#real life consequences that could impoverish the population more

[arrozaurus]

i am looking into refseek and turns out YEAH a major factor in climate change is how the urban form is laid out wow! this has consequences in the way i conceptualize the world

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: this post is part of the Recommended Reading series here on Can’t You Read; an ongoing and evolving feature that combines an easy to swipe info-graphic, a short journal, and a link to an important related discussion I’d like to share with readers.

A Culture of Predation Can’t Stop Fascist Pig Violence

In the wake of the frankly surprising (but extremely welcome) guilty verdicts in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, I’ve tried very hard to reign in my cynicism. After all, the conviction of a cop for murder “in the line of duty,” let alone a white cop who murdered an African American man with an impoverished background, is about as common as a goddamn unicorn fart, and on that account alone the verdict is worth commemorating, if not necessarily celebrating. 

While it would be unspeakably obtuse to suggest that the verdict represented some sort of positive justice, it’s also undeniable that many feel this moment may indeed be a starting point; a chance to at least begin to imagine what a positive justice for African Americans might look like. In particular numerous observers have pointed to the very public crumbling of the proverbial “blue wall” of silence, the fact that Chauvin’s fellow police officers passionately testified against him with the whole world watching, as a positive omen for the future of police reform.

Unfortunately I (and many other observers) have doubts about this position. I don’t mean to be a downer, but the truth is that nobody, not even immunized murderpigs and their commanders, can justify the horrifying video of Chauvin mindlessly executing George Floyd over the course of nine and a half minutes. Faced with the choice of openly embracing their own “little Eichmanns” in front of an outraged public, the Blue Meanies decided that ultimately it wasn’t worth protecting a fuck up like Derek Chauvin. The cost, both to his fellow thug cops, and the profession of policing as a whole, would simply have been too damn high to justify the reward. 

The sad and horrifying truth here is that if Derek Chauvin had simply shot George Floyd, instead of casually kneeling on his neck for almost ten minutes, he’d probably be a free man today; just like so many cracker murderpigs before him. Furthermore, even this smallest of concessions probably wouldn’t have happened without months of nationwide protests conducted under a state of constant assault by violent, openly rioting police officers. That last reality is certainly not lost on fascists and neoliberal authoritarians; why else do you think reactionary lawmakers are rushing to pass legislation that criminalizes mass protest against racialized police violence? 

Still, you can’t blame folks for hoping; hope can be a good thing if it gives you the strength and courage to continue a seemingly impossible fight for actual justice. Perhaps some long day from now we will look back on this moment and say “and the conviction of Derek Chauvin was the point when the wave ultimately broke, and the tide of cracker police violence finally rolled back” - even if it’s clear that these convictions, by themselves, do not have the power to enact the change we so desperately need. 

Where I can and will find fault however, is with those deluded and disingenuous souls who have used this moment to once again champion the doomed cause of police reform; blithely ignorant or willfully oblivious to the fact that police reforms already failed to prevent the murder of George Floyd, and so many others like him. The bald truth is that the current establishment movement towards police reform is about maintaining the power and funding of the very same violent uniformed thugs who’re murdering poor people on behalf of the capitalist state in the first place; that’s why nobody is talking about removing qualified immunity for police officers, and that’s why even some cops themselves are coming around to the idea of reform at this late a date. In many ways, the real importance of the movement to “Defund the Police” is that the mere threat of taking away the sweet filthy ducats that pay murderpig salaries has already shifted the carceral establishment’s position towards bargaining; albeit, in bad faith.

The road to neofeudalist hell is paved with dark intentions however, and what establishment reformers, even and perhaps especially those who’re prepared to acknowledge the fundamentally racialized aspects of police violence, aren’t prepared to discuss in the open is the nature and purpose of policing itself in a capitalist society. There is no public examination of why it is that we keep hiring folks who turn out to be violent white supremacists to be police; and there certainly will be no discussion about the ways class relationships intersect with race through the designed function of racialized policing.

Despite the pro-police propaganda you’ve been fed all your life to suggest otherwise, the vast majority of what police actually do in America is to protect the wealth, property, and feelings of affluent white people and the corporations they own. Far from solving major crimes and preventing violence, modern policing in the Pig Empire revolves around nuisance violations, so-called broken windows policing, and other methods of harassing poor people for minor infractions of the law; remember, the police encounter that lead to the murder of George Floyd started over the purchase of cigarettes and a dodgy twenty dollar bill. The reason murderpigs can get away with violently assaulting protestors and journalists who threaten the established order is because that is precisely what they’re being paid to do, and indeed what their predecessors before them have always been paid to do.

On the surface, this class and capitalism analysis may appear to create a tension with the narrative that white supremacy and racism are also driving the crisis of police violence, but that’s really just about the same old establishment spin. As I’ve discussed in numerous prior essays, you simply cannot separate capitalism from white supremacy, or even racism, because bigoted ideas are propagated and spread for the specific purpose of marking out certain marginalized groups for exploitation and highly-lucrative (for some) repression.

Do you want to know what systemic racism in policing really looks like? It looks like hiring murderpigs to repress the poor, knowing full well that due to centuries of slavery and exploitation, the nonwhite and particularly African American population will be vastly overrepresented in the targeted communities. It looks like a supposedly colorblind war on drugs, the ongoing use of demonstratively racist stop and frisk practices, and expanded powers for your community’s “gang squad” in pretty much any neighborhood that just happens to be predominantly Black. It looks like literally profiting from these practices in ways that are sometimes extremely brazen and obvious, but sometimes hidden from everyday sight; even if they’re hardly much of a secret. The fact that the police are ultimately enforcers for the capitalist ruling class, also makes them enforcers of the white supremacist order that capitalism is so dependent upon in our society; there is no contradiction involved here.

Look; you don’t get rid of fascist murderpigs and white supremacists in law enforcement by throwing more money at nazi cops. Joe Biden can summon up all the pretty words he likes, but you can’t address the racialized nature of police violence without fundamentally altering either the racialized nature of inequality in American life, or the very purpose of policing in our society; and he’s sure as shit not talking about doing any of that at all. Thus, no matter how surprised and hopeful I am after the Chauvin guilty verdicts, that sense of positivity is ultimately tempered by the realization that “nothing will fundamentally change” - and that includes cracker thug pigs executing unarmed Black men on camera.

Although they might finally be better than openly fascist Republicans, the Democrats still don’t have answers to the problem of racialized police violence because ultimately, they don’t have answers to the crisis of capitalism itself. It’s not a question of reform or changing the law; murder is already illegal, even if you’re a white cop. Inequality, and the security force violence necessary to maintain it, is a festering sore inside the American body politic, and there are indeed consequences for essentially ignoring a crisis now so obvious and enraging to the public at large. 

What kind of consequences? Well, let’s ask researcher and professor Temitope Oriola who provides one terrifying answer in the public journal, The Conversation:

“The United States is at Risk of an Armed Anti-Police Insurgency“ by  Temitope Oriola

Or, you know, we could just abolish the murderpigs first; your call really - but don’t expect Palooka Joe to be much help, either way.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[themattress]

The Flag Smashers: What Could Have Been

Going over every available online resource, this is what I have gathered about the Flag Smashers storyline from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and how real life screwed it over.

ORIGINAL PLOT: A virus broke out during the 5 year "Blip" period. Vaccines were once easily distributed to all, but ever since the population killed off by Thanos was restored, the world's governments reasserted control over their country borders and vaccine distribution across them, with the GRC deliberately keeping it from impoverished communities in order to get the newly re-increased global population "back under control". The Flag Smashers go around stealing vaccines to distribute to the poor and downtrodden.

Donya Madani, founder of the Flag Smashers, was a test subject for HYDRA as they attempted to recreate the Super Soldier serum and it left her with a weak immune system, so naturally she contracts the virus. Karli Morgenthau tries to get Dr. Nagel, who has developed a new version of the Super Soldier serum, to help Madani, but he refused ("not my pig, not my farm", as he so eloquently put it). The Power Broker, who is funding the Flag Smashers and Dr. Nagel's research, allows Karli to steal his vials of serum and turn the Flag Smashers into Super Soldiers. What Karli doesn't know is that Nagel's version of the serum is different and, as a consequence of not altering its host's physical appearance, will increase the aggression within its host to the point where all morality and sound judgement becomes clouded. Both Karli and John Walker (who injects himself with Nagel's serum), both naturally aggressive people, thus go off the deep end due to their heightened aggression. 

When Sam, Bucky and Zemo encounter Sharon (aka the Power Broker) in Madripoor, she realizes that working together with them can secure her a pardon from the US government, and thus she turns on Karli and the Flag Smashers just as she turned on Dr. Nagel and will also turn on Batroc - after having been so shamefully betrayed by the US government and the Avengers, Sharon no longer believes in loyalty, only in self-interest.  

Sam relates to Karli (his situation and hers are similar, with clear parallels drawn between Isaiah Bradley and Donya Madani) and tries to save her from herself as the serum takes its toll on her, but Sharon kills her in order to conceal her identity as the Power Broker, which Karli knows since Sharon is the one who taught her how to fight. Sam takes the GRC to task for creating the situation that spawned the Flag Smashers, and rightfully so.

REWRITTEN PLOT: The Flag Smashers are terrorists who go against the GRC because something something "life was better during the Blip" and "no more borders".

Donya Madani, founder of the Flag Smashers, falls ill with tuberculosis. Karli Morgenthau - for some reason - tries to get Dr. Nagel, who has developed a new version of the Super Soldier serum, to help Madani, but he refused (as he should; he's a scientist, not a medical doctor). Karli steals his vials of serum and turns the Flag Smashers into Super Soldiers, but the Power Broker who funded both the Flag Smashers and Dr. Nagel's research is unhappy about this and threatens Karli with violent, fatal retaliation. The affects of Nagel's version of the serum aren't talked about beyond him saying that his version is "subtle and optimized".

Despite it being repeated over and over again that the Power Broker is pissed off about Nagel's serum doses being stolen by Karli and that the serum is considered very important to the Power Broker, Sharon (aka the Power Broker) works together with Sam, Bucky and Zemo when they run into her in Madripoor, doing things that run completely counter to stated desires of the Power Broker, a plot hole that has been called out even to the showrunner.

Sam relates to Karli (for...reasons, I guess) and tries to save her from herself even though it seems like she's just become incredibly evil and ruthless of her own volition, but Sharon kills her in order to conceal her identity as the Power Broker, which Karli knows since Sharon is the one who taught her how to fight. Sam takes the GRC to task for creating the situation that spawned the Flag Smashers, even though we have no evidence of malice on the GRC's part and the Flag Smashers just seem to be loony terrorists with unclear motivations and goals.

In conclusion, if you’re frustrated about how Karli and the Flag Smashers are treated as sympathetic by the narrative even when they don’t seem to be, how the nature of the conflict between the Flag Smashers and the GRC is really unclear, how Sam’s speech casting blame on the GRC for the Flag Smashers’ actions doesn’t track with what we saw, how Sharon actively worked against what the Power Broker’s interests supposedly were, and how Donya Madani was wasted as a character despite being played by a renowned Mexican actress, then blame COVID-19. This show would have had a much more coherent story without it.

[keneerike]

Floyd, Chauvin, and Race in America: Where Do We Go from Here?

[My audio commentary here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-31492767/floyd-chauvin-race-relations-where-do-we-go-from-here-jttg-may-2021]

This article employs race relations as the backdrop for tackling some universal challenges we all face.

It's less about politics than it is about exploring two skills that serve well in all walks:

1) A knack for asking the right questions. 

2) The ability to get others aligned with your way of thinking.

Through that prism, it's an intriguing read for anyone.

I've fielded some questions about the Floyd/Chauvin case, now that the verdict has been handed down:

Where do we go from here? What are some of the implications surrounding race relations, public and personal accountability, and activism?

A few thoughts:

1) There are (visible) cracks in the Blue Wall.

John 3:20: "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light."

Exposure to natural light dries up the conditions that allow bacteria to flourish.

Ditto for bad actors.

Public pressure, however misguided, is leading to important questions that are holding municipal departments accountable. It's increasingly-difficult for police unions to sweep criminal malfeasance under the rug.

You'd like to see the public do more of this in other arenas, like public and private education, but independent, critical thinking is seldom found in the middle of a herd.

2) Will More Conversations About Race Lead to (Significant) Change?

Doubtful.

Setting aside the question of what the specific goal is for some of these movements, how often does "talk" actually lead to change?

Intentional, thoughtful action is what gets things done.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement will struggle to produce meaningful, positive change for reasons I've outlined in the past:

Two problems facing the protest community:

1) Inability to Create Change

2) Sullied Reputation: “Protesters are Thugs.”

“They only have one question: What’s in it for them?

Why should they invest the time and effort to help you, beyond offering empty gestures and lip service? It could be an emotional reason or a financial one. 

It could be to create tranquility inside their own minds. You have to give people a reason to get off the sidelines. 

Article: Freddie Gray, Dirty Cops, & The Problem With (Peaceful) Protests

As we've seen with many would-be revolutionaries of the past, how the spoils of early victories are divided reveals much about BLM's long-term viability. Integrity of leadership is one of the canaries in the coal mine for spotting movements that can stand the test of time. Unchecked spending from BLM organizers has brought increased scrutiny over how donations are being managed.

BLM leadership putting winning Monopoly strategy to good use.

Most campaigns sputter because they ignore one---or more---of the following tenets:

Three Steps to Producing Effective Community Organizing Campaigns:

1) Provide clear information on the problem, including reasons why people need to join the cause. Use incentives.

2) Present specific actions for participation that further the cause, including easy access to donation links and support for policies that actually move political and economic levers.

3) Routinely examine strategy and tactics, assessing how much progress has been made and whether the current course of action is appropriate for the scope of the problem. Adjust accordingly.

Article: Slacktivism: The Problem With Social Media Movements

Shaming people, especially when your own hands aren't clean, isn't going to get anything beyond nominal concessions. 

Most of the old boy network---or, "The Man", to put it more humorously---knows this. That's why they can get on board most any cause, with little fear of any real loss. They know standards for change agents worth supporting have plummeted, so companies are happy to capitalize, picking up market share and goodwill in exchange for token displays of support.

The biggest sports leagues in the world have gotten in on the act, hopping onto the protest bandwagon that first picked up steam a few years ago. A few commercials and planned anthem demonstrations are hollow gestures that will ultimately do nothing to help minority communities advance.

(Although the dollars that have been pledged to aid communities could do some good---if used properly.)

3) How do we avoid being killed by the police? 

Stay out of the line of fire.

Looking for a "safe" stance on police-related incidents that won't get you “cancelled”?

Me neither. :)

But hey, this site doesn't shy away from controversy.

If you live in an impoverished community, you're more likely to have interactions with the police. When they're not setting up speed traps to meet monthly quotas, they're patrolling high-crime areas where illegal activity is fiercest.

The cops have mandates to hit areas where their efforts can register the biggest impact. Those tend to be areas with higher concentrations of minorities.

You're much more likely to be hassled by police in East St. Louis than you are in East Hampton.

Although ongoing calls for change may lead to negative unintended consequences for those inner-city zones.

You can only campaign for reduced police presence so long before politicians start to listen. People respond to incentives: Shifts in policy come when jobs get threatened. Pushes to defund the police---an ill-conceived response to relatively-rare high-profile incidents---will lead to an increase in crime. Remove deterrents to crime---police presence, policies that punish quality-of-life infractions---and you'll see anti-social behavior spike.

But if you're paying attention, you already knew that.

That's something to think about in the most vulnerable communities, where per capita income leaves residents least capable of defending themselves when the wolves are at the door.

City life without cops.

So, how do we avoid fatal encounters with the police?

What’s the lesson here?

The onus is on the public to recognize that the police are human, subject to the same fears and frailties that we are. You’ve got to minimize your exposure to danger as much as you can.

Article: What We Learned from Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Ferguson 

Do not resist arrest.

You may have been profiled or detained unlawfully---fair enough. If you're still alive, you will have a chance to fight your case later.

We've got a lot of agency, ability to influence the world around us.

It's up to you whether your run-in with the cops ends in a conversation, a citation, or a trip to the hospital.  

And, unfortunately, nowadays one has to define what "resisting arrest" means:

Yelling at the police, attempting to wriggle out of handcuffs, running away, brandishing a knife---these are no-nos that could get you killed.

This is common sense and goes without saying among older generations. They understand you can be respectful without being obsequious. 

But in a society where subtle messaging and normative cues are fed to individuals less-practiced in critical thinking, population manipulation is easier to achieve. 

