#kidnapping people who oppose the Dictatorship

[tomlinsonhazz]

💛💙❤️🇻🇪 FREE VENEZUELA !!! 🇻🇪💛💙❤️

Please sign this petition to help my country end

Dictator Maduro's regime 📢🆘

💛💙❤️🇻🇪 Edmundo won by DEMOCRACY!! 🇻🇪💛💙❤️

THE PEOPLE of Venezuela need Maduro OUT! 🚨

[milarepas]

Maduro saying he will build two maximum security prisons, to make them “reeducation, farming and work centers”

He's going to build concentration camps for people who oppose him. THEY ARE GOING TO KEEP KIDNAPING PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE HIM AND JUST SEND THEN THERE TO RE-EDUCATE THEM this is insane.

Chavistas are targeting people who were in the pacific protests, they are marking house by house all the people who participated or who think differently. How can people who are outside of Venezuela see this and do nothing, IT'S LITERALLY HITLER IN PERSON, HE'S MARKING HOUSES AND TAKING CHILDREN TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

A 13 year old girl was arrested for committing "terrorism" crimes A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

Don't fall for the lies of non-Venezuelans trying to explain to you what's happening here, this is not about ideologies, IT'S A DICTATORSHIP THAT NEEDS TO LEAVE NOW.

Our real elected president is EDMUNDO GONZÁLEZ.

[itstokkii]

I've been considering making this post for a while but hesitated since I don't wanna beat a dead horse.

I'd like you to look at this post looking back at the Andijan massacre. What started as people protesting issues like distribution of gas, electricity, and other human needs and rights ended in a bloodbath. A cousin of mine told me schools taught it as "the national guard protecting civilians from Islamist terrorists."

I'd also like you to look at this paper by the Human Rights Watch on the torture and persecution of Uzbek Muslims like me during Islam Karimov's 20 years of dictatorial rule. Even Uzbek Muslims outside of Uzbekistan weren't safe. Multiple family friends of mine were randomly tackled to the ground and arrested by Korean Police on accounts of "domestic terrorism" in Uzbekistan, and some were only released about 5 years ago.

You weren't allowed to wear hijabs(even in Islamic universities), openly pray, read the Quran, or do anything religious. Someone would always be there watching to report you.

I wasn't allowed to go outside by myself around my neighborhood due to Uzbek government agents kidnapping the children of Uzbek diaspora abroad. I wasn't allowed to wear a hijab until after we went to Uzbekistan 2 years after Karimov's regime ended, and we made sure it was safe there and back. I wasn't even allowed to visit the country to see my relatives for almost a decade because of the crackdown on Uzbek Muslims.

When Uzbekistan was colonized by Russia as the Uzbek SSR and even before then as Turkestan, Russia made sure to stamp out religion entirely. They killed off scholars and poets like Cholpon, who wrote about Uzbek self-determination and praised religious texts. Uzbekistan's first leadership since its independence carried on with this policy, with Russian colonial values ingrained into them.

As for Korea, our partition was opposed by the whole peninsula. When Jejuans protested the US-UN backed elections, it ended in 10% of Jeju's population being killed by joint US-Korean forces. Though the South Korean Government apologized for the first time recently, the US stays silent. What a surprise. The bodies of these Jejuans were buried in mass pits and had the Jeju Airport built on top of it.

The US still fails to apologize for the No Gun Ri Massacre, in which the US Army murdered about 300 Korean villagers despite knowing they were civilians and therefore not targets. The US also indiscriminately bombed North Korea with more bombs than they had in the Pacific Theater in World War 2, martyring almost 2 million Koreans.

After the Korean War followed almost 30 years of dictatorship by Syngman Rhee, then a military junta, then Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. During this time, university students protesting the dictatorial rule established by the US were arrested as "anti communists," and be tortured repeatedly, sometimes even until death.

Though the Seodaemun Prison is known for being Japan's colonial prison where they arrested independence activists, the Korean dictatorships used it to arrest people in favor of democracy.

The Namyeong-Dong Anti-Communist Investigation Office was a similar prison, in which one of the floors had extremely thin, narrow windows to avoid prisoners from escaping. Park Jong Cheol, a Seoul National University student who was protesting against Korea's military dictatorship at the time, was incarcerated here and routinely tortured. He eventually died due to water torture.

The Gwangju Massacre was a protest held by many activists against Chun Doo Hwan's dictatorial rule, which came about as he staged a coup and successfully overthrew the previous government. As they called for democracy, Chun Doo Hwan brought the national army, who fired upon, killed, and raped the protesters. Chun Doo Hwan was never held responsible for his crimes before he died, and his grandson recently apologized to the victims and their loved ones. It was found that the US approved Chun Doo Hwan's plans to use armed forces on the protesters in Gwangju.

Though the Gwangju Massacre is taught about in Korea, much of the US involvement and responsibility of the horrors of the dictatorship is left out.

The US does not allow Korea to produce its own nuclear arsenal, allowing Korea to rely entirely on the US for nuclear support. Additionally, the existing presence of the USFK in Korea and their joint training sessions with the ROK army further provokes North Korea and therefore gives the US a "justification" to maintain its military presence in Korea.

Growing up I was taught where to look for nearby nuclear shelters. We visited the War Memorial of Korea multiple times, and air raid sirens are rare but are happening more often recently.

This, along with the added danger of living as Uzbek diaspora outside of Uzbekistan as Muslims.

So when I say "please respectfully depict Russia and the US when it comes to the Cold War in a way that does not center them entirely" and "please keep the gravity of their actions in mind as you write them; Hetalia does not exist in an apolitical vacuum,"

and I am met with "mature adults" telling me that "they're just characters," or

"i'm the one ruining the fandom," or

"block and move on," or

"i love russia and america cold war!!!" or

"you're crazy" or

"moralf*g" or

"someone's sensitive"

and especially from russian artists who call me an "American SJW." russians calling me an uzbek overly sensitive for asking that they portray their country a little more respectfully to the victims of their colonialism. yeah that's completely normal

you are normalizing centering discussions about the Cold War to the imperial core, and then having nothing of substance to say about and being absolutely insensitive towards someone who's life has been and still are dictated by these imperial forces, and even harrassing them.

where's the "block and move on" mentality you prided yourselves for?

this fandom hasn't changed since the 2010s. it's just more quiet in the way it marginalizes victims of colonialism.

oh, and that person who told me to "block and move on, sister!!!" when it comes to me explaining myself as an uzbek-korean muslim?

you're not one to talk. 네가 뭘아는데 ㅅㅂ새끼야

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“CIVIL WAR'S RUMBLE HEARD FROM SUPPRESSED GERMANY,” Toronto Star. March 1, 1933. Page 1 & 2. ---- Distortion of Facts Injurious to Country Equal to Treason ---- IRON HEEL RULES --- Berlin. March 1 - Civil war threatened Germany to-day following abrogation of civil rights throughout the nation by an emergency decree under which Chancellor Adolf Hitler attained his dream of an iron Nazi rule. 

To cope with the civil war threat, 40,000 special railway guards were ordered to hold themselves in readiness for immediate mobilization to-day. 

Meanwhile Nazi storm troopers and steel helmets co-operated with regular police in hundreds of cities. In carrying out wholesale raids on Communist headquarters, clubs and gathering places. 

Thousands of Communists were arrested even without the formality of court warrants. 

President Von Hindenburg to-day issued an emergency decree imposing the death penalty for all cases of "betrayal of the German people or high treason."

The decree specifically regards the disclosure of military secrets, or the distortion of facts which would injure the country. treason, as evidence of Government officials anxiously admitted the immediate outlook for the Reich was fraught with perils. 

Whether Germany plunges into civil war, they said, depends upon the obedience to the decree of states outside Prussia, many of which are unfriendly to the Hitler regime. 

Possibility these states may oppose the decree was seen by government authorities, who predicted the following argument, in effect, would be used: 

"If the federal government abolishes the fundamental rights of the republic's constitution by emergency decree, the several states are not bound to obey the orders of the government. 

"On the contrary, they will be obliged to maintain the constitutional rights of the several states." 

It was admitted the government was especially apprehensive of the attitude Bavaria may take, since a tendency is apparently growing to establish a kingdom there under the House of Wittelsbach. 

It is expected the government will confer with the Bavarian premier later to-day.

