#get better at weeding out the nazis in your movement

[lem0nademouth]

is your movement being demonized or does your movement have a lot of nazis that you chose to ignore (or better yet, agree with and platform)

[drxaria]

I don't like the sentiment on the left of LGBTG+ issues being "not up for debate". I know, it's disgusting and dehumanizing, but we live in a world of demons and ghouls who want you dead. They're trying to legitimize their horrible goals through "civil discourse" and they're incredibly dishonest, vile, and transparently bigoted. But abstaining from confrontation is basically ceding ground to them that they have no place to walk on. Getting into arguments with these assholes sucks because they're usually just locked and loaded with a bunch of pre-baked disingenuous talking points to get them to their real point, which is that you shouldn't exist. But ultimately, their reasoning is so flimsy and thin that it's best to just cut through the bullshit and get straight to the core of why they hate LGBTQ+ people, and forcing them to justify why they think queer people's human rights should be stripped away and why they think that's a dignified "debate" to have is what shuts down that dehumanizing debate better than refusing to confront it. It takes a bit of knowing the baseline aspects of the issues and knowing how to not get trapped in the weeds on something irrelevant, but it's the reality of the world right now. And most virulent queerphobic fascists have given up on the "debate" anyway because they know that their movement loses when the debate goes on for too long on the scale of the public consciousness.

That said, no teacher should be instigating a debate on the human rights of some of their students in the classroom.

If it comes up, it's a human rights issue that you don't entertain for the purpose of classroom engagement, and you move on, especially with those kids in the class. Imagine sitting down a recently racially integrated classroom and having a "spirited discussion" on desegregation, with 1 or 2 black kids there. Imagine a Jewish kid having to sweat through a classroom discussion in Nazi Germany about whether or not the "Semitic plague" should be dealt with systematically by the Aryan race. It's sickening, and it's exactly analogous to queer and trans kids having to sit there as they debate and their peers whether or not they should get genocided.

I can definitely picture some conservative teacher who thinks they're real sneaky try to pull this in their classroom to legitimize the tenuousness of LGBTQ+ rights. Those kids whose lives are being put to question from that should not have to suffer the dehumanization of defending their own right to live in a place where they are meant to learn and grow as people. If you're in that class though, what I said above for interpersonal confrontation applies here too. Feel free to treat that teacher just like your racist family members at Thanksgiving. Cut through the charade and the bullshit and make them defend why they think the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ people is a debate worth having, and on those grounds, nothing else. Not bathrooms, not sports, not drag. Force them to acknowledge that what they're questioning are human rights. No weaseling away to a tangential topic, no euphemisms, no lies. If that's a fiery debate they want to start, make them sweat until they agree to put it out.

LGBTQ+ people deserve better than to have to suffer the indignity and humiliation of having their lives put up on trial. But it's the people trying to take your rights away who should be ashamed, because they are ghouls, and they should be the ones pissing and shitting themselves embarrassed trying to argue why you don't deserve human rights. If they want to play with that fire, they should be the ones to burn.

It's not just the LGBTQ students, it's any student who has a LGBTQ person in their life: a mother, a father, a friend, a neighbor, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin. It's more than just classmates.

No one has no right to question if people are valid.

[therealdisneyfan2319]

Not the Worst Idea After All | Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Synopsis: In the midst of war-torn Europe, Bucky manages to find a way to help Steve take his mind off of the war for a while

Characters: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes

Warnings: None

Word Count: 974

Other Fics: Broken Glass (part 1), Count Your Blessings (part 2)

I’ve always loved Steve and Bucky’s friendship.  This idea popped into my head and I had to write it.  Hope you enjoy!

Belgium.  Winter.  1944.  Steve Rogers and his Howling Commandos were en route to Berlin.  They were going through and weeding out all the known HYDRA bases in Nazi-controlled Europe.  Was it better than being stuck in Bastogne?  Marginally.  It was still cold and snowy, they didn’t have much food, and their days consisted of long stretches of boredom with the occasional spurt of action.  It was tedious and draining.  Missing the holidays at home wasn’t helping morale either.

Steve was in his tent working on the report from the previous day’s mission.  A commission to captain earned him both the privilege of his own tent and writing the official battlefield reports for Company HQ.  He had spent the last couple of hours working on this latest one, carefully reviewing details from the mission: orders, troop movements, casualties, everything had to be spelled out.  Technical writing wasn’t his strong suit.

“Ugh,” he groaned while throwing his head in his hands.  This was definitely one of his least favorite parts of being Captain America.  “Can’t this thing write itself?”

“You should talk to Howard Stark about that.  I’m sure he could fix you up with a self-typing typewriter or something.”

Steve glanced up.  Standing at the entrance to his tent was Bucky.  He was slouched over with his hands in his pockets in a futile attempt to keep them warm in the bitter cold.  He was grinning his signature cheeky Bucky Barnes grin.

“And you know better than to enter an officer’s quarters without requesting permission,” Steve half-joked.

“If it’s all the same, Cap, I’d much rather beg for forgiveness than ask permission.”  Steve was still his best friend, Army protocols be damned.  He ambled in and crossed to the desk where Steve was working on his report.  “Christ, Steve, it’s a report, not literature.”

Steve chuckled.  “You’re free to write it if you think you’d do a better job.” “That, my friend, is a perk of still being an enlisted man.  That report is above my pay grade.”  Bucky sat down on Steve's cot.  He was looking around the tent for something.  

“Alright, what do you want?” Steve asked.

“You wanna play a little hooky tonight?”

“Buck…”

“I’m serious!”

“Bucky…”

“What?!”

“You’re not seriously suggesting we just go AWOL, are you?”

“What?  No.  We’re not going AWOL, Steve.  I’ve got a better idea!  No one will even know we’re gone.”  He stood up and looked at Steve.  “Look, we’re a few miles away from German lines.  We’re not headed right into enemy territory.”

Steve rubbed his temples.  “There better be a good reason for you wanting to do this.”

“Come on, Steve!  It’ll be fun!” begged Bucky.

“Going into town to pick up women in a bar where we don’t speak the same language doesn’t strike me as a fun time,” he replied.  Before the war Bucky’s antics usually involved dragging Steve to some sort of outing where they could meet girls.  Bucky would get all the attention and he’d end up awkwardly fumbling his way through a conversation if he was lucky.  Steve would definitely get attention from the ladies now, but he didn’t want that.

“Who says I wanted to go into town?” Bucky’s eyes darted around until they suddenly stopped a little to the left of Steve’s face.  He jumped up, ran over, and grabbed the shield that was lying next to the desk.

“Hey!  What-”

“Follow me!”

“Where-?”

“Come on, let’s go!”  Bucky ran outside, shield tucked under his arm, a huge grin on his face.

Annoyed as he was, Steve couldn’t help but grin.  Bucky was his best friend.  They’d been closer than brothers growing up in Brooklyn.  He always looked out for Steve when he was small and he wasn’t about to give that up now.  He grabbed his overcoat and wool watch cap, threw them on, and chased after his friend.

Steve caught up to Bucky without a problem.  They headed east away from the camp.  It was dark, but the full moon illuminated the way for the two soldiers.

“Here we go.  I found this while on patrol the other day.”  Bucky plopped the shield in the snow.

“Bucky, what are we doing here?”  They were at the top of a small hill.

“Remember when we were kids and we’d take garbage can lids or whatever we could find and go to the top of snow piles and slide down them?”

Steve’s eyes lit up.  Here they were, in the midst of war, deep in HYDRA territory, and Bucky Barnes wanted to go sledding.  “You’re joking…”

“No, come and give me a push!”  Bucky was kneeling on the Captain America shield.  Steve laughed.  He walked over and leaned down behind Bucky, placing his hands on his shoulders.

“Ready?” Bucky nodded enthusiastically.  Steve gave him a push, careful not to push him too hard.  The shield lurched forward and sped off down the hill.

“WOOHOO!” A shout erupted from Bucky’s lips.  He hit a bump in the snow and flew off, landing face down in the snow.  Steve roared with laughter.  For the first time in a long time he wasn’t thinking about the war.  Instead he was preoccupied with how stupid Bucky looked face down spread-eagle in the snow.  Bucky brushed the snow from his body as he pushed himself to a sitting position.  He grabbed the shield and turned to look at Steve.  “You want a go?!” he asked.  Steve nodded.  So Bucky ran back up the hill.  His feet kept sinking into the snow so he wasn’t moving very fast.  When he got to the top of the hill he handed the shield to Steve.  Steve grabbed the shield and with a running start belly flopped onto it and sped off down the hill.

“Maybe,” he thought, “Bucky doesn’t have the worst ideas after all.”

[mashounen2003]

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

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Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

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Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

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We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

--------------------------------------------------

Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

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Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

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Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

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Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

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I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

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Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

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Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

[leesanapper3]

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[marcjampole]

Are the George Floyd riots the American Reichstag Fire?

I have to admire the thousands of people protesting the awful death of George Floyd and the unredeemable racism in the criminal justice system that it represents. Even wearing masks, the protestors are risking their lives to show that they are both sick to their stomachs and exhausted by the centuries of racism that have poisoned the United States. Young and old, protestors are more likely to be hurt or die as a result of contracting Covid-19 at the rallies than from police brutality or getting run over by an uncontrollable mob. As is typical, the overwhelming majority of protestors have been peaceful, despite the rage boiling inside them. Congratulations to the thousands of peaceful protestors for their bravery and dedication to the cause. 

There should be no prize or nod of recognition to those who predicted that we would once again see a national series of marches protesting police violence. It was bound to happen again as long as police departments don’t do a good job weeding out racists, as long as police recruitment ads focus on military adventurism and not peace-keeping skills, as long as police unions keep protecting bad apples, as long as we have an administration in Washington that is both racist and brutal and encourages both racism and brutality. It would have also been easy to predict that some demonstrations might lead to violence, because violence will occasionally break out at even a well-organized protest. 

