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the-silentium · 4 years ago

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Home Sweet Home

Masterlist - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8

Fors is an Original planet. I do not give permission to people to use it for their own fics, the planet, the animals, the Nightmares, the lore or anything related to Fors. Thank you.

Pairing: Bad Batch x Reader

Words: 7569 words

Warnings: Angst, sexual innuendos.

A/N: Last “soft” chap before the action come back ~

**Words in bold are words said in French, which means the clones can’t understand it.**

Taglist: @clone-rambles / @mandaloriandin / @apathetic-catastrophie / @jenstar1992-2 / @haloangel391 / @lightning-wolffe / @cherrydemon5 / @and-claudia / @lackofhonor / @gaymasonjar / @depthsreturn / @koskareevesismyqueen / @leonidas-banana-phone

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Nothing changed. Not the obnoxious people, not the earthy smells, nor the heavy atmosphere. The loud locks of the gates closing behind your group still resonated through your ears, sounding too much like the last nail sealing your coffin shut and not like a protecting device. Was it your instincts telling you that you made the wrong decision? Or was it just the dread of returning somewhere you never wanted to return? Either way, it was clear that you didn't feel any bits of nostalgia at being back between these rocky walls.

Hells, even the council's room was giving off unpleasant vibes with its tall bookcases carved directly into the walls that protected way too many old books that weren't all redacted in French nor in Basic. A map of the planet hung on the furthest wall of the room, the different villages identified with their respective symbol to help with trades, hunts, fights. Frabas' name crossed out in blood-red ink to remind everyone of the overnight genocide that happened there.

The lanterns were the only nice things in the room. The soft green and blue crystals contained within the glass enclosure bathed the whole room in their light. Maybe if you focussed on them long enough their glow would soothe your mind.

"Excuse me? You spit on it?" Tech's sudden high pitch tone was surprising enough to pass through your incessant flow of thoughts

"Yeah. Right there." He pointed at an intergrown knot close to the far extremity of the table where the heads usually sat. "What? Did you want me to piss on it? That's a bit too animalistic." Kayden added as soon as he noticed Tech's offended expression that quickly morphed into a disgusted one.

"Honestly, with you people, I wouldn't have been surprised." Crosshair's jeer traveled the room in a second. It took even less to drop Kayden's mood.

His hand tightened around yours and without losing a single second, you matched his grip to keep him from expressing his frustration through anything physical. Now wasn't the time to start a fight between your own team members when several other players might want to hurt you.

If tonight's bad luck could turn into good fortune at least once, now would be the time. The 'diplomats' were out of harm's way, Kayden had technically done what he was told and thus was not considered a traitor, leaving you alone on the spot.

"Look who just found his voice again." He caught your message and used his words instead. "I was sure you'd swallowed your tongue when you ran like a chicken back there."

"And who ran the fastest in the group eh?" The sniper walked to the table. His hands fell flat on the wood to support himself as he leaned forward, daring the brunette at your sides to make a move.

"The fastest is usually the one to survive." He pointed out as he scratched at his clothed chest with his free hand, his right one still prisoner of your grip.

"Crosshair." Hunter slightly pulled him backward by the pauldron and away from the incoming confrontation. "Enough." He added with a growl, clearly remembering how this wasn't his brother. Not fully.

Against all expectation, Crosshair did back off, although he quickly moved his animosity towards the new source of irritation, clear proof that this wasn't the man with whom Hunter had shared so many memories, good or bad. He was a total stranger that didn't respect him at all and lived to push his buttons. Why he stayed with you all was a mystery, although you weren't complaining. Keeping him restrained while in the jungle would have been a true challenge.

It was like waiting for a storm to explode. The dark grey clouds were there, the strong winds blew away everything in their wake, the thunder resonated in the distance, yet there wasn't any droplet of rain. The men faced each other just like in the cave, mere centimeters separated their chest plates and anytime now, the first blow would mark the start of a colossal downpour.

It was nerve-wracking. Even Wrecker and Tech were watching, clearly pondering if they should intervene or if by doing so they would aggravate the situation. You started getting up as the door opened and startled you into seating down again.

Never had you thought that seeing Arlan enter a room would make you feel relieved, yet, this was exactly how you felt at the moment. It seemed like the sudden entrance of an outsider was enough for Crosshair to back off. You subtly crossed your fingers that he wouldn't lash out at the leader even though the scene would very probably make you feel so much better. The consequences of going against Arlan just weren't worth it.

Before the dark-haired leader could notice it, you separated your hand from Kayden's, both your backs straightened and your unbothered masks came back on. Wearing the well-worn suit of this fake cocky personality was deeply uncomfortable but truly necessary. Over the years it became your best shield and Kayden your best ally.

"Take a seat." Arlan waved towards the table as he walked deeper into the room, passing Hunter and Crosshair like they weren't even there. It took years to be able to read the black-haired leader, but it definitely came in handy now.

His calm tone hid a deep irritation that showed through the tightness gripping the muscles around his eyes. He quickly tamed his features as he took place at the end of the table, his elbows immediately meeting the hardwood of the armchairs to allow his fingers to interlace before him.

Soon the 4 seats opposing you were occupied with rigid troopers. Their helmets still firmly on would have been seen as an enormous lack of respect if only Arlan's attention wasn't already focussed on two nasty boots dripping mud onto the piece of art that was the table.

Arlan only needed one look to communicate thoroughly his thoughts. The hard gaze that could easily be misinterpreted as a constipated one transpired enough threats that Kayden removed his boots without any further delay. The ultimatum was clear and you both knew that there was nothing Arlan despised more than repeating himself. Well, maybe you two were the firsts on his list, but that was especially because you loved to make him repeat himself.

If only he didn't look like there was an entire fire-ants colony in his pants, Kayden would have kept his feet up for a bit longer just to raise the man's blood pressure a little. You swore he got more grey hair each time he had to talk with the two of you.

The disapproving sigh accompanying the stormy grey hues boring deeply into yours was a true gift to Kayden whose smirk widened in consequence.

"Do you know why you're here?" The question resonated within the room with utmost seriousness, a seriousness that you forced yourself to shrug nonchalantly in response.

"Surely not because you missed me." You placed a smirk on your lips to copy your sidekick and complete the infernal duo act.

His dark-grey sleeves rode up his arms as he bent forward, his elbows now resting on the table, to get a closer look at you, 3 chairs away. Whilst being very tempting, flinching under his hard stare was out of the question. Four months in a medbay with kind people almost made you forget what the world was really made of; selfish people who always looked out for weaknesses to exploit and were eager to beat others down in hope to raise themselves up.

"We are here to talk relations between the Republic and your planet." Hunter sharply stated, cutting short the staring contest. "My team was sent in a preliminary manner to inform you of the Republic's intentions seeing as your representatives couldn't be reached through official channels. In the following days, two senators will be coming here with adequate troops to talk in the Senate's name."

How the room got hotter in a second was a mystery. All you knew was that even though his tone was borderline too crisp to be qualified as diplomatic, Hunter's words were so perfectly chosen that you wondered if he'd done this kind of job before.

As the silence following Hunter's declaration stretched, Arlan's gaze moved to the hard visor of the commando trooper. The intensity of his stare left you thinking that maybe he was able to see through the shade. Unfazed, Hunter stared right back as you did just moments prior.

You nearly missed it. If you hadn't been watching Arlan as intently as you were doing, the minuscule flash in his eye would have been overlooked. A muscle jumped in his jaw, filling you with dread. Something was wrong. Somehow he had the upper hand and he was internally relishing his win.

"A very well executed lie, but I am sorry to announce you that the Republic won't come here, Sergeant. Not after the Jedis signed a treaty to never come on this planet ever again." You were sure he paused just to get a reaction out of the commando. Hunter's helmet hid his expression perfectly. If he'd reacted or not was totally lost on everyone, unfortunately, it wasn't the same for Kayden whose eyes grew as big as saucers. "No Jedi, no clone, no senator, no Separatist, no outsider is welcome here."

Say what now? Never before had you ever heard of Jedis ever landing a foot on Fors, even less signing a treaty.

Hunter's helmet slightly dipped in your direction, surely to get some answers through your body language. Surely, he got the message when you gulped, wariness filling your eyes as you continued to stare at the man in his mid-50s. His message had been pretty clear from the very beginning. That he felt the need to add that the clones weren't welcome caused doubts in your village ethics to creep into your mind.

As far as you knew, no one had ever been executed in cold blood. Sure, you'd heard stories as a child about how people who were a tad bit too disturbing in the community would vanish overnight, obviously thrown out into the jungle to be feasted on by some hungry creature. Without knowing if they were true events or simply a way to make children behave, you took a habit of sticking with Kayden as soon as the firsts Furants that created their nests in the crooks of the walls circling the village entered the gates to hide, signaling that 7 pm had recently passed and the Nightmares would show up in under an hour. After all, there was no better nuisance in Alryan than the two of you.

Knowing that Arlan's smugness was carefully hidden under layers of practiced indifference, a very tantalizing urge to break your knuckles once again send tingles into your dominant hand. Breaking his nose for a second time would definitely help your mood as well as everyone else's in the room, you were sure of it.

"The- the Jedis? But they never-"

"It is not common knowledge." Arlan archly cut Kayden short and rolled his eyes with that very particular expression that made you feel like the stupidest idiot in the galaxy. In response, the tingles in your hand intensified. "This treaty is way older than me after all. We never needed the Republic's help in any way, not then and certainly not now." He at least had the decency to meet his eyes as he talked.

"And what do you think of the Nightmares? Frabas-" You piped up, the image of a traumatized red-head girl shaking in her bloody clothes popped in your mind. "They could've helped with that."

"They are protectors." He closed his eyes in exasperation and pinched his nose like he'd repeated the concept over and over again to a child that never retained anything.

"They don't protect shit! They kill us!"

Where had he been his whole life? Every night they came and howled, screeched, hissed, yapped and laughed on the other side of the gates in hope of having some juicy flesh and fresh blood to appease their hunger and thirst. Some even went as far as hitting the gates repeatedly in hope of breaking their way in. 10 hours per night, 368 nights a year, every year.

"They protect the Core that's in you--" He interrupted himself as soon as he noticed the irritation breaching his mask, allowing venom to drip through the closing cracks. His rage fit only lasted a second but it was a second too much. He gave you more than he wanted you to know.

"What do you mean? In me?" You could feel yourself starting to shake. In apprehension, anger or fear you couldn't tell. There was too much going on at the same time, assaulting your already tired mind.

"Nothing that you need to know." His tone was definitive, his grey eyes conveying the same message.

"Bullshit!" You jump to your feet just as he pushed his chair to get up. "If it's in me like you say, I deserve to know!"

Your yell must have triggered something, because as soon as the words flew from your mouth, Rhian and his troops entered the room, bows fully bent and ready to shoot in your direction. Elijah had his hammer in both hands, fully prepared to use it against a clone- your money went on Wrecker- if needed and Pete was ready to blow a tranquilizer- or it could easily be a fast-acting poison- into someone's neck.

The answer to the intrusion was immediate. Wrecker's chair went flying behind him at the impact of his legs when he followed his CO's movement. All four troopers stood on their side of the table, imposing and totally ready to enter a fight if need be. You and Kayden though? Totally not ready. You were unarmed and by the time you took hold of Kayden's bow, at least three arrows would have found their way into your body.

"All you really deserved was to die on Murphy Day." He snarled in your direction as his impatience once again showed through his slipping mask. "Throw them in the slammer."

That's it. Goodbye knuckles. Always the perceptive, Kayden grabbed your upper arm, right below the Algax's clean-cut, and pulled you back to his side even before you made the first step towards the bastard. Always there to keep you alive for another day. What a nice friend.

"Hands behind your head." Rhian barked as he approached you and Kayden from behind.

Doing as you were told, you noticed the troopers hesitating before doing as ordered when you nodded at them. Tech lifted his good hand, the other keeping hold of Crosshair's cage. One of the archers went to seize it, but a sudden shoulder to the sternum kept him away.

He's not just a nerd. You smirked as the archer stumbled.

"Let them keep it." Rhian waved off the fuming archer who definitely wanted to go back and win his fight. Too bad. "Walk ahead. You know the way." Rhian nodded towards the door after getting a hold of Kayden's bow and quiver, his very own bow aimed at the floor. The string was stretched just enough to cause serious damage if he needed to defend himself quickly, but he seemed to know that it wasn't needed.

Kayden led the way with you in tow, Elijah and Pete moved away from the door to let you pass at a safe distance. Out of the corner of your eyes, you noticed Rhian breaking formation to move up to Arlan, who surely waved him over.

You sighed as you remembered that he didn't even tell you why he wanted you here.

The clone's boots resonated against the rock floor at each of their steps, close enough to appease your mind.

"Do you know a way out of here?" Hunter's voice emanated softly within your ear.

You moved your shoulder blades in a circular motion as if you were stretching the muscles and nodded your head at the same time as to not look too suspicious to the archers escorting the group. Good thing that they didn't notice your earpiece yet.

Wrecker must have been the one right behind you because he relayed the message to Hunter through the private line.

"Now?" You rotated your head from side to side like when you needed to crack your neck.

"No." Came Wrecker's whisper.

"In the slammer?" A small nod.

"Yeah."

"Then we wait and we get out as soon as possible." Hunter told his half-plan to the Batch who hummed their approvals.

Once again the unusual parade that you formed along with the armored men attracted many curious eyes. Ignoring them was easier this time around, the familiarity of their chary gazes finally coming back to allow you to concentrate on something else.

This part of the village was carved so deeply into the mountain that even the occasional howls coming from the jungle couldn't be heard. There couldn't have been better protection for a population of more than 700 people than a natural barrier of rock. Sure, this very convenient refuge could easily become a tomb for a lot of villagers in the event of a breach, but several emergency tunnels were created for this very situation. They were maintained at a perfect condition in case a repeat of Frabas' catastrophe ever came to happen.

Every Alryan learned the location of every single tunnel at the youngest of age. They were only to be used in emergency cases and right now, it was an emergency. It all depended on the perspective.

"It never changed." You stated quietly as the slammer's entrance came into view, the dark purple glow emanating from its depths was a stark contrast to the lively colors of the main area.

Goosebumps rose on your arms as you followed Kayden down the tunnel. The nearby natural well raised the humidity in these parts of the mountain and thus caused the air to become colder. Just my luck, you thought as the fresh air infiltrated your clothes by the multiple tears in their fabric.

"In there." Rhian speed-walked to catch up with Kayden and direct him to a cell carved into the wall on his left.

You were locked up with him, Wrecker and Hunter got situated in the cell facing yours, Crosshair and Tech on the one right beside theirs.

Right as Tech got in after a growling Crosshair, Rhian took hold of the cage and kicked Tech inside who landed in a yelp. You weren't even gripping the bars yet that the heavy door closed behind the engineer.

"Give him back!"

"Sorry 'bout that." He threw the cage in the air twice, the flame within shaking frantically as it hit the bars. "Orders are orders." He ignored the yells of his name bouncing in the detention center and walked out unbothered, his men in tow.

"How quick can you get us out of here?" The urgency in Hunter's tone only added to your own raiding anxiety. What would Arlan do to Crosshair? He was totally defenseless.

"Couple of minutes. But we'll need Back-Up. I hope you have it." You turned to Kayden who scoffed in mocked offense.

"You have back-up?" Tech wondered out loud, tilting his head. "I thought no one would help you here."

"Jeez. Thanks for the vote of confidence." Kayden held his heart before reaching for his chest pocket. "Back-up is my Godot." He pulled a hand-sized lizard from his pocket to show the Batch.

The Godot's orange scales shone softly at Kayden's contact, their light reflecting onto the soft line of baby blue leaves growing on each side of its spine. Its three-fingered paws grabbed fingers and clothes to remain in place while two black eyes moved independently from one another to take in what was happening around. Its long tail wrapped around Kayden's wrist as he lifted it up to show off, the small leaves at its end shining brightly in surprise.

Wrecker gasped and lifted his helmet to get a better view of the animal. "That's what I saw the first time, Tech! It's the lizard that disappeared!"

"Nothing disappeared Wrecker. There was nothing there." Tech rebuked.

"Don’t be so sure about that! They can camouflage themselves, right Back-Up?" At the half-baked order, the tiny lizard shut off its light and changed its skin pigmentation to copy its environment to perfection.

"It disappeared Tech! See? That's what I saw and you didn't believe me!" Wrecker's tone raised as he pointed to Kayden's seemingly empty outstretched hand.

"Wrecke-" You tried to warn him to keep his voice down but heard steps coming your way.

"Back-up, go get the master key at home." Kayden hurriedly whispered to the Godot and quickly kneeled to allow it access to the ground so it could wander away and get the required object.

A guard appeared at the end of the corridor just as Kayden got up and threw himself onto the upper hammock fixed to the walls. He moved around to get comfortable and into the right position, hands under his head.

"So, I've heard that Stockholm syndrome was hard on you." Brett, a particularly annoying scout, mocked from behind his beard.

"Nope. Still don't like y'all." You replied nonchalantly despite the urge to punch him through the bars.

"I was talking about them." He pointed to the two cells containing the clones and you lifted a single eyebrow.

"Tech, definition of Stockholm syndrome please." You asked, maintaining eye contact during the whole process.

"Stockholm syndrome," You saw the genius perked up at your request. Sadly, he didn't lift a finger in the air while he recited the meaning of the word. "Is a psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands." He ended with a nod and the movement satisfied you enough to let the lack of a finger go.

"That means you dumbass." You spat as you crossed your arms over your chest. "I'm with them willingly."

"Get fucked!" Kayden shouted with a laugh that got half a smile out of you.

"You? Our captive? It sure felt like the other way around." He finally switched to basic and the hate coating his words told you that he wasn't talking about the pranks and snarky attitude, no, he was talking about something bigger than that.

"What are you talking about?" Maybe you could get more answers out of him than you did with Arlan.

He scoffed. "Stop trying to play the idiot. Between the two of you, Kayden's the best at it."

You ignored said idiot's thanks to press the matter. "Okay and let's imagine I really don't know what the hell you're talking about. What in the damn world did I do?" You remembered Arlan's word and almost added what is wrong with me? but Brett was already dropping the three medicine canisters to the ground, out of reach from either your cell or the clones' and went away.

"You live."

You sat on the ground, drained of every ounce of energy you once had. What was wrong with you? Why did everyone want you dead? The fear you felt at Arlan's words came back as you thought about what it could all mean. The Nightmares who stopped appearing when you left and came back when you did. Whatever the Core was that supposedly resided in you and the fact that the Lumsin knew what it was while you didn't. That the villagers never saw you as an annoying brat but a vile oppressor.

You faintly heard Kayden talking with Tech about Back-up, but couldn't make out the exact words, your own thoughts being way too loud for you to clearly hear anything outside your head.

"It's alright. Don't worry about it." An arm fell on your shoulders and pulled you into Kayden's side who now sat next to you on the ground, successfully pulling you out of your own mind. Yet, as comforting as his gesture was supposed to be, you only felt guiltier. Even when everyone else pointed their fingers at you, he was still there to keep yourself up even after you'd vanished on him.

Kayden scratched the clothes over his heart again and cut off your incoming guilty declaration.

"Question. If the half-skull one was to break my jaw or somethin' and that you didn't see it happen, would you believe me if I told you it was him?" Kayden asked, frowning too deeply for you to brush the question off as one of his stupid ones.

"Wha-?" Then it dawned on you. "Did you threaten him?" You asked Hunter, voice raising in octaves.

You knew Kayden probably deserved it, but he was your best friend. You've been helping each other for more than 15 years and there was no way you'd let him get beaten for a stupid jealousy tantrum.

An invisible hand squeezed your heart as you felt Kayden relaxing against your side. He doubted that you'd listen to him. More importantly, he doubted that you'd trust his word over someone else's. Sure it was Hunter's word, but you knew the Sergeant was not in his right mind and not only because of the irrational feeling.

"He wouldn't stop talking." The unbothered tone in which he answered shocked you.

"Yet you've never threatened Tech."

"That's not the same." Why must he sound like he truly believed that he did nothing wrong?

"You may not value his life and health, but I do. A lot." You emphasized the last word so he got the message. "And his word is the only single one in the galaxy that I never ever doubted."

Kayden's breath sharply filled his lungs and Hunter's fingers curled into fists. You still deeply loved the dark-haired Sergeant and seeing him frustrated at your words made a real number on your insides but that rational part of your brain told you that he would tire of you someday and would leave, whereas Kayden had shown countless of times that he'd be there to hold your hand, push your back and pull you up whenever needed.

"Good to know."

Why did his acknowledgment of your words make you sick? You'd said those words yourself and they were true, so how could they hurt that much? If it wasn't of the half-circles traced on the back of your right hand, you certainly would have had a physical reaction. It could have been hiding in your hammock or tears leaking from your eyes, you didn't know.

"You don't trust us?" Wrecker's hurt translated in his low, nearly inaudible tone if it wasn't of the earbud deeply pushed into your ear canal.

"I do Wrecker. I really do. It's me that I don't." Damn. For someone who wanted to avoid feelings-talks like the plague, you found yourself right in the middle of the deepest one ever.

"I don't understand." He admitted.

"I-" You sighed, trying to find the words that would explain something you didn't know how to explain. "I don't myself Wrecker. I make people despise me and-" The words escaped you. Out of exasperation, your free hand moved up to rub your closed eyelids and drag the pads of your fingers down your cheeks.

"When they don't you persuade yourself they do and you tell yourself that they'll give you up so you start to doubt them even when there's nothing to worry about." Kayden shrugged at your wide eyes looking at him. "Don't be surprised I know you better than yourself. You did the same shit with me but I didn't let you."

"Then why did you doubt yourself against Hunter?"

" 'cuz you love him." He answered in your native tongue and you were grateful for it. You weren't ready to say the words out loud and if Kayden, the person who just demonstrated that he knew you like the palm of his hand, said those words himself, then he'd throw your feelings out in the open and you couldn't have that. Not when your brain still expected the Bad Batch to get back to their ship and leave you on Fors, where you belonged.

"You were there longer."

"Yeah, but that was because you couldn't escape me. Give them their chance. You might be surprised." He patted your shoulder like an old man who gave advice to a youngster.

"We wouldn't give you up. You're our friend!" Wrecker added once the conversation in a foreign language died.

"If you still doubt our friendship, then you might want to remember that we passed hundreds of hours training you to be our pilot and that we lied to our superiors to keep you." Tech pointed out, this time with the finger in the air. It brought the tiniest of smiles to your lips.

"Or remember the moments shared." Hunter surprised you with his quiet words that Kayden definitely couldn't hear without a comm device. Had he realized that he was fighting a non-existent enemy? Or did he feel as bad as you following your exchange?

"Or you can remember that you're a freak." Tech slapped his lean brother's shoulder

"So I belong with you guys? Yeah, I'll- I'll do my best to remember all that." A chuckle escaped your lips. "Thanks." You added under your breath, to which the boys nodded and Wrecker smiled brightly.

"Is your chest okay?" Tech asked and pointed at Kayden who was still scratching his torso.

"Yeah, 's just itchy. I think Kerth put some poison Ivy in my clothes. I wouldn't be surprised." He pulled his shirt forward to look at his skin. He winced. "That does look like it."

"You never get tired of looking at yourself?" A soft feminine voice chuckled from down the hallway.

Soft brown eyes shone behind fiery red locks, their owner walking straight to your cell where she stopped to pass you a hot container. You'd recognize that smell everywhere and apparently so did your stomach who growled loudly in anticipation of receiving some soup.

"Good timing, I see." She chuckled, put her pack on the ground and offered you a container. "It's not poisoned, I promise. I did it myself." She assured in basic when you kept watching her hands without making any move towards the food.

Still unmoving, Kayden took it upon himself to grab two containers and let the redhead give the clones their servings.

"They wanted me to only feed the soldiers but I slipped some for you two as well. For all the spare crusts." She nodded at you, who kept watching her in silence. Before turning around to go back to where she came from, the woman had the kindness to grab the discarded medicine canisters and offer them to Kayden. "Take care."

Wait. You had to tell her. It was like your brain forgot how everything worked. Opening your mouth wasn't hard compared to finding what to say. Even then your throat constricted in an attempt to shut you up, but you couldn't let her go without telling her.

She deserved to know.

"Fleena." Was all you managed and it was enough to stop her in her tracks. When she turned, your hand was already fishing around in your pocket for the small piece of wood.

She came back as you brought your closed fist forward and dropped the dirty necklace on her open hand.

She stared at it, surprise taking over her soft features in a flash as soon as she recognized the symbol. She turned it to inspect the back and now was the right time for the earth to open beneath your ass and take you away.

"Where did you get that?" The tremors in her voice send a knife through your heart.

Swallowing down the lump in your throat, you made sure to choose your words better than with Hunter. "Nixon was a Wanderer."

"He-" She started with hope until she registered your sentence. "Was?"

There it was. The moment to own what you did finally arrived.

"What did you do?" She pressed as you kept silent, unable to say it out loud.

"It wasn't him anymore, Fleena. He hadn't grown up and kept walking in circles on his bleeding feet. He was tormented."

You freed him. You helped him. Now that her horrified hazel eyes bore into yours, Crosshair's words that were so helpful before held no sense.

"He was still my brother." She clutched the necklace to her chest, tears running down her cheeks.

"Nixon was gone."

"I don't expect you to understand. You don't know anything about having a sibling."

The silence following her retreating steps was even heavier than before. No. That wasn't true. The boys spoke in the background and in your ear, prompting you to remove the device to have some peace.

"You're right, I don't." You grumbled in your knees that were now up to your face to hide your features, your arms tightly wrapped around them to keep them close.

"That's the biggest bullshit that ever came out of your mouth." Kayden scoffed next to you. "What do you think I am then? Your friend?" He puffed like it was the stupidest joke he'd ever been told. "Fuck no. We've been family ever since your dad died so cut the crap or I'll hit you."

I should be punching you for saying such stupid stuff.

"For real. I'll hit you so hard you won't ignore me again." He shuffled around to better position himself, arm lifting-

"I've abandoned you." You spat more at you than at him.

"Siblings sucks but we love them anyway." He shrugged. "You're no exception."

Tears gathered in your eyes. Even after leaving him alone to fight for himself, Kayden still loved you as much as before and never once held a grudge against your actions. He was a true god-given gift and you'd treated him unfairly.

Pain exploded into your shoulder and you found yourself colliding with the ground.

"The fuck?" Four spots on your shoulder hurt so deeply that it didn't take long for you to realize that he'd hit you with his knuckles.

"My monthly quota was not yet achieved." He smirked, watching you massage the beaten skin.

"Don't you think I'm hurt enough already?"

"Stop whining, we have Biogel." He shook the metallic container before your face.

"That thing hurts like hell." You groaned, pushing his hand away to sit straight.

"When did you become such a baby?" You shot him the deadliest glare you had in reserve. "Hey. It's a very small price to pay for completely healed wounds in under 30 minutes."

"Completely healed?" Tech inquired, eying the matching container in his hands that Kayden pushed him.

"Yeah! One good layer and bye-bye! Works for sprained stuff too, just takes a little longer." Kayden answered as he helped you apply the cold sticky gel onto your arms. "Little tips: let someone else put it on you." He added as you hissed and groaned under the burning feeling that came with the product.

Your hands closed and opened repeatedly to keep from hitting Kayden in retaliation for the pain he was putting you through. The raging fire led to intense stinging that you could describe as white-hot needles poking your damaged skin.

"Please remember that you love me." Kayden said right before he dropped a huge blob of Biogel onto the hole in your leg. Had he not jumped away, your elbow would have connected with his chest at high speed. Instead, all that got injured were your nerves, your vocal cords and Hunter's head.

"I'll murder you if you do that again." You whimpered while clutching your upper thigh in hope of cutting every pain transmission from your leg to your brain.

"Good thing it was the last one!" He laughed from his side of the cell, Biogel discarded to the profit of the warm bowl of soup which he was already drinking like he'd been starved for a week.

Wrecker's gasp and groans filled the air. A quick glance his way showed Hunter applying a coat of the translucent substance on his burnt hands and neck as well as on the cuts on his arms. Then came Hunter's turn who covered some scratches from the Yappians and after some thought applied some of it on the side of his forehead. No sound escaped his throat, the only proof of the pain assaulting his nerves being the scrunching of his face, unlike Tech who yelped when Crosshair carelessly applied the gel on his wrist and arms. Then, like pain didn't affect him at all, he splattered some on his swollen ankle and it was done.

"I'm sure no one really wants to eat right now, but it'd be good to eat the food until Back-up comes back and we have to leave." Kayden reminded.

"What's that?" Crosshair asked, more worried about the soup than Wrecker was. The tank was already slurping the soup down, mindful of his sensible fingers.

"In basic I guess it translates as bone soup." Wrecker stopped abruptly, mouth still scotched to the bowl. He eyed you in distress, pondering if it was safe to swallow or not. "It's good, despite the name. Hunters usually eat that before a hunt to boost their systems, right Y/N?" Just for the sake of the game, you nodded. It was true anyway.

"And eh… what's in it?" Tech moved the container in small circles to try and identify what was floating in the light yellow liquid.

"Roots, meats, some veggies, guts and ground bones." You kept your poker face as Kayden enumerated the 'ingredients' and Wrecker lost all colors. "Where do you think the name comes from?"

Wrecker spat his enormous gulp and you laughed to the point of tears, soon joined by your best frie- brother.

"He's just fucking with y'all, Wreck. It's called bone soup because there's bone marrow in it to help with our joints. And there’s no guts. We're no savages." You did your best to control your laugh before digging into your soup eagerly. How Kayden always managed to get your mood up was a total mystery, but it always worked and you were grateful for it.

"Could've fooled me." Crosshair taunted.

"Ya can choke on it." You said at the same time Kayden did, getting a laugh out of it.

The delicious soup filled your stomach in less than 10 gulps and it wasn't until you put your bowl down that you realized how good it made you feel to fill that emptiness in you. The soup wasn't enough to make you sleepy after a nice meal and provided just enough nutrients for everyone to be able to face the fast-approaching escape without a problem. Mixed with the Biogel, you were back at the top of your games.

Arlan really made an error in taking care of the group.

"What now? What's your plan?" Hunter wondered, posing his container on the ground.

You met gaze with Kayden and he nodded confidently. "How well can you all swim in your armors?"

"In calm water, we are fine but slow. We can't go in strong water. The current will catch in the plastoid and will drag us down."

A hum resonated from within your throat and you pucker your lips. "You can't give them up. That scratch out the underground well and the waterfall." You taped your lips in thought. Watching Tech who still drank with only one hand, you knew that hiking wasn't an option as well. For now at least.

"Then it's the dark pit." Kayden pointed out.

It indeed was the last possible option. The other remaining one would be to use the front gates and it was the least possible one.

"Yeah. The other tunnels would take too long to get out and then we'd lose too much time walking back at the Old Man's cave." You recalled from your mental map of the jungle. "I'm fairly sure we have two hours until dawn. The Old Man's Cave is 15 minutes away from here if we run."

"Then we run." Hunter agreed.

"Now, to get out… Hey, big guy." Kayden called. "What's the name?"

"Wrecker." He answered proudly, almost puffing his chest out.

Kayden scoffed. "Obviously. Should'a figured." He turned to you. "Is it too late to change my name?"

The moron was too far for a shoulder slap, so you showed your exasperation with a roll of your eyes. "Stop screwing around and tell us your idea."

"Yeah yeah." The childish tone wasn't surprising on his part. He turned his attention back to the tall clone. "So, Wrecker, I bet you're experienced with big shafts so how good are you with pulse-hammers?" In a flash, you threw your empty container at his head with utmost precision that you knew Crosshair would be proud. The flying object was as unexpected for him as the inappropriate sentence was for you and hit him square on the forehead.

"I'll strangle you." You threatened.

"Kinky." He winked while nursing his forehead.

"With what?" Wrecker inquired, too focussed on the unknown term to pick up at the dirty joke.

"Her han-"

"Not that, morron." You cut him off. "The big hammer that exploded that tree back at the pit." You clarified for Wrecker.

"Oh! I've never used one before, but I'm sure it can't be that hard!" Excitement glimmered in his eyes at the perspective of using the powerful weapon.

"Oh believe me it's hard." Kayden smirked way too smugly for your taste.

"Okay. Time out. Planning is paused." You poked the palm of your hand with the fingertips of your other hand. "I call pervert veto card." You deadpanned.

"Oh hell no you can't!" Was there panic in his voice? Yes. Definitely.

"Oh heck yes I can! Once a year for 24 hours and I'm using it now." Thank the gods you'd not used it before.

"But-!"

"No but or butts. No sexual reference in any form, implied or not. 24 hours starting now." He glared at you from his spot two meters away. You could have laughed at his face that perfectly mirrored a kid who just got his Christmas gift stolen directly from its small weak hands.

"You're fucking me in the ass." He grumbled like an overgrown petulant child.

You lifted an eyebrow. "Try again. You can do it."

"Party pooper."

"There you go." As you turned to the rest of them, a laugh escaped your lips at the clones’ expressions.

Crosshair, despite his feelings blockade, was covering his mouth, Wrecker was laughing his ass off, Tech looked relieved behind his horrified eyes and Hunter chuckled. He appeared to be pleased and somewhat totally used to the situation, which grabbed your curiosity.

Later. You forced a cough to get everyone's attention. "Let's continue. To answer your question, Wrecker, handling a pulse-hammer is not hard. Only remember to not touch the head," You had to stop to point at Kayden in a threatening manner when you sensed a perverted comment about to escape his idiotic mouth despite the veto card being used. "And hit with the glowing side. If you hit with the other side, you'll damage the hammer and it'll be useless."

"I can do that!" Wrecker enthusiastically nodded.

"So we plan into exploding our way out of here? What do we do about Cross?" Tech pointed out what he thought was a flaw in your plan.

Right at this moment, Back-Up appeared before Kayden, its fluffy leaves puffing out in pride as Kayden removed the Master key from its belly pouch. What a marvelous creature they were. Being able to fit your own size in an extensible pouch that covered your body from your collarbone to your pelvis was truly amazing and more than practical.

"We'll split. Kayden will guide you guys to the emergency tunnel and I'll go get Cross. I'll meet you all as soon as I can."

