#isl denier

[beardedmrbean]

I bet the last thing Bernie Sanders expected upon his arrival in Ireland and Britain was to be met by angry protesters—to find himself heckled and damned as a sellout by the kind of radicals who would have been shouting his praises just six months ago. And yet that is what happened: Some of Britain's Bernie Bros have morphed into Bernie bashers.

Why? Because he refuses to describe Israel's war on Hamas as a "genocide" and he doesn't approve of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.

Quick—cast him out. Unperson him. He has ventured outside the parameters of acceptable Left-wing thought and must be punished.

It all kicked off in Dublin. Senator Sanders, who is on these isles to promote his book, Why It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, was speaking at University College Dublin. A group of pro-Palestine protesters assembled at the entrance to the venue, all wearing the uniform of the virtuous: a keffiyeh. "It's OK to be angry about capitalism, what about Zionism?" they chanted.

It got heated inside, too. Sanders was interrupted by audience members. "Resistance is an obligation in the face of occupation!" one shouted. "Occupation is terrorism!" yelled another.

Sanders kept his cool with his reply: "Good slogan, but slogans are not solutions," he said.

It continued at Trinity College the next day. Sanders was in conversation with the Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole. Outside, a small but noisy gaggle of anti-Israel agitators displayed a banner that said: "Boycott Apartheid Israel."

"Free Palestine!" they chanted. (Deliciously, a woman who was queuing for the Sanders event bellowed "from Hamas!" every time they said it.)

Again, Sanders was heckled by hotheads. "Ceasefire now!" they shouted. At one point, in the words of Trinity News, Sanders "threw up his right arm in frustration and looked at O'Toole, as if to ask him what would be done."

It is little wonder he felt frustrated. Sanders was there to talk about capitalism, yet angry youths kept badgering him about Zionism. He is used to a fawning response from Socialist twentysomethings, and yet now some were effectively accusing him of being complicit in a "genocide." It's quite the downfall for one of the West's best-known leftists.

The turn on Bernie is underpinned by a belief that he is too soft on Israel. The radical Left will never forgive him for initially supporting Israel's war on Hamas. Even his more recent position—he now says there should be a ceasefire—is not good enough for these people, who seem to measure an individual's moral worth by how much he hates the Jewish State.

They want Bernie to say the G-word. They want him to damn Israel as uniquely barbarous. They want him to agree with them that it is right and proper to single Israel out for boycotts and sanctions.

In short, they want him to fall into line. They want him to bend the knee to their Israelophobic ideology.

These illiberal demands on Bernie to bow down to correct-think continued when he arrived in the U.K. A group of communists protested against him in Liverpool. Normally, Sanders would have been shown only love in a historically radical city like Liverpool, said the Liverpool Echo, but this time, "the atmosphere was different," for one simple reason: "his refusal to brand Israel's actions in Gaza as 'genocide'."

Sanders' resistance of the G-word haunted him in his media interviews, too. Ash Sarkar of Novara Media, a key outlet of Britain's bourgeois Left, asked him three times if he would call Israel's war on Hamas a "genocide." He refused and it went viral. Armies of ersrtwhile Bernie fans damned him as a "genocide denier."

There is something quite nauseating in this spectacle of an elderly Jewish man being pressured to denounce the world's only Jewish State as genocidal. Millennial Gentiles who want to trend online might be happy to throw around the G-word. But Senator Sanders, who lost family in the Holocaust, clearly has a deeper moral and historical understanding of what genocide is. And it seems he is not willing to sacrifice that understanding at the altar of retweets or an easy ride.

Good for him.

Sanders' father was born in Poland, where most of his family were exterminated by the Nazis. Sanders is a son of the Shoah, a descendant of survivors of the greatest crime in history. To subject him to the modern equivalent of a showtrial in which you demand that he scream "Genocide!" at Israel feels unconscionable. As does branding him a "genocide denier."

Why won't he call Israel's war on Hamas a "genocide"? Maybe, says a writer for the Jewish Chronicle, it's because he lost so much of his family to Hitler's gas chambers and therefore he "knows what a genocide is, what a war crime is." He knows that while the war in Gaza, a war started by Hamas, is "horrible," to use his word, it cannot in any way be compared to the Nazis' conscious efforts to vaporize an entire ethnic group.

There has been a Inquisition vibe to some of the Bernie-bashing in Britain. At times it has felt cruel. The sight of fashionable, privileged Israel-bashers haranguing a man who will have heard stories from his own father about the genocidal mania of the Nazis has come across like Jew-taunting rather than political critique.

More broadly, this unseemly episode gives us a glimpse into the authoritarian impulses behind the Left's obsessive opposition to Israel. Israelophobia, it seems, is less a rational political stance than a borderline religious conviction. There are true believers, who dutifully repeat the G-word like a mantra, and sinful outliers, who refuse to treat Israel as uniquely "problematic."

One's moral fitness for radical society is increasingly judged by one's willingness to treat Israel as the most wicked nation in existence. The dangers of making hostility to the Jewish State a requirement of being a Good Leftist should be clear to everyone.

Sanders is wise to resist this tyrannical zeitgeist, and to say what he believes rather than what he believes will be popular.

Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer of spiked. His new book, A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable, is available now.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

[demi-shoggoth]

COVID-19 Reading Log, pt. 7

36. Fox Tossing and other Forgotten and Dangerous Sports, Pastimes and Games by Edward Brooke-Hitching. After a run of long and/or downer books, I wanted something short and upbeat. So I reread something. This book is exactly what it says on the title—most of the games have been abandoned for being cruel to animals, hazardous to human health or just silly (or sometimes multiple at once, like archery golf). Sports and games tend to get little exposure in histories, and so it’s nice to see both that people have always done weird stuff to alleviate boredom, and that we’ve gotten less openly bloodthirsty and cruel in the modern era.

37. The Leprechaun’s Kingdom by Peter Haining.  This is a collection of folktales from Ireland, some of them literary and other less so. It also serves as a repository of art of faeries, ghosts and other supernatural things from various British Isles sources, mostly but not entirely Irish. I wish that some of the pieces had been replicated at larger sizes, but that’s just about my only complaint here. If I had found this book at, say, 11 or 12, I would have been completely obsessed with it.

38. Sleeping with the Lights On by Darryl Jones. I was initially disappointed in this book, which was much smaller than I was expecting—for $16, it’s a hardcover about the size of a trade paperback, but half the page count. Turns out, it doesn’t need to be long. This book is a concise overview of horror scholarship and analysis, covering a lot of the highlights with brevity and insight. The section on vampires, for example, manages to do better in 7 pages than Nick Groom’s entire book. This is a great introduction to critical perspectives on horror for someone who is just getting into the subject, and even as an old hand I found new things to think about and enjoy.

39. Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Food Plants, edited by the National Geographic Society. I have owned this book for years, using it as a reference. Sitting down with it turned out to be a disappointment. The first seventy or so pages are a history of agriculture and food plants, which trends strongly towards the March of Progress fallacy and is extremely biased towards Western Europe. The bits on the plants themselves are oddly organized (why start classifying fruit by botanical fruit types and then give up halfway? Why does soy only get a brief mention as an oil plant, and not for its other many, many uses?). Some of the authors need to be reigned in more—the author of the nuts chapter was purple in prose and pseudoscientific in their claims.

40. Catastrophes! by Donald Prothero. Prothero is an author I have a love-hate relationship with. His writing on mammal paleontology and evolution is typically pretty good, and he’s the co-author of two good books about paranormal claims (one on UFOs, one on cryptids) that I quite like. But about his Mesozoic writing… let’s let Captain Muramatsu explain it:

Thank you, Cap.

Anyway, this is his geology book about natural disasters. The author’s anti-religious bias shows in dramatic and occasionally baffling ways, like his constant remarks on the “irony” of deadly disasters on Christian holidays. In an aside during the discussion of Pompeii, it appears that he sides with Emperor Titus about the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem! And in a chapter on mass extinctions, he claims that the asteroid impact was minimal if not uninvolved with the extinction of the dinosaurs, which he supports by savagely cherry picking his sources. The irony of him complaining about global warming deniers cherry picking their sources seems lost on him. At least there’s some good, and lengthy, quotations from primary sources to be found, and the diagrams and photographs are strong. But the authorial voice was decidedly unpleasant.

