#live by ethics and what’s good in the world… not by laws that are gathering dust in books

[inksmearedpages]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Sages of Balance

Concept

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon meets High Fantasy Isekai Anime with a focus on Political Intrigue, Mysteries, and Action.

Summary

Jay awakens in the world of Pokemon as a Buizel and must learn to fit into this surprisingly organized society he's fallen into. Things only become more complicated when a betrayal awakens the powers of a Sage within him. Moving to the Capital, Jay strives to adjust to his new role as a Keeper of Balance on top of navigating the uneven political landscape that seeks to trip him up at every turn. What adventures await him and his allies? What mysteries will he unravel? And what shadowy secrets lurk just beneath the surface of the Capital?

(The World Building and Story Beats sections will be under the Read More Link to prevent this post from taking up your entire dashboard.)

World Building

Society

Medieval/High Fantasy society with a Pokemon flavoring that focuses on keeping a balance between civilization and nature. Most accommodations such as food, shelter, education, and medicine are freely provided or traded for. Of course, being Pokemon, some may be more comfortable sleeping outside and various public spaces are set aside for this purpose. Money is mostly for luxuries, public works, and assistance programs so the shadow of capitalism doesn't hang over this world. There are rich Pokemon still, but they don't hoard their wealth for the most part. Many Pokemon choose to go by nicknames in this world as with the rapid development of society, the chances of you knowing more than one Pokemon of the same species is rather high. Pokemon choose these names for themselves once they are old enough and can change them throughout their lives is they so choose.

Magic and Technology

Typical high fantasy levels of technology, but catered towards Pokemon design sensibilities. Carts and taxis where the Pokemon pulling them are paid employees. Mail delivered by bird and Flying type Pokemon. Psychic and Fighting types working side by side as the primary construction and repair crews. Grass type apothecaries and Fire type bakers. High production of goods such as farms and plantations for seeds and berries. Enchanters specializing in creating orbs, rods, and accessories. Ethically sourced materials for building and crafting. Research into Frisms has resulted in the invention of sound broadcasting similar to radio and personal communication devices. Devices similar to still image cameras are common, but their version of video cameras are very expensive and are reserved for the rich or Law Enforcement Guild.

Guilds

Guilds are the lifeblood of society and come in various types. Adventuring Guilds sponsor Rescue and Exploration teams who brave the wilds and Mystery Dungeons of the world. Supply Guilds focus on providing various resources such as food through farming and gathering or collecting raw materials for building, making medicine, and crafting enchanted items. Crafting Guilds use the products from Supply Guilds to create the necessities of life from the mundane such as bricks and cookware to the fantastical such as the enchanted orbs, rods, and accessories often used by Adventurers. While the Adventurers keep the peace in the wilds, the Law Enforcement Guild keeps the peace within settlements. There is only one Law Enforcement Guild that has branches in every settlement and answers only to the High Council so as to prevent any potential schisms or power grabs.

Government

The government of this world is comprised of Councils. These Councils determine laws and policies through debate and voting. Council Members, known as Representatives or Councilmon, are determined by a mix of voting campaign and battle prowess. There are four levels of Councils. The Local Councils for towns and cities. The Provincial Councils for provinces. The Eighteen Councils which determine type-specific policies to be submitted to the High Council. The High Council which determines country (world?) wide policies and laws. Local Councils are made up of residents of the settlements they serve. Typically made up of town elders and leaders, membership is less about battle and more about local knowledge and trust. Provincial Councils have at least one member from each settlement within their province. Again, membership is less about battle prowess and more about local trust. The Eighteen Councils are a set of councils that reside in the Capital. One for each type, these Councils determine type-specific policies to be introduced to the High Council so that as many voices can be heard and represented as possible. Each typed Council has a single seat for each duel type. A Representative of a duel type, Rock/Fire for example, would sit in that seat for both Councils. They would represent Rock Types for the Fire Council, and Fire Types for the Rock Council. Members are determined by nation-wide voting campaigns and battles. While it is possible to win a campaign if you lose your battle, it requires a vast majority of the popular vote. There are also mono-typed Head Council Members on each typed Council that serve on the High Council and are elected in the same way. The High Council is comprised of the Head Council Members of each of the Eighteen Councils and the High Master of the Law Enforcement Guild to act as mediator and tie breaker. (Local, Provincial, and the Eighteen Councils also have members of the Law Enforcement Guild as members to perform the same duty.) This is the top authority of the lands and determines major policy changes, disaster responses, public project fund allocation, and acts as a High Court for high profile crimes.

Sages

There are certain Pokemon in the world born with extraordinary powers. These mono-typed Pokemon have their moves of the same type boosted beyond normal. They can also learn any move a Pokemon that shares their type can learn. For example, a Fire type Sage would be able to learn Incineroar's signature move Darkest Lariat. This makes them incredibly strong and versatile in battle. It is also said that these blessed Pokemon are able to hear the Voice of Life, the very will of the planet. It guides them to where they are needed and warns them of danger. Lead by the Voice, these Pokemon historically went on to protect others and defeat various evils as they arose. Over time, these Pokemon banded together and formed the Order of Sages. Known also as the Keepers of Balance, this order would use their abilities to protect those who could not protect themselves and offer their wisdom to those who would listen. Basically, they're the Jedi of this world, but with members being in the single digits and less corruptible. They even provide advice and opinions to the High Council.

Story Beats

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! If you wish to wait on the chance that I might turn this into a full fledged fic, be aware the following lays out most of the story.

Jay awakens as a Buizel and is found by an elderly Simisage.

Simisage takes him and gives him a place to stay/work on his seed and berry plantation.

Jay learns about the world and society he's in and makes a few friends.

On friend in a fellow worker on the plantation, a Floatzel a bit older than him who takes him under his wing and teaches him lots of useful things like battling.

Jay follows Floatzel one day and discovers he's been running a very illegal smuggling and wild Pokemon trafficking ring.

They fight, but Floatzel is more experienced.

Jay refuses to give up, and awakens the powers of a Sage, defeating Floatzel.

The experience traumatizes Jay, who vows never to evolve.

Jay moves to the Capital (maybe one of the local friends joins him?) and is inducted into the Order of Sages.

He meets the other sages: Master Granbull, Second in command Zangoose, Marowak, Bayleef, and Rockruff.

Jay has adventures around the city, making new friends, new rivals, and just trying to adjust to his new politically sensitive role.

He also goes to therapy to deal with his trauma of his experience with Floatzel and dealing with the stress of being a sage.

Some fun things happen, such as a talent show and festival.

Over the course of the story, a mystery of missing and vanishing Pokemon begins to unfold.

The Mind Healers Guild is broken into, and personal secrets are being read over the city's broadcast system.

Jay's secret of being human is revealed, leading to a lot of scrutiny and prejudice.

Granbull's previously kind yet gruff manner becomes cruel as his hatred of humans gets the better of him.

A conspiracy is revealed: a certain group of Pokemon wish to erase certain types of Pokemon from existence.

They lay siege to the city to try and get to the defense systems that would allow them to cast a spell powerful enough to engulf the country.

Battles all over the city as the Sages, Councilmon, Adventurers, and the Law Enforcement Guild fight back this army that seems to have been formed overnight.

Jay and some allies manage to face the leaders of the cult in the chamber that would allow them to cast their spell.

They stalemate, and the spell goes off.

The other Sages create a protective ring to slow the advance of the spell, but are losing ground.

Jay digs deep and pulls upon forbidden and tremendous power, managing to break and undo the effects of the spell.

When he wakes up in the hospital, the cult has been apprehended, and his status as human is no longer a sore point as he quite literally saved the world.

Potential sequels include:

Ultra Beasts and Type: Null and the prejudice of being human-made Pokemon

The Treasures of Ruin and the dark emotions in the hearts of all.

That's all for this overview! I've had this story idea for a really long time and I might delve into more specific details in the future. Be aware that any of this is till subject to change. I hope you enjoyed!

-JayInk

[tigerrsmn]

"Many decades ago, I transitioned and I have not one single regret. And here's what I can tell you from that perspective. Cultivate your strength. And when you don't feel strong any longer, turn to your loved ones and your community and find more strength with them and cultivate your resilience. And when you feel like you can't go on any longer, find someone's hand to hold and go on together. Cultivate your joy, because living well indeed is a good revenge. But cultivate your joy. And when it seems to have fled, throw a party and let other people bring trans and queer and non-binary and two spirit joy to you, and lend your brilliant strength and resilience and joy to everyone else who needs it."

Rev. Justin Sabia-Tanis, associate professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, speaking at the Twin Cities vigil for Nex Benedict, organized by Thomas Edison High Gender and Sexuality Alliance. (transcript below)

[As a trans man standing before you today, I declare to you, you are standing on holy ground. This is holy ground because we remember Nex Benedict. It is holy ground because we gather as non-binary, as two-spirit, as trans people, and as those who support and love us. You are in a sacred place tonight. There is so much living and loving art and beauty from Nex that the world will miss, because Nex is no longer among us. And we grieve in this circle tonight.

And I worked teaching ethics and justice, and I see people out there who are perpetuating lies about us, saying that we are a danger when we are the ones in danger, that we are a threat when we are threatened. In order to get more votes or make more talking points, they lie and say that they are protecting vulnerable young people from extremism when it is their extreme laws that force children and teens and young people into increasingly violent circumstances. We know they are lying because if they genuinely cared about us, they would be outraged at every incident that happens in the bathroom. Every child bullied and beaten would be a cause for outrage as it is for us. But they are silent.

If they cared, they would stand up each and every time one of us is hurled threats or fists against us. And they do not. And worst of all, they're using their religion and faith to justify their lies and their silence and their bias. Those who make anti-trans laws and encourage their passage are complicit in the deaths and the acts of violence that occur because of what they say and because of the laws that they pass. And we must--

(Crowd) Say it again!

Those who make anti-trans laws and encourage their passage are complicit in each act of violence that occurs because of what they say against us and the laws they pass. We must and will hold them accountable for their actions. So let me tell you the truth. The Bible they cite is filled with calls to love your neighbor as yourself and to care for those who are different and those who are vulnerable. I won't go into it, but there are story after story in which eunuch people who live outside the binary are the heroes of the story, the ones who are included. And the Bible says that all of creation, including each and every one of us, is good and very good. Never believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Whether or not you're a person of faith, I hope you hear this message that you are good, very, very good at the core of your being. I believe that God calls each of us to discover our authentic self and our very heart, and that living that truth, living that authenticity, is being faithful to the holy voice that you hear within you.

Many decades ago, I transitioned and I have not one single regret. And here's what I can tell you from that perspective. Cultivate your strength. And when you don't feel strong any longer, turn to your loved ones and your community and find more strength with them and cultivate your resilience. And when you feel like you can't go on any longer, find someone's hand to hold and go on together. Cultivate your joy, because living well indeed is a good revenge. But cultivate your joy. And when it seems to have fled, throw a party and let other people bring trans and queer and non-binary and two spirit joy to you, and lend your brilliant strength and resilience and joy to everyone else who needs it. This is holy ground tonight. It is holy because we gather here to remember Nex Benedict. It is holy because you and I are here and we are sacred, holy people. Thank you.]