Be careful whom you accept marching orders from. 

The media has no stake in your individual well-being, so they'll tell you whatever they think will get you agitated and ready to do what they want you to do: 

Support the right interests and buy products and services.

Emotional thinkers make great consumers.

I love feedback, so do share your thoughts.

[lukeyhughes]

so the other day i reblogged a post and vagued about my issues with gk’s framing of iraqi tragedies in the tags, which was then replied to and that reply was circulated. while the reply was awesome/insightful/interesting i feel like my original point sorta got lost in the shuffle. i wasnt going to make a post about this for a bit but i feel like its been consuming my thoughts all day so i’ll elaborate what i meant under the cut! 

gen kill is david simon show, so like all david simon shows the thesis is “people exist in inside of a broken system.” in this case, the broken system is the marine corps chain of command and the people are the marines who have to carry out senseless orders. this is shown in many ways, including pointless dangerous missions (see: the bridge, danger close, etc.), how capable enlisted men are vs. most officers, how the “only good officer” nate is punished for rational choices, and how the marines have their spirits crushed because they are forced to senselessly kill iraqi civilians.

when i was in first year of undergrad i took an african studies class that in one seminar problematicized coverage of the Rwandan Genocide: how many times have you heard/read a Romeo Dallaire interview/account? how many times have you read/heard an interview from a genocide survivor? how many times have you seen pictures of bodies/skulls of genocide victims? the answer for the average person is a lot, hardly ever, a lot. with the iraq invasion, the questions would be: how many times have you heard the accounts of coalition soldiers about the iraq war across media types? how many times have you heard accounts of it from the iraqi civilian perspective? how many times have you seen statistics regarding the amount of iraqi civilian casualties? a lot, hardly ever, a lot.

that is all to say that in western media/society we are very comfortable listening to white narratives and just seeing brown bodies, which translates into only hearing white narratives of the tragedies of the deaths of others in foreign countries. in generation kill, iraqi civilian casualties/fatalities/tragedies are framed so that we feel sympathy for the marines that caused them as opposed to those suffering. that is not to say that we as the audience do not feel sympathy (i certainly do!) but it is because of our own internal empathy, not the narrative framing of the show.

let’s take a look at three of the biggest cases of iraqi civilian tragedy and how they’re framed in the show:

first, when rudy goes up to the roadblock and sees the dead little girl in episode 4. we get quite a few shots of the father’s shell-shocked face, but just as many are shots of rudy’s horror/sadness; we watch him walk away from behind from rudy’s perspective and we see that rudy is unable to look away from them. rudy didn’t actually have anything to do with it (aside from abetting i suppose), but even when he gets back to camp the show makes sure to illustrate how affected by it he is, ignoring brad and ray who call out to him. this one is actually surprisingly gk’s best example of eliciting sympathy for iraqi casualties; however, the focus of the scene is still on rudy and the father’s reaction is still mostly used to contribute to rudy’s guilt/horror.

the next scene is the little shepherd boys who were shot by trombley while out with their camels. we see the mom crying over her son, but its basically background noise and is if anything used to further the marines’ (particularly brad and doc bryan to a lesser extent) guilt at causing the situation. we know this because her actions don’t exist independently: they are used for the marines to react to. we also get considerably more shots of marines looking on in horror than her crying about her son. brad’s guilt/sadness about the subject is dwelled on for about twenty minutes over the next two episodes, longer than any of the actual victims’ screen-time dedicated to their feelings combined.

the worst scene is the man in the white car, which sets off the main drama for the next episode. we get why walt did it- the show goes out of its way to make sure that we do- but at the end of the day a man is still dead, likely for no reason. in the aftermath we get about a hundred heartbreaking shots of walt’s shocked face, with a few of brad thrown in as well. on the other hand, we get no shots of the people in the car being horrified at seeing someone they know lobotomized. we just see them run away, no sadness no horror no nothing: from the show’s narrative perspective, this man’s death has no impact on anybody except for walt and the other marines. to make matters worse the man’s face is only shown when the marines notice how horrifyingly disfigured his body is; to me this is robbing the real man of his dignity even in death. 

let’s take a step back and look at gen kill’s general portrayal of iraqis. we don’t really get to see the marines interact with civilians until they reach baghdad when they go into rundown neighbourhoods. here, the iraqi men are portrayed as greedy and dumb, cutting in front of children and not understanding that there are other types of government. that’s not to say that that didn’t happen in real life- i’m sure it did- but it’s essentially the ONLY view of iraq civilians we get: ignorant, greedy, backwards, etc. deadass the only sympathetic iraqi characters in episode 7 are children, where we get a couple of UNICEF-esque shots of doc bryan holding crying kids to drive home that guilt factor. i bring this up because it means that the iraqi characters are not written so that you feel bad for them or empathize with their terrible situation. instead, the narrative wants you to empathize with the marines (in this case, particularly nate) who feel guilty for causing this chaos that they can’t do anything to fix it. 

the only other time iraqi civilians even have lines is when a refugee women tells brad about how he is destroying her home, but even then the point of that isn’t really her pain but how brad feels guilty/ashamed about what the usmc (an institution that is part of identity more than anyone else) is doing that; also she’s attacking brad who really had nothing to do with the baghdad situation and already feels guilty about other things, so its just creating more material for brad’s identity/guilt crisis and our sympathies for it.

all of this to say is that in basically every single case civilian tragedies don’t exist in the narrative on their own: they are used for the marine main characters to react to: the village. the truck crew. the men at the roadside. even the syrian student.

also @sunnygreys replied to some tags i made alluding to this issue. you should read what they wrote bc it’s a really interesting counterweight to what i’m saying and offers a different perspective. but anyway basically they mention certain lines where people are like “no ones forcing us to be here.” particularly notable was when godfather says that no one is forced to be here because they’re all volunteers in episode 3. my view of this has always been that saying that is ignorance on his part and another symptom of the broken command system. godfather chose to be career military,  he chose to accept the mission, he chose to change the ROE, etc: there was no gun to his head. for the enlisted men, the ones on the bottom who actually carried out the mission that injured the boys, they are pretty much being forced to be there by their circumstances. out of all the marines we interact with in the series, im pretty sure brad is the only enlisted man who comes from wealth and by extension had other options, while most others either implicitly or explicitly grew up in impoverished/unstable households: poverty is the new draft. thats sorta between the lines, but i imagine david simon knows that because of his previous work on poverty. what isnt between the lines is that the command system DOES force men in lower ranks to “be there” and carry out order: they can get NJPed for disobeying, they sign contracts that they’ll be dishonourably discharged and lose their benefits if they break, etc. there’s no gun to their head physically but metaphorically its pretty close. to me at least, those lines are not narratively placed to make us sympathize less with the marine main characters but instead to make us sympathize with them even more, because it shows how disconnected command really is. david simon is a huge dick irl but he’s a really clever writer.

again, i reiterate that we as the audience likely feel sympathy for the iraqi population because for most people its naturally sad when people die/get injured/etc. i think a lot of points i made and ones made by @sunnygreys can be mutually true, but the main difference being that i really don’t believe that gk’s intention was to make us step back and reflect on our sympathy with the “oppressors:” i really do think that’s who the show intends for us to sympathize with most based on their choices in camera shots, who says what, etc. that doesn’t mean we can’t step back and reflect, as i hope many of us have, i just think that was an unintended consequence. (if i’m misconstruing what you said please lmk and ill edit!)

that being said, can’t think of a way that generation kill could have done better in this regard based on the book/characters it had. the marines ARE the main characters and by conventional standards its their narrative/feelings/growth that matters. but just because there may have been no other way doesn’t make it unproblematic. its another example of western media using violence against nameless, distant foreigners for their own horror. 

there are people wandering this earth who are dealing with the loss of the man in the white car, the little girl at the roadblock, an entire village. those little boys, if they’re still alive, probably have to deal with the severe injuries they got when they were shot by marines. those slums of baghdad may still be in unstable today and have likely lost community members due to sanitation/hunger/violence. imagine knowing that there is a show out there where you or your loved ones are being used as a plot device to make viewers feel sympathy for the ones who put you in those positions. i sympathize deeply with the marines of GK, but i can imagine how hard it would be to be in the iraqi population’s place watching yourself and your experiences interpreted in a way dissociated from your own suffering so that the primary victimhood can be placed on the ones who did it to you. 

in conclusion, i love gen kill a lot. i love the story and the characters, and i think its an effective story in terms of achieving what it seeks to achieve. i think it’s okay to love something and be critical of it. also if western media companies weren’t cowards and weren’t scared of losing american military financial contributions they would make a miniseries about the iraqi people who were terrorized by american invaders, including the ones we love in gk!

[felipeandletizia]

May 8, 2020: Queen Letizia held a videoconference with the Spanish Federation of Brain Injury (FEDACE). The heads of the Spanish Federation of Brain Injury (FEDACE) today stressed to Doña Letizia the importance of starting rehabilitation activities as soon as possible so as not to continue with the loss of abilities and setbacks in the quality of life of people in need this resource. As they have explained, assistance to therapeutic day care centers fulfills two fundamental functions, on the one hand, working to improve and maintain people's capacities and, on the other hand, freeing families, caregivers, mainly women , in order that they can continue with their habitual life, in the labor, social, or any other field.

In the videoconference with Her Majesty the Queen, the President of the Spanish Federation of Brain Injury (FEDACE), Luciano Fernández Pintor, also President of the Galician Federation of Brain Injury (FEGADACE); the Vice President of FEDACE AND President of the Association of Brain Damage Coming from Castilla - La Mancha (ADACE CLM), Ana Cabellos Cano, Director of the Tutelary Foundation for Brain Damage of Castilla - La Mancha (FUNDACE CLM); and the managing director of FEDACE, Mar Barbero Lázaro, member of the National Council on Disability as an expert on the Third Sector, Disability and Employment.

FEDACE represents and energizes the Associative Movement of people with Brain Injury and their families, which brings together more than 40 territorial entities and brings together around 11,000 members. The mission of the organization is to raise awareness in society and the Administration on the importance of creating a network of social health resources and services in accordance with the number of people suffering from this brain injury and with the severity and variety of its sequelae. In the videoconference, the heads of this Federation have told him that in recent weeks "everything has taken a spectacular turnaround" since, for example, as a consequence of the confinement, all the 43 member entities of the Spanish Federation of Brain Injury (FEDACE ) have centers closed (with the exception of residences) with most of their employees teleworking; in addition, the vast majority have applied for ERTEs.

Attention to users with Brain Injury has not been possible in person and attention has been given and tele rehabilitation from computer applications in different ways: telephone monitoring especially for those who are alone, leisure activities through WhatsApp , enabling platforms to upload videos and documents with activities and exercises that users can do at home, although this proposal has led to many difficulties, since many users, as well as their family caregivers, are not adapted to new technologies and , in quite a few cases, they are lacking the necessary computer equipment (computer, wifi ...).

Likewise, a notable decrease in family calls from the hospital for cases of strokes or traumatic brain injuries -main causes of brain damage- is being appreciated, which is probably due to the fear of approaching medical centers due to the possibility of contagion. We are afraid that people have been left unattended, mainly because they have not gone to health centers. Remarkable and worrying is also the fact that, due to the need for beds, people are being sent to their homes before the end of the usual period of rehabilitation after a stroke, head trauma, brain tumor or other causes that cause Brain Damage. The loss of rehabilitation in this phase will definitely mark the recovery of people.

In the scenario of the gradual return to activities, according to those responsible for FEDACE, they warned that dysfunctions may occur is in the field of therapeutic day care centers and in the field of rehabilitation, as day centers are covered by a series of ratios both in terms of personnel and space that, at the moment, collide with what has been called social distance. On the other hand, we are talking about users with multiple pathologies and with severe degrees of dependency and disability.

This situation will also affect in a very important way the transport of people with brain damage, since, if now the volume of the chairs and the multiple pathologies of people already had a negative influence on the occupation of the media, now it will influence much more, which will imply a notable increase in the cost of the service.

Currently, the member entities of FEDACE are very concerned about their economic situation since today most of the subsidies are stopped, and even some private funders may reduce or cancel their contributions to carry out projects in favor of the people with brain damage or their families. In addition, it is very possible that this crisis affects the families of people with brain damage, with a probable family impoverishment, at an economic level.

This will also have an impact on women, who, as we have analyzed, are the ones most frequently assigned voluntarily or involuntarily as caregivers, further distancing them from the possibility of joining or rejoining the labor market.

Looking ahead, they have detailed to S.M. the Queen who will work in three fundamental directions: care for a population at greater risk than most citizens, with a series of clinical and dependency derivatives that make them much more vulnerable and that during the time the current situation has lasted Due to the lack of adequate continuity in rehabilitation, they have suffered a significant decline in their motor and cognitive state, among others; secondly, the maintenance of employment and the continuity of the entities, situations that are totally linked, with the necessary supply of protection equipment and the rest of the necessary security measures, creating, on a mandatory basis, levels of stock of materials fundamental, at least in two levels, a level 1, in the entity, for a week and a level 2, in the field of regional administration, for two weeks (21 days assured supply) and, thirdly, in the indirect administrative sphere, following the same rules as other administrations, with telework, the maintenance of security measures and the recommended distance.

The heads of the Federation indicated that where the real difficulty arises and involves a real problem is the recovery of health care and rehabilitation services, as well as the mobility of people to make these services effective.

The scope of the rehabilitation should be considered as any other clinical activity and until the full de-escalation is reached, the previous appointment should be implemented to maintain the highest levels of safety. To start the activity, the following precautions should be taken, such as carrying out the necessary tests on all personnel who provide services in the entity, such as risk personnel, as well as all persons who will use the services; guarantee the availability of hygiene and individual protection measures in centers, masks, gloves and hydrogels, as well as implement the use of electronic dispensers; restrict, as far as possible, risk activities outside the centers; increase the spatial ratio as much as possible, with activities in more open spaces or take turns providing the service to reduce the number of people present.

Regarding transportation to and from day centers, they also recalled that the multiple pathology of people with ACD makes most of them need wheelchairs that are more bulky than average to meet their needs. This implies that the occupation of space in transport vehicles is greater than the average. If we add to this the proposal / recommendation of the development authorities, it leads us to think that in an adapted 9-seater vehicle, only three chairs could go, which means a brutal increase in the cost of the service, an increase that must be paid for or families or by entities. All these measures will mean, until the normal situation is reached, a considerable increase in operating cost.

For all the above, the Spanish Federation of Brain Injury (FEDACE) proposes 12 measures and 12 challenges, from now until September, before COVID-19 to prevent situations of social injustice and socio-sanitary complications in the probable period of application.