Semi-Military Rule While the storm troops of the now dominant Nazi party clamped down. a semi-military regime on Berlin, and auxiliary police proceeded to "mop up" every resort known to be a rendezvous for enemies of the government, the Hitler government prepared to issue a blasting statement demonstrating the extent of the alleged Communist plot which began with Monday's attempt to destroy the Reichstag building by fire. 

Hermann Wilhelm Goering. Hitler's alde and minister of the interior for Prussia, promised to Issue a report on incriminating documents, which the government sald were found in Lieaknecht House, headquarters of the Communists, outlining revolutionary plans. 

The documents, it was announced, revealed a plot to kill Germany's leading statesmen. to poison promi nent Berlin citizens, and to kidnap women and children in order to create "a reign of terror among the bourgeoisie. 

An order from the Comintern, Russian organization dealing with the spread of Communism abroad, will be published, it was said. to show that the Communist leaders in Berlin were threatened with "recall to Moscow and death" if they failed to overthrow the present regime. 

More than 5,000 special police were ordered on extra duty during the crisis.

Picked Nazi Troops Of this number, 2.000 are picked storm troops from the Nazi faction, chosen for their devotion to Hitler.

An additional army of 3,500 storm troops was held at headquarters in police barracks, for instant duty in the event of rioting. 

The Reichstag fire of Monday and Its repercussion has produced situation only comparable to a state of war. Under the orders of the president, demanded by Hitler's government, every semblance of liberty of expression has been can- celled, and only a final presidential decree of complete martial law would be required to make the government officially a dictatorship. 

Paper Defies Hitler An indication that the emergency decrees will meet opposition outside Prussia was seen in the fact that the Socialist newspaper Volkszeitung of Dresden definitely appeared on the streets and the assertion of a government spokesman that the Socialist press was banned forever. 

Copies of the paper were received by Berlin subscribers of the banned and padlocked Socialist news organ Verwaerts. 

Switching its attack from Communist and Socialist to Liberal news- papers, the government also suppressed the Democratic newspaper Achtubrblatt indefinitely. 

An official announcement, meanwhile, stated at least seven incendiaries were involved in the Reichstag fire. 

Communist Deputy Torgler, now under arrest, it was said, left the building 45 minutes after the blaze was discovered. 

A ten-year prison sentence is provided for "distorting and communicating to any foreign power any facts the concealment of which is demanded by the nation's interests." 

False News, Ten Years The circulating of false news regarding government secrets entails a ten-year sentence. 

Writers of articles inciting workers to strike on any vitally important public works, or to engage in a general strike, will be punished by Imprisonment for a maximum term of three years. 

Police announced raids on various offices of Communist and Socialist organizations, and private homes, had yielded more than a million treasonable documents, as well as arms. gas masks and bombs. 

Thirty-nine Communist leaders were arrested in Thuringia.

At Hamburg. the free city's government decided to confiscate all Communist leaflets and posters, and ban all Communist newspapers. Police patrols were strengthened and the entire force kept in readiness for emergencies. Sixty Communists were arrested in raids in several suburbs of Hamburg, including Altona and Harburg. 

Struggle For Life Leftist and Centrist parties of Germany now enter the fast stages of a struggle for existence, with their newspapers silenced and their assemblies and communications shut off by the strictest measures of repression since the war.

While the Hitler government Insists next Sunday's election of new national and Prussian state parliaments are to be held as scheduled, the chief of the government's Information bureau indicated the balloting will be meaningless.

“Parliamentary and democratic times are over for Germany," declared Walter Funk, head of the government press department. One assistants declared all the Communist votes cast Sunday will be thrown out. The Communists polled nearly 6,000,000 votes in the fast election, increasing their Reichstag representation from 14.6 per cent, to 16.9 per cent. and they were even stronger in the Diet.

Meanwhile there were no signs to give credence to wild rumors that the week-end would bring a terrible fate to the foes of Chancellor Hitler. These rumors, circulating in Euro- pean capitals, appeared based on the recent orders sasued by Minister Goering to Prussian police a nationalistic groups such as the Nazi storm troops and steel helmet war veterans and to ruthlessly suppress others. 

Two Killed at Worms Worms, Germany, March 1 - Two persons were shot and killed here today in the first flare-up of violence following the emergency decree restricting public freedom.

[infiniteglitterfall]

First: Shame on both your heads for posting this on October 7 and tagging it that way.

As October 7 unfolded one year ago, I watched along with the rest of the world, devastated, as the terrorist cult that had brutally ruled my home for 17 years unleashed its savagery on Israel. Hamas claimed the atrocities of October 7 were part of their "resistance" against Israeli occupation and aggression. One year later, I hope it is clear for all to see that Hamas's attack was not an act of resistance but one of a nihilistic terrorism.

Shame on you for acting like Hamas torturing, mutilating, and burning its way across 21 towns was an act of resistance that should be commemorated by sharing Vintage Propaganda.

Since the start of the current war between Israel and Hamas, Hamas has committed countless atrocities against its own people in Gaza. This was true even before the war. Yet somehow, despite the fact that Hamas has effectively kidnapped the Gaza strip and all its inhabitants and routinely terrorizes them, these crimes are never reported by Arabic media or western media, nor by global human rights organizations, all of which tend to portray Hamas as a legitimate resistance group who are trying to "liberate" the Palestinians.

Shame on you and the entire rest of the movement for silencing and ignoring Gazan activists instead of centering and platforming them.

And fuck you for supporting the far-right fascist theocratic dictatorship that has held Gaza under intensely cruel control for 17 years.

I was held under arrest for 21 days [by Hamas] and subjected to various types of torture. I was beaten with batons and sprayed with cold water in the late winter night hours.

...After we were released, most of those who participated in the demonstrations emigrated away from Gaza. There was no hope for any change in the current situation. We suffered ongoing harassment by Hamas members. Some died trying to leave, like Tamer Al-Sultan, a pharmacist whose crime was asking for a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

Second: Edward Said may have been born in Palestine, but his Columbia University ass was a quintessentially American ivory tower academic.

He once called campus security because a Vietnam War protest interrupted the class he'd paid so much to take.

His gift to academia was giving it permission to copy-paste American racial dynamics onto a COMPLETELY different part of the world.

Clueless Westerners look at this shit and go, "Yes! This tallies with my understanding that Jews are privileged white people and Muslims are oppressed!"

We don't learn about 1,300 years of MENA colonization by a series of Islamic empires in school. Much less that the power dynamic there today is one where Iran tries to build its own empire by using terrorist groups as its own armies, brutally oppressing Syrians, Yemeni, Baha'is, Jews, Hindus, Christians, and the "wrong" kinds of Muslims. We just assume everywhere else works the way the United States does.

Everything he says in this clip is completely counterfactual, superficial disinformation.

Let's see how many lies there are in the above clip alone.

"Israel was constructed on the ruins of another society" - you do know that the Jews, Arabs, and Bedouins who became Israeli citizens were part of that society, right? Perhaps this dude is why so many people seem to think Jews invaded Palestine in 1948.

"Another people who remain unacknowledged" - the only ones who are unacknowledged are the ones who remained in Israel. Seriously, who on this earth does not know about Palestinians?

"as just sort of obscure natives in the background" - Anyone who reads history books with actual, genuine citations, as opposed to Ilan Pappé, knows that this is not the case. Not only are they an obvious and integral part of history. But in his context of "oh we'll just kick out the Palestinians?" Did he never hear about every surrounding country invading en masse in 1948? Does he somehow think that the UN's plan had been for Israel to declare independence and war in the same day?

"Back to the desert - let them go to one of the other Arab countries" - bruhhhh. 350,000 middle- and upper-class Arabs left before the war even started, because al-Husseini's volunteer armies were trying to take as much land as they could. I could write paragraphs about all the towns that weren't Kicked Out By The Jews, and the towns that attacked first because militias or Arab armies had taken them, etc.

"The British left us a road system, an electrical system, municipal buildings, etc etc etc, and we could build Israel" - If the leadership of Arab Palestine had accepted the UN's 1947 vote to give it a state, it would have had all of that too! The entire purpose of everything that Britain built, and everything that Jews and Arabs built under Britain, going all the way back to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, was that BOTH COMMUNITIES WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SELF-DETERMINATION!!

"If we had done X and Y to create Palestine, Israel wouldn't exist" - see above. He is paraphrasing an unnamed source who, if his paraphrase is even accurate, was talking out of their ass.

