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SnK Chapter 135 Poll Results

This month’s poll closed with 2,264 entries. The poll results were compiled by momtaku, /u/_Puppet_, /u/berthototototo, u/staraves

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,980 responses

Volume 34 started off on a high note with ��Battle of Heaven and Earth” being our 7th highest rated chapter with an average of 4.61.

Easily the best action based chapter post timeskip

Very action dominated chapter this time. Just pure adrenaline, not many answers. Not complaining though, great chapter!

Best chapter since 122, hype levels were great, pacing was great, just overall great really.

What I loved about this chapter is that this was the first time I REALLY felt the suspense, the kind of suspense where it looks our heroes can not win the fight and all hope is lost. It was a very similar feeling I experienced in the first chapters of Attack on Titan where the fight against Pure Titans always felt like the enemy had the upper hand and our heroes were fighting a losing battle that they could only fight to mitigate the losses as low as possible

A chapter will less talk more fight. It's been a while.

I loved this chapter immensely. For months, this was the first I could finally rate the highest.

We are near the end, oh god, this was a a hell of a journey from 2013 as a manga reader it is for me one of the best manga I have ever read

Everything about this was awesome from bucket girl Ymir to all the previous titan shifters to bird Falco. There was so much I had to wrap my head around, so I’m going to have to read this a couple more times.

So many mysteries I just don’t want it to be rushes uwu and for us to only be getting a chapter per MONTH can you throw us some bones PLEASE

I’m rethinking everything I thought I knew about the manga

We're hanging on a razor's edge between masterpiece and ruin. Whatever happens, please let it be well executed. . .

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE OVERALL MOMENT?

2,001 responses

This chapter was filled with lore, action and great individual character moments but seeing the fantastical forms of titans past brought into the fight was our favorite moment with 31.4% of the total. “Mikasa carrying the whole damn team” was second with 24.7%. The arrival of the flying titan (10.6%), the vision of Bertholt Hoover (10%) and Pieck rushing forward with the bombs (6.9%) round out the top five.

One of my all-time favourites probably, I absolutely loved all the character interactions as well as the amazing new titan designs.

Bert back! Bert back! Bert back!!! <333333

I really did like it, all those previous titans forms are interesting and see that the manga is very soon to end, I can't wait to know the end.

The chapter hasn't changed anything fundamentally but was exited to see OG Ymir

A demonstration of the despair and hopelessness of fighting Ymir

Bird!!! Falco!!! And!!! Ghost!!! Bertholdt!!! YES! YES! YES!

Really liked Jean and Reiners moments this chapter,

Bringing back old titans was really badass and intimidating.

Tentacle porn. That is all.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE COMRADE-RELATED MOMENT? 1,969 responses

With a battle involving Alliance teamwork and some visits from old friends, this chapter had many moments between current and former comrades. The wholesome scene between Jean and Reiner packed with an Armored Titan joke garnered the majority of votes (50.2%), with others favoring Armin’s vision of Bertolt (15.9%), and Annie’s reunion at the end of the chapter (14.1%).

jean saving reiner really moved me i really love these characters and after seeing them fighting it was nice seeing one saving the other. i mean jean had a really good reason to hate reiner and he previously said that he would never forgive him but he did and it was nice

Loved that scene between Jean and Reiner. Jean came a long way since his selfish oppotunistic days: Not letting Reiner fall, even though he really hated him. Actually willing to die. Great character development.

I'm curious to see, what effect this might have on Reiner: I mean he was being called a member of the survey corps again and therefore he was kind of being ""forgiven"".

Jean-Reiner-Bromance!

Connie x Levi canon

Ngl, I felt a great satisfaction as ghost Bertolt looked down on Armin who was suffocating from that giant tongue lmao

at this point I think that the ackertalk is sadly never happening. A missed opportunity.

WHO WAS THIS CHAPTER’S MVP? 1,973 responses

It’s Mikasa nation domination with 52.4% of the vote. There were a lot of great character moments but it’s hard to beat the one who stopped the manga ending prematurely! There was also appreciation for Ymir (12.8%) who brought in some interesting Titan designs and a great fight. 11.8% gave the nod to Falco for swooping in for the last minute save. 6.3% were hyped for Pieck’s no-nonsense charge, and 4.1% liked seeing Levi push himself in battle despite needing another couple of months in bed.

Levi has been severely injured for not even a week, yet he held his own and saved Connie AND Jean. I don't ever want to hear any whiny criticisms about this man ever again.

If Pieck dies we riot

Jean is best

Love Mikasa sm

MIKASA SUPREMACYYY GO BEST GIRL

Loved Reiner and Jean moment as well as Mikasa’s bad assery!

Mikasa was amazing this chapter

Pieck, the only one to make a move against Eren directly while the rest are too much up in their feelings. Best girl moment right there <3

Mikasa was so badass!! Love to see it

Mikasa was the BOMB in this chapter, loved that winged panel of hers.

My God I loved it, Mikasa was so badass, especially in that speech scene with her wings, Falco is best boy, I loved the interactions and everyone saving each other

THE CHAPTER IS TITLED “BATTLE OF HEAVEN AND EARTH”, WHAT DOES THIS REFER TO? 1,942 responses

The most popular interpretation of the title “Battle of Heaven and Earth” seems to be designating Ymir as the Heaven, and the Alliance as the Earth (42.6%), with the reverse of that being the second most popular (27.8%). In third came the idea that it relates to Ymir using the titans of deceased Eldians (20.9%).

A battle that people might die in (Heaven) or survive (Earth)

A battle which has consequences for both Heaven (Paths) and Earth (The World)

The alliance fighting in the heavens while the colossal titans destroy the earth.

It is a reference to Ragnarok.

multiple viable interpretations. the ascended vs descended, the heavenly winged mikasa vs the now devil of all earth ymir, the winged titan against the earthly titans.

Probably a weird take, but it reminds me 131. Eren being in the Heaven as his coping mechanism and Ymir being on the ground (earth)

I’m not sure but it’s in reference to the 4th chapter titled First Battle. Just like last chapter referenced the 5th chapter.

Heaven: Paradis. Earth: beyond the sea.

all of the above- YOU GET SYMBOLIC METAPHORS, AND YOU GET SYMBOLIC METAPHORS

because the battles are in the sky while on earth the colosus step down on earth

***ohhh heaven is a place on earth***

WE’D PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT YMIR WAS UNJUSTIFIABLY FRAMED BY HER PEERS. DOES LEARNING THAT SHE FREED THE PIGS AFFECT HOW YOU VIEW HER? 1,952 responses

Ymir apparently freeing the pigs was an unexpected opening for the chapter. For 34.4% this action meant that Ymir has always been #TeamFreedom. A sizable 18.8% think this relatively minor reveal makes her way more suspicious. Closely following that, 18% think it means nothing at all. It’s just a cool detail that resolved a mystery.

It's trying to say that since Ymir freed the pigs, she created this whole mess which I heavily dislike since it goes against what her character was in 122

When back in 122 everyone was foaming about tHe FuCkInG pIgS, I was rolling my eyes so hard, because to me the pigs were insignificant: it does not matter who set them free, they might have just run away on their own, what matters is that Ymir is the one they blame, which started the whole story. NOW, huh, the pigs might be important, or at least it really might have been Ymir who let them go, set them free. She couldn't get free herself, so she granted freedom to the poor animals.

I always just assumed Ymir set the pigs free, I didn't realize it was something people saw as ambiguous until now…

I wasn't expecting any of that sh*t, and now I'm certain that Ymir is the real baddie here

Peppa Pig is free

WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN YMIR FREEING THE PIGS AND LOOKING DOWN AT THE ALLIANCE? 1,835 responses

The chapter opens with Ymir after freeing the pigs from the pen, but what does this mean? It’s close, but the most popular option is that Ymir is recalling that the last time she prioritised the idea of freedom the suffering was not worth it (29.9%), followed by the assertion there’s no deeper meaning (22.3%). A close third place of votes believe the connection is that Ymir has given up acts of selflessness as she doubles down on the rumbling (21.8%) and an even closer fourth place see it as her looking down on the Alliance as if they were the caged animals (21.4%).

Did she free the pigs out of compassion, or to spite her master? Is the rumbling everything to put the pigs back in the pen, or to get revenge on those who scorned Eldians?

How it started versus where it's ended up. All this torment and death because of something so minuscule because of human cruelty towards each other.

It seems like a parallel between Ymir freeing the pigs and Ymir freeing the past titans.

It shows she's an actor with agency and motivations, whether in her slave-like state or her god-like position

It was her first act of free will, and her routing the scouts it technically her third, so in a way they are parallel actions.

She looks at humans like pigs

She wants freedom, and the only way to obtain it is to kill the alliance

She's still in a cage, represented by the bones of Eren

She has been stewing in everything she has gone through for 2000 years and that might've turned her hateful.

it is possible that after looking at humanity for hundreds of years that she believes that it is not human's nature to be compassionate like her, but to fight each other until no one remains, and she has decided to speed up to what she feels is the inevitable conclusion so that her ghost can be gone for good.

WHY IS YMIR THE ONE ACTIVELY FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE ALLIANCE? 1,919 responses

Armin notes that Ymir seems to be the one in control of the titans, why is this? The large majority at 54.5% believe her to be working side by side with Eren. About ¼, at 24.8% think she’s stepping in for Eren while she’s unconscious, while the minority at 20.7% think she’s overpowered Eren and is the real big bad of the story.

If she really wants the whole humanity to perish, then it means she lost all hope in humanity and is like an empty shell who has never experienced any drop of love. I feel that Ymir doesn't really care about protecting or helping Eren. She just wants to see an empty world - without humans.

The chapter was really well drawn. Also I see lots of new possibilities to happen, as Eren being a slave, Ymir perhaps becoming the final villain. it also makes to recall back to chapter 1 when I see Eren crying in front of Mikasa after some sort of "dream". This makes me think that Eren will eventually come to regret his actions but it's gonna be too late. thus he receives this dream but he is never able to see it through. Quite a sad fate. Although that's just a speculation on my part.

Armin questioning Ymir's role has me hoping for an Armin talk no jutsu with Ymir.

Eren and Ymir are unbeatable

Ymir/Eren are the only ones who can build titans right now. They baited Falco and Annie to return to get all of the 9 shifters near the founder again and they are planning something.

It warmed my heart seeing Ymir protecting her otosan as a thank you for bringing her with him on Take Your Daughters to Work Day 🥺

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO ARMIN BEING FRENCHED BY A TITAN? 1,957 responses

In one of the weirdest moments in recent memory, Armin gets french kissed by a titan of the past. 42% of fans think it makes sense, as it was the only way to stop him from biting himself to transform. 36.1% feel bad for Armin as he’s gotten molested and now this, he just can’t catch a break. 14.2% are scared to ask if this constitutes fanservice, and 7.8% are too grossed out to think about it any longer.

When I wanted a non-Annie pairing for Armin, I wasn't expecting this. Stop harrassing my poor boy.

the chapter has already spawned Armin tentacle hentai and that makes it the best chapter in the whole manga

Armin capture thing was a little weird but makes sense IMO.

I know Armin being captured in that way has a narrative purpose, but that was disturbing in the end and i hate people will/ and are joking about it.

It didn't cross my mind that the frenching was to prevent Armin from transforming until I saw the vote option. Thank you.

WILL THE CANNONS AT FORT SALTA DO BETTER OR WORSE THAN THE BLIMPS? 1,920 responses

Fort Salta’s own forces don’t seem very effective as of yet, with the blimps almost completely failing, and now they turn to three cannons. Not a single respondent thinks they’ll do anything (Not that we gave them the option), though more think they’ll do nothing in red.

Them cannons, it will be effective.

They’ll get hit by the fort’s cannons but they probably won’t be very effective

KARINA SAW THE ARMORED TITAN GET CHOMPED IN FRONT OF HER VERY EYES. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT HER? 1,924 responses

Even though the Plot-Armored Titan escaped death yet again, all Karina saw was her son’s flesh mecha being chomped from afar. 37.3% are finding it hard to care about Karina’s struggle, but of the ones who did have an answer, 31.2% think the purpose of the death fake-out is so she can better appreciate when Reiner is alive and well later. Just under a fifth at 19.3% think she’ll do something rash while thinking her son is dead, unsurprisingly more than the 12.2% who think Karina would do something nice for once.

fuck karina

reiner always manages to escape death

JEAN POINTS OUT THAT THE SPAWNING TITANS ARE NOT MINDLESS. WHAT IS THEIR TRUE NATURE? 1,933 responses

It was a close one, but a plurality of respondents (38.1%) thought that the shifters brought forth by Ymir were the real deal, their souls controlled in death. Or their spirits? Their essences? Their… PATHS GHOSTS? Slightly fewer respondents (36.8%) think they’re just empty clones, Ymir simply not bothering with creating new forms since that would probably take a fuckton more years. 23.7% are somewhere between the two other options – maybe these shifters aren’t really present, but some of their will remains.

The fact that Armin saw Bertolt tells me that a part of the titan's "souls" still exist within them and they're being forced to do Ymir's bidding

The founding titan powers give her complete control over sentient shifters, and the attack titan powers (utilized by the founding titan) lets Ymir reach back in time and utilize the shifter's "essence" (maybe they all had a weird dream they don't remember), and obviously the warhammer titan is what allows them to take form. Beast titan go brrrrr

I have a small theory about souls of past shifters being imprisoned in some paths area or insubconscious mind of current titan shifters.

I’m conflicted between the two first answers but I hope there empty clones

At first, I thought it would be like Zeke's titans in Ragako (the anime showed their weird coordinated dance). But looking at Bertholdt, it seems they're not acting on free will but are still a bit conscious.

If you chomp one, do you get its power?

They are empty vessel's resurrected the only reason Armin saw Bertolt was becuase armin was the holder of the collosal titan! In my opinion of course

They are ghost/ spirits of the past shifter, which have a limited consciousness like zombies

They are moving according to the old users skills, like a saved “data”

They are the ones who volunteered to be in the walls when the Eldians escaped to Paradis. They sympathise with Eren and are fighting for him.

They are the real shifters working with Ymir

We see Bert crying right before we see his titan try to eat Reiner —— maybe he’s being forces by Ymir.

The souls of the previous titan holders can see what is happening though paths but they don't have control over it

Ymir created them via the shifters' own memories respectively. The Beetholdt panel might show hesitation of wanting to grab Reiner for example and emphasizes on the theme of Slavery. How to achieve freedom you must steal freedom (Erwn said he stole the world's freedom to achieve his own) or enslave/oppress someone or a group.

Ymir created them while eren is using them

souls being completely controlled but can be revoked original consciousness back,cringe naruto shit.

Through PATHS all is possible

ISAYAMA WENT ALL OUT WITH TITAN DESIGNS. WHICH ANCIENT TITANS DID YOU MOST ENJOY SEEING? 1,926 responses

The most popular design in Isayama’s titan showcase by a decent margin was the “Faceless Titan” (45.8%), with “The Thing Titan” coming in second (34.4%). In third was the “Minotaur Titan” (32.4%) and narrowly in fourth, the “Mummified Titan” (31.3%). Interestingly, 2/4 of the top designs appear to be previous Warhammer Titans, which is fitting with it being one of the most popular titan designs. Well, except for the one we saw in Ymir’s backstory that had hair. We all agreed that thing was atrocious.

I loved the previous titan shifters.

croco titan best boi

There's a lot of titans missing, so I'll say here that I love the dinosaur titan, the bearded titan and the ghost-like titan as well.

that 'wolverine' titan is actually a deer. It kind of blends in with Reiner's armor but you can see the antlers if you look closely.

always wanted to see ancient titan designs since learning about the inheritance and such, so this is a dream come true for a fanartist

Previously, it was left to our imagination what all these past Titan Shifters looked like, but thanks to this chapter (through the power of PATHS!), we got to see many of them for ourselves. A nice treat from Isayama, but also a mind-blowing one, especially with how they intervened in the fight.

Seeing all these past Titan Shifters appear like that was so interesting to me that it made me analyze each one and try to identify which was an old Jaw Titan, an old Beast Titan, an old Cart Titan, an old Warhammer Titan, and so on, so this chapter also felt like a fun guessing game in that regard!

Adding animals to the mix just feels like a try hard to make them scary. If he wanted them to have some real crazy powers it could've been done better imo, having these many animals just thrown around didn't make sense to me, we already got the beast titan and that bird titan. It's enough animals for me, especially since initially what made titans so scary in the first place was how identical they are to humans, only differing in their mounstrous size.

I never liked the idea of animal titans, it just feels so weird and out of place with no explanation for why or how they are animal-like. That being said, some of the other titan designs were pretty rad.

Show us Kruger's titan though

WHICH RETURNING TITAN DID YOU MOST ENJOY SEEING? 1,925 responses

In a chapter filled with new titans of the past we also saw some classic designs. By far the most hype-inducing one among fans was the Colossal Titan at 66.6%, followed by the War Hammer at 19.6%, Porco’s Jaw at 12.2%, and Marcel’s Jaw at 1.5%.

I loved how the one, true and only OG Colossal Titan of Bertholdt descended upon them like a fucking God

since there was no ""Other"" option in the ""favourite moment"" question, I'll say it here: Marcel's titan was my favourite moment.

Last chapter I was wondering if there'll be "another Beast Titan clone". We end up getting the entire museum lmao

The Colossal Titan, the God of the SnK world, appeared as the judge (while aldo not being himself, ironically) seriously, it was amazing

The Colossal Titan's entrance was like sweet karma, after how the SC murdered Bertold brutally and never cared one bit, they still couldn't get rid of him. SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS kekekek

THERE’S BEEN SOME DEBATE BUT IT SEEMS FRECKLED YMIR WASN’T THERE. IS THIS SIGNIFICANT? 1,900 responses

Ah, the innocent days of our freckled goddess… she may have turned out to be a regular girl, but where was she when our other old friends were running around? There were a couple of Titans who looked a bit like her, but none with both her little gremlin body and her distinctive nose and teeth. Does it matter? 63.8% of you don’t think there’s anything to it. Maybe she’ll be in the next chapter, or maybe Yams forgot her… maybe she’s chilling with Grisha and Kruger. 36.2% think there could be something more to her absence so far.

i hope freckled ymir came back ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ

I think it's highkey sus that we didn't see freckled Ymir's titan and that really gives me hope that Historia really will have an important part in the finale since it feels like Yams is saving freckled Ymir for a Historia moment

about freckles... i think her titan was the one that was gonna try and eat reiner/jean. dark hair, thin arms, small facial features.