Keeping in mind that we don’t know yet how many of the incidences of violence at Floyd protests were large enough to be called riots and the broader question of what constitutes a riot, let’s consider how riots start. At the heart of the riot dynamic is the simple fact that most people are followers and conformists. Most people look to others to set the tone. One trivial example: In the late 1970’s in Candlestick Park, there were more people in the stands passing a doobie than standing up with their right hand at their hearts during the singing of the Star Spangle banner. Post 9/11, if you don’t put your hand to your heart and sing, people give you dirty looks.  A less trivial example: tattoos. Thirty years ago, tattoos were an expression of rebellion; but nowadays, most people below 50 consider it a lifestyle decision.

A riot consists of two kinds of people: Those who start it and everybody else. Imagine being in a swarm of people that breaks off from a march or has been herded into a relatively confined space by the police and/or urban geography. Three people break the glass of a storefront and start looting. The entire crowd moves that way, sweeping individuals along with it. A few other people—let’s call them early adopters—start taking things. All of a sudden, what was once taboo is now being done by everyone. Keep in mind that everyone there—the good, the bad, the blessed and the cursed—is angry, frustrated and tired of the constraints of quarantine. Many are quite poor and long past disgusted at getting exploited, demeaned and paid poorly by the wealthy.

Or imagine that the same three people set fire to a car. A protestor’s better self knows it’s wrong, but the same primitive instinct that has you yelling for a defensive lineman to cripple the opposing quarterback kicks into high gear, so you start cheering. Your cheers and those of all the other basically good people around you are part and parcel of the start of a riot.

Keeping the three or four riot starters from activating the crowd is the key to making certain that a peaceful demonstration doesn’t steer into violence. Now at this point in history, virtually every group involved in organizing demonstrations for civil rights, criminal justice reform, LGBTQ rights, immigrants, the poor or any other cause under the banner of progressives and the left knows how to keep protests nonviolent. Additionally, the accurately named incident called a “police riot” really doesn’t happen in much of the country any more, even if individual instances of police brutality are frequent and ubiquitous. Good planning by organizers and police restraint explain why protests usually lead to very few altercations nowadays.

So why have the George Floyd protests been different? Do we blame the added frustration of the Covid-19 quarantine? Were there too few march monitors because of the relative spontaneity of the actions? Did the mix of responsible versus irresponsible people skew too much to the irresponsible, because the responsible ones stayed home to avoid the crowd?

Early evidence is suggesting another, more nefarious reason for the riots: They were started by white, right-wing provocateurs interested in stirring up a race war in America.

Already the police in Pittsburgh, Nashville, and Minneapolis suspect that riots in these cities were started by white nationalists. Mayors from all over the country report that a larger than usual number of riot participants have come from out of town.

What we may be experiencing is an American reboot of the 1933 arson attack on the German parliament building, called the Reichstag, that was perpetrated by Nazis, but blamed on the communists by the recently elected Nazi government. Now I’m not saying that Trump or the Trump campaign is directly or even indirectly paying white supremacists to start riots at George Floyd protests. It could be someone else. For example, we know that Koch-sponsored organizations are financing the anti-Covid 19 protests around the country—you know, the ones in which oversized, evil-looking dudes carry large weapons and are allowed to menace everyone around them. 

But even if Trump had nothing to do with setting up these riots, he certainly is using the Nazi playbook following the Reichstag fire: labelling the protestors and rioters as terrorists and calling for the police to crack down with heavy boots and blazing firearms against rioters, and by implication, against protestors, too. 

Motive is an important element in proving any criminal case, and there can be no doubt that Trumpites have more of a motive to start a riot than do #Blacklivesmatter, Antifa or other social justice and civil rights movements and organizations. As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pointed out in a magnificent speech at today’s daily press conference (June 1), Trump and the conservatives are delighted to change the topic from the institutional racism that led to George Floyd’s murder to rioters creating mayhem in the streets and threatening our way of life. By contrast, it was and is in the best interest of those protesting to keep things peaceful.  

The facts are slowly falling into place and so far, it looks as if white racists and not legitimate protesters who started many if most of the violence. Expect a white wash from the Barr Justice Department, but a thorough investigation by a number of state governments. 

By the way, it’s easy to separate racists from non-racists among so-called friends of social justice by how they react to the violence. The non-racists like Cuomo focus on how the violence helps the right-wing narrative. The racists insist that the rioters have undercut their case for change. That case has not changed. Probably at the instigation or white provocateurs, a few people did some stupid stuff. As some have pointed out, their looting is peanuts compared to the $600 billion large corporations and banks have looted from the American people in the form of Covid-19 financial help, while individuals, small business, states and municipalities have been largely ignored.

[codenamesazanka]

You know that “survival of the fittest” phrase. MLA taking that too literally. :/ there’s no equality in their little shit of an ideology. I was wondering what’s the real life counterparts of the MLA? And what do you think will happen to them? Got any predictions? I hope The LOV just steals a truck load of moneys at the end uwu

Hi @shinakiraarts​ !!! I love you for this question because this is gonna let me indulge in topics I’m really interested in: evolution/sociology/bioethics. So, warning: nerd blabber. and super long. 

-

First fact: You’re right! The Meta Liberation Army is shit. 

The phrase “survival of the fittest” is often attributed to Darwin, but it was actually coined by Herbert Spencer, a philosopher who is now associated with the ideas of Social Darwinism. Basically, he believed that the concept of natural selection should be applied to human society - humans are/should be in an all-out competition in the struggle of life. 

The ‘weak’ got their due in destitution and will/should die off, while the ‘strong’ deserved their wealth and power and will lead civilization to greatness. So, social inequality was the ‘natural way of things’. It was a very attractive idea to rich people already in power, and was often used as rationalization for exploitation, racism, colonialism... a lot of oppressive politics and laws. 

There is never any equality in an ideology that believes in ‘survival of the fittest’ as social policy. It’s intended for there to not be equality. 

*

The real life counterparts - or close to it - of the MLA unfortunately existed (and some continue to exist), and their ideology contributed to countless human right abuses. 

According to Iceman:

“One's rank in society will be directly tied to the strength of one's meta ability. Beyond sheer strength, life has no value.” 

For Social Darwinists, one’s rank in society already signifies their ability and strength. The wealthy were fit, the poor were unfit. And because social stratification wasn’t only due to class/wealth... The idea would come to include: individuals without disabilities were fit, those with disabilities weren’t; Western societies were fit, other non-western cultures weren’t; and one race above all was fit, other races weren’t. 

“[Some] life has no value” was often the conclusion. This would lead to eugenics - making sure only the ‘right’ people would reproduce - and that turned into policies such as marriage prohibitions, forced sterilization, and euthanasia. The most notorious example is Nazi Germany; but the United States deserve a mention for having a huge movement that influenced the Nazis; Imperial Japan dabbled in it; and many other countries. 

*

Here are the actual facts. Evolution is a law of nature - it’s the change in the characteristics of a populationover time. Natural selection is how evolution occurs - some characteristics that can be passed down from parent to offspring allow the individuals to survive better in a particular environment and reproduce. Because they are able to have kids, who also survive, those characteristics will become common in a population. 

It’s really important to understand that evolution is just change. Evolution has no purpose and no goal and no foresight. There are no ‘higher-evolved’ creatures, there is no endpoint that accumulates into an ‘ultimate being’. Natural selection isn’t picking out the ‘best’ traits - it’s simply that some traits happen to give an advantage in survival in a particular environment and so they are passed on. 

“The gazelle has evolved longer legs to better escape predators” 

is more 

“Gazelles with slightly longer legs hada slightly better chance of surviving to reproductive age, andthus came to dominate the population.”

*

BTW, ‘fitness’ in a biology context means “an individual’s ability to produce viable offspring”. If Iceman had his balls chopped off before he ever had any kids, he’s not fit anymore. He lost the ‘survival of the fitness’ contest. 

*

A funny and often overlooked thing: the ‘strength’ that the MLA believe in, is subjective. Are we classifying quirks by combat power? Flexibility of usage? Impact on people? And they know that some quirks do better in some environments, and others in other environments, right? Oh, but I have a feeling they’re not generous enough to figure out what quirks are most powerful in what environment.

Iceman is no doubt very powerful and strong right now in Deika City, where he has access to ice, and to water to produce more ice. So what happens when you stick him in a desert, or any other arid place? And put him up against someone who can manipulate sand? 

And what about having a quirk that isn’t ‘strong’, but becomes one when combined with a clever and strategic mind? Mr. Compress’ quirk is odd, not immediately obvious that it can be dangerous; but he’s demonstrated he can toss boulders at cars and rip off limbs. 

Should Iceman be defeated by someone with a small, quiet quirk because he didn’t go to fucking school and learn, idk, physics, and the person did, I guess he deserves to die? 

Or what about a quirk like one that allows a person to be immune to diseases? Not immediately demonstrable? When a plague comes, they’ll be the strongest person in the city. 

A bunch of megalomaniacs with flawed, unsustainable ideas - that’s the MLA. Their society would’ve been shambles. 

*

I wanna talk about the ‘law of the jungle’ the MLA has, in comparison to the League of Friends Villains’ apparent policy of ‘we don’t really care about your quirk, just be loyal and willing to kill and become part of Shigaraki’s harem and we’ll find a way for you to help.’ 

As cruel and driven by ruthless self-interest as humans can be, people can also be so incredibly kind and compassionate. Selfishness may have been a part of human evolution, but so was/is empathy and altruism. 