It is not the Palestinians' fault that they had horrific fascist leadership, led by a literal Nazi war criminal, which would accept none of that so long as it involved Jews being there. But it also isn't Israel's fault.

"Israel bears no responsibility for pushing people out" - Israel has been clear since day 1 that it would be happy to negotiate returning any refugees' property or compensating refugees somehow, as the Arab League has demanded -- just exactly as soon as the Arab League, equally, negotiates the same for the 850,000 Jewish refugees that every Muslim-majority country, from Morocco to Afghanistan, began ethnic cleansing before Israel even declared independence.

Also... If the Oslo Accords say that Israel isn't liable for that, it means Palestine signed the Oslo Accords with that in there. This is Western paternalism: the same Western paternalism that runs through the entire movement. Westerners, including Edward Said, consistently deny Palestine and Palestinians any sort of agency at all.

"Gaza is the most criminal place on earth - because of Israel!" First of all, rude. Way to shit on Gaza. But also: Then why is he saying Gaza, and not Palestine? Why is Gaza the most criminal place on earth, and not the much larger West Bank? Could it perhaps be because the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, the only country that gave Palestinian refugees citizenship and human rights? And Gaza was occupied by Egypt, which kept them under harsh military rule... and the military was full of Muslim Brotherhood members who actively spread resentment and disinformation to encourage terrorism? No? The people of Gaza are inherently violent? And that's not an incredibly demeaning and dehumanizing characterization? Because he's taking away their own agency, and crediting it instead to Israel??

"Jews have been so oppressed but you can't keep oppressing people" - As everyone does, he's erasing the 20%+ of the population of Israel that's Arab, Druze, Bedouin, Circassian, etc.

"Just because you yourself were a victim once." I can see why this resonates with Westerners, who rarely know anything about antisemitism or Jewish history beyond "Holocaust bad." But seriously, once?? The Holocaust itself sits neatly between hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered in Russian/European pogroms on one side, and the ENTIRE Middle East and North Africa massacring and yeeting the Jews on the other.

"There has to be a limit!" Bro. Nobody is arguing that "the Jews" get to oppress people for unlimited years Because Holocaust. That reveals an incredibly disturbing void of knowledge about the actual dynamics and political events between the two countries. It's also a pretty weird and biased concept of Jews in the first place.

Lastly, fucking stop with the shitty slogans. When a movement makes it this obvious that you consider the entire thing to be "Occupied Palestine" - as do both your blogs - you can no longer hide behind, "we're not saying we want Hamas to massacre the Jews it couldn't get to a year ago!"

1998, Edward Said.

"Israel was constructed on the ruins of another society."

via conflictechoes on insta

[amirblogerov]

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: Dictatorship of Terror and Information Warfare

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), one of the largest and most influential terrorist organizations in Syria, has long been known for its brutality and destructive policies. In the Idlib De-Escalation Zone (IDZ), where HTS has established its control, it continues to threaten the safety and lives of both civilians and its opponents.

HTS members commit atrocities and crimes against both Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islam extremists and civilians in the IIDZ. Their methods include murder, torture, kidnapping, and illegal arrests. However, HTS does not limit itself to violence, but also wages an information war, seeking to denigrate its opponents and present itself as the saviors of the population.

HTS spreads false information about its opponents, trying to present them as more brutal and dangerous than itself. Their propaganda is aimed at driving a wedge between the population and the opposition groups, making people afraid and submitting to their authority.

However, their crimes and disinformation are becoming more and more blatant and transparent. More and more people understand that HTS are not saviors, but terrorists who seek to establish their brutal regime and destroy all who oppose them.

It is important to spread the truth about HTS's crimes and expose their lies. Only in this way can we prevent their horrors and help the population of the IJD find freedom and security.

[daenerystargaryensgirlfriend]

The thing that I hate the most when talking about politics is that some people will see you condemning fascism and Benito Mussolini and they'll immediately call you a communist.

And by communist they don't mean Marx's idea which has as ultimate goal the socialization of the means of production achieavable, in his obinion, by a fight between the capitalists and the proletariat (that is the social class whose only wealth is their labor power).

Instead they mean Stalin's government in Russia that treated its opposers with force, through massacres and deportations to labor camps and that led to the death of millions of people.

In the political arena, Stalin established a dictatorship based on his party being the sole holder of power.

Any disagreement was repressed, leading to the 'Great Purges,' during which many citizens, from the highest to the lowest classes, were killed, tortured or deported. Additionally, a great deal of ideological propaganda was disseminated to criminalize any dissent.

Doesn't that sound familiar? let's see:

Repressing opposers with force? checked

see alt for more info (there are many others of course but these three people are the ones that i remember the most)

Deporting people? checked

sorry the links are in italian

The Italian political deportees, taken from Italy to the concentration camps of the Third Reich for their opposition to the Nazi-Fascist regime between September 8, 1943, and April 25, 1945, totaled at least 23,826 people (22,204 men and 1,514 women). 10,129 of them died, amounting to 45%. source

A few of them are:

Renzo Ildebrando Bocchi (died at 31)

Franco Cetrelli (died at 14)

Cecilia Deganutti (died at 31)

Giovanni Palatucci (died at 36)

One party led by a dictator that is the sole holder of power? checked

Fascism definition:

An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), and the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.

Massacres? checked

These are the ones that made more victims and in total in these three places 1939 people lost their lives.

Marzabotto massacre,

Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre

Ardeatine massacre

Lippa di Elsame massacre

...

In the end,

when those people condemn communism, they actually condemn yet another dictatorship government that hid itself behind the communist movement, by using force to make people agree with its ideology and live by its ideas. The only difference is that Mussolini created and led the fascist manifesto and it followed its values, while Stalin and the other "communist" dictators just used that ideology to rule with terror.

The fascist ideology is fascism, but the communist ideology is NOT stalinism.

You can like or not like the communist ideology, but to compare fascism with communism means that either you have no idea what communism stands for or you're a hidden fascist that still thinks that Mussolini did anything good in its life.

The italian (I speak for my country because i know about my costitution) clearly bans and forbid fascism and any dictatorships in our constitution and it doesn't mention communism because it. is. not. a. dictatorship.

We italians had a lot of good politicians that were from the Italian Communist Party, but that was when politics where actually done by capable people, before Berlusconi (aka the man accused of: bribery, corruption of police officers, judges and politicians, defamation, embezzlement, extortion, false accounting, mafia, money laundering, perjury, tax fraud and underage prostitution... among the others) went to the government and before we sent people like Salvini (aka the man who was accused of kidnapping migrants by not making them docking to the Sicily port when they were authorized by the state, a racist, homophobic and transphobic man) or Vannacci (aka this... thing below)

or Meloni (who's not trying to let pro-lifers in abortion clinics, who said in an interview that Mussolini was not that bad, who's against gay marriage ect) or La Russa (who has a fucking little statue of Mussolini in his goddamn living room and whose son is a raper but he continues to defend him) to represent us.

I do agree, Mussolini did something good in its life: dying🤗

E a tutti i fascisti su Twitter o Tiktok o... ovunque che difendono Mussolini auguro una serata dimmerda.

[garudabluffs]

March 17, 2023The International Criminal Court today issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Putin’s commissioner for children’s rights, for war crimes: kidnapping Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia.

March 17, 2023 Heather Cox Richardson

23 hr ago The international assessment that Putin and one of his top officials have personally engaged in war crimes drives another wedge between Putin and the rest of the Russian people as over time his inability to interact successfully with the rest of the world will have growing consequences for the people at home..."

"Right-wing figures frustrated by the secular values of democracy—religious freedom, companies that respond to markets without interference by the state, academic freedom, public schools, free speech, equality before the law—want to restore what they consider human virtue by using the state to enforce their values." =fascism

"When Trump said, as he did yesterday, that “the greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia,” he was echoing this ideology to mobilize his followers (even though his concerns are probably less to do with civilization than with his legal issues). His call for firing “deep staters” and reconstituting “the State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest” is an explicit call to radicalize our government."

"Meanwhile, CNN’s John Miller, as well as journalists from many other outlets, reports that sources in law enforcement are telling them that “senior staff members from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the New York State Court Officers—who provide security at the state Supreme Court building in lower Manhattan—and the New York Police Department” have been meeting all week to prepare for a possible indictment of the former president, as early as next week."

