#she is terrible on foreign policy and Black issues

[wastedandbasted]

you guys...y'all don't really look into politicians actual records deeply enough like you should, do you? and no, Wikipedia is NOT enough and not even always accurate...

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 8, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” Ford said he was issuing the pardon to keep from roiling the “tranquility” the nation had begun to enjoy since Nixon stepped down. If Nixon were indicted and brought to trial, the trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”

Ford later said that he issued the pardon with the understanding that accepting a pardon was an admission of guilt. But Nixon refused to accept responsibility for the events surrounding the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.’s fashionable Watergate office building. He continued to maintain that he had done nothing wrong but was hounded from office by a “liberal” media.

Rather than being chastised by Watergate and the political fallout from it, a faction of Republicans continued to support the idea that Nixon had done nothing wrong when he covered up an attack on the Democrats before the 1972 election. Those Republicans followed Nixon’s strategy of dividing Americans. Part of that polarization was an increasing conviction that Republicans were justified in undercutting Democrats, who were somehow anti-American, even if it meant breaking laws.

In the 1980s, members of the Reagan administration did just that. They were so determined to provide funds for the Nicaraguan Contras, who were fighting the leftist Sandinista government, that they ignored a law passed by a Democratic Congress against such aid. In a terribly complicated plan, administration officials, led by National Security Adviser John Poindexter and his deputy Oliver North, secretly sold arms to Iran, which was on the U.S. terror list and thus ineligible for such a purchase, to try to put pressure on Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorists who were holding U.S. hostages. The other side of the deal was that they illegally funneled the money from the sales to the Contras.

Although Poindexter, North, and North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, destroyed crucial documents, enough evidence remained to indict more than a dozen participants, including Poindexter, North, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, and four CIA officials. But when he became president himself, Reagan’s vice president George H.W. Bush, himself a former CIA director and implicated in the scandal, pardoned those convicted or likely to be. He was advised to do so by his attorney general, William Barr (who later became attorney general for President Donald Trump).

With his attempt to use foreign policy to get himself reelected, Trump took attacks on democracy to a new level. In July 2019, he withheld congressionally appropriated money from Ukraine in order to force the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce he was opening an investigation into the son of then–Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. That is, Trump used the weight of the U.S. government and its enormous power in foreign affairs to try to hamstring his Democratic opponent. When the story broke, Democrats in the House of Representatives called this attack on our democracy for what it was and impeached him, but Republicans voted to acquit.

It was a straight line from 2019’s attack to that of the weeks after the 2020 election, when the former president did all he could to stop the certification of the vote for Democrat Joe Biden. By January 6, though, Trump’s disdain for the law had spread to his supporters, who had learned over a generation to believe that Democrats were not legitimate leaders. Urged by Trump and other loyalists, they refused to accept the results of the election and stormed the Capitol to install the leader they wanted.

The injection of ordinary Americans into the political mix has changed the equation. While Ford recoiled from the prospect of putting a former president on trial, prosecutors today have seen no reason not to charge the people who stormed the Capitol. More than 570 have been charged so far.

Yesterday, a 67-year-old Idaho man, Duke Edward Wilson, pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. He faces up to 8 years and a $250,000 fine for assaulting the law enforcement officers. And he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for obstruction of an official proceeding.

This law was originally put in place in 1871 to stop members of the Ku Klux Klan from crushing state and local governments during Reconstruction.

If Wilson is facing such a punishment for his foot soldier part in obstructing an official proceeding in January, what will that mean for those higher up the ladder? Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has sued Trump; Donald Trump, Jr.; Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), who wore a bullet-proof vest to his speech at the January 6 rally; and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who also spoke at the rally, for exactly that: obstructing an official proceeding.

Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) launched a similar lawsuit against Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, but withdrew from it when he became chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Ten other Democratic House members are carrying the lawsuit forward: Representatives Karen R. Bass (CA), Stephen I. Cohen (TN), Veronica Escobar (TX), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Henry C. Johnson, Jr. (GA), Marcia C. Kaptur (OH), Barbara J. Lee (CA), Jerrold Nadler (NY), Maxine Waters (CA), and Bonnie M. Watson Coleman (NJ).

Lawyer and political observer Teri Kanefield writes on Just Security that there is “a considerable amount of publicly available information supporting an allegation that Trump and members of his inner circle intended the rallygoers to impede or delay the counting of electoral votes and certification of the election.” She points out that the rally was timed to spur attendees to go to the Capitol just as the counting of the electoral votes was scheduled to take place, and that in the midst of the attack, Giuliani left a voicemail for a senator asking him to slow down the proceedings into the next day.

At the end of the Civil War, General U.S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln made a decision similar to Ford’s in 1974. They reasoned that being lenient with former Confederates, rather than punishing any of them for their attempt to destroy American democracy, would make them loyal to the Union and willing to embrace the new conditions of Black freedom. Instead, just as Nixon did, white southerners chose to interpret the government’s leniency as proof that they, the Confederates, had been right. Rather than dying in southern defeat, their conviction that some men were better than others, and that hierarchies should be written into American law, survived.

By the 1890s, the Confederate soldier had come to symbolize an individual standing firm against a socialist government controlled by workers and minorities; he was the eastern version of the western cowboy. Statues of Confederates began to sprout up around the country, although most of them were in the South. On what would become Monument Avenue, the white people of Richmond, Virginia, erected a statue to General Robert E. Lee in 1890, the same year the Mississippi Constitution officially suppressed the Black vote. Black leaders objected to the statue, but in vain.

Today, 131 years later, that statue came down.

Notes:

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.asp

https://www.cfr.org/blog/orlando-massacre-and-global-terrorism

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/prosecutions.php

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/swalwell-lawsuit-trump/6d4926e63b9a8fcd/full.pdf

https://www.justsecurity.org/75032/litigation-tracker-pending-criminal-and-civil-cases-against-donald-trump/#Thompson

https://www.justsecurity.org/78035/why-a-trump-lawsuit-to-protect-executive-privilege-could-backfire/

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/idaho-man-pleads-guilty-assault-law-enforcement-and-obstruction-during-jan-6-capitol?s=03

Dr. Hilary Green @HilaryGreen77With Lee Monument coming down, I know that this site will be filled with apologists decrying the process. As someone who wrote about Richmond in book 1 and currently in book two, Black Richmonders rejected the Lost Cause monuments and routinely vocalized their discontent. 1/8

278 Retweets1,076 Likes

September 8th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/robert-e-lee-statue-removal/2021/09/08/1d9564ee-103d-11ec-9cb6-bf9351a25799_story.html

Sha

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[agiar2000]

Resistance to Violence

I just saw this video, and I found it very intriguing and impactful, intellectually. It actually did get me thinking differently about the main issue therein. https://youtu.be/YJSehRlU34w

When this video was published, I was probably already quite convinced of the virtue of non-violent resistance.

In recent years, however, I have seen more and more of how non-violent protesters have not only been subjected to oppressive violence in retaliation, but have also been publicly blamed for the violence being done to and around them, so that the corrupt media has successfully managed to redirect the sympathy that ought to be conferred on those who are bravely and peacefully standing in the face of violence and oppression, and twist it into even more support for the oppressive system. I have seen how violent regimes are perfectly willing to brutalize peaceful people just to assert and demonstrate their dominance, and then I see them getting praise from large swaths of the population who support that oppression.

On the other hand, I have also been thinking more about situations where violence was the catalyst to finally make progress for equality and justice. The Confederate States of America, the Nazis of Germany, and the various unconscionable horrors they wrought were not stopped by people protesting peacefully, by seeking common ground, by seeking to understand them better and make them comfortable. They were stopped by a sufficient opposing army slaughtering them until they ceased to be willing and able to pose a continuing threat to humanity.

It's also helpful, I think to contrast the end of the Confederacy with the end of the Nazis. Starting with the Confederacy: While slavery and white supremacy were certainly overtly stated goals of the Confederacy's rebellion, the Union was (and still is) hardly an anti-racist country, and it has been noted that their goal in fighting the Confederacy was more about retaining the Union than about ending slavery. In the end, when the Confederacy surrendered, there was an attempt by the victors to ease the feelings of the erstwhile rebels, to allow them to retain a great deal of "Southern pride". For that, we get the Daughters of the Confederacy whitewashing and rewriting history, the Ku Klux Klan continuing to wage terror across the country, and many of the various monuments and other dedications to honor Confederate leaders. The meaning of these symbols is clearly white supremacy, and not merely "Southern pride", as evidenced by how they're used. Many of these monuments were erected in the former Confederacy as part of the backlash against the civil rights movement in the 20th century, and some people even outside of America proudly wave the Confederacy's navy jack flag. Why would non-Americans wave that flag? Because they want to wave a flag for white supremacy, and they can't legally wave the flag of the Nazis.

The Nazis, by contrast, were obliterated. They were not allowed to retain "Nazi pride" after the fall of their heinous regime. The symbols of their monstrosity were banned. A standard of basic human decency was granted greater priority than the "freedom" of terrible people to do horrible things. Nazism was destroyed, not simply because it opposed other powers that wanted to control them, but because they were evil, and they needed to be stopped for the good of the world. The result is that now, less than 8 decades after the fall of the Nazis, Germany is a far more decent, pro-social democracy than the former Confederate states, which continue to stand for right-wing oppression, even over 15 decades after the surrender of the Confederacy.

Another example, though less of a dramatic one, is that of the Stonewall riot. The LGBTQ community did not start gaining rights and freedom from a horrifically oppressive regime because they were kind, nice, and peaceful, gently appealing to the better angels of their murderers and oppressors, making the effort to try to understand them and to meet them in the middle. What kicked off their victories at this time was Black trans women of color throwing bricks at police.

Considering all that, I found Chenoweth's presentation difficult to reconcile. When the oppressive regime has control over the media, when they make every peaceful protester look like a violent, dangerous terrorist, and they convince large portions of the population to be willing to fight for fascism, convincing them that it is actually "freedom", and that efforts for justice are actually an attack on their very identity, how can one possibly proceed? When those in power do murder peaceful protesters, do you keep showing up to protest peacefully? If you see someone going around shooting people left and right, do you stand there and demand verbally that the shooter stop?

So, what to do? We live in a violent society that has normalized routine violence against the poor, minorities, people of color, and all of the most marginalized and vulnerable in society. We only need 3.5% of the population to actively resist? Already 5.8% of the American population is in deep poverty, with 9.2% in poverty, generally. Globally, these numbers are even more horrifying, with 9.2% in deep poverty and nearly 17% in a state of being "multidimensionally poor", and nearly half living on less than the equivalent of US$5.50 per day. Couldn't we count on those people, at the very least, to oppose their own oppression? No, we cannot, partly because part of being so oppressed is being kept so weak and powerless that you don't have the energy to resist and being provided just enough that you're terrified to lose what little you have by daring to stand up, but also because so many of them have been brainwashed and corrupted into voting against their own interests and being willing to fight against the people who are trying to help them, and blame the even more marginalized among them or phantoms of foreign powers for all of their problems. Maybe if they knew what was really going on, we would have won long before now.

Now, regarding the topic of the video, the success of non-violent resistance, I very much appreciate that Chenoweth's presentation relied on statistical data from studies of hundreds of events rather than the mere anecdotes that were foremost in my mind when I started watching, and I also appreciate that she started by talking about the mindset from which she started, which closely resembled my own, including good examples of violent revolutions that ended corrupt regimes. I don't know exactly how the data she used to reach her conclusion were gathered and classified, and I retain some skepticism, but I would very much like to believe that her data are, in fact, representative, accurate, and actionable. I would very much like to believe that we can, in fact, win freedom and justice through peaceful means, though I have a hard time really being confident in it. I want to believe that she's right because otherwise, I see very little hope at all. We are very close to a point at which total environmental collapse is inevitable, with the majority of global power still putting the pedal to the metal to drive us off that cliff as fast as possible. The most aggressive policy proposals to save the planet involve easing up on the gas slightly, far too little far too late, and even those are being defeated by the regressive death cult of neoliberals, conservatives, and fascists. At this point, it is hard to see how any future can exist that does not involve tremendous destruction. Either the forces of evil win outright and destroy everything, or the forces that oppose them are forced to wreak so much destruction in order to stop them that they might as well have lost anyway. It's hard to imagine sometimes that we have not already completely lost, that the world is not already completely doomed, and all that is left is to watch as the monsters responsible for it just keep making things worse until the very end.

I guess the answer is just to have faith and to do whatever we can to give humanity the best possible chance, and that means two main strategic goals: 1. Motivate and influence enough people to reach that 3.5% threshold to actually resist for the change that we all need. 2. Determine an actual action plan for those people to carry out that will have the desired effect with a minimum of collateral damage and harmful side effects.

Sadly, I have no idea how to do either of those things, and anything I can think of still feels either depressingly small and insufficient or worrying for its potential to cause unintended harm.

[qqueenofhades]

Can you please explain why you like Warren more than Sanders? I was too young to vote in 2016 but I would've voted Bernie in that primary, and I plan to do so this year(I'll vote whoever the Democrat party chooses in the real election, I understand the dangers of not doing so). I don't know much about the differences in their policies except that Sanders is slightly more leftist and a relatively simple comparison between the two would help. And how big of a factor should his age play in my vote?

Thanks for asking!

I think the best place for you to start, if you want everything explained in depth on each issue far more eloquently than I can, is to simply read the Political positions of Bernie Sanders and Political positions of Elizabeth Warren pages on Wikipedia, which outline their positions on pretty much everything you could think of. The main difference in how people perceive them lies in the fact that Bernie has been a democratic socialist for his entire political career, while Warren became a Democrat in 1996, and is viewed by the hard left as still being too pro-capitalist and/or pro-military and/or too ethically suspect and/or untrustworthy and/or could change her mind and betray them again. For a certain subset of people for whom purity of ideology and/or the strength of conviction is only ever demonstrated by never changing your mind and only ever having held the right positions, the fact that Warren’s political positions have changed over time seems dangerous, and that she isn’t as purely “socialist” as Bernie means that she is, in their eyes, a lesser candidate. As I said in the earlier ask, we will never have an American president who is completely free from the toxic elements of American ideology. There are things that I don’t fully agree with Warren on, absolutely. But lashing into her as a secret spineless corporate shill who would completely betray the progressive movement if she was elected has nothing to do with reality, certainly nothing that reflects her actual rhetoric and voting record, and once again demonstrates the tendency of a certain subset of Bernie supporters to completely refuse anything less than their candidate no matter what, and that is… frustrating.

Let me be clear: Warren and Sanders are my top two choices. Policy-wise, they’re the only candidates proposing anything I want to actually see enacted. I completely support anyone who wants to vote for either of them in the primary, and indeed, I ended my last post by strongly urging the anon (and anyone else who identified ideologically with Bernie) to vote for him in the primaries. I myself get a cold shudder at the idea of having to vote for Biden or Buttigieg as the Democratic nominee (even if I don’t think it’ll happen). I don’t want to have to do it, which is why I keep urging progressives to turn out in droves and vote their conscience in the primaries: that way, we won’t even end up in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for a nominee we don’t really like, don’t support, and who will continue more ineffective centrist policies that don’t address the real problems in the country. If progressives vote in sufficient numbers, we will get a progressive nominee that we can actively vote for and feel good about, rather than one that we can barely stomach. If we sit home and only let the moderate/centrist white Democrats vote in the primary, that is the nominee that we will end up with. Gross. 