You nearly hadn't finished that Hunter inevitably rejected your plan. "No. We stay together."

"We can't. You guys will be the decoy I need to sneak around and find him and having one of you with me will catch attention and slow me down." You cut Hunter as he still looked like he was about to be opposed. "I still have my comms and earbud. I'll contact you every 5 minutes." You offered in an attempt to compromise.

Silence stretched and you got up, already ready to depart. The tingling in your arms and leg had subsided some time ago and to your sweet surprise, applying weight on your leg didn't hurt as much as before.

Kayden unlocked the cells and a hand softly grabbed your forearm. "Fine. You comm every 5 minutes and you take this." He moved to Tech to rummage through his belt and hand you a pistol. "Use it if needed."

You took the pistol with a steady grip despite the uncertainty shaking your guts. It was the very first blaster you've ever had in your hand and it was heavier than you thought. "Don't worry. I will." You assured him, voice strong and unwavering.

But… could you really?

#bad batch x reader #hunter x reader #tech x reader #wrecker x reader #crosshair x reader #tcw #star wars #clone force 99 #sergeant hunter #clone trooper tech #clone trooper wrecker #clone trooper hunter #clone trooper crosshair #Good Night Good Luck

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alexsmitposts · 4 years ago

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The Nasty Truth About America’s Love Affair with Narcissism and Self Pity

Column: Society Region: USA in the World

📷There is a saying, “the crazy people have taken over the asylum.” They did that in the United States in 2016, a nation ruled by grifters, petty criminals and the delusional.The sane and decent became the “silent majority” as the not just America but the world learned that the darkness of the American soul depicted so often by Hollywood is not fiction at all and that a reality TV actor had tapped into a cesspit of sewage that has seeped into every American community.Then came 2020.By sheer luck along and, yes, the votes of 81 million Americans lucky enough to survive voter suppression and intimidation financed by a worldwide organized crime cartel, the insane are now out of power.The new “captain’’ of America’s “ship of state” may well, however, have something on his hands worse than the Titanic. The Titanic had the courtesy to actually sink while America, under this analogy, drifts lifelessly along.Extremism is big money in America, climate denialism, race hatred, social discord and civil war, hate is both a product and an addiction.It is also one of America’s biggest businesses. There would be no social media, no Google, no news organizations, no underbelly of device driven ecstasy, without fear and hate being marketed like cigarettes and CBD gummies.Roots of America’s Politics of Fear and Hate 2.0American extremism is not the result of poverty or oppression. It originates among the privileged, the “haves” who adhere to insane beliefs driven by boredom and generalized dissatisfaction at lives the rest of the word would envy, overpaid jobs, gas guzzling cars and trucks and fast food laden with fats and poisonous additives.If you asked many millions of Americans to define “reality,” their brains would grind to a halt. Reality is based, not on experience or observation but on “beliefs” and strongly held “opinions” which are invariably those scripted for them.Beliefs and opinions untested by the feedback loop of life has created a generation of Americans who are, essentially, living in a video game. This makes Qanon a AI program.Collective delusion has become the norm for many, and by “many” we mean up to 150 million lost souls, caught in an RPG game or, for some, a “first person shooter.”What does it make those who play? But then we have seen all this before, just without a population softened up to this degree by chaos theory conditioning. Some background:The Roots of Fascist AmericaIn 1940, Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine’s man of the year. The parents and grandparents of Trump’s supporters, following Huey Long, Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh sought to establish a “whites only” America based on the German model with carefully selected military leaders run by Wall Street pulling the strings.There is something magical, even today, about being “white folks.” That magic originated in the 18th and 19th centuries with the “Sturm and Drang” movement. Extremes of emotion and subjectivity were exalted above rationalism.Childish temper tantrums became a philosophy and eventually a political movement.The movement, which failed in Europe, found fertile ground in the United States in a society that increasingly defined itself though ritualized slavery and degradation and oppression of “coloured races.”This was a society built on the genocide that wiped out millions of indigenous peoples with the survivors now living on “reservations.”Imagine land where nothing grows, and no one could live. This is an “Indian reservation.” From time-to-time oil is found or minerals or there is a need to build a pipeline. Then even the worst land on earth is taken away.This was done in South Africa. It was done in Rhodesia. It used to be called “colonialism.”By the 20th century there were no indigenous people left to imprison. America then turned to warring against the freed slaves and millions of “undesirable” European immigrants, Catholics and Jews in particular.Curiously, this war was centered on banking issues, blocking trade unions, sustaining child labor and controlling farm prices. This created the alignments that

exist today, the strong tie between Wall Street and homegrown extremism built of bigotry and race hatred.You see, too many of the undesirables that fled autocratic Europe found that the long hand of international banking that maintained serfdom for millions, even in supposedly advanced Western Europe, had institutionalized the same in the United States under the guise of representative democracy.Leading the way was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.By the 1920s national membership was estimated at over 8 million. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other northern and western states were governed by Klan controlled politicians who used the state militias and National Guard as a private army and local police as armed enforcers.Behind it all, the banks that brought Hitler to power and the American corporations that made millions financing Nazi Germany’s war machine, General Motors, Dupont-Remington, Lockheed, Alcoa and General Motors.Even Hitler Would Cringe…The new American revolution, driven by Donald Trump and his televangelist backers, is the result of as social anthropologists note, generations being allowed to live the life of spoiled children, steeped in narcissism and self-pity.The events of January 6, 2020 and how it tied to many American religious leaders has emptied churches across the US, with millions finding themselves humiliated with having followed “false prophets” in support of hatred and tyranny. From Salon:“…these religious figures (Trump’s powerful televangelist backers) and the institutions they led (have become) hyper-political, the outward mission (has)seemed to be almost exclusively in service of oppressing others. The religious right is not nearly as interested in feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless as much as using religion as an all-purpose excuse to abuse women and LGBTQ people. In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples. And then Donald Trump happened.Trump was a thrice-married chronic adulterer who routinely exposed how ignorant he was of religion, and who reportedly — and let’s face it, obviously — made fun of religious leaders behind their backs. But religious right leaders did not care. They continually pumped Trump up like he was the second coming, showily praying over him and extorting their followers to have faith in a man who literally could not have better conformed to the prophecies of the Antichrist. It was comically over the top, how extensively Christian right leaders exposed themselves as motivated by power, not faith.”Jerry Falwell Jr., who introduced Donald Trump to America’s evangelical Christians, is himself an enigmatic figure.Falwell is typical of America’s religious leaders and stories such as this, from Fox News, are daily fodder for Americans:“Jerry Falwell Jr. allegedly played games with his wife Becki where they’d rank Liberty University students, they most wanted to have sex with, according to one pupil who claimed to have been intimate with Becki.The ex-student — who claims Becki initiated oral sex with him 10 years ago — told Politico that she bragged about playing the sex-ranking game while walking around the Virginia campus with her evangelical-leader husband.‘Her and Jerry would eye people down on campus,’ the former student of the conservative school told the outlet.Social Engineering Through PandemicAnyone who really lives in America will make this perfectly clear, this country has turned into a lunatic asylum. Our previous president told us COVID was a hoax, allowed over 40,000 from China enter the US while the threat of COVID was well known and turned his back while, today’s figure, 570,264 Americans died. Experts now cite that Trump was personally responsible for over 400,000 of those deaths. He is quite simply a mass murderer.Do remember that only 900 died in Australia. Canada lost 23,000. 35 died in Vietnam. 440 died in

Cuba.One might wonder how a Hitleresque figure such as Donald Trump could have millions of followers while the legal mechanisms in the US are amassing evidence for both criminal and civil prosecutions which quite probably will never come to bear.Groundhog Day, an Unending NightmareLet me tell you how I began my morning. As a journalist and intelligence briefer, I review incoming material, both open source and private intel. The big story overnight involves a revelation on a religious talk show involving theories on COVID 19 and vaccines.The show is by Jim Bakker, an important religious leader and political advisor. In 1989, Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison for mail and wire fraud but served on 5 of those years. He has stolen tens of million of dollars from his congregation to support a wild and lavish lifestyle of utter debauchery.In this area, he is typical of America’s evangelical Christian leaders.The guest on Bakker’s show was Steve Quayle. I know Quayle as an advisor to President George ‘W’ Bush on Middle East affairs. I know of no qualifications for this post.I do know of Quayle. After 9/11 he approached my staff in Amman, Jordan offering them generous payments to “launder” otherwise sourceless intelligence on Iraq into the Bush White House to justify an American invasion of that nation.Two million people died, maybe many more, due to fake US intelligence on Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.Groundhog Day TwoLet us take the clock back a few years. I remember traveling to Kentucky, then and still a very backward area of the country, in 1956 to visit relatives. This was a presidential election year, and my father was working for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate that was opposing Dwight Eisenhower.Even I, at a fairly young age, was flabbergasted at the dinner table discussion that day as my “hillbilly” relatives expounded on their political opinions and version of historical fact. This is how they laid it out:We should support “Ike” because he killed Hitler personally after storming Berlin. They described a sword fight. What they described reminded me of the death of the Sheriff of Nottingham played by Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. They then went out to describe how the US beat both Russia and Germany who were at war with the US. It seems Russia did not fight Hitler at all but was actually Germany’s ally. My father, a reasonably educated person and longtime friend of Russia, found this somewhat disturbing. Next, we heard about how “godless communists” were going to take away our freedoms and destroy our standard of living. I might remind you that my relatives in Hazard, Kentucky had no electricity or plumbing. One of my cousins lived in an abandoned car parked in a slag field.During that trip, we visited my grandfather, a retired coal miner. He lived in a shack covered with tar paper along a railroad track. I loved my grandfather.Life Lessons Do not Come Over the InternetOver the next 60 plus years, I had shared tea with farmers in Vietnam, military veterans living in a small shack in the Khyber Pass and everything from heads of state to struggling farmers all over Africa and the Middle East. None would have guessed that there are Americans that live in not just utter poverty but steeped not only in delusional ignorance but far worse than that.A current obsession with American “conservatives” is the fear of being overrun with transexuals, who, according to many, represent a threat to our freedoms. I have never met a transsexual. From what I understand, up to 10,000 currently serve in America’s armed forces.Back during the 1960s when I served with a Marine combat unit in Vietnam, we probably had no transexuals, only gay or “homosexual” Marines and Navy. Absolutely nothing was thought of it as these individuals invariably served with honor and courage.They existed in significant numbers.Today aging “conservatives” who avoided military service in Vietnam continually harp about saving the rest of us from “homosexuals in the military.”Voting and

“Jim Crow”Let us take another look at efforts by the Hitleresque racists and bigots to save the rest of us from ourselves, against our will of course. In Georgia, the legislature recently passed a law that makes it a felony to offer water to someone waiting in line to vote.Water is an issue because, in Georgia and many GOP (Trump’s party) run states, polling places in areas where people of color vote have been closed causing day long lines. In 2020, volunteers offered food and water to those who would otherwise have either collapsed or left without voting. Now offering food and water can lead to being executed by racist police, quite literally, or spending 5 years in prison.In 2020, voters in many key urban areas were threatened by armed neo-Nazi militias or openly threated in emails from Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, organizations deemed terrorist in Canada and now citied by the US Department of Justice as trying to overthrow the US government.In January, during a US Senate runoff election in Georgia, 364,000 voters were challenged by the GOP in Georgia as “illegal.” All of them were African American. All 364,000 were qualified to vote and their votes were eventually counted, giving Georgia two Democratic US Senators.The Federal Elections Commission is now investigating that this effort to rig the Georgia senate elections was secretly financed by illegal contributions from members of organized crime.Groundhog Day ThreeI live in a rural and primarily Republican area. I parked my car less than 30 feet from the door of a polling place, a local church, and voted in less than 3 minutes with no lines or ID check.In order to limit mail voting, Trump ordered mail sorting machines destroyed with sledgehammers and over 40,000 mailboxes picked up and junked as scrap metal. Mail service in many cities simply ended. One letter I sent to Washington DC from Michigan took 45 days to arrive.Hundreds of millions of pieces of mail, starting in late September 2020 simply disappeared, not just votes but government checks, Christmas presents and medications from pharmacies sent to Veterans.All of this was not just publicly known, things are far worse than that. Those who so many decades ago believed the United States fought Russia in World War Two, would raise children and grandchildren with no respect for human rights, no understanding of democracy, no ethical norms nor any remote understanding of right or wrong.This is the reality for those living in America, a reality that those who watch America from afar through the distorted lens of Google Corporation and the press, can never fathom.Ah, but things are so much worse than that. It is not just having spent 4 years with a president who told us you could cure covid by drinking bleach or eating flashlights. It gets worse.Groundhog Day FourA few days ago, former Trump advisor Cirsten Welcon claimed that President Biden had been paid billions of dollars by China to let them test their newest “weather weapons” on Texas. Power outages there, now attributed to corrupt backroom deals by Republican politicians, led to many deaths and considerable suffering.Little did any of us know of the role of the magic Chinese weather machines.In another vignette, it has been a years since Trump advisor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland stood before a television audience raving like a lunatic. He then pursed his lips and blew at the television camera, the “wind of god” which he claimed destroyed COVID forever.This effort by Reverend Copeland, who has millions of followers and a vast financial empire, led President Trump to announce that COVID 19 was going to disappear.ConclusionSome would like to believe that the institutionalized insanity of America’s right is restricted to the “Untermensch” substrata of rural poor whites. However, for decades now, the most radicalized and extremist elements of America’s society, the most ignorant, the most warlike yet cowardly, have gained control of the US military through service academies which espouse their conspiracy theories.With the onset of Trump, they gained much

more than a foothold in American politics, they now control many states “lock, stock and barrel,” and are involved in not just voter suppression but a general quashing of human rights and free speech.The door to this turn of events began well into the 19th century. Laws, still on the books, are now being employed against Donald Trump, from CNN:The Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump that cites a little-known federal statute that was first passed after the Civil War.The complaint, filed Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, accuses Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit accuses them of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.These same extremist elements and calling them “extremist” insults al Qaeda and ISIS (banned in Russia) who are moderate in their beliefs and practices in comparison. These statements might sound extreme in themselves were it not for so many Americans, religious and military leaders, members of government and business leaders calling for wholesale murder of their political opponents citing their personal communication with a non-corporeal authority they said is “god.”Americans hear this all day every day, the emails are unending, TV networks like Fox, OAN or Newsmax say little else, and that message is carried not just through media but lawn signs dotting the countryside.Hundreds of thousands of American homes are festooned with paraphernalia espousing murder of public officials and their families. Americans see it every day driving to work. What they ask themselves when they see things like this is how many others hold these beliefs but keep it to themselves?What if academics wrote papers on the issues, we discuss here? What if the BBC produced a documentary? Would things get better? The problem dates back not just generations but centuries.It is not a moral problem; it is not a political problem. It is one of degeneracy. At some point we may be required to reassess our definition of sentience.

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sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel · 5 years ago

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State of the Galaxy in 2021, pt 2

Some notes for my fanfic, the Second Yeerk War. Now for the Andalites! All years and numbers are going to be kept to Earth standard for easy reading, since not everybody has a Galard-to-English Dictionary. It’s a bit long, so read more after the break!

Nation: The Republic of Andal

Government Type: Parliamentary Republic

Head of State:

Electorate Minister Elisisth-Karrigor-Silam

Head of Military: Council Leader Aniila-Fitinari-Emil

Population: 289,800,000 sentients, including

288,600,000 Andalites

1,200,000 assorted aliens

Capital:

Andal (Andalite Homeworld)

Fleet Composition:

5 StarSword-class Dome Ships

7 GalaxyTree-class Dome Ships

2 RisingMoons-class Dome Ships

18 Intrepid-class Cruisers

15 Adamant-class Cruisers

45 Inquiry-class Patrol Ships

3 Nerin Ridge-class Frigates

28 Talak River-class Frigates

~800 Ascalin-class Assault Transports

340 Drone Ships

~8,000 Model 35 Fighters

~2,400 Model 22 Fighters

~1,800 Model 16 Fighters

~2,000 various other Fighters

~2,000 Transport Ships

~250 Fast-Courier Shuttles

~100 Mobile Science and Technology Laboratory Ships

~7,300 Freighters

~100,000 Drones

Notable Planets:

Andal (Andalite Homeworld)

Silver Skies (Andalite colony)

Lilac Plains (Andalite colony)

Primary Imports: Cultural artifacts, Z-Space telemetry

Primary Exports: Cultural artifacts, computers

Summary: The Republic of Andal was founded over 7,000 years ago by Prince Virrigan-Elinisouth-Alimini-Rutigar. Also known as Virrigan the Black or Virrigan the Kingslayer, Prince Virrigan overthrew the previously established monarchies in a single day and ceded the power previously enjoyed by the Warrior caste to the mercantile families. What followed is still being debated by scholars today, as any official history of the Andalites has surely been modified to better suit the political needs of the current government.

What is known with certainty is that 3,600 years ago, the Andalites discovered basic Faster-Than-Light propulsion and set out to explore the Galaxy. Immediately after this, the Andalites immediately found themselves at war with several other races such as The Five, the Skrit-Na, and the Jiff. The conclusion of these wars is shrouded in mystery, but scholarly opinion is that the Andalites would have wiped out the Skrit-Na if they could have, while The Five and the Jiff simply had it coming for their many crimes against peace and sentient life.