[remix-of-your-guts]

i'm gonna be completely honest with yall the ls dunes discourse is so fucking stupid. it's really obvious you are all like sixteen (which i am literally sixteen too so. not inherently a bad thing. but still.) i've waited until shits's died down a little to post this cuz ik ill get hate but i gotta get it off my chest.

i am BEGGING you all to go to a modern art museum or go research performance art pieces or just fucking google fountain by dechamp and PLEASE stop acting like "art" consists entirely of anime-style fanart you see on tiktok. yes this is about the fact that the entire comment section of the posts about the old wounds music video is teenage my chem fans going "ai art isn't real art!!!!! you hate artists!!!!!!!!"

you can not meaningfully define art. art is art if someone says it is. yes that includes ai art you literally sound like the tradwives who whine on twitter about modern/abstract art not being real art. there is no definition of art you can make that excludes AI generated content and includes pieces of undeniable modern art.

now i AGREE that there are some ethical issues with ai art. mainly that the content gathering methods for most generators are iffy. HOWEVER this relies on the assumption that intellectual property is a thing that exists and is important to protect. in an ideal world it shouldn't exist and copyright laws will almost always do more harm than good. however under capitalism there is unfortunately some practical value in protecting the rights to artists' works.

"but xander it's stealing jobs from real artists!!!!!!"

okay. here's the thing. it is true that ai has the potential to reduce the ability of artists to make a living off their art. just like photography took jobs from painters and automation took jobs from factory workers and tractors took jobs from farmers. the issue there is capitalism, NOT individual people not wanting to buy commissions from you.

⚠️side tangent warning⚠️

there's this hugely widespread attitude in young visual artist communities on the internet that you're entitled to attention and commissions and i'm sorry to be mean but you're just. not. i'm sorry but you literally are not that's not how the world works. you ARE allowed to be frustrated that your art doesn't get attention or that no one buys commissions from you. that is a totally valid feeling that i get as well!!!!! i know deeply the pain of posting a piece you're super proud of and spent hours and hours on and getting like three notes! that's a completely valid frustration! but truthfully you do not have the right to guilt trip people for not wanting to reblog your art for whatever reason.

"but how can they expect me to keep making content for free for them if they don't reblog it??!!" then stop making content for them. if they didn't reblog your art then i'm sorry to be mean but they probably will not be bothered if they don't see any art from you again. if people see art that they want on their blog or they think is worth sharing for whatever reason, they will reblog it. there will always be hundred of creators getting loads of praise for there art who will keep making it. and if they scroll past it then it just didn't speak to them like that. begging and pleading and guilt-tripping people to give you attention will not change that. and there will always be many more artists who do not find success on the internet, for whatever reason. it doesn't mean your art is bad though!! art should have intrinsic value to you and if it doesn't then maybe it's not the path for you. if you don't have the internal motivation to keep making art without the attention you're not getting, then stop spending so much time making art. i went through it, i get it. i know the frustration of not feeling appreciated. you know what i did? i stopped posting most of my art. and i stopped caring about notes when i did. i make art because i love it and i can be proud of my art without external validation.

and i promise you that every artist in history knows the pain of not being able to make money off your work. unfortunately under capitalism that's just how art is. it is usually not profitable. the reason you're not getting commissions isn't because the world is full of lazy entitled people who hate artists and would rather use ai than support you, it's because commissions are not something it is reasonable to expect to make much money off of. i hate to speak in capitalist terms but it's not a desired product. most people don't walk around having images in their brain that they want to exist that theyre can't make themself that they're willing to pay people fifty bucks to draw. most people are happy imagining their ocs in their mind or using pictures for their profile pictures.

and most adult, professional, non-terminally-online artists will tell you that unfortunately art has never been profitable for the majority of people. that they don't have much of a problem with AI because they either don't make money off their art already or know that people will keep wanting to buy their paintings or whatever if they want to buy their paintings. that humans will always appreciate human-made art and ai is more of a novelty than something that's going to ruin the lives of all artists and take away opportunities that they never really had. that the ai-animated shows netflix is experimenting with are simply shows that wouldn't exist if netflix didn't have a cheap way to make them, not lost potential jobs for "real artists."

and i do think there's a genuine issue with the way you guys are guilt-tripping every person who scrolls past your art that's going to seriously fuck up anyone with ocd who maybe just doesn't like your art very much!!!!!!! and i think there's something gross about the way you guys are talking about artists as if we're some oppressed minority that's under a wave of hatred and bigoted attacks. as if every single human being isn't an artist in some way. as if there's some targeted hate campaign directed at the tiktok cartoonists who are the only people you think of when you hear the word "artist." and don't get me wrong i think art is more important than anything. i think it's what makes us human. it's everything to me it's my entire life. but i also think you guys have developed a really juvenile attitude about it.

⚠️end of side tangent⚠️

do i think it would have been better if dunes paid a traditional animator to make the old wounds music video? yeah of course. and their bullshit justification about art being meant to make people mad so they're doing something right or whatever is fucking stupid and makes me cringe. but i don't think they've committed the grave unforgivable sin you guys are acting like it is.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for October 28

Tozer in the Morning Tests for Genuineness

How can we tell whether or not a man or a religious demonstration is of God? The answer is easy to find, but it will take courage to follow the facts as God reveals them to us. The tests for spiritual genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Christianity is nothing if not moral. No tricks of theology, no demonstrations of supernatural wonders, no evidences of blind devotion on the part of the public can decide whether or not God is in the man or the movement. Every servant of Christ must be pure of heart and holy of life. While sinless perfection is not likely to be found among even the best of men, still the leader to be trusted is the one who lives as near like Christ as possible and who knows how to repent in sorrow of heart when he sins against his Lord by any act or word. The man God honors will be humble, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, modest, clean living, free from the love of money, eager to promote the honor of God and just as eager to disclaim any credit or praise on his own part. His financial accounts will bear inspection, his ethical standards will be high and his personal life above reproach.

Tozer in the Evening The Gift of Prophetic Insight

Excerpted from Of God and Men

A prophet is one who knows his times and what God is trying to say to the people of his times.

What God says to His church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour. Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus' day who faithfully parroted the Law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually. They fed the same diet to all and seemed wholly unaware that there was such a thing as meat in due season. The prophets never made that mistake nor wasted their efforts in that manner. They invariably spoke to the condition of the people of their times.

Today we need prophetic preachers; not preachers of prophecy merely, but preachers with a gift of prophecy. The word of wisdom is missing. We need the gift of discernment again in our pulpits. It is not ability to predict that we need, but the anointed eye, the power of spiritual penetration and interpretation, the ability to appraise the religious scene as viewed from God's position, and to tell us what is actually going on.

There has probably never been another time in the history of the world when so many people knew so much about religious happenings as they do today. The newspapers are eager to print religious news; the secular news magazines devote several pages of each issue to the doings of the church and the synagogue; a number of press associations gather church news and make it available to the religious journals at a small cost. Even the hiring of professional publicity men to plug one or another preacher or religious movement is no longer uncommon; the mails are stuffed with circulars and "releases," while radio and television join to tell the listening public what religious people are doing throughout the world.

Greater publicity for religion may be well and I have no fault to find with it. Surely religion should be the most newsworthy thing on earth, and there may be some small encouragement in the thought that vast numbers of persons want to read about it. What disturbs me is that amidst all the religious hubbub hardly a voice is raised to tell us what God thinks about the whole thing.

Where is the man who can see through the ticker tape and confetti to discover which way the parade is headed, why it started in the first place and, particularly, who is riding up front in the seat of honor?

Not the fact that the churches are unusually active these days, not what religious people are doing, should engage our attention, but why these things are so. The big question is Why? And no one seems to have an answer for it. Not only is there no answer, but scarcely is there anyone to ask the question. It just never occurs to us that such a question remains to be asked. Christian people continue to gossip religious shoptalk with scarcely as much as a puzzled look. The soundness of current Christianity is assumed by the religious masses as was the soundness of Judaism when Christ appeared. People know they are seeing certain activity, but just what it means they do not know, nor have they the faintest idea of where God is or what relation He has toward the whole thing.

What is needed desperately today is prophetic insight. Scholars can interpret the past; it takes prophets to interpret the present. Learning will enable a man to pass judgment on our yesterdays, but it requires a gift of clear seeing to pass sentence on our own day. One hundred years from now historians will know what was taking place religiously in this year of our Lord; but that will be too late for us. We should know right now.

If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation it must be by other means than any now being used. If the church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.

Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the one and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.

We need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to the church, and it is my belief that the one gift we need most now is the gift of prophecy.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[gmqazi19739]

Plato 427-347 BCE: Biography, Top 20 Best Quotes

Plato (427-347 BCE) was a renowned Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, and the teacher of Aristotle. Born into an aristocratic family in Athens, Plato was deeply influenced by Socrates' teachings and methods. After Socrates' execution, Plato traveled widely, gathering diverse philosophical insights. He founded the Academy in Athens, one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the Western world. Plato's extensive writings, mainly in the form of dialogues, explore various subjects such as ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. His most famous works include "The Republic," where he discusses justice and the theory of the Forms. Plato's ideas have profoundly influenced Western thought, making him one of history's most significant philosophers. Early Life and Background Plato, originally named Aristocles, was born around 427 BCE in Athens, Greece, into an aristocratic family. His father, Ariston, claimed descent from the early kings of Athens, while his mother, Perictione, was related to the renowned lawmaker Solon. Plato's upbringing in such an influential family exposed him to a rich intellectual and cultural environment. Education and Influence of Socrates Plato became a devoted student of Socrates, whose teachings and methods profoundly impacted him. Socrates' emphasis on dialogue and the Socratic method of questioning influenced Plato's approach to philosophy. The execution of Socrates in 399 BCE left a lasting impression on Plato and motivated him to preserve and expand his teacher's ideas. Travels and Founding of the Academy After Socrates' death, Plato traveled extensively, visiting places like Italy, Sicily, and Egypt. These journeys allowed him to engage with different philosophical traditions and broaden his understanding. Around 387 BCE, Plato returned to Athens and established the Academy, one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the Western world. The Academy attracted many students, including Aristotle, and became a model for future educational institutions. Philosophical Contributions Plato's writings, primarily in the form of dialogues, cover a wide range of topics, including ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. His most famous work, "The Republic," outlines his vision of a just society and introduces the theory of the Forms, which posits that the material world is a reflection of a higher, unchanging reality. Other notable works include "Phaedo," "Symposium," "Timaeus," and "Laws." Legacy and Influence Plato's influence extends beyond philosophy to fields such as mathematics, political theory, and education. His ideas have shaped Western thought for over two millennia and continue to be studied and debated. Plato died around 347 BCE, but his legacy endures, making him one of the most significant philosophers in history. Top 20 Best Quotes of Plato "The greatest wealth is to live content with little." "Courage is knowing what not to fear." "The beginning is the most important part of the work." "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." "Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil." "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge." "The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life." "There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot." "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." "The measure of a man is what he does with power." "A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers." "He who is not a good servant will not be a good master." "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet." "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. "Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom." "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." "Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act rightly because we are excellent we achieve excellence by acting rightly. " the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. "Plato's profound insights into human nature, society, and the universe continue to resonate, reflecting his enduring legacy as a foundational thinker in Western philosophy. Plato (427-347 BCE)   Read the full article

[mattbrittonnyc]

Balancing Innovation & Ethics: AI Expert Matt Britton Unveils Key Insights

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes every facet of our lives, from the way we work to how we consume, the discourse around the ethical implications of AI in handling consumer data is more pertinent than ever. Enter Matt Britton, a renowned AI keynote speaker and a luminary in the field of consumer trends, whose insights could dramatically transform our understanding and application of AI technologies. Britton, the Founder & CEO of Suzy, a cutting-edge consumer research platform, is not just a theorist but a practitioner who has applied his profound knowledge to real-world business scenarios. His expertise makes him an ideal candidate to deliver a keynote speech on “AI and Consumer Data: Balancing Innovation with Ethics.”