So in other words, I am not here to stoke the worrying and self-inflicted factionalism ongoing between Sanders and Warren supporters who have to outdo each other with My Ideology Is Better Than Your Ideology. That was exactly what I was critiquing in the earlier answer. I think both candidates align well with my values, I would vote for either one of them without qualms, and I think they are proposing policies that broadly target the major issues at hand. Destroying one to try to advance the other is unnecessary, counterproductive, and doing half the Trump/GOP machine’s work for them. It is a hollow moral victory in shouting echo chambers on the internet that has no real-world value and helps no one at all in the long run, except for feeling smug that you have The Most Pure Doctrine. Yay. Still not helping us get rid of Trump. So vote for whichever one you want in the primary, and then vote for whoever wins in the general. Like I said above, if progressives turn out in sufficient numbers, we won’t end up with a terrible candidate in the first place.

I like Warren because she has shown a consistent willingness to learn, grow, to take feedback and adjust her policies accordingly, to engage with community leaders, and, frankly, to demonstrate a more nuanced awareness of intersectionality and identity. Bernie has a tendency to struggle with differentiating class and race, dismisses “identity politics” and can confuse it with tokenism, and still holds the position that, essentially, socialism and economic justice will fix everything. Even the left-leaning The Guardian has found some grounds to criticize him on how he has handled this. I think that Warren is more aware on some levels as to how multiple factors inform an individual’s politics, not just economics and social class. But guess what: these are still minor quibbles and the kind of nitpicking that I get to do at primary stage! I’m still completely happy to vote for the man in a general election! Nothing that I say about Bernie here disqualifies him from my support if he’s the progressive candidate that comes out on top! And none of what I say below about Warren should be read as some sort of insidious attempt to prove that Bernie doesn’t hold these positions too/passive-aggressive slam on him, etc. etc. I’m simply explaining what I like about her particularly.

I like Warren because her plans are detailed, workable, based on extensive research, highlight multiple values that I have in common with her, and give practical recommendations as to how to implement them within the existing framework of the American political system (as well as, where needed, changing it radically). Her policy documents specifically highlight the African-American maternal mortality crisis, valuing the work and lives of women of color, protecting reproductive rights and access to care/abortion services, funding, respecting, and supporting Native Americans and indigenous people, supporting the LGBTQ community on many fronts, cancelling all student debt on day one of her presidency (as an academic with a lot of student debt, this is a big issue for me), confronting white nationalist terrorism, getting rid of the electoral college, regulating and breaking up market monopolies, taxing the shit out of billionaires, holding capitalism accountable, fighting global financial corruption and “dark money” in international politics, introducing immediate debt relief for Puerto Rico, overhauling immigration policy to make it more fair and welcoming, fighting for climate change especially as a racial justice issue, ending private prisons and federal defense budget bloat, recognizing that just throwing endless money at national security issues has not fixed them, drastically revising and ending a foreign policy currently based on endless money and endless wars, breaking up Wall Street economic monopolies and misbehaviour, transitioning to 100% clean energy and Medicare for All, reinvesting in public schools, and… I could go on, but you get the gist. She is a lawyer, professor, and senator with public and professional expertise in many relevant fields. She used to teach bankruptcy law and economic policy. She is smart and tough, but can break complicated concepts down and explain them clearly. She has earned the endorsement of black women’s groups and over 100 Latino leaders. And: yes. It’s time for us to have a female president. It just is. I feel strongly about it.

Warren was recently attacked for putting out a plan related to how the U.S. military could drastically reduce its wasteful carbon footprint and help combat climate change, as this was clearly proof that she was in fact just a lip-service progressive and didn’t want to, you know, apparently abolish it entirely and pretend it didn’t exist and personally tell everyone in the military what a bad person they were. I am not a fan of anything about the U.S. military-industrial complex. But if you don’t recognize that it’s largely composed of poor, working-class people of color and/or economically deprived people who have no other career option, that veterans are discarded instantly the moment they’re no use to the war and propaganda machine and that any politician is going to have to reckon with this, and that you can’t snap your fingers and make it go away, then that’s also not helping. Warren has also been attacked for not wanting to get rid of capitalism entirely, as if that is a remotely feasible or workable option in 21st-century America. She has voted for and suggested regulations and wealth taxes and major restructuring and everything else you can think of, she proposed and founded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and so on. But for some people, this still is Just Not Good Enough. Which…. fine. You don’t have to vote for her in the primary if she’s not ideologically the closest candidate to you. Once again, the point of the primary is to pick whichever candidate you like the most and to do everything to help them win, so you aren’t stuck with a bad choice when it comes time for the general. But acting like this is a huge and horrible disqualifier and that she’s an awful corporate hack who will just be terrible (her main crime not being Bernie/competing against him) has nothing to do with reality, and everything with having to win internet woke points and ideological militancy arguments. It’s not helpful. 

Since the earlier post went viral, I am now getting random hate or completely bizarre misinterpretations of my argument or whatever else, none of which I will answer and all of which will be deleted out of hand, because I am just not interested in trading insults about this and/or engaging in pointless arguments with people who have already made up their mind. But for some people, it’s apparently really threatening to say that if you only vote for the best ideology in the primaries and then quit in a snit fit before the general election, you’re not helping. You’re not doing anything useful. Everyone who was reblogging the post and agreeing with me was around my age or older; everyone who was reblogging it to slam me was usually a lot younger. And I’m glad that 21-year-olds feel that winning the ideology battle is more important than having a functional government, but: sorry. I’m old and I don’t have to listen to that, and I’m not going to. Perfect cannot be the enemy of good, or even better than what we’ve got now. And let’s be clear: anything would be better than what we have now. It would directly save lives and impact policies, and if you can’t admit that because you’re too hung up on how Elizabeth Warren might Be A Capitalist Pig Who Likes Billionaires, please, please get off the internet and go outside.

Would Warren, Sanders, or even Buttigieg or Biden lock immigrant children in cages and concentration camps at the border and commit deliberate slow-motion genocide by denial of care and access? No. Would they actively roll back Obama-era regulations protecting LGBTQ rights, the environment, climate change activism, and anything else you remotely identify as a progressive cause? No.  Would they start a needless war with Iran, build a border wall, stoke Nazis and white supremacists, pander to all the worst parts of American insularism and xenophobia, collude with Russia, lie about everything, destroy all regulations and policies that don’t benefit anyone but the rich, white, and male, fill their administration with convicted felons and homophobes and people who want to rob us blind, and be aggressively incompetent, unprepared, malicious,  stupid, angry, and dangerous to both the country and the world? No. So the various attempts to claim that there is “no real difference” between the presidency of a non-Sanders Democrat and Trump are… please, please sit down for a moment and think about what you’re saying. I realize this is, again, a hard position to hold when you depend completely on having The Right Ideology, and nuance, complexity, evolving positions, and willingness to be open to new ideas are not things that are valued in zealots on either the right or the left. I don’t know what fantasyland these people are living in, when they act like not voting for a non-Sanders Democrat against Trump would be a great moral victory or proof that they’re too good for the world that the rest of us have to live in, or think that the election into being about some magical chance to make the entire capitalist global military-industrial system vanish. It won’t. It won’t even if Sanders wins the presidency. Change only comes slowly and systematically.

This is once again, long. So to summarize:

1) If you want to understand the differences between Bernie and Warren from a place outside just what I say, go and read their policy summaries on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Look on their websites, compare their plans, do your own research, and don’t fall into the ideology-war trap just for the sake of looking better on internet arguments.

2) Vote for Bernie in the primary! Please! We want a progressive candidate who will make genuine change! We don’t want one who is just a moderate Republican but has to be a Democrat because moderate Republicans no longer exist!

3) I like Warren for many reasons and will be voting for her in the primary, but will vote for Bernie (or anyone else) who wins the primary and emerges as the nominee. I only wish that all Bernie supporters would give the reciprocal guarantee. There is a subset – again, not all – who are only loyal to him and nothing else, and who seem to feel that if they can’t have him, not voting is a better or more “moral” choice, even if the alternative is Trump.

4) For me, Bernie’s age is an issue. I can’t answer for what it might be for you, but he would turn 80 in the year he was sworn into office. He also did have a heart attack and would have a year of grueling campaigning to go.

5) Factionalism and ideology wars and loyalty to one person, rather than even trying to consider the lives and people that are at stake, that have already been lost, and that continue to suffer from Trumpism, is not helpful, not empathetic, and not more moral. You can sit and feel self-righteous all you want, good for you. People are dying. Refusing to make a change because it can’t be all the change, all at once, is not and will never be how this works.

Anyway. I hope that helped you. 

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[thetailorofenbizaka]

Chapter 1–The Tale of the Scissors, Act 3: Reunion; Scene 2

The Tailor of Enbizaka, pages 74-82

I don’t know why Kayo would say things like that. I had thought perhaps that you might have pulled some trick on her mind, but I still haven’t reached a conclusion at that.

The only thing I’m certain of is the event that spurred her on to start talking like her husband was alive.

--That was hardly any time at all after the two of you had swapped bodies.

That day, Kayo was going for an aimless walk outside for the first time in a while, without any work to do.

She had likely wanted to go around and see the sights of Enbizaka after it had recovered from the fire.

.

Enbizaka was erected along a long hill in the center of Onigashima, and a lot of the people who worked as merchants in Onigashima had shops set up along this hill neighborhood.

Almost all of the people who lived here were foreigners, or else mixed-race people who had foreign and Jakokuan genes.

What was more, there were not a lot of people among those who were walking along the road who had the Jakokuan feature of black hair. People with hair of various colors and shades like red, brown, green, and even white, passed through as though it was normal.

And so, Kayo’s newly pink hair was not something that turned a lot of heads.

The most conspicuous sign of Enbizaka’s foreigner culture were the foreign trading houses that stood at the top of the hill.

Starting with those of Freezis and Yarera, there were many representatives for firms doing business with Jakoku who had taken up residence in Enbizaka.

A little way away from the trading houses there was the Enbizaka execution site.

It’s said that this place was created as a sort of warning, as the crimes being committed by foreigners in Onigashima were rapidly increasing around the time the island was first established. Even now criminals would sometimes be taken there from the mainland to be executed, but for Kayo this place had very little to do with her.

As she walked down the hill, Kayo gazed at the neighborhood that had regained the same liveliness that it had held four years before, and wore a peaceful expression on her face.

When she reached the bottom of the hill, there was Soukyou bridge.

Once you passed over this curved bridge made of stone and headed down the middle road from there, there was the Miroku shop that sat just along the street. This was the only bridge that connected Enbizaka to the middle road, and as such there were always a lot of people passing through.

It was right after she’d set foot on Soukyou bridge.

Kayo suddenly came to a stop.

Her eyes were opened wide, and she was fixedly staring at a blue haired man on the far end of the bridge.

At that moment, he was leaning on the handrail and looking at the river dreamily, not appearing to notice that Kayo was staring.

“Ah…Aaah…”

Kayo stood there for a time, open-mouthed.

And as she did so the man started to quickly walk in the opposite direction from where she was.

Kayo flusteredly moved to chase after him, but his form was soon buried in the throng of people, and eventually she could no longer see him,

Mournfully coming to a halt, Kayo then murmured, “He’s—alive.”

Kayo must have seen a trace of her dead husband in this man that she’d never met before—that was what I thought at the time.

Because it was after this event had happened that Kayo started to speak to everyone as though her husband had survived.

However…from what I could see, that blue haired man looked hardly anything like Kayo’s husband.

If I had to come up with any similarities, I suppose I could say that his left hand had burn scars on it that were similar to those on Kayo’s husband.

.

I became curious about that man, and started to search for his whereabouts.

While being inside the scissors I am able to see all of Enbizaka, and as such it wasn’t that difficult for me to locate him.

--When I first found him, he was inside that Freezis Trading House.

He was in the middle of having some conversation with the house’s owner, Perrier, sitting opposite her at the table.

“It’s rare to SEE YOU come here YOURSELF,” Perrier laughed, offering him some tea.

“Oh no, it’s really quite embarrassing...I usually leave all outside matters to my wife, staying cooped up at home with work, you see. Today she’s been a little under the weather, so I’ve come to deliver our goods in her stead,” the man replied, smiling.

From the way he carried himself, I could tell that he was a merchant of some kind.

“She SICK? You must WORRY.”

“Oh no, it’s nothing terribly major. My wife’s father works as a doctor, so he examined her and told us it was just a cold. She should be better by tomorrow.”

“Thank GOODNESS for THAT!” As she spoke, Perrier set out a bundle of koban coins before him. “…RIGHT, well, HERE’S PAY.”

“Thank you kindly. I’ve already placed the textiles and kimono you ordered in your cellar. –I hope for your continued patronage.”

“Jakoku kiminos are having BOOM in Maistia RIGHT NOW! And you REALLY HELP OUT by bringing us such GOOD PRODUCT all the time, MIROKU SHOP-SAN! …Though wish you could increase amount you DEAL with us...” Perrier groused, resting her chin on her hands.

“…Even this amount has been a bit much for us. Understand that with our national isolation policies, the amount of resources we’re allowed to send to foreign countries like this is harshly regulated.”

“The shogunate should stop being so STUBBORN and OPEN COUNTRY already! I SAYING THAT for YEARS but they NOT LISTEN!”

In contrast to Perrier’s excitement, the man replied with a warm smile, “I know your feelings, Perrier-sama…But foreigner though you are, calling for this country to ‘open its borders’…I wonder if that’s wise.”

“…? WHY?”

“There is an extremist group in Jakoku called the ‘Crimson Robed Masses’.” The man launched into an explanation of this group with a quiet countenance. “They engage in all kinds of harassment for those that call for open borders and the foreigners that live in Jakoku, and I’ve heard that from time to time they’ve even gathered together and committed raids. If you were to attract the attention of such a crew—”

“Oh, I KNOW about THEM. Been sent LOTS of threats. …BUT! I IGNORE them! A Freezis does not YIELD to mere THREATS!”

“I see—well, I’m not too far removed from the issue myself, as my wife and I have foreign ancestry…But in any case, I hope to be able to maintain good business dealings with the Freezis Foundation Firm in the future. If you have any requests, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

Perrier appeared to think for a moment at the man’s offer, and then returned, “If there nothing to do about not raising textile and kimino export number...As for request, we NEED craftsman who can tailor clothes to kimono locally, and repair tattered and torn kimono. We have tailors in Maistia, but they don’t know ANYTHING about Jakoku kimono, and all FUMBLING at everything.”

“Regarding tailors…ours is just a family-run shop, so it would be a bit beyond us to send someone of those talents to Maistia--

“…I hear THERE other GOOD TAILORS in ENBIZAKA. I met one MYSELF a bit ago—I THINK my MAID called her SUDOU.”

The man appeared to think for a moment, and then finally replied, “Ah, yes, the Sudou wi—”

“You know HER?”

“Oh no, apparently my parent and her parent were once good friends long ago, but the two of them got into some sort of feud…The connection between our families has been severed since then, publicly. My wife doesn’t know about all this, and will sometimes ask her to do work, but I’ve never actually met her myself.”

“I SEE.”

“Well, a dispute between our parents has little to do with me, of course. I myself am a homebody by nature, so it’s more that I just haven’t had the opportunity to meet her.”

“I thought MAYBE if you GOOD FRIENDS you could introduce us, but from SOUND OF THINGS that be hard.”

“I believe she gets along fairly well with my wife, so you ought to ask her about it next time she comes up here—oop, look at the time,” the man said, taking a glance at an ostentatious clock of foreign make that had been hung up on the wall. “I should head back before long.”

“RIGHT. I SHOULD head to PORT soon too.”

