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earaercircular · 1 year ago

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Recycling and reuse of construction and demolition waste is a huge opportunity for the circular economy

Dismantling of rock wool panels in the Zwartzustervest hospital.

The construction sector is responsible for around 11 percent of national CO2 emissions and accounts for almost 50 percent of the material demand in the Netherlands, according to figures from the Het Groene Brein science network[1]. It is therefore logical that making construction more sustainable is essential for the success of our climate ambitions. 'Waste-to-product' company Renewi[2] and construction company Heijmans[3] see enormous potential for the circular economy.

“We are building houses in the Netherlands more and more energy-efficiently. More and more solar panels are being installed on roofs and our homes are increasingly better insulated. This progress means that the greatest environmental pressure of the built environment shifts: from the use of a building to the use of its materials,” says Thijs Huijsmans, senior circular construction advisor at Heijmans. “We have an enormous challenge ahead of us to keep all these materials in the cycle for much longer. Heijmans' mission is to create a healthy living environment. The use of circular materials fits in seamlessly with this. This saves CO2 and is therefore better for the earth, i.e. our living environment."

Collaboration with Renewi

Huijsmans is part of a team at Heijmans that is responsible for sustainability in the long term. “We place a vista. Not only from our own capabilities, but precisely with a view to collaboration with other parties. The entire chain is needed to achieve the sustainability challenge.”

One of those parties is waste recycler Renewi. Because various waste streams are released during both the construction and demolition of buildings. And that is a valuable source of raw materials for Renewi. “Such a collaboration starts from 'waste care': waste is released during Heijmans' activities and we come into the picture as a partner for collection,” says Marc den Hartog, director of Renewi Netherlands. “But our collaboration has continued to develop. Together we looked at how the construction sector can deal with these waste flows much more consciously. What does this waste actually consist of? Which flows can we separate? And what needs to happen if we want to reuse these waste flows as raw materials?”

Insight into waste

Heijmans receives a monthly report from Renewi in which all waste flows from all construction and demolition projects are documented. This way, Heijmans immediately sees which waste stands out and what it needs to pay attention to. “A good example is rock wool,” says Huijsmans. “We purchase this through wholesalers who receive it from the stone wool producer. Stone wool is a product with a significant environmental impact. With Renewi we have now ensured that rock wool ends up in a separate container after demolition. And Renewi in turn has agreements with the producer who takes back the material. For example, old rock wool is reprocessed in the production process to increase the share of secondary raw materials in products. This way you are working with multiple parties in the chain to complete the circle.”

Human factor

Examining a specific material or waste stream is only part of the success. “The human factor is at least as important,” says Den Hartog. “Ultimately, it is the people on the construction site who make our recycling and reuse objectives possible by separating waste at source. That is why we organise interventions and make instructions visually clear. We even work with behavioural scientists to see together how we can nudge people in the right direction.”

Huijsmans emphasizes what a challenge this sometimes is. “It is not rare for four different languages to be spoken on a construction site. Heijmans wants to be CO2 neutral, but to achieve this you must be able to explain the importance of waste separation to everyone. That is very complex. We try to keep people sharp with the help of toolbox sessions[4]."

Influencing suppliers

Another challenge is reducing waste supplied via suppliers. Many building materials are supplied in plastic, in all kinds of different colours and thicknesses. “As Heijmans, we have agreed that we will only accept packaging material that is recyclable or reusable,” says Huijsmans. This means, for example, that plastics are minimally printed with texts and logos or that packaging is made of biological material. “In the beginning we feared that such a statement would cost us money, because we could only contact a few suppliers. But in practice you notice that most suppliers adapt quite quickly. Then it is no longer an issue at all.”

Heijmans has now even stipulated in its terms and conditions that suppliers must respect the builder's sustainability strategy and actively contribute to it. “We see that more and more other builders are also asking this from suppliers,” says Huijsmans. “It takes some courage in the beginning, but ultimately you make the sector more sustainable together.”

Outflow is at least as important as inflow

When making the built environment more sustainable, a lot of attention is paid to the inflow of materials needed on the construction site. But Huijsmans sees it as his job to make the executive flow, for example in demolition projects, just as important. Huijsmans: “You naturally want to reuse all the materials that flow from a project as high-quality as possible. But there is actually one more step: first and foremost, the goal should be to simply leave materials in the building. In other words: is demolition even necessary in the first place?”

Degrowth in construction

There are all sorts of developments going on in construction that are making the sector more sustainable and limiting waste. Think of timber construction, prefab and demountable houses, the materials passport[5] and steel produced with green hydrogen. Huijsmans: “But innovations alone will not help us. Ultimately, we need to move towards a form of degrowth and less consumption, including in construction.”

“There is not one solution,” Den Hartog agrees. According to him, it is becoming increasingly relevant to include calculation tools such as CO2 pricing and true pricing in all facets of the economy[6]. “The point is that we allocate all costs associated with materials, including those associated with a negative impact on the environment. This makes the decision whether to always use new materials or to opt for secondary raw materials a much more conscious choice.”

Role of government

Den Hartog also sees an important role for the government in this. “The government, and in this case the Central Government Real Estate Agency, is also the largest real estate company in the Netherlands. They can play an exemplary role by making circularity the standard in their tenders and thus give a huge boost to demand. In addition, the government is able to determine the rules of the game, for example by requiring the use of secondary raw materials in new building materials. Finally, the quality of recycled material is no longer inferior to that of brand new materials and this demand is stimulated by further innovation. There is a huge opportunity for the Netherlands to be a leader in circular construction.”[7]

Source

Teun Schröder, Recycling en hergebruik van bouw- en sloopafval is een enorme kans voor de circulaire economie, in: Change Inc, 12-09-2023, https://www.change.inc/circulaire-economie/recycling-en-hergebruik-van-bouw-en-sloopafval-is-een-enorme-kans-voor-de-circulaire-economie-40392

[1] Het Groene Brein was founded on November 6, 2012 after a request from the most innovative, sustainable companies. These frontrunners, united in the De Groene Zaak business network, increasingly encountered questions in the implementation of their sustainability strategy for which no solution existed (yet) in the market. Questions that went further than turning on an LED lamp or separating your waste. These frontrunners hypothesized that scientists – the people with the most innovative knowledge in existence – might have the answer. With the help of DuurzaamDoor, Het Groene Brein was launched in 2012. https://hetgroenebrein.nl/over-ons/

[2] Read also: https://earaercircular.tumblr.com/post/659378159147433984/processing-150000-tonnes-of-flood-waste-will-take

[3] Koninklijke Heijmans N.V., located in Rosmalen, is a Dutch listed construction company. After the sale of activities in Belgium and Germany in 2016 and 2017, the company is only active in the Dutch market.

[4] workshops

[5] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/722179599996534784/towards-a-circular-and-more-sustainable-fashion?source=share

[6] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/667949635074146304/sustainability-becomes-a-discipline-in-every?source=share & https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/655856832509788160/true-price-the-solution-for-food-prices-that-are?source=share

#demolition waste #circular building #circular economy

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robertreich · 5 years ago

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The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can't.

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency, and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail.

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life. The system is rigged. But we can fix it. Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none.

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it -- as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same. As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs.

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers.

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism -- socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths.

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.” He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion -- roughly one hundred times the size of his company's investment program for America’s poor cities.

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 -- a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders -- not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business -- to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders -- ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value -- such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt -- and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined.

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur -- in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves -- the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

#video #videos #oligarchy #American oligarchy

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beingwhollyhuman · 3 years ago

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"Working-class Black and white people have long understood that we are natural allies, and the owning class has done everything in their power to invent and promote racist ideas to divide us. Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 occurred when Black and white indentured servants took up arms against the landed gentry of the Virginia House of Burgesses. This interracial militia captured Jamestown and burned it to the ground. Word of the rebellion spread far and wide, and several more uprisings ensued. The planter elite were alarmed and deeply fearful of alliance between their workers, so they enacted laws that permanently enslaved Virginians of African descent and gave poor white indentured servants new rights and status. The white rebels were pardoned and the Black rebels were punished, further cementing the racial divide.

Despite violent attacks by elite forces, poor whites and Blacks continued to organize together. They formed the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, an interracial alliance demanding their fair share of subsidies and profits, and improved working conditions. Harrison George of the Communist Party remarked in 1932, 'The impoverished farmers are on the march. We cannot order them to retreat, even if we desired.'

Our generation must carry on this march. White supremacy erodes our humanity and is our common enemy. The white elite created white supremacy, a 'historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.' White supremacy infuses all aspects of society including our history, culture, politics, economics, and entire social fabric, producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. What can be created, can be destroyed. White people need to be active in the dismantling of white supremacy." -Leah Penniman, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land

#soul fire farm #farming while black #resources

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kny111 · 5 years ago

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Apocalyptic novelist Max Brooks is something of an expert on planning for pandemics and other disasters. The author, whose books include World War Z, Germ Warfare and the forthcoming Devolution, has toured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has reviewed government response plans related to various emergency situations — all in the course of research.

"We have a network in place that we as taxpayers have been funding to get us ready for something just like this," Brooks says of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he adds, "we have been disastrously slow and disorganized from Day 1."

Brooks says the notion that the U.S. government was blindsided by the pandemic is "an onion of layered lies."

"What could have happened when this virus exploded — even when Wuhan was locked down — is we could have put the word out," he says. "The government could have put the word out to ramp up emergency supplies to get them ready and then have an information strategy in place."

Instead, Brooks says, President Trump was slow to acknowledge the virus as a real threat. And thus far, the president has resisted using the Defense Production Act to force private companies to manufacture masks, gloves and other essential supplies in the fight against the coronavirus. Many government task forces that plan for disasters have yet to be activated in this crisis.

White House Not Using Defense Powers To Boost Medical Supplies

"One of the biggest problems we're facing now is panic. You see it in the stock market. You see it in panic buying," he says. "All of this panic could have been prevented. ... If the president had been working since January to get the organs of government ready for this, we as citizens could have been calmed down knowing that the people that we trust to protect us are doing that."

Interview highlights

On the task forces that plan for situations like this

Max Brooks has researched disaster preparedness for his novels and has lectured on the subject at the U.S. Naval War College. He has also been a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His new book, Devolution, will be published May 2020. Michelle Kholos/Penguin Random House

I can tell you that the federal government has multiple layers of disaster preparedness who are always training, always planning, always preparing, regardless of how much their budget gets cut. I have toured the CDC, and I've seen all their plans. I have witnessed what was called a "vibrant response." This is the homeland nuclear attack scenario, which was a coordination of FEMA, the Army, the National Guard, state and local officials, all working together in a massive war game to prepare us for a nuke. I have also witnessed what was called a "hurricane rehearsal of concept drill," where not only did the same players come in, but also bringing in our allies from Canada and Mexico. So I have seen that we have countless dedicated professionals who think about this constantly and they're ready to go. And they have not been activated.

On why these task forces haven't been activated yet

There is no excuse not to mobilize the full forces of the federal government right now and to centralize the response.

This all has to come from the federal government. This is why we have big government. Politically, you can argue about the role of big government in everyday society, but this is not every day. This is an emergency. The entire reason that we have these networks is when the bells start ringing — and they have not been activated. I don't know. I'm not sitting in the White House. I don't know whether the president is being lied to, whether he is holding onto a political ideology. I honestly don't know. But there is no excuse not to mobilize the full forces of the federal government right now and to centralize the response.

On how the Defense Production Act works when mobilized properly

What is supposed to happen is the federal government has to activate the Defense Production Act immediately. Now, what Defense Production Act does is it allows the federal government to step in and aggressively force the private sector to produce what we need. And what is so critical in this is timing. Because you can't simply build factories from scratch; what you can do is identify a supply chain in order to make it work.

Novelist Max Brooks On Doomsday, Dyslexia And Growing Up With Hollywood Parents

For example, if New York needs rubber gloves, New York cannot simply build rubber glove factories overnight. However, there might be a rubber glove factory in Ohio that could produce it, but they might not have the latex. So therefore, the Defense Production Act allows the federal government to go to the condom factory in Missouri and say, "Listen, you have barrels of latex we need. We are requisitioning those. We are giving them to the rubber glove factory in Ohio. And then we are transporting the finished rubber gloves to New York." That's how it is supposed to work.

On how Trump warns about nationalizing private industry — but that's not how it works

President Trump is spinning some sort of tale about, I don't know, the federal government — black helicopters coming in and taking over factories. That's not how it works at all. What happens is the federal government has the network to identify where the production chain is and how to help the private sector work through this, because the private sector doesn't know.