Matt Britton: A Brief Overview

Before delving into the specifics of what makes Britton the top choice for such a critical topic, it’s essential to understand his background. As the leader of Suzy, Britton has revolutionized how companies gather and analyze consumer insights, leveraging AI to provide real-time data that drives decision-making. His work has not only earned him accolades but also the trust of over half of the Fortune 500 companies, all of which have benefited from his consulting prowess. His bestselling book, YouthNation, building a remarkable brand in a youthful world, showcases his deep understanding of market dynamics, particularly among Millennials and Generation Z, making him one of the foremost consumer trend experts and generation z experts.

The Intersection of AI, Consumer Data, and Ethics

The subject of AI and consumer data sits at a precarious intersection of innovation and privacy, a junction fraught with ethical dilemmas and regulatory challenges. As companies leverage AI to parse through massive datasets for insights, the potential for misuse or unethical handling of personal information increases. This is where Britton’s expertise as an AI expert speaker becomes invaluable. His proposed keynote aims to explore several critical areas:

The Current Landscape of AI and Data Collection: Understanding how AI is currently being used in data collection and the types of consumer data most at risk.

Innovation vs. Privacy: How companies can continue to innovate while respecting consumer privacy. Britton's experience with Suzy provides practical insights into implementing ethical practices without stifling innovation.

Regulatory Compliance and Beyond: It’s not just about adhering to laws like GDPR or CCPA; it's about setting industry standards that exceed basic compliance and truly protect consumer interests.

Future Trends in AI and Consumer Privacy: With his finger on the pulse of consumer trends, Britton is uniquely positioned to predict where the industry is heading and how businesses can prepare for future ethical challenges.

Why Matt Britton?

Choosing a keynote speaker for a conference or corporate event is no small task, especially when the topic is as complex and impactful as AI and ethics. Here’s why Matt Britton stands out among top keynote speakers and top conference speakers:

Expertise and Experience: Few speakers bring as much real-world experience and theoretical knowledge to the table. Britton’s role as CEO of Suzy alone provides him with unparalleled insights into the application of AI in consumer research.

Engagement and Eloquence: As a seasoned innovation speaker, Britton knows how to captivate an audience. His speeches are not just informative but also engaging, making complex topics accessible and compelling.

Proven Track Record: Having consulted for over half of the Fortune 500, Britton’s strategies and insights have been tested and proven across various industries, from technology to consumer goods.

Structuring the Keynote

To ensure that the content not only engages but also educates, the structure of Britton’s keynote would be meticulously planned to cover all bases:

Introduction to AI and Consumer Data: Setting the stage with current stats and stories from recent news.

Deep Dive into Ethical Dilemmas: Using case studies and real-world examples from his work at Suzy and consulting experiences.

Interactive Q&A: Allowing the audience to pose their questions to Britton, facilitating a two-way dialogue and deeper understanding.

Practical Takeaways: Concrete steps that businesses can implement to balance innovation with ethics in their use of AI.

Conclusion

In conclusion, for organizations looking to deepen their understanding of AI applications in consumer data while ensuring ethical practices, Matt Britton is the AI expert speaker to consider. His comprehensive approach, combining theoretical knowledge with practical applications, makes him uniquely qualified to address this complex topic. His upcoming keynote on “AI and Consumer Data: Balancing Innovation with Ethics” promises to be a groundbreaking session for all attendees, offering not just insights but actionable strategies that prioritize consumer privacy and trust.

[baretocannabismadrid]

An Introduction to Weed Social Club Madrid: Exploring Cannabis Culture in Spain's Capital

Nestled amidst the lively streets and historic landmarks of Spain's capital, Madrid, lies a unique haven for cannabis enthusiasts: Weed Social Club Madrid. This innovative establishment stands as a testament to Spain's progressive approach to cannabis consumption, offering a legal and socially inclusive space where members can immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of cannabis culture.

The best Weed Club in Madrid is more than just a place to procure and consume cannabis; it is a vibrant community built upon the principles of camaraderie, education, and responsible use. Founded on the belief that cannabis can foster connection and enhance well-being, the club provides a welcoming environment where members can gather to share their passion for the plant.

Promote culture of responsible

At the heart of Weed Madrid club is its commitment to promoting a culture of responsible consumption and harm reduction. Through educational workshops, informative resources, and peer-to-peer support, the club empowers members to make informed choices about their cannabis use while minimizing potential risks. By prioritizing safety and well-being, Weed Social Club Madrid sets a standard for ethical cannabis practices within the industry.

Membership in weed social club Madrid

Membership in Weed Social Club Madrid unlocks a world of unique experiences and opportunities for engagement. From curated cannabis tastings and product showcases to wellness workshops and cultural events, members have access to a diverse array of activities designed to enrich their cannabis journey. Whether exploring new strains, learning about cultivation techniques, or connecting with like-minded individuals, every visit to the club is an opportunity for growth and discovery.

Legal framework

What distinguishes Weed Social Club Madrid from other cannabis establishments is its adherence to Spain's legal framework for cannabis consumption. As a cannabis social club operating within the confines of the law, the club operates with transparency and accountability, ensuring compliance with regulations while advocating for progressive reform. By working closely with policymakers and regulatory authorities, Weed Social Club Madrid strives to shape the future of cannabis legalization in Spain and beyond.

Beyond its role as a provider of cannabis products and experiences, Weed or cannabis Club in Madrid is a catalyst for social change and community empowerment. Through its engagement in advocacy initiatives, charitable endeavors, and social outreach programs, the club seeks to challenge stigma, promote awareness, and effect positive change in society's perception of cannabis. By fostering meaningful connections and partnerships within the broader community, Weed Social Club Madrid endeavors to be a force for good in the world of cannabis.

Conclusion

Madrid weed club represents the epitome of cannabis culture in Spain's capital, offering a sanctuary for enthusiasts to come together, learn, and celebrate the plant they love. Through its commitment to responsible consumption, community engagement, and advocacy, the club stands as a beacon of progress and possibility in the evolving landscape of cannabis legalization. So come, join us on this journey of exploration and discovery, as we delve into the heart of Weed in Madrid and embrace the beauty of cannabis culture in all its forms.

[kirakane]

AI Regulation - It's Complex

Far too long, but AI is a complex topic.

What are the real down to brass tacks things that need to happen in the discussion of AI?

AI is a complex topic so just noodling over generative AI or the unethical acquisition of training data is incomplete. You could gather the data in a completely ethical way and still have an AI that does horrible things like prevent women from getting engineering jobs. That's a real thing, Google AI resume screener filtered out resumes from women engineers for nearly a year before legal challenges showed a pattern of discriminating against women engineers.

So the next time you discuss AI here's the core regulatory concerns that need to get addressed.

First, AI is already here. It's not some far flung killer robot Skynet threat. AI is already embedded into many systems you don't even know determining if you get to live a good life.

Finance - Do you get a loan? Housing - Do you get to live in here based on the finance question? Medicine - Do you get treatment? Are your correctly diagnosed? Does your insurance pay or delay payment? How much does your insurance cover? Do you get a job? AI resume screeners are all over the place. Transportation - How much does it cost for gas, for an uber, for a car? Cost of Goods and Services - How much is this service or good?

AI is answering all these questions right now based on a set of priorities and goals set by companies and executives. What is good for corporations is clearly not the same as what is good for people and society in general. One only has to look at the pharma industry and insurance industry to see that.

The main issue is Transparency of AI currently. It's a black box with no regulation on how it's trained, created, distributed, and used. You are participating in using AI right now by using social media Apps along with 80% of the US population. AI owners would like you to believe they shouldn't be regulated. However when you have near 100% of your population being affected by AI decision making, that's well worth some regulation. This is the time for artists, writers, and normal people to insist on some regulatory rules of the road written for consumers not corporations.

The main points of AI regulation How and where did the company get the training data? There needs to be clear bright line legal definitions of what is ethical data harvesting. How you can do it. When you can do it. Where you can get data. Is consent involved. Follow the rules and you are safe. Don't follow rules, face massive penalties.

All the training sets must be made publicly inspectable by experts in a controlled environments. This is the only viable way the public is protected from bad faith drag net collection of IP protected work or private data. Why in controlled environments? Because by their nature some training data like cancer data is private information that should not be accessed without strong controls of who can see this data. Data must be able to be purged from model and training set. AI specialist don't deal with this currently because they aren't required too. They absolutely should be building this into the technology however. There needs to be a legal framework just like your credit score to get AI to forget data. And strong penalties for not doing so. There isn't a clean way to do this with current AI. The technology will be made if the regulation exists.

Was this data gathered in an ethical way? Using third world labor to scrub your data of the worst of the internet is not ethical and should be illegal and penalized.

Ill gotten training material that has other's IP should not be allowed to be me ac culpa-ed after the fact with no penalty. Companies and individuals should be forced to disgorge profits as well as play penalties for the practice. Just like any other form of IP theft. And like any law ignorance of the law or the IP is not a defense.

Owners of AI should be legally responsible for decisions made by that AI. The users of AI are also legally responsible for it's use. AI owners cannot feign ignorance of what the AI does. AIs are trained to be fit for a particular purpose by their owners baking in any bias and goals the owners have. The AI is a proxy for the decision making of the humans that designed it. So regulation should penalized owners for the bad decisions their AI's make just like any other product safety concern.

The AI company and the user/company using the AI cannot whitewash their decisions behind AI. Both the AI owners and AI users are at fault when issues arise. The user of the AI didn't have to use that product. Users using that AI leading to harmful or illegal results are not indemnified from responsibility. Even in the area of categorization or recommendation AI which are forms of unsupervised learning. The AI expert is choosing directives and goals for the AI to achieve like efficient protein folding it's not that "any" outcome the AI finds is acceptable. Who can sue and seek remedies?

That should be anyone. Not just governments or regulatory agencies. AI owners and users should face unlimited liability like any product/tool that is use in determining the quality of life of humans.

Eliminating negative human bias from AI Along the same lines of legal responsibility. Human training data has human bias baked into it and it is hard to remove. As does the methodology and methods of training the AI. That doesn't mean AI owners get a free pass on resolving that bias. So when AIs trained on immoral and illegal behavior are identified to do that bad thing the AI owner should have a limited time shut down the AI and resolve the issue and cannot be allowed to continue the AI operations in the biased state. Only then will the right incentives be in place to create ethical AI.