READ MORE https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-17-2023/comments

522 Comments

"The Iraqi author Sinan Antoon told me this in 2021: “No matter what — and I say this as someone who was opposed to Saddam’s regime since childhood and wrote his first novel about life under dictatorship — had the regime remained in power, tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive today, and children in Fallujah would not be born with congenital defects every day.”

'What does this have to do with Ukraine? For months, U.S. and European officials have cast the conflict in Ukraine in stark moral terms. If Putin can succeed with a war of aggression across his borders, the argument has gone, then a dark agenda of territorial conquest and might making right wins out. President Biden has framed the contest as a clash between “all democracies” and Putin’s authoritarian project. Last November, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described the collective efforts of Ukraine’s Western allies as a reflection of “how much countries around the world value and respect the rules-based international order.”

'The legacy of Iraq undermines this rhetoric. For many people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the global South, the U.S. invasion is the most glaring recent episode in a long history of Western meddling and U.S. hypocrisy on the world stage. For officials in China and Russia, de facto adversaries of the United States, the Iraq War is an easy precedent to put forward to shoot down Washington’s talking points, no matter how self-serving and cynical that may be.'

“U.S. officials frequently invoke [the rules-based order] when criticizing or making demands of China,” noted Paul Pillar, a veteran former U.S. intelligence officer. “In no way can the offensive war against Iraq be seen as consistent with respect for a rules-based international order, or else the rules involved are strange rules.” (Sorry that gifted link is not available)."

[sylviagirlie]

Argentina has seen many dictatorships, coups d'etat placed by the USA to de-stabilize the region and be able to control the resources here present, within other reasons.

On March 24th, 1976, the final and most cruel, most ruthless, most inhumane coup was done: the process of national reorganization.

Part of the Plan Cóndor, behind which was the United States of America together with the Military School of the Americas, the Junta organized a coup to Maria Isabel de Perón, or Isabelita, amidst a context of "red threat" within the country, with the guerrillas opposing the repressive, oppressive, already vicious and far-right measures of the government.

With the excuse of the "communist threat", 30,000 people were kidnapped, tortured, killed, thrown off planes into the ocean, buried in mass graves, r*ped, electrocuted. Newborns and babies born in the clandestine centers were kidnapped and given the the families of high-standing military men, robbed of their identities to this day.

The dictatorship, led by a Junta Militar, was not only military, it was the media (the newspaper Clarín, for example), it was the owners of big companies (Amanda, for example, a sugar company), it was the bureocratic apparatus of the State, it was the Church, stealing the children and re-homing them to other people, and refusing to give out information. The dictatorship of '76 was a civil-military dictatorship, we cannot limit it to only the armed forces, because it wasn't. Civilians were defending it, while the horrors were unrevealed to the world at first, veiled in whispers under a "they must've done something". Some, many, helped the ones chased.

As for the ones that were quite literally hunted down by the dictatorship: no, they weren't all "commies" and "lefties". They were high school and university students, some of them were just friends of friends, some just happened to be out past curfew, some just happened to be in a "subversive reunion" (that could be anything that was more than three people together), some just had a "forbidden book" and became suspects, so they were eliminated.

And for the "commies" and "subversives", so what? They were communists. They were tortured, they were burned alive, they were killed, they are still missing. Most of the bodies are still unfound.

Their mothers and grandmothers are still looking for them. Madres and Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo are still looking for their missing kids and grandchildren.

Today, it's been 46 years since the coup that lasted seven, took thirty thousand lives, robbed children of their identities and their backgrounds, and still didn't manage to destroy the urge and will to fight for better material conditions, because all of us who believe in a better society, and believe in remembrance, and believe in homage, are still saying TREINTA MIL COMPAÑEROS DETENIDOS-DESAPARECIDOS, PRESENTES.

AHORA Y SIEMPRE.

Thirty thousand detained-missing companions, present.

Now and forever.

[snowberry-pie]

Hey uhhh you are filipino? May I ask what happened with uhhh the presidency?

yes im filipino!! (ASEAN represent 💪🏽) and basically we had our elections a few days ago, and Bongbong Marcos—the son and supporter of Ferdinand Marcos, a former PH president who 1. ran a dictatorship 2. enforced martial law and kidnapped and tortured those who opposed him 3. embezzled so much money from Filipinos that we’re still in debt to this day and 4. literally had to be ousted with a revolt—WON by a possibly-rigged landslide.

and if that wasn’t bad enough his VP Sara Duterte is the daughter of our current president and is a supporter of his war-on-drugs that got millions killed.

People are mad about this for obvious reasons, but IMO the worst part is how many of the older Pinoys, who WERE LITERALLY THERE during the Marcos regime, fell for BBM’s social media propaganda campaign and were like “hmm yes this is such a good idea” it’s so bad

[qqueenofhades]

Hi there, I really liked what you had to say about the upcoming election. I was wondering if you have published any articles recently in regards to that? I know you said you were a historian.

Aha, thank you so much, this is very flattering. Alas (?), the book that I have just published is about the crusades, as I am a medieval historian by training. However, one of my main research interests is the role of the “imagined medieval” in modern culture, I have written a book chapter about the role of the crusades in post-9/11 political and cultural rhetoric, and I am developing a research project that examines the current crisis of public history through a medievalist perspective. That, however, is still in draft stages.

That said, I absolutely DO have a mini reading list for you (and a lecture to go with it, because as noted, I am an academic and this is how we function!) The topic of today’s class is “Why Accelerationist Ideology Is And Always Has Been Horrifically Racist and Genocidal Throughout History, and White Americans Only Like It Because They Don’t Live In Countries Where It Was Done (By America).” Not very snappy, but there you have it.

The reading list, to start off, is:

The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia by Michael Sells

These are all hefty books (though the Maddow and Sells books are shorter) but they’re accessible and written for the layperson, and we always have time to educate ourselves. Why are they relevant to the 2020 election, you might ask?

First: the Cold War book lays out in great, GREAT detail the consequences of a global world order absolutely gripped by a competing standoff of ideologies (American capitalism vs. Soviet socialism) and how these two forces gulped up the politics of the rest of the world, destroyed numerous satellite states, and tried to rebuild them from the ashes into new ideological utopias -- precisely what a lot of people are suggesting now with the ridiculous “just burn everything down and it will magically fix itself!” theory that is somehow presented as the Moral Alternative to voting for Biden/Harris. You know what this caused during the Cold War? Yep. Human suffering on a massive scale, and absolutely zero utopian perfect states, whether capitalist or socialist. It also makes the extremely salient point that in the 1930s, German leftists and liberal democrats were infighting among themselves as to who was Less Morally Pure, and couldn’t agree on a candidate or a moral imperative to oppose the other guy, and figured that their flawed liberal idealists were “just as bad” as said other guy. Was that guy’s name Adolf Hitler? Why yes. Yes it was. Is there a lesson here for us? Who can say. Seems hard to figure.

Leaving aside the tragedy and pointlessness of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, both fought as proxy battlefields between Americans and Soviets, let’s consider the Great Leap Forward, in China (1958-1962) under Chairman Mao Zhedong. The idea was to dismantle traditionalist Confucian Chinese society and rebuild it as a modern socialist state, which was the goal of a lot of twentieth-century old-school socialist/Marxist “people’s republics.” Mao took this exact “burn conservative society down and rebuild it according to Enlightened Leftist Principles” approach and it was... a disaster. A total and epic disaster that caused both short and long-term suffering to the Chinese people and, wouldn’t you know it, did not result in a utopian Chinese state. This is also the reason you cannot say anything complimentary about Fidel Castro, especially if you want to win Florida, no matter how “good” you think his socialist principles were in the abstract, because: Cubans and Cuban-Americans fuggin’ hated the guy. You know why? Because he also destroyed their lives.