I feel like her foreground omission isn't a big deal, since we're already two Jaws in, both of whom have more impactful connections to those present.

I want freckled Ymir back

ymir freckles did make an appearance, wasn’t she the titan attacking reiner as he was holding onto jean that mikasa slashed?

I believe Freckeld Ymir's Jaw Titan is shown when Bertholdt's Colossal Titan attempts to eat Reiner. It's very small though so it's hardly noticeable and I can't even confirm that it was indeed her Titan but it seemed like it.

YOU GAVE ME HOPE ABOUT FRECKLED YMIR DAMN YOU and thank you

SINCE ALL THE TITAN OTHER SHIFTERS SUMMONED THIS CHAPTER WERE DECEASED, DOES THIS MEAN ZEKE IS DEAD? 1,953 responses

Ymir summoned titans of the past according to Pieck, does that mean Zeke is of the past now too? The fandom is overall undecided on this one, as about half don’t know, at 48.5%. 32.7% are confident Zeke is still around, and 18.8% take this as confirmation of his death.

Zeke may not be dead, because the beast titan summoned last chapter could be Xavier's beast titan too. Because in one earlier Marley arc chapter, someone mentioned that "The beast titan is the same as ever". Meaning, Xavier's beast titan was also monke.

IF Zeke is alive, it means that Pieck is once again somehow "faking" her defeat and goes for the detonator but then she somehow runs into Zeke. They have a lot of history and too much stuff unresolved between them and because of eren/armin and zeke/pieck dynamics is that those 2 stayed on the founding titan..

I think Zeke and Bertolt are both stuck in paths, unable to properly die. I hope Zeke is just shackled making titans like we saw him in 120. That would be poetic, for the one who hates his Eldian blood so much to be forced to enact the one thing that made him hate himself (the existence of titans).

I just realized that in the last chapter I thought Zeke was there but it was the shot of the Marleyan general saying ""I am sorry""... I was writing about how Zeke cannot be dead, what are you all talking about, he is right there, then went and checked 134. Now I'm just sitting here with no answers at all. Zeke could be anywhere, alive or dead, no clue...

CHEKHOV’S EXPLOSIVES CONTINUE, AND THIS CHAPTER PIECK ENSURED THEY WERE RIGHT NEXT TO EREN. WHO WILL DETONATE THEM? WILL THEY BE EFFECTIVE? 1,121 responses

We asked what you think would come of the explosives that have been built up for eight chapters now, and collated your responses. First, who will detonate them?

Pieck: 182

Mikasa: 140

Armin: 134

Reiner: 99

Gabi: 81

Levi: 71

Connie: 38

Jean: 29

Annie: 23

Falco: 14

Eren: 6

Ymir: 2

Zeke/Onyankopon/Bertholdt: 1

There were also 7 mentions of the cannons that the Marleyans got ready to use this chapter actually coming in handy, and setting off the explosives. It’s also noteworthy that Pieck is thought of more than any other character to be likely to sacrifice her life to get it done. Additionally, many people who put forth Armin detonating them suggested this occurs through his titan transformation igniting them, not just him using the detonator.

In terms of success, 255 said that the explosives would either do nothing or overall be ineffective, with the most commonly given reason being that Eren is not in the nape. 250 said that the explosives will be helpful one way or another, including 7 who said they would end Eren’s life (Most of these involved Mikasa as the detonator). 9 people specified that they hope the bombs don’t do anything, 25 said nobody will detonate them at all, and 2 said it will be effective but will make things worse.

They will play an important role in the Climax, one way or another

warhammer can just throw the explosive after it deals with pieck

His neck is covered with more bones and the blimps didn't hurt them, but the explosives are as close as possible, so I think maybe they could work.

100% those explosives will be used in one way or an other, but i have a feeling that eren is not even there ;)

Annie will likely be able to get close to Pieck, as her titan is very agile and will activate the explosives that will be able to get Eren out of her giant's head

Could be anyone. The way they're set up, they must have some effect.

Could be Jean or Connie and maybe the rumbling will be paused or the Eren's skeleton will collapse as the story continues..

Connie and he will die doing so, doing few damage but someone will be like "hey he gave us a weakness we can exploit"

if they are effective, mikasa but if they arent it will be connie or jean

Doesn’t matter who detonates them it won’t be effective

Eren better pull a Reiner and transfer his consciousness. Isayama introduced that shit on purpose. Peick probably playing dead and will try to detonate to no avail.

Gabi is going to detonate them and save Pieck too. The explosion might help in the fight, but I doubt Eren is in the neck, my bet its Zeke who is in there.

Eren, once all the shifters are dead he will detonate it killing himself and ensuring all titans are reborn in Historias baby, truly freeing ymir and ending the curse of the titans.

Fort Salta Cannons will detonate them. They wont be effective because Eren is hiding in Paradis with the Warhammer Titan power (or he can transfer his consciousness to the rest of his spine in case he really is there).

Levi will detonate them to kill Zeke who is actually the one in the nape

Levi will give up on his dream of killing Zeke and die sacrificing himself to detonate it

Pieck will sacrifice herself to detonate the fuse and when she does she will fall to her doom. She will be content in knowing that it will work. She lits it up and falls at the same time. When shes falling she feels a great sense of acceptance, but all of a sudden Falco swoops in to save her with everyone on his back. As they watch it blow up the body keeps moving for eren was not there to begin with.

I think Ymir will use them against the alliance

Oyankopon drops a flying knee into the plunger in an act of self-sacrifice.

titanfolk: Kaboom?

Isayama: Yes titanfolk, kaboom.

WHY IS ARMIN HAVING THE VISION OF BERTOLT? 1,928 responses

In one of the more confusing panels of this crazy chapter, we see Bertolt standing over Armin. 39.6% believe it to be a fragment of Berthold brought back through the Colossal Ymir summoned, 25.5% think Bertoto has awareness in an afterlife, 25.1% think Armin is having a memory from his predecessor Burrito, and 7.3% think Ymir is just messing with Armin.

Grabbing Armin allowed Ymir to access Bertolt's titan, similar to how they have Zeke captive for his Beast titan

It's some kind of twist that's coming related to the whole predecessor memory stuff.

Some kind of PTSD vision brought on by being put in a Titans mouth

Since this was an ongoing issue how Armin didn't seem to have access to Berth's memories, he'll probably will see some of them soon. And especially the one, where Eren says to Levi that Armin will save humanity, not him. That will give him the last push to do whatever.

The scene with Bertholdt was a direct recall of when Armin woke up after eating him, and seeing him crying in the form of the Colossal Titan's skull and saying "it hurts" in chapter 85. My poor boy :( He was probably suffering from eternal torment in an afterlife/paths related place. Shifters' Hell would be a good word, as Ymir Fritz kinda had the same experience being enslaved for eternity

Him seeing Bertolt for the second time makes me think these two are going to switch places at some point. That being said it's not the end-end for Armin, and Eren is definitely reserving him a seat in whatever path underground there is.

I thought Armin was feeling the despair/hopelessness that Bertolt did while the warriors were undercover in Paradis. The paralyzing dread of the task before him, even though he is the "strongest titan"

Bertolt's individual "soul" still exists as a singular entity, that lives within Paths. Armin as his inheritor has a soul-link to him, can see him, recall his memories and even feel some of his feelings. However his presence here will serve for Armin to make some kind of realisation that will help conclude the battle.

YOUR THOUGHTS ON MIKASA IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,942 responses

We knew Mikasa would likely be chapter MVP but we wanted to give her an extra shoutout for a great chapter. Only 9.1% percent refused to play along. A majority of nearly 60% agreed with all our gushing about her performance, selecting all of the above. Of the individual entries, “Bless those ackergenes” (10.2%), “They were goners without her” (8.8%) and “She was unbelievable” (7.9%) were top selections.

Isayama in November said mikasa character is coming and this chapter felt like the start of it and hoo was this Mikasa's chapter. We have known that Mikasa is one of three main MCs, and isayama had been foreshadowing Mikasa's role in the finale so much. I'm excited to read the final 3 chapters.

goat mikasaaaa

HEAD EMPTY JUST MIKASA SUPREMACy

I LOVE MIKASA

Loving all the Mikasa scenes. It’s about damn time,

Mikasa going "Fuck it. Fight me. All of you, I don't care if you're shifter clones, I'll kick your ass." was a great bit of dark humour and a really well done character beat. If she has to go down she'll go down fighting with pride.

THIS CHAPTER MIKASA FOUGHT TO THE END AFTER LEVI DELEGATED THE ATTACKING ROLE TO HER, A REVERSAL FROM FEMALE TITAN ARC. IS MIKASA HUMANITY'S NEW STRONGEST SOLDIER? 1,940 responses

Levi has always been humanity’s strongest soldier, but this chapter had Mikasa being the only one fighting till the end. This being temporary due to Levi’s worn down body is the consensus, with 49.3% affirming its brief nature while 34.3% venture that Mikasa will one day take on this mantle permanently.13.8% believe she has surpassed even what a healed Levi would be capable of, and 2.7% do not think she’s surpassed him in any way.

I’m glad to see a lot more female empowerment with Mikasa being a major hit in this chapter. I got very worried with the amount of saving Levi had to go through and avoiding near deaths at some points.

Let the Humanity’s Strongest go down like a badass he’s always been, stop making him this pitiful please

LEVI NEEDS IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION HE MIGHT BE HAVING INTERNAL BLEEDING FROM THAT EXPLOSION AND HIS LEG BEING BITTEN MAKES IT EVEN WORSE FUCK

I BELIEVE IN LEVI'S SUPREMACY

Mikasa Ackerman supremacy

that wings really said mikasa is the most freest person now

I’d love it if isayama would stop crippling Levi. I know its to get him out of the fight but cmon

NOW THAT WE SEE IT IN ACTION, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF FALCO’S BIRD TITAN? 1,944 responses

Most fans are behind this controversial development at this point, with 46.8% loving it, and 29.3% not loving it but feeling that it fits in the chapter. 17.4% have changed their mind from negative to positive after seeing it in this chapter, and 6.5% will always hate this.

Falco's titan is amazing. He saved everyone and it's his second transformation, he is goat.

I liked Falco saving the day :) It doesn't matter to me how he learnt to fly and control his titan so fast. Maybe Zeke helped him via sending visions? Or maybe Falco is talented? I don't know and I think we have more important thing to read about

Falco Being able to fly a few hours after Hange's death makes this chapter less good.

The Flying Titan is questionable but everything else are great

the design of Bird Titan is kinda cringe

Porco must be very proud of his son

KIYOMI AND YELENA ARE NOT ON THE FLYING TITAN, ALONG WITH THE AZUMABITO ENGINEERS. ANY PREDICTIONS? 1,911 responses

After Kiyomi forebodingly accepted the risk of the ship sinking that also contained Yelena and the Azumabito engineers two chapters ago, she has not been seen since despite Falco now arriving. The majority of you (70.2%) believe they’re fine, with the ship surviving Falco’s transformation, while just under a quarter (23.2%) believing both drowned on the sinking ship, and a slim minority (6.6%) believe they are with our main crew on the Flying Titan.

Yelena better be okay

I wonder where is yelena

I just want to learn how the rest of the Azumabito family are doing after Falco transformed into the Titan.

ISAYAMA’S DONE IT AGAIN! WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE THROWBACK THIS CHAPTER? 1,936 responses

Isayama loves himself some throwbacks and this chapter was no exception. Mikasa giving a speech reminiscent of her Trost speech was the most popular option at 32.9%, with Armin dreaming of Bertolt crying similar to his dream of the Colossal Titan was a close second at 28.2%. Rounding out the top three was Falco taking a bird form in parallel with the Fort Slava scene we just saw in the anime.

It was like going back to Trost arc amazing wise... It was really a good one full of quotes from previous memorable moments of the series, while reading it i thought "wow, it really is ending

I think it significantly has to do with his memory of the colossal crying after RtS so perhaps it's a near death state experience of his predecessor for Armin

I'm also interested to see what Armin is going to do next. He seems to think back to Erwin whenever he gets himself into a pickle. I'm excited to see how he will use his titan in this battle.

Based on the parallels with Trost the only bomb that's blowing Eren out of his titan is Armin's Colossal Titan.

DO YOU AGREE WITH ANY OF THESE CRITICISMS ABOUT THE CHAPTER? 1,428 responses

No chapter is free from criticism, so we scoured discord, twitter and reddit looking for the most common complaints. The lack of character deaths seemed to be on many minds. “There was too much plot armor” and “Eren and OG Ymir are too OP” were the two options that got over 30%. Grumblings about the flying titan (26.1%) and Mikasa with a winged background (23.9%) were also common selections. I think what’s most telling is that ⅓ of respondents skipped this question entirely indicating that they had no major complaints at all

Everything was going 10/10 until the flying titan came and saved everyone. Another chapter with 0 deaths this late in the story.

I really love that mikasa with wings so much. It means for me she's the hope of humanity.she's ackerman so ymir can't control her... she will have a big roll at the end!

Being able to recreate old Titans is too OP

not too sold on the whole spawning in Titans and a flying bird that just recently got their power swooping in to save everyone

I'm completely sold on the idea of past shifters being summoned. Some people may say it's quite an asspull, but honestly, I've had a little problem with this series, which is that the Coordinate has been teased as the power of God itself but we've never seen that in action, so I'm satisfied. I'm not a big fan of the flying titan (teasing things is not the same as justifiying things) and the lack of character deaths made me think Hanji could have died this chapter, which would've been more meaningful honestly. Still, I'm very happy to say Isayama has surprised me once again.

WAYYYYYYYYYY TOO MUCH PLOT ARMOR

I know people are getting stomped on right now, but was expecting at least someone to die.

I don't mind the flying titan, but I would've liked just another hint that the beast titan can be any animal. The very first one in Ymir's flashback was an ape, could've been a dinosaur or something!

You never wanted to accept that this series was a shounen manga aimed at little boys, did you?

DOES THIS CHAPTER ADD EVIDENCE TO THE THEORY THAT HANGE’S VISION WAS REAL? 1,929 responses

On the poll team, our first step in preparing results is looking for spam. We identify that primarily by looking at timestamps and bursts of entries that choose to answer only a single question in rapid succession. Typically we see this behavior on shippy questions and those involving Gabi, so it’s been puzzling that in the last year the only questions to get significant spam are those involving Hange’s vision. Clearly someone, or maybe a few someones, are very afraid of ghosts.

With the spam entries removed, the Yes’s outweighed the No’s by 54-46 percent on the question of whether or not this chapter added evidence to the theory that Hange’s vision was real.

The ghosts of Eldians past are definitely going to feature in the endgame I think. The shifters are the most important but Hange's vision makes it clear that they're all "alive" in Paths somehow. Let freckled Ymir talk to Historia once more!!

I hate conscious development

I bet Hanji is screaming in the afterlife, wanting to be on top of Falco's titan

HAS THE FOCUS ON BIRDS IN THE ANIME OP/ED ADDED EVIDENCE THAT THE BIRDS IN PREVIOUS CHAPTERS ARE SIGNIFICANT? 1,913 responses

Bird theory (/birds being significant in some large way) has been gaining traction recently in the manga already, and then the anime made a whole ED theme about them and had them in focus in the OP as well. In one of the most one sided poll results in recent memory, almost 90% of the fandom feels this is evidence of birds being significant, while 10.7% say no.

birb

Birb

bird

Bird

bird

birds

DESCRIBE THE CHAPTER IN ONE WORD 1,330 responses

This month’s top 5 chosen words bear a resemblance to last month’s, specifically with 1-3 being in last month’s and 1 & 3 being in the last two months. “Chaos” is one more on the original side for this chapter.

Amazing [96]

Epic [50]

Awesome [48]

Chaos/Good/Great [27]

Cool [26]

And in a shocking turn of events, this question is being used to concoct recipes again? Well, it’s a bit of a stretch, but it doesn’t sound half bad.

Nuts

Lasagna

Goat

Cheesy

Chicken

Bertholdt

Chomp

Juicy

Exquisite

ISAYAMA RECENTLY ESTIMATED THERE IS 1-2% LEFT OF THE STORY. WHAT CHAPTER DO YOU THINK THE MANGA WILL END AT? 1,941 responses

I don’t know why Isayama does it, but he keeps assuring us the end is near. But we’ve guessed the end is near since… oh, RTS? Then Marley? Then when the Rumbling started? Remember when chapter 130 was the max? Don’t worry, the ride will end someday. 35.5% think chapter 139 will be the last, giving the final volume five chapters. 33% are sticking with 138, the classic four chapter volume. 28.7% think we’re strapped in for a little longer at 140+ chapters. 2.5% think we’re wrapping up in just two chapters. And 6 respondents think the next chapter is the last! Gonna guess you’re either hoping for Falco to crash into a tree or you’re just tired of this ride. (Sorry, the ride never ends.)

I'm worried about the pacing. While I was glad to have a glimpse of Bert (and Erwin) again, his appearance is long overdue. Along with a whole bag of other characters who need resolutions. I don't know how Isayama will delegate worthwhile endings to this huge cast and themes in 3-4 chapters.

Each chapter makes me feel there's 3 chapters left (and there has passed more than 3 chapters since I thought that for the first time xd)

Another amazing chapter. I see the story ending at Chapter 139. Three more chapters of action, deaths and twists, and one more epilogue chapter.

There's apparently not much of the series left but this chapter still doesn't feel like we're that near the end :/

I was expecting a lot of people to die this time around, but I guess that'll happen later considering we seem to have one more volume left after this one. That actually raises my hopes a bit on the ending not being as rushed as we were afraid it would be. And the return of the anime on top of that? Man, I'm not ready to say goodbye. :(

I'm worried if Isayama will be able to end every character arc. I mean, we're left with 1 or 2% of manga and there is this quite a lot of things to end. I just hope ending won't be rushed.

...it just added a lot of questions like Yams has to give us 5 chapters for the last volume at this point lol.

dunno how this ends with everyone being satisfied. Estimating that 3 chapters are left we need a conclusion to Reiner, Mikasa and the promised Eren and Armin confrontation. While there's mysteries like Zeke's whereabouts, what's going on w Historia, why can ymir manifest herself in the real world, what did eren mean by saying "you haven't gotten to the part where I eat our old man", Bertholdt shard of him getting spared by Dina and Mikasa's see you later scene. Not to mention an epilogue where if alliance wins we get to see how the world treats the eldians now. Im already losing faith that minor characters might be just cannon fodder and I find myself saying "Its Isayama. one chapter where it feels nothing happened doesn't meant we're getting a rushed ending" too often these days.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST HOPING TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,960 responses

It feels like there’s a lot to accomplish with so few chapters remaining. While Eren’s POV is still top on our wishlist (29%), “I don’t care just resolve a mystery, any of them” was the number two (19%). The third most common response was for Armin to come up with a plan (14%). Historia, Zeke and the more specific options all scored in single digits.