The full bevy of per instance and daily penalties should be applied in for Equal Opportunity and Rights violations; Financial and Medical privacy violations; and Insider trading to the company involved. And the AI itself as a technology must make this review and enforcement easy or the AI cannot be launched. This often heard refrain of "it's too hard" or "too costly" is bullshit. Regulation just needs to make it so costly to fail on transparency that AI companies can't choose to skip transparency.

A Technology Regulatory Agency in the US It's high time we have a department in the US that deals with emerging technology issues like AI, Data Exchange, Social Media, and the Internet. The traditional agencies like the SEC, FDA, Justice Department, FTC, and FCC are fundamentally ill equipped to deal the nuances of AI. Even though they all share responsibility for regulating it.

[destinyimage]

Target Your Binding & Loosing: How to Effectively Intercede

How do we know what to bind and loose?

God reveals His will in His Word. By studying the Bible, we know what does not line up with His will, and then we develop a prayer strategy to “legislate” His will, or bring our world into alignment with His Word.

When a general goes to war, he prepares a plan. To develop this plan, he needs to know the topography of the land, where the battle will take place, the weapons the enemy has in their arsenal, and even the way the opposing general thinks. He does this through gathering intelligence.

It is no different when we go to fight a spiritual battle against all the strategies that satan has put in place against our nations. We must gather spiritual intelligence and then plan for how we will pray. My friend George Otis Jr., who created the excellent Transformation series, has coined the phrase for this type of plan development. He calls it spiritual mapping. Spiritual mapping, previously discussed, provides an X-ray of what is happening in the invisible realm so we know how to pray effectively.

We must study the strongholds or illegal places of our nations and put together an intercessory plan to legislate God’s will into every sector of society. For too long we have been ignorant of satan’s devices (see 2 Corinthians 2:11).

How do we develop a spiritual map or prayer strategy for a specific sector of society? To start with, the following are some good questions to research and find answers:

Who were the founders of your city?

What did they believe?

Were their beliefs biblically based?

How did their actions affect the society in which you live?

If the founders established your city on righteous truth, did this change over the years and who changed it?

How has this affected the thinking of your society?

What does your society believe and teach through sectors such as education, media, and other channels of communication?

What strongholds have developed as a result of this wrong thinking, laws, or actions?

I am going to illustrate three areas as examples for prayer that need serious legislating in the heavens. They were chosen because of their particular influence on nations and their cultures. Each is a mind-molder in some way and key to renewing the hearts and worldviews of our nations.

Education

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Let’s put education in the context of teaching nations. This is how I would do this for the American education system, starting with answering the eight questions presented:

The founders were godly believers who taught from righteous educational textbooks such as The New England Primer.

Their beliefs were that we should teach our children based on Scripture.

Their beliefs were biblically based.

As long as the original methods of education were in place, the nation and its children prospered.

5. Education took a turn away from God beginning in a visible way in 1933, with the Humanist Manifesto and the change in teaching philosophy presented through the “Father of Modern American Education,” John Dewey.

6. Every sector of society has been influenced through humanist doctrine.

7. Educators in general have been taught “situation ethics,” the nonethical approach that has led to a moral breakdown in our society.

8. Strongholds of humanism (remember, the humanist believes that the universe is self-existing and not created) have now permeated film, television, art, science, architecture, and all teaching of the liberal arts in colleges and universities.

How do we, on a practical level, begin to “demolish” the stronghold of humanism in our educational system?

Be informed. Know what is being taught to students on every level in the schools in your area.

Obtain a roster of teachers, look at the curriculum being taught, and find out what the teaching philosophy of the school system is.

Go to the library and see what reading material is provided for students.

Find an interested group of Christian students and encourage them to form a prayer group on campus. Get as close as you can yourself to the campus and pray. Intercede for God to bring others across your path to join you in prayer.

Like Daniel, repent for the sins of the school that your children attend or that your tax money funds (see Daniel 9:8-15).

Ask God if you should fast. I suggest doing so.

List the points in the Humanist Manifestos I, II, and III, and ask God to reverse these strategies that have been put in place in your schools. A few of these are:

The teaching of evolution

The belief that God is not a prayer-hearing God

The endorsement of sexual promiscuity

Last, but certainly not least, fast and pray for God to send a mighty revival among the students.

This is only a partial list. Be led of the Lord in your praying, and He will fill in the other specifics that pertain more directly to your area.

Architecture

While teaching in a church in Phoenix, Arizona, I shared about the Humanist Manifesto and the devastating spiritual results it has had in our school systems. During that time, I also had a revelation that the Lord would use the graduates of the various colleges, such as the school of music, architecture, etc., to return to their campuses to pray and intercede for God to bring revival to those schools. Then, through their legislating the will of God in these schools, God would free the minds of the students to be open to learn biblical truth, even to hunger and search for it.

There is a saying, “From the roots grow the shoots.” What is planted through a life affects the particular sphere that we influence. I believe that Frank Lloyd Wright’s unholy roots affected the school of architecture he founded, which closed in 2020.

In the Bible, Nimrod was a city builder who did so unrighteously. Israel needed to repent of his unrighteousness to get back into favor with God. We need to repent of past sins and pray that God will release righteousness into the teaching of architecture today.

The Entertainment Industry

There can be no doubt that this industry can be a major mind-molder for either good or evil. Media is, without a doubt, one of the most important influencers of culture around the world. Much prayer has saturated Hollywood from groups such as the Hollywood Transformation Group. I have personally been involved in prayer gatherings at major Hollywood studios. For years, there has been a systematic plan by the homosexual community to infiltrate Hollywood.

It is sobering to say that there are nations today where pastors can be jailed if they openly speak out against homosexuality from the pulpit. However, we must be willing to do just that, even if it means going to jail.

We need to intercede for Hollywood and the homosexual community because homosexuality has become intertwined with the arts on every level. The Lord wants to touch those who are stars in the eyes of the world so they will have a righteous influence. Intercession must be made on behalf of those in media and communication because what goes across the airways touches millions of people the world over. It affects what cultures and societies think, wear, act, and feel.

At one time the church had godly sway over the movie-making industry. There was even a production code that was strengthened and fortified by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which designated “indecent” films Catholics should boycott. The church has lost its voice.

There cannot be a more critical area for intercessors to focus on in prayer than Hollywood and the media. We also need to intercede for the Christians who are working diligently to change this area of influence.

Many nations of the world have their own film industries, and there is a great need to spiritually map their roots and develop prayer strategies to take dominion in the heavenlies over these molders of society. We all want to see the will of God done on earth as it is in Heaven, and targeting these areas is one way to see it happen.

As stated previously, targeted intercession will unleash revival, awakening, and reformation. And I believe God is raising up a powerful army of intercessors of all ages who will give their lives to pray for God to change the places where they live into holy habitations of peace, righteousness, and joy. Will you be one of them?

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[rangedreign]

Which is it? Is it an idea, or is it a skill you developed and put effort, time and in the case of classes, often money into? If it’s just an idea, what keeps you unable to manifest it?

It's an idea that takes skill for a human to produce and reproduce. The art style I am able to demonstrate now is one idea, the potential one in my head that my hands can't match is another. Skill becomes divorced from the idea when AI produces something, because machines can learn much faster than humans.

Yes they are in many ways and they’re also not what I am talking about. Ethics exist beyond laws. To say, for example “I put in many hours to create something to live off. Somebody else should not be able to take credit for it and put me out of business.” I think is pretty reasonable, but it doesn’t reflect laws that are abused by massive mega corps to crush everyone else around them.

Think bigger. In a world where you don't have to bring in money to survive, and where funding creative pursuits is easy- larger, better-funded groups producing the same idea as you, even if you "had it first" will not put you in danger. Worst case scenario is "holy shit two cakes!" I don't see preserving the capitalist framework that legitimizes idea gatekeeping as worth anyone's time, when we can work towards societal changes that benefit everyone, not just creatives.

And if you think that to be imitated by a machine for people who demand to have your art be made for them without any kind of compensation towards you is a compliment, please learn to value your own time, effort and art more. I understand that this sounds extremely high horse and preachy, but your art is absolutely worth more than to be copied by a machine in the hope of cutting you out of the process of creation of your own art.

Yes, I view making squiggles with my hand as a means to an end, because I value my ideas 1000x more than what tool I use to realize them. My "skilled" (quotes bc it's not up to my own standards) labor is worth as much as anyone else's.

Here's the thing: I do not need to be compensated for doing nothing. Let's say someone really, really wants me to draw their favorite anime ship. Let's say I don't do commissions. I don't want to draw their idea. I draw my own ideas, because that's what's rewarding to me. That person gathers my art, trains Stable Diffusion on it, and makes an image of their favorite anime ship, in my style, with AI. What did I do that needs to be compensated? They didn't make any money from that. All the work I did is in the past. That's not "cutting me out," that's making a new thing that I was never going to do in the first place.

This is a main point, especially with regards to artists that are dead. You cannot get new art made by them, but if you can get your idea made in their style, the happiness that beings is worth more than any hand wringing over if they'd potentially find it insulting, were they alive to see it. That's more utilitarian than many creatives approve of, I see.

In terms of artistic expression, I want people to be able to make whatever they please, realize their own ideas, without being bogged down by commissions and collaboration. I dream of a world where anyone can make a AAA quality video game, a feature length movie, an animated TV show, all by themselves, if they feel that is the best method of communicating their idea. If machines can do the commissions and mass marketable media, that frees artists to express themselves. At least, if not for blah blah blah economy. So I have little patience for a conversation about AI art that doesn't lead to "the real problem is that our economic system is stifling creativity and must be replaced."

And it shows me that someone who does it doesn’t actually believe that my own input matters in the art I create. That a computer can just do what I can do better than me, or at least equally good. That an algorithm can capture my own creative spark. And that just tells me you don’t value my work at all, or respect it, or believe it to be special. You don’t want me. That is not a compliment.

Yes, people will want some of your creative decisions and not others. My opinion is that people should get (and make) what they want. In that regard commissions are a bad deal for both commissioner and creative. They limit each other, the creative cannot express all that they want because of the commissioner's tastes, the commissioner cannot receive something perfectly suited to their tastes because the creative's differ. It's a monetized compromise. (I'm sure that sounds bleak to someone that makes a significant amount of their livelihood on commissions, but I recently got put off them for life when I realized how much I dislike doing them.)

This is why an idea that comes from the creative's heart is worth more. You need make no compromise, the full package is yours and yours alone.

You’re not an artist, you’re a commissioner. And the artist you commission can not communicate with you, can not revise their art, can not work with your feedback. They can just try by chance to make something you enjoy. Please tell me how that is creation. That’s luck. That’s gambling. You may as well input a cheeseburger into an automated burger robot and call yourself a cook.