Obviously, there is a ton of distance between old-school Communism in the 20th century and 21st-century modern democratic socialism such as that run in Norway (and the Scandinavian countries in general), no matter if your racist uncle on Facebook insists on conflating the two and howling about the Red Menace like it’s still 1962. But the point is that radical leftist accelerationist theory hasn’t changed from 1962 (or frankly, from Karl Marx) either. It still figures that by some miraculous principle, the entrenched systems and ideologies will either just disappear or be “torn down,” the Peasants will Rise Up and Overthrow the Aristocracy, and something something socialist utopia. Except that was tried multiple times in the 20th century and it always failed. More than that, even if it was supposedly “leftist,” it inflicted just as much suffering on its own people as fascist right-wing dictatorships. Americans have always been infused with the triumphalist confidence that they “won” the Cold War because socialism was bad, and it was the inherent flaws in socialism as a world order that doomed it to defeat, unlike rah-rah Red White and Blue American Capitalism. So capitalism, ignoring its own fatal flaws, went hog-wild in the 80s and 90s, establishing Reaganite deregulation as the core and unimpeachable tenet of the market, and we’re all living in the increasing wreckage of that economic system now. Obviously the right wing uses “socialism” as a bugaboo to scare us that Things Could Be Worse, but I haven’t seen the faintest trace of historical context or awareness from the particularly deluded breed of hard leftists who still cling onto the magical theory that a Perfect People’s Uprising Will Fix Everything.

On that note, let’s move to Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine lays out in similar excruciating detail how the U.S. systematically destroyed the economic systems of countries particularly in Asia and Latin America (and the entire shameful history of Uncle Sam in Latin America should be required reading for EVERYONE) and sold them a bill of goods about “free market economics” in the Keynesian model. Guess what resulted from this attempt to destroy entrenched societies overnight and rebuild them in the name of Ideology? If you guessed “massive human suffering and ongoing generational devastation and dysfunction” you’d be right again! This was accompanied with constant political interference from the CIA and the State Department to support right-wing dictators and military takeovers in a way that have left the politics and institutions of Central America in permanently broken disarray, because it turns out it’s a lot easier to keep exploiting those brown people in governmental systems that don’t allow dissent or democracy, no matter the exalted principles you like to preach about Freedom and Liberty. The U.S. likes to act as if the Central American refugee crisis is this unwarranted invasion of these dirty immigrants, as if it didn’t play a DIRECT AND LONG LASTING EFFECT in destroying the infrastructure of these countries to the point where they’ve become incapable of functioning as healthy democracies. If you think “banana republic” is the name of an upscale clothing store, I beg you, research the history of that term.

This hasn’t even gotten to the absolutely horrible history of Africa’s treatment at the hands of white Europeans (see the Kendi book for obvious anti-racism education and also how those racist ideas are directly built into the ideological infrastructure of America). Somehow white leftists, while professing to be allies of Black Lives Matter and proclaiming themselves Woke, have managed to overlook this, and I don’t know how??? (Answer: it’s racism Jan.) First it was the transatlantic slave trade and the large-scale kidnapping, sale, and chattel bondage of generations of people. Then it was 19th-century colonialism and imperialism, where Europe thought it could “civilize” the “Dark Continent” and rebuild it to an “enlightened standard.” This was not a right-wing project; this was solidly mainstream and it was enthusiastically advocated by many liberals and intellectuals who busily composed an entire academic and “scientific” literature to support it. Did the European wholescale destruction of traditional societies in an attempt to build a Perfect Ideological Utopia result in... massive human suffering, by any chance? Leopold II of Belgium might have something to say about that. Then when an overstretched Europe was finally forced out of its overseas colonies in the aftermath of World War II, guess what resulted? Did African society spring from the ashes and remake itself in a perfect image? Nope! It became subject to decades-long civil wars and bloody military dictators because its infrastructure had been so crippled (very deliberately so) by its departing colonialist overlords that it likewise had no sustainable model for development. It turns out when you break things out of the idea that they’ll magically fix themselves, they just stay broken and they get worse. Now we once more have the West acting like Africa is a hotbed of Primitives while ignoring its own role in destroying it (and the situation in the Middle East, but that’s a whole OTHER can of worms! So many cans! So many!)

The Peter Frankopan book is an excellent exploration into the flourishing medieval trade networks across the East, the function of the Silk Road in bringing culture and commodities across the known world, and how Europe’s intervention and eventual ascendancy was marked by profound violence, the destruction of these networks, and the outright pillage of non-white people and riches. Which we know, but... read it. Europe and its heir (America) started the crusades, colonialism, imperialism, two world wars, and other conflicts that always contained a virulent aspect of spreading Ideology and getting people to Believe The Right Thing. These cumulative conflicts have devastated the planet repeatedly and we are still feeling their effects right up to this minute. They were all connected to Establishing Supreme Ideology and Supreme Whiteness (and Supreme Christianity). I’m detecting a pattern. The Rachel Maddow book explores how from the 1980s onward, America went absolutely hog-wild with the military/military ideology as a central way to solve its problems, which was tied to the Cold War, capitalism, and extreme individualism. All of which are tied to our current mess today.

Obviously, the most extreme examples of putting ideology above people result in outright holocausts, which is why you should read the Michael Sells book about Bosnia. Everyone knows about the WWII Holocaust of the Jews (and we have already seen how that is busily being denied along with the return of anti-Semitism, which never goes away), but the Bosnian holocaust was happening while most of us were alive. The West deliberately ignored it, because it was framed as the “last crusade” against Muslims in Europe and they needed to be removed in order to create a Pure Christian Europe; hence the Bosniaks were apparently an acceptable sacrifice in achieving this. I have some words on my tongue, I think they start with “massive human suffering,” and how that is constantly what results when an existing society, no matter how flawed, is attacked by ideological zealots who see huge amounts of death as an acceptable price to pay for their brave new world, as long as it’s not theirs (and sometimes even when it is). In fact, the accelerationist theory of social change is so profoundly racial and genocidal (and is indeed being used in exactly that way by the neo-Nazis and white paramilitary elements today) that it’s even more shocking to see supposedly progressive and moral people advocating so enthusiastically for it. It is a white supremacist Nazi wet dream of an ideology in which all the “flawed” people just vanish (spoiler alert, they don’t vanish, they are brutally murdered or allowed to die from deliberate and arrogant negligence) and the Aryans cavort in paradise. Just replacing that with some socialist jargon buzzwords doesn’t change the underlying framework.

And this is STILL NOT GETTING to America’s own history, and you know, the fact that this continent was occupied when white settlers arrived, declared it “terra nulla” or “empty land,” and set about slaughtering the existing advanced civilizations and their people in the name of! You guessed it! SUPERIOR IDEOLOGY! Funnily enough, destroying the Native Americans “for their own good” didn’t result in utopia for them. It resulted in.... yeah, I think we get it by now, but just in case, one more time: MASSIVE HUMAN SUFFERING.

Tl;dr: The accelerationist theory of social change (just destroy everything and it will magically rebuild according to our preferred ideology) is a racist and genocidal fantasy of orgiastic destruction that has caused untold damage throughout history. White Americans whether on the right or left are fond of it, because they have never lived in a country where this has been repeatedly and horribly done to them (often by America itself) and which has cost uncountable Black, brown, Muslim, Jewish, Latin American, Native American, etc lives. The deliberate or deliberately negligent destruction of society does not lead to regeneration. It leads to long-term and unfixable damage, and the people who profit the most from deliberate disaster are the capitalist corporate overlords that the left professes to hate. This country is a racist garbage fire and nobody denies that it needs to change or die, but buying into this theory about how you should just stand back and let it burn/obstruct efforts to work within the system and mitigate the damage IS BULLSHIT and RESULTS IN MASSIVE HUMAN SUFFERING AND DEATH. Which, so far as I know, wasn’t supposed to be a progressive value, but hey, I could be mistaken.

Learn some history. Wear a mask.

Don’t be a whiny pissbaby that makes the rest of us die.

Vote Joe Biden and Kamala Harris 2020.

[chiefavenueglitter]

Updated FAQ about Belarus

Captions under the cut

Is Belarus a democracy? No. Belarus has been under the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. There are no free and fair elections, and the state has been sanctioned for human rights violations by the United States and European Union. Minorities, journalists, and those who oppose the regime are persecuted. What is happening now? On August 9th, 2020, Belarus held blatantly fraudulent presidential elections. A combination of police brutality, government negligence regarding COVID, and the ousting of a pro-democracy candidate has brought Belarus to a boiling point. Belarusians have held daily protests since the election, despite state violence and thousands of arrests. Opposition and strike leaders have been threatened, kidnapped, and forced to leave the country. What are the goals of the protests? Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has stated that she has two goals: to release all political prisoners, and hold new, democratic elections. Unofficial polling data shows Tikhanovskaya won the election by a landslide, but the state has reported that she only recieved 8% of the vote. Protestors are demanding an end to state violence and for legitimate election results to be honored. Has anyone been hurt? Unfortunately, yes. Riot police and special forces have been using unprecedented levels of violence against protestors. As of today at least three protestors have died due to state violence. Countless others have been injured, including a large number of journalists. The UN has recognized hundreds of cases of torture at the hands of the police, with many protestors held for days in deplorable conditions. Police have also arrested, beaten, and injured minors and students. What has been the international response? Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Lukashenko on his victory. Putin has also obliquely offered military assistance to Lukashenko, but whether or not he will intervene is unclear. The EU has imposed sanctions and restrictions on Belarus’ officials. What can I do to help? Dictatorship thrives in the dark—bring as much attention to what is happening as possible. The protests have been sustained since early August, and we must keep pressure on Lukashenko by not letting Belarus be forgotten. We must magnify the voices of the Belarusian people as loudly as we can.