“Are you sailing off again? It’s awfully late…”

“It’s MERMAID! I go CATCH MERMAID!”

“…Oh, a mermaid, hm? I suppose I have heard legends that there is a mermaid living in the seas around Onigashima, but—”

“I HEAR that you EAT MERMAID and become IMMORTAL! If we CATCH AND RAISE IT, it’ll make killing on mainland! I not let such DRAMATIC business chance SLIP AWAY!” Perrier shouted, having at some point gotten an enormous harpoon around and in her hand.

“…Well then, good luck with that. I’ll see myself out.”

The man left the trading house, a faintly amazed expression on his face.

.

From there the man headed down the hill. At that point I had already pretty much figured out who he was, but I continued to observe him.

After he had descended the hill and crossed Soukyou Bridge, he advanced through the middle road—and then walked inside the Miroku shop.

“Welcome home, Daddy.”

Rin was the one to greet him.

“Good to see you, Rin. How is Mommy?”

“She’s still resting, but I think she’s got a lot better.”

“I see…Where has Miku gone?”

“Mnn…She’s still at Kiji-san’s, I think.”

The moment he heard that, the man’s face rapidly grew stern. “That disgusting foreigner…I expressly forbid you from ever interacting with that brute!”

“Yelling at me’s not gonna help…And I don’t think Kiji-san is that bad a guy?”

“No means no!”

As he yelled in anger, the man retreated further into the shop.

.

The man’s name was Miroku Kai.

He was the head of the Miroku household.

That meant that Kayo had become convinced that a man with a wife and children was her husband—

But I had no way of telling Kayo that she was mistaken.

The only thing I could do was continue to watch over her.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Images of brutality against Black people spur racial trauma (AP) Since Wanda Johnson’s son was shot and killed by a police officer in Oakland, California, 11 years ago, she has watched video after video of similar encounters between Black people and police. Each time, she finds herself reliving the trauma of losing her son, Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a transit police officer. Most recently, Johnson couldn’t escape the video of George Floyd, pinned to the ground under a Minneapolis officer’s knee as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. “I began to shake. I was up for two days, just crying,” she said. “Just looking at that video opened such a wound in me that has not completely closed.” Johnson’s loss was extreme, but, for many Black Americans, her grief and pain feels familiar. Psychologists call it racial trauma—the distress experienced because of the accumulation of racial discrimination, racial violence or institutional racism. While it can affect anyone who faces repeated prejudice, in this moment, its impact on Black people is drawing particular attention. The unfortunate irony is that the very tool that may be helping to make more people aware of the racism and violence that Black and other people of color face is also helping to fuel their trauma.

Critics question `less lethal’ force used during protests (AP) When a participant at a rally in Austin to protest police brutality threw a rock at a line of officers in the Texas capital, officers responded by firing beanbag rounds—ammunition that law enforcement deems “less lethal” than bullets. A beanbag cracked 20-year-old Justin Howell’s skull and, according to his family, damaged his brain. Adding to the pain, police admit the Texas State University student wasn’t the intended target. Pressure has mounted for a change in police tactics since Howell was injured. He was not accused of any crime. He was hospitalized in critical condition on May 31 and was discharged Wednesday to a long-term rehabilitation facility for intensive neurological, physical and occupational therapy. His brother has questioned why no one is talking about police use of less lethal but still dangerous munitions. “If we only talk about policing in terms of policies and processes or the weapons that police use when someone dies or when they are ‘properly lethal’ and not less lethal, we’re missing a big portion of the conversation,” said Josh Howell, a computer science graduate student at Texas A&M University. The growing use of less lethal weapons is “cause for grave concern” and may sometimes violate international law, said Agnes Callamard, director of Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University and a U.N. adviser.From 1990 to 2014, projectiles caused 53 deaths and 300 permanent disabilities among 1,984 serious injuries recorded by medical workers in over a dozen countries.

Coronavirus Global Death Toll Passes 500,000 (Foreign Policy) The coronavirus pandemic, about to enter its fifth month this week reached two grim milestones over the weekend: More than 10 million people have been infected with the virus and over 500,000 have died of it. Europe has seen the most deaths of any continent, although its overall caseload is declining. The situation in the Americas is more concerning: Two countries—the United States and Brazil—account for roughly 35 percent of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide and both countries are still seeing new cases in the tens of thousands daily.

Virus hits college towns (NYT) The community around the University of California, Davis, used to have a population of 70,000 and a thriving economy. Rentals were tight. Downtown was jammed. Hotels were booked months in advance for commencement. Students swarmed to the town’s bar crawl, sampling the trio of signature cocktails known on campus as “the Davis Trinity.” Then came the coronavirus. When the campus closed in March, an estimated 20,000 students and faculty left town. With them went about a third of the demand for goods and services, from books to bikes to brunches. Fall classes will be mostly remote, the university announced last week, with “reduced density” in dorms. Efforts to stem the pandemic have squeezed local economies across the nation, but the threat is starting to look existential in college towns. Communities that have evolved around campuses are confronting not only Covid-19 but also major losses in population, revenue and jobs.

Band’s pandemic diversion leads to every-night gig in park (AP) What started as a way for two musicians to get out of the house during the pandemic has turned into nightly concerts at the boathouse in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—with fans who expect them to play three to four hours a night, seven nights a week. “One day I came here with my guitar out of nowhere, to just get some fresh air. And people just started coming over. And then they were like, ‘Thank you!’ And then it took a life on its own,” said Alegba Jahyile, leader of Alegba and Friends. Jahyile, a Haitian raised in New York who plays guitar, drums and bass, recalled a woman who cried at one concert. “You made my day,” she told him. “It’s been a terrible week for me and my family. Listening to you, singing, I felt the joy, I found a little bit of serenity, of peace to my day.” The area has steps that are good for sitting. It’s also adjacent to a grassy hill where people can bring children and dogs, spread blankets, plop down lounge chairs, and picnic while listening to the music.

World Food Program warns of ‘devastating’ pandemic impact in low- and middle-income countries (Washington Post) The World Food Program (WFP) warned Monday that the socioeconomic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic will be “devastating” and could trigger food shortages for millions of residents of low- and middle-income nations. In the countries in which the organization operates, the number of people suffering from hunger is estimated to rise by more than 80 percent by the end of 2020, in comparison with pre-coronavirus times. Latin America and Africa are among the most heavily impacted areas. “This unprecedented crisis requires an unprecedented response. If we do not respond rapidly and effectively to this viral threat, the outcome will be measured in an unconscionable loss of life, and efforts to roll back the tide of hunger will be undone,” WFP Director David Beasley was quoted as saying in a release. “Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.”

Iceland’s president wins second term (Foreign Policy) Icelandic President Gundi Johannesson won a second term on Saturday in a landslide victory. Johanneson won 92 percent of the vote, while his right wing challenger Gudmundur Franklin Jonsson received just 7 percent of the vote. The Icelandic presidency is a largely symbolic post, although the president can exercise veto power over legislation.

Britons are fatter than most in the rest of Europe, says PM Johnson (Reuters) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday Britons were significantly fatter than people in most of the rest of Europe, admitting he had lost weight after contracting the novel coronavirus. Speaking to Times Radio, Johnson said: “I have taken a very libertarian stance on obesity but actually when you look at the numbers, when you look at the pressure on the NHS (National Health Service), compare, I’m afraid this wonderful country of ours to other European countries, we are significantly fatter than most others, apart from the Maltese for some reason. It is an issue.” “Everybody knows that this is a tough one, but I think it’s something we all need to address.” Johnson did some press ups to show he was “as fit as a butcher’s dog” in an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper, just months after he fought for his life in hospital against the coronavirus.

French court convicts former PM Fillon of embezzling public funds (Reuters) A French court on Monday found former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon guilty of embezzlement of public funds in a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 run for president and opened the Elysee Palace door for Emmanuel Macron. A French court on Monday found former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon guilty of embezzlement of public funds in a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 run for president and opened the Elysee Palace door for Emmanuel Macron.

Hard times even for homeless (Worldcrunch) Speaking to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, anthropologist Luisa Schneider described one homeless girl she’s followed. “Before the crisis, she was able to study and wash in cafes or libraries. Neither is possible now.” Schneider expects more Germans to sleep on the streets in the coming months. “Many networks have now collapsed. Even homeless people who used to support each other are now losing sight of each other.” In France, government authorities and NGOs were able to accommodate 177,600 people with shelter during the lockdown period, reports Le Monde. The government has invested more than 2 billion euros helping those without homes, including requisitioning 13,300 hotel rooms. Yet France’s emergency phone number for homeless assistance remains overwhelmed, with over 200 calls on average daily and many unable to secure a temporary housing situation. And as the country continues opening up, it is unclear how long the special accommodation period will last.

Polish election (NYT) Polish President Andrzej Duda failed to win enough of the vote in Sunday’s election to avoid a runoff, according to exit polls, forcing him into what is expected to be a tightly fought contest with the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski next month. Although Duda came out ahead on Sunday, analysts expect that to change in the runoff election in two weeks, as opposition voters whose support was split in the first round unite around Trzaskowski.

Russian state exit polls show 76% so far back reforms that could extend Putin rule (Reuters) Russian state opinion pollster VTsIOM said on Monday that its exit polls showed that 76% of Russians had so far voted to support reforms that could allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule until 2036. The nationwide vote on constitutional reforms began on June 25 and is being held over seven days as a precaution against the coronavirus pandemic. If approved, the changes would allow Putin to run twice for president again after his current term expires in 2024.

Militants attack Karachi stock exchange, killing at least 3 (AP) Militants attacked the stock exchange in the Pakistani city of Karachi on Monday, killing at least three people—two guards and a policeman, according to police. Special police forces deployed to the scene of the attack and in a swift operation secured the building, killing all four gunmen. There were no reports of any wounded among the brokers and employees inside the exchange and a separatist militant group from a neighboring province later claimed responsibility for the attack.

China forces birth control on Uighurs to suppress population (AP) The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.” The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.

Thailand opens its borders to some (Worldcrunch) Thailand will allow pubs and bars to reopen on Wednesday and plans to let in some foreign travelers after recording five weeks without any community transmission of the coronavirus, a government official said. Pubs, bars and karaoke venues will be able to operate until midnight as long as they follow safety guidelines such as ensuring two-meter spaces between tables. Foreigners with work permits, residency and families in Thailand will also be able to enter the country, but will be subject to a 14-day quarantine. Visitors seeking certain types of medical treatment such as some cosmetic surgery or fertility treatment could also be allowed into the country.

Balcony churches: Kenyans find new ways to worship in lockdown (The Guardian) The children hang over the balcony railings on Sunday morning. In the parking lot below, a four-person band test microphones and practise harmonies. A moment later, the group fills the Mirema apartment complex in Nairobi with music: “I’m happy today, so happy. In Jesus’s name, I’m happy.” The Rev Paul Machira, a tall, slender beanpole of a man with greying hair, leaps around energetically, encouraging the balcony worshippers to join in prayer. Sporting green overalls embroidered with his nickname, Uncle Paul, the 43-year-old has been traveling around apartment complexes across Nairobi, bringing his balcony services and Sunday school to families since the Covid-19 pandemic closed down places of worship in Kenya on 22 March. Pairing dance moves with their tunes, the band encourage children and their parents to spend the hour dancing and praying together. When Machira realises that a crowd has gathered on the balcony of the apartment building next door, he shifts to a “360 service” to include those neighbours. Machira’s services are by invitation only. He says that the group have had to skip services because some of the neighbours have objected to “noise-makers” in their complex. Machira’s group have been booked for as many as four services in one day before. This popularity means that they sometimes have to split into two, renting an additional van and musical equipment to cover more ground.

[anonymoustalks]

The left has become absorbed by identity politics and is obsessed with race.. it scares me that they will create more racists than before they started

(6-17-20) You both like politics.

You: heyaa

Stranger: Hi

Stranger: How are you

You: anything you're interested in?

You: I am fine

Stranger: I'm interested in hearing opinions on things

You: oh, me too ^^

You: what kind of things?

Stranger: Politics is divisive, but in order to get a better understanding I wish to listen to both sides

You: awesome, I think that's great ^^

Stranger: :) thank you

You: do you have issues you care about most?

Stranger: The current fall of western society

You: fall of western society huh

You: can you elaborate more?

Stranger: Over the past few years we have seen western society devolve. Where once we were fairly united and we stood strong, we have become more divided and with the introduction of identity politics, that has just worsened till we have gotten to where we are now. China is currently pushing her borders, and yet with the US in flames and the uk following suit (along with France for that matter), noone challenges it

You: mhm *nodsnods*

Stranger: To speak out against the lunacy is to be called a racist and a bigot, not that that's anything new of course but those who are calling for these things seem to not really understand the importance and significance of their actions. I see this as akin to the 1920s Weimar Republic. They are pushing for things they don't want

You: you type a lot haha

Stranger: Sorry i am choosing my words carefully

You: mhm it's fine

You: so you think strong foreign policy is very important?

Stranger: I do. I am from South Africa, though I live in the uk. For those who live outside the us and Europe, we see the importance of Baro and the us on a geopolitical scale. China owns the east of Africa, if not central as well. The us has been the top dog preventing them and Russia from doing much for years, though that's going to change in the coming years

Stranger: NATO not baro* bloody autocorrect

You: oh okay I was wondering what that was haha

Stranger: If I may ask, where are you from?

You: the us actually

Stranger: I thought you might be given the time :) it's half 1 am here

You: yeah it's late!

You: so in your view, western countries need to have more of a spine?

You: is that basically what you're saying?

Stranger: Always. But history has a cycle.

Stranger: Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times

You: very fair

You: speaking of cycles, I think something that is floating around these days

You: is whether it's sort of like the beginning of the end of american hegemony

You: sort of like UK's empire gradually had its sunset

Stranger: This is what I am concerned with. All empires have their time in the sun, and all shall fade. I had hoped I would be dead before it happened. I made a prediction several years ago that should trump win in 2020 again, there will be civil war. I am unsure on my prediction of civil war, but I can see that he will win. Should there not be war, I give it another 2 presidencies before yourselves will fall, and ww3 breaks out

You: hmm the us is steamy right now, but idk about civil war

Stranger: It's been brewing for a while now by my estimation

You: that said I would not be surprised about China continuing to be more aggressive

You: that stuff with India yesterday?

You: ^^

Stranger: Without strong willed opposition, they will always push more overtly. They have done so in the shadows for years now

Stranger: And that's just one example

Stranger: They have intruded on Thailand air space as well

You: I don't think either democrats or republicans are very foreign-policy aggressive right now though

You: idk if your concern will be that much better with biden

You: clinton was a little hawkish but she lost 2016

Stranger: It would be much worse with Biden, or anyone from the left EXCEPT Tulsi Gabbard

You: oh you sounded like you didn't want trump to win lol

Stranger: I don't like him. But honestly, he's the best option out of what has been shown. Bernie is a socialist, Hillary is a warmonger, Biden will probably be a puppet. Who can stand? Hillary could be strong, but you would go to war. For all his faults, Trump has avoided war and conflict. He brought North Korea to the discussion table.

You: okay ^^

Stranger: I may not like him but he is effective, and has been a boon to you economy though as someone who works in finance, the next crash is due soon

You: fair enough although I think a lot of places are hurt by the coronavirus economy anyways

Stranger: Yeah.. the lockdowns are odd.. why quarantine those who are healthy? We have always quarantined those who were I'll first, and then those who go out and riot get a free pass? It's a bit confusing, and is a little bit of double think. Rules don't apply to you if you have the correct opinions it would seem

You: idk the US never really had forced quarantines

You: everything here was just you were supposed to do it

Stranger: The uk did, apologies

Stranger: Well not heavily enforced near me

You: we had college students going to beaches even though the quarantine was happening

You: because young ppl think they are invincible

You: and dumb ^^

Stranger: Hahaha yeah you aren't wrong in that

Stranger: But I have waffled on, may I hear your opinions on what we have discussed?