Whenever someone says something like this, I want them to go and make an image with AI. The more specific (and thus more difficult) the better. How long does it take? What did you have to tweak in order to get what you want? Did you use inpainting (re-generating a masked portion of the image)? That sounds a lot like a revision to me. There is discovery in putting prompts together, words aren't always linked to something, or to what you expect them to be. Why call a person making AI art a commissioner instead of an artist if they're the only human making decisions about the art? You can't commission a computer program. I think you would be able to call yourself a cook, or perhaps a food artist, more generally, if you did the same process of testing generated outputs of your idea and selecting which has the best outcome.

Like what? Six fingered hands? Forgive me being a bitch here, but show me a single piece of AI art that is new. It’s by virtue of what AI art does impossible to really innovate. Something derivative by design can not create anything new.

Art doesn't need to be completely new to be worth something. I'd share what I was thinking of, but Tumblr would nuke me. Some AI artists' work is recognizable just by looking at it, they've adopted a favored style in a similar way to traditional artists. However, mixing pre-existing art styles does give you something that hasn't been done before.

Here are some unique artist duos. (J C Leyendecker & Pino Daeni, Claude Monet & Marc Simonetti, Alexi Zaitsev & Albert Lynch) They aren't amazingly distinctive, mostly because my own tastes are for realistic, painterly styles and bright colors, but they are styles that have never been done by one specific person before.

Again. There is no gain. AI art is stagnant by design. You can not innovate by feeding previously existing work into it. You can only average out stuff that already exists. That is not a flaw, that’s a feature. That is how it works.

Why is innovation a requirement for net gain? Look at the pictures posted above. They are new. Pixels and/or brushstrokes have never been put in that exact order before, and they likely never would have if I hadn't generated them myself. That may not be innovation, but it does ADD to the world's supply of art.

Also, stable diffusion can surprise you with interesting additions to what it generates. Look at this, one of the first things I made.

The prompt was "oil painting of an evil princess, ornate lavender and pink details, fantasy, intricate, elegant, whimsical, highly detailed brushstrokes, digital painting, artstation, dnd concept art, smooth, sharp focus, illustration, art by alphonse mucha". Her hair piece totally looks like an eye, and it's a very fitting character design "choice" for an evil princess, but there's nothing about that in the prompt.

The artistic worth of AI art only comes from the humans that view it (prompter included), since there's no conscious draw-er. A computer generating images with no one to ever view them is generating code, not art.

To make an AI copy public domain art and pass yourself off as the creator is an insult. So is to make art and pass if off as theirs, or as something comparable to what they made. Inspiring others to learn a skill so they can be like you is a good thing. This is also very much not letting a computer imitate them and passing it off as a creation by a human.

"I made this with AI" - cool "I made this" (and everyone assumes you made it by hand) - not cool, lying AI art and handmade art are different things and I don't think they should be judged in the same context or by the same metrics.

These picture generating prompters have no shame…..

[qqueenofhades]

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all). 

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional: October 28th

Tozer in the Morning Tests for Genuineness

How can we tell whether or not a man or a religious demonstration is of God? The answer is easy to find, but it will take courage to follow the facts as God reveals them to us. The tests for spiritual genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Christianity is nothing if not moral. No tricks of theology, no demonstrations of supernatural wonders, no evidences of blind devotion on the part of the public can decide whether or not God is in the man or the movement. Every servant of Christ must be pure of heart and holy of life. While sinless perfection is not likely to be found among even the best of men, still the leader to be trusted is the one who lives as near like Christ as possible and who knows how to repent in sorrow of heart when he sins against his Lord by any act or word. The man God honors will be humble, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, modest, clean living, free from the love of money, eager to promote the honor of God and just as eager to disclaim any credit or praise on his own part. His financial accounts will bear inspection, his ethical standards will be high and his personal life above reproach.

Tozer in the Evening The Gift of Prophetic Insight

Excerpted from Of God and Men

A prophet is one who knows his times and what God is trying to say to the people of his times.

What God says to His church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour. Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus' day who faithfully parroted the Law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually. They fed the same diet to all and seemed wholly unaware that there was such a thing as meat in due season. The prophets never made that mistake nor wasted their efforts in that manner. They invariably spoke to the condition of the people of their times.

Today we need prophetic preachers; not preachers of prophecy merely, but preachers with a gift of prophecy. The word of wisdom is missing. We need the gift of discernment again in our pulpits. It is not ability to predict that we need, but the anointed eye, the power of spiritual penetration and interpretation, the ability to appraise the religious scene as viewed from God's position, and to tell us what is actually going on.

There has probably never been another time in the history of the world when so many people knew so much about religious happenings as they do today. The newspapers are eager to print religious news; the secular news magazines devote several pages of each issue to the doings of the church and the synagogue; a number of press associations gather church news and make it available to the religious journals at a small cost. Even the hiring of professional publicity men to plug one or another preacher or religious movement is no longer uncommon; the mails are stuffed with circulars and "releases," while radio and television join to tell the listening public what religious people are doing throughout the world.

Greater publicity for religion may be well and I have no fault to find with it. Surely religion should be the most newsworthy thing on earth, and there may be some small encouragement in the thought that vast numbers of persons want to read about it. What disturbs me is that amidst all the religious hubbub hardly a voice is raised to tell us what God thinks about the whole thing.

Where is the man who can see through the ticker tape and confetti to discover which way the parade is headed, why it started in the first place and, particularly, who is riding up front in the seat of honor?

Not the fact that the churches are unusually active these days, not what religious people are doing, should engage our attention, but why these things are so. The big question is Why? And no one seems to have an answer for it. Not only is there no answer, but scarcely is there anyone to ask the question. It just never occurs to us that such a question remains to be asked. Christian people continue to gossip religious shoptalk with scarcely as much as a puzzled look. The soundness of current Christianity is assumed by the religious masses as was the soundness of Judaism when Christ appeared. People know they are seeing certain activity, but just what it means they do not know, nor have they the faintest idea of where God is or what relation He has toward the whole thing.

What is needed desperately today is prophetic insight. Scholars can interpret the past; it takes prophets to interpret the present. Learning will enable a man to pass judgment on our yesterdays, but it requires a gift of clear seeing to pass sentence on our own day. One hundred years from now historians will know what was taking place religiously in this year of our Lord; but that will be too late for us. We should know right now.

If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation it must be by other means than any now being used. If the church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.

Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the one and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.

We need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to the church, and it is my belief that the one gift we need most now is the gift of prophecy.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[mariesocuniverse]

Relationships: WayV

MaeKun

if it werent for the the laws of ncity he wouldve asked her to join wayv and stay in their dorms

Since they don’t live together or are part of the same unit they don’t really spend a lot of time together but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t want to be with Mae

Large parent/protective older brother energy

not as protective as 127 hyungs but you know

Yeah she’s a menace when she teams up with other WayV members but she doesn’t clown him as much as they do it’s cause she saves that energy for doyoung lmao

mae claims she visits the wayv dorm for him but he’s 50% sure she’s just there for the animals

the other 50% is because she wants him to cook for her which he does even if she doesnt ask

hes like those parents who insist on giving you leftovers to bring home to your family

he taught her to do magic tricks bc she was insistent on wanting to learn at least one

okay but honestly she thinks he really cool despite all the clowning she does to him

like singing? dancing? cooking? visual? magic? and he can fly a plane????

one of the reasons she has high standards ngl

MaeTen

ten has unofficially adopted her whether people like it or not

he has fought with taeyong and doyoung about it she is his baby

if mark and johnny are his brothers, mae is basically his younger sister

if you look at his photo gallery he has a folder dedicated to mae and mae only

any photo or video of them together is basically ten clinging to her like a koala

he looks at her like she put all the stars in the sky but the same goes for mae

she has admitted in an interview that ten is one of her role models because of his talent and work ethic

whenever she needs help with dancing he’s one of the first people she asks

xiaojun once asked him who’s his favorite between yangyang and mae and you could see him malfunction for like six seconds before jokingly scolding him

“yah how could you ask me that type of question?”

fun fact! ten was the person she asked to go with her when she got her first tattoo!

he arranged the appointment at the place where he got his and held her hand when she was getting it

Lowkey considered getting matching tattoos but never really took the time to think of what tattoos they’d get

MaeWin

another top ship among czennies

these two are so soft for each other omg

just one glance at the two and you’re already melting

You can see Yuta screaming about MaeWin whenever the group is together and they’re interacting

And if you can’t see it you’ll probably hear it

MaeWin: casually talking

Yuta: is this what heaven looks like

MaeWinMark is just yuta’s weakness and he doesn’t even bother to hide it

Okay back to MaeWin before I get ahead of myself and make an entire post about Yuta and MaeWinMark

If they’re gathered in a large group their interactions aren’t really noticeable unless you’re actively looking for it

While the others are talking you can just see Mae playing with his hands or winwin giving her a soft smile while patting her head

They talk more when they’re either in a small group or just the two of them

MaeWin shippers were devastated when they got separated so when nct 2020 happened they went feral

Every once in a while they go out for hotpot and talk about what has been going on

LuMae

this man right here

they first met when she was visiting NCT U dance practice for BOSS with food and she heard him from the hallway

its one of the reasons why she wasn’t intimidated by him even though hes a giant

she was excited to see what kind of energy and personality he would bring to nct

and she was not disappointed at all

personal hype man

whenever they’re on a variety show together and mae is asked to do something he just yells “FIGHT HAEYADWAE”

of course the same goes for mae but less loud bc last time she kept yelling she lost her voice and couldnt talk for the rest of the show

He just has this energy where if he’s hyped up about something she feels energized to be hyped up well so you just hear the both of them cheering loudly

its always interesting to see because you just see a gentle giant cheering loudly with this smol girl next to him trying to match his energy

he always makes sure she’s comfortable when they’re at a schedule

like we know how he’s really silly on camera but he’s also very observant and caring

one time mae complained about how her feet hurt from the heels she was wearing so he just picked her up bridal style and walked to the van without a word

XiaoMae

They’ve heard abt each other from Kun and ten and greeted each other when they passed by each other in the halls but they never really had a chance to grow close until nct 2020 happened

Mae wasn’t in the Make a Wish unit so there weren’t a lot of chances to get to know each other while promoting either but it doesn’t mean they’re not friends

ten also hogs her attention when she visits the wayv dorms but we dont talk about that

these two arent as close as the others but not to the point where they actively avoid each other

whenever they’re together they just vibe

theres no awkward silence or small talk they just talk about random stuff

“no lucas, i dont hate xiaojun hyung we just dont hang out as often as we do”

“yes hendery we do have each other’s numbers we just don’t talk often”

WayV is lowkey tempted to lock the two of them in a practice room together and do a vlive to see what’ll happen

prime candidates for “It’s Awkward but It’s Okay”

their dynamic is kinda DoRen where they pretend to be awkward around each other as a joke

like they went out together once and everyone as excited bc omg they were interacting

XiaoMae shippers are starved for content and will accept any crumbs that come their way

