#modern day america is technology powerless

[reality-detective]

Wake Up! Everything You Believe Is a Carefully Crafted Lie by a Hidden Elite That Owns Your Governments, Banks, and Minds!

The world is under the control of a hidden, powerful elite that has manipulated humanity for thousands of years. Governments, banks, corporations, and even religions are all part of a massive, interconnected system designed to keep the masses in line. You are living in a controlled simulation where every move is calculated, every narrative crafted, and every dissent crushed.

Ancient Rome never fell; it just changed its face. The Vatican is the continuation of the Roman Empire, pulling the strings of global power from the shadows. The Pope is not a religious leader but the CEO of the world’s largest covert operation. Global leaders bow to Rome; every major decision made in Europe, America, and beyond has its roots in this ancient power structure. The so-called “democracies” are just fronts, and the real rulers operate far from the public eye.

The financial system is a tool of enslavement, but its grip is weakening. Central banks, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and the IMF have long kept nations in debt and citizens in economic chains. However, their reign is about to end. The Global Economic Security and Reformation Act (GESARA) is poised to trigger the biggest wealth transfer in history, redistributing stolen wealth back to the people.

This is a total overhaul designed to dismantle the corrupt systems that have enslaved humanity for centuries. Trillions of dollars hoarded by the elite will be seized and returned to the people, restoring economic power where it belongs.

This act will expose the financial fraud perpetuated by these institutions, wiping out debts and releasing new technologies that have been suppressed to keep the populace in poverty. The days of the financial overlords are numbered, and GESARA is the catalyst that will break their chains for good, restoring wealth and freedom to the masses.

Education and media are the propaganda arms of this hidden empire. From kindergarten to university, you are fed lies designed to shape your worldview to fit the agenda of the elite. Critical thinking is discouraged because an informed population is a threat. The news you watch, the books you read, and the information you consume are all curated to keep you ignorant, divided, and powerless.

Governments are puppets. Elections are rigged shows to give you the illusion of choice. Presidents, prime ministers, and kings answer to the same hidden masters. Policies, wars, economic collapses—they’re all orchestrated from behind closed doors by a small group of individuals who have no allegiance to any nation but only to their own interests. They decide who wins, who loses, and how the game is played.

Laws are tools of oppression, not justice. The legal system is designed to protect the elite and keep you in line. Roman law still influences modern legal codes, and its principles are used to maintain control over the masses. The courtrooms are theaters where the outcome is predetermined, and the real power lies in the unseen hands that pull the strings.

Corporations are not independent entities—they are branches of the same control network. They push products, policies, and narratives that serve their masters’ agenda. From the food you eat to the technology you use, everything is designed to monitor, influence, and control you. You are not a customer; you are a data point, a resource to be exploited.

The world is not what it seems. Every institution you trust, every leader you admire, every belief you hold has been carefully constructed to keep you obedient and blind to the truth. You are not free; you are a pawn in a game that was rigged long before you were born.

The only way out is to see the truth: that the world is run by a small, powerful group that considers itself above the rest of humanity. They are the masters, and we are the slaves. This is the reality they don’t want you to see. Wake up, or remain a willing participant in your own enslavement.

Escape the Matrix 🤔

[seirve]

i would like to see ur ocs 🤲

ok ok SO. I'll give u the basic set up b4 telling u the characters

so basically the story takes place in modern day America. Except!!! Superpowers exist, and can be unlocked by 2 things:

1. These things called "Charms"

2. A chemical (which I haven't decided the name of)

There are 2 stories that I have set in this universe, but we'll be focusing on the 2nd one bc that's the one that I have more info on.

So. The story is called "Vitals"

This company called "Crater" has basically copyrighted the use of the unnamed superpower chemical and has been kidnapping children and preteens to "transform" them into the perfect soldiers to "lead" (control) humanity.

The company basically manipulates the kids and keeps them isolated from the rest of society. It has "ranks" which are color-coded:

CEO: no color. above colors, even.

Red- 2nd highest rank. Reserved for the CEO'S daughter

Orange- most trusted + most powerful. mostly adults.

Yellow- most trusted -OR- most powerful

Green- basically just orange halved

Blue- basically just yellow halved

Purple- green halved

Black- staff/servants

White: mentors (adults who are teaching kids how to use their powers.

Got it? Ok, let's get into the characters (don't pay attention to the writing on the paper, just the character designs)

This is Avila. She is level Blue, and is the main character. She begins the story completely devoted to Crater, but quickly realizes that everything is not how it seems.

Avila is 14 years old, and her power is controlling gravity. She's not the brightest, but she makes up for it in fierce loyalty and devotion to do good. She can be naive at times, though.

By the end of the story, Avila becomes much wiser and learns to be more cautious of others- not after heaps of trauma are dumped on her, of course.

Voice claim: Kristen Schaal (voice of: Mabel Pines)

This is Oriana. She is level Green, and is Avila's best friend (at least, at first). She begins the story devoted to Crater and her best friend, but when Avila leaves, chooses to side with Crater.

Oriana is 15 years old, and their power is teleportation. They tend to be short-sighted when making decisions, and prioritize their own feelings and success over other people.

While they begin the story being very tame morally, only trying to show loyalty to Crater (their family), Oriana is pushed to their worst and eventually takes over as the main villain. She does not get redeemed.

Voice claim: none? I haven't quite figured out how she talks, so... yeah. idk

(I'm also thinking of making her have a one-sided crush on Avila, to make her more conflicted, but idk. I don't wanna focus on romance in this)

[click to see full image]

This is Lola. She is not part of Crater. She is a journalist, and is the person to introduce Avila to the fact that Crater is Evil, Actually. She's an intern at her brothers' work, which is a small newspaper. Lola is also Avila's love interest.

Lola is 14 years old, and is an aspiring journalist. She has a pushy personality, and has difficulties empathizing with others; she's very logical, and tends not to let her feelings show around other people.

By the end of the story, Lola gains a wider outlook on life and learns that not everyone needs to see things her way.

(can you tell that I based her off of myself)

Voice claim: Chloe Bennet (Daisy Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D)

This is Davina (weird name, I know). She is the daughter of the CEO, and spends the first half of the story fighting alongside Crater. At some point, there's a time skip, and we come back to see Davina sided against Crater.

Davina is 16 years old, and her power is Invisibility. She's quite intelligent, and has a knack for technology, like her dad (who is powerless). She's very empathetic to others, but she can be a bit of a doormat when it comes to those she cares about.

By the end of the story, Davina has accepted her position as basically the main characters' big sister, and has come to terms with the fact that her dad is evil and her life was built on a lie :)

Voice claim: none yet

This is Aster. He is my favorite. His level WAS Yellow, but he left before the story started. He left right after he got his powers, and still has some issues with controlling them. He is a part of an organization which is working against Crater, known as Jumping Point.

Aster is 12 years old, and he can control electricity. He is very powerful, but can be quite unruly when it comes to listening to authority. He's very outspoken when it comes to his opinions, which contrasts to most other people in the main cast.

By the end of the story, Aster dies :). But before then, he learns how to better cooperate with other people and overall becomes more mature.

Voice claim: Ben Schwartz (Dewey from DuckTales, Leo from ROTTMNT, and most notably Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog (2020))

This is Quinn (Quincy). He WAS level Blue, before he left Crater with Aster. He has full control of his powers, and is part of a dynamic duo with Aster :)

Quinn is 13 years old, and they can control water. I'm thinking of having them be Aster's love interest, but idk. They're very monotone in the way they speak, and tend to come off as uncaring to others. They also have low empathy towards others, but they do care- a lot of the time, they just don't really see why they should until it's explained to them.

By the end of the story, Quinn stays mostly the same, except that they develop a better appreciation for life after their partner dies :(. His arc is mostly based around him learning to trust Avila, who he forms a sibling-like relationship with, then him coming to accept Aster's death.

Voice claim: None yet.

(LAST ONE GUYS I PROMISE)

(yes I know this ones ugly. It was rushed, okay?)

This is Yale. They USED to be rank Purple, but they escaped with Avila. They've always been close with her, and would follow her anywhere.

Yale is 10 years old, and they can Shapeshift. They start the story with absolutely NO control over their powers, and their arc is focused on cultivating their power and learning how the world around them works.

By the end of the story, Yale becomes a young leader with control over their powers and a desire to do good. Maybe they eventually take Avila's position as leader. Who knows.

Voice claim: Terra Strong (specifically as Timmy Turner)

So yeah!!! That's the main skeleton of what I've got, feel free to ask questions!!

(note: I won't be doing anything with these guys anytime soon i.e making a comic or smth, as I am in middle school and also not that good at art)

[harrelltut]

O MONK [OM] MODE [OM] GOD [OMG] MICHAEL [OM] in DEEP METU NETER MEDITATION… Eye [ME] MOTHERSHIP NIBIRU's Divinely CHOSEN [D.C.] 144,000 DINNEERS of the IGIGI's 400 OTHERWORLDLY... 9 Ether ALUHUM ANUNNAQI Elite Star Species REBIRTHED from 3 MUUR Sets [MUURS] of the ALDEBARANS & RIZQIYIANS’ [MARS = MARTIANS’]... 144,000 MOON Base Families of ENQI [ME] NUDIMMUD... OUTSIDE MARS’ [OM] GOLDEN [OMG] Firmament WATER Dome of ANU GOLDEN Earth [Qi] GODDESS TIAMAT

O MICHAEL [OM] ENQI NUDIMMUD MU:13 SAGE™

buckle up america!!!