We need answers. NOW.

I liked this chapter but I’m getting tired of the mystery. We’ve been lead on for too long and there’s too many loose ends that need to be tied up already.

can we get eren’s pov now

Yes ! More Bertholdt please !!! I missed my big sweaty boy !

Where’s Freckled Ymir!!????!?!???!! Is Pieck okay!?!?!!!?!!

When will Levi die lol

Where armin

What happened to Armin!?? And does peick survive?

WHERE IS MONKE?!

Where the hell is eren?

I hope I can see Eren again

i hope isayama let levi kill zeke before he died , i want him to reunite with erwin and proudly tell him that he accomplish the mission

I just hope that Pieck and Armin are okay :((

i just want armin to be okay

I just want Eren/Mikasa, not all this shit(((

I just want to see Bertolt in the next chapter too

Wonder what is going on inside Ymir's head. Would also love to see Paradis' reaction to the ongoing massacre (if I didn't miss it somehow)

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 1,811 responses

While Reddit has historically stayed consistent, it’s been incredible to see the rise of Twitter and the fall of Tumblr as a dominant fandom platform. A year ago only 8% selected Twitter as their primary place for Attack on Titan discussion now that number is nearing 50%. Last month it became the most selected platform, surpassing Reddit, and this month proves it was no fluke.

wish i had irl friends who read the manga oof

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER? 526 responses

🧐

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Hentai

10/10 again !!! Isayama knows what he’s doing and I trust him with the ending❤️

2/10

GOOD chapter, definitely some eclipse vibes lol, Armin seemed to have realized Ymir is the one with the power and that they'll have to deal with her sooner or later to stop the rumbling. Next step is realizing Eren is 100% ready to kill him if he needs to. Maybe they'll stop trying to kill poor Zook for no reason now at least.

I loved seeing the alliance get there asses clapped

I hope Eren Yeager doesn’t love anyone from “Attack on Titan”.

But it's weird, I thought best Ymir was in the chapter too? She owes us so much, even more if SnK's afterlife is canon (Hange couldn't have known of Keith's death otherwise). And technically, Zeke could be dead like the others. First I was so bored by his constant plot armor but now...

The titan designs were got tier. Isayama came in clutch with these designs

There are still a lot of mysteries unsolved about the Titans and Eren's whereabouts is unknown. Would love to know more about the Ackerman blood too.

This poll is biased for not including statements against Mikasa and the Alliance.

If ymir creates the bodies of titan shifters, why did she give falco a bird form if she wants to stop them? Not saying it's a plot hole yet, but I hope there's a reason for it.

The title reminds me of the chinese saying of “天人交戰” which literally translates as battle between the heaven and human but means ones inner struggle. Maybe it is referring to eren’s inner struggle of wanting freedom and having to kill everything standing between him and freedom. Idk.

A lot of people have been trying to make sense why we're learning about Ymir freeing the pigs here of all places, but rather than it being evidence that she's some evil mastermind I think it's a representation of how devastating this cycle of hatred has been. In that first scene we see Ymir as a kind and empathetic girl who decides that though she can't free herself, she can still help these simple animals who she saw earlier also wanted to escape. But in the present, after suffering greatly for her kindness and being forced into servitude that lasted for countless years and even into death, we see Ymir not just as willing to commit a brutal omnicide on the rest of the world but as someone who is seemingly enslaving others in the pursuit of that goal - in many ways, she might be repeating the same crimes that were done to her by King Fritz.

After seeing the first episode of the new anime season and how well Mappa delivered on that, I cannot *wait* to see the crazy battle action of this chapter animated.

Armin, as expected, ended up a failure yet again. This is what Bertholdt, Erwin and Hange died for -_-

GIVE 👏 ARMIN 👏 A 👏GODDAMN 👏 BREAK

Armin is beginning to understand this always was about Ymir. After seeing her twice.

I really wish Armin could do something besides being tortured with doubt and getting captured.

BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK BERT IS BACK

can levi die already let this old man reunite with his homies in shingeki no heaven. at this point death is like the only peace and/or freedom anyone can get in this series which is kind of a shitty message

I'm a fan of how fucking OP Eren and Ancestor Ymir, which is honestly how it should be. I never expected The Alliance to stand a chance, and they all got fucking wrecked. I'm completely surprised nobody died, I feel like that'll be changed next chapter, though; unfortunately. My main question is: What the fuck do The Alliance plan to do next without Armin and Pieck? Also, seeing the past shifters was fucking amazing and I didn't expect that shit.

Decent chapter. I gave it a 3/5, because it was a purely action, set-up chapter with not so great action scenes, at least compared to other great fight scenes in the series. Still, we got quite a few nice panels and interesting powers, so i will be looking foreard to the payoff.

eren better be in the next chapter idc 🙄‼️

Eren is trying to kill his friends, Ymir is not controling him, he is FREE. Accept it already.

FALCO WILL EAT EREN LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I need this tension between mikasa and Eren resolved in the following chapters....these two are the only characters regarding whom I'm totally not sure what tf will end up happening to them.

Hange would've loved to see all the different types of titans from bygone times. I wish they were still alive, I miss them.

I can't believe that best boy Bertholdt Hoover, the one true God of Destruction, is back, and as usual, the first thing Isayama does is make him cry. Absolutely incredible. This is all I'll think of this month.

I think the Ymir revelation was huge but other than that it was an anxiety-inducing rollercoaster of will they, won't they (die). Nothing much happened. I feel antsy

I think there is a possibility that eren and ymir brought back the shifters because they agree (mostly) with the rumbling and bert is crying because he knows what he has to do to ensure it

I wonder if Ymir regrets setting those pigs free. It was the act that set her life into further misery. I think it's beautiful but tragic how Eren really gave her back the will to fight.

I'm blown away

I'm honestly shocked at how incredible this story has become. Much like Bertholt I feel like I'm fine with whatever happens, because this whole journey and the world are incredibly cruel. And that does not make it bad by any means, it makes it more meaningful.

I'm not a huge fan of the fight scenes so I'd just like to see a satisfying climax and conclusion to the fight soon. Looking forward to Levi killing Zeke and all the reunions.

I'm really optimistic about Bertholdt possibly coming back, oh gods I hope he comes back.

I'm scared because this chapter didn't progress a lot of the story and we only have 3 or maybe 4 chapters left.

Isayama really got to flex his ability to design terrifying monstrous titans again.

It was an interesting chapter. It really works well if you think about it. Regular humans who are humanity's last hope, the strongest soldiers left are against two literal gods. Of course it will not be easy at all, Ymir summoning all those titans and everyone nearly dying multiple times is proof that you cannot defeat such gods that easily. Very excited for the next chapter to see how everything else plays out.

Maybe Anni can use her female titan powers and attract all of the former titan shifters - so that Mikasa detonates the Bombs.

Mikasa deserves a fuckn BREAK. like God she saw her family get butchered TWICE, first by humans, then by titans and now fckn Eren took away the one family she was desperately trying to protect. If anyone should've gone crazy like Eren it's mikasa. She does seem to be at her wit's end and ready to go above and beyond after saving everyone in this chapter and seeing the harm Ymir/Eren is causing. But since she's always done what she believed in, no matter what she does, I just want Mikasa's character to get some sort of happiness by the end of it. Is that too much to ask :/

Nobody said “The Eagles are coming” bad chapter 0/10. I’m kidding. But in all seriousness I really just want to see the ending already. I’m going to imagine it ends with the remnants of humanity rebuilding and promising to never be turbo-racist ever again while a tired Historia looks on with her baby saying “You are free” or something.

PIECK DONT DIE I LOVE YOU!!!!!

PIECK GREATNESS NEXT EPISODE

Reibert pandering for this chapter. It was a tad too fast but I love the focus on Reiner reacting to the CT attacking him. reiner could ALMOST die of the gayest way possible had Jean not butted in.

Screamed when Annie came on

Sets up for a super exciting finale

spare eren POV crumbs? dunno what this man been thinking since chapter 86

stanning bertholdt hoover isn't just a hobby, it's a lifestyle, a reason to breathe, he's also an art, the first gift you open on xmas, a hug from a loved one, he is everything I have ever wanted, and everything I needed.

hOLY FUCKING SH—

I cant see when or how it'll end

I did NOT expect Armin to get tongue porn'd. It's hilarious to imagine Annie seeing that HAHAHAHAHA

I really miss eren so much...AoT without him...it's long time we didn't see him pls isayama):

I rlly don’t see Ymir the same way and I hope it won’t affect the way I see Eren

I still miss Hange :(

I think Bertholdt was crying because his Titan was forced to attack and eat Reiner, against his own will

I think Connie will be the one to help Levi take down Zeke. Levi will live!!!

I thought it was very good. Not peak AOT but great! There was to many saves before death , reminded me of bleach. Seeing the old Titans was really cool and the action was great also.

I want armin and annie flashback in next chapter

i want EMA meet again):

I want Mikasa to choke Eren with the scarf

I want monke boi back :(

I want more Eren

I want more!!!!!!!

I wanted see Historia

I was really excited to hear we were getting more bertholdt

I was vey hyped because of this chapter and it delivered. During all the chapter i was like "someone's gonna die someone's gonna die" and when Berthold's titan appears and eats reiner's titan I screamed, but that son of a bitch is inmortal hahah.

idc idc come back to save pieck and armin please

It gives the idea of how powerful that titan god is, i think it lives up to Rod's description of titam god and how powerful it felt during Ymir's backstory (her form)

It got really hype when all the past shifters came over but Pieck’s bomb failing could be seen a mile away. Over amazing with some nice moments.

it is really, life and death situation. still, looking forward to this especially the ending. how will aot end? surely, it will be a legacy. a great masterpiece made by isayama-sensei.

it maintains a nice pace

It sucks. Manga went downhill since chap 105. The shit needs to end.

It was a classic high tension action chapter which I loved

IT WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

It was amazing and full of a lot of lore!

It was amazing! I'd say this could be one of the best chapters written! So much action went on to the point where I hope MAPPA has a decent sized budget to animate it all. I'm really eager to see what the next chapter has in store. The main thing I'm looking forward to that wasn't listed here is basically what will happen to Levi. Is he going to survive through all this, or is he going to succumb to his wounds? Is he going to pair up with Zeke to take down Eren? Or is he going to stay on the "sidelines" untill the war is over?

It was fun, but somewhat inconsequential aside from Falco

It was good, i just need some answeres. Ymirs ability was so sudden.

It was great to finally see previous titan shifter forms, especially the beast titans.

It was just overall so epic

It was really great in terms of action but disappointing as well since there was too much plot armour - I was expecting at least one death.

it was really nice before the episode, it's all getting so intense and i didn't expect ymir to go in with a bang like this

It was really nice, all the symbolism, along with Mikasa with the wings was amazing.

it was super crazy

It'll probably be more enjoyable in the anime (if MAPPA even tackles this). Straight battles have never been this manga's strong suit.

Jean, dare to die and I won't love you anymore >:'(

Its up to ho wmany chapters we have left, if we have like 10 it was a very good one, if we have smt like 3 ( that i dont think so ) it was waste of time

Levi is almost certainly dead/dying

Levi might be a ‘slave’ to being a hero but he’s a victim of his own popularity which is preventing Isayama from killing him off. We know he’s not gonna fulfill his promise to Erwin because Levi never gets what he really wants, surprise surprise. But if he keeps getting injured and left out of action he’ll live the rest of his life with nothing but regrets.

levi please don't die

LEVI PLEASE SURVIVE :(

levi u ok buddy

Levi's leg is not daijobu,,, is he even alive

Lol who TF cares about Bert? He killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Eldians alongside Reiner and Annie. I still say he deserved what he got and is not worthy of any kind of sympathy, no matter how many angsty teardrops Isayama draws on his stupid face.

looking forward to seeing it animated.

Lots of weirdness, but still great

man the titan battles were great, seeing all the previous titans fight was pretty awesome seeing the hopelessness form the alliance really showed the reality of it all, now they lost 2 additional titans leaving Eren with 6 and the alliance down to 3

MAPPA gon be hurting

not enough lesbians

Not for the chapter but, All the openings and endings(lyrics and images) of the series have some details of the things we are experiencing with the latest chapters

That being said that Annie scene was pretty cringe. I expected that, but it was so cliché it's ridiculous.

ONLY BERT & PIECK HAVE RIGHTS

overall good! it was alot to process but im on board and excited for the next one

Pls end it Mikasa, you can do it.

Plz yams don't give me hope like this

Professor X vs. Magneto soon

really crazy. You have to admit that Isayama doesn't stop when it comes to creativity.

Really curious about Bertolt apparition

Pretty good. As much as I want the Alliance to win in the end, their utter defeat this chapter felt more realistic, than if they managed to actually do anything.

Really liked Jean and Reiners moments this chapter, overall a good chapter that flew by. Hope quickly turned into desperation but Falcons teams arrival means they got one more chance. Armin capture thing was a little weird but more or less makes sense.

Since the rumbling started, this series has became more dull and predictable. Loads of plot armor, stupid teosts only for shock value and weird pacing are major problems in this arc. Too bad, because the post timeskip portion of this manga up until the rumbling was one of the best pieces of media I had seen. But now I am only expecting the boring cliche shonen ending.

Still hate Annie being back, she can still go.

Still think Mikasa is gonna be the one to either kill Eren or bring him back to his senses somehow

The afterlife thing still hasn't answered and I wanna know how's the corps doing T_T

The Alliance got dumpsterd yet no one died. They'll probably die in all in one chapter.

the art, as usual, was really good

There are still some mysteries to solve and things to do (like EMA final convo, which I don't think will last just 2 or 3 pages) in so little time, I'm kinda worried to be honest.

This chapter is full of plot twists, I didn't even expect the storyline to turn out like this.

This chapter is painfull and more action at the same time and i hope there are still chances that there old happy days will be back

This chapter was actually exciting! And thank goodness Bertolt is finally back!!!!! So many people assumed he was finished and forgotten, but a small group of us knew Isayama wouldn't leave us hanging without his closure. I'm looking forward to learning why we're seeing him now and whatever's going to happen to Armin

This chapter was breathtaking and hard to continue due to the speculations that someone was going to die. I feel like the next few chapters is where things start to get serious if not already. I found it very enjoyable yet nervous at some moments.

This was so crazy and hopeless like it's peak apocalypse even more than rumbling. It's a nightmare I love Isayama

Too many last-seconds saves kinda ruins the tension.

umm it would've been better

Ummm this chapter had too much suspense

uuuuuuuhhh nothing else i guess

Very PogChamp

We are going to get the best manga ending ever.

Nobody is free yet...

MAN WTF IS HAPPENING I READ TBE MANGA BHT HAVENT REREAD IT AND I FORGOT WVERYTHING MAN WTF

#snk polls #snk poll #snk poll results #snk 135 #snk chapter 135

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parrhesiablog · 3 years ago

Text

The Case for Trivial Anarchism

An analysis of proceduralist, legal obligation and political authority arguments against anarchism

The Consummation of Empire from The Course of the Empire by Thomas Cole (source)

Read here on my substack: https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/the-case-for-trivial-anarchism

I. Trivial Anarchism Defined

Think of the nature of a utopian society in which everyone lives up to their moral obligations according to whatever your moral theory is. Hardly anyone would envision an ideal society in which people steal, murder, trespass, cheat on their spouse or any other clearly bad action. If you are the type of person who thinks everyone should go to church, then imagine everyone does this. If you are the type of person who thinks everyone should donate 10% of their income to effective charities, then imagine people in this society do.

In this utopia, the laws were exactly how you would like them to be. Your wildest policy dreams could be implemented whatever they may be. If you’re a liberal, you can have universal basic income, wealth redistribution, subsidized housing, legalized gay marriage, reparations and anti-discrimination policies. If you’re conservative, you can have border control, strict policing and drug prohibition.

If you think for a second about what the laws would be, you might notice there would be a problem of sorts. If everyone fulfilled their moral duties, government would not be necessary. If nobody committed murder, theft, assault and so forth, you would not need laws to prevent people form doing this. You would not need police for enforcement or prisons for confining criminals. If nobody created drugs that were unsafe or prepared food in an unsanitary way, then you do not need regulatory bodies to check on them. If people donated a large portion of their income to charities, you would not need to tax them.

Government is an institution that punishes people who do not conform to the law but if everyone behaved as the law wanted, then you would not need the government. I think this position could be called something like being a Trivial Anarchist. In a utopian society with perfect actors that follow all their moral obligations, you would be an advocate for anarchism but in some sense this is a trivial point because we do not live in that world. This does not mean you want to reduce the size of government under present conditions.

Within the philosophy of anarchism, there are the extreme anarchists who would end the state immediately and there are those who are more hesitant. In an essay entitled “Do You Hate The State?”, Murray Rothbard critiques some Anarcho-Capitalists for being too gradual in their approach compared to his more radical “abolitionist” approach:

The abolitionist is a "button pusher" who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed.

Relative to the trivial anarchist, the Button Pusher Anarchist would be toward the opposite end of the anarchist spectrum with the always-and-everywhere button pusher being the furthest extreme. So, wouldn’t everyone be on this spectrum as at least a trivial anarchist? I think no and the reasons that they would not be tell us a lot about political reasoning and ethics. I will argue that there is not a good reason to not be a trivial anarchist.

II. Instrumentalism and Proceduralism

In discussions of democracy, different justifications for the institution are provided. Someone may say that democracy is a good institution because it creates peace and thriving economic conditions. This is an instrumentalist argument. It takes the stance that democracy is good because it gives us good things. If other institutions were better, the institutionalist would probably want to switch systems.

There are other arguments which are about the process itself. For example, one could argue democracy is good because it allows a nation’s people to shape their own institutions and allows everyone’s voice to be heard. These types of arguments are proceduralist.

Proceduralism is the thesis that some way (or ways) of distributing power or making decisions is intrinsically good, just, or legitimate.