[killthebxy]

          for our beautiful planet Earth, everything changed in the year 2097 --- the year an unexpected and completely unpredictable cataclysm struck: a hypernova explosion [click], when a (at the date) unidentified massive star collapsed into itself. although far enough from Earth to, in theory, provoke no consequences, the monstrous black hole that resulted from this event resulted itself, in turn, in a gravitational pull so strong that it affected the magnetic field of our sun. in a catastrophic chain of events, including successive solar flares [click] and the Earth’s own magnetic field being also affected, all of this culminated in an impoverished atmosphere and consequent levels of radiation that would not support life in the planet for much longer. having no other solution, then, and making use of the best technology available, around 0.01% of the global population departed Earth never to return, in search of a new, Earth-like planet to colonize.

          the route was soon set towards the constellation Aquarius, and, more concretely, a red dwarf star named 2MASS J23062928-0502285 and more commonly known as TRAPPIST-1 [click]. in the early decades of 2000, the discovery of this star and the exoplanets that orbited it had made headlines around the world --- precisely, because some of them might harbor living conditions similar to those of Earth. after a journey that spanned a generation and lasted for 40 years at the speed of light, the remaining earthlings arrived at planet 2MASS J23062928-0502285 e, also known as TRAPPIST-1e [click] --- a planet similar to our fallen Earth in mass, radius, density, gravity, temperature, and stellar flux, as well as graced with a compact, hydrogen-free atmosphere and a solid, rocky surface. although tidally locked [click], and bearing temperatures much colder than what most of the human race was used to (ranging between  −48 °C/ −55 °F and −27.1 °C/ −16.7 °F), the portions of land by the planet’s equator proved hospitable enough --- and, thus, small settlements were established to eventually grow and spread from there.

          four more generations passed, and human life on TRAPPIST-1e became as normal as possible. the survivors of the original Earth, and of the space journey after it, ensured the passing of culture, habits, history, technology, and knowledge --- and the planet came to be known as Nova Earth, initially, and then as Theia. Theia [click] was a hypothesized ancient planet in the early Solar System, about the size of Mars, which might have collided with the early Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, leading then to the formation of the early Moon. to the now nova-terrestrials, or Theians, it seemed like a suitable tribute to their beloved home planet’s little sister. 

          for a few centuries, humans endured and rebuilt as much as they could of their former glory, attaining levels of progress and prosperity never before seen in their ancient home: the processes of nuclear fusion and fission were perfected and made safe to use, though now utilized for the sake of advancing technology and medicine rather than to promote wars; the force of gravity was truly understood and became controllable, able to be easily augmented or reduced according to the respective objective; string theory [click] was researched and developed to full maturity, which allowed for a much deeper understanding of quantization [click] and, in turn, of the dimensions of time-space. 

          eventually, and by means of artificial selection [click], the human genetic code itself began being modified and experimented with --- resulting in the birth of Theians who were stronger, faster, more intelligent, and who could live longer compared to the original Earth humans. a select few, inclusively, were chosen to undergo extreme bioengineering [click], accompanied by intensive training of the psychic capacities. these Super Theians, therefore, were not only merged with highly advanced and intricate macro (for example, prosthetic body parts) and nano (for example, chips implemented in their brains) technology, effectively becoming cyborgs rather than simple humans, but also developed their spiritual energy, known as Ki [click], to the full potential --- for example, becoming able to fly on their own by focusing this Ki, or to materialize it into a usable form of energy such as heat or electricity. given their superior capacities, the Super Theians were unanimously elected as the most suitable rulers for every budding country, and continued this era of prosperity and development.

          nevertheless, in the year 300 (year 2437, in the Earth calendar), yet another tragedy awaited, when the inhabitants of planet 2MASS J23062928-0502285 h, also known as TRAPPIST-1h [click], invaded Theia --- whom, for all its technological advance, had yet not been able to detect other life forms in the rest of the TRAPPIST-1 system, and now risked to pay for it with its very existence. coming from a world somewhat similar but constantly plunged in glacial temperatures, these primitive creatures where mostly made of ice and compensated their lack of scientific arsenal with mysterious magical powers that allowed them to rise the fallen humans and convert them to mindless allies. and, having no need for food or heat or comfort, they quickly conquered Theia’s dark side that was always facing away from its star. for their unknown nature and characteristics, these beings became commonly referred to as the Others or the White Walkers, and the places taken by them came to be known as The Lands of Always Winter.

          under this ruthless and unexpected threat, despite their superior technology and weapons, the Theian civilization quickly became fragmented, with struggles for power and eventual civil conflicts amongst them starting to appear frequently --- which, obviously, only tilted the odds against them even further. a couple decades of terrible war against the Others (and between rival human factions) ensued, decimating the population and transforming the habitable zone of the planet into mostly ruins and frozen wastelands. one resistance group, however, endured where most others were failing, due to their spirit of gregariousness and the extended leadership of several Super Theians: the Night’s Watch, so named for their objective to end this terrible period known as The Long Night, and to bring the dawn back to Theia. whilst fighting to defend the remaining human cities, the soldiers of the Night’s Watch also invested in research as much as they could and as much as the crumbling civilization still allowed them to. through work developed by an exceptionally wise and intelligent man, Aemon Targaryen, they were eventually able to clear the inconsistencies underlying topics such as negative energy [click], exotic matter [click], the Casimir effect [click], and causality [click] violation --- thus, devising the way to create a traversable Einstein-Rosen bridge [click], or wormhole, and, in turn, to travel back in time. 

          having come to the grim conclusion that little else could be done to stop the Others, the new goal for survival then became to fix past mistakes --- and either prevent/properly prepare for the invasion, or altogether find a solution to save the original Earth from oblivion. charged with this heavy and ultimate burden, the current commander of the Night’s Watch was chosen to navigate the spaceship also engineered by Dr. Aemon --- built with dark matter [click] and the recently discovered element katchin [click], and containing the most advanced computer systems ever known to Earth and Theia alike --- and, accordingly, named Hope. Hope crossed the wormhole, then, without any major incidents... and arrived at Earth, in the year 2019, for the very final attempt at hope for the human race.

some assorted details in this verse:

Jon is a Super Theian and, as such, gifted with superhuman speed/ strength/ reflexes/ intellect;

he has a small 998 number tattooed at the back of his neck, which is the indicator of his Super Theian number (every Super Theian has their own number, it’s a sort of identity mark);

during one of the most intense battles against the Others, he lost his right arm and had surgery to have a prosthetic implanted instead --- this artificial limb functions exactly like a real flesh one and has its own bioengineered nervous system, and can be attached and detached at the port by his right shoulder;

Hope is equipped with everything technology that you can imagine, and can produce virtually anything --- including a highly advanced 3d printer able to create something as massive as a house, for example, and to compress it into a portable capsule to be used whenever needed;

Jon’s weapon of choice is Longclaw, a long sword he usually wears strapped to his back --- the blade is made of dark matter just like Hope and therefore invisible to both the naked eye and any form of human-known radiation, becoming visible only when Jon activates it by focusing his Ki;

for decades now, Theians have been using pills and supplements as their main source of nourishment, and real food as we know it stopped existing entirely after the Others invaded and changed the planet’s climate --- therefore, don’t be surprised if Jon doesn’t know how to eat something as simple as a banana, for example, because he’s never actually seen one in his life;

due to the advanced medical knowledge and materials/techniques, as well as the genome of Super Theians, Jon’s cell regeneration is much quicker and more efficient than a normal human’s and, despite the many battles he’s fought, his body is entirely clean of scars or marks --- the exception being the patch of skin surrounding his port where the artificial arm connects;

besides the artificial arm, he also has a few different chips implanted in his brain since birth (as is the rule with most, if not all, Super Theians) that contribute to his enhanced senses and skills --- one, in particular, is linked to his right eye and allows for it to function like a computer, being able to, for example, produce X-ray vision or to analyze the elements any material or object is made of;

a Super Theian’s weakness comes laced with their cyborg nature, namely the possibility of interfering with the bioengineered circuits and connections pretty much like one would hack a computer system --- it is not easy to do, especially with how intricate and ingenious Theian technology is, but it is certainly possible and, in Jon’s particular case, the weakest spot would be his right eye chip, given that it is directly connected to the central nervous system and able to jam its entire functioning.

one final note:

          this is a very flexible verse, that can easily accommodate any sort of crossover --- given that Hope can literally take Jon to any place in space and/or time. i purposefully left most roles vague, save for Aemon Targaryen (and even so this can easily be adapted), exactly so that this background can be usable by any muses. for example, your muse can be one of the invaders, instead of the Others, or they can be a Theian or Super Theian and travel along with Jon, or they can be a human that Jon encounters when arriving at Earth, or they can live in yet another completely different planet that Hope lands on --- the possibilities are endless! so if you’d ever like to fit your muse in this verse, just let me know and i’m sure we’ll plot something amazing.

[quacinema]

On The Dreamers In Toy Story 4, Buzz Lightyear finds his “inner voice” in the buttons on his chest which when pressed relay different catchphrases or soundbites that he can immediately act upon. Thus there is an axiomatic quality to his decisions and the inner voice is seen as outside you - you can press the button but the phrase is not chosen. The father’s inner voice in the movie is clearly his GPS. Either way, toys and humans have both inner and outer voices, they model the world, autonomously. The game of giving and asking for reasons begins not only with other self-conscious beings but with regards to oneself and how one interacts with the call of the repeatable inner voice that is modeled on one’s outer voice. One can realize there is no difference when Andy voices Buzz or when Andy voices himself and becomes his own toy.

“Name a film.. / Which film?” Any action or saying, or saying as a doing, has a possibility of already being in a film, which is to say repeatable, and possible to treat as an axiom that can be launched in any situation, without any regard to the situation itself, like Buzz pressing his own button. Is there a point where we need new inner voices, new buttons? Of course, the inner voice in this regard can be wrong for the situation it appears in, but that may mean reality is wrong, the idea is right, and the button should simply be pressed again in a different situation. But is there anything worth repeating in French cinephilia’s love for American pictures, or Americans caught in this same French projection of themselves? As Andrew Tracy once noted, on an artistic level it is clear that there are not many masterpieces in American movies, only some great moments, often crushed by some exterior or interior compromise, a lack or difficulty in differentiating inner and outer voices.

Cinema, an art that appeared to have some sort of prelapsarian relation to reality, in fact bars itself from reality by such an assumption of fusion. In fact, Matthew and Isabelle learn more about what is going on in the street by briefly catching it on TV. No amount of film watching “all of a sudden” links up with reality, there is nothing in the films themselves that can tell you anything. If one believes the sophistry that there is no difference between critiquing and making a movie, and that there is no difference between movie and reality, you end up in a suicidal position of gassing your living room while dreaming of Bresson. (This is also something one may unfortunately claim of Ossos.)

Godard’s critique of American cinema is as crucial to his System as Plato’s critique of democracy is to his own. It is a recipe that can be updated but it is not to be simply jettisoned because it is opposed to liberal tastes. It has recently been argued that today’s “opium of the people” is both “the people” in the sense of populism, and “opium” itself, and one can easily tie this to the notion of a Hollywood (”independent”, “foreign”, or otherwise) narrative that’s “for the people”, or else we have the fragmentation of someone like Philippe Garrel to stand for the position of “opium”. If today’s pornography is often crowdsourced, where comments and data trails allow a company to create their scripts that directly copy consumer desires, and the actors do not know their lines or know any details until they get to the set, then it should be clear that if the production of Last Tango in Paris was critiqued for last minute script changes or withheld details in pursuance of a dated idea of “getting into character” and “surprise” from the actors, today it is absolutely normalized, and instead given a “democratic” spin, our ultimate fetish. Either way, “story” appears from the American standpoint to be the only way to model our reality, especially if, in this particular example, the sex remains more or less the same, the narrative being an excess that does nothing but give us the seed to live the most stupid Aristotelian lives. And again I’m not arguing for opium-based fragmentation to mimic one’s sense-experience, nor am I claiming we should fight narrative because it is a “totalizing practice” or that totalization is already evil and totalitarian - instead it’s that both forms of story are not abstract enough to hold any traction in thinking either politics, sex, or art today.

The cinephilic mistake is not in the fact that the films they imitate in their daily life are too far removed from “lived experience” and have no relation to their social reality- in fact, this is the strength of cinema. If the highest levels of imagination could be recalled at the press of a button on one’s chest when one needs a sort of compass then this would be one of the better uses of movies. For in fact, there is nothing more impoverished than “lived experience”, whether it’s a conservative claiming that superhero movies are bad because they don’t mean anything to our real lives, or whether it’s some sort of liberal-leftist who demands more stories told in first person by those who are historically excluded and yet in the very form will take moves from world cinema and yet claim any litany of reasons why universalism doesn’t exist and particularity is all that matters. But other systems can be imagined - if a new form is invented, outside of either opium or people, the link of being able to ‘live’ a movie can be closer to realizing philosophy ‘in practice’. That is, today and yesterday’s ‘cinema’ is too close to so-called ‘real life’ to be worthy of imitation.

Kelley rightly claimed the movie allows us to think the crucial difference between siblings and comrades, and such a confusion can lead to what Zoohky called those “who want to enjoy art but not make it, enjoy the catharsis of protests but not do the work of politics [...] what u may think is sexual exploration, may in fact be the repression of it; what u may think is political engagement, may in fact be the repression of it; what u may think is artistic celebration, may in fact be the repression of a formal event by which the world could be reshaped forever.” Despite the insularity of the movie’s characters, there’s something worth holding onto that is implicit in the film's locale: simply being American does not give you special insight into American movies, and the experience of French-Maoism is not simply a call to a return of only understanding politics from one’s own local standpoint. But this also goes for the French experience of May ‘68 - they may not be the best people to inquire about its political consequences and bequeathals. We are comrades of Ideas, and not merely an Idea’s sibling.

The brick that comes through the window saves the three children by waking them up and ultimately allowing them to live, but it also allows them to keep dreaming that they have any relation to a real historical movement that isn’t mere incest and trivia. In that sense the breaking of the window may be a dream sequence on par with 1900′s ending of De Niro and Depardieu rolling around comically fighting until the end of history.

[chiseler]

La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein

Media tycoon and former Labour MP Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in crime) was given a state funeral in Jerusalem after *accidentally* falling off his yacht – the unluckily named “Lady Ghislaine”. Later it was revealed Maxwell Sr was a Mossad asset who used his vast network of connections and publishing platforms to run editorial interference over his purchased assets to influence enemies and friends alike, ensuring their fealty to the foreign government that had enlisted him for its espionage work.

His tabloid empire was the piss-colored propaganda organ of the interests he served, overseeing its rapid growth and tentacled reach across the globe. More ominously, he was behind the spy agency’s successful attempt to install a trapdoor in software intended for government use, allowing the Israelis a direct pipeline into a vast network of computers installed with undetectable malware.

At the time of his death, the disgraced magnate was under investigation for raiding his companies’ pension funds to cover the losses incurred from his multiple and reckless takeovers, and finance a luxury lifestyle he enjoyed sharing with high profile pals like Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters. Curiously, many of these fossilized specimens from Robert Maxwell’s roster of friends from the Reagan era would circle around Epstein, most notably Donald Trump whose Mar-a-Lago resort would later become a recruiting center for employer Epstein’s underage “massage therapists”.

Fast forward a couple of decades since the days a casino mogul was gobbling down canapés with the old guard denizens of the ‘swamp’. Notice a similar, if not identical MO in both Maxwell and Epstein’s role in procuring technology for the Israelis, who in turn sold it with undisclosed add-ons, providing an open window into its users’ databases.

Like his predecessor, Epstein had a financial stake in a startup (headed by former Israeli Defense Minister and later Prime Minister Ehud Barak) connected to Israel’s defense industry that provides infrastructure for emergency services as a call handling platform. Considering the company’s connection to military intelligence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate on some of this software’s other ‘special’ features. A variation of the early technology that Maxwell was able to procure for his Israeli bosses was later sold to the Saudis, who leveraged its sophisticated tracking features to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi.

Epstein, like Maxwell, was laying the groundwork for Israeli espionage activities through his interests in companies with a political agenda concealed in products intended for international export. If true, the playboy philanthropist feted and flattered his high profile friends to ensnare them as complicit partners in what amounts to the legal definition of treason. Epstein’s covert activities have undiminished real world consequences for anyone on Israel’s international radar, especially those challenging the status quo policies in place that prioritize “The Jewish State’s” political and financial objectives over actual justice and global stability.

If you have ever asked yourself why Israel’s war crimes and settlement expansion go unchallenged by US lawmakers, consider the career destroying consequences contained within those dossiers compiled by the braintrust behind Epstein’s ’suicide’. “We’ll trade you one US Embassy in Jerusalem for 10 minutes of hidden camera footage of you . . . let’s say ‘enjoying’ a rolled up Forbes magazine”.

Were the surveillance apparatuses installed throughout Epstein’s properties merely a voyeur’s tools, or did he use them to leverage the moral failings of his former friends for purposes that might have risked exposure of more than the nether regions of wealthy pedo-punters? Considering his connections to Israeli defense industries and his own Achilles penis that required, by his own admission, “three orgasms a day”, the answer points to an unslakable addiction that dovetailed conveniently with his state-sponsored sex crimes.

Did Epstein make the same mistake as Maxwell (who had asked for nearly half a billion dollars in “loans” from his Israeli backers to relieve him of his mounting debts) believing the dirt he had in his possession would prove radioactive if released? By this time, the corpulent tycoon was nicknamed the ‘Bouncing Czech’ a reference in most part to his worsening money woes. The implication of this request, if turned down, was the exposure of Israel’s state secrets. Epstein could have also attempted to collateralize the cache of damning evidence still in his possession to secure his his freedom with the same fatal consequences.

Both Maxwell and Epstein somehow evaded the electronics that linked them to the outside world at the time of their deaths, even though the latter had reportedly made an attempt on his own life while in custody. Both men, facing ruination and serious prison time gave their executioners an alibi: They had nothing to left to live for. The establishment media is already trotting out ancient, ding-a-ling conspiracy theories from obscure right wing sources (attributed to Russia, of course) to highlight the absurdity and futility of questioning the official story of Epstein’s death. Verdict: Nothing to see here.