There is the idea of aggressive cavemen society that weed out the weak - including the ‘deformed’, the old; but archeology also has evidence that early humans and hunter-gatherer groups loved and cared for their disabled, had helped them and each other survive. In some tribes, the old people past reproductive age might be frail and unable to work as much, but they served an essential function: transmitting culture. Watching the children, teaching socialization and language, telling the stories that will be retold again and again. The traits we consider to be ‘human’.

Culling or accommodation. 

Twice - with a paper bag over his head, afraid of getting hurt, was limited in his quirk usage, trying to recover from a traumatic event - was readily recruited into the League of Villains. He - according to himself - wasn’t able to do much, so he helped out in anyway he can, and he became the League’s most loyal member. He was allowed to set his boundaries, allowed to be himself, and allowed to go at things in his own way. 

The MLA wouldn’t have done any of that. Helping, finding alternatives, accepting, nothing like that for Twice. Just look at the MLA’s attempted ‘recruitment’ of Twice - break him down psychologically, force him to use his quirk in the way the leaders would want, probably kill him had he been too troublesome. Instead of succeeding, it backfired on them badly. 

“Embrace your ‘meta-ability’, live as you like, and be free to be themselves” is the supposed values of the MLA. The problem is, they put too much weight on quirks, on training them and using them and judging each other by them. All their focus is on the ability, as if it was a single separate thing - and they forgot to look at the human that ultimately controls that ability. 

*

Anyways! I hope the League are able to reunite and completely wreck these mega-idiots and break Redestro’s stupid L-shaped fingers and steal all their resources!!! Ahhhhh I love the League of Villains!!! 

[beinglibertarian]

Fans of Hitler Aren’t Fans of the Mises Institute, Go Figure

Many of us remember it like it was yesterday when Nicholas Sarwark posted an asinine tweet directed towards the Mises Institute:

“If my political party or think tank was the preferred choice of actual Nazis, I’d probably want to make jokes about weed too.”

Many of us also remember that this whole dispute was over Tom Woods refusing to sign an anti-fascist petition. Why? For an obvious reason: libertarians are already against fascism by definition, hence the “pro-capitalism” part—fascists are both anti-communist and anti-capitalist. Sarkwark, however, still took it as “a clear sign” that the Mises Institute and its faculty were nothing but dog whistlers to Nazi’s.

Fast forward ten months and we find another attack on Tom Woods, this time from the same people that supposedly have an affinity for the Mises Institute. Yes, of course, Hitler-loving fascists are now taking a swing at the Ph.D. historian.

To preface, during the Mises University 2018 summer program this past July, I had the honor of attending the week-long seminar full of talented and ambitious individuals in the liberty movement. We learned about the Austrian business cycle theory, how the stages of production are warped by the government, and almost any economics topic you can think of; we also learned about the economics of Hitler.

Tom Woods gave a fact-filled lecture about Hitler and economics, which you can watch here. Backed up by a plethora of quotes he argued that fascists and Nazis:

• Thought economics was a sham science, and that economic laws didn’t exist • Were against the gold standard • Thought currency was backed up by a supply of goods, instead of by the total stock of commodity money • Believed state interests must always trump private interests, and that the will of the state represents the will of the people

These are only a few topics he touched on, but nevertheless, the comments on the video made it clear that fans of Hitler are no fans of the Mises Institute. Here are a few of the comments, and you can go see the rest for yourself:

• “So let me get this straight, In the 1930’s Germany put 6 million back to work while America was starving; Germany had a trade surplus with America that irritated FDR so much he tried to ban goods from Germany; international jewry declared economic war on Germany, refusing international credits; Germany used a barter system with third-world countries for raw materials with no usury or currency manipulations that left both parties satisfied and Germany as a favored nation to trade with; FDR had to push America into a devastating World War and he still never raised America out of the depression. Ahhh… professor, what was your cherry-picked, anecdotal point again????” • “Wow, a PhD in history with almost zero clue why the fascist movement began. Talk about the Wiemar Republic, usurious banking, and social degeneracy, you hack.” • “There are no “laws” of economics. There are beliefs, idealised hypotheses. They may be workable, but that doesn’t make them inviolable truths.”

Fortunately, we can finally put this whole conspiracy to rest, and speaking of rest, maybe Sarwark can sleep better now knowing a Nazi invasion isn’t imminent, at least not from the likes of the Mises Institute.

  Steven Clyde is the host of the Peace and Liberty podcast, as well as a graduate of Mises University.

The post Fans of Hitler Aren’t Fans of the Mises Institute, Go Figure appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[violetsystems]

#personal

I don’t really know what people claim about me in real life half the time.  I hear echoes from other people about who I am or what I represent.  But the reality of the situation is people both talk to me and don’t.  I’m an extremely forward facing person in public.  This has grown over a three year period sharing my thoughts on the internet.  It’s also as of today the third year that has passed quietly since I quit alcohol.  In some ways it’s only fitting a phase passed with a whimper.  It’s a habit I will never go back to.  Which is sort of a refreshing place to start looking ahead.  It’s true after sharing all this personal information on the internet I’m still very much alone.  I sit in a kitchen that overlooks the train platform like a fishbowl.  My life has become much the same.  Open ended for everyone to read into.  But most people just skim the cover of the book.  Some people are aware of the sprawling Tolstoy-esque monologues I’ve woven over the years.  The images and people that got me through some dark times.  The inspiration I took from them and acted upon in my own life.  I found beauty in myself and explored what that meant.  Then I lived it.  The result is the same as it’s ever been really.  I don’t really compare or measure myself to anyone in this world.  I stand on my own two feet and have proven my worth to myself countless times around the globe searching for bizarre artifacts for my museum.  Some Indiana Jones shit for sure.  I hate nazis too.  But for however much of a superhero I’ve become to some I’m still just that guy who people would rather ignore or attack.  Some years I’d be a little more depressed about it.  People can claim they know all about me.  And yet nobody really cares that I’m spending the holidays alone for the most part.  People here probably do.  Which is why I reiterate the painfully obvious in paragraph form once again.  If I really hated my life right now I’d be less enthused by the fact of spending the turn of the year alone.  I’ve done that for years.  If I can’t be with somebody who respects me I don’t really want to suffer the consequences of being treated less than what I deserve.  I don’t live my life hardcore to hold over anyone’s head but my own.  And I don’t really expect people to understand every nuance I breathe into my life to stay real as fuck.  I do realize people are ignorant and I’ve spent a year policing that behavior in my life.  I got so good at it that it blew my cover wide open.  And then it fades like everything else exciting i’ve done.  I don’t know what the point of getting people’s attention is anymore.  People don’t talk or share anything openly.  It’s all projections and mirrors we are meant to look and read into.  I do have real interactions in the city i live in.  I paid my rent.  I’ve lived in this place for a decade now.  I came from a bad place.  I’ve written about that and nobody cared.  So now I’m here in the present.  My rent got lower.  My ear to the ground even more so.  I still wear esoteric street wear brands that have aged in reverse.  And people still just treat me like a shadow that is neither here nor there.  So slippery that people would rather just use me as a pivot or soapbox in passing than confront me directly.  I’m the boogeyman on the internet to some people.  To other’s I’m a level 120 paladin that’s strong like bull.  And in 2020 it’s apparently very obvious I’m through with everybody’s bullshit.

Three paragraphs.  That was the format.  I wrote every week to you for years.  You echoes in my head like a void.  Is there anybody actually even out there?  I wouldn’t continue if I didn’t think there was.  And yet we’re still echoing back and forth like a blip on a radar.  Tracking movement like a James Cameron film.  Shipwrecked and stranded on a terraformed mining colony.  Slaves to our careers in a crumbling Utopia called America.  My love for you like a sonnet from a William Gibson poem.  If William Gibson decided to risk it all and leave cyberpunk behind and let us live out our dystopia in peace.  I don’t really have anything to show for any of this.  That wasn’t the point.  If I believed I had nothing to show for all this growth I’d be the biggest loser.  I wouldn’t know the value of myself.  I wouldn’t know the boredom I’m supposed to enjoy of staying the course.  My kitchen bubble a literal ship on a maiden voyage into the great beyond.  That’s what happens when you legalize weed I guess.  Some things have changed.  I’ve spent my time organizing my finances and my belongings just as much.  I head back to New York in the same nondescript way again in February.  Around a birthday nobody has ever celebrated in the last three years for certain.  It can be your birthday anywhere.  I tend to spend it in places where it means something.  Nobody knows other than politicians robocalling me to wish me happy birthday.  That happened last year.  That’s the tip of the iceberg I’ve come to expect.  And yet nobody really knows how deep the wounds have been that I’ve been hiding.  I stopped going out entirely in some respects.  And yet I’m everybody’s favorite topic at the local grocery store.  I mean nothing and feel invisible.  I live with that reality every day.  That some people wish they could interact more but are afraid.  And some people just can’t risk it.  So I make myself less risky.  Which is to say I’m far less risky than I was this time last year.  And I was pretty fucking boring then.  I’m not a boring person.  It’s obvious somebody who hops on a flight to New York by himself with no plan is somewhat spontaneous.  I feel comfortable talking to people.  I don’t feel awkward in what I project.  I have overdone it at times.  And sometimes been too much of a ghost.  And yet people can’t stop talking about fractures of things I’ve done.  I didn’t get here in the present day by being boring.  And then again that’s what it feels like.  People who show off are sloppy.  I see the arcs of their behavior over time.  Just like I look back at the last three years with a bit of a smile.  You have to start somewhere.  And you plan your journey to move forward.  I don’t have any resolutions to speak of other than to enjoy and love myself.  Spread that where it’s well deserved and give everybody else the cold shoulder.  How could I cut off the world so viciously like that?  I gave them three fucking years and what have they done?  We’re all still down here in the bomb shelter talking about our feelings.