Pure proceduralism, the most radical version, holds that there are no independent moral standards for evaluating the outcome of the decision-making institutions.1

Pure proceduralism is not popular because it has absurd and revolting conclusions. For example, a democracy that elects a leader that commits atrocities would be the most good, just or legitimate option because the election process was good. Most people are a blend of proceduralism and instrumentalism. They believe in the institution of democracy to some extent and value the process but they also care a lot about the outcomes that it produces.

I would consider myself a pure instrumentalist. The only thing that matters is the outcomes that are produced. I want my policies to win. If letting children vote achieved my policy goals, I would support it. If raising the voting age to 45 and above achieved my policy goals, I would support it. Do I support the electoral college, DC statehood, gerrymandering, campaign finance laws or voter ID laws? It depends on what policies it would produce.

You could object that I should have at least some proceduralist considerations but the consequences of elections are important and the value of voting is either really small or non-existent. Does a gang of robbers out-voting a lost traveller about whether to steal from the traveller make the action anymore ethically acceptable? I would probably say no or maybe but ever so slightly if so. Presidents command influence over trillions of dollars, the wellbeing of hundreds of millions and the lives of many foreigners and soldiers in US war zones.

Imagine two Central European presidential candidates: Novak and Vesely. They will be the exact same in all ways except Vesely will invade Ruritania and kill 100,000 people for no good reason. You can tell the future. You’re in charge of counting the votes and notice that Vesely won by 99,999 but you can switch the number so that Novak wins by 1 vote, essentially switching the vote of 100,000 people. Would this be ethical? I think I would switch the votes. I value a life over a legitimately counted vote. How many deaths would it take for you to change the votes? Please don’t tell me people can’t tell the future or that more than one person counts the votes.

I believe that someone could reject trivial anarchism if they had proceduralist beliefs. That would mean that an ideal situation in which everyone was acting totally morally was not good enough. You would also have to have votes on issues. If you imagined a society in which everyone had the right to vote for what they believed, then they would likely vote for things that are ideologically appealing (I am skeptical of the self-interested voter theory2). The result would be that it would be necessary for government to enforce laws which people would not voluntarily follow even if they were acting morally. It is imaginable that the will of the people is not congruent with perfect moral action.

III. Discrepancy Between Moral Obligation and Legal Obligation

There is another reason someone may reject trivial anarchism regardless of proceduralist concerns. Someone could believe that you do not have positive moral obligation to do things like donate to the poor but that the government should enforce laws that take money from people. This would mean perfect law is more demanding than your moral obligations.

While I do not think that people would admit they feel this way, I think this stance is common. There is a common refrain among conservatives towards liberals:

If you really want to raise taxes so much, then why don’t you donate to the government?

This could be said with varying levels of snark and in some contexts it may be inappropriate because the person may not be the target of the desired tax increase. But I do think that this is getting at something important. This point jumps to my mind when I see an article like “These Billionaires Want The Ultra-Wealthy To Pay More In Taxes” with a quote like this:

At least a dozen billionaires have made public statements that call for the super-rich to pay more in taxes. On Monday, Salesforce chairman and cofounder Marc Benioff penned the latest in a string of billionaire op-eds calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. The California software entrepreneur, who ranked No. 93 on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans released earlier this month, wrote that “increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change.”

For some reason, I doubt that he donates his money to the government. In fact, hardly anybody does. From what I found, in 2020, $1.6 million was donated as a gift to “reduce debt held by the public”. That may sound like a lot but the government spent $6.55 trillion in 2020. I can reasonably say that he does not donate the equivalent of what he believes he should pay in taxes because if he did the number would be greater than $1.6 million.3 Are these billionaires acting in a consistent manner or is this hypocrisy?4

It seems odd to me to think that someone would want the government to punish them for doing what they are doing currently (not paying “enough” in taxes or charitable contributions). You would think that if this billionaire felt that improving education, health care and fighting climate change were so important you could use coercion to solve it then you should be morally obligated to do it without coercion.

I want to provide an example to demonstrate the weirdness of this. There is a famous thought experiment popularized by philosopher Peter Singer in his essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” in which he asks the reader to imagine a drowning child. Here is a description5:

Your route to work takes you past a shallow pond. One morning you notice that a small child has fallen in and appears to be in difficulty in the water. The child is crying in distress and it seems is at risk of drowning. You are tall and strong, so you can easily wade in and pull the child out. However, although you'll come to no physical harm if you rescue the child, you will get your clothes wet and muddy, which means you'll have to go home to change, and likely you'll be late for work.

In this situation, do you have a moral obligation to rescue the child?

It is as if you would say that you do not have to save the drowning child but the drowning child should be saved. In fact, the drowning child should be saved so much so that use of coercion is necessary. It would be like you saying if you had a gun, you would hand it to someone else and say “coerce me and others like me to save the child.” That person would take the gun and then point it at you and then you would save the child happily. Something seems off about this position.

IV. Political Authority

Some believe there is actually a duty to obey the government and that the state has a right to rule. This position is a belief in political authority. If the state is legitimate, then you should not abolish the state and the ideal society would be one in which people obey the government. Rejecting trivial anarchism because of political authority could make sense depending on what one’s justification is for political authority. The Democratic justification was discussed in the proceduralism section.

The consequentialist justification for political authority is the Hobbesian position against anarchy. It is the belief that without a government, things would be really bad. In his words “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”6 If everyone behaves well, as stipulated in the thought experiment, then life would not be like this. Therefore, there would be no legitimate political authority.

If one was an advocate for the Divine Right of Kings, then one could see that a king had a right to rule regardless of the behavior of his subjects. Hardly anyone advocates this position so I will not devote time to rejecting the divinity of kings, a time consuming task.

The social contract argument is very popular. It usually takes the form that we tacitly consent to being ruled by the government In a world with ideal behavior, what would the government do? If there is no proceduralist considerations and no difference between legal and moral obligation, then this state would only interfere with society in unnecessary and harmful ways. It would be weird to have a government which is not necessary or desirable in the consequentialist sense but it exists because everyone consented to it by remaining where they are. This makes me think that social contract theorists would admit that it is actually for consequentialist reasons when pressed. I have never heard of someone who was a social contract theorist but thought government was not necessary.

If someone says that you continue to remain in the territory despite claiming you are oppressed by the government therefore the government is legitimate, they would have to assume that a government has a right to lay claim over the area in the first place. If I was a mafia boss and claimed a neighborhood in New York and then went and collected taxes, it would not be a good justification to say that the residents of the neighborhood should just leave. I would have to justify me laying claim to the neighborhood first.

Perhaps you would say that the citizen accepts services provided by the government. Maybe it’s like eating in a restaurant and not paying. If you are receiving services for which you have to pay regardless of whether or not you consent, in other words “an offer you cannot refuse”, then it is not analogous to services provided by a private business. If the mafia provided protection from other gangs, would that mean the mafia was legitimate in its collections?

One could argue that natural rights are real and ought to be protected by the government. But the government would only violate natural rights and not do more to protect them because nobody would be violating anyone’s rights in the ideal society. Government is the existence of an entity which takes away some rights to protect some others. Without other forms of justification for political legitimacy, under a natural rights viewpoint, taxation is equivalent to theft. To think that we should advocate taking some rights to prevent the taking of others is weighing and evaluating tradeoffs. It is in some sense meta-consequentialist. A non-meta consequentialist would believe that rights can never be violated, no matter what, and be an anarchist a la Rothbard.

V. Conclusion

What all does this matter? The point is that if you believe in this trivial form of anarchism then you believe that we should abolish the state in a world in which everyone acts according to their moral obligations. Although I am likely unsuccessful, I hope to have convinced you that proceduralism is not a legitimate justification, that legal obligations are equivalent to moral obligations and that non-consequentialist political authority arguments are without merit.

The conclusion would be that the only legitimate justification for government is consequentialist in nature if it exists. It is the belief that things would go poorly under any form of anarchy and that is why we need a state. This is a major change in political thinking. It means if a stateless society would function better than one with a government, there would not be a reason to have a government. I do not actually believe in political authority because I believe that there is no good justification for government, including the consequentialist one.

The task of convincing someone that consequentialist concerns about anarchy are not as warranted as concerns about the existence of government is too much for an essay of this size. It involves an extended discussion of possible objections, hypothetical scenarios and usually a lot of economic reasoning. For this type of argument, see David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom or Edward Stringham’s Anarchy and the Law.

1 Brennan, Jason. Against Democracy. 10 - 14. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 2017

2 See: The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan

3 Please let me know if you find this number to be incorrect. I didn’t find any other examples of donations to the US federal government.

4 Perhaps they donate the equivalent to a charity that they feel accomplishes the desired tasks more efficiently than the government. If this were the case, it is feasible to imagine a consistent argument in which they feel they are fulfilling their obligation in a more efficient manner but in an ideal world taxes would be higher and they would pay those instead.

5 https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/singer/

6 Hobbes, Thomas "Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.". Leviathan.

#anarchism #philosophy #political authority #libertarian #ancap #anarchocapitalism #anarchy #freedom #political philosophy #blog

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tinyshe · 4 years ago

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Why I’m Removing All Articles Related to Vitamins D, C, Zinc and COVID-19

source

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

I’ve also kept you informed about billionaire-backed front groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a partner of Bill Gates’ Alliance for Science, both of whom have led campaigns aimed at destroying my reputation and censoring the information I share.

Other attackers include HealthGuard, which ranks health sites based on a certain set of “credibility criteria.” It has sought to discredit my website by ensuring warnings appear whenever you search for my articles or enter my website in an internet browser.

Well-Organized Attack Partnerships Have Formed

HealthGuard, a niche service of NewsGuard, is funded by the pharma-funded public relations company Publicis Groupe. Publicis, in turn, is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “Great Reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.

HealthGuard is also partnered with Gates’ Microsoft company, and drug advertising websites like WebMD and Medscape, as well as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — the progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as a national security threat.

The CCDH has published a hit list naming me as one of the top 12 individuals responsible for 65% of vaccine “disinformation” on social media, and who therefore must be deplatformed and silenced for the public good. In a March 24, 2021, letter1 to the CEO’s of Twitter and Facebook, 12 state attorneys general called for the removal of our accounts from these platforms, based on the CCDH’s report.

Two of those state attorneys general also published an April 8, 2021, op-ed2 in The Washington Post, calling on Facebook and Twitter to ban the “anti-vaxxers” identified by the CCDH. The lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claim, is all because a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included — are successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine risks.

“The solution is not complicated. It’s time for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to turn off this toxic tap and completely remove the small handful of individuals spreading this fraudulent misinformation,” they wrote.3

Pharma-funded politicians and pharma-captured health agencies have also relentlessly attacked me and pressured tech monopolies to censor and deplatform me, removing my ability to express my opinions and speak freely over the past year.

The CCDH also somehow has been allowed to publish4 in the journal Nature Medicine, calling for the “dismantling” of the “anti-vaccine” industry. In the article, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed repeats the lie that he “attended and recorded a private, three-day meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when, in fact, what he’s referring to was a public online conference open to an international audience, all of whom had access to the recordings as part of their attendance fee.

The CCDH is also partnered with another obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch. The picture below is from an Anti-Vax Watch demonstration outside the halls of Congress. Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this bizarre duo.5

Gates-Funded Doctor Demands Terrorist Experts to Attack Me

Most recently, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute,6 which has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,7,8,9 — with funds from the foundation most recently being used to create a report called “Meeting the Challenge of Vaccine Hesitancy,”10,11 — also cited the CCDH in a Nature article in which he calls for cyberwarfare experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people who are “vaccine hesitant.” He writes:12

“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.

Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures.

The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive.”

Why is Hotez calling for the use of warfare tactics on American citizens that have done nothing illegal? In my case, could it be because I’ve written about the theory that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus, created through gain-of-function research, and that its release was anticipated by global elites, as evidenced in Event 201?

It may be. At least those are some of my alleged “sins,” detailed on page 10 of the CCDH report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel.”13 Coincidentally enough, the Nature journal has helped cover up gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, publishing a shoddy zoonotic origins study relied upon my mainstream media and others, which was riddled with problems.14,15

So, it’s not misinformation they are afraid of. They’re afraid of the truth getting out. They’re all trying to cover for the Chinese military and the dangerous mad scientists conducting gain-of-function work.

You may have noticed our website was recently unavailable; this was due to direct cyber-attacks launched against us. We have several layers of protective mechanisms to secure the website as we’ve anticipated such attacks from malevolent organizations.

What This Means for You

Through these progressively increasing stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these governmental and pharmaceutical thugs and their relentless attacks. I have been confident and willing to defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats have now become very personal and have intensified to the point I can no longer preserve much of the information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them. If you can imagine what billionaires and their front groups are capable of, I can assure you they have been creative in deploying their assets to have this content removed.

Sadly, I must also remove my peer reviewed published study16 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity.” It will, however, remain in the highly-respected journal Nutrients’ website, where you can still access it for free.

The MATH+ hospital treatment protocol for COVID-19 and the iMASK+ prevention and early outpatient COVID-19 protocol — both of which are based on the use of vitamins C, D, quercetin, zinc and melatonin — are available on the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s website. I suggest you bookmark these resources for future reference.

It is with a heavy heart that I purge my website of valuable information. As noted by Dr. Peter McCullough during a recent Texas state Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing, data shows early treatment could have prevented up to 85% (425,000) of COVID-19 deaths.17 Yet early treatments were all heavily censored and suppressed.

McCullough, in addition to being a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center, also has the distinction of having published the most papers of any person in the history of his field, and being an editor of two major medical journals. Despite that, his video, in which he went through a paper he’d published detailing effective early treatments, was summarily banned by YouTube in 2020.

“No wonder we have had 45,000 deaths in Texas. The average person in Texas thinks there’s no treatment!” McCullough told the senate panel.18 Indeed, people are in dire need of more information detailing how they can protect their health, not less. But there’s only so much I can do to protect myself against current attack strategies.

They’ve moved past censorship. Just what do you call people who advocate counteroffensive attacks by terrorism and cyberwarfare experts? You’d think we could have a debate and be protected under free speech but, no, we’re not allowed. These lunatics are dangerously unhinged.

The U.S. federal government is going along with the global Great Reset plan (promoted as “building back better”), but this plan won’t build anything but a technological prison. What we need is a massive campaign to preserve civil rights, and vote out the pawns who are destroying our freedom while concentrating wealth and power.

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dfusioninc · 4 years ago

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Three Ways to Improve Your Condom Demonstrations

Condoms do so much for us! They help prevent unintended pregnancies and transmission of sexually transmitted infections – no small feat. They deserve to be celebrated once in a while! February 14th is National Condom Day – a day to show a little appreciation to condoms. If you teach sexuality education, National Condom Day is a great opportunity to refresh your condom lesson and demonstration. Here are three tips for taking your condom lesson to the next level.

1. Promote Pleasure

People don’t have sex to wear condoms. Instead, many people are having sex for pleasure and because it’s fun. Your message about condoms will be better received if you acknowledge pleasure. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) includes pleasure in its description of a sexually healthy adult (Bruess & Schroeder, 2014). Since young people report wanting accurate, nonjudgmental information about pleasure, it’s important to include discussions about pleasure (Cameron-Lewis & Allen, 2013).

Incorporating discussions about pleasure into a condom demonstration can be as simple as talking about lubricants, condom style variations, and finding a proper fitting condom. Acknowledge young people’s concern about condoms decreasing the pleasure of sex because of reduced physical sensation or because of potential awkwardness.

dfusion’s newest HIV intervention app, 3T, includes pleasure in the condom demonstration through gamifying the condom steps and by including information about lubricants, tips to increase sensation, and ways to talk about condoms with a partner.

2. Focus on Fit and Feel

COVID means that most everyone is wearing masks. There are so many styles and shapes and versions. Brands are promoting their face coverings using messaging like “The best fit for people with glasses” or “voted best face covering for professionals”. Just like people can try out a bunch of masks and find the right one for their face, people can try out different condoms to find one that feels and fits best. And fit and feel are not just about choosing the one that brings the most pleasure – it’s also about finding the fit and feel that won’t lead to the condom breaking or slipping and therefore not effectively reducing the risk of pregnancy or STI transmission.

Have you had a student brag that no condoms will fit them? You might have responded that condoms are designed to fit everyone. You might have even gone so far as to blow up a condom like a balloon or slid one onto a foot to demonstrate. While condoms are designed to fit most penises, this student’s comment provides an opportunity to acknowledge that condoms do come in different sizes both length and girth. In a soon-to-be released mobile app for Trans Women, we have a customized activity on finding the right condom based on material, size, texture, thickness, and shape.

In a recent study, about 18% of surveyed sexually active young people reported that a condom broke once in the last 3 months and about 12% said a condom had slipped off in the last 3 months. Often breakage or slippage can happen because a person did not put the condom on correctly. But breakage and slippage can also occur because the condom was not the correct fit. If a condom is slipping off, the condom may be too wide or loose and the person should find a narrower condom. If the condom bunches up at the base of the penis then the condom is too long. A condom that fits correctly should unroll to the base of the penis, cover the entire shaft, but not have extra material. Helping learners recognize proper or poor fitting condoms can help them avoid a condom break or slip.

3. Embrace Inclusivity

So often, the focus of condom demonstrations or condom lessons are just on the person who is wearing the external condom. But usually, condoms are worn when there are at least two people in the room, each of them playing an important role in safer sex. And that safer sex can look very different for different people. Use gender neutral terms and phrases. Avoid assuming that the condom is being used for pregnancy prevention purposes or for vaginal sex. Using phrases like “people with penises” or “the person wearing the condom” is more inclusive of trans women, non-binary and gender non-conforming folks. Step up your inclusivity game by including conversations about lubricates for everyone involved. Lube helps increase pleasure, can prevent problems caused by dryness, and can be an opportunity to increase communication among partners. For example, in both 3T and Trans Women Connected apps, users have the chance to role play talking about lube and condoms. When educators also talk about lube, it lets your learners know that you recognize that people have different types of sex and have different needs in bed, some of which may benefit from a little lube.

Do you work in a place that prohibits using condoms in a condom demonstration? Or maybe your online condom demonstration just needs a new prop? The award winning ConDEMO is here for you! With oversized yet realistic condom packaging, the nylon ConDEMO can be used on a standard-size water bottle (or a foot or arm) to show every step of using a condom including checking for the expiration date and unrolling the condom in the correct direction.

We want to hear from you! What ways have you found to add spice to your condom demonstrations?

