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Pluralistic: 26 Mar 2020 (EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds, the ideology of economics, LoC plugs Little Brother, Canada nationalizes covid patents, Exponential Thread, Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty, record wind power growth, social distancing and other diseases, Badger Masks)

Today's links

EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds: With a deep cut from the NSA's secret listening post.

The ideology of economics: Economics doesn't have "laws" it has "policies."

LoC plugs Little Brother: Open access FTW.

Canada nationalizes covid patents: An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19.

Exponential Threat: Trump threatened to sue media outlets that aired this spot.

Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty: "Millions for plutes, but not one cent for workers."

Record wind-power growth: Covid stimulus could start a Green New Deal.

Social distancing and other diseases: Do we trust IoT thermometer companies, though?

Badger Masks: UW Madison's open facemask design.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds (permalink)

Telework is a quiet reminder that we live, in some sense, in an age of wonders. As terrible as lockdown is, imagine it without any way to videoconference with your peers and colleagues.

But it's also a moment where we tremble on the precipice of cyberpunk dystopia, when calls for mass surveillance – both for epidemiology and stabilizing states that are bruised and reeling – meet a world where everything is online and amenable to "collection" by spooks.

This is, basically, the moment that EFF has been warning about for 30 years: the moment when the "digital world" and the "real world" fully merge, and where the distinction between "tech policy" and "policy" dissolves.

One way you can help keep this in your colleagues' minds is to use EFF's amazing, free/open graphics as your videoconferencing background (most of these are the creation of the brilliant Hugh D'Andrade).

Now, those are all great, but this one is Room 641A at AT&T's Folsom Street center, where the whistleblower Mark Klein was ordered to build a secret room so the NSA could illegally spy on all US internet traffic.

The ideology of economics (permalink)

Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" advanced a simple, data-supported hypothesis: that markets left to their own will cause capital to grow faster than the economy as a whole, so over time, the rich always get richer.

https://boingboing.net/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-t.html

He's followed up Capital with the 1000-page "Capital and Ideology" – whose thesis is that the "laws" of economics are actually policies, created to "justify a society's inequalities," providing a rationale to convince poor people not to start building guillotines.

The first ideology of capital was the "trifunctional" system of monarchist France, dividing society into "those who pray," "those who fight," and "those who work."

After the French revolution, we enter the capitalist phase, then social democracies, and now, "meritocracies."

"Meritocracies" invest markets with the mystical power to identify and elevate the worthy, in a kind of tautology: those who have the most are worth the most. You can tell they're worth the most because they have the most.

("That makes me smart" -D. Trump)

In Piketty's conception, "Inequality is neither economic nor technological. It's ideological and political," where "ideology" "refers to a set of a priori plausible ideas describing how society should be structured" (think: Overton Window).

https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality

The major part of the book seeks to explain how the post-war social democracies gave way to the grifter meritocracies of today, pulling together threads from across the whole world to tell the tale.

On the way, he described alternatives that were obliterated, and others that were never tried, and shows how "meritocracy" gave us Trump, xenophobia, Brexit, and the Current Situation.

In particular, he's interested in why working class people stopped voting (spoiler: they no longer perceive that elites will pay attention to them irrespective of how they vote) — and what it would take to mobilize them again.

The elites' indifference to working people is grounded in an alliance between the Brahmin Left (educated, well-paid liberals) and the Merchant Right (the finance sector). Notionally leftist parties, like the Democrats, are dominated by the Brahmin Left.

But more than any other, Macron epitomizes this alliance: proclaiming his liberal values while slashing taxes on the wealthy — punishing poor people for driving cars, exempting private jets from his "climate" bill.

Life in a "meritocracy" is especially cruel for poor people, because meritocracies, uniquely among ideologies, blame poor people for poverty. It's right there in the name. French kings didn't think God was punishing peons, rather, that the Lord had put them there to serve.

"The broadly social-democratic redistributive coalitions of the mid-twentieth century were not just electoral or institutional or party coalitions but also intellectual and ideological. The battle was fought and won above all on the battleground of ideas."

As Marshall Steinbaum writes in his excellent review, Piketty's work doesn't just highlight new ideas in economics: it highlights the intellectual poverty of the economics profession and its tunnel vision.

"Economists cannot be allowed to be the arbiters of the intensely political concerns Piketty takes up in the book, and the good news is that there is reason to believe they won't be."

LoC plugs Little Brother (permalink)

Honored and pleased to have my book Little Brother included on the Library of Congress's excellent collection of open-access ebooks in its collection, which you can always access gratis but which may be of especial interest during the lockdown.

https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2020/03/more-open-ebooks-routinizing-open-access-ebook-workflows/

If you enjoyed Little Brother and its sequel Homeland, you might be interested in the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, which Tor is publishing on Oct 12.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

If you're looking for more topical reading, Infodocket's carefully curated list of coronavirus resources is here for you:

https://www.infodocket.com/2020/01/31/2019-novel-coronavirus-resources/

Canada nationalizes covid patents (permalink)

Canada's Parliament has passed Bill C13, "An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19," amending patent law to create automatic compulsory licenses for any inventionused to fight covid, including diagnostics, vaccines, therapies or PPE.

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-1/bill/C-13/third-reading

As E Richard Gold writes, it's an "important signal that Canada will not support IP delays…While most firms are helping find solutions, this will prevent those who try to take advantage-by raising prices or limiting supply-or those who cannot deliver to block what is needed."

Exponential Threat (permalink)

"Exponential Threat" is a remarkable – and factual – political ad, one that contrasts Trump's statements on coronavirus with the spread of the disease in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMwvmJLnc0

More remarkable: Trump has threatened to sue the media for airing it, which is a totally cool and normal thing for someone who has sworn a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to do.

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/2017/web/hero_images/Redacted_PUSA_Letter.pdf

"In case you needed more, here's an (admittedly incomplete) list of Trump statements on the novel coronavirus and COID-19"

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2020/03/25/exponential-threat-the-covid-19-themed-ad-that-the-trump-pence-campaign-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

Jan. 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China."

Feb. 2: "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It's going to be fine."

Feb. 25: "CDC & my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."

Feb. 25: "I think that's a problem that's going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine." [White House | New York Post]

Feb. 26: "We're going very substantially down, not up."

Feb. 27: "One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

Feb. 28: "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."

March 2: "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"

March 2: "A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they're happening very rapidly."

March 4: "If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better."

March 5: "I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work."

March 6: "I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down."

March 6: "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful. They are perfect just like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."

March 6: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

March 6: "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

March 8: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus."

March 9: "The Fake News media & their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the Coronavirus situation."

March 10: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

March 13: National Emergency Declaration.

March 17: "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty (permalink)

This Bernie Sanders floor speech in the Senate on the GOP's relentless attempts to punish poor people in the covid relief package is a must-watch

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/fp3my0/bernie_goes_full_sanders_on_the_republicans_for/

tldr: GOP Senators are freaking out because some people in line to get the pittances they're doling out actually earn EVEN LESS than $1k-2k/month, and so they might get a raise in the form of covid relief.

That is, rather than taking the fact that this bare-minimum subsidy package exceeds "normal" income as a wakeup call to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 2009, the GOP is calling for cuts to aid to the most vulnerable Americans.

As Sanders points out, these same Senators had no problem with the Tax Scam, which poured trillions into the accounts of the richest Americans, directly and indirectly through stock-buybacks, which also left US business vulnerable and in need of trillions more today.

Now those bailed-out plutes want workers to risk death to "restart the economy," and the GOP will ensure they'll starve if they don't.

As ever, The Onion nails it:

https://politics.theonion.com/gop-urges-end-of-quarantine-for-lifeless-bipedal-automa-1842461351

"GOP Urges End Of Quarantine For Lifeless Bipedal Automatons That Make Economy Go"

Record wind-power growth (permalink)

As the world's wind-generation capacity increases, you'd expect annual growth to fall proportionately (it's easier to double a very small number than a very big one!), but this year should see the largest proportional growth ever, a 20% increase!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/25/worlds-wind-power-capacity-up-by-fifth-after-record-year

That number is uncertain (hello, coronavirus), but on the other hand, there's a massive stimulus package in the offing that could be used to restart the economy by saving the planet with renewable energy.

The non-adjusted, pre-virus projection for this year's total growth in wind power was an additional 76GW (to meet climate projections, that number has to rise to 100GW/year, and then to 200GW/year).

Social distancing and other diseases (permalink)

Though the evidence is a little shaky, it appears that social distancing has dramatically reduced the spread of other infectious diseases, like flu.

https://qz.com/1824020/social-distancing-slowing-not-only-covid-19-but-other-diseases-too/

The data comes from an Internet of Shit "connected thermometer" company that (allegedly) anonymizes its data and uses it for health surveillance; they report a massive drop-off in high temps relative to other years and pre-distancing levels.

The claims are plausible, but they're also an ad for an IoT company that sells a product no one needs, so take them with a grain of salt.

I'd be interested in STI transmission after weeks/months of government-recommended masturbation-over-hookups:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-sex-guidance.pdf

Badger Masks (permalink)

A local hospital asked researchers at the UW Madison Engineering Design Innovation Lab to design them a field-expedient face-shield that could be mass-manufactured to protect its staff from coming cases.

https://www.wired.com/story/tinkerers-created-face-shield-being-used-hospitals/

Using hardware-store parts, the UW makerspace, and teleconferencing with self-isolating collaborators, the team designed an excellent mask, the Badger Shield:

https://making.engr.wisc.edu/shield/

They've manufactured and delivered 1,000 Badger Masks to the hospital and a Ford plant in MI is making 75,000 more this week for Detroit-area hospitals. Here's a technical spec you can follow if you have access to equipment and parts:

https://www.delve.com/assets/documents/OPEN-SOURCE-FACE-SHIELD-DRAWING-v1.PDF

It involves just 3 pieces: polyethylene sheets (laser- or die-cut), an elastic headband, and a 1" thick strip of self-adhesive polyurethane foam. For initial production, Midwest Prototyping used office-supply-store electric staplers for assembly.

The design process started with a teardown of an existing, approved mask, and the project lead, Lennon Rodgers, worked with collaborators to replicate it, sanity-checking successive designs with his wife, an anaesthesiologist.

They started hand-delivering prototypes to the hospital, who refined the design further, swapping in latex-free elastic and lengthening the shield. Tim Osswald from UW used his polymer engineering expertise to find a supplier who could create a custom die.

Now, more than 1M Badger Masks have been sought, with manufacturers like St Paul's Summit Medical tooling up to meet demand.