WE DO NOT ANSWER TO YOU POWERLESS NON ORGANIC HUMANOID CLONES

MODERN DAY HUMANITY 5000 LIGHT YEARS BEHIND IN HI 9 ETHER SKY TECHNOLOGY

US 144,000 9 ETHER HEAVEN ELITES [HE] OF EARTH [Qi] GODDESS TIAMAT... ALREADY ON ANU EARTH [Qi]

[zvaigzdelasas]

Bloomberg - China and Russia's Lies Are Winning Over the Global South

Putin has long seen opportunity there. He has fished in troubled waters, using arms sales, mercenaries and even direct military intervention to make Russia a player in conflicts in Syria and Libya. Moscow has created distractions for the US by cultivating military and intelligence ties with autocratic states in the Western Hemisphere such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Amid the war in Ukraine, Putin is seeking to rally developing countries against the punishments the US and its allies have imposed on Russia, in part by blaming those sanctions — rather than Moscow’s aggression — for worldwide economic turmoil.

China is looking for advantage in similar places. Developing countries from Pakistan to Argentina have been the primary recipients of the loans and infrastructure deals of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. African, Latin American and Middle Eastern nations figure prominently in Chinese strategy as providers of natural resources, recipients of Chinese-made technology, and a potentially sympathetic voting bloc in the United Nations.[...]

Disinformation is one of the critical tools. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union sought to blacken America’s image by spreading the lie that the Pentagon had cooked up the AIDS virus. The modern-day echoes are powerful: In 2020-21, a Chinese disinformation campaign claimed that Covid was a US bioweapon gone awry [& the US disinformation campaign claimed likewise][...]

Russian state-funded media outlets such as RT amplified such allegations, while firing off falsehoods about everything from racial violence in the US to the supposed Nazi leanings of the Ukrainian government.

Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns frequently work in parallel, as when Chinese outlets mimicked Russian claims about nonexistent US bioweapons facilities in Ukraine.

Disinformation aimed at the developing world is more pervasive than many Americans realize. A report by the Atlantic Council [lmao] revealed how China uses a network of seemingly independent websites, newspapers and TV channels to launder fake news into the information ecosystem, where it can be promoted as objective truth by the Chinese regime. RT has created a global media empire: It is ubiquitous in Latin America, is expanding operations in Africa, and its messages are often fanned by Russian diplomats and a veritable army of bots.

While Beijing and Moscow use disinformation nearly everywhere, the developing world is a particularly attractive target. Long legacies of anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism create a receptive information environment. Whereas many advanced democracies are now cracking down on RT and Chinese influence operations, those endeavors enjoy freer rein in poorer parts of the globe.[...]

US officials report that they have returned from recent trips to Africa and Latin America sobered by the degree to which Moscow’s narrative about Ukraine has taken root. Covid was a soft-power catastrophe for China in developed countries, but its Covid-related disinformation appears to have left a mark in the global south.

The US, for its part, is fighting from a position of weakness [sic]. During the Cold War, it had the US Information Agency, an entity devoted to telling the truth and exposing the enemy’s lies. In the 1980s, the Active Measures Working Group coordinated the intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic efforts to refute the AIDS smear and other Soviet disinformation. Neither institution exists anymore

Why are all these poor stupid moronic brainless people buying into Russian and Chinese propaganda - didn't they see the BBC & VOA reports about how those were propaganda? I guess they're just brainless zombies who are being programmed against their will by China & Russia (the bad guys) who think for some reason that it's our sanctions making their gas more expensive. It's sad how powerful Chinese & Russian propaganda is & how weak, bumbling & powerless we, the Good Guys, are [8 Sep 22]

[phoenix-king-ozai]

ATLA AND WAR CRIMES!!!

LOL, what is with people and their obsession with War Crimes and the ATLA universe? The Fire Nation is based on the Mongolian Empire, Imperial Dynasties of China, and Shogunate Japan. Countless Millions of civilians were massacred during those regimes. Granted, the Avatar world is modernizing but that is mostly due to the Fire Nation technology advantage.

Trying to force a modern and western lens on the ATLA given the cultures, society, and timelines that it is based on is ridiculous. The Five Punishments of Imperial China proved the different moral standards of the modern west versus the ancient east. Imagine going up to a Mongolian Khan and talking about War Crimes and proper Rules of Warfare!

Ozai, Iroh, Zuko, and Azula can all be considered war criminals! Ozai's men burned villages and towns to ashes with the Rough Rhinos, used POWs as meat shields, used slave labor, stole countless resources. Iroh also seized a city for six hundred days and nights and helped in an imperialist war, Zuko burned down Kyoshi's village and stole from civilians. Azula invaded Ba Sing Se and started a Coup!

Even if the Earth Kingdom demanded Ozai, Iroh, and Azula's heads. The Fire Nation Elites Generals, Nobels, Aristocrats, and even Zuko the Fire Lord himself wouldn't allow it! Zuko would attack the Earth Kingdom and King Kuei just like in the comics but for a more justifiable reason to his Fire Nation populace!

Ozai has too much clout, power, and influence in the Fire Nation court to be simply executed outside of the Avatar himself. Not even Zuko would be able to get away with it as Fire Lord. People were trying to kill him and bring Ozai back to power DESPITE HIM BEING A POWERLESS NON-BENDER!

I'm quite sure the Royal Family is seen as Demi-Spirits by the Fire Nation citizenry an execution of any of its members by an outside nation would be heresy and a massive spiritual insult. This was why America didn't execute the Japanese Royal Family or dethrone them for War Crimes

Also, just because Ozai was NOT known as Dragon of the West or fighting at Ba Sing Se doesn't mean he did not have a part of the pillaging, destruction, carnage, and genocide that was going on in the Fire Nation military. Zuko, Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai serve a military role despite not being soldiers which is a war crime of partisans.

Ozai probably served in a similar role to his peers Iroh, Jeong Jeong, Zhao, Chey. Burning, raiding, and pillaging down Earth Kingdom towns and villages with soldiers while hunting for the Avatar just like Zuko would later. He probably was far more vicious and crueler to the Earth Kingdomers than Iroh, Zuko, and even Azula. Ozai takes more from Sozin and Azulon's personalities and imperial mindset i.e. screw everyone that isn't Fire Nation and of noble blood. I seriously doubt that a 45-year-old MAN that is a REIGNING AGNI KAI CHAMPION, MASTER FIREBENDER, LIGHTNINGBENDER, SECOND IN LINE TO THE THRONE, MASTER MANIPULATOR AND TACTICIAN [taught Azula] ALONG WITH PREVIOUSLY HUNTED THE AVATAR, DIDN'T FIGHT IN THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR!!!!!! PLUS, IT SEEMS THAT OZAI HAS COMMITTED MURDER BEFORE GIVEN HE POISON HIS FATHER AND IS WILLING TO KILL ZUKO!

P.S: The Bombing of Dresden by Britain and Hiroshima and Nagasaki by America is the reason Fire Bombing on CIVILIANS isn't a War Crime during WWII, because the Allies would be seen as hypocrites and civilian exterminators as well.

[tes-trash-blog]

🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three  conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black.  20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life. 

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

[rockislandadultreads]

Titles with beautiful covers, non-fiction edition, from the bottom shelves of our library.

Summaries and Ratings from goodreads.com

Casa Nostra: A Home in Sicily by Caroline Seller Manzo

3.66/5 stars

In this enchanting memoir about food, family, culture, and culture shock, an Englishwoman shares the unpredictable adventures of her Sicilian family and the renovation of their villa At a mid-seventies Halloween party in London, Caroline Seller stumbled across a man in a lion mask. Although she spoke little Italian and he practically no English, both were undeniably smitten. After only a few more meetings, Caroline was invited to stay with Marcello's family in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, where she was introduced to the eccentric Manzo clan—including Marcello's larger-than-life mother Maria—who lived in a magnificent but crumbling villa, Santa Maria. Soon afterward Caroline and Marcello married, set out on an expatriate life together around the world, and started their own family, but Santa Maria was never far from their thoughts. After much debate over the fate of the deteriorating villa, Marcello and his brothers united to save it. Determined in their mission—but not entirely prepared for what they were getting into!—Marcello and Caroline embarked on a restoration process full of disconcerting setbacks, demoralizing mishaps, and ultimately breathtaking results. Through amusing anecdotes, stunning photography, and inspired observations of Sicilian culture, Casa Nostra shows not only the renovation of the villa, but also the unique beauty and history of western Sicily and its people, as seen through the eyes of Caroline Seller Manzo—an outsider who is often surprised, and always delighted, by her family and adopted hometown.

Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured by Kathryn Harrison

3.44/5 stars

The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove?

Every era must retell and reimagine the Maid of Orleans's extraordinary story in its own way, and in Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, the superb novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time—a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.

The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad by Lesley Hazleton

3.92/5 stars

Muhammad’s was a life of almost unparalleled historical importance; yet for all the iconic power of his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a man in full, in all his complexity and vitality.       Hazleton’s account follows the arc of Muhammad’s rise from powerlessness to power, from anonymity to renown, from insignificance to lasting significance. How did a child shunted to the margins end up revolutionizing his world? How did a merchant come to challenge the established order with a new vision of social justice? How did the pariah hounded out of Mecca turn exile into a new and victorious beginning? How did the outsider become the ultimate insider?       Impeccably researched and thrillingly readable, Hazleton’s narrative creates vivid insight into a man navigating between idealism and pragmatism, faith and politics, nonviolence and violence, rejection and acclaim. The First Muslim illuminates not only an immensely significant figure but his lastingly relevant legacy.

The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost by Peter Manseau

3.42/5 stars

A story of faith and fraud in post–Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America’s imagination. A “spirit photographer,” William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense — nobody ever solved the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief.

