hiking group near the border, and suspecting that the group might be being smuggled across the border.

Regional police then passed on the information to the federal police force who sent officers to the region to patrol, where they found the hikers.

Having checked the hiking group's documents which proved the whole group was in Germany legally, police said they ended the operation.

Ms Alkousaa's post about the incident on X, formerly known as Twitter, has provoked a storm of reaction on social media.

Police said Ms Alkousaa had not contacted them directly and no complaint has been lodged.

Many of the reactions to the post express support for her, but some of the comments are racist. Others approve of the police's response.

The incident points to growing concerns in Germany about whether minorities are welcome in areas where the anti-migrant far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is surging.

Saxon Switzerland is one of Germany's most beautiful regions. Its spectacular mountainous terrain is portrayed in the works of 18th and 19th century Romantic painters, such as Caspar David Friedrich. The landscape has a special place in German culture and is popular with tourists.

But the state of Saxony is also a place where the far-right does well in elections.

In polls the AfD is either the most popular party, with around a third of the votes, or neck-and-neck with the incumbent conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Next year three German regions, including Saxony, will elect new regional parliaments. At the moment it's unlikely that the AfD will get into power because no other party will form a coalition with it.

But if the far-right wins the most votes, it could make it impossible for mainstream parties to form a stable governing coalition.

Over the past few months Germany has been embroiled in a ferocious debate about rising numbers of asylum seekers. So far this year around 290,000 people have applied for asylum, which is more than in 2022.

The numbers are much lower than in 2015 and 2016, when 1.5 million migrants and refugees came to Germany.

But some local councils are struggling logistically because the current influx comes on top of large numbers of Ukrainians. Germany has taken in 1.5 million Ukrainians since Russia's full invasion last year.

The increasingly fractious mood over migration is a boon for the AfD, which is fiercely anti-migrant.

Over the past decade its rhetoric has morphed from anti-euro populism to nativist far-right radicalism. Nationally the AfD typically polls over 20%, second only to the opposition conservatives.

Conservative politicians have also been adding pressure on the government. Angela Merkel's centrist so-called Willkommenskultur, or welcome culture, appears to have vanished from the debate. The new conservative leader Friedrich Merz is more hard-line with his rhetoric and is pushing the government to toughen up borders.

As a result, chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-leaning coalition has introduced spot checks on eastern borders with Poland and Czechia, where some migrants cross into Germany.

Officials say the aim is to target people smugglers. But critics suspect that when they are faced with the rise of the AfD, the move is more about cosmetic political action in the run-up to key elections across eastern Germany next year.

As Germany struggles with labour shortages in many sectors, local business leaders regularly express concern that the rise of the AfD may be harming eastern Germany's economic prospects.

They fear that potential workers from abroad might be reluctant to work in regions where the far-right is popular. Judging from reactions to Riham Alkousaa's experience, some international tourists may be put off too.

[dungeonbf]

today has been busy for me but i did see ur response post let me tell u.. i am obsessed!!! AUTHRIGHT WRITING POETRY EUGHH i bet he like hands it over shyly, hesitantly, not making eye contact while he’s rambling about how stupid and weak poetry is & he’s all “I don’t know what came over me, it must’ve been ancap or anacc or one of those queers” & chrislib is like reading it and they smile and authright quiets bc he’s like ‘… does he like it?? does he DISlike it? oh my god???’ and chrislib goes “i dunno. i think it’s sweet.. and, i like the way you write, how you describe your feelings. ^_^” and authright is like “…is that so?….” btw chrislib is keeping the poetry he kind of slips it into his pocket & keeps it lol.

i also love that he wld listen bc I TALK when it comes to like things I love.. like i cld talk for hours tbh.. and if he laid in my lap as I talked i wld be so joyous. I wld pet his hair & caress him.

ALSO U AND ANTI CENTRISM ARE SO CUTE OH MY GOD literally ok. might just be me i’m a sucker for that sort of trope *falls on the floor* but it’s sooo cute & deep & … idk. it’s insane. & it’s like yes you two have friends but it’s rlly u & jrem (?) against the world.. & it’s not a sad thing, it’s a nice comforting thing.

— @boykujou

@boykujou HIII CLEO!!! yesyes, in contrast to what i said earlier, i think he’s actually pretty good at writing. since he’s so un-expressive about his feelings out loud, he uses writing as a way of expressing himself without actually having to speak it into existence. we love a repressed king. anyways, i’m picturing him spending countless hours writing and then re-writing to make the perfect poem for you. i feel like, at first, it’d be very rough and blunt — the last line of the poem simply being “i like you.” but he gets more and more expressive with each draft.

ughhh i’m just a sucker for blueman expressing his feelings through writing, i think he’s a romantic at heart. i feel like he really tried hard to get the “traditional” romance, a girl and a guy, (preferably in the 40s) but it never felt right to him. it always felt like it was missing something (because he’s closeted and in denial of his orientation) — anyways, my point is, i think chrislib is really his saving grace and allows him to be more expressive and open and actually, y’know, come to terms with his sexuality.

AND YES YOU GET IT. YOU GET THE VISION. me and jrem against the world fr. i think we’d butt heads cuz an-acc is incredibly anti-totalitarian and, as the leader of the anti-centrist movement, anti-centrism works with tankies and other totalitarian sects. basically this is my vision

an-acc: so you’re working with the tankies… okay so you’ve literally never ever cared about me ever, you want me DEAD 😞

do you get the vision. qui’s so dramatic (just like me fr) and insane but anti-centrism puts up with it because no one gets jrem like an-acc does yk??

[way2manyusernamez]

i would love to contribute to a wiki about paras/transIDs again, but i just don't want to be on one that welcomes pro-c's.

unfortunately i don't know of any wikis that accept paras/transIDs AND are seriously anti-contact.

i guess wikis feel this need to be Neutral about things. but if you run a wiki that's neutral about contact discourse, you're just going to have a wiki full of pro-contacts gaining power & people getting pro-contactism normalized to them. because the strongly-anti-contacts will generally Leave.

also a lot of wikis in my experience are just straight up run by pro-contacts.

[mallowstep]

Not sure if I’m sending this in the right place but, as someone who identifies as “centrist” in this whole anti pro thing (I don’t like either side, harassment and overzealous hatred over fictional characters bordering on obsession is unhealthy and definitely really harmful to minors in those spaces but a majority of proship shit I’ve come in contact with during my attempts to kinda figure myself out were also very black and white when it came to arguments over fictional depictions of certain topics, consumption of media and honestly at times reminded me of the fandom culture I was groomed in) I agree with you the most and genuinely enjoy a lot of what you write, and it’s refreshing to see someone else who has similar opinions and ways of handling these topics in their works with a nuance that people lack when looking at any of this stuff which infuriates me. I’d send this off anon but I do kind of fear backlash from outing my stance on this stuff — this whole controversy is dumb, I do wish people who could handle your approach on dark subjects gave your writing more of a chance, your mosspelt story was a very well put together piece on grooming and it’s effects while not being too graphic and focusing on an emotional journey and i really loved it, I wish people in general could use more nuance when looking at fiction and interactions with said fiction because these black and white arguments get us nowhere

[this ask was initially sent jan 31]

thank you so much for this ask.