By now, it’s a given that the parasitic and preferred daughter of the deceased tycoon, made the fateful introduction between her new boyfriend and the Israeli operatives seeking an entry level plutocrat to carry out their blackmail operations after the untimely death of his predecessor. An impoverished socialite has to survive in pricey Manhattan somehow, and that somehow was re-establishing the shady connections to the espionage underworld that had recruited Maxwell Sr.

Ghislaine’s later role as Epstein’s Chief Procurement Officer (or pimp for short) gives more credence to the rumors that she is more than just a debased, barnacle-like appendage to a billionaire, desperate to please her platonic partner by “organizing his social life”, but a fully cognizant co-conspirator in an operation aimed at strengthening Israel’s hand in all matters pertaining to its national security interests, or more accurately, its overseas criminal enterprises.

The recent raid on Epstein’s Manhattan apartment was not the result of a so-called Justice Department righting the egregious wrong it committed by letting Epstein off with a slap on the wrist after his initial conviction that allowed him to serve his sentence largely outside the minimum-security facility with an open door policy for its billionaire guest. More likely, the reversal of Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal was a joint operation between the oligarch cabal informally known as the Mega-Group, and the state security apparatuses that do their bidding.

It’s seems likely that this sudden pivot towards justice from a Justice Department initially spooked into inaction by the spook in his custody, was motivated by the need to remove the most damning bits among Epstein’s vast trove of physical evidence against the pervy punters who visited his island getaway for unintended photo ops with underage girls.

Perhaps his own abuse of these minors was a perk he felt entitled to, and one that would be overlooked in the service of “national security”. It’s hard for most people to differentiate between the government he actually worked for and the ruling establishment on his home turf.

It’s possible that Epstein felt his serial transgressions were merely par for the plutocracy and justified in the service of a higher calling.

The ‘Israel First’ philanthropist shared an unyielding ideological justification for his own criminality as Robert Maxwell, whom the British Home Office had considered recruiting for its own intelligence gathering in the mid 1960’s. Having determined that the well-connected, multilingual, rising star politician was strictly “Zionist”, the spy agency withdrew his candidacy.

Epstein’s real crimes had little to do with raping children, despite the overturned plea deal that came about when a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the victims rights by by concealing the agreement from them. The one time teflon-coated “member of intelligence” who was “above the pay grade” of a powerful District Attorney (now a now scandal-tainted former Labor Secretary) was ultimately (and lethally) penalized for not destroying the contents of his secret-laden safes, leaving his handlers still vulnerable to their explosive contents.

Had the doomed financier divested himself of the toxic assets still in his possession, he might still be roaming the earth today, scouring it for new specimens to populate his underage petting zoo. As a result of the Justice Department’s decision to reverse the non-prosecution deal meant to bury the most incendiary facts of the case, lower-rung punters like former governor Bill Richardson and Senator George Mitchell are being publicly named for their part in the sordid scandal. Someone has to take the fall. (Rule number one of PR crisis management: Crucify the insignificant and let them hang out to dry until the public tires of watching the slow motion spectacle of their undoing.) Meanwhile, documented and/or photographic evidence against more powerful players like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump will have already been destroyed in the pursuit of selective justice.

The fallout of Epstein’s spectacular downfall predictably miss the mark as scandals involving the rich and powerful tend to do. Much of the controversy will dissolve into a Cheeto dust maelstrom of disinformation, disseminated on Reddit and 4Chan by incel info-warriors before shooting up a shopping mall or playground.

Subsequent reporting of the case will overlook decades of the elite-driven state craft that elevated corrupt and ruthless entities like Epstein and Trump, both ring-kissing acolytes in their youth of influential mob fixer/political power broker Roy Cohn – himself a serial sexual predator who similarly caught the fancy of fellow deviants Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. Follow the money trail from Tel Aviv and you’ll discover an ancestral link between the corpse of Epstein and his ghostly godfathers waiting with his rewards in hell.

Along with the other disgraced and expendable patsies left in the wake of this ongoing scandal is Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s octogenarian chief legal counsel and ‘wing man’ aboard the Lolita Express. The now unemployable cable news pundit will live out the remainder of his pointless life under a cloud of suspicion. Despite all the damning testimony against him, the statutory rape allegations never quite stick, but follow him around like a sneaky fart, forcing a distance between himself and the rest of humanity that will last until he is engulfed by the sulfurous fumes of his own making.

The former Harvard law professor’s lifelong service to Israel will go unrewarded – not as a result of victim testimony placing him at multiple crime scenes, but in consideration of his own inept self-defense strategy: ”I’m a scurvy rat aboard a sinking ship eating its own tail to stay alive. Pity me”! Dershowitz at this point will be lucky if he can achieve the same pay grade and social status of Lindsay Lohan. Ditto for Prince Andrew who can at least be relied on to expire slowly of gout in his time-out corner at Windsor Castle.

The moral of this story could be “Lie down with dogs and never wake up again with a prison-issued sheet around your neck”. A variation of the old “Lie down with dogs and and wake up as fish food”.

by Jennifer Matsui

[kaette-kita-slayers]

Slayers Special 2-6 - Little Princess 2 (Part 1)

I’m splitting this one into two parts, since it’s longer than usual. (Here’s part 2)

(If you haven’t already, you might want to read the writeup for the first “Little Princess”, since this story is a followup to the events there.)

“Help! Someone, please, help!”

I could hear the desperate, panicked voice of an old man coming from the area where the highway reaches the forest.

“Give up, old man. Nobody’s gonna help you!” a brutish-sounding man’s voice said.

This is where an ordinary person with no guts for a fight would pretend they hadn’t heard anything and move on, but Lina Inverse isn’t like that! Without hesitation, I ran toward the direction the voices had come from.

It was probably a traveler being threatened by a bandit or something like that. In which case, I could demand a huge reward for saving him!

Lina catches up to them and sees a bandit, sword raised, advancing on an old man on the ground. Behind them, there’s a girl struggling with two other men.

Lina draws her short sword and dives for the sword-wielding man. The two cross swords, and then Lina spins to the side and elbows him in the jaw. As he falls, out cold, she thinks to herself that he’s no better than any other generic thug.

One of the remaining men yells at her not to move, and Lina looks over to see that they have the girl restrained with a sword to her throat.

It’s an effective tactic, if stereotypical.

“Help me!” the girl cried out. She was blonde and petite… wait, what the–?!

“Make a move and she dies, bitch!”

I ignored the man spouting cliches and made a mad dash for the three.

“H-hey, I told you not to–”

The men went into a panic, but I still ignored them!

“How dare you show your face in front of meeeeee?!”

My jump kick hit the hostage–Laymia–right in the face.

The story resumes in a simple restaurant in a nameless little village near the highway, with Lina apologizing awkwardly to Laymia, claiming that her “foot slipped”. Lina had had trouble with a girl claiming to be Laymia before, but…

She sorta turned out to be the real one. It’s hilarious, really. Normally, this is the kind of thing that we could all laugh off (I think), but in this case, unfortunately, I was dealing with the daughter of a nobleman, complete with an attendant.

Said attendant–the old man–is furious, veins popping out on his forehead, yelling at Lina that “I’m sorry” isn’t good enough. Laymia says nothing, fiddling with a rose she’s holding.

Lina assumes she’s trying to strike some kind of pose, but the mark left on her face from Lina’s kick ruins it. Lina also notes that the two of them aren’t wearing the kind of nice clothing she would have expected, presumably to keep from standing out while traveling.

Laymia’s servant continues berating Lina.

“This girl that you kicked is the daughter of Duke Turadia, holder of lands entrusted to him by the king himself! And even worse, you kicked her in the face! If the mark doesn’t go away, Lady Laymia will… Lady Laymia will… be stuck with this hilarious face for the rest of her life!”

“Well, excuse me for having a ‘hilarious face’…” Laymia muttered, side-eyeing the old man, who quickly bowed his head.

“Eh… heh. Forgive me, my lady! That just slipped out. Please forgive your humble servant, Crambe!”

Laymia lets it slide, but orders him to stop berating Lina and especially to stop referring to her aloud as the duke’s daughter, since they’re traveling in secret. Silently celebrating, Lina apologizes to her one more time.

“By the way… judging by your appearance, I assume you’re a sorceress…?”

I nodded in response to her question.

“I thought so.”

“Even a cat could figure that out.”

“Old man…”

“Oh, just another slip of the tongue!”

Casually flinging her rose under the table, she asks Lina if she would agree to accompany them as a bodyguard. Lina doesn’t want to, but she knows she can’t refuse outright after what happened earlier. Still a little suspicious that she might be dealing with a fake, she asks Laymia why they didn’t bring soldiers with them.

Laymia says that she would have preferred to do so, but her father’s lands are in an economic crisis. Crambe interrupts, protesting that she shouldn’t reveal that, but she counters that Lina needs to understand the situation.

Picking up a leafless rose from under the table, she explains further.

“You’ve probably heard rumors about this, but a short time ago, an ambitious chancellor in our lands did something unwise…”

Believe me, I know.

“Thanks to the strange golems he unleashed, the city suffered massive damage, and we’ve exhausted our resources trying to rebuild.”

I started in shock, and froze. T-that… that couldn’t be… don’t tell me…

“Er… that… that sounds awful…” Sweating profusely, I forced a smile.

Damn it, Naga, you picked the perfect time to disappear on me…

Laymia tells her that because of the disaster, they were left without money to pay their soldiers and staff, and now only the old man with her is left. As she attaches a leaf to the rose, she adds that she has to make artificial flowers to earn money.

She begins to cry, and Crambe puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t cry, princess… that’s just acknowledging that you’re one of the worthless poor now.”

“Are you trying to pick a fight with me…?”

“Why… how could you ever think that? You have my deepest apologies! It just slipped out.”

This old guy… I think maybe he only stuck around with them because no one would want to hire him if he left the castle.

Returning to the subject, Laymia tells Lina that they’re on their way to Figaro City to see Duke MacGarrell, a relative of hers, to ask him for a loan.

“So please, I beg you! I… I don’t have anything to pay you with right now, but I will as soon as I can raise some money! And if that’s not enough, I’ll rub your shoulders! Make you tea! I’ll be your slave!”

“Princess… you’re abasing yourself a little bit too much…”

“Stop crying, old man, and you bow too!”

Both of them were sobbing. Naturally, I couldn’t refuse her request.

The trip to Figaro City goes well. Laymia gets caught running out on her bill a couple of times, and they encounter some bandits and other assorted lowlifes, but nothing worse happens.

Despite being roughly the same size as Tyrell City, it’s a very different place, with an oppressive atmosphere. In contrast to the run-down areas populated by commoners, the castle is surrounded by opulent mansions. There are clearly far more impoverished than wealthy, and Lina thinks that lords of places like this are almost always rich.

The group heads straight for the castle (Lina suspects because Laymia has no money for sightseeing and shopping, anyway). When the guards at the entrance stop them, Laymia announces herself as Laymia Ul Turadia, the daughter of Radius Von Turadia.

The soldiers call her a liar, rendering her speechless. Furious, Crambe demands to know why they think so, and the soldiers reply that she’s too suspicious. She has no soldiers accompanying her and looks too poor to be a duke’s daughter, and besides, they were never notified that Laymia would be coming to visit.

“You didn’t contact them and let them know you were coming?!” I asked Laymia in a low voice.

“Come on! If I had enough money to send a messenger, I wouldn’t have had to skip out on paying for my meals!”

A soldier in armor decorated with gold emerges, demanding to know what’s going on. Judging by the extravagance of his armor, Lina guesses that he must be officer-class or even part of the duke’s personal guard. He’s solidly built, with close-cropped hair and a square jaw.

One of the other soldiers addresses him as “Captain Barrell”, but before he can continue, Lina cuts in and tells him that he needs to teach the soldiers under his command better manners. He retorts that she’s got a big attitude for someone so tiny.

The other soldier tells him that Laymia claims to be the daughter of the duke from Tyrell. Barrell laughs scornfully and pulls out a few silver coins, telling the soldiers not to bother with people like them, just to send them away with a little money. He then flings the coins on the ground in front of Lina and the others.

Lina is furious.

“I said, don’t mock us! You think you can throw a few coins at us and make a mockery of us and our pride and our situation?! And you, Miss Laymia! Don’t pick up any of the coins this jerk dropped! It’s disgraceful!”

“Miss Lina…”

“What?”

“I think you’d be more convincing if you weren’t picking up the coins yourself…”

… Oops!

“Oh, uh, it’s kind of a reflex… Even silver coins are still money–no sense wasting it!”

Moving on, Lina asks Laymia if she has any proof of her identity, and Laymia remembers that she does have a letter from her father. As she begins rifling around in her basket of crafting materials, Lina exasperatedly thinks she should have just done this in the first place. Having trouble finding it, Laymia wonders aloud if maybe she sold it somewhere along the way. Finally, she remembers that she’d used it to put under her flowers while applying starch to them, and pulls out the letter (well-starched) and hands it to Barrell.

Barrell pales, but, still suspicious, he takes the letter and starts to open it to see what’s written inside. Lina interrupts, telling him he’d better be prepared for the consequences if he’s planning to open up and read a letter from one duke to another without permission. Getting even paler, Barrell disappears inside with the letter.

After a long wait, Duke MacGarrell emerges with a group of soldiers. Barrell is not among them.

Later, the three of them, plus the duke and his five sons, are seated at a narrow table in a room deep in the castle. The duke is a seedy-looking, lanky man in his forties, with a short mustache that only makes him look worse. His children resemble him, with unremarkable faces.

The food they’re being served, in contrast to the grandeur of the castle and the duke and his family’s clothing, is all commonplace fare. The duke offhandedly apologizes for the solders’ behavior, and Lina thinks that they don’t seem too thrilled with Laymia’s arrival.

Laymia and Crambe appear not to notice, both staring at the food.

“Look, old man! There’s dressing on the salad! They really went all out!”

“Oh, to think that I would once again be able to eat a fish larger than the palm of my hand… It’s been so long…”

“And… is that chicken?! Oh, I wish I could box it up and take it home to everyone…”

The duke awkwardly invites them to go ahead and eat, since the two of them are already stuffing their faces. He doesn’t even bother saying anything until they start slowing down a bit, then says that Laymia’s father must be in trouble, if he’s sending his only daughter out on a mission for him. Blushing, Laymia agrees that it’s shameful, while stuffing some fried chicken into a pocket.

He tells Laymia that he will give them the amount her father requested. Lina thinks to herself that he must have mistaken her for a servant of Laymia’s in disguise, to be willing to announce that in front of her.

The duke adds that he’s not talking about a loan, either–he’s offering the money outright. Lina is puzzled, since everything so far had indicated that he was unhappy to see them (unsurprisingly, since they’d shown up out of the blue asking for a huge sum of money). She wonders if Laymia’s father might have actually requested less than she thought.

Wiping up some sauce on his plate with a piece of bread, Crambe protests that, regardless of how desperate they may be, it would shame Duke Turadia to accept that much money without giving anything back. Lina would have just taken it with a “Don’t mind if I do!” but she supposes that rulers do have to take things like honor and reputation into account.

The duke muses that he can’t very well go back on his word and insist on repayment. After a short silence, he suggests that they do something for him instead, since it will take a little while for him to gather the necessary funds anyway.

Laymia asks what that “something” is, but the duke says he hasn’t thought of it yet. Nevertheless, they agree to his terms.

He ends up giving them a simple job to do: deliver a letter to an old associate of the duke’s, now retired and living in an old fortress by a lake north of the city. The journey should take about four days, total, and the duke assures them that his men have eliminated the bandits that used to attack travelers along the route.

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way–it’s only noon on their first day when something happens. As they’re walking, Lina suddenly grabs Crambe and tells him to stop.

“W-what is it, all of a sudden?”

“Don’t tell me…!” Laymia looked at me with an expression of shock and horror. “You dropped your wallet?!”

Does she ever think about anything but money?

“No! Somebody’s after us!”

A muffled voice congratulates her for noticing, and Lina mocks them for staying hidden, asking if they’re that afraid of just three people. Taking the bait, they begin to emerge from the trees, somewhere between twenty or thirty people in all.

They aren’t simple bandits, either. All of them have matching armor and weapons–plate mail, longswords, and full helmets–and they move like a trained unit. It’s obvious that they’re soldiers from somewhere.

“Hmph… I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I don’t have any money to give you!” Laymia suddenly stepped forward, delivering her proclamation firmly.

She hadn’t had any money before, but right now, she had a bit of money for expenses given to her by Duke MacGarrell.

“Rather than hand over my money… let me apologize!”