You: mhm, I disagree but it's cool yo~

Stranger: No that's great, it shows that we can discuss and hopefully come to compromise

Stranger: Thank you for being chill and relaxed

You: mhm I'm basically a hippie though so I don't usually take strong stances on international intervention

Stranger: That's fair and understandable. I used to agree with that as well for many years

You: I kind of think it's a little bit of a selfish position to take (the peace one)

You: in the sense that I don't want to deal with other people's problems

You: so in a sense it's kinda selfish

Stranger: It is and it isn't :)

Stranger: It's a moral good and a difficult thing. Peace only exists as reprieve from war. Humanity is a war like species, and peace only ever exists between them. And I applaud your pacifism

You: idk I'm not sure if it's always something to applaud

You: I think in a sense it's a kind of inaction

Stranger: A good thought experiment for you then, look at ww2

You: yup

You: I'm familiar with isolationism in history and its ramifications

Stranger: The us was neutral officially for years, and because they took no strong stance, the Nazis rose to power. Admittedly it was partly the fault of all the allies and ww1 but that's a digression.

Stranger: But war was thrust upon them officially by what happened. The peaceful stance can be taken from you, but that is not a bad thing in my opinion

You: yup

Stranger: What would you do if you could, at that time?

You: at that time?

You: hmm

You: it's not a question I've thought very much about

Stranger: I thought on that myself

You: and what did you conclude?

Stranger: My answer was intervention. Stop the Anschluss, the Munich agreement, the extremely harsh measures of the treaty at the end of ww1

You: oh yeah that was a terrible treaty

You: I kind of imagined myself as an average person though haha

Stranger: But I understand the reasoning at the time for allowing all those things to go through

Stranger: I am too

You: you would have protested your government signing that treaty?

Stranger: That's why thay generation was called the greatest generation. We the average man stood up and took up arms, because they believed what was right.

Stranger: It is difficult to say that if I lived in that time I would. Of it was today, 100%

You: mhm... war is frightening

Stranger: We cannot judge the past with the same moral standing we have today

You: of course

Stranger: And yes, war really is a horrible thing

Stranger: If peace was an option, I would go for it. Often times though, we have no control over that

You: mhm there is suffering in a lot of places, and violence that arises from suffering and hatred

Stranger: Look at the Nazis and the hatred of the Jews. That was extremely common all across Europe, the uk and the us. Many leaders in politics and business liked the Nazis initially. But just because something is common, does not make it right

You: I actually never understood antisemitism

Stranger: You are quite wise, and I agree with you. But the sad thing is, there will always be suffering

You: or why people hate(d) jewish people

Stranger: The scary thing is, many of those in BLM look up to a man called Farrakhan (forgive me on the spelling) who is a huge antisemite. Like he openly calls for violence against them. He gets away with it, because he is black. Why he hates them I don't know. They are hated I think, because they are the oldest abrahamic religion and the oldest monothesist one as well, from which both Islam and Christianity draw their teachings from initially

You: I just don't understand why they are hated

You: often by christians too

Stranger: Me neither, I find it abhorrent. They have been persecuted for thousands of years

You: yeah idk I just don't understand why

Stranger: I have yet to find out why. I know in Islam they hate them as it is dictated within their scriptures, though the exact wording I am unsure on. Christians I would think it's because they don't believe that Jesus was the son of God

You: I guess so

Stranger: But I may be entirely wrong

Stranger: Which I probably am

You: idk I don't know anything so I have no clue

Stranger: Hence why I like and want discussion :) we learn more through communication

Stranger: We become better the more we communicate

You: is there a reason why you dislike blm so much?

Stranger: I stand against identitarianism

You: so basically all those "pride" movements?

Stranger: I come from a racist country that segregated everyone and everything based on the colour of everyone's skin and I was hated for being the colour of my skin just for being born. I cannot condone movements that wish to implement the same things, as it will lead to suffering and hatred.

Stranger: I have nothing against being proud of your race, though I think the idea is a bit stupid. I have an issue with everything needing to divided up based on the colour of ones skin, I choose to judge someone on the basis of their character. I'm not perfect and there are times where I have been prejudiced but it is something I am consious of and wish to not do

You: mhm okay

You: I'm not sure if blm wants things to be divided up based on race though

You: I thought they were mostly against police brutality

Stranger: Some very much so are. Though I will concede that not all of them are, and I should tar everyone with the same brush. But as a counter to that, look at CHAZ in Seattle, they have segregated farms though calling them that is hilarious

You: I thought chaz is just a city block?

Stranger: On the police brutality, I agree with them and that reform must happen. Abolishing police is not a good idea. More funding is required, better training and better internal policies and structures to vette and review the officers is needed. Abolishing them will lead to anarchy. You are correct that Chaz is, but it is a microcosm showing the very things I stand against. I am against racism of all kinds, segregation is a form of racism. The us had a history where they did it too and agreed that it was wrong

You: mhm

You: I just wasn't familiar with blm as pro-segregation

You: that said, most blm activists are just really young

Stranger: They have been co-opted by those who are. And many activists are young white kids

You: I don't think mainstream democrats take them very seriously

Stranger: I'm not so certain. But I hope I am wrong

You: idk I mean these days who knows what kind media we each read

You: so I'm sure I'm in a bubble too

Stranger: They may see these things as a good and helpful idea, but the road to hell is often paved with good intentions

Stranger: Of course, and I hope I'm wrong. I recommend a variety of news sources, especially independent ones. A great one is a guy named Tim Pool on YouTube. He is a left leaning centrist guy who is upfront with his leanings. But he gives the news as it is

You: mhm I try to avoid youtube news

You: although idk if it's truly reliable to always go through bbc or ap or others

You: they are just mainstream

Stranger: BBC is very biased in my opinion. Tim used to work on mainstream media but he left. I would call him credible, he looks at news sources and verifies them. He's very milk toast and fence sits allot the problem with news is that all sides want to spin things the way they want it

You: mhm okay

You: is there any kind of mainstream media that you like?

Stranger: I don't trust any of them when it comes to almost anything except weather and sport scores. I will listen to what is said from various sources before coming to my own conclusions. I have lost all faith in the media since 2016

You: I see, I guess it ends up being hard to find something to trust

Stranger: Unfortunately it is. My reasons for it was both the elections in the us for 2016 and the brexit vote here in the uk. I was very similar to you then, very much so a hippie and very left leaning. I disagreed with Trump and Brexit, but I lost. But the way the media and society within the left handled themselves and the situation, that put me off completely and pushed me to become more conservative than what I was

You: interesting, although I'm not exactly following what made you more interested in conservative things

Stranger: The constant denigration of those who you disagree with. The treatment hat those people got, most of whom are the working class, upon the backs of which society is upheld. They are not racist or evil. They have a different opinion and different values. How does making a choice in a democracy make someone evil when neither side is perfect?

Stranger: The left preaches tolerance, except that it doesnt in reality

You: mhm yeah I don't like that

You: I don't think it is effective either

Stranger: All it does is polarize people

Stranger: And drive them further away from reaching g a compromise

You: right

Stranger: Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with Brexit, but as a democracy we made a decision. So now we need to exact that decision. I would have voted for trump despite my disdain for him

Stranger: Enact not exact*

You: I think there are a lot of people who think similarly as you do ^^

Stranger: There really are

Stranger: The left has become absorbed by identity politics and is obsessed with race.. it scares me that they will create more racists than before they started

Stranger: Constantly calling your opposition racist and evil will force them into being it

You: mhm I think there are some things to distinguish between social media left-wing people and people in everyday life I think

You: the vitriol is always much more amplified online than people are irl

Stranger: Oh agreed! Twitter is not real life, but it has started to bleed over

You: I live in a fairly liberal state, although I don't really think I have ever seen twitter irl

You: although I do think there is probably self-censorship occuring

You: in the sense that people are afraid of what their neighbors will think

Stranger: There is allot of that

Stranger: Anything you say will be used against you. Even if it's not that controversial

Stranger: People have lost their jobs for an opinion not done at work

You: that said, I don't think that's per say the "left's" fault though -- I just think that public opinion has shifted dramatically in the last 10 years

Stranger: Or how about the man who lost his job because his wife said something controversial

Stranger: I agree with you

Stranger: I really do

Stranger: Allot of this I do think could have been stopped years ago

You: I don't really like the lynch firing of people

You: that companies do for their public image

You: because the truth doesn't matter

You: it's just public image

Stranger: They do so because they are scared of the mob

You: but at the same time, I think public image is a thing because majority opinion really has shifted in the past two decades

You: opinions on homosexuality have swung dramatically in the US

You: ten years ago it was totally okay in public to be anti-homosexual

Stranger: Obama was against gay marriage until it was politically important for him to win the next election

You: but public opinion I think has swung really fast

You: yeah

You: I think he swapped at the first poll that showed >50% of americans supported it

Stranger: Yep! I find it hilarious that that was the case

You: yes but I think conservatives find this kind of fast change extremely uncomforting

You: I can understand that sentiment

You: also isn't it getting kinda late for you? ^^

Stranger: Conservatives are by their very nature are conservative. Change is neither malevolent nor benevolent, but we cannot look at change as universally good. Not can we disregard tradition

Stranger: It's 3 am and I can still keep going, I'm enjoying this conversation :)

You: I need to do the dishes eventually lol

Stranger: If you wish to leave you can by all means :) I won't hate you for it

You: I'm fine either way tbh

You: are you working right now? if you have work tomorrow you should prob go to bed

Stranger: It's up to you :) I can go for ages though my coherence Kay descend

Stranger: I'm sadly unemployed at the moment having lost my job earlier this year

You: coronavirus?

Stranger: Sadly yes

You: that's unfortunate, I'm sorry

Stranger: Not your fault :) so don't stress

You: so aside from Russia and China and the decline of western things, is there anything else that you stress about lol?

Stranger: The drive of censorship

Stranger: I have serious issue with censory

You: mhm

Stranger: And yourself?

You: mhm I dunno really

Stranger: That's good, though I would urge you to become concerned with censorship

You: mhm maybe

You: for me it's sort of a contextual concern I think

You: in the sense that it depends on your vantage point

Stranger: Opinions, art and books doesn't matter. Today it is their voice, tomorrow it is my voice. The day after it becomes your voice. Censorship takes away their rights to speak, and your rights to listen

You: mhm, what I mean is that my family immigrated from China

You: so my reference point of censorship is literal government censorship

You: in comparison the "political correctness" thing just doesn't seem as big to me imo

You: because 90% of it to me is sort of like a person's relationship with the neighbor basically

You: the US government doesn't censor what you can publish essentially

Stranger: That's fair enough, but this is where it starts. Things take time, and if anyone gives in (such as they have in several cases) that builds. In time that becomes the norm, there after what gets censored will not be at the choice of the people but of those who are in power

You: perhaps, although I kind of have faith in the 1st ammendment and the US supreme court

You: we barely have libel laws or defamation laws in the US because of the 1st ammendment

Stranger: I have seen calls to change and amend it. In the uk we have no freedom of speech, people have been arrested for jokes, what's been said on Twitter, etc. There are those who say that it's ok to censor this and that because e they are problematic or it would be good for everyone. But that is how it starts. The US has so much freedom

You: ahh... yeah I feel like it is different in the uk

Stranger: The uk doesn't care for free speech. It's very worrying and there are calls for even more censorship here.

You: mhm that sounds worrisome

Stranger: I guess I project it across to all western countries, and that is something we have seen recently

You: I don't think the US will lose the 1st amendment anytime soon, it's not politically realistiic

Stranger: Look at Amazon censoring books and movies being removed etc, this is how this begins. If it is allowed now, how can we stop it in the future

You: idk the status of free speech in other countries

You: actually this is a very interesting topic

Stranger: The us is one of the only countries that has it

You: do you think freedom of speech should be protected in private spaces?

Stranger: Codified in law that is

You: because technically freedom of speech for us is supposed to be only related to public government relationships

Stranger: I believe it should always be be protected

You: specifically "congress will make no law restricting freedom of speech" (paraphrased)

You: so you believe that private companies should not control what is said on their premises?

You: I mean it's fine if you believe that, it's actually just a bit further than what the current status quo is

Stranger: Yes. They are not above the law. Society may shun them, but they should not become involved. Outright calls for violence are against the law and that should be honoured, outside of that no they should not impose on pthers

You: hmm in the US this is where things get super complicated

You: because conservatives are also the ones who want content restricted/said in their religious schools too

Stranger: I've noticed.. and that has an effect on the rest of the world

You: basically "freedom of religion" and "freedom of speech" being on the same political side here makes things very weird

Stranger: And yeah I am aware of that as well, though the pendulum seems to have swung to the other side now. And it will swing back to the other side again

You: kind of like "My store should have the freedom of religion to deny my patrons of being homosexual in my store" kinda thing

Stranger: Yeah it is hard but there is more to the opposite side than just the one thing

You: it's a weird convoluted thing when both are conservative issues

Stranger: That's a difficult one, but I would say that should be discussed and debated but the highest courts. I cannot say from a legal sense one way or the other, morally I can say that it's hard to decide. I think that everyone should get a choice but I am uncertain

Stranger: By not but*

You: mhm that's fine ^^

You: I just think it's very interesting because most laws here, they govern the relationship between between the government and the people

You: so our freedom of speech laws do not apply to amazon censoring books because they are a private company

Stranger: Which is the difficult thing

Stranger: They are protected by being a private company

Stranger: As it's not just them

You: maybe ^^ we have a free market though, so things that cannot be published on amazon will find an outlet elsewhere

You: provided there is a demand for it

You: that said, it also has some gray area with morality laws

Stranger: That is true but monopoloes make things harder to find

You: kind of like youtube banning pornographic content

Stranger: Yeah I can understand that morally, legally I don't know but I would assume that there is some laws regarding that

You: I mean I'm just used to many various sites having bans of various sorts

Stranger: The uk has some

Stranger: Yeah, but there are protections for them being platforms not publishers

You: I don't think there is any law forcing youtube to ban pornographic content; it's just a branding choice by the company

Stranger: If they are publishers, those protections don't apply

You: like I think they want to be seen as family-friendly

Stranger: Fair enough, would have thought there might be

You: porn sites are not illegal in the US lol

Stranger: Not family friendly, advertisement friendly

You: lol true

Stranger: Sorry I don't know enough to be able to say :) I'm happy to admit that

You: mhm aside from political correctness, I guess I just don't personally see a big problem with censorship in the US

You: although I think I have a different belief than you that I think it's okay for private companies to choose what they want to publish

You: even if the ban content

You: these companies still need to compete

Stranger: Them doing so is fine, but if they wish to be protected as platforms they cannot act as a publisher. I think that's the Crux of their protections

Stranger: It is something that has been going for a while though

Stranger: And I think Trump will have it in his campaign for reelection this year

You: okay ^^

Stranger: But I don't know, he has been interested in censorship and has said he is against it in the past

You: I think people mean different things by censorship

You: but that's just imo

You: there are almost no western countries that experience censorship by their governments

You: so people mean things like censorship at their workplace

You: although imo that's kind of less censorship and more on the political correctness spectrum

Stranger: True. That is very true. But if you don't stop censorship openly, then should it come from government you don't already know you can stand against it

You: but to me, that "political correctness" isn't anything new either; it's as old as time

You: like did we always worry about saying something that would offend our boss?