(cw: i do not discuss any details of what certain fics contain, but i do discuss that i have written fics dealing with various kinds of abuse with some being graphic.)

the mosspelt piece is one of my proudest works, and i think it definitely...goes down the easiest? (in contrast with, say, no one held me to the flame, a concept i didn't expect any amount of support for or engagement with.)

i would like to take this moment to remind everyone that you don't have to engage with everything i write, just in case anyone needs to hear that today. if something is upsetting to you, don't read it. love to everyone.

anyway. as someone whose stance is tax paying adult/whatever is funniest/whatever people have decided today, i don't really like to acknowledge shipcourse. i've got friends who bear both labels, and they both agree with me. so. i think that pretty accurately describes how nonsensical this whole thing is, that two people on supposedly opposite sides can have the same opinions.

i was talking with one of my friends who has the same stance as me (altho, if forced to label ourselves, we would pick differently), and we were talking about how it ultimately comes down to how do we actually stop harm.

banning topics from ao3 doesn't stop harm. things will happen no matter what. you don't have to like it, but that's the reality. (for a tangible example of this happening, look into how FOSTA/SESTA made it harder for law enforcement to do their jobs.)

as some of y'all know, i was most engaged in this discourse when i was at a deep low point. (or high point, as it were, seeing as i was trending towards mania.) it's been a while since i've spoken on it because i needed a good long time out.

ultimately, characters on a screen or in a book do not matter and cannot be harmed. real people can. what matters to me is therefore the normalization of abuse.

a talking point that continues to bother me is the idea that just acknowledging something exists and happens is normalizing abuse. i think anyone who's read some of my fics can agree with that. i think if you read no one held me to the flame and manage to get off to it, or otherwise think it's normalizing abuse, then i'm a much worse writer than i thought. (i name nohmttf specifically because it goes as far as deliberately depicting the acts.)

i don't know where i'm going with this, just...it's all pretty senseless. if the super dark stuff like nohmttf isn't your cup of tea, i don't want you to read it. i want you to enjoy your time reading my fics.

[sceneshepherd]

Hello, my name is Ghost. I am 22 yrs old & my prns are he/it/ey.

My DNI, nonhuman identities & about me are after the cut.

☆○◦˚⭒IDENTITIES🐺

⛦german shepherd unusually large, long ears and muzzle, large paws, medium length tail. slightly shaggy short fur. undead, possibly a reanimated corpse or simply a spirit. similar to a church grim. loner, skittish and nonconfrontational. avoids contact with other beings. resides within a forest bordering an old cemetery, usually manifests after dark. ⛦mackenzie river wolf very large, gray with black tipped fur and a frosted face. ⛦canid and crocodilian cladotherian ⛦black cat, crow/raven ⛦werewolf usually all black fur, sometimes gray. ⛦vampire ⛦zombie ⛦ghost ⛦night elf

⋮⤳my main blog is @stapleworm where i follow and interact with people <3

⋮⤳i am autistic and bipolar with psychotic features and i am a witch. i am a spiritual, delusional & psychological therian & otherkin. i try to keep this page sfw but do be warned i dont always check my sources or the pages i reblog from, and i do apologize for the inconvenience, but keep that in mind. this blog is almost 'therapeutic' for me and i dont care if i get any followers, so yeah lol.

⋮⤳DNI: NSFW, d//d//l//g, terfs, transphobes, lgbtphobes, racists, anti-blm, bluelivesmatter, conservative, centrist, pro-life, christian, misogynists, anti-feminists, cishet men, n*zis, anti-semitics, classists, anti-therian, cringe culture, anti-kin, anti-mogai, anti-neopronouns, gatekeepers, elitists, anti-harm reduction, etc, anything shitty. dont fucking talk to me at all if u agree w any of these things in any capacity.

⋮⤳DONT TALK TO ME IF YOU ARE UNDER 17. I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS. further, if you post heavy politics regularly i probably won't be following you, as i try to limit my exposure to it (it is a huge energy drainer and makes me really depressed!!)

⋮⤳and finally, IF U POST NSFW DONT INTERACT WITH ME. I DONT WANT TO BE EXPOSED TO THAT SHIT UNWILLINGLY, SERIOUSLY.

[antoine-roquentin]

The second fall of Richmond was hardly kinder to the Confederate president. In June of last year, Davis’s eight-foot bronze likeness, which had presided over the city’s Monument Avenue for more than a century, was torn from its pedestal and dumped into the street—his face nullified with black paint, his overcoat spiked with pink and yellow, and his outstretched hand now reaching upward as if making a forlorn appeal to the heavens. In the weeks that followed, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, and Matthew Maury, Davis’s bronze company on Monument Avenue—the so-called Champs-Élysées of the South—were likewise eliminated from view, but they at least enjoyed the honor of an official state removal. Davis, their chief, received no such courtesy: protesters tied ropes around his legs and dragged him to the ground with what news reports described as “a tiny sedan.”

The conquest of Monument Avenue represented a key front in the renewed struggle for racial justice: the demand for a dramatic rethinking of U.S. history and its place in public life. Strikingly, the most powerful energy behind this fight comes not only from scholars but from activists, journalists, and other thinkers who have made history a new kind of political priority. Although American historical amnesia is the laziest of tropes—“We learn nothing,” said Gore Vidal, “because we remember nothing”—liberals today are more committed than ever to a passionate remembrance of things past. In recent years, a distinct pattern has emerged. Acts of horror—the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; the Charleston church massacre; the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; the murder of George Floyd; the storming of the U.S. Capitol—are met not only with calls for justice but with demands for a more searching examination of history. Reading lists and syllabi are distributed; institutional commissions are tasked with extensive historical inquiries; professional historians appear regularly in op-ed pages, on television, and in social-media feeds.

Every modern political movement makes some contact with history. Even in the United States, with our notoriously weak memory, progressive reformers have always invoked earlier struggles. Eugene Debs boasted that the Socialists of 1908 “are today where the abolitionists were in 1858”; Martin Luther King Jr. never tired of talking about the Declaration of Independence, a beacon of democratic equality whose light exposed how little of it the United States had so far attained. Yet the role of history today, especially within liberal discourse, has changed. Rather than mine the past for usable politics—whether as analogue, inspiration, or warning—thinkers now travel in the opposite direction, from present injustice to historical crime. Current American inequalities, many liberals insist, must be addressed through encounters with the past. Programs of reform or redistribution, no matter how ambitious, can hope to succeed only after the country undergoes a profound “reckoning”—to use the key word of the day—with centuries of racial oppression.

In public debate, this order of operations has produced some unexpected ideological alignments. The Atlantic, a sturdy citadel of centrist thinking on every contemporary subject from populism to Palestine, has been the editorial home of both Ta-Nehisi Coates, this century’s most influential writer on race and U.S. history, and Ibram X. Kendi, the historian who has emerged as this moment’s most prolific critic of American racism. The New York Times, whose editorial board could not muster more than one vote out of thirty for Bernie Sanders, has in the past two years published the 1619 Project, which was billed as “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken” in an American newspaper; an essay making the case for reparations; and an excerpt adapted from Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, which compared America’s “enduring racial hierarchy” with those of ancient India and Nazi Germany.