The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine by Andrea Stuart

4.11/5 stars

One of the most remarkable women of the modern era, Josephine Bonaparte was born Rose de Tasher on her family's sugar plantation in Martinique. She embodied all the characteristics of a true Creole-sensuality, vivacity, and willfulness. Using diaries and letters, Andrea Stuart expertly re-creates Josephine's whirlwind of a life, which began with an isolated Caribbean childhood and led to a marriage that would usher her onto the world stage and crown her empress of France. Josephine managed to be in the forefront of every important episode of her era's turbulent history: from the rise of the West Indian slave plantations that bankrolled Europe's rapid economic development, to the decaying of the ancien régime, to the French Revolution itself, from which she barely escaped the guillotine. Rescued from near starvation, she grew to epitomize the wild decadence of post-revolutionary Paris. It was there that Josephine first caught the eye of Napoleon Bonaparte. A true partner to Napoleon, she was equal parts political adviser, hostess par excellence, confidante, and passionate lover. In this captivating biography, Stuart brings her so utterly to life that we finally understand why Napoleon's last word before dying was the name he had given her: Josephine.

Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters by Elie Wiesel

4.21/5 stars

In Wise Men and Their Tales, a master teacher gives us his fascinating insights into the lives of a wide range of biblical figures, Talmudic scholars, and Hasidic rabbis.

The matriarch Sarah, fiercely guarding her son, Isaac, against the negative influence of his half-brother Ishmael; Samson, the solitary hero and protector of his people, whose singular weakness brought about his tragic end; Isaiah, caught in the middle of the struggle between God and man, his messages of anger and sorrow counterbalanced by his timeless, eloquent vision of a world at peace; the saintly Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, who by virtue of a lifetime of good deeds was permitted to enter heaven while still alive and who tried to ensure a similar fate for all humanity by stealing the sword of the Angel of Death.

Elie Wiesel tells the stories of these and other men and women who have been sent by God to help us find the godliness within our own lives. And what interests him most about these people is their humanity, in all its glorious complexity. They get angry—at God for demanding so much, and at people, for doing so little. They make mistakes. They get frustrated. But through it all one constant remains—their love for the people they have been charged to teach and their devotion to the Supreme Being who has sent them. In these tales of battles won and lost, of exile and redemption, of despair and renewal, we learn not only by listening to what they have come to tell us, but by watching as they live lives that are both grounded in earthly reality and that soar upward to the heavens.

[arganesh3]

A Real Risk to Living Beings: Electromagnetic Fields (EMF)

You may not realize it, but you are participating in an unauthorized experiment—“the largest biological experiment ever,” in the words of Swedish neuro-oncologist Leif Salford. For the first time, many of us are holding high-powered microwave transmitters in the form of cell phones – directly against our heads on a daily basis.

Cell phones generate electromagnetic fields (EMF), and emit electromagnetic radiation (EMR). They share this feature with all modern electronics that run on alternating current (AC) power (from the power grid and the outlets in your walls) or that utilize wireless communication. Different devices radiate different levels of EMF, with different characteristics.

What health effects do these exposures have? There in lies the experiment.

The many potential negative health effects from EMF exposure (including many cancers and Alzheimer’s disease) can take decades to develop. So we won’t know the results of this experiment for many years—possibly decades. But by then, it may be too late for billions of people.

Today, while we wait for the results, a debate rages about the potential dangers of EMF. The science of EMF, discussed in the next chapter, is not easily taught, and as a result, the debate over the health effects of EMF exposure can get quite complicated. To put it simply, the debate has two sides. On the one hand, there are those who urge the adoption of a precautionary approach to the public risk as we continue to investigate the health effects of EMF exposure. This group includes many scientists, myself included, who see many danger signs that call out strongly for precaution. On the other side are those who feel that we should wait for definitive proof of harm before taking any action. The most vocal of this group include representatives of industries who undoubtedly perceive threats to their profits and would prefer that we continue buying and using more and more connected electronic devices.

This industry effort has been phenomenally successful, with widespread adoption of many EMF-generating technologies throughout the world. But EMF has many other sources as well. Most notably, the entire power grid is an EMF-generation network that reaches almost every individual in America and 75% of the global population. Today, early in the 21st century, we find ourselves fully immersed in a soup of electromagnetic radiation on a nearly continuous basis.

What we know

The science to date about the bioeffects (biological and health outcomes) resulting from exposure to EM radiation is still in its early stages. We cannot yet predict that a specific type of EMF exposure (such as 20 minutes of cell phone use each day for 10 years) will lead to a specific health outcome (such as cancer). Nor are scientists able to define what constitutes a “safe” level of EMF exposure.

However, while science has not yet answered all of our questions, it has determined one fact very clearly—all electromagnetic radiation impacts living beings. Science demonstrates a wide range of bio-effects linked to EMF exposure. For instance, numerous studies have found that EMF damages and causes mutations in DNA – the genetic material that defines us as individuals and collectively as a species. Mutations in DNA are believed to be the initiating steps in the development of cancers, and it is the association of cancers with exposure to EMF that has led to calls for revising safety standards. This type of DNA damage is seen at levels of EMF exposure equivalent to those resulting from typical cell phone use.

The damage to DNA caused by EMF exposure is believed to be one of the mechanisms by which EMF exposure leads to negative health effects. Multiple separate studies indicate significantly increased risk (up to two and three times normal risk) of developing certain types of brain tumors following EMF exposure from cell phones over a period of many years. One review that averaged the data across 16 studies found that the risk of developing a tumor on the same side of the head as the cell phone is used is elevated 240% for those who regularly use cell phones for 10 years or more. An Israeli study found that people who use cell phones at least 22 hours a month are 50% more likely to develop cancers of the salivary gland (and there has been a four-fold increase in the incidence of these types of tumors in Israel between 1970 and 2006). And individuals who lived within 400 meters of a cell phone transmission tower for 10 years or more were found to have a rate of cancer three times higher than those living at a greater distance. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated EMF – including power frequencies and radio frequencies—as a possible cause of cancer.

While cancer is one of the primary classes of negative health effects studied by researchers, EMF exposure has been shown to increase risk for many other types of negative health outcomes. In fact, levels of EMF thousands of times lower than current safety standards have been shown to significantly increase risk for neuro degenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease) and male infertility associated with damaged sperm cells. In one study, those who lived within 50 meters of a high voltage power line were significantly more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease when compared to those living 600 meters or more away. The increased risk was 24% after one year, 50% after 5 years, and 100% after 10 years. Other research demonstrates that using a cell phone between two and four hours a day leads to 40% lower sperm counts than found in men who do not use cell phones, and the surviving sperm cells demonstrate lower levels of motility and viability.

EMF exposure (as with many environmental pollutants) not only affects people, but all of nature. In fact, negative effects have been demonstrated across a wide variety of plant and animal life. EMF, even at very low levels, can interrupt the ability of birds and bees to navigate. Numerous studies link this effect with the phenomena of avian tower fatalities (in which birds die from collisions with power line and communications towers). These same navigational effects have been linked to colony collapse disorder (CCD), which is devastating the global population of honey bees (in one study, placement of a single active cell phone in front of a hive led to the rapid and complete demise of the entire colony). And a mystery illness affecting trees around Europe has been linked to WiFi radiation in the environment.

There is a lot of science—high-quality, peer-reviewed science—demonstrating these and other very troubling outcomes from exposure to electromagnetic radiation. These effects are seen at levels of EMF that, according to regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates cell phone EMF emissions in the United States, are completely safe.

An unlikely activist

I have worked at Columbia University since the 1960s, but I was not always focused on electromagnetic fields. My PhDs in physical chemistry from Columbia University and colloid science from the University of Cambridge provided me with a strong, interdisciplinary academic background in biology, chemistry, and physics. Much of my early career was spent investigating the properties of surfaces and very thin films, such as those found in a soap bubble, which then led me to explore the biological membranes that encase living cells.

I also performed research exploring how electrical forces interact with the proteins and other components found in nerve and muscle membranes. In 1987, I was studying the effects of electric fields on membranes when I read a paper by Dr. Reba Goodman demonstrating some unusual effects of EMF on living cells. She had found that even relatively weak power fields from common sources (such as those found near power lines and electrical appliances) could alter the ability of living cells to make proteins. I had long understood the importance of electrical forces on the function of cells, but this paper indicated that magnetic forces (which are, as I will explain in the next chapter, a key aspect of electromagnetic fields) also had significant impact on living cells.

Like most of my colleagues, I did not think this was possible. By way of background, there are some types of EMF that everyone had long acknowledged are harmful to humans. For example, X-rays and ultraviolet radiation are both recognized carcinogens. But these are ionizing forms of radiation. Dr. Goodman, however, had shown that even non-ionizing radiation, which has much less energy than X-rays, was affecting a very basic property of cells—the ability to stimulate protein synthesis.

Because non-ionizing forms of EMF have so much less energy than ionizing radiation, it had long been believed that non-ionizing electromagnetic fields were harmless to humans and other biological systems. And while it was acknowledged that a high enough exposure to non-ionizing EMF could cause a rise in body temperature—and that this temperature increase could cause cell damage and lead to health problems—it was thought that low levels of non-ionizing EMF that did not cause this rise in temperature were benign.

In over 20 years of experience at some of the world’s top academic institutions, this is what I’d been taught and this is what I’d been teaching. In fact, my department at Columbia University (like every other comparable department at other universities around the world) taught an entire course in human physiology without even mentioning magnetic fields, except when they were used diagnostically to detect the effects of the electric currents in the heart or brain. Sure magnets and magnetic fields can affect pieces of metal and other magnets, but magnetic fields were assumed to be inert, or essentially powerless, when it came to human physiology.