You: ^^

You: it's always been there

You: I just think people are uncomfortable because bosses have changed in the last few decades

Stranger: It's not just their work place. The new "town square" is has become online. Your freedoms online are not protected despite it being codified in law

Stranger: And you aren't wrong, and coming from China or at least your family, you bring an interesting perspective

You: I feel like in the US we have very little digital legislation

You: the US of is head of hear

You: *there

Stranger: The world needs a digital bill of rights, to protect us all and our data. But we won't get it

You: but I don't think we have anything guaranteeing that speech on the Internet is free by any regard

Stranger: I would argue we do

You: hm? which law?

You: I like most websites have ToS's and rules banning X Y or Z on their site

Stranger: Freedom of speech and expression

You: oh I mean in terms of law

Stranger: That is what I meant, so that we are free to speak and express ourselves. I also believe that our data should be private and cannot be sold and that should be protected. There are other things that I have heard but it's difficult to remember all those that were proposed

You: ahh

You: yeah we don't have those laws right now

Stranger: Today stuff is okay but you are not protected

You: although the EU has some privacy ones that we don't have in the US

Stranger: The EU doesn't care mostly

Stranger: Some laws only protect some information, I'm talking about all of our information

You: ^^

Stranger: Everything we post and do is tracked, monitored and sold

Stranger: We revel in it, "I was talking about cats/dogs and all of a sudden I got adds for cat/dog products"

Stranger: We hear that often

You: yup

Stranger: Also, with regards to our rights and things, who holds these companies accountable?

Stranger: Take google for example

Stranger: They have been caught tampering with the elections

You: well, again, we have basically no laws about this in the US so there is no accountability

Stranger: They openly censor news and opinions

Stranger: They are a monopoly

You: although some europrean countries have lawsuits whatever with them

You: yup they totally are

You: where are anti-trust laws lol?

Stranger: That's what I think Trump will be looking at, I would if I was in his shoes

Stranger: But they were given special protections

Stranger: Those need to be taken away, the large companies need to be broken up but governments are incompetent

Stranger: I don't trust them to do it well

You: mhm it actually reminds me of south korea actually

Stranger: I mean there are a few senators in the states that I think have the moral fortitude to do so, but I don't know

You: countries are loathe to break up companies that they're proud of basically

Stranger: Yep

You: like samsung in south korea lol?

Stranger: They wouldn't break them up

Stranger: It would do serious damage to the economy and blah blah blah

You: their revenue was like 20% of the entire country's gdp

Stranger: Yep it's a difficult argument

Stranger: And I can understand why you wouldnt

Stranger: That 20% could drop to below 1%

You: anyhow it is getting kind of late

You: it was nice talking to you

You: and you should sleep ^^

Stranger: Likewise! :) I needed to move my sleep schedule for a 24 hour race on the weekend anyway, sp thank you for occuping my time and mind :)

You: goodnight!

Stranger: I'm glad to have met another willing to talk, take care my good friend

You have disconnected.

[serenagaywaterford]

Cate fan here. Cate and Elise explained the focus on Sofie in The Guardian, and in the ABC article that asks "why is the cast so white" where they call Sofie as their "trojan horse". We fully trust Cate in handling this passion project, especially as she and Andrew, her husband, have experience with working on issues concerning refugees. This series also has the support of Rau's sister and the UNHCR. I believe they picked the best of all approaches given this project's long development period.

Good for you. “We fully trust”??? Wtf dude. Who’s “we”? Some Blanchett hivemind?Glad you PERSONALLY fully trust some actor you don’t even know (who names her son after a convicted paedophile, or just jokes about it. *shrug*). I don’t. Nor should I have to.

Why do I get messages like this every fucking time I post my own stupid opinions on this show?

Look, I am not a Cate Blanchett stan. And I especially don’t think everything any actor does is immediately blessed by God and can never, ever be criticized or have weaknesses. I literally said I am going to be patient and see how this show turns out. And me saying Sofie’s story is the least interesting is ONCE AGAIN not stating it is shit and should be erased! You people take everything so black and white. 

Here is a lesson for fans: not everything is an “all or nothing” situation. When I say Yvonne isn’t a great dancer, I am not saying she is fucking terrible and should never dance–which seems to be exactly what the lot of you heard last week based on the responses I got. I just said she isn’t the best ever at something that isn’t even her fucking job! FFS. I love Yvonne as an actress and think she’s absolutely fantastic, in Stateless and other shows. But that doesn’t mean I have to say she’s fucking fantastic at absolutely everything ever or else I lose my “cool fan” points. I don’t give a flying fuck what other people think about how much of a “true fan” I am.This week I say Sofie’s story is the least engaging and I get this random shit about how great Cate Blanchett is(?) and how Sofie is some “Trojan horse”. That doesn’t even make sense!!! Have any of you (them) actually read the Iliad? Being a Trojan horse isn’t a GOOD thing. Unless I guess you’re Achilles, lol. Generally speaking, it’s this: “Something that initially seems innocuous but is ultimately bad or malicious.” Maybe be more careful with words, lmao. I think maybe they meant “conduit”, or something similar. Unless they are actually insinuating that Sofie makes everything way worse for the detainees and is part of the problem. No, they mean she’s a trigger for recognition that something is very wrong in these places and she “brings down” the system–which is all idealistic, revisionist bullshit. Cos while Rau’s story made some big waves, it didn’t stop anything. Sure, SHE got out and so did the Palmer report, which changed some aspects of detention, esp for Australian citizens... And it unearthed like 200 other cases similarly brutal, like Vivian Solon. 

“In politics, the precise relationship between cause and effect is usually unclear. Some of the things that happened in the six months following the release of Cornelia Rau would certainly have happened anyway. Some, most likely, would not. What is clear, however, is that the case of Cornelia Rau shaped public opinion about the treatment of asylum seekers in a way no previous episode had. The Cornelia Rau affair taught the public that the lazy trust it had placed in government – not to inflict on innocents serious harm – was unwarranted. It was able to do this, as almost everyone immediately understood, because the person who had suffered false imprisonment and neglect was not a swarthy, dark-skinned, Islamic outsider. She was “one of us”. If, in February 2005, it had been discovered that a mentally ill Australian woman of Iranian descent had been wrongfully imprisoned, the transformative effect on public opinion would almost certainly have been immeasurably less.”

But activists and doctors are STILL fighting the Australian government over conditions and the mental health concerns of current detainees. Which is what I assume Blanchett and co. are trying to inspire reaction to? Which is a good thing and absolutely nobody is saying it’s not. I am not saying: “Sofie fucking sucks! This whole show is garbage and doesn’t have any compassion for the refugee crisis! Kill her off and just focus on everyone else!” I am saying, of all the stories, hers is the least interesting and the least relevant to the issue of detention camps at this moment (in the show, in history). Obviously. I don’t even understand why this opinion bothers people??? Like, it’s just objectively true that it’s the least relevant to the real crisis and plight of actual refugees jailed in these prisons for years on end. The Rau case happened 15 YEARS AGO. The problem right now is not what happened to her, it’s what’s continuing to happen in other centers--currently.And if you want to talk seriously about mental health issues of detainees in a fictional sense, using a character who IS ALREADY MENTALLY ILL to highlight how these refugees end up suffering serious, chronic, and sometimes fatal mental illnesses is not the best way to do it. Like, jfc, it’s just… okay, I will need 50 pages to explain why this is not the best approach if you really want to talk about mental health in detention centres. You can’t use a rich white girl who had a devastating pre-existing illness that caused her to BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE as your mascot for “Look, how terrible this place is! Everyone goes crazy!” She was already fucked up, she was already so, so, so vulnerable, and this made it a million times worse. The stories that are important are the healthy, perfectly capable refugees from war-torn countries that end up there for NO reason and gradually through constant imprisonment, abuse, neglect, isolation, lack of privacy, and stress DEVELOP illness, and it goes unnoticed and untreated until you have a prison full of broken people, especially children who are trying to kill themselves. And a lot of this is due to the guards and government employees who are actively awful, or merely wilfully blind.

So, excuse me, for stating that SOFIE isn’t the most important character to focus on, or the most interesting. All Sofie’s story does is highlight how oblivious the guards/officials/etc is to the mental welfare of their prisoners, and the inherent problems with the system. Which, yes, is important to a degree but if you can’t get people to care about refugees without insisting the story revolve around a white person… I just… I dunno what to tell you.

Oh, wait, am I stepping on the precious toes of Cate and Yvonne stans? Whatever. Boo hoo. I don’t care. If you’re gonna make a show about such serious issues (including the portrayal of mental illness based on someone’s ACTUAL LIFE!!!), be prepared for people to get critical about the lack of nuance and sensitivity, and the use of TV tropes. And how fucking WHITE-FOCUSED it is. Because, guess what–if it wasn’t and if Cate/Yvonne/Jai/Asher wasn’t in it–you all wouldn’t even be watching this. How about we all just admit that? It has so much attention not because of the story or the issues (that I assume Blanchett wanted to address), but because of the cast and the focus on the white people.

I do not care how much a massively privileged, white, Hollywood star has worked with refugees. That doesn’t absolve them from having bias, making poor decisions, or falling prey to tropes in their film-making. They are HUMAN BEINGS, an especially human beings that live in a very strange otherword of celebrity, constant validation, narcissism, and money. So much money. They can seem like the most grounded people ever but they are not. Anybody who’s spent even 10 minutes in Hollywood knows this. It’s a thick BUBBLE completely detached from the real world we all live in. So, quit acting like these ACTORS are suddenly experts on foreign policy, immigration, governmental processes, politics, law, sociology, economics, mental health, and whatever else. Especially not bigger experts than critics who have spent their whole lives involved in these issues. (I’m not talking about me. I’m a biologist lol.) She is producing a FICTIONAL TV SHOW to raise… awareness? I guess? To me, as of right now, it’s just using “Sofie’s” real story and vaguely touching on some of the issues. And without all that much depth either. Yet.And pardon me if I don’t really care for Rau’s SISTER’S support of the show. It’s not her sister’s story to tell. Sorry. This is about Cornelia herself. (Yes, I have read Rau’s article.) And OF COURSE the UNHCR is supportive. They are supportive of anything that helps raise awareness in a positive way. And, PLEASE NOTE: I once again never said this was a shit show that needs to be cancelled cos it sucks so bad. It does serve a purpose but I have issues with the NARRATIVE STYLE AND DECISIONS they’re making in order to do that. It has nothing to do with the actual issues.Yet. Like, I’ve said a million times and nobody seems to hear, YET. It’s only 2 episodes in and it has plenty of time to get really into the deep issues. They’ve only just brushed over them right now, so I’m happily waiting for the big pay off.

But let’s not all act like this is the first ever attempt to bring awareness of this humanitarian crisis to mainstream Australians and Blanchett is some sort of national refugee activist hero. Like I’ve said before Safe Harbour (in terms of (sometimes soapy) fiction) and Chasing Asylum (in terms of documentary) and even Go Back To Where You Came From (lol reality tv) have all attempted this, and with some stellar results. Go watch any of those and tell me what Stateless is doing that is so amazingly unique and affective. Stateless is just bringing big Hollywood names to the issue, and trying to bring awareness. AND, amazingly, guess what! It doesn’t even have to be a GOOD show to do that. It can be mediocre and still reach the people Blanchett & Co. clearly want to reach and get people thinking. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And me criticising little bits of the programme (like Yvonne’s dancing/accent/choice to have her speaking English all the time, or the lack of focus on actual refugee stories, ffs) is not me saying the whole thing is boring, useless garbage and a waste of time. So, y’all need to hop off my dick for two seconds and not just assume that me talking about my opinion of its small weaknesses is saying I hope your faves choke. Gimme a break. And just in case you all are still pissed off about my complaints that Sofie’s story isn’t the most important focus ever, I’ll just dump a few links here:

‘Begging to die’: succession of critically ill children moved off Nauru

Australia: Reverse Cruel Refugee Policy

'Australia is a bigger cage’: the ongoing trauma of Nauru’s child refugees

How Australia turned its back on the world’s refugee crisis

Mental health crisis in Australia’s refugee camps

The mental health of asylum seekers in Australia and the role of psychiatrists

Christmas Island detention centre’s conditions stoke tension, detainee says

Australia blocks asylum seekers held offshore from seeking medical care in the country

Nauru: MSF report shows disastrous mental health impact of Australian refugee policy

‘Someone needs to say, enough’: Mental health on Manus Island

Nauru asylum seekers��� mental health as bad as torture victims, doctors say

Nauru detention centre: Abuse and trauma reports leaked

Australia’s man-made crisis on Nauru: Breaking Women

The Nauru files: cache of 2,000 leaked reports reveal scale of abuse of children in Australian offshore detention

Australia: Appalling Abuse, Neglect of Refugees on Nauru

Australia to reopen Christmas Island detention center after defeat on refugee policy

UN body says Australia breached human rights laws and needs to review Migration Act

And yes, most of these are offshore centres (some of which have effectively closed now), but it’s not even counting the ones actually in Australia itself, many of which are still operational: List of Australian immigration detention facilities

And yeah… The unknown story of Cornelia Rau. Just as a reality check of what Sofie’s story is meant to be. It’s absolutely horrifying, devastating and incredibly sad, and not something to be glamourised or sensationalised for woke points. 

So, sorry (NOT SORRY) for saying Rau/Sofie’s story isn’t the most important part of this whole MASSIVELY COMPLEX thing, nor is it even close to the most interesting aspect of the crisis. I do get why they chose her story as a vehicle to unlock the issue for all the other white, middleclass Aussies (and others) watching but I still don’t think it’s the most interesting aspect of the SHOW. That’s all. I’m not saying it’s pointless to tell “Sofie’s” story, or that I don’t like it, or it’s entirely irrelevant. Just it’s not the most important thing to me.

I can’t believe I have to say this again but just so we are all on the same page:

I HAVE NO BIG PROBLEM WITH “STATELESS”. I DON’T HATE IT. IT IS A GOOD, WELL-ACTED, WELL-PRODUCED, ENGAGING, DECENT SHOW THAT IS ATTEMPTING TO TAKE ON A HUGE, COMPLEX ISSUE IN A VERY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME. I THINK IT’S ADMIRABLE THAT EVEN MORE ATTENTION IS TRYING TO BE BROUGHT TO THE ISSUE AND GOOD FOR BLANCHETT FOR PUSHING FOR IT. I JUST WANT MORE FOCUS ON THE RELEVANT ISSUES TO THIS TIME PERIOD.

What’s the point in raising awareness and putting heavy focus on something awful that happened 15 years ago and has been resolved (more or less, cos nothing is ever totally resolved in politics)? Let’s focus on the terrible shit that hasn’t been resolved yet. Acting like Sofie’s story would happen today is just so far from reality when you are aware of all the changes made and results of the Rau situation. Any criticisms I have of the show or its actors do not mean I hate the show and think it’s stupid and pointless. Just, if it was my show, I’d do it slightly differently. THAT’S ALL. But it’s not my show and I could never produce TV so don’t get all your knickers’ in a twist over my personal opinions about trivial shit. No need to come into my inbox on a weekly basis and try to school me about Yvonne, Cate, etc. I can have opinions on actors/TV shows, even if you think they’re stupid. If you think my opinions are wildly misinformed on politics/storytelling/etc, that's fair. Maybe they are. Tumblr is certainly not the best platform for me to lay out all my thoughts in a coherent way. But so far I don’t have anybody coming at me about the actual issues, just getting butthurt that I’m not kissing your fave’s ass. (Keep in mind, Yvonne is one of my fav actresses too. I’m just not insanely obsessed with her.)