In the age of Sanders and Trump, the Democratic establishment has assumed a defensive posture, concerned above all with holding off various barbarians at the gate. And yet in its consideration of the past, the same establishment has somehow grown large and courageous, suddenly eager for a galloping revision of all American history. For some left-wing skeptics, this apparent paradox requires little investigation: it redirects real anger toward vague and symbolic grievances. No, the Democrats who govern Virginia will not repeal the state’s anti-union right-to-work law, but yes, by all means, they will make Juneteenth an official holiday. If this movement only signals a shift from material demands to metaphysical “reckonings”—from movement politics to elite culture war—then it is not an advance but a retreat.

This critique, however persuasive as a reading of many liberal politicians, does not do justice to the intellectuals and journalists who have driven the national debate on these issues. It does not quite capture the significance of their interventions, or the ambition of their challenge to traditional liberal ideas. Nor does it capture the peculiarity of today’s politics of history. American conservatives, traditionally attracted to history as an exercise in patrimonial devotion, have in the time of Trump abandoned many of their older pieties, instead oscillating between incoherence and outright nihilism. Liberals, meanwhile, seem to expect more from the past than ever before. Leaving behind the End of History, we have arrived at something like History as End.

[jollygoods-and-deers]

Why hello, hello stranger! I'm your (probably not) local digital artist who posts when god occasionally releases me from the grips of the devil himself. Please Read The Following:

⭐DO NOT INTERACT ⭐ with this blog if you:

Minor under 15**

Pro Pedophilia/ Pro Incest

Porn blogs

Pro-shipper and/or Anti-Anti ***

Transphobe/Terf/Gender Critical

Truscum/Transmedicalist/Anti-Trans Trender of Any Kind

Thinks Bi people "just need to choose"

Gold Star Lesbian

Thinks Bisexual means you are only attracted to two genders.

Race Realist

Mainly aligns with Conservative and/or Centrist politics

Against Neopronouns

Antisemitic

Islamophobic

Anti religious

Anti Atheist

** If under 15, I don't care if you randomly like or reblog one of my posts. Just don't follow/contact me/constantly interact with my blog on purpose. I don't want to deal with having a bunch of really young minors in my audience, mostly because I do a good bit of swearing & possibly gore.

*** Don't interact w/ me if you think portraying a ship of a minor w/ an adult, incest, or an abuser w/ their victim as romantic/healthy is okay. Just don't portray and/or say it is a healthy relationship. Execution, framing, and genre are everything to me.

This is NOT the blog for you!

🦌Socials🐈

Insta: tamarack_and_deers

TW: @ jollygoodzz

TH: OhMeOhMy

ART Tag:  jollygood’s art

PHOTO Tag:   jollygood’s photography

[koreaunderground]

(2021/04/09) Anti-war activist visited by police after posting embarrassing AOC video

[thegrayzone.com][1]

  [1]: <https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/09/anti-war-activist-police-aoc-video/>

# Anti-war activist visited by police after posting embarrassing AOC video | The Grayzone

Max Blumenthal·April 9, 2021

9-11 minutes

* * *

#### An anti-war activist was visited by California Highway Patrol officers after posting video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bumbling comments on Israel-Palestine. The action, which AOC denies triggering, was initiated by a call to US Capitol Police.

* * *

As he waited for a food delivery at his home in Los Angeles on April 8, Ryan Wentz, an anti-war activist and producer for the online viral program Soapbox, heard two men calling his name from over his front gate. When he approached, he realized they were not delivery drivers, but police officers flashing badges of the California Highway Patrol.

The cops informed Wentz that they had received a call from the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the US Congress, about a tweet he had sent that allegedly threatened Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Wentz told The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”

> (1/X) I’m really shaken up right now. I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home. They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening [@AOC][2] on Twitter yesterday. This is provably false. [pic.twitter.com/NGR8KViy93][3] > >    [2]: <https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>   [3]: <https://t.co/NGR8KViy93>

— Human Rights Watch Watcher (@queeralamode) [April 8, 2021][4]

  [4]: <https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1380284997785948162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

The California Highway Patrol indicated on Twitter that it had acted on a call from Capitol Police.

_**Update:**_ A [spokesperson for AOC has denied to Intercept][5] reporter Ryan Grim that their office reported Wentz’s post, and has “asked Capitol Police to look into what happened here.”

  [5]: <https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1380515841951797248?s=20>

The police visit Wentz received may have been [part of a wider trend][6] of post-January 6 law enforcement intervention in social media criticism of members of Congress.

  [6]: <https://twitter.com/theoneronin1312/status/1380230580919484416>

> The CHP often assists in investigations at the request of allied agencies. Please contact the U.S. Capitol Police for additional information. > > — CHP Headquarters (@CHP_HQ) [April 9, 2021][7]

  [7]: <https://twitter.com/CHP_HQ/status/1380337921086005249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Though AOC’s office has denied falsely informing Capitol Police of an online threat by Wentz, the Democratic congresswoman has in the past asked her supporters to report critics to social media censors.

Whoever called the police on Wentz furnished law enforcement with a patently false allegation, as he has never threatened violence against any member of Congress.

In the tweet that triggered the police action, Wentz merely posted video of AOC delivering a vapid and embarrassingly convoluted answer to a question about resolving the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Describing her answer as “incredibly underwhelming,” he let the congresswoman’s cringeworthy commentary speak for itself.

> On April 1, [@AOC][8] did a livestream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. She was asked about “peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” > >    [8]: <https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least: [pic.twitter.com/qHdwTy5pVO][9] > >    [9]: <https://t.co/qHdwTy5pVO>

— Human Rights Watch Watcher (@queeralamode) [April 7, 2021][10]

  [10]: <https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1379879392642408448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Asked by Michael S. Miller of the New York Jewish Community Relations Council about actions that could be taken to support movements towards peace between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, AOC responded as follows:

> Earlier just now you and I were talking about the what and the how. And I think that when we talk about peace, centering people’s humanity, protecting people’s rights – it’s not just about the what and the end goal which actually gets a lot of focus, but I actually think it’s much more about the how, and the way we are coming together, and how we interpret that what, and how we act in, you know, the actions we take to get to that what. > > So what this really is about is a question more than anything else about process. And we really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected and have, you know, a lot of equal opportunity to really make sure we are negotiating in good faith, etcetera. That being said, you know, I think there’s just this one central issue of settlements, because if the what – if the what has been decided on as two state, then the action of settlements, it’s not the how to get to that what. > > And so, you know, I think that’s a central thing that, you know, we center. And that we value Jewish and rather, we value Israeli, uh, uh, uh, we value the safety and human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians, in that process that is similar, and that is on equal footing. And so all of that is extremely important in that process.

