#the only industry plant conspiracy i support

[diabhalin]

lestat is an industry plant

[vulnerary-prince]

From Harvard ethics professor Christopher Robichaud:

“Everyone in the days and weeks ahead will use this loss as an opportunity to seek validation for their own hobby horse complaint. Harris lost because she campaigned with Liz Cheney. Harris lost because she didn't embrace Gaza. Harris lost because she didn't choose Shapiro. Harris lost because she wasn't progressive enough (possibly my favorite one).

Take a good hard look at the map, my friends. Trump has won the popular vote. Trump ran the table. Explaining that with your hobby horse issue isn't going to cut it, tempting and consoling as it may be.

The problem isn't the electoral college. The problem isn't that we didn't have a full primary. The problem isn't Harris. The problem isn't that Dems didn't have the right message. The problem isn't even inflation or the border.

The problem is so much worse than any of those things. Those are all technical problems, with straightforward expertise fixes. If only it were so! No, our problem is not technical. It's very much adaptive. A party that embraced the Big Lie, supported an insurrection, and has been selling conspiracy-addled madness for years was widely and enthusiastically embraced. Voter turnout was profound! People didn't sit this out.

Simply put, the problem--as some of you have rightly posted--is cultural.

America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying. And if you look at the demographics, you also won't be able to comfort yourself that it's just a white thing, or a working class thing, or an education thing. It's multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That's what winning the popular vote means. That's what running the table amounts to.

A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades--at best--not two-to-four year election cycles. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that.

The GOP evolved into a party of rage, lies, and revenge--and it correctly diagnosed that there was and is a large appetite for that. That's what the country wants. At least, enough of the country wants it to ensure broad appeal and widespread electoral success. The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They've been speaking to a country that's gone, like dust in the wind.

And that's my final thought, which my posts last night alluded to. The America I knew and loved is gone. This new America--nah, I won't even bother. I will say that cultural change is less likely to occur in politics, or in the academy. You're not going to get people to see how vulgar they've become through a clever argument or a nice campaign speech, that's for sure.

This would be time for the arts, broadly understood, to step in. The arts can change hearts and minds. Too bad the arts have been systematically dismantled in education in this country, and on the other end, the tech industry's assault on the arts through AI is sure to hollow out any good-faith efforts that might emerge.

And for the rest of the world, America's rightward lurch is, I'm afraid, bad news for you too. I know you know this. Because it's not isolated, is it? It's just at the moment the most prominent example of a burgeoning trend. And this will embolden others in other countries, to be sure. We need not speculate what happens when countries become mired in lies, embrace resentment, and savor bullying. We know exactly what happens. Bloody conflict and global destabilization.

The first quarter of the 21st century will therefore in hindsight be viewed as the seed-planting stage for the absolute shit show that's about to unfold globally over the next two and a half decades. Count on it.

Adopt whatever coping and endurance strategies you have available. You're going to need it.

I think that's all I've left to say.”   

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

You have a Deku gate spin off planned? What's the about?

there are three, technically four, different ideas actually

prequel where Inko and Toshinori first fall in love and learn to cope with the conspiracy

prequel of fluffy side stories about how Izuku grew up in this au

true sequel where Izuku is asked to be in a relationship and he has to tell his partner about the conspiracy. Both versions would be split pov where Izuku struggles with the guilt of inflicting bullshit onto someone he cares about and not being able to do much to stop it, and the partner would either be Uraraka or Aoyama. I have ideas for both but not enough to pick (and no i'm not going to solve this with poly)

The one with Uraraka would be about misogyny, both in general and from the conspiracy. Specifically I'd want to focus on the unique brand of misogyny that comes from other women and how it's often justified as moral in 'progressive' fandom spaces. Uraraka would struggle with the balance of legitimate criticism worth taking into account, and hateful nonsense that can be dismissed, ultimately questioning her own motivations. She's not a beard, but what if she is playing into stereotypes about girls who only go for the strongest quirks? She liked Izuku before knowing his family was wealthy, but she did want to become a hero for the money. Things like that. There's also the conflict of wanting to tough it out for love like Inko did, as well as not wanting to destroy the person she loves by breaking up over something neither of them can control that he already feels immensely guilty about, but is it really a relationship if she feels obligated to stay out of spite?

The Aoyama one would open with a kind of naive optimism that the conspiracy won't affect him as much since he's a gay boy and most of the fandom's hatred is focused on 'straight' women. But there are still people who think he's an industry plant meant to queerbait the original Dekugaters into giving up, people who think he's not the right gay boy to be with Izuku and try to drag him into shipping wars, and even the people who 'support' him only do so as long as he fits into the fetishistic fantasies they project on to him. Few people care about his own abilities or accomplishments as a hero, they only want fluffy wholesome anecdotes about him and his boyfriend. That sort of dismissal gets thrown at Izuku as well, and he takes it a lot harder, to the point that Aoyama worries that his involvement is making things actively worse for him, and that Izuku is only staying to make him happy. Not to mention how [redacted] might be affected and in turn affect everything.

[dvandom]

Idea for a recontact SF setting

(Someone has probably already done this, of course, but I can't recall seeing this particular variation. Recontact stories themselves are fairly common, of course.)

When the first interstellar civilization collapsed, none of the "viable without extensive trade and support" colony worlds had the resources to rebuild.

Oh, there had always been conspiracy theories about colonists being deliberately planted on worlds lacking crucial elements for native stardrive industries, but the simple fact was that any world worth mining for such elements was either uninhabitable from the start, or was quickly rendered uninhabitable by intensive mining. The people living on those worlds didn't last too long after the collapse, as food and even air ran out and there was no real option for roughing it. A handful lasted a few centuries in slowly decaying regional fiefdoms, maintaining an aging fleet of cargo ships and one or two warships and lording it over nearby agricultural worlds, but rebellions were inevitable and soon the spaceways all went quiet. (Assume FTL communication in this setting required physical delivery of messages via ships, no ansibles.)

Millennia passed. Some colonies fell to chaos and ended up lucky to maintain an Iron Age level of civilization. Others did better, either thanks to foresight or a better roll of the dice on resources, but none were able to build back to the technology required for FTL travel. Sure, old starships mothballed in solar orbit only decayed a little overall, but now-irreplaceable parts of the drive system failed after the first few generations. Some worlds could find small amounts of some of the needed resources, but no one world had all the ingredients to rebuild a stardrive AND fuel it.

Eventually, the very idea of interstellar travel was considered a myth, although a handful of worlds had rediscovered enough of the life sciences to confirm that they were not autochthonous to their homeworld, strongly suggesting the myths had some truth to them.

One day, strangers arrive claiming to be from another star. They claim to have found an entirely new form of FTL travel that they could source locally, but the protagonist's world is especially abundant in. Are they complete frauds? Are they really from another world but still pulling a scam? Or, potentially more disastrous for the protagonist's world...are they being completely honest?

[georgefairbrother]

Within a year of the end of the Miners’ Strike, another major UK industrial action had dramatic implications for an entire industry’s workforce. This time the disruption involved printers working for Rupert Murdoch’s News International, at that time publisher of The Times, Sun and News of the World.

On February 15th, 1986, BBC News reported;

“…Eight police officers have been injured and 58 people arrested in the worst outbreak of violence yet outside the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London…Police estimated 5,000 demonstrators gathered near the printing works for a mass demonstration…Similar mass protests have taken place regularly outside the Wapping plant ever since the start of a strike three weeks ago over new working conditions and the move from Fleet Street to cheaper premises in East London…”

New computer-based production technologies meant that a significantly reduced workforce would be required to operate the new plant. News International management had secretly secured the cooperation of the EETPU (electricians’ union) and created a parallel workforce. Around 6 000 Fleet Street printworkers were summarily dismissed immediately upon striking, and production began at the new plant with virtually no delay.