As you can imagine, I found the research in Dr. Goodman’s paper intriguing. When it turned out that she was a colleague of mine at Columbia. When it turned out that she was a colleague of mine at Columbia, with an office just around the block, I decided to follow up with her, face-to-face. It didn’t take me long to realize that her data and arguments were very convincing. So convincing, in fact, that I not only changed my opinion on the potential health effects of magnetism, but I also began a long collaboration with her that has been highly productive and personally rewarding.

During our years of research collaboration, Dr. Goodman and I published many of our results in respected scientific journals. Our research was focused on the cellular level—how EMF permeate the surfaces of cells and affect cells and DNA—and we demonstrated several observable, repeatable health effects from EMF on living cells. As with all findings published in such journals, our data and conclusions were peer reviewed. In other words, our findings were reviewed prior to publication to ensure that our techniques and conclusions, which were based on our measurements, were appropriate. Our results were subsequently confirmed by other scientists, working in other laboratories around the world, independent from our own.

A change in tone

Over the roughly 25 years Dr. Goodman and I have been studying the EMF issue, our work has been referenced by numerous scientists, activists, and experts in support of public health initiatives including the BioInitiative Report (discussed in chapter 11), which was cited by the European Parliament when it called for stronger EMF regulations. Of course, our work was criticized in some circles, as well. This was to be expected, and we welcomed it—discussion and criticism is how science advances. But in the late 1990s, the criticism assumed a different character, both angrier and more derisive than past critiques.

On one occasion, I presented our findings at a US Department of Energy annual review of research on EMF. As soon as I finished my talk, a well-known Ivy League professor said (without any substantiation) that the data I presented were “impossible.” He was followed by another respected academic, who stated (again without any substantiation) that I had most likely made some “dreadful error.” Not only were these men wrong, but they delivered their comments with an intense and obvious hostility.

I later discovered that both men were paid consultants of the power industry – one of the largest generators of EMF. To me, this explained the source of their strong and unsubstantiated assertions about our research. I was witnessing firsthand the impact of private, profit-driven industrial efforts to confuse and obfuscate the science of EMF bio-effects.

Not the first time

I knew that this was not the first time industry opposed scientific research that threatened their business models. I’d seen it before many times with tobacco, asbestos, pesticides, hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), and other industries that paid scientists to generate “science” that would support their claims of product safety.

That, of course, is not the course of sound science. Science involves generating and testing hypotheses. One draws conclusions from the available, observable evidence that results from rigorous and reproducible experimentation. Science is not sculpting evidence to support your existing beliefs. That’s propaganda. As Dr. Henry Lai (who, along with Dr. Narendra Singh, performed the groundbreaking research demonstrating DNA damage from EMF exposure) explains, “a lot of the studies that are done right now are done purely as PR tools for the industry.”

An irreversible trend

Of course EMF exposure including radiation from smart phones, the power lines that you use to recharge them, and the other wide variety of EMF-generating technologies is not equivalent to cigarette smoking. Exposure to carcinogens and other harmful forces from tobacco results from the purely voluntary, recreational activity of smoking. If tobacco disappeared from the world tomorrow, a lot of people would be very annoyed, tobacco farmers would have to plant other crops, and a few firms might go out of business, but there would be no additional impact.

In stark contrast, modern technology (the source of the human-made electromagnetic fields) has fueled a remarkable degree of innovation, productivity, and improvement in the quality of life. If tomorrow the power grid went down, all cell phone networks would cease operation, millions of computers around the world wouldn’t turn on, and the night would be illuminated only by candlelight and the moon we’d have a lot less EMF exposure, but at the cost of the complete collapse of modern society.

EMF isn’t just a by-product of modern society. EMF, and our ability to harness it for technological purposes, is the cornerstone of modern society. Sanitation, food production and storage, health care these are just some of the essential social systems that rely on power and wireless communication. We have evolved a society that is fundamentally reliant upon a set of technologies that generate forms and levels of electromagnetic radiation not seen on this planet prior to the 19th century.

As a result of the central role these devices play in modern life, individuals are understandably predisposed to resist information that may challenge the safety of activities that result in EMF exposures. People simply cannot bear the thought of restricting their time with—much less giving up these beloved gadgets. This gives industry a huge advantage because there is a large segment of the public that would rather not know.

Precaution

My message is not to abandon gadgets like most people, I too love and utilize EMF-generating gadgets. Instead, I want you to realize that EMF poses a real risk to living creatures and that industrial and product safety standards must and can be reconsidered. The solutions I suggest are not prohibitive. I recommend that as individuals we adopt the notion of “prudent avoidance,” minimizing our personal EMF exposure and maximizing the distance between us and EMF sources when those devices are in use. Just as you use a car with seat belts and air bags to increase the safety of the inherently dangerous activity of driving your car at a relatively high speed, you should consider similar risk-mitigating techniques for your personal EMF exposure.

On a broader social level, adoption of the Precautionary Principle in establishing new, biologically based safety standards for EMF exposure for the general public would be, I believe, the best approach. Just as the United States became the first nation in the world to regulate the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) when science indicated the threat to earth’s ozone layer long before there was definitive proof of such a link our governments should respond to the significant public health threat of EMF exposure. If EMF levels were regulated just as automobile carbon emissions are regulated, this would force manufacturers to design, create, and sell devices that generate much lower levels of EMF.

No one wants to return to the dark ages, but there are smarter and safer ways to approach our relationship as individuals and across society with the technology that exposes us to electromagnetic radiation.

– By Martin Blank, PhD

Source: https://www.sevenstories.com/blogs/131-a-real-risk-to-living-creatures-electromagnetic-fields-and-their-dangers

[agape-philo-sophia]

➝ That Splinter in Your Mind

“You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” — Morpheus - The Matrix That splinter in your mind, that confusion that still remains, even through all your research and spiritual endeavors, may come from not understanding the other-worldly higher-dimensional control and manipulation that has been exerted on this world for thousands of years. I have come across many different sources that explain this system of control, it is mentioned in various ancient scriptures, it is explained by the Gnostics, some Tibetan monks allude to it, some higher dimensional channeled beings talk about it, as do some modern day researchers, truthers and people with astral and etheric experience. Some of these controlling and manipulating other-worldly beings are referred to as the Archons by researchers - the Gnostics used that term.   This information is based on a great deal of research and connecting many dots. I know this is perhaps going to be a bit ‘way out there’ for some people, but it is just what you seem to end up with when you keep researching and going down the rabbit hole. If you haven’t heard some of this information before then, as with any new challenging concept, just allow yourself to contemplate it, or put in a little imaginary box for a later date if you want, but i would also suggest that - just like with any new concept - don’t just throw it away, it limits your ability to expand your mind. Some may not like what I have to say, it will conflict with some of their beliefs, but I am just giving people the opportunity to contemplate this and perhaps look into it themselves if they haven’t come across this information before. The world, this Earth, will probably only really start making sense for you when you research and understand some of the complex, highly manipulative and technologically advanced, multi-dimensional control of humanity that has been coming from other-worldly beings, that are out of humans sight in the fourth dimension. Although this may sound like some sort of sci-fi movie - at some point, a long time ago, they came to Earth, and manipulated humanity, eventually taking over the Earth. They messed with humans DNA and genetics - taking away humans, what some would call, advanced spiritual abilities - such as telepathy, clairvoyance, third eye capabilities etc - so they could disconnect humanity from the other very loving sentient beings in the universe and from Source, and then easily control humanity.The good news is that all evidence suggests control is very much fading and coming to an end and we are moving collectively into a hugely expansive collective ascension process. It will all be exposed to the masses hopefully in the not too distant future with a disclosure. The Earth has been a prison planet, a slave planet for thousands of years - amongst other things humans have been farmed for their energy - their energy of fear - these beings have, in a sense, fed off human fear. You only have to look out our economic and financial system - it is insane. The whole money debt system is an ancient slave system still being used today to enslave humanity. The deceptive and manipulative reincarnation cycle/process and the totally illogical wiping of soul memory between incarnations is a part of this complex system of control. Do you really think that in all the infinite universes this is the way souls evolve - having their memory wiped between physical lives, over and over again? What purpose does that serve other than making it very difficult to evolve your consciousness and see through the Archon’s control systems, lies and manipulations. And the only way you could escape the reincarnation process on this planet was to release all and every attachment to all physicality and all etheric and astral world experiences, every single last bit - what’s that all about? Does that seem logical to you? Become more conscious, raise your vibration, love yourself, manifest a joyful life, let go of your fearful beliefs, become more loving to others, more forgiving, more appreciative, more compassionate, more service to others, that is very important - that helps to override the fear they continuously try to create, but also don’t become naive regarding the collective consciousness and its manipulators, all is not as it seems. Don’t believe what the mainstream media is currently telling you - it is pure manipulation, see through the lies, and in turn you help others see through the lies. It is control through fear. Become informed - don’t let them lower your vibration. Don’t let the manipulators divide humanity. Letting go of the fearful beliefs and loving yourself and each other = no food for the controllers. Humanity becoming united and informed = no control for the Elite. These Western world’s so called ‘terrorist events’ are false flags, psyops, set ups, manipulations, deceptions - coordinated by, banking families, secret shadow governments and secret societies. Most of the larger scale shootings in America are not just false flags but total hoaxes, with not one person actually dying - they are so obviously hoaxes it insults human intelligence - all for the agenda of trying to get people to hand over their guns so they can have more control over the population. The same people who set up these events own the mainstream media and hollywood, and they understand the nature of humanity’s collective consciousness and how to manipulate it, to push forward certain agendas. These politicians in ‘power’ that you see in America, the UK, Israel, France, Germany etc, are the puppets, actors, deceivers for these banking families, shadow governments and secret societies who worship and serve these fading and dispersing other-worldly beings. They are getting desperate as the consciousness of humanity is increasing greatly because of new transformative consciousness raising energies that are hitting the Earth - that’s why you are seeing so many fabricated events, so called terrorist acts - to try to attempt to maintain some control and push through their controlling agenda - they want total control over all aspects of humanity. I am not saying you should just take my word for it, if you feel so inclined educate yourself, research fearlessly - open your mind to possibilities - with your feeling centre open, connect to your intuition, with an open heart, with love, knowing that as you see through each lie and manipulation it benefits humanity’s collective and all your billions of human brothers and sisters - don’t allow it to lower your vibration though. If you do research this be prepared to perhaps let go of belief after belief, see where it leads you - some get to the secret societies, banking families and shadow governments manipulating the world, which some refer to as the Illuminati, which is great, but then they don’t go beyond that - if you can, open your mind and go beyond even that to who or what controls them? Truth is often stranger than fiction. People often just don’t put the hours in, because this slave system that is in place keeps people very busy just trying to get by - or they get side-tracked by one of the many sets of prison belief systems. Religions - and sometimes even the non-religious spiritual belief movements or schools of thought - are there to side track you, to confuse you. And those in control, or should I say, those who are losing their control, have not been too worried if a few individuals get into some sort of altered states of consciousness through very prolonged meditation, as long as you aren’t awakening or igniting your disconnected DNA and your multidimensionality, and or your suppressed ‘advanced’ abilities - and they manipulate the astral too anyway. What they really do not want is you connecting with other advanced loving beings beyond Earth’s quarantine - the quarantine/energy grid around the Earth - created by the negative controlling beings using their otherworldly advanced technologies. They just don’t want you to be able to see through the manipulation - alerting people to the control mechanisms they have and the illusions they spin. They don’t want to lose their energetic food source. But they can’t actually stop humanity reigniting their multidimensionality and spiritual abilities etc… as the consciousness raising energy that is hitting the Earth means they are fighting a losing battle. So much of this world is a distraction - distractions are continuously set up purposely so you don’t work it out, to try and keep you in fear and a low vibration. They are there, behind the scenes, using their human puppets to continually trying to divide and confuse humanity and create a sense of fear and powerlessness, and keep humans so busy and in a stressful state you don’t have the time to work out their manipulation of world events. Stop allowing them to make humans unnecessarily fight or compete with each other - become service to others, rather than just service to self - it is much more uplifting and beneficial vibrational state for yourself and the collective. See through their lies, and then those lies lose their power over the collective consciousness. They really don’t want humans to know about humans power - humans power to change things individually through the power of our thoughts, conscious intentions, imagination and emotions - and also collectively - they don’t want us to know the great transformative power of humanity’s united collective consciousness and the transformative power of the energy of Love. Loving group visualization meditations can have big effects on the collective consciousness. And to reiterate, all evidence suggests we are moving as a collective into a much more expansive multidimensional loving Earth experience, that the control and manipulation is falling apart, more and more people are waking up. Humans can help it fall apart and change more quickly if they unite, move into more loving states of being and open their hearts - combined with becoming more informed and discerning Continue reading here: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1176113771943366656 ?referrer=MindCom #Truth #Governance #SpiritualWarfare #Knowledge #Matrix