The video that Wentz tweeted of AOC’s long-winded dodge of a fundamental question about resolving the Israeli occupation of Palestine prompted a flood of online mockery and contempt, mostly from leftist Twitter users. Many derided AOC as a careerist who had abandoned progressive causes like Palestinian liberation in order to curry favor with Democratic Party power brokers, while others ridiculed her meaningless word salad.

> This is a very easy issue for a leftist, why is AOC struggling? > > Isreal is an apartheid state that should be Defunded > > — Nick is a Fred Hampton Leftist 🥋 (@SocialistMMA) [April 7, 2021][11]

  [11]: <https://twitter.com/SocialistMMA/status/1379905138601684995?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

> I'm incredibly impressed with [@AOC][12]'s Obama-like ability to fill large amounts of time with words while saying absolutely nothing. I challenge anyone to tell me what she just said. <https://t.co/hIkWTNR5Rp> > >    [12]: <https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) [April 7, 2021][13]

  [13]: <https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1379883635743059971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Within hours of the online pile-on, someone reported Wentz to the Capitol Police for tweeting the video that embarrassed AOC. Because Wentz does not provide any information about his personal identity in his public Twitter profile, the social media giant appeared to have provided his private details to federal law enforcement.

“Another weird thing is usually I would get a report [from Twitter],” Wentz said, “because I’ve gotten my tweets reported before. But I didn’t get any notification about this.”

AOC’s staff has previously appealed to social media censors to suppress online criticism. On February 4, 2021, her campaign sent a mass email to supporters asking them to “scan your social media to find posts with misleading information” about the congresswoman, and “use the built-in report feature to flag them for moderators.”

![][14]

  [14]: https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-04-09-at-12.30.18-AM.png?resize=1170%2C1067&ssl=1

Team AOC issued its appeal for supporters to police social media in response to right-wing mockery of a [dramatic livestream][15] in which AOC suggested that the mob which stormed the Capitol building on January 6 nearly assassinated her.

  [15]: <https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKxlyx4g-Yb/?utm_source=ig_embed>

“I just hear these yells of ‘WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE?’” she recounted in the livestream. “This was the moment where I thought everything was over. I thought I was going to die.”

However, the source of the yells which had terrified AOC turned out to be a Capitol Police officer who had been dispatched to protect her. Further, the congresswoman’s office was located in the Cannon House Office Building, which had not been penetrated by any rioters on January 6.

Right-wing activists and other political foes of AOC [exploited these points][16] to launch a viral hashtag likening the congresswoman to Jussie Smollet, the actor who faked an attack on himself. After [attempting to challenge][17] her critics directly, AOC delegated her staff to dispatch its army of supporters to report critics en masse to Twitter and Facebook censors.

  [16]: <https://nypost.com/2021/02/04/aoc-blasted-for-exaggerating-capitol-riot-experience/>   [17]: <https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1357037568966217728>

Weeks earlier, podcaster Jimmy Dore had initiated a [“Force The Vote”][18] campaign to pressure AOC and fellow members of the progressive congressional “Squad” to withhold their votes for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House until Pelosi agreed to bring a bill for Medicare for All to the floor for a vote.

  [18]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrqTQd5rnwU>

In response to [incendiary criticism][19] from Dore for her refusal to buck centrist party leadership, AOC declared, “That’s not tone, that’s violence.”

  [19]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyAXpYPA7C4>

> RT: briebriejoy “15 million people have lost their employer-based health care in the middle of a global pandemic, and barely half of House Democrats support Medicare for All even though 88% of their constituents do. > > That’s violence.” [#ForceTheVote][20] <https://t.co/fSD8qwsINJ> > >    [20]: <https://twitter.com/hashtag/ForceTheVote?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) [January 2, 2021][21]

  [21]: <https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1345275897704640512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

According to Wentz, the police officers that visited him asked if he had any violent intent behind his tweet, then left. “If this was like a purely intimidation thing,” he reflected, “then I guess it did its job. It’s not comforting to be on the receiving end of that. But at the same time, they’re not going to shut the left up.”

Wentz’s disturbing encounter with law enforcement appears to be part of an emerging trend. On the same date law enforcement visited him, a Twitter user posted photos of alleged federal agents on their front lawn and claimed, “FBI just came by my house for a tweet to Ted Cruz.”

> FBI just came by my house for a tweet to Ted Cruz. [pic.twitter.com/cbwouoz4GC][22] > >    [22]: <https://t.co/cbwouoz4GC>

— the1312ronin (@theoneronin1312) [April 8, 2021][23]

  [23]: <https://twitter.com/theoneronin1312/status/1380230580919484416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

[theculturedmarxist]

If someone were to tell you that major and influential business sectors like the fossil fuel and health insurance industries simply don’t exist, or imply that major corporations like ExxonMobil and Cigna don’t try to manipulate public opinion and advance a political agenda in order to protect and maximize their profits, you might find it hard to contain your laughter.

But looking at corporate media’s coverage of corporate media, one gets the sense that anyone who dares to suggest that media corporations like Comcast-owned MSNBC, AT&T-owned CNN or News Corp–owned Fox News have their own commercial interests—which incentivize them to push pro-corporate politics—are kooky “conspiracy theorists.”

That’s really strange. After all, there are plenty of reports from corporate media discussing how major oil and health insurance companies spend fortunes to propagandize Americans into believing that a single-payer healthcare system would be disastrous, or that the climate crisis really isn’t that serious, despite all evidence to the contrary (FAIR.org, 1/24/20, 1/31/20). There are whistleblowers like former Cigna PR executive Wendell Potter who revealed how he, along with other paid corporate propagandists, cultivated “contacts and relationships among journalists and other media gatekeepers,” and learned from the tobacco industry’s “groundbreaking work in stealth PR” in order to develop talking points and advance a political agenda to protect industry profits.

So why exactly should we trust for-profit media outlets to be impartial and have their news coverage untainted by their own business interests?

Throughout the 2020 election cycle, FAIR (7/17/19, 8/21/19, 1/30/20, 4/7/20) has documented how corporate media have been trying to play kingmaker by aggressively pushing centrist and right-wing Democratic presidential candidates like Joe Biden onto the electorate, while assailing progressives like Bernie Sanders as “unelectable.” Now that Sanders has dropped out of the race, it’s worth examining the role propagandistic and hostile media coverage played throughout the primary in determining the outcome.

Analyzing the paradoxical phenomenon of the sizable “Socialists for Biden” voting bloc, FAIR’s founder Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 3/16/20) noted that although continuous exit polls confirm that most voters agree with Sanders ideologically, many nevertheless voted for Biden, because they perceived him to be a more “electable” candidate against Donald Trump.

Although several people have debunked the myth of “low” youth voter turnout in this election cycle (FAIR.org, 2/26/20; Films for Action, 3/5/20; Atlantic, 3/17/20), it’s true that older voters turned out in massive numbers to support Biden. On Twitter (3/14/20), journalist Malaika Jabali attributed the “generational divide” in voting behavior to an “information divide,” and argued that many older voters don’t suffer from a lack of information, so much as too much information from different sources compared to younger voters.

That influential media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post continue to exercise a formidable class-control function on behalf of their owners and advertisers seems to be borne out by data confirming Jabali’s analysis.