Rupert Murdoch said of his dealings with the print unions;

“…For 17 years there, I lay down and had these people run over me. Day after day, week after week, month after month, with bad, idle wasteful practices in all our plants…”

In response to a reporter’s question he denied that he was out to break the printers’ unions, but to preserve his newspapers ‘for the people that do work for them’.

The General Secretary of SOGAT 82 (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), Brenda (later Baroness) Dean (1943-2018), described the behavior of Murdoch and his company as a ‘conspiracy of deceit’ over secretly recruiting strike-breaking labour while negotiations between her union and News International management were ongoing. Having discussed with police plans for orderly and peaceful picketing, she blamed extreme left and right agitators, a destructive minority ‘rent-a-mob’, for the picket line violence that ensued.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer concurred;

“..We saw the classic example of honest well-intentioned union members supporting their cause being joined by diverse elements whose only interest was in causing as much trouble as possible…”

News International did not lose a single night of production during the thirteen months of industrial action, which resulted in over 1200 arrests and 410 police officers being injured. With echoes of the Miners' Strike, police were accused of aggressive and heavy handed tactics against picketers and also local residents, many of whom were sympathetic to the strikers.

The strike ended in defeat for the unions, and by 1988 all the major national newspapers had moved their printing operations away from Fleet Street with labour saving technology.

[whatiwillsay]

But also the things about “industry plants” is that just because an artist is being backed and promoted… doesn’t mean they’re not a genuine talent. It means they have good representation. Like what, are label execs and studio heads supposed to look at a pretty young thing with buckets of natural charm and actual talent and say “hmm better let this develop on it’s own without my influence?” Lol NO, they’re in this to make money and they see dollar signs. It may be crude, but of course they’re going to push their new moneymaker. Right or wrong that’s just how it works. Spectrum anon is right, except I’d argue that all mainstream artists signed to major labels could be argued to be some level of “industry plant” when you look at it from a perspective of label/studio execs contracting with artists for the purposes of making them both a lot of money. It’s a business not an organic process. Even the really obvious cases like the Tramp Stamps, it’s kind of like… okay but they did it with the Spice Girls and One Direction and were massively successful, so what’s the big deal? There are several famous bands going back decades who exist because a label thought these unrelated performers would work well together. Sometimes the inorganic process works out great! Anyway it just seems like “industry plant” is mostly just applied to popular artists that the person saying it doesn’t like, when they want to give themselves some sort of serious-sounding reason to not like them rather that just admitting it’s not their vibe and moving on.

ok but to me an industry plant has to be something BEYOND "this artist has backers in the industry"

developing and supporting promising talent to ensure you make money isn't "planting" anything. the only legit example of industry planting i know is the Tramp Stamps (article posted below).

everything else is just like... yeah people in the industry saw an opportunity to make money by supporting and investing in certain artists so they did so. how is that a conspiracy? like what even is an industry plant? if it's just "the industry got behind artists they saw they could make money" then basically EVERY successful artist is an industry plant. so then it's meaningless.

to me there needs to be a conspiracy element where nobodies that don't the unique and original talent/ideas get propped up in an artificial way for the industry to make money.

[heyreine]

From Harvard ethics professor Christopher Robichaud:

“Everyone in the days and weeks ahead will use this loss as an opportunity to seek validation for their own hobby horse complaint. Harris lost because she campaigned with Liz Cheney. Harris lost because she didn't embrace Gaza. Harris lost because she didn't choose Shapiro. Harris lost because she wasn't progressive enough (possibly my favorite one).

Take a good hard look at the map, my friends. Trump has won the popular vote. Trump ran the table. Explaining that with your hobby horse issue isn't going to cut it, tempting and consoling as it may be.

The problem isn't the electoral college. The problem isn't that we didn't have a full primary. The problem isn't Harris. The problem isn't that Dems didn't have the right message. The problem isn't even inflation or the border.

The problem is so much worse than any of those things. Those are all technical problems, with straightforward expertise fixes. If only it were so! No, our problem is not technical. It's very much adaptive. A party that embraced the Big Lie, supported an insurrection, and has been selling conspiracy-addled madness for years was widely and enthusiastically embraced. Voter turnout was profound! People didn't sit this out.

Simply put, the problem--as some of you have rightly posted--is cultural. America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying. And if you look at the demographics, you also won't be able to comfort yourself that it's just a white thing, or a working class thing, or an education thing. It's multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That's what winning the popular vote means. That's what running the table amounts to.

A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades--at best--not two-to-four year election cycles. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that.

The GOP evolved into a party of rage, lies, and revenge--and it correctly diagnosed that there was and is a large appetite for that. That's what the country wants. At least, enough of the country wants it to ensure broad appeal and widespread electoral success. The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They've been speaking to a country that's gone, like dust in the wind.

And that's my final thought, which my posts last night alluded to. The America I knew and loved is gone. This new America--nah, I won't even bother. I will say that cultural change is less likely to occur in politics, or in the academy. You're not going to get people to see how vulgar they've become through a clever argument or a nice campaign speech, that's for sure.

This would be time for the arts, broadly understood, to step in. The arts can change hearts and minds. Too bad the arts have been systematically dismantled in education in this country, and on the other end, the tech industry's assault on the arts through AI is sure to hollow out any good-faith efforts that might emerge.

And for the rest of the world, America's rightward lurch is, I'm afraid, bad news for you too. I know you know this. Because it's not isolated, is it? It's just at the moment the most prominent example of a burgeoning trend. And this will embolden others in other countries, to be sure. We need not speculate what happens when countries become mired in lies, embrace resentment, and savor bullying. We know exactly what happens. Bloody conflict and global destabilization.

The first quarter of the 21st century will therefore in hindsight be viewed as the seed-planting stage for the absolute shit show that's about to unfold globally over the next two and a half decades. Count on it.

Adopt whatever coping and endurance strategies you have available. You're going to need it.

I think that's all I've left to say.”

[cachien]

vent

middle tn is by far the worst worst WORST place i have ever lived

i've lived in georgia, texas, alabama, and south carolina. i have relatives in mississippi so i've spent a lot of time there as well as florida. middle tn is by FAR the worst of anywhere.

starting with the basics there's anti homeless infrastructure EVERYWHERE while the price of living requires twice the average salary (idk if that's actually true but unless i live in the most crime-heavy part of town i cannot afford to live anywhere on a single income, even when i was working full-time in a job that required my degree)

my fiance's family is from here and them + everyone i've met through them are the worst people i have ever known. they're anti-vax. they use racial slurs for jokes. they HATE trans people like oh my GOD these are the most transphobic assholes i have ever met in my life, they are just openly anti-trans and tradwives and misogynists. covid is a government conspiracy, biden is the devil, trump is our only hope for salvation but the damn conspiring dems who rule the world will never let him get back in office, he'll have to do a hostile takeover. the other day my soon to be father in law seriously asked if it's confirmed that the holocaust happened. his wife is german. this morning he said the 'rumors' that hitler had a micropenis were probably made up by people trying to make him look bad. (that's just a fact from his medical records and autopsy, like, people did not need to make up new facts to make hitler look bad??? are you fucking serious??)

i have a potentially fatal allergy. i will go into anaphylactic shock if exposed to a certain allergen. they treat this like i'm being dramatic. my future mother in law legitimately suggested that i consume only chicken broth for a few weeks to "reset" and then after that i'll be fine. she constantly tries to say i should do liver detoxes and drink these expensive teas and all kinds of things and i don't know how many times i've bit back the argument that your liver's entire job is detox you do not NEED support for that if your liver is functioning

they're anti-doctor. you can't trust scientists because big pharma and the government control everything. soy is going to kill you, it has phytoestrogens, they cause breast cancer (NO, no no no. hate soy because the industry is hugely ecologically damaging and usually relies on slave/child labor, but phytoestrogens are literally harmless and if soy is someone's only reliable source of calcium and protein let them have it they need it and we are not plants so plant estrogen is not going to effect a human at all). my soon to be mother in law bought me a book for christmas called "the peanut allergy epidemic" that cites a quack calling himself a doctor who has no actual degree who claims vaccines cause food allergies even though there's ample research showing that that is NOT true and that globalization and people consuming high quantities of unfamiliar foods are more likely the cause. which checks out if you look at any of history.