Other designs are popping up across America. San Francisco's Exploratorium is making 200+ shields/day using its own makerspace.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago If the Constitution was a EULA https://web.archive.org/web/20050330012000/http://slate.msn.com/id/2115254/

#10yrsgo Discarded photocopier hard drives stuffed full of corporate secrets https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/03/18/hightech_copy_machines_a_gold_mine_for_data_thieves.html

#5yrsago TPP leak: states give companies the right to repeal nations' laws https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/press.html

#5yrsago Woman medicated in a psychiatric ward until she said Obama didn't follow her on Twitter https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-held-in-psychiatric-ward-after-correctly-saying-obama-follows-her-on-twitter-10132662.html

#5yrsago Sandwars: the mafias whose illegal sand mines make whole islands vanish https://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/

#5yrsago Australia outlaws warrant canaries https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/australian-government-minister-dodge-new-data-retention-law-like-this/

#5yrsago As crypto wars begin, FBI silently removes sensible advice to encrypt your devices https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150325/17430330432/fbi-quietly-removes-recommendation-to-encrypt-your-phone-as-fbi-director-warns-how-encryption-will-lead-to-tears.shtml

#1yrago Article 13 will wreck the internet because Swedish MEPs accidentally pushed the wrong voting button https://medium.com/@emanuelkarlsten/sweden-democrats-swedish-social-democrats-defeat-motion-to-amend-articles-11-13-731d3c0fbf30

#1yrago EU's Parliament Signs Off on Disastrous Internet Law: What Happens Next? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-disastrous-internet-law-what-happens-next

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Late Stage Capitalism (https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/).

Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill? https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/

Upcoming appearances:

Quarantine Book Club, April 1, 3PM Pacific https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416

Museums and the Web, April 2, 12PM-3PM Pacific https://mw20.museweb.net/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

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chaoticbluebirdconnoisseur · 5 years ago

Note

You are put in charge of a koei warriors game that takes place from the years 190 to 220 what factions would you put in it and which characters would you put in each faction? (Max 20 characters for each faction)

This turned out way too long

The classic Dynasty Warriors experience would be the Wei, Wu, Shu, and Others package, where every kingdom would have a short explanation on why and how exactly they came to power. I could list the most important officials and generals of each faction, and the narrative would be how each kingdom's merits and or failures shaped the outcome of the era. Of course if I would be in charge, the officer list would almost exclusively be orientated to history. Even with more historical accuracy it would still be the Vanilla-Standard-Dynasty-Warriors (which would still be three times better than the thing we have now).

BUUT how about the story doesn’t focus on the kingdoms per se but to the moral dilemmas of the time, a closer look at a clan, etc., etc.. I take inspiration from Spirit of Sanada, which had a more focused viewpoint about the Sanada clan, it’s changing allies and of course what that meant for the individuals who lived in that time. The game isn’t that great, but it had an interesting approach on how you could change up the story by highlighting the individual fates, something the main title (which has only limited resources of time and attention) could barely focus.

Since I have to make a game about the 190s to 220s, I think the most fitting scenario, fitting for the game I’m after would be the last struggles of the Han Dynasty. There is so much you can do wrong with this scenario (especially in the hands of Koei) since you have to at least in a degree restructure the Other faction, which would be encountered with a backlash from the fanbase. So it wouldn’t be fitting for a main title. But with proper care, opportunities for the story, narrative and character development (which were always suffocated for the benefit of already established tropes) would get much-deserved recognition. I know it sounds kinda boring but hear me out.

The restoration of the Han Dynasty wasn’t as black and white as many like to think. There weren’t these borderline insane Han loyalists or the cruel Caos who merciless usurped the imperial throne, there were far more grey areas and nuances than what is commonly assumed. The discussion of political hegemony of the Han Dynasty had a lot of opinions on if the Han Dynasty should be restored and how it should be restored. And the Han Dynasty wasn’t as united on how they could realize the goal of unification of the land.

In the Zhou Dynasty while the Spring and Autumn period, the court in Luoyang was holding imperial authority only in name, while their vassals were contending with one another for power. The display of insincere loyalty was frequently described as “chasing the deer” (taking the throne for themselves). So while in the Jian’an where most vassals were trying to ‘chase the deer’, the Han Dynasty was trying to piece together a court in which it could wield influence. The problem just was that most of their associates had experienced hardship through the Han Court in earlier reigns (The rule of the eunuchs with the Dangku arrests).

The Han loyalists, which is by most assumed a homogenized group of people, of the same social class, education, and political ideologies. Those loyalist act in favor of the Han court because they ‘owe’ the court, the rewards they have bestowed on their ancestors. The reality however presented itself a little bit differently. Sure some clans and individuals had this reasoning for their loyalty, but this was not the case for most of them.

Let’s take the Xun family to elaborate. At the start we have Xun Shu who was not exactly popular at the Han court for his opinions. then we got his nephew Xun Yu (昱) who was executed for his anti-eunuch activities. Then Xun Shuang spent around 10 years in hiding, because of the fear that the eunuch controlled Han court would arrest him. His commentary on the Yijing is a complete critique of the Han dynasty. Xun Yue refused service on accounts of illness. A passage from the Hanji (Xun Yue wrote) states:

He who confides himself to the crooked traducers, whom he employs in office, and banishes his loyal and virtuous [ministers from the court] ... who, [in a fit of] anger, inflicts punishment much more severe than that which the law precribes, who continues his misconduct and conceals his faults, blocks the way of the loyal and the virtuous, and executes those who give him honest admonition, may be called a doomed ruler ... A doomed ruler is destined to perish.

Reading this passage you have at least 3 Han emperors in mind. The Hanji actually has a lot of those passages. There is a lot of malice towards the dynasty, but as it seems they still supported the dynasty because of the positives provided, if the imperial court could take control again. Xun Yu’s reasoning in welcoming Emperor Xian, were calculated arguments of the psychological appeal of loyalism, the prestige of the emperor, and the resulting possibility of a stronger influence for Cao Cao’s regime. While all of that, there were Emperor Xian’s in-laws trying with force to restore the old regime, but it couldn’t mobilize enough people, because the not-so-much-doctrinated-loyalists who already suffered through earlier reigns, had no interest in restoring their worst nightmare.

Anyway back to the game, there are a lot of strongpoints for such a story to be implemented. Long asked questions could be answered entertainingly like: How did this mess even start? Why was there no chance the Han court could be saved? What were the intentions of those loyalists? I think a better understanding of why the Han Dynasty was doomed could not just benefit the Wei faction but also the others. Now to the factions.

The first faction would be logically the Han Court, with it’s main protagonist Emperor Xian. (The factions are max 10, because i can)

Liu Xie

Liu Bian

Fu Shou (and or Consort Dong)

Wang Yun

Kong Rong

Xun Yue

Dong Cheng

Yang Biao

Cai Yong

Cao Jie

The second faction would be Wei

Cao Cao

Wang Lang

Hua Xin

Cao Pi

Xun Yu

Xiahou Dun

Lady Bian

Jia Xu

Zhong Yao

Cao Ren

Last but not least we have the Other faction

Yuan Shao

Yuan Shao’s brood (anyone will do)

Yuan Shu

Dong Zhuo

Lü Bu

Liu Bei

Guo Si

Li Jue

Diaochan (why not)

Xin Pi

And that’s it. Now to sum up everything:

It’s definitely no main title

It will screw over Wu and Shu

It’s about a topic not much explored in the games generally and probably not that wanted

The factions are a little bit restructured

It’s a game I’d like to see, and I know that there could arise problems because it is more story-driven and probably won't fit in the Hack and Slash format. But I know that Koei will not in any way be capable to make out of this a good game. So I will enjoy the idea itself, hoping Koei will never get the idea to produce it.

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creepingsharia · 6 years ago

Text

A Month of Islam in America: June 2019

Another month, and another step forward for sharia in America as more censorship was exposed. A whistleblower leak confirmed that @Pinterest protects Muslims and censors any reference to “creeping sharia,” and many other non-liberal topics.

Click any link below for more details and link to original source.

Jihad in America in June

Brooklyn: Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 20 Years for Attempting to Join Islamic State (ISIS) Mohamed Rafik Naji was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Frederic Block for attempting to provide material support or resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a foreign terrorist organization. Naji pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2018.

Brooklyn: Muslim Woman Who Helped ISIS Gets 4 Years, But Will Be Out in 18 Months

With credit for time served, Sinmyah Amera Caesar will end up only serving about 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges accusing her of using social media to help recruit IS fighters under the nom de guerre “Umm Nutella.” She had also admitted violating a cooperation agreement with the government a — betrayal that infuriated prosecutors.

Illinois: Bosnian Muslim refugee and mother of 4 jailed for sending money, supplies to ISIS

Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a/k/a Medy Ummuluna, a/k/a Bosna Mexico, 39, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Salkicevic, aka Medy Ummuluna and Bosna Mexico, espoused the ISIS philosophy that infidels should be killed and once said that unbelievers should be buried alive.

At the time of her arrest, she was working for an air cargo company at Chicago O'Hare Airport...

Illinois: Two Muslim converts convicted of aiding Islamic State (ISIS)

Joseph D. Jones and Edward Schimenti proudly waved a terrorist flag during a photo at a Lake Michigan park in Zion, had plotted to attack the Navy’s main U.S. training center near North Chicago and once had their eyes on planting an ISIS flag atop the White House.

Now Jones and Schimenti, both 37, have been found guilty of providing material support to ISIS.

Indiana: Yemeni Muslim who tried to join Islamic State terrorists gets 8 years in prison

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker handed down the 100-month sentence Friday afternoon in the case against 21-year-old Akram Musleh, U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler announced.

He admitted in the plea agreement that from about April 2016 through June 21, 2016, he offered himself to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as IS, knowing it was a “designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Pittsburgh: Syrian Muslim Refugee Arrested for Planning Jihad Attack on Christian Church

Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 21, a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was arrested today based on a federal complaint charging him with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and two counts of distributing information relating to an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction in relation to his plan to attack a church in Pittsburgh.

“Court documents show Mustafa Alowemer planned to attack a church in the name of ISIS, which could have killed or injured many people...”

Ohio: Jordanian Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 15 Years for Trying to Join Islamic State (ISIS)

A Dayton, Ohio man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 180 months in prison and 25 years of supervised release for attempting, and conspiring, to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Laith Waleed Alebbini, 28, was convicted following a bench trial in November and December 2018 before U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice.

Alebbini attempted, and conspired, to provide material support and resources to ISIS in the form of personnel, namely himself.

Alebbini, a citizen of Jordan and a U.S. legal permanent resident, was arrested by the FBI on April 26, 2017, at the Cincinnati/Kentucky International Airport, as he approached the TSA security checkpoint.

South Carolina: Muslim - twice convicted for attempts to join ISIS and kill Americans - gets 20-year prison sentence

A federal judge has sentenced a South Carolina man who tried to join ISIS to 20 years in prison.

Zakaryia Abdin, 20, pleaded guilty in September 2018. The Ladson man was arrested in March 2017.

New York: Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant arrested in Times Square terror plot

Ashiqul Alam was arrested Thursday after arranging through an undercover agent to buy a pair of semiautomatic pistols with obliterated serial numbers, prosecutors said. Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that development was “a clear indicator of (Alam’s) intent to move his plot forward.”

The defendant, a legal resident born in Bangladesh, moved to the U.S. as a child about 12 years ago...

He talked about wanting to “shoot down” gays, referring to them with a slur; using a “rocket launcher, like a huge one,” to cause havoc at the World Trade Center; and obtaining an enhanced driver’s license so he could walk onto a military base and “blow it up,” the documents said.

Illinois: Muslim Arrested for Threatening to Bomb Aurora Casino for Allah

A recently released affidavit and search warrant claimed that 30-year-old Musatdin M. Muadinov, while detained by police on Feb. 12, vowed to “pray to Allah” to “destroy the casino.” He further demanded to meet with President Donald Trump, saying that if his demands were not met, “we would all meet Allah,” according to the affidavit obtained by the Daily Herald.

Muadinov — who was dressed in what police described as “Muslim attire” when arrested — waived his right to remain silent.

More Jihad in America in June

Florida: Suspect sent bomb threats to judges ‘for cause of Islamic State’

Nebraska: Heavily armed Marine arrested trying to enter Air Force Base

Arizona: Muslim shared terror propaganda before attacking police officer

Brooklyn: Muslim in Jail for ISIS Support Pleads Guilty to Slashing Correctional Officer

South Carolina: Man who pledged allegiance to ISIS hid explosive device in teddy bear

Arizona: Witness in probe of 2015 Islamic jihad attack on free speech event convicted of lying to FBI

Libyan National Found Guilty of Terrorism Charges in 2012 Attack on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi

Iraqi Muslim who orchestrated jihad attack that killed 5 U.S. troops gets 26 years prison, then release to Canada

Immigration Jihad in America

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

New York: Brooklyn Mosque Blasts Islamic Call to Prayer to 20 Block Radius (VIDEO)

Somalis have Changed Minneapolis

New York: Thousands of Muslims take over two city blocks in Brooklyn to pray in the streets

Four Muslim ISIS suspects arrested in Nicaragua, likely headed for US

Islamization of America

Pennsylvania: 167-year-old Catasauqua church will become Islamic mosque

Pennsylvania: Former Easton church is now a Sunni mosque

Pennsylvania: Former daycare in residential Salisbury to become Muslim “community center”

Virginia: Residential home in Annandale to become a Muslim funeral home

Education Jihad in America

New Jersey Public School District to Students: “May Allah Continue to Shower You Love and Wisdom”

Maryland school fails Christian student for refusing Islamic prayer

New York: Cornell Univ. Muslim Students Demand More “Prayer Rooms”

Stanford administrators say advertising for conservative event threatens Muslim students

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association: What Americans Need to Know

DOE Investigating Elite Colleges For Hiding Saudi, Qatari Cash from Regulators

Islamic Slavery & Sexual Jihad in America

Virginia: Three Muslim family members arrested for conspiracy, forced labor, and document servitude

Detroit Imam: Wife-Beating Serves to Remind Her That She Misbehaved (VIDEO)

Dhimmitude in Elected Office

Trump Admin Sues Greyhound for Banning Muslim Driver from Wearing Full Length Islamic Robe

Democrat majority passes defense authorization bill that funds transfer of remaining Gitmo jihadis to U.S.

Minnesota: City of Bloomington allows terror mosque to flout local laws (VIDEO)

Minnesota city council votes 5-0 to ditch Pledge of Allegiance (to avoid offending Muslims)

Diversity is our Strength Alert

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

Boston Police Dept’s First Muslim Captain Put On Administrative Leave Amid ‘Anti-Corruption’ Investigation

Minnesota: First Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar fined by state for unlawful use of campaign funds

Minnesota Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar filed joint tax returns before she married husband

Fraud for Jihad

Connecticut: Muslim Grocery Store Worker Pleads Guilty in $3.2M Federal Food Stamp Fraud

Massachusetts: Muslim Restaurant Owner Pleads Guilty to Tax Fraud Conspiracy

That’s just what we had time to compile for just the month of June.

Far too many steps forward for the sharia, and only a few pushbacks, but worth noting:

New Jersey: School District Scraps Posters Calling upon “Allah” to “Shower” Students with Blessings After Threat of Lawsuit

Rather Than Go to Trial, Terror-linked CAIR Settles with the Victims They Defrauded

Tunisian Muslim who swore allegiance to ISIS removed from U.S.

New York: Albany mosque imam convicted of terrorism is deported back to Iraq It’s almost midnight and Americans are losing their first amendment rights to sharia supremacists and the big technology, media and politicians who support them.

Please share this report before it’s too late.

#Legal #Jihad #Sharia #News #Politics #Immigration #monthly

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writcraft · 6 years ago

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Racism, Tone-Policing and Speaking Out in Fandom

Unequivocal condemnation of fanfic or art that glorifies or romanticises the Nazi regime and/or promotes a narrative which erases its significant horrors feels like it should be an easy position to take. A no-brainer. This wasn’t an example of art designed to make us uncomfortable or to provoke discussion; it was an unthinking, romanticised depiction of a regime that committed galling atrocities, swiftly followed by the lightwashing of a canonically black fictional character. We inhabit an online space where misinformation travels rapidly, where white supremacism thrives. This should be a something people can publicly condemn without worrying unduly about any potential backlash.

The fact that even speaking out on this topic has caused people - including queer, Jewish people - to feel silenced, attacked, tone-policed and chastised as they share their reaction to something they consider abhorrent is symptomatic of a much broader issue in fandom spaces broadly and it is that which I want to talk about in this post. I don’t want to conflate racism in fandom with the now two instances of Nazi-themed Harry/Draco art, but I think a lot has been said on the latter and want to take the opportunity to use what has happened over the last two days as a jumping off point to think about the former. When it comes to callout, to speaking out and to our responsibilities as fans, I think there are important connections.

The unfettered protection of freedom of content creation is something I have passionately defended and will continue to do so throughout my time in fandom. This is demonstrated by the spaces I have either created or moderated for several years, most notably HP Kinkfest and HP Horror Fest. However, protecting that position is often the point at which conversations get closed, the trump card played to end all other discussions that might make us - and by us I mean white fans like myself - uncomfortable with the conversations being instigated. I’m not convinced that ‘unfollow me now’ posts are ever particularly helpful, as they have an air of performative allyship about them, leading to echo-chambers and knee-jerk responses, and one thing we are particularly bad at these days is engaging with any difficult topics with nuance.

As ever, this post is long, and there are some resources at the end should you wish to keep reading.

Difficult conversations in fandom are those which force us to critically interrogate our own modes of fannish engagement, and the extent to which we listen when invited to consider if the things we uphold as progressive are really progressive at all. Perhaps the fallout from this latest debacle is a good time to sit back and consider the things we speak out about, the things we don’t speak out about, the centering of white voices and perspectives, the privilege that comes from being able to leave certain discussions to other people simply because they are difficult and, by extension, the groups we expect to take on the responsibility and emotional labour involved with speaking out. Perhaps this might prompt us to examine the way we react to things without thoughtful critique of broader socio-political structures in place that become part of fandom’s hierarchy of conversation and content creation.

It is not enough to react to a something that creates a visceral response from the majority of people in a fandom but then ignore the less comfortable questions that flow from it. To assert a position on extreme examples of something that is not okay but then refuse to listen to people who express discomfort about things which might harsh your own fannish squee or might force you to consider the less instinctively obvious ways you might be contributing to racism in fandom is an inconsistent, safe way of engaging with the complexities that come from critiquing fandom spaces. The appearance of now two pieces of art that provoke almost universal fandom-wide disgust cannot be the only time we actively demonstrate an interest in expressing vocally that racism and white supremacy has no place in our fandom spaces.

We are ten years on from Race Fail ‘09 yet conversations around race are still being derailed, tones being policed, POC fans being portrayed as particularly angry, impolite or prone to complaint. I have seen this happen on multiple occasions, where the platform for critical discussion of content creation in fandom has been stripped away, or people have been silenced, in pursuit of protecting the fun part of fandom, the right to produce content unfettered, protecting the ability for women to create uncensored. I fundamentally believe the latter is an important, joyous and political act of fandom experience, but it loses some of its politicised resonance when that starting point is used to silence others trying to start critically nuanced discussions.

Freedom of content cannot be the point at which we disavow ourselves of any responsibility to question the things that inform our own perspectives. We cannot allow our passionate defence of that position to cloud our ability to listen to other perspectives. I’m not here to protect the children, but we must not conflate resistance to conservative-leaning narratives that advocate for sanitised and problem-free content, with the issues fans from marginalised groups try to raise about the way fandom has work to do when it comes to having proper conversations around queerness, race, misogyny and so on. We cannot on the one hand rush to condemn a pretty obvious issue, and on the other fail to think about the other questions it raises because it might stop us from having a good time.

The difficult conversations that spring to mind – the ones that get immediately shut down – include thinking critically about objects of fandom, the tendency to approach questions of social justice through an American (frequently white) lens, the continued dominance of white, cis-male slash ships, inability to critique - or listen to critique of - the things we love when canon or creators make decisions that leave people distressed. The conversations include thinking about how fictional characters are romanced or sanitised to the point at which their fanon portrayal erases any of their past political choices, tokenism, shutting down conversations around racebending and failing to understand why – for some POC fans – that doesn’t feel representative when it is handled unthinkingly in fanfiction produced by white authors.

To refuse to engage with these questions often involves shouting over or silencing people who are trying to explain why something makes them uncomfortable in pursuit of protecting freedoms afforded to us as we create unfettered content. I’m not suggesting that we should not be free to create content – we are, all of us – aware of the slipperiness of that particular slope, but with that freedom comes a responsibility. If we care about the voices frequently talked over within our fandom, we – and I include myself in this – need to be better at listening when people force us to examine our own modes of engagement. This involves taking the time to conduct our own research, to take that responsibility upon ourselves instead of expecting others to educate us. It involves researching political posts we put on our blogs together with assessing the fandom content we produce and engage with. Are they accurate? Are they correct? It involves labour, time taken to educate ourselves, and balancing speaking out with knowing when that becomes speaking over, knowing when to sit down, shut up and listen.

I am writing this because I have been culpable. On many occasions I have remained silent on issues or refused to confront difficult situations for fear of losing friendships or to protect my own status within fandom. I have found certain conversations uncomfortable and have therefore avoided them altogether for fear of being seen as a trouble-maker, or someone who is trying to police or gatekeep fandom content whilst simultaneously wanting to so fiercely protect freedom of content creation. I have had several friends call me out on this, and my discomfort with taking on fraught topics when feelings are involved is something I have had to re-examine. Thank you to the friends who have challenged me on this. It is a brave thing to do, something I haven’t always responded well to, and I appreciate you for a much-needed dose of honesty. This post by @dictacontrion (rightfully) made me uncomfortable because it has called me out. In particular, this:

If we are not willing to speak up and take action, if we are not willing to risk our comfort, risk our status, risk our ease in order to defend freedom and equality, than we are not defenders freedom and equality. If we are not willing to speak up and take action in defense of our principles, our principles mean nothing.

I am working on my own methods of fandom engagement. I apologise for all of those conversations I have taken myself out of because they were hard, and I promise I will strive to do better. As noted above we are a decade on from Race Fail, but these patterns continue to occur. I want to conclude by noting that the perspectives I have outlined above do not come from my own work. They come from the – often free and emotionally exhaustive – labour that has been put into raising these issues and asking those difficult questions within fandom space and within the broader sphere of fan studies. The work of Dr Rukmini Pande, Stich’s Media Mix and the many guests that have featured on @fansplaining episodes have been instrumental starting points for me and I have included some of the links below for that I would encourage people to consider listening to and reading together with exploring the links in the show notes and the Twitter accounts, blogs and tumblrs of the featured guests.

Episode 22A - Race and Fandom Part 1: Fansplaining’s Flourish and Elizabeth follow up on the last episode’s questions about the impact of racism in the Star Wars fandom—and how it’s a microcosm of fandom at large. They interview Rukmini Pande and Clio, and they hear clips from Holly Quinn, Shadowkeeper, and PJ Punla. Topics covered include the historical presence of fans of colour, space nazis, femslash and its discontents, and the Filipino perspective on the whiteness of media.

Episode 22B - Race and Fandom Part 2: In the second and final installment of Fansplaining’s “Race and Fandom” episodes, fans of colour continue to speak about their experiences in fandom. Elizabeth and Flourish interview Jeffrey Lyles and Zina, then hear clips from Roz, Traci-Anne, and zvi LikesTV. Topics covered include being Black and Jewish, Star Wars weddings, cosplaying characters of color, and why kink is never divorced from the real world.

Episode 89 - Rukmini Pande: An episode where Dr. Rukmini Pande, a fan studies scholar whose new book, Squee From the Margins, explores race in both the field as well as fandom at large. Topics discussed include defining the boundaries of “fandom,” how queerness and gender structure fan studies while race typically does not, closed vs open digital platforms, how fandom discussions of racism are often relegated to “crisis points,” and more.

I also recommend the Transformative Works and Cultures Journal special edition on Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color (Vol 29 (2019)) which is freely accessible and edited by Abigail De Kosnik and André Carrington.

#racism in fandom #fandom raceism #nazism #white supremacy #drarry

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internutter · 5 years ago

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Challenge #02671-G114: The Mighty Paragon

What kind of man was Steve Rogers, to fight for America with his background?

In the original comics, he was Irish from the Lower East Side. This means he was probably Irish Catholic from the tenements, which meant he was considered by most Americans with power (maybe) one step above dirt.

On the other hand, he was a tall, blond, blue-eyed man, the Nazi ideal. The Catholic church coexisted with the Nazis without severe discrimination. Many Irish were allied with the Nazis.

He grew up in a multicultural multiracial neighborhood and would have known many people that the Nazis considered less, but he would not have been one of the people they considered less due to their genetics.

So what kind of man could look out, see the horrors that are being done to other people, and choose to ally with the people who treated him and many others like dirt instead of the ones who would treat him extremely well but commit atrocities against others, and continue to do so over the course of an entire war?

And for a laundry list of references related to this...

https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/92559081749/protestant-steve-rogers-v-catholic-steve-rogers

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/captain-america-getting-real-life-statue-some-say-its-wrong-place-180959706/

https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements

https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/irish-immigration-beyond-potato-famine

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-racism

https://markhumphrys.com/sfira.nazis.html -- Neemers

[AN: Owing to my dreams of actually putting a price tag on my anthology, I can't actually write about Captain America. So let's make up a strikingly similar hero]

A hero fights, not because they like fighting, but because some evil must be stopped with brute force. Two factions are at war, and in some ways they are alike in villainy. However, there is a key difference. On one side, the downtrodden are still permitted to have a voice. People have the freedom to speak. The freedom, also, to choose who they listen to. The freedom to act upon their convictions or to choose to remain complicit in tyranny.

Interestingly, the nation with those freedoms had the other crib notes from it and turn the philosophies just three degrees more evil. But that's not why we are here.

Picture a hero. Good. Now picture almost the exact opposite of that. Scrawny, weak, always sick. Culturally, they are the lowest of the low. The most reviled. The hated. However, this hero is lucky enough to exist in the nation that allows such people to live their own lives. This hero can speak. This hero can listen. This hero lives in a cluster of other such reviled and hated folks, but they do not hate. These rejected persons are their neighbours. Friends, allies, connections to acquire what is needed. A network who shares what little they have, for the betterment of all.

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit peakd (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]

#instant story #just add prompt #random #superheroes #consequences

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dramionediscussion · 5 years ago

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to BDSM anon - I hear ya and there is definitely some validity to the concerns you're raising. that said, I think that this entails a much broader discussion of bdsm (and other kinds of kink practices that are associated w it) that are better suited for bdsm spaces. bdsm is after all not totally unproblematic but kinksters are generally open minded and up for discussing it! I will say that you cannot divorce the author from the context - it's true that we tend to see more femsub in society (1)

so naturally that might be one of the things people think of first. there's definitely a discussion about bdsm in general as well as in a fanfic context, but it's as complex a topic as us discussing the prevalence of m/m slash or other tropes. I will say that as a sub/switch myself, sub!Hermione a lot of sense but so does dom!Hermione. I think you really need to consider the fic's context, how the kink is writtwn (I definitely can't agree with the portrayal of BDSM practices in many fics) (2)

but I like that you're taking the time to think about this! definitely reach out to the bdsm community if you have questions, and there's tons of resources out there on how to ensure RACK (risk aware consensual kink) is being adhered to. I would defo encourage all writers to look into RACK, SSN, consensual non-con and aftercare so we can all write more realistic bdsm. Unless, of course, you're writing more extreme practices/true non-con, in which case having disclaimers to indicate that this (3)

is not intended to be educational and may be poor BDSM practice. I mean, whether fic will be taken as sex ed is another debate in itself but at the bare minimum I think we should acknowledge that readers may be influenced by our content. But yeah, more discussion! apologies for the post which sort of exploded from me oops

Edit:

Agreed Anon, there should be a discussion about this since there is a lot of BDSM content being written. Authors who choose to write this should be aware of what is right and wrong in this kink and should take the time to research it. Also, they should be open to discussing the things they did wrong if someone who is better versed makes a suggestion.

I do think that if an author is writing a fic that is non-con, that contains bad BDSM practices, they should definitely indicate it so as to not confuse anyone and have them think that this can happen in a real BDSM situation.

And we should all remember that the authors writing the fics, just wanna have fun, so they may not always get things accurate so we shouldn’t judge then too hard. A lot of authors self project onto their characters, and since most BDSM content is with a female sub, then maybe that's why we are seeing this. But this last point is just my theory.

- Lisa

#dramione #Anonymous

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sciencespies · 5 years ago

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Seven Ways to Learn About Natural History From Home

https://sciencespies.com/nature/seven-ways-to-learn-about-natural-history-from-home/

Seven Ways to Learn About Natural History From Home

Smithsonian Voices National Museum of Natural History

Seven Ways to Learn About Natural History From Home

March 19th, 2020, 6:00AM / BY

Margaret Osborne

Insect expert Dan Babbitt talks about the Chilean Rose Tarantula on “Smithsonian Science How,” a video series for students. (Smithsonian Institution)

The Smithsonian’s museums may be closed in the wake of COVID-19, but you can still learn about natural history from your home. The National Museum of Natural History offers digital resources for students, teachers, parents and science-enthusiasts alike. Here are seven ways to deepen your understanding of the world around you while social distancing.

Browse the digital collections

This triceratops is available to view on the Smithsonian’s 3D digitization portal, along with over 2,000 specimens and artifacts from the National Museum of Natural History. (Smithsonian Institution)

The Smithsonian released millions of images into the public domain last month, including 2.8 million artifacts and specimens from the National Museum of Natural History. You can remix, download and use these images to help learn about the natural world without leaving your house. Be sure to check out the thousands of objects also available to view in 3D.

Watch “The Doctor Is In”

Dinosaurs are all the rage in the first season of the museum’s popular YouTube series “The Doctor Is In.” (Smithsonian Institution)

Watch Smithsonian dino-celebrity Dr. Hans Sues talk about paleontology in the YouTube series “Doctor Is In.” Sues answers a variety of audience questions, including one from Guns N’ Roses rocker Slash, and covers topics ranging from cats to government conspiracies. Keep an eye out for season two coming soon with geologist Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell.

Take a virtual tour

A virtual look at the antlers collection at the Museum Support Center. (Smithsonian Institution)

Tour the museum’s permanent, temporary and past exhibitions — including “Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World,” which shows how epidemics spread across the world. If you want to see what’s behind the scenes, check out the Museum Support Center tour. You can see whale bones, antlers, gorilla brains, bats and more in the museum’s collections.

Visit the Ocean Portal

The Ocean Portal website has a variety of topics related to the ocean. (Smithsonian Institution)

Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal is the perfect place to visit for in-depth information about anything sea-related. Explore the anatomy of a penguin, shark conservation and topics like climate change and hurricanes. It’s a great resource for students and teachers who are transitioning to online learning, or for anyone interested in learning more about the ocean.

Explore human origins

An interactive human family tree is available on the Human Origins website. (Smithsonian Institution)

Visit the Smithsonian’s Human Origins website to explore what it means to be human and learn more about how we evolved. The site has lesson plans for teachers, 3D artifacts, videos and research from scientists at the museum.

Analyze bones

The burial site of four colonial leaders of early Virginia. (Smithsonian Institution)

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a forensic anthropologist? Written in Bone shows you how to analyze human bones for clues about who they belonged to. Look at forensic case files from colonial burials in Virginia and Maryland to learn how Smithsonian scientists answer questions about life and death during colonial times. Or take a 3D tour of an excavation site in Jamestown, where scientists discovered four graves underneath the earliest known Protestant church in North America.

Learn from Smithsonian scientists

Geologist Ben Andrews and webcast host Maggy Benson discuss how explosive volcanic eruptions happen. (Smithsonian Institution)

Bring Smithsonian scientists to your virtual classroom with Science How. Choose from 50 archived videos of scientists discussing topics ranging from butterfly adaptations to the natural history of cell phones. The videos include resources for teachers divided into grade levels and worksheets for students.

Use the Smithsonian Learning Lab

Learning Lab gathers resources across all Smithsonian museums to help educators teach remotely. (Darren P. Milligan, Smithsonian Institution)

Smithsonian’s new Learning Lab is designed for distance learning to help educators while schools are closed. It allows teachers and students to explore natural history online, using collections items, videos, podcasts and text. Educators can search topics related to their curricula or aggregate their own collection of digital items.

Related stories: Digitization Allows Public Access to Smithsonian’s Hidden Collections ‘One Health’ Could Prevent the Next Coronavirus Outbreak The Dr. Is In: Are Birds Dinosaurs and Other Questions From our Readers Meet the People Leading the Fight Against Pandemics Here’s How Scientists Reconstruct Earth’s Past Climates

Margaret Osborne is an intern in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Her journalism has appeared in the Sag Harbor Express and aired on WSHU public radio. Margaret is an undergraduate at Stony Brook University, where she majors in journalism and German language and literature and minors in environmental studies. She’s spending her last semester in Washington, D.C. and will graduate in May.

More From This Author »

#Nature

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go-diane-winchester · 6 years ago

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How Misha ruined slash fiction

THIS IS AN EDITED REPOST.

I first got into fandom slash fiction because of Lord of the Rings. Before that I had no idea there were others like me. The Ringers, as I prefer to call them, were the nicest slash fans and gave me the erroneous impression that slashers are really lovely girls. How wrong I was. But almost twenty years ago, I [and my generational demographic] had the semblance of mind to differentiate between fact and fantasy. I came across the definition of slash fiction, way back then. Its was generically defined as fanwork done by women for women. Of course one would argue that men like slash fiction too. Correction. Straight and Bi women like slash fiction. Gay or bisexual men like Bara. That is something that they indulge in because it is attractive to them. How trans people fit into this dynamic, would be an interesting study for the future and I have already done a post on that subject.

Straight women are completely different. How straight women show their attraction and what they are attracted to, is completely different to what gay or bi men like. Even bisexual women are still women and still writing from a female perspective. For decades, and I am counting the pre-star trek era, that was how things were. Women, for decades, had no other platform for sexual expression except slash fiction. The phenomenon started in the East, and spread all over the world. But Eastern and Western slash are completely different from one another. Why don't women just write something with a man and a woman? This is where we notice that slashers and other women are completely different. Slashers don't like to watch another woman’s love story. Its not satisfying for us. We can write ourselves as the other half of a pairing, like a Mary Sue scenario, but to be honest, its not the most popular genre because the only woman truly satisfied with the story is the writer herself. Women, very seldom, bond over Mary Sues. But slash stories are discussed as a way of bonding over a common interest.

Classic slash was hidden. It was underground, which was good because the uncultured riff raff stayed away. It was the ultimate girl talk. It surprised us, how similar our desires were and what we found attractive. Remember the faulty character Becky Rosen? Even though she is problematic, the moment Sam licked his thumb and wiped the ink stain off her nose, many of us turned into embarrassing swoony puddles. Why? He was cleaning her nose, for goodness sake. What’s so cute about that? I don’t know. We all just gushed at him. Remember Dean spinning the Impala in the episode “Baby”. I played that bit again and again. It had nothing to with sex. Dean was handling a car but I remember having a flushed face over it.

I read somewhere that foreplay starts in the kitchen. This applies to women anyway. So warming your girl up starts way before you even get her to the bedroom. So you start with a candle lit dinner and soft music and slow dancing. While he may be ready when he walks in through the door, she will need wining, dining, dancing and lovey dovey talk to get interested. Usually. Sometimes, she will appear suddenly turned on, but no, she just saw her husband helping an old man cross the street, and she thought ’‘why is he so stinking cute? Wait till I get my hands on him’’. But that is once in a while. We don’t switch on and off like men. We are, by nature, cautious creatures. Getting us in the mood is as important as the act of lovemaking itself. That is why art that is geared to women, generally, is over-the-top and melodramatic, indulging the foreplay more than the sex.

Ryan Gosling with a boom box [or whatever you call that thing] standing on top a car, confessing his undying love = foreplay. Jack Dawson making Rose stand at the head of the ship [or whatever you call it], making her imagine she’s flying = foreplay. Is it necessary to the story? Nope. Will the Titanic stay buoyant because Jack didn’t make Rose fly? Nah, its will still sink. Do we like it, nonetheless? Oooh, yeah.

For the past 80 or so years, we have kept slash fiction solely to ourselves because:

men wont appreciate it because its not their “thing”

men will misunderstand it [case in point: Misha Collins]

because it was sexual fantasy and some of us would prefer not to share that openly.

Did male actors speak about it when they did find out? Yes, in passing, especially if they were the subject of the story. A reporter or crew member would always tell them. In the case of J2, Kim Manners apparently told them what he had found on the internet. The Lord of the Rings cast found out because of Peter Jackson. What was their reaction? The same as all the other actor’s reactions: They would smirk/laugh about it, make a joke and move on. Then Misha Collins came along. The first time he had spoken about slash fiction, I had winced. Apparently, judging from the audience reaction, so had they. We really didn’t want this spoken about, openly, for two reason.

1] He was speaking to a general audience during his panel. Some of them don’t care for slash fiction and no, homophobia has nothing to do with it. If it doesn’t float your boat, it just doesn’t. Keep throwing the word homophobia around, unnecessarily, and its going to eventually lose its effectiveness because it is frequently being used to bully people into doing what you want, rather than for equality. So no, Jensen Ackles is not a homophobe because he doesn’t want to be up close and personal with Misha Collins. Grow up.

2] The sane slashers of those days, [and it was a decade ago] didn’t want their personal naughty little secrets spoken about so candidly in a public setting. Why? Let me illustrate. If you tell your friends, in a personal setting, how you like when a man runs his hands all over your body, it will illicit some “oohs” and giggles followed by their own contributions to the discussion. If you are sitting with that same gaggle of friends at a crowded restaurant and you say the same thing loudly for the whole room to hear, what will they think of you, especially if they have children with them.

Slash used to be one of those things a lady never spoke about in public, no matter how empowered she thought she was. Personally, I don’t think a lady has to relinquish her femininity and decency in order to feel empowered. That’s why I don’t like women, like Kim and Briana, who call themselves bitches to show how tough they are. Sure, I will break a man's face, if he puts his hands on me, but that doesn’t mean that I have no feminine qualities, and I won't exhibit this aggressive side of myself with a loving and caring man. I guess things have changed since the early days, and women are different now. But this is just my opinion and not relevant to the subject at hand.

If Misha knew how to gauge the audience, he would have understood there and then, that this is not a suitable topic to indulge in, where the audience was mixed and included some younger people, i.e., teens and children. What he did, was to keep running his mouth off about something he didn’t know. And its shows in the way he refers to Destiel as pseudo-porn. His fans were very angry about it, because it lessened their artistic efforts to pornography and nothing else. He said he went on Wikipedia to learn more about slash fiction. For a man who went to university, he is not very smart. If you have ever done any academic research report at university level, you will know that any report that includes citations from Wikipedia are immediately rejected.

Wikipedia is an unreliable source of convoluted, opinionated information that is sometimes not quantifiable and therefore cannot act as an academic resource. Plus anyone can edit those pages, no matter what agenda they have or how stupid they are. This fool didn’t know that. So he started to “educate” the still fixated younger batch [who have now grown into the hellers we loathe with gusto] in the audience and on YouTube as to what slash fiction was and that is why they like him so much. While other actors speak a line about it and move onto another topic, Professor Knowitall esq. will give his rather young audience a lecture on a subject he knows nothing about, thereby conditioning them to think that slash fiction is something that it isn’t. Is he that stupid or that arrogant?

If you look through Wikipedia, it will give you the impression that slash is homosexual in nature, and that it is an expression of gay love. The fact that those stories and artwork originated with straight women and are powered by the artistic efforts of straight women, is ignored. There are topics about queer recognition and LGBT relevance on that page. The page isn’t telling you what slash fiction is. It is telling you what other groups feel about it. I can tell you, almost a century ago, slash fans were not indulging this art form for those reasons. They were doing it for their own satisfaction. If other people like it too, that’s fine and dandy, but it is not about them. And what Misha has done with this fandom, which is bleeding into other fandoms via intrusive destiel fans, is to make slash about the LGBT.

That is why gay men are now getting angry because young impressionable girls are listening to him and turning a straight/bi female art form into an inaccurate gay platform. They are using things like closetedness, gay bashings, bigotry and even AIDS as a gay “trope” or theme for their stories. Gay men fought to change the name ''Gay Cancer'' to AIDS, because it was erroneously being considered a homosexual disease, and yet years later, we have a ''fake'' inclusive generation celebrating a story like ''Twist and Shout". No wonder gay men hate teen slash girls. If you write about a subject you know nothing of, you will write it wrong. These children [because they behave like that] are writing about some very sensitive and serious topics and they are romanticizing them. What person wont get angry?

In the old days, the two people who made up a pairing, were differentiated, by using two words: Seme and Uke. While slash was a straight female art form, gay men didn’t give two hoots about these words. They didn’t read the stuff. They didn’t care. They had bara. When “woke and non-bigoted, inclusive” slash fans started speaking for gay men through their stories despite the fact that these men have a voice of their own, the guys got angry because they don’t have a seme and uke role type in their relationships. Well, of course they don’t. Slash is not about gay men. Its about straight women and their sexual expression. And in their fantasies, there are seme’s and uke’s.

That is another problem with the Wikipedia page. When you look at the history, it starts with Kirk and Spock. The dunderhead who wrote that page, didn’t know that slash started in the east, probably Japan, although Hong Kong might dispute that. When it became animated in the 1970’s, the anime version was called Yaoi. The Japanese were actually making money from slash fiction way back when, by making comic type books, essentially novels with pictures. And it was those translated stories, which were almost always set in another world, that gave birth to Kirk/Spock slash fiction. Star Trek is also set in another world so to speak. The westerners got hold of these books when the Asians immigrated. The first slash stories were actually distributed in conventions, because the internet didn't exist back then.

There is only one other person who over-indulged his slash fan base. Harry Styles. He regretted it, because it ruined his friendship. So he stopped. But he had a good excuse. He was between the ages of 15 and 19 whilst in 1 Direction. He was a baby and didn’t know any better. Harry learned his lesson within five years and stopped. Misha has been on the show for ten years. He was in his mid thirties when he started on Supernatural. He was already a grown man who has no excuse, because he is not stupid. With the amount of damage the militant destiel fans have done, you would think that he would stop. He doesn’t. Because it gives him staying power.

The one thing I have noticed is, overindulging a slash fan [not necessary a heller - any slash fan] is like feeding a Mogwai after midnight. It turns into an uncontrollable gremlin. That is exactly what Misha’s militant fanbase is: a hideous collection of gremlins that he overfed and now they are attacking any mogwai that doesn’t show gremlin traits, even if they are mild-mannered destiel fans who don't like the leads beings threatened. What Misha’s dumb section have now done, is that they have taken slash fiction itself, and turned it into an increasingly hateful and problematic concept. Because, the general public, which includes J2 [because they have nothing to do with slash fiction], now have the impression that slash is a means of bullying and putting your indulgences before other peoples’ opinions and dignity, in the name of representation.

It also give the impression, to unknowing people, that homosexuals are boisterous and demanding people and you have to please them or else. The general public don’t know that predominantly female, heterosexual, entitled princesses are writing this crap. They think that gays are pushing slash fiction because words like gay, queer and LGBT keep popping up in a pro-destiel argument. Any gay man reading this, take heed, because these children are damaging your collective reputations. And if you don’t deal with it now, the PR headache you are going to have to deal with, in the future, as a group, is going to be immense. And it won’t even be your fault, but you will be blamed for it. How do you go about doing that? Speak directly to Misha. Shut up the master Gremlin-Troll himself. Tell him he is doing you a great disservice. After all, the mostly straight heller girls are speaking for you and he is pushing the microphones into their hands.

I always liked slash because not only was it a means of female sexual expression, but it was also a means of female creativity. Sure, we all like Cinderella, but it was lukewarm for some of us because, she was difficult to emulate. And growing up, we didn’t know she was a character to enjoy, not to emulate. Children always emulate what they see on screen. She was thin, pretty, a good singer with nice hair and small feet. I am club footed, bipolar and fat, with a lion’s mane that brushes broke on. I felt sorry for her because she was abused. I felt sorry for her because she was crying at one point. Then I remembered what I look like when I cry. Soft tears don't roll gently down my pink cheeks. Snot rolls down my nose, careening to the inside of my mouth. Not pretty. Not delicate. The story was nice but it left me feeling inadequate. Some women love it. Others, like myself, are “meh” about it.

When I read a bemusing slash version with actors in place of the fictional cast, I read the whole story smirking. I didn’t begrudge the beautiful lead [I think it might have been Jensen] because I was as besotted with him as Prince Charming was [presumably Jared]. I didn’t want to be him. I wanted him. I wanted the prince too, just FYI. I could be a fly on the wall in the story, without actually picturing how my insignificant self would fit into the story. That is what slash fiction meant to me. It was an escapist art form into a fantasy 'verse, that is custom made to put a smile on my face.

Now, Prince Charming is fighting for gay rights against his bigoted father, the king, and Cinderella is beaten by his ugly step siblings because he is a homo. And I look at it and blink. I am not the audience for this story. Empathy is one thing, but replacing your sexuality with someone else’s, is something else all together. Especially since every slash story now, seems to be about gay characters and gay rights and homophobia. Slash has turned into a one trick pony. How much could you write about gay rights? Slash’s creativity is running on autopilot. Take your ship, make them gay, make one closeted and unhappy, make the other out and happy, throw in a gay oriented trope, even AIDS [no decency threshold] and boom! You've got a story.

They’ve been writing in this way for the last ten years and they’ve ruined the whole genre. So much so, that destiel and cockles stories aren’t enjoyed by anyone except destiel fans, because Misha and Cas are in those stories. And he is always written as a precious smol bean. At this juncture, I have to point out that, to be fair, other ships on Supernatural and other fandoms are doing the same thing, because destiel fans bend the will of others to their own. I heard they are actually tagging destiel into posts about other shows. Other bloggers noticed that destiel and Misha are in Mother Nature tag. They don't even leave Mother Nature alone. Why? Because Misha has turned a harmless indulgence into an addiction. He is their only dealer and pursuing canon gives them their fix. They are gremlins on crack with stunted creativity.

Of course, the children argue that they can't read an unrealistic story which is why slash characters have to instead be gay. Oh yeah, then how come in Cockles stories, Misha is something pregnant. Sometimes, he is a pregnant wolf. So you can take your “realism” and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. When you write a totes realistic story, with gay characters rather than slash characters, you are disrespecting three groups of people:

the actors, who are your, sometimes, unwilling muses

the homosexual community, that you have absolutely no right to speak for

the earlier slash fans who nurtured this art form, before you ''woke'' idiots came barreling in, with your inclusiveness, and flushed their efforts down the toilet, all at the behest on one selfish man.

Decent slashers say: This is a work of fiction and has no bearings on reality. Then they go out of their way to not include themes that are synonymous with the gay community. The characters in a properly written story are never explicitly gay. They just like some guy, even though last week they were with a girl. And no, that doesn’t make them bisexual either. Remember, slash is a platform with a large percentage of straight females and bisexuals don’t want you speaking for them, either. Otherwise, nobody will dispute the hellers for saying that Dean is bi because he wore a purple shirt, once. The fed up bisexuals reading insulting meta on how Dean is bisexual, because of his food and clothing choices, are a case in point. So the character are fantasy slash characters. If I were to coin a word, then they are slashsexual.

They are just muses for the woman’s sexual expression. We don’t need to tell them what we are doing, thereby putting them in an uncomfortable position to amend or dispute our opinion about the subject. That is plain rude and borderline sexual harassment. Even if we are women and they are men. Treat them with the same dignity that you demand for yourself. Its got nothing to do with them. Don’t ask them. Misha, on the other hand, has no shame and will therefore never turn down a question. He will answer the question in a way that his gullible fangirls like, inflating his ego and giving him permanence in the show. Has Misha caused irreparable damage? I am afraid so. Older women, in the SPN fandoms, get caught up in life so they don’t indulge in slash as much. And so the brats are running this art form to the ground, teaching nonsense to those that are younger than them, parroting whatever crap Misha spews about slash fiction, in the name of sexual equality, representation and the LGBT. I am not even counting their online behaviour, just pointing out their horrible handling of slash fiction at the behest of Misha Collins. They still listen to him and its going to get worse and worse, until slash fiction becomes THE most hateful thing about fan culture.

Please note:

The analysis of slash fiction does not include tinhatting. Tinhats do not believe that the people they are writing about are mere muses. Cockles fans and J2 Tinhats believe that they people they are writing about, really are gay, but closeted due to public shame and ostracization. Tinhats, at least the ones that I came across, do not like to be seen as shippers. They are a separate entity altogether. That would be a fascinating topic for the future. Thank you to the tinhat who reminded me of this, because I completely forgot.

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sarcasticcynic · 6 years ago

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Fulfilling a promise to the auto industry, last May Trump’s EPA proposed the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficiency (SAFE) Vehicles Rule. As the EPA’s inclusion of the word “Affordable” in a supposed environmental regulation makes clear, Trump is again decreasing environmental protection in the name of corporate profits. The SAFE Rule will roll back regulations that require auto manufacturers to meet clean air standards and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their vehicles:

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday submitted its proposal to roll back climate change rules that required automakers to nearly double the fuel economy of passenger vehicles to an average of more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. The rules, which would have significantly lowered the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, were opposed by automakers who said they were overly burdensome.”

The EPA formally published its proposed rule in August, with the minimum comment period and public hearings. Dozens of individuals, organizations, and state and local government entities requested an extension of the comment period and additional hearings due to “the breadth and depth of the record to review” and “the changes from prior analyses conducted on the same topic,” not to mention its importance. The EPA denied all requests, explicitly stating that it preferred to give maximum response time to the auto manufacturers, rather than to the concerned public:

“Automakers will need maximum lead time to respond to the final rule, and extending the comment period and holding additional public hearings (which would also cause the comment period to be extended) are inconsistent with provision of maximum lead time.”

(The EPA did, however, grant a three-day extension in response to someone pointing out that its original deadline violated federal law.)

So why hasn’t the SAFE rule gone into effect yet? The usual fly in Trump’s anti-environmental ointment: California.

It is no secret that, while Trump dislikes everyone who does not give him full-throated support and loyalty, he reserves a special hatred for California. California has publicly opposed Trump and his policies from literally the day after the election. Some examples:

Trump is a climate change denier; California leads the country in restricting greenhouse gas emissions and producing clean energy from alternative sources.

Trump is anti-immigrant; California is a “sanctuary state.”

Trump slashed taxes for corporations and the ultra-wealthy, and cuts federal programs that help ordinary citizens; California has a $15/hour minimum wage, and raised taxes to fund education.

Trump ordered states to send their National Guard troops to the southern border; California redeployed most of them elsewhere.

Trump ordered states not to pay unemployment benefits to furloughed federal workers during his recent tantrum government shutdown; California paid them anyway.

It particularly rankles Trump that California, with its policies diametrically opposed to his, is consistently outperforming the rest of the country. So naturally Trump has tried to take his revenge on California whenever he can (so far unsuccessfully):

He sued California and tried to withhold federal funds unless California “voluntarily” assisted ICE... until federal judges told him he couldn’t legally do that.

He threatened to withhold federal emergency funds for fighting California’s wildfires.

Just three days ago, he canceled a $1 billion federal transportation grant to California and demanded the return of another $2.5 billion that California has already received, tying it directly to California filing suit against his so-called “emergency” declaration one day earlier:

“As I predicted, 16 states, led mostly by Open Border Democrats and the Radical Left, have filed a lawsuit in, of course, the 9th Circuit! California, the state that has wasted billions of dollars on their out of control Fast Train, with no hope of completion, seems in charge! The failed Fast Train project in California, where the cost overruns are becoming world record setting, is hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

Returning to the SAFE Rule: The 1970 Clean Air Act generally prohibits individual states from implementing their own vehicle emission standards. The Clean Air Act, however, also requires the EPA to

“...waive application of this section to any State which has adopted standards for the control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines ... if the State determines that the State standards will be, in the aggregate, at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable Federal standards.”

For the past 50 years, California has consistently had more stringent standards than the federal government, and has routinely received these waivers. The most recent waiver, in 2013, exempted California’s Advanced Clean Car (ACC) program, Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) standards. The Clean Air Act also allows other states to adopt their own standards if “such standards are identical to the California standards for which a waiver has been granted.” At present, “Thirteen states follow California’s standards for cars sold in their borders, representing about 40 percent of the nation’s vehicle market.”

Now, automakers don’t want to have to manufacture two different kinds of vehicles, one for California and its followers and one for the rest of the country. So, as part of the new rule, the Trump administration decided to try to withdraw the EPA’s existing waiver. This would, of course, have led immediately to years of litigation. California and the Trump administration have therefore been trying to negotiate some sort of compromise instead.

As you might well guess, the supposed master deal-maker in the Oval Office has been as successful at this negotiation as he has been at pretty much every single negotiation he’s tried since taking office: it got absolutely nowhere. So yesterday--probably spurred by Trump’s vendetta against California for filing suit against his emergency declaration--the White House and the EPA unilaterally announced: “the Trump Administration has decided to discontinue discussions with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regarding the proposed Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule.”

Trump claims it’s all California’s fault, of course: “CARB has failed to put forward a productive alternative since the SAFE Vehicles Rule was proposed.” California begs to differ:

“Sessions between the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and CARB were not substantive and never progressed into the nitty-gritty of policy negotiations. ‘The administration broke off communications before Christmas and never responded to our suggested areas of compromise — or offered any compromise proposal at all. We concluded at that point that they were never serious about negotiating, and their public comments about California since then seem to underscore that point.’”

The EPA plans to finalize its new rules by April, including the attempted revocation of California’s waiver. See you in court, Donald!

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christinevelazquez-blog-blog · 4 years ago

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Journal 2 on Field trip One: FGCU campus

The first stop we made on our field trip was at a solar compacting trash unit. Hinted by the name, solar compacting trash cans use solar energy to compact trash. There is no need for plastic trash bags, which are wasteful and can pollute waterways and landfills etc. This trash can also save on how many trips you take to the landfill, because you are compacting the trash, there is more space for waste. These trashcans are actually sealed so no waste can leak out, and no small animals can sneak in the trash and create a mess. An important note to remember is that, if too much trash is found in recycling, all of that recycling will be considered trash anyway. Using the recycling logo to determine whether something is actually recyclable or not is super important for sustainability. Preventing how many items are sent to the landfill helps in the amount of waste that is sitting and creating more pollution/methane leakage that could leak into waterways and affect animals. FGCU takes initiative by having multiple trash cans offering areas for recycling and waste removal. FGCU takes healthful waste and actually burns it down to create energy. This in turn cuts down on the amount of waste that is sent to the landfill, as well as the amount of harmful chemicals that are released into the atmosphere as a byproduct of the trash. The health waste facility is where all of this is done. In terms of FGCU’s landscape, it has a lot of native trees planted around the campus. Slash pine trees, and live oak trees are examples of a few. Native trees are better adapted to the area in which they originate, meaning less maintenance is required on these plants throughout the year. Being of native origin, these trees and plants attract other native animals/insects seeking habitat. Invasive/nonnative species typically cause harm to native species because they cause an increase in competition for food, resources, and overall space for land habitation. Examples of invasive species include brown anoles, iguanas, and bermese pythons. All of these species were introduced or came here by cargo ship, or other forms of trade. On top of these efforts, FGCU also promotes lots of physical wellbeing, with bike racks and large open areas for people to walk and longboard around campus. It also includes buildings with backyards and windows to encourage students to look outside and be in nature. ”Green spaces” are areas outside where you can get away and enjoy the outdoors, it promotes mental well being and biodiversity. FGCU has a bunch of these spaces planted around the campus and differing buildings for students to feel more connected to the outdoors. LEED certification is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is an organization that gives plaques and awards (silver, gold, platinum) to buildings and establishments that have innovated their technology to better suit the needs of the environment. Seidler Hall, the building on FGCU with the most waste and energy usage has the highest certificate of platinum, which is great considering how difficult it is to achieve these recognitions. In order to get a LEED certification, you want to: increase water efficiency, save energy, improve indoor air quality, include few, low energy lights around the building with lots of windows to let in natural light, and finally, use recycled materials to create your building, reusing and giving purpose to items that would’ve otherwise been thrown away. Small innovations of technology, like FGCU using rocks around the barriers of buildings to prevent erosion and flooding of land during storms, are improvements that go a long way in terms of caring for the environment and land of the university. In Seidler Hall, very few, low energy lights are used throughout the building. During the day they are mostly kept off because the windows provide a lot of natural light. FGCU even has a sustainable AC cooling system, using thermal ice storage to cool the campus. Cold water runs through the pipes underground and this will cool the buildings. At night when the AC isn’t needed as much, the water will be frozen to ice and the process is repeated again. Because the system is using water, it is energy efficient and reusable. Overall it saves the university 400,000 dollars a year. The disadvantage to this technology is that there isn’t any true thermostat, but it has much less of an environmental impact overall. FGCU also has a solar power field in the main entrance that generates 2 megawatts of energy a day. Overall money from florida power and light is lessened and it helps the environment with no pollution. Boardwalks at the university are made of Ipe. It is very durable, can survive forest fires, and doesn’t need to be chemically treated. This means no harmful fall off occurs when precipitation happens. Grass in the water and lilypads can help purify the water from rain before it enters the waterway. Alligators, peacock fish, and turtles all use the pond. It creates a good home and environment for them to live in. Scientists use the wetlands and ponds for research on a multitude of things like soil permeability, snakes, water table levels, and much more. In basic, sustainability is defined as meeting our needs without compromising the needs of future generations. The three kinds of sustainability are social, environmental, and economic. Florida Gulf Coast University is the sustainability campus, our colors are green and blue; green for earth, blue for the sky, which completes the life cycle. The 4 components of environmental study are

1. Green Education, which include classes that incorporate and teach sustainability sustainability.

2. Green Practices, using more natural alternatives to energy like solar, wind and hydro powered energy.

3. Green Dining, FGCU removed trays from the lunchroom, which in turn cut down on waste because students carry less food.

4. Green Research, looking into topics and environmental studies that are interesting and important to us. Even googling current sustainability efforts is a step in the right direction.

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cosimaballettithomas-blog · 6 years ago

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Blog No. 9

The topics of this week’s readings were Aquatic Biodiversity Loss/Extinction and Soil, Agriculture and Food, all of which are being impacted in one way or another by the unsustainable use and depletion of natural capital and ecosystem services. (Prof’s PowerPoint). Miller’s Chapter 11: Sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity addresses how aquatic species are threatened by human activity (Miller 2012, 251). Although we have only managed to explore roughly 5% of the oceans and only 1% of its life forms, scientists have detected three patterns that occur in the ocean: (1) Most marine biodiversity is concentrated in coral reefs and estuaries, as well as the ocean floor, (2) Biodiversity tends to be higher near coasts than open water “because of the greater variety of producers and habitats in coastal areas,” (3) Biodiversity is higher towards the bottom of the ocean as opposed to its surface again because of the array of habitats as well as the availability of more diverse sources of food (Miller 2012, 251). Coastal activity is particularly detrimental to oceans; for example, coral reefs are an essential safe haven for approximately 90% of fish species yet almost ⅕ of the world’s reefs have been destroyed by pollution and acidification, as well as development of the shore itself (Miller 2012, 252-253). That value is now outdated with the IPCC’s recent release of its “Summary for Policy Makers” which warned that coral reefs could disappear altogether within the next few decades (Milman 2017).

Freshwater aquatic zones are experiencing different yet equally dire destruction by processes such as dam construction and water withdrawal for irrigation. Another problem faced by aquatic areas are invasive species which “can displace or cause the extinction of native species and disrupt ecosystem services and human economies.” In fact, ⅔ of fish extinction in the United States has been caused by invasive species within the last hundred years or so (Miller 2012, 253). These species can be introduced in a number of ways; for example, “many arrive in the ballast water that is stored in tanks in large cargo ships to keep them stable. These ships take in ballast water, and whatever microorganisms and tiny fish species it contains, from one harbor and dump it into another” (253). These ships are now required to flush out their ballast water before entering a harbor, but invasive species nonetheless are transported such as by sticking to the body of a ship. This just goes to show how important effective and strict environmental law and policy are in the protection of biodiversity.

Miller explains that protecting marine biodiversity has proven somewhat difficult, one reason being that “much of the damage to the oceans and other bodies of water is not visible to most people” (260). Another reason is that people see the oceans “as an inexhaustible resource that can absorb an almost infinite amount of waste and pollution.” Clearly, as explicated in the trailer for “Albatross” about the garbage in the Pacific, this is not the case, we just can’t see the waste and pollution because so much of it is in the bodies of animals (Albatross). Lastly, and perhaps most problematic, “most of the world’s ocean area lies outside of legal jurisdiction of any country” making it for the most part a free for all, similar to the concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons” which describes how, when land is common, people will tend to deplete it by overconsumption; however, when land becomes privatized, land owners will tend to take better care it since it is their land” (Miller 2012, 260).

Another way to move away from the tragedy of the commons outcome and encourage people to protect aquatic biodiversity is through economic incentive. Miller describes a case study a 2004 study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund that found that “sea turtles are worth more to local communities alive than dead” due to the revenue that sea turtle tourism creates that is “three times more than the sale of turtle products such as meat, leather, and eggs” (261). Thus, informing and educating people about the economic benefits of protecting their native wildlife and essentially feeding into the anthropocentric ideology could actually prove beneficial.

That said, in response to Miller’s Critical Thinking Question #9 of this chapter, the first important point of my policy that I would use to protect the world’s aquatic biodiversity is that we serve to benefit more in the long run by preserving animals than killing and selling them for profit (Miller 2012, 276). Secondly, because it has proven so difficult to divide and establish authority over international waters, I would create an entire department of defense geared towards biodiversity preservation and a sub-branch that is entirely assigned to water bodies to carry out the laws and exercise authority that forms the basis of my third policy implementation which would be to ban all hunting, poaching, and trading of marine species as a fully encompassing way of protecting them that resolves any confusion about who has right to which part of the ocean in that no one would under my authority. I don’t think scientists have a good enough reason to want to explore the oceans, unless of course it is for the purpose of protecting marine species. We have already degraded enough of the planet and there are few reasons compelling enough to cause any more harm.