HenMae

the duo people didnt know they needed until they met

its not like people didnt want them to become friends its just that theyre energies match well

these two are such a vibe

you know how there are ppl who don’t see for long periods of times but you still want tackle them in a hug whenever you meet? yeah its like that

kun sometimes wants to separate the two bc of how much chaos they cause together

they’re the duo where they think something is a good idea at the time but ends up as something bad at the end

kun has banned the two from the kitchen bc of a fire they started

HenMae shippers are thriving because of all the stories of the dumb shit they’ve done

lowkey considered doing a series together on nct daily but then the channel stopped uploading vids so it was never mentioned again

one time he was on call with his sister when she walked in and accidentally mistook her as his gf and now they jokingly have each other as bf and gf in their phone contacts

ten nearly had a heart attack when he saw the contact name pop up and mae picked up the call

 yangyang has the whole thing recorded on his phone and refuses to delete it

MaeYang

(A/N everytime i see this gif i need a moment to pause and try and remember my ideas cause my head goes empty when it comes to yangyang)

okay if HenMae are chaotic, MaeYang are worse

kun doesnt need to dye his hair gray bc of all the stress these two cause him

czennies thought they didnt interact much bc of different schedules and groups but once nct world happened they changed their minds

MaeYang slowly climbing up the ranks of nct ships

during one of his lives yangyang mentioned how he spoke a lot with mae and that she wanted to add him to the 00liner gc

czennies lost it that day bc 1) holy shit theres a 00liners gc and 2) why tf hasnt yangyang been added into it yet

insists that she calls him oppa/hyung even though theres only a one month difference between them

Mae and Yangyang: whispering in the corner of the room

kun: theyre either talking shit about someone or world domination and i cant tell whats worse

he tried teaching her some german once and she now knows like three sentences

“Hallo, Ich bin Mae. Was geht ab? Mir geht’s gut.” (A/N this is the outcome of my three years of german lessons everyone)

and basically all the swear words but we dont need to talk about that

haechan jokes that he’s stealing mae away from the dreamies so he wont be the maknae in wayv 

[wisdomrays]

A MAJOR SIN: GHULUL (defrauding): Part 2

Constant self-criticism in order to avoid ghulul

Actually, the devoted souls should show more sensitivity in keeping away from ghulul. For example, if they gather together for the sake of servitude to God or worship, we need to have the thought within about whether it is our lawful right to step on the carpet under our feet. If we do not do that, then it means we have lost our sensitivity on this issue. I am not saying that it is not your right. Those who built these establishments bought the carpets for your use; this is a different issue. The point I am trying to make is that, we need to be so sensitive as to question ourselves about whether we deserve to use these carpets by prostrating ourselves on them and causing them to wear out a bit. We are eating from the food they serve us here, but are we really deserving of it? Having concerns, hesitations, and sensitivity about this issue is very important. Caring about where the morsel in one’s mouth comes from, to whom it belonged, questioning is it really lawful or not, and showing great sensitivity in this respect is a very important duty that falls on a believer. You may be included in different units of serving faith and people or organizations. A person who works at such an organization should do this service for the sake of God, without asking any financial demand, if possible. But if he or she does not have any other income for a livelihood, it is possible to give that person a certain salary. However, it should definitely be a fixed amount clearly stated. Otherwise, those who handle the organization might think, “We have the financial means in our hands anyway. Then let us give our employees no less than a high-level journalist. After all, we go to so many different countries of the world and take serious pains. For this reason, a high salary is our right!” This thought is just another form of ghulul.

As for what needs to be done here, within the rules determined by the team that governs the organization, they should say to employees, “You can take this much as your monthly payment, and this is for the travel expenses.” Nothing extra to that amount will be lawful for them. Otherwise, one might lose while seemingly being on the righteous path. While walking to God and having the means to gain His good pleasure, they might fall for Satan’s trickery and—may God forbid!—become a fallen one.

The ethical conduct and discipline of making an explanation to the people

Other people governing establishments of volunteers such as supplementary schools, cultural centers and the like must show the same sensitivity. The people who support this service trust the volunteers to the degree of comfortably saying, “You can take my soul” if a soul were needed somewhere. If there is a ghulul somewhere, even if it is as little as one-seventh of a grain of barley in worth, God will bring us to account for it. As a matter of fact, the Qur’an declares: “Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it; and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it” (az-Zalzalah 99:8). Accordingly, we will be held liable for even smaller sins. The Arabic word dharra refers to the smallest particle of matter; it used to be called molecule, then atom, and then a subatomic particle… You can even call it luminiferous aether . So according to the verse, God Almighty will call us to account for evils we cannot even see with a microscope or x-rays.

As believers, our greatest credit is the people’s trust. They keep asking “How do you find finance to support the schools?” We have the people’s support. People give their support, for they have the belief; “There is no shadow of doubt and speculative purposes in these people’s lives.” Therefore, if you commit some form of ghulul by laying your hands on something that is not your lawful right, you will have, first of all, broken this trust. On the other hand, imagine that the people put their trust in you, but you betrayed them; God will bring one to account for that betrayal. But it is doubtful whether we can say anything meaningful during such questioning or not. The situation on Judgment Day will surely make the Pride of Humanity sad.

There are such essential values and disciplines in Islamic teaching that it is an entire case to be studied separately. God Almighty bestowed great blessings on Muslims, such as the Holy Qur’an, the Authenticated Sunnah, the Islamic teachings, and made this into the spirit of our lives. If Muslims still fail to erect the monument of their soul after so many blessings pouring down on them, then it means they are spending their lives in vain. Therefore, if we do not embarrass the noble Prophet in the Hereafter, and if we wish God’s graces to keep coming in terms of good works in this world, then we have to show the utmost sensitivity on this issue. For the same reason I told certain people who have been my friends for 40 to 45 years, “You had better not own an apartment or car of your own.” I am not such a sensitive person, but let me tell you one thing I did. So many times I opened my hands to God and prayed: “My God, please, here I am imploring You, do not grant worldly means to my own brothers.” Because, if others see them enjoying some wealth, they can say, “Then he is taking something from somewhere.” Praise be to my God, every one of them is employed somewhere as workers and I—the whole world is a witness to it—am not disturbed by this at all. Let them keep living—may God grant them long life—as laborers. I will not feel sad at all. I would be sad if they died as sinful people or if other people gossiped about their dishonesty; for it would mean discrediting a noble ideal the people gave heartfelt support to.

Thieves of success

Let me express as a final point that ghulul can happen with not only material but also spiritual matters. For example Bediüzzaman mentions that the victory of an entire battalion cannot be ascribed to their commander only. All the rewards and honor do not belong to the commander but the entire army. For this reason, laying claims on the accomplishment of an entire movement means associating partners with God, on the one hand, and ghulul on the other. It is a great danger if a person lays claim to certain achievements by disregarding the efforts of millions and asserting his role by saying, “my plans and projects, my insight and thoughts…” and appropriating the people’s appreciation for himself by saying “I did it.” If others respond to him by singing his praises, and if he welcomes these, it is a further degree of disrespect and moral corruption. Such an attitude is also a form of ghulul, a major sin, and betrayal of trust.

[wxlfbites]

The Church of Satan

I can only imagine the amount of criticism and hate I'm going to get for this, so I just want to preface this post by saying that in 2015 I considered myself a LaVeyan Satanist for a while. I was a teenager and felt like what I was reading was exactly how I felt, it gave me a sense of justification for the views I had. I am not just some random, misinformed individual who only read anti-satanism propaganda. In fact, I've still actually never read anti-satanism propaganda. My opinions have been formed based exclusively on what I've read on the Church of Satan's own website. These are of course, my own opinions and people are allowed to disagree... I just think it might be something to think about if you're considering becoming a satanist.

THIS WILL BE AN EXTREMELY LONG POST

Firstly, I'm addressing the membership the Church of Satan is now implementing. ~ While the Church of Satan says that you do not need to become a member in order to consider yourself a satanist, it is clear that they encourage you to do so. It has registration and payment based memberships that allow you access to confidential information, rituals, and online chat groups you are otherwise not entitled to. Their website claims these memberships have always been in place, but I do not remember any such kind in 2015. ~ It is their policy that affiliated members are discouraged from exchanging member-exclusive information with non-members. They also express that if you are a non-member of the church, you should not expect members to keep up extended exchanges or promotion of your wares. Further, your membership is subject to rejection and retraction at their discretion and they openly state that when you apply for a membership, they gather information on you to ensure you are someone safe and trustworthy to allow in. ~ Whether or not it is intentional, they use guilt tactics in order to persuade people into becoming members. To quote some of these phrases on their own website: "Those who proudly carry our red cards identifying themselves as members have the strength and dedication to implement the tools traditionally associated with Satan". "Look to your other possessions and expenses (most people spend far more than this on general entertainment) and we’re certain you can do this if it means something to you to become a member." "We’ve discovered that most individuals can muster these funds if membership is something they truly desire." ~ They describe your membership card as a key that you must show and scan to other members to prove your affiliation. They make a few references to the underground secrecy that members may or may not choose to maintain, and so to protect their identities as members, these... calling cards if you will.. are used to discretely confirm ones membership in the Church. ~ They do not tell you where the money for your registration fee goes. In fact, they say: "That is up to the administration. It will be applied to whatever is most required at the time it is received. If you feel the need to know in more detail, then don’t join." Implying you don't have the right to know exactly where your money goes? ~ Their membership application includes inappropriate questions that no organization, religious or otherwise, should ever ask. These include: " Are you satisfied with your sex life? Describe your ideal of a physically attractive sex partner." "How many years would you like to live?" "In what organizations do you hold membership?" "Are you a smoker? If so, to what extent." "Do you drink alcoholic beverages? If so, to what extent? State preferences." " Secondly, how does satanism compare themselves to other religions and philosophies? ~ The Church of Satan declares themselves to be "a formidable threat to those who would halt progress in the name of spirituality and theism of any sort." "We are a group of dynamic individuals who stand forth as the ultimate underground alternative, the “Alien Elite.” ~ They state things like "Our members and officials will not serve as teachers nor as entertainers—we have neither the time nor the inclination.", "It is our policy not to spoon-feed information to students who are too lazy to do research." and "Your schedule is of no importance to us." so it's no surprise that the satanic texts they do not provide in full on their website, including the Satanic Bible, - which is there main text and one they highly encourage you to read - cost money. ~ They believe themselves to be the only form of satanism, stating: "People who believe in some Devilish supernatural being and worship him are Devil-worshippers, not Satanists.", "Anton LaVey was the first to define Satanism as a philosophy, and it is an atheist perspective." and “Theistic Satanism” is an oxymoronic term and thus absurd." ~ Statements like: "we stand in opposition to theist religions and their

inherent hypocrisy.", [regarding the word Shemhamforash] - "So, Satanists use it for traditional blasphemy’s sake.", [regarding someones question about their experiences with demons] - "Satanists do not believe in demons or other supernatural beings, nor do we believe in spells. Seek help from local mental health professionals to assist you to get over these delusions.", "We Satanists are all anthropologists to some degree and can find that not upsetting people who think in such simplistic and erroneous terms of “belief equals goodness and truthfulness” might be worthwhile to smooth the proceedings in which one is involved. Trying to teach them that they are mistaken in such a belief may not be worth one’s efforts." are pretty much self explanatory as to the lack of consideration satanism has for other religions as being true for others.