Pew Research (12/10/18) found that although social media has become a more popular source for news,  television still retains supremacy, with 49% of US adults receiving news most often from TV. Whereas young adults aged 18 to 29 receive 36% of their news from social media and 16% from TV, older voters aged 50–64 receive 65% of their news from TV and only 14% from social media, and voters older than 65 receive a whopping 81% of their news from TV and a mere 8% from social media.

Pew (9/26/19) also documented a striking partisan divide on Americans’ trust in the media, with 69% of Democrats having a “great” or “fair” amount of trust in the media, compared to only 15% of Republicans.

Other media studies of cable news like CNN and MSNBC confirmed their pivotal role as an anti-Sanders attack machine (FAIR.org, 1/30/20). According to the Norman Lear Center (5/19), self-identified liberals watch MSNBC at three times the rate of moderates and ten times the rate of conservative viewers. Branko Marcetic (In These Times, 11/13/19) documented that MSNBC’s August–September 2019 coverage of the Democratic primary not only emphasized electability over policy issues, but also talked about Biden three times as often as Sanders, who had fewer negative mentions (11%) compared to Sanders (21%). Another survey by In These Times (3/9/20) of CNN’s coverage of the 24 hours after Sanders and Biden’s massive wins in Nevada and South Carolina found that Sanders received three times more negative coverage than Biden, despite winning by similar margins.

Given Sanders’ massive advantages over Biden when it came to campaign staff and volunteers, organizational and online presence, ad buys as well as money in Super Tuesday states, it’s clear that the media blitz following Biden’s South Carolina win played a decisive role in propelling him to victory in states he didn’t even campaign in (New York Times, 2/26/20).

Yet, in what is truly a collective galaxy-brain level take, corporate media appeared to deny their own existence and how the profit motive compromised their coverage throughout the primary.

Whenever corporate media discuss themselves, they frequently use scare quotes around the term “corporate media” (e.g., Washington Post, 10/24/19; Politico, 8/13/19), as if the term is referring to a nonexistent entity or a figment of their audience’s imagination. This is in stark contrast to their alarmist attitude towards foreign state media outlets like RT and Xinhua, which are frequently referred to as “propaganda” and “state media”—no quotation marks required (New York Times, 3/8/17, 2/18/20).

Yet when they weren’t suggesting they were imaginary, corporate media were also fully capable on occasion of discussing their enormous impact on the race. Vanity Fair’s “Joe Biden, Revenant, Was an Irresistible Media Story—and It Helped Win Him Super Tuesday” (3/5/20) described how Biden campaign aides were gloating to CNN about riding their “earned-media tsunami” to victory in Super Tuesday—referring to coverage that wasn’t paid for following Biden’s South Carolina win—and estimated to be worth at least $72 million during those crucial days.

Despite noting that Sanders actually had more free coverage ($156 million) during this time period from the same “‘corporate media’” which had “written him off” earlier, Vanity Fair argued that media narratives trump any other factor (including money), with Sanders’ narrative being largely negative in contrast to Biden’s:

In recent days Biden has basked in mostly positive coverage, with TV pundits citing his South Carolina victory in arriving at a consensus narrative: Biden, despite poor showings in all of the early-primary states, is the comeback candidate peaking at the perfect moment��. Following Biden’s Saturday blowout, the media narrative shifted from Sanders being the momentum candidate to questions about whether his campaign was constrained by a ceiling due to his poor South Carolina performance, particularly with black voters, the most consistent Democratic voting bloc.

Corporate media frequently noted how Sanders has been their most frequent critic when he was on the campaign trail, and even when they grudgingly admitted its validity at times, they treated Sanders’ media criticism as an ideological perspective on the media, rather an uncontroversial description. Politico (8/13/19) wrote that “Sanders has long accused the ‘corporate media’ of putting the interests of the elite above those of the majority of Americans.” Vanity Fair (2/18/20) wrote: “Sanders has long contended that the agenda of ‘corporate media’ doesn’t necessarily reflect the people’s needs, and his 2020 campaign has doubled as a rolling media criticism shop.” The New York Times (3/5/20) also gaslit readers by attributing critique of the “‘corporate media,’” and MSNBC’s hosts for pushing an “‘establishment’” perspective, merely to Sanders and the “activist left,” as if their critique were only a sectarian complaint.

The Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple (10/24/19) mocked Sanders’ critique of the “‘corporate media,’” implying that Sanders hasn’t “done enough research” to “tease out tendencies,” despite writing that “attacking the ‘corporate media’ is good politics for Sanders, and his critiques sometimes land with heft and reason.” Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan (2/12/20) glancingly acknowledged media hostility towards Sanders when she observed that Sanders kept dissing “what he calls the corporate media,” and that his “ardent followers bond with him and with one another by despising the mainstream media, often enough with good reason”—yet she failed to explain this hostility in structural terms regarding media ownership and commercial interests. In the Post’s “Bernie Sanders’s Bogus Media Beef,” Aaron Blake (8/14/19) cited executive editor Marty Baron dismissing Sanders’ claims as a “conspiracy theory,” while the Post’s Paul Waldman (8/14/19) dismissed Sanders’ media criticism as “something in common with pretty much every candidate,” and breathtakingly asserted that “ideological bias is usually the least important.”

Waldman’s assessment isn’t shared by FAIR (Extra!, 10/89), or by Politico’s founding editor John Harris (11/7/19), who admitted that “the pervasive force shaping coverage of Washington and elections is what might be thought of as centrist bias, flowing from reporters and sources alike.”

Another approach to dismissing structural media criticism has been to portray Sanders and Trump’s media criticisms as equally wacky conspiracy theories (FAIR.org, 1/24/20). CNN’s Chris Cillizza (8/13/19) asserted that Sanders’ critique of the Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post’s coverage is “absolutely no different than what Trump does.” Politico’s John Harris (2/13/20) bemoaned the “dilution of mainstream media’s institutional power” and pined for the days where editors at “major news institutions possessed enormous power” to “summon sustained national attention on subjects they deemed important” with their story selection and framing, while denouncing Sanders for following the “Trump precedent” in “taking flight from public accountability.”

When corporate media didn’t dismiss their bias against him, they sunnily described how Sanders didn’t seem to need fairer coverage from corporate media—and cable news in particular—because nonprofit media outlets, with considerably less resources and reach, are increasingly picking up the slack. Citing the “formidable” influence of “alternative media,” the Los Angeles Times (12/12/19) argued that “coverage in what Sanders likes to disparage as the ‘corporate media’ may matter less to him than to any of his rivals because of the benefit he derives from a surging alternative media ecosystem.” The New Republic (2/12/20, 2/28/20) acknowledged MSNBC’s hostile posture towards Sanders, yet also failed to explain that bias in terms of corporate interests, while arguing that Sanders’ campaign strategy of relying on an alternative media infrastructure to run “against the ‘corporate media’” and ���withstand attacks from mainstream networks” has “worked wonders.”