[totallyrhettro]

Ravenvale, Chapter 6

Word Count: 2265 Rating: This chapter: general; overall story: explicit Warnings: None Summary: On their way home from another case, Agent Seaborne and Agent Roach find themselves in the strange, fog-covered town of Ravenvale. Notes: Seaborne and Roach AU where, years after the events seen in the YouTube series, they manage to become FBI agents.

Also available on ao3

First Chapter Previous Chapter

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Roach was a bit dumbfounded at the news the librarian had just given him, to say the least. Not quite shocked, but more than a little confused as to why anyone would lie about having an uncle. Then again, this gentleman was behaving rather strangely. Maybe he was mistaken; perhaps he wasn’t all there, in a manner of speaking. After a second or two the stranger seemed to forget his own surprise and went back to looking over the FBI agent before him. Roach cleared his throat.

“Anyway, I was told that you knew something about, uh…. little people? In the fog?” Instead of answering, ‘uncle’ began investigating Roach’s suit, feeling the fabric and turning over what he could to get a better look. “Mr…?”

“Deneir,” the stranger filled in, not looking up from Roach’s seemingly interesting tie. He turned over a lapel, revealing the inner pocket, and before Roach could stop him, pulled out a wallet.

“Hey!” Roach tried to grab it back but Mr. Deneir was quick, stepping out of reach before opening up the wallet and looking inside. Roach’s badge was unmistakable and Mr. Denier's eyes widened at the sight.

“FBI?” he asked, actually looking at Roach this time. Roach nodded, stepping closer in the hopes that Mr. Deneir would now give back the wallet. “You’re investigating Ravenvale?”

“Uh, yes,” Roach lied. His hopes that now this strange man would finally answers some questions raised slightly. “My partner and I just arrived today. What can you tell me about what’s going on?” Deneir’s eyes shone with excitement and a grin appeared on his face as he placed the walled on the counter, ignoring Roach’s outstretched hand. He scurried back into the next room, leaving the FBI agent rather confused. Snatching up his wallet and tucking it away, Roach rushed to catch up.

The library was decently sized, with rows and rows of bookcases filling most of the main floor. A mezzanine level overlooked the open space with shorter shelves, tables and computers set up as well. The entire place was certainly set up to be a library, but as Roach stepped into the room he noticed that something was amiss. Dozens if not hundreds of books lie scattered across the floor, littering between the shelves and isles with no rhyme or reason for how they’d been toss about. Deneir moved about them, quickly but delicately, looking for something in particular. Finally he grabbed up the only open book and made his way back to the rather dumbfounded agent.

“I’ve been doing research-” he began with a strong tone of detachedness. Roach couldn’t hold back a soft chuckle.

“I can see that.” He did his best to avoid the piles and piles of books in order to reach over and take the offered one. The page was opened to two pages lined with very small text and an artistic rendering of a very familiar figure. “The tiny woman,” he whispered. It was obviously hand-drawn, and there was zero sense of scale, but the form was unmistakable. Deneir nodded enthusiastically, tapping the image a few times for emphasis.

“They live in the mist,” he explained. “You’ve seen them?” Roach nodded, not looking away from the drawing for a moment. “Everyone says I’m crazy, but I know… I know the truth. I’ve seen them, too.” His curiosity peaked, Roach couldn’t help but smile himself. He hoped that finally, at long last, he’d found something real. Something that couldn’t be explained by science or reason. Something… alien.

“What are they?” His hopes hadn’t been this high since the Navy reported unusual sightings off the coast of Florida back in 2015. Those hopes were a bit lowered when Deneir answered his question.

“Leirans,” he stated. “Fey, fairies, sprites,” he continued. Each word make Roach’s hope fade further. Fey? Fairies? As in, mythical creatures?

“So…” he began, still clinging to the last shred of hope in his heart. “N-not aliens?” Deneir shook his head vigorously before answering.

“Nope.” Roach’s face fell. “Leirans. Much worse.” Deneir stepped away, bending down to sift through his massive pile of books, obviously looking for something else. “They worship the Lady of the Mist.” He looked up, briefly, to add: “Get it?”

“Right,” Roach agreed, absentmindedly. He looked back to the drawing, trying to decide if this was indeed what he had seen in the fog. “Mist.” He had so hoped he had finally discovered proof of aliens. Still, it wasn’t a total loss. Fairies weren’t aliens, but they weren’t human either. They weren’t Bigfoot, or the Chupacabra, but they were mythical. Roach wanted to- needed to know more. “What do they want?”

Deneir didn’t seem to hear him as he scoured the massive inventory before him, trying to find some elusive book, so Roach repeated the question louder. Eventually Deneir looked up, his eyes slightly glazed over as he took in the sight of the tall man who was speaking to him.

“The book- the book!” he exclaimed. “Just read the book. I’m reading.” He was, in fact, not reading but still looking for whatever book he probably wanted to read, but Roach took his advice anyway.

“Fairy, also known as Fey, Fairfolk or sprites,” he read aloud. “Are mythical beings from Europeon folklore. They are a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural, or preternatural.” He paused, thinking about this. “Preternatural… like demons? Witches?” Deneir, of course, didn’t answer. Roach read on. “While their true form is unknown, they often appear as humanoid, small in stature, with magical powers, and a penchant for trickery.”

“Tricksters!” Deneir suddenly shouted from across the room. Roach looked up, expecting more, but Deneir wasn’t even looking up.

“A common feature of the fairies is the use of magic to disguise appearance,” the passage continued. “Fairy gold is notoriously unreliable, appearing as gold when paid but soon thereafter revealing itself to be leaves, gorse blossoms, gingerbread cakes, or a variety of other comparatively worthless things.”

“Fake gold, fake treasures, fake, fake, fake…” By now Roach had learned to ignore Deneir’s random bouts of input and moved on to the next paragraph.

“While they rarely interact with humans, more playful fey have been known to play tricks on people.” So far Roach didn’t see any proof that the woman he’d seen was playing a trick. Unless… “Do you think fairies are causing the fog?” At last Deneir paused a few moments before looking up, realization crossing his face.

“Yes!” he shouted, making Roach jump from the volume. Deneir pointed at him, his eyes wide and crazy. “Yes, that’s it!” Bending down he snatched up what had to be the first book he saw, opened it up to a random page and began to read. “Lady of the Mists, The Guardian of Liars, Maiden of the Mist…”

“A fairy queen?” Roach guessed, trying to carefully walk around the books to get to him.

“Leira!” Even though Roach was almost standing next to him, Denier’s shout was no more quiet than before. “Mother of Illusionists, The Mistshadow.” Finally, Roach reached him, but just as he was about to look at the book the man was holding, Deneir snap it shut and tossed it behind him in one fluid motion. “Not a queen,” he answered. “But she’s dead. She’s dead?” He repeated the words as if he had confused himself. “She’s dead, she died…” He continued to ramble as he went back to searching and Roach found that’d he’d had enough. Maybe he could come back when Deneir was more calm, or when Seaborne could come with him. Until then, he wanted to show Seaborne this book and tell him what he had seen.

Until then, he had a book to read.

~ ~ ~

Seaborne was alone at the diner, staring into a cup of fresh coffee, decaf this time, when his partner came in looking for him. He was deep in thought, thinking about the dream he’d just had, trying to decide if he wanted to have it again, and didn’t hear when Roach started speaking.

“You awake, Seaborne?” the taller man was asking.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry.” Seaborne took a deep breath and stretched his back. “Guess I’m still a little groggy from my nap.”

“That good, huh?” Roach mused casually as he looked for the waitress. Seaborne hid a smile behind a sip of his coffee and gave a non-committal ‘Mmm’ noise. Not really interested in the answer, Roach moved on to something much more important than hearing about how his partner’s nap went. After ordering his own beverage, Roach placed the book that Deneir had given him, on the center of the table.

“What’s this?” Instead of answering Seaborne’s question, Roach opened to the bookmarked page showing the entry he’d read earlier. Seaborne read the headline out loud. “Fairy. Not your usual research.”

“Deneir- uh... the, um, librarian, gave it to me.” He pointed at the image that dominated the page. “This is the woman I saw. The uh, thing, I saw in the fog.”

