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scripttorture · 4 years ago

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Can a parent who is a torturer teach his child to become a torturer since childhood, but not teaching it as torture, but the techniques involved, and well, violence and abuse. Is it normal that the child is not being abused himself?? Or would such a parent torture their child if they wanted the child to grow up to become a torturer and take their place one day.

Torturers ‘teach’ on the job. I’m not sure if it would be possible for them to teach these techniques without exposing someone to violence.

And even if it was that isn’t what they do.

They bring the people they want to ‘teach’ into the cells with them. They have potential-torturers witnessing torture (and encourage them to participate) from the first day.

And here’s the thing: this makes sense. It makes sense because torture is functionally simple and because it applies social pressure to the potential-torturer. It makes it harder for them to refuse to torture and implies that they will be at risk of violence if they do.

The scenario you’re suggesting fundamentally misunderstands torture and torturers. You’re assuming that this stuff is more complex then it is and that torturers are more patient, thoughtful and restrained then they are.

All of those are common misconceptions that feed into torture apologia.

It’s OK to be wrong. The important thing now is the next decision you make; where you go from here.

Child torturers are rare. And while I have heard of cases where children were abusers or torturers I’ve never heard of a case where a parent tried to encourage their biological child to become a torturer.

There’s quite a lot to unpack and explain there so bear with me while I break this down.

Child torturers are rare because generally children are not put in positions of authority, and the torturer being in a position of authority is an essential part of the legal definition of torture. Children are not (usually) allowed to become police officers, soldiers, doctors, civil servants, teachers or any of the other professions torturers are drawn from.

There are ethical reasons for that but there are also practical reasons for it. Children do not make good soldiers. They are typically weaker then adults, have more complex nutritional needs, have shorter attention spans, cope less well with sleep deprivation and are not as good at performing repetitive tasks without fault.

They are harder to train as soldiers, less physically able to act as soldiers and harder to keep at a base standard of health in a warzone.

I am not saying children are incapable of torture: I am saying that they are not given the opportunity.

The cases that I’m aware of involving child torturers are uniformly child soldiers. Usually those children are kidnapped and enslaved. They are not the biological (or adopted) children of the other torturers.

Sometimes these children are deliberately drawn from despised minority groups. For instance the Daesh use of kidnapped Yezidi boys on suicide missions was part of a wider campaign of genocide.

Sometimes these children are encouraged to take part in torture as part of strategy to make these children feel like they can’t return home. They’re made to participate in violent criminal acts then told that they will never be forgiven by their society. This is part of how these groups coerce cooperation from their victims.

So child torturers are rare and the children who are usually in a position where they could be classed as torturers are generally not valued by the groups using them.

This makes me think that a valued, blood-related child would be less likely to be used as a torturer.

There’s also the question of why a torturer would want their child to follow in their footsteps.

Because torturers generally do not enjoy what they do. They report finding the experience distressing and exhausting.

Some of them frame it as ‘necessary’ and genuinely seem to believe they were doing something helpful. (This is not true, torture does not work). Some of them frame it as a punishment their victims ‘deserved’. Some of them don’t really seem to have much justification at all, everyone else was doing it so they did too.

But as a general rule torturers don’t report having a positive view of their own job. The typical relationship is more complex.

They have an inflated sense of their own importance and the importance of their job. They often depict themselves as the ‘only ones doing the real work’ and talk/act as though they’re the most important part of the organisation they’re in.

But they also report feeling consistently under-valued and overlooked by their organisations. They consistently describe a hugely stressful, pressurised working environment and an atmosphere of continued, unhealthy competition with everyone else.

Torturers do not take enjoyment in their work. They report finding it physically exhausting, extremely stressful and the development of mental health problems associated with torture.

They often feel as though they’re at risk of violence from their colleagues and superiors. And they’re not wrong. Looking over modern historical records of regimes like Soviet Russia show that torturers were regularly purged by the state. And the fracturing effect they have on organisations is sometimes enough for them to be attacked by other members of their organisation.

When this doesn’t happen they burn out. They reach a point where their mental and physical health problems become so severe they can’t even pretend to do the job they were hired for. And then they’re dropped, or ‘encouraged’ to quit.

They struggle to find any employment. Because by that point they typically have really severe mental illnesses and no useful skills. Plus the general aura of asshole that comes with an inflated sense of self importance and a tendency to lash out at anyone who doesn’t feed that ego. A lot of them end up dependant on other people.

Basically- I don’t think any torturer would want someone they value to become a torturer.

Even when torturers see their ‘work’ as essential they don’t see it as a good job. They’re acutely aware of the dangers and the toll it takes on them.