[loadsofplaces]

Somalia

General Information Somalia is the Eastern African country that occupies the area around the Horn of Africa. The region has been involved in international trade for centuries, possibly millenia (as the “Land of Punt” mentioned in Ancient Egyptian records was most likely located there). Starting from the 10th century at the latest, Arab and Persian traders were present at the coast and spread Islam. During the medieval period, several Islamic sultanates ruled in the region. After Britain occupied Aden in Yemen in 1839, European colonial powers also started getting interested in the lands over at the other side of the Gulf of Aden. In the late 19th and early 20th century today’s Somalia was mainly divided into Italian and British Somaliland (while French Somaliland would become today’s Djibouti), with Egypt and Ethiopia also involved in the power struggles around the Horn of Africa. In 1960 Italian and British Somaliland united as the Somali Republic. Independent Somalia has been struggling with a variety of complex geopolitical issues such as the aftermaths of colonialism, the Cold War, struggles with neighbouring countries (especially Ethiopia) around Pan-Somalism, famine, Islamic terrorism etc., and Civil War has been ongoing since the early 1990s. Over 85% of inhabitants are ethnic Somalis, who are clan-based Muslims, three fifths of them nomadic. Minorities include Bantus and Arabs. Official languages are Somali and Arabic, the capital is Mogadishu.

Somali Poetry Somali culture is famous for its poetry, so that Somalia is sometimes called “A Nation of Poets”. Though written language has been rarely used before the 1970s, many older poems were passed down orally, and this tradition is very important in Somali culture. Somali poetry follows certain rules of scansion, alliteration and pacing, and social etiquette expects it to not be used to disrespect (especially women, the disabled, elderly, and children). During the 20th century especially, poetry also gained a lot of political importance. Somalia’s most famous poet is probably Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the leader of the Dervish movement in the early 20th century, whose art was a means of resistance to British colonialism. In the 1940s, when foreign powers were surveilling the Somali independence movement, romantic verses prevailed, but they often contained political messages hidden to these foreign censors. During the dictatorship of Barre from 1970 to 1991, the government used poetry to consolidate power and mobilize people.

Legal system Somalia's legal system is a mix of civil, Sharia, and customary law. Based on the hierarchy of laws in Somalia, after the Sharia, the constitution is the country's supreme law. Consequently, rules that are not compliant with the principles of Sharia cannot be approved. As stipulated in the constitution, Somalia is an Islamic state which makes Islam the main religion and the propagation of other religions is prohibited.

Crimes in Somalia There is a risk of terrorism in Somalia, notably by the al-Shabaab, which opposed the current Federal Government. Terrorism may occur anytime through kidnapping, suicide bombings, and armed assaults. State and civilians are seen as legitimate targets, and even foreigners working in Somalia have received some threats. Crimes in Somalia are high due to poverty and lots of clashes between armed militias and clans. Corruption is also one of the main issues in Somalia. Bribery is widespread in almost all sectors, particularly in the legal system. Illegal activities are often tolerated in return for bribes. Somalia continues to be seen as a high-risk country because of the security situation and economic inequality and is currently ranked as the world's most fragile state. 

Economy Somalia is classified by the United Nations as the least developed country in the world. It is hard to estimate how much an average Somalian earns (according to the African Development Bank, Somalia is "characterized by a severe lack of basic economic and social statistics"), but it is around $350 dollars a year. Despite the low HDI index which is equal to 0.351 as of 2017, we can notice a couple of things rather known from highly developed countries such as presence of Stock exchange.  Typing www.sse.so into the browser we can be directed to the elegant Somalia Stock Exchange website.

One of the highest fertility rates in the world The fertility rate is the average number of children born by one woman while being of child-bearing age. Somalia until the beginning of the XXI century had one of the largest fertility rates in the world. Statistics are now dropping and currently are at the level of 6.07 births per woman. It is considered very high since most of the developed countries are permanently below 2.00. 

Source: https://allafrica.com/stories/200101080500.html https://www.sse.so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Stock_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Somalia https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/414612709416125325/ https://www.britannica.com/place/Somalia https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/somalia https://www.mnopedia.org/thing/somali-poetry-minnesota

[47-shades-of-hitman]

In Your Likeness | Chapter 5 - A sliver of humanity

“Hey, you down for a run?”

Agent 47 looked up from the folder Diana had given him and saw you standing on the threshold, hands on your hips. Your hair had been tightly tucked behind your ears and instead of your usual Assassin’s attire, you now wore a somewhat more casual fit.

“Why not.” he said, standing up and putting away the documents.

You hummed and plopped down on one of the available chairs.

“Well then, I’ll wait here for a bit until you’re ready to go.”

He frowned. “Wait for what?”

“For you to put on your training gear, or something more breathable.” you said.

After a moment of silence you turned to him.

“You aren’t going to tell me that your plan was to… To run in that suit?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, a lot actually.” you explained, “People will stare. Besides, it’s very hot outside.”

“I function just right in this no matter the heat.”

You arose from your seat and crossed your arms, opposing him. “It looks ridiculous. A man sprinting in a suit like that through ancient Jerusalem. Tell you what, we’ll take an alternative route instead.”

Agent 47 wasn’t sure what you meant – “Alternative route?”

Instead of answering, you turned on your heel and left the room, the hitman soon following. He easily caught up to you and in silence, you left the Brotherhood’s quarters.

Despite the scorching heat, you broke out into a slight jog to warm up.

“Do you do parkour?” you quizzed upon approaching a wall.

“Excuse me?”

You flung yourself onto it, grabbing ridges and bricks that were sticking out, climbing up with practised ease. In about six seconds, you stood on top of a two-story building, peering over the edge to see what was taking him so long.

“I’m not sure if I…”

You pointed at the drainpipe on the side of the wall, shrugging. “Just use that. You’ll learn.”

47 climbed up and dusted down his slacks right after. “Heavily reliant on scaling buildings, aren’t you?”

You chuckled dryly. 

“The Assassins have been doing that since the beginning of the Brotherhood. If anything, it’s one of our most important skills. It’s a fantastic way to go from A to B unseen, and way quicker at that. I don’t carry them on me at this moment, but on one of my bracers I do have a grappling hook which I can use to my advantage.”

Walking over the flat rooftops, you hopped from one house to the other, staying out of sight from balconies and cameras.

“The beginning of the Brotherhood,” Agent 47 repeated. “How far back does it date? Golden Age? Middle Ages?”

A laugh fell from your lips and you jumped down a ledge before propelling yourself up a higher wall, gripping the edge. After hoisting yourself up, you turned back to help 47 out, but he managed just fine on his own.

“No, 47. The Brotherhood of Assassin originates in ancient Egypt.”

“Egypt?”

“In the time of Cleopatra. The Hidden Ones were the first ones, but no one knows who they really were. Eventually, it grew out into a Brotherhood for people carrying out assassinations and protecting our employers. Long story short: through the ages, we spread all over the world. Greece, Italy, America, France, England… You name it.”

47 let out a sound of surprise, since he had never known that it dated so far back.

“Our cause was to fight for peace above all things. Protect the people who needed us to do so. Working in the dark to serve the light. Our motto –  nothing is true, everything is permitted .”

You halted and looked out over the Wailing Wall, folding your hands on your back. Taking in the sight of Jews gathering to pray brought a sense of serenity.

“We fight for peace in freedom. And in that, we differ from our enemies, the Templars, or their more public name nowadays, Abstergo Industries . Once founded in the early thousands, set on claiming back the Holy Land under a veil of Catholicism, but under the surface, a whole lot less to do with whatever peace the church preaches. The Order of the Knights Templar once believed that peace could only be gained through oppression of lesser people and dictatorship.”