God. I am turning off anon cos every week now I say anything even remotely, mildly critical of some minor aspect of Stateless I get bombarded with this kind of condescending shit from rabid stans of the actors. If you can’t put your name to it, I’m not interested in your thoughts anymore. Sorry. I’m tired. And my inbox is tired lol.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

@dykeofwellington

#he’s no better than any other politician

#and is indeed actively worse than quite a few

#politics

#us politics I am curious as to why you think he’s actively worse than someone like Steyer, or Tulsi Gabbard, or simply in general. Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest? I would also love to know who you think is the best choice out of the lot? and you’re reasoning behind that?

--

Hey for some reason I can’t reblog the post where you asked the above about Bernie. I’m going to give a very brief rundown of thoughts. 

First, let’s clear up some rather broad, assumptions made: 

am curious as to why you think he’s actively worse than someone like Steyer, or Tulsi Gabbard, or simply in general. / Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest?

I never said any politician’s name. Just a general indication that he’s worse than a few. I think it’s interesting you assumed I meant those two and not that he’s worse than, let’s say, Julian Castro. 

I clearly said “no better than any other politician” which puts him on equal footing with Warren etc. so this assumption: Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest? is unwarranted. 

What I was saying was basically - no better than e.g. Warren and worse than quite a few e.g. Castro, Clinton (I know, come fight me leftists who drank the almost 30 years of GOP koolaid on her) etc. 

--

A quick rundown of issues I have with Bernie include, but are not limited to: 

Inability to deal with sexual harassment in his campaign in a meaningful way (he apologized and such, but there’s not to my eyes been a significant change)

General sexism in his campaign as well as sexism displayed by followers. He’s just got a sexism issue overall.

Lack of meaningful, recent civil rights record 

Unwilling to coalition build with colleagues in government (a profoundly necessary skill if you want to get anything done as president). Basically, he’s not a team player. We need team players. Team players is how DC works. (e.g. “Ms. Clinton, pointing out that Mr. Obama had to fight tooth-and-nail even for relatively centrist solutions such as the Affordable Care Act, draws the lesson that the next president must have a strong sense of practicality and realism; big rallies cannot wish away the complex politics of Congress. Mr. Sanders, by contrast, claims that Mr. Obama had insufficient revolutionary zeal.” Sanders’ view is not helpful nor realistic.) 

Lack of passing meaningful policy/legislation in his 25 years as senator which indicates an overall inability to solve issues within the existing system as well as a manifestation of the above mentioned inability to coalition build. While many senators propose many bills and pass few (that’s kind of par for the course) Sanders’ are particularly lack lustre. Of the seven enacted of which he was primary sponsor, three were designations (S. 885, H.J.Res. 231, S. 893) and one was a national park boundary movement (H.R. 1353). 

Bernie Sanders was the primary sponsor of seven bills that were enacted:

S. 885 (113th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 35 Park Street in Danville, Vermont, as the “Thaddeus Stevens Post Office”.

S. 2782 (113th): A bill to amend title 36, United States Code, to improve the Federal charter for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and for other purposes

S. 893 (113th): Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013H.R. 5245 (109th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1 Marble Street in Fair Haven, Vermont, as the “Matthew Lyon Post Office Building”.

H.J.Res. 129 (104th): Granting the consent of Congress to the Vermont-New Hampshire Interstate Public Water Supply Compact.

H.R. 1353 (102nd): Entitled the “Taconic Mountains Protection Act of 1991”.

H.J.Res. 132 (102nd): To designate March 4, 1991, as “Vermont Bicentennial Day”.

Medicare for All: it’s an incredibly complicated thing to implement and I’m personally not convinced Sanders’ plan is the right approach, nor that it would pass congress when introduced. 

Weak stance on gun control and relationship with the NRA

Tendency to shout over and shut people down, especially those asking questions he doesn’t want to answer 

His lack of attempting to control his supporters - their misogyny and racism - are indicative of the kind of person running the campaign. These things rot from top down. 

How powerfully his ego influences his actions, especially in 2016 when it took Obama hauling him into the white house before he finally stepped down and stopped running 

That whole Russia murkiness

His continued view that the primaries are rigged when they aren’t, he just lost, is actively harmful 

He has, or has benefited from, super PACs (he has some direct PAC contributions, but it’s not a large amount. Most of his benefits from PACs come in other forms than direct contributions). 

So, this is not something I particularly care about overall, because running for president is expensive (which is a Problem), and it’s a current reality to campaign financing. But he made such a big deal out of it I take vindictive pleasure in him having them/benefitting from them because I can now corner Luke Savage at a mutual friend’s annual Christmas party and tell him to shove it up his arse. 

Support of Gabbard who is a bit of a Russian plant (not to mention a terrible candidate overall) 

He is old, he is white, he is straight, he is cis, he is male - we have the most diverse range of potential nominees and if we think he’s the Answer or Saviour there’s a lot of unpacking of internalized stuff that needs to happen. 

A personal thing, but I really, really dislike his shoutiness. He reminds me of every socialist bro who has shouted down women and other marginalized people at parties I’ve been to (I know quite a few Jacobin/Socialist hacks e.g. aforementioned Luke Savage who uses the Sanders Certified approach If You Shout Enough They Can’t Get A Word In Therefore You Win to conversations and debates) and it leaves my skin crawling. 

No policy to address the needs and interests of First Nations/Native Americans including living standards, water access, education, treaty rights, any sort of reconciliation and addressing the issue of colonialism and genocide etc. (I think Castro is the only one with anything addressing Native American needs)

Breach of Clinton’s campaign voter data. Super. Shady. 

Ultimately, I’m not an idealist because idealism doesn’t make for good policy. While I dislike the term leftist because it invokes, to my mind, the blind, unthinking frothing wrath of Bernie Bros(tm), I do have leftist goals. 

However, I am practical about the approach, which will almost always be incremental. It’s like building a house: you lay foundations before you start on the walls, roof and insulation. Bernie wants an instant house to appear out of no where. That’s not how life nor government, works.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t push to improve things and make for a better world, a more just society. But the reality is: we have a system we must work within and so we need people who can do that effectively. That said, we can and should try to improve the system on the way, as well. But burning it down and starting from scratch is a pipe dream. Best lay it to the side and fight for things that can actually improve lives today. In the here and now. 

in the end, I don’t like Bernie Sanders because he is an old, shouty white man driven by ego who is crude, mean, and isn’t a real democrat. I think we can do better. 

My current list of choices for the Democratic nominee (which is open to change. It will depend on how debates play out and further policy details put forward by candidates): 

Julian Castro (I like his platform the most; he has experience in DC from the Obama administration; knows how to be a team player; he’s young, intelligent and well spoken; has that “presidential” look that many voters like to see, which you know. Makes sense. Mostly I like his platform and everything I’ve heard and read about him has been positive. He also runs a (mostly) positive campaign! Unlike Some Old White Shouty Men. I can go on.)

Kamala Harris (She has a good platform with sound policy plans; she has grit and stamina needed to run against Trump; She runs a positive campaign - even using her funding to support other democrats currently primarying republicans/are just up for general re-election; she’s a senator so has experience and allies in DC with whom she can coalition build; she’s a team player; she will give us a good shot in Florida and N. Carolina; she has strong support from Black Americans who are the base of the democratic party; as DA she fought against prop 22 and prop 8 [yes, she’s not perfect as DA or AG but point to someone with a perfect track record. I’ll wait. I’m not here for perfection or purity politics, I’m here for someone who can win and will implement descent policy while in power], she pioneered one of the first open data initiative to expose racism in the legal system, lol she’s not a millionaire unlike Some Old White Shouty Man - which is neither here nor there for me personally, because again I’m realistic, just a refreshing thing. I can go on.) 

Elizabeth Warren (I’m rather luke-warm on her but she’s better than the other options.)

My ideal ticket, currently, is: Harris/Castro. 

Again - this is open to change. And, at the end of the day, I will vote for the democratic nominee in 2020 no matter what because we can’t have another four years of Trump. 

[theliberaltony]

via FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

The Democratic presidential field maintained its 2019 pace of at least one new entrant per week, with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announcing his run last Friday and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, making her previously disclosed campaign official with a kick-off rally in Honolulu.

But in addition to those candidates making formal inroads, a few new names popped up in the periphery of consideration, hints and speculation, including Stacey Abrams and Bill Weld, who are each making their first appearance on this watch list.

Feb. 1-7, 2019

Stacey Abrams Fresh off her State of the Union response, which received strong reviews from her fellow Democrats, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate didn’t rule out a presidential run during an interview with BuzzFeed News Thursday.

“I’m thinking about everything, I gave myself a deadline of the end of March to make a decision about what I’m going to do next,” Abrams said, adding, “I don’t believe in cutting off opportunities, or forgoing ideas. But often what you find is if you think about something beyond your scope, there’s something in the middle you never thought about.”

Abrams has also been the subject of speculation about a run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Georgia Republican David Perdue. Michael Bennet (D) Asked if he was still considering entering the presidential race, the Colorado senator told 5280 Magazine that he did not have any updates to provide. Joe Biden (D) Biden was the top performer in a Monmouth University poll gauging presidential preferences among registered Democrats. The former vice president received 29 percent support, with the next-closest finisher earning 16 percent. He also earned the highest net favorability rating, with 80 percent of registered Democrats viewing him favorably to 9 percent who viewed him unfavorably.

A CNN poll Wednesday showed that a majority of Democrats — 62 percent — wanted Biden to enter the presidential race.

Politico reported Thursday that Biden was nearing a decision on a run, and was reaching out to Capitol Hill allies including Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Chris Coons, D-Del., as well as Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

On Tuesday, during a private lunch with television anchors prior to the State of the Union, President Donald Trump reportedly described Biden as “dumb” and said he hoped to run against him.

“Biden was never very smart. He was a terrible student. His gaffes are unbelievable. When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose; it’s not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it’s because he’s dumb,” the president said, according to sources cited by the New York Times. Michael Bloomberg (D) The former New York City mayor decried the subsidies provided to Amazon to attract it into building its much-publicized HQ2 in Long Island City, Queens as unnecessary, aligning him with left-leaning city representatives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who herself has been critical of billionaires like Bloomberg.

On Friday, Bloomberg will deliver the keynoteaddress at the Americans for Immigrant Justice’s 23rd annual awards dinner in Miami. Cory Booker (D) Last Friday, Booker entered the presidential race with the release of a video describing a platform of optimism and a slew of media interviews that touched on his career path from Newark, New Jersey councilman to U.S. senator.

“I think a lot of folks are beginning to feel that the forces that are tearing us apart in this country are stronger than the forces that tie us together. I don’t believe that,” Booker said in an interview on “The View.” “So, I’m running to restore our sense of common purpose, to focus on the common pain that we have all over this country.”

On Tuesday, the New Jersey senator, a lifelong bachelor, confirmed that he has a girlfriend, or, “a boo,” as he put it.

This weekend Booker, who also picked up an endorsement from fellow New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez shortly after his announcement, heads to Iowa for six events on Friday and Saturday, before continuing on to South Carolina on Sunday for three more events continuing into Monday. Sherrod Brown (D) Brown told CNN Tuesday that a decision on a presidential campaign is “probably” coming in March. On Wednesday, the Ohio senator received the support of Jim Obergefell, who filed the lawsuit that led to the 2015 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right of same-sex couples to marry. Obergefell called Brown “one of the best advocates” for the LGBT community in the Senate.

After touring Iowa last weekend, Brown continues his “Dignity of Work” listening tour this weekend in New Hampshire, where he will stop in Hampton, Berlin, Laconia, Concord and Manchester for a variety of roundtables and meet-and-greets and to attend the New Hampshire Young Democrats’ 2019 Granite Slate Awards. Steve Bullock (D) Politico reported last Friday that Bullock is likely to wait until the end of Montana’s legislative session on May 1 before making a decision on a presidential run. After describing the governor’s bipartisan efforts in the Big Sky State, Politico quoted a former Montana Republican state representative who said of a potential Bullock campaign: “I’d go so far as to say he wouldn’t suck.” Pete Buttigieg (D) The South Bend, Indiana mayor defended his White House run at the age of 37, saying that the job was “a leap for anybody,” in an interview with “This Week” Sunday. Buttigieg further drew a line of differentiation between the Medicare-for-all ideas being touted by a number of Democratic presidential hopefuls, saying that, unlike Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., he didn’t feel as if the idea necessitated the end of the private insurance industry.

This weekend, Buttigieg visits Iowa for the first time since launching his presidential campaign. His trip includes meet-and-greets in Ames, Grinnell, Ankeny and Johnston over the course of Friday and Saturday. Julian Castro (D) Appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Tuesday night, Castro said he wasn’t interested in being another Democrat’s running mate should he not capture the nomination for himself, explaining that he’s “been there and done that last time,” in reference to his 2016 vetting by Hillary Clinton.

Last weekend, the Hispanic-American Castro told New York magazine that he anticipated that the presidential campaign would be centered around immigration because Trump uses the issues “as a political ploy to drum up his base” and that “he’s convinced that’s the only way he can win this election,” but even so, does not “underestimate” Trump. John Delaney (D) Delaney is opening his first office in New Hampshire next Monday, WMUR reported, which will coincide with a visit by the former Maryland congressman, who will stick around to campaign in the state early in the week. The trip follows one taken by Delaney to Utah on Wednesday to speak at the Sorenson Winter Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City. Tulsi Gabbard (D) Gabbard officially launched her presidential campaign last weekend with a Honolulu rally, before running into a number of controversies later in the week, including receiving the unwanted endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, who he has long admired the Hawaii senator for her foreign policy positions.

“I have strongly denounced David Duke’s hateful views and his so-called ‘support’ multiple times in the past, and reject his support,” Gabbard responded to the New York Post.

She then defended her oft-criticized 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by telling MSNBC Wednesday that, “Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.” Kirsten Gillibrand (D) Gillibrand toured New Hampshire last weekend, with five stops in two days, and revealed to the Concord Monitor that she was on the verge of hiring staff in the state.

Though the New York senator has downplayed her moderate past since entering the presidential race in January, she pledged to “find common ground” with Republicans while in New Hampshire, though reiterated that she was angered by Trump’s actions to divide the country.

During Trump’s State of the Union Tuesday, Gillibrand had a viral moment featuring her exasperated response to Trump’s speech, off of which she later tried to fundraise, which may or may not have been in violation of congressional rules.

On Wednesday, fellow New York Democrat, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, was pessimistic about Gillibrand’s presidential chances, telling the New York Daily News she didn’t feel Gillibrand could win in Midwestern states like Ohio. Maloney later partially walked back the comments, issuing a statement noting that Gillibrand is an “outstanding Senator and would be an exceptional President” and that she was “simply commenting on the importance of winning back previously blue states and having a strategy for doing so.” Kamala Harris (D) Harris delivered a preemptive response to the State of the Union Tuesday, criticizing Trump’s “insincere appeals to unity.”

“I want everyone to remember this: The strength of our union has never been found in the walls we build,” the California senator said.