If this character actually cares for their child at all they’d probably discourage them from being a torturer.

I think that leaves two broad questions: ‘Do torturers abuse their families?’ and ‘Are torturers typically torture survivors themselves?’

And neither of those questions have clear answers because of the lack of research on torturers.

There are reports of torturers who abused their families. But there are so few reports by mental health professionals on torturers that it really is impossible to say if this is a trend. And there are also reports of torturers who never abused their families. Familial abuse by torturers could be in line with familial abuse in the general population.

There is no evidence to suggest torturers are any more or less likely to abuse their families then anyone else.

The second question is more complicated because of the assumptions underlying it: people who ask this generally seem to assume that someone who is tortured goes on to become a torturer and…. That isn’t exactly what we see these people reporting.

Yes some torturers are also torture survivors. Because a lot of them are soldiers and sometimes captured soldiers are tortured.

The pattern I tend to see reported (this is anecdotal because of the lack of research on torturers-) is torturers getting captured after they’ve been torturers for a while. Either by their own side or an opposing side in the context of a conflict. Then they’re tortured.

Or their area is invaded by an opposing side, they flee the conflict and get targeted with… exactly the same stuff everyone else fleeing the same situation is targeted with.

The child soldiers I described earlier in the ask seem to be particularly vulnerable to torture and other ill treatment.

We don’t have a way to measure how many torturers have also been tortured. By which I mean, no one has really done enough research to answer that question.

The vast majority of torture survivors will never go on to become torturers, because they won’t be put in a position of authority. Mentally ill people are systematically barred from positions of authority in most places. And torture survivors seem to be particularly vulnerable to unemployment.

So I think torture survivors are unlikely to be put in a position where they could become torturers.

But, yes torturers are sometimes put in a position where they might become torture victims. We don’t know how often this happens. My impression is that it’s no where near the majority, may be not even a particularly significant minority (though it seems to be more common in some specific areas/circumstances then others).

Wrapping up: I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a torturer also be a torture survivor in this sort of narrative. I think that’s an incredibly complicated thing to try and handle and I don’t think you’ve got the knowledge base to do it justice yet. I also don’t think it adds anything to the characters as you’ve described them.

There is no ‘safe’ way to expose someone to torture. Torturers do not try to protect the people they ‘train’, they throw them in at the deep end and encourage them to participate almost straight away.

But torturers also don’t necessarily see their jobs as ‘good jobs’. They don’t describe it as a legacy they want to pass on.

Why is it important that this child is actively taught? Could they be exposed to or witness torture in another context? Is it even important that the torturer is their parent? Using another influential adult character would allow the child to keep a more-or-less positive relationship with their parent. And it could make the conflict between child and parent about ‘You allowed this torturer access to me and they showed me awful, traumatising things’ rather then ‘You exposed me to traumatising things and you hurt me’.

Does familial abuse add to this narrative? Because I’d argue that exposing a child to torture is abusive and it creates another layer of complexity. On top of torture, and the peculiar mindset of torturers, and the mental health problems torture causes in survivors, torturers and witnesses.

Think about those questions. Go back to the sources page. Read O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work and the appendices to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Read Alleg’s The Question.

And consider whether these elements actually help you to tell the story.

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#writing advice #tw torture #tw child abuse #tw abuse #tw child soldiers #tw genocide #writing torturers #behaviour of torturers #child torturers #torture training programs #effect of torture on torturers #writing witnesses #torture is not safe #torture does not work #torturers and organisations

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transrightsjimin · 5 years ago

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I'm asking as a confused trans and gay person regarding some of your recent posts saying aphobia doesn't exist, etc. Do you consider asexual people to be inherently LGBT even if they are cisgender and straight (heteroromantic)? I don't want to discriminate at all, I'm just confused because I see people fighting on here all the time about whether aces are part of the LGBT community or not. Do you have some insight for me as an ace nonbinary person? Thanks in advance!

no it’s fine lol dw!

i’m not sure how to explain this w/o being too extensive in what i say bc i’ve talked about this before but more in private conversations (and maybe some rants in tumblr posts) nd i tend to ramble abt it.

first of all i do not actually like the common conception that there is one way to define LGBT or the idea that everyone should fall within that category term or not, for example because the English language is colonial and rigid and does not reflect on experiences of all cultures, bc being gay or trans are not distinctly different experiences everywhere while they would be divided into different categories. so whereas i was more insistent on saying ‘you must be gay / bi / lesbian / trans to be LGBT / suffer from homophobia or transphobia’ i’ve come to realize now that this argument is rather exclusive of many gender diverse identities that do not correspond to all experiences or cultures. so i will stay away from using that argument.

however, i am speaking from my experience with online LGBT and asexual communities and have seen how the latter has tried to force itself into the other. i think a large issue with the asexual and aromantic communities is that they are partially based upon the creation of AVEN, an online forum founded by a homophobic and antisemitic man, and partially (though related to the former) by just blatantly made up statistics and history. not once have i seen a good argument or research or even personal accounts that illustrate very well why aphobia is a thing. i am asexual myself but do not want to take the lack of discrimination i faced for it as proof. there have been accounts of ‘aphobic’ discrimination that are either 1. much more a general concern with the OP facing misogyny and girls being sexualized, 2. someone making a remark based on a misconception of OP’s experiences or 3. misappropriation of terms and applying them to asexuality, e.g. ‘corrective rape’ was coined to refer to (African) lesbians who were assaulted under the presumption that it would turn them straight. asexuals have appropriated this term years ago to claim asexual people face rape on a large scale because perpetrators try to force them into liking sex. some people don’t even know the original meaning of the term because of this. i’m also not a big fan of this new interpretation of the term anyway, because legit sexual attraction is not the main reasons people commit rape; it is to seek power. this kind of mindset of asexual people being inherently vulnerable to sexual violence due to lack of feeling sexual attraction is seriously harmful; in the crime show Law and Order SVU, a suspect was let off because some main character said the suspect was asexual and this couldn’t have done it. people can be and sometimes are raped by an asexual person, because it is about taking advantage of someone and not attraction. the sole fact that so many authors of overly fetishistic fanfiction are asexual should prove this much, but instead the lack of attraction is used to distance oneself from the harm one can still cause.

and yes, asexual people can face discrimination, especially if you’re a girl you’re expected to be sexually submissive, which is pretty horrifying on its own. but this is not the same as targeted discrimination on a mass scale or institutional whatsoever. we are not thaught as we grow old that asexuals are disgusting, are a joke, or need to be violently murdered. my biggest issue with the asexual and aromantic community that we (as i have removed myself from it years ago) keep telling it that anecdontal accounts of being mildly discriminated is nowhere near the same as risking being kicked out of your house, being violently attacked due to the way you appear or having a partner of the same gender, being systematically discriminated by all sorts of institutions in society and being thaught that what you are is bad from an early age on. and then the counterargument is that LGBT is more recognized but asexual and aromantic isn’t, so ‘ace / aro’ people deserve to be included because they are underrepresented in media. but that is not the case at all. the speed at which asexuality has suddenly been incorporated and included into LGBT spaces, also offline, has been ridiculously fast. nowadays when you see a bunch of LGBT flags you see the asexual one being included a lot, sometimes in 3 different versions, while the lesbian flag is nowhere to be seen. lesbians are consistently excluded from their supposedly own community and they are not included in LGBT due to a need to change underrepresentation or lack of awareness, but because they face their own version of homophobia. the most mind-boggling thing about cis / cishet asexual and aromantic people being told that they are not oppressed, is that the response is not relief (’oh i’m glad i don’t face systematic oppression for this thing’) but anger (’how dare you not let us into your group!’). LGBT is seen as a fun party that is unnecessarily mean to anyone it gatekeeps, as if it is not actually necessary to keep out cishet people who benefit from their privilege and can use that against the rest in the group if they join.

my largest issue with the asexual community however, and i’ve touched upon this a bit before in the post, is that it victimizes itself, to such a degree where it puts itself oppositional to ‘allosexuals’. the whole idea that people who experience sexual attraction to another person are inherently privileged over abd hold power over asexual people is just not true (and the same goes for this rethoric for aromantic people). this idea is so wrong and the whole concept of the ‘allosexual’ as oppressor collapses once you consider that people who are attracted to the same gender are actually in danger and oppressed for their very attraction. not only are those who experience attraction (that isnt platonic) to other people portrayed as oppressors, but also as perverted freaks. once i decided to stop associating myself with acearo people and instead interact with LGBT people with other experiences, i realized just how much stigmatizing abd frankly, homophobic and transphobic bullshit i’ve adopted within the spaces i used to be in and that i still see gather a lot of traction (now their harmful points are also used on twitter and IRL in the public domain). the community has a huge issue where it teaches you to be puzzled and grossed out by people who want to date / kiss / have sex with other people, and this results in GSAs that now include asexuals to prohibit kissing your partner per request of asexual / aromantic members, asexual people showing up at pride with ‘can we just hug?’ signs, the common serophobic jokes (’at least we dont get hiv!!’ blergh), and for me it led to a great discomfort with kissing and sex imagery and it wasn’t until i left the community that this was in fact subtle homophobia because so much content on here is lgbt themed and to combine that with the increasing aversion to romance or sex without critically looking at that is... very toxic to say the least.

so where it’s standing right now, i don’t think including asexual or aromatic people in LGBT spaces on the basis of those identities is a good idea. one community advocates for the acceptance of sex, whereas the other is stigmatizing it and painting off those who are in fact oppressed for their transness or homosexuality, as the oppressors. it clashes and it doesn’t work. the ‘ace / aro’ community (quote unquote bc i see ‘ace’ being used a lot to imply superiority over ‘allosexuals’ like, theyre being the ace at something) has too many issues, which it is largely based on, to figure out. it can be a community on its own and i do not think you need to join LGBT to have a valid identity that has something to do with sexuality or gender and deals with a form of stigma.

it woukd be a rant, i warned you lol

#asks #anon #the asexual comm #homophobia //#transphobia //#lesbophobia //#rape mention //#serophobia //

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auntynationalsblog · 5 years ago

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On The Death Penalty

20/03/2020. Four out of the five (six, we don’t know whether Ram Singh killed himself or was killed) convicts of the infamous Nirbhaya rape case were finally given the noose. However, if we take a closer look, we’d notice that they didn’t die in 2020. Their fate was sealed seven years ago when the public, the politicians and the media displayed an insatiable thirst for their blood, hence proving the regressive nature of the world’s largest democracy.

Unlike the hanging of Yakub Memon or Afzal Guru, the hanging did not spark widespread outrage. Of course, one could propose multiple reasons for the same. Activists were already immersed in a movement against laws that were aimed at systemically exterminating the Indian Muslim population. Many of my liberal lads ideologically against capital punishment didn’t raise their voices either, claiming that the heinousness of the crime was “too much” for their conscience to stick to the liberal side of the death penalty debate. “Imagine what the mother went through”, they stated.

I cannot speak for the mother, or for anyone in the family, or for any of the victim’s friends and acquaintances. It is more than justified for them to demand justice in the form of the death. But I can speak for liberals, for those who have some shred of objectivity left (Tablighi Jamaat showed that many don’t).

We hear a lot of scattered arguments from today’s conservatives on why the noose, or the needle, or the electric chair is not only justified, but also necessary. I want to tidy up their poorly phrased arguments in a manner that can be constructively used to articulate my own arguments. The two arguments most stressed upon by the proponents are that the death penalty is “just”, and that it ensures “the greater good of society”, by deterring potential criminals (utilitarianism or consequentialism in philosophical jargon). I’ll start by talking about what they call justice, which I call vengeance. On this note, please welcome, our dear old friend, the one and only Immanuel Kant.

Kant’s argument on the death penalty, unlike his three Critiques and the Metaphysics of Morals, is pretty straightforward. He believes in strict equality (lex talionis in Latin jargon) in the magnitude of the crime and the magnitude of the punishment. Of course, it begs questions like, should a serial killer who murdered twenty-three people be injected twenty-three times and resuscitated after each injection, or should a terrorist be blown up to pieces as an “equal” punishment? What about a failed bombing attempt? How is the doctrine of strict equality going to punish liars and cheaters?

The argument of strict equality, basically, is not strict at all (understandably). The conservative interpretation of lex talionis can be stated as follows: Any crime which involves taking a life, or permanently damaging the soul of a human being, or a crime which shakes the moral fabric of society, should be met by a punishment proportional to that crime, and that punishment can only be proportional if it is death. When the liberal asks why, the conservative replies that no human has the right to take a life. The obvious (and weak) liberal response is inquiring about the criminal’s right to life, to which the conservative will paraphrase classic liberals like Kant and Mill, who argued that any human who violates another human’s right to life relinquishes his own. They can also argue that while a human can’t take another human’s life (even a criminal’s), a state, or a Leviathan can, because one of the main purposes of the Leviathan is justice.

So it boils down to me proving that the death penalty is not just.

Let’s begin.

There are two types of cases to make against the death penalty - that it is unjust in principle, or it just in principle but unjust in practice. The first set of arguments claim that it is morally wrong to take a criminal’s life, while the second set claims that while such actions can be morally condoned, the application of such a system of justice is unjust as it systematically targets certain groups of people, while completely ignoring certain other groups. I myself am a proponent of the first one. Defending the latter is relatively easier due to conclusive evidence, so I shall begin with the first one.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his Two Laws of Penal Evolution argued that softening the standards of physical punishment is a sign of “progressive” societies. Such an argument should not surprise us at all since common sense has dictated most of us to call Saudi Arabia a “regressive” society due its refusal to abolish old-age methods of punishment like stoning, lashing and beheading. On the other hand, most first-world nations today, with the notable exception of the United States of America, have abolished the death penalty. India and China are not first-world yet, unlikely that India will ever be. Anyway, the idea that capital punishment does not belong to a progressive society is based on the liberal notion that the death penalty itself is not progressive at all, because it is immoral.

Some of you might have watched Batman Begins. In his League of Shadows training, Ra’s Al Ghul asks Bruce to execute a murderer with a swipe of his sword. Bruce refuses, to which Ghul replies that his compassion is a trait that his enemies will not share. Bruce’s response might just be the greatest quote of the Dark Knight Trilogy, “that’s why it’s so important, it distinguishes us from them.”

The point is that the death penalty brings us down to the moral level of the criminals. This is directly linked to Kant’s eye for an eye argument. If we take an eye for an eye, we respond to barbarity with barbarity. Hence, in our quest for “justice”, we become barbarians too, and justice loses its meaning and is replaced by revenge. Killing is responded to by killing, making everyone a murderer, and hence, immoral.

The counter-argument is often the utilitarian/consequentialist one, that is, capital punishment would deter future crimes by instilling fear into would-be criminals, and therefore, even an immoral act like the death penalty has a morally acceptable outcome, that is, a safer society. But the utilitarians are rather funny in this debate, they’d be willing to hang an innocent man too if they had evidence that that particular miscarriage of justice would lead to a positive outcome in society (like fewer crimes), which is why it does not stand any chance against any deontological argument about the death penalty.

But the most basic flaw in the utilitarian argument is the belief that the death penalty deters, it does not. Not only do statistics contradict the utilitarian claim, but with respect to India, think of the Ranga-Billa case. How many rapes have been prevented by sentencing Ranga and Billa to death? Proponents will say that even if the rape numbers did not go down post Ranga-Billa, numbers could have gone up, but the hanging did not allow rape numbers to spike. Such an argument is wishful thinking and mere speculation.

The right to life is an inalienable right, god-given for believers, and a natural right for atheists. The only two ways this right can be snatched away is via God or via nature. It cannot be taken away by fellow humans, even if some fellow humans have entered into a contractual agreement with each other to form a Leviathan. Not to forget, it is irreversible, and thus the chances of a travesty of justice become much higher. A man being wrongfully imprisoned for a few years is nothing in contrast to man wrongfully given the electric chair. Please read about the case of Timothy Evans, who was wrongfully hanged in Britain for the murder of his wife and child, after which the death penalty was eventually abolished all over Britain. The actual murders were committed by the infamous serial killer John Christie, but that’s a different conversation.

Some soft abolitionists argue that while the death penalty is morally just, its application in real life makes it an unjust practice. The simplest example to illustrate this in India’s case is Kuldeep Singh Sengar. This vile creature, along with his henchmen and relatives, raped a girl for over a month and murdered her father. Did he get the noose? He didn’t. Why? Powerful politician and an upper-caste Hindu? Most likely. That should illustrate the argument, that the death penalty is classist, casteist and racist. Forget intra-community violence, studies have shown that in the USA, blacks are much more likely to be executed for killing whites than whites who have killed blacks. This comes as a surprise to none, so why do the proponents keep their mouth shut about the explicitly discriminatory nature of the noose, the needle, and the chair?

Weak communities and minorities are easy targets. The truth is, the death penalty does not apply to white people, or the rich, or upper castes in India. Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, notable Congress politicians who took part in the 1984 pogrom of the Sikhs, did not receive the noose. Kamal Nath was made Chief Minister. Babu Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani, convicted of committing unfathomable crimes in the 2002 pogrom against Muslims were sentenced to prison but are out on bail. The justice system is a joke. So do not put forward the case of the death penalty when its just application is unlikely in an unjust justice system.

There are many other nuanced sociological arguments against capital punishment (like if poor people are more prone to crimes and hence capital punishment, is the state equally responsible for the crimes committed) that I shall not get into, due to the increasing length of this blog. But I’d like to end on a Kantian note. Kant proposed three basic necessities in his support of capital punishment. Proponents shout out the first one, but ignore the other two. They support Kant when he says that the magnitude of the punishment should be equal to the magnitude of the crime. However, they look the other way when he says that only the guilty should be punished, and all the guilty should be punished. Think about