“Uh… we don’t need you to apologize…” said one of the men, who seemed to be the leader, sounding puzzled. “First and foremost, we don’t want money, we want–”

“Our lives?” I interjected.

The man shook his head and said, “No. We want the letter you have.”

“What…?! How do you know about the letter?!” The shocked voice belonged to Crambe.

“I don’t need to answer that.” The man bluntly stated, “If you hand over the letter and don’t give us any trouble, we’ll spare your lives. We’ll even pay you for it.”

“It’s all yours. <3”

“You can’t just hand it over to him with a smile, Miss Laymia! You won’t get the money from the duke!”

“She’s right. You shouldn’t be so disloyal.” For some reason, the man was nodding in agreement with what I had said.

Laymia comes around and refuses to give up the letter, and the men draw their swords.

The story resumes that night, at an inn. Lina had taken care of the soldiers easily, leaving them to scramble to run away from her.

Eating some fried crab, Laymia says that she’s worried about the fact that the men knew about the letter. Lina responds that the three of them may have gotten caught up in some kind of plot. Since the men after them knew about the letter, it’s reasonable to assume that there’s a spy among MacGarrell’s people. Lina lowers her voice before continuing, telling them that she has a theory about what’s really going on.

Her guess is that MacGarrell is preparing to go to war against someone, and when the three of them arrived, he saw the opportunity to contact someone connected to his plans without the enemy noticing. She doesn’t have any idea whether they have the real letter, or if they’re just serving as decoys for other messengers, but either way, the enemy probably learned about them thanks to the spy in the castle.

Disbelieving, Laymia points out that the duke had originally offered her the money with no strings attached. Lina tells her that she’s being naive; the duke must have known that, as the representative for another duke, she wouldn’t have been able to accept his initial offer. Besides, it defies common sense to think that, in return for nothing more than an ordinary letter delivery, the duke would be willing to give them the kind of money it would take to fund the government of an entire region, even if he is related to Laymia.

Laymia and Crambe begin brooding over the idea. Keeping her tone light, Lina tells them not to worry too much, because all they need to do is deliver the letter as quickly as possible. Besides, Lina can handle anything that the enemy could throw at the group. Laymia and Crambe aren’t convinced, but then, they have no idea how powerful Lina actually is.

Finally, Crambe says that they can’t turn back now, regardless of what the duke’s real intentions might be. Laymia agrees, and Crambe continues…

“Then all we can do is continue on! We’ll reach our destination by afternoon tomorrow. We might be ambushed again, but who cares about that? If we die, we die. We could have avoided all of this if we’d gone looking for Lord Phraon and adopted him into your family, but what does that matter?”

Lina interrupts Laymia attempting to strangle Crambe, asking her who Phraon is. Looking sad, Laymia replies that he's a cousin of hers, an orphan who was, at one time, the only person other than Laymia with the right to inherit her father's title and lands.

Unfortunately, the chancellor had planned to force her father to abdicate in favor of Phraon, then control the government from the shadows as his advisor. Phraon wasn't actually involved in the scheme, but after everything came to light, people grew suspicious that he might have been an accomplice. Finally, he renounced his right of inheritance and left the castle.

Blushing a little, Laymia says that it must have been difficult for him, since he's so sensitive. Lina puts two and two together and asks Crambe if she's in love with Phraon, and he tells Lina that it's true.

Unfortunately, Crambe can't resist getting in another jab at Laymia, and the two don't stop arguing until late that night.

Notes

Not really much of anything, except that the story mentions Laymia using tape to make her roses. That struck me as a little... technologically advanced for the setting.

Edit: There’s one major thing I forgot! The word I translated as “chancellor” really means minister, but there’s a reason for that. The story hinges on how stereotypical the plot is (until Naga gets involved), and I get the impression that more people are familiar with the trope referring to “chancellors” rather than “ministers” thanks to games like Chrono Trigger. (That’s what the TV Tropes page is called, even.)

[alibiappeal6-blog]

Soft skills, tech jobs: What Philly can learn from Albuquerque’s anti-poverty push

In Albuquerque, N.M., just as the sun starts to set, the reddish gleam of the Sandia Mountains follows you everywhere you go.

The mountains are an inescapable presence all day long, really, towering over the 558,000 souls who call New Mexico’s largest city home. Look out a random window of most buildings downtown and they’ll likely be staring back at you. Close your eyes at night and their silhouette will greet you in the morning.

The state’s staggering poverty numbers, too, are unavoidable.

It’s evidenced in the downtown area’s homeless population. It’s seen in the rural towns on the hourlong drive to the more posh Santa Fe. It’s in the weary gait of workers who, in a car-first city like Albuquerque, walk home along the shoulder of Route 66.

It’s also in the U.S. Census Bureau data: New Mexico has routinely ranked among the country’s poorest states. With 19.7 percent of its residents living below the poverty line, only Mississippi is more impoverished.

As part of collaborative reporting project Broke in Philly, we spent the better part of a week last month getting to know the city of Albuquerque, its long-stemming problem with poverty, and the ups and down of local workforce development strategies.

Why Albuquerque? Because despite how modest a 3 percent drop in poverty rates may seem, lessons can be gleaned from their local approach, which has been lauded by the Kellogg Foundation and the Obama White House. Given Philadelphia’s stubborn 25.9 percent poverty rate, and the lackluster results of current efforts, we’d be remiss to turn a blind eye to the lessons other cities might contribute.

###

It’s almost noon, and Michelle Rodarte, 43, is tearing up a bit as she explains why she had to leave her job at a call center.

“I just resigned,” Rodarte says. “I’ve been in a lot of call centers but they’re a dead end. They’re terrible. I worked for Bank of America, and there you’re not [judged] based on service but on [caller] surveys. If you waited an hour on the phone to speak with me, there’s a consequence.”

Before she could be fired over survey results, she resigned and went back to the place that has helped her find work and training resources before: the New Mexico Workforce Connection, a federally funded local organization that brings together a spread of workforce development programs and nonprofits under one roof in a Northeast Albuquerque office.

That’s where the city’s most enterprising jobseekers often begin their journey.

Soft skills assessment is one of the services available on TalentABQ — a multi-stakeholder effort to get people into jobs including the City of Albuquerque and Santa Fe nonprofit Innovate+Educate — which was recently rebranded as One Albuquerque: Job Source.

Once inside the one-story building, which is peppered with cubicles and small offices, jobseekers are triaged in the front. A case manager assesses their profile and puts their information on a unified system for employers to see. People can log onto computers that use job-board-scouring software, or use phones to cold-call employers. They can enter one of the free WorkKeys hard-skills certification classes or get information on an online soft-skills assessment platform known as Core Score.

That approach, coupled with the organization’s work to de-emphasize the need for four-degree college degrees, is what brought us out here.

Inside his office at NMWC, I ask Jacob Lomas Sanchez, who heads the nonprofit’s Albuquerque office, why he thinks the initiative has been successful, and what a poverty-stricken city like Philadelphia, might want to replicate.

Sanchez depicts a systemic approach to career placement.

"They say it sounds too good to be true."

Tawnya Rowland, TechHire New Mexico

“Right now, Job Source is a platform that puts all the jobs in your region in a geographic location map, where people can then plan transportation and child care around that job,” Sanchez. They can also, he said, get matched through their Core Score assessment results with jobs that suit their strengths and experience.

Though many of the available jobs are in retail, or otherwise consumer-facing (Starbucks, he said, has been a major partner), there are also mid-skill technician jobs, the kind that Albuquerque has by the thousands according to a Brookings Institution report.

Jacob Lomas Sanchez at his desk. (Photo by Roberto Torres)

At a recent meeting with incoming Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller, Lomas Sanchez laid out the impact numbers: TalentABQ had managed to get some 13,000 folks to come through the website and get their soft skills assessed by Core Score, which was built in-house last year by I+E. Some 1,500 attended Job Ready Hire fairs, with an average 35 percent of them walking away with contingent job offers.

Employers, the director said, have been open to looking at Core Score assessment results as a certification of a prospective employee’s true abilities, one that opens the door to those without college degrees.

(NMWC has a Philly relative by way of PA CareerLink Philadelphia, in that both are “proud partners of the AmericanJobCenter Network.” Their offerings, however, differ.)

“They like it because it’s nimble,” said Sanchez. “The assessment doesn’t have to be proctored and it lasts 20 minutes.”

But a key strength of the centralized approach at NMWC is that under the same roof lie many paths to making life-altering career moves.

###

One place jobseekers can be sent to after triage is TechHire New Mexico.

A few doors down from Lomas Sanchez’ office sits Tawnya Rowland, the program’s director, who’s a bit concerned about not reaching the people she needs to find.

"People who are getting four-year degrees are leaving the state. People we incubate here are setting down roots."

Daniel Heron, CNM Ingenuity

Last year, the initiative — initially a project of the Obama White House — got a watershed $4 million grant to train jobseekers for positions that don’t require a college degree. Through 2020, TechHire is tasked with finding 400 people under the age of 29 in New Mexico and funding their training in IT and tech — from coding bootcamps to IT support training.

“It’s the millennials we’re trying to target,” said Rowland. “A lot of them don’t want a four-year degree, so the focus is on an accelerated learning model.”

The second step is placing graduates into paid internships. The funding lets TechHire share the costs of paying trainees with employers.

Thousands of tech/IT jobs available, without a degree. If you want one of those jobs, but need IT training, TechHire New Mexico is a grant program that may be able to pay for your training. Call us at 505.843.1960 for more information.

— TechHire New Mexico (@techhirenm) June 26, 2018

What’s one barrier been? In a state with a complex cultural background and a majority-minority demographic, reaching a diverse population remains a challenge. She said there’s been little success in connecting Native American people with the program.

Another hurdle? People don’t believe they’ll really end up getting free training.

“They say it sounds too good to be true and that’s a barrier to be able to get the word out there to enough people,” Roland said. “We instill into our participants that they’ll have to start out somewhere. Give it a year. The credentials are stackable and they’ll learn more about the path they want to take.”

So far, many have been able to find their path. Or at least, they’ve started following it.

###

In search of lessons for Philadelphia, Mark Muro of Brookings tells Technical.ly the novelty isn’t Albuquerque’s push for soft-skills assessments. After all, de-emphasizing four-year college degrees is becoming more common, especially among certain positions in the growing innovation economy.

What’s more novel, he says, is placing the results of a platform like Core Score at the center of the process.

But if there’s one thing in the Albuquerque experience that Philadelphia would benefit from replicating, Muro says, it’s that the New Mexico city has sought to unify efforts by bringing them under one roof.

“One of the biggest problems with the American training system is its fragmentation and confusingness,” said Muro, a Metropolitan Policy Program Senior Fellow at the D.C.-based think thank. “To the extent they’re expressly taking that on, they are attacking a key problem. It also makes sense to physically co-locate resources, it leads to better information flow and better hand off.”

###

James Manochio had been working at Walmart for four years, even though his true passion was talking about animation in front of his 30,000 YouTube subscribers. One of his videos, where he ranks the top 10 songs on the show Family Guy, has over half a million views.

Then, one day, he heard from a friend about TechHire, and how they’d pay for him to attend a new bootcamp focused on digital media.

“My ideal job is to work in videogames, either as a designer or programmer,” says Manochio, 25, as he shows off his work inside a CNM Ingenuity classroom. This nonprofit, an offshoot of the Central New Mexico Community College, focuses on entrepreneurship and tech training and offers a handful of coding bootcamps.

After the 12-week Digital Media program, grads will be able to step into digital media roles and work on projects that mix the arts with animation and augmented reality.

“For the last five years we’d only done software development,” says Daniel Heron, in charge of tech talent for the program. “But we realized New Mexico has one of the most creative economies in the world, especially with the connection to Santa Fe [a city with a thriving arts community and home to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.]”

The value is that bootcampers work on real projects, instructor Rod Sanchez says. They’ve just completed some augmented reality work for the Albuquerque Zoo.

Still, Heron says, there’s pushback from some companies on hiring bootcamp grads versus the more traditional graduates of computer science programs.

“I don’t really like to compare them,” Heron says. “But the funny thing is that people who are getting four-year degrees are leaving the state. People we incubate here are setting down roots.”

###

Another CNM Ingenuity grad is 11 Online founder Alonso Indacochea. For him, things have truly gone full circle. 

After graduating from the bootcamp, he joined other grads to start a dev shop that now takes on interns from TechHire New Mexico.

Sitting at a conference room inside downtown coworking spot Simms Space, you can tell he’s furiously passionate about growing a local tech community. And, plot twist: an hour into our conversation he reveals that he’s a Temple University grad who cheered, from afar, as the Philadelphia Eagles won Super Bowl LII. The Temple history major remembers teaching ESL classes in Northeast Philly and living in Northern Liberties when the rent was way, way cheaper.

Then in 2013, he moved to Albuquerque after his wife landed a job at the University of New Mexico.

“What TechHire has allowed us to do is basically get compensated for training people in specific technologies that we use in our project,” Indacochea said. “With a few exceptions, most of our hires have been non-traditional: coming from bootcamps or self-taught. It fit in naturally with what we were doing anyway.”

Alonso Indacochea, a tech founder and Temple grad now living in Albuquerque. (Photo by Roberto Torres)

The harmony in that relationship echoes what the City of Philadelphia is trying to do through its relatively new Tech Industry Partnership: a council of sorts where local companies (first in tech, later in other industries) get a chance to voice their talent needs as the city lays out workforce development strategies.

For all the praise Indacochea offered, there’s also concern in the technologist’s assessment of the program.

“I’ve seen how some of these programs can be abused,” he said. “I just hope that companies are using the funds to that end, really giving people coming from different backgrounds a shot.”

###

Nancy López lays it all out in plain English: Despite the recent, modest drops in poverty rates, the last 18 years have seen little measurable progress when it comes to stemming poverty in New Mexico.

López, a professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, is the director and cofounder of UNM’s Institute for Study of “Race” and Social Justice (the quotation marks are there for a reason).

Does she see potential in things like TalentABQ and TechHire New Mexico as a pathway out of poverty? Sure. But it won’t happen overnight.

"We keep trying to do quick fixes, but what we need are culturally inclusive programs."

Charles Ashley III, Cultivating Coders

“Summer youth employment programs and internships are key,” López said. “Work study programs at colleges to connect youth to these spaces. There are also lots of ways this could start happening in middle school.”

If you were looking for hope in that regard, you’d might want to hear out Charles Ashley III. He says his nonprofit, Cultivating Coders, is thinking long term.

Over the blaring pop music at a coffee shop in Northeast Albuquerque, Ashley said the nonprofit, founded in 2015, parachutes coding instructors into rural communities (like Farmington, N.M., and Gallup, N.M.) and Native American territories (like the Navajo Nation) who live there for eight weeks while they deliver tech programming to kids.

“If we get kids coding from the age of 11 to 13, imagine how far along they’re going to be when they graduate high school,” said Ashley. “They’re saying there’s no black or brown kids in tech. Now there will be, because these kids will be exposed.”

(Sound familiar?)

Ashley says community partners that can continue training are the first step, which is why they’re working on training school teachers so they can both learn how to code themselves and teach the in-house curriculum.

The poster children for the success of the program? Two young graduates who, during their high-school lunch break, help build apps for the City of Albuquerque.

They make $25 an hour.

Ask Ashley how tech can build an onramp away from poverty for New Mexico’s youth and he’ll tell you it starts by making sure the ramp is fully accessible, by making intentional strides toward that goal.

“We keep trying to do quick fixes, but what we need are culturally inclusive programs,” Ashley says. “The cycle of poverty is generational, and people need to feel they have access to opportunities.”

As Philadelphia grapples with the consequences of its poverty rates, looking at other cities for inspiration might be a good place to start.

“Best practices can be found anywhere,”the Brookings Institution’s Muro said. “They may be applicable in Philly even if they don’t come from a big coastal hot market.”

-30-

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Source: https://technical.ly/philly/2018/10/26/albuquerque-talent-abq-one-albuquerque-one-source/

[leftpress]

2016: The Death Of Liberalism

The year 2016 ended with two more dramatic and bloody occurrences: the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Istanbul and the brutal murder of people in Berlin who were peacefully enjoying preparations for Christmas. These events were linked to the bloody morass in the Middle East and more specifically to Syria.

January 05, 2017 | Alan Woods

The fall of Aleppo represented a decisive turn in the situation. Russia, which was supposed to have been isolated and humbled by the “international community” (read Washington) now controls Syria and decides what happens there. It called a peace conference in Kazakhstan to which neither the Americans nor the Europeans were invited, followed by an agreement for a ceasefire dictated on Russia’s terms.