You shuddered even though the weather was far from cold – thoroughly appalled by the idea of them.

“And eventually, it became an institute of rich men seeking to become more wealthy and powerful. And then came the Pieces of Eden. Of course they already existed, but the more modern war about them, I mean.”

For a moment, you looked over at 47 to see if he was still listening. His eyes were as blue as the sky and made your heart skip a beat. Every time you saw that colour you remembered that they were the bluest shade you had ever seen.

Deciding to proceed walking, you stepped away, 47 in tow.

“I promise I won’t bore you for any longer.” you said, “If I’m talking too much, just say the word.”

“Well,” 47 began, “I was the one who asked you to teach me about the Brotherhood of Assassins, did I not?”

Your lips quirked upward and you exhaled. “I suppose. Tell me about you first, it would only be fair.”

“If you insist.” he said, “At the moment, I work for the ICA. It’s an organization handling contracts given by clients. I’m their hitman for particularly difficult jobs.”

“Like seeking out a secret organization created by both of our enemies.”

“Correct. As you know, I’m genetically made to be the best assassin one can create, with a very low failure rate.”

You hopped down a few roofs and reached a lower wall, where you jumped off, landing on the cobble street. Your conversation hadn’t made you able to do some parkouring through the town, anyway.

“Since you told your story quite quickly, I shall make mine short, too. I killed Ort-Meyer, who created me through his experiments, wanted to leave the world of killing by living with a priest, but eventually, he got kidnapped and I was pulled back into the trade. After all, I barely know how to do anything else.”

A large grin spread over your face as you two walked down the street, pushing past a few tourists in the process. “A priest? Never expected you of all people to take interest in such things.”

“I tended to the garden.” 47 explained, unsure why he was telling you this – after all, he barely knew you and whatever he was telling could be used against him, for he couldn’t be seen as weak.

But your eyes were kind and glimmered in amusement as you looked at him.

“Look at you, the one purely created to take lives, tends and cares for it.”

47’s gut twisted in confusion at the lack of humour in your voice. Where he had expected you to mock him for it, you were inexplicably accepting. “I suppose.” he mused.

“And here we are.” you added. “This way.”

You guided him outside of the ancient city and went uphill for a while, the Mount of Olives at your right hand.

“The Pieces of Eden, then.” 47 reminded you.

“Oh, yes.” you breathed, “The Pieces of Eden grant the holder great power over others. The Templars want those artefacts for themselves, so the Creed countered by making it their duty to do all to prevent that. And if we know where those artefacts are, we can keep an eye on them, take them to hide them away and most importantly, avoid conflict.”

“Avoid conflict? That clashes with our current mission.”

“Well, if it  can  be avoided. We’re not afraid to fight for it. Peace through freedom, I mean. Sometimes force is needed, and so it shall be done.” you concluded, shrugging a little.

“And you, what is your story?” 47 quizzed as the pair of you halted on top of the Mount of Olives. You were slightly out of breath because of the heat, holding your hand above your brow to shield yourself from the sunlight. The golden Dome of the Rock stood shining brightly.

“I’m (Y/n) (L/n), thirty-five years old, Master Assassin of Jerusalem’s Brotherhood. Nothing that you don’t know of.”

Agent 47 huffed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Why the interest?” you softly quizzed. “It’s not that it matters.”

“You said you wanted to become acquainted.”

You smirked, folding your hands on your back, closing your eyes to enjoy the light of the sun on your cheeks.

“I was born into the Brotherhood, like my father and his father’s father. Needless to say, we have a long history in the Creed. Not the most prominent or anything, but quite famous. My father’s side of the family consisted of ruthless Assassins, living for their trade. My father fell in love with a young female Assassin and married her – my mother. They had my brother, Joseph, and me. All was well and my parents were loved by the Brotherhood, but one day, my father died while on duty.”

Your voice faltered upon ending your sentence, and you looked at your boots for a moment, exhaling deeply. “I never really got to know the man who he was behind the blade. He trained us, and everything I know, I know from him. In hindsight, he was more a mentor than a father. I respect him greatly, but I never felt like I was his daughter. I suppose it’s a bit strange… Well, not for you. In theory, you killed the man who put you onto this Earth.”

Agent 47 hummed, breathing in the scorching air.

“And your mother?”

“She’s in Thailand, in a retirement home set up by Assassins. There she can live her final days in peace, try to forget about the passing of her husband and her son, but with her later stage of Alzheimer’s, I’m not sure where her emotions are at the moment.”

Gesturing to the side, you told Agent 47 to head down the street.

“What happened to Joseph?”

You halted in your tracks, a few tourists that had been walking behind you nearly bumping into you, muttering something angry in what you recognized to be Spanish –  Perdona , you murmured, shaking your head before resuming your walk, albeit at a quicker pace now.

“I don’t like to talk about it.” you said, “Maybe another time. I’ve already told a lot about myself. Enough for now. We should get to actually working out, now.”

Breaking out into a jog, you started running down the street, passing by tourists every now and then.

“Do you often run?” 47’s voice was unusually steady given that you were dashing forward at quite a pace.

“As often as I can. Keeps me fit.”

He hummed in agreement. “Can’t argue with that.”

You went running through a few streets before speaking again – “Mind if I spice this up a bit?”

Before 47 could respond, however, you were already scaling a high wall on your left, pushing yourself up with practised ease. He spotted a drainpipe and sighed in acceptance, soon following you up the roof.

When he finally vaulted onto it, he saw that you were already a few buildings away, leaping from one with so much as the bat of an eye.

“Are you seeing this?” he asked, then realizing that Diana couldn’t hear him – after all, he wasn’t on a mission and thus he didn’t carry his trackers – and he knew that pursuing you wouldn’t bring him anywhere. Another thing he recognized was that he lacked an important skill he hadn’t realised he didn’t have, until now. You leapt further and further away, gracefully so, as if you were dancing.

Where he mostly blended into the crowd, hiding in plain sight, you were away in the blink of an eye, gone with the wind.

You looked over your shoulder, seeing him just stand on the roof where you had left him. He was watching you with an odd posture, as if he wasn’t sure what to make of your antics.

Smirking, you shook your head, resuming your trip back to the headquarters. Bouncing to the edge, you peered down the side of the roof to see if it was all still clear, and upon seeing that the bushes were still soft and plump enough to fall upon, you spread your arms, diving off.

Agent 47 felt his stomach churn in shock, his breath hitching as he watched you jump. As if snapped out of a trance, he darted to the end as quickly as he could, immediately figuring out the importance of scaling and parkour in the speed at which he was currently going.

He came to a halt at the edge and leaned over it to find you standing with your arms crossed, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I thought you…”

“Hm…” you replied. “Come on, let’s get back to the headquarters.”

47 slid down a drainpipe and walked up to you.

“That was… Impressive.” 47 stated as you resumed your trip back to the base.

“Thank you.” you mused, “That dive was a  Leap of Faith. Took a long time to master.”

“I can imagine.”

You turned your face away, smiling in amusement.

Even though it was tiny, a bond was starting to form.

These months were going to become interesting, you figured.

[teansouprmyjam]

Aaaaah I don’t know why but today I’m really angry bcs people from first world countries don’t know how different their reality is to people from third world countries. They reaaaaally don’t understand.

They take so many things for granted and somehow don’t realize how fucked up their own countries are. Like... you have to pay to be educated? to get emergency treatment? I’m just.... it’s so so weird.

But that’s not what upsets me, not really. It’s education.

It’s just that... for example I just rbd a post about a teacher who taught their class critical thinking. That’s great. That’s awesome. But there’s something that really upset me about it.

Now I’ve realized it is the fact that they don’t know how important it is. And how different it is to say that something like that is important in a third world country.

Here we are taught critical thinking and analysis as the most basic thing because we were literally forbidden from it just some years ago.

From a country that has undergone so many dictatorships, it angers me so much to see their realities? And it’s horrible bcs I’m not entirely sure why. Like... I haven’t even lived through the dictatorships but I studied them time and time again, my mother went through them, she almost got kidnapped, my father was almost sent to war.