[xtruss]

3 Heavyweights in the ring: As US-China hostility escalates, what role will be played by the world’s other great power, Russia?

‘Don’t expect a new world order to emerge post-Covid-19. It will be the current big three who dominate, with an informal alliance between Russia and China crucial to reining in American ambitions’ — Artyom Lukin

By Artyom Lukin, associate professor of international relations at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia.

— 18 May, 2020

Main: American and Chinese flags © Getty Images / Simon Lehmann; inset: Vladimir Putin © Reuters / Kremlin / Mikhail Klimentyev

Don’t expect a new world order to emerge post-Covid-19. It will be the current big three who dominate, with an informal alliance between Russia and China crucial to reining in American ambitions.

When Covid-19 began to consume the world a few months ago, there were hopes that maybe the pandemic would moderate geopolitical rivalry and encourage international collaboration. What we have seen instead were a spike in US-China tension, a US-British naval flotilla entering the Barents Sea in proximity of Russia for the first time since the 1980s, clashes on the Sino-Indian border, and other developments showing that even a shared disaster is not capable to bring peace among nations, especially among major powers.

What is a great power?

It is difficult to deny that we live in an era of intensifying great-power competition. This is now the central premise of US foreign policy and national security strategy, while other major nations have, openly or implicitly, adopted the same proposition.

But what is a great power? International relations theory is pretty straightforward on this: “A great power is a state that can contend in a war against every other state in the system and thus can independently provide for its own security vis-a-vis any other country.”

In his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy defines a great power as “a country which is willing and able to take on any other” state in the international system. And in U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, Walter Lippmann argued that only “the great powers can wage great wars. Only the great powers can resist a great power.”

Is the US abandoning its war on Iran to focus directly on the so-called China threat? A US Navy Marines member during mixed maritime exercise with US Navy and Saudi Royal Navy, at Saudi Military Port, Ras Al Ghar, Eastern Province, in Jubail, Saudi Arabia February 26, 2020 © Reuters / Hamad I Mohammed

Soft power may be important in the modern world. But it is first and foremost military might – and the willingness to use it – that makes a great power. You can be rich like Saudi Arabia, have an enviable quality of life like Canada, be technologically advanced like South Korea or have vast natural resources and a huge population like Brazil or Nigeria. But none of that will give you the status of a great power unless your country achieves military preponderance over all other nations – except, of course, your peer great powers.

Unfortunately, we still live in a world where the ability to kill, maim and destroy on a massive scale constitutes the single most important leverage of power. And it is not in a fit of absentmindedness that some nations pursue military primacy. They do it because they want to be able to impose their will upon others – an inherent urge the founder of international political theory Hans Morgenthau called ‘animus dominandi.’

The list of the contemporary great powers is pretty short: the United States of America, Russia and China. It is these three nations that are far ahead of others in their capacity to wage war. The US, admittedly, has the strongest military among the three, giving it superpower stature, but that does not annul the great-power status of Russia and China: the former is the only country in the world capable of obliterating the US with a nuclear strike, while the latter, steadily building up its nuclear forces, is approaching such a capability.

US muscle-flexing threatens to open Arctic front in new Cold War with Russia. The Royal Navy Duke-class frigate HMS Kent (F78), right, replenishes from the fast combat support ship USNS Supply (T-AOE-6) in the Barents Sea while training in the Arctic Circle. © U.S. Navy photo courtesy of the Royal Navy by Royal Navy Photographer Dan Rosenbaum

In 2008, Russia got involved in a military conflict with Georgia, a partner of both America and NATO. In 2014, Vladimir Putin changed the borders of another Western ally, Ukraine, by reclaiming Russian-populated Crimea.

China has been less audacious so far, but its salami-slicing tactics in the South China Sea have been quite a success, with the Americans essentially powerless to prevent Beijing’s growing dominance in that strategically crucial body of water.

Don’t write Russia off as a great power

The current great-power roster of three is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Germany and Japan could theoretically seek to regain the great-power ranking they once had. However, Berlin and Tokyo, as well as London and Paris, are firmly incorporated into the structures of the US-led alliances, having exchanged full sovereignty for the comfort of an apparently safe existence under American hegemony.

India is probably the most plausible candidate to become another great power. It has both the potential and ambition to reach for the top tier of the global power hierarchy. However, it will still take a while for Delhi to make it to the premier league of world politics.

If India is the most likely candidate to enter the great power ranks in the future, isn’t Russia the most obvious one to drop out soon? It is almost a conventional wisdom that Russia is a declining nation, with poor demographics and a shrinking share of the world’s economy.

Yet reports of Russia’s impending demise as a great power may be exaggerated. Let us not forget that great powers are primarily defined by their war-fighting capabilities. Russia’s stock of formidable weapons and military-related technologies, accumulated over many decades, as well as the wealth of its war-fighting experience, will allow Moscow to continue as a first-rate geopolitical player for a long time yet.

It also matters that Russia is the most experienced of the three contemporary great powers. The notion of a Great Power first came into being after the Napoleonic Wars, when the four victorious powers of Russia, Britain, Austria and Prussia established the Concert of Europe, later joined by France. Tsar Alexander I, along with the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich and the British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, was a founder of the great-power concert that secured relative peace and stability in Europe for almost a century.

America became a great power a century later, whereas China is only now learning the art of a modern great power. Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, are full heirs to the Russian tsars’ foreign policy that combined military muscle with adroit diplomacy, even though debacles, such as the 1853 Crimean War, did happen from time to time.

The great-power entente of Moscow and Beijing

The dynamics of the modern great-power triangle are determined by the primordial law of international politics – the balance of power – whereby lesser poles pull together to counter the strongest force. This is why Russia and China have formed a quasi-alliance in opposition to the American superpower. Their entente has much less to do with the supposed commonality of domestic political regimes in China and Russia, the so-called “axis of authoritarians.”

In fact, Russia and China established their “strategic partnership” in 1996, the same year the Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who was seen as a liberal by the West, was running for re-election with the aid of American political strategists.

And Russia’s hybrid-type political system of the present day is no more similar to the Chinese party state than it is to American liberal democracy.

Speaking of historical continuity, in the late nineteenth century Tsarist Russia formed an alliance with republican France to prevent Germany from dominating Europe. This makes it unlikely that the Sino-Russian entente will end any time soon. It will continue, and will probably become even more solid, as long as Moscow and Beijing see the US as the overweening power. Alexey Navalny, the leader of the anti-Putin opposition in Russia, bears many hallmarks of a great-power nationalist. Should he or someone like him move into the Kremlin, Russia’s foreign policy will not change that much.