In different ways these developments expressed the same phenomenon: the old world order is dead and in its place we are faced with a future of instability and conflict, the outcome of which nobody can predict. The year 2016 therefore represented a turning point in history. It was a year marked by crisis and turbulence on a global scale.

Twenty-five years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union the defenders of capitalism were euphoric. They spoke of the death of socialism and communism and even the end of history. They promised us a future of peace and prosperity thanks to the triumph of the free market economy and democracy.

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Liberalism had triumphed and therefore history had reached its final expression in capitalism. That was the essential meaning of the now notorious phrase of Francis Fukuyama. But now the wheel of history has turned full circle. Today not one stone upon another is left of those confident predictions of the strategists of capital. History has returned with a vengeance.

Suddenly the world seems to be afflicted by strange and unprecedented phenomena that defy all the attempts of the political experts to explain them. On 23 June the people of Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union – a result that nobody expected, which caused shock waves on an international scale. But these were as nothing compared to the tsunami provoked by the result of the American presidential elections – a result that nobody expected, including the man who won.

Within hours of the election of Donald Trump, the streets of cities all over the United States were filled with demonstrators. These events are the dramatic confirmation of the instability that has afflicted the entire world. Overnight the old certainties have disappeared. There is a general ferment in society and a sense of widespread uncertainty filled the ruling class and its ideologues with deep foreboding.

The apologists of capitalist liberalism complain bitterly about the rise of politicians like Donald Trump who represents the antithesis of what is known as “liberal values.” For such people the year 2016 seems like a nightmare. They are hoping that they will wake up and find that it was all a dream, that yesterday will return and tomorrow will see a better day. But for bourgeois liberalism there will be no reawakening and no tomorrow.

Political commentators speak with dread of the rise of something they call “populism”, a word that is as elastic as it is meaningless. The use of such amorphous terminology merely signifies that those who use it have no idea what they’re talking about. In strict etymological terms populism is merely a Latin translation of the Greek demagogy. The term is applied with the same gusto that a bad painter plasters a wall with a thick coat of paint to cover up his mistakes. It is used to describe such a wide variety of political phenomena that it becomes entirely devoid of any real content.

The leaders of Podemos and Geert Wilders, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Evo Morales, Rodrigo Duterte and Hugo Chavez, Jeremy Corbyn and Marine Le Pen – all are tarred with the same populist brush. It is sufficient to compare the real content of these movements that are not only different but radically antagonistic to realise the utter futility of such language. It is not calculated to clarify but to confuse, or more correctly to cover up the confusion of stupid bourgeois political commentators.

The death of liberalism

In its editorial of 24 December 2016 The Economist chanted a hymn of praise to its beloved liberalism. Liberals, we are told, believe in “open economies and open societies, where the free exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas is encouraged and where universal freedoms are protected from state abuse by the rule of law.” Such a beautiful picture really ought to be set to music.

But then the article sadly concludes that 2016 “has been a year of setbacks. Not just over Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the tragedy of Syria, abandoned to its suffering, and widespread support—in Hungary, Poland and beyond—for ‘illiberal democracy’. As globalisation has become a slur, nationalism, and even authoritarianism, have flourished. In Turkey relief at the failure of a coup was overtaken by savage (and popular) reprisals. In the Philippines voters chose a president who not only deployed death squads but bragged about pulling the trigger. All the while Russia, which hacked Western democracy, and China, which just last week set out to taunt America by seizing one of its maritime drones, insist liberalism is merely a cover for Western expansion.”

The beautiful hymn of praise to liberalism and Western values has ended on a sour note. The Economist concludes bitterly: “Faced with this litany, many liberals (of the free-market sort) have lost their nerve. Some have written epitaphs for the liberal order and issued warnings about the threat to democracy. Others argue that, with a timid tweak to immigration law or an extra tariff, life will simply return to normal.”

But life will not simply “return to normal” – or more correctly, we will enter a new stage of what The Economist refers to as a “new normality”: A period of endless cuts, austerity and falling living standards. In reality, we have been living in this new normality for quite some time. And very serious consequences flow from this.

The global crisis of capitalism has created conditions that are completely unlike the conditions that existed (at least for a handful of privileged countries) four decades after the Second World War. That period witnessed the biggest upswing of the productive forces of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution. This was the soil on which the much vaunted “liberal values” could flourish. The economic boom provided the capitalists with sufficient profits to grant concessions to the working class.

That was the golden era of reformism. But the present period is the era, not of reforms but of counter-reforms. This is not the result of ideological prejudice, as some foolish reformists imagine. It is the necessary consequence of the crisis of the capitalist system that has reached its limits. The whole process that unfolded over a period of six decades is now thrown into reverse.

Instead of reforms and rising living standards, the working class everywhere is faced with cuts, austerity, unemployment and impoverishment. The degradation of working conditions, wages, rights and pensions falls most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. The idea of equality for women is being eroded by the remorseless search for increased profitability. A whole generation of young people is being deprived of a future. That is the essence of the present period.

The elite’s Marie Antoinette moment

The ruling class and its strategists find it hard to accept the reality of the present situation and are completely blind to the political consequences that flow from it. The same blindness can be observed in every ruling class that is facing extinction and refuses to accept it. As Lenin correctly observed, a man standing on the edge of a precipice does not reason.

The Financial Times published an interesting article by Wolfgang Münchau entitled “The elite’s Marie Antoinette moment”. It begins as follows:

“Some revolutions could have been avoided if the old guard had only refrained from provocation. There is no proof of a ‘let them eat cake’ incident. But this is the kind of thing Marie Antoinette could have said. It rings true. The Bourbons were hard to beat as the quintessential out-of-touch establishment.

“They have competition now.

“Our global liberal democratic establishment is behaving in much the same way. At a time when Britain has voted to leave the EU, when Donald Trump has been elected US president, and Marine Le Pen is marching towards the Elysée Palace, we — the gatekeepers of the global liberal order — keep on doubling down.”

The comparison with the French Revolution is highly instructive. Everywhere the ruling class and its “experts” have shown themselves to be completely out of touch with the real situation in society. They assumed that the order of things that emerged from the post-war economic boom would continue forever. The market economy and bourgeois “democracy” were the unquestioned paradigms of the epoch.

Their smug complacency precisely resembled that of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. It is by no means certain that her famous phrase was ever pronounced, but it accurately reflects the mentality of a degenerate ruling class that has no interest in the sufferings of ordinary people or the inevitable consequences that flow from them.

In the end Marie Antoinette lost her head and now the ruling class and its political representatives are losing theirs. The Financial Times article continues:

“Why is this happening? Macroeconomists thought no one would dare challenge their authority. Italian politicians have been playing power games forever. And the job of EU civil servants is to find ingenious ways of spiriting politically tricky legislation and treaties past national legislatures. Even as the likes of Ms Le Pen, Mr Grillo and Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Freedom party head towards power, the establishment keeps acting this way. A Bourbon regent, in an uncharacteristic moment of reflection, would have backed off. Our liberal capitalist order, with its competing institutions, is constitutionally incapable of doing that. Doubling down is what it is programmed to do.

“The correct course of action would be to stop insulting voters and, more importantly, to solve the problems of an out-of-control financial sector, uncontrolled flows of people and capital, and unequal income distribution. In the eurozone, political leaders found it expedient to muddle through the banking crisis and then a sovereign debt crisis — only to find Greek debt is unsustainable and the Italian banking system is in serious trouble. Eight years on, there are still investors out there betting on a collapse of the eurozone as we know it.”

In 1938 Trotsky wrote that the ruling class was tobogganing to disaster with its eyes closed. The above lines are a graphic illustration of this fact. And Mr Münchau draws the following conclusion quote:

“But it is not happening for the same reason it did not happen in revolutionary France. The gatekeepers of western capitalism, like the Bourbons before them, have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.”

The collapse of the centre

Contrary to the old prejudice of the liberals, human consciousness is not progressive but profoundly conservative. Most people do not like change. They cling obstinately to the old ideas, prejudices, religion and morality because they are familiar and what is familiar is always more comforting than what is not. The idea of change is frightening because it is unknown. These fears are deeply rooted in the human psyche and have existed from time immemorial.

Yet change is as necessary to the survival of the human race as it is to the survival of the individual. The absence of change is death. The human body constantly changes from the moment of birth; all cells break down, die and are replaced with new cells. The child must disappear in order for the adult to be born.

Yet it is not difficult to understand people’s aversion to change. Habit, routine, tradition – all these things are necessary for the maintenance of social norms that underpin the functioning of society. Over a long period they become ingrained, conditioning the daily activities of millions of men and women. They are universally accepted, as are respect for the laws and customs, the rules of political life and the existing institutions: in a word, the status quo.

Something similar exists in science. In his profound and penetrating study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S. Kuhn explains how every period in the development of science is based on an existing paradigm that is generally accepted, providing a necessary framework for scientific work. For a long time this paradigm serves a useful purpose. But eventually small, apparently insignificant contradictions appear that eventually lead to the downfall of the old paradigm and its replacement with a new one. This, according to Kuhn, constitutes the essence of a scientific revolution.

Exactly the same dialectical process occurs in society. Ideas that have existed for so long that they have hardened into prejudices eventually enter into conflict with existing reality. At that point, a revolution in consciousness begins to take place. People begin to question what seemed to be unquestionable. Ideas that were comfortable because they provided certainty are shattered on the rock of hard reality. For the first time people begin to shake off the old comfortable illusions and look reality in the face.

The real cause of the fears of the ruling class is the collapse of the political centre. What we are seeing in Britain, the United States, Spain and many other countries is a sharp and increasing polarisation between left and right in politics, which in turn is merely a reflection of an increasing polarisation between the classes. This in turn is a reflection of the deepest crisis in the history of capitalism.

For the last hundred years the political system in the USA was based on two parties – the Democrats and Republicans – that both stood for the maintenance of capitalism and both represented the interests of the banks and big business. This was very well expressed by Gore Vidal who wrote “our Republic has one party, the property party, with two right wings.”

This was the solid foundation for the stability and longevity of what Americans regarded as “democracy”. In reality, this bourgeois democracy was merely a fig leaf to conceal the reality of the dictatorship of the bankers and capitalists. Now this convenient setup is being challenged and shaken to the core. Millions of people are waking up to the rottenness of the political establishment and the fact that they are being deceived by those who claim to represent them. This is the prior condition for a social revolution.

Crisis of reformism

We see a similar situation in Britain, where for 100 years Labour and Conservatives alternated in power, providing the same kind of stability for the ruling class. The Labour Party and Conservative party were run by solid, respectable men and women who could be relied upon to run society in the interests of the bankers and capitalists of the city of London. But the election of Jeremy Corbyn has upset the apple cart.

The ruling class fears that the massive influx of new members into the Labour Party may break the stranglehold of the right wing over Labour. That explains the panic of the ruling class and the vitriolic nature of the campaign against Corbyn.

The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of reformism. The strategists of capital resemble the Bourbons, but the reformist leaders are only a poor imitation of the former. They are the blindest of the blind. The reformists, both of the right and left varieties, have no understanding of the real situation. Though they pride themselves on being great realists, they are the worst kind of utopians.

Like the liberals of whom they are merely a pale reflection, they are pining after the past that has vanished beyond return. They complain bitterly about the unfairness of capitalism, not realising that the policies of the bourgeoisie are dictated by the economic necessity of capitalism itself.

It is a supreme irony of history that the reformists have fully embraced the market economy precisely at a time when it is breaking down before our very eyes. They had accepted capitalism as something that is given once and for all, that cannot be questioned and certainly not overthrown. The alleged realism of the reformists is the realism of a man who tries to persuade a tiger to eat salads instead of human flesh. Naturally, the realist who attempted to perform this laudable feat did not succeed in convincing the Tiger and ended up inside its belly.

What the reformists to not understand is that if you accept capitalism you must also accept the laws of capitalism. And under modern conditions that means accepting cuts and austerity. Nowhere is the bankruptcy of reformism more clearly expressed than in the fact that they no longer talk about socialism. Nor do they talk about capitalism. Instead they complain of the evils of “neoliberalism”, that is to say, they do not object to capitalism per se but only a particular model of capitalism. But the so-called neoliberalism is merely a euphemism for capitalism in the period of crisis.

The reformists who imagine that they are great realists are dreaming of a return to the conditions of the past when that past has already receded into history. The period that now opens up will be entirely different. In the decades that followed 1945, the class struggle in the advanced capitalist countries was attenuated to some extent as a result of the reforms won by the working class through struggle.

Trotsky explained long ago that betrayal is implicit in reformism in all its varieties. By this he did not mean that reformists consciously betray the working class. There are many honest reformists, as well as a fair number of corrupt careerists. But the way to hell is paved with good intentions. If you accept the capitalist system – as all reformists do, whether right or left – then you must obey the laws of the capitalist system. In a period of capitalist crisis, this means the inevitability of cuts and attacks on living standards.

This lesson had to be learnt by Tsipras and Varoufakis in Greece. They came to power with huge popular support on an anti-austerity programme, but were very quickly made to understand by Merkel and Schäuble that this was not on the agenda. In the end they capitulated and meekly carried out the austerity programme dictated by Berlin and Brussels. We saw a similar situation in France where Hollande won a massive victory promising an anti-austerity programme, then did 180° turn and carried out even deeper cuts than the previous right-wing government. The inevitable result has been the rise of Marine Le Pen and the Front National.

Capitalism in a blind alley

In countries like the United States every generation since the Second World War could look forward to a better standard of living than that enjoyed by their parents. In the decades of economic boom workers became accustomed to relatively easy victories. The trade union leaders did not have to struggle much to obtain wage increases. Reforms were considered to be the norm. Today was better than yesterday and tomorrow would be better than today.

In the long period of capitalist upswing, the class consciousness of the workers was somewhat blunted. Instead of clear-cut class socialist policies, the workers’ movement has been infected with alien ideas through the transmission belt of the petty bourgeoisie which has elbowed the workers to one side and drowned out their voice with the shrill declamations of middle-class radicalism.

The so-called political correctness with its mishmash of half-baked ideas fished out of the rubbish bin of bourgeois liberalism has gradually become accepted even in the trade unions where the right-wing reformist leaders eagerly seize upon it as a substitute for class policies and socialist ideas. The left reformists in particular have played a pernicious role in this respect. It will take the hammer blows of events to demolish these prejudices that have a corrosive effect on consciousness.

But the crisis of capitalism does not permit such luxuries. Today’s generation of young people for the first time will face worse conditions of life than their parents enjoyed. Gradually this new reality is forcing itself on the consciousness of the masses. That is the reason for the present ferment of discontent that exists in all countries and is acquiring an explosive character. It is the explanation for the political earthquakes that have taken place in Britain, Spain, Greece, Italy, the United States and many other countries. It is a warning that revolutionary developments are being prepared.

It is true that at this stage the movement is characterised by a tremendous confusion. How could it be otherwise, when those organisations and parties that should be placing themselves at the head of a movement to transform society instead have been transformed into monstrous obstacles in the path of the working class? The masses are seeking a way out of the crisis, putting political parties, leaders and programs to the test. Those who fail the test are mercilessly cast to one side. There are violent swings on the electoral front, both to the left and to the right. All this is a harbinger of revolutionary change.

In retrospect the period of half a century that followed the Second World War will be seen as an historical exception. The peculiar concatenation of circumstances that produced this situation in all likelihood will never be repeated. What we face now is precisely a return to normal capitalism. The smiling face of liberalism, reformism and democracy will be cast aside to reveal the ugly physiognomy of capitalism as it really is.

Towards a new October!

A new period opens up before us – a period of storm and stress that will be far more similar to the 1930s than the period after 1945. All the illusions of the past will be burned out of the consciousness of the masses with a hot iron. In such a period as this the working class will have to fight hard to defend the gains of the past, and in the course of bitter struggle will come to understand the need for a thoroughgoing revolutionary programme. Either capitalism is overthrown, or a terrible fate awaits humanity. That is the only alternative. Any other course of action is a lie and a deceit. It is time to look truth in the face.

On the basis of diseased capitalism there can be no way forward for the working class and the youth. The liberals and reformists are striving with might and main to prop it up. They whimper about the threat to democracy, hiding the fact that so-called bourgeois democracy is merely a fig leaf behind which hides the crude reality of the dictatorship of the banks and big business. They will try to lure the working class into alliances to “defend democracy”, but this is a hypocritical farce.