~ This statement: "Knowing this, if you choose to affiliate with any pseudo-Satanic or anti-Satanic groups, you may well find yourself disaffiliated from the Church of Satan. Forewarned is forearmed." might sound harmless at first glance, but this kind of reminds me of an isolation tactic where cults discourage their followers to read or engage with opposing or differing opinions because it might open their eyes to the truth of things?

Finally, here are some statements that I personally don't find are morally or ethically okay?

~ In terms of kids worrying about their parents approval the Church says: "Satanism teaches that, so long as you live with your parents, you are in “their lair” and must show them respect". Which... is literally the same shit abuse victims hear all the time..... (example "you live in their house, they're your parents and you should love and respect them no matter what")...

~ "There can be no more myth of “equality” for all—it only translates to “mediocrity” and supports the weak at the expense of the strong." is a statement I just .... wish I were making up at this point.

~"The emotional drive to “change the world” is a common stage of early adult development typically beginning around age 16 and lasting until around age 24. Usually, individuals who become aware as to how the world actually functions—rather than being lost in a fantasy wherein they will be some sort of savior figure—come to realize that idealism (such as changing the world) is less important than the principle of getting what you want for yourself.",

Also! Um.. they are fully aware and okay with people who uphold discriminatory political views....

To quote their website regarding politics: "Our members span an amazing political spectrum, which includes but is not limited to: Libertarians, Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Reform Party members, Independents, Capitalists, Socialists, Communists, Stalinists, Leninists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Zionists, Monarchists, Fascists, Anarchists, and just about anything else you could possibly imagine."

And to justify this, they say: "Members who demand conformity from other members to their particular political fetish are welcomed to depart.”, "For a Satanist to expect, much less demand, consensus on any given issue, beyond basic advocacy of individual liberty within local laws, is an enterprise which is probably as masochistic as it is insane.", "Some naïve idealists seem to think that the Church of Satan as an organization risks irrelevancy if it does not become an advocate of certain political positions—usually their own pet issues which are assumed “must” be shared by other Satanists. This fear is based upon the assumption that the Church of Satan needs to change the world or risk “fading into obscurity.”

Again, all of this information comes directly from the Church of Satan website itself. It it not "propaganda". It comes from their own mouths. You're free to disagree with my interpretation and views of the above. But if you do agree, I'd love to know.

The things above make me uneasy. They give me huge cult vibes and are actually disappointing to read as someone who once considered themselves a satanist. As an omnistic pagan now, I do believe that all religions hold truths within them and can say that there are certain things within satanism I do agree with. But overall, I feel like calling satanism a religion is a stretch and should be joined with caution if it's something you are really interested in. I am only one person, I can't tell anyone what to do. But if you were considering becoming a satanist but hold values and views that the things in this post opposed or were opposite to, then maybe satanism isn't right for you. It's definitely not right for me.

I hope this post was educational at the very least. I hope that it might help people make a decision either way if they were interested in joining the Church.

[poulpichou]

Government failures and fucked-upperies in France

Ok, so I recently wrote a bit about the situation with police brutality in France, but now I would like to tell you more about WHY the government needs the police so much. A lot of my sources will be in french (and marked (F) like this) because there are a lot of cases that didn’t make it to the international press. Many sources also come from the newspaper Mediapart and require a subscription.

I’ve had a lot of people telling me “BuT It’S nOt ChInA” and let me tell you, yes I know it’s way worse in other countries (Peru, Thailand, Nigeria and so on, a lot is happening right now in the world), but where the fuck do you draw the line? The kind of things I’m gonna tell you about is unacceptable, and so hypocritical when a country calls itself a democracy and the land of human rights, and we should be angry about that and try to make it change. Here I’m talking a lot about Macron but let’s not forget that many current problems began under Holland’s presidency, who was supposed to be from the left, and even before. Alright, here we go.

President of the wealthy

Soooo let’s begin with how Macron was elected by wealthy people: half of the 16 million euro collected for his campaign was financed(F) by 1200 people, mostly living in Paris, by banks, and also by rich french people living abroad. So of course the first thing he did when he could was to reward them for his victory and he cut their taxes in december 2018. He deleted the “taxe on fortune” that was in place for 40 years (minus 3 years under Chirac first presidency) and replaced it with another that taxes way less, in the name of trickle down economy (you know, the same way Thatcher and Reagan did) saying that rich people would invest more and thus creating more jobs. Of course that didn’t happen and rich people just got way richer without any effects on poor people.

At the same time, he cut down housing benefits for students and poor people (1/4 of people between 18 and 24 are under the poverty line) and cancelled housing helps for 50,000 people. In december 2018, he wanted to pass a law that would increase fuel prices in the name of ecology, but that would once again mainly affect working and middle classes. That’s how started the yellow vest movement, because people were becomming poorer and poorer and they felt like the government only gave to the rich and took from the poor.

In 2018, 14% of the french population was under the poverty line, and 21% suffer from food insecurity and it has only worsened since.

At the end of 2019, a student even set himself on fire at his university because he was in such financial distress he couldn’t go on anymore.

Yellow Vest movement

If you have to read one article about it, it’s this one.

In 2017, Macron said in one of his speeches about a train station that it was “a place where one encounters people who are succeeding and people who are nothing”. The yellow vest movement came from these “people who are nothing”. For the first time in decades, people who were not heard, people who didn’t have a place in the political landscape in France were on the front scene. A lot of protestors never demonstrated before, or even engaged in politics. Many of them now protested because “they had nothing else to lose” (F). People were angry from not being listened to and being used only to allow rich people to get richer, and oh boy they showed it in the street.

The first protests took the government by surprise. They were not expecting the numbers of protestors, nor their determination. The protest were also completely different from the demonstration the state was used to deal with: there were no official leaders, making it really difficult for the government to negotiate, demonstrations were often not declared beforhand in prefectures (F), and people were systematically targetting (F) banks, major brands like Apple or McDonalds and luxury shops, causing millions euro worth of damages.

On the 1st of december 2018, protestors in Paris took over the Arc de Triomphe and completely overfloaded the police.

One policeman said afterward that on this day, “the Elysée could have fallen” (F). Police forces were not prepared, the right orders were not given at the right times and some police company were surounded by furious protestors. The same policeman said that in that moment, “they forgot about their code of ethics”, that they were just shooting rubber bullet wherever they could and “trying protect their life”. The following weeks, police put on steel fences around the Elysée and members of the government and their collaborators were asked to lock down and put away all of their documents(F) before the weekly demonstrations, in case the protestors were able to take over the buildings.

It was a turning point in the protests, and from then the orders given to the police changed completely. From then they’ve been allowed to litterally do whatever it took to keep the country in order. The government understood that the last thing between them and the furious people they betrayed was the police, and that’s precisely why they are trying to give them even more power today with the law on global security (see my last post, and probably a next one I’m gonna write soon because it would be too much for this post).

Since December 2018, a journalist, David Dusfresne, documents and keeps count on the police brutality, first on twitter and then on the online newspaper Mediapart(F) (TW for really graphic pictures of wounds and blood). For now he counted 4 deaths, 30 people who lost an eye due mainly to rubber bullets, 6 who lost a hand due to detonative grenades (France is being the only european country to use them against its own population), 346 wounded to the head (fractured skull mainly, due to the rubber bullets and baton blow) and a total of 969 documented reports on police brutality (and that’s only for 3 years).

Since then, a total of 9 police officers have been judged guilty, 7 of them being only suspended temporarily and avoiding prison, with only 2 of them ending up in prison(F) and being expelled from police forces.

People began to record the police more and more to prevent any brutality or to have proofs in case it happened, and then the police began to target journalists and anyone who had a camera.

They began to lie to people, telling them it’s forbiden to record the police (for now it isn’t), they forced photographs to delete their photos in the middle of demonstrations. They covered their ID number on their uniform (F), they covered their licence plates.

The government also began to talk about legitimate protest, aka the peacefull one, and put the name of “casseur” (thug) on anyone who would be too angry. to their taste, saying that the latter were taking the former in hostage. Basically they were saying tht yes, protestors took aver the arc de Triomphe, but it was only hooligans who just wanted to burn things, nothing political behind that.

Here began the preventive arrests (F) before demonstrations (arresting people who had done nothing on the only presumption they will), the arrest of journalists, the arrest of people having masks and protection glasses on them. From now on the administration can ban someone from public demonstration without going through the justice system.

Between November 2018 and November 2019, around 3,000 person(F) from the yellow vest movement were senteced to community services, fees, suspended prison sentence, and for 1/3 of them prison sentences. Those numbers are underestimated because many cases have not been judged yet. Some protestors were sentenced for shouting slogans(F), for wearing protective masks(F) (F), other were sent to prison for damaging radars(F) on highways, or for filming riots while wearing a yellow vest(F). There has been a massive tendency(F) for the state to sue people for “participation to a gathering with the intent to commit violences against persons or goods”, allowing them to give fees, community services or even prison sentences to people based only on the intent they gave them. Many people found guilty of attacking police forces were judged with the only proof being the declaration of police officers, and even though a lot of them claimed to be innocent they were still sentenced because they couldn’t bring proof of their innocence.(F) Amnesty International talks about the criminalization of demonstrators(F) that’s happening in France and warns about the instrumentalisation of laws that goes against international law. (F)

The ban on masks (they can be considered as weapons) during demonstration allows police to take protestors(F) who have some on them or in their car to the police station for a maximum of 48h for the sole purpose of making them miss the demonstration. This law is not applied nowadays because of Covid, but it still exists.

With the yellow vest movement, the part of the population who wasn’t used to the police actually began to endure what POC have been living for decades.

Racisme

France is a fucked up racist country. It was born in colonisation and slavery, and still rely on its former colonies to prosper economically. Young men perceived as Black or Arab are 24 more times likely to be stopped in the streets. The overwhelming majority of people killed by the police are black or arabic(F). When the police kills POC, the judiciary system often refuses to do a full investigation, refuses to hear some of the witnesses, refuses to watch some of the video tapes from surveillance cameras (F). A lot of autopsies are proved to be ballant lies, founding heart diseases(F) or blood infections(F) when the victim was actually killed by suffocation due to ventral tackle, a police technique that got France sentenced by the European court of human rights (F).

BAC

Since the mid 90′s, France has special police forces for working-class neighborhoods, the Brigade Anti-Criminalité (BAC), that operate in suburbs (in France rich people live in the city center and poor people in the suburbs) where a majority of imigrants and people from black and arabic descent live. BAC agents are all volunteers, they act in unmarked cars and civilians clothes and can carry weapons(F).

Their purpose is to roam the streets and to catch misdemeanor in the act, and they’ve been known (as well as regular police) to harass population by proceeding to systematic identity cheks(F) (often outside of what’s allowed by law), by insulting people(F), provoking people with racist and homophobic insults(F), by beating them(F) and charging them for “outrage” or “rebellion”(F) when they protest (charges that always give reasons to police officers when there’s no recordings of the arrest and allow them to get money for the prejudice). There have been reports of torture on adults(F), tennagers(F) and children(F), and cases where the BAC agents took victims to quiet places so they could beat them up(F). There have also been reports of agents inventing charges when their provocations didn’t push the victim to confront them(F).