oh: fun fact here. my degree is in history. so every time they say something horribly racist or holocaust denying or say that things are "historically inaccurate" or about how the modern world is soooo horrible and the left is trying to kill us all, i have minimum twenty primary sources disputing them and they do. not. care.

a family they're close friends with "cured" their child's autism by forcing him to have a vegan diet of home-grown produce bc clearly the evil evil GMOs and "inorganic" lettuce caused his autism. now that he's homeschooled and eating healthy and, oh, ten years old with more independence and therapy, he's doing better! clearly it was the veganism! bc autism needs to be cured and leaves can do it!

the far right cult is literally delusional and i live among them and i've never hated my life more. when i lived with my abusive ex whose catholic midwestern family greeted me with "ya ain't no gaddamn democrat, are ya?", they were more reasonable than people in this area. that guy's mom was at least not anti-vax. he was also homeschooled and sure he didn't believe in dinosaurs and though the earth is 7000 years old but at least he was kind to trans people and had black friends that he treated with respect.

i went to a painting group that was mostly old women and it devolved into a conversation about snow white having black dwarves is soooo historically inaccurate because ms german woman didn't even see a black person till she was 20. never mind that the holocaust killed black germans and that a fifty year eugenics process systematically eradicated germany's black population in the early twentieth century, clearly black people never existed there and to even suggest having them in a story about dwarves and magic and poison apples would just make it so unrealistic, as if the rest of the story is accurate. same woman who asked about my writing and i said i was working on a fantasy novel modeled after regency era england but with dragons and she went "yeah bc they totally had those back then" hello??? you cannot say a damn word about history when you don't know any of it

like this is the most gun-toting, history-denying, school-shootings every other week, transphobic, absolutely delusional brainwashed area i have ever lived. i can't take it anymore i've got to get out. i will be homeless in LA or NYC or anywhere that i can mention i'm bi without the absolute knowledge that my identity will become a political debate.

[homeschooled-hermit]

And I don't know much about fighting but I know I will fight for you SNEAK PEEK

"Hello?" Caroline opens the door to the house. Or, mansion she should really be calling it. She had been sure that she'd come to the wrong place when she had arrived to find not a lab but a mansion. Surrounded by a gate with a fingerprinting system. In the middle of nowhere. But she called her professor, and this in fact is the right place according to him. Because of course she gets assigned to her professor's brother for her internship.

Doctor Klaus Mikaelson had at one point been one of the most sought-after scientists in the biochemistry industry. Some of his technology is still being used today. He worked with some of the biggest superheroes at the time. He'd been one of her idols as a kid. She would spend weeks trying to recreate his technology. Usually resulting in… less than desirable results. Even with her powers.

Then seven years ago, he dropped off the face of the Earth. No one knows why. But there's plenty of conspiracy theories. He'd been abducted by aliens, killed by villains then had his death covered up, switched sides and gone into underground villainy. Most people seem to believe the latter theory. Seeing as an underground villain that claims to want to cleanse the world of the 'hypocritical heroes infesting our world' appeared shortly after Doctor Mikaelson's disappearance. And maybe it's because of that that Caroline is a secret supporter of him too.

Caroline had been quite surprised when Professor Mikaelson had assigned her to his brother for her internship. Which could only mean that he's still alive. And is safe enough for her to intern with.

"Is anyone home?" Caroline walks further into the house, looking around for any sign of another person. Then she hears what sounds like growling and banging coming from deeper in the house. She tracks the noises to a room. She opens the door, and Doctor Mikaelson is immediately launched through the door. He lands on the floor, and she sees an incredibly overgrown plant in the room. She quickly closes the door, and rushes to the doctor's side. "What the hell was that?!"

"My last experiment got a little out of hand." Doctor Mikaelson explains, getting to his feet. Caroline scoffs. That's an understatement. She gets to her feet as well. She takes a good look at him, seeing that he's not much older than her. And isn't at all hard on the eyes. Actually, that's an understatement, he's hot. She doesn't usually like guys with stubble but he makes it look good. "You must be the intern my brother sent."

[ladychlo]

was just sitting here thinking about how happy Louis and harry look on their Tours and how connected and real they seem to their fan and then I think of the stunt and the whole bullshit and I get an existential void out of it. does it make any dense????!!!! seeing them like that makes whatever happens else just absurd and voided and not necessary I think I'm having an existential crisis because of this lmfao

hiii love,

I love tour for them so much, because they get to have that raw interaction with their fans with nothing in between....they get to receive genuine love and admiration, like you start in front of a sea of people, coming here just to hear you and your music cause they relate to it and they love it...and they show you a support you've been told it cant be real...

and Im laughing so hard at this, because I was talking with my friend Kaw specifically about this while ago. but yeah, not to say its highly predictable to get an existential dread from pr stunt because consumption of imagery is just capitalism. and what else that doesn't suck your soul of and commodify your feelings other than capitalism?

okay I might sound a bit far from the point but hear me out. PR stunt work on the basis of consuming two things, imagery and story. so you might think the only thing you consume is idk a song, album, movie...etc. but you're actually consuming more than that, you might ask why? well no consumption under capitalism and industries that works according to it gonna let you consume for free.

you might not pay for pap pictures but you pay in another way (your engagement, your reproduction of the purpose of these images..etc). besides, existential void comes with the death of reality, because there is no interest in selling your reality, reality can only be sold if it can be commodified. so genuinely, they don't care if you believe the story or not, they don't care of its not consistant, does it make sense or not. this goes on the sense of limiting consumption of a story if its true , which means if tabloids or entertainment media in general worked on giving you a solid truthful story, its a loss because the truth is boring and not in a cool-I-can-make-a-consumable-product-out-of-it-way.

now you might say, but these sold stories look stupidly fake and makes no sense at all why go with? why even survive? and continue to sell? because the point is as I said you are not sold the truth, you're sold the story. and people who consume these stories are not that dumb you know? its entertainning for them.

have you ever heard of KAYFABE?

it basically means "In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true," specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or pre-determined nature. Kayfabe has also evolved to become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the realm of the general public."

.everyone knows that these wrestling stories are scripted as much as everyone knows that paparazzi don't just suddenly show in the street corner, or take the perfect storytelling shot or have access to private property, or have a GPS of celebrity locations planted in their brains...etc. anyone with decent critical thinking will understand that, but they choose to mascarade the show as true not because its real but because its entertaining. so staged events like a wrestling match in WWE RAW or a staged pap walk are produced as real and perceived as real. its the narrative that plays some sort of a theatrical drama with heroes villains romance etc etc etc. they dont give a shite if you dont believe it, or you point out inconsistencies or what makes more sense, because.....its not consumable beyond you and your friends of delusional gay conspiracy theorists.

[agent-cupcake]

since you like dark AUs, have you ever thought about writing one about crime bosses? like maybe Dimitri is the *seemingly* soft-spoken don with a Feral side trying to settle the score with the rival Hresvelg family, throw in Felix as his top enforcer and Sylvain as the man with ears on the competition through all the wives he's seduced. idk I just wanna see the lads in italian businessman suits.

I think I got a little carried away fleshing out this AU. Oopsie.

~Fódlan city is separated into three boroughs: Faerghus, Leicester, and Adrestia. Political tensions have been ramping up over the years and many people are beginning to feel that Mayor Seiros is too focused on trying to maintain the status quo. 

~Adrestia is the historical landmark, the oldest of the three and although it’s been on a slow decline, it’s still the cultural hot spot with the best venues, entertainment, sports, and university. The worst crime problem, too, although they’re good enough with selling their image that many people aren’t aware. It is somewhat commonly known that Borough President Ionius Hresvelg is compromised and there are rumors about him being complicit in the fire that killed all but one of his daughters, but nobody knows for certain. What many people don’t know, only dare to whisper about, is the Agarthan gang influence. 