“I see. Still convinced you saw a fairy?” Seaborne asked, trying to understand what Roach was telling him.

“No, I did see it.” Roach paused, concerned that he wasn’t explaining himself correctly. “I mean, I saw this. This is what I saw dancing in the fog.” He tapped the book for emphasis. With a sigh, Seaborne set his coffee aside and slide the book closer to him. He turned it around to read the text. Roach watched as his friend’s eyes scanned over the pages, reading the text that he himself had read not long ago.

“Fairy tricksters are often drawn to the unconscious desires of humans,” he read aloud. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Roach admitted. “But this is definitely what I saw. Deneir also called them Leirans. I think they might have something to do with the fog-” Seaborne interrupted his partner’s thought by pushing the book back towards him.

“Are all the entries in that book this bizarre?” he asked with a grin. Roach glanced around before learning forward and shoving the book right back.

“That’s just it,” he whispered. “It’s the only entry in the book.” As he said this, he turned the page of the book revealing a completely blank page. Over and over he turned pages, each one just as blank, and Seaborne finally took notice. That was odd indeed, to say the least.

“Weird book,” he commented, taking it in his hands now to check the rest of the pages. It didn’t take long to find out that Roach was right: there was just the one entry. Except for the two pages on fairies, the entire book was blank. “You said the librarian gave you this?”

“Yeah… he was a bit odd, to be honest.” Sitting up straight he sent his partner a look to be quiet as the waitress came over with another coffee. Roach thanked her briefly, waiting until she left again before continuing. “He said he didn’t have a niece,” he stated firmly, raising his eyebrows as if he made a very important addition. Seaborne just looked at him, confused, before shaking his head.

“Well,” he sighed. “That is weird.” Sipping his coffee, Seaborne sat back in his chair and stared out the window at the damned fog that was still thick as ever. Roach waiting for his partner to say more but it quickly became obvious that Seaborne was done talking.

“I think we should inves-”

“Uh, uh.” Seaborne nearly spit out his coffee as he turned down Roach’s idea before he could even finish the thought. “No way. You’re not pulling me into another wild goose chase before I’ve had a break from the last one.”

“But you just said it yourself; it’s weird.” Giving his partner his bet puppy-dog eyes, Roach hoped it would work as it had many times before. This time however, Seaborne was far too sick of this town to fall for anything of the sort.

“Yes,” he admitted. “It’s weird. The people are weird, the town is weird, lots of things are weird BUT! I. Don’t. Care. I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed, use my own shower, and eat my cereal in my own house. After that you can tell me everything you think you’ve figured out about this horrible town to your heart’s content. Until then, I just want to go home. Okay?” Thoroughly downtrodden, Roach didn’t argue but slumped in his chair, defeated. He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. Seaborne had won and that was that.

The two of them sat in silence as Seaborne finished his drink. Roach looked out the window at the fog, the small hope that the fairy lady might reappear, heavy on his heart. He placed his large hands flat on the table, slowly rubbing the tips of his thumbs together, mindlessly. Seaborne couldn’t help but stare at those hands… wondering…

“What is it?” Roach asked, upon catching Seaborne staring. Immediately the shorter man looked somewhere else.

“Nothing,” he lied. After a few more seconds of quiet, Roach couldn’t take it any longer. He grabbed up the book and got to his feet. “What are you going?”

“You may not want to investigate,” he explained. “But I do.” He was halfway to the door before Seaborne could respond.

“What’s the point?” he explained. “We’re leaving tomorrow.” Roach didn’t listen. “What about supper?” Seaborne added, yelling this time, but his partner was already gone. Grumbling to himself, he waved down the waitress. Maybe some food would cheer him up.

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[sonsofks]

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[one-messy-moomin]

I had my first experience with a Covid denier on my train on the way home today, some maskless dude sat across the isle from me on a pretty empty train, waved in my face to get my attention so I took out one of headphones thinking he was going to ask a question and he then proceeds on telling me that I don’t need to wear a mask because it’s all a hoax and spew loads of rubbish about the NHS being crap and making up fake deaths. I told him quite clearly, I know it’s real my husbands parents are both currently getting over it (thank god) and I feel safer and better for wearing a mask, he kept asking me why and I just said because it makes me feel better when I can protect others, prevent any sort of spread. I knew he wanted an argument with me but after the day I had at work I just shoved my headphones back in, turned up the volume and ignored him.

[scotiaeire]

The Election and the Weather.

https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/sinn-fein-irish-election-win-irelands-future?utm_campaign=Best+of+IC+-+10+Feb+-+2020-02-10&utm_content=Story1&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Mailjet

I’m not going to comment on Irish politics from a place of “as if I belong here” because, I’m Scots and we’ve only just moved here and don’t want to offend any Irish folks with what they probably think would be my uneducated, inexperienced outsider’s opinion.

(I’m not unhappy at the result though, being *very* familiar with UK politics and the machinations of both Tory and Labour, which appear to have merged into one party these days)

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/weather-warning-ireland-storm-ciara?utm_campaign=IC+FAV+-+Feb+10+-+2020-02-10&utm_content=Story2&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Mailjet

But the weather’s something even I have the right to discuss. ;) And it worries me. I believe in Climate Change, despite the deniers. I’m approaching sixty and over my lifetime  have seen the seasons vanish, and storms that used to be limited to the winter months arise all year round and worsen in intensity, and in the places I’m familiar with..the Scottish Highlands, largely..snow is vanishing, putting in a brief appearance, if we’re lucky, for two days, a few centimetres deep before turning to mush and disappearing.

“When I was young...” snow was a regular winter visitor. Where I lived, it generally began in October, Novermber latest, could reach six foot deep and often did, and lasted until March, April or even May.

Twice as a child and young woman, I got lost in snow whiteouts and almost died of hypothermia ....my sense of navigaton has always been shit! and if it hadn’t been for my dad finding me the first time I *would* have died.

Tell me, folks in the far north of Scotland (and now, places in Norway, Finland...) when was the last time snow fell as it used to?

In it’s place..at least in Scotland and, it seems, in Ireland, we get increasingly stronger winds, damaging winds that often reach Hurricane force, and far too much rain, causing flood damage and, in some cases, death.

I’ve seen too many times spring flowers bloom then be knocked back or killed off by raging winds brought in from the seas or the Arctic..blackened, made brittle, in a suddenly hostile “spring”.

I know there are people, many folks, committed to changing what’s happening. They’re opposed by those who, largely because of commercial interests, are turning a blind eye to what’s happening to the natural world and the weather and climate globally. Those folks, they have an “I’ll be dead and buried by the time it gets *that* bad so might as well ignore it now and make my cash whilst I can” attitude.

I hope none of them have bairns.

But I remember, until I was a young adult, winters full of glorious deep soft snow, snow that lasted, and only rare storms that brought a little excitement into life, not danger. I remember the reliability of Spring arriving, when you *knew* you could sow seeds, plant bulbs, plan a garden and not fear your efforts to grow food for your family would be wiped out in one horrendous powerful superstorm.

I also remember summers, even in Scotland, even that far north, of sunshine that didn’t scald and overheat (with one exception being one year on the Isle of Arran, which I guess was my first taste of a too-hot summer...I’d brought cold weather clothes on a camping trip and the heat made car tyres melt and stick to the equally melting tar on the roads!)

Yet my last few years when in Belgium, my husband’s home nation, the summer’s heat hit the high thirties, often forty degrees, and it was killing heat. Literally. Old people, those with respiratory or heart conditions, died from it. Shops opened their doors at nights so that homeless or vulnerable folks could bring sleeping bags and bed down next to their freezers. Human kindnesses amidst crises.

I grieve personally for the loss of snow, which probably sounds crazy. But I do. I grew up with it, know it and the magic and beauty it brings, and I miss it, *have* missed it, for years now, the past couple of decades if not more.

A couple of years ago in our northwest Scottish home, we didn’t have enough money for our only source of heat, the one open fire in the livingroom. And it was winter, and temperatures hit record lows...minus twentyfive.

And we sat in our layers of clothing, coats and hats, barely able to move because the cold when it’s that low makes you slow and clumsy and tired. And because we were broke, we ran out of food and I was reduced to making scones, day after day, for a week, with the bag of flour, half tub of margerine I had left, and water, no milk.