Sources:

Barrett, M., Laris, B. A., Anderson, P., Baumler, E., Gerber, A., Kesler, K., & Coyle, K. (2020). Condom use and error experience among young adolescents: Implications for classroom instruction. Health Promotion Practice. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839920935431

Breuss, C. & Schroeder, E. (2014). Sexuality education: Theory and practice (6 ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Cameron-Lewis, V. & Allen, L. (2013). Teaching pleasure and danger in sexuality education. Sex Education, 13(2), 121-132. doi:10.1080/14681811.2012.697440

#nationalcondomday

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years ago

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With the coronavirus pandemic surging and initial vaccine supplies limited, the United States faces a hard choice: Should the country’s immunization program focus in the early months on the elderly and people with serious medical conditions, who are dying of the virus at the highest rates, or on essential workers, an expansive category encompassing Americans who have borne the greatest risk of infection?

Health care workers and the frailest of the elderly — residents of long-term-care facilities — will almost certainly get the first shots, under guidelines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued on Thursday. But with vaccination expected to start this month, the debate among federal and state health officials about who goes next, and lobbying from outside groups to be included, is growing more urgent.

It’s a question increasingly guided by concerns over the inequities laid bare by the pandemic, from disproportionately high rates of infection and death among poor people and people of color to disparate access to testing, child care and technology for online schooling.

“It’s damnable that we are even being placed in this position that we have to make these choices,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, a co-chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign, a national coalition that calls attention to the challenges of the working poor. “But if we have to make the choice, we cannot once again leave poor and low-wealth essential workers to be last.”

Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing death or curbing the spread of the virus and returning to some semblance of normalcy is the highest priority. “If your goal is to maximize the preservation of human life, then you would bias the vaccine toward older Americans,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said recently. “If your goal is to reduce the rate of infection, then you would prioritize essential workers. So it depends what impact you’re trying to achieve.”

The trade-off between the two is muddied by the fact that the definition of “essential workers” used by the C.D.C. comprises nearly 70 percent of the American work force, sweeping in not just grocery store clerks and emergency responders, but tugboat operators, exterminators and nuclear energy workers. Some labor economists and public health officials consider the category overbroad and say it should be narrowed to only those who interact in person with the public.

An independent committee of medical experts that advises the C.D.C. on immunization practices will soon vote on whom to recommend for the second phase of vaccination — “Phase 1b.” In a meeting last month, all voting members of the committee indicated support for putting essential workers ahead of people 65 and older and those with high-risk health conditions.

Historically, the committee relied on scientific evidence to inform its decisions. But now the members are weighing social justice concerns as well, noted Lisa A. Prosser, a professor of health policy and decision sciences at the University of Michigan.

“To me the issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country,” Dr. Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the time, “and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers among essential workers.”

That position runs counter to frameworks proposed by the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and many countries, which say that reducing deaths should be the unequivocal priority and that older and sicker people should thus go before the workers, a view shared by many in public health and medicine.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C. director and the nation’s top public health official, reminded the advisory committee of the importance of older people, saying in a statement on Thursday that he looked forward to “future recommendations that, based on vaccine availability, demonstrate that we as a nation also prioritize the elderly.”

Once the committee votes, Dr. Redfield will decide whether to accept its recommendations as the official guidance of the agency. Only rarely does a C.D.C. director reject a recommendation from the committee, whose 14 members are selected by the Health and Human Services secretary, serve four-and-a-half-year terms and have never confronted a task as high in profile as this one.

But ultimately, the decision will be up to governors and state and local health officials. They are not required to follow C.D.C. guidelines, though historically they have done so.

Defining ‘essential'

There are about 90 million essential workers nationwide, as defined by a division of the Department of Homeland Security that compiled a roster of jobs that help maintain critical infrastructure during a pandemic. That list is long, and because there won’t be enough doses to reach everyone at first, states are preparing to make tough decisions: Louisiana’s preliminary plan, for example, puts prison guards and food processing workers ahead of teachers and grocery employees. Nevada’s prioritizes education and public transit workers over those in retail and food processing.

At this early point, many state plans put at least some people who are older and live independently, or people who have medical conditions, ahead of most essential workers, though that could change after the C.D.C. committee makes a formal recommendation on the next phase.

One occupation whose priority is being hotly debated is teaching. The C.D.C. includes educators as essential workers. But not everyone agrees with that designation.

Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, argued that teachers should not be included as essential workers, if a central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities.

“Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees,” he said. “Of course they should be treated better, but they are not among the most mistreated of workers.”

Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, disagreed. Teachers not only ensure that children don’t fall further behind in their education, she said, but are also critical to the work force at large.

“When you talk about disproportionate impact and you’re concerned about people getting back into the labor force, many are mothers, and they will have a harder time if their children don’t have a reliable place to go,” she said. “And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can’t telework, they are disproportionately Black and brown. They’ll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue.”

In September, academic researchers analyzed the Department of Homeland Security’s list of essential workers and found that it broadly mirrored the demographics of the American labor force. The researchers proposed a narrower, more vulnerable category — “frontline workers,” such as food deliverers, cashiers and emergency medical technicians, who must work face to face with others and are thus at greater risk of contracting the virus.

By this definition, said Francine D. Blau, a labor economist at Cornell University and an author of the study, teachers belong in the larger category of essential workers. However, when they work in classrooms rather than remotely, she said, they would fit into the “frontline” group. Individual states categorize teachers differently.

Dr. Blau said that if supplies are short, frontline workers should be emphasized. “These are a subset of essential workers who, given the nature of their jobs, must provide their labor in person. Prioritizing them makes sense given the heightened risk that they face.”

The analysis, a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, is in line with other critics, who say that the list of essential workers is too wide-ranging.

“If groups are too large, then you’re not really focusing on priorities,” said Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, who worked on the vaccination frameworks for the W.H.O. and the National Academies.

The essential workers on the federal list make up nearly 70 percent of the American labor force, the researchers said, compared with 42 percent for the frontline workers. Women made up 39 percent of frontline workers and, in certain occupations, far more. Frontline workers’ education levels are lower, as are their wages — on average, just under $22 an hour. The proportion of Black and Hispanic workers is higher than in the broader category of essential workers.

Death vs. transmission

Some health policy experts said that to prioritize preventing deaths rather than reducing virus transmission was simply a pragmatic choice, because there won’t be enough vaccine initially available to make a meaningful dent in contagion. A more effective use of limited quantities, they say, is to save the lives of the most frail.

Moreover, vaccine trial results so far show only that the shots can protect the individuals who receive them. The trials have not yet demonstrated that a vaccinated person would not infect others. Though scientists believe that is likely to be the case, it has yet to be proved.

Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”

But to protect older people more at risk, he called on the C.D.C. committee to also integrate the agency’s own “social vulnerability index.”

The index includes 15 measures derived from the census, such as overcrowded housing, lack of vehicle access and poverty, to determine how urgently a community needs health support, with the goal of reducing inequities.

In a new analysis of the states’ preliminary vaccine plans, Dr. Schmidt found that at least 18 states intended to apply the index. Tennessee, for one, has indicated that it will reserve some of its early allotments for disadvantaged communities.

Still, some people believe it is wrong to give racial and socioeconomic equity more weight than who is most likely to die.

“They need to have bombproof, fact-based, public-health-based reasons for why one group goes ahead of another,” said Chuck Ludlam, a former Senate aide and biotech industry lobbyist who protested putting essential workers ahead of older people in comments to the committee. “They have provided no explanation here that will withstand public scrutiny.”

Blurred lines, many unknowns

Further complicating matters, the different priority groups discussed by the C.D.C. committee are overlapping — many essential workers have high-risk conditions, and some are older than 65. Some states have suggested that they will prioritize only essential workers who come face to face with the public, while others have not prioritized them at all.

Even some people whose allegiance lies with one group have made the case that others should have an earlier claim on the vaccine. Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 1.3 million grocery and food processing workers, said that despite the high rate of infection among his members, he thought that older adults should go first.

“Here’s the thing: Everybody’s got a grandmother or grandfather,” Mr. Perrone said. “And I do believe almost everybody in this country would want to protect them, or their aging parents.”

But Dr. Nirav Shah, Maine’s top public health official, said he respectfully disagreed, repeating the explanation he had given his in-laws — who are older but in good health and able to socially distance.

He said: “I’ve told them: ‘You know what? I’m sorry, but there are others that I need to get this vaccine to first, so that when you guys get vaccinated, the world you come back into is ready to receive you.’”

All these plans are, of course, unfurling with essential information still unknown.Many state officials said that as on-the-ground realities emerge, they fully expect their plans to evolve.

One uncertainty: given the high rates of apprehension swirling around this vaccine, how many people in the early groups will actually line up for it?

“If a high proportion of essential workers decline to get the vaccine, states will have to quickly move onto the next group anyway,” said Dr. Prosser, the University of Michigan health analyst. “Because once the vaccines arrive, they will have to be used in a certain amount of time before they degrade."

Additional work by Jugal K. Patel.

Abby Goodnough is a national health care correspondent. She has also served as bureau chief in Miami and Boston, and covered education and politics in New York City. She joined The Times in 1993. @abbygoodnough

Jan Hoffman writes about behavioral health and health law. Her wide-ranging subjects include opioids, vaping, tribes and adolescents. @JanHoffmanNYT

#healthcare #covid vaccine #racism #ethics

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

For two weeks now, the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, has gripped the nation, sparking nationwide protests calling for justice and changes to the criminal justice system. But this latest wave of demonstrations isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a much larger movement, often grouped under the umbrella of Black Lives Matter, which has protested police killings and police misconduct since the early 2010s, after the shootings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri.

In fact, research by Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution and political scientists Kris-Stella Trump and Katherine Levine Einstein shows that the number of Black Lives Matter protests1 in response to police killings of black civilians has grown from only a few in a handful of cities in 2013 to over 500 protests in nearly 200 cities in 2014.

But what effect do these protests have?

Political science, it turns out, actually has a lot to say about protests, even though it’s really hard to pinpoint what makes one protest effective and another not. Broadly speaking, though, there are four main ways the literature tries to evaluate a protest:

Did it raise awareness?

Did public opinion change?

Were there institutional changes as a result?

Were there electoral consequences, either intended or unintended?

First, protests, at their most basic level, raise awareness about issues that might not yet be in the mainstream. This might not sound all that important, but research by political scientist Deva Woodly of The New School shows that protest movements can fundamentally alter the way we talk — and think — about a specific issue.

Examining the protest movements around the fight for marriage equality from 1994 to 2004, Woodly found that these movements succeeded in fostering a “common sense” of understanding around an issue by tapping into people’s sense of equality, relying on phrases like “love” and “regular people.”2 And in the case of the protests around Floyd’s death, that might mean changing how Americans talk and think about the disparate impact policing has on black communities and communities of color.

We don’t know yet how language around criminal justice and policing reform will change as a result of these protests, but there is some evidence that such shifts might be underway. Using Google Trends data comparing Google search behavior prior to and after May 25 — the day Floyd was killed — it does seem as if more individuals are interrogating racism in their own lives, with searches like “am I racist” nearly tripling. Phrases like “abolish police,” “defund police” and “police abolition” — concepts that have been central to the Black Lives Matter movement but less mainstream when discussing police reform — have also seen sharp upticks in interest.

What this tells us is that these protests are, in some way, raising awareness: People are seeking, or at least googling, more information.

In addition to increasing awareness of an issue, social movements can also change public attitudes toward it. This, of course, is hard to measure. But in at least some of the initial polling on Floyd’s death and the protests, we can see that public opinion is coalescing. An overwhelming majority of Americans, for instance, say that Floyd’s death was wrong and the police officers involved should be held accountable. Opinion around the protests is much murkier, even if most Americans are sympathetic to those protesting.

In studying how social movements change public opinion, Taeku Lee of the University of California, Berkeley found that protests can play a large part. His analysis of the civil rights movement in the 1960s found that though the protests weren’t initially popular, sentiment among nonsouthern white Americans moved from a sense of apathy to one of moral outrage. And in my own research of the civil rights protests, I found evidence of less racism and more support for affirmative action among white people from counties that had peaceful protests.

However, peaceful protests in other contexts — such as the anti-Vietnam War movement, the environmental movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement — have been less effective in moving public opinion. For instance, concern about the environment has stayed relatively stable despite growing activism. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why these protests haven’t been as effective, but it’s important to remember that media coverage can go a long way in influencing how the public thinks about different protests.

One big unknown is whether media coverage of the violence associated with some of the current protests might end up undermining support for the broader movement. A recent study by Princeton University political scientist Omar Wasow suggests that could happen. In his examination of protests during the civil rights movement, he found that areas that saw violent protests reported an increase in President Richard Nixon’s vote share in the 1968 election. (Nixon campaigned heavily on a “law and order” message that some argued was a coded racist message to white America.)

Wasow’s study fits into a broader consensus that nonviolent protests tend to yield outcomes that achieve a movement’s goals better than violent protests do. But there is some research that pushes back on this. For instance, another recent study by political scientists Ryan Enos, Aaron Kaufman and Melissa Sands found that the 1992 Los Angeles uprising — a violent reaction to the acquittal of four police officers caught on camera beating Rodney King, a black man — didn’t spark a backlash. Instead, they found that the protests may have led to an increase in support for funding local public schools. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter protests following the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by police officers seemed to have led to decreased racial resentment among white Americans — especially among younger people — even though there was violence associated with some of the protests.

One important thing to remember here is that minority-led protests historically tend to draw more of a police presence than predominantly white protests, and the police are often more likely to use force against minority-led protests. So in many instances, the violence we may associate with these protests isn’t because these protests are inherently more violent; it’s because they draw more intense police contact to begin with. So if the research from the 1992 uprising and recent Black Lives Matter protests is any indication, it’s possible that violence in some protests may not entirely upend a movement’s goals.

There does seem to be some consensus in the literature that many protests are successful in spurring institutional change, at least at the federal level. As University of Pennsylvania political scientist Daniel Gillion has found, protests have tended to push legislators to vote more in line with protesters’ goals. The legislation that emerged from the civil rights movement is one such example, but Gillion also argues that the protests in 1968 pushed legislators to pass bills improving public housing infrastructure. Similarly, researchers Maneesh Arora, Davin Phoenix, and Archie Delshad, then of the University of California, Irvine, found that after the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests, state governments proposed and passed more bills aimed at addressing police accountability. And political scientists Logan Dancey and Jasmine Masand, then both of Wesleyan University, found that in Congress, black legislators engaged with online discussions of race and policing more frequently than their white colleagues.

Protests don’t just impact legislation. Megan Ming Francis, a political scientist at the University of Washington, has written extensively about how protests and civil rights organizations like the NAACP have effectively applied political pressure to the courts. For instance, Francis describes how the NAACP simultaneously fought to change public opinion at the grassroots level while also bringing lawsuits to combat lynching, segregation and Jim Crow-era laws in the courts.

More broadly, this research underscores all the ways in which protests are often viewed as a political resource that allows marginalized groups to amplify their voices when traditional methods, such as voting, might not adequately represent their preferences.

And finally, though protests may often be thought of as a last resort, they can also have important downstream consequences for elections. Wasow’s work and my own research shows that large, peaceful protests during the civil rights movement actually helped Democratic presidential candidates — a finding that Gillion and Stanford’s Sarah Soule have observed in more recent protests as well.

But of course, as we also know from Wasow’s research, protests can have unintended consequences — i.e., more violent protests corresponding with an uptick in Nixon’s presidential vote share — so it’s not entirely clear what effect these protests will have on the general election. On the one hand, they could mobilize the Republican base — although there are reasons why this might not be the case.

If the party tries to meet protesters’ demands, the protests could also mobilize the Democratic base. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and others seem to have begun to take action, although it’s still unclear where the conversation around police reform may head next.

However, it’s also possible that the effects of these protests will be minimal come November. It’s still too early to know what institutional changes or electoral consequences might result, but whether there will be an effect — including substantive legal action at the local, state and federal levels — is a real question.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Shom Mazumder

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phroyd · 5 years ago

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Sending the U.S. military to use force is among the most consequential decisions presidents can make. Matters may get out of control even with the most careful and deliberate planning. Skipping such steps shows callous disregard for American lives and interests. And there is overwhelming evidence in the past week that President Trump instigated an escalation cycle with an American enemy without such consideration. According to multiple news reports, policymakers gave Trump the option of killing Qasem Soleimani as one of several choices, perhaps hoping that including such a dramatic measure would push him toward a middle course; instead, he went for it, reportedly with little forethought or preparation. Our national security system is not meant to function that way.

Instead of holding a tightly managed, inclusive debate in the Situation Room, Trump made one of the most dangerous choices of his presidency among a tiny group at Mar-a-Lago. Such decisive moments are usually preceded by hundreds of people spending countless hours in dingy government offices and conference rooms, building PowerPoint slides and questioning lawyers. These individuals create the parameters and permutations of what the decision-makers consider. They identify the possible options, vetting their likely operational, diplomatic, economic and other effects. That work enables the commander in chief to make wrenching decisions about his military options wisely.

At least, that is how decisions are supposed to be made, and how we helped leaders make them when we worked in government. Bad options, considered with little serious deliberation on an unnecessarily rapid timeline, should never get to the president in the first place.

Like the broader system of government, which is designed around cumbersome checks and balances to prevent impulsive action, the traditional decision-making process for employing military force is ponderous. These steps frustrate some who view military advice as best when it’s direct and unadulterated, but they are supposed to ensure that the president chooses only from options that have been examined thoughtfully by experts in a variety of relevant areas. And the process is meant to consider all possible reactions with due preparation. To do otherwise may come at a toll of blood and treasure, credibility and certainty.

Since Soleimani’s death, many foreseeable consequences have unfolded. Iran threatened retaliation and took at least two such actions, first announcing the death of the 2015 nuclear agreement, then launching a ballistic missile attack on Iraqi bases where U.S. forces are deployed. The Iranian public — probably under some pressure — rallied around its government, expressing anger in massive street demonstrations. Elements of the Iraqi government also signaled that the U.S. strike has imperiled that bilateral relationship, with the parliament voting to expel American forces from the country. In his first public address on the crisis Wednesday, Trump suggested that he will pause further military action, but the American position in the Middle East is almost certainly worse now, with little benefit to show for the strike.

We have no idea what we’re doing in Iraq. We didn’t before we killed Soleimani.

Soleimani and his campaign of violence were provocative and merited an American response. But killing him, and doing it in Iraq, needlessly escalated the situation. Any standard Defense Department and interagency process of vetting options would have seen the threats, counterthreats and missile launches coming and recommended against it — which we know because two very different administrations rejected targeting the general. But many press accounts say no such process was followed under Trump.