Strikingly, in all these reports, corporate media either misrepresented Sanders’ proposed solutions to corporate media bias or omitted them altogether. Vermont journalist Paul Heintz (Washington Post, 2/26/19), for example, chided Sanders for not understanding what a “free press” does, and claimed that Sanders’ remedy for corporate media is merely “uncritical, stenographic coverage of his agenda.”

In fact, Sanders’ op-ed in the Columbia Journalism Review (8/26/19) echoed many of FAIR’s criticisms of corporate media and proposed solutions:

Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read and download. Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and “benevolent” billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny….

In my administration, we are going to institute an immediate moratorium on approving mergers of major media corporations until we can better understand the true effect these transactions have on our democracy…. We must also explore new ways to empower media organizations to collectively bargain with these tech monopolies, and we should consider taxing targeted ads and using the revenue to fund nonprofit civic-minded media.

Setting aside the interlocking commercial interests mass media corporations share with other industries and advertisers funding their coverage (FAIR.org, 8/1/17), just as one can expect the healthcare and fossil fuel industries to launch propaganda campaigns to protect their profits (Intercept, 11/20/18; Guardian, 10/23/19), one can reliably predict these same media corporations to oppose any political agenda that harms their own profitability. Given Sanders’ opposition to future mergers and corporate consolidation of mass media giants, proposals to wield antitrust legislation against Google and Facebook, and levying new taxes to fund nonprofit media outlets, is it any surprise that for-profit news sources opposed his candidacy (Politico, 8/28/19)?

Perhaps future media criticism might sound less “conspiratorial” if we simply referred to outlets like MSNBC as “Comcast,” CNN as “AT&T” and the Washington Post as “Jeff Bezos” instead. When one understands corporate media as an industry in themselves, decisions to have a centrist bias to maximize profits by appealing to liberals and conservatives alike, or creating “information silos” to sell the news as a commodity to target demographics, make a lot more sense. And when we understand the news industry as a top-down institution, beholden to stockholders like all other corporations, we can stop blaming journalists for bad coverage, and start blaming executives like Les Moonves and Tony Maddox for doing things like gifting billions of dollars in free coverage for Trump (FAIR.org, 3/31/20, 4/13/20).

Then maybe claiming that corporate media outlets like MSNBC and CNN are hostile to left-wing political agendas will be considered just as obvious as saying that ExxonMobil and Cigna are opposed to climate action and universal healthcare.

[way2manyusernamez]

i've been looking for a way to describe "i'm anti contact, but not the type of anti contact that gets along with neu-c's..." i think one way might be "anti-centrist anti-contact"? it's not perfect but i've been tagging my posts with it when they're about criticizing neu-c's.

i recently read the MAP Wiki's article on Contact Discourse in full, which uses the phrase "anti-centrist anti-contact" to describe anti-c's that dislike neutral-c's and strongly oppose pro-c's:

"Neutral-contact MAPs have expressed feeling alienated by both sides of the debate. Anti-centrist anti-contacts and pro-contacts alike have expressed feeling frustration at neutral-contacts' refusal to fully or properly take a side in what they view as an extremely morally important discourse. Anti-contacts and pro-contacts, particularly if they are radicals, often aggressively exclude or harass people on the other side of the discourse. Social ostracization, shaming, and callouts over contact discourse also frequently occur. Many anti-contacts view opposition to pro-contacts as necessary for their goal of assimilation, and some pro-contacts view opposition to anti-contacts as necessary for their goal of assimilation."

also here's this debate on a political compass instead of a line, because i love visualizing data in new and exciting ways (and i was/am a Centricide fan):

[newstfionline]

Saturday, November 14, 2020

A Third of the World’s Air Routes Have Been Lost Due to Covid (Bloomberg) Before the coronavirus, a decades-long aviation boom spawned a network of nearly 50,000 air routes that traversed the world. In less than a year, the pandemic has wiped almost a third of them off the map. Border closures, nationwide lockdowns and the fear of catching Covid-19 from fellow passengers have crippled commercial travel. As thousands of domestic and international connections disappear completely from airline timetables, the world has suddenly stopped shrinking. In years to come, overseas business trips and holidays will likely mean more airport stopovers, longer journey times, and perhaps an additional mode of transport. Even when an effective vaccine is found, the economic reality of the recovery may mean some non-stop flights are gone for good.

The rural/urban divide (The Economist) An analysis of the election results by The Economist suggests that the partisan divide between America’s cities and open spaces is greater than ever. Preliminary results supplied by Decision Desk HQ, a data-provider, show that voters in the least urbanized counties voted for Mr Trump by a margin of 33 points, up from 32 points in 2016. (Specifically these are the bottom 20% of counties by population density.) Meanwhile, voters in the most urbanized counties—the top 20%—plumped for Mr Biden by 29 points, up from Hillary Clinton’s 25-point margin in 2016. More broadly, the greater the population density, the bigger the swing to the Democratic candidate. Even after controlling for other relevant demographic factors, the data suggest that urban and rural voters are more divided today than they were in 2016.

More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining (Washington Post) More than 130 Secret Service officers who help protect the White House and the president when he travels have recently been ordered to isolate or quarantine because they tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with infected co-workers, according to three people familiar with agency staffing. The spread of the coronavirus—which has sidelined roughly 10 percent of the agency’s core security team—is believed to be partly linked to a series of campaign rallies that President Trump held in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation. The virus is having a dramatic impact on the Secret Service’s presidential security unit at the same time that growing numbers of prominent Trump campaign allies and White House officials have fallen ill in the wake of campaign events, where many attendees did not wear masks. Among those who are infected are White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and outside political advisers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. In addition, at least eight staffers at the Republican National Committee, including Chief of Staff Richard Walters, have the virus, according to officials at the organization.

Trump Rebuffs Biden Transition Team, Setting Off Virus and National Security Risks (NYT) President Trump’s refusal to allow President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his transition staff access to government offices, secure communications and classified briefings prompted growing warnings on Thursday, including from Republicans, that keeping Mr. Biden in the dark potentially endangers the country. On Capitol Hill, several Senate Republicans insisted that Mr. Biden should at least be given access to the President’s Daily Brief, the compendium of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence secrets and assessments of threats like terrorist plots and cyberattack vulnerabilities. “President-elect Biden should be receiving intelligence briefings right now—that is really important,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, a member of the Intelligence Committee and one of the few Senate Republicans to publicly acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory. “It’s probably the most important part of the transition.” Giving Mr. Biden and his top aides access to the daily briefing, as Mr. Trump got right after his election four years ago, would address only a fraction of the problem. Mr. Biden will confront an array of complex dilemmas: bruised relationships with foreign allies, a weak economy and a sluggish recovery, perhaps the most high-risk period yet of the coronavirus and a need to distribute a vaccine to 330 million Americans. The president-elect’s team is concerned that it is being shut out of planning for the vaccine distribution, a huge undertaking that the incoming administration expects to inherit the moment Mr. Biden is sworn in. His advisers said they have not had access to the details of Warp Speed, the project that has vaccine distribution planning well underway, and understand little about its workings.