The resulting Great Andalite Peace, which had lasted in one form or another until the Yeerk War, saw the Andalites support and elevate several worthy species to galactic prominence, such as the industrious Desbadeen, while others who were deemed unworthy were driven out of civilized space, such as the duplicitous Norshk. This was, of course, entirely in the interest of peace and prosperity for all civilized peoples, and the exact details remain hazy. However, what is clear is that during this time of relative peace, Andalite military doctrine shifted towards occupation and policing duties, which rendered them relatively unable to counter the sudden emergence of the Yeerk Empire.

The emergence of the Yeerk Empire is an interesting moment in Galactic history. While the Andalites famously blame Prince Seerow-Nesireuth-Carill, leader of the expedition to the Yeerk homeworld, for his lack of judgement in sharing Andalite technology with an underdeveloped species, Yeerk Empire scholars begged to differ. They instead pinned the blame squarely on the security chief, Warrior-Commander Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, for his strict and heavy-handed enforcement of restrictions he and his security team forced onto the Yeerks at gunpoint. This matter has never been sufficiently clarified, with Andalite apologists often pointing to the brave and noble acts of the Andalite military as they struggled to contain the neural parasites that threatened Galactic stability.

However, unreliable and often biased sources often point out that the Yeerk Empire was welcomed by the Galactic community at large. They were an active trade partner with the Skrit-Na, held a formal alliance with the Taxxons, and generally had no impact on the day-to-day life of most Humans for most of their occupation of Earth. Other races such as the Mak, Ssstram, and Hork-Bajir voluntarily signed treaties of surrender to the Yeerks, in accordance with Galactic laws upheld and enforced by the Andalites. However, Andalite reports often claim that the representatives of these races were Controllers, a claim which has never been properly substantiated.

The Andalites maintain that the Yeerk Empire was guilty of many, many crimes, and that as neural parasites they were a disease which required quarantine. However, despite the live-and-let-live efforts of the Andalite military, who only wished to contain the Yeerk contagion, it would quickly be reported by Andalite military officials that each and every quarantine fleet would be met with hostility before the Yeerks, in an act of petty spite, would exterminate themselves and everyone else on the planet they had infested within a few hours of the fleet’s arrival. Such crimes by the Yeerk Empire could not go unpunished, and so it was that the Andalites attempted to quarantine each planet infected by the Yeerk contagion. It was, of course, for the safety of the Galaxy.

In spite of this heroic effort, Kelbrid-backed anti-Andalite propoganda has reached such a critical level of saturation that it has even affected the youngest generation of Andalites, who have begun pushing for reforms to limit the power and influence the military has over Andalite society. However, it is this scholar’s opinion that the Andalites are gracious, kind, noble, amazing, wonderful, and thoroughly enjoyable people who only want what is best for the Galactic community at large. The Andalites would never, ever pose a threat to civilized societies, and any despicable acts of genocide that you might hear about are simply rumors.

#Animorphs #Fanfiction #Second Yeerk War #Andalites #Andalite headcanon #Faction Summary #Not sarcastic at all

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poisonedpomegranate · 1 year ago

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If anyone is wondering what the point of protesting in the USA is, just remember that the genocide of the Palestinian people and the Zionist policy is in the interest of the USA (the only vote against Brazil's proposal at the UN), and anyone with the slightest humanity and critical sense should support Palestine.

The USA always promotes wars.

For those who don't know, Palestine was colonized by Great Britain and, during the first war, Palestinian territory was promised to the Jewish people. Great Britain promised without consulting the Palestinians. They treated the people as disposable and decided to found another state on their land. Israel was conceived with this colonial mentality. This was never an issue that involved just Israel and Palestine, it always involved "developed" countries and always served the interests of those countries.

Beautiful display of solidarity ongoing right now from the US calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

Source: @jvplive on Twitter

#free palestine

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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‘The Hypocrite Hegemonic West’ Projects Its Own Crimes Onto China By Accusing It of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Colonialism’

— 19 July, 2021 | Sputnik

The Chinese national flag is seen in Beijing, China © Reuters

A key Western propaganda strategy is to accuse others of crimes that they’ve themselves committed. This is seen most blatantly in Western accusations that China is committing “genocide” or “colonialism” in Xinjiang.

As I Say, Not as I do

Most Western criticisms of China can be categorized under one broad umbrella: psychological projection. It is involuntary, reflexive and Pavlovian; as well as strategic, planned and deliberate. It’s a key pillar of Western propaganda, especially against China. It manifests in accusing others of that which you are guilty of.

Few propaganda campaigns meet the criteria better than the “Xinjiang genocide” narrative. Western history has no shortage of genocide and mass murder – both at home and abroad. Thus, in a natural reversal, many in the West accuse China of genocide. Such accusations are weaponized by the Western propaganda machinery – from the media to Wikipedia – and then projected onto China. Of course, there’s little evidence for any of it.

The United States of America, the vanguard of Western propaganda today, remains at the forefront of this campaign. The entire nation itself was of course founded on the genocide of indigenous peoples. Thus, in a classic example of projection, the US projects its crimes onto someone else, officially accusing China, its main rival, of genocide.

It is of course an entirely political decision – the US regime’s own lawyers disagree with the assessment.

Not to be outdone, also accusing China of “genocide” is Canada’s House of Commons. Recently, as unmarked graves of indigenous children are being discovered across the country, Canada has sought to divert attention by stepping up its “human rights” criticisms of China. It even went to the extent of delivering a joint statement on behalf of 44 countries at the UN Human Rights Council, which, with no sense of irony, mentioned reports of “forced separation of children from their parents” in China – exactly what Canada itself had done to indigenous children, word for word. Goebbels would’ve been proud.

Such flippant, reckless accusations of “genocide” by Western nations and their legislatures and media are despicable; not to mention a grave injustice to victims of actual genocides. Few diplomatic actions are more irresponsible than making a joke of perhaps the most serious accusation that can be levied on a nation state.

The ideological basis of the new Cold War is clear, and this time the Western powers look set to be on the losing side

A Project of Projection

Yet, despite the factual inaccuracy and historical revisionism, such projection nevertheless feels comfortable. Projecting your own guilt on someone else is an easy coping mechanism. It makes you feel better knowing that those “Others” are no better than you are. It helps you avoid coming to terms with your own guilt. This could help explain why so many are willing to absorb and believe it.

As an added bonus it also provides a much-needed diversion from their own crimes, not to mention aids the hybrid war against China.

An old falsehood in the West’s quiver is accusing China of colonialism. When once China was accused of imperialism and even “genocide” in Tibet, with even Hollywood celebrities speaking out, that is no longer in fashion. Today, the same narrative is being recycled for Xinjiang.

China may be building more than 100 new nuclear missile silos in its western desert... but only in response to American aggression

Industrial-Scale Lies

Colonialism is defined by economic exploitation and wealth extraction. The colonizer extracts wealth from the “colony,” either by exploiting its labor or natural resources, and ships it back to benefit the home nation. The “colony” becomes drained of capital and sees little benefit from its own natural resources and labor. Consequently, the colonizer grows richer.

Few colonial examples illustrate this better than India, the largest “colony” of the largest imperial empire in the modern world.

When British colonialists first started landing on Indian shores, the subcontinent commanded the single highest share of the world’s economy. In 1700 AD, India had 24.4% of the world’s GDP, the largest in the world. It was the global leader in manufacturing, producing 25% of the world’s industrial output. From the late 17th to the early 18th century, India accounted for 95% of British imports from Asia. The Indian economy at the time was in a proto-industrial state, and if left to its own devices, would possibly have experienced an “industrial revolution” of its own.

Instead, it was Britain that had the industrial revolution – financed by Indian capital. By the mid-18th century, the relative situation between India and Britain was largely reversed, with Britain beginning to replace India as the world’s leading economic and commercial power, leading directly to its superpower status.

Estimates cited by the Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar, suggest the total robbery amounted to $45 trillion, around 17 times Britain’s current GDP.

India’s share of world GDP had come down from 24.4% to 3% when the British left in 1947. The same study also estimates that an unbelievable 1.8 billion people died from deprivation and famines in 190 years – between 1757 and 1947. No wonder then the British House of Commons projects Britain’s crimes onto someone else – officially accusing China of genocide by passing a non-binding motion (Britain having committed no shortage of crimes against China as well). There is little doubt that if India today was the rising power that China is, the West would’ve concocted similar accusations and projected their crimes onto India instead.

US-China confrontation may only get worse under Biden as Beijing switches into ‘war mode’ in face of western criticism & sanctions

China’s Nefarious Plot to Make People Richer

Today, the “Xinjiang genocide” narrative has been largely debunked, with even the most wicked propagandists split on whether the term is appropriate.

Accusations of colonialism are no less farcical. While colonialism is defined by economic exploitation and wealth extraction, China’s policies in Xinjiang and Tibet, while far from perfect, are the opposite. These regions have become exponentially richer than what “democratic” countries like India achieved for their border minority regions, or indeed, for their whole countries. China recently announced the elimination of extreme poverty, including in Tibet and Xinjiang.

In 2020, Tibet had the fastest economic growth among all of China’s 31 provinces and administrative regions. Per capita income has doubled in the last 10 years. Primary school enrollment is nearly universal. The unemployment rate is below 4%. Nearly all higher-education graduates have a job.

Xinjiang has a per capita income of around $7,868, higher than that of Goa ($6,698), India’s richest state by per-capita income. Meanwhile, Kashmir, a restive Muslim-majority region of India that also has a history of separatism and terrorism, languishes with a per capita income of $1,342.

Beijing has invested about 2.35 trillion yuan in Xinjiang over the past seven decades. GDP grew at an annual rate of 7.2% from 2014 to 2019. Per capita disposable income has multiplied more than 100-fold in 40 years. Primary school enrollment is 99.91%. 99.7% of residents are covered by basic medical insurance. Colonialism indeed.

China’s US visit snub is because Biden is increasingly behaving like Trump

Genociding Truth

Of course, none of this means that Chinese rule is legitimate because it has made these regions richer. Xinjiang and Tibet are as much part of China as Texas or Florida are of the US. Yet, for decades, Western propaganda has desperately tried to poison the well and portray Chinese rule as illegitimate. The US has directly funded Tibetan and Uighur separatists for decades.

Normally, one would assume that the more serious the accusation, the more overwhelming the evidence. But in this case, it’s the opposite. No wonder few outside the West are buying it. The Xinjiang narrative remains one of America’s weakest propaganda campaigns.

The Western cabal often tries to slander China at the UN by releasing statements criticizing it. China and its allies then release counter-statements in response. The two groups have been exchanging official barbs over the last three years, at numerous UN sessions. In every single such exchange, the pro-China side always gets more support than the pro-US side – every single time.

In the latest back and forth, where Canada fired the opening salvo with its joint statement last month, the result was an overwhelming backlash of anti-imperialist solidarity – a whopping 90 nations released statements supporting China and opposing any interference in its internal affairs. The international community stood with China against the US-led Western onslaught.

Expectedly, this elicited complete radio silence from Western media. It could only keep shouting over the rooftops about how “44 nations criticize China at the UN” – in story after story, with no mention of the nations supporting China. After all, propaganda by omission remains the easiest and oldest form of propaganda.

Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war. It is also the first casualty of an information war. And in the West’s campaign to accuse China of “genocide,” the only thing being murdered is the truth.

— Maitreya Bhakal is an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, the US, and global issues. Follow him on Twitter @MaitreyaBhakal

0 notes

anonymoustalks · 4 years ago

Text

do multiculturalism and small religious cult based on the concept of love towards your neighbor run by mentally ill people make it more diverse?

(6-18-20) You both like history.

Stranger: Hey

You: hiya

Stranger: Hello

Stranger: Hi

You: another hi wow ^^

You: very... hello-y

Stranger: Halló

You: why we say hello?

Stranger: to greet each other

You: are greeting important?

Stranger: no it's more important to salute than greet

Stranger: let's perform the Roman salute together

You: ;-; but dunwanna

Stranger: why not?Dont you share my war-like Roman spirit?

You: no, I am primitive

Stranger: filthy barbarian, too uncivilized to salute

You: yup ^^

You: I am one with nature

Stranger: do you put up irminsuls everywhere

You: oh that would be fun

You: that's a good idea

Stranger: it didnt end well for those who thought it'd be a good idea

You: it's okay

You: my faith is more important

Stranger: slaughtered by Charlemagne's frankish knights, forced to convert...

Stranger: do you sleep well

You: sure! ^^

You: do you?

Stranger: Yes of course

You: okay that's good

Stranger: what history do you like?

You: mhm, I kind of just forgot to remove this tag lol

Stranger: why did you tag history??

You: I wanted to learn about the balkans

Stranger: about the powder keg of Europe...okay

Stranger: but what period?

You: 1999 ish

You: yugoslavia basically

Stranger: oh the yugoslav war

Stranger: there was a great deal of ethnic tension between ethnic serbs and albanians they started cleansing each other NATO intervened and bombarded Yugoslav cities with DEPLETED URANIUAM as a result Yugoslavia got dismembered

Stranger: oh right

You: sounds like a good summary

You: also why with depleted uranium?

Stranger: many serbs still have cancer because of depleted uranium

Stranger: the type of bombs they used

You: oh

Stranger: I still cant understand why your dad beats you.

You: that's quite a change of topic lol

Stranger: Why does he beat you?

You: mhm because I'm a pagan

Stranger: no pagan would refer to themselves as pagan

You: it's okay, I have my own idea of paganism

Stranger: it means "a commoner" in latin

You: (don't worry I got this!)

Stranger: I hate you

You: :c

You: I feel sad now

Stranger: you're terrible.

You: D:

You: how can I become un-terrible?

Stranger: bring yourself into a permament state of non existence

You: is that nihilism?

Stranger: No its not nihilism -_-

You: okay sorry ^^

Stranger: oh speaking of words starting with nihil

Stranger: have you heard of ex nihilo

You: nope!

You: my linguistic skills are subpar!

Stranger: do you speak Latin

You: nope!

You: I would prefer to learn birdspeech

Stranger: Mao ordered the killing of all sparrows in China.

You: D: that's so sad!!

You: why?!

Stranger: he thought they were pests.

You: that's terrible

Stranger: Yeah

You: humans are more like pests

You: they've infested the planet

Stranger: thats so

Stranger: misanthropic

You: is that bad?

Stranger: it does reflect the actual state of affairs but its still misanthropic

You: I'm sorry if I offended you

Stranger: I just said its misanthropic

Stranger: I am not offended

You: oh okay, good

Stranger: given I am just a small larva not a human

You: oh you are a small human?

Stranger: are you implying small humans(in other words children) are larvae?

You: hm?

Stranger: Oh nvm my mind twisted this a bit

You: I mean children are neither eggs nor adults

Stranger: right

Stranger: do you like shouty children

You: mhm I think they are fine

You: children are being children

You: it's kind of natural I think

Stranger: so you said humans have infested the planet implying humans are evil. are they naturally evil or are they corrupted by society

You: mhm, I don't think any animals are intrinsically good or evil

You: but if there are a lot of them than it is an infestation

Stranger: so corrupted by society?

You: sure we can go with that

Stranger: Oh are you a Rousseauist

Stranger: you spoke of nature and so on

You: oh, I am not that sophisticated

You: I am a pagan

Stranger: shut up

You: sorry >.<

You: but I'm seriously not that sophisticated

Stranger: I know

Stranger: I ken that

You: *headtilt*

Stranger: I must kithe you that I am a mammal.

You: okay

You: I like mammals

Stranger: I must kithe you that I partook in the colonial partition of Africa.

You: oh how old are you?

Stranger: Oldish

You: I wonder how old your mitochondria are

Stranger: wait do you use numbers to measure age

You: idk

You: units of measurement are a social construct

Stranger: so...?

You: numbers are fine

Stranger: should we establish institutions that encourage people to use numbers to describe age

You: I don't know, what do you think?

Stranger: I have no opinion on that

Stranger: should we establish institutitoons of royal power

You: it is hard for me to grasp the concept of royal power

You: or royalty

Stranger: divine right

Stranger: the grace of god

You: can you explain god to me?

Stranger: when discussing Kings and how they justify their power the only God is the biblical one

You: I see

You: I feel like it must have sounded very strange to the pagans

Stranger: No it didnt

Stranger: Ceaser claimed to have descended from Jupiter

Stranger: CAESAR SORRY

You: I think it would have gotten weirder if they went to asia

Stranger: they had local rulers that also justified their rule with similar concepts

Stranger: it wanst all too different throughout the world

You: I think many of them had local gods

Stranger: obviously

Stranger: in almost all polytheistic religions there is an archgod though

Stranger: the god of all gods

You: I think I would prefer to reject gods and stay with my trees

Stranger: until the trees get cut down

You: why are you so mean?

Stranger: I am not going to lie about the harsh realities of this world

You: but you can change the world

Stranger: to what extent?

Stranger: and in what direction?

You: idk, that's up to you

Stranger: you can change the world

You: yup ^^

Stranger: you change the world

You: yup ^^

Stranger: does this sound motivating

You: it sounds depressingly motivating by being not actually motivating lol

Stranger: not so good then

You: no it's probably fine

Stranger: you can change the world for the worse

Stranger: does this sound motivating

You: it sounds motivating through its pessimissim

Stranger: I've never found pessimism motivating

You: mhm, really?