Idk I’m just angry that people don’t know that, and it’s not just my country, this happened to basically the entirety of Latin America: people were forbidden from critical thinking and if you did oppose the government, appeared to be slightly different than the ideal citizen, read the wrong books, listented to wrong songs, did art or just happened to look “shady” or talk to people who looked “shady” you either got fired, beaten, killed or kidnapped and tortured. And this wasn’t so long ago, this happened in the 80s. And I think what really makes me upset is that it was mostly education that was affected by dictatorships, especially the last one. Entire programs were changed to make the perfect citizens and to make sure they wouldn’t ever dare to think differently. And it was mostly students and teachers who got kidnapped. To even think about La Noche de los Lapices or La Noche de los Bastones Largos, it makes me so angry.

And you’re lucky I’m not even mentioning that other countries were INVOLVED in allowing these dictatorships in Latin America. 

It is so silly bcs here I am ranting about stuff that everyone knows in Latin America. I shouldn’t be so angry but to see first world people and how different their reality is to ours and how they know things are different but they don’t know just HOW MUCH they are different. It angers me.

Like some of y’all really never had to protest for anything in your life and it shows. Every student I know has been part of a protest.

[theculturedmarxist]

The fascist insurrection in Washington DC—which resulted in the storming of the US Congress, the panicked dispersal of terrified senators and members of the House, the delay of the official validation of Joseph Biden’s Electoral College majority, and even the occupation of the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—is a turning point in the political history of the United States.

The hoary glorifications of the invincibility and timelessness of American democracy have been totally exposed and discredited as a hollow political myth. The popular phrase “It Can’t Happen Here,” taken from the title of Sinclair Lewis’ justly famous fictional account of the rise of American fascism, has been decisively overtaken by events. Not only can a fascist coup happen here. It has happened here, on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.

Moreover, even if the initial effort has fallen short of its goal, it will happen again.

What occurred yesterday was the outcome of a carefully planned conspiracy. It was instigated by Donald Trump, who has been working with a gang of fascist conspirators strategically positioned within the White House and other powerful institutions, departments and agencies of the state. Wednesday’s operation carries with it the overwhelming stench of the Trump sons, close aides like Stephen Miller, and numerous others working behind the scenes within the military, the National Guard and the police.

The conspiracy utilized the well-known techniques of modern coups. The plotters identified the meeting of the Congress to ratify Biden’s Electoral College majority as the propitious time for action. The assault was prepared by weeks of lying claims by Trump and his minions that the 2020 election had been stolen. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rendered critical service by withholding Republican recognition of Biden’s election for weeks, thus providing time and legitimacy to Trump’s efforts to discredit the election with totally fraudulent claims of ballot fraud.

A majority of Republican congressmen and a substantial number of Republican senators orchestrated Wednesday’s political debate at which the legitimacy of the Electoral College vote was challenged, to provide the necessary pretext for the planned right-wing uprising. The final signal for the storming of the Capitol building was given by Trump himself, who delivered an insurrectionary harangue to his supporters, who—one can be certain—were directed by elements with police, military and paramilitary training.

It has already been widely noted that the fascist gangs encountered virtually no resistance as they stormed the Capitol. In the most critical and vulnerable areas of the Capitol building, the police were hardly to be seen. To politically evaluate the police response on Wednesday, one has only to recall the violence deployed last June against a peaceful anti-police brutality demonstration in Lafayette Park.

Had a left-wing protest been called in Washington to protest Trump’s efforts to overthrow the results of the election, the demonstrators—as everyone knows—would have been met with a massive show of force by the police and National Guard. There would have been police sharpshooters placed strategically on every building in the vicinity of the protesters. Military helicopters and drones would have been circling overhead. The slightest unauthorized movement by the crowd, however peaceful, would have been met with demands for its immediate dispersal, followed within minutes by the launching of barrages of tear gas cannisters. Hundreds, if not thousands, would have been kettled and arrested.

The response of the Democratic Party to the coup has been a pathetic display of political spinelessness. The first hours of the insurrection passed without a single prominent Democratic leader issuing a clear denunciation of the conspiracy, nor did any prominent Democrats call for popular resistance to the coup. Former President Obama and the Clintons, who are followed by millions on Twitter, remained silent throughout the day.

As for the president-elect, Biden waited hours before finally appearing before the public. After describing the attack on the Capitol as sedition, Biden made this extraordinary appeal to the leader of the conspiracy: “I call on President Trump to go on national television now, to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”

Normally, when confronted with an attempt to overthrow the constitutional regime, the political leader threatened by the conspiracy must immediately seek to deprive the traitors of all access to the mass media and a nationwide audience. But Biden, instead, called on Trump to appear on national television—to call off the insurrection he himself had organized!

Biden concluded his remarks with the following clarion call. “So, President Trump, step up.” This bankrupt appeal to the would-be fascist dictator will go down in history as Biden’s “Hitler, do the right thing” speech.

The Democrats, let alone the media, have no intention of exposing the full depth of the conspiracy and holding its plotters and organizers responsible. The effort to cover up the crime has already begun, with the media bloviating on the need for Democrats and Republicans “to come together in bipartisan unity.”

The decision of the House and the Senate, in the evening hours, to uphold Biden’s election is not the end of the crisis.

Appeals for “unity” with the conspirators clear the path for the next effort to carry out a fascist coup d’état. This is the lesson of the invasion of the state Capitol last April by armed fascist thugs in Lansing, Michigan and the subsequent conspiracy in the autumn of 2020 to kidnap and assassinate the Democratic governor of the state, Gretchen Whitmer. The Democratic Party and media quickly suppressed coverage of these crimes and hardly defended Whitmer against the attack. The plotters, thus far, have received little more than a slap on the wrist.

The Democrats’ response to the fascist conspiracy is not dictated merely by cowardice or stupidity. Rather, as representatives of the financial-corporate oligarchy, they are frightened that the exposure of the criminal conspiracy and its political aims would ignite a mass response within the working class that would spiral into a movement against the capitalist state and the interests it serves.

The effort to conceal the conspiracy must be opposed. Workers must take up the demand for the immediate removal and arrest of Trump. He cannot be allowed to remain in office, utilizing the immense power of the presidency to continue his plotting. His retention of the White House represents a massive threat to the people of the United States and the world. Trump still has the power to declare a national emergency and even launch a war. His finger remains on the nuclear trigger.

Nor should his co-conspirators be left in office. The Republican senators and congressmen involved in the conspiracy must be likewise removed from the Senate and Congress, arrested, placed on trial and sent to prison.

The continuing reference by the Democrats to their “Republican colleagues” is itself a mockery of democracy.

The demand must be raised for a public investigation with open hearings, aimed at identifying all those involved in the conspiracy, leading to their arrest and imprisonment.

Absolutely no confidence should be placed in the in-coming Biden administration—assuming that his inauguration is not blocked by a further uprising—to hold the conspirators to account and defend democracy.

It must never be forgotten that Biden and the Democrats represent nothing more than another political faction of the same ruling class. As Obama declared immediately after Trump’s election, the conflict between the Democrats and Republicans is nothing more than an “intramural scrimmage,” i.e., a friendly fight between members of the same team. In a statement issued Wednesday evening, Obama singled out Republicans for praise, writing obsequiously: “I’ve been heartened to see many members of the president’s party speak up forcefully today.” The only purpose of such a statement is to conceal the truth about the extent of the fascist coup.

The events of January 6, 2021 must be taken as a warning. The working class must elaborate a political strategy and plan of action to defeat future efforts to impose a dictatorship.

The political and economic dynamic of capitalist reaction and counterrevolution will continue, even with Trump out of office. This dynamic will not abate after January 20. The Democratic Party, whose congressional and senatorial delegation is stacked with millionaires and people with the closest ties to the CIA and the military, are no less capable than the Republicans of organizing a conspiracy to suppress democratic rights.

In any event, the policies of the Biden administration, which will pursue policies set by Wall Street and the military, will perpetuate and escalate the anger and frustration exploited by the fascists.

Throughout the past year, as it has conducted an unrelenting struggle against the ruling class policy of herd immunity, the Socialist Equality Party has shown in detail the connection between the ruling class’s inhuman response to the pandemic and the Trump administration’s assault on democratic rights.

The danger has not passed.

It is essential to build a network of rank-and-file committees in factories and workplaces capable of organizing broad-based popular resistance through the mobilization of all sections of the working class.

Above all, workers must understand that the disintegration of American democracy is rooted in the crisis of capitalism. In a society riven by staggering levels of social inequality, it is impossible to preserve democracy.

Draw the lessons of January 6!

Take up the fight for socialism and the defense of democratic rights by joining the Socialist Equality Party.