In our combined 25-plus years in the Pentagon and the White House, use-of-force and even show-of-force decisions created some of the tensest moments between civilian and military leaders, revealing differences in approaches and assumptions. We saw controversies over the U.S. naval presence in the South China Sea, counterterrorist strikes in areas outside active hostilities across the Middle East and Africa, and troop deployments in Afghanistan. Interactions can be so fraught, and secrecy so important, it was often tempting for both sides to limit the number of people involved or go directly to those with decision-making authority. With Soleimani’s death, we don’t know whether civilians cut out military planners or if military officials took shortcuts in the process. Regardless, whatever truncated steps led to the choice to kill him had alarming results.

In our experience, any serious process to consider military force should include six key criteria.

First, the use of force must be consistent with international and domestic law. Deliberately targeting civilians or cultural sites, for example, should be off the table — and the Pentagon ruled those options out after Trump suggested them this past week.

Possible courses of action should be aligned to the broadest strategic objectives. The Soleimani strike was a tactical success, but it damaged the goals of countering the Islamic State, stabilizing Iraq and getting Iran to the negotiating table; it also put U.S. personnel across the region at risk. Before the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, planners considered many parallel matters: the risk to U.S. service members; the possibility of civilian casualties; the likely diplomatic fallout with Pakistan and what that might mean for the war in Afghanistan; the legal authorities and implications; the domestic political cost if the raid resulted in American casualties, failed or both; and how Congress would react to all of those considerations.

Operations must be proportional to the security context. Killing one of the most senior Iranian military leaders, even with his lengthy list of despicable crimes and ostensible involvement in imminent threats, was an extreme response to the staged protests against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the rocket attack on an Iraqi base that killed one American. Killing Soleimani in response to these acts — particularly without providing any public evidence of an impending attack against Americans (though the administration has repeatedly insisted that this is what it was trying to prevent) — skipped tens of rungs on the escalation ladder.

Military actions must also be operationally feasible. Political leaders may ask for proposals that belie the laws of space and time because of a well-intentioned but fundamental misunderstanding of military capability. The U.S. military cannot simply find and kill a target anywhere in the world at any time using drones, a demand sometimes made by policymakers. Research by one of us found that many senior officials involved in drone policy underestimate the cost and logistics and overestimate drones’ availability, capabilities and range.

Options for strikes should be real options. Reportedly, whoever drafted the president’s briefing slides used the Goldilocks paradigm — presenting options that were too mild, too extreme and one that was just right. In such frameworks, most of the options are meant to be throwaways; these typically receive much less attention and planning than the preferred option does. Such frameworks are deceptive and dangerous: The Soleimani strike was never meant to seem best.

President Barack Obama faced this paradigm during the Afghanistan strategic review in 2010, when the military leadership offered widely varying recommendations for troop levels. During the George W. Bush administration, former senior Pentagon official Peter Rodman lamented how difficult it was to get the military to tee up meaningful and discrete options besides “do nothing and thermonuclear war.” This kind of advice presumes that the decision-makers are in on the gag; they aren’t always.

Finally, options must be politically informed. Obama’s unwillingness to intervene in Syria, for example, was rooted in his belief that the public wouldn’t support it. When Congress signaled its resistance as well, his view was solidified.

Inside the Pentagon, by statute, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is responsible for the development of military analysis, options and plans to share with the defense secretary and the president as he sees fit. In reality, military advice is not just one individual’s best ideas but a massive and complex process that engages hundreds of military and civilian experts. Those people generate and vet the options and flag political considerations, calculating how to best mitigate risk and coordinate with allies.

Yet it appears that the tight circle at Mar-a-Lago involved in making the decision to kill Soleimani — mainly the secretaries of defense and state — neglected many of these key elements, as the convoluted messaging, lack of preemptive mitigating actions and failure to inform close U.S. allies, let alone members of Congress, demonstrate.

It seems that the national security apparatus skipped crucial steps while deferring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s advocacy. For example, consulting the Commerce Department might have flagged potential oil market impacts; Treasury could have noted the likely market fluctuations; the intelligence community could have offered real-time analysis on threats to U.S. personnel before and after the strike; and the State Department may have requested noncombatant evacuations of Americans from various Middle Eastern hotspots, highlighted the diplomatic fracas with European allies and underscored the need for deft diplomacy to repair the inevitable U.S.-Iraqi government crisis so that killing Soleimani did not cause a rupture.

Instead, Trump reportedly relied on a few advisers for what may be the most consequential foreign policy decision of his presidency. Small-group decision-making limits the imagination and thwarts checks and balances — and it can be dominated by impassioned advocates. The resulting decisions tend to be more about the president’s preferences than about national security interests. Now Trump needs to hear from a broad range of advisers about what might come next.

Of course, with this chaotic administration, lecturing on procedural deliberation from the outside may seem like wishcasting, at best. What, then, can responsible defense and military officials do when the president demands risky options, when the secretary of state inserts himself in the chain of command or the commander in chief publicly threatens war crimes? The answer is not to make post-hoc justifications or to pray that our system survives. The muscles of deliberation have to be exercised. Engaging Congress, which established the authorities that create good military options; reiterating to the troops and the world that the U.S. military follows the rule of law; telling senior commanders that they should not be tempted by those seeking private advice; promoting the secretary of defense as the face of the defense apparatus — these are all useful near-term steps.

No matter the president, bad military options should not land on his desk. We may have been lucky to ratchet down tensions with Iran. We shouldn’t have to rely on luck next time.

Phroyd

#trump #iran #assassination

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thinkveganworld · 5 years ago

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Part Two - Reagan Administration Undermined the Constitution: A Cautionary Tale from History

written by “thinkveganworld.tumblr.com

This is Part Two of a series I wrote a few years ago. The sources for all of the following information are “The Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,” published by The New York Times [Times Books, 1988], and two “PBS Frontline” broadcasts, one aired in 1987 and another in 1990. As I said in Part One of this article, the public never fully understood Iran-Contra, and this helps clarify what the scandal was about.

What happens when a president. vice president and their administration willfully break laws, run a secret war in defiance of Congress, sell arms to a declared enemy of the U.S., actively undermine the Constitution, and repeatedly lie about those activities to Congress and the American people? How could those events be swept under the rug? How could they stay covered up, so that even today the American people remain crippled by their inability to learn from their own recent history? All of those things happened as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Bill Moyers says, “The basic Constitutional issues still have not been confronted. Can a president, on his own, wage a war that Congress opposes? And how are we the people to hold our leaders accountable if we are kept in the dark about their deeds? What happened in Iran-Contra was nothing less than the systematic disregard for democracy itself. It was in effect a coup, a spirit at odds with liberty. Officials who boasted of themselves as men of the Constitution showed utter contempt for the law, They had the money and power to do what they wanted, the guile to hide their tracks, and the arrogance to simply declare what they did was legal.

Part Two of this series focuses on President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush’s lies to the public regarding Iran-Contra, with an emphasis this time on Bush. Not only did the president and vice president have the arrogance to simply declare what they did was legal, they had the arrogance to repeatedly lie to the American people about their deeds, They did this despite the fact that some of their lies had already been exposed but not widely reported.

George H. W. Bush’s most widely reported lie is, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” A far more serious lie is Bush’s claim that he was opposed to negotiating with terrorist nations. The Reagan-Bush team was secretly selling arms to Iran, allegedly in exchange for the release of hostages, and then funneling the profit from the arms sales to the Contras. Bill Moyers says, “At ten high level meetings, top officials have discussed the arms shipments to terrorists. George H. W. Bush has attended at least five. He also heads the President’s Task Force on Terrorism.”

Bush said at a press conference, “Today I am proud to deliver to the American people the result of the six months effort to review our policies and our capabilities to deal with terrorism. Our policy is clear, concise, unequivocal. We will offer no concession to terrorists, because that only leads to more terrorism. States that practice terrorism, or actively support it, will not be allowed to do so without consequence.”

Even as the vice president spoke, the Reagan Administration was selling arms to terrorists. Bush knew it. He had attended meetings on the arms shipments.

One arms shipment around the time of the Bush speech netted $800,000 profit. The Iranians accepted 1,000 American-made missiles without releasing even one hostage. They paid triple market price for the weapons. Bill Moyers says, “The arms sales have become big business, off the shelves and off the books, accountable only to the inside trader. The profits will wind up not in the U.S. Treasury, but in a private slush fund - what North, Casey and company now call the Enterprise. Nearly $4 million of it will keep the Contras supplied with weapons of war, despite the congressional ban.”

By fall of 1986, the Enterprise was making huge profits, but few hostages were released. Since few hostages were being released, the obvious question is: Were hostages or profits the real reason for making deals with terrorists? As Moyers says, “The hostages had become a cash cow for the undeclared war.” The Enterprise made $16 million by inflating prices on weapons sales to the Iranians. A sixth arms shipment to Iran generated $8 million profit, but no hostage was released. Instead, two more hostages were taken. The Enterprise made additional huge profits with the seventh arms shipment in October, The Iranians then released only one hostage, but only after seizing another.

Although Bush attended high level meetings on the subject of shipment of arms to terrorists, and headed the President’s Task Force on Terrorism, he continued to deny knowing about arms for hostages, Bill Moyers showed film footage of Bush talking with a group of reporters. A reporter asked, “Did you know about the Contra aid or not?” Bush replied (this is verbatin): “I sense that there were, that we were sending arms, and I sensed that we were trying to get hostages out, but not arms for hostages.” Another reporter asked, “Did you not begin to smell a rat here?” The vice president answered (again, this is verbatim) “Not really, no. I could see that it was, got a little close but not, not enough to say no, this is not arms, that this is purely arms for hostages.”

Another serious lie is Bush’s deception that he was “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra. To this day, Bush has not publicly admitted he lied about it. In addition, to this day most mainstream journalists have not worked hard to make sure most of the American people know Bush lied. The following official minutes of a June, 1984 meeting of the President’s National Security Planning Group show that Bush was in the loop,

National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane: “There seems to be no prospect that the Democratic leadership will provide for any vote on the Nicaraguan program.”

President Reagan: “It all hangs on support for anti-Sandinistas. How can we get that support in the Congress? We have to be more active.”

UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick: “If we can’t get money for the anti-Sandinistas, then we have to make the maximum effort to find the money elsewhere.”

Secretary of State George Schultz: “Baker’s argument is that the U.S. government may raise and spend funds only through an appropriation by the Congress.”

President Reagan: “If such a story gets out, we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs outside the White House until we find out who did it.”

Pretending to be out of the loop on Iran-Contra, Vice President Bush later told reporters, (This is verbatim) “I saw some references in one of these stories to the nine, nine o’clock meetings. Let me tell you how it works. Somebody comes in there, like it’s Don Regan, me and the president, ‘Anybody hear anything new on the hostages today? We got and heard of that? Has it moved forward at all? We’ll ask Poindexter.’ Poindexter would come in the room. ‘No, we haven’t had a report.” That’s the end of that meeting. Then you go ahead and talk about the budget, or talk about something else.”

Bush neglected to add, “and sometimes you talk about ways to get around the law.”

Another George H. W. Bush lie was his claim that the deal making which helped continue the illegal war in Nicaragua did not involve any “quid pro quo.” Bush’s concern during the June, 1984 meeting was that there could be a problem if the U.S. were to “promise to give third parties something in return” for their help in the covert war, in other words, a quid pro quo. The truth is, the Reagan Administration did promise to give something in return in many instances, Vice President George H. W. Bush personally delivered the quid in one instance and then later lied about it,

This is how Bush came to deliver the quid: After the Reagan Administration decided to disregard Congress and secretly continue the war in Nicaragua, they needed to keep the Contras going. They then pressured small governments, such as Honduras, for assistance. Bill Moyers says regarding Honduras, “The deal is simple. You help the guerillas bring down Nicaragua, We’ll help you with weapons and money, It is a quid pro quo verging on bribery, and they [the Reagan Administration know it.”

Reagan’s team did not want to send a U.S. ambassador to Honduras to deliver the quid, because an ambassador might be called before Congress for questioning, As the government eventually admitted in Oliver North’s trial, Vice President George H. W. Bush was the person the Reagan Administration sent to deliver the quid to Honduras. As Moyers says, “that quid amounted to more than $100 million in expedited military, economic, and CIA assistance.” Honduras agreed t the quo. In return for the $100 million in U.S. help, Honduras served as a base for the Contras in the war against Nicaragua.

After he became president George H.W. Bush denied what he had already admitted in open court, namely the fact that he personally delivered the quid to Honduras. Bush told the press (again, this is verbatim), “Honduras, there was no quid pro quo. The records of the meeting demonstrate that there was no quid pro quo.”

Honduran President Suazo met with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, and much of the cabinet, in Washington, two months after Bush’s visit to Honduras. In a May 21, 1985 memo, National Security Adviser McFarlane writes to President Reagan: “It will be important to reiterate to [Honduran President] Suazo the importance we attach to his continued cooperation in enabling the FDN [a Honduran based Contra group] to remain a viable element of pressure on the Sandinistas. without making the linkage too explicit, it would be useful to remind Suazo that in return for our help we do expect cooperation in pursuit of our mutual objectives, You could underline the seriousness of our security commitment, which the Hondurans seem to regard as the main quid pro quo for cooperating with the FDN.” McFarlane is another source supporting the fact that there was a quid pro quo with Honduras, again showing Vice President Bush lied to the American people on the subject,

Unlike the sex lies the media pursued to feverishly during the Clinton scandal, the many lies of George H. W, Bush and Ronald Reagan involved widespread human rights abuses and constitutional issues of statecraft. As head of the President’s Task Force on Terrorism, Vice President Bush said that offering concessions to terrorists only leads to more terrorism, The administration knew what it was doing, Reagan’s and Bush’s concessions did, in fact, led to more terrorism, more kidnapping of hostages and more killing of innocent civilians in Nicaragua, and they knew it,

The many lies of the Reagan-Bush Administration were not as harmless as Bush’s widely reported “no new taxes, as mainstream media misled the public to believe, Reagan’s and Bush’s more serious lies led to much human suffering, bloodshed, death and destruction, often mainly for financial profit. In addition, those lies threatened the constitutional separation of powers, Reagan and Bush were aware of all that, too.

During Iran-Contra, our system of checks and balances failed us. The failure allowed Reagan and Bush to hide their dirty linen and bloodstained hands from the American people and much of the rest of the world. Those issues will be the subject of the next article in this series.

#Iran Contra #George H. W. Bush #Ronald Reagan

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protectrightwhales · 6 years ago

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Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection Act Reintroduced in 116th Congress

North Atlantic right whale #3370 swims with her calf about half a nautical mile from the shore of Palm Coast, Florida on March 21, 2019. The calf is partially rolled on its side, showing their entire right lip. #3370 is at least 16 years old and this is her second calf.

Mother/calf pairs are at the highest risk from seismic blasting as the stress levels and energy expended in trying to escape the blasting could affect reproduction and calves could become separated from their mothers because the calls they use to communicate could be drowned out by the blasting.

credit: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, permit #20556-01

The Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection Act (H.R. 1606) has been reintroduced in the 116th Congress by Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). The legislation would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to prohibit oil, gas, and methane hydrate-related seismic activities in the North Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Straits of Florida planning areas of the outer Continental shelf. This is extremely important legislation that would protect highly endangered North Atlantic right whales - and all other life in the Atlantic Ocean - from the devastating effects of seismic blasting. There is also an urgent need to pass this legislation as soon as possible, considering that five permits for seismic blasting in the Atlantic were approved in December of 2018. The decision to allow seismic blasting violates three federal laws - the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Environmental Policy Act - which led a large, diverse coalition of groups to file a lawsuit against the proposed blasting. A coalition of conservation organizations is also seeking a court order to put an immediate halt to the blasting while the lawsuit works its way through the courts. A more permanent solution is needed in the long-term though and that's what this legislation would provide. It's a simple bill that only comes in at two pages long but that's as long as it needs to be in order to ban seismic blasting. If this only two-page bill could be passed, North Atlantic right whales and the countless other species that call the Atlantic Ocean home would be safe from the devastating noise pollution and physical damage from seismic blasting - and from the drilling, extraction, transportation and burning of any oil that was found during the blasting. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) also participated in the hearing that was held by the Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee in the House that was held on March 7th. We wrote about Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) using an air horn during the hearing to demonstrate noise pollution that would be caused by seismic blasting. Rep. Beyer begins his questioning at 1:29:41 in the video of the hearing. We fully endorse the Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection Act (H.R. 1606) and believe it does have a chance of passing the House now. When the bill was introduced in 2017 during the 115th Congress it had 40 co-sponsors - 37 Democrats and 3 Republicans - one of the Republicans was Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) who is an original co-sponsor of the new bill and the other two Republicans lost their seats but to Democrats that are strongly opposed to seismic blasting (Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) and Rep. Joe Cunningham). Of the 37 Democrats, most kept their seats and will most likely cosponsor the new bill while a few others left Congress but were replaced by Democrats that we believe will cosponsor or at least vote for the new bill as well. A companion bill, S. 828, was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) along with nine other Democrats and 1 Independent - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Unfortunately, even if it passes the House, the Senate will most likely not hold a vote on S. 828 as the Senate Republicans are increasingly hostile to the Endangered Species Act - one of the major laws that protects North Atlantic right whales - and they are also very supportive of the oil and gas industries. Even if it somehow passed the Senate, it would not be signed into law because the President and his allies are the ones that want the oil drilling to occur. However, it's important for this legislation to be passed (something that was impossible in the previous Congress due to Republican control) in order to lay the groundwork for the ban to eventually be signed into law. More Information:

Congressman Blasts Air Horn During Hearing to Demonstrate Noise Pollution - 3/30/2019

Groups Seek Court Order to Block Seismic Blasting in Atlantic Ocean - 2/23/2019 Federal Judge Halts Offshore Oil Drilling Permits During Government Shutdown - 1/24/2019 Special Report: Trump Administration Approves Seismic Blasting in Atlantic Ocean - 12/8/2018 To find out more about what is happening to North Atlantic and North Pacific right whales and how we can all take actions in our everyday lives to protect them, please visit our Facts and Action sections on our website. We also post updates and pictures on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.

article: http://www.protectrightwhales.com/2019/4_9_atlantic_seismic_airgun_protection_act_reintroduced

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newstfionline · 5 years ago

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Headlines

In 1919, driving cross-country was a crazy idea. An Army convoy set out to show it could be done. (Washington Post) A long line of nearly 100 vehicles stretched out along the White House Ellipse on the morning of July 7, 1919, replete with heavy troop carriers, light trucks, sidecar motorcycles, reconnaissance cars, field kitchens, blacksmith shops and one Renault light tank. Though an armistice had brought peace to Europe the previous year, the military had given itself a new mission: driving a convoy across the country. The Army’s road trip got off to a rocky start, with several vehicles breaking down that afternoon on the hilly roads leading out of the District. The party made camp the first night in Frederick, Md., where a brevet lieutenant colonel joined the group as a last-minute observer for the Tank Corps. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then 28, was there “partly for a lark and partly to learn,” he wrote later, because “nothing of the sort had ever been attempted.” In the weeks ahead, engine troubles plagued the convoy, which progressed at an average pace of less than 6 mph. On Sept. 6, 1919, the vehicles limped into San Francisco, where the daily log appreciatively noted “fair and warm” weather and fine “paved city streets.” Twenty-one of the doughboys had suffered injuries or fallen sick over the course of the journey. The heavy vehicles had damaged or destroyed 88 bridges and caused 230 road accidents. One Army captain described the weeks on the road as “comparable to those generally experienced in the advance zone of battle operations.” In his final report to the chief of the Motor Transport Corps, Eisenhower reflected that “extended trips by trucks through the middle western part of the United States are impracticable until the roads are improved.” Years later, he would see the possibilities of a national highway building program firsthand while leading mechanized Army forces on the autobahns of Nazi Germany.

Trump approval rises, but a majority also see him as ‘unpresidential’ (Washington Post) President Trump’s approval rating has risen to the highest point of his presidency, though a slight majority of Americans continue to say they disapprove of his performance in office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

DMV databases become part of unprecedented surveillance infrastructure (Washington Post) The FBI and ICE have turned state driver’s license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through hundreds of millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show.

21 hurt in shopping plaza blast: Gas lines found ruptured (AP) A vacant pizza restaurant exploded Saturday in a thundering roar at a South Florida shopping plaza, injuring more than 20 people as large chunks of concrete flew through the air. The blast flung debris widely along a busy road in Plantation, west of Fort Lauderdale. The restaurant was destroyed, and nearby businesses and cars were damaged. Though firefighters found ruptured gas lines afterward, authorities said it was too early to determine a cause.

U.S. Says Trade Talks Resuming as China Demands End to Tariffs (Bloomberg) The Trump administration said trade talks with China are starting up again as Beijing reiterated that it’s essential the U.S. removes all existing tariffs for a deal to be reached. Negotiations between the world’s two largest economies collapsed in May after U.S. officials accused China of backtracking on draft commitments, and amid key sticking points like China’s demand that the U.S. lift all the punitive tariffs put in place since the trade war started almost a year ago.

From Libya to Texas, tragedies illustrate plight of migrants (AP) They are trapped in squalid detention centers on Libya’s front lines. They wash up on the banks of the Rio Grande. They sink without a trace--in the Mediterranean, in the Pacific or in waterways they can’t even name. A handful fall out of airplanes’ landing gear. As their choices narrow on land and at sea, migrants are often seen as a political headache in the countries they hope to reach and ignored in the countries they flee. Most live in limbo, but recent tragedies have focused attention on the risks they face and the political constraints at the root of them. A record 71 million people were forcibly displaced around the world in 2018, according to a report last month by the U.N. refugee agency, in places as diverse as Turkey, Uganda, Bangladesh and Peru. Many are still on the move in 2019, or trapped like thousands in detention in Libya, where an airstrike on Tuesday killed at least 44 migrants and refugees locked away in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura.

Macri and Rivals Launch Campaign Ads for Presidential Election (Reuters) Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his rivals in the October election launched their campaign ads on local TV on Sunday, targeting undecided voters who will be key to choosing whether his policies remain in place another four years.

BA Faces $229 Million Fine Over Breach of Customers’ Data (AP) The U.K. data regulator is fining British Airways 183 million pounds ($229 million) over a breach that compromised information on half a million customers.

San Fermín: Three gored during annual Pamplona bull run (BBC) Three people have been gored during the first bull run at the annual San Fermín festival in Pamplona. Two others were taken to hospital with head injuries and a total of 48 others were treated by the Red Cross. Injuries at the event are common and at least 16 people have died taking part since 1910, when records began.

Greece: Exit polls give win to conservative party leader (AP) Exit polls in Greece’s general election indicate conservative opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis won a comfortable victory Sunday over left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The vote was Greece’s first parliamentary election since the end of its international bailouts and came as the country gradually emerges from a brutal financial crisis that saw unemployment and poverty levels skyrocket and the economy shrink by a quarter.

Bus Falls From Highway Bridge in Northern India, Killing 29 (AP) A speeding bus smashed through the boundary wall of an expressway bridge and plunged into a drain in northern India early Monday, killing at least 29 people on board, an official said.

Hong Kong protesters seek to tell mainland Chinese visitors about their struggle (Washington Post) Visitors from China accustomed to high end hotels and luxury stores were handed Hong Kong newspapers detailing the upheaval in the city over the past weeks. News in China has been highly censored since massive student-led pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. Chinese Internet users attempting to find information about the ongoing Hong Kong protests have found their queries blocked. State media has instead published stories that show widespread support in Hong Kong for mainland China, often completely false.

Strong Quake Causes Panic in Eastern Indonesia (AP) A strong subsea earthquake late Sunday night caused panic in parts of eastern Indonesia and triggered a tsunami warning that was later lifted. There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties.

Australia Tracks Chinese Warship Headed Towards U.S.-Australia War Games (Reuters) Australian defence officials said on Monday they were tracking a Chinese surveillance ship that is expected to position itself just outside of its territorial waters to monitor military exercises between Australia and the United States.

Iran steps further from nuke deal, adding pressure on Europe (AP) Iran increased its uranium enrichment Sunday beyond the limit allowed by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, inching its program closer toward weapons-grade levels while calling for a diplomatic solution to a crisis heightening tensions with the U.S. Iran’s move, coupled with earlier abandoning the deal’s limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile, intensifies pressure on Europe to find any effective way around U.S. sanctions that block Tehran’s oil sales abroad. But the future of the accord that President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. from a year ago remains in question. While Iran’s recent measures could be easily reversed, Europe has struggled to respond, even after getting a 60-day warning that the increase was coming. Meanwhile, experts fear a miscalculation in the crisis could explode into open conflict, as Trump already has nearly bombed Iran over Tehran shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone.

Libya’s Mitiga Airport Resumes Air Traffic Following a Missile Strike (Reuters) Air space re-opened at the Libyan capital’s only functioning airport, Mitiga, on Sunday after it was halted following a fall of missiles, according to a post on the Mitiga airport authority’s Facebook page.

#headlines

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priceofliberty · 6 years ago

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Even if voting isn’t HELPFUL, it at the very least isn’t harmful, and the idea that voting can’t change policy is false-constitutional amendments that are on the ballot can have very big impacts, for example, there’s one in alabama rn that could make it a lot harder to get an abortion. Additionally, the process of voting helps indirectly educate people on the issues and the structure or government, and at the very least encourages people to pay attention to what the govt is doing.

Voting propagates the false notion that your voice matters in a ‘representative democracy’ and that by ticking a few boxes on a ballot, you have exercised the fullest expression of your political authority — this is misleading at best, and outright false at worst; that is what is harmful about the American electoral processes.

If any of you would take a minute out of our day to actually read the study, you’ll see that we’re speaking to national domestic and foreign policies, not local or regional policies. By all means, cast your ballot for propositions and referendums because they represent a rare instance of ‘direct democracy’ against which I am not ideologically opposed (we participate in direct democracy nearly every day in most of the decisions we make).

I also contend that voting does not encourage people to pay attention, as evidenced by the last century of American history. It is pretty clear that once an election ends, peoples’ collective attention span effectively shuts off. In fact, I would argue that the structure of national elections encourages, not stifles, single-issue votes (and thus, single-minded voters). This is further demonstrated by the oscillating intensity of the anti-war movement; very loud during the Bush administration, and very quiet (but still on the fringes) during the Obama administration. Note how many conservatives now support Trump and are quiet about many of his executive overreaches. In sum, voting induces complacency in the base of voters who ‘win’ the election.

Also, the idea that if people don’t vote there will be all this media attention and people will confront the illegitimacy of the system is wrong-elections in Louisiana regularly have turnout under 20%, for example. Most people staying home on election day is the status quo in the South, and nobody cares. It just allows for Republican control of the government, which is meaningfully worse for poor people who have to deal with welfare cuts, or lgbt people who have to deal with job discrimination.

I keep hearing this argument that a lack of voters = a Republican victory, which heavily implies that the majority of people who vote (or would vote) are not Republicans, or would not vote for a Republican; there’s no evidence for this. Republicans parrot the same talking point (that your lack of voting only allows the liberals to win). Still, I know of plenty of Republicans who abstain from voting, and in particular abstained from the 2016 election. It is a falsehood; someone has to be voting for Republicans, who spend just as much money on ‘getting out the vote’ and riling up their base as Democrats do.

I will concede that its merely an idea, simply because its never been seen, that the national media would confront the illegitimacy of an election with unprecedentedly low turnout. I am not sure Louisiana is a good example, despite the historically-frequent low turnout, due to their runoff elections which is something I actually advocate for.

ok yeah i do have one last point on the matter. even if you’re against voting the energy you’re spending urging people not to vote could be much better spent advocating for other things. Like voting doesn’t directly influence policy, true, and it’s not enough, very true! but choosing between two platforms created by elites which nevertheless have very different policies and effects is still an important harm reduction strategy. Also, constitutional amendments and referendums ARE policy. bye lol

And here you concede, unashamed, that you’re putting your lot behind a class of political elites who have better PR than the other class; that voting “doesn’t directly influence policy” (as I continue to assert) but it becomes symbolically important to effect a “harm reduction strategy.” There isn’t a single legitimate argument that a political victory at the polls reduces harm, because the harm is always and consistently pushed off onto other people. In particular, most Americans are content to vote for their candidates, despite the massive, undeniable harm both parties cause to innocent people living anywhere other than America.

Again, my energy is spent urging people to break out of the mentality that the only or best way to reduce harm is to vote. Indeed, voting perpetuates the system of harm, shifting the burden disproportionately onto those deemed undesirable by the political class. Pot calling the kettle black, look where you put your energy this morning. You’re not even trying to convince me, simply lambaste me for what you perceive as wasting time.

You want to help people? Reduce harm? Educate people “on the issues”? Give whatever time or money you can offer to a charity of your choice. There are thousands out there.

That study, by the way, besides stating that “The estimated impact of average citizens’ preferences drops precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level”, also concludes:

The failure of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy is all the more striking because it goes against the likely effects of the limitations of our data. The preferences of ordinary citizens were measured more directly than our other independent variables, yet they are estimated to have the least effect.

Nor do organized interest groups substitute for direct citizen influence, by embodying citizens’ will and ensuring that their wishes prevail in the fashion postulated by theories of Majoritarian Pluralism. Interest groups do have substantial independent impacts on policy, and a few groups (particularly labor unions) represent average citizens’ views reasonably well. But the interest-group system as a whole does not. Overall, net interest-group alignments are not significantly related to the preferences of average citizens. The net alignments of the most influential,business-oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes. So existing interest groups do not serve effectively as transmission belts for the wishes of the populace as a whole.

Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of“affluent”citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover,because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

It is federal (not state, not local) legislation which determines the ultimate direction this country takes which, in my opinion, is hardly more than a descent into tyranny. It is painfully clear to anyone breathing in the U.S. today that the average citizen has no influence on domestic or foreign policy. It’s clear from this study, as well, that even pooling our resources as average citizens, we have a “non-significant, near-zero” impact on policy. The only preferences that matter are the preferences of the elite—there is no evidence showing otherwise.

This is why I will continue to stress the futility of voting in the national context, and will continue to encourage active participation with charities and activism.

#voting #elections #politics #Anonymous #mine

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southeastasianists · 6 years ago

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Cambodia will vote on Sunday July 29. Today, the 20 competing parties can make their final appeals to the voters. It is the endpoint of a campaign that many have dramatically dismissed as a death knell for Cambodian democracy. Both publicly—through articles and social media posts—and in private conversations, people often draw on their observations and memories of Cambodia’s past elections to weigh in on the state of politics and to consider what options remain.

First, some background. National elections are held every five years. In 2013, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), headed by Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, came close to defeating Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The results shocked the ruling party, which has effectively been in charge of the country’s affairs for almost four decades.

After the commune elections in 2017 demonstrated that popular discontent with Cambodia’s longstanding leadership had not ceased, the government began a series of drastic measures. Sokha was accused of plotting a “colour revolution” with the help of the US and jailed on treason charges, for which he could face 14 years imprisonment. Rainsy left the country under threat of defamation charges. In November 2017, the Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party and barred its members from political activities for five years before redistributing their seats. The bulk of them went back to the ruling party, a handful were scattered among other “opposition” parties.

So on Sunday, 19 parties will contest the CPP’s powerful grip. But without a major opposition party, this year’s election looks markedly different than previous ones.

The 2013 elections provide the most common backdrop to structure people’s observations of this year’s campaigns: compared to the bustling excitement and the loud and cheerful confidence displayed by CNRP voters all over the country, the opposition parties’ campaigns this year are mostly remarkable for what they are not. Even the capital Phnom Penh, otherwise the hub of campaign activities, is mostly silent and few things indicate that challengers to the CPP remain.

Yet for someone who has spent years combing through archives that document the work of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) it is the country’s first elections that still shape observations, at times producing an almost eerie sense of déjà vu:

what exactly is the role and agenda of the small parties? Will the government track voters’ choices in the ballot boxes? What will the total numbers of votes cast reveal about the future of Cambodia’s democracy?

These questions, now on the forefront of many voters’ minds, were just as intensely debated 25 years ago. At the end of its mission to implement the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, UNTAC organised the country’s first democratic elections in 1993. The highly anticipated event was globally celebrated (some might say overly glorified) as the “birth of democracy” in Cambodia.

In 1993 as well as in 2018 a total of 20 parties registered to compete in the elections.

However, then, as now, the concept of a “political competition of ideas” was mostly elusive in an environment marked by fear and insecurity.

In 1993 it was the memories of the war that loomed large. During their televised campaign speeches Cambodian politicians alluded repeatedly to “mountains of bones, rivers of blood and an ocean of suffering” and appealed to their fellow politicians to prioritise national reconciliation. The theme was also evident in the parties’ names—Khmer Neutral Party or Liberal Reconciliation Party—and party symbols that used images like shaking hands or the peace dove.

Amidst the ongoing political violence in the country, the candidates chose their campaign locations and words carefully. “We live with the tiger and therefore must act in such a way as to avoid being eaten”, explained a candidate to an UNTAC official. Another observer noted in his report: “… the Bulletin of the Democratic Party is printed in a no-fuss black and white typescript. The Bulletin’s lackluster presentation style is carried over in content. This is no doubt a deliberate tactic to avoid direct criticism and the possibility of harassment.”

In 2018 similar tendencies can be observed. Many of the CPP’s competitors embrace the least objectionable of all causes in their campaigns and vaguely profess to “protect forests” or “end poverty” once in power. In his office, one party leader handed me a small program, the size of half a postcard, and gestured towards the breast pocket of his shirt: Easy to put it in here, he said. Easy to hide. And of course, small programs are also cheaper: most of the parties are notoriously under-financed and have only limited funding to spend on the campaigns. They focus their attention on going door to door in the provinces, talking to prospective voters and distributing their leaflets.

In the space of the city of Phnom Penh this translates into an overwhelming presence for the CPP. Huge, well-lit billboards have been erected at major intersections of the city. They line many of the large boulevards, streets and bridges. The party’s programs, slogans, and symbols have been glued to building walls at regular intervals. The portraits of the party’s leaders, Hun Sen and National Assembly president Heng Samrin, shoulder by shoulder, are omnipresent. There are tents, where party supporters alternately play campaign speeches and music. Expensive cars adorned with the CPP symbol can be spotted all over town. Shops sell CPP hats, shirts, phone cases and other merchandise. Rallies involve thousands of identically dressed supporters in cars, open trucks, and motorbikes and are flawlessly choreographed events: police are positioned on every corner, their ears pressed to their walky-talkies, waiting for their signal to stop the traffic and wave the motorcades through.

Amidst all of this, the campaigns of the other parties are difficult to find. None have a single billboard; their signs are small, mostly at the outskirts of the city, by the side of dusty roads. Some have taken to parking tuk-tuks decorated with flags and equipped with loudspeakers that blast recorded campaign speeches by their leaders towards the passers-by. Their processions have dramatically fewer supporters and the authorities are less likely to support their way through the city’s dense traffic, often leading to the campaign processions being cut into smaller and smaller groups of supporters.

In 1993, cognisant of the CPP’s relative wealth and reach even at that time, UNTAC tried to level the playing field by creating a radio station and then distributing radios in the provinces. One might assume that with the advent of social media and the intense popularity of Facebook in Cambodia the smaller parties could make up for much of the financial, material, and organisational limitations of their campaigns by reaching out to their supporters online. Yet, the government’s announcement to monitor social media ahead of the elections has spooked many and it is almost as quiet and monotonous on the web as it is in the streets of Phnom Penh.

Despite these restrictions and regardless of the media used, rumours travel fast in every era. To express their concerns and ask for advice in the run-up to the 1993 elections listeners from around the country wrote to the UNTAC radio station, which sometimes received several hundred letters a day. During a special program, selected letters would be read and answered on air. People had heard of magic pens or spy drones, and contacted UNTAC for advice.

Similar stories circulate today. Smartphones and their integrated cameras make it unnecessary to imagine more elaborate methods of surveillance inside the ballot box, but the dominant themes of those rumours remain the same: people worry about the government’s ability to compromise the secrecy of the vote.

Which brings us to one last point: the current preoccupation with the total number of votes cast. During a televised statement in 1993, In Tam, the leader of the Democratic Party, urged his fellow people to go and vote to guarantee that Cambodia would no longer be isolated:

“Please participate in the elections; so that there are 90 percent or even more, so that they can see that we want to be a country that obeys the law and lives under the rule of law… Today they regard us as people living under the rule of the jungle, today there is nobody who recognises us; so if we do not all go to the elections, if we can’t be bothered to vote, then we will continue being a country that is excluded from the global community, so mobilise everything there is.”

And indeed, 90% did turn out, providing observers with the key element of their success story—despite the fact that both before and after the ballot it was business as usual and power-play and bargaining, not the will of the people, determined the end result.

Today, Sam Rainsy and his supporters urge the Cambodian people to stay at home to demonstrate that democracy can survive. Those who must go, they say, should spoil their ballots. They have dismissed all other parties as puppets or traitors and will claim every vote not cast for any party.

It is likely because of the tendency of the former CNRP members to bring up the Paris Peace Agreements, in their appeals from abroad, that people continue to regularly bring up UNTAC themselves: “they [UNTAC] installed the two prime ministers and then just left”, a shop owner said yesterday. A few days earlier she had also noted that “nobody will come to help because they already spent so much money then”.

Many commentators have loudly declared these elections “a farce”, “already over”, and “history” weeks before the polls have opened. And while it is true that Hun Sen is not going to disappear from the world stage by means of this vote, such statements are dismissive of those who are still grappling with the question of what the right decision under these difficult circumstances is.

To those people, who had neither the luxury to learn about the country’s history in libraries or archives, nor the convenience to observe and comment from the sidelines, it is the memory of another election that looms large: that of 1998 and the clashes leading up to it that turned Phnom Penh once again into a war zone.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, Hun Sen’s government has conducted riot training and provided new equipment to officers around the country. Two days before the vote people are wondering: is the current suspense the proverbial silence before storm, or is it the silence before the silence? And what is worse? “We have stocked up on dry noodles, just in case”, a market vendor said.

Looking back, it becomes painfully obvious that not only are Cambodia’s elections flawed, they are also a flawed vehicle to trace political change in Cambodia. To those still committed to peaceful change, the simplistic tales of “birth” and “death” of democracy are meaningless. Cambodians will, as one party official said, just continue to use and engage whatever space remains. “It is important for us as Khmer, the leaders and the citizens, we must try ourselves, trust in ourselves and hope. We cannot give up. If we give up, if we think it is impossible, if we only think of losing, who is going to help us?”

#Southeast Asia #Cambodia #Politics #General Elections

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careerfinders · 6 years ago

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pain and the European Union were told unequivocally yesterday that Gibraltar’s British sovereignty will never be bartered against the wishes of its people and that the Rock must be included in any future relationship agreed by the UK and the EU after Brexit.

The message was delivered almost simultaneously by Chief Minister Fabian Picardo in the Gibraltar Parliament and Prime Minister Theresa May in the House of Commons.

It came as negotiators in Brussels agreed a text for the proposed political declaration that accompanies the Withdrawal Agreement and sets out a framework for talks on future EU/UK relations.

European Council president Donald Tusk announced that the text had been agreed in draft form by EU and UK negotiators and “agreed in principle at political level”.

A leaked copy of the draft text made no mention of Gibraltar, despite threats from Spain that it would vote against the Withdrawal Agreement and the declaration unless they specified that Gibraltar’s inclusion in any future arrangements between the UK and the EU must first be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London.

London and Brussels are loathe to reopen the draft agreement and or the declaration to entertain last-minute objections raised by individual EU member states.

Although they do not state so openly, some officials believe the Spanish position is driven more by party political concerns ahead of regional elections in Andalucia on December 2, rather than genuine concern about the future negotiation.

Gibraltar’s absence from the leaked copy of the political declaration was taken as by Spanish opposition parties as a snub by Brussels to the Socialist government of Pedro Sanchez.

In London, Mrs May told the Commons that she had spoken to Mr Sanchez and made the UK’s position clear.

“We have been working constructively with the governments of Spain and Gibraltar in the negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and we want this work to continue in the future relationship,” Mrs May said.

“But I was absolutely clear that Gibraltar’s British sovereignty will be protected and that the future relationship we agree must work for the whole UK family.”

In Gibraltar, the Chief Minister reinforced that message for the avoidance of any doubt.

“Brexit is a bad thing for the whole of Europe,” Mr Picardo said.

“Brexit without an agreement for orderly agreed withdrawal would be even worse for the whole of Europe.”

“And for us, Brexit is as bad an idea today in reality as when it was in theory at the time of the Referendum.”

“But so for us, it is always best that we stick with Britain despite Brexit.”

“We have stuck with Britain in the past. And we will stick with Britain in the future.”

There was support too from the Opposition bench in the Gibraltar Parliament, where the Leader of the Opposition, GSD MP Elliott Phillips, said expressed concern about speculation that Spain might raise joint sovereignty during negotiations for the future relationship.

“From these benches, that is entirely unacceptable to Her Majesty’s Opposition, and to the people of Gibraltar,” he said.

“The position of the Spanish Government raises further concerns as to [its] commitment to adhere to any agreement over Gibraltar.”

“For now we reserve our assessment until such time as the position becomes clearer but continue to express our misgivings.”

“I am sure that we share the dismay of the whole House that Spain should be seeking to exclude Gibraltar from the negotiations on the future relationship with the EU until it gains a political advantage.”

“The [Gibraltar] Government will need to remain vigilant that nothing is changed in the current text of the Withdrawal Agreement to further undermine Gibraltar’s position.”

PARALLEL AGREEMENTS

The controversy over Madrid’s objections to the Withdrawal Agreement came as Gibraltar, the UK and Spain finalised parallel work on agreements that will provide a framework for cooperation between Gibraltar and Spain after Brexit.

Mr Picardo briefed the Cabinet and the Brexit Select Committee on that package of measures, which he and his team had finalised with the UK and Spain in Madrid this week.

The package includes four memorandums of understanding on citizens’ rights, tobacco market access, cooperation on environmental issues and cooperation on police and customs matters.

There is also a tax treaty that sets out provisions on fiscal transparency and tax residency rules of the type found in a double taxation or information exchange agreement.

Gibraltar has such agreements with many other countries and has long sought one with Spain, Mr Picardo said.

All of those agreements are now “virtually complete, subject to a common final political agreement” Mr Picardo told Parliament.

The Chief Minister expects to make a ministerial statement on the nature and effect of those measures next week, once the European Council has reached final agreement on the Withdrawal Agreement and political declaration on the future relationship.

“Nothing in these documents compromises any of our red lines,” Mr Picardo said.

“Nothing in them alters in any way whatsoever our Constitution and constitutional competences.”

“There are and there will be no concessions on matters of sovereignty, jurisdiction or control.”

“In fact, they are expressly arrangements entered into without prejudice to all sovereignty positions.”

“Neither do these documents require us to do things that we have any problem in doing.”

All of the MoUs – except for the tax treaty and the agreement on citizens’ rights – create obligations only until the end of December 2020, or the end of the 21-month transition period. “Unless we agree otherwise, they drop dead then,” Mr Picardo said.

The Chief Minister told Parliament that “nothing has been imposed” on Gibraltar and that everything agreed would be implemented in line with the Gibraltar Constitution.

“All the commitments entered into, whether under the Protocol or the MoUs concerning Gibraltar, have been negotiated by Gibraltar and the United Kingdom together,” he said.

“They are commitments entered into only as a result of the consent of the Cabinet of Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar having been expressly given.”

“The Government is the guardian of the Constitution as much as this legislature or the judiciary may be.”

“We would not have countenanced agreeing to anything which might have resulted in our constitutional order somehow being compromised.”

SPANISH VIEWPOINT

Unsurprisingly perhaps, there was a different interpretation of the agreements in the Spanish Congress in Madrid, where Spain’s state secretary for European affairs, Marco Aguiriano, briefed Spanish MPs on the latest Brexit developments, including the agreements with Gibraltar.

Mr Aguiriano left no doubt that Spain believes the Gibraltar Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement gives Spain a role in how certain EU laws are applied to Gibraltar.

“It is the first time that any primary EU legislation will recognise Spain’s involvement, and its right to be consulted, on certain aspects of the application of EU law on the Rock,” he said.

He also sketched out the content of the various agreements that stemmed from the protocol.

He said the tax treaty would tackle “tax fraud” and “unfair competition”, while the agreement on citizens’ rights would protect the interests of cross-border workers who, he said, would benefit from the same rights as Gibraltarian workers.

He spoke too of tobacco, letting slip that the memorandum including a commitment that the differential between prices in Gibraltar and Spain would be “no more than 32%” by June 2020.

On the environment, he said the agreement would establish a technical committee for cooperation and enable Spanish artisanal fishermen to fish with “absolute normality”, as well as implement a moratorium on reclamation through to the end of the transition period.

The last memorandum on police and customs cooperation sought to coordinate efforts to tackle organised crime in the area of the Strait of Gibraltar, a shared goal of all three governments.

Last night, the Gibraltar Government was closely monitoring the statements made in the Spanish Congress by Mr Aguiriano, who was still speaking as this edition went to press.

However, questioned by the Chronicle, a spokesman for No.6 Convent Place said Mr Aguiriano was giving the agreements a spin that was not based on fact.

“The statements from Sr Aguiriano are not based on any possible proper interpretation of the texts,” the spokesman said.

“The publication of the MoUs will demonstrate this.”

“There is nothing in any of them or the Protocol which will allows Spain to be consulted in any way about the implementation of EU law in Gibraltar.”

“His description of the content of the various agreements on tax, citizens’ rights, environment and tobacco is also off the mark, not least because much of what he describes is already in place under EU laws.”

DIALOGUE

Despite the different messaging in Gibraltar and Madrid, Mr Picardo said Gibraltar remained committed dialogue and cooperation that respected red lines on sovereignty and jurisdiction.

The Chief Minister told Parliament that without Gibraltar’s inclusion in the Withdrawal Agreement, the Rock would not be covered by the transitional arrangements designed to cushion the blow of exit from the bloc.

Mr Picardo added too that it was time to consider what type of future relationship Gibraltar wanted with Spain, “our geographic gateway to Europe”.

Gibraltar, he said, had more reasons for cooperation or discussion with Spain than with any other remaining EU nations.

“So we wish to continue, in our discussions about the future, to engage directly with Spain also in the spirit of cooperation and positive engagement we have enjoyed in this withdrawal phase of the negotiations,” Mr Picardo said.

“No one should think that we read any part of the Withdrawal Agreement in any way that would persuade us to avoid that genuine, human and political reality.”

“Nobody needs a veto to bring us to the table.”

“At this critical time in Europe’s history, Gibraltar can be the strongest foundation stone for a future relationship between the UK and the EU, not a rock on the road to agreement.”

“That is our firm commitment and resolve.”

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ruminativerabbi · 6 years ago

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The Jewishness of Israel

As we move forward through the next weeks, I hope to discuss many of the issues that I found the most interesting and the most controversial this summer in Israel. Some I have addressed already, but others are—at least in their current iteration—brand new. Some have aroused a lot of interest outside of Israel, while others appear to have garnered almost no attention outside the nation’s boundaries. And some strike me as truly crucial issues, while others appear to me—an outsider, admittedly, but a regular visitor and an informed observer—to me, at least, as a huge amount of ado about almost nothing at all.

And so, first up is the issue that has aroused the most controversy both inside and outside of Israel, the newly passed Basic Law, more correctly known as the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.” All, even the most vehemently outraged, seem to agree that this law was almost entirely symbolic and merely grants a level of official recognition to a situation that all know already to exist and that all observers have considered fully self-evident for the last seventy years. Even Sayed Kashua, an Arab-Israeli author violently opposed to the new Basic Law, had to admit in his red-hot New York Times op-ed piece a few weeks ago that this summer’s bill simply makes de jure a situation that has been de facto reality since the founding of the State.

Defenders of the law have made the point, and sharply, that the Israeli Declaration of Independence formally acknowledged the Jewish nature of Israel at the moment of its national inception and that this summer’s bill merely ratified that concept and granted it a level of official recognition it has lacked from then to now. And, indeed, the opening lines of the Declaration could really not set out the concept of the Jewish nature of the new Jewish state in clearer language:

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma∙apilim [that is, immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

But, as Americans also know, a Declaration of Independence is just that, a declaration that serves as a kind of political statement of intent and of ideals by a nation’s founders, and not a bona fide legal document at all. (That is why the oath of office that the President of the United States takes at the inauguration ceremony references the obligation to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” and not, say, to uphold the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.) And this accurately mirrors the situation in Israel as well, say Israelis who favor the Basic Law: since Israel does not have a written Constitution akin to the U.S. one, the decision was made early on—in a 1950 decision of the Israeli Supreme Court called the Harari Decision—that in lieu of an American-style foundational document, the series of Basic Laws passed by the Knesset over the years would serve as the legal foundation for Israeli jurisprudence. This summer’s initiative, therefore, is merely an effort to translate the basic values of the Declaration of Independence into Israeli law, almost precisely in the way that the delegates to the Constitution Convention of 1787 took the task upon themselves to enshrine the values and principles that led to American independence in a legal document that would serve as the basis for future American law. And, they ask, should that be more controversial in Israel than it was in America…or in any modern country?

Furthermore, a nation’s right to self-determination and self-definition being basic to its sense of national self, this kind of effort to establish in law the values and principles that led to a nation’s founding is not seen in any other quarter as bogus or racist merely because the nation in question has citizens, even lots of them, who are members of minority faiths, ethnic groups, or language groups. Iran self-defines as an “Islamic republic,” for example, and the world seems to find it not at all troubling that there are non-Muslims among the citizenry. So do Pakistan, Mauritania, and Afghanistan, all three of which nations have non-Muslims among their citizenry. Nor do I notice people suggesting that Norwegian or Icelandic products be boycotted because their nations’ constitutions recognize a specific religion as the national one despite the obvious truth that among the nation’s citizens are people who subscribe to different faiths. The U.K. also has an official religion, by the way—and British law requires that the sovereign belong to it. But I can’t recall ever hearing anyone denounce the British for maintaining a formal relationship as a nation with the Anglican Church, much less suggesting a boycott of British products until the U.K. renounces its ties to its own national church…to which only a minority of the population maintains formal affiliation. (It is true that a majority, 62%, of British Christians are Anglicans. But fewer than 60% of the general population are affiliated with any Christian church—a majority, to be sure, but not a very large one.)

When taken in the context of other nations’ foundational documents, formal constitutions and otherwise, the situation seems even stranger to me. The Basic Law makes Hebrew the official language of Israel and grants Arabic special status and guarantees that the level of official Arabic usage will be maintained. (Arabic is the native language of about 18% of Israelis.) By comparison, the Latvian Constitution recognizes Latvian as the national language of Latvia despite the fact that about a third of the citizenry speaks Russian, not Latvian. The Spanish Constitution makes Spanish the nation’s national language, and requires that citizens conduct their affairs in that language regardless of their actual native language, be it Basque or Catalan or any one of several lesser-known native tongues spoken by Spanish citizens. And many other nations, particularly ones that are the homes to unusual languages that are not widely studied or known elsewhere than in that single country—nations like Estonia or Armenia—have enacted laws designed to promote the use of the national language regardless of the fact that some of the citizenry grew up speaking different languages and continue to speak them. About these laws, however, no one seems much to care.

Regarding immigration, the Basic Laws specifies that the “ingathering of the exiles” concept will remain fundamental to Israeli immigration policy and that, as a result, Israel will remain permanently open to Jewish immigration. Given the fact that the 1950 Law of Return declares unequivocally that “every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh,” that is, “as an immigrant,” the response to this part of this summer’s Basic Law seems particularly surprising. Nor is there any lack of international parallels: the laws of many nations, including such Western democracies as Italy and Ireland, grant special status to would-be immigrants who belong to the nation’s ethnic majorities. There is an American parallel to this as well, as Eugene Kontorovich pointed out in an essay in the Wall Street Journal last July: the State Constitution of Hawaii specifically authorizes the state government to create policies that will facilitate land acquisition by native Hawaiians by enacting preferential policies openly favoring ethnic Hawaiians over the rest of the state’s citizenry.

So the short answer is that nothing has changed and the Basic Law largely codifies policies that have been in place for well more than half a century. And yet, the level of real anger—expressed both inside and outside of Israel in massive demonstrations and petition-signing campaigns—seems to me rooted in something more basic than the decision formally to declare Hebrew the national language of Israel or to create a legal basis for the Law of Return almost a cool seven decades after it was voted into law by the Knesset.

In an age of rising nationalism, many people—myself included—are at least on some level wondering what the whole concept of nationhood should mean in the post-colonial world. The myriad issues relating to immigration here and particularly in Europe are part of this as well. As is the cardinal question of what it could or should mean for a nation to embrace a specific culture and to promote that culture to the exclusion of others. Sometimes, the issues involved are benign or, at the very least, not oppressive. (I have no clear idea why Christmas should be a federal holiday in a nation that has no state religion, but I’ve long since stopped fretting about it.) But other times the effects of enshrining a national culture in law are profound. So the larger question is really whether the concept of a national state with its own culture—and the attendant baggage that culture brings along in its wake—whether that idea is something that deserves a place at the table, so to speak, in the 21st century…or whether it should be consigned to the dustbin of history along with its malign offspring: ultra-nationalism, ethnocentrism, racism, and xenophobia. Or should the idea be specifically not to pitch out the baby with the bathwater and so to attempt thoughtfully and rationally to pursue a policy that promotes the healthy growth of a nation’s chosen identity without allowing its policies to veer off into intolerance or prejudice?

In the end, there are nations and there are nations. Some, like Israel, are the sole nation-states of an indigenous people whose land has been occupied over long centuries by a long list of foreign invaders and colonialists. Nations like that—Armenia, Finland, South Korea, or Estonia would be good examples of others—have, it seems to me, a reasonable right to promote their national heritage as long as that formal effort does not result in untoward discrimination towards citizens merely because they self-define culturally differently. Our own nation promotes American culture in countless ways. So do most countries. To single out Israel for opprobrium because of its wish to see itself as the embodiment of the national aspirations of the Jewish people is to deny it a right easily and almost automatically offered to every other nation. And that, it seems to me, is defensible solely by arguing that ultimately the Jewish people has no right to its own nation, its own national culture, or the pursuit of its own national aspirations. I’m sure there are people out there who think just that. But I’m far less sure why anyone who does not feel that way would be enraged by the Knesset’s decision to ratify as law the principles that have guided Israel since 1948. The timing may have been controversial. There may even have been no specific need to undertake this specific action at this specific moment in history. But, in my opinion, the Basic Law itself seems a reasonable attempt to enshrine in law values that have been part of Israel’s national sense of purpose and identity for the entire length of its history as a modern state.

#Basic Law #Israel #Nationalism #Hebrew language

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