The only force that has a real interest in democracy is the working class itself. The so-called liberal bourgeoisie is incapable of fighting reaction, which flows directly from the capitalist system upon which its wealth and privileges are based. It was Obama who paved the way for the victory of Trump, just as it was Hollande who has paved the way for the rise of Le Pen.

In reality, the old system is already breaking down before our very eyes. The symptoms of its decay are evident to all. Everywhere we see economic crises, social breakdown, disorder, wars, destruction and chaos. It is a terrible picture, but it flows from the fact that capitalism has led humanity into a blind alley.

It is not the first time that we have seen such things. The same symptoms can be seen in the period of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the period of decay of feudal society. It is no accident that men and women in those days imagined that the end of the world was approaching. But what was approaching was not the end of the world but only the end of a particular social economic system that had exhausted its potential and become a monstrous obstacle in the path of human progress.

Lenin once said that capitalism is horror without end. We now see the literal truth of this assertion. But alongside the horrors produced by a decadent and reactionary system there is another side to the picture. Our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition from one historical period to another. Such periods are always characterised by pains, which are the pains of a new society that is struggling to be born, while the old society struggles to preserve itself by strangling the child in the womb.

The old world is dying on its feet. That it is tottering to its fall is indicated by unmistakable symptoms. The rot is spreading in the established order of things, its institutions are collapsing. The defenders of the old order are seized by an undefined foreboding of something unknown. All these things betoken that there is something else approaching.

This gradual crumbling to pieces will be speeded up by the eruption of the working class on the scene of history. Those sceptics who wrote off the working class will be forced to eat their words. Volcanic forces are building up beneath the surface of society. The contradictions are building up to the point where they cannot be endured any further.

Our task is to shorten this painful process and ensure that the birth takes place with the least possible suffering. In order to do this it is necessary to accomplish the overthrow of the present system that has become a terrible barrier to the development of the human race and a threat to its future.

All those who are trying to preserve the old order, to patch it up, to reform it, to provide it with crutches that will enable it to hobble along for a few years or decades more are playing the most reactionary role. They are preventing the birth of a new society which alone can offer a future to humanity and put an end to the existing nightmare of capitalism.

The New World that is struggling to be born is called socialism. It is our job to ensure that this birth takes place as soon as possible and with the least possible pain and suffering. The way to achieve this end is to build a powerful worldwide Marxist tendency with educated cadres and strong links with the working class.

One hundred years ago an event took place that the changed the course of world history. In a backward semi feudal country on the edge of Europe, the working class moved to change society. Nobody expected this, on the contrary. The objective conditions for a socialist revolution in Russia seemed to be non-existent.

Europe was in the grip of a terrible war. The workers of Britain, France, Germany and Russia were slaughtering each other in the name of imperialism. In such a context the slogan “workers of the world unite” must have seemed like an expression of bitter sarcasm. Russia itself was ruled by a powerful autocratic regime with a huge army and police force and secret police whose tentacles extended to every political party – including the Bolsheviks.

And yet, in this seemingly impossible situation the workers of Russia moved to take power into their own hands. They overthrew the tsar and established democratic organs of power, the Soviets. Only nine months later the Bolshevik Party, which at the beginning of the revolution was a tiny force of no more than 8000 members, came to power.

One hundred years later Marxists are facing the same task that Lenin and Trotsky faced in 1917. Our forces are small and our resources are meagre, but we are armed with the most powerful weapon: the weapon of ideas. Marx said that ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses. For a long time we were fighting against a powerful current. But the tide of history is now flowing strongly in our direction.

Ideas which are listened to by ones and twos today will be eagerly received by millions in the period that now opens up. Great events can take place with extreme rapidity, transforming the whole situation. The consciousness of the working class can change in a matter of days or hours. Our task is to prepare the cadres for the great events that impend. Our banner is the banner of October. Our ideas are the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. That is the ultimate guarantee of our success.

London, 5th January 2017.

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[cryptodictation]

Ipea suggests readjusting Bolsa Família by 29%, plus R $ 450 per family

(photo: Disclosure)

Researchers from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea) suggest that the federal government grant one readjustment of up to 29% access criteria and the amounts paid by the Family Purse and create an extraordinary benefit of R $ 450.00, lasting six months, for all families with an income of up to half a minimum wage per person. The measures would reach the poorest third of the Brazilian population at a time when they are vulnerable to the crisis caused by the new coronavirus.

The actions would be combined with the inclusion of 1.7 million families that are on the program's waiting list. The additional expense calculated with assistance transfers in 2020 is estimated at R $ 68.6 billion, but more than 80% of this expense would be temporary and restricted to this year. The impact for next year would be much less, of R $ 11.6 billion, according to the technical note released this Friday (3/27), by Ipea.

The scenario is just one of the 72 alternatives designed and calculated by researchers Lus Henrique Paiva, Pedro Ferreira de Souza, Leticia Bartholo and Sergei Soares. According to the text, the simulations were requested by the Ministry of Economy, which asked for “the construction of intervention scenarios to enhance the use of the PBF (Bolsa Família Program) and the Single Registry as mechanisms to reduce the economic losses caused by 19 Brazilian low-income population “.

The work also analyzed institutional and operational difficulties, as any covid-19 response to support vulnerable families needs to be swift. “There is no use in a good answer that could be operational in 3 or 4 months, leaving the poorest families without resources during the most critical period of the crisis”, warns the text.

The researchers' assessment that it is necessary to reset the waiting list for Bolsa Familia and restore the real value of the poverty and extreme poverty lines set at the beginning of the program in 2004 at this time of greatest social vulnerability. Today, the benefit is paid to families with a monthly income of up to R $ 178 per person, and extreme poverty is considered when the amount is up to R $ 89 per person. These figures, according to the proposal, would rise to R $ 230 and R $ 115, respectively, which would increase the number of families able to join the program.

In addition, the researchers defend the creation of an extraordinary benefit to be paid to all families that have an updated registration in the Single Registry, a federal government database for the inclusion of families in social programs, regardless of whether they receive or not. Bolsa Família. To be included in Cadnico, I must have a family income of up to R $ 522.50 per person.

The researchers' argument is that families that are in Cadnico but are not yet on the “poverty line” that justifies the payment of Bolsa Família may experience “impoverishment” during the crisis of the new coronavirus. This would provoke a kind of rush to the Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS), already overloaded and that would assist an agglomeration of people just when the health recommendation for the population to stay at home and avoid situations of high risk of contagion by the citizens. 19.

“The granting of temporary benefits to vulnerable families is a more rational preventive response than simply waiting for these families to fall below the poverty line and having to go to the CRAS to update their information in the Single Registry,” says the study.

During the life of the extraordinary benefit, the poorest 30% of the Brazilian population could count on a minimum monthly income of R $ 450 per family. Bolsa Família beneficiaries could accumulate payments and have, on average, a monthly income security of almost R $ 690 per family. After the end of the extraordinary benefit, the families benefiting from the program would continue to receive on average something close to R $ 240 per family (R $ 77 per capita), an amount 27% higher than what is currently paid, in the researchers' calculations.

Simulations were made with other amounts, of R $ 150 or R $ 300 per family, which consequently would have less impact on public accounts, but would less protect families in the period of crisis.

“We understand the fiscal restrictions that plague the Brazilian State, but, given the likelihood of catastrophic developments from a social point of view, our recommendation inevitably tends towards the most generous scenarios,” says the technical note. According to the researchers, “at worst, even if social risks are overestimated” the additional expense would be almost all temporary.

In addition, spending on transfers would rise from 0.4% of Brazilian GDP to 1.4% of GDP this year – well below the annual Social Security deficit and in line with other countries' income transfer programs.

From the institutional and operational point of view, the suggestion made by the researchers considered to be of difficulty would intermediate the discharge. In the readjustments and the inclusion of more families in the program, the obstacle is the task of delivering so many cards at the same time to the beneficiaries, at a time when the logistics effort can be difficult.

To create the extraordinary benefit for six months, specific legislation is recommended (without connection to Bolsa Família) and good coordination with Congress for quick approval. The biggest difficulty would be to adjust Caixa's systems to the new parameters of the special payment, since they would be different from Bolsa Famlia. Even so, the researchers believe it is possible to rotate a sheet in early April, for payment at the end of the month.

Assistance network

The technical note from Ipea also calls attention to the lack of resources in the federal government's assistance network, which would need R $ 2.5 billion to keep the services running, but only has about R $ 1.5 billion (being R $ 500 million conditional on the approval of a special credit by the National Congress).

“Let us remember that the assistance network is responsible for welcoming people on the streets and even for bearing the burial costs of individuals whose families do not have the financial means to do so. It is necessary to underline, therefore, that the success of the suggestions for expansion of The benefits exposed in this note require the recomposition of the budget available to the social assistance services “, says the text.

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[96thdayofrage]

Media tycoon and former Labour MP Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in crime) was given a state funeral in Jerusalem after *accidentally* falling off his yacht – the unluckily named “Lady Ghislaine”. Later it was revealed Maxwell Sr was a Mossad asset who used his vast network of connections and publishing platforms to run editorial interference over his purchased assets to influence enemies and friends alike, ensuring their fealty to the foreign government that had enlisted him for its espionage work.

His tabloid empire was the piss-colored propaganda organ of the interests he served, overseeing its rapid growth and tentacled reach across the globe. More ominously, he was behind the spy agency’s successful attempt to install a trapdoor in software intended for government use, allowing the Israelis a direct pipeline into a vast network of computers installed with undectable malware.

At the time of his death, the disgraced magnate was under investigation for raiding his companies’ pension funds to cover the losses incurred from his multiple and reckless takeovers, and finance a luxury lifestyle he enjoyed sharing with high profile pals like Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters. Curiously, many of these fossilized specimens from Robert Maxwell’s roster of friends from the Reagan era would circle around Epstein, most notably Donald Trump whose Mar-a-Lago resort would later become a recruiting center for employer Epstein’s underage “massage therapists”.

Fast forward a couple of decades since the days a casino mogul was gobbling down canapés with the old guard denizens of the ‘swamp’. Notice a similar, if not identical MO in both Maxwell and Epstein’s role in procuring technology for the Israelis, who in turn sold it with undisclosed add-ons, providing an open window into its users’ databases.

Like his predecessor, Epstein had a financial stake in a startup (headed by former Israeli Defense Minister and later Prime Minister Ehud Barak) connected to Israel’s defense industry that provides infrastructure for emergency services as a call handling platform. Considering the company’s connection to military intelligence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate on some of this software’s other ‘special’ features. A variation of the early technology that Maxwell was able to procure for his Israeli bosses was later sold to the Saudis, who leveraged its sophisticated tracking features to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi.

Epstein, like Maxwell, was laying the groundwork for Israeli espionage activities through his interests in companies with a political agenda concealed in products intended for international export. If true, the playboy philanthropist feted and flattered his high profile friends to ensnare them as complicit partners in what amounts to the legal definition of treason. Epstein’s covert activities have undiminished real world consequences for anyone on Israel’s international radar, especially those challenging the status quo policies in place that prioritize “The Jewish State’s” political and financial objectives over actual justice and global stability.

If you have ever asked yourself why Israel’s war crimes and settlement expansion go unchallenged by US lawmakers, consider the career destroying consequences contained within those dossiers compiled by the braintrust behind Epstein’s ’suicide’. “We’ll trade you one US Embassy in Jerusalem for 10 minutes of hidden camera footage of you . . . let’s say ‘enjoying’ a rolled up Forbes magazine”.

Were the surveillance apparatuses installed throughout Epstein’s properties merely a voyeur’s tools, or did he use them to leverage the moral failings of his former friends for purposes that might have risked exposure of more than the nether regions of wealthy pedo-punters? Considering his connections to Israeli defense industries and his own Achilles penis that required, by his own admission, “three orgasms a day”, the answer points to an unslakable addiction that dovetailed conveniently with his state-sponsored sex crimes.

Did Epstein make the same mistake of Maxwell (who had asked for nearly half a billion dollar in “loans” from his Israeli backers to relieve him of his mounting debts) believing the dirt he had in his possession would prove radioactive if released? By this time, the corpulent tycoon was nicknamed the ‘Bouncing Czech’ a reference in most part to his worsening money woes. The implication of this request, if turned down, was the exposure of Israel’s state secrets. Epstein could have also attempted to collateralize the cache of damning evidence still in his possession to secure his his freedom with the same fatal consequences.

Both Maxwell and Epstein somehow evaded the electronics that linked them to the outside world at the time of their deaths, even though the latter had reportedly made an attempt on his own life while in custody. Both men, facing ruination and serious prison time gave their executioners an alibi: They had nothing to left to live for. The establishment media is already trotting out ancient, ding-a-ling conspiracy theories from obscure right wing sources (attributed to Russia, of course) to highlight the absurdity and futility of questioning the official story of Epstein’s death. Verdict: Nothing to see here.

By now, it’s a given that the parasitic and preferred daughter of the deceased tycoon, made the fateful introduction between her new boyfriend and the Israeli operatives seeking an entry level plutocrat to carry out their blackmail operations after the untimely death of his predecessor. An impoverished socialite has to survive in pricey Manhattan somehow, and that somehow was re-establishing the shady connections to the espionage underworld that had recruited Maxwell Sr.

Ghislaine’s later role as Epstein’s Chief Procurement Officer (or pimp for short) gives more credence to the rumors that she is more than just a debased, barnacle-like appendage to a billionaire, desperate to please her platonic partner by “organizing his social life”, but a fully cognizant co-conspirator in an operation aimed at strengthening Israel’s hand in all matters pertaining to its national security interests, or more accurately, its overseas criminal enterprises.

The recent raid on Epstein’s Manhattan apartment was not the result of a so-called Justice Department righting the egregious wrong it committed by letting Epstein off with a slap on the wrist after his initial conviction that allowed him to serve his sentence largely outside the minimum-security facility with an open door policy for its billionaire guest. More likely, the reversal of Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal was a joint operation between the oligarch cabal informally known as the Mega-Group, and the state security apparatuses that do their bidding.

It’s seems likely that this sudden pivot towards justice from a Justice Department initially spooked into inaction by the spook in his custody, was motivated by the need to remove the most damning bits among Epstein’s vast trove of physical evidence against the pervy punters who visited his island getaway for unintended photo ops with underage girls.

Perhaps his own abuse of these minors was a perk he felt entitled to, and one that would be overlooked in the service of “national security”. It’s hard for most people to differentiate between the government he actually worked for and the ruling establishment on his home turf.

It’s possible that Epstein felt his serial transgressions were merely par for the plutocracy and justified in the service of a higher calling.

The ‘Israel First’ philanthropist shared an unyielding ideological justification for his own criminality as Robert Maxwell, whom the British Home Office had considered recruiting for its own intelligence gathering in the mid 1960’s. Having determined that the well-connected, multilingual, rising star politician was strictly “Zionist”, the spy agency withdrew his candidacy.

Epstein’s real crimes had little to do with raping children, despite the overturned plea deal that came about when a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the victims rights by by concealing the agreement from them. The one time teflon-coated “member of intelligence” who was “above the pay grade” of a powerful District Attorney (now a now scandal-tainted former Labor Secretary) was ultimately (and lethally) penalized for not destroying the contents of his secret-laden safes, leaving his handlers still vulnerable to their explosive contents.

Had the doomed financier divested himself of the toxic assets still in his possession, he might still be roaming the earth today, scouring it for new specimens to populate his underage petting zoo. As a result of the Justice Department’s decision to reverse the non-prosecution deal meant to bury the most incendiary facts of the case, lower-rung punters like former governor Bill Richardson and Senator George Mitchell are being publicly named for their part in the sordid scandal. Someone has to take the fall. (Rule number one of PR crisis management: Crucify the insignificant and let them hang out to dry until the public tires of watching the slow motion spectacle of their undoing.) Meanwhile, documented and/or photographic evidence against more powerful players like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump will have already been destroyed in the pursuit of selective justice.

The fallout of Epstein’s spectacular downfall predictably miss the mark as scandals involving the rich and powerful tend to do. Much of the controversy will dissolve into a Cheetoh dust maelstrom of disinformation, disseminated on Reddit and 4Chan by incel info-warriors before shooting up a shopping mall or playground.

Subsequent reporting of the case will overlook decades of the elite-driven state craft that elevated corrupt and ruthless entities like Epstein and Trump, both ring-kissing acolytes in their youth of influential mob fixer/politcal power broker Roy Cohn – himself a serial sexual predator who similarly caught the fancy of fellow deviants Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. Follow the money trail from Tel Aviv and you’ll discover an ancestral link between the corpse of Epstein and his ghostly godfathers waiting with his rewards in hell.