~Leicester was originally a port town focusing on shipping and cargo but now has become a modern, cosmopolitan place with the best job market but an unstable political position as Mayor Seiros fights them on engaging too much with international trade. They’ve faced issues with the other two Boroughs to establish themselves and their individuality. Borough President Riegan has suffered a lot of controversy, not so much due to his own actions, but because of the constant involvement of other people on the board. Although Adrestia has the market on culture, Leicester has the best red light district. 

~Faerghus is primarily industrial, as evidenced by the sprawl of factories and manufacturing plants. Their industry means a huge disparity of wealth and a lack of cultural refinement due to the majority of blue collar workers and emphasis on production. Lambert Blaiddyd was the owner of Blaiddyd Industries centered in Faerghus, a weapons and industrial resource manufacturer on the rise. Before his tragic death, there were rumors about him running for Borough President against incumbent Cornelia and possibly even Mayor with his favorable stance on fighting poverty, uplifting the lower class, and stricter criminal law. 

~Just gonna casually borrow from myself and say that the Tragedy on Duscur Street was an assault on a gala fundraiser event for a poor, crime-ridden district in Faerghus held by Lambert Blaiddyd. Many people assumed that it was also meant to springboard into his announcement that he would be running for Borough President but the event quickly became a national tragedy with nearly everyone in attendance being killed or injured. Although it was officially blamed on the poor inhabitants of the district and essentially killed any public support of helping the community out of poverty, there were many people who were aware of the shady conspiracies surrounding it all.

~Orphaned son of Lambert Blaiddyd, Dimitri, joined the military when he became of age just as his father always intended him to. Lambert was of the belief that even though they were rich, they still owed a debt to their country. Predictably, this did nothing for Dimitri’s mental health but it did instill in him a sense of “justice” as well as a taste of brutality and “ends justify the means” sort of ideas. 

~Leaving the service was a twofold thing. Dimitri returned to Fódlan city when fresh evidence in the Duscur case was unearthed and wound up retiring from the service to tend to Blaiddyd Industries when he saw the state it was in. However, his military career took a dive after killing a target and his family, leading to a resurface of repressed trauma and leaving Dimitri unable to shoot a gun without shaking. He’s one of the best at hand to hand, but poor marksman. 

~I did headcanons about Dimitri never really “getting over” his feral side in this post, which is how I imagine his personality for this type of AU. Stable, but only to an extent because the fresh evidence did nothing to reveal the culprit of the Tragedy on Duscur Street. In fact, it did nothing but highlight how broken the justice system really was and made Dimitri realize that the system could not be trusted to see to the interests of the people. Not in a vigilante way so much as a “the only way to have power in this city is to claim it by force” way, thus kickstarting his shady career under the table with Blaiddyd Industries being the shiny cover.

~Dimitri and Edelgard had been friends with when they were younger and going to the same private school but now he begins to suspect the Hresvelg family and particularly Edelgard for all of the terrible things that had happened, blaming her for the rampant crime problem. Since he has a totally legitimate means of weapons manufacturing, he arms his people and begins to drive any and all Hresvelg influence out of Faerghus. Cornelia’s the highest publicized murder, but there are many as Dimitri “cleans house”. 

~Meanwhile, Edelgard, after realizing how weak and pathetic her father was, went to school for criminal justice. However, rather than using that degree for any sort of legal career, she took over the main criminal enterprise of Adrestia after coming to a similar conclusion to Dimitri as to how broken “justice” actually was. She cooperates with the shady cabal only known as Agartha and begins to work her way up with the eventual goal of becoming mayor. 

~Felix joined the military around the same time as Dimitri in an attempt to escape from his father and wound up becoming a specialist taking on independent mercenary-type contracts. Similar to Dimitri, this did absolutely nothing to help his issues. Although he fundamentally disagrees with Dimitri in many ways, he isn’t blind to the reality and understands the necessity of brutality when facing off against brutal people. Still, he’s far more likely to do things his own way rather than take direct orders which leads to a lot of butting heads. 

~Sylvain was always seen as a playboy philanderer of absolutely no concern to anybody even though he’s definitely one of the most cold-blooded of the crew, accepting Dimitri’s logic and reasoning for criminal enterprise because of his unfortunate awareness of how awful the world actually is. He has hopes about the reform of the poorer districts in Faerghus, especially the Sreng district, but his main focus is definitely on seeing the Hresvelg family and whoever is pulling those puppet strings taken out. Most people aren’t aware of this, though. All they see is the pretty rich boy drinking and charming his way through high society. He’s the best with blackmail and twisting the social sphere to his will because he knows everybody's secrets and weaknesses. Additionally, he’s good at keeping Dimitri's above-ground image as spotless as possible. 

~Dedue is Dimitri’s number two, his ride or die. They have basically the same relationship as they do in the game with Dedue running Dimitri’s security force, both above and below. He’s a surprisingly fantastic driver, got those Baby Driver level maneuvers. His hope is, of course, to clear up the reputation of the people who were blamed for the Tragedy on Duscur Street by finding the real culprit. He coordinates everything security related, his system of organization is impeccable. 

~Mercedes is the friendly and sweet underground doctor. She’s practically a wizard with medicine but chose to work for Dimitri because of the bureaucratic nightmare weighing down the hospital’s ability to take care of people. Ashe is the group’s best marksman and incredibly skilled with long range weaponry and the mechanical/technological innerworkings of those systems. Annette does a lot of things, but mostly helps Dedue keep things running and keeps track of planning and arranging things. Despite being such a scatterbrain, her ability to juggle a lot of things at once and easygoing temperament is good for a team of such diverse personalities. Ingrid is auxiliary security and helps with odd jobs and boosting security. She’s good at making people do what she wants so she is usually the one to help manage all of the “grunts” during jobs. 

~Anyway, now that we have all of that backstory out of the way, you specifically mentioned fashion so let us discuss the main three’s wardrobes.

~While Dimitri himself doesn’t care particularly about fashion, he’s aware of the important of optics. Or, at the very least, the people around him are. Say what you want about feral Dimitri, he’s stylish as hell. Plus, he has some sense and comfort in formal wear after his military service, although growing out his hair is probably (either consciously or subconsciously) a rebellion against the strict codes enforced about how to dress. Wearing an eyepatch instead of having a glass eye or any alternative is a choice of convenience and a sort of symbol. Despite how expensive his clothes are, Dimitri often looks rather unremarkable due to his preference for monochromatic dark pallets. His go-to outfit is a buttoned shirt, tie, waistcoat, trousers, jacket, and a Chelsea boot. The only jewelry he wears are silver cufflinks engraved with the Crest of Blaiddyd. The jacket and suitcoats are almost exclusively single-breasted with a classic or slim fit to accentuate his narrow waist. In extremely formal situations, he’ll upgrade to the double-breasted suit. Dimitri favors dark colors without patterns, black and dark blue usually. No browns or greys. His ties vary a bit more with a preference on power colors like blues or reds (is imagining Dimitri in red sacrilege? He needs SOME variety...).  If things are going to get messy, he’ll take off the jacket but overall is very comfortable moving around in formalwear which is very problematic for his poor, overworked tailors. Outside, he’ll wear black leather gloves and single-breasted overcoats possibly with the collar somewhat popped. There’s a chance that he’ll wear a black wool cape, they’re hesitantly in fashion, and it would have a bright blue lining for dramatic effect.