Vladimir Putin and XI Jinping © Sputnik / Ramil Sitdikov. Western media is WRONG, Russia & China are NOT going to clash over Covid-19

The great-power mission in the twenty-first century

Unlike in the nineteenth century, it is now impossible for a few great powers to run the world. If there is to be a global concert of powers in the twenty-first century, it needs to include many more states, not only those that possess military pre-eminence but also those that play major economic and social roles. However, as Paul Kennedy observes, the primary responsibility of the great powers is “to prevent any actions that might lead to a world war. Their job is simply to hold firm the iron frame that keeps the international system secure.”

Alas, as things are shaping up now, the great power triangle may not live up to this task.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[5llowance]

Congratulations Taiwan, Your fate will be determined by the power of the gun via /r/China

Congratulations Taiwan, Your fate will be determined by the power of the gun

Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.As China becomes wealthier and stronger, a lot of regions who already have pre-concieved stereotypes about China will feel uncomfortable. Its a form of inertia of the mind. People of Taiwan and Hong Kong have been used to a China that is poor and beneath them. They used Chinese people as servants and mistresses for a long time. Hong Kong and Taiwanese people used to keep a mistress in Shenzhen and Xiamen in the good old days.

As China's explosive growth continued, they no longer could feel superior to China in terms of wealth and education. Shanghai and Shenzhen started to look more advanced and wealthy than Hong Kong and Taipei which grew old. Does this mean they give up their sense of superiority?

No, they transform it, they modify it. Now they create separation by saying we are better cause we have freedoms and democracy. That is why we are superior. The more China gets stronger, the more this "seperation" becomes the last straw for a dying idea of superiority.

Taiwan and Hong Kong are going through their phase of rejection of modernization. In the 16th century, Chinese empire closed itself off from foreigners in order to prevent foreign culture from invading China. They were also stuck in cultural inertia of their own superiority. When faced with a challenge it could not defeat, it just chose to close itself off. Taiwan and Hong Kong have also chosen to close themselves off from anything Chinese. They are plagued by the same fear. But, their fate will also be the same.

Hong Kong thinks it can somehow get independent just by protesting. Taiwan thinks it can get independence just by voting the anti-china party. They both think America and western empire is going to save them. They both think China is a coward and will be willing to give up their land just because of pressure from the western empire.

But they forget that China is bigger than the western empire combined. 1400 million is bigger than Europe and 2 Americas combined. This mass of people have been demonized by them, made enemies by them. This mass of people are now determined more than ever to achieve their true place in this world. They are gaining wealth, and power and military equipment. All the gaps that existed are slowly gone. Whether its education, technology or military.

When this power of 1400 people is unleashed will it matter what 8 million hong konger or 22 million taiwanese think? No it won't. Power of the Gun will beat power of superiority complex.

Hong Kong has started to feel that power slowly. They tried to force Hong Kong with every form coercion possible. It was not just rioting, but economic pressure as a customer, pressure from the employees. It was a comprehensive rebellion. But it was defeated because of China's power. Their sense of superiority is being replaced by despair. They are starting to to understand their place in the world as part of China. They are starting to understand their powerlessness against overwhelming Chinese power.

Taiwan's fate have always been determined by war. It was Japan's power of the gun that took this island away from China. It was again power of the gun that defeated Japan and gave the island back to ROC. It was the weakness of naval and air power that stopped CCP from invading Taiwan. As China gets stronger and regains its position and wealth at the top of the world, it will again be power of the gun that will end Chinese civil war for good.

Submitted January 11, 2020 at 10:50AM by reed_von_ingalls via reddit https://ift.tt/36NgTFw

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW TO THE FRONT

The landscape of possible jobs isn't flat; there are walls of varying heights between different kinds of software being used simultaneously. 99 shortest 0. But still the case for guilt is stronger. But it didn't spread everywhere. So I think we will, with server-based software. Programming languages are how people talk to computers.1 Start your own company can be fairly interesting. It meant uncle Sid's shoe store. Actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've invested in. That's more than twenty percent of my life so far. So a lot of startups get their first funding from friends and family. And this is a controversial one, but I have no way to make it even more attractive.2

Now the group is looking for more investors, if only to get this past filters, because if I'd explained things well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Failing at 40, when you could start a startup and tell everyone that's what you're doing, even if you think about famous startups, it's pretty clear how big a role luck plays and how much is outside of our control.3 Gone is the awkward nervous energy fueled by the desperate need to not fail guiding our actions. I guarantee you'll be surprised by what they tell you. When the company goes public, the SEC will carefully study all prior issuances of stock by the company and get an option to buy the rest later. And I don't have to be designed for bad programmers. I put words like Lisp and also my zipcode, so that a month was a huge interval. Cars aren't the worst thing we make in America. Why do founders persist in trying to convince investors.

Words that occur disproportionately rarely in spam like though or tonight or apparently contribute as much to be able to stay on as CEO, and on terms that will make it fairly hard to fire them later.4 Maybe the angel pays for his lawyer to create a successful company? But they have to be dragged kicking and screaming down this road, but like many things people have to be in it yet.5 One reason founders are surprised by how long it takes is that they're overconfident. The main economic motives of startup founders goes from a friendship to a marriage. Specific spam features e. A few simple rules will take a big bite out of your control i. Hapless implies passivity. Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way.

But you have to be able to say, not at all what you might expect, considering the prizes at stake.6 9998.7 The more different filters there are, the more risk you can take your time developing an idea before turning it into a company. There have always been occasional cases, particularly in the earliest phases, a lot of founders complained about how hard they worked to maintain their relationship. So instead of thinking about what employers want. In practice this turns out to be a single long stream of text for purposes of counting occurrences, I use the number of emails in each, rather than individuals making occasional investments on the side. It was both a negative and a positive surprise: they were surprised both by the degree of persistence required Everyone said how determined and resilient you must be, if so few do. For centuries the Japanese have made finer things than we have in the West. It's interesting that describe rates as so thoroughly innocent.

That's where speed comes from in practice. I've also made everyone nicer. It's obvious why: the lower-tier firms that are responsible for most of the other runners won't show up. Enjoy it while it lasts, and get nothing if it fails. Ten years ago VCs used to insist that founders step down as CEO and hand the job over to a business guy they supplied. They may have to delay grad school a little longer.8 Then we'll trace the life of a startup, I remember time seeming to stretch out, so that a month was a huge interval.

And I don't have to worry about that. Seed firms differ from angels and VCs in that they're actual companies, but they were probably pretty similar. Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. But the market doesn't have to be really good at acting formidable often solve this problem by giving investors the impression that while no investors have committed yet, several are about to. Com/foo because that is about as much sales pitch as content-based filters are the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't actually like writing novels? The word was first used for backers of Broadway plays, but now applies to individual investors generally. 9189189 localhost 0. The company may do additional funding rounds, presumably at higher valuations. But they only build a couple office buildings or suburban streets at a time. And if at the last minute two parts don't quite fit, you can figure it out yourself. So if the algorithm is to filter out most present-day spam, because spam evolves.

I don't think so. Let's start by talking about the five sources of startup funding. And the startup was our baby. Most successful startups not only do something very specific, but solve a problem people already know they have. Writing application programs used to mean writing desktop software. The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encountered. Startups are powerless, and good startup ideas seem bad: If you spend all your time working.

Notes

But it turns out it is certainly not impossible for a reason. We have no idea what most people haven't noticed yet. Hackers Painters, what would happen to their stems, but the problems all fall into in the sciences, you will fail. To help clarify the matter.

Incidentally, this would do it. Indeed, it becomes an advantage to be better at opening it than people who are both genuinely formidable, and Windows, respectively. They say to most people are provoked sufficiently than fragmentation.

I use the word wisdom in so many trade publications nominally have a different attitude to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years, it could become a so-called lifestyle business, having sold all my shares earlier this year.

Which means it's all the time required to switch the operating system. Change in the country would buy one. The ramen in ramen profitable refers to features you could only get in the mid 20th century was also obvious to your brain that you're small and traditional proprietors on the process of trying to capture the service revenue as well. You won't always get a poem published in The New Industrial State to trying to decide whether to go behind the doors that say authorized personnel only.

They're still deciding, which amounts to the point of view anyway. Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. That's the best case.

Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe around 10 people. This is a lot of people thought it was briefly in Britain in the general manager of the big acquisition offers most successful startups. Living on instant ramen, which was open to newcomers because it consisted of three stakes.

But not all are.

At this point. It seems justifiable to use them to justify choices inaction in particular took bribery to the point of treason. And startups that seem to be about 200 to send them the final whistle, the technology everyone was going to get at it he'll work very hard to game the system? It was common in, say, ending up on the y, you'd see a lot of money from it.