They are basically above the law. There have been cases of massive corruption(F) where the agents returned to their unit(F) after the end of their suspension, and the person who leaked the info got fired.

As they are field agents, their role is also intelligence: they gather intells in the suburbs and they also infiltrate demonstration(F) and wear the attire of “casseurs”, to gather intells on violent individuals. Since the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement, they’ve participating in containing demonstrations as well even though they don’t have any training in that field.

Refugees

Police is being extremely violent against refugees, particularly in Northern France and what used to be the “Jungle” of Calais. Amnesty International reported that police had been beating refugees with baton, confiscating their clothes and tent daily during winter (it also happened in Paris(F)), urinating on their tents, spraying teargas directly in the face of sleeping men. A group of 4 associations also issued a report(F) on police harassment against volunteers who helped refugees, with as much as 646 instances of police harassment and abuse against volunteers between November 2017 and June 2018 in Calais. Human rights observers reported harrasment techniques such as body search of female volunteers by male officers, insults, pushing, threats of legal suits and threats of arrest. Volunteers who reported these behaviours were told by the police internal investigation body that the reports where defamatory and could constitute a crime.

At the beginning of the year, associations that were not approuved by the state were forbidden to distribute free meals to refugees(F).

Islamophobia

France has always been an islamophobic country but it has been more public and accepted since the 2015 terrorist attacks. Many laws promoting laicity are actually used to target Islam:

The ban of public display of religious items in public institutions (schools, libraries, government buildings) target mainly women wearing hijabs when many mayors keep on installing nativity scenes during Christmas(F). In 2016 some cities made wearing a burkini (full body covering bathing suit) on the beach illegal and we had some astonishing scenes of police officers asking a women (who wasn’t even wearing a burkini) to undress on the beach in the name of the law.

The law that says people have to uncover their face when being in a public space only target muslim women and is now completely useless as we have the obligation to wear a mask everywhere

The law that says street prayers have to be autorized in prefecture beforehand only target muslim community: when a muslim association organized a street prayer(F) in 2017 to protest their eviction from their place of cult in the city center they were charged 10,000€ (5,000€ from the association and 5,000€ from its president), whereas catholics students organized a street prayer(F) last month and didn’t face any charges. Legally, any autorization must be asked more than 3 days in advance and in both cases it was only asked on the day before.

Following the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was attacked mid october for showing caricatures of the prophet Mohamed in class, four 10 years old children were arrested for “terrorism apology”(F), interrogated for 10 hours and their houses checked by police forces in full gears. The minister of interior also disolved the Collective against Islamophobia in France, saying that, since it was prottesting against anti-terrorist laws (that are super islamophobic) it was promoting radical islamism and terrorism. A minute of silence was imposed in schools and the names of people who didn’t follow the procedure were given to the minister of education, who said “none of them will be left unpunished”.(F)

To sum up: the government is being super islamophobic but muslims who voice their concerns are seen as radical islamists and are associated with terrorists.  Furthermore, it’s now easier for islamophobic people in government to ban associations or to pass shady laws thanks to the state of emergency.

State emergency

Following the 2 years of state emergency (2015-2017), France passed a law against terrorism(F) that normalized a lot of the state emergency’s characteristics: it took power away from the justice system to give it to administrations, directly under the control of the government.

The government, who previously had to be accountable in front of a judiciary judge, can now do many things under the only control of an administrative judge(F). The actions of administrative judges are controled by the council of state, and the president of the said council is the prime minister or the minister of justice, named by the president.

Here is what they can now do(F):

place people under house arrest with obligation to check in police stations every day for a maximum of a year

deny or restrict access to public events to some people, or proceed to body search

make someone wear an electronic bracelet when they didn’t commit any infractions

close places of worship for a maximum of 6 months when the ideas discuted there promote hate, discrimination, violence or terrorism

require people to give their login of any account on internet to the police

investigate on civil servants using secret services files

create a national centralized file with the names of people travelling in and out of the country by plane or boat

With the autorisation of a judge of freedom and detentions, they can also search houses and seize computers or phones to inspect the contents.

If people refuse to do any of the above when they are asked to, they risk 3 years of prison and a fee that can go up to 45,000€.

The offense “terrorism apology” was used against hundreds of people, with a large proportion of them being underaged (1/3 of them in 2015), sometimes for something as unsignificant as a non-violent facebook comment, a situation pointed out by Amnesty International(F). The NGO also highlights the fact that the fear of being considered as an extremist or the fear of facing judiciary consequences sets limit to freedom of speech.

Since 2015, the government has used the power given to them by the state of emergency to place 24 environmental activists under house arrest for the duration of the COP21(F) and to search the house of people who were protesting against the construction of an airport(F), construction potentialy linked to corruption(F), and also to close temporarly more than 30 mosques and install security cameras inside(F).

The consulting national commission on human rights pointed out a “highjack” of the state emergency, that was used to silence protestors, unions and refugees with abusive means, like unnecessary handcuffing, adults and children being aimed at with assault riffle during house searches and house being damaged during searches.

2015 was also the year of the Intelligence Act, a law that allows inteligence agencies to install scanning devices on the infrastructure of telecom operators so they can collect data on communications that are likely to reveal a terrorist threat.

Covid 19

When the epidemy started to be problematic in France in February 2020, hospital workers had been on strike for 11 months(F) and were asking for doctors and nurses jobs opening, and more beds in hospital. At the beginning of february, 600 administrative hospital workers had quit(F) so they were not “accomplices of the management of misery”. Healthcare workers had been saying for years that the deterioration of the working conditions in hospitals were gonna lead to patients death.

Since the beginning of the 2000′s, 100 000 beds have been removed(F) from hospital services and there has been a budget cut close to 12 bilions euros(F) for the health services.

Then comes Covid 19, and the government asks health workers to always do more with less, in the name of common good. We applaud them at our windows every night, and then they don’t get the bonus(F) the government promised, the healthcare system doesn’t get any budget increase and even worse, it still has to face a 800 milions cut in the middle of the pandemic(F).

The newspaper Mediapart issued a report(F) exposing the lies of the government:

They decided to get only small quantities of masks at the beginning of january against experts opinion, they said the virus wouldn’t reach France.

Government lied about the usefullness of masks to prevent people asking for them when they didn’t have some to distribute to the whole population. They said it was useless, and even dangerous because we didn’t know how to use them, they actively encouraged people not to wear them, and they lied about mask shortage. I really want to insist on that point, the instensity of communication on the subject was incredible. Every day we had many different high-ranked person in the government telling us on TV, on the radio or in newspaper that we shouldn’t wear masks. They only made wearing masks compulsory in public spaces mid July, 6 months after the first case in France(F).

Healthcare workers didn’t have enough masks and thus faced higher risks of contamination but the government still allowed non essential big companies like Airbus to use milions of the precious FFP2 masks. The government still refuses to give the number of healthcare workers who died from Covid19(F), the only count we have is made by journalists, and it’s believed to be underestimated.

To this day, healthcare workers are still on strike for better working conditions and better pay. I took this pic earlier this month from one of the firestations in my city, you can read written in white paint on the doors “understaffed, population in danger”, “18 months of strike and still NOTHING”, “Covid bonus ???” and “SOS”. Firefighters also write this on their trucks and their helmets, and hospitals have had banners deployed for more than a year now. All of these people are still working to ensure everyone’s access to health services but they refuse to transfer data to the state sickness insurance for example (and they are now facing administrative sanctions(F) and are threatened to not be given cancer drugs if they don’t end the strike(F)).

Regarding Covid, we are one of the only countries in europe to use self-filled certificates to be able to go outside. These certificates are controlled by the police, and like I said earlier, increased police controls harm a certain part of the population (young people and POC). Amnesty International issued a report(F) on the violences comited during french lockdown, pointing out repetitive and significant illegitimate actions from the police, such as beatings, use of tasers, illegal arrests, racists and homophobics insults and verbal threats. In April 2020, Mohamed Gabsi, a homeless person, was killed by the police after being arrested for being outside during the lockdown(F). The officers who killed him are still in service.

The covid crisis brought us in the worst recession we had since WW2, and the Secour Populaire (french association that helps poor people) had to help 45% more people than it helped in 2019(F). In my city, there are so many people coming for food distribution on certain days they had to install permanent fences in the street so people can queue in order.

Corruption and Other Stuff

In France (as in many other countries) it’s rare to have politicians who’ve never been prosecuted in any judiciary or administrative case.

Here I’m only gonna tell you who have been accused and who have been prosecuted for what in Macron’s government, and quite frankly it’s not exhaustive because one wikipedia page just brings me to 5 more.

The following tab is quite heavy so feel free to just check the left column with the legend.

(Now let me cry thinking about this Swedish minister who had to quit over a chocolate bar)

(All my sources are from french newspapers, I can give them if you ask me but I’m not gonna put them here because there are way too many)

People who had to quit the first government were still appointed deputy governor of the Bank of France (Sylvie Goulard), president of the national assembly (Richard Ferrand) and chief of foreign affaires commission at the national assembly (Marielle de Sarnez). They are being investigated for corruption and embezzlement and they still have a successfull political career, and more important they still heavily influence the laws of our country and of Europe. Sylvie Goulard was even chosen by Macron to seat at the European Commission but european deputies decided it was fucked up and rejected her appointment (F).

In this list I only talked about members of the government but there has been other scandals linked to people around Macron.

Benalla cases: It all began when we discovered Alexandre Benalla, chief of security and travels for the president, was participating in demonstration as a policeman (which he wasn’t) and used his position to beat up protestors and passerby. The rest of the case is filled with destruction and hiding of evidences(F), illegal sharing of public surveillance videotapes by the police, undeclared guns(F), illegal but unpunished use of data by the police(F) and the Elysée(F), breaking of the judiciary control by Benalla, illegal diplomatic passports and meeting with african’s leaders, russian contracts with an alleged mafia boss(F), office searchs for a newspaper ordered by the State, who tried to seize the proofs and the sources the newspaper had on the case(F) and so on. The case involves several members of the government and members of special forces, and some journalists who were writing on it were then auditionned for disclosure of state secret(F). The case in general highlighted the impunity members of the government and police officers have, as well as anyone who is close to the president, but also the dysfunction in the justice system and the impossibility for high ranked people to face justice. The fucker is still free, taunt people on twitter and still gives interviews to national television.

Kohler case: Alexis Kohler, general secretary of the Elysee and Macron right hand man during his campain, hid his personnal links to the sea transporters MSC and then attributed them huge state funds. He also lied in his involvement in the decision. We discovered Macron sent a letter to the national financial prosecutor's office to clear him, which they did, until an anti-corruption association relaunched legal proceedings. The guy is now being prosecuted for corruption and bribery. (F) (F)

Conclusion

Fuck the police, eat the rich, let’s forbid them from being elected, a next long post on the Law on Global Security the governement is trying to pass is gonna come soon if you’re interested.

Please tell me if you see any inconsistency in this post, I tried to source it as much as I could and to verify everything I wrote but like anyone else I have bias and sometimes I wrote things at 5am so I’m aware I might be incorrect  and I’m open to constructive criticism. Also sorry for my approximate english sometimes.