China congratulates Biden, but few US policy changes seen (AP) China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. U.S.-Chinese relations have plunged to their lowest level in decades amid a tariff war over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus, accusations of spying and tension over human rights, the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong and control of the South China Sea. Trump labeled China a security threat and imposed export curbs and other sanctions on Chinese companies. Political analysts expect Biden to try to resume cooperation with Beijing on climate change, North Korea, Iran and the coronavirus. And they say Biden might pursue a more traditional, predictable policy toward China. However, economists and political analysts expect few big changes due to widespread frustration with Beijing’s trade and human rights record and accusations of spying and technology theft.

Eta Returns, Soaking Florida’s West Coast (NYT) Tropical Storm Eta pounded Florida again on Thursday, flooding beach communities along the Gulf of Mexico, forcing rescuers to wade through hip-deep water and hitting portions of Tampa and Jacksonville as it made its way back out to sea. In a series of overnight rescues in Madeira Beach, near St. Petersburg, firefighters used high-riding fire trucks and an inflatable Zodiac boat to ferry 15 people, a cat, two birds and five dogs from several flooded households to dry land. Eta’s landfall was its second in the state this week. It hit the central part of the Florida Keys late Sunday, and made landfall again at about 4 a.m. Thursday near Cedar Key, roughly 130 miles north of Tampa. Floodwaters receded by late morning as the storm moved out into the Atlantic near Florida’s border with Georgia.

Students take on “online proctoring” companies (Washington Post) “Online proctoring” companies saw in coronavirus shutdowns a chance to capitalize on a major reshaping of education, selling schools a high-tech blend of webcam-watching workers and eye-tracking software designed to catch students cheating on their exams. They’ve taken in millions of dollars, some of it public money, from thousands of colleges in recent months. But they’ve also sparked a nationwide school-surveillance revolt, with students staging protests and adopting creative tactics to push campus administrators to reconsider the deals. Students argue that the testing systems have made them afraid to click too much or rest their eyes for fear they’ll be branded as cheats. Some students also said they’ve wept with stress or urinated at their desks because they were forbidden from leaving their screens. One system, Proctorio, uses gaze-detection, face-detection and computer-monitoring software to flag students for any “abnormal” head movement, mouse movement, eye wandering, computer window resizing, tab opening, scrolling, clicking, typing, and copies and pastes. A student can be flagged for finishing the test too quickly, or too slowly, clicking too much, or not enough. If the camera sees someone else in the background, a student can be flagged for having “multiple faces detected.” If someone else takes the test on the same network—say, in a dorm building—it’s potential “exam collusion.” Room too noisy, Internet too spotty, camera on the fritz? Flag, flag, flag. As an unusually disrupted fall semester churns toward finals, this student rebellion has erupted into online war, with lawsuits, takedowns and viral brawls further shaking the anxiety-inducing backdrop of college exams. Some students have even tried to take the software down from the inside, digging through the code for details on how it monitors millions of high-stakes exams.

‘Peru is fired up’: Protesters, police clash as political crisis flares, 11 wounded (Reuters) Fierce clashes in Peru between police and protesters have wounded at least 11 people, doctors and rights groups said on Friday, as thousands of Peruvians took to the streets to protest the ouster of president Martin Vizcarra. The clashes, and other more peaceful protests in the capital Lima and other cities, are piling pressure on a fragmented Congress and the new government of Manuel Merino. Thursday night’s rallies were among the largest in two decades in Peru. Vizcarra, a politically unaffiliated centrist who is popular with voters, was ousted on Monday in an impeachment trial over allegations he received bribes, accusations he denies. “All of Peru is fired up, we’re all very angry,” said Jose Vega, a protester in Lima, where some carried banners comparing the new president to the coronavirus pandemic and saying he did not represent them. Vizcarra oversaw an anti-graft campaign that led to frequent clashes with Congress in a country that has a history of political upheaval and corruption. The crisis precipitated by his departure has rattled the world’s no. 2 copper producer and seen its sol currency hit 18-year lows.

Boris’s Biden problem (Washington Post) During the height of the U.S. campaign, Britain’s former ambassador in Washington Kim Darroch revealed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government were expecting—if not hoping—that President Trump would be reelected. Before months of pandemic changed the math, Downing Street was imagining that four more years of Trump would smooth the way for a fast-track free-trade deal with the United States just when Johnson needed it the most, as Britain exits the European Union at year’s end. But the win by former vice president Joe Biden has charged the “special relationship” between the two leaders and two closely allied countries with what the British might call a certain . . . awkwardness. Johnson and President-elect Biden have never met, and though the British prime minister sent his congratulations, the message was somewhat bungled. In the official tweet from Johnson’s office, there were faintly visible words in the text, a ghost of an earlier, edited message, that congratulated Trump instead. Biden, for his part, called Johnson last year the “physical and emotional clone of Donald Trump” in private remarks widely reported in British press. Johnson could use a few friends these days. His aides are warring; England is in lockdown again; Britain continues to tally the highest death toll from the coronavirus in Europe. And the British prime minister still hasn’t secured a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union.

Indian and Pakistani troops exchange fire, at least 15 dead (Reuters) At least 10 civilians and five security personnel were killed in cross-border shelling between India and Pakistan on Friday, in one of this year’s deadliest days along the heavily militarised frontier separating the nuclear-armed rivals, officials said. Indian officials said the barrage of mortars and other weapons along several parts of the Line of Control—the de-facto border—began after Indian troops foiled an infiltration attempt from Pakistan in northern Kashmir. Pakistan’s military said in a statement it had responded to unprovoked and indiscriminate firing by the Indian army. Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchange fire across the mountainous border, but the shelling on Friday was particularly intense, according to Indian officials.

Strong typhoon leaves 42 dead, 20 missing in Philippines (AP) Thick mud and debris coated many villages around the Philippine capital on Friday after a typhoon killed at least 42 people and caused extensive flooding that sent people fleeing to their roofs, officials said. Troops, police, coast guard and disaster-response teams rescued tens of thousands of people, including many who flooded radio and TV networks and social media with desperate pleas for help. Floodwaters receded and the weather cleared in many areas after Typhoon Vamco blew out into the South China Sea on Friday, but the military said it was still rescuing people trapped in some flooded communities. After slamming into northeastern Quezon province, Vamco gained strength with sustained winds of 155 kilometers (96 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 255 kph (158 mph). It blew north of metropolitan Manila overnight Wednesday, toppling trees and power poles, swelling rivers, flooding residential communities and setting off landslides and storm surges.

Ethiopia War Risks Becoming the World’s Next Refugee Crisis (Foreign Policy) Little more than a week has gone by since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a “military confrontation” in the country’s northern Tigray region and the death toll is likely already in the hundreds. All communication lines, including internet, have been cut in the region, making it difficult for foreign observers to understand what is happening on the ground. Human rights group Amnesty International has made one of the first attempts to shed light on conditions in Tigray when it reported the details of a mass killing on the scale of “scores, and likely hundreds.” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa confirmed “the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day labourers in no way involved in the ongoing military offensive.” Amnesty has not made a judgement on which group was responsible for the killings, although they cite eyewitness accounts placing the blame on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Tigray and up until Abiy’s ascent, the dominant party in Ethiopia’s government. Faced with such violence, alongside the threat of airstrikes from Ethiopia’s military, a refugee crisis is beginning to take shape. Neighboring Sudan has taken in 11,000 refugees so far.