Stranger: especially given the etymology of the word

You: hmm

Stranger: are you thinking

You: idk, probably not anything productive

Stranger: do you like reflecting in bed

You: it's not a bad place to reflect

You: sometimes, I think if I had been born 100 years ago, I would have been very religious

You: but wasn't

You: and now I have a lot of misplaced faith

You: that I don' know what to do with

Stranger: well...right the conventions of the Edwardian era were quite rigid so you had to be religious

You: I should just make my own religion I guess

Stranger: oh no

You: is that bad?

Stranger: you intend to become a cult leader

You: a cult is only bad if you manipulate your cult members

You: otherwise it's just called an ordinary religion

Stranger: so?is there any guarantee that you wont use other believers to build up your own power base?

You: I don't think I need any power

You: we should give our love to the world that surrounds us

Stranger: thats what Christianity says

You: yes but I dont believe in any god

You: so I can't be christian unfortunately

Stranger: so you need a religion as a set of practices that promote the love your neighbor thing

You: good things are made by plagiarizing ^^

You: mhm, I don't think it's bad if someone made a church and community for these beliefs?

You: you can help other people in your church and support them

You: and overall just feel nice in a community

Stranger: Sounds so rosy

You: yup{

You: ^^

Stranger: well...not sure this would gain any traction considering people already have similar religions except that they have a God and idolatry is important in our culture you know

You: yes, it is sad... I guess I will jut have to be alone then :c

You: but I have my faith!

You: I guess there just won't be many others...

Stranger: when you say something about faith I always think of crusades really even though that isnt even remotely what you mean

You: hmm?

You: what I mean by faith is believing in something even when there is no evidence to suggest you should believe in it

You: for instance, there is no reason you should believe that your neighbor will not steal from you

You: but faith is trusting that they will not

Stranger: yeah but I mean when you say the first that come to mind "religious fanaticisism, the defender of the faith status, the conquest of "divine" fiefs"

You: lol ^^

Stranger: say that*

You: I guess I just ended up defining faith for myself somehow I guess

Stranger: Its just because the idea of fighting for faith is quite common

Stranger: oh nvm

Stranger: my mind perverts everything

You: huh?

Stranger: Just never mind

You: oh okay

Stranger: Sorry

You: hm? why are you sorry?

You: you have nothing to be sorry about

Stranger: Yeah right

Stranger: so yeah I like the crusades ofc did you know that the first crusade was the only successful crusaaade

You: I didn't know!

Stranger: wait I think I got carried away with all these crusades

You: although I think it depends on your side

Stranger: I mean there never were any "muslim crusades"

Stranger: they use a different term

You: but I mean the all attacke jerusalem?

You: *they all

You: at different points in history

Stranger: Well yes

Stranger: the holy land right

You: yup

Stranger: but actually Judea has always been plagued with bloodshed

Stranger: when Hadrian was Roman emperor Jews rebelled against Roman rule and commited genocide against Romans

Stranger: based on religion

You: killing is mean

Stranger: you can see similar stuff happening nowadays

Stranger: its effectively the most restless spot in the world

You: mhm

You: although sometimes I wonder how it compares to Sudan

Stranger: what about it?

You: idk if the palestinian area is worse, or if it's a matter of we just pay more attention to it

You: or if there are also places elsewhere in the world that are worse/very bad

Stranger: well the conflict there has been around for a long time and its an ethno religious conflict thats why we pay so much attention to it

Stranger: and also Israel may possess nuclear weapons

Stranger: which is also why some people are concerned about the current situation in the middle east

Stranger: oh and also Trump supports Israel which is also why some people are ever more concerned about Israel

You: hmm

Stranger: and also the jews are considered one of the most oppressed people on Earth

Stranger: oh wtf am I saying

You: hm?

Stranger: no nvm

Stranger: Sorry

You: okay

Stranger: But again Hadrian banned the Torah law

Stranger: and

Stranger: many jews were sold into slavery

Stranger: and they were banned from practicing their religion

Stranger: oh I like Hadrian so much

Stranger: He did so much good for Rome

You: I just feel like I only know the wall that's named after him

Stranger: and the city

Stranger: Adrionople

You: hadrian... remove the H?

Stranger: In some languages H is silent thats why

You: oh okay

Stranger: its quite weak in English as well

Stranger: in French it doesnt exist at all

Stranger: although its still used in writing because the spelling is a mess

You: language can get weird

Stranger: well yes especially if its Germanized vulgar latin that borrowed lots of frankish vocabularly from an old dutch superstrate

You: I guess a lot of people migrated and moved around ^^

Stranger: Yeah obviously thats how the salic franks came to rule over Gaul

Stranger: OH AND they wrote the salic law

Stranger: they wrote the salic law

Stranger: !!!

Stranger: they wrote the salic law

You: you sound really excited ^^

Stranger: No its actually very important the salic law caused at least 3 wars

You: oh wow

Stranger: why....why history???

You: did you just read something new?

Stranger: no really

Stranger: why did you tag history

You: I forgot to remove the tag since I just wanted to learn about the balkans

Stranger: do you generally talk about history

You: hmm I talk about anything really

Stranger: oh where are you from?

You: us east

Stranger: Pensylvania?

You: nope!

You: that's pretty specific

Stranger: Constantinople?

You: even more specific lol

Stranger: Virginia?

Stranger: see I am good at geography

You: constantinople, idk if there's a us city of that name

Stranger: well I didnt mean it in a serious way

Stranger: are you from Virginia?

You: nope

Stranger: Washington?

You: I feel like I should stop answering because you will guess it eventually lol ^^

Stranger: did I guess it though?

You: I plead the fifth!

Stranger: Oh but you should definitely rename your hometown Constantinople because it sounds more Christian than anything

You: well there are a bunch of places with strange names

Stranger: Trumpoletania?

You: is that an actual place?

Stranger: no just my imagination and alternative present

You: Maybe in 100 years

You: and they continue to name avenues after US presidents

Stranger: i

Stranger: do

Stranger: la

Stranger: try

You: lol

Stranger: even those that owned slaves?

You: are you protestant or is this a modern revulsion of idolatry?

You: they all owned slaves

You: this is america

Stranger: well the presidents that held the position before the civil war did

You: yes and most of the streets named after presidents are usually after the "founding fathers"

Stranger: well thats still idolatry

You: is idolatry bad in your moral-ethical compass of things?

Stranger: and those people didnt embody all the things that the modern day US claims to embody

Stranger: No not necessarily

You: oh okay, I'm just curious

You: because all forms of commemoration can be interpreted as a kind of idolatry

You: well, frankly its in the eyes of the beholder

Stranger: well when you have a large statue of Stalin in front of your house then its obviously idolatry

Stranger: and I do want a statue like that

Stranger: to idolize the greatest leader of the USSR

Stranger: see I dont see idolatry as necessarily bad

You: mhm but it's different depending on if you commissioned the statue or if someone else visits your statue 100 years in the future

You: the meaning can change in the eyes of the beholder

Stranger: well the only difference is how many people are affected by the cult of personality

You: fair enough

Stranger: I think in the US there should be a few statues of Stalin

Stranger: privately owned ones at least

You: lol

You: I'm not always sure why I understand people idolize people

Stranger: why are you so alien

You: because I clearly can't speak english

You: ^^;;;;

You: how is it possible to type something and have the words come out all in the wrong order?

Stranger: just like any other human you should understand why people idolize other people and elevate them above others

Stranger: dyslexia

You: are there more people that you idolize?

Stranger: Lenin,Marx,Ernst Thalmann,Niccolo Machiavelli, Pinochet and Mussolini

You: that's such a nice spread

Stranger: oh wait no

Stranger: I dont like Machiavelli Pinochet or Mussolini

You: oh that's too bad

Stranger: why

You: idk, it's good to like a diversity of things I think

Stranger: it depends actually

Stranger: is the world diverse?

You: diversity is a strange word and I don't know how to process it

Stranger: Mussolini could process it easily

You: ^^

Stranger: shut up

You: :c

Stranger: is the world diverse

Stranger: answer me or face my wrath

You: umm... yes...?

Stranger: do multiculturalism and small religious cult based on the concept of love towards your neighbor run by mentally ill people make it more diverse?

Stranger: cults*

You: hmm maybe?

You: I think it is a bit abstract to quantify diversity

Stranger: I think it's a bit abstract to quantify numbers

You: lol ^^

Stranger: you cant counter my statement

You: of course

Stranger: you lose

You: it's okay, I think it can be fun to lose sometimes

Stranger: thats an overromanticized idea created to make up for the horrors of losing

You: mhm the way I would analyze it is probably as a reactionary sentiment towards the competitiveness of modern culture?

Stranger: competitiveness of modern culture? what do you mean by modern culture?popular culture?

You: mhm gaming pops into my mind immediately

You: or the set of sentiments related to that kind of competitiveness for fun

Stranger: well this is unrelated to what we were discussing a few minutes ago though and is merely part of some cultures

Stranger: not all of them ofc

You: yup, it's unrelated

Stranger: are you irrelevant

You: sorry!

Stranger: thats a genuine question

You: oh I read it backwards lol

You: "you are irrelevant" lol

Stranger: seems like you are used to insults

You: mhm probably~

Stranger: but, are you irrelevant?

You: I think it depends on your frame of reference?

You: I suppose I must be relevant to myself

You: I have no idea if I'm relevant to others though

Stranger: Okay let me put it this way. Why do your parents consider you to be irrelevant?

You: hopefully not!

Stranger: but they do

Stranger: that's a well-known fact

You: okay go on

Stranger: No that's all I've got to say about your irrelevant now tell me, why do your parents deem you irrelevant

Stranger: irrelevance

You: um, apparently this is news to me, so I was hoping you could explain

You: that said, it's really hard for me to know what other people think

You: because um, I'm not them

Stranger: harness the power of lightning and use it to develop an ability to read human minds

You: is that a reference towards electricity and.... idk what technology

Stranger: Perhaps

You: I dunno, I don't know a lot of things

Stranger: that's true

Stranger: you know very few things

You: yup

Stranger: But it's perfectly okay to be ignorant

Stranger: I know a lot of ignorant people

Stranger: who I am very good friends with

You: okay

Stranger: you're ignorant.

You: I don't really mind that much tbh

Stranger: you are ignorant

You: mhm

Stranger: you are ignorant

You: why are you repeating it?

Stranger: you are doomed to be ignorant forever

You: I don't really see ignorance as an absolute though?

Stranger: because I've been told that psychological abuse works like this

Stranger: well I deal in absolutes.

You: oh, were you experimenting with something?

Stranger: Yeah, with neo-absolutism and its psychological basis

You: I'm not totally sure how to reconcile that statement

Stranger: The gracchi brothers tried to reconcile the senate and the roman people after an inflow of unpaid slave labor and cheap grain bankrupted the small farmers

Stranger: But to no avail

Stranger: disgruntled senators assassinated the gracchi brothers and thousands of their allies

You: that's a bit sad

Stranger: yep just like your life

You: I'm quite happy with my life actually

Stranger: you arent

You: hm? how so?

Stranger: You are constantly told that you're a failure

You: I was wondering why you changed the topic to "why your dad beats you" earlier?

Stranger: Oh I was trying to help you with your family problems

You: oh, I don't live with my parents though

Stranger: why not

Stranger: you should leech off your parents

You: idk because I don't need to?

Stranger: why not??

Stranger: you can ask your parents to subsidize Malta

You: I dunno, I don't need to

You: I wonder why I don't do things I don't need to do

Stranger: why dont you want Malta subsidized

You: because I am selfish

Stranger: what's the etymology of the word selfish?

You: self-ish?

You: sell-fish?

Stranger: in the past the self part meant "I" (similar to the greek word ego) so in Old English they said "ic self" in middle english it came to mean "a person who has no identity"

Stranger: and I think when you say selfish

Stranger: you mean that you have no identity

Stranger: that somebody has stripped you of your identity

You: okay, I can live with that I guess

Stranger: and now you're lost,trying to make your life meaningful

Stranger: but decades of degeneratation have affected you

Stranger: what creates degeneracy?

You: I dunno~

Stranger: you're not smart :/

You: I thought we established that earlier?

Stranger: we didnt

Stranger: you're not smart :////

You: lol okay

You: I wonder what creates degeneracy

Stranger: keep wondering

Stranger: perhaps one day you will find your answers

You: mhm okay ^^

Stranger: you aren't smart

You: yup

Stranger: you aren't smart

You: you really like the repeating thing

Stranger: its really interesting that when you had to choose between shame and arguing you chose shame you know I am a psychology graduate(graduated 2 years ago) and this is actually a sign of a weak personality

You: ohh that's really cool!

You: also congrats

You: I don't mind having a weak personality

Stranger: you're a weakling

You: lol

Stranger: look at yourself

You: I think you are probably affirming a component of my identity?

Stranger: you cant even lift a table

You: maybe that is why you are not getting as much of a reaction?

Stranger: of a reaction?

Stranger: this is a bit out of place

You: hm?

Stranger: I am trying to help you with your mental problems

You: oh okay

You: I thought you were repeating because you were expecting me to say something different

Stranger: that too since this would give me some info about your retention character

You: (retention character, meaning...?)

Stranger: google it, I wont tell you since I realize that you must learn to find all sorts of helpful information on your own

You: I feel like I am not heading in the right direction with googling "retention character"

Stranger: wanna know why I chose that term?

You: why?

Stranger: Its probably the least popular term outlined in the book "the interpretation of dreams" by Sigmund Freud and I am well aware that it doesnt have a wikipedia page so you'll have to skim over the book and maybe you'll find it there

You: oh okay

Stranger: you must learn that sometimes its very hard to acquire useful information

You: I guess so

Stranger: I am beginning to think that you have trouble learning

Stranger: not dyslexia but something different

You: mhm can you elaborate more?

Stranger: No. You have to process my ever word and muster all of your brain power to get your answers

You: aww, I would appreciate it if you just said it ^^

Stranger: No. You must learn how hard it is to obtain information

Stranger: I am trying to help you.

Stranger: stop resisting

You: Okay, I'm a bit lazy though

You: or maybe I am lazy today

Stranger: thats the problem

You: I am unclear about how I am resisting

Stranger: you are always lazy

You: okay that is probably true too

Stranger: ignorant, lazy and pitiful

You: I dunno about pitiful

Stranger: I feel sad for you

You: although I guess from an external party I guess that is possible

You: it's okay you don't need to feel sad

You: I'm quite happy

Stranger: you aren't

Stranger: stop lying

You: I try very hard not to lie

Stranger: the biggest lie I've heard from you so far

You: hm?

Stranger: is you say

Stranger: ing

Stranger: that

Stranger: you try very hard not to lie

Stranger: an ignorant

Stranger: lazy

Stranger: liar

You: okay, I'm not totally sure if I am following

Stranger: its okay

You: but if you think that way it's fine too ^^

Stranger: wait I think I know why you disgust some people

Stranger: especially your parents

You: go on

Stranger: you are ignorant and lie too much

You: mhm I'm a little bit unsure how people can tell what are lies though

You: but yes I am ignorant

Stranger: some can some cant

Stranger: I can

You: okay that's pretty nice intuition

Stranger: not intuition you dumb fucker

You: hm? what then?

Stranger: you've got be more careful about what you say

Stranger: because about 70% of what you say is gibberish

You: oh... I'm sorry then

You: I guess I should try to be clearer?

Stranger: you say intuition when its the critical method

You: ah okay

Stranger: No you should stop speaking. At all

You: I didn't know

Stranger: for about a month

Stranger: and then start speaking again

You: I don't really want to do that

Stranger: but in a more reserved manner

You: how do I speak more reserved?

Stranger: First of all throw words that you most commonly use away they are the worst and they make you sound dumb and ignorant so dont say nihilism (this is what you say in almost every situation) dont say unsure because this makes you sound uncertain and thus weak and silly

You: is it bad to sound weak/uncertain?

Stranger: it isnt bad to sound uncertain when its justified

Stranger: but you're literally both dumb and uncertain

You: mhm, but I don't really understand why strength is valued as a virtue

Stranger: It isnt valued as a virtue you moron

Stranger: you seek opposites

You: huh?

Stranger: thats a retarded way of thinking

You: can you explain more?

Stranger: "can you explaim more" is the backbone of your everyday vocabularly

Stranger: throw it away

You: mhm but I don't always understand things, and it would be helpful if people clarified their statement

Stranger: you never seek answers. you want others to find them for you

Stranger: thats why you're so dumb by the way

Stranger: so get rid of it

Stranger: you dont need that phrase

Stranger: imbecile

You: is the a better way to ask for feedback?

Stranger: You dont need feedback at all. Forget about feedback. You should never request feedback

You: mhm why?

Stranger: "why" get rid of this

You: I feel like it is hard to justify doing something unless you know the reason

Stranger: another rule you should apply

Stranger: Dont argue with people who are much better than you

You: I didn't realize I was arguing you though...