It made us ill. Yet, we had a roof over our heads and knew others didn’t, so....

Poverty kills. End of. It does. And there’ve been times in life I’ve not had the money to pay for a stamp or buy food for myself, when I would starve to feed my bairns. I made it, we made it, but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

The big commercial companies, the investors in projects and trade that impacts the world’s climate, and most of the politicians, they have no idea what poverty is, nor do they give a shit. Lining their pockets and swelling their bank accounts is ALL that matters.

The weather? Let it go mad. People going hungry, dying? Not their fault. Homelessness? Pfft....

But I read the article about Irish politics. Young folks voted Sinn Fein based on lack of housing. That basic that should be a Right for everyone, a Home, too many simply can’t have.

As I said, I’ve been homeless more than once. In my case I had to literally sleep in doorways, in tree thickets in city parks. And for a young girl, that’s about as dangerous a situation as you can be in. And no, I’m not going there, because some memories need to stay buried.

So young folks voted with their hearts and in the right direction.

And it’s largely young folks who are looking at the now ruined global climate and trying to mend things.

Know what? I think they will, where my generation failed to even accept, at first, Climate Change existed. (present company excepted!)

[ruffoverthinksthings]

So I was wondering how come the magical beings don't rise up? I mean I know magic is against the law but they still have it, and I guess humans wouldn't be too much of a magic against centuries old Fae, genie reality warpers, demigods, etc

FourReasons:

Ancient Magical Law

“Good” Faeries, Fae, and Wild Fae tend to be bound byincredibly strict rules that prevent them from directly meddling inmortal’s lives or harming them, thus why Fairy Godmother had tobless Cinderella to get her, her Prince, and their kingdom the “HappyEnding” they needed, or why the Blue Fairy had to give Pinnochiothe caveat that he couldn’t lie if he wanted to stay a real boy–itwasn’t just them testing them, or the limitations of their powers,it was as the Fairly Odd Parents might say, “Da Rules.”

This specific rule is that “A Fae may only guide, advise, andinfluence mortals; their choices must ultimately be of their own freewill and consent, without violence, manipulation, or deception.”

Edit:

(Amendment to said rule: “A Fae may directly intervene in the lives of Mortals if it is to protect them from the imminent, undeniable, and malevolent intervention of a Corrupted Fae, or other Forces beyond their capabilities, Mundane or Magical.”

i.e. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather blessing Prince Philip’s sword, or the entirety of Cinderella’s trip to the ball.)

Breaking these have serious consequences such as thepermanent corruption of your magical essence and becoming someonelike Maleficent, forever consumed by the hate and vengeance that theylet consume their being entirely.

That aside, even if you aren’t expressly/magically forbiddenfrom the act, slipping in a Persuasion Potion into an influentialpolitician’s drink to get them to say “Nay” on the Magic Banvote is NOT seen as a very “Good” thing to do, will likely harmthe “Yes To Magic” movement from the scandal, and will probablyget the alchemist/witch sent to the Isle beside.

On a side note, I imagine that’s why Auradon has a 0% crimerate–complete, crippling, absolute fear of being thrown onto theIsle of the Lost, about the only real prison facility they have anymore.

Cells in dungeons and sheriff’s offices are just for keepingdrunkards in until they sober up in the morning.

Misplaced Good Faith

The Fae and Wild Fae have little reason to doubt the words oftheir Royals; they have always done right by them, and like the restof the largely uneducated, ignorant, and superstitious masses, trustthem implicitly and would always err on their side when it comes todecision making.

The ones most affected by the Magic Ban such as Flora, Fauna, andMerryweather simply assumed that Beast and the other royals would trytheir best to make their lives as comfortable and easy as possible,alongside that of the masses, priority to the latter because they HADbeen struggling and relying on the blessings of Good Faeries and thelike to actually get shit done for all this time.

… The problem was when they never STOPPED being the priority.

A lot of the attitude of why Fae and Wild Fae’s opinion that theban should be rescinded is a very misguided and malevolent form of“fairness”: the “Arcane Aristocracy” and “MythologicalMonarchy” ruled over “Mere Mortals” for thousands if notmillions of  years, it’s time for them to see what it’s liketo constantly be inferior to them for the next thousands if notmillions of years.

Auradon does have a really big thing for “getting what youdeserve…”

… The Fae just never realized they would be on that same list.

Underestimation of Technology

TheFae may have simply underestimated the power of technology, and werethus caught completely off-guard by the incredible pace with which itadapted, advanced, and Auradon’s people adopted it wholesale.

“Oh,don’t worry, give it a year or a decade at the worst, they’llcome crawling back and begging us to wave our wands when their fancy‘computers’ don’t end up doing what they think they’ll do,”some professional magicians (of the non-entertainment variety) said.

Saidcomputers didn’t—they did MORE than what they though they’d do,advancing at a pace far faster, cheaper, and more convenient ratethan training/hiring a mortal mage or convincing a Fae to help you,and taking out so many other jobs in the process, too.

TheShoemaker Elf community is surviving today only by the grace ofgovernment subsidies, protectionist laws, incentives for patronizingtheir products, and an incredibly well-paid and pamperedmarketing team; if the market was completely Free, they would havebeen starved to death by the sheer speed and cost-effectiveness offactory-made shoes.

Thequality of craftsmanship doesn’t really mean much to the commonman, who just cares about having a pair of shoes that won’t breakthe budget.

NoPopular Support

Thisis a result of all three of the above reasons, in that the time thatthe Fae had finally had enough of all the discrimination, thedisplacement, and the outright obsolescence that had come about withthe Magic Ban and the hyper-focus on technology, they just couldn’tfind any allies to actually make them more than a niche group ofprotesters.

Themasses of Auradon LIKE technology. They don’t want to do anythingto hamper its progress, like sanction people for patronizing the newayGem in the form of much higher prices for consumers. Andfrankly, Magic has lost a LOT of its wonder and appeal to them nowthat there almost always is an app for that.

Asproven by the Sidekick League in The Isle of the Lost (bookseries), Auradonians are either extremely racist or just so ignorantthey’re unaware of the damage they’re causing tonon-human residents of Auradon; the Seven Dwarves, the Undersea Folkof Atlantis (not to be confused with the Formerly-Lost-City ofAtlantis), and even the 101 Dalmatians have all been struggling forall this time as essentially slaves to the ruling class of royals andtheir mortal constituents.

Itdoesn’t really help that Beast’s advice to Ben with all politicalmanners is, again, “Yell and stomp and shout down anyone whodisagrees with you until they bow out.”

Iwould assume that the rest of Auradon is much more polite about it,but still ultimately unhelpful.

They’renot EVIL or malevolent people, mind you!

Theyjust… really don’t know, don’t care to know, and are sopreoccupied with their daily lives, it never really crosses theirmind that there might be a problem.

AsClimate Change deniers have proven, most folks don’t really careabout Big Problems until their houses are completely flooded from thefoundation to the roof.

[rhotdornn]

Red Thorn: Are there any stories or tall tales you really love, either now or when you were young? // Red Dusk: What would your happily-ever-after look like? Your very own Ironworks-style machinery and a lot of explosions, a loving home, or something entirely different?

Red Thorn

“Tall tales I like… Hrm. There is this one tale Mother sung to my twin and I during our pup years back home, right as she tucked us in for slumber. ‘Twas a tale sacred isle, cast off within the depths of the Empty, stolen from sight of any and all who would seek it out. Upon it dwelt a fairer folk, and nobler still was their governing tribe of Wolves. One day, through the silken caress of the mists that dragged around it in a dense swirl, the eyes of a sailor punctured through; and upon its coral reefs they caught hint of a maiden most terrible, yet endowed with elegance, with skin paler than Menphina’s sickle, and eyes most fierce, hallowed and flickering with a brilliance in which Azeyma’s flare paled in comparison. She had noticed him, and in turn had the appeal of a strapping, young Sea Wolf lad stuck with her. For many a moon did they convene under the shroud of secrecy, their paths enigmatic, roads wrung with uncertainty. The end, well… I’m hardly a story teller, but ‘tis a tale as old as time–of higher blood craving the kiss of the outside world, of imprisonment and desire, companionship and dismay. Maybe I’ll finish it one day for you… Or find someone deft at delivering it to proper effect.”