Outside Mogadishu, locusts turn farmland into desert (Reuters) A rifle on his back, Mohamed Yasin tries in vain to chase away the swarm of yellow-coloured insects that have invaded his farm as his camels mill about nearby. Swarming on the outskirts of Mogadishu, locusts are eating away at Yasin’s livelihood, destroying maize and beans and all his grass. The insect plague hitting Somalia is part of a once-in-a-generation succession of swarms that have swept across East Africa and the Red Sea region since late 2019, driven by unusual weather patterns. In a region where many already go hungry, The coronavirus has this year exacerbated the crisis by disrupting the supply chain of pesticides and other equipment needed to fight them off.

Zimbabweans mend shabby dollar notes amid economic crisis (AP) Albert Marombe takes a grimy, tattered $1 note and delicately, expertly glues it back into one piece, holding it up for inspection. “I don’t care how torn it is. All I want to see is the serial number being visible on both sides,” said Marombe. He’ll sell that shabby $1 note for 80 cents and it will get back into circulation. Many shops will reject it but market traders will take it, although at a reduced value. Worn out or shredded by rats, $1 notes are king in Zimbabwe, beset by a continuing economic crisis. One dollar bills are used by many people to buy their daily bread and other small purchases. Crisp new notes are not coming into Zimbabwe, so enterprising traders are repairing old ones for desperate customers. The U.S. dollar has dominated transactions in Zimbabwe since the country’s hyperinflation soared to more than 5 billion percent and forced the government to abandon the local currency in 2009. Last year the government re-introduced a Zimbabwe currency and banned foreign currencies for local transactions. Few took heed though and the black market thrived, while the local currency quickly devalued. In March this year, the government relented and unbanned the dollar. Now shortages of small denominations of the dollar are a nightmare.

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January 15, 1919: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht murdered

Rosa Luxemburg, born 1871 as Rozalia Luksenburg in Zamość, Poland, was a thought leader of the left wing of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the German Empire. As a steadfast anti-militarist, she stood in sharp opposition to the center wing of the party, which (more or less reluctantly) supported World War I, splitting off the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) as a new party. She also founded the Marxist Spartacus League, acting independently of the USPD and leading to the foundation of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Although she opposed against Leninism, she firmly believed in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Contrasting many contemporary communists, she did not interpret the body of thought of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in a dogmatic way, but rather in a critical way. Her political engagement resulted in multiple detentions and imprisonments during the war.

Karl Liebknecht, born 1871 in Leipzig, had made himself a name as a prominent antimilitarist and member of the left wing of the SPD, famously winning the imperial electorial district of Potsdam-Spandau-Oberhavel, until then a stronghold of the German Nationalist Party. Due to his antimilitarism, he separated from the SPD, which began to support the war, and founded the International Group, which later became the Spartacus League, and which ultimately caused his expulsion from the SPD. When he started to organize anti-war demonstrations, he was sentenced to four years and a month in a corrective facility, but was released after two years, three months before the end of the war. He immediately began to reorganize the Spartacus League, attempting a revolution in Germany following the example of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. On November 9, 1918, he proclaimed the “Free Socialistic Republic of Germany” from a balcony of the Berlin Palace. This proclamation failed – shortly before, Philipp Scheidemann had proclaimed the “German Republic” from a window of the parliament building, the Reichstag.

In January 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were the leading figures of the Spartacus Uprise, Luxemburg as the mastermind and Liebknecht as the master organizer and agitator. The uprise started when the centrist fractions of the provisional government illegitimately intended to increase their influence on politics and administration by removing a number of left-wing persons from office, among them Berlin Police president Emil Eichhorn. The insurgents sympathizing with a prospective communist government attempted to remove the center-leaning government of Friedrich Ebert from power, with no avail.

Against the advice of Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht wanted to forcefully overturn the government and seize power before the elections scheduled for January 19 could be held. But Liebknecht had misjudged the general athmosphere among the German population: The workers followed a general strike call, but they were tired of violence. The government of Friedrich Ebert, however, teamed up with the military to forcefully suppress the uprise, with success. One of the leading figures in quelling the uprise was interior minister Gustav Noske.

Luxemburg and Liebknecht were now wanted persons. They were identified by vigilants in an apartment where they had hidden, fearing for their lives. Illegaly taken in custody, they were brought to Hotel Eden where they were mistreated. Waldemar Pabst, leading officer of the Guard-Cavalry-Shooter Division, which had its headquarters in the hotel, decided to “finish off” Luxemburg and Liebknecht. He contacted Gustav Noske, who told him to confer with his superior, which Pabst refused. Noske, unwilling to protect Luxemburg and Liebknecht, but also unwilling to take responsibility, said to Pabst, that he should decide himself what to do.

Pabst commisioned a selected group of individuals to drive Liebknecht to the Tiergarten park in Berlin where they should shoot him, ordering them to make it look as if Liebknecht had been shot while being on the run. They drove to a dark place of the park, faked a car breakdown, got Liebknecht out of the car and shot him from behind. Then they dragged the dead body back into the car and drove him to the police station opposite of Hotel Eden, where they turned him in as an “unknown corpse”.

Rosa Luxemburg’s death was staged as a lynch mob. When she was brought to the entrance of the hotel, a soldier disguised as an angry civilian hit her unconscious with a rifle butt. She was thrown into a car and driven away while Lieutenant Hermann Souchon, riding on the footboard, killed her with a contact shot in the temple. Her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal, where it was found floating in a lock 16 days later.

None of those participating in the murders was ever punished, active obstruction of justice from the side of the government was involved.

Karl Liebknecht was buried on the cemetery at Friedrichsfelde on January 25 with an empty coffin for Rosa Luxemburg at his side. More than 100,000 people attended the funeral. Luxemburg’s body was buried there on June 13. Again tens of thousands of people were there.

The murders caused violent riots throughout Germany that came close to a civil war. The government under Ebert and Noske forcefully crushed the riots, causing thousands of deaths. That bloodbath was one of the reasons that the Weimar Republic had a hard time to find supporters among the majority of the Germans, and its Social Democratic leadership did not easily find unquestioned approval. It was the first nail in the coffin of the Weimar Republic before it even existed, and the reputation of its leaders was undermined from the very beginning.

The graves were destroyed in 1935 by the Nazi government and restored by the government of the GDR after world war II. Commemorating the murders has become an element in the tradition of the extreme political left in Germany: Each year, members of the political left gather on the second weekend of January at the gravesite to commemorate Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Numerous memorials have been set up to commemorate the events and the unatoned murders. Rosa Luxemburg has a prominent memorial at the site where her body was disposed of in the Landwehr Canal.

At the site where Karl Liebknecht was shot, there is a stele carrying his name.

Streets, squares, and schools were named after the two, mostly in the GDR. Some of these places have been renamed after the German reunion, some still carry the names.