And as an example, I have a World War II rifle made by the Smith Corona typewriter company. Smith Corona worked with the federal government to then partner up with the Winchester company, to then share resources and to share tools and talent to then produce the rifles that we needed. That's how it works. It's not some sort of KGB coming in and taking over everything. It is guidance and streamlining. And only the federal government has the experience to know how to do that.

On what the U.S. military would do in a pandemic

I can tell you that the military has a vast transportation network here in the United States that is ready to go. We don't have to put truck drivers or private individuals at risk, because the military is already trained to do this. And I've watched them do this. The military spent years working out the legal framework of how to transport goods from one place to another around this country, because it's not like Afghanistan, where the army builds a road and then they own the road. The army has had to go through a tremendous amount of training and adaptation to work within state and local governments to make sure everything is done legally and safe without infringing on our rights. And they have done this. The Army's logistics corps can deliver anything that we need anywhere in this country within a matter of hours or days.

When it comes to sheer massive might, getting stuff done, getting stuff produced and getting stuff moved from Point A to Point B, there is no greater organ in the world than the United States military. We did it in World War II. We've done it all over the world. We can do this now. This is the thing the military is good at, and we need to let them do that.

On how the pandemic is revealing flaws in our social structure

I think there are massive gaps in our systems that are being exposed right now, which, by the way, this is not news to the experts. Anybody who works in these fields could have told you years ago that we were vulnerable to this. It's going to rip through our prisons. It's going to rip through our homeless population. God willing, it doesn't rip through our nursing homes. But what no one is talking about, what terrifies me, what keeps me up at night are the secondary casualties that will occur because of hospital overflow. What I mean is we're only talking about now how many people are going to die if the coronavirus really rips through our country. What is not being talked about enough or what needs to be talked about are the people who are still going to die of cancer, of accidents, of other diseases, because they simply can't get into the hospitals because the hospitals are choked with coronavirus patients.

On how we share some of the blame for this mismanagement as voters in a democracy

In China, every single death will be laid directly at the feet of the Chinese Communist Party. They have all the power; therefore, they take all the responsibility. When we look back at this, we — all of us individual citizens — are going to have to take a measure of personal responsibility, because we are the government. If we don't like our leaders, we shouldn't have put them there. And as much as we would love to blame this historically incompetent captain of our ship of state, we have allowed the ship to rust underneath us. It's not just President Trump's fault that institutions like the CDC have been defunded for years. It's not just President Trump's fault that we have allowed anti-vaxxers to spread misinformation throughout this country. It's not just President Trump's fault that we are continuing to build a society in support of a tech world that is based on comfort and not on resilience. We as voters and we as taxpayers must accept our share of the blame.

There is a massive amount of blame that will be laid at the feet of Donald Trump and his enablers. And when this is all over, when the dead are buried and the sick are healed, there will be a reckoning. But there were systemic issues way before Donald Trump. When Donald Trump was a carnival barker on a reality show, we as a people, as a nation, were dismantling the systems that were put in place to keep us safe. And we need to look at that damage, because the one thing we don't want to do is assume that when Donald Trump goes away, that the problems will go with him.

On the difference between panic and preparation

Panic never helps. Panic implies that you lose your mind, and that in a war — even a war against a microscopic enemy — gives aid and comfort to the enemy. When you panic, you don't think rationally, and in times of crisis, rational thought is the greatest weapon you could possibly have. So preparing, No. 1, means clearing your mind and thinking about what you have to do. It means making a list of what you need to buy, prioritizing what needs to come first, thinking about how you're going to take care of the people around you. That is preparing. Panicking is freaking out and getting in a fistfight in the grocery store over bottled water when you don't even need the water, when the tap is already running. That's panic.

I think right now we have to be so careful about who we listen to, because panic can spread much faster than a virus. And I think in addition to social distancing, we have to practice good fact hygiene. What I mean is we have to be careful what we listen to, what we take in — just as if it were a virus. And we have to be careful also what we put back out, as if we were spreading the virus. So we cannot pass along rumors. We cannot pass along misinformation. We must be critically careful not to scare people into doing irrational and dangerous things. So we need to listen to experts, the CDC, Dr. Fauci [director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], the World Health Organization, our local public health officials. These are the front-line soldiers that are doing everything to keep us safe and are literally putting their lives on the line. These are the people we need to listen to. What we cannot listen to is random facts on the Internet supposedly, things that people are passing along to us, conspiracy theories. And I'm very sorry to say this, but I think that everything our president says at this point must be fact-checked.

#covid-19 #sars cov 2 #information #info #education #authors #health #cdc #virology #viruses #virus #biology #max brooks #articles #stuff im reading

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drew-22s · 4 years ago

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Drug Trafficking

There was a time in life when drug trafficking did not exist, and it was simple, normal traveling going on in the world. But everyone in the world knows the United States has a major unquenchable thirst for illegal drugs coming and going. Drug trafficking is a major issue globally going from country to country across the world. Some may ask, ‘What is Drug Trafficking’? As the United Nations observe, “drug trafficking is a global illicit trade involving the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws” (UNODC, para 1). Many agencies such as DEA, Border Patrol tend to want to stop the illegal transportation of drugs but if you were to ask any of them, they know their job is not as easy as many people may think. I’m sure many of them can vouch and say it wasn’t always like this but now they have to figure out the stopping of this issue. Drug trafficking can be done in many different ways now, mainly through airplanes, tunnels, or even maybe over sea. Its different ways for different areas.

Gustavo Solis says” drug smuggling along the border is like a balloon, if you squeeze one part, the air simply shifts to another” (Drug smuggling, and the endless battle to stop it). We could talk about this issue in South America or Afghanistan but that would be no use to us in the United States. In the United States for at least two decades, different seizures of drugs varying from marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and maybe some pills like opioids. Our neighboring country, Mexico, plays a big role in the drug trafficking coming into our country. Lauren Villa shared “the top five districts for drug trafficking in 2016 were: Western District of Texas, Southern District of Texas, District of Arizona, Southern District of California, District of New Mexico” (Trafficking Statistics, 2021). This is a lot of ground to cover when trying to find a way to stop the trafficking from happening. Most of DEA and Border Patrols have no way of figuring out how to stop this issue, they just offer temporary support that has not been effective for years. People outside of the agencies and outside of the drug trafficking world, we must understand this is also considered a productive business and the operations continue to evolve and grow. Monitoring of these smuggling techniques are hard and time consuming. Villa also shared “according to the DEA, when shipments of drugs are trafficked into the U.S. in kilogram or pound-sized blocks, they are usually taken to an apartment or house where a person responsible for bagging up the drugs breaks them into smaller quantities using blenders, coffee grinders, food processors, or diluents” (Trafficking Statistics, 2021). Reports by UNODC “drug traffickers may have laundered around $1.6 trillion, or 2.7 per cent of global GDP, 2009”. With drug trafficking unfortunately comes illicit flows of cash or other illicit financial funds generated by an organized crime. Despite the efforts of trafficking drugs, it is important to know if someone you love has a drug addiction, it is extremely important to find your love one help immediately.

The harms that come from drug trafficking always almost involve excessive violence by the cartels but of course people have seen shows involving drugs and the trafficking of drugs and also the laundering of money, but no one experiences more than the Border patrol especially in San Diego. Solis stated “during the 2016 fiscal year, Border Patrol agents in San Diego confiscated nearly 83,000 kilograms of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin from the three ports of entry in the area. The next closest border sector in terms of drug seizures was Laredo, Texas, which covers twice as much land and where agents confiscated 10,000 fewer kilograms of drugs, according to Customs and Boarder Protection data” (Drug smuggling, and the endless battle to stop it). Once fences were built in San Diego to try to fix the issue of trafficking over the border, agents noticed more pangas which are small, open fishing boats that run on outboard motors abandoned on the beach. Also, when fences were being built San Diego had issues with building of tunnels. Solis stated “while the majority of smuggling attempts happen in the ports of entry, the biggest loads of drugs enter San Diego through tunnels. The ones equipped with rails can carry packages as big as 35 tons. It can take more than a million dollars to build one of these tunnels, but the drug smuggling organization can get a return on its investment after two successful shipments” (Drug smuggling, and the endless battle to stop it).

The research shows that nothing has really been effective when discussing and searching for ideas to stop the process of drug trafficking. When you think just about the ocean perspective, Coast Guard or DEA or Border Patrol agents there aren’t enough patrol over the entire sea surrounding The United States. It’s difficult but I am sure it’s also difficult to avoid corruption amongst the team in law enforcement. A lot of money is being made through this harming process and a lot of law enforcement can be paid off to turn away or not report certain crimes. Within the drug trafficking organization, a lot of the process would not work without the help of some corrupted law enforcement. Although not a lot of agents and law members participate with the drug process, enough do to make a difference. Maybe the thought should be to get the corruption out and that might help with dismantling of the drug trafficking organization as a whole and take many cartels out that are involved. Lauren Villa shared recent statistics on drug trafficking, “In 2016, the majority (84.9%) of traffickers were male with an average age of 36. Roughly 70% of all offenders were U.S. citizens, and almost half (49.4%) had little or no prior criminal history. The DEA puts much of its focus on trafficking from Mexican drug cartels because not only do they control a large share of the drug distribution within the U.S. Between 2011 and 2015, there was an almost50% increase in the number of people sentenced for crimes related to heroin trafficking in the U.S. (Trafficking Statistics).

#stopdrugs #stopdrugtraffickin #do better

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workersolidarity · 5 years ago

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[Today's Worker's Unity March: Burning of an effigy of Cop as a Pig in uniform and another police uniform in front of the statue of Andrew Jackson in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana 9/27/19 7pm.]

Tonight I marched for Socialism.

I marched for various Socialist and Social causes more generally including Worker's Rights, police and prison abolition, LGBTQ causes and more. The march was organized by a coalition of groups including the New Orleans Worker's Group, the New Orleans People's Assembly, New Orleans Hospitality Workers, and other local, regional and national groups fighting for Immigrant Rights, disolution of our borders, and the various struggles our Immigrant Community is faced with daily among other things. The march was also dedicated to all the incredibly talented Street Musicians in our beautiful city. Our amazing musicians who represent the purist expression of New Orleans culture. This is a culture so rich and unique that it draws in millions of people and millions in tax revenue to our city every year. Even though these musicians are an integral part of the exotic experience of New Orleans culture, they are still being driven out by the gentrification of our city. The rich Bourgeois scum moving into our city suck up the profits WE earn, then turn around and avoid paying THEIR SHARE in taxes, and then profoundly drive up our rents. To top it off, these Bourgeois scumbags have a habit of calling the fucking pigs on these incredibly talented and hard working musicians (conveniently only the Black ones) who've been in the city long before themselves, and will surely be here long after they're gone. Our March was also in Solidarity with our wonderful New Orleans Hospitality Workers! Women and men who cater seemingly endlessly to the Bourgeoisie and their freeloading grown children day in and day out. Hospitality workers display unparalleled patience in dealing with these rich, drunk assholes, and they do it daily for disgustingly low wages, no health insurance or any other benefits, unreliable hours, and Bosses free to fire workers on a whim. These supercilious fucks treat our hospitality workers like human trash. Our Comrades toil away in horrible conditions, living with constant job insecurity. They invest their blood, sweat and tears into the restaurants, stores and hotels in which they work. Many put up with intolerable practices like illegal wage theft, pervasive sexism, sexual harassment and even sexual assaults that go unreported for fear of losing their jobs. Yet, despite working extra hours without overtime pay (a common practice in the city) and other indecencies, these workers at the end of the day can no longer afford to live in their own city. How fucked up is that?

Tonight we also Marched for and stand in Solidarity with our Comrades in the LGBTQ Community, Comrades who suffer these indecencies often to extremes our straight, cis-gendered Comrades would NEVER tolerate. We love you all. Your battle is our battle. Your blood spilled is our blood spilled. Your struggle is our struggle, and we'll gladly stand by your side, and die by your side fighting the injustices you suffer. Our hearts are with you Comrades. ♥️

Of course we also Marched in Solidarity with our incredibly resilient but ever struggling Black Community. I stand in awe of our Black community that rebuilt after Katrina despite the Local and State Government's sickening efforts to permanently prevent black communities from rebuilding; using the immense power of the State to exclude Black Communities, often using zoning regulations designed to be nearly impossible to comply with in order to exclude Black and Brown people from the years long rebuilding effort. These efforts coincided with the firing of all public school teachers in Orleans Parish, a majority of whom were Black and Unionized. They then proceeded to Privatize the entire public school system in Orleans Parish, leading it to become the first school district in the United States to completely privatize the public school system and turning public education in New Orleans into a grand Neoliberal experiment with Black and Brown children playing the part of lab rat. The effect this all had on teacher's wages has been astounding. Some teachers are now making less than $10.00 an hour to educate the majority black students. Most of the public school teachers who were fired after Hurricane Katrina never got their jobs back, leading to thousands of Black educators forced to choose between early retirement, unemployment, or moving out of the city entirely. The city's newly empowered Charter Schools recruited (mostly white) recent college graduates, many of them without ANY teaching experience at all! Just hundreds of deeply inexperienced, completely unqualified, non-unionized "educators" paid starvation wages.

And then of course there is our Immigrant Community. These Comrades give so much back to the rest of us, words could never do them justice. Our Immigrant Communities that do so much to enrich our culture and add so much to our city that we could never repay them for it in a thousand years. And yet, Louisiana is on the frontline of the race to incarcerate, profit off and deport them back to violence filled, corrupt countries with few, if any, opportunities. Despite the fact that their work, their farms, and even their tax dollars form the backbone of American society, this is how to Bourgeoisie choose to thank their hard work. US Imperialism, regional domination big oil and big ag industries and other forms of profiteering has so decimated the countries from which many immigrants seek to escape, that it has become nearly impossible, and downright dangerous to raise a family in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatamala. The US empire has spent centuries controlling these country's governments for the benefit of the US Bourgeoisie in the name of Capital. Throughout our shared history, the US has been busily overturning those governments we've deemed unsatisfactory to the needs of our mega-corporations, with our CIA sponsoring Right-Wing Military Dictatorships, Fascist Regime's, and death squads. And yet we have the audacity to act surprised when these families seek to escape these auxiliaries for corporate control we call "Independent" governments? They deserve our welcome, our hospitality, and our love. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our working class Comrades.

Maybe one of the most important issues on which to take a stand is that of the history and struggle of indiginous peoples in the Americas. Tonight we proudly march in Solidarity with our indigenous Communities. Indiginous people have endured genocidal slaughter, torture, starvation, and some of the most horrid political, cultural, and educational oppression imaginable. Over the course of centuries of being dominated by the colonization and Imperialism of European Capitalist States, it's unquestionable that the indiginous community lived through the kind of systematic slaughter that only a handful of cultures worldwide have ever experienced. We are not unaware of who's land it is on which we protest tonight. The struggle for indiginous rights, indiginous emancipation, and the continued suffering of indiginous peoples at the hands of their colonizers is a crime of unimaginable proportion that weighs heavily on our minds tonight. Your struggle will no longer be ignored as long as we have air in our lungs to make ourselves heard! We will never forget your struggle. And when the Revolution we seek comes and we can stand together on the piles of Bourgeoisie bones, begins the moment when all the oppressed people of this nation can finally begin the healing process that is so desperately needed. This will be the very moment we begin to dismantle the farce that is the republic of the United States of America. We will dismantle this empire of the rich and our very first governing action will be to return the land stolen so long ago by the Imperial European colonizers to the Indiginous people's it was stolen from. The oppressed will become the oppressor and never again will we allow the interests of a few to dominate the workers of the world again.

That is the future we march for today.

All of these different groups, with different histories, suffering from different forms of the same Capitalist oppression, are all united on this night as ONE Working Class. We are the Proletariat! We clean your toilets, cut your grass, grow your food, make your dinner, take out your trash, fix your cars, play the music you listen to; we are your designated driver, your waitress, your bar tender, your street cleaners; we fix your roofs, educate your children, check you out at the store, deliver your Amazon purchases. WE ARE THE WORKING CLASS AND WE OUTNUMBER THE RULING CLASS 10'000 TO 1. WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALL OUR COMRADES, WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE. WE MUST REJECT THE IDENTITIES GIVEN TO US BY RULING CLASS AND THE BOSSES. WE MUST FIGHT BACK AGAINST ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION, INCLUDING RACISM, SEXISM, GENDER BIAS, XENOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA AND ALL THE TOOLS THE CAPITALISTS USE TO KEEP US DIVIDED SO WE CAN NEVER BECOME A THREAT TO THEIR PROFITS. WE MUST ORGANIZE, MARCH, DEMONSTRATE, PROTEST, USE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE WE CAN THINK OF TO BREAK THE GRIP OF THE CAPITALISTS AND THEIR STATE APPARATUS. WE MUST SMASH THIS STATE APPARATUS THEY'VE BUILT SOLELY FOR THE PURPOSE OF VIOLENTLY ENFORCING OUR CLASS POSITIONS!!!

The time has come for workers to claim the mantle of those Revolutionaries who came before us, and to destroy the Capitalist system and the ruling class once and for all.

Viva La Revolucion!

Viva La Liberte!

Viva La egalite!

Viva La Socialisme!

Viva La Communiste!

Da zdravstvuyet bol'sheviki!

Solidarity to all my Comrades!

Tonight we march!

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revlyncox · 5 years ago

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Collective Responsibility

Unitarian Universalists can learn from the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur and its emphasis on collective responsibility. This sermon was delivered on October 6, 2019.

We are all Jonah sometimes. (Yes, that Jonah.) There are moments when we make choices that we know are not guided by truth or love or whatever leads us to act as our best selves. The experience of having insight into moral clarity and wandering in the opposite direction anyway is very common. That’s a human thing. Maybe we have a fish-belly experience to help us turn it around, maybe we make a change on our own, maybe a trusted friend tells us the truth. For as long as we live, there are opportunities to notice we’re going in the wrong direction and to turn around.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m Jonah at the end of the book. Sometimes, in the less compassionate part of my heart, I hope to witness negative consequences for people I disagree with. Sometimes the universe offers more forgiveness than I would offer if it were up to me. I’m not talking about situations where someone in a marginalized group is pressured to show forgiveness to someone in a privileged group, that is a whole other sermon. I’m talking mostly about petty disagreements that could be reconciled if the willingness were there. When I’m not my best self, I am sometimes like Jonah, and I pout when punishment is not forthcoming. This happens fairly regularly when I see people driving on the highway in an inconsiderate manner. Luckily, the eventual reconciliation of all beings with mercy, holiness, and love is not something I am in charge of, even though I have faith that it may be so at the end of time.

Letting go of grudges is something I struggle with, and I’m still working on it. For some people, letting go is a more complex process, and it’s not healthy or justice-oriented to rush, especially when it involves trauma or repeated and prolonged harm. Within in the realm of everyday forgiveness and reconciliation, I still struggle, I keep returning to the work, and I hope I’m going in the right direction. Meanwhile, the Book of Jonah reminds me that the universe contains more potential for growth, for change, for making amends, and for forgiveness than I am able to contain within myself at any one time. So the High Holidays gives me signs and reminders that every so often I need to turn around, to turn toward life.

There is a way in which the Book of Jonah is about the redemption of the Ninevites, and there is a way in which it is about the redemption of Jonah, the lesson that sometimes things are not all about him. It’s not about any one of us. The world isn’t about me, even though the ways I am privileged might lead me to think otherwise. Spiritual community is about our shared mission and shared strength, which means people don’t always get what they want. The demonstration about the plant that provided shade over Jonah’s head for one day was to put compassion in a larger context; the earth is so much larger than any one person can experience. There are sources of grace, and reasons for limits, that are beyond our knowing.

On the other hand, sometimes we are the Ninevites. Sometimes we’ve been participating in a society, going ahead with business as usual, not really conscious that the collective impact of our way of life could lead to disastrous consequences, not just for ourselves, but for our entire sphere of existence. For ancient people, large scale consequences may have been understood as Divine response. I don’t know if the story happened exactly that way, but I believe it’s true that we bear collective responsibility for some of the negative consequences have befallen our communities, our nation, and our world.

For me, this is a key point of resonance between the High Holidays prayers and Unitarian Universalism: the interdependent web. We know that what happens on any part of the web affects the rest. We know that we are connected to each other in proximity, to neighbors around the world, to the earth we share. We know that we are made of stardust, and that the whole universe of which we are a part moves together in a dance of gravity and matter and energy. Knowing that cause and effect are a complex network of responses, we as Unitarian Universalists have many opportunities to contemplate our call to community, our call to build coalitions, and our call to face the consequences of societal structures as one body.

This stark understanding that all of us are in this together, that the consequences of our societal choices will affect all of us, is part of the sentiment in the Aveinu Malkeinu, which we’ll hear after the sermon. Aveinu Malkeinu is a prayer of acknowledgement of collective responsibility, and most of all a prayer that disaster will be averted and we will have time to demonstrate a new way of being. It matters that people gather together in community for this prayer. High Holidays services are opportunities to acknowledge widespread harm, to anticipate shared consequences, and to pledge collective action to change. The prayer is addressed to a Higher Power, but all over the liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it’s clear that humans have responsibilities for creating and repairing the better world that we pray for. We face consequences together, we commit to change together. Maybe that’s a flavor of what the Ninevites did when presented with Jonah’s prophecy.

Aveinu Malkeinu isn’t the only prayer of collective responsibility in the Jewish liturgy. There are many. For instance, in the Ashmanu, the community recites a list of different transgressions, one for each letter of the alphabet. If you’re using an interpretive translation, the community might say we have Acted out of malice for the letter A, we have Backbitten for the letter B, on up to Z, we have lacked Zeal to struggle for our convictions. All of the examples are in the plural, things we have done. Even if I personally didn’t commit letter V for violence, I am part of a system that allows violence to occur, and I am here to support my neighbor who wants to turn aside from violence. No single person has committed every sin on the list, but we have all co-created a community structured such that these sins happen.

There is a quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a twentieth century theologian and civil rights activist, about this ethic of collective responsibility. He said, “…morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” (End quote)

Heschel had the Holocaust partially in mind when he said this. He was born in Poland in 1907. His mother was murdered by Nazis, and two of his sisters died in concentration camps. In Heschel’s understanding, some were guilty for the atrocities of the Second World War, but all were responsible for allowing the growth of the ideology that led to them, and for letting atrocities go on as far and as long as they did. The bystanders were also responsible.

Heschel is well known for applying the same ethic of social responsibility to the moral crises in America that he applied to the moral crises of Europe. He marched for African American civil rights, calling it praying with his feet. In a 1963 speech to a conference on Religion and Race, Heschel said:

“Race as a normative legal or political concept is capable of expanding to formidable dimensions. A mere thought, it extends to become a way of thinking, a highway of insolence, as well as a standard of values, overriding truth, justice, beauty. As a standard of values and behavior, race operates as a comprehensive doctrine, as racism. And racism is worse than idolatry. Racism is satanism, unmitigated evil.” (End quote)

Heschel’s point that, while some are guilty, all are responsible, explicitly included collective responsibility of white people for a culture of racism. Today we might frame the discussion in terms of white supremacy culture, of the systems of inequality that are baked into our legal codes, our public policies, our expectations of etiquette, and our economy. Some are guilty of knowingly creating terror and exploitation for people who are marginalized while creating advantages for people with privilege. All of us are responsible for dismantling that system.

This is just one example of our shared call to repair; the same goes for ecological repair, for justice for Transgender and gender non-conforming folks, for our health care system, for economic justice. Some are guilty, all are responsible. On Yom Kippur, I will be thinking not only of my personal confessions, but also about how we as communities and a society are collectively responsible for creating change, as the people of Nineveh took responsibility to create change together.

It’s not usually that easy for a truth-teller to come along and energize an entire population toward making amends and changing behavior to bring about justice and wholeness. We change on a smaller scale, convincing one congregation at a time, one legislator at a time, one movement at a time. We are constantly called to the work of repair. We know that the consequences we face are bigger than any one of us can change alone. We know that how we bind ourselves together in ethical, spiritual, and economic ways affects other beings on a larger scale than we can grasp. So repair, reconciliation, making amends, learning from our mistakes … these are ongoing projects. We hope to be guided in that continuous repair by the spirit of love.

Kindness, compassion, mercy are aspects of strength, and it is an ongoing project of renovation and rebuilding to infuse that strength into all our ways of being together. That’s one of the interpretations of Psalm 89, verse 3: Olam chesed yibaneh. You could translate that as, “the strength of kindness has been and shall be in the continuous process of being rebuilt.” In other words, a world shall be built from love.

There is a song based on Psalm 89:3, composed by Menachem Creditor. You might have heard it at a Jewish spiritual gathering or at a social justice protest. The “we” is a key word in this song. We build this world from love.

Olam chesed yibaneh, tai dai dai, tai dai dai, tai dai dai (x4)

I will build this world from love, tai dai dai, tai dai dai, tai dai dai

And you must build this world from love, tai dai dai, tai dai dai, tai dai dai

And if we build this world from love, tai dai dai, tai dai dai, tai dai dai

Then God will build this world from love, tai dai dai, tai dai dai, tai dai dai

Maybe there is a Higher Power who suffers with us and strengthens us and urges us toward justice and compassion. Maybe all of the Divinity that is currently in the world comes from human beings being their best selves. In either case, that which is sacred waits for us as humans to collectively take responsibility, to acknowledge our interdependence, to face up to brokenness, and to commit to repairs. May we do so with love, in love, and empowered by the spirit of love. So be it, blessed be, amen.