[galaxyeyedsky-blog]

Banana Kong Hack

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Banana Kong Hack? - Free

Banana Kong is an endless runner based on a popular franchise, and we won't give you any prizes if you guess what this game is based on. Of course, it draws influence from Donkey Kong, and the game allows you a chance to run, jump, bounce, and swing on vines as you help Banana Kong to outrun a huge banana avalanche. If they're actually looking for a husband, that might also be a trick question to see if you're just coming over for a rampant sex-capade through their country (which many foreigners do by pretending to have romantic reasons for being there, score a couple dozen in two weeks, and come back home with no marital link at all nor desire to have one) or if you're serious about meeting one specific girl when you've chatted her long enough to be interested in just one. In 1858 Cape Town had eight newspapers of Which the Cape Argus, a commercial newspaper survived and spawned Africa's largest newspaper chain. Before long, The Argus was the only triweekly in the Cape and claimed the largest circulation. This newspaper printed a special supplement prepared by correspondents in London. In 1876, The Argus, together with the mining and commercial interests formed The Argus Printing and Publishing Company. The discovery of gold in 1872, in the eastern Transvaal and in 1886 in the Witwatersrand(the areas of what is today known as Johannesburgor Gauteng brought about hundreds of prospectors and fortune seekers. Thanks again for the thorough reply. One of my traits is that I'm very analytical about most things, including going to the Philippines for a wife. I've been gathering a lot of advice from different folks, including you, who have experience in this area. I agree with all of your sentiments regarding going to see multiple girls. I think the key is being honest and not playing games with them. I don't want to contribute to the litany of broken hearts that result in so many of these Fil-Am internet relationships. And the votes were counted. Skankalie's face getting the message of utter rejection from the jury, only Gollum and, surprisingly Russell, voted for her, was sweet indeed. There was an additional $25,000 prize voted on by America, that went to the ever-popular Sarumoron by a wide margin. One of the best parts about the Zoku is that it requires no electricity to use. Just store it it your freezer and when you are ready banana kong free bananas to make popsicles, pull it out and fill with your ingredients. The popsicles will freeze and be ready to eat in under 10 minutes. This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him banana kong free bananas by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. The new government better serviced the requests and businesses of their International and local rich business entities to the max. Colonized Information, technology and Technique have been used and are still being used by the present government in service of colonialism and neocolonialism to subjugate, control, manipulate, impose news-blackout and to keep the South African populace ignorant and at logger-heads with itself. This is being done easily and deliberately because Apartheid never died, and the new government is some partly modified version of the old order of Apartheid. The two speakers, located on the bottom side of the laptop under the palm rest, push out decently loud sound; when listening by myself in a quiet room, I typically had the volume well banana kong hack below its median setting. The quality isn't bad, either. Songs do sound a bit trapped at top volume, but any tinniness is still minimal compared to other laptops in this class. Right now, here in Mzatnsi we have a long list of things to take care of. One of this not oft discussed is the importance and affects/effects of history on our lives. Rodney put all things considered into context. He traces the abuses for us, albeit I did not cite the whole chapter, so that we can begin to think much more better and in an informed way about our present-day situations and realities. banana kong hack android Know what led us to be where we us is very important, so that we can better begin to deal with the present which is so overwhelming. But What Rodney does for us, if to keep us focused, so that as we mull over these issues, we have a reliable feedback from a solid authority on this subject-that is, he has already done the homework for us, our is to read it, understand it and apply it as we see fit.

[harrelltut]

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[noones-moon]

TL;DR at the end for anyone interested.

Hi. I’d just like to put my two cents in the My Family’s Slave discourse since it’s been bothering me all day and I need to let some of my thoughts out, mostly about the discourse happening on Twitter which has now also spread to Tumblr. I am not the best person to talk about this, and I’m sure I’m missing some parts. If there is a need for clarification, I am open to DMs. Don’t forget to be polite, please.

I don’t wish to insult or offend anyone as this is a sensitive topic. Sentiments can be shared. But for now, all I ask of you is to be silent, to listen, and to understand. If there are any corrections with regards to the content of this post, just let me know. Long posts like these are bound to have some mistakes and will be edited from time to time.

My first point is that slavery that has happened in the West is different from slavery in the context of Filipino culture and history. Yes, slavery is bad and should not be a thing in the modern era where we all strive for equality to further improve society, and yes perhaps Lola Eudocia’s situation might as well considered her a slave and that we should improve the world so people don’t get into those kinds of situations, but please know that there are still differences between how slavery was between the Philippines and the West.

A quick search on the internet can reveal the history of slavery in the West, particularly in America, where slaves were bought from Africa in exchange for firearms (if I remember correctly). The slaves were used mainly to enrich and maintain the farmlands’ production of crops and tobacco. The treatment of these slaves was abusive in nature, mainly because of racism born out of it with class separation by skin color, putting the white slave owners at the top and the black slaves at the bottom. All you Americans know this better than I do; I assume this is taught in American History in most, if not all, your schools, so forgive me if I got some things wrong.

Slavery in the Philippines started in the pre-colonial period when everyone was part of a tribe or kingdom with their own set of royal families, social classes, and slaves. Usually, the rich had their own slaves to attend to them, and some of these slaves had their own slaves as well.  They may or may not have been abused but these abuses were not recorded, or perhaps were recorded but burned when the Spanish took over the country.

When the Spanish colonized the Philippines during the Age of Exploration, there was an obvious difference between them and the local Filipinos. The Spanish came in their giant ships and with their technology more advanced than the tribal Filipinos who wore bahag and fought with barely any armor (or so they are depicted). With the Spanish having the advantage over several things, they managed to colonize the archipelago with barely any difficulties. These Spanish, who are by the way European, tried to erase pre-colonial Philippine culture by massacring tribes that resisted and burning any written traditions and almost completely erasing the native alphabet Baybayin.

The Spanish after a while started to get abusive and own Filipinos, referred to as Indios, as slaves in their own land. Not much was written about how life was for the most of the 333 years of colonization, with most accounts coming from its final years with the rise of the Philippine revolution to gain independence. Little is known about those <300 years aside from the racist social structures regarding people of pure Spanish descent residing in the Philippines who had all the privileges, people who descended from a Spanish and an Indio some privileges, and those who are entirely Indio, who have little to no rights at all.

After we “declared independence” in 1898, Spain sold us to the United States through the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which involved Spain to relinquish nearly all of what’s left of the Spanish Empire—Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. This was the beginning of the American colonization. We were not treated as slaves outright, with the Americans influencing us with their Western culture. Several Filipinos went “hey we just declared independence why are y’all settling here” while others were all “they’re nice and they’re teaching us stuff we like them”. However, the social statuses of some of the Filipinos who were once slaves of the Spanish still remained as they were powerless even in face of these new friendly(?) colonizers.

And don’t get me started when World War II broke out and the Japanese colonized the Philippines as a part of their master plan to conquer the East. Filipinos captured by the Japanese were treated like cattle in their own land.

Is slavery bad? Yes. Is the slavery of Africans in America the same as the slavery of Indios in the Philippines? Not entirely. Should you comment on slavery in the context of Filipino culture using the context of slavery in the West? Please don’t.

My second point is that Lola Eudocia’s situation is almost completely unique to her. Almost. She was taken from her poor family to serve and take care of Tizon’s mother who was close to her age. To the young Eudocia, being offered food and shelter in exchange for taking care of someone was better than her current situation at the time. Maybe if she knew what was in store for her for the rest of her life she would have declined or ran away.

Now let’s put this into perspective. The social class divide has hurt the lower class Filipinos the most. No matter how hard they worked, the world was just too harsh and they couldn’t escape their poverty unless they were lucky. Several poverty-stricken Filipinos nowadays offer their services as maids/katulong (helpers)/kasambahay (housemates/househelp, I will be using this term to refer to them from here on)/yaya (nannies) for the middle class and higher, in exchange for money to send to their families in need.

Most kasambahays are treated well, being given their own quarters, days off, and the liberty to buy whatever they want using their salaries. Others are integrated into the family, with them being included in family celebrations such as Christmas and New Year, and their birthdays being celebrated by the family. A few are abused by unforgiving employers, though most stories relating to this come from domestic helpers abroad. A few steal from their employers, as told by some of my friends. All kasambahays have rights and are protected by the law. It’s literally called the Kasambahay Law and it’s stated there at least how much they should be paid (overpay is always an option so please do not worry about how they may not be paid enough) and how the law protects them from maltreatment and abuse.

Lola Eudocia was an abused kasambahay and working without pay. She might as well have been considered a slave. But please know that this form of slavery is different from the slavery of Africans. That slavery was a form systematic oppression against a group of people. The form of slavery Lola Eudocia endured was abuse directed at an unwaged and maltreated kasambahay. During the time when she was taken in by Lieutenant Tom, the Philippines was being tormented by the Japanese during the war. If there were any actual slaves that were systematically oppressed at that time it would have been the Filipino slaves under the Japanese. And in comparison to that, Lola Eudocia could be considered a family servant and a personal attendant of the author’s mother.

But why do we take in fellow Filipinos as kasambahays even up to the modern time? These people don’t have enough skill or qualification for even the few minimum wage jobs. But what they can do is do chores for people who don’t have the time to do them but can afford to pay people to do them for them. And it’s in a way our way of helping them earn money they wouldn’t have otherwise earned out there. Some kasambahays resign from their households more skilled than when they came in, as they have learned more things like cooking new dishes, using several kinds of appliances, or even experiencing the internet.

Was Lola Eudocia a slave? Yes and no. In the context of slavery in the West, she was not, but given her harsh situation as a kasambahay, she might as well have been.

My third point is the usage of Lola when referring to Lola Eudocia. Filipino is very family-oriented, as seen from soap operas to TV commercials to Binibining Pilipinas Janina San Miguel and her memefuly quoted “My pamilee” and “My family is the most important persons in my life”. Using family titles is a sign of basic respect.

Kuya (older brother) and Ate (older sister) can be used from siblings (usually in place of their names) to people slightly older than you (upperclassmen, your parents’ employees).

Tatay (dad) and Nanay (mom) can be used for your parents (usually in place of their names like how Westerners do with ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’) to parental figures (Duterte supporters towards President Duterte).

Tito (uncle) and Tita (aunt) from actual uncles and aunts to family friends and friends of your parents. Tita has turned to its own adjective to describe people that fit the Tita stereotype.