You: I thought I was just asking for an explanation

Stranger: I told you to get rid of "why" in your speech and you tried to justify using why

You: ah okay

Stranger: throwing arguments at the interlocutor creates an argument

Stranger: fool

You: I don't really feel like doing the things you are suggesting though

Stranger: buffoon

You: I'm sorry if it seems disrepectful

Stranger: clown

You: I feel like clowns are kind of scary actually

You: I don't really understand why they are invited to birthday parties

Stranger: your behavior is that of a clown

Stranger: but it isnt scary

You: hmm, clowns are for generating entertainment and laughter?

Stranger: yep thats why you usually try to but it doesnt really make you seem funny when you're required to hold a proper conversation

You: sorry

Stranger: try to do

Stranger: idiot

Stranger: shame on you

Stranger: shamee

You: I don't understand shame in all of its aspects actually

Stranger: Shame

Stranger: on you

You: is the meaning of that phrase that I should feel shame, even though I don't?

Stranger: shame on you

You: ^^ okay

Stranger: clown

You: you seem to be very patient

Stranger: you've gone so boring...

You: sorry

You: I think I just have difficulty understanding you

You: I'm not always sure when you are being sincere vs. just having fun

Stranger: are you going to bring something interesting into the convo

You: umm I'm not sure I know what you consider to be interesting

You: I can guess at things

You: also is it late for you?

You: sorry if I've kept you up

You: I know I took a lot of your time

Stranger: lol I wouldnt damage my sleep pattern because of people like you

You: okay that's good ^^

Stranger: the only reason Ive been talking to you is boredom but as I already mentioned you've become very very boring

Stranger: so I have to wish you a happy life and say goodbye

You: sorry

You: okay you too

You: I wish you the best

Stranger: byeeeeeeeeeeee

Stranger has disconnected.

#omegle #history #religion #roman history #cults #jerusalem #crusade #ignorance #mental illness #faith #I was acting a bit silly here and this conversation was very strange

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jayeltontoro · 10 months ago

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I'm so glad South Africa took the bull by the horns and got things this far.

I felt when this criminal mass killing on the Palestinian people kicked off that it would be the end of Israel. I still think that, and it is long past time that Israel were held to account. I am grieved every day this continues, but I see that the world is waking up at last to the lies of the Zionist project, seeing the duplicity of the US government writ large, understanding that the racism and genocide that the United states was founded on and continues to pursue is exported. The Zionist Israel is a White Israel Project. Indigenous Semitic Jews, black Jews are segregated second class Jews in Zionist Israel. For fucks sake the Zionists even invented names for these 'categories of lesser jews'. It's no wonder WASP America loves it. I'd guess that behind the support of the biggest military in the world by an order of magnitude for a white colonial project is the FEAR of WASP America that if White Israel Project fails, they will be threatened, although by who... They've already comitted genocide on a continental scale, using all the same methods, tropes, lies and murders.

I understand everyone's disappointment with the ICJ for not calling for a ceasefire or oversight of the IDF in Gaza.

But this is still acknowledgement from the highest international court that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and withholding aid. It's a big political blow to Israel. There's a reason why its government and supporters have spent weeks freaking out over the case and attacking South Africa.

It gives legitimacy to the Palestinian resistance and their supporters (including the Ansar Allah movement which has been blockading Israel's ports in the Red Sea), in addition to international law that recognises the need for armed resistance to occupation.

This ruling will continue to erode support for Israel in the West and highlight the complicity of Western governments that materially support Israel.

Disappointment in the limitations of international law and institutions is understandable but dismissing the ruling is doing Netanyahu's work for him.

#us genociders #us complicity #israel is committing genocide #israel is an apartheid state #israel is a terrorist state

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sciencespies · 5 years ago

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Why Jessica Biel is Lobbying Against This Vaccination Bill

https://sciencespies.com/news/why-jessica-biel-is-lobbying-against-this-vaccination-bill/

Why Jessica Biel is Lobbying Against This Vaccination Bill

Jessica Biel attends the 70th Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 17, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Getty

What do Jessica Biel and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have in common? Well, first of all, neither of them has played Wonder Woman in a movie. Biel reportedly turned down the role in 2007, and no one seems to have offered the part to Kennedy. Secondly, both of them appeared together this past week in Sacramento, California, apparently lobbying against California Senate Bill 276, a bill aimed to address declining childhood vaccination rates in California by making the process of getting medical exemptions more stringent.

Biel is best known for starring in movies such as The Rules of Attraction (2002), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Blade: Trinity (2004), Stealth (2005), The Illusionist (2006), The A-Team (2010), and Total Recall (2012). Kennedy shared pictures of their day via his Instagram account, such as the following:

From Instagram

Instagram

As you can see, he called Biel ”courageous.” Courageous for what exactly? He continued by saying “for a busy and productive day at the California State House.” Is the California State House really that dangerous? Are there deadly spiders, pits of molten lava, vampires, or chainsaws there? Was Biel risking getting some potentially deadly diseases, such as measles?

Not according to Biel’s Instagram post, which said:

This week I went to Sacramento to talk to legislators in California about a proposed bill. I am not against vaccinations — I support children getting vaccinations and I also support families having the right to make educated medical decisions for their children alongside their physicians. My concern with #SB276 is solely regarding medical exemptions. My dearest friends have a child with a medical condition that warrants an exemption from vaccinations, and should this bill pass, it would greatly affect their family’s ability to care for their child in this state. That’s why I spoke to legislators and argued against this bill. Not because I don’t believe in vaccinations, but because I believe in giving doctors and the families they treat the ability to decide what’s best for their patients and the ability to provide that treatment. I encourage everyone to read more on this issue and to learn about the intricacies of #SB276. Thank you to everyone who met with me this week to engage in this important discussion!

What is SB 276? Currently, in California, like many places around the country and world, children are required to get a set of vaccinations before entering school. These vaccinations are supposed to protect children from getting diseases such as the measles, mumps, pertussis, tetanus, and hepatitis B. This year has shown what can happen when measles vaccination rates drop below 95% in a community. We’re not even halfway through 2019, and as of June 6, there have been already at least 1,022 individual cases of the measles in 28 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s the greatest number of reported cases reported in the U.S. since all of 1992. This is measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

The problem is, since 2000, an increasing number of parents around the U.S. have been trying to opt their kids out of vaccinations. As Laura Eggertson explained in CMAJ, in 1998 Andrew Wakefield published a since-retracted and since-discredited study in The Lancet suggesting that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine was linked to autism. Despite no real scientific evidence supporting such claims, Wakefield has continued to assert this link and some celebrities like Jenny McCarthy have greatly amplified Wakefield’s claims about vaccines and autism.

In order to prevent the return or surge of vaccine-preventable diseases, legislators such as State Senator Dr. Richard Pan, who is also a pediatrician, have been attempting to close the loopholes that have allowed parents to keep their kids from getting vaccinated. In 2015, California Senate Bill (SB) 277, co-authored by Pan and fellow State Seantor Ben Allen, passed the California State Senate and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. This law eliminated vaccine exemptions for personal beliefs, meaning that parents could no longer just say that they didn’t want their kids to get vaccinated because they didn’t want to do so.

Since the passage of SB 277, a main way parents in California have been able to keep their kids from getting vaccinated has been medical exemptions. A medical exemption is when a doctor determines that a kid has real medical reasons not to get vaccinated. Real medical reasons include severe allergic reactions to vaccines or a significantly weakened immune system from taking required medications or having a real medical condition. These are scientifically legitimate reasons not to get vaccinated but tend to be relatively uncommon. It is also relatively straightforward to medically prove that you have such conditions.

State Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, left, calls on lawmakers to approve his measure to toughen the rules for vaccination exemptions Wednesday, May 22, 2019, in Sacramento, Calif. The Senate approved the bill, SB276, that gives state public health officials instead of local doctors the power to decide which children can skip their shots before attending school. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

However, as Pan explained on his State Senate page, “Medical exemptions have more than tripled since the passage of SB 277. Some schools are reporting that more than 20 percent of their students have a medical exemption. It is clear that a small number of physicians are monetizing their exemption-granting authority and profiting from the sale of medical exemptions.” People profiting off selling something not backed by science? Shocking. Is that really a thing?

That’s why Pan, along with State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, introduced SB 276 on March 15 to make the process of getting a medical exemption more stringent. The California Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, California and Vaccinate California co-sponsored the bill. If SB 276 were to pass, physicians could no longer just write patients medical exemptions for vaccination. Instead they would have to fill out a form including their name, license number, reason for requesting the exemption, and certification that they have examined the patient, and submit the form to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). The CDPH then would determine whether the medical exemption is granted. The bill would also have the CDPH create and maintain a database of medical exemptions to check whether any physicians were cranking out such exemptions like a printing press. Moreover, it would grant the CDPH and County Health Officers the authority to revoke medical exemptions if they found something fraudulent or inconsistent with medical guidelines.

The return of measles to the U.S. has been a real and costly problem, as I have written before for Forbes. Although no reported deaths have occurred yet this year, measles can cause serious problems such as brain inflammation and kill. This year’s measles outbreaks also may be a harbinger for worse things to come, should vaccination rates slip even further. Something needs to be done about the threat of vaccine preventable diseases returning and surging.

Yet, as Melody Gutierrez And Soumya Karlamangla reported for the Los Angeles Times, opponents of SB 276 have called Pan a “tyrant,” and the bill a “crime against humanity.” Yes, someone called a pediatrician trying to find ways to protect the population against measles and other vaccine-preventable disease a “tyrant.” And, yes, someone didn’t say that he plays Cards Against Humanity��but instead claimed that Pan is committing “crimes against humanity. ” As the United Nations describes, “crimes against humanity” usually refers to true atrocities such as genocide, mass murdering, and atrocities committed during European colonialism. To equate a pediatrician trying to solve a real problem to a genocidal dictator is simply outrageous. This type of language and claiming that someone is “courageous” simply for spending a day lobbying against a vaccination bill is unnecessarily inflammatory and may create an impression of oppression that simply doesn’t exist.

Kennedy’s own family members, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Maeve Kennedy McKean, have condemned his continuing anti-vaccination actions in an article they co-authored in Politico, writing that, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Joe and Kathleen’s brother and Maeve’s uncle—is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.”

Regardless, State Senator Brian Jones still seemed quite welcoming to Kennedy in this tweet:

Welcome to #caleg, @RobertKennedyJr and @JessicaBiel! Thank you for taking the time to chat about your opposition to #SB276. #caleg #NoOnSB276 pic.twitter.com/AkkWRbPSJk

— Brian W. Jones (@SenBrianJones) June 12, 2019

It is one thing to inquire about the risks of vaccines and whether such a bill will further threaten the autonomy of physicians or create more administrative overhead. Routine vaccination certainly has its risks, just like anything in life, including throw pillows, or watching I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Nonetheless, the risks of vaccination are quite low and certainly much lower than the risks of not getting vaccinated or, for that matter, putting jade eggs in your vagina. And yes, SB 276 would take some decision making authority away from individual physicians. But insurance companies and hospital administrators have been progressively taking authority away from individual physicians in much, much greater and more alarming chunks for the past couple decades and adding much more administrative overhead. If you are truly worried about physician autonomy and independence, why not address these?

It is something completely different to use inflammatory words and suggest conspiracies that don’t exist. Vaccination is important because there is currently no alternative to preventing and controlling disease such as the measles, pertussis, mumps, rubella, and tetanus. The viruses and other microbes causing vaccine-preventable disease would love it if more people stopped getting vaccinated. Telling people to not vaccinate without offering any viable scientifically-backed alternative is not engaging in scientific discussion and frankly not being responsible.

Time may show what Biel’s true motivations and stances are. (I am reaching out to Biel’s representatives to get further clarification.) Does she have real questions, and is she simply getting caught in anti-vaccination rhetoric from others? Or is she actually spreading misinformation about vaccination herself? Ultimately, the question is how similar or different is Biel really from Kennedy.

#News

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mrkrndvs · 7 years ago

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📰 Read Write Respond #025

New Post has been published on https://collect.readwriterespond.com/read-write-respond-025/

📰 Read Write Respond #025

Background image via JustLego101.com Made with Canva

![Cover for Read Write Respond edition #025 featuring an Lego image from @JustLego101](INSERT LINK)

My Month of January

I have been back at work for few weeks now. No extended summer holidays in my current role. My work this month has involved reviewing our reporting solution in light of recent changes, as well as supporting schools with their start of the year setup.

With the move from ten weeks of holidays to four, I have learnt to appreciate every minute. Whether it be going away for a few days to explore Bendigo or building endless flat pack furniture, my time was occupied. Looking back at my few weeks at home, we managed to get so much done, even in the insipid hot and humid weather.

Personally, I have spent the month head down in the world of the #IndieWeb. In particular, I have continued to craft my second space: collect.readwriterespond.com. This effort to better control my existence on the web fits with my focus of ‘intent’ this year. I sometimes find myself using the word deliberate, but it all feels far too adhoc for that. With all this in mind, I contributed to a collective podcast that Benjamin Doxtdator put together. I also got to catch up with Richard Olsen for lunch, which was nice as well.

In regards to my writing, here was my month in posts:

Read Write Review – Voices from the Village in 2017 – A curation of my year and keeping a monthly newsletter.

My One Word for 2018 is Intent – My ‘one word’ for 2018 is intent. For me, this is about many things.

[Reflecting on the Voices in the Village 2017](A collection of comments from my blog(s) that have pushed my thinking this year) – A collection of comments from my blog(s) that have pushed my thinking this year.

Reclaiming My Bookmarks – A reflection on using my own blog to reclaim my bookmarks and then syndicate them to other sites, such as Twitter and Diigo.

A Kind of Emoji – A reflection on using emojis as a way to provide visual information about blog posts.

Hidden in the Code – A collection of short codes that I often turn to when working with WordPress

Microcast #005 – A Day in the Life of a Blogger – A recorded response to Richard Byrne on blogging, which he kindly responded to.

Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking this month …

Learning and Teaching

Image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/33263856@N02/5157195892 Quote via Kath Murdoch ‘My Favourite Inquiry Journeys of 2017’

My Favourite Inquiry Journeys of 2017…. – Kath Murdoch stops and reflects on twelve projects she has helped with in 2017. In summary, she pulls out some of the key aspects that went across all the different inquiries, such as authenticity, integrative, involves experts, learning is shared and emergent. This post is not necessarily a list of driving questions and/or units to roll out, but rather a source of ideas and inspiration. Along with her post on ten practices of an inquiry teacher and AJ Juliani’s reflection on choice-based learning, they provide some guidance going into the new year.

Using an inquiry based approach to teaching and learning is multi-faceted. At its heart, inquiry is a stance – it’s about how we talk to kids and how we think about learning. It is also about how we plan and the contexts we both recognise and create in which powerful inquiry can thrive. These contexts can be highly personal (one child’s investigation into their passion) and they can also be shared contexts that bring learners together under a common question. These shared inquiries form a powerful ‘backbone’ of the primary classroom.

Google Maps Moat – Justin O’Beirne discusses the addition of ‘areas of interests’ to Google Maps. He wonders if others, such as Apple, can possibly keep up? The challenge is that these AOIs are not collected — rather they are created. Added to this, Apple appears to be missing the ingredients to develop their own AOIs to the same quality, coverage, and scale as Google. Google is in fact making data out of data. For a different take on Google 3D imagery, watch this video from the Nat and Friends.

Google’s buildings are byproducts of its Satellite/Aerial imagery. And some of Google’s places are byproducts of its Street View imagery. So this makes AOIs a byproduct of byproducts. Google is creating data out of data.

Four Moves – Mike Caulfield has released a new site containing a series of activities to support the development of web literacy and fact checking. It focuses on the four moves: check for previous work, go upstream to the source, read laterally and circle back.

The Four Moves blog is based on research conducted by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, which found that students lack knowledge of basic web techniques for verification and source assessment, which puts them at the mercy of misinformation. Instructions are written for students using the Chrome browser due to the popularity of that platform in schools and among students. However, the features we are using are in general not browser-specific; faculty and students using different browsers should translate actions where appropriate by looking at your own browser’s documentation.

Explainer: the evidence for the Tasmanian genocide – Kristyn Harman provides some background to the extermination of indigenous people in Tasmania. Along with the map of genocide, resources like these are central to a call to change Australia Day. In another post on remembering, Louise Raw highlights why Winston Churchill was and is not the saviour of democracy he is sometimes portrayed as.

Whereas the master narrative framed this state of affairs as proof of a benign government caring for unfortunate victims of circumstance, the colony’s archives reveal that Aboriginal people were removed from their ancient homelands by means fair and foul. This was the intent of the government, revealed by its actions and instructions and obfuscations. In the language of the day the Aboriginal Tasmanians had been deliberately, knowingly and wilfully extirpated. Today we could call it genocide.

How To Digest Books Above Your “Level” And Increase Your Intelligence – Ryan Halliday says to read above your level you need to ‘read to lead’. This involves ignoring the facts and storyline to focus on the key messages. Reading all of the introductions, prefaces and translators notes as they often provide context to the book. Make notes in books and write out quotes, physically. Apply what you learn. I am not sure I completely agree with everything Halliday suggests, but it does provide a useful provocation to think about the art of reading. For some just reading is what matters.

In short, you know the books where the words blur together and you can’t understand what’s happening? Those are the books a leader needs to read. Reading to lead or learn requires that you treat your brain like the muscle that it is–lifting the subjects with the most tension and weight.