During a conversation with historically black colleges and universities leaders Thursday, Harris was critical of the way gender has played a role in the Senate, citing the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings as an instance during which she was treated differently than her male colleagues.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found enthusiasm for a potential Harris nomination to be nearly equal to that of Biden, with 58 and 60 percent of respondents, respectively, saying they would be excited for the two to emerge victorious from the primaries. John Hickenlooper (D) Hickenlooper visited South Carolina Tuesday and Wednesday, where he conversed with voters and spoke to the state’s Hospital Association. Speaking to reporters, the former Colorado governor said that voters were interested in a candidate’s record of achievement, something that has become the centerpiece of his stump speech ahead of a potential announcement. Eric Holder (D) Next Tuesday, Holder will visit Des Moines for a speech at Drake University’s Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement. Jay Inslee (D) Inslee told CNBC this week that a presidential campaign decision is coming “in weeks, not months” and continues to pitch himself as the potential candidate most focused on environmental issues.

“Both by experience and passion and commitment, I have had a long, demonstrated vision statement for economic growth around clean energy that is unique amongst potential candidates.” Inslee said. Amy Klobuchar (D) Klobuchar will make “a little announcement” in Minneapolis Sunday, she said in a video posted to her social media accounts Wednesday, one that will reveal her decision regarding a presidential run, she earlier explained on MSNBC Tuesday.

Minnesota Public Radio reported Monday that, should Klobuchar enter the presidential race, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will extend her an endorsement.

“If Sen. Klobuchar chooses to go, I’m with her,” said Walz, a former member of the U.S. House, adding, “It’s in our best interest to have multiple choices out there, but I would argue that as more Americans get to know Amy Klobuchar, she’ll prove to be the person that they may want to get with.”

Klobuchar was the subject of a scathing HuffPost report Wednesday that included claims she mistreats her Senate staff, frequently describing their work as “the worst,” leading to high turnover in her office. Some former staffers pushed back in the story, arguing that the senator had high standards and suggested that male senators would not face such criticism for similar behavior. Mitch Landrieu (D) Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu all but ruled out a 2020 presidential run in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday morning, but added a “never say never” caveat.

Landrieu, who released a book last year and has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump in a number of television appearances to start 2019, cited the influx of “great candidates in the race,” and said that the race was “getting filled up.”

As for potential candidates who he felt operate in a similar lane to himself, he cited Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, and additionally had high praise for Stacey Abrams‘ State of the Union response Tuesday night, saying he felt she would make a “really good candidate.” Terry McAuliffe (D) Though he still has not reached a final decision, the former Virginia governor told CNN last weekend that he’d “like to” run for president and said, as he has before, that a decision would come by the end of March. Seth Moulton Following a brief appearance before the Bedford, New Hampshire Democrats last weekend, Moulton toldreporters that he was “not here to talk about 2020,” and instead focused on “spend[ing] the next two years making sure President Trump wasn’t reelected.” He conceded, however, that he was “not sure what that means for me.” Beto O’Rourke (D) O’Rourke admitted to “thinking about running for president” during a conversation with Oprah Winfrey in New York City Tuesday and said, of the prospect of helping to unify the country, “I’m so excited at the prospect of being able to play that role.” He said he would announce his decision about a run “before the end of the month.”

Pressed on what was preventing him to declare a candidacy on the spot, the former Texas congressman said that his family was an important consideration.

“For the last seven years, my family hasn’t seen me,” he said. “That’s the far more important responsibility.”

A New York Times profile Wednesday detailed O’Rourke’s mid-20s, which he spent living in New York. The newspaper described him as “adrift,” comparing his “quarter-life crisis” of soul-searching to his ongoing contemplation of a presidential campaign and recent travels through the country’s interior. Bernie Sanders (D) Though he has given unilateral responses to the State of the Union in the past, Sanders faced criticism this year over the belief that he was distracting from Democrats‘ official responses, delivered by Stacey Abrams and Xavier Becerra — though he did describe Abrams’ address as “extremely effective” at the top of his speech.

In his remarks, Sanders called attention to the struggles of the nation’s middle class and took issue with Trump’s avoidance of climate change and other progressive priorities. Howard Schultz (D) The former Starbucks CEO continued to rebut the criticism that his potential run as an independent could pave the way for Trump’s reelection, explaining that he wanted to pay forward the success he was able to achieve and help others do the same, previewing a theme he would touch on in an appearance at Purdue University Thursday.

Ralph Nader, whose own third-party presidential run in 2000 is still blamed by some Democrats for preventing Al Gore from winning that year’s election, wrote for Time this week to both defend and attack Schultz’s moves, arguing that “‘spoiler’ charges” constituted “political bigotry,” but that the billionaire’s policy positions were closer to those of the GOP, rather than being centrist, as he claims.

Next week, Schultz will participate in a CNN town hall in Texas on Tuesday, before continuing on his book tour in Philadelphia on Wednesday and Washington, D.C. on Thursday. Elizabeth Warren (D) Warren again faced backlash this week for her past claims of Native American heritage. After the Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Massachusetts senator wrote on her State Bar of Texas registration card in 1986 that she was “American Indian.”

“I can’t go back,” Warren told the Post in response. “But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted.”

Questioned further about the situation on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Warren explained that the claim was a result of her “family story” and again apologized.

“When I was growing up in Oklahoma, I learned about my family the same way most people do. My brothers and I learned from our mom and our dad and our brothers and our sisters. They were family stories,” she told reporters. “But that said, there really is an important distinction of tribal citizenship. I’m not a member of a tribe. I have apologized for not being more sensitive to that. It’s an important thing.”

The controversy arose just days before Warren was set to make a major announcement Saturday in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before embarking on a campaign swing through the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Bill Weld (R) Weld, the former Republican Massachusetts governor and 2016 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, re-registered as a GOP voter, according to the Massachusetts secretary of state’s online voter registration status lookup.

The Boston Globe earlier reported that Weld was strongly considering a Republican primary challenge to Trump.

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [272]

“You’re back!” Evelyn is just as startled to see the proprietor of the Black Emporium swinging down from stacks of books as she was the last time she was here. “And you look the same as before! Did you forget something?”

“No. Did you?” Evelyn replies, and suddenly - as though the realization of what she’s doing has just happened now - feels extremely awkward about maybe having taken a joke too seriously. She holds up a basket, “I did say I’d be back and we’d have some tea. I. Um. Should I have sent a message ahead? I brought Dorian.”

“Hello, charmed. Probably. It remains to be seen.”

Ellana blinks slowly, “You…came back to have tea with me?”

“Yes,” Evelyn says, “Was I…not supposed to?”

Ellana had seemed very excited about the idea the last time Evelyn was here, and she had looked so terribly lonely and it may be something of what some people would consider a waste of time and effort to come back to the Black Emporium without any real business aside from tea and chatter, but at the time Evelyn thought that based on the sad and quiet and nervous look on Ellana’s face it would have been the least she could do.

“You meant it?�� Ellana says, sounding terribly small for someone who’s going to outlive the rest of the world. “I mean - you remembered? And you meant it?”

“She’s here isn’t she?,” Bull says, “You got anything good for making vitaar around here?”

“Probably. Check around that-away with the rest of the cosmetics,” Ellana says offhandedly gesturing vaguely behind her, blinking confusedly at Evelyn. “And you brought Dorian Pavus, Altus of Minrathous, preeminent researcher and developer of time-space warping magics? I - are you sure, absolutely and completely certain, that you hadn’t forgotten something and now you’re doubling back to make it look less awkward by sweetening me up to get it?”

Evelyn turns around to look behind her. She’d thought bringing Dorian would be fun because Dorian, in general, is always a little party of his own and she thought if things got awkward Dorian’s propensity for destroying and plowing down awkward social situations would bail her out.

Dorian beams, “You’ve heard of me.”

“Oh, yes,” Ellana replies, “I mean. How could I have not? I’ve been following your research for the past few - how does time work again?  Um. I think it’s years. Years are a normal amount of time? I think? Anyway I’ve been following your research since you published that paper concerning a timed-delayed rapid compression spell to enhance fire based magics and I’ve thought you very brilliant. I mean, the way you applied the same theory from that paper to the current use of time distortion fields? Wonderful. It’s a great work around for the complex issue of overlapping mass.”

Dorian’s eyebrows might as well have become part of his hair.

“That was my first paper and I’ll let you know now, out of surprise and awe that you actually read that piece of utter useless shit, that I’m flattered that you think I could link those two studies together considering that when I polished up my latest piece I was literally doing it by the seat of my pants with death breathing down my neck.”

“I can tell,” Ellana nods sagely, “Crude but extremely effective, especially if you polish it up a bit more. It’s not the work around I came up with, but I think it’s much more efficient.”

“Wait,” Evelyn’s brain catches up with the conversation as she holds up a hand to stop this from rapidly spiraling into a discussion. Because three mages from three different schools talking theory is a discussion and she hasn’t even put down the tea basket, “You’ve solved time travel?”

“I’ve had all the time in the literal world,” Ellana replies, “If you name it, I’ve probably played with it for a few years before getting bored.”

Dorian pushes past Evelyn, grabs the nearest chair and sits down in it, “Enough pleasantries. We’re talking theoretical mathematics and philosophy. Evelyn, if you’d have told me sooner that this is what was waiting for me at the Black Emporium maybe I wouldn’t have been so damn slow about getting here.”

Evelyn grabs her own chair and drags it to where Dorian is as Ellana quickly goes to get a chair and table, quickly casting some spells to increase the light in the room and float over pens, papers, some journals, and a couple of plates and jars.

“If I had know this is what I could’ve been getting the entire time you’d have never gotten me out of here the first time,” Evelyn replies. “Maker - Bull said that your hobbies were knitting and embroidery. I brought you wool. I could’ve brought you my unsolved thesis project.”

“I do like to knit and embroider,” Ellana protests, “He wasn’t wrong. He just…neglected to mention my other hobbies.”

“You’re useless,” Dorian calls out towards the stacks where Bull and disappeared. Bull’s arm appears from behind a shelf and he flips Dorian off.

“The last time I was here - before the Inquisition - I spent three days discussing the relevance of architecture and war tactics to a culture. Topics I didn’t think either of you two would care about.”

Evelyn and Dorian stare at Ellana.

Ellana shrugs, “The Iron Bull is the only person I’ve met in the past two centuries capable of holding an interesting conversation regarding the trends of society’s foreign policy and aesthetic movements. He’s a man of many depths and frankly I’m extremely excited to have him back in my shop again. And he’s brought me the two of you and I feel like I don’t even know where to start. Bull, are you good back there? I’m going to start in on them because. Well. It’s been almost five centuries since I’ve had a live body down here willing to sit down and talk theory.”

“I’m good,” Bull says, “Do I still have a tab?”

“Does he still have a tab,” Ellana rolls her eyes and whispers, “He just takes things for free and pretends they’re on a tab. As if I cared about the stuff he takes. He’s the only one who’s had an interest in most of it in this decade. He’s practically taking out my garbage for me.”

[dkotarba21ahsgov]

Media Assessment of Issue

My first article(liberal leaning) - The Guardian

This article focuses on the peaceful protests aswell as police brutality within the riots which have been raging all summer. It is written by Lios Beckett, who is a senior reporter on gun policy and politics at the Guardian. The article appeals to both moderates and democrats, and attempts to show how violence has been used by police at protests. The main focus of the article is based around the opening quote, “93% of demonstrations have involved no serious harm to people or property.” According to Beckett, the violence at the riots have been driven by the police and government actions and not domestic terrorists as others might say. She believes government response to the violent protests has been too forceful and violent despite the mass destruction the rioters might have otherwise caused. Beckett also ironically said BLM demonstrators were targeted by groups associated with the KKK after previously disproving the right wing media outlets who also said domestic terrorists were involved in the riots. The purpose of the article was to point out how violent government intervention has made protests more violent. There were “392 incidents this summer in which government authorities used force on Black Lives Matter demonstrators.” This quote does show how the government has used force many times, but also paints the government authorities as terrible people and as the ‘bad guys’. The government only interfered with violent protest and riots. The BLM demonstrators were destroying cities, and in some cases killing people in the process. Only with permission from city govereners, and good reason to interfere, did government authorities come in to clear the streets. 

My second article(impartial source) - Pew Research

The subject of this article is statistics-based analysis of approval ratings of the BLM movements, and the violent protests. This article is written by Deja Thomas, who is a research assistant focusing on social trends. The article provides many sets of data to prove the decline in support for the BLM movement. According to the article, support for the movement has declined tremendously for Whites and Hispanics, while support has remained same for Blacks and Asians. This article is intended for all audiences and has no bias, because it is purely the interpretation of data. The article is significant because it shows how initially, with the death of george floyde, flocked like sheep to the movement and that support has died down since then. 

My third article(conservative-leaning) - Daily Mail

This article is written by Chris Pleasance, who is a foreign news reporter from England. The focus of the article is how America is experiencing protest fatigue and support for the BLM movement has declined. This article uses statistics, though it does not say where from, to explain why the support for the BLM movement has declined. This article is very similar to the last article, but the statistics are different. This could be explained by the different sources of statistical data, and also the time difference for the publication of each article, this article being published later. The intended audience for this article is moderates and conservatives. The significance for this article is that the lack of support for the BLM movement could mean more conservative voters. 

Each of these articles focus on the BLM movement. Two of the articles talked about the decline in support for the movement, while one discussed more about the response to the demonstrations by government. The first article suggested that terrorist organizations have targeted the demonstrations, which could explain the decline in support. I personally agree most with the viewpoints last article. Much of the data within the second article proves many of the points in the last article. The statements and accusations made within the first article I don’t agree with.

[nightblink]

Blink Reads Oathbringer - Chapters 13-16

Chapter Thirteen – Chaperone

I’d be tempted by a balcony too, Shallan, especially one bound to have a great view.

It’d be good for Shallan to be able to Lightweave herself into Veil without needing sketches beforehand. It’s a good limitation to have on her powers, especially at first, but she’s going to need more flexibility.

Thank the Heralds that Sebarial and Palona are looking out for you to make sure that you do things like eat. You’re the type that gets submerged in your art or whatever you’re doing and somehow ignores the body’s pleas for sustenance.

…that’s not Palona.

He’s so distracted upon seeing her that he stumbles – what happened to your coordination, Kholin? [cackles] But he “didn’t even have the decency to blush” – yeah, he was probably too busy appreciating-

You did invite him in.

Oh hello little tidbits – “born under the sign of the nine”? Wait, isn’t nine the bad number in Vorin theology? That… does not assuage my worries for you in the slightest. At least having a birthmark is benign, and dear lord, is that an attempt to invite her into your rooms while you’re half-dressed? Adolin. Propriety, young man!

Dopey grin is canon.

‘Ash’s eyes’ – is that a new swearing-by-the-Heralds, or one we’ve heard before?

‘She’d traveled to the ancient city of the Knights Radiant, but compared to Adolin’s affection, all the sights of Urithiru were dun spheres.’ Be still my shipper heart

Plopping right down onto the floor with all their food, it’s such a comfortable atmosphere!

Shallan, I know you have new detail to add to your fap material, but later, okay?

Oh now he starts blushing and worrying about propriety. Now that his brain’s caught up with the rest of him, the Alethi Sensibilities are coming out.

SHALLAN. wOW girl, you are thirsty. (I don’t think he’d mind)

‘Fake it ‘til you make it’ really does help, Shallan, at least it did/does so for me. Glad to see you’re reaping the benefits – enough to have it recognized by others!

Oh no, oh nooo, she’s spiraling again…

I don’t think he entirely believed that answer.

“A Shallanspren.” Pretty much, yeah.  omg Adolin don’t poke poor Pattern. Das rude. I’m imagining his fractals going all spiky in annoyance.