I don’t have any fears about the new year.  I paid my rent on time.  Actually before it was usually due.  I’m getting better at simply walking through things.  Almost as if the streets were a runway.  There’s people that vogue downtown in public all the time.  Everybody knows that’s not me or my power.  I respect that a lot of diversity feels free to exist around me in the city I’ve come to love begrudgingly.  I also know when to shut the door on ridiculous bullshit.  The trick is not getting upset.  Like you walk down this catwalk with all these eyes on you.  What does it matter.  You have the power.  That comes from within you.  Nobody can take that away other than yourself.  So you get into the zone and march towards your goal.  Or you find a safe space to bow out of the spectacle for awhile.  When faced with the mundane prospect of just living the reality in front of me I’m not exactly bored.  I’m pissed off nobody understands just how much I’ve put into being me.  But why  be the old man yelling at cloud in sky.  I have answers.  I live them every day.  I have two checking accounts.  I have backup plans for everything.  I don’t worry because I come prepared.  Nobody knows just how many notifications I’ve set up for myself I live by.  Nobody knows what certain activity in my dash means to me.  I don’t share my personal life much with anyone.  Nobody gives me the impression they listen let alone process what I say.  I learned this skill traveling abroad where people didn’t speak my language.  Learn to be silent and appreciate human kindness.  Cultivate it in yourself and how you present yourself as a guest.  Curb your power and share when appropriate.  Shine when it’s your time.  It’s been my time for a minute.  I listen to myself enough to know it.  What you do with that time is something only you know the value of.  These days I try to stay happy.  I also don’t expect people to understand the deep realities of why I make the choices and sacrifices I do.  When it comes time to live them I will just breathe.  Live in the moment and act accordingly.  I spent three years and I’ll spend three more being myself.  After awhile what can people really say?  They forget all the good I’ve ever done.  Maybe they’ll forget the times when they talked shit about me.  Maybe I just don’t care about any of it any more.  I just want to live.  I want to be happy.  I want to keep doing what I am doing.  I need to.  And nobody can stop me.  Because nobody cares that deeply about me enough to know where I’m going.  I’ve already been there and back again.  If you’ve been on the journey with me then you know I’m still on it.  It’s as bullshit as it ever was and I’m stubborn as fuck.  Strong like bull.  Allergic to bullshit.  Isn’t that what a tank is supposed to do?  Take the heat while you run interference.  Could use some heals.  Actually don’t bother.  I made a paladin because I knew I had to roll solo.  I stand in the light.  Bubbled up in my kitchen for the next week on vacation.  Not to burst yours or anything. <3 Tim

[a-wandering-fool]

I’m posting this article because it aligns very closely to why I believe the DNC is struggling with voters:

===============================================

A comment left on a Reddit thread, talking about the media and the Democratic Party not being able to figure out how to navigate today’s events:

What strikes me as funny about the Democratic reaction:

First, Trump was elected President with the lowest public opinion percentage in recent history. That is, we elected a President who was covered in mud and who was disliked by the majority of voters. (If this is because people really dislike him personally but like what they think he’ll do–either as President or with the bully pulpit–or because of the Bradley effect and he is better liked than people are willing to public confess, I don’t know.)

So Trump is “Mr. Teflon” when it comes to being covered in mud.

For the Democrats to react to Trump the way they have is like mud wrestling a pig: you just get covered in mud and the pig likes it.

Second, by being willing to swim in the mud, many of the radical left elements of the DNC have become emboldened. From the AntiFa groups, arguably descendant from the militia group within the Communist Party of Germany in the 1930’s, to the various protesters backed by the Communist Workers World Party (who brought down the statue in Durham, NC) and International ANSWER, another socialist/communist front, we’re seeing a rising tide of violence from the Left. We’re seeing the Left, once bastions of free speech half a century ago, now shutting down speech on college campuses, assaulting reporters and terrorizing conservative groups.

This, by the way, is not playing well with middle America. We’re a country founded in part by a collection of religious radicals and cultists, and we tend to be more accepting of our “weirdos” than most. We may strongly dislike neo-Nazis and White Supremacists (and they do make very easy targets of one’s dislike), but middle America values the First Amendment even more–and the idea that as adults we should be violently enraged by someone’s ideas is seen as childish and small.

And the longer the DNC doesn’t strongly stand out as an organization against these fringe communist elements, the longer people will associate the DNC with them.

Which means the stronger these fringe groups push at Trump, the more votes Trump (and the GOP) will receive for the next 8 years–because they may not be voting for Trump and the GOP, but against the Antifa movement and the DNC.

Third, elections are won at the local level. But now at the local level, thanks to the various protesters (noted above), it’s making it increasingly harder for a moderate Democrat to step into politics and succeed. That’s because in many areas, at the local level, the liberal protesters have taken a “you are either with us, or you are against us” attitude. And unless you are an especially clever politician and can navigate the minefield your liberal voters have put into place, you run the risk of being politically blown up. I mean, if I were a Republican running for office anywhere in Minneapolis, I’d just show the video of the Antifa flag being raised in Hennepin county with some ominous music after some shots of Antifa thugs knocking heads and shutting down speech on college campuses–then ask the rhetorical question if my liberal Democrat opponent has anything to say.

Right now, from where I’m sitting, the Democratic Party is being swept along by events rather than trying to get in front of them. In some ways it may not be possible for them to get ahead of events–after all, it may require them to confront the more radical elements of their party. While the GOP can afford to jettison the more radical elements on the Right (since white nationalists in general cost you votes: every white nationalist who steps forward showing his support costs perhaps a dozen votes by your more moderate base who care more about tax reform and regulatory burdens than they do cultural issues), the Democrats may not be able to.

It’s why so many Democrat legislators in California have remained strictly silent in wake of the Antifa-driven anti-free speech protests in Berkeley.

And unless the Democrats figure out a way to come out of the weeds, they may find themselves a minority party in Congress for as long as the GOP was from the 1930’s to the 1990’s–a 62 year span that saw GOP control House of Representatives for only 4 years, and the senate for only 10 years.

================================================

[apriltwentythree]

on politics:

none of us in our right minds would refer to an afro american as ‘nigger’. but afro-americans do not have the same obligation to be careful regarding that word or act sacred about it, unless they wish to. they can laugh while calling each other ‘niggah’. I feel something similar about the word ‘comrade’. it’s my inheritance, and can laugh about it if I so wish, there is no obligation to go around being reverent about it, and by extension, it can surely never sound patronizing when I say it.

i equate niggah and comrade only because both words did not start out as words referring to the ruling or protected classes, and were even used derisively by them then! but now, both words are not really tied to their historical connotations, at least not in their entireties, also not in every context. it can be cool to be a nigger(ask Dave Chapelle), it can be cool to be a comrade(ask Dulquer Salman). naturally, to pretend that it can sound patronizing any longer, is at worst lazy ignorant or at best a lazy lie….esp. when the accused is someone who mostly sits in a room staring out of the window by herself, and have no real party politics to speak of! meaning, when you are equally pissed off as your accuser, you don’t think that you owe them any explanation.

anyways, because it’s my inheritance, i value the word just as much as the average comrade does. say, if i find an election manifesto on a celebrity feed, it’s tough to get too excited, instantly! so i try to look for a connecting link— healthcare, medicine, disability. there! that I truly care about. and when i read and learn about just that, it helps me to retain some integrity regarding the comrade inheritance. guess this is more to do with people’s personalities, i don’t think this is how most people prefer to approach their politics or, feel the need to, I am just saying this is how I look at it. something of a personal nature really, nothing more to it!

what made me wish to be like eeda_Leela who is slightly more familiar with the politics of everything happening around her than eeda_Aishwarya, is the year-long hackathon that brought me up-close to society and the politics of the everyday, than ever before! everyday politics is mostly always about feeling than thinking, ask Brexit voters or Trump supporters. I’m not even referring to ideologies per se, I’m just saying, it’s mostly about influencing people, enough to make them ‘feel’ something. so, if i say I am now a comrade just like all my friends are, and wish to join the election festival alongside everyone, it’s bcoz now i am starting to ‘feel’ something; the ‘KL wave effect’ is influential clearly ha ha! BK, who has always been the poster boy of elite hipster-hood, now aspires to reach the entirety of his troll soul depth and party with the proletariat through the night. that says it all for me! Advaid(AD) says he came to Kerala at the age of 18. soon, in 2015 —was he 24 then? i was 31— I saw him shrug off all his hipster English and start to dappankoothu his way into Malayalam. If I’m remembering right,  there were quite a few civic-conscious Facebook posts by him, in all-Malayalam. i don’t know who influenced him in particular, may be he self-influenced, having stayed long enough in Kerala!

I had some time to myself these past couple of weeks, and realized that I’m naturally-inclined to be eeda_Aishwarya when it comes to Kerala politics, and that I cannot self-influence regarding the politics of the everyday, unlike eeda_Leela who easily can. and I’m eeda_Aishwarya in Boston too, I cannot naturally-invest in party politics here either. i don’t even know what is the Mueller Report! I don’t know who are the Senators from Boston after the 2018 November elections. occasionally, I try to read up on some Healthcare-Medicine-Disability, but it has been a while I did that too.

on the other hand, i always had a thing for ‘World Politics’, it has always been my political weed. i can self-influence, and read all kinds of shit on that, enlightening or otherwise! maybe it’s because it’s more humankind-drama, and less humanperson-drama. even if you are not invested in the politics of the immediate, everyday surrounding for any reason, still it encompasses all. reader you, writer me, all of everyone —together, over a lengthy period of time. and I recently discovered this academic-historian, Yuval Noah Harrari. his critics call him ‘pet historian’ of the liberal elite bcoz Obama, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg…everybody is his fanboi! apparently, he is a best selling phenomenon, and I got a copy of his latest book from the local library. from reading so far, it looks as if the book is a bunch of op-Eds put together to meet some rushed-deadline. meaning, the book is good only in parts, not as a whole! some passages seem mind numbingly rhetoric, and even the title of the book feels cliched — 21 lessons for the 21st century.  if your politics is quite evolved and up-to-date, the book may not do much for you. but it did give my half-baked politics, some nice perspective; my politics is far from evolved.

say, he talks about the tidal wave of disillusionment that has touched the liberal elite in a sad Trump world. Harrari says ‘’this is not the first time the liberal story has faced a crisis of confidence. the first era of liberalism ended with WW-I, with imperial powers cutting short the global march of progress. when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Sarajevo was murdered, it looked as if all the great powers believed more in imperialism, but liberalism survived the Ferdinand moment. it was short lived though, as Hitler came on the scene and made fascism look cool in the 1930s40s. next when 50s70s saw Che revolutionizing minds everywhere, it seemed communism was the true solution, and that liberalism was on it last legs. but then, it was communism that collapsed first, as everyone liked the supermarkets better! so, it seemed like liberalism was the most dynamic and the most solid story through times, and it soon adopted best ideas and practices from others. say, it learnt from communism to expand the circle of empathy, and value the concept of equality alongside liberty (communist welfare programs).’’

‘’as liberalism mostly catered to the middle classes and upper there, western liberals  had a hard time applying their universal values to the non-Westerns. say, even when the Dutch finally got out of Nazi occupation, they were still adamant about colonizing Indonesia. liberalism didn’t become everyone’s favorite, many nationalist movements throughout the world felt like placing their hopes on Moscow or Beijing, rather than champions of liberty from the West! Harrari says that over time, liberalism survived it all — the Ferdinand moment, Hitler moment, Che moment— but now it cannot easily survive the Trump moment, which is far more nihilstic. bcoz all the other movements of the twentieth century offered a vision for the entire human species—global domination, revolution, liberation— Trump offers nothing global for all! he just says Nammude America. and he still mostly likes the liberal package — democracy, free markets, human rights, social responsibility — except all the fine ideas stop at the border. just like the Brexiters who still like all the liberal values, but only for natives of Nammude Britain. Like Xi Jinping who advocates Nammude China and still adores liberalism: their domestic politics is not so liberalized, but their international cooperative-politics is quite Obama-like-liberal. I was watching some Anthony Bourdain the other day, i didn’t even know that Oman is still a Sultanate, and not yet a liberal democracy. but the people seem contented, and in no rush to fuel a democratic government like the rest of the progressive world, and it felt like Nammude Oman there too’’.

all that made me think of how growing up across small-towns-Kerala in the era of Doordarshan, the middle-middle class aspiration extended only up to that of the nation’s cool and confident —be it Northies or Tamils or Bangaloreans or Goans. Hindi was my second language in school, used to write lengthy literary essays. but bcoz I never conversed in Hindi back then, haven’t retained anything from it at all! now when a colleague at work or someone at the desi grocery shop here tries to engage with me in Hindi, i speak in English back. my Tamil is relatively better than my Hindi. I still listen to both Hindi and Tamil music though, and care about following the lyrical meanings. but the aspirations of that Doordarshan watcher have changed, it’s less of, caring for validation from the Hindi speakers and the Tamil speakers surely. it seems more of, staying local and caring for validation from Nammude Boston at random— Mandarin speakers and Spanish speakers maybe or, going the other kind of local and caring for validation from Nammude Keralam at random— Vaikkom dialect speakers and Kasargod dialect speakers maybe!

[teatimeisalwaysfourpm]

Resist

Before when conversations surrounding touchy subjects I would usually not engage. However, not engaging ha lead to a Trump presidency and a GOP run congress. So the time for disengaging is over and from now on I will be speaking my mind at every turn I get. Below are some the times where I have spoke my mind and I will continue to add to this because I not let myself and others loose rights yet alone let Neo-Nazi’s think they have won. They may won the 1st battle but the war is far from over. So let’s see if they can keep up. Let it be known, if you show yourself to be a Neo-Nazi, conservative lover I can’t  

1st instance I spoke my mind, shut someone down

This was before our current POTUS got his tiny little hands on the presidency. I was eating lunch and this the day everyone could vote if they didn’t already vote. I was casually eating and I had heard the multiple excuses in the book about not voting and or I can’t vote because “I’m not registered bullshit.” Anyway a friend of mine casually said “There is no good outcome to this election.” I shut that shit down immediately and said “Hillary Clinton winning is the best outcome from this election.” She tried to debate me and I said “But what.” She was quiet for a few seconds before she said “you’re right.” I didn’t not hesitate to exclaim that repercussions for our current POTUS winning at the time would be dangerous to so many people. 

2nd instance I spoke my mind, shot someone down   

This conservative idiot who I absolutely know voted for our current POTUS  so much he sleeps with a picture of that vile orange dill weed above his bed. Below is an excerpt from a conservation Me and others had with him. Usually we always have conversations where he is the lone man out due to his views. Backstory, he is white and has a beard and man bun and wears shorts and t-shirts no matter the weather/season. No I didn’t bother with that changing name shit, he doesn’t deserve it, his name is Chris. Others involved in the conservation have had their names changed.  

Dr. Smith: Chris I need you to write a weekly conservative article because no one else has that viewpoint

Chris: Okay, I can do that.

Lisa,Catherine and Patricia:I think Maddie is a conservative yeah and so is Jake?

Chris: Oh, Yeah I forgot Maddie is a conservative   

Tina to Patricia: Isn’t your brother(Jim)  a conservative?

Patricia: Not to my knowledge.

Lauren, myself: Oh spoilers did you not know?

Patricia: Last I checked in November he wasn’t registered to vote.

Tina: He had a Ted Cruz poster on his Facebook.

Chris: I sleep with a Trump poster above my bed.

Michael: So does Trump.

Lauren,myself: Somehow how I think Trump sleeps with a Putin Poster above his bed.

Michael to Lauren: How did you know that.

Chris: I don’t think Jim is one and I don’t know anyone else. 

Tina: I can’t think of any others. 

Lauren,myself: You Guy’s Don’t Have Meetings. 

 3rd instance I spoke to my mind, shot someone down  

When I first heard our current POTUS proposing the weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants I had to resist the urge to kill more than one person now a days. Anyways while talking my mom i said this and I tweeted the following tweet.  

4th time I spoke my mind, shot someone down 

This girl in my class thought a slavery-themed project for 5th graders where classrooms were plantations and homework was slave labor was appropriate. The students would answer questions to get off their plantation around the school and if they answered incorrectly they had to complete slave labor a.k.a. homework.  I kindly explained how problematic this was and if she wanted to incorporate actual stories and artifacts  from slaves and that time period, there was better ways of doing that than what she planned. I suggested she could show “Glory,” the movie and she had the nerve to answer back “What’s that, I have never heard of that.” I also sent her the following email (it’s below and it’s shortened) and I sent some links where this type of lesson would not go over well. Fortunately for her, this lesson was done hypothetically in class so no 5th graders were subject to her tone-deafness.

1. Slave Labor and Homework should never be equated.

2. By equating them you are trivializing the experiences of many African-Americans who died and or lived through that time.

3. Many people like to think we aren't that far removed from slavery and enslavement of people but in all honesty I know people who are 3 generations removed from it. There grandparents had parents who were slaves and or they were slaves themselves. You can't contend a "fun activity" involving movement school wide with classrooms as plantations will allows students to recognize the hardship and harsh reality that was slavery.

4. The newsletter that was proposed to allow students to opt out of the activity while in theory is a good thing in actuality this will allow a variety of students to once again shrug off the treatment of slaves/ make the behavior of those in charge at the time okay.  

5. You said something at the end of class about no student should feel like they have to pick sides however, this activity will nevertheless bring up these racial issues/sides. 

6. Many People of Color will assume your trivializing the history and glamouring the treatment they received. 

7. You have to take into consideration your school's demographic and you classroom's demographic/ beliefs. You will have bigoted beliefs and you will have more open-minded beliefs as well. However this culture clash will probably end in chaos and destruction. 

8. As an African-American your activity was extremely insensitive, racist and tone deaf. The activities and the way the subject matter is handled was way off base. This isn't about political correctness, this is about accurate treatment of history. 

9. The way you have students and the school engaging with the subject matter will undoubtedly raise conflict.

10. I just felt I had to tell you in all honesty, I would rethink both learning experiences. You can broach the topic with artifacts, videos, speakers, pictures and field trips. 

11. The reenactment while involving movement does little to actually make sure the students are understanding and engaging with the subject matter. There is a way to engage the students and have them recognize what transpired during that time however, it's not through reenactions and the "fun, little" creation of maracas.The way your learning experiences are currently organized only showcase tone-deafness and the trivialization of the life of slave/ makes the white slave-owners behavior okay. 

In summation I’m on my soapbox and I’m not getting down anytime soon!!!!

[rupertacton]

FUCK MY LONDON

Hermit's Cave. Sniff in the bogs. Fucking stinks in here. Camberwell Road. Corrib Bar. Watching football. Landlady said we were welcome back but not to bring any black people with us. Not in those words. Never went back. Walking past venues I played in that are no longer there. Rhythm Factory. Whitechapel Road. Round the corner. Used to be able to buy hash. Private member's club. Pool table. Foreign students. Building gone. Pint in the Castle. One end of Brick Lane. £2 in my pocket. Other end. Got food. Zoot. Beer. Still had some change. In my day this was all fields. Stewart Home. This is my home. I want to leave. Leave home. Chemical Brothers. Prodigy. Brixton Academy. No drugs. 13. Wouldn't go to see either of them now. Fuck them. Tried to get into the 4 Aces. Dalston used to scare the shit out of me. Me and Andrew went to buy an ounce and got robbed. Clapton Square. Got away with the weed but Andrew got his phone and ring nicked. Andrew convinced it was a set up. I'm still not sure. Arrested for criminal damage and possession at Caledonian Road & Barnsbury Station. The free line. Graf everywhere. Me and Mark. He was already on doing more serious stuff. Getting banged up for writing would've been silly. Bumped into him on Cambridge Heath Road. Years later. He was in an X5. Little gaff out in Essex. Kid. Still moving food but not touching it if you get what I mean. Born in Walworth. First wave gentrification. Sitting out in the garden at 6am sharing a joint with one of the Birmingham Six. Reading Ballard. Under the Westway. Subterranea. Black Star and Company Flow. MCD and Scratch Perverts supporting. Mainly crushing fucking boredom though. Africa Centre. Hour of jungle at the end of Funkin' Pussy. Listening to Rudimentary Peni. Carcass. Blak Twang. Rodney P. Heartless Crew. Upfront FM. Fuck it. Listing stuff. I'm sitting in the Barbican. Working. Listening in to an American man having a conversation with an English woman. I sort of hate them. They are probably alright. Vacuous pricks. The lot of us. St James' C of E primary school. Bermondsey. Jamaica Road. Everyone white. Almost. Everyone racist. Almost. What the fuck happened there? Used to play out on the Arnold Estate near the community centre my mum helped found. Found a load of porn out back. Awakenings. You can get a St John Bakery custard donut there now. Arches used to be full of garages. Cut and shut. Dennis was a ticket tout. Got us tickets to the '93 Semi-Final. In the fucking Spurs end. I was in an Arsenal shellsuit. Scarf. Cap. Got let in the Arsenal end. Grew up watching Palace. Everyone at school was Millwall or Liverpool. Why the fuck do I support Arsenal? Questions. Didn't grow up but I got old. Long nightwalks. Getting robbed in broad daylight on my own street. Kids from Kid's Company. Wallet full of cash I couldn't really tell anyone about. My sister wanted to go down there with a kitchen knife. In the end they apologised. Sent a cheque. We all make mistakes. Always carry a glass Lucozade bottle. Middle class grunger to middle class wannabe badman but I never wanted to be anything. Books. So many books. Art was everywhere. Went to Sensation. Load of shit obviously but exciting. Southbank. Mid to late 90's. Never skated. Legendary names. Benjobe. Tom Penny. Hardcore. Hip-hop. Rapping. Kope was working at A1 Stores on Wooly. Bag full of spraypaint. I never painted. Different sort of writing. Exploration. I'm not an urban explorer. Follow the Thames. Richmond to Teddington. Tower Bridge to East India Dock. Trinity Buoy Wharf. Sitting in a lighthouse all day. Hungover. Got chased through Broadway Market. Years before the farmers showed up. London is tiny if your postcode limits your movement. Escape. Fiction is liberating. The truth won't set you free. George Davis is innocent. Frankie Fraser on the 12 bus with his little dog. Chatting to my mum. Richardson's club house and torture chamber on a quaint little square just off Camberwell Road. Pet shop that used to stink of skunk. Dangerous dogs out front. This is what you're moving into. The ghosts will catch up with you. The past is never really the past. I'm past it. Read too many conspiracy theories. Canary Wharf as a beacon of occult energy. Hawksmoor Churches. All mainstream. Pick up the info in Waterstones in the London section. Make up your own myths. Smoking DMT in Blythe Hill Fields. London breathing. Viewpoints. Greenwich Park. Primrose Hill. Parliament Hill. Lunchtime. Out of the stockroom. Packing records all day. Enough to make you hate music. Where's the glamour? Guestlist is standard. Why the fuck would you pay to watch music? I still love it. Astoria. Gone. Plastic People. Gone. We went downstairs and when we went back out everything was covered in snow. Walking back. D Double E and Footsie. Legends. Tubby on decks. I think. All blends into one. But the snow. That happened. Stayed in Hackney. Walked back along a white carpet. These moments we live for. Put up with all the shit. I never really took photos. Stopping traffic at Elephant & Castle roundabout after getting run over. Black cab driver wanting to make sure I was alright. Asked what football team I support. Told him. Said he'd leave me in the road if it was up to him. Banter. Fucked up my Helly Hansen. Driver had no insurance. I told him to drive off but everyone made him stay. Writing is alchemy. You don't have to believe me. Planning is alchemy. London is being remixed. New block of flats named after the pie and mash shop on Westmoreland Road. Some attempt at continuity. Don't worry about me. It's everyone else. The search for authenticity is futile. Tayyabs. Lahore. Needoo. The holy trinity. But don't kid yourself. You can't eat your way to an understanding of lived experience. I'm sitting across the road from Madame Tussauds. This is authentic London even if you think it isn't. Some of my best friends are northerners. GO HOME. Get out while you can. I grew out of the fear of other areas. I moved. I walk from Lesnes Abbey to Grove Park on the Green Chain with my uncle. I walk from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace on the Parkland Walk with my girlfriend. I walk from Limehouse Basin to Island Gardens to Greenwich to Southwark Park with my mate. I walk from my flat to Walthamstow Marshes via the Olympic Park with myself. Memories shadowing every step. An egret and a heron near Stratford Westfield. I'm convinced we're all going to die in a shopping centre. Kingdom Come. Every witness appeal tells a story. Pain. Tragedy. I was watching Therapy? at Brixton Academy when the second riot happened. A venue full of pale faced teenagers insulated from an outpouring of justified anger. I performed with the guy who is supposed to have started the first Brixton riot. When the whole city rioted I walked up the back of Walworth Road watching kids hide stuff in bins. No one even noticed me. This is England. Wembley. Norway. Such a terrible match. The people behind me and my dad making monkey noises whenever Paul Ince touched the ball. Turned me off England for life. I couldn't even enjoy Euro '96. Arch contrarian. Of course I disagree. Got my bank account emptied and lost about £140 of other people's money getting robbed on Churchill Estate. Never trust someone who has just come out of prison for kidnap who says they can get some good food for a good price. Lesson learned. Two kids on the N68 tried to move me up. This was much later. I was wearing a Stone Island. I think they thought I was balling. I'd spent the night doing other people's sniff. I had a shit phone and an Ipod. I explained. We left on good terms. Lesson learned. Even where I used to sign on is gone. RIP Camberwell Job Centre. I fucking hated you but I miss you. Monday night football at the Petchey Academy saved my life. Made me a better person. The Shacklewell before it was cool. When it was cool. Saw Rodigan out back. Felt like a proper shubs. The Haggerston when it was Uncle Sam's. Live jazz. Terrible pints. Sitting in a Polo. UKG. Smoking draw. Just driving around. My room in the attic full of smoke. Entire house stinking. So many lost years. Round to Len's after a night out. Get the chop out. Staggering home. 8am. Mouth so dry. Lying in bed. Zoot in the ashtray. Bottle of water. Normal weekend. The Gramaphone. Commerical Street. Gone. Rushing. Hudson Mohawke and Rustie. Insanely strong pills. Up to the tubes for a weird after party. Everywhere will go soon. Corsica Studios. Summer of ket. Spangled in the smoking area. That rave in Hackney Wick. Bouncer wearing a bally. I was sick into a ballon. I was falling in love. Never wanted a relationship before that. Football. Drugs. Music. Books. Art. Masturbation. Very occasional sex. That was enough for me. I was kidding myself. Obviously. You pick and choose memories. You order the moments. You try to create a coherent picture. There is no coherent picture. Nothing to see here. Move along. First football match. Palace. Millwall. Punch ups in the family enclosure. Scary as fuck. LOVED IT. Grown men screaming cunt. Just got a text saying Whitechapel Bell Foundry is closing. My London is over. Fucked. Done. You can keep it. Do what you want with it. I don't care. If I don't care then why am I crying?

THE CUNTS, FREAKS, CRIMINALS, BOHEMIANS, NAZIS, NUTCASES, IMMIGRANTS, COMMIES, TRAMPS, ARTISTS, VANDALS, MUSICIANS, SHOTTERS, MIDDLE CLASSES, WHITES, BLACKS, WORKING CLASSES, TOFFS, GAYS, CHANCERS, BANKERS, BARROW BOYS, STALLHOLDERS, STAKEHOLDERS, LADS, CASUALS, RUDEBOYS, ANARCHISTS, BELL MAKERS, DRUGGIES, BARISTAS, RAVENS, BEEFEATERS, TOURISTS ETC. ARE ALL GONE. DONE. FUCK MY LONDON.

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Politics from Time: How Far-Right Personalities And Conspiracy Theorists Are Cashing In On The Pandemic Online

On the evening of Feb. 6, as U.S. news networks reported the death of a doctor in Wuhan, China, who had warned of a deadly new virus, thousands of Americans were tuning in to a different kind of show.

“The good news is I heard actually that you can’t get this if you’re white,” Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator, told viewers on his “America First” channel on the streaming platform DLive. “You’re only really susceptible to this virus if you’re Asian,” Fuentes continued. “I think we’ll be O.K.”

Fuentes, 22, a prolific podcaster who on his shows has compared the Holo-caust to a cookie-baking operation, argued that the segregation of Black Americans “was better for them,” and that the First Amendment was “not written for Muslims,” is doing better than O.K. during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s part of a loose cohort of far-right provocateurs, white nationalists and right-wing extremists who have built large, engaged audiences on lesser-known platforms like DLive after being banned from main-stream sites for spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories.

The model can be lucrative. Viewers pay to watch the livestreams through subscriptions and donations, and the platform allows the content creators to keep most of the revenue. Fuentes appears to have earned more than $140,000 off his DLive streams, cementing himself as the most viewed account on the platform, according to calculations provided to TIME by a livestreaming analyst who was granted anonymity because of their work tracking these accounts. Fuentes is hardly alone. Eight of the 10 top earners on DLive this year as ranked by Social Blade, a social-media analytics website, are far-right commentators, white-nationalist extremists or conspiracy theorists.

The social disruption and economic dislocation caused by the virus–as well as the nationwide protests and civil un-rest that followed the death of George Floyd in late May–has helped fuel this growing, shadowy “alt tech” industry. As public spaces shut down in March, millions of Americans logged online; the livestreaming sector soared 45% from March to April, according to a study by software sites StreamElements and Arsenal.gg. As people became more socially isolated, many increasingly turned to pundits peddling misinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech. And even as mainstream platforms cracked down on far-right propagandists, online audiences grew. Over the past five months, more than 50 popular accounts reviewed by TIME on sites like DLive have multiplied their viewership and raked in tens of thousands of dollars in online currency by insisting COVID-19 is fake or exaggerated, encouraging followers to resist lockdown orders and broadcasting racist tropes during the nationwide protests over police brutality. Many of these users, including Fuentes, had been banned by major social-media platforms like YouTube for violating policies prohibiting hate speech. But this so-called deplatforming merely pushed them to migrate to less-regulated portals, where some of them have attracted bigger audiences and gamed algorithms to make even more money. In addition, clips of their broadcasts on less-trafficked sites still frequently make it onto YouTube, Twitter and other mainstream platforms, essentially serving as free advertising for their streams elsewhere, experts say.

As social-media giants like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook target hate speech and misinformation, sites like DLive seem to be turning a blind eye, former users and employees say, recognizing that much of their traffic and revenue comes from these accounts. “They care more about having good numbers than weeding these people out,” a former employee of DLive, who was granted anonymity because he still works in the livestreaming sector, tells TIME. (DLive did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Which means ordinary users on gaming and streaming platforms, many of them teenagers, are often one click away from white-nationalist content. Many of these far-right personalities allege they are being unfairly censored for conservative political commentary or provocative humor, not hate speech. Most of these viewers won’t respond to streamers’ often cartoonish calls to action, like the “film your hospital” movement in April meant to show that no patients were there, thus “proving” that COVID-19 was fake. But this murky ecosystem of casual viewers, right-wing trolls–and the occasional diehard acolyte–creates a real challenge for technology companies and law-enforcement agencies.

And it doesn’t take much to trigger a tragedy. Over the past two years, terrorists inspired by online right-wing propa-ganda have livestreamed their own deadly attacks in New Zealand and Germany. In March 2019, a Florida man who had been radicalized by far-right media and online conspiracy theorists pleaded guilty to sending more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. A month later, a gunman armed with an AR-15 shot four people, killing one, in a synagogue in Poway, Calif., after allegedly posting a racist and anti-Semitic screed on the site 8chan. About three months later, a man killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, after posting a racist manifesto online, according to authorities.

With COVID-19 continuing to surge in parts of the country, ongoing protests over racial injustice and the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, the next few months promise to offer fertile ground for bad actors in unmoderated virtual spaces. Far-right propagandists “are really capitalizing on this conspiratorial moment,” says Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard University Shorenstein Center’s Technology and Social Change Project. “Everyone’s locked inside while there is what they refer to as a ‘race war’ happening outside their windows that they are ‘reporting on,’ so this is prime content for white-nationalist spaces.”

The migration of far-right personalities to DLive illustrates how, despite mainstream platforms’ recent crack-downs, the incentives that govern this ecosystem are thriving. Anyone with an Internet connection can continue to leverage conspiracy theories, racism and misogyny for attention and money, experts say.

The outbreak of COVID-19 arrived during a period of reinvention for far-right propagandists in the aftermath of the white-nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Over the past three years, social-media giants, which had endured criticism for giving extremists safe harbor, have increasingly attempted to mitigate hate speech on their sites. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, as well as payment processors like PayPal and GoFundMe, have all shut down accounts run by far-right agitators, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In late June, YouTube removed the accounts of several well-known figures, including David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist. Reddit, Facebook and Amazon-owned streaming site Twitch also suspended dozens of users and forums for violating hate-speech guidelines.

But these purges hardly solved the problem. Many online extremists were on main-stream platforms like YouTube long enough to build a devoted audience willing to follow them to new corners of the Internet. Some had long prepared for a crackdown by setting up copycat accounts across different platforms, like Twitch, DLive or TikTok. “These people build their brand on You-Tube, and when they get demonetized or feel under threat they’ll set up backup channels on DLive or BitChute,” says Megan Squire, a computer scientist at Elon University who tracks online extremism. “They know it’s going to happen and plan ahead.”

While the suspensions by social-media companies have been effective at limiting the reach of some well-known personalities like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was banned from YouTube, Facebook and Apple in 2018, others have quickly adapted. “Content creators are incredibly adept at gaming the systems so that they can still find and cultivate audiences,” says Becca Lewis, a researcher at Stanford University who studies far-right subcultures online, describing these efforts as a “game of whack-a-mole.” Many white-nationalist accounts have tied their ban to the right-wing narrative that conservatives are being silenced by technology companies. For platforms like DLive, becoming what their users consider “free speech” and “uncensored” alternatives can be lucrative. “More speech also means more money for the platform, and less content moderation means less of an expense,” says Lewis.

The prospect of being pushed off main-stream social-media, video-streaming and payment platforms has also prompted extremists to become more sophisticated about the financial side of the business. While Twitch takes a 50% cut from livestreamers’ earnings and YouTube takes 45%, platforms like DLive allow content creators to keep 90% of what they make. And as many found themselves cut off from mainstream payment services like PayPal, GoFundMe and Patreon, they began to embrace digital currencies.

DLive was founded in December 2017 by Chinese-born and U.S.-educated entrepreneurs Charles Wayn and Cole Chen, who made no secret of their ambition to build a platform that rivaled Twitch. They described the site as a general-interest streaming platform, focused on everything from “e-sports to lifestyle, crypto and news.” But two things set it apart from its competitors: it did not take a cut of the revenue generated by its streamers, and it issued an implicit promise of a less moderated, more permissive space.

DLive’s first big coup came in April 2019 when it announced an exclusive streaming deal with Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie. In just two months, DLive’s total number of users grew by 67%. At the time, Kjellberg was the most popular individual creator on YouTube, with more than 93 million subscribers and his own controversial history. In 2018, he came under fire for making anti-Semitic jokes and racist remarks, and more than 94,000 people signed a Change.org petition to ban his channel from YouTube for being a “platform for white-supremacist content.” The petition noted that “the New Zealand mosque shooter mentioned PewDiePie by name and asked people to subscribe.”

DLive’s community guidelines theoretically prohibit “hate speech that directly attacks a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.” But it soon became apparent to both employees and users that executives were willing to ignore venomous content. By early 2019, “political” shows were gaining traction on the site. Those programs devolved into “streams dedicated to white pride and a lot of anti-Semitism, entire streams talking about how Jewish people are evil,” says the former DLive employee who spoke to TIME, adding that moderators acted much more quickly when it came to copyright concerns. “Your stream would be taken down faster for streaming sports than saying you hate Jews.”

The employee recalls raising the matter with Wayn, noting how off-putting it was for new users coming to watch or broadcast streams of popular video games. According to the employee, Wayn explained that the company “didn’t want to get rid of these problematic streamers because they brought in numbers.” The founders knew they had to keep viewers because, as Wayn noted in a 2019 interview, if they wanted to “compete with Twitch on the same level and even take them down one day, DLive needs to match its scale.” Wayn did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

By June 2020, DLive seemed to be openly cultivating a right-of-center audience. On Twitter, it briefly changed its bio to read “All Lives Matter,” a right-wing rallying cry in response to Black Lives Matter. The site has increasingly become a haven for fanaticism, says Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “Before, on YouTube, some of these people would do a dance with the terms of service,” she tells TIME. “But on DLive, the gloves are off, and it’s just full white-supremacist content with very few caveats.”

On the night of June 29, Fuentes had 56% of the site’s total viewership at 10 p.m., according to the review of the site’s analytics provided to TIME. An additional 39% was viewers of 22 other extremist personalities streaming their commentary. At one point on the night of Aug. 10, just 176 of the more than 15,000 viewers on the top 20 channels on the site were not watching accounts linked to far-right figures. Popular programming in recent months has included alarmist footage of racial-justice protests, antivaccine propaganda, conspiracies linking 5G networks to the spread of COVID-19 and calls to “make more white babies while quarantined.”

The company may be even more reliant on those accounts now. Some users have left the site, complaining publicly about the virulent racism and anti-Semitism spilling over into regular channels and game streams. “DLive is a safe-haven for racists and alt-right streamers,” one user wrote on Twitter on June 22. “Seems to me DLive is the new platform for white supremacists,” wrote another, echoing complaints that it’s a “literal Nazi breeding ground” and “the place where racists don’t get deplatformed.”

The migration of hate speech to far-flung corners of the Internet could make it harder to track, increasing the risk that it spills into the offline world. Experts say law-enforcement and national-security agencies are still unprepared to tackle right-wing extremism. They lack expertise not only in the rapidly evolving technology but also in the ideological ecosystem that has spawned a battery of far-right movements. The recently repackaged white-nationalist youth movement, with new names like “America First” or the “Groypers,” looks more like “gussied-up campus conservatives,” as Friedberg of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center puts it, “so they are not triggering the same warning bells.”

Recent incidents show how this online environment that blends political commentary and hate speech can be dangerous. An 18-year-old accused of firebombing a Delaware Planned Parenthood clinic in January was identified through his Instagram profile, which contained far-right memes reflecting popular beliefs in the young white-nationalist movement, according to BuzzFeed News. In June, Facebook deactivated nearly 200 social-media accounts with ties to white-nationalist groups rallying members to attend Black Lives Matter protests, in some cases armed with weapons.

Analysts who track extremist recruitment online also warn that the pandemic may have long-term effects on young people who are now spending far more time on the Internet. Without the structure of school and social activities, many children and teenagers are spending hours a day in spaces where extremist content lurks alongside games and other benign entertainment, says Dana Coester, an associate professor at West Virginia University who researches the impact of online white extremism on youth in Appalachia. It’s common, she notes, to see teenagers sharing Black Lives Matter messages alongside racist cartoons from popular Instagram accounts targeting middle schoolers. “So many parents I’ve spoken with say their kids are on devices until 3 in the morning,” she says. “I can’t begin to imagine how much damage can be done with kids that many hours a day marinating in really toxic content.”

Analysts warn that both U.S. law enforcement and big technology companies need to move quickly to hire experts who understand this new extremist ecosystem. Experts say the mainstream platforms’ recent purges are reactive: they patch yesterday’s problems instead of preventing future abuses, and focus on high-profile provocateurs instead of the underlying networks.

One solution may be to follow the money, as content creators migrate to new platforms in search of new financial opportunities. “[White supremacists] have become particularly as-siduous at exploiting new methods of fundraising, often seeking out platforms that have not yet realized how extremists can exploit them,” said George Selim, senior vice president of programs of the Anti-Defamation League, in testimony before a House subcommittee in January. “When a new fund-raising method or platform emerges, white supremacists can find a window of opportunity. These windows can, however, be shut if platforms promptly take countermeasures.”

On the evening of Aug. 11, Joe Biden’s pick of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate dominated the news. “She hates white people,” Fuentes told viewers on DLive. “She is going to use the full weight of the federal government … to destroy conservatives, to destroy America First, anybody that speaks up for white people.” NBC and ABC News–which have a combined 13 million subscribers on YouTube–had an average of 6,100 concurrent viewers watching their coverage. Fuentes’ show had 9,000.

–With reporting by ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA/NEW YORK

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[networkingdefinition]

Health Food Quotes

Official Website: Health Food Quotes

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• After examining some of the recent cases which the Postal Service has pursued, vigorous prosecution of, for example, a health food advocate. – Vin Weber • Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. – Moby • Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker. – Pat Williams • Even in the old days, we’d make an effort. When I’d go out to score on Eighth Avenue, I’d get my junk and a chocolate doughnut. But I’d always also pick up one of those pita-pocket health food sandwiches. You know, something really good for me. – Steven Tyler

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health+Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture. – Tony Benn • Half the people I look who are health food addicts look sickly to me. Let’s start taxing health food. Somebody force a burger down some of these people’s jaw because they look a little pale and wan to me. – Dennis Miller • He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods. – P. C. Cast • Health food makes me sick. – Calvin Trillin • Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better. – Robert Redford • Health food shops can make people feel very important; it’s like a brand new religion with people trying to convert you to quinoa. – Pippa Evans • Health food would seem healthier if the people that sold it looked less unhealthy. – Dov Davidoff • Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill. – Mason Cooley • I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. – Gene Baur • I couldn’t get away with Halloween pranks ’cause my parents owned the health food store. So, it was so easy to bust me. I was the only kid on the block egging houses with those big ‘ole brown eggs. Like, you didn’t have to be a detective to figure it out. ‘Oh, I wonder who Tofuttied my mailbox. Is it the same evil genius who filled my bird bath with Rice Dream? – Arj Barker • I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for like two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had. – Reggie Watts • I have to say that being a vegan in 1986 or whenever was a lot different than being a vegan in 2012. You’d go to health foods stores and basically your choice was between Mung beans and nutritional yeast, and that’s about it. – Moby • I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. “Thought you weren’t into internal pollution,” I said. Lately Ranger’d been on a health food thing. “Props,” Ranger told me. “Didn’t want to look out of place.” I didn’t want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn’t look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman. – Janet Evanovich • I used to work at a health food store. I got fired for drinking straight Bosco on the job. – Steven Wright • I worked in a health food store once. A guy asked me, ‘If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet? – Steven Wright • In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either. – Neal Barnard • Just because you take gluten out of something doesn’t make it a health food. – Chris Mohr • Most of the human body disease such as Obesity, Cancer, Heart disease are linked with our food which we eat in our day to day life. If people are eating health food than how come there be more than 50% death from heart and cancer disease alone in a developed nation such as USA? – Subodh Gupta • Older people shouldn’t eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get. – Robert Orben • Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word “organic” is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic. – Michael Pollan • People who shop in health food stores never look healthy. – Amy Sedaris • Saw a man in Whole Foods yelling at his son, What are you doing?! You know I don’t eat bread!! Is there such a thing as health food abuse? – Bob Saget • Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer’s mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops. – Frank Muir • The FDA and much, but not all, of the orthodox medical profession are actively hostile against vitamins and minerals… They are out to get the health food industry…And they are trying to do this out of active hostility and prejudice. – William Proxmire • The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy – a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting “Sieg Health” and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind. – P. J. O’Rourke • The magazine at the health food store said, Stop Aging! Isn’t that what death is for? Trust me, we’re all gonna stop aging. – Dana Gould • The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food. – Waverley Root • The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I’m outside Ajay’s newsagent’s. I’m on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I’m massive on Handie’s furniture shop, King’s Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I’ve possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout. – Jenny Downham • There are so many health food nuts out there that eat nothing but natural foods but they don’t exercise and they look terrible. – Jack LaLanne • Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I’m not much into health food, I am into Champagne. – Rupert Holmes

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'y', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_y').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_y img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[equitiesstocks]

Health Food Quotes

Official Website: Health Food Quotes

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• After examining some of the recent cases which the Postal Service has pursued, vigorous prosecution of, for example, a health food advocate. – Vin Weber • Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. – Moby ��� Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker. – Pat Williams • Even in the old days, we’d make an effort. When I’d go out to score on Eighth Avenue, I’d get my junk and a chocolate doughnut. But I’d always also pick up one of those pita-pocket health food sandwiches. You know, something really good for me. – Steven Tyler

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health+Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture. – Tony Benn • Half the people I look who are health food addicts look sickly to me. Let’s start taxing health food. Somebody force a burger down some of these people’s jaw because they look a little pale and wan to me. – Dennis Miller • He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods. – P. C. Cast • Health food makes me sick. – Calvin Trillin • Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better. – Robert Redford • Health food shops can make people feel very important; it’s like a brand new religion with people trying to convert you to quinoa. – Pippa Evans • Health food would seem healthier if the people that sold it looked less unhealthy. – Dov Davidoff • Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill. – Mason Cooley • I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. – Gene Baur • I couldn’t get away with Halloween pranks ’cause my parents owned the health food store. So, it was so easy to bust me. I was the only kid on the block egging houses with those big ‘ole brown eggs. Like, you didn’t have to be a detective to figure it out. ‘Oh, I wonder who Tofuttied my mailbox. Is it the same evil genius who filled my bird bath with Rice Dream? – Arj Barker • I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for like two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had. – Reggie Watts • I have to say that being a vegan in 1986 or whenever was a lot different than being a vegan in 2012. You’d go to health foods stores and basically your choice was between Mung beans and nutritional yeast, and that’s about it. – Moby • I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. “Thought you weren’t into internal pollution,” I said. Lately Ranger’d been on a health food thing. “Props,” Ranger told me. “Didn’t want to look out of place.” I didn’t want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn’t look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman. – Janet Evanovich • I used to work at a health food store. I got fired for drinking straight Bosco on the job. – Steven Wright • I worked in a health food store once. A guy asked me, ‘If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet? – Steven Wright • In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either. – Neal Barnard • Just because you take gluten out of something doesn’t make it a health food. – Chris Mohr • Most of the human body disease such as Obesity, Cancer, Heart disease are linked with our food which we eat in our day to day life. If people are eating health food than how come there be more than 50% death from heart and cancer disease alone in a developed nation such as USA? – Subodh Gupta • Older people shouldn’t eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get. – Robert Orben • Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word “organic” is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic. – Michael Pollan • People who shop in health food stores never look healthy. – Amy Sedaris • Saw a man in Whole Foods yelling at his son, What are you doing?! You know I don’t eat bread!! Is there such a thing as health food abuse? – Bob Saget • Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer’s mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops. – Frank Muir • The FDA and much, but not all, of the orthodox medical profession are actively hostile against vitamins and minerals… They are out to get the health food industry…And they are trying to do this out of active hostility and prejudice. – William Proxmire • The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy – a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting “Sieg Health” and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind. – P. J. O’Rourke • The magazine at the health food store said, Stop Aging! Isn’t that what death is for? Trust me, we’re all gonna stop aging. – Dana Gould • The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food. – Waverley Root • The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I’m outside Ajay’s newsagent’s. I’m on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I’m massive on Handie’s furniture shop, King’s Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I’ve possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout. – Jenny Downham • There are so many health food nuts out there that eat nothing but natural foods but they don’t exercise and they look terrible. – Jack LaLanne • Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I’m not much into health food, I am into Champagne. – Rupert Holmes

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'y', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_y').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_y img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );