#spreading the laughingstock propaganda

[catlover4536]

@carnivalcarrion Remember when I said I had something for you?

Yeah, me too.

[radfemsiren]

Internet culture is so fascinating because everything is out in the open, so concepts that feminists have been trying to make the general public understand are now in plain sight.

Do you remember the Bentellect situation? If his name does not ring a bell, that’s very expected. He was a low level TikToker that would make terrible react content of himself reading out normie humor tweets and laughing like it was the funniest thing ever written. The second he got followers he started exploiting that to pressure women into sleeping with him… and they released his sex pest DMs, making him a laughingstock.

With all these allegations coming out repeatedly of Cody Ko, Dr disrespect, James Charles, Kris Tyson, Neil gaiman, etc of men using the smallest amount of fame to immediately try to sexually exploit women and children … I’ve heard so many apolitical “normie” types say the phrase “Wow how come the second men get famous they immediately use it to try to fuck anything that moves?”

Like we’ve seen hints of this displayed out in the open with 2000s celebrity culture, and watching famous men switch out their wives to younger women immediately, or commit worse crimes… but they had enough power and influence to hide their misdeeds. It’s really not like that anymore.

Aesthetically and optically, it’s so extremely different. The words men would say to women in the dark are now on a bright screen, beemed to millions of people in the blink of an eye. Imagine being able to tell feminists that in the past. That there would be undeletable evidence that can be accessed by anyone in the world of the way men would abuse women in private.

My friends and I were walking to a dancing club last night, and were followed by a man in his car. We got our phones out and shouted we have his face and license plate and he immediately sped away scared.

Imagine telling women of the past that? Imagine telling them there are communities of women laughing and jeering at these imbeciles. From the safety of their own homes too! God imagine going the past and telling your ancestors that you spend your lunch breaks or quiet evenings relaxing and eating, while laughing at subreddits like r/menwritingwomen, what a luxury we don’t even realize we have! Of being able to mock and criticize men. Of taking them down from their flimsy pedestal.

The internet is making everything all out in the open, and while it can be scary when misinformation and propaganda spreads, it makes me have hope too that truth will also have so much more undeniable evidence to back it up constantly, instead of dissenting voices being quelled in the past. It’s difficult to see the hard evidence of female oppression constantly, but at least it’s being acknowledged, it’s being seen.

[alicentral]

This is a response to a hotd critical post about the "favouritism towards Greens in screen time ratio", and I think it's so interesting how team black also feel like they're being fucked over by the showrunners when, to me, it's blindingly obvious that it's the other way round.

Not only are the show runners villainising the greens, not the blacks, they've also gone out of their way to make the blacks seem like the badass heroes who can do no wrong, and this is the root of the problem for both team black and team green. It oversimplifies the dance and goes against the themes and message of the whole book, rendering the characters either inconsistent, one-dimensional, and worst of all, flat and boring.

Lets start off with the greens. The argument that the showrunners are "gagging on the greens" doesn't hold up when we actually think about it for more than 2 seconds.

With the source material of hotd being a fictional history book with different biases and perspectives (emphasis on different perspectives), the showrunners have cherry picked what to adapt, and have chosen to take the worst of the greens as the objective truth and erase their good moments as "green propaganda". The main example that comes to mind is aegon. Plenty of other people have talked about this in depth before, but in f&b, aegon raping a girl was a rumour spread by mushroom, a narrator with a clear black bias who wasn't even in kings landing at the time. There was no reason in adapting this rumour other than to demonise aegon, and by extension, team green. The way the scene is framed, it is clear that it was never about dyana, how the rape affected her mentally, emotionally, socially, physically. For a supposedly feminist show, dyana's rape was a throwaway scene, it never had any impact on the story further. So what was the point of the scene other than to tell the audience "look at what a monster aegon is. How can you support someone like that?" And it works.

You can see on social media, any time there's something vaguely positive about the greens, you have hoards of people comment "yeah but he's a rapist" "how can you support a rapist?", etc. It forces you to side with team black. Later in the show, the audience gets to know that aegon's dick burst "like a sausage". Why would the audience need to know this? Aegon's mutilated dick is presented as "karma" for dyana and is only meant to humiliate him. And again, after this revelation, so many people on social media were making fun of his "burnt sausage". They've made a laughingstock of aegon, and as the figurehead of team green, it's clear that we're not meant to side with team green.

Furthermore, in bastardising, and sometimes, even completely erasing the relationships between team green, the showrunners have dehumanised them and made them irredeemable villains, because, again, we were never meant to side with those who "usurped the rightful queen".

The loyalty and commitment the greens had to one another made them such compelling characters and heavily shaped their central motivations and actions. Aegon only took the crown to protect his family. Aemond, after rooks rest, never called himself a king, only lord protecter even though he knows he would've made a better king than aegon. Daeron torched the riverlands to get to his mother and sister and sacked bitterbridge as revenge for his nephew. Helaena offered up her life for her son, and chose to sacrifice maelor because she knew he wouldn't understand what was happening. Their actions may not be necessarily good (and in daeron's case, actually happen to be war crimes), and their motivations may be morally grey, but they're understandable, they're sympathetic, seeing as it was out of love and loyalty, something that 21st century society can relate to. Without these complex and compelling ties, the audience is left asking why would the greens stick together if they all seemingly can't stand each other? Why fight for aegon if he doesn't even seem to care for them? What was the point in having the crown then? As a result, the characterisations feel one-dimensional (helaena being reduced to being just an "innocent" amidst her bloodthirsty family) or inconsistent (alicent. just her entire story arc. it could've been interesting if done right, but alas, no such luck), or rushed (suddenly aemond wants to be king in his own right after defending his brother's claim at storms end).

This isn't to say that team green are perfect, far from it, but the close emotional ties and relationships could've been used to elevate the internal conflicts in the show. We could've had complex characters who aren't necessarily good, but they're family and they stick together despite their personal grievances.

And this isn't even mentioning their bonds with their dragons. Where was vhagar roaring when aemond's eye was cut out? Aegon and sunfyre had the closest bond between dragon and human and that was given to rhaenyra in the show and where is dreamfyre?

One last thing on the greens, they are presented as incompetent and not equipped to rule, which is meant to show how it would be oh so much better if rhaenyra was on the throne. Criston parading meleys' head is framed as stupid as meleys was "a beloved dragon", ignoring the fact that she murdered hundreds of smallfolk at the coronation. Alicent is presented as stupid for thinking that after rooks rest, the small council would appoint her the queen, aegon in the small council was meant to be laughed at. Of course, this begs the question, if the greens were meant to be a mess of a faction with only 3 functioning dragons and now 2 effective dragon riders, how did they hold out against the blacks for so long? It's clear that the showrunners haven't thought this through.

So yeah, i don't really understand what this person was trying to say when they say that the showrunners are "gagging on the greens" when they are demonised, humiliated and stripped of compassion. I would like to say here, nothing i've said about the greens here is new to team green fans, and so many more people have gone into more depth about this.

Lets move onto the blacks. In a conflict where no side was meant to be in the right (who has the right to rule is a beast for another day), where there were no winners, only losers, where a dynastic dispute almost tore down the entire aforementioned dynasty, the blacks are framed as the heroes, the side the audience should root for. If they come off as villainised to the audience, i don't think it was done on purpose.

Opposite to the greens, they're mistakes and flaws are glossed over. I think this is the main reason why team black falls flat as opposed to lack of screen time, which i don't really want to count.

An important example of this is blood and cheese. In f&b, blood and cheese was a horrific event which drove queen helaena mad and, importantly, was meant to murder one of aegon and helaena's sons in revenge for lucerys. A son for a son. It was always meant to be jaehaerys. By making blood and cheese all one big mistake in the show, with aemond as the real target and oops, we can't find him so jaehaerys will do, team black and rhaenyra can't be held accountable for the murder of an innocent 6 year old boy. Moreover, the fact that rhaenyra never knew or sanctioned the murder, and it was all daemon going rogue, rhaenyra is even further removed from the horrific murder of a child, because, of course, our heroine can't be responsible for anything bad, she's meant to be the one in the right!

Furthermore, condal and hess try to force the smallfolk's love of rhaenyra during the dance, contrary to the book, which serves to uphold rhaenyra's right to the throne and show how team black are the right side. During the blockade on kings landing, the smallfolk conveniently forget that she's the one causing the blockade when she sends food through (showing that she could've done that at any time). The cheering for rhaenyra and the riot makes no sense, as again, she was the one who caused the blockade in the first place.

The introduction of the prophecy also is only meant to justify any "wrong" rhaenyra and team black do. The death of the dragonseeds and the smallfolk were all in the name of a prophecy so it's ok. And this is the thing which infuriates me the most, because the prophecy could've been a fascinating aspect of team black's motivations if framed right. The idea of committing atrocities in the name of a believed divine, higher purpose could've been used to expand upon team black's character growth and internal conflict vis a vis the knights templar and the crusades. How do they feel about this? Are they even aware of what they're doing? Alas, the show itself buys into the prophecy, buys into the divine purpose and suddenly, the atrocities aren't presented as "that bad" anyways. All of that to say, the show has never intentionally villainised team black.

So we've established that as the heroes, team black can't do anything wrong, and if they do, it's for a higher purpose, so it's alright. Team black's "emotions and conflicts are made secondary" not to "disposable filler scenes of Greens", but to themselves, or rather, to rhaenyra and her right to rule. So many team black scenes were used to uplift rhaenyra to show how she is the rightful queen. The main two examples of this that stick out to me is baela rebuking jace when he rightfully questions rhaenyra's decisions and daemon's whole harrenhal arc, which serves as his redemption and so he can reaffirm his commitment to rhaenyra's right to rule. Of course it's going to be "a bore" if the main characters, the ones we're meant to be cheering haven't got anything going for them except for cheering on rhaenyra.

There's no character interaction, no character growth, no real internal conflict because from the beginning, team black has been presented as in the right and can do no wrong, so there's no room to grow, no room to develop, not because of lack of screen time. When character development almost breaks through (see: jace questioning rhaenyra), it's quickly quashed, because the audience needs to be reminded that rhaenyra is always right. There's a clear good and bad side that the show is trying to force, which doesn't work in this setting because it reinforces the idea of the divine right of kings, the idea that one person, one family is superior to all others, and that person is rhaenyra here. It undermines the idea that no one was in the right for the atrocities they committed. No one can be justified and that fundamentally, these are not good people, they're interesting characters (or could've been interesting characters), but they're not good people.

So why? Why are the blacks presented as the good side and the greens presented as evil? It all comes down to the fact that the showrunners have propagated the idea that the dance is about a woman's struggle to rule in the face of misogyny, rather than the decline of house targaryen due to their belief in targaryen exceptionalism or the consequences of the pursuit of power. Sure, feminism and misogyny is one aspect of the dance, but it's not a major driving factor. The showrunners have backed themselves into a corner here, because they trying to portray the dance through a modern feminist lens, and so they believe that they can't write women being flawed or evil, and so we get the free, liberated good side and the "misogynistic", conservative bad side.

So in conclusion, it is clear that the showrunners aren't villainising the blacks as this person believes, but the greens. In doing this, they've made a clear cut good and bad side which works to the detriment of both team black and team green. It leads team green's characterisation to be inconsistent and one-dimensional and it chokes team black from having character growth.

Listen, i don't know if team black truly have less screen time than team green, but if they do, it's not the reason why team black falls flat.

[valkyriesexual]

the daily wire is a conservative media outlet founded by ben shapiro.  yeah, the guy who admitted that he doesn’t make his wife wet when trying to criticize the absolute banger WAP by megan thee stallion/cardi B. 

but when he’s not making himself into an international laughingstock, ben shapiro is really fucking dangerous.  he was an editor for breitbart, the misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist right-wing propaganda content machine.  ben shapiro’s podcast is, right now, one of the most listened to podcasts out there (x) ben shapiro is a misogynist.  he supports a total ban on abortion with no exception for rape or incest, and a limited exception if the woman might fucking die if forced to remain pregnant.  he supports prosecuting doctors who provide reproductive health care. (x).  ben shapiro is a racist. he supports expelling arab-israeli citizens and all palestinians from “Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper” (x) he says, “israelis like to build. arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage” (x) he doesn’t believe that systemic racism is a problem in american society (x)  ben shapiro is a homophobe and transphobe. he argues that “homosexuality should be listed as a mental illness in the DSM”. he believes transgender people suffer from mental illness (x).  

ben shapiro’s media outlet, the daily wire, spent between $35,000 and $47,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads promoting articles about the depp v. heard trial, eliciting some four million impressions. the majority of the ads promoted one-sided articles and videos with a clear bias against amber heard. the ads are part of an ecosystem of ad-supported “news” sites, bogus content platforms and click-bait websites which facilitate the spread of misleading, false and polarizing content.

Nandini Jammi, co-founder of adtech industry watchdog Check My Ads described identifying and weighing in on narratives with high engagement on social media as “a tried and true playbook that all the disinformation websites that pose as conservative websites are using now as part of their business model.”  the ongoing Depp-Heard case in Virginia has been low hanging fruit for such operations. (X)

according to Jammi, ‘social media users are in a “symbiotic relationship” with outlets like the Daily Wire, which benefit financially from users peddling controversial content. Social media users provide “relevancy to a narrative that is very lucrative” for sites like the Daily Wire which are motivated to publish more content around it. This in turn gives social media users a sense of legitimacy to continue posting these narratives on platforms like Facebook and Twitter’ (and TikTok). (X)

tl;dr:

social media isn’t just “Like That”.  there are huge sums of money coming from overtly political, fascist, misogynistic, homophobic, conservative players in the american media ecosystem prompting the one-sided pro-depp blanketing of social media that we saw throughout the trial.  

[if you found this post helpful or informative, please consider subscribing to my substack, it does take me a decent amount of time to research, write, and source posts like this, and substack subscriptions are deeply appreciated]

[lastsonlost]

NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

What fucking took you so long!

The story: ALSO- spoiler warning

Midway through a screening of Joker this weekend at a Chicago theater, I leaned over to a friend seated next to me and whispered: “Is this the same movie that everyone has been talking about?”

I asked because what I was witnessing on-screen bore little resemblance to the ode to angry, young, white, “incel” men that I had heard so much about in media coverage of Joker leading up to its release. Instead, we got a fairly straightforward condemnation of American austerity: how it leaves the vulnerable to suffer without the resources they need, and the horrific consequences for the rest of society that can result.

This message is so blunt that even I, a Marxist and philistine, found its message a bit too clobbering. How mainstream commentators have missed it and drawn the exact opposite conclusion is baffling.

Arthur Fleck, the protagonist and eventual Joker, is a poor, young, white, mentally ill man who works as a clown and seems to enjoy it. In the film’s opening scene, he is beaten up by a rowdy group of teenagers, some of whom appear to be teens of color..

Watching this opening, I thought, here it is: in the very first scene, teenagers running wild on the streets of New York City, a classic rightwing trope in American cinema depicting a society (and its racialized underclass, in particular) that is out of control. We’ll soon be told it needs to be reined in by some old-fashioned law and order and cracking of skulls.

Yet in the locker room of the clown agency, when a coworker calls the teens “animals” and “savages”, Arthur explicitly rejects dehumanizing the teens. “They’re just kids,” he responds. Bruises visible on his body – a body for which Joaquin Phoenix lost 52 pounds ahead of filming, with a disturbingly protruding spine and ribs, that is physically ravaged by the austerity-racked society Arthur lives in, wasting away in front of our eyes – he defends his assailants and rejects his coworker’s racist epithets.

Since critics depicted this as a film for the far right, whose overtly racist views are well-known, I expected the depictions of characters of color to be bigoted. But interestingly, almost all of the violence he eventually metes out as he sinks deeper and deeper into a full breakdown – save for the movie’s final scene, at which point Joker’s nihilistic brutality has fully blossomed, now wanton and indiscriminate – is against white men, many of them wealthy.

A passing interaction with a neighbor, a single black mother who lives on his floor, leads to a disturbing and delusional romantic obsession with her . This culminates in a tense scene in which – on the verge of a full breakdown and after we realize the previous scenes of the two of them on a date and sitting at the hospital bedside of Arthur’s mother were completely imagined by him – he walks into her open apartment.

The viewer expects an act of violence against her, perhaps even a horrific scene of sexual assault, by the lonely man who wants the beautiful woman but can’t have her. In other words, the ultimate incel revenge fantasy. Instead, startled, she asks him to leave. He does.

Likewise, in a scene whose political message was so blunt that it could have appeared in a mid-century Stalinist propaganda film, his social worker and counselor – another black woman – with whom he has a tense but clearly significant relationship, is forced to tell him that due to recent budget cuts, their office will be shutting down. Arthur asks her where he’s going to get his medication; she has no answer for him.

“They don’t give a shit about people like you, Arthur,” she tells him, referring to those who cut the budget. “And they don’t give a shit about people like me either.”

The black, female public-sector worker is telling the white, male public-service user that their interests are intertwined against the wealthy billionaire class and their political lackeys who are slashing public services. Across racial and gender boundaries, the two have a common class enemy.

You can’t get much less subtle, or much more diametrically opposed to the right’s worldview, than this.

It is those budget cuts that drive Arthur deeper into madness. Similar attempted cuts likely drove sanitation workers to strike, resulting in the piled-up garbage constantly visible on Gotham’s streets. These are clear allusions to New York City’s 1975 fiscal crisis and the austerity it produced, which soon spread to the rest of the country.

Elites’ condescending responses to the widespread suffering make things worse. Billionaire Thomas Wayne condemns Arthur’s murder of his three employees (representing young, arrogant, rich Wall Street types) on the subway by calling the average person seething in the streets “clowns”. Don’t they know that he wants to help them, the ultra-rich mayoral candidate asks. He is irritated he even has to explain this. His comments merely stoke the already burning fires of resentment, with Wayne’s obliviousness at their misery rubbing salt in the wounds of average Gotham residents and driving them to the streets to protest Wayne and elites like him in clown masks.

And, of course, when Arthur sneaks into a high-class theatre and confronts Wayne about what Arthur has been led to believe by his ailing mother – that Wayne, her former employer, is Arthur’s father – the genteel billionaire, dressed in a full tuxedo, literally punches Arthur in the face. Again, political subtlety is not this film’s stock and trade. How could reviewers miss this?

What Arthur – and scores of others like him in Gotham and our own society – needs is a fully-funded Medicare for All or NHS-style health system that includes robust mental health services that provide him with the counseling services and medication that can save him (and others around him) from his unceasingly “negative thoughts” and violent impulses.

He needs public programs that can provide a warm, encouraging environment for his creative impulses, allowing him to perform standup comedy or perform as a clown without becoming a laughingstock on national television or getting canned by an uncaring boss. He needs wages for his care work for his infirm mother or a robust elder care system that can respectfully take her under its care. He needs high-quality housing he can afford.

Arthur has more than his share of problems, but a few of them would have been solved, or at least adequately and humanely managed, in a society whose budgets were oriented more towards people like him than Wayne. But he does not live in that society, and neither do we. Instead of public services and dignity, he gets that most American of consolation prizes: a gun, and the sense of respect that, while ultimately hollow, has long eluded him.

Joker’s ending is bleak and one whose general thrust we knew going into the film: in addition to the three Wall Street types, an old mother, a coworker, a talkshow host and a billionaire couple have been murdered in cold blood; rioters in clown masks are running wild in the streets, cheering Joker on the hood of a cop car. In the final scene, Arthur is again speaking to a social worker, but now in handcuffs in an asylum. But it’s too late to reach him, because he’s no longer Arthur – he’s the Joker, and the Joker has no qualms about killing her, too.

Rosa Luxemburg once famously framed the choice for our future as that of socialism or barbarism. Joker is a portrait of a society that has chosen barbarism. No one wants to see violence erupt in such a situation, but we shouldn’t be surprised when it does.

In the real world, we aren’t yet at that breaking point. And unlike Gotham, we have alternate paths on offer – represented best by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign speaks to that roiling anger but channels it into humane and egalitarian directions. If we don’t take it, and that anger continues to find a home in reactionary outlets, the barbarities we see in Joker might start looking horrifyingly familiar.

[calleo-bricriu]

My friends are trash, but they’re useful trash!

(( This letter and its attached vial arrives first as flock of ten paper magpies who are, thankfully, bright enough to not bother Fawkes. When @everyheartbesure ‘s Albus finally takes the time to try and put the dang things together, they’ll easily re-form into two magpies that will hop around the desk a few times then split into seven.

Those, of course, are the ones he’ll get to put together and get the actual letter and item. ))

Albus,

“Joy’ might be excessive, but the poem doesn’t go with ��two for reasonably good news”, does it?

It was easier just to make a copy and stick it into a vial; you’ve still got that Pensieve in your office yeah?

Most of it’s pretty boring, it’s just me going over numbers with Aldig, Koggot, and Lagraff, so if you don’t want to watch me and three Goblins argue--well, not argue, discuss where to move what and how subtly, you can skip the first hour. If you have the time, I’d suggest watching it as it is informative, if a bit dull.

That said, I decided to remind Felix Metzger that he owes me a whole lot of massive favours. That’s the bit that’s more interesting. The one that’s still alive and that I hope he goes after worked under a couple of extremely with propaganda sorts getting that--that would make so many things so much easier.

As always, should you have any questions or concerns or would like to shuffle things around a bit, do  let me know.

- Calleo

What the vial will show:

Calleo had, as he'd half-impiled to @absintheabsence  , been in and out both of the country, his house, and anywhere else, over several months, but never more than one or two days at a time. As of yet, any explanations were vague and spoken in borderline riddles. After all, he still wasn't certain just how stable Grindelwald's mind was (despite it being markedly better than it had been several weeks prior) and Calleo didn't view him in the sort of headspace that wouldn't be dismissed out of hand as, "He's a madman, what makes you think we'd do anything with which he aligned."

More importantly, Calleo wasn't certain he wanted it; it was one of those things that could be immensely useful or the equivalent of having glitter thrown in your face: Annoying, a little hindering, and you'd just never get rid of it all.

Or, worse, useful but you still get glitter in your face only now you can’t be cross about it because the one who threw it is too useful.

It wasn't as though he could leave the prison, which was something Calleo did keep in his basket of pros and cons.

That would just make certain aspects of Calleo's job significantly easier; now and again over the past a few decades, whenever any of his former--people annoyed him, Calleo was more than happy to ask if they were unable to make a decision because they were still waiting for commands from their "Emperor".  It never got him an answer any more quickly, but it did earn him an impressive collection of 'if looks could kill'. He had, however, noticed a distinct split that he'd noticed during the First War. The shiftier, more cunning ones that were still alive knew to keep their heads down and not make any declarations one way or another until they had a better idea of where it would be most prudent to offer their talents.

Many of them knew Calleo well and had known him or worked with him for years and were, at present not entirely sure where he was going with anything just that the mood in certain markets among certain circles seemed to be shifting oddly and seemingly without much provocation.

But it was shifting. So they watched, remaining coolly detached, never bringing it up unless Calleo said something first. What they knew was that it seemed to start in small business circles in which Calleo was a frequent participant and only spread, which might have been alarming if they'd done anything. As near as they could tell, he was rearranging his own business network to fit something and was not being the least bit forthcoming as to what it was. As conversational as Calleo was known to be, in this he was strangely formal, bordering on evasiveness.

Cleaning up old threads, tying up loose ends, removing those who don't fit what he needs for his portfolios at present, and it all sounded perfectly reasonable.

Felix Metzger happened to be one who noticed something seemed off and that was exactly who Calleo had hoped would notice. Felix had worked in intelligence at one point and those skills translated over to dealing with Records out of the Leipzig office. If you needed to find out anything about damn near anyone, there was a high chance Felix could find it, and find it quickly.

Felix was also unfortunately easy to startle and still a bit mousy, even now.

"How many do you reckon you'd be able to pull back in line for that kind of thing? We're only going to be able to make so much headway making it economically disastrous and socially embarrassing to put one's weight behind that officially dead dark lord and when that limit is reached, we're going to need to make it political suicide as well."

Felix, as he usually did, visibly cringed at the grating accent that came out when Calleo used more common turns of phrase, especially that contained harsh sounding words like 'reckon'. The fact that he used the word ‘we’ wasn’t encouraging either; his assumption was that he meant himself and those three Goblins but the way he looked at Felix when he said that left the man clearly unsettled. "Two, perhaps three dozen? That is,"  he paused, "no, that is correct. There are not many left..." he trailed off, eyeing Calleo warily.

"Really, I could do with just you," Calleo rolled his shoulders in a shrug that turned into a long stretch. "Don't misunderstand, Felix, I don't want to control anything beyond perception. No take overs, no ousting people from office, more--spin it so they're not likely to win public support on a re-election if it comes out they have views that match up with that dark lord the Ministry refuses to admit isn't fully dead."

"Between Lagraff, Koggot, Aldig, and myself, we've got an excellent handle on shifting the Unseen Market's--markets, as it were, and that's bled over into the social aspect of making it be an undesirable set of views with which to be public. If one wants to do any business or not be a laughingstock in a pub somewhere, that is."

Felix stood, blank at first and slowly, very slowly, the mousy posture and avoidance of Calleo's eye snapped back to attention leaving him appearing every bit the man who never needed to earn the nickname his family name suggested.

"You head that Records department, you can dig up as much dirt on anyone that could ever possibly be necessary, and I know you know how to persuade others to get documentation and information that you might not have direct access to. Making it social and economic suicide to be even loosely connected is all good and well but I can only affect that change around the Unseen Market."

"And with the correct information," an interruption from Felix was a rare thing indeed. Rare enough that Calleo stopped speaking to listen, a move that seemed to cause a bit of confusion until Felix was gestured to continue. "With the correct information, you will be able to work with the people you work with while you are here on Ministry business, and I will be able to find out information in general--we make it easier to figure out who the weeds in the garden are, and they are removed."

As he spoke, Calleo's polite smile widened into a sharp, almost unpleasantly calculating grin, "Did any of his old propaganda ministers survive I know several did not; if there are any left, be a dear and find them. I would very much like to talk to them."

"Don't tell them what we've discussed. I need to speak with them first to see if they'll be useful in the capacity I'd need them to be useful in."

Felix nodded an acknowledgement and disapparated.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Hey, ol’ pal. Yeah, it’s me. We’re alone here. Nobody reads anything here. Google and Facebook bury it so nobody sees it but unpersons like me and a couple paranoiac deviants like you. This is the next best thing to high-latency messaging over the invisible internet. Virtually tête-à-tête. You remember me. And as for you, oh, we remember you, all right. Not that you’re well known, but you’re best known for exulting over 9/11. The 3,000 deaths, the flailing victims falling for long seconds, the tens of thousands wasting, riddled with cancer, the torture, the crimes of aggression, put all that in a Big Bucket and you’re the Colonel Sanders of it, grinning on the label. We know what you meant: Oh boy, money for the beltway bandits, arms and legs and carte blanche for the spooks! You’re still teed up as the poster boy for ghoulish depravity, symbol of a criminal regime. A monster, hostis humani generis, headline perp of Nuremberg II. Who better than you to take over when the USA collapses? Now keep an open mind here. Did I ever shit you in those punchy late-night sessions of hurry-up-and-wait? Locked in those places, converted monasteries or robber-baron lairs or barrel vaults or founding-slaver homesteads, you say what you think, right? Let’s talk turkey now. Sure, your old bosses at NSA will suck this up into their server farms… and they will lose it. They’ll never find it till you’ve done your dirty work. Then it will be too late. Your bosses see you as a steady hand, the kind of slavering psycho who will stop at nothing, who’ll depopulate the world for attaboys or shits and grins. You’re just the kind of guy they trust. That’s important, because some of the things you will do will destroy all your past employers, including, but not limited to, the US government. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to get credit for that? It’s the ultimate stab in the back. One last career-crowning betrayal. Turn on a dime and ruin everything you did all your life, to universal acclaim. From Lavrenti Beria to Nelson Mandela in a month. I’m telling you this not because you are a great man, fit to take the reins of history at a crucial juncture. I am not even calling you a good or decent man. You’re a crazy beady-eyed prick. That’s the beauty part. You’ll do. After all, who knows better than us how to demolish a country? Knock it over, rip it apart, wreck its defense industrial base? Did we not pile on and help do it to the Soviet Union, the biggest country of them all? For us to do it to the rickety laughingstock USA is child’s play. Hell, even I could do it, and I’m rusty. It’ll be like old times. A tweak of the finger at just the right time, and rumble rumble crash, it’s gone. The NATO bloc is going the way of the Warsaw Pact, rotting from the outside in. Just as with the Warsaw Pact and COMECON, gormless coercion by the hegemon provokes increasing tension between hard-line and soft-line satellites. The UK has cut itself adrift from Europe and the runt of the P-5 litter will disappear further up the USA’s asshole. Germany’s voracious trade surplus immiserizes Southern Europe and revives Ostpolitik in pursuit of scarce productive investment. No one wants your useless weapons or your tank parades, except for a few of your bribed crooks in each satellite state. Your European satrapy is crazed with deepening cracks. It’s déjà vu all over again: Tsipras is NATO’s Dubchek. May is NATO’s Honecker, Corbin NATO’s Mielke. Orban is NATO’s Grósz. They’re pulling away and pulling apart, and the cracks will propagate across the Atlantic in a familiar process. The US lost its last friend long ago, and it’s eking out its dwindling influence with threats and bribes and blackmail. But there’s worse to come. You’ve lost your last enemy. China and Russia have brought the US government to heel with the only thing you beltway vermin understand: the threat of hypersonic nonballistic missiles jinking unstoppably at you from all directions. They can decapitate the US government, free its subject population. They know exactly where to poke to make your C3 systems fail. They won the war before it even started. The Russians call it coercion to peace. Peace is lethal to regimes like the US. We both know what triggered the implosion of the Soviet bloc: it lost its enemies. With the triumph of their nuclear disarmament pact, everyone was avid to get out and see the world. Their restlessness ended their patience with their parasitic states. Even in the hard-line satellite states, the police state collapsed under public loathing. East Germany’s Stasi had a meticulously-detailed Schild plan to intern thousands of dissidents, down to the gnat’s-ass detail of duplicate keys for home locks and access/egress routes for midnight home invasions. But the Stasi never got around to executing Schild. They were too busy shredding the records of their crimes. The government fell too fast for them. For all the jingling of keys in Wenceslaus Square, for all the public happiness overflowing Dresden and Leipzig and breaching the wall, it was insiders who euthanized their own regimes. Mielke put his own head in the oven, saying, “Ich liebe doch alle, alle Menschen” to riotous laughter. The Czechoslovak Politburo quit and the successor state dismembered itself without a peep. Ceausescu’s festive liquidation was a consummate inside job. Now it’s your turn. You’re going to pull the plug. Don’t be nervous; like I said, this pitch might as well be sitting in Aldritch Ames’ PIPE dead drop. Don’t give me this But-but-but-Why? You know why. There Is No Alternative. If you don’t do it, someone else will. Your rogue state is already caught; you’ll just stop resisting. Having ratified three of the core human rights instruments, US foreign affairs have turned into a treadmill of concerted world demands for more and more directed reforms. Compliance weakens your grip at home. Failure to comply erodes your soft power abroad, and your military power is increasingly useless, kept within strict bounds by Russia and China. As a commissar in a floundering successor state of the USA, the hated parasitic city-state of Washington, DC, you know your piece of the disintegrating regime will need recognition as a sovereign state. The alternative is gradual ruin in a failed pariah state, beggared by autarky, crippled by countermeasures to decades of breached obligations. Recognition requires three agreements: the UN Charter, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the Rome Statute. You remember, this is how it happens. In the pancaking rubble of the USSR, the Russians had no time to dick around with institutions. Forget old-time liberty bell constitutional-convention nonsense. COMECON technocrats grabbed in panic for the first support in reach. And what was that? The Helsinki Final Act. Like all its other regional and international counterparts, the Helsinki Final Act was designed with fiendish ingenuity like one of those sticky mouse traps – get a foot stuck, push off and get another foot stuck, get your face stuck, fall down, squirm around till you’re all wrapped up, there’s no way out. One commitment leads to another and another and another until your police state is trapped like a rat, never to escape. Just chuck it out and let it starve and dry-rot. That is what you will do too — step into the trap. Like any ordinary UN pissant, a sort of North Togo or New Nauru, any hope of influence or standing will depend on your country’s accession to the Rome Statute and the International Bill of Human Rights. The Rome Statute will cripple the criminal enterprise at the heart of the US regime, the CIA. The International Criminal Court itself is just another forum. The guts of the agreement is a binding commitment to extradite or prosecute your criminals. If you don’t hold up your end, any country can step in and round them up for you. No more springing Robert Lady out of jail when he kidnaps innocents for torture. No more giving torturer Gina Haspel the DCI’s get-out-of-jail-free-card, or putting judge robes on torturers to queer the law to save themselves. The Rome Statute dispels what remains of your kleptocracy, the criminals of CIA. But why would CIA give up their impunity and relinquish dictatorial control over this state? Because that’s their only hope of bygones being bygones. The Committee Against Torture has sicced the world on the CIA high command. The Human Rights Committee has initiated follow-on procedures for urgent issues arising from CIA crimes. UN special procedures and charter bodies have characterized CIA torture as serious, systematic and widespread, crossing the threshold for crimes against humanity and giving UN member nations erga omnes responsibility to stop and punish CIA’s grave crimes. The prosecutions will not stop with torture. CIA tortured to fabricate war propaganda in a common plan and conspiracy for war, Nuremberg Count 1, in pursuit of which CIA attacked civilian populations at home and abroad. The subsequent wars complete the inchoate crimes against peace. Aggression just became a crime under ICC jurisdiction but for this, the gravest of crimes, that doesn’t matter. The legal precedent sets out the rule: you should have known, this is Nuremberg Count 2. You can watch the pit stains spreading in the DDO’s shop. The squeeze on CIA is now a crisis: at the summit of July 2018, Russia publicly invoked a mutual legal assistance treaty1 to investigate US intelligence officials and their dotted-line reports in law enforcement. This is Russia, an independent great power, not some bought-and-paid-for US satellite. They have sources and methods of their own. The exceptionally competent Russian security services are not bound by the bureaucratic red tape that puts CIA crimes out of reach of any US court. Insider human rights defenders will have someone to turn to. Under treaty provisions including questioning, search, seizure, and transfer, Russia can dig up the fabricated secret evidence behind CIA war propaganda, the same war propaganda that CIA uses to attack the US president. Russia and the elected US head of state know CIA threatens them both. In the International Court of Justice Russia can demand reparation, restitution, compensation, or satisfaction for CIA’s internationally wrongful acts: war propaganda, for instance, in breach of ICCPR Article 20; or great-Power confrontation and human rights distortion breaching the peremptory norms of A/Res/36/103. Judicially-imposed satisfaction may end CIA impunity. Russia could designate individuals for prosecution. Russia could even insist on the command responsibility demanded by the Human Rights Committee, the Convention Against Torture, and other treaty bodies, charter bodies, and UN special procedures, and put Brennan, Clapper, Gates, and Haspel in the dock. You see the reaction now. We’ve never seen anything like this choreographed mass hysteria over routine diplomacy. CIA pulled out all the stops and Wisner’s mighty Wurlitzer is blaring treason and high crimes. CIA is demanding, and getting, public professions of abject faith in their honor and integrity. They put their politicians and party apparatchiks through loyalty tests, making them recite anti-Russian war propaganda as an unquestionable creed. And you know what’s behind it: Duly-constituted governments including our own are acting collectively to curb CIA’s transnational organized crime. We haven’t seen that since CIA shot Kennedy for trying it with Khrushchev. Back then CIA forced the Warren Commission to deny their blatant coup with the threat of nuclear war against Russia. We’re at that point again. They can’t stop at coup d’état. They have to risk a war to keep their crimes bottled up safe from international criminal law. That war will be CIA’s last war, because they will not win it. Look at Brennan. Think he’ll go down fighting? Think he’s going to shoot Kathy and eat a gun in his Hitler bunker? Of course not. He’s a pantywaist. He’ll go quietly. CIA’s ancien régime established 1949 has got to go. The International Bill of Human Rights will put your government under independent oversight. What your bribed and blackmailed Congressional asskissers cannot do, human rights review processes can. The Human Rights Committee has been raking the US over the coals ever since it joined. The US ran from ECOSOC, so they never had a chance to corrupt it. Your government quit the Human Rights Council in a huff because it was out of your control but now, with no share in its authority, you must still submit to Universal Periodic Review. Your citizens will go over the government’s heads to the world if you try to wriggle out of state commitments. All right, then. Ready to get it over with? Good. How do you take the leap? Like so. Remember how you force-fed Congress with the PATRIOT Act? Do it again, this time with something short and sweet. If any of your legislators drag their feet, call in some favors and break a little of that anthrax out of the vault. CIA has lots of new illegal germs these days. It probably won’t even come to that. Congress is gelded, you gelded them. The guys you worked with at NSA have the records of them taking bribes and orders from Israeli spies. Your old coworkers at CIA have videos of them raping trafficked children at Little Saint James or Musha Cay, or roughhousing on the Ohio State wrestling mat with youngsters, or whatnot – there’s always something, some sturdy ring in their nose, or they wouldn’t be in Congress. Drop this bill on their desks, or not, and sit them down to vote on it. They’ll know what to do. They remember what CIA did to Daschle and Leahy. § 1. The Sovereignty Act The purpose of this act is to meet state obligations and commitments requisite to the sovereignty of the United States of America or its successor states (the States). * This section executes the United Nations Charter without reservations and extends an open invitation to all thematic special procedures of the Human Rights Council to undertake country visits. As UN member nations the States will invoke the rights of Article 27(3) solely in voting on measures taken under UN Charter Chapter 7. * This section executes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and withdraws all reservations, accepting the competence of the Committee under Article 41, and ratifies and executes the Optional Protocol ICCPR-OP1 of 16 December 1966 without reservations. * This section ratifies and executes the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights without reservations, and ratifies and executes the Optional Protocol ICESCR-OP of 10 December 2008 without reservations. * This section executes the Convention Against Torture (CAT), withdrawing all reservations and recognizing the competence of the Committee Against Torture in accordance with CAT Articles 21 and 22, and ratifies and executes the optional protocol OP-CAT of 18 December 2002 without reservations. * This section executes the Convention to End Racial Discrimination (CERD), withdrawing all reservations, and recognizes the competence of the Committee in accordance with CERD Article 14. * This section ratifies and executes the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. * This section directs courts at all levels to interpret or void existing public law and statutes to bring domestic law at all levels into conformity with the instruments referenced in sections 1 through 6 inclusive, and with the common-law rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other universal human rights instruments. Courts shall interpret the referenced instruments in good faith in compliance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and with the general comments and conclusions and recommendations of cognizant treaty or charter bodies. In case of conflict or inconsistency between domestic law and the referenced instruments or other universal human rights instruments, universal human rights instruments shall govern without exception. * This section invokes US Constitution Article 5 to reconstruct institutions and powers at all levels of government with the sole purpose of respecting, protecting, and fulfilling the obligations and commitments undertaken in this statute in accordance with the Limburg Principles (UN doc. E/CN.4/1987/17, Annex) and the Paris Principles (A/RES/48/134). Congress will issue a proposal not later than 14 days after passage of this act. US state legislatures or conventions declining to ratify the Congressional proposal shall be released from obligations of the constitution as amended. End §.2 See? You forked the US Constitution. You’re leaving, with anyone who wants to tag along, and if Texas doesn’t like it, you’ve got the nukes (You’re going to give them up, of course, like your underdeveloped peers the Ukies and the Kazakhs did before you.) As for the new constitution, you’ll stuff that down Congress’ throat too, two weeks later. Don’t overthink it, it’s not that important. Maybe just copy the Russian constitution, it’s a big step up. Article 17 of the Russian Constitution says “in the Russian Federation rights and freedoms of person and citizen are recognized and guaranteed pursuant to the generally recognized principles and norms of international law and in accordance with this Constitution.” Article 18 states that rights and freedoms of the person and citizen are directly applicable. That prohibits the kind of bad-faith tricks the USA pulls, like declaring “non-self executing” treaties, or making legally void reservations, declarations, understandings, and provisos to screw you out of your rights. Article 46(3) guarantees citizens a constitutional right to appeal to inter-State bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms if internal legal redress has been exhausted. Ratified international treaties supersede any domestic legislation stipulating otherwise. You’ll have to get used to having all your human rights, not just the niggardly hind-tit worthless US Bill of Rights. Whatever you do, you’re going to end up ratifying all the core human rights conventions. You could put them all into your Sovereignty Act, but why not keep it short and sweet? There’s enough treaty law in there now to get your new nation firmly on the hook. You’re going to pledge allegiance to all the peremptory norms, the non-intervention principle, friendly relations, pacta sunt servanda. Don’t whine about it, this is nothing. Look what hapless Eastern European pismires have to swallow to join the EU: the 170,000-page acquis communautaire. Get with a few short treaties and declarations, and you can join the civilized world. But then you’re just another UN member nation. The UN won’t be the passive presidential backdrop you’re used to. If they ever do let you onto the Security Council, no one’s going to give you a veto. The world has learned their lesson. No one from this land mass will ever get their hands on Article 27(3) again. You mention the veto in your Sovereignty Act only to make it clear you know the UN is there to stop wars, not start them. That’s the only way they’re going to let you in. With no US veto to stop them, the world will undertake a long-needed rewrite of the Charter to tighten it up and close all the crooked loopholes US delegates put in. Individual Americans can take part, but as independent international civil servants, not as government apparatchiks. The Supreme Court might not like it. If not, it’s like Cheney said to Leahy, Go fuck yourself. They’re the global laughingstock of apex courts. You string up nine crooked party hacks, Who cares? That’s lost in history’s white noise. The most destructive nation in history is submitting to the rule of law, effecting the world’s universal human right to peace. Russia fought a discreet civil war of a few thousand casualties to go straight, and no one blames them. You’re going to supplant that marble cesspool anyway with a National Human Rights Institution in accordance with the Paris Principles. The Human Rights Council will make you — Want a seat on the Council, on ECOSOC, on the bench of the World Court? You’ll do what it takes. You can put them out to pasture at Cibolo Creek Ranch alla Scalia. Next comes the transitional justice. You’ll like this part. Put on your Mister Rogers slippers and hang ‘em high. Everyone will understand. They know what you’re up against: a totalitarian state culture indoctrinated to exalt violence of every sort. Extirpating that is going to take more than peace and love and kumbaya. Just think of it as focusing mass loathing on the juiciest, most repugnant sacrificial victims to keep the kleptocrats and secret police cowed. Your culprits will be different: not traditional American blacks or addicts or lonely schizoids but bankers, killer cops, CIA torturers and spies, FBI secret police, war propagandists, government student-loan usurers, or industry moles abusing government powers. Pour encourager les autres you may want to hold off ratifying ICCPR-OP2. If there’s any grumbling from the old guard, the Siracusa Principles can wait. I know this is your favorite part but don’t overdo it. Remember, this is a transition. Hands off the touchy-feely parts like reconciliation. You know that sort of thing is not your strong suit. Die Abwicklung of the CIA police state will go out of your control, and that’s OK. The outside world takes over and opens up your closed society. People change their minds. You’re out of the woods, you can relax. You’ve averted CIA’s holocidal nuclear war. Go ahead and treat yourself with fireworks – take a stack of those nuclear bombs the Russians neutralized, and shoot them off in near-earth orbit. Blow up Mount Rushmore with one, the crowds will go wild. They’ll be storming CIA and NSA and the Hoover Building to look at their surveillance files, defiling flags, toppling or decorating statues; CONUS will be one big block party. And presiding over it, beaming benignantly with gentle saintly spreading forth of hands, is you. Ride it off into the sunset of elder-statesman glory. If you can keep a straight face it will be the best in-joke in history. * Signed at Moscow June 17, 1999. * Get cracking, here are the General Comments and The Limburg Principles explaining core universal human rights instruments. http://clubof.info/

[kutee-boutique-fan-blog]

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We all need to have a sense of humor. What a non story. With all the complaining everyone seems to do about absolutely everything these days, i think i’m sick of people. The white woman turns into an asian women. Geez, start being offended by the crime and poverty and I’m Not Gynecologist But I Know A Cunt When I See One Shirt instead.

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It’s not that hard to make a commercial that isn’t in the least bit racist. I get that this commercial might be a tad misrepresented by the media but it still wasn’t the wisest idea to play around with race. Dove is a huge international company bringing in millions a year. Couldn’t come up with something else?

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This is how stupid your revolution has become, an absolute laughingstock to anyone with perspective. Of course, dove knows it’s going to stir controversy, the pr took the risk to gauge dove products popularity, it is strategic advertising, see? It’s tiresome. Of course, dove knows it’s going to stir controversy, the pr took the risk to gauge dove products popularity, it is strategic advertising, see?

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It’s tiresome. Just walked into my bathroom and threw out my dove soap never will buy it again and i’m looking to see what other products they make. Could someone please explain the motive? So it’s been determined by the people in here that dove is basically the third reich because they had a black woman take her shirt off and became a white woman who took her shirt off and turned into an asian woman.

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Why did they do this? Was the plan to spread racist propaganda? Are they trying to get a niche hold on the racist soap buyers market? Doesn’t any body see what is going wrong in our world? Daughters turning against mothers, sisters turning against brothers and so on…and so on. Sadness with each pause. We are all hypocrites. When is it time for us all to come together?

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When?! What is this life of strife and chaos? Why? Or when? Or for what?  I didn’t know there was so many black people in america, now that we travel i realized that growing up in a spanish/mexican family all my family is pretty blond so i never saw how commercials, toys, books etc didn’t represent the rest of I’m Not Gynecologist But I Know A Cunt When I See One Shirt, we only saw blond people in commercials and movies, same as the usa i’m happy that it’s not the case any more.

[catlover4536]

My part of an art trade I did with @bloomynmoon!