Edtech

Image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/kwl/4555399660 Quote via danah boyd ‘Panicked about Kids Addiction to Tech?’

Panicked about Kids Addiction to Tech? – danah boyd suggests that there is a lot of hype associated with kids addiction. Some of the problems may be associated with parents themselves. In response, she provides two activities for parents: verbalize what you’re doing with your phone and create a household contract. Mitchel Resnick’s provides a different perspective, suggesting time on task is not the problem, it is rather what is done with that time, for Cory Doctorow it is all an arms race focused on control, while Audrey Watters paints her own complicated picture of addiction. Each of these pieces add to a wider dialogue around moderation and other such technical answers currently being suggested as soutions to our digital overload.

Many people have unhealthy habits and dynamics in their life. Some are rooted in physical addiction. Others are habitual or psychological crutches. But across that spectrum, most people are aware of when something that they’re doing isn’t healthy. They may not be able to stop. Or they may not want to stop. Untangling that is part of the challenge. When you feel as though your child has an unhealthy relationship with technology (or anything else in their life), you need to start by asking if they see this the same way you do. When parents feel as though what their child is doing is unhealthy for them, but the child does not, the intervention has to be quite different than when the child is also concerned about the issue.

Arguing with the Digital Natives guy in four vexations – David White reflects on a debate with Marc Prensky in which they discussed the future of our digital world. White shares four vexations from the conversation, but the one that stands out to me is his concern about ideas associated with ‘effective and successful’ being separated from a discussion of equality. This links with Alvin Chang’s post looking at school borders and segregation, a topic also discussed on the Have You Heard podcast. It is also interesting to think about this alongside Simon Longstaff’s discussion about the technology and the design of a more ethical future.

My concern is that we rush to ‘make the world a better place’ without reflecting on who we might be doing that for and why. Action without reflection (or thinking) is of little value

The human solution to Facebook’s machine-produced problems also won’t work – Responding to Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious pledge to fix the statistical behaviour-modification machine that is Facebook, Doc Searls explains why Zuckerberg will fail. He suggests that changing facebook is like turning a cruise ship into an aircraft carrier, Searls argues that what has been gained though is a realisation that we all live in the digital world now. It is for this reason that it is important to support children with their online presence and making sense of social media. Alternatively, Dave Winer believes that Zuckerberg’s year will be complete once he lets Facebook rejoin the open web. We can only dream.

The best thing for Zuck to do is get the hell out, let it finish failing, and start over with something new and better, based on what he and others have learned from the experience. (Which tends to be the best teacher. And hell, he’s still young.) It should help him—and all of us—to know that all companies fail; they just fail faster in Silicon Valley.

EdTech Factotum #12 – Clint Lalonde reflects on blockchain. Rather than focusing on whether or not everyone should embrace it, he instead suggests that it is something that we need to be aware of. This is a similar point that Audrey Watters made during Episode 74 of the Contrafabulists podcasts, that it is not necessarily about which technology to choose, but asking why and how things actually work. For more on the blockchain, watch this attempt to explain it to a five year old, read Alex Hern’s analysis of Bitcoin or reflect on Leda Glyptis’ unpopular opinions.

Asking why is important and does often get lost in the rush to something new and shiny. But let’s keep asking how as well. In my mind, these are companion questions because, even though you or I may never use blockchain in our day-to-day life, there is a very good chance that it will be used on our behalf in the future. And there is already more than enough unknown technologies running our life right now.

Should Your Class Or Student Blogs Be Public Or Private? – Kathleen Morris unpacks the benefits of both private and public blogs. She provides a number of arguments with clear points evidence to clarify her points of view. This is particularly pertinent to schools and educators at the start of the school year. Personally, when I supported classroom blogs they were closed as I was not comfortable everyone who needed to be fully aware of the consequences was. I think though that Kin Lane’s advice on APIs can also be applied, that is, approach everything as if it is public even if it is not. On blogging in general, Chris Aldrich wrote a reply on the potential of blogging as a commonplace book, while Jim Groom suggests that it is an investment in your soul.

A dilemma that faces many educators new blogging is the question of whether they should be publishing their students’ information and work online. They might wonder if their class or student blogs should be public for anyone to see, or private for a limited audience (or no one) to view.

IRL Podcast – Bot or Not – This episode of In Real Life is dedicated to bots. Along with Crofton Black and Abigail Fielding-Smith’s investigation into the influence of Twitter bots, Kris Shaffer and Bill Fitzgerald’s guide on how to spot a bot, Kin Lane’s reflections on the waves of bots and Nicholas Confessore’s exposé into the follower factory, these resources provide a useful starting point for understanding bots and there implication on society today.

From politics to poetry, bots are playing an increasingly visible role in culture. Veronica Belmont investigates the rise of social media bots with Lauren Kunze and Jenn Schiffer. Butter.ai’s Jack Hirsch talks about what happens when your profile is stolen by a political bot. Lisa-Maria Neudert measures how bots influence politics. Ben Nimmo teaches us how to spot and take down bot armies. And Tim Hwang explores how bots can connect us in surprising, and meaningful, new ways.

Storytelling and Reflection

Image via https://pixabay.com/en/crowd-lego-staff-choice-selector-1699137/ Quote via David Golumbia ‘Social Media Has Hijacked Our Brains and Threatens Global Democracy’

Social Media Has Hijacked Our Brains and Threatens Global Democracy – David Golumbia discusses some of the changes to democracy associated with social media. He argues that we have lost the ability to think slowly, therefore making us more susceptible to irrational decisions. This touches on some of Peter Skillen’s points from a few years ago. Along with Zeynep Tufekei’s concern about free speech and Jordan Erica Webber’s look into micro-targetting, these posts paint a grim view of the future.

Those who celebrated the Facebook revolution and the Twitter revolution were celebrating the replacement of (relatively) calm reflection with the politics of reactivity and passion. This domination of System 2 by System 1 thinking is the real social media “revolution.” The question that remains is whether democracies have both the will, and the means to bring considered thought back to politics, or, whether digital technology has made politics impossible.

Facial recognition’s ominous rise: are we going too far too fast? – This is a strange article documenting the rise of NEC. In it, Ben Grubb provides a range of examples, including Crown Casino tracking VIPs and Westfield estimating age, gender and mood. On the one hand, it can be read as being positive – which you would assume as the author’s expenses to iEXPO2017 were paid for by NEC – in that we can now do all these things with technology, but at the same time it asks the question as to whether we ought to? It reminds me in part of the post discussing Hitachi’s use of cameras to improve student life at Curtin University. My question is probably, “why would you?”, as Tony Longstaff warns can does not equal ought.

Already facial-recognition technology is being used at Crown Casino in Melbourne to identify VIPs and banned guests. Australian state and federal policing agencies are also deploying it, with South Australia Police using it to identify criminals and to search for missing persons.

The best thing ever written about “work-life balance” – Austin Kleon discusses work-life balance. Reflecting on Jocelyn K. Glei’s supercut on the subject, Kleon notes the difference in responses between men and women. For men it is often about creating the write conditions, while for women it is making do with whatever spare moments there are. For the late Ursula K. Le Guin it is not about spare time, but rather occupied time.

You can have it all, just not all at once – Kenneth Koch

The Line 6 DL4 Is Quietly the Most Important Guitar Pedal of the Last 20 Years – Dale Eisinger takes a look at the influence of technology on music, in particular the looping pedal. From Radiohead to Battles, Eisinger lists band after band influenced by the features and constraints of the humble pedal. There is a long history of technology influencing music. An example is the BBC documentary Synth Britannia which describes the influence of synthesiers on bands like Depeche Mode and New Order. It is also interesting to think about the DL4 as a ‘non-human’ actor and unpack what this might mean, especially for the modern busker.

As technology democratized around the turn of the century, digital audio workstations like Pro Tools revolutionized the home studio, and ultimately changed the course of music with their boundless potential. A less commonly discussed breakthrough of the era involved musicians’ outboard gear, such as guitar pedals, which moved from analog to now-inexpensive digital architectures. Chief among the hardware that benefited from this shift were delay pedals, a class of effect pedal that gives an echo or repeating effect to a sound. Delays were generally expensive, since they required either actual tape loops or expensive memory within their makeup. Digital technology changed that, introducing with it the kind of lower-priced loop pedals that encouraged experimental strains of ’00s indie rockers to recreate with live instruments a similar effect as sampling. There was one pedal in particular that emerged as a favorite: the Line 6 DL4 delay modeler.

The Victorian State Education System…from the inside out and the outside in – Former principal of Templestowe College, Peter Hutton, reflects on his connection with the Victorian Department of Education. It is a real insight into a part of education that many teachers never really experience. It will be interesting to see where his ‘EdRevolution’ goes and grows.

Unless there are parental complaints, if the school’s numbers are stable or growing and your data is tracking ok, essentially DET allow you to innovate and do as you please. I have loved this level of professional autonomy and dare I say trust shown by DET in its’ Principals. Not really the ogre that people sometimes suspect. In fact many senior staff have provided me with encouragement and professional support during the more innovative years at TC.

FOCUS ON … Digital Hygiene

Quote via Ian O’Byrne ‘Take the time to review and reinforce your digital hygiene’ Image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5978434781

There are so many posts out there which support users with reviewing their digital presence online. See for example Boost your digital fitness with a data cleanse and Digital Trace Audit: A #clmooc New Year’s ‘Unmake’ Cycle. Ian O’Byrne though has spread his out across the whole month. Unsure which link to include, I have instead provided a summary of all the posts here. I think that the statistics are clear, we could all do more.

Understanding the differences between privacy and security – Ian O’Byrne explains how privacy is like closing the curtains or blinds on a window in your house, whereas security is like locking the doors and windows on your house.

Three steps to develop a system to take control of your passwords – Ian O’Byrne suggests that changing your passwords frequently is one of the simplest things you can do to protect yourself from digital threats

How to use two factor authentication to protect yourself online – Ian O’Byrne shows how two-factor authentication uses your password to log in to your accounts and services and then requires a a randomly generated (usually) six number key as well.

Backup your digital information and devices – Ian O’Byrne talks about the importance of backing up three ways: the original file on your computer, a local backup and a backup in another location.

Clean out your browser extensions – Ian O’Byrne argues that one of the best ways to mitigate risk is to regularly clear out your browser extensions that you don’t regularly use.

Review & Revoke Social Logins & Third Party App Access – Ian O’Byrne raises several concerns with social logins for new accounts, such as trusting one site with personal or private information that you gave to another site.

Protect your connection to the Internet – Ian O’Byrne says it is important to maintain an up-to-date router and consider the use of a VPN when using public wifi networks.

Encrypt your devices – Ian O’Byrne looks at the options for encryption provided by the popular devices and explains why it is important.

READ WRITE RESPOND #025

So that is MONTH for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.

Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest or maybe you want to subscribe? Otherwise, archives can be found here.

Cover image via JustLego101.

#Newsletter #Read Write Respond

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republicstandard · 7 years ago

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Australia's Invasion Day: What Does This Actually Mean?

Ash Sharp Editor

Australia Day is a national holiday in which Australians historically have joined together in summer to enjoy a long weekend with the celebration of traditional Aussie customs such as atrocious beer, grilled kangaroo, and domestic violence.

There's a lot going on in Australia lately. A long-running discussion about Aboriginal rights has, of late, taken a wider identitarian turn. On Jan. 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip landed in Sydney Cove, near where the famous Opera House was later built, to establish a penal colony. This is the date commemorated by Australia Day, and thus the target for the so-called 'Invasion Day' protests.

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Some of these protests demand change from the Australian government and action on the Uluru Statement From The Heart, a document put together by a concordance of Aboriginal leaders in 2017 which was rejected by the Australian Government in favor of recognizing Aboriginals in a constitutional amendment. Other protests are quite different in origin.

I love my country, I love being Australian, I celebrate being Australian almost every day. I do not celebrate it today. Today my heart is with our indigenous brothers and sisters and all the pain and turmoil they have suffered #InvasionDay 🖤💛❤️ pic.twitter.com/TfHer7kr6s

— Jona Weinhofen Ⓥ (@jonaweinhofen) January 25, 2018

The Aboriginal elder Tauto Sansbury told a small crowd in Adelaide that recognizing the hurt caused by celebrating on the day the first fleet arrived must be the start of a wider conversation.

“People have said there’s other issues to deal with, well no there’s not,” he said. “This is the first one that breaks down the barriers. Then we can move on to all of the other things that are not right for Aboriginal people.”

Perhaps Mr. Sansbury is right, and the future is in changing the date of the celebration of Australia as a concept to another. Alice Springs Councillor Jacinta Nampijinpa Price disagrees.

"Let’s be honest about where the argument to change the date comes from: a place of resentment, anger and now hate. The vitriol that has been directed at me, as an Aboriginal woman, for voicing my opinion and for encouraging a healthier way of thinking, has been far, far worse then any alleged racist sentiment claimed to come from the celebration of Australia Day.

Is changing the date some kind of quick fix to obscure the failure to solve our real problems? Symbolic acts have no meaningful impact on Australia’s most marginalized, so why then are so many so happy to invest vast amounts of energy into a meaningless symbolic act?

It is a pathetic attempt at appeasing resentment, anger, and white guilt."

Tarneen Onus-Williams of the "Aboriginal Nationalist" group Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance said

"F..k Australia, hope it burns to the ground.

People who celebrate Australia Day are celebrating the genocide of aboriginal people, waving Australian flags in our faces. It’s disgusting.

We don’t want the date changed. We don’t want to celebrate Australia Day at all."

Tarnee Onus-Williams

You might say Ms. Onus-Williams sounds like a bit of an extremist and generally I would agree. This week she called 3AW Radio host Neil Mitchell a "racist" for the slight of asking her if it was appropriate to use the state-funded Koorie Youth Council (headed by Onus-Williams herself) to use public money to promote 'Invasion Day' rallies. She also does not believe that White people's law applies to Aboriginals, which as I gather is a common sentiment among fringe groups.

For those questioning the genocide of the Aboriginal people, we must accept that there are technical grounds for her words. Between 1910 and 1970, up to 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and put in white foster homes. According to the United Nations 1951 definition, this counts as a genocide. Granted, it's hardly gas chambers or Rwanda, but it was a messed up time regardless- with the youngest of these people still very much alive and part of society.

There's clearly a lot of work to go on between White people and Aboriginals to smooth things out. While I would make no apology for the rights of the descendants of the settlers, if Aboriginal people are indeed being treated unfairly in Australian society- that's a topic of discussion for Australians. What shouldn't be on the cards is the weaponization of this topic to advance agendas that are insurrectionist in intent. This is exactly what has happened in this 'Invasion Day' Movement. There will always be a conflict of interests between racial groups, and what interests me most is how opportunistic leftist ideologues capitalize on these issues, again and again.

This one leads me to many questions. As Bill Warner explains, Hijra is the Jihad of Migration.

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There is no common motivation for Muslims to support the rights of Aboriginals on religious grounds, but there is plenty to be gained from supporting identitarian movements that target White Australians. I do wonder what would happen if magically those troublesome Whites were evaporated from Australia. Would the interests of Islamists and Aboriginals still align under those circumstances? The other assessment I draw from this image is that again, we witness the alliance between Islam and the Hard Left authoritarians in the field of social politics.

White man 1: “so silly that they wanna change the date” White man 2: “I know right?? I like Australia Day being where it is. Screw catering for everyone” Yeah, but nah. I’d hate for everyone to get a celebratory holiday for the death of my family. #fuckedup #InvasionDay

— Sanie 🤘🏼🇵🇸 (@ArabAussiePunk) January 27, 2018

The oddity of course here is that people of non-White descent who follow a religion of conquest are now also Australians, but feel no allegiance to the nation-state that allowed them to become citizens. Rather, the stain of benefitting from the government of the oppressor is shrugged off. This time, the more recent immigrants are on the side of the people who are complaining about historical immigration.

ABC's Indigenous Affairs editor Stan Grant, himself of both settler and Aboriginal ancestry, approaches the truth with caution.

Australia Day feels angrier. It is a defiant flag in a window and a flag on fire at a protest. This is our age; what the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra calls "the age of anger". We prize identity more than citizenship.

Grant does hit the nail but is too confused in his blog post to strike it cleanly. Identity is indeed becoming more important than citizenship, as lines in multicultural societies are cracked open along religious and ethnic lines. A civilizational clash, so to speak.

Those who tack too close to the other side of the conflict are brought down by a storm of racist slurs.

Uncle Tom is a racist slur @EricHardcastle #auspol https://t.co/yECmdLZMGB

— Nyunggai W Mundine (@nyunggai) January 27, 2018

Are we allowed to call people like that coconuts?

— Unreality Enthusiast (@manbearcat) January 27, 2018

Warren Mundine is an Aboriginal advocate and successful businessman. His book teaches the value of self-determination and warns against victim culture. As he writes:

After the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal people started to receive equal pay across the board through a combination of changes to laws and industrial decisions over about a decade. For some regional industries, like the pastoral industry, this meant a huge jump in expenses. Most Aboriginal people in those industries had never actually received equal wages. Instead of getting a pay increase, they lost their jobs and were kicked off their lands. The pastoralists lost a cheap source of labor and weren’t willing or able to pay them full wages.