Miller’s Chapter 12: Food, Soil, and Pest Management addresses the issue of food security and why, despite the fact that we have more than enough food, people are still going hungry (Miller 2012, 278). This divide can only grow with increasing global temperature rise and its impacts such as drought leading to more frequent and intense periods of food shortages i.e. famine (Miller 2012, 279). This in turn will displace more people thus exacerbating the issue of congestion and overcrowding as people are forced to immigrate. Another issue posed to the food supply is the consequences of specialization that “puts us in a vulnerable position should any number of the small number of crop strains, livestock breeds, and fish and shellfish species we depend on disappear as a result of factors such as disease, environmental degradation, and climate change” (Miller 2012, 281). Miller furthers that this violates the principle of sustainability that addresses biodiversity in that we have no “ecological insurance policy for dealing with changes in environmental conditions” given our limited food source variety (281).

There are two major types of agriculture, industrialized and subsistence. The former uses heavy equipment and lots of resources such as capital, water, fossil fuels, and commercial fertilizers/pesticides to produce monocultures which are single crop types grown for the purpose of bolstering yield (281). This form of agriculture uses 25% of global cropland and occurs largely in developed countries, producing roughly 80% of the global food supply (Miller 2012, 281). Subsistence agriculture on the other hand is done by individuals producing only what they need to support themselves or their community. Another types of agriculture is slash-and-burn which involves the burning of tropical forests for the purpose of clearing land away in order to use it intensely until the soil is becomes infertile and the land is left to restore itself, which can take decades (283). This process, as well as agriculture in general is incredibly detrimental to soil, especially topsoil, which takes centuries to regenerate (284). Topsoil erosion can have two results, the first being fertility loss “through depletion of plant nutrients in topsoil” and water pollution “in nearby surface waters, where eroded topsoil ends up as sediment,” which kills animals and clogs water bodies (Miller 290). Soil can also erode naturally by wind and water, especially in regions with high rainfall, which explains why rainforests have very infertile soil, despite sustaining such high biodiversity (289).

The Green Revolution began in the 1950’s with the rapid increase in global food production due to high-input industrialized agriculture to bolster crop yields (Miller 2012, 283). The Green Revolution is also marked by an increase in efficiency and crop yield without the need for more land, which has been beneficial in keeping large forest land in the U.S. from being cultivated for agriculture (285). The major downfall, however, is the massive amount of fossil fuel combustion both during the production and transportation of goods (288). The Green Revolution is also responsible for a large amount of waste, pollution, environmental hazards, and public health problems (Prof’s PowerPoint).

A pest, according to Miller, “is any species that interferes with human welfare by competing with us for food, invading lawns and gardens, destroying building materials, spreading disease, invading ecosystems, or simply being a nuisance” (297). There are many natural pest controls such as spiders that kill more insects than humans; however, deforestation and agriculture that uses chemicals to clear land upsets this natural balance, forcing us to create artificial and less effective pest control methods (Miller 2012, 297). This is just one more example of how we simply cannot replicate natural ecosystem processes. Other disadvantages of synthetic pesticides include the acceleration of genetic resistance to pesticides by pests that breed at rapid rates and can develop and inherit immunity through natural selection. Moreover, because of this genetic resistance, farmers will have to spend more money on new forms of pesticides (299). Lastly, synthetic pesticides are not sedentary and can pollute surrounding land by spreading through the air, water, or even unintentionally to wildlife and humans. On the other hand, the advantages are that pesticides can save lives, help increase food supply, increase profits, etc. (Miller 2012, 299).

An Environmental News Network article titled “Using the Sun and Agricultural Waste to Control Pests” discusses an alternative to synthetic pesticides using ‘bio solarization,’ a process that combines solar energy with soil amendments to manage weeds and other soil-borne pests” (ENN 2019). This is a zero-waste process that takes “low-value byproducts of crop production,” i.e. food waste such as skins and hulls and adding it to the soil to promote good bacterial growth which in turn increases soil acidity making it inhospitable to many weeds and pests. This is in addition to regular solarization which involves laying a clear plastic tarp over soil to trap radiation (pictured below) and heat the soil effective killing weeds and pests. This process takes several weeks, so by adding the food waste, farmers can reduce soil treatment time to just a few days. This pest management method eliminates the need for synthetic pesticides and produces no waste in that, besides the plastic tarp, it uses recycled materials that would have otherwise gone to waste. Moreover, it’s an excellent example of how industrial agriculture can reduce its environmental impact and integrate sustainability into its operation (ENN 2019).

�� (ENN 2019)

Word Count: 1782

Discussion Question: Do you think it is important that we explore the deep ocean, even if it means interfering with the life and natural processes there?

Work Cited

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Chapter 11: Sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity." Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

Van Buren, Edward. “Prof’s PowerPoint Notes.” https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RMjVGYUwwZlBXa28/view

Milman, Oliver. "Scientists Warn US Coral Reefs Are on Course to Disappear within Decades." The Guardian. May 30, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/30/us-coral-reefs-global-warming-climate-change.

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Chapter 12: Food, Soil, and Pest Management." Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

"Albatross." Albatross. https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/.

University of California Davis. "Using the Sun and Agricultural Waste to Control Pests." Environmental News Network. January 09, 2019. https://www.enn.com/articles/56373-using-the-sun-and-agricultural-waste-to-control-pests.

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lodelss · 4 years ago

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ACLU: The Democratic Platform Heads in Right Direction on Criminal Justice, but Still Misses the Moment

The Democratic Platform Heads in Right Direction on Criminal Justice, but Still Misses the Moment

As Democrats gather this week to nominate their presidential candidate, they will also adopt the party’s proposed platform. On criminal justice reform, the platform continues to move the party away from its harmful tough-on-crime past. But it also misses an opportunity to respond to Americans’ desire to seek transformational changes in the criminal legal system. For the past 60 years, presidential politics have played an outsized role in criminal justice policy-setting, despite this issue being largely the domain of states and localities. Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, 90 percent are under state or local jurisdiction. Barry Goldwater was the first national politician to focus on criminal justice issues as part of a presidential election, invoking tough-on-crime rhetoric and racist attacks on the civil rights movement. The five-term U.S. senator from Arizona was the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and ran on a law-and-order platform that denounced the civil rights movement as lawless and equated it with criminal behavior. He lost the 1964 presidential election, but his candidacy provided a boost for future law-and-order candidates. In the 1968 elections, Richard Nixon made law-and-order a central theme of his winning campaign, dedicating 17 speeches to the topic. He deployed the “Southern strategy” to appeal directly to Southern white working-class voters who opposed racial desegregation and the advances being made by the civil rights movement. It was during the Reagan administration that the full development of the law-and-order strategy began to take hold. While Nixon called for a war on drugs in 1971, President Ronald Reagan brought Frankenstein to life — dramatically increasing law enforcement budgets and slashing funding for drug treatment, prevention, and education. By the early 1990s, Democratic politicians wanted to wrest control of criminal justice issues and began a bidding war with Republicans on who could impose harsher penalties. In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime. Weeks before the New Hampshire primary, he flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who was mentally incapacitated. During Clinton’s tenure, he slashed funding for public housing by 61 percent while boosting corrections funding by 171 percent, made it easier for public housing to exclude anyone with a criminal history, and signed into law the infamous 1994 Crime Bill. By 1996, the Democratic Party platform invoked law-and-order rhetoric that differed little from what Republicans expressed two decades earlier:

“The Democratic Party under President Clinton is putting more police on the streets and tougher penalties on the books … President Clinton made three-strikes-you’re-out the law of the land, to ensure that the most dangerous criminals go to jail for life, with no chance of parole. We established the death penalty for nearly 60 violent crimes … We provided almost $8 billion in new funding to help states build new prison cells … [W]hen young people commit serious violent crimes, they should be prosecuted like adults. We established boot camps for young non-violent offenders.”

It wasn’t until 2008 that the tone of the Democratic Party platform began to change, and by 2016, in response to the killing of Freddie Grey at the hands of Baltimore police and other high profile instances of police violence, Democrats called for “reforming our criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.” Which brings us to this year’s proposed platform. It blasts police violence and private prisons and calls for a reduction in the nation’s incarceration rate. It supports front-end reforms like tackling the school-to-prison pipeline, fighting mandatory minimum laws and ending cash bail, as well as back-end reforms, such as reentry services for people leaving prison and increasing the use of presidential clemency powers to release people serving long sentences. Compared to past DNC platforms, this year’s proposed platform represents a dramatic shift from the 1990s. The Democratic Party has reversed course on certain positions, now saying it is “unjust — and unjustifiable — to punish children and teenagers as harshly as adults,” the opposite of the party’s 1996 platform. This year’s proposed platform also responds to the Black Lives Matter movement by recognizing systemic racism and calling for a dramatic change in the legal standard for police use of deadly force. And it has reversed course on the death penalty, now opposing it. But even while recognizing this evolution of the platform and the challenges of finding consensus among a party with diverse viewpoints, it is still disappointing to see the platform fail in some respects to meet the demands of the moment. For example, the proposed Democratic platform calls for an end to the “failed war on drugs, which has imprisoned millions of Americans,” yet fails to support policies that would actually end this failed war that has disproportionately harmed Black and Brown communities. Not only does the platform neglect to call for the decriminalization of all drug possession, which would strike a genuine blow to the war on drugs, it fails to even support marijuana legalization, which is supported by a large majority of Americans. The call to end the war on drugs is meaningless without these basic proposals. Moreover, on policing, the platform is silent on the call to slash police budgets and redirect those resources into alternatives to policing, and to reinvest in communities historically targeted by the police. Instead, the platform mostly continues to tout procedural reforms and calls for greater transparency and accountability. These are important reforms, but they miss the mark on what millions of people are marching on the streets to demand — a fundamental reorientation of public safety, divesting resources away from police and into alternatives to police and towards resources that will build long-term safety and stability. Finally, even though during the campaign trail candidate Joe Biden and a dozen other candidates committed to the ACLU to cut incarceration rates by 50 percent if they were to become president, the Democratic Party platform is now silent on setting this or any other concrete reduction goal. The Democratic Party has a terrible track record on criminal justice issues. It has now clearly broken away from this tarnished past, and the party platform recognizes the destructive crisis of mass incarceration. Yet the party still fails to recognize the need for transformational change, and until it does so, it will miss providing a home for the millions of Americans who are tired of tinkering around the edges and are looking for transformational change of a criminal legal system rooted in white supremacy and racism.

Published August 18, 2020 at 11:54PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/347VGYh from Blogger https://ift.tt/2YfxnUB via IFTTT

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nancydhooper · 4 years ago

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The Democratic Platform Heads in Right Direction on Criminal Justice, but Still Misses the Moment

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