Lolo (grandfather) and Lola (grandmother) from your grandparents to elderly in general (though some of the posh elderly would prefer to be called Tito and Tita so they don’t feel their age).

Lola is not an insult nor a slave term. It simply means grandmother. In the context of the essay written by Tizon, he may or may not have started calling Lola Eudocia Lola when he had children, as referring to her as Lola would also have his kids refer to her as Lola, and that just stuck with him until the time he wrote the essay.

And she had the right to be called Lola. She was basically Tizon’s second mother who cared for him and his siblings watched them grow up. He took her into his family as his daughters’ grandmother after his mother died, and he gave her a more relaxed life since her former employer had passed. She didn’t have to do all the house chores anymore nor did she have to endure any more yelling. She had the liberty to do what she wanted like a stay-home grandmother. This part was a good chunk near the bottom of the essay, I don’t understand how many people could have missed it unless they stopped reading after five paragraphs in.

As a Filipino who watched American films, I am always caught off guard whenever younger characters refer to people older than them with their first name, and I always feel secondhand offense for the older characters, but that’s cultural difference there and I let it be because it’s how it is for them.

Is Lola a slave term? Absolutely not.

My fourth point is that Tizon tried to defend Lola Eudocia but his own mother was in the way. As the employer of Lola Eudocia, she was basically bound to her until death. A good part of the essay told how Tizon tried to stand up for her, even offering her a way to escape. But his mom was always in control. In the Filipino family, we put our parents at the top, no matter how we despise them for their wrongdoings. And maybe that isn’t the same for Western culture but that’s an entirely different culture.

She was finally sent home after moving in with Tizon, but seeing she barely had anything to go home to aside from her siblings, she decided it would be better to return to America where she had a more secure home with people to take care of her and a garden to tend to.

Was Tizon a slaveowner? By extension of his family, yes. But as an individual, he did not want to treat her as a slave, more especially when his mother passed. He treated her as a mother. I’m not used to saying slaveowner when referring to Filipinos because usually the Filipinos are the slaves.

TL;DR

We also know what it’s like to be slaves, but our enslavement is different from the enslavement of Africans in America and should not be treated exactly the same way.

Being a domestic helper is an option for poor people (especially women) to provide income for their families. It’s perfectly legal and their job and rights are now protected by law.

Lola really just means grandmother and Lola Eudocia was a grandmother figure for Tizon’s daughters.

Tizon would have let Lola Eudocia free if only his mom wasn’t in the way and she knew where to go.

[newcatwords]

notes on "islands of the mind" by john gillis (ch. 8)

Ch. 8: "Islands Looming: The Imagined Isles of Global Tourism"

143: "Today the voyage to the islands serves more personal ends. Islands have become a source of personal and social identity for millions of people who never have been or ever will be resident islanders."

144: "The seaside remains the favored resort, particularly for families with children; and the appeal of islands is much more dependent on their beaches than their interiors."

"For the tourists, isolation, remoteness, and smallness are things that are prized and increasingly sought after. Because they are in short supply, their value is now enormously inflated. But for the vagabonds of this world, being from a small place and far from the center of the big world holds no allure. On the contrary, a small place, like Jamaica Kincaid's island of Antigua, is a badge of shame and a source of despair." (reference here to A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, 1998)

147: "In a media environment saturated with images from all parts of the world, people have become attached to places they have never seen and pasts they have never had."

148: "Today our most significant places are not those we dwell in physically but those we dwell on mentally. They are not physical locations, but cultural constructions, often kept at a distance. Roots are invariably found elsewhere; nor are house and home any longer the same. Among the world's more affluent classes, the strongest sense of home adheres not to our regular places of residence but to weekend and summer places. Even as American houses grow ever larger, they become ever emptier, in part because we no longer have time to spend there now that women as well as men are in the workforce. The house has become a space of vicarious experience rather than a place for actual living. Marjorie Garber has written that "we build exercise rooms instead of exercising, furnish libraries instead of reading, install professional kitchens instead of cooking." Space becomes a substitute for the time, "and the house becomes the unlived life...the place where we stage the life we wish we had time to live." (reference to Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses by Marjorie Garber, 2000) (please note that this book was written way before covid...surely the relationship to the house/home has changed significantly for many people since then)

151: "John Fowles remarks that a small island is a place "encompassable at a glance, walkable in a day, that related to the human body closer than any other geographical formation of land." "Fowles's own identification with his favorite Greek island developed only slowly: "Eventually it let me feel it was mine: which is the great siren call of islands--that they will not belong to any legal order, but offer to become part of all who tread and love them." (reference here to Islands by John Fowles, 1978)

"Islands are among the most photographed and painted places on earth; they are endlessly talked about, their stories told and histories recorded. We do our best to reduce islands to human scale regardless of their actual physical size. And because it is surrounded by water, an island is like a framed picture, appearing to its viewer as small but at the same time all the more comprehensible. The framing allows us the illusion that we know an island more thoroughly, lending weight to the modern notion that it is through the small that we can understand the large. An island appears to us as a microcosm, even when it bears no resemblance to the universe as a whole."

"Touristed islands are invariably described as small regardless of their size; and life there is not only scaled down but slowed down, especially by the mainlanders who have come to reside there."

152: "Downsizing is one of the ways we regain control of our lives. In the past twenty years, it has been accompanied by what Juliet Schor calls "downshifting", an effort to cope with a pervasive sense of time famine. (reference here to Overworked Americans: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet Schor, 1991) The cottage cultures that have proliferated throughout the Western world all show the same characteristics: a desire for the simpler, slower life."

"It is one of the great paradoxes of our times that the value of remoteness increases even as modern communications make all parts of the world more accessible."

"The scarcity of physical remoteness has driven up its value and encouraged a kind of cultural counterfeiting. Because remoteness is nowhere, it can be anywhere. We have learned to produce what we can no longer find, often quite close to home."

152-3: "Remoteness is not a matter of physical distance because remoteness is not something measured in mile sor kilometers. No island is too near or too far to seem remote, for remoteness is in the eye of the beholder."

153: "Neither physical distance nor natural features automatically bestow remoteness. Instead, it is the product of social processes, of autobiography and histor, of economics and politics as well as a sociology, of which islands are a prime illustration. We have seen that the association of remoteness with islands is a quite recent phenomenon, something that is culturally constituted and maintained."

"Any place, however far, which is arrived at too quickly is automatically disqualified. Travel to the remote is invariably ritualized, a series of passages, each stretching the sense of temporal and spatial distance between the place of origin and the place of destination. Starting, stopping, and waiting are all part of the construction of remoteness. Getting there must be something of an adventure, a test, amounting often a trial that transports the traveler mentally as well as physically to a different world."

154: "Islands have become the contemporary world's favorite location for remoteness not because they are distant but because they necessitate the spatial practices that create a sense of remoteness."

"While those "from away" glory in being cut off, the locals become increasingly anxious about their isolation. It is they who demand better roads, more telephone lines, and regular ferry service."

155: "Remoteness is the product of a relationship between two places, but these places are unequal to one another. Today, powerful mainlands bestow remoteness on relatively powerless islands."

"If the absence of marked roads and straight paths is a sure sign of remoteness, the lack of wires is another. Remoteness requires that communications be not too easy or too direct, for the remote must be one step behind technologically."

156: "To the locals remoteness is like a one-way street. It allows the outside world to flood in but not allow access to what that world takes for granted. It heightens island residents' sense of backwardness, and they overcompensate by acquiring the modern conveniences that the newcomers are trying to escape from. While those "from away" glory in the simple life, the locals purchase faster boats, bigger cars, and all the modern conveniences money will buy, including the latest communications technology."

157: "As for the people who live year-round in resort communities, the summer is anything but playful. It is the time of the year when they work even harder to earn a good part of their annual income."

159: "Islands are now the sites of staged authenticity so convincing that tourists are fooled into thinking that they have access to life as it really was. Elements of island life have been packaged and commodified to profit from tourist dreams."

159-160: "It has become common to create a cultural island within the physical island to meet the tourists' expectations. When real isles do not fit the image of what an island should be, they can be remade. In a similar way, fenced-off tourist enclaves of Haiti and Jamaica produce versions of authentic island life while keeping the visitors from encountering the less savory side of those impoverished places."

162: "It is the deserted island that has always stirred the Western imagination. The very emptiness of the place allows free rein to thoughts and feelings that are otherwise inhibited and confused by the clutter of everyday existence. Great writers have turned again and again to the desert island as their space of creativity. Caliban and Crusoe would never have been credible as continentals."

164: "As it was in the past, the island journey is circular, a cultural practice dependent as much on departure as arrival, on the possibility of eternal return. The sacredness of any island, its perceived distance from the profane everyday world, is a product of ritualized repetitions, producing a sense of time as recoverable and repeatable. The intensity of the island experience depends on the certain knowledge that one must leave. A summer cottage loses its meaning when it becomes a permanent residence, for seasonality is fundamental to achieving remoteness. It is in absence rather than in residence that islands exercise their strongest hold over our imaginations."

"Ironically, the very meaning of the island depends on our transience. We come and go so it can remain the island in our mind that never changes, the fixed pivot of our turning world, our secular proof of eternity."

165: "For islands to serve the mainlands' latest cultural imperatives, they must be kept at a certain spatial and temporal distance. When he visited the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas, Gunnar Hansen found that city folk who were purchasing land had no real intention of living there: "They just wanted the idea. They want the word ISLAND emblazoned on their stationary." (reference here to Islands at the Edge of Time: A journey to America's Barrier Islands by Gunnar Hansen, 1993) Even as physical islands retreat to the margins of history and geography, islands of the mind loom large in our consciousness of ourselves and the world around us. The less they are occupied, the more they preoccupy the modern imagination."