~In general, Felix is never going to be as formal as Dimitri but he's not running around looking like a high society dandy the way Sylvain does. He’ll wear waistcoats without a jacket, turtlenecks under a suit instead of a button down, or button down shirts without anything over it. There’s always a sense that although he’s paying respect to formalities, he’s never quite going to bow down to the rules. Despite that, Felix isn’t plain in his choices. His post-timeskip outfit is full of little details. He’ll wear two-tone wingtip shoes instead of plain oxfords, a waistcoat with a chain, have buttons engraved with designs, and maybe even have panels with small scale floral or geometric patterns on his waistcoat. I like to think he might wear fun socks, too. He’s always wearing a watch on the inside of his wrist and will pointedly check it when people are annoying him. Felix is also a lot more welcoming to color, albeit with a focus on blues and dark greens. Black isn’t as much of a staple for him, anything leather or neutral will likely be tan or brown. Felix’s favored outwear is his dark brown bomber jacket with fur trim. While he’s fine wearing double-breasted waistcoats, you won’t catch him dead in a double-breasted suit. His choice to grow out his hair is from the same rebellious mind-set as Dimitri. Felix is incredibly clever about hiding weapons on his person, like the meme of being asked to give up all of his weapons and building up a massive pile from increasingly dubious places. 

~Sylvain is by far and away the most fun fashion-wise for obvious reasons. His in-game costume is practical armor, but with the fun pops of color and style to make himself stand out. He’s the only one of them who can pull off pleated and cuffed suit pants, which he enthusiastically does because you can never go wrong with the classic styles. He definitely wears suspenders with certain suits. Extra points if he’s wearing suspenders but they’re actually gun holsters. Along these lines, Sylvain’s also more comfortable with longer suit jackets, double-breasted looks, and things that aren’t as slim fit. He’s very aware of what he is, so he might as well look like a classic gangster to dress for the part. Plus, any man can be fashionable, he also needs to be different. To keep a casual, approachable vibe on the daily, he’ll wear unbuttoned blazers with jeans, but add a colorful pocket square or shirt underneath to keep it classy. He’ll also follow the waistcoat trend but ditch the jacket and, being aware of his raw power, roll up the sleeves of his button down to reveal his forearms. Sylvain very much strikes me as a boot or loafer kind of man, the two extremes of comfort. In another post I mentioned Sylvain wearing Doc Martens and there’s a trend of wearing them with suits to give it an edgy flair, which he absolutely does. Despite the occasionally foppish styles, Sylvain doesn’t wear bright colors or go too far with patterns. He definitely prefers to wear dark reds, blues, and greys and add in brighter color through accessories or small pops. Sylvain’s not the biggest fan of ties or neckwear when he can avoid it. At least, not tight ones. I actually think he might prefer an ascot or cravat to a tie proper, unless he can loosen up the tie a bit. He has a massive collection of designer sunglasses. 

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

February 11, 2022 (Friday)

Yesterday, the Treasury noted that the U.S. budget had a surplus of $119 billion in January. That’s the first budget surplus in more than two years.

Tax receipts are up significantly: they grew 21% in January to $465 billion, as higher employment and earnings meant a big jump in payroll taxes and withholdings. At the same time, outlays fell 37%. 

Today, the administration warned any American in Ukraine to get out as quickly as possible, leaving no later than 48 hours from midday today. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned that, “[i]f you stay, you are assuming risk with no guarantee that there will be any other opportunity to leave and no prospect of a U.S. military evacuation in the event of a Russian invasion.” He said the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv stands ready to help financially and logistically.

Sullivan told reporters that the administration believes that the world has entered the window of time in which if Russian president Vladimir Putin is going to attack Ukraine, he will do so. The U.S., he said, is “ready either way.” It will continue its hefty diplomatic push, or it and key allies will respond to an invasion with severe economic sanctions, reinforce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and continue to support Ukraine and its well-trained and equipped army.

The U.S. has deployed service members to Poland, Romania, and Germany to defend NATO territory under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty that established NATO. Article 5 says that an attack against any NATO ally is considered an attack on all of them and that, in such an event, they will come to each other’s aid. To date, Article 5 has been invoked only once: on September 12, 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. 

Those personnel, Sullivan emphasized, “are not soldiers who are being sent to go fight Russia in Ukraine. They are not going to war in Ukraine. They are not going to war with Russia. They’re going to defend NATO territory, consistent with our Article 5 obligation. They are defensive deployments. They are non-escalatory. They are meant to reinforce, reassure, and deter aggression against NATO territory.”“

Whatever happens next,” Sullivan said, “the West is more united than it’s been in years. NATO has been strengthened. The Alliance is more cohesive, more purposeful, more dynamic than at…any time in recent memory.

”President Joe Biden spoke today with leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, Romania, the Secretary General of NATO, and the presidents of the European Union to coordinate a response to Russian aggression. Biden will speak again with Putin tomorrow.

The Fox News Channel is cheering on the so-called “Freedom Convoys” of disgruntled Canadians driving commercial trucks who have shut down Ottawa, Canada’s capital, as well as key border crossings between Canada and the U.S. They have created traffic jams that have made it impossible for auto plants on both sides of the border to get the parts they need, and the resulting production cuts, as well as the idling of hundreds of millions of dollars in trade, are hurting the economies of both countries.According to Justin Ling in The Guardian, the convoys appear to have been organized by James Bauder, a conspiracy theorist who believes Covid-19 is a political scam and has endorsed the QAnon movement.

 Canada’s recent vaccine requirement to cross the Canadian border provided a catalyst to pull together a number of different groups opposed to public health measures with anti-government protesters. The protests were neither popular nor representative of truckers: there were never more than about 8000 protesters, 90% of truckers crossing the border are vaccinated, and the Canadian Trucking Alliance strongly opposes the protest.  

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Canadian Trucking Alliance told Rose White of MLive that many of the Freedom Convoy protesters “have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements.” Ling noted that the convoy participants flew neo-Nazi and Confederate flags and had QAnon logos on their trucks, but Bauder urged his supporters stick to the message of “freedom.

”The “Freedom Convoy” has been pushed by fake accounts on social media and has picked up supporters from the U.S. right wing, including leading lawmakers. Facebook officials told NBC News today that fake accounts tied to content mills in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania, and several other countries have been pushing the convoy. Their disinformation is working; donations from the U.S. have flooded into accounts supporting the convoy protesters.

Former president Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), and others have endorsed the convoy, and the Fox News Channel has talked about the convoy two and a half times as often as CNN and five times as often as MSNBC in the last month, according to Philip Bump of the Washington Post. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America tweeted that the network has spent more than ten hours on the story since January 18, with the network personalities—especially Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity—explicitly calling for an American version of the protest.

The idea of shutting down supply chains does not interest the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which yesterday denounced the convoy. “The livelihood of working Americans and Canadians in the automotive, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors is threatened by this blockade,” Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said in a statement. “Our economy is growing under the Biden Administration, and this disruption in international trade threatens to derail the gains we have made. Our members are some of the hardest workers in the country and are being prevented from doing their jobs.”

But that is almost certainly the point. Disrupting a nation’s supply chains destabilizes its economy and thereby weakens the government in power. Indeed, U.S. lawmakers know this quite well: in 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded a 26-day truckers’ strike in Chile that helped to destabilize the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown the following year by right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet. 

The economy under Biden shows that his traditional vision of a government that supports ordinary people rather than cutting taxes and funneling money to “makers” works; the extraordinary unity of NATO in the face of Putin’s determination to advance authoritarian goals shows that multilateral cooperation rather than unilateral military action works, too. For those determined to regain power, disruption and destabilization are the order of the day.

[marcilled]

This is a random thought about a trend I noticed, and although I haven’t seen it as much recently, it always weirded me out whenever I did see it discussed.

For a while I’ve been seeing this claim come up, regarding new celebrities / influencers, that they’re an “industry plant”, which is hilarious when you regard it as a joke, and kind of unsettling when taken as a serious statement. Usually it goes that some tiktok or other popular post will be about some inane drama with influencers that are up and coming and only insulated tiktok teens know or care about, and it’s met with this reaction like, “who the fuck are any of these people” “this girl is OBVIOUSLY an industry plant it doesn’t make any sense how she just exploded out of nowhere” “everything about her is fake” etc etc etc and I’m sure there’s a ton of discussion that can happen about the nuances here BUT.

The thing about this claim is. People will just claim that influencers are industry plants without any fucking supporting evidence

Which is WILD when you think about it. Like, a lot of posts like this, you can brush it off as just being a joke basically... But... are they really??? People get really in depth with their “theories” about how an influencer’s fame has been manufactured from the get-go by powerful adversaries. Which, I mean, I’m sure there probably are influencers like that, who were basically just a puppet figure of some startup looking to get juicy inflows of investor cash or something. But I find it hard to believe you could just pick out any newly famous person from a crowd and say that they’re an industry plant just because their fame seems inexplicable, undeserved, or outright uncanny. The world is fucking weird, but that doesn’t mean every single thing you can’t explain is some cover-up by shadowy figures. Hold on... this sounds similar to another phenomenon that’s come and gone before, too...

The Mandala effect

It just reminds me so much of the self-assured, borderline conspiracy theorist rhetoric behind the Mandala effect. Sure, you could just scoff at the idea of it, and regard it as something weird but ultimately not too harmful. But you can’t deny that everyone who feeds into these sorts of bullshit beliefs, just contributes to this sort of... miasma of paranoia that percolates throughout much of our current lives. It’s a really unhealthy rabbit hole to find yourself going down, especially if you are already mentally ill, or otherwise vulnerable.

But, also, at the surface level, I just also wanted to remark at how pitifully stupid it is that people could be faced with the fact that they had incorrect preconceptions about something, and decide that “it’s not me who’s wrong, it’s the universe!!!”

[96thdayofrage]

WAR DAY 7️⃣1️⃣8️⃣1️⃣ 🍬 "That the lie of Israel continues to be embraced by the ruling elites—there is no daylight between statements in defense of Israeli war crimes by Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz—and used as a foundation for any discussion of Israel is a testament to the corrupting power of money, in this case that of the Israel lobby, and the bankruptcy of a political system of legalized bribery that has surrendered its autonomy and its principles to its major donors. It is also a stunning example of how colonial settler projects, and this is true in the United States, always carry out cultural genocide so they can exist in a suspended state of myth and historical amnesia to legitimize themselves.

"The Israel lobby has shamelessly used its immense political clout to demand that Americans take de facto loyalty oaths to Israel. The passage by 35 state legislatures of Israel lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a mockery of our Constitutional right of free speech. Israel has lobbied the U.S. State Department to redefine anti-Semitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that 'demonize' Israel; statements that apply 'double standards' for Israel; statements that 'delegitimize' the state of Israel. This definition of anti-Semitism is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses.

"The Israel lobby spies in the United States, often at the direction of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, on those who speak up for the rights of Palestinians. It wages public smear campaigns and blacklists defenders of Palestinian rights–including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein; former U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, also Jewish; and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine.

"The Israel lobby has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate U.S. elections, far beyond anything alleged to have been carried out by Russia, China or any other country. The heavy-handed interference by Israel in the American political system, which includes operatives and donors bundling together hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in every U.S. congressional district to bankroll compliant candidates, is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series 'The Lobby.' Israel managed to block 'The Lobby' from being broadcast.

"In the film, a pirated copy of which is available on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use massive cash donations to buy politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.

"Netanyahu’s open defiance of Obama and alliance with the Republican Party, however, did not stop Obama in 2014 from authorizing a 10-year $38 billion military aid package to Israel, a sad commentary on how captive American politics is to Israeli interests."

—Shift to the Far-Right

"The investment by Israel and is backers is worth it, especially when you consider that the U.S. has also spent over $6 trillion during the last 20 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East. These wars are the greatest strategic debacle in American history, accelerating the decline of the American empire, bankrupting the nation at a time of economic stagnation and mounting poverty, and turning huge parts of the globe against us. They serve Israel’s interests, not ours.

"The longer the mendacious Israeli narrative is embraced, the more empowered become the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and far-right hate groups inside and outside Israel. This steady shift to the far right in Israel has fostered an alliance between Israel and the Christian right, many of whom are anti-Semites. The more Israel and the Israel lobby level the charge of anti-Semitism against those who speak up for Palestinian rights, as they did against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the more they embolden the real anti-Semites.

"Racism, including anti-Semitism, is dangerous. It is not only bad for the Jews. It is bad for everyone. It empowers the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred on the extremes. Netanyahu’s racist government has built alliances with far-right leaders in Hungary, India, and Brazil, and was closely allied with Donald Trump. Racists and ethnic chauvinists, as I saw in the wars in the former Yugoslavia, feed off of each other. They divide societies into polarized, antagonistic camps that only speak in the language of violence. The radical jihadists need Israel to justify their violence, just as Israel needs the radical jihadists to justify its violence. These extremists are ideological twins.

"This polarization fosters a fearful, militarized society. It permits the ruling elites in Israel, as in the United States, to dismantle civil liberties in the name of national security. Israel runs training programs for militarized police, including from the United States. It is a global player in the multibillion-dollar drone industry, competing against China and the United States.

"It oversees hundreds of cyber-surveillance startups whose espionage innovations, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, have been utilized abroad 'to locate and detain human rights activists, persecute members of the LGBT community, silence citizens critical of their governments, and even fabricate cases of blasphemy against Islam in Muslim countries that don’t maintain formal relations with Israel.'

"Israel, like the United States, has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. One million Israelis, many of them among the most enlightened and educated, have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists—Israeli and Palestinian—endure constant government surveillance, arbitrary arrests and vicious government-run smear campaigns. Mobs and vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such as Im Tirtzu, physically assault dissidents, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and African immigrants in the slums of Tel Aviv. These Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, demanding their expulsion.

"They are supported by an array of anti-Arab groups including the Otzma Yehudit Party, the ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach party, the Lehava movement, which calls for all Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories to be expelled to surrounding Arab states, and La Familia, far-right soccer hooligans. Lehava in Hebrew means 'flame' and is the acronym for 'Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land.' Mobs of these Jewish fanatics parade through Palestinian neighborhoods, including in occupied East Jerusalem, protected by Israeli police, shouting to the Palestinians who live there 'Death to the Arabs,' which is also a popular chant at Israeli soccer matches.

"Israel has pushed through a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that echo the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law, for example, permits 'small, exclusively Jewish towns planted across Israel’s Galilee region to formally reject applicants for residency on the grounds of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”' Israel’s educational system, starting in primary school, uses the Holocaust to portray Jews as eternal victims. This victimhood is an indoctrination machine used to justify racism, Islamophobia, religious chauvinism and the deification of the Israeli military.

"There are many parallels between the deformities that grip Israel and the deformities that grip the United States. The two countries are moving at warp speed towards a 21st century fascism, cloaked in religious language, which will revoke what remains of our civil liberties and snuff out our anemic democracies. The failure of the United States to stand up for the rule of law, to demand that the Palestinians, powerless and friendless, even in the Arab world, be granted basic human rights mirrors the abandonment of the vulnerable within our own society."

_____

🍬 Chris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie. Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S. Original to ScheerPost, republished in Consortium News, May 14, 2021.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/05/14/chris-hedges-israel-the-big-lie/

[back-and-totheleft]

“I’m not sure I’ve modified my thinking”

“It’s a strange place, England,” Oliver Stone informs me at the start of our Zoom call. “You’ve managed to make it worse than it was,” he says, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. “You’ve turned it into World War Two with your attitudes over there. The English love punishment, it’s part of their make-up.”

You sure know how to break the ice, Mr Stone. It’s a slightly galling accusation, given that he has hitched his wagon to Russia, hardly a paragon of enlightenment. The New York-born writer-director has never shied from ruffling feathers, though. Stone has taken on the American establishment to thrilling effect in his movies, from Platoon to Born on the Fourth of July, JFK to W, Salvador to Snowden, and still emerged with three Oscars. And he has admiringly interviewed a string of figures whose relations with Uncle Sam have rarely been cosy, including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin. Those had more mixed receptions, as has his support for Julian Assange.

Yet at 74 he is still a thorn in the side of the military-industrial complex and is set to remain one for some time, having just had his second shot of Covid vaccine. This being Stone, he got his jab in Russia. A recent trial showed the Sputnik V vaccine he was given to have 92 per cent efficacy and he’s palpably delighted. Angry too, of course. “It’s strange how the US ignores that. It’s a strange bias they have against all things Russian,” he says. “I do believe it’s your best vaccine on the market, actually,” he adds, sounding weirdly Trump-like.

If his bullishness is still intact, Stone reveals a more vulnerable side in his recent memoir, Chasing the Light. The book, which he discusses in an online Q&A tonight, goes a long way to explaining his distrust of government, society and, well, pretty much everything. There are visceral accounts of him fighting in Vietnam, and fighting to get Salvador and Platoon made. “The war was lodged away in a compartment, and I made films about it,” he says. “Sometimes I have a dream that I’ve been drafted and sent back there.”

The crucial event in the book, though, is his parents’ divorce when he was 15. Stone realises now that his conservative Jewish-American father and glamorous French mother were ill-suited. Both had affairs. What really stung was the way he was told about their split: over the phone by a family friend while he was at boarding school. “It was very cold, very English,” he says. “I say English because everything about boarding school invokes the old England.” He’s really got it in for us today.

With no siblings, he says, “I had no family after that divorce. It was over. The three of us split up.” His world view stemmed from his parents being in denial about their incompatibility, he writes in the book: “Children like me are born out of that original lie. And nobody can ever be trusted again.”

That disillusionment took a few years to show itself. “All of a sudden, I just had a collapse,” Stone says. He had been admitted to Yale University but his father’s alma mater suddenly felt like part of the problem. He felt suicidal and sidestepped those thoughts by enlisting to fight in Vietnam, putting the choice of him dying into other hands.

The Stone in the book was described by one reviewer as his most sympathetic character. “It’s true probably because it’s a novel,” he says. Well, technically it’s an autobiography, but it’s a telling mistake. Fact and fiction can blur in his work, from the demonisation of Turks in Midnight Express (he wrote the screenplay) to the conspiracy theories in JFK.

Writing the book allowed him to put himself into the story, something he says he’s never been able to do in his films. He has tried. He wrote a screenplay, White Lies, in which a child of divorce repeats his parents’ mistakes, as Stone has. “I had two divorces in my life [from the Lebanese-born Najwa Sarkis and Elizabeth Burkit Cox, who worked as a “spiritual advisor” on his films] and I’m on my third marriage, which I’m very happy in.” He and Sun-jung Jung, who is from South Korea, have been together for more than 25 years. They have a grown-up daughter, Tara, and he has two sons, Sean and Michael, from his marriage to Cox.

White Lies is on ice for now. “It’s hard to get those kinds of things done,” Stone says wearily. Will he make another feature? It’s been documentaries recently, the last two on the Ukraine. “I don’t know. It’s a question of energy. In the old days, there would be a studio you’d have a relationship with, and they’d have to trust you to a certain degree. And that doesn’t exist any more.”

He thinks back to the big beasts of his early years. Alan Parker, who directed Midnight Express; John Daly, who produced Salvador and Platoon; Robert Bolt, who taught him about screenwriting. “Those three Englishmen had a lot to do with my successes,” he says. I think he feels bad about all the limey bashing. “John was a tough cockney, but I liked him a lot.” He liked him more than Parker, whom he describes as “cold” with a “serious chip on his shoulder.” He smiles. “Sure. Alan did a good job with Midnight Express, though.”

You wonder if Netflix could come to Stone’s rescue. They have given generous backing to big-name directors, from David Fincher to Martin Scorsese, Stone’s old tutor at NYU film school. Surely they would welcome him? “Well, that’s why you’re not in charge! Netflix is very engineering driven. Subject matter such as [White Lies] might register low on a demographic.”

Isn’t he also working on a JFK documentary, Destiny Betrayed? That could do better with the Netflix algorithms. “I’m having problems with that too. Americans were so concerned with Trump, I don’t know that they wanted to hear about some of the facts behind the Kennedy killing. They don’t recognise that there’s a connection between 1963 and now, that pretty much all the screws came loose when they did that in ’63.” He smiles. “I know you think I’m nuts.”

Well no, but you do wonder at his unwavering conviction that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, probably involving the CIA. JFK is a big reason why a majority of Americans believe in a conspiracy and, according to Stone, led to the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board, which he claims is “the only piece of legislation in this country that ever came out of a film.”

Yet several serious studies, including a 1,600-page book, Reclaiming History, by the former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That book accused Stone of committing a “cultural crime” by distorting facts in JFK. “I feel like I’m in the dock with Bugliosi. I didn’t like his book at all,” Stone says. “Believe me, you cannot walk out of [his forthcoming documentary] and say Oswald did it alone. If you do, I think you’re on mushrooms.”

Stone knows whereof he speaks regarding psychedelics. On returning from Vietnam he was “a little bit radical” in his behaviour, he says: drugs, womanising, hellraising. He recently took LSD for the first time in years. “It was wonderful,” he says. He hallucinated that he was “moving from island to island on a little boat”.

What was radical in the Seventies can be problematic now. He has been accused of inappropriate behaviour by the model Carrie Stevens and the actresses Patricia Arquette and Melissa Gilbert. “As far as I know I never forced anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do,” he says. Has he modified the way he behaves around women? “Oh sure, no question.”

At the same time, he is disturbed by “the scolding going on, the shaming culture. I don’t agree with any of that. It’s like the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It scares the shit out of me. I do think the politically correct point of view will never be mine.”

He’s not a slavish follower of conspiracy theories — QAnon “sounds like nonsense”, he says, as was the theory that Donald Trump was “a Manchurian candidate for the Russians. That was a horrible thing to do and it hurt that presidency a lot. I’m not an admirer of Trump by any means, but he was picked on from day one.”

What does he make of Joe Biden? “I voted for him, not because I liked him, but as an alternative to Trump’s disasters. He’s got a far more merciful humanitarian side. But he also has a history of warmongering.” Fake news, he says, has “always happened”, in the east and west, on the left and the right. “I mean, back in the Cold War, the US was saying Russia was lying and Russia was saying the US was lying. Each one of these wars the US has been involved in was based on lies.”

It sounds as if Stone has been on the Russian Kool-Aid himself. He is making a documentary, A Bright Future, about climate change that advocates pursuing nuclear power in the short term, and has visited some Russian nuclear plants. They are “very state-of-the-art,” he says. “The US is not really pursuing the big plants, the way Russia and China are. I believe in renewables, but they’re not going to be able to handle the capacity when India and Africa and all these countries come online wanting electricity.”

Putin liked the interviews Stone did with him in 2017, he says. “I think they contributed to his election numbers.” Wasn’t he too easy on the Russian leader? “That’s what some say. But I got his ire up. I did ask him some tough questions about succession. ‘I think you should leave’ — that kind of stuff. The pressure that Russia is under from both England and the US is enormous,” he adds. “Unless you’re there I don’t know that you understand that. Because you take the English point of view, and they have been very anti-Soviet since 1920. You talk about fake news — I feel that way about MI5 and MI6.”

You can’t help but admire Stone’s conviction. If he’s modified his behaviour that’s probably a good thing, but as he says, “I’m not so sure I’ve modified my thinking. I express myself freely. I don’t want to feel muzzled.” Whatever you think of him, be grateful he hasn’t been.

-Ed Potton, “You talk about fake news. I feel that way about MI5 and MI6,” The Times of London, Feb 8 2021 [x]

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    Abolishing The Racist European Epistemology

As an Indigenous Austronesian, I genuinely believe that moving away from the Western/European worldview and unlearning Western sociocultural proclivities will lead to a greater, compassionate society... or move forward with an exclusively community-centered, feminist, anti-corporatism worldview that we can all strive to cultivate in current and future generations! 

Epistemology is commonly defined as the system of knowing. A civilization’s system of knowing ultimately molds their cultural and socioeconomic system; their entire reality. The European epistemology, and especially the development of European science, has justified the objectification of life, the death of the spirit, and the death of human connection prevalent in ancient and traditional Indigenous worldviews: the spiritual, egalitarian practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, the animism of Shintoism, Native American spiritualism and African polytheism which values all things, animate and inanimate; the reverence-worship of ancestral spirits in the Indigenous Austronesian islands, community-based and matriarchal. Even before the system of knowing, predecessors of modern humanity were altruistic and communal, caring for their sick, elderly and disabled: the natural empathy of a socially and emotionally intelligent prey species. 

Accepting beneficial Non-European concepts today and furthering education on the historical and intrinsic value of environmentalism and altruism in Indigenous knowledge is crucial to our survival as an inherently communal species. 

Allowing Western society to proceed the narrative of history going forward in 2020 is unquestionably dangerous.

From The Social Epistemology of Morality: Learning from the Forgotten History of the Abolition of Slavery:

“The dominant narratives Western countries tell about themselves is that they took the lead in advancing human rights throughout the world. The West has achieved enough self-awareness to recognize its own capacity for mass human rights violations in slavery, imperialism, the Holocaust, and other crimes against humanity--although it has forgotten many of its crimes. In the dominant Western historical narratives, however, the West has forever been an auto-didact, arriving at the true principles of morality through its own self-sufficient reasoning, figuring out for itself when it has failed to apply them, self-correcting its course, and taking the lead in teaching these principles to the rest of the benighted world. It does not imagine that it had to learn fundamental moral truths from those whom it victimized, particularly not from people of African descent.”

Without context, it already paints a familiar picture of the Western world, and America in particular. With contexts, it explains how Haiti, and Haiti alone, was the first country in history to abolish slavery: “...the site of the only successful slave revolt in world history.”

Today, Haiti’s valiant, winning revolt in the history of slavery in the Western world is not widely known, or known at all.

From the very first chapter of Yurugu--- An African Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior:

Indigenous and/or Non-European epistemological systems have always deeply respected the universe and environmentalism: their societal, cultural and architectural structures working with nature, instead of against it. Valuing life, instead of objectifying it. 

The Western/European epistemology devalues and neutralizes Indigenous knowledge even as it simultaneously adopts them. From How Indigenous Knowledge Advances Modern Medicine & Technology:

“For centuries, Indigenous people’s lives depended on their knowledge about the environment. Many plant species — including three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation and enjoyed across the globe — were domesticated by Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. Corn, squash, beans, potatoes and peppers are just a few examples of foods that now contribute vastly to global cuisine!”

“Indigenous knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, Indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy through conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C.”

Indigenous science and modern science must work together in harmony the the progress towards safe medical treatments and cures. 

     The death of the spirit, the ushering in of European philosophy: naturalism, individualism, and, ultimately, racism... 

The entire concept of racism (and how it became systematic + created the imaginary concept of Race, based exclusively on phenotypical appearances with no scientific basis or evidence of its validity) is part of European and American history. “Black” was initially defined by white people, originated from their European-sourced racism and the White’s obsession with their own concept of whiteness.

From White Supremacy In Eurocentric Epistemologies: On The West’s Responsibility For Its Philosophical Heritage by Björn Freter:

“By reading some of the important so-called enlightened and enlightening [European] philosophers, such as the exemplars Voltaire, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, one can find blatant white supremacist racism. Consequently, it is very likely that their racism affected the construction of their philosophical edifices. However, it seems Western scholarship has demonstrated little interest to address this problem. It is not that the texts I engage here are hidden; at least then I could claim a conspiracy. Rather they appear to be widely intentionally disregarded. If philosophy is to retain its integrity, then a work of amelioration must be done, and these destructive, fracturing epistemologies must be addressed.”

Freter goes on to address the racism inherent in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical work, an influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment; xenophobia is blatantly present in Kan’s work: 

“Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people.”

“Mr. David Hume (an influential Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, also racist) challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour. The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature. A bird’s feather, a cow’s horn, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and invocation in swearing oaths. The blacks are very vain but in the Negro’s way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings.”

The compulsory and “pragmatic” dehumanizing of African (and Asian) spirituality/epistemology while ignoring the systematic disadvantages of non-white people is, in itself, racist. It is where such prejudices all began. To consider that racist European philosophies influenced the modern world’s systematic racism... unthinkable? No. Unsurprising. The Western/European epistemology gave birth to racism as it is understood today-----  which was “reformed” or replaced through capitalism.

     Slavery & Capitalism Are Irrevocably Connected

From The Old World Background to European Colonial Slaver:

Slavery was integral to America’s socioeconomic development, and the socioeconomic development of Europe preceding it. It is an unquestionable aspect of America’s culture and history. The moral monstrosity of slavery permeates every proverbial fiber of capitalism, as they are incestuously connected. 

Tipping practices in America can trace its origins to slavery. Wet nursing was primarily done by black female slaves, abused by white upper-class female masters. As slaves became free, those who could not afford to leave the continent were forced to remain in America’s earliest service industries. 

From Black Perspectives, reflecting on Eric William’s Capitalism & Slavery:

“At its most basic, (and setting the question of semantics aside for a moment) the Williams thesis held that capitalism as an economic modality quickly replaced slavery once European elites accumulated the vast surplus capital from slavery that they needed in order to bankroll their industrial revolution. After providing the material foundation and the trade infrastructure that fueled Europe’s dramatic transformation towards modernity, slavery, according to Williams, began a rapid decline in the early nineteenth century. As the new global standard of industrial capitalism took hold, Williams found that antislavery sentiment conveniently accelerated in support of an apparently more efficient and less capital intensive method of commodity production.  Slavery, in short, was no longer needed. Ideological superstructure followed the economic base. Labor coercion continued post emancipation in the form of sharecropping and wage peonage as former slaves quickly experienced proletarianization. In the end, technological change, modern agricultural methods, and industrial factories supplanted traditional agrarianism and ended the older feudalistic relationships of slavery.Nearly every aspect of this thesis has been scrutinized, amended, embellished, and/or overturned by subsequent scholarship.  

Attempts to [describe] the precise features of capitalism and slavery while tracing their relationships to one another over time also proliferated well beyond William’s original set of questions. Perhaps the most sweeping account to recently push outward from the Williams thesis is The Making of New World Slavery (1997) by Robin Blackburn. For Blackburn, slavery not only enabled European capitalism but also the entire cornucopia of European modernity itself. In exploring the interdependence of slavery and capitalism it turns out that, for Blackburn, Williams actually did not go far enough. Blackburn details how a vast cosmos of forces from modern nation-states, tax systems, financial industries, consumer economies, and a host of other political, ideological, economic, and cultural transformations were all built upon the backs of enslaved Africans.  Rather than finding a stark shift in the age of emancipation from slavery to capitalism, however, Blackburn describes an ever thickening dialectic between slavery and modernity at large, with capitalism serving as only one of many transformative processes that grew directly out of slavery between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries.  While Blackburn would argue against the idea that slavery was unprofitable or on a path towards natural extinction at the dawn of the nineteenth century, he does find that Williams was generally correct in describing the role of slavery’s surplus capital in fueling industrialization in the European metropole.” 

[...] “By way of a tentative conclusion, slavery and capitalism might best be described as inseparable yet also irreducible to one another. They must be understood as both distinctive yet permanently connected.  Certain aspects of each system overlap with one another while other parts of each system seem to stand apart."

Through understanding European’s epistemology and the historical and interconnected contexts of racism, slavery, capitalism, and white privilege in Western development, and the Western world as we know it today, we can learn to deconstruct and abolish it: in our personal lives, and hopefully externally!