At the same time, Aboriginal people gained rights to government benefits, which previously they weren’t entitled to. So those who lost their jobs became full-time welfare recipients... Ultimately, the key to tackling long-term unemployment among Aboriginal people is the same as for anyone else. You have to address long-term welfare dependency.

For these radical ideas, Mr. Mundine has been called Uncle Tom -which makes no sense at all unless you recognize the globalist leftist movement as in some sense monolithic- and coconut; brown on the outside but white on the inside. Yes, an age of anger indeed. You must obey the perception of what radicals say is your racial interest, or you are a traitor. How can any society stand such flagrant bigotry against examples of success? Mr. Mundine's book is available here. I highly recommend you buy a copy, I have.

Here lies the issue. When the system is shown to be quite accepting of people provided they are willing to work hard and not give up despite adversity, this breaks the narrative. But whose narrative is it?

Frequent readers of these pages may already recognize where I am going to point the finger. Where does this anger spring from? I have suspicions. The rhetoric used is all too familiar to me, and to my former allies on the Radical Left. We can surely recognize that society is not perfect or that unfairness occurs without demanding the entirety of society be overthrown. That is madness.

Across the spectrum, on this issue, the same narrative is deployed in every nation founded by Europeans. Colonialism is the worst thing to ever happen, and it's because of that the indigenous people need to be protected from the society the White Man built. Because the personal fortitude exhibited by men like Warren Mundine breaks the socialist's framing of the world, the world must be redrawn along racial lines in order to sow division further.

It’s intrinsically about conflict, tearing down the old, using activism to impose your views on society. And don’t play the victim card with me when this whole campaign to change Australia Day is founded on perpetual victim hood.

— Bodywise (@BodwiseLisle) January 26, 2018

Thomas Sowell found the crux of this flawed mentality.

In the half century between 1945 and 1995, black Americans' raw test scores rose by the equivalent of 16 IQ points.

In other words, black Americans' test score results in 1995 would have given them an average IQ just over 100 in 1945. Only the repeated renorming of IQ tests upward created the illusion that blacks had made no progress, but were stuck at an IQ of 85. But we would never have known this if some researchers had not defied the taboo on studying race and IQ imposed by black "leaders" and white "friends."

Note well. Black intellectuals reject utterly the idea that non-White people cannot succeed in White nations. The idea that this is the case is an idea promoted by Neo-Marxists who wish to see the fall of Western Civilization in totality, in the vain hope that a socialist society will rise in its place. The racial causes championed by these radicals are mostly cat's paws. Once the bourgeoisie is finished, the ideological purging will begin again, regardless of how black you are.

The Neo-Marxist left is a global movement that is linked by recognizing very vague principles, like the equation of Whiteness with 'privilege' and, therefore, Capitalism itself. To fight Whiteness is to fight on the side of the good guys against the Evil Empire, so it goes. This mentality is unbelievably facile, but so open in interpretation that it can be applied to any situation where the blame can be laid at the feet of Whitey and/or Capitalism, which as previously stated, just means White People.

This makes it possible for British transgender mixed-race model and known racist Munroe Bergdorf (what a title!) to hold several conflicting ideas at once. I'm using Bergdorf as an example as there are few people who are so vehement in their overt ideological stances. Rest assured, Bergdorf is merely saying what a great many Neo-Marxists genuinely believe.

Bergdorf sees no conflict in having this as a pinned post in which she says;

"Don't let other people define you your identity is integral to creating change in the world"

"Don't let other people define you..." @i_D 😉 pic.twitter.com/WEl2S2H4uA

— Munroe Bergdorf (@MunroeBergdorf) December 20, 2017

This concept does not extend to Whites. White identity is toxic in nature. Bergdorf shows this to be her true opinion when she said;

"Honestly I don't have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people."

One more time. Racism is a system that ALL white benefit from. Nobody is above or exempt. Regardless of how non-racist u consider yrself. Nobody is exempt from social conditioning or systemic racism. You can unlearn and be an ally but that doesn't mean you don't benefit from it.

— Munroe Bergdorf (@MunroeBergdorf) January 24, 2018

Finally, Bergdorf makes strong statements in solidarity with Aboriginals.

In solidarity with Indigenous Australians today. Austrailia Day is a cruel and white supremacist holiday. Call it what it is #InvasionDay #Genocide. Austrailia is stolen land. I stand with you. pic.twitter.com/ADdtD6PJ6w

— Munroe Bergdorf (@MunroeBergdorf) January 25, 2018

In solidarity with Aboriginal Australia ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾 #InvasionDay pic.twitter.com/bzBkzRwLN4

— Munroe Bergdorf (@MunroeBergdorf) January 26, 2018

Naturally, when it is pointed out that Bergdorf is in fact a racist the victim card is deployed. Land rights only matter when the newcomers arrived 250 years ago and are White. This is a consistent aspect of racial advocacy.

Angry white people calling for me to be deported... LMAOOOOOOOO. Deport to where?! The entitlement.

— Munroe Bergdorf (@MunroeBergdorf) October 13, 2017

The flaw in the logic is clear, for which we must thank Bergdorf for being so open. The only possible reason for Bergdorf and her ilk to say such things is that they are in fact Hard Left racist activists themselves. If Australia is indeed "stolen land" and "always was, and always will be aboriginal", then Sweden always was, and always will be Nordic. France for the Gauls. Poland for the Polish. Europe: Always was an always will be European land.

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Twitter user Old Holborn cuts straight to the point.

Interesting new approach from the left. "no immigration, no diversity, fuck multiculturalism" https://t.co/dchW4TbxEr

— Old Holborn✘ (@Holbornlolz) January 26, 2018

So it would certainly appear to all who are not far left fanatics. It cannot be reasonable to demand diversity and multiculturalism in one moment and then advocate for an ethnostate when it suits. Yet, this is where we are with the modern leftist. Western countries may not have borders, borders are for Nazis. 'Nations of Color' must have the right to expunge the Whites from their land. The press will ignore or support these ideas, as it can only be ethnic-cleansing when Whites do it. The double standards expressed by the left will, either intentionally or not, further deepen racial tensions. It is happening already, as White people are discovering a racial identity politics that is not actually racist at all.

Despite being told that Whiteness is toxic for several decades, the descendants of Europe have shown fantastic politeness and restraint in the face of severe problems brought about by migration- to the point of near certain demographic suicide in some nations. It is thanks to overtly racist activists like Bergdorf, Tarneen Onus-Williams and their American analogs such as Shaun King that racial consciousness is even a topic among Whites- particularly when it comes to the perception of racial bias against White people. As Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers discovered;

We asked 417 black and white respondents to assess how big a problem anti-black bias was in America in each decade from the 1950s to the present. We then asked them the same questions about anti-white bias — the extent to which they felt that racism against whites has changed since the 1950s.

Black and white Americans both thought anti-black bias had decreased over the decades. Whites saw that decline as steeper and more dramatic than blacks did, but the general impressions of the trend were similar for both races.

When asked about anti-white bias, though, black and white respondents differed significantly in their views. Black respondents identified virtually no anti-white bias in any decade. White respondents agreed that anti-white bias was not a problem in the 1950s, but reported that bias against whites started climbing in the 1960s and 1970s before rising sharply in the past 30 years.

When asked about the present-day United States, a striking difference emerged. Our average white respondent believed that at the time of our survey in 2011, anti-white bias was an even bigger problem than anti-black bias.

The entire concept of the Alt-Right or modern identitarianism is a product of Hard Left racist activism. I would argue that in the United States this trend towards Whites feeling victimized is only likely to continue, particularly with 5 more years of the Obama administration to come after this survey. From the events surrounding Australia Day, we can see a mirroring of the race-politics that were deployed by Neo-Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter so perhaps the path is a similar one. Perhaps Australia is priming to be made great again.

Institutionally, Australia now seems set for achieving the exact opposite of what diversity measures are set out to achieve.

Dr. Tim Soutphommasane is Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner. in 2016 he wrote the following piece for ABC entitled "Is Australia a Racist Country? On the State of our Race Relations."

Our immigration program is now one that makes no discrimination on racial grounds. The status of citizenship is open to all members of Australian society, regardless of their ethnic background or national origin.

This does make it hard to sustain the view that Australian society is irredeemably racist. It is hard to square that assessment with our reality and celebration of cultural diversity. About 28% of our population was born overseas; another 20% are the children of migrants. Public acceptance of diversity and multiculturalism is also strong and robust. The Scanlon Foundation's social cohesion survey in 2015 found that 86% of Australians believe that multiculturalism is good for the country - a level that has been consistent the past three years.

None of this should be taken to mean that racism is not a problem. Unfortunately, it still is.

Dr. Soutphommasane goes on at length to talk about representation in the media and the problems caused by a perfectly reasonable suspicion of Islam.

As he focuses on relative minutiae, he misses that the very concept of diversity quotas or the granting of special privilege to religious groups is anathema to a free society. Despite all the evidence that Australians are hugely non-racist, he sees his role -as many other left-wing academics do- to stamp out racism, among white people in particular. As bigots will always exist, one cannot make such an impossible quest happen without resorting to tyranny.

This is not to say bigotry for the sake of bigotry should be acceptable, but the path Australia has taken is no more effective at improving race relations than electing Barack Obama was in the United States, or the ascension of Sadiq Khan in London.

Representation is meaningless if you simply supply access to power to leftists because they call you a racist if you don't. It never works the way it is thought to do by anyone except- drum roll please- leftist ideologues.

Councillor Price, who we met at the top of the article, is completely correct. Invasion Day is an exercise in appeasement. If Australia Day is changed, it is a small victory for the leftists who move onto another topic, emboldened. If the calls are ignored, the leftists still win- they can come back next year and the year after. Forever. The ideological roots of this movement belong to Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot. These people, of many races and backgrounds, are part of a long march of their own- like a virus, the ideology of Communist thought crosses the generations, seducing the young with stories of noble rebellion against imperialist devils.

If Australia is to resolve the issue of Aboriginal identity, first the topic of Hard Left Neo-Marxism must be addressed. Without this resolution, the divisions in Australia will only grow deeper. As I have shown, Australia is not a racist country, by the admission of Aboriginal leaders and the Race Discrimination Commissioner. What it does have a problem with are hardcore ideologically motivated leftist radicals. That is the true invasion of Australia.

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nebsabroad-blog · 7 years ago

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From genocide to recovery (very long)

Our time in Kigali was spent mostly learning about the genocide. Kigali has the most incredible memorial museum supported by the Aegis Trust which is based at the UK Holocaust Centre. This museum tells the story of the genocide from its roots in Belgian Colonialism (where the terms “Hutu” and “Tutsi” went from descriptors of social class to almost completely artificial descriptors of ethnicity that divided the society, especially once all Rwandans had to carry ID cards stating whether they were Hutu, Tutsi or Twa) through to the tensions leading up to the genocide and then finally the outbreak of chaos in 1994. It was hard to get through the exhibition especially as some Rwandan members of a church group near us were breaking down and sobbing.

The museum, like everything in Rwanda, is really well thought through. In addition to the exhibition that tells the story in chronological order there are gardens, memorials and additional exhibitions that concisely inform about other genocides. However the one critique of the museum we had was that it did not go into great detail about Hutu on Hutu violence or the Hutu casualties of the war. This is a sensitive topic in Rwanda as Paul Kagame (the current president who also led the Tutsi revolt) maintains that no atrocities were carried out against the Hutu during his ascent to power, aside from those committed against the Hutu who were protecting Tutsis. His account is disputed by some historians who have stated that as his army made its way from the North of the country to Kigali, it also committed war crimes.

As well as the museum we also visited a couple churches South of the city where thousands of Tutsis died as they fled to these holy sites (and many like them across the country) thinking they would be safe, that they wouldn’t be slaughtered in a house of god. In the end these served to make the slaughtering easier as all the victims were penned in. As you enter these churches, you are overwhelmed by the smell of chemical preservatives used to maintain the clothes that are on display to show the sheer number of people who died there. It is important to remember that the weapons of the genocide were not bullets or other means to make the deaths quick but rather clubs, machetes and other blunt objectives. As I stood in these churches I imagined how completely terrified the people would have been as they witnessed their friends and family being brutally murdered in front of their eyes, knowing there was no escape from the frenzy of violence making its way towards them.

The other aspect of the genocide which is scarcely comprehensible is the speed in which it occurred. Close to a million deaths in 100 days. As a Rwandan pointed out to us, for this many murders to have occurred using the methods employed, more than a million people would have been involved either directly or indirectly. This is the point we found hard to grasp, the nationwide insanity that took over, the collective consciousness that made it acceptable for millions of normal people to either inform on their neighbours, former friends and even family members, or worse kill them themselves.

The similarities to the Holocaust are stark, there were three main ones we noticed. First, the Tutsis had previously been placed in power by Belgium who then reversed this decision and gave power to the Hutu. The Tutsis were then later blamed for everything wrong with the country, similar to the Jews who had made up much of the Wiemar republic. Two, the sophisticated use of propaganda in the lead up and during the genocide. The militias took over newspapers and radio stations and used these to call the Tutsis cockroaches, foreign parasites bleeding the country; they categorised them as foreigners to be exterminated. Perhaps the most perverse and effective tool was that, in a god-fearing country, they bastardised the bible, issuing warped missives and broadcasts in which they said that by giving up Tutsis you would be doing god’s work and purifying your country. It is worth pointing out that while many churchmen and women acted unbelievably bravely and saved or attempted to save their fellow Rwandans, there were also many examples of ministers and nuns working for the militia and condemning to death many Tutsis who sought refuge with them. The third similarity was how well planned the Genocide was. Militias were trained in the lead up to the outbreak, kill lists were drawn up and when the violence started moderate Hutu leaders and opposition members were systematically executed.

All this occurred in recent memory and yet the country is now thriving. It just doesn’t compute, especially as the country has very few natural resources, no mines of diamond, gold or platinum, not even a coastline. What we really couldn’t understand was how Rwandans were living day to day in the knowledge of what their neighbour or colleague had done or worse what they themselves had done during the genocide. Throughout our whole time in Rwanda I couldn’t help but look at anyone over the age of 30 and wonder what had been their experience over the 100 days - had they been a perpetrator, a victim, a bystander?

We were lucky to have an incredible evening with some very well educated young Rwandans who had lived through the Genocide and who happened to just be having a drink at our hostel. We had an amazing evening with them, over the course of which they explained how Rwanda is reconciling and building.

They told us that reconciliation is still ongoing in the country. While the international criminal court and local courts had tried and convicted a number of leading militia and government leaders (100,000 by 2000), the current government estimated it would take a 100 years to try all those accused. Not to mention it would be impossible to humanely imprison all those guilty. Instead the government instigated Gacaca which is community based justice and reconciliation. To date, through the Gacaca system, 1.2 million cases have been tried. While the system has its critics, it has seemingly been key to bringing justice and peace to many. They told us one story of a middle class Tutsi woman whose houseboy had murdered her husband and son. He had admitted his crimes and pleaded for forgiveness then, amazingly and however unlikely, she had given him his old job back and they were living together again. The guy who was telling us this said he didn’t understand this level of forgiveness. Despite how it appeared to us (with people going about their lives), the genocide was still very fresh in everyone’s mind and, of course, tensions still exist.

On how Rwanda is developing so fast, they spoke in reverence for Paul Kagame. They said that if they ever take a 2-week holiday they come back to find a new building has been built or a new road paved. In this way Rwanda is like Singapore, everything is planned and executed with maximum efficiency. There are no extensive public consultations on each project, instead progress is relentlessly and ruthlessly pursued. It made me think of the UK and the number of consultations on Heathrow expansion or HS2 or any of the energy projects I’ve worked on where any minuscule change can take two years to push through. They said that Kagame does not suffer fools or accept non-delivery. If a minister fails, they are replaced the next day, it is as simple as that. A good example is that they decided to change the official language from French to English in a single cabinet meeting. They came out that meeting and that was it, the curriculum was changed (much to the chagrin of the teachers no doubt) and road signs were changed.

We tentatively asked about the criticisms of Kagame we had heard. That there is no opposition, that critics of Kagame have disappeared, that freedom of speech is relentlessly quashed. At this point the conversation took an awkward turn. They were very defensive and said that the Genocide is so recent that it still clouds everything meaning you have to look at who is criticising Kagame and you will find that they are in some way implicated in the Genocide. We did not have the facts to refute this but we have since learnt that this is very likely to be big generalisation. They were very critical of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, the BBC, the Guardian or any organisation that spoke out against Kagame. Ariel spoke in defence of these and argued well but we both felt we had to back off.

Ultimately they felt that some freedoms and certain human rights were worth sacrificing for the sake of progress. They asked us to give Rwanda more time, say 20 years so that it would be another generation removed from the Genocide, then it might be time to introduce these rights. I couldn’t help but think that once removed these rights are very difficult to reintroduce, again as proven by Singapore.

At the end of our time in Rwanda we both felt conflicted by the place. On the one hand we have huge admiration and a sense of awe at where the country is and where it is clearly going? But what price is right to pay for such fast progress? What is the legacy of Kagame who has achieved so much since taking power but at what cost to Rwanda’s civil society?

We will watch and try learn with great interest.

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