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fapangel · 5 years ago

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YOUR CUNT PRESIDICK GIVE 3000 TROOPS AND F15S FOR SAUDIS YET CANT LET 50 STAY FOR KURDS

There’s a big fucking difference between some rear-echelon guys sitting in air-conditioned offices and Patriot battery control vans sipping lattes and Special Forces operators stationed as human shields between two armies spoiling for a fight.

I’m actually planning a Big Effortpost about this soon; my first actual writing for this blog in a long, long time - but for now, consider what this guy has to say: https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1182718671237664768

This is exactly what the United States has done in countless places - the best example being South Korea. And for decades, the United States has largely dictated the foreign relations of states like that as the price of their patronage. Eventually, we had to compensate that patronage by tolerating unequal trade deals that disadvantaged our own domestic workers, and resulted in resentment towards our supposedly close allies - just ask anyone in my home state, home of the US auto industry, how they feel about Japanese and Korean automobiles destroying their livelihoods. These master-vassal alliance arrangements are the ones Trump is currently dismantling and re-setting on more equitable terms - which, in the long-run, will make for stronger alliances based on mutual interest, instead of arm-twisting ones held together mostly by the pressure of the Soviet Union (which no longer exists.)

Those Cold War thinkers still make up the majority of “The Blob,” the foreign-policy “establishment’ of thinkers that include the think tanks, the government bureaucracy, and the former bureaucrats who then go to work at think-tanks publishing papers that are read by the current bureaucrats. The master-vassal relationship is absolutely what they want to inflict on the Kurds; to turn Kurdistan into a permanent tool of US regional policy.

The establishment of a Greater Kurdistan - one extending from northern Iraq all the way to the east bank of the Euphrates - is Washington’s de-facto policy. We want the Kurds to have that land, because they’ve already got a nation (their shared ethnicity) to bind together their state, and they’re far less of a pain in the ass than pretty much every other government, ethnic group or loose socio-religious polity in the region.

... of course, that’s also supposed to be true of Turkey, as well - despite them invading a contested area (Cyprus) in what was essentially an attack on another NATO ally. And said NATO ally - Greece, the land of my ancestors - embarrassed NATO by falling under the control of a fascist fucking dictatorship for seven years in the late-sixties/early seventies. And the best part is, It was American meddling in favor of authoritarian governments (to combat the Communists) that helped that regime come to power - an American CIA agent was best pals with several of the colonels who’d later stage the coup!

I say to you, as a Greek-American well-educated by my elders in the trials of my bloodline and a fiercely loyal citizen of America: is this what you want for Kurdistan? The America of the Cold War did such things for pressing reasons, even if they weren’t right - in the contest of nukes, whoever loses the game of positioning loses everything (consider the Cuban Missile Crisis.) That era is past, but the elitist leadership class that still infests our government are full of people who would continue the crimes of the past, despite there no longer being any excuse for them. It took us a decade just to put Trump in office. It will take us a generation to remake our government entire.

I want Kurdistan to be truly free - and it will never be so if it doesn’t fight its own battles. You won’t fight like my grandfather’s generation had to; with antique weapons and whatever they could steal from the enemy. The Greeks received European aid to prop them up as a foil against the Turks for a long time, but much of it was privately collected and donated - nothing like the support in cash and arms the Kurds have received. The Kurds are going to bleed Turkey, especially since the President has indicated multiple times that our largess is not coming to an end; that the money and the weapons will continue to flow, even as we punish Turkey for their trouble-making. If the Kurds doubt that the favors of great powers always come with strings attached, they will doubt no more once Turkish F-16s start fading from the skies when America shuts off the deliveries of sundry engines and spare parts - to say nothing of the economic sanctions. America put the Turkish lira into freefall with sanctions in August of last year - all to get back one American held hostage by Ergodan. One American. Wars run on money, and nobody can doubt our power to dry Turkey’s coffers.

We have armed and enriched the Kurds and will soon disarm and beggar their enemies, the Turks - but Kurds must do the bleeding to secure Kurdistan’s future. It is truly incredible that the President of the United States would openly threaten our own treaty ally with possible war on behalf of people who’s state America doesn’t even officially recognize yet. He’s only raising the specter to drive the final point (”call us and mediate a deal before we make you wish you had,”) but even for Trump it is incredible to lift one’s shirt and flash his saber hilt at our own treaty ally. America is far from all-powerful, but it’s as close to a God on Earth as this wretched world is likely to see, and though Americans cannot bend Heaven, we can absolutely move Hell when we see fit.

We have given the Kurds as much opportunity and means as we can. Ergodan’s push against the Kurds is motivated by the demands of his own political survival - any setbacks in their Syrian operations, and the inevitable slow attrition the Kurds will inflict on their “border area” will all tell against Ergodan personally. By fighting their own battles, the Kurds can do what America cannot - humiliate and discredit Turkey’s flamboyant strongman. This is about teaching Turkey a lesson it must learn - that the Kurds can bloody their nose without America holding their hand, and America’s only recompense to Turkey will be laughter. But it’s about something more, too - the possibility of changing Turkey’s political trajectory for the foreseeable future by finishing off Ergodan’s last remaining bastion of credibility.

If America does this, then Kurds will only be seen as obedient pawns of a much bigger, much wealthier power, and Turkish resolve will only harden.

Kurds have won Kurdistan - for all our help, our advisers, our money, our weapons, our airstrikes, it was Kurds who carried bright steel into the smoke and flames of war. Now Kurds must secure Kurdistan. They might resent us, even hate us for what we do now. I don’t give a damn if they do - as long as Kurdistan is truly free.

Americans defend the right to keep and bear arms because they fear their own government. I suggest the Kurds consider that carefully.

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davidmann95 · 6 years ago

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Thoughts on Calvin Ellis?

Calvin Ellis is fascinating, because while I’ve said before that Superman having “the American Way” tacked on after the fact to his list of virtues doesn’t really work when creators are on a number of fronts hard-pressed to center his stories around that in the same way as Captain America, this Superman is built explicitly to reckon with that. He’s built in the idealized image of an incoming President at a moment of transformative change, only to stick around for that President in question to become more visible as a human with massive successes and horrible flaws, and then not be President at all. He’s Superman Plus, Superman ascendant and triumphant, the guy whose civilian identity works to make things better across the world while also President of an organization that defends the multiverse when wearing the cape. At the same time, he’s a Superman who lies to the American people on a scale Clark Kent never remotely approaches, a Superman who literally automates the business of representing and making decisions on behalf of the American people via Brainiac when he’s busy, a Superman who has to make decisions that will determine who lives and who dies. He’s a figure with different priorities and principles than Clark Kent even as his triumph over Superdoomsday clearly marks him as a ‘true’ Superman, and there’s diamond in that coal just waiting to be squeezed out. I’ve never been able to track down the quote, but I’m certain I once read Morrison mention that if he ever did any long-form Superman work again after Action Comics it was going to be with this guy, and that’s something I’d be fascinated by.

With all that said, something special under the cut!

So when Multiversity was still coming out…wow, four years ago, a few friends and I were really into Morrison’s proposition that these books could continue as ongoings, so we thought we’d come up with solicits for the individual titles, that I imagined would themselves ultimately come back together into another big event. We never finished them, but I did complete solicits for a year of President Superman adventures. Reproduced entirely unchanged from when I wrote them at 19 below, I also left in the commentary I tacked on to them.

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #1

· In thisoversized opening issue, 3 fantastic features!

· First, TheOrigin of Superman! See how an orphan of the stars became Earth’s greatest hero,as both Superman, and United States President Calvin Ellis!

· Bearwitness to the secrets of Fort Superman! From the Gates to the Underworld,where dwell the specters of Krypton’s greatest criminals, to First Dog Vathlo’sDen, to the varieties of Kryptonite–ranging from mind-bending Sapphire todeadly Emerald–all the secrets are revealed!

· And in thedepths of the distant future, locked in battle with the Time Trapper, the 31stcenturies’ Super-Hero Squad look back on the formation of the mighty JusticeLeague International, and its greatest conflicts, crises and triumphs, for theclue to how to save their own history!

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #2

· America’sgreatest threat is at hand, and with a heavy heart President Ellis must rallythe nation against…Superman?!

· How has itcome to this? It’s the Son of Krypton versus the military might of the USA!

· Could theWhite House Science Fair hold the key to it all?

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #3

· CalvinEllis returns to his old hometown of Smallville to personally congratulate oldfriend of the family Professor Phineas Potter on his newly developed energysource, in order to raise national awareness of its possibilities.

· But whenthe Professor is missing and his assistant lies dead, it’s up to the Man ofDiamond to solve the crime, the roots of which may stretch into Superman’s ownyouth!

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #4

· Beforetaking his oath of office, Calvin Ellis first made his name defending theinnocent and the helpless as a lawyer in Metropolis.

· He’ll haveto put his legal expertise to the test when the Har-ZǶl abduct him to try anddefend their own commander-in-chief at his trial, when not a single individualon their planet is willing to do so!

· If hedoesn’t find a way to exonerate their leader in spite of the mass of evidence,then by the laws of the Har-ZǶl the defender of the guilty must share theirfate! As time and hope run out, will Superman compromise his principles, evento save his own life?

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #5

· A bountyhas been placed on President Ellis’ head, and the supervillains of the worldare eager to claim the prize!

· Even if hesurvives the attacks, how will Superman keep his other identity concealed inthe face of increasingly impossible escapes from doom?

· He may havebigger things to worry about when Metallo enters the Kill-Race!

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #6

· After yearsof the U.N. attempting outreach, the Anti-World Htrea sends out an ambassadorto Earth—their greatest champion, Bizarro.

· But inspite of Superman’s best efforts, the communication gap is left unbridged, andwar is at hand.

· CanSuperman save two worlds when both regard him as a traitor? Even if he does,there may be no way to salvage the situation.

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #7

· Operatingin secret from the bowels of Fort Superman, Brainiac intends to utilize itsplanet-wide neural network to seize control of the entirety of human society!

· Supermanmust battle against his own security systems in order to reprogram hisonce-faithful ally!

· But whenBrainiac states it is merely acting to better the world as its master has, doesCal truly have a defense?

· As Brainiacis offline, it’s up to Courtney to cover for the President in his absence!

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #8

· Seekingadvice in the wake of Brainiac’s attack, Superman journeys into the Multiverse!

· OnEarth-30, Kalel meets that worlds own President Superman, ruler of aplanet-wide U.S.S.R.!

· Looking outonto an Earth perfected by Kal-L, what conclusions might Superman come toregarding his own role?

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #9

· Underorders from the Guardians of Oa, Green Lantern John Stewart seizes control ofQurac!

· Theirsuperhuman weapons program declared an unconscionable risk to Earth’sburgeoning meta population, Stewart is tasked with dismantling the nation andestablishing a new government to the Guardian’s specifications, even if itbrings him into conflict with his fellow J.L.I. members!

· As the restof the team prepares for battle, Superman must wonder: is this wrong? And evenif so, can he challenge the authority of the Guardians of the Universe?

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #10

· In the wakeof GL’s occupation, Qurac’s former state-sponsored super team Onslaughtterrorizes the nation in the name of its absentee leaders, while theprovisional government accuses the U.S. as culpable for the actions of itscitizen.

· With afull-fledged war a possibility, President Ellis wonders if Superman can weighin in the public eye.

· He may haveto, if he’s to counter the pernicious influence of lobbyist and arms industrydarling Steven Flashman!

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #11

· Warbeckons.

· Long ago,Superman swore never to take a life.

· Must CalvinEllis break that vow in the face of his oath to serve as Commander-In-Chief,for what may be an unjust conflict?

PRESIDENT SUPERMAN #12

· “Mybeautiful children…I’m sorry. Sorry for the compromises, the mistakes, the arrogance. So sorry for this world you have inheritedfrom me. You deserved better. All I have left to give is the truth.”

· Somewhereamidst the ruined landscape of lost America, tarnished forever when the truthof its last President was revealed, the last hope for the future is dying.

· Even if thefinal commanders of the Super-Society somehow manage to repeal time itself, canCal remain in his station, knowing what his mere presence may bring down on hisbeloved adopted world? Must Superman die to save the Earth? Or Calvin Ellis?

· From thedepths of time…might the Super-Hero Squad offer another option?

Commentary

1: I figured if this was real, anorigin issue would be necessary, as Cal’s only shown up before a very smallhandful of times. Aside from the most obvious references (the only really evenslightly ‘off’ thing is the changes for the classification of Kryptonite), theSuper-Hero Squad are indeed E-23’s Legion. I figured by the 31stcentury the full extent of Superman’s role in the 21st is publicknowledge, and that the team that assembled in honor of him might be a touchmore regimented and formalized, hence the slightly more militaristic title. TheJLI has no connection to the bwa-ha-ha team, the title’s simply a reflection ofthe more multicultural makeup of the group here.

2: The culprit here is RubyKryptonite (Kalel’s equivalent to Red). I initially thought of having a newnecklace from Courtney be the source, but reconsidered having her one majorrole be as a source for jewelry and causer of problems—I think I gave her abetter role in issue 7, though if this were to continue on I’d try and give hermore to work with. So I recalibrated for the Science Fair, recalling an oldstory where some child amateur geologist shows Superman his mineral collection,including a Red K sample that causes problems. Really, this all just springsfrom the whole “Crazy Superman versus his sane, human other identity” conflicthaving much higher stakes here.

3: Based off the base of an ideafor Superman I’ve had for awhile of “Clark solves a murder in Smallville overthe course of several phases of his career”, tinkered with to fit here.

4: He didn’t just materialize inthe Oval Office one day. It’s certainly far from uncommon for politicians tocome from a career in law, something I could see Superman pursuing. I figuredthis would be a decent way of fitting that background into a story as a fittingcentral element. For the record, Superman doesn’t compromise his ethics, butthe punishments the Har-ZǶl turn out to be ridiculously lenient by ourstandards.

5: Like issue #2, a classic setup(Superman has to protect Clark), inherently ramped up.

6: The intermediary between theclassically influenced first half, and things getting quite dark indeed in thesecond.

7: As will be shown after I dofurther solicits, I’ve intended 7 and 8 to be significant issues in eachseries. 7 is both the ‘middle’ post-Multiversity issue for everything exceptPresident Superman, and a recurring digit of significance in Morrison’s work,so I’m trying to structure things to have the 7th issue be one ofsignificance in each series. Here, we see the start of Superman’s questioningof his role that defines the second half of my ‘run’.

8: Issue #8, meanwhile, is thecentral number of the Multiverse in Morrison’s conception of it, so each #8 inthese will be a Multiverse tale. I wanted to use Earths we’ve seen beforepresented in different contexts, and here we’ve got the universe of Red Son,with a Superman who has embraced his status as a ruler to the arguable publicgood, to contrast with the pushing-it but still mostly noninterventionistEllis.

9: Plunging into the big final arc,one I wanted to question some of the basic assumptions of Superman’s role inthe world, and of how Cal would have to work in particular. Here the big thingis that even though Superman has always refrained from using his powers on theworld stage, it’s always been an implicit concession that if he doesn’t, no oneelse will either. GL, working under the conniving and pragmatic Guardians andbeing on a cosmic level that they declare to be above any given planetsauthority, seemed a prime candidate for breaking that rule who couldn’t just bebrought down immediately.

10: Again, classic setup—willSuperman try to tell the public what he thinks they should do—shaken up by hisdirect role in the proceedings on both sides of the issue here. And yes, thatis “Funky”. He’ll be popping up again.

11: One of my first thoughts aboutSuperman as President is that, in that role, he is inevitably going to orderthe implementations of decisions that will end human lives, directlycontradicting the moral code it’s made clear he has in Action Comics #9. Hencehim working overtime to try and ensure peace. Here’s him faced with maybehaving no other option. Perhaps he intervenes covertly as Superman to preventcasualties, one interference that normally wouldn’t be abided on the part ofone identity to counteract the necessary actions of another? Even that’s adegree of deception in theory unbecoming of the Superman role. No matter what,there’s going to be a degree of moral compromise not present on the part of theclassic Superman. I figure it’s here Cal’s established as the utilitarian toClark’s socialist (relatively speaking).

12: Maybe my first thought of aPresident Superman book was of Calvin leaving a letter for his children in anation wrecked by the revelation of his double life. 50 to a hundred or soyears in the future, America’s place on the world stage has been decimated, theone meaningful seat of power being the collective of the Super-Society, agrouping of Calvin’s descendants, those of his worlds own Supergirl, and thoseof one or two Phantom Zone Prisoners having filled their sentences andgenuinely trying to repent such as Quex-Ul and Dev-Em. Eventually they manageto alter the timeline, with the Super-Hero Squad emerging from deep history totry and convince Cal to carry on. Obviously he does, as in theory this comiccontinues onwards (presumably at least on E-36 and E-41, since we know Cal’sadventures are published there), but the end of this issue itself leaves thingsup in the air regarding his final decision.

#Superman #Calvin Ellis #President #Barack Obama #Grant Morrison #Multiversity #fanfic #Opinion

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theculturedmarxist · 6 years ago

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Gas the bikes, race war now. Or, Race and Racism as an Historical Process: A Rope of Sand

Racism is not simply a set of beliefs or behaviors which must be discontinued or inhibited. This is a bourgeois conception of racism, which portrays it as a malformed idea as such. If systemic racism is recognized, it is rendered as a malformation within, but not of, the system, which needs must be preserved to facilitate bourgeois society. Ideas in themselves are impotent things. They must be animated by an individual or individuals in order to gain motive force. It’s this animation, this reification, that materializes the idea and places it into a social-historical context. This idea is no longer an idle abstraction, but becomes through its materialization and subsequent action and interaction with its context that creates the idea as a process.

Just as bureaucracy is a materialization of the idea state, so too is the Catholic Church a materialization of the idea of Christianity. Both are ancient concepts, in infancy simple theories for the organization of individuals and groups of individuals, that have through their development affected and been affected by the continuous process of history. A significant portion of humanity’s historical record is a vast library of business receipts. The persecutions of Diocletian; coronation of Charlemagne; the Inquisition: a litany of Christian events that turned the course of history.

Racism too is such a process. Through study, any process can eventually come to be understood to a greater or lesser degree, and with understanding comes a certain amount of predictive ability. Simple processes are easily predictable. You light a match and can assume with relative certainty that it will either burn until it consumes all of its fuel or will otherwise fizzle out. Historical processes tend to be vast, incomprehensibly complicated interactions of innumerable variables which are able to be understood in their entirety vanishingly rarely.

However, even knowing only some of the variables allows for a certain amount of extrapolation. Meteorological forecasting operates on a similar principle. Complex, global processes are studied with as much accuracy as science can allow, which is then translated into a predictive model. Sometimes it doesn’t rain when the model calls for rain. Tornadoes emerge with little warning. But still, for everyday use it suits our needs.

Every process reaches an inevitable conclusion. That does not necessarily imply a terminal point at which the process ends. Often throughout history the resolution is transformative, mutatis mutandis, or evolutionary. The so-called Fall of Rome not being a single, demonstrative event, but a many-centuries long process which caused new systems of social organization to arise where the old systems failed. Western Europe develops along a separate thread than the Byzantine East, two evolutionary paths with a common ancestor.

Racism the idea is a material fact in our society. Its roots are deep in the people and in the state which oversees them. As a system of processes in itself, racism grinds on towards its own inevitable conclusion. We have some idea what possibilities exist there at such a point, transitional, or terminal.

Through the lenses of the racist ideology, we know that:

People belong to discrete “races” determined by physical appearance.

These races have inherent differences which make them ultimately incompatible.

This incompatibility produces separate populations, which must be kept separate in order to prevent cultural and genetic pollution which produces strife. (I wonder if pollution shares a common root with other polis related cognates).

These physical manifestations of racial difference are indicative of superiority or inferiority regarding various traits within those discrete populations.

Inevitably, contact results in conflict, which ultimately ends in the enslavement and/or annihilation of one group or the other.

Whether or not these things are true, they are what people are made to believe in regards to the Hitlerite ideology of race. These are among the messages transmitted whenever the subject of race arises in the Bourgeois media. It is so entrenched that very few, even among Leftist circles, even questions the assumption that there is a fundamental, material difference between White and Black populations. “Asians,” “Mexicans,” “Blacks,” “Whites,” “Natives,” “Arabs,” “Jews,” and so on, aren’t just treated as separate cultural generalizations, but are conceived as being complete, entirely alien species from each other.

This is a reactionary Strasserite conception of our world. Instead of a material analysis of history, its foundations are the fantasies of a racist. It is a reactionary ideology which seeks to replace class struggle as the mover of history with the imaginary conception of race. It isn’t the fact of material accumulation and maintenance that drives history, but the mass delusion of the existence of some sort of “race” and the absurd prophecy of its eventual “perfection.” It’s nonsense, but the conceptual basis for it is the pacemaker regulating the heart of Bourgeois society.

The ultimate conclusion of this sort of ideology is a final, cataclysmic Race War in which the defectives are eliminated in favor of those destined for perfection (if they’re not perfect already).

This idea is in evidence prominently within the so-called “Alt Right.” It isn’t hard to look through any given gathering of these masterminds to find them positively slavering at the mouths. At last, those kike bastards will get what’s coming to them. We’ll finally put those niggers back in their place. The opening of the season on trannie degenerates will be declared a national holiday. Hail God Emperor Trump! For them, this isn’t some far-off prophecy. It’s a conflict in progress, and they’re a people under siege. Every time a cop guns down a black kid, it’s a celebration. Every Jewish massacre is a victory for the Nation.

Humans, in my opinion, tend generally to incline towards humanity, humaneness, towards avoiding conflict rather than seeking it. This isn’t a rosy estimation, but something we see among most animals in nature. Symbolic, ritualized violence is often a substitute for the death match. Even predators tend to kill out of need rather than blood thirst. Unrestrained violence is rarely productive for anyone involved, and often incurs great cost. For normal, healthy individuals, collaboration is preferred over conflict.

For the embryonic Fascists among the Alt-Right, they’ve discarded humanity in favor of death. This apocalyptic conflict isn’t an eventuality to be undone for avoided, but actively pursued. It isn’t an accident of circumstance, but a goal to achieve.

Even aside from this fanatical element, the idea of a coming Race War is gaining purchase generally. Unopposed by a Communist response, it will inevitably continue to develop, with society drifting toward that conclusion. The whole ideology of race and racism works towards this end. Race produces racial animosity, itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a positive feedback loop, entrenching perceived divisions, antagonizing its captive constituents. It is corrosive to human and humanity alike.

I’ve been told before that I have a strange fixation on race. I suppose that might be true, because I think it is the principle ideology which must be culturally dismantled for Communism to develop. Even in the “best” of conditions, Racism is destructive. As the ongoing Capitalist crises intensify, Race and Racism can only become absolutely ruinous. I feel pretty secure in saying that, if it came down to some sort of racialized global conflict, “White People” would almost certainly win. It would be a holocaust of indescribable proportions too terrific in cruelty, too Cyclopean in scope to bear contemplating.

This doesn’t exist solely within the realm of possibility or conjecture. Arguably it’s already happening now. Like wounds festering the corruption will spread. It is already spreading.

However.

There is an inoculation to this plague. Communists know it. It has been a central element of Communism since the beginning. The principle of Internationalism is essential, essential. More than labor organization, more than minority liberation, more than the vilification of capital, the Bourgeoisie fears Internationalism the most of all. An international, class conscious proletariat is the death stroke to global capital. Even more than the last century or the one previous, technology like the Internet makes the development of a truly connected global proletariat a terrifyingly immediate potentiality to the bourgeoisie.

Race is the root from which racial animosity springs, and class consciousness strikes directly at that root. The actual, elective solidarity of class consciousness dispels the illusionary consanguinity of nation and race. Race is a sterile ideology that bears no lasting fruit. It rots and withers beneath the illumination of scientific Communism like a carcass in the sun. Its putrid memory doesn’t long remain. It fades with time and new life springs from its death. Nectar gathers instead of poison.

Without this development, racism and racialism, and their material manifestation and progress will continue unimpeded. Race war becomes an ever more likely result of our current circumstances. If it isn’t opposed and undermined with strenuous energy, the conclusion can only be anticipated with foreboding.

Class consciousness disrupts the material process of racism. The affirmation of our factual universal humanity, in opposition to the mythology of national and racial particularity, derails it, disperses it. It is the only environment in which Communism can truly develop and grow, one in which the old identities, roles, categories imposed on humanity by the past are disposed of. We have to kill the irrationality necessary for racism to exist so that rational solidarity, and from it Communist emancipation can develop in its place.

#communism #marxism #racism #race war #a rope of sand

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Do Republicans Want To Take Away Health Care

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-to-take-away-health-care/

Why Do Republicans Want To Take Away Health Care

Democrats Republicans And Your Health Insurance

Why some Republicans are skeptical of the new Senate health bill

Shereen Lehman, MS, is a healthcare journalist and fact checker.;She has co-authored two books for the popular Dummies Series .

Healthcare reform has been a contentious political topic in the U.S. for many years, and is shaping up to play a major role in the 2020 presidential and congressional elections. What does each party want? Let’s take a look at how the priorities of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party;could impact your health insurance.

National And State Level Coverage Losses

Because the economic crisis stemming from the pandemic is driving millions of people onto coverage programs supported by the ACA, CAP estimates that approximately 3 million more people stand to lose coverage from the health care repeal lawsuit than the 20 million previously estimated. According to a March 2019 analysis by the Urban Institute, full repeal of the ACA would cause enrollment in Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program to fall by 22.4 percent and enrollment in individual market coverage, including for the ACA marketplaces and other insurance people purchase on their own, to drop by 35.4 percent.

The economic stress of the pandemic has pushed the United States into a recession. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate in the second and third quarters of this year will average 15 percent higher than it was during the Great Recession. At an unemployment rate of 15 percent, 17.7 million people would lose employment-based health insurance coverage, according to a recent report by the Urban Institute. With access to ACA coverage options, most of these people would find new forms of insurance. Urban estimates that 8.2 million would end up with Medicaid/CHIP coverage, and 4.3 million would gain coverage through the ACA marketplaces or other private coverage. About 5.1 million would remain uninsured.

Table 1

Doubling Down Again On Health Savings Accounts

Bolstering health savings accounts has been a very popular reform idea among Republicans, and that enthusiasm is clear in the RSC plan.

The plan proposes to increase how much an employee can contribute to a health savings account. Currently, an individual can contribute $3,500 and a family can contribute $7,000.

RELATED: Premiums on benchmark HealthCare.gov plans decline 4% for 2020: CMS;

A 2018 bill that passed out of the House but didnt make it through Congress increased the contribution cap to $6,650 for an individual and $13,300 for a family.

Now, the RSC plan wants to increase the figures again, this time to $9,000 per individual and $18,000 for families, in line with a proposal from libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

The RSC plan would also expand health savings accounts so that they could be used for a number of health services and products that currently must be paid for with after-tax dollars, the plan said.

Don’t Miss: Who Is The Speaker Of The House For Republicans

The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Strip Coverage From 23 Million Americans

Tomorrow, the Trump administration and 18 Republican governors and attorneys general will file their opening briefs with the Supreme Court in California v. Texasthe health care repeal lawsuit. The lawsuit, criticized across the political spectrum as a badly flawed case, threatens to upend the Affordable Care Act and strip 23.3 million Americans of their health coverage, according to new CAP analysisabout 3 million more than was forecast before the coronavirus pandemic. The anti-ACA agitators who initiated the health care repeal lawsuit, backed by the Trump administration, continue their attempts to dismantle the ACA, including its coverage expansions and consumer protections, amid the pandemic, during which comprehensive health coverage has never been more important. Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and job-based insurance due to the current economic crisis are relying on the insurance options made possible by the ACA to keep themselves and their families covered.

Is The Supreme Court Likely To Save Obamacare

The Supreme Court is likely to leave in place the bulk of Obamacare, including key protections for pre-existing health conditions.

Conservative justices John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared in two hours of arguments to be unwilling to strike down the entire law a long-held Republican goal.

The courts three liberal justices are almost certain to vote to uphold the law in its entirety and presumably would form a majority by joining a decision that cut away only the mandate, which now has no financial penalty attached to it.

Leading a group of Democratic-controlled states, California and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives are urging the court to leave the law in place.

A decision is expected by late spring.

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans Voted To Impeach Trump In The House

Republicans Really Hate Health Care

Theyve gone beyond cynicism to pathology.

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Of all the political issues that divide us, health care is the one with the greatest impact on ordinary Americans lives. If Democrats hadnt managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, around 20 million fewer Americans would have health insurance than currently do. If Republican-controlled states hadnt refused to expand Medicaid and generally done as little as possible to support the act, national progress might have tracked progress in, say, California so another 7 or 8 million people might have coverage.

You obviously know where I stand on this political divide. But Im starting to believe that I misjudged Republican motives.

You see, I thought their behavior was cynical and strategic: They opposed Obamacare because they thought there was political mileage in scaring people about change, and also in denying Obama any successes. Oh, and their donors really hated the taxes on the rich that pay for the ACAs subsidies. And right up through 2016 they could hope to convince voters that they had a secret plan for something much better than Obamacare.

Indeed, all of these things surely played a role in GOP health care strategy. But at this point theyve clearly lost the political argument. In 2017, Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare made it clear to everyone that their party didnt have any better ideas, and never did; everything they proposed would have devastated the lives of millions.

The Real Reason Republicans Couldnt Kill Obamacare

Democrats did the work, Republicans didntand that says a lot about the two parties.

Adapted from The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage, St. Martins Press 2021.

The Affordable Care Act, the health-care law also known as Obamacare, turns 11 years old this week. Somehow, the program has not merely survived the GOPs decade-long assault. Its actually getting stronger, thanks to some major upgrades tucked in the COVID-19 relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this month.

The new provisions should enable millions of Americans to get insurance or save money on coverage they already purchase, bolstering the health-care law in precisely the way its architects had always hoped to do. And although the measures are temporary, Biden and his Democratic Party allies have pledged to pass more legislation making the changes permanent.

The expansion measures are a remarkable achievement, all the more so because Obamacares very survival seemed so improbable just a few years ago, when Donald Trump won the presidency. Wiping the law off the books had become the Republicans defining cause, and Trump had pledged to make repeal his first priority. As the reality of his victory set in, almost everybody outside the Obama White House thought the effort would succeed, and almost everybody inside did too.

That was no small thing, as Republicans were about to discover.

Read Also: When Did Republicans Turn Against Nixon

The Healthy Could Buy Less Expensive Policies In Some States

Obamacare requires insurers to provide an array of health care benefits, including maternity, mental health, prescription drugs and substance abuse. This comprehensive coverage, however, jacks up premiums and provides services that some consumers find unnecessary — think, a couple in their late 50s who aren’t having any more kids likely don’t need maternity coverage.

The bill would allow states to waive this federal mandate, which would allow insurers to offer skinnier plans that offer fewer benefits with lower premiums.

Do you have a pre-existing condition? How will the GOP healthcare bill affect you and your family? Share your story: Text/WhatsApp us on +1-347-322-0415

Opinion: Democrats Are Lying On Health Care

Republicans Aren’t Campaigning On Healthcare â They’re Hiding From It (HBO)

In November of every even-numbered year since at least 1970, the biggest lie in American politics has been Democrats claiming that Republicans are going to take away your Social Security. Republicans learned to live in a defensive crouch and to try to avoid mentioning the words Social Security. Now the new lie is about health care, mostly that Republicans are going to take away coverage for;preexisting conditions.

As usual, the truth is very different. The Senate Republican Policy Committee explained in a May 2017 paper that under the Republican-backed alternative to Obamacare, the American Health Care Act, no one will be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Even if you are skeptical of Republican talking points, you dont have to look very far to find objective confirmation. According to FactCheck.org, Sen. Schumer was wrong to say, as he did on the Senate floor April 28, that the bill goes back to the day when insurance companies could deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions.

Democrats cant accept that the hallmark of the Obama years Obamacare has been a flop and is being taken apart piece by piece. And they will do anything to use the health-care issue against Republicans. No lie is too big.

Republicans dont want to take away your health care or leave people with preexisting conditions without coverage. If Democrats will lie to you about this, they will lie to you about other things.

Recommended Reading: Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary

Why Do Republicans Oppose Obamacare

Patrizia Rizzo, SEO Reporter

11:10 ET, Nov 11 2020

Patrizia Rizzo, SEO Reporter

Invalid Date,

REPUBLICANS have campaigned against Obamacare ever since it was signed into law in 2010.;

But with a change in presidency ahead, the Supreme Court is likely to leave in place the bulk of Obamacare, including;key protections for pre-existing health conditions.

Why Is The Affordable Care Act So Despised By So Many Conservatives

IT HAS been called the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed, as destructive to personal and individual liberties as the Fugitive Slave Act and a killer of women, children and old people. According to Republican lawmakers, the sources of each of these quotes, the Affordable Care Act , or Obamacare, is a terrible thing. Since it was passed by a Democratic Congress in 2009, it has been the bête noire of the Republicans. The party has pushed more than 60 unsuccessful Congressional votes to defeat it, while the Supreme Court has been forced to debate it four times in the acts short history. Obamacare was also at the heart of the two-week government shutdown in 2013. Why does the ACA attract such opprobrium from the right?

Read Also: How Many Registered Republicans In Texas

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

Despite what they say on television about protecting the most vulnerable, one by one the Republican senators are all getting in line behind Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. We don’t yet know who that is, but we can assume how he or she will vote on Obamacare.

People with pre-existing conditions like me are again terrified of losing our insurance, this time in the midst of a pandemic. We’ve lived through years of scary uncertainty and now months of sheltering in place. Enough is enough. We are all health care voters now. We’ll see whether our wavering senators are health care voters, too.

Laura Packard is a Denver-based health care advocate and cancer survivor. She is the founder of Health Care Voices, a non-profit grassroots organization for adults with serious medical conditions, co-chair of Health Care Voter, and runs the pharma accountability campaign for Hero Action Fund. Follow her on Twitter:

States Allowed To Add Work Requirements To Medicaid

What is it? Medicaid expansion was a key part of the ACA. The federal government helped pay for states to expand Medicaid eligibility beyond families to include all low-income adults, and to raise the income threshold, so that more people would be eligible. So far, 37 states and Washington have opted to expand Medicaid.

What changed? Under Trump, if they get approval from the federal government, states can now require Medicaid beneficiaries to prove with documentation that they either work or go to school.

What does the administration say? “When you consider that, less than five years ago, Medicaid was expanded to nearly 15 million new working-age adults, it’s fair that states want to add community engagement requirements for those with the ability to meet them. It’s easier to give someone a card; it’s much harder to build a ladder to help people climb their way out of poverty. But even though it is harder, it’s the right thing to do.” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Washington, Sept. 27, 2018

What’s the impact? Even though HealthCare.gov and the state insurance exchanges get a lot of attention, the majority of people who gained health care coverage after the passage of the ACA 12.7 million people actually got their coverage by being newly able to enroll in Medicaid.

Also Check: Why Are Republicans So Scared Of Trump

Republicans Stop Giving A Sh*t About Babies Once They’re Actually Born

Republicans are generallyÂ;pro-life, and mostÂ;conservativesÂ;believe that life beginsÂ;at the moment of conception.

They see aÂ;fetus not as part of a woman’s body, but asÂ;a human beingÂ;who doesn’tÂ;deserve to die throughÂ;abortion.

In last week’sÂ;Republican debate, nominees Â;the viral and controversialÂ;videoÂ;of a Planned Parenthood official allegedlyÂ;discussing the sale of fetal organs.

Republicans used the video asÂ;a springboardÂ;to discussÂ;limiting — and, in some cases, completely prohibitingÂ;– a woman’s access to an abortion.

In fact, Republicans areÂ;so committed to protecting the lives of the unborn that there isÂ;an entire page on the party’sÂ;websitededicated to the importance of upholding its reputation asÂ;the “pro-life party.”Â;It says:

The Republican Party must continue to uphold the principle that every human being, born and unborn, young and old, healthy and disabled, has a fundamental, individual right to life.Â;Like Abraham Lincoln, we rely on the Declaration of Independence for our authority to assert that every individual human being has a Creator-endowed right to life, and that it is the duty of government to protect that right.

Cool.

Besides the obvious “my body, my choice” liberalÂ;perspective on this, which says that what a woman decides to do with what’sÂ;in herÂ;body is up to her,Â;there’s a massiveÂ;problemÂ;with the Republicans’ pro-life platform.

But why don’t they give a single sh*t about that baby once it’s actually born?

Paul Ryan Has Dreamed Of Slashing Medicaid Since His Keg

Paul Ryan

Republican Paul Ryan, like most other members of the U.S. Congress, is a millionaire.

Christa Patton is 68 years old. She is frail and no longer able to leave her home. She lives on a fixed income. Patton told Van Jones on a recent episode of his CNN show “The Messy Truth” that she would not be able to eat without the Meals on Wheels program.

Paul Ryan is the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. By his own account, in college he used to hang out with his friends and drink beer while sharing his dreams of cutting Medicaid. When Ryan was 15 years old, his father died from an alcoholism related heart attack. Ryan and his family then received his father’s Social Security survivor’s benefits. Ryan used that money to attend college. This was not the only money that Paul Ryan received from the federal government. His family built its wealth from receiving government contracts.

Like his idol Ayn Rand , Paul Ryan has combined meanness, cruelty and callousness toward the weak and the vulnerable with gross and unapologetic hypocrisy.

Republicans like Ryan along with the millionaires and billionaires who comprise Donald Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle literally want to take food, shelter and health care away from poor people like Christa Patton. Today’s Republicans view these Americans as useless eaters to be disposed of by means both passive and active.

Social psychologists have shown that, in effect,;poor people become;invisible to the rich and upper classes.

Read Also: What Cities Are Run By Republicans

Premium Subsidies And Affordability

The ACA’s premium subsidies were designed to keep health insurance affordable for people who buy their own coverage in the individual market. Premiums for individual market plans increased alarmingly in 2017 and 2018, although they were much more stable in 2019 and 2020, and rate changes for 2021 appear to be mostly modest. But premiums for people who aren’t eligible for premium subsidies can still amount to a substantial portion of their income.

The individual market is a very small segment of the population, however, and rate increases have been much more muted across the full population .

Democrats have proposed various strategies for making coverage and care affordable. Joe Biden’s healthcare proposal includes larger premium subsidies that would be based on the cost of a benchmark gold plan and based on having people pay only 8.5% of their income for that plan . Biden’s proposal would also eliminate the ACA’s income cap for premium subsidy eligibility and provide subsidies to anyone who would otherwise have to pay more than 8.5% of their income for a benchmark gold plan. This would eliminate the “subsidy cliff” that currently exists for some enrollees.

The 2020 Democratic Party platform calls for a “public option” health plan that would compete with private health insurance carriers in an effort to bring down prices, and lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60.

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lizabethstucker · 3 years ago

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Asimov's Science Fiction (March/April 2017)

Digging into my backlot of science fiction magazines. A mixture of verse and stories. I've only reviewed and rated the stories. This particular issue is the 40th Anniversary one! 3.8 out of 5 "Soulmates.com" by Will McIntosh Daniel wants someone to share his life with, to love and be loved by. When he meets Winnie through a dating app, he thinks she could be the one almost immediately. Emily, his former girlfriend and current best friend, is more suspicious, doing a deep dive on who Winnie could be. Which, considering they never meet in person despite Winnie being in Atlanta and Daniel in Athens, not that long a drive, is valid. Starts extremely slowly, assumingly to establish the characters. Not my favorite way as most writers don't do a good job at it. I'm not entirely certain that this is actually science fiction, despite the use of Artificial Intelligence. As to Daniel, I found him to be incredibly childish, blind, immature, and boring. He learned absolutely nothing from his experience. I struggled to complete this novella. 2.5 out of 5 "Number Thirty-Nine Skink" by Suzanne Palmer It started simply enough, an expedition designed to bring life in balance to an empty planet. Then the humans left suddenly, leaving Mike willingly behind with Kadey whose programming makes the creatures populating the area. When Mike dies of cancer, Kadey continues her work. Until the night something changes. Poor Kadey, struggling with loneliness, possibly incomplete programming, and the knowledge hidden from her regarding why the humans left. Sad, yes, but with a more hopeful ending that is also a beginning. Lovely story, so well written. 4.5 out of 5 "Three Can Keep a Secret..." by Bill Johnson & Gregory Frost A convoluted tale of assassins, misdirection, love, greed, and con-artistry with an almost noir feel to it. It's almost impossible to give a synopsis that isn't chockful of spoilers. The first person narrator isn't totally reliable, but still intriguing in what he shares. I loved this more than I expected with this strange little story. FYI, in case you don't know, the title is from an old saying. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. 4.5 out of 5 "The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going" by Sarah Pinsker A child must suffer so the city can be happy, or so they say. One particular child is taken from her mother, locked away in the dark with no social interaction beyond the delivery of food. As time passes, language is lost and memories of a happier time begin to fade. Then one day the door isn't shut tightly and the child gets out of the tiny dark room. She crawls up the stairs, each step bringing back a particular memory, heading for freedom. But at what cost? Rip my heart out, why don't you? Two and a half pages of the most gut-wrenching narrative. The tightly woven writing is painfully descriptive. And the ending! Oh, the ending. I just cannot deal with it. 5 out of 5 "Invasion of the Saucer-Men" by Dale Bailey Teenagers have been foiling alien invasions for some time. After all, the adults are either locked in their homes consuming television or would dismiss the very idea of aliens. The newest landing of a flying saucer bonds together teens out at the local make-out point. Per the author, his idea was to take the cheesy sci-fi and horror movie titles of the 1950s and treat the core idea with some emotional and thematic nuance. Here we have a group of teen archetypes, from the football star to the nerds to the beauty. There are also the followers that are always found in high school. This brings back memories of too many cheesy nights at the drive-ins in my county. I've always found my sympathies fell with the aliens most of the time, faced with humans whose first response to the unknown was always violence. Horrible ending to this story. Horrible. CW: extremely graphic attack. 3 out of 5 "Kitty Hawk" by Alan Smale After receiving word of her brother's death, Katharine Wriht travels from Ohio to North Carolina to help her other brother. Instead of Orville preparing to pack up for the trip home with his beloved

brother's body, he is trying to continue with the flight experiments that killed Wilbur. Katharine finds herself engaged in helping, even learning to fly herself. This is a complete AU of the Wright Brothers and the birth of flight, through World War I and the suffrage movement. The writing is evocative of the time period and the dangers of experimental flight. I don't know why it didn't click with me, but I struggled quite a bit in reading this imaginative tale. I can see others enjoying this greatly, just not me. 3 out of 5 "Cupido" by Rich Larson Marcel is a genius at chemistry. He came up with a way to make pheromones specific to the pair he's paid to bring together, either by one of the potential couple or by a third party. The majority of the money he charges goes to pay for his grandmother's colon cancer treatment. As word gets around, he finds himself moving to smaller cities to avoid identification. As yet, what he does isn't illegal. He didn't expect to find himself attracted to his potential mark. Frankly, I don't consider this to be science fiction at all. The science is already viable. Add the consent issues which would be called dubcon (dubious consent) and I'm too busy cringing to enjoy. In my mind, Marcel is anything but a hero. 3 out of 5 "A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension" by Andrea M. Pawley Olive was removed from the reducer pile, adopted by a childless couple to help stave off loneliness. Now that the second grandmother is living with them and Mama was pregnant, Olive is worried that she will be sent back to the pile, no longer needed. A loving, imaginative little android who believes in fairy dust, even if the fairies never seem to do anything magical like in the stories. Love doesn't have to be limited to just humans or blood relations. Sweet and touching. 4.5 out of 5 "The Wisdom of the Group" by Ian R. MacLeod There are theories and studies about group-think, how certain groups can intuit a trend or coming situation without any real knowledge. With the right group, the members could get wealthy or probably save the world, depending on their inclination. Samuel has been part of such a group since brought in by his professor while still in university. Now, years later, Samuel is wealthy, has a liv-in lover, three dogs with unfortunate names, and a gorgeous house in Washington state. But something is wrong, something that seems to be originating from Samuel. The response is usually to cut the wrong out of the group. A complicated basis for a disturbing story. I had to sit on this one for a while in order to determine what I felt about it. Definitely strong writing, could almost be considered psychological horror. I don't know if I would ever say that I liked it, but I recognize the work done and the uniqueness of the story. 3.5 out of 5 "After the Atrocity" by Ian Creasey Abu Hameed, the terrorist behind the attack that left ten thousand people dead, has also died during interrogation. The solution? A machine that can make exact copies, complete with memories, of an individual. Violet Ruiz, operator and creator of the machine, even made a duplicate of herself in order to work 24/7. As Hameed's copies die during the enhanced interrogation, more copies are needed. Soon Violet II wonders about the ethical implications. Well thought out consideration of just how far a nation is willing to go in search of revenge wrapped in the disguise of intel. Patriot Act, enhanced interrogation the Greater Good, dismantling both Habeas Corpus and the Geneva Convention, anyone? 4 out of 5 "Goner" by Gregory Norman Bossert In order to explore space, humans had to be converted from flesh into nanotechnology based creatures. The pilots call themselves Goners. Char's best friend's father is a Goner. Already fascinated with the idea of flying, Char uses a sliver of Pilot Clark to begin changing. While this is complete in itself, the story also begs for more. What is happening to Char? Will he be allowed to live his dreams despite his age? S fascinating a concept. 3.5 out of 5 "We Regret the Error" by Terry

Bisson A series of news corrections from the future. So many corrections, even some corrections of corrections. Taken individually, these are amusing. Pieced together, there is a much deeper story playing out. Oh, and a nice dig at Disney's well-known history of not paying some of their artists for their work. 3 out of 5 "Tao Zero" by Damien Broderick Teenagers, incredibly smart ones, have unprotected sex after winning $370 million in the Mega Millions lottery. The celebration leads to a child, the narrator, and the money to try to trap the Tao, the Way that cannot be named, inside a machine. I tried, I really tried to read this without success. After rereading the first two pages over and over in an attempt to struggle through, I put the story aside, hoping to pick it back up when refreshed. Didn't work. DNF

#magazine review #science fiction #Asimov's Science Fiction

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cluebottles · 5 years ago

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Consuming Avatar: The Last Airbender for the First Time...

... at 23 years old.

**Some Major Spoilers Ahead for Plot Lines and the Ending -- If you haven’t seen Avatar: The Last Air Bender I highly suggest you watch it before you read

[Before I begin: I live in America. Currently and since the “founding” of our country, minorities have not been treated as equal -- Black people in our country have been treated as less than human and have been brutally murdered at the hands of the police and the hands of our governing system of racist oppression since the beginning. It’s still happening. It will continue to happen if we ignore this, if we give up, if we push forward without enacting change. Be safe when you are protesting. Educate people who might not understand. Use your platform to speak out, to share information and resources. Donate if you can. Here’s some resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ ] Alright, so the spoiler alert is out there in the open and I’ve addressed our current situation, I guess we should jump in with a little back story of my history with Avatar. As a kid, I never watched it. I still pretended to water bend in the pool -- Avatar transcended more than just television. The idea of controlling the elements around you was magnificent enough to bleed into that weird group of kids who never watched it growing up. I also had one Avatar video game that I barely played...because I didn’t watch the show...so I didn’t know what was going on. Trying to watch something and be caught up as a kid without streaming services was just impossible, so I’m lucky to not only have the complete box sets now, but we’re all lucky Netflix has graced us with the story to binge-watch.

I want to first start off and say that overall I highly enjoyed this show. Everyone I knew has praised it as being an important character building experience that made them the person they are today -- and while I can understand that, and some of that is not only important and moving, I’m also here to criticize that, just a little bit.

Let’s start off with the characters and story-- both of which mostly fantastic. I mean, Uncle Iroh is a phenomenon I’d only heard of and honestly had to think he was overrated until I fell in love with him on screen.

I think Uncle Iroh is also a very important character because he shows an important and believable character growth -- he was a war criminal. He was pushing forward, killing innocent people as he attempted to conquer the great Earth Nation city Ba Sing Se. His son was killed in the war he was raging, and he gave up and went home and over years has worked on himself to have the wisdom he is known for and astounding character growth. “But didn’t he save the last two dragons?” ...you can do a good thing while also doing other bad things. Lmfao. He is constantly trying to steer his nephew, Zuko, in a more positive direction, while also providing scattered support to the Aang Gang more than once throughout the entirety of the series. (RIP to Uncle Iroh’s original voice actor, Mako Iwamatsu, and I praise the beautiful story dedicated to him in Uncle Iroh’s tale, an episode that made me cry once I realized it was a dedication to him.)

Let’s contrast this to these two -- both having the least believable character growth(s? ses? ???) I’ve ever seen.

Everyone says “that ZUKO CHARACTER GROWTH ARC THO” and I just... I don’t have the same energy for it. Maybe it’s my most unpopular opinion on this show? But ... it’s just so rushed. I do think this series ended too soon, and I know it goes beyond just this show in comics, but as a consumer of just this show, it was flat to me. “I MUST HAVE THE AVATAR” to “I MUST HELP THE AVATAR SAVE THE WORLD” but a majority of him in this series has been the former while the last season, really, has been the latter. We stan reassessment and learning and bettering the world, but some of the first times he’s helped the Avatar has been for his own personal gain because he wants the glory so he can go home to his abusive family. I wish he would have been given more time to have a more realistic turnaround, because the beginning and the end are there -- it’s just a weird muddled middle that doesn’t make sense to me. The same with the hatred of his father. We’re not given much between “I NEED TO RESTORE MY HONOR AND COME HOME TO MY FATHER” and “I WILL HELP THE AVATAR KILL YOU” and I think that’s a shame.

Mai... I just... I can’t even.. like I don’t know where to begin on how underwhelming her betrayal of Azula is. Like yes, it has shock value, but besides the shock value, to me, it’s unbelievable. Yes, she has had a crush on Zuko since they were kids, but she’d been closer to Azula than him for most of her life. Even in the EPISODE where she does this betrayal she has very little time alone with Zuko. He tricks her and traps her in his cell, and just moments before this she’s accusing him of going against her and their entire nation. In scenes we see them together before this she’s broken up with him and shouted at him, they’ve gotten into fights, a lot, and she’s seen talking about the perks of dating a prince, relishing in the fact that she gets them too. To me her betrayal is unbelievable. I don’t hate her at all though! I honestly just think she needed more screen time so that we could be shown her doubts about the Fire Nation and how strong her relationship to Zuko actually is.

I guess it’s time for another unpopular opinion -- I can’t stand Sokka and Yue. They don’t have chemistry. Yue is literally engaged to a dickbag and instead of doing what was best for her, she was going to just go through with it. Also, Yue and Sokka don’t know each other that well nor have they known each other for that long, whereas Suki met Sokka first. Suki and Sokka have a natural chemistry. Sokka takes Suki for granted, a lot, but they’re fantastic.

Cluebottles’ Top Ten Favorite Character List

Uncle Iroh

Sokka

Toph

Suki

Avatar Roku

Appa & Momo

Avatar Kiyoshi

Katara

Aang

Zuko

Now, we know Uncle Iroh preaches humility, growth, peace and harmony. And while a lot of the time I would agree, there are some times where I don’t. Here is my biggest criticism of the show: love doesn’t conquer all, and Avatar: The Last Airbender sloppily tries to enforce that it does ‘til the awkward end of the series.

I understand that this is a children’s show. However, the fact that it’s about war and multiple people have died during the show (even if it wasn’t always outright shown), I don’t think killing the Fire Lord would have been unwarranted. If anything, it’s another show that pushes “no matter what be the bigger person”, “no matter what, love is the only way”, “you can’t fight hatred with hatred”, which ultimately does not work, and furthers the bullying of people or the oppression of people.

Aang is supposed to save the world, and when it comes down to it, he can’t kill the Fire Nation’s Leader, Lord Ozai, who is the third in straight succession to lead the assault on conquering the other nations. A war of 100 years ends “peacefully” -- except for all of the people who lost their lives fighting for their family and freedom against the Fire Nation.

Aang seeks council from his previous Avatar incarnations -- and each of them tell him to take out the Fire Lord for the good of the world. That’s Aang’s only job as the Avatar -- to keep the balance and work for the good of the world.

Instead of him bringing down the swift hand of justice, Aang learns how to bend energy (wtf?) at the literal last minute from a giant lion turtle so that he can bend the energy (again, wtf?) out of Ozai and take his bending power away. Even when the kid gets the snot knocked out of him and the Avatar state takes over, Aang stops it. And then he bends the energy (wtf x3) out of Ozai successfully even though the turtle tells him it can corrupt him entirely if he does it wrong, that it’s extremely hard to do, and even though he’s never practiced doing it.

Iroh was a war criminal. He reformed himself and helped the community he hurt when he really never had to. Zuko has his own “character development arc” where he goes from being bad to goodish to bad again to okay to bad to finally good. He’s a kid, he’s still learning, and has changed drastically for the better. Azula...Azula had been struggling with some form of mental illness/psychosis since she was a small child even into adulthood. She’s hateful and dangerous, but not only is she still a kid -- she should be (and is) locked up so she can’t ever hurt anyone again.

Fire Lord Ozai is an adult, fully aware of his actions, has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in his wake trying to take over territories and kill other benders, enslave them, and imprison them. Even when confronted by the Avatar, resistance, and his own son peacefully, not only does he start the violence in retaliation, but he doesn’t learn from being shown compassion. He is literally already a war criminal, there should be no compassion left for anyone to show him. My point being that there’s a stark difference between him and others who may have been like him.

So in the end, the big message that this sends to me is that you should always show love and compassion. Never resort to violence. Be the “bigger person”, like I mentioned above, and like I said this doesn’t translate to real life. I think a huge reason why I feel I need to criticize this and other children’s shows that push this message is that we are being fed this narrative at a young age while we’re being bullied, while we’re facing hatred from others whether it’s because of the color of our skin, our gender, our sexuality -- we are expected to always be the “better person”. Our problems will somehow amicably be fixed by love. We shouldn’t actively be trying to dismantle a system taking advantage of and killing minorities, all I have to do is be nice. As we grow that feeds into our naive outlook on protesting and rioting, our outlooks on lawmaking and leadership. “Well they just made their whole movement look bad” “You should never resort to violence” -- meanwhile the police have been murdering black people for years and years, and people have been “peacefully protesting” that. Rioting was what got freedoms for several different movements, whether it’s worker’s rights, lgbt+ rights, the "civil rights act”, rioting is what literally got the USA the “freedom” to begin with.

In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang is gifted at the last moment with the ability to take away Lord Ozai’s power and ultimately, have a peace restored without violence. In the real world, you cannot take away the power of war criminals and oppressors because they have the power in a system stacked against you. So trying to answer such a huge life question, trying to end a war in the real world, trying to take down oppressors -- showing them love and trying to fumble it on your own sense of humility does nothing.

I watched this show unfold and finish moments before I watched people take to the streets to protest yet another black life lost by the hands of police brutality and systemic racsim. Watching George Floyd die just for being black in America, knowing all of the black lives lost every day just because they are black in America to then look at a show that tries to push a message like “love conquers all”, “violence is unnecessary”, just makes me angry because we live in a world where these sentiments, though nice, don’t exist.

That being said, I’m glad this show meant a lot to people, because it did mean a lot to me too. For some reason, it gives me a strange sense of hope. This is probably my favorite show and I’m watching it again after just finishing it. If you haven’t watched it, there are a lot of lessons that can be learned to positively affect you and make you take a step back and re-evaluate, and maybe implement some of Uncle Iroh’s wisdom into your life.

#avatar #avatar the last airbender #netflix #critically reviewing avatar the last airbender

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historyoftheemblem · 8 years ago

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SoV Countdown : History of Valentian Religion & Transition to Nagaism

As promised, we’re kicking off the month of May with periodical meta posts written and curated by the admins. Expect at least two a week until June, and if you wish to further discuss these topics with us, then we encourage you to check out our discord server (password: shouzoukaga)! Now, without further ado... At this point, most fans know that Valm (in Awakening) is Valentia 2000 years in the future; however, one of the things that has been criticized about Awakening’s Valmese arc is that Dumaism is not mentioned at all. The Valmese, instead, worship Divine Dragons and make only brief mention of Mila. This lack of Milaism/Dumaism is interesting since the culture in Valentia was very much wrapped up in its two opposing belief systems, and specifically, Walhart and the Valmese Empire closely resemble the Rigelian Empire, which followed Duma’s philosophy of power. So where’s Duma then? In this post, I seek to shed some light on why Dumaism might have been lost to Valmese history, beyond the excuse that developers simply forgot.

Most of the following is canon information in Gaiden, not SoV, and elaborated by theory. Some Gaiden spoilers are included, but I have placed warnings around the major ones.

First of all, a brief history of Valentia’s two cultures for those who are unfamiliar with Gaiden: Zofia and Rigel have been two completely separate countries, led by two very different philosophies (Love vs Power, Leisure vs Discipline, Emotional vs Physical, etc., respectively) for nearly 300 years by the time Gaiden takes place. While there may have been some overlap and sharing between the two countries in the beginning, they probably grew more and more disparate as the years passed and they built up their own cultures. Mila and Duma are said to have been warring deities as well, so as long as this belief remained pervasive throughout Valentia, the rift between Zofia and Rigel only grew more intense with time.

Eventually, the people of Zofia became lazy and corrupted by Mila’s bounty, and the people of Rigel grew cold and heartless in pursuit of power. While there may have been slights on both sides, the events of Gaiden are set in motion when Emperor Rudolf of Rigel requests aid from Zofia and Zofia refuses to share despite the fact that its country is bountiful in resources and food. It occurs to him then that Valentians have become too reliant on their gods, too short-sighted by their philosophies, and as long as they continue to refuse aid from or refuse to aid their neighbors, then Valentia as a whole is bound to self-destruct.

Most of Zofia appears to be fairly homogenous in its worship of Mila. There are monasteries and temples all throughout the land, and those who work/live in them are respected and looked to for guidance. On the other hand, Rigel is split into two factions : the capital area and the eastern swamps. Rigelians who live in the capital appear to be less religious, even though they still follow Duma’s philosophy of power, and the only Rigelian magic users we see - aside from the shamans - are Tatiana and Hark. Unfortunately, there is not much in their dialogue that gives us a picture of what they think of Dumaism or their religious practice, but they are clearly different from the antagonistic shamans, who sing Duma’s praise even as they die.

These shamans live on Fear Mountain or in the eastern swamps, separate from the rest of Rigel, and are twisted in appearance. They appear to be far more fanatical in their worship of Duma, even going so far as to trade their souls or offer live sacrifices for spells and power. There’s obvious tension between these two groups, with the shamans even attacking other Rigelians (e.g. kidnapping Tatiana), and while these shamans work under the flag of Rigel, they are religious extremists in comparison to the rest of the country. This doesn’t seem to have always been the case, however, as Hark, the former High Priest of Dumaism, displays far less fanaticism than Jedah, who usurped the position.

Despite these differences, Nomah’s epilogue states that he attempts to unify Milaism and Dumaism after the war. While a nice idea in theory, these attempts likely do not go very far. As mentioned, most Rigelians do not appear that strongly religious, and those opposed to the war from the beginning would probably be apologetic or even ashamed of Dumaism. Of course, there would also be those who blatantly oppose uniting the two religions (as there are probably plenty of people who oppose the unification of Valentia), but in the end, Milaism would prove to be the stronger practice. The continent was united, yes, but Zofia still invaded and beat Rigel, and usually the culture of the losing side fades away with time.

Duma is also recorded in history as an “evil god” - and Rudolf an evil man - but it should be noted that Gaiden’s entire storyline sets up the premise of a clear-cut “good” and “evil,” but then dismantles it at every turn.

-MAJOR SPOILERS-

The drive for Valentia’s betterment had been a joint effort between Duma and Rudolf from the beginning, as it is Duma who gives Rudolf the Falchion to seal away Mila, which then gives rise to the “heroes” Valentia needs. At the war’s end, Rudolf directs Alm to the location of the Falchion and with his dying breath, tells him to seal Duma inside as well. In turn, Duma’s dying words are not of anger, hate, or resentment. He knows his fate, accepts it, and even blesses Alm for his future endeavor to unify Valentia:

That should be enough… Hero Alm. I entrust everything to you. Inherit the will of us siblings and govern this land… Carrying both the strength of Doma as well as the love of Mila, guide the people justly… You must not repeat the same mistakes we committed. You must never again disturb our slumber…

However, The battle that went on beneath Rigel Castle probably never made it to the public, so Alm’s supporters continued to believe that Duma was evil and that Rudolf had gone crazy. This became history, and Alm’s reputation became “the Hero Who Slayed the Evil God.” After only a few hundred years, anyone who followed Dumaism would have likely disappeared or been cast out to find asylum elsewhere.

-END SPOILERS-

Over time, Valentia and Archanea shared culture, as the Whitewings, upon their return home, probably enticed visitors to check out the newly unified country. It would not be surprising, then, if eventually Nagaism took root in former Zofia, and with Mila sealed away (and theoretically no longer able to meddle in human affairs), a more tangible god (eventually Tiki) would have been favorably received. After 2000 years, Nagaism would replace Milaism almost entirely, but since Milaism has been recorded in history as a “good” belief system, vestiges of it still remain in Valm.

On the other hand, the only remnants of Duma’s existence are the Demon’s Gate (Inigo’s Paralogue map) and the Demon’s Ingle, which is said to be where Duma’s remains rest. This location is incorrect, however, as Duma’s remains should be just past the Demon’s Gate instead, so this is likely perpetuated as a myth to explain the activity of the volcano in Valm. Walhart’s power-driven way of ruling his nation is also likely a remnant of the Rigelian mentality that managed to survive over the years, but given that Walhart makes no mention of Dumaism, it would be safe to assume that the Rigelian power philosophy separated itself from religious practice. A country doesn’t exactly like remembering it’s evils, after all, and so Dumaism took the blame for the evils of the unification war and became lost to history.

#fire emblem awakening #fire emblem: gaiden #valentia #valm #fe13 #fe2 #fire emblem: awakening #meta #admin: ree

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