“Inappropriate? Such as… dividing by zero?” Pattern you are amazing

I’m so happy that she can find happiness, be happy, content, able to revel in this sort of little moment that can never be captured. Shallan needs little moments like this in her life, spots of brightness to hold onto when the dark feels like it’s overwhelming

Come on, Shallan, come on, try the men’s food, you know you want to-!

Well. Adolin likes spicy-as-fuck dishes, confirmed.

PATTERN OH MY G O D

“accidentally” pATTERN that’s not how it works and fucking hell, I’m laughing too hard to be at my desk for this

“NO MATING.” Dead, I’m just dead, Send me off to the Farplane now

(he probably saw what you were imagining in your head earlier, Shallan. It’s your own fault, really)

!!! He noticed how she felt in the meeting and thought he’d help try to rectify that! Goddamn it you two have such a great dynamic

Thank you Brandosando for confirming again that Adolin is highly educated despite being illiterate - a future HIghprince has to know how to run their princedom, after all. Those ardents must have had fits trying to get him to sit down and pay attention, though (I’m still of the mind that he’s ADHD and nothing has popped up to contradict this so far)

Aaand there’s the pacing.

yOU TWO. Both wanting this to work but almost unsure of your own worth to each other, cradling that warmth of hope and spark of affection that’s maybe even growing to love

“You only ruined the wrong ones, you see.” that’s not the greatest appeal to his logic but damn if it doesn’t work. AND HE GOES IN FOR THE KISS-

“No mating!”

Pattern you are a gem

 Chapter Fourteen - Squires Can’t Capture

‘They were playing cards.’ Yeaaaaaah, they must have escaped Odium’s influence somehow. But how?

‘What in Damnation’s depths?’ another good swear to remember!

Workform, then. 

I flip the page and FUCKING HELL I thought I was tossed into a Cthulu or White Wolf Black Spiral Dancers sourcebook for a moment before the details resolved themselves out of the greater picture.

 ‘Shallan’s Sketchbook - Corridor’? ....dude. That. Shallan. Shallan. That is not at all like the style we saw you use in previous books. That is a Coping Sketch.

We were definitely wrong about how the Everstorm would hit the parshmen, at least for right now. These aren’t Voidbringers - or at least they’re not mindless, probably not controlled either? What is going on

Wait- was that a spren?

Best option, Kaladin. Good choice.

(I think.)

Chapter Fifteen - Brightness Radiant

So the second body was found in the same area as well as being the same manner of murder? I can’t remember if that area ‘belonged’ to one of the Highprinces or not

The fidgeting with the ball only enhances/reinforces my ADHD headcanon for him

I know they’re (supposedly) looking at all the options, but that’s not terribly convincing, Adolin. [winces] And while he’s right, Shallan, he just has information you don’t. Damning information.

Oooo, Shallan’s going to investigate, isn’t she. Veil time? Veil time?

Oh no Adolin what are you going to say, are- are you actually working yourself up to tell her?

...maybe. Toeing the cultural boundaries is certainly something to be unsure of especially for Vorins, but... perhaps.

(Blame him, Shallan. You’re going to be tasting spice for days.)

Ohhhh no no no, this is bringing up things she’s been trying to repress even though she can’t, Adolin come on, use that uncanny insight of yours-!

The snark would be funny if it were actually playful instead of a deflecting tactic.

[winces] Shallan, I know you’re fighting your PTSD right now, but that thought was really classist.

[buries face in hands] Adolin this is not a good time, I know you’re excited, you want to share this with her and your mind is set, but Shallan is not up for this right now. This could trigger a full on panic attack.

That is... a way to cope. Fake it til you make it. And it’s another personality inside her, she’s just strengthening it, bringing it to the forefront. But she’s once again avoiding facing the issue - because if she faces it she’ll shatter.

(They’re opposites in that way - Adolin facing the problem directly, Shallan deflecting. Very firebender vs waterbender mentality.)

Oh, Pattern.

This is going to bottle up inside until she breaks. Again.

...can he tell the difference, I wonder? She’s still Shallan, but... a different aspect of Shallan.

HAH, that little shove! Oh, I’m flashing back to kung fu practice years ago...

[SNORTS] Zahel, they know you too well. (If you’d ever tried that with Vivenna, she would not be having it.)

He’s been doing this since he was six, Shallan, cut him a little slack. He’s internalized the ‘mysticism’ and it makes sense on a deep level to him, at least.

He’s right about the unlearning, Shallan. Just trust him.

But don’t cut him any slack for the chicken.

part of it might be from being a duelist but I swear that part of it is more

“She knew that passion - she’d felt what it was to be alive with interest, to be consumed by something so fully that you lost yourself to the wonder of it. For her it was art, but watching him, she thought that the two of them weren’t so different.” - @heliokrantor LOOK LOOK WE WROTE ALMOST THIS E X A C T THING IN ‘BEFORE THE DUEL’ . Just. an entire fic of it. [highfives] Fuckyeah.

And at the end, she finds peace. 

Chapter Sixteen - Wrapped Three Times

So. Does that make the Honorblades Splinters of Honor?

TELL US ABOUT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR PLATE, STORMFATHER. At least what Oathlevel a Radiant can get/materialize/whatever it at!

Frightened? The Stormfather can feel fear? On the sort of level that a human/Parshendi/mortal can feel emotion?

At least Navani is staying occupied by rolling up her sleeves and taking on civil engineering projects. (They’ll certainly need it.) I’d thought she was a conceptual mechanical engineer, but apparently her interests are broader than just that!

Dalinar is being v e r y careful about the amount of unbridled power he allows himself, and after seeing the flashbacks I can only think thank god.

Did Stormfather just confirm that he was a Cognitive Shadow, or was that pure metaphor?

Is... is this guard giving Dalinar shit for not obeying his own directives? Dude, you have steel-plated balls.

....are you one of Lopen’s ‘cousins’.

A watch! How common are those? Probably not at all, but how did Nanavi get it? Was she the one who managed to engineer a clock down to watch-size?

Oooof, that heresy is hitting you in unexpected ways. Even your own swordmaster ardents don’t want much to do with you anymore.

And then, of course, there’s Zahel. Hi Vasheeeeer. You gonna reveal yourself anytime during this series?

Please continue confusing the Rosharans with your Nalthian turns of phrase. It’s vastly entertaining.

wrESTLING? I. Well. Okay then. Barechested, tight-pantsed wrestling it is, then. ‘Vehah match’, note to remember what that’s called.

I wonder, if you hadn’t stopped reaching for the Thrill, would you have been able to grasp it? Or does the Nahel bond prevent it from taking hold?

OH OH STORMLIGHT. YES. DO THE THING DALINAR DO THE THING BREATHE THE LIGHT

Or not. Fair fight, that’s respectable.

You were enjoying the sight Navani, don’t try to say otherwise.

‘GEMHEART’ AS AN ENDEARMENT. AAAAAAAHHHHH.  It's like telling one "not only are you the greatest and most beautiful of gems, one who holds the light of my life, but also I would fight armies and chasmfiends for you". I love it. Give me more of this.

Three monarchs for the Iri - two kings and a queen. Are they joint rulers? Poly? Or do they all rule over separate parts of Iri? I’m inclined to think the latter since apparently it’s only the queen that has influence over foreign policy.

Ooo, are you going to try to bully your ardents into speaking with you, Dal? 

“I was merely one in a long line of idiots given the ability to kill people too easily. Well at least you can recognise and admit that.

Navani, you should know by now that it’s easier for the men of your family to think when they’re in motion. All of them, including Dalinar.

“Alethkar has not been relevant in the world since the Sunmaker’s fall.” Yeaaaah, you’ve all been warring amongst yourselves in your divided princedoms - you’ve not even been a real kingdom and therefore a power on the world scale up until the unification, and then after Gavilar dies you took all your Highprinces over to fight another, rather pointless war. It’s no wonder the rest of the world won’t leap when you call.

Oooo, shit, all of Iri-Rira is still salty over the Alethi getting Adolin’s Plate? Damn.

hello reference for how to wear takama. I’m keeping you too.

“You sound like your niece!” “I’ll take that as a compliment.” 10/10 here for Dalinar questioning his faith while still keeping faith

!!!! Conscious surgebinding! There’s Adhesion, but we still need to know what on Roshar Tension does. I’m still drawing a blank on that one. Sanderson please don’t keep us in the dark for too long on this one.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

he heard he wife’s name

Evi

(your brother’s death wasn’t what broke you. it was hers. and now, with your spren filling the cracks in your soul, you’re starting to remember)

[antoine-roquentin]

For about five years, Mic.com was a place where readers could go to get moral clarity. In the Mic universe, heroes fought for equality against villains who tried to take it away. Every day, there was someone, like plus-size model Ashley Graham, to cheer for, and someone else, like manspreaders, to excoriate. Kim Kardashian annihilated slut shamers, George Takei clapped back at transphobes. “In a Single Tweet, One Man Beautifully Destroys the Hypocrisy of Anti-Muslim Bigotry.” “This Brave Woman's Horrifying Photo Has Become a Viral Rallying Cry Against Sexual Harassment.” “Young Conservative Tries to Mansplain Hijab in Viral Olympic Photo, Gets It All Wrong.” “The Problematic Disney Body Image Trend We're Not Talking About.” “The Very Problematic Reason This Woman Is Taking a Stand Against Leggings.”The site had an unfiltered voice that spoke on behalf of marginalized individuals. Breitbart called it “SJW Central.” “I think a lot of people in today’s day and age want to know, ‘What are we supposed to be outraged about?’” a former Mic staffer who left the site earlier this year told The Outline. “It seemed as if we were trying to position ourselves as, ‘We are the definition of woke, and this is how you break down this narrative or fight the mainstream.’”But after laying off 25 staffers last week, Mic has a new mandate: pivoting to video. According to a memo that was sent to staff, the site’s new mission is “to make Mic the leader in visual journalism.”

In retrospect, it looks like Mic’s commitment to social justice was never that deep — which surprised and disappointed many of the young ideologues who went to work there. (The Outline spoke to 17 current and former staffers who requested anonymity due to nondisclosure agreements.) Mic chanced upon the social justice narrative, discovered it was Facebook gold, and mined away. Now the quarry is nearly dry....

The site started in 2010 as PolicyMic, an evenhanded, forgettable politics website where unpaid contributors posted commentary that could be upvoted by other site members. The PolicyMic origin story was that Chris Altchek, a Goldman Sachs banker who leaned conservative, was always debating his friend Jake Horowitz, a foreign policy columnist for Change.org who leaned liberal. The two had fierce debates about the issues of the day, and they wanted to convert that spirit into a website “to help our generation talk about the issues that really matter,” Horowitz told The New York Observer. The two met in jazz band at the New York prep school Horace Mann; they started the site when they were 23, each having raised $75,000. Altchek contributed his Goldman bonus....

This Facebook-driven success was no accident. Every time Mic had a hit, it would distill that success into a formula and then replicate it until it was dead. Successful “frameworks,” or headlines, that went through this process included “Science Proves TK,” “In One Perfect Tweet TK,” “TK Reveals the One Brutal Truth About TK,” and “TK Celebrity Just Said TK Thing About TK Issue. Here’s why that’s important.” At one point, according to an early staffer who has since left, news writers had to follow a formula with bolded sections, which ensured their stories didn’t leave readers with any questions: The intro. The problem. The context. The takeaway....

In some communications, Horowitz and Altchek emerged as tone-deaf to the diverse staff they had cultivated. In 2015, when a TV news reporter and a cameraman were fatally shot in Virginia during a live broadcast, Horowitz and Altchek ordered pizza for the office and sent an email to staff letting them know that they could take time off if they felt traumatized by the news. In response, a group of employees of color wrote an email pointing out the fact that the site frequently covered shootings of black people by police and those writers had never been offered pizza or a personal day.

The leadership was excited about elevating underrepresented communities, but employees said that Mic had become a content factory. The site had “no plan” for a Trump win on election night, multiple former employees told me, and improvised by pulling queer people and people of color out of the newsroom, putting them in front of a camera, and having them talk about how they felt. In another instance, a former staffer told me about how Horowitz, who served as editor in chief of the site until mid-2015 and is now editor at large, once interrupted a reporter pitching a video about a woman building rooftop gardens in New Orleans: “‘But, is she black? Is she black?’" the former staffer recalled Horowitz asking, “as if the story would be less impactful had the woman doing the work been white or Hispanic or Martian.” When the site was pushing into original comedy, Altchek told multiple staffers that he wanted to make “the next Chappelle Show, except it’s hosted by a trans woman of color.” Multiple former employees brought up the time Altchek introduced a video about the feminist #FreeTheNipple movement at a large staff gathering with a joke implying that the video still would have been excellent even if it hadn’t included boobs: “Titties aside,” he said, it was a great piece.

Altchek’s biggest misstep, however, was a get-out-the-vote effort called #69TheVote, which launched in late 2016. The conceit was that, while 69 million baby boomers and 69 million millennials are eligible to vote, only the former actually do so. “Boomers have always been on top,” the voiceover in the announcement video says. “Sometimes it seems like they're afraid to try new positions. But we're ready to go down on history” — a voice interrupts — “ahem, in history” — “oh right….” The video was widely disavowed by staff members and lambasted by The Washington Post, Gawker, Vice, and others....

Cahill’s suggestions belied his ignorance of reporting and lack of sensitivity to social issues, according to former staffers. Cahill wanted to replicate the success of New York magazine’s cover story with photos of women who had accused Bill Cosby of rape, said the staffer who covered social justice issues, and suggested they “do a similar roundup” with survivors of sexual assault. “‘Maybe campus rape, maybe not...whatever! Just find rape victims and get them to share their stories!’” the staffer recalled in an email, mocking the tone. “I know it wasn't intended to be so… gross. But to me it demonstrated such a complete lack of understanding of how sensitive those stories are, how difficult it is to find dozens of victims willing to go on the record about the trauma they've experienced, the trust a writer has to earn, not to mention the horror of how many Cosby accusers there were… all of it. It showed me he didn't get how any of the work the reporters were doing was done, or that the reason NYMag's story did well had nothing to do with that ‘story template’ playing well.”

While Cahill was remaking the site in Google’s image, Mic hired NPR NewsExecutive Editor Madhulika Sikka to shore up its journalism cred. Sikka was brought in with the hope that serious journalism could help free Mic from its dependence on Facebook — and that her resume could offset the fact that former news director Jared Keller and former managing editor of news Chris Miles were both found to have plagiarized parts of stories. Seven months later, Sikka was out, telling Ad Age that the job “wasn't quite the right fit for me.” Meanwhile, Cahill was promoted to managing editor of editorial operations in January 2016 and then VP of content in June 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile.

During these experiments, Mic continued to bait Facebook readers into getting worked up over everything: Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie, a high school teacher in Oregon who doesn’t believe in rape culture, people with bad opinions onThought Catalog, people using bad hashtags, and Zazzle.com. “Mic trafficked in outrage culture,” a former staffer who left in 2017 said. “A lot of the videos that we would publish would be like, ‘Here is this racist person doing a racist thing in this nondescript southern city somewhere.’ There wouldn’t be any reporting or story around it, just, ‘Look at this person being racist, wow what a terrible racist.’” Mic had already exhausted its outrage vocabulary by the time Trump’s election supercharged civil rights violations.

“It ratchets everything up to 11, to a point where if everything is an outrage, nothing is an outrage,” the staffer who left in 2017 said. “Everything is the biggest deal in the world because you’re trying to create traffic, and it desensitizes us to what are actually huge breaks in social and political norms.”