Red Dusk

“M’ happy-ever-after, eh? More like happy-never-after! Settling down? Pfscht, no–none of those even remotely climb to par with havin’ my own shop–not just Ironworks but all varieties of Magitek, and most importantly–the sweet secrets of those tomestones. Now, Mane doesn’t like no talksies ‘bout it here and there, but… Ever since we–and by we, I mean I of course–managed to wrestle control and reverse-engineer the materia supply chain for that blasted Ki-suit, even he’s been left a skeptic, no longer a frantic denier. Allag’s not that bad, really–sure, folk went mad with power, who cares? Shove it in the right hands and you’ve got yourself a lot of… Potential and incentive to create a miracle, and more yet–but you Eorzeans know full well of that, being the playground of the late Empire, neh? Dalamud, that Tower, even legends of that Azys Lla compound… Think of all the possibilities.”

[listentotheland]

On Saturday April 18, Rupert Read and Alastair McIntosh engaged in dialogue about the relationship between Climate Science and Activism. More than 70 people joined in to listen. The video is an example of expansive dialogue wherein complexity thrives and sustains without collapsing into summative and divisive "camps" within the whole of climate campaigning. The result is a model of listening and cooperative exploration that sets a path through transformation. Witness the power of deep consideration engaged by two passionate leaders of cultural shift. This video has been edited for "zoom-bombs" and is otherwise the full content of the conversation. Alastair McIntosh Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues, raised on the Isle of Lewis. A Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology and a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, he holds a BSc from the University of Aberdeen, an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in liberation theology and land reform from the University of Ulster. His books include Hell & High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition on the cultural and spiritual dimensions of climate change, Rekindling Community on the spiritual basis of inter-relationship, and Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power on land reform and environmental protection—the latter described as “world changing” by George Monbiot, “life changing” by the Bishop of Liverpool and “truly mental” by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. For the past 8 years he and his wife, Vérène Nicolas, have lived in Govan, where he is a founding director of the GalGael Trust for the regeneration of people and place. A Quaker, he lectures around the world at institutions including WWF International, the World Council of Churches, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the UK Defence Academy (on nonviolence). His driving passion is to explore the deep roots of what it can mean to become fully human, and use such insights to address the pressing problems of our times. Rupert Read Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner and a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Read is currently a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he has been awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council funding for two projects on "natural capital". His other major recent academic focus has been on the "Precautionary Principle" having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms. In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors. Read's application of the precautionary principle in climate and environmental affairs underlies many of his talks and presentations, notably including "Shed a Light – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?" which was given at Churchill College, Cambridge and has gained success on YouTube with over 100,000 views. In June 2018, Read triggered a BBC policy shift by publicly refusing to debate a climate change denier. This led to new policy that meant the BBC would no longer present climate change deniers' views as a counterbalance to scientific standpoints. In October 2018, Read declared his support for Extinction Rebellion. Acting as Extinction Rebellion's spokesperson, he gave a number of interviews on national news programmes during the Rebellion's London protests in April 2019. Read was part of the five members of the group invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands. The following day the UK Parliament declared a "climate change emergency,"part of Extinction Rebellion's demands. Read commented regularly through the Eastern Daily Press "One World Column" for five years. In his regular appearances in the local and national press, he speaks on sustainable transport, green economics, and social justice. He was formerly chair of the Green House thinktank, a former Green Party spokesperson for transport and former East of England party co-ordinator.

[hillburn42-blog]

The best new self-tanning products | Sali Hughes

Bare-legs weather arrives so abruptly in Britain that one day I can be wondering if 100 denier will be enough to calm the shivers, and the very next have people I barely know telling me I must be boiling in tights (please stop).

All well and good for them, with their naturally golden limbs, year-round tanning regime or “screw it” attitude, but I have neither the genes nor the inclination to be shorts-ready whenever the sun deigns to show its face. My legs are white, dry and not fastidiously shaved (unless I know they’re to appear before anyone but my family), so I seek products to give them an instant, relatively thoughtless makeover.

The best I’ve found in 30 years is (£29.50, 100ml), a gift to anyone who’d like to add instant, realistic, streak-free colour while disguising moderate scars, veins and birthmarks. Its silicone base means it doesn’t rub off on clothing and sheets, or cause my legs to look like melted candles when heavy rain hits. The peerless texture means that one blob on a tanning mitt (buy cheap: they’re all the same) strokes effortlessly on to limbs in seconds. It helps if you’re not freshly basted in thick body cream, which I usually am, but I get around the problem by using (£2.99, 250ml), which rinses off, leaving a light, fake-tan-friendly coating of moisturiser.

If Body Blur is too rich for you (and I hear you, though would add that one tube should last the summer), try to score some scarcely stocked (£7.99, 150ml), which works in the same way and almost as well (the colour and indelibility aren’t quite as good, but I’m pernickety). If wash‑offs don’t appeal, I enthusiastically recommend (£19.95, 30ml) from celebrity tanner (yes, it’s a thing) Jules Von Hep’s excellent new vegan brand, Isle of Paradise. These eliminate everything women hate about self-tanning – the smell, the faff, the orange – by working with the skincare products you use every day. Just mix one to 12 drops into your favourite face or body cream and apply as usual before washing hands. The fewer drops you use, the lighter the tan, so start low and increase. Four drops were just right to tint my milky legs for a solid three days.

This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/jun/16/best-self-tanning-products-sali-hughes

[hunterdavies]

Texas road kill and a warning to all Bunny Isle deniers

[christiane16o-blog]

Aged Boy In Liverpool In Sydney's South west Yahoo7 News

WASHINGTON (Wire service) - COMMANDER IN CHIEF Donald Trump's youngest boy, 11-year-old Barron, are going to join an independent school only outside Washington in the autumn, the White House pointed out on Monday. My mommy went on to be with the Lord only this past Christmas time, simply four days after her 84th special day. When Mommy Guts is trading in the Protestant metropolitan area from Halle, Kattrin http://10beauty-and-health10.info/valgorect-a-place-de-choix-dans-les-postes-des-services-de-remplacement-pour-combattre-letat-de-sante-hallux-valgus-accordees is actually entrusted a laborer household in the country side overnight. Youthful girls typically remain with their mom for 2 years while young guys leave faster, concerning 1 year. Plus you can do it without lots of expenditure as well as without harsh chemicals that could possibly harm you, your family members, your dogs, and Mother Earth! The primary thing you have to perform while showing your young adult to tidy up is setting up the requirements. I dressed up along with an aged jacket my mommy had offered me and I utilized my ipad as the Fatality Note" since I don'; t have one. The mama of the new bride or even bridegroom will definitely intend to select her wedding celebration jewelry as thoroughly as the remainder of the wedding gathering. Due to the fact that white metal commonly includes nickel or even palladium, you'll wish to confirm specifically just what steel was mixed with the gold to generate the white colored metal. I added Plum Wine yet that appears that Butterfly's Child has to do with a connection in between a Japanese female and white colored man so it won't fit in this article. In usual problem, these stem tissues develop either in to red cell, leukocyte or platelets, in to a regulated technique. When she observed an ad for the Heritage Front-- a team of Holocaust deniers as well as white colored nationalists-- she called all of them, claiming she was actually pulled due to the focus on her International heritage. Along with my pay attention to franchising, problems began to bubble up at the Newton store being actually taken care of by my mommy. That had years, as well as a final risk of dumping my other half off back along with her mother just before my wife determined to take on her mother nd tell her to withdraw. Persia White - Starlet, her dad is actually Black Bahamian and also her mom is actually a White American. I will incorporate women must take an excellent examine their partner to be's mama to calculate whether to go on as well as walk up the isle or compete the hills. When I pointed out batteries, my mom said that this will additionally be actually a good idea to grab some brand-new electric batteries at the hardware establishment on the way residence coming from the dental professional. The bride's mother's uncle produces her wear a collection of 21 white as well as red bracelets that have actually been purified in buttermilk. That was actually Roy Horn's 59th birthday party (October 23, 2003) when he was executing on stage with the 7-year-old, 600 extra pound Royal white leopard, Montecore, that the pet cat wounded him. My mama in law will certainly assessment me on everything off cooking food in the kitchen to the best ways to look after my little one and I only take this as helpful criticism, as if my mommy possesses all her life. The black waistband in martial arts signifies experience, while a white colored waistband is actually used through rookies. Do not buy a new puppy from a dog store - again, these will perhaps have been actually separated from their mommy prematurely and also being actually showed in a crate is certainly not the very best begin in lifestyle.

[englishclassgermanlit-blog]

10 Interesting German Fiction Books

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, A.W. Wheen (Translator)

“This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another – if only he can come out of the war alive.’ (goodreads)

2. The Trialby Franz Kafka, Edwin Muir (Translator), Willa Muir (Translator), Max Brod (Afterword)

“Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.” (goodreads)

3. The Readerby Bernhard Schlink, Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)

“Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany. When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.” (Goodreads)

4. Every Man Dies Aloneby Hans Fallada, Michael Hofmann (Translator), Geoff Wilkes (Afterword)

“First published in Germany in 1947, Every Man Dies Alone is a true masterpiece from a bestselling writer who saw his life crumble following his decision not to flee Germany and his refusal to join the Nazi party. The novel presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple’s decision to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, Otto and Anna Quangel launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in. In the end, Every Man Dies Alone is more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order—it’s a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right, and for each other.” (summary.com)

5. Austerlitzby W.G. Sebald, Anthea Bell (Translator)

“In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before...” (Back cover of book)

6. Anne Frank : The Biographyby Melissa Müller, Rita Kimber (Translation), Robert Kimber (Translation)

“The first biography of the girl whose fate has touched the lives of millions. For people all over the world, Anne Frank, the vivacious, intelligent Jewish girl with a crooked smile and huge dark eyes, has become the "human face of the Holocaust." Her diary of twenty-five months in hiding, a precious record of her struggle to keep hope alive through the darkest days of this century, has touched the hearts of millions. Here, after five decades, is the first biography of this remarkable figure. Drawing on exclusive interviews with family and friends, on previously unavailable correspondence, and on documents long kept secret, Melissa Muller creates a nuanced portrait of her famous subject. This is the flesh-and-blood Anne Frank, unsentimentalized and so all the more affecting--Anne Frank restored to history. Muller traces Frank's life from an idyllic childhood in an assimilated family well established in Frankfurt banking circles to her passionate adolescence in German-occupied Amsterdam and her desperate in Bergen Belsen at the age of sixteen. Full of revelations, this richly textured biography casts new light on Anne's relations with her mother, whom she treats harshly in the diary, and solves an enduring mystery: who betrayed the families hiding in the annex just when liberation was at hand? This is an indispensable volume for all those who seek a deeper, richer understanding of Anne Frank and the brutal times in which she lived and died.” (history.com)

7. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germanyby William L. Shirer

“Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.

No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading.” (Goodreads)

8. Outlander (Outlander #1)by Diana Gabaldon

“The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord . . . 1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life . . . and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire . . . and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.” (goodreads)

9. Number the Starsby Lois Lowry

“Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. When the Jews of Denmark are "relocated," Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save Ellen's life.”(Goodreads)

10. Debunking Holocaust Denial Theoriesby James Morcan (Goodreads Author), Lance Morcan (Goodreads Author),Hetty E. Verolme (Foreword)

“DEBUNKING HOLOCAUST DENIAL THEORIES: Two Non-Jews Affirm the Historicity of the Nazi Genocide, by independent researchers and filmmakers James Morcan & Lance Morcan with a foreword by Holocaust survivor Hetty E. Verolme (author of The Children's House of Belsen), aims to end the denial once and for all by tackling the bizarre phenomenon head-on. Written in close consultation with Holocaust survivors and World War Two historians, no stone is left unturned in meticulously verifying the historical facts of the genocide. The Morcans present a wide array of sources including Nazi documentation, eyewitness accounts, scientific reports and shocking photographic evidence to shut down the debate deniers wish to create.” (Goodreads) 

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Indeed, the young are tethered to a slumber land of no ideas or ideals. Shackled to the beasts of debt and endless consumer-rent-mortgage-fee-levy-tax-fine-surcharge-hidden add on Capitalism. They amble to the nearest Starbucks and find the plastic putrid world and shitty coffee essence safe, conformist, the place to snuggle in with Twitter-Snapchat-Instagram-Facebook-Spotify. Add to that the general malaise of wanting nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with hipster joker-a-second crap they have downloading and meandering through their apps, and we have a country of no serious thinking. Tapped into the spine of the controllers, the brain centers micro-processing the emotions of the dictators. Not to say the oldsters in US of A aren’t the same – ambulating in the grand isles of Costco and Walmart, and, yes, juiced up on a triple-shot foamy caramel latte. The faces of red-white-and-blue are the hollowed-out skulls of the zombie culture of wanting-getting-having-buying-discarding-paying it down through the ka-chang of the ever-present ATM. I worked hard as a social worker-case manager-breeder of anarchy with old and young, now the young, kids in care, state custody, plied by the champions of bureaucracy, who have some shekels and grants here and there to help them get way past the eight ball they are behind. Shuffled from foster home to foster home, many intersecting with the juvenile injustice system, and many bouncing from school to school, no foundations, no biological link to a put-together family, whatever that is these days in the land of ballooning debts and general anxiety disorder over the simple disparity of why the gap of accumulation of wealth is getting bigger and bigger. With fewer haves than can be imaginable, and mostly haves not wondering how each and every public service had now been captured by the MBA Gestapo and elite SS forces of financial felonies. That is the anxiety of the rebellious like me. Youth having to make a choice of learning how to weld metal for a living, at the community college, then hunkering down three to a room, or five to a living room. Rents are criminal, and available places for kids coming out of state foster custody are about as rare as a wild living trotting wolf in Wyoming. Kids go from state custody to homelessness . . . or variations on a theme . . . sometimes back to the very mothers or fathers that state bureaucracy yanked them from in the first place for heinous crimes. We play charades with these youth, with their minds, their dreams, their futures, their lives. We de-link ourselves from screaming at the top of our lungs – “The systems are broken, gone, because we let the billionaires and millionaires set policy, hold sway over states, cities, regions, denude all agency for a public commons, public good, public health, public economy and public investment track.” We have tuition debts in the hundreds of thousands per graduate student (AKA mark, sucker born every nano second, PT Barnum, yeah!) after a few years past the undergraduate degree. We have a beleaguered youth who know nothing but the logo-brand game, know nothing but what they might want on top of their triple-decker quadruple-supreme, triple-dipped seven-scoop ice cream Sunday. Conversations are about things, about stupid shows, about video games, about the nothingness, zilch of the inhumane celebrity-actor-musician-athlete culture. And, is it their fault, these Gen Z kids, when we have ball-and-chained their barely burgeoning lives and decades of future absurd toil to the whims of the murderous marketers and money mongers? I have youth who can’t hitch a ride on public transportation because it’s buggered up, runs one bus to the hour, or never makes it out to rural or suburban locales, and then they have to throw down for Lyft or Uber just to make it to their shit jobs where they are cogs . . . . I was just talking to them about how screwed up Uber is . . . “I didn’t even think about getting workers’ compensation,” John said. “Uber wasn’t paying for anything.” John knew what many drivers know: that Uber fights tooth and nail in courts and in front of labor boards from New York to California to classify its drivers as independent contractors, in part to avoid having to pay for workers’ compensation payouts to its more than 300,000 drivers, a workforce comparable to major employers like Home Depot and Target. . . . . or how rotten Google et al are The Highlands Forum doesn’t need to produce consensus recommendations. Its purpose is to provide the Pentagon a shadow social networking mechanism to cement lasting relationships with corporate power, and to identify new talent, that can be used to fine-tune information warfare strategies in absolute secrecy. Total participants in the DoD’s Highlands Forum number over a thousand, although sessions largely consist of small closed workshop style gatherings of maximum 25–30 people, bringing together experts and officials depending on the subject. Delegates have included senior personnel from SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, RAND Corp., Cisco, Human Genome Sciences, eBay, PayPal, IBM, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, the BBC, Disney, General Electric, Enron, among innumerable others; Democrat and Republican members of Congress and the Senate; senior executives from the US energy industry such as Daniel Yergin of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; and key people involved in both sides of presidential campaigns. Other participants have included senior media professionals: David Ignatius, associate editor of the Washington Post and at the time the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune; Thomas Friedman, long-time New York Times columnist; Arnaud de Borchgrave, an editor at Washington Times and United Press International; Steven Levy, a former Newsweek editor, senior writer for Wired and now chief tech editor at Medium; Lawrence Wright, staff writer at the New Yorker; Noah Shachtmann, executive editor at the Daily Beast; Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online; Nik Gowing of the BBC; and John Markoff of the New York Times. … or how felonious Amazon has always been, continues to be, and will forever be a curse to all humanity if we do not just stop using it, and taking the big guy to tax court, like the courts of Inquisition taking youth to court if they fudge on their housing subsidy, or the court of Scarlet Letter for daddies in arrears for child support . . . . Yep, I try and tell the Latte Lads and Lasses that Amazon is the criminal enterprise, maximum security vanguard of all bad things . . . . As Amazon spreads around the world selling everything and squeezing other businesses that use its platform, is Jeff Bezos laughing at humanity? His ultimate objective seems to preside over a mega-trillion dollar global juggernaut that is largely automated, except for that man at the top with the booming laugh who rules over the means by which we consume everything from goods, to media, to groceries. Crushing competitors, history shows, is leads to raising prices by monopolizers. Consumers, workers and retailers alike must be on higher alert and address this growing threat. You have nothing to lose except Bezos’s tightening algorithmic chains. To start the conversation, you can wait for Franklin Foer’s new book out this September, titled World Without a Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. Until then, a good substitute is his 2014 article in The New Republic, ‘Amazon Must be Stopped.’ I tell my youth to look into it, how the billionaires’ club is made up of perverts – hating man and woman kind, hating the poor, the downtrodden, and certainly hating foster youth or recovering adults, and the homeless, and the working poor looking for a decent clinic to set a broken bone from working like slaves for these millionaires and billionaires. Our youth are prime victims of agnotolgy – the deliberate erasing of facts, truths, beliefs, but truly, history. The Jewish Nakba scrubbing. Holocaust deniers in Zion, and the new Zion, the American continent. How Canadians know nothing of their own terrible rape and murder of first nations peoples . . . their support of African despots . . . their terrible homegrown devils of international mining and arms sales . . . . Agnotology, the Two Minutes of Hate, a la Orwell, the fabricated Emmanuel Goldstein. Youth who know nothing of North Korea, of Vietnam, of any of the truths of their own womb . . . truths scrubbed by schools, by the controllers, facilitated by the Media and Publishing, and consumed by overworked, overwrought parents. Youth that hate government but love the big boys and girls running roughshod over our-their own survival: the business class. I find it interesting that Ralph Nader goes on an attack of Just Jeff Bezos (Amazon dot conned) without footnoting his piece that ALL the Fortune 1000 captains (Goose-stepping toward the vaults of shekels) of industry-finance-military-real estate-technology-media-energy are dirtier than the Mafioso, dirtier than any El Chapo, dirtier than any den of pimps and pornographers. Is there a clean, good one on the lists below? And think of the investments, the power these people wield to determine global financial-military-cultural future: Bill Gates: $86.0 billion,  United States, Microsoft Warren Buffett: $75.6 billion, United States, Berkshire Hathaway Jeff Bezos: $72.8 billion, United States, Amazon.com Amancio Ortega: $71.3 billion, Spain, Inditex, Zara Mark Zuckerberg: $56.0 billion, United States, Facebook Carlos Slim: $54.5 billion, Mexico, América Móvil, Grupo Carso Larry Ellison: $52.2 billion, United States, Oracle Corporation Charles Koch: $48.3 billion, United States, Koch Industries David Koch: $48.3 billion,United States, Koch Industries Michael Bloomberg: $47.5 billion, United States, Bloomberg L.P. Or the entire DNA strains of the World’s Richest Families, they any better than Jeff Bezos and Monopoly Amazon? That’s the rub is it not, that the poverty my youth suffer, the poverty I suffer, all these shell games played with our social right: national health care; real social security; public schools and colleges; libraries for the people; banks of the states; water, air, land, food, press/journalism part of the public commons; the right to a roof over your head and a light bulb and plate of slop and a flicker of heat in the dead of winter; the vast collective right of nature to persist, excel, and evolve. This country is set ablaze by the entire Little Eichmann and Big Himmler and Ugly Zionist and Crusader logic of pain and theft. My small charges, 16 to 21, are caught in a web of psychological-physiological-economic-educational-medical-spiritual deception, and they have nothing to turn to than the ebbing and flowing corpuscles created by the generators of multi-syllabic, three dozen hyphenated things they consume, all nano-particled and sliced and diced with the magic of the chemical still. We have kids with ticks, kids with obesity-lethargy-lingering intelligence and cognition. We have children who are the essence of the Stanley Milgram experiment on obedience, except his was an experiment on authority, lab coats and Yale basement authority, whereas today, the Milgram experiment is fluid, directly wired into Facebook-Google-Anything Digital. Today, youth and the old are kettled to consumer and be all they can be based on a giant interstellar Madison Avenue-PsyOps experiment to lobotomize-confuse-disassociate-deny humans in this country. Imagine, no rebellion, no running through the streets, no daily Molotov’s thrown into the limos and onto the doorsteps of the millionaire and billionaire murderers. Milgram examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on “obedience” – that they were just following orders from their superiors. The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question: Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). These finance-foisting, tax-robbing, war-creating, debt-inducing, human/child/ecosystem-sacrificing pigs are given more than a trillion get out of jail cards. They are running things, playing editor like Jeff Bezos, ruining everything like Mr. PayPal – My joke about Thiel’s “Brownshirt Combinator” isn’t as funny now, is it? ‘Transition Adviser Peter Thiel Could Directly Profit From Mass Deportations’: Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition adviser Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses. […] Working closely with a president-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel’s varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans. […] In addition to containing information on family relationships and immigration history, the records FALCON collects can also include photographs of subjects, employment information, educational background, and “geospatial data.” […] Last month, it was reported that Trump and his advisers are drafting plans to launch a campaign of workplace raids across the country to find undocumented immigrants. With a mandate to enforce laws relating to unauthorized employment, HSI has been identified as the primary component within ICE that conducts such job-site raids. This past October, after a lengthy investigation, HSI agents raided several Mexican restaurants in Buffalo, New York, arresting more than a dozen workers, some of whom were charged with criminal counts of “illegal re-entry,” raising an outcry from immigrant advocates. In 2013, after an HSI raid on carwashes in Phoenix, more than two dozen immigrants were reportedly sent to Enforcement and Removal Operations officers for possible deportation. ICE can conduct such raids even in so-called sanctuary cities that have refused to allow local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in finding and removing undocumented immigrants. […] Palantir, which is backed by the CIA’s venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement. While Ralph Nader is huge in so many ways, and I worked for his campaigns and was lambasted by colleagues in journalism, education and the environmental movement, the real rub is how he at his wise age can even stomach ANYTHING the billionaire class says, does, and infers. His Utopian thing, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, was and is off the mark, big-time – In the cozy den of the large but modest house in Omaha where he has lived since he started on his first billion, Warren Buffett watched the horrors of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television in early September 2005. . . . On the fourth day, he beheld in disbelief the paralysis of local, state, and federal authorities unable to commence basic operations of rescue and sustenance, not just in New Orleans, but in towns and villages all along the Gulf Coast. . . He knew exactly what he had to do. . . So begins the vivid fictional account by political activist and bestselling author Ralph Nader that answers the question, “What if?” What if a cadre of super-rich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? What if some of America’s most powerful individuals decided it was time to fix our government and return the power to the people? What if they focused their power on unionizing Wal-Mart? What if a national political party were formed with the sole purpose of advancing clean elections? What if these seventeen superrich individuals decided to galvanize a movement for alternative forms of energy that will effectively clean up the environment? What if together they took on corporate Goliaths and Congress to provide the necessities of life and advance the solutions so long left on the shelf by an avaricious oligarchy? What could happen? America is a country of the dead. As is Israel, and note that not ONE cute-real-serious-well-acted-poorly- acted movie about the perfect Milgram subjects – Israelis – has ever been made, produced, shown on the Media, one clearly hoisted by Zionists – in some of their own words, as Gilad Atzmon lends some weight to this, In his recent address to the ultra-Zionist and war-mongering Stand With Us, Alan Dershowitz said, ‘People say Jews are too powerful, too strong, too rich, we control the media, we’ve too much this, too much that and we often apologetically deny our strength and our power. Don’t do that!’ Elder Zionist Dershowitz who acquired for himself the reputation of a “remarkable liar” (Chomsky) and a “serial plagiarist” (Finkelstein) probably decided, just before he meets his creator, to give truth one last try. In our world, no one can deny that Jews are “too powerful,” “too rich” or that they “control the media.” Yet no one can ignore that Jews themselves are rarely apologetic about their extensive and overblown power. In fact, as with Dershowitz, most Jews tend to boast about the various facets of Jewish domination and, while boasting, use every trick in the book to silence anyone else who points to that power. As I have been arguing for several years, Jewish power is the ability to suppress the discussion on Jewish power. Actually, Dershowitz’ approach here is rather refreshing. He admits that Jews are overwhelmingly powerful yet insists on presenting a rationale as to why Jews should never apologize about this overbearing and abusive power. ‘WE (the Jews, presumably) have earned the right to influence public debate, WE have earned the right to be heard, WE have contributed disproportionately to success of this country.’ One may wonder who is included in that ‘WE’ that has contributed so much to the ‘success’ of America. Is he referring to his client and close friend Jeffrey Epstein who pimped under-aged girls for the elites? Does Dershowitz’ ‘WE’ include Alan Greenspan who led the country to class genocide? Or perhaps his ‘WE’ denotes all those Wall Street Jewish bankers, like the Goldmans, the Sachs and the Soroses – those who, on a daily basis, gamble on the American future and the global economy. And almost certainly, Dershowitz’ ‘WE’ includes Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson who have managed to reduce American politics into merely an internal Zionist affair. These are daunting times, the entire globe sucked of its telephone calls, its computer messages, all the uploads and downloads, every human individual defecation and urination and climax cataloged in these nuclear-powered cloud servers. Battened down, these surveillance hatches. Young people are now the cows, bred to follow the orders of Old Navy and any new shiny merchant of duncery and death; to pay for their cell phones, diligently, to pay-pay-pay for the poisons going into their brains and bellies. They are taught to not question or to not rebel, or to not just sit down and start a ruckus. Daily, the power of corrupted commercialization is like s drug resistant tuberculosis eating at our next and our next generation’s soul. Until there is no resistant antinode or antibiotic to stop the final solution drawn through the elaborate algorithms of controllers – massive forgetting, massive insanity. These demigods — the monopolies — supplying every microgram of humanity’s needs, now that we are sealed in this fate of capitalism – addicted to goods and services unnecessary, and willing to watch all good and common needs vanish with each new libertarian sucking the blood from us all like the vampires and nematodes of the capitalist elites. http://clubof.info/

[listentotheland]

On Saturday April 18, Rupert Read and Alastair McIntosh engaged in dialogue about the relationship between Climate Science and Activism. More than 70 people joined in to listen. The video is an example of expansive dialogue wherein complexity thrives and sustains without collapsing into summative and divisive "camps" within the whole of climate campaigning. The result is a model of listening and cooperative exploration that sets a path through transformation. Witness the power of deep consideration engaged by two passionate leaders of cultural shift. The video is in Gallery View and has been edited for "zoombombs." Alastair McIntosh Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues, raised on the Isle of Lewis. A Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology and a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, he holds a BSc from the University of Aberdeen, an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in liberation theology and land reform from the University of Ulster. His books include Hell & High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition on the cultural and spiritual dimensions of climate change, Rekindling Community on the spiritual basis of inter-relationship, and Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power on land reform and environmental protection—the latter described as “world changing” by George Monbiot, “life changing” by the Bishop of Liverpool and “truly mental” by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. For the past 8 years he and his wife, Vérène Nicolas, have lived in Govan, where he is a founding director of the GalGael Trust for the regeneration of people and place. A Quaker, he lectures around the world at institutions including WWF International, the World Council of Churches, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the UK Defence Academy (on nonviolence). His driving passion is to explore the deep roots of what it can mean to become fully human, and use such insights to address the pressing problems of our times. Rupert Read Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner and a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Read is currently a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he has been awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council funding for two projects on "natural capital". His other major recent academic focus has been on the "Precautionary Principle" having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms. In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors. Read's application of the precautionary principle in climate and environmental affairs underlies many of his talks and presentations, notably including "Shed a Light – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?" which was given at Churchill College, Cambridge and has gained success on YouTube with over 100,000 views. In June 2018, Read triggered a BBC policy shift by publicly refusing to debate a climate change denier. This led to new policy that meant the BBC would no longer present climate change deniers' views as a counterbalance to scientific standpoints. In October 2018, Read declared his support for Extinction Rebellion. Acting as Extinction Rebellion's spokesperson, he gave a number of interviews on national news programmes during the Rebellion's London protests in April 2019. Read was part of the five members of the group invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands. The following day the UK Parliament declared a "climate change emergency,"part of Extinction Rebellion's demands. Read commented regularly through the Eastern Daily Press "One World Column" for five years. In his regular appearances in the local and national press, he speaks on sustainable transport, green economics, and social justice. He was formerly chair of the Green House thinktank, a former Green Party spokesperson for transport and former East of England party co-ordinator.

[listentotheland]

On Saturday April 18, Rupert Read and Alastair engaged in dialogue about the relationship between Climate Science and Activism. More than 70 people joined in to listen. The video is an example of expansive dialogue wherein complexity thrives and sustains without collapsing into summative and divisive "camps" within the whole of climate campaigning. The result is a model of a model of listening and cooperative exploration that sets a path through transformation. Witness the power of deep consideration engaged by two passionate leaders of cultural shift. Alastair McIntosh Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues, raised on the Isle of Lewis. A Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology and a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, he holds a BSc from the University of Aberdeen, an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in liberation theology and land reform from the University of Ulster. His books include Hell & High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition on the cultural and spiritual dimensions of climate change, Rekindling Community on the spiritual basis of inter-relationship, and Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power on land reform and environmental protection—the latter described as “world changing” by George Monbiot, “life changing” by the Bishop of Liverpool and “truly mental” by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. For the past 8 years he and his wife, Vérène Nicolas, have lived in Govan, where he is a founding director of the GalGael Trust for the regeneration of people and place. A Quaker, he lectures around the world at institutions including WWF International, the World Council of Churches, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the UK Defence Academy (on nonviolence). His driving passion is to explore the deep roots of what it can mean to become fully human, and use such insights to address the pressing problems of our times. Rupert Read Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner and a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Read is currently a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he has been awarded – as Principal Investigator – Arts and Humanities Research Council funding for two projects on "natural capital". His other major recent academic focus has been on the "Precautionary Principle" having contributed substantially to work co-authored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb on applying the principle to questions of genetic modification of organisms. In further work, Read has theorised the utility of the precautionary principle in a wide range of areas, including: climate change, the environment, as well as financial and technology sectors. Read's application of the precautionary principle in climate and environmental affairs underlies many of his talks and presentations, notably including "Shed a Light – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?" which was given at Churchill College, Cambridge and has gained success on YouTube with over 100,000 views. In June 2018, Read triggered a BBC policy shift by publicly refusing to debate a climate change denier. This led to new policy that meant the BBC would no longer present climate change deniers' views as a counterbalance to scientific standpoints. In October 2018, Read declared his support for Extinction Rebellion. Acting as Extinction Rebellion's spokesperson, he gave a number of interviews on national news programmes during the Rebellion's London protests in April 2019. Read was part of the five members of the group invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands. The following day the UK Parliament declared a "climate change emergency,"part of Extinction Rebellion's demands. Read commented regularly through the Eastern Daily Press "One World Column" for five years. In his regular appearances in the local and national press, he speaks on sustainable transport, green economics, and social justice. He was formerly chair of the Green House thinktank, a former Green Party spokesperson for transport and former East of England party co-ordinator.