Along with the other disgraced and expendable patsies left in the wake of this ongoing scandal is Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s octogenarian chief legal counsel and ‘wing man’ aboard the Lolita Express. The now unemployable cable news pundit will live out the remainder of his pointless life under a cloud of suspicion. Despite all the damning testimony against him, the statutory rape allegations never quite stick, but follow him around like a sneaky fart, forcing a distance between himself and the rest of humanity that will last until he is engulfed by the sulfurous fumes of his own making.

The former Harvard law professor’s lifelong service to Israel will go unrewarded – not as a result of victim testimony placing him at multiple crime scenes, but in consideration of his own inept self-defense strategy: ”I’m a scurvy rat aboard a sinking ship eating its own tail to stay alive. Pity me”! Dershowitz at this point will be lucky if he can achieve the same pay grade and social status of Lindsay Lohan. Ditto for Prince Andrew who can at least be relied on to expire slowly of gout in his time-out corner at Windsor Castle.

The moral of this story could be “Lie down with dogs and never wake up agan with a prison-issued sheet around your neck”. A variation of the old “Lie down with dogs and and wake up as fish food”.

[newstfionline]

Welcome to Zucktown

By David Streitfeld, NY Times, March 21, 2018

MENLO PARK, Calif.--John Tenanes, Facebook’s vice president for real estate, is showing off the company’s plans for expansion. It will have offices for thousands of programmers to extend Facebook’s fearsome reach. But that is not what Mr. Tenanes is excited about.

He leans over a scale model of the 59-acre site, which is named Willow Village. “There will be housing there,” he points. “There will be a retail street along here, with a grocery store and a drugstore. That round building in the corner? Maybe a cultural center.”

In just a few years, Facebook built a virtual community that linked more than two billion people, an achievement with few precedents. Now the social network is building a real community, the kind you can walk around. It is a project with many precedents in American history, quite a few of them cautionary tales about what happens when a powerful corporation takes control of civic life.

Facebook, Mr. Tenanes says, has a dual mission: “We want to balance our growth with the community’s needs.”

Willow Village will be wedged between the Menlo Park neighborhood of Belle Haven and the city of East Palo Alto, both heavily Hispanic communities that are among Silicon Valley’s poorest. Facebook is planning 1,500 apartments, and has agreed with Menlo Park to offer 225 of them at below-market rates. The most likely tenants of the full-price units are Facebook employees, who already receive a five-figure bonus if they live near the office.

The community will have eight acres of parks, plazas and bike-pedestrian paths open to the public. Facebook wants to revitalize the railway running alongside the property and will finish next year a pedestrian bridge over the expressway. The bridge will provide access to the trail that rings San Francisco Bay, a boon for birders and bikers.

Mr. Tenanes contemplates the audacity of building a city.

“It’s a good thing, right?” he says.

Depends how it goes. Facebook is testing the proposition: Do people love tech companies so much they will live inside of them? When the project was announced last summer, critics dubbed it Facebookville or, in tribute to company co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zucktown.

The company has not warmed to these names. “I owe my soul to the company store,” Tennessee Ernie Ford sang. But Facebook’s ambitions are now confronting a more urgent problem: an escalating crisis over the company’s power to sway elections, its casual approach to data privacy and its susceptibility to Russian manipulation. If Facebook’s image is permanently sullied by the furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Zucktown will falter before it is finished.

The social media colossus is not the only Big Tech company in the complicated position of dressing up its expansion as a gift to its neighbors.

A few miles down the 101 highway, another new civic-corporate partnership is underway in the city of Mountain View. Google is promising to place the public “in the very heart of Google’s vibrant community.”

The search company plans a 600,000-square-foot office building with a roof that melts up into soft peaks, kind of like a meringue. It will have stores, cafes, gardens and even a space for theatrical performances, as well as a place for consumers to test-drive new Google technology.

Google will build 5,000 homes on its property under an agreement brokered with Mountain View in December. Call it Alphabet City as a nod to Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent. The company said it was still figuring out its future as a landlord, and declined further comment.

Zucktown and Alphabet City, as well as similar projects being contemplated across Silicon Valley, could at a minimum have consequences for the start-up culture that transformed fruit orchards into the world’s greatest tech hub. Silicon Valley was built by engineers jumping from company to company. That drove the innovation that sped the rise of some firms and hastened the demise of others.

As workers begin to literally live at the office, they will inevitably be more beholden to bosses who also collect the rent. After all, it is much harder to find a place to live in Silicon Valley than a new job. Turnover may slump, and so might the turnover in ideas.

The push into the physical also has implications for the 1.2 million people in Silicon Valley who are teachers, fitness instructors, clerks, baristas--all those who hold jobs that do not come with stock options. As they inch down the clogged streets and bid money they don’t have on miserable houses, they will hear the siren call of Big Tech: We can fix broken communities by building new ones. Trust us.

“Corporations are paying for things that the city or county and state used to pay for,” said Cecilia Taylor of Belle Haven Action, a community advocacy group. “They have a lot of money. A lot of money. More than the city does. And a lot more power.”

On a wall in the Facebook division charged with the company’s growth there is a poster with a classic tech admonition: “Go Big or Go Home.” Facebook is in essence tweaking that to “Go Big at Home.” About 12,000 of its 25,000 employees work in Menlo Park. In a decade, it will have space for 35,000--slightly more than the city’s current population.

The notion of communities run by and for companies has been a fixture in the United States almost from the beginning. Often these places were exercises in plunder.

In the textile town of Lowell, Mass., in 1846, the mill clock slowed down to lengthen shifts and then sped up at night when the workers were off, according to one contemporary reformer. U.S. Steel built Gary, Ind., but took little responsibility for its employees, many of whom lived in substandard housing in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

There were more benign examples too. Milton Hershey began building a chocolate factory in the middle of Pennsylvania in 1903 and then surrounded it with a community where, he pledged, there would be “no poverty, no nuisances, no evil.” In return for surrendering certain rights--like local elections and privacy--workers in the town of Hershey got medical coverage, a free junior college, parks and a zoo.

By the 1960s, the era of the company town in America was fading, even as countries like China picked up the notion. Zhengzhou is a remote Chinese city that was once impoverished. It now has 350,000 workers building iPhones.

Hardy Green, author of “The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy,” said that the tech companies had been reviving elements of the company town in the United States for years now.

The free meals, nap pods, concierge services, yoga classes, on-site laundry and haircuts are a perk but also a modern way of slowing down the mill clock so the workers can spend more time working. But in a society where government is increasingly ineffective, company towns are nevertheless likely to be welcomed, or at least tolerated.

“It may be the best option for many, just as a benevolent dictatorship can be O.K. for as long as the benevolence lasts,” Mr. Green said.

Only seven years ago, Silicon Valley had a very different attitude about building housing for workers, much less the community. A gaunt Steve Jobs, in what would turn out to be his last public appearance, made his case before the Cupertino City Council for a new Apple headquarters.

Mr. Jobs told council members how great the new doughnut-shaped headquarters was going to be. It would have a lot of trees, a theater, curved windows. Architecture students would come from all over to study it.

City Council member Kris Wang had a question: How could the 60,000 Cupertino residents benefit from this new campus?

“We’d like to continue to stay here and pay taxes,” Mr. Jobs said. “If we can’t, we’d have to go somewhere like Mountain View.”

Ms. Wang, a former Cupertino mayor, persisted. “Do we get free Wi-Fi or something like that?”

“I’m a simpleton,” Mr. Jobs replied. “I always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things. That’s why we pay taxes. If we can get out of paying taxes I’d be glad to put up a Wi-Fi network.”

Since that June 2011 meeting, the number of hours commuters in Silicon Valley lose every day to congestion has doubled to 66,000. About 300,000 new jobs have been created, pushing the median apartment rental rate up 37 percent and the median cost of a home to $968,000.

Meanwhile, the big companies--not only Apple but Amazon, which has an increasingly large presence in Silicon Valley, as well as Facebook and Google--are much wealthier.

Apple built a $5 billion campus that, for all its splendor, is not readily accessible by mass transit. That problem was compounded by the company’s apparent lack of interest in where its new employees would live. Decisions like these are no longer acceptable from a public relations point of view, and would not be smart for the companies in any case. If Silicon Valley continues choking on its traffic, the companies will find hiring not merely difficult but impossible. Even for a tech programmer, a $2 million house is a hurdle.

So the virtual companies are being forced to grapple with the most intractable physical issues.

“I don’t think Google, for instance, thought they were going to have to get into the transportation business,” said Allison Arieff, editorial director of San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a research organization. “But they now have a giant swath of the company devoted to getting people around. Housing seems the next step. No one bats an eye if universities build housing for students, grad students and tenured professors.”

[top5internetsourcesuniversi-blog]

The Abortion Debate

'In the military personnel at present that spontaneous vergeinateion productions dedicate both second of either solar day. Abortion is a big guinea pig in this multiplication be typesetters case of ingest loose horm champions the miss conjunction of love and obligation and what it bugger offs to the t adequate to(p). They lack to amply understand the presents and laws to puerility cargon be consume nonwithstanding they atomic number 18 good-tempered tykeren themselves. When we misuse this we persist to f each(prenominal) into legal injury decision devising of miscarriage. Abortion ties into what whatever record the kill of a gaykind bearing. We fail to constitute the f routine of when does spiritedness begin.\n some(prenominal) may claim that animation begins as we name in our makes uterus. ( fit to pro livenesstime physicians.com) military personnel creationnesss behavior begins as we atomic number 18 subject to adapt, reproduce, organi zed, perk up competency etc. Does this real define that we are able to shut a room take a life that has neer displayed these actions only if go a way. numerous people volition agree that during both miscarriage and p everyplacety-stricken charitable cosmosness is killed. They similarly displace to decoctk that when does life begin or is cool offbirth respectable miscarriage. fit to pro-choice ne devilrk tender-hearted life begins as a mollycoddle / fetus begins to roost on its sport got without the makes co-occurrence (Pro-choice network).\nIn the earth today laws flip been straight in umpteen states that in that location is a set metre for a wo custody to abort her electric s applyr or fetus. Women muckle unless have miscarriage between octette to twelve weeks of m differentliness. This tax return to the question when are we considered compassionate organisms viewpoints regarding this burn vary wildly, but after illumination of wherefor e one should be considered gentle from the moment of intention. fit in to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word is to begin with derived from Latin, considering the act of bearing young, manifestation (Webster Dictionary). It is a verge that describes an unborn child, norm tout ensembley use from two months after conception to birth. However kind-hearted life force non come out to be true at the fourth dimension; a benevolent has to have a conscious to be a merciful the fetus wishing to have a soul, reciprocally define as the ghostly essence of human being.\nIn friendship today stillbirth is viewed as the kill of vindicated or intentionally violent final examinatione lives. Which society has the say to outlaw spontaneous stillbirth be actor it harms innocent human beings? But unconstipated after concession those points, some still do non favor more than stringent stillbirth laws because they think that they dont really work there would still be similarly umteen spontaneous miscarriages. Abortion is outlined as a landmarkination of a gestation alternatively of its prevention, abortions are condole withful separately. \nThe statistics on abortion as listed on the Center for ailment Controls website show the demographics that the highest percentages of women who dupe abortions are Caucasians, unmarried, and inwardly the age puke of 20 24. The plosive speech sound of most standard abortions is within the stolon-year octonary weeks of gestation, which correlates to the highest employ method involving curettage. (Center for disorder Control)\nAbortion is non alship screwal the way to go if things in your life does not go well. at that place are various paths that kick the bucket down to being and irresponsible overprotect and one way you raft do this is by having the infant and giving the child up for adoption. Abortions behind lead to umpteen an(prenominal) a(prenominal) problems with your he alth and problems in relationships family of friends. According to the surgical incision of Health abortion send word cause receiveliness run a risks of your nigh child, pelvic infection, and melodic line clots in the uterus, unsounded bleeding and some more. Abortion is specify as a termination of a pregnancy sort of of its prevention. The percent of women who produce abortions are not married and most the ages of 20 24. The current of most authoritative abortions is within the first eight weeks of gestation, which correlates to the highest utilise method involving curettage. (Center for unsoundness Control)\nThe opposite ship canal that doctors approach abortion in different techniques. During the first eight weeks of ontogenesis, abortion methods such as suction aspiration ignore be performed where a nihility subway system working 29 quantifys stronger than a household vacuum removes the embryo. some other method used during this time frame admits dila tion and curettage where the neck opening is dilated, and a sagaciously knife crying at the ashes of the child until all the remains have been scrapped out.\nAll abortion that take place every day comes with short term and long term effect. The leading causes of abortion related motherly deaths within a week of the operating theater are hemorrhage, infection, embolism, anesthesia, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. legal abortion is cipher as the ordinal leading cause of maternal death in the pass water to labourher States. Other come-at-able side effects of receiving an abortion include a risk that the cleaning char charr could fix infertile or have miscarriages in later pregnancies. Another risk is the development of an mad stop k instantaneouslyn as Post abortion syndrome where many potential reminders of the abortion can trigger a depressive response in the person. This serious precondition is then used in support of pro-life activists react against aborti on. \nIn the imprint of many pro-choice supporters, pregnancy itself can be too traumatic for a charr. When putting pregnancy in perspective, for nine months, a cleaning woman is subjected to both horny and somatogenetic pain, which can have personal, pecuniary and social effects on the womans life the most common reason of why women may guide abortion is because of finical impoverishments.\nIn many cases in our world today we care very apace to judge people. alliance fails to take into account that the women may have never cute to take this road in abortion but now face the feature that she has to. Many cases of pregnancy have being lead stand to lack of love, neglect, attack, and scotch issues and etc. Issues of thwart have to be aware. The womans choice regarding an abdicable pregnancy that was force-ably bought on her that by chance may be taken in to account, abortions due to rape or incest, where carrying the child to term would cause even more horny misu se to a woman who has already been injured. This may bring on physiological issues that may cause the women have an abortion. Society will argue that something that is uncalled-for will bring happiness. (Planned Parenthood)\nWhen bringing forwards the subject of abortion we often transmit the males out of question. When having a baby it takes two. When receiving an abortion it also may take two. Many people mark off abortion as a womans issue, however, though it may not affect men in the akin physical sense, it can have emotional consequences for them as well. According to the (American life league) date the wife terminates her pregnancy the husband is uneffective to do the uniform if he does not take the child, or arguably more significantly, he is unable(p) to stop the abortion if he does want the child. This again relates to the rights of the woman and if she should be able to have the final say over her own consistency. When armed combat to pass abortion restriction s, a ordinarily used competition is that it goes against religion and the point of if it is the right or wrong thin to doing Gods eyes.\nReligious implications have helped fuel the scrap over this super charged issue. The religious issue over abortion is so difficult to resolution because of the varied personality of religion .While sects of Catholics are by out-of-the-way(prenominal) the majority, about 76.69% of the U.S. populations. Catholics pass that having an abortion is immoral, a form of murder, and not allowed. This fact, however, does not taut that Catholic women never undergo an abortion. According to Guttermacher 27.4% of U.S. abortions in 2002 tranquil data that 42.8% of Catholic women, 7.6% of Protestant women and 22.2% of other religions. \nMany religions have found ways to justify abortions as permissible. According to (Jewish belief .com) the termination of a pregnancy is not seen as wrong, as long as it is performed to protect the mothers wellbeing, whe ther that is her physical or emotional health. During the trial of many abortions we see that the mother takes into account that importance of herself but not her and the fetus as a substantial Other religions guess that in renascence of the soul such as Buddhism and Hinduism that potently teach and inspire the sacredness of life by allowing abortion. \nReligious groups also use the view of the soul to oblige their argument. If the soul determines that a fetus is a person that would bastardly that it is a human being at the moment of conception, and does not leave the body until the time of infixed death. In the Catholic Church abortion in the head of social encyclicals, outset with Pope social lion XIIIs in the garner of Rerum Novarum. He believed that toilet that abortion is an admonitory and singular socio-ethical problem, merit central concern in Catholic social teachings this was viewed in the churches eye as social injustice. \nThis lofty would entail that al l forms of human life deserve the kindred respect and should enrapture the same rights end-to-end every percentage point of development. The fact that innocent children without a component does not get the chance to explicate themselves does not mean that people in our society have the right to take a life? Or is it a human being yet because you need the most important thing of being a human being which is the power to breathe on your own without go mothers support. If you want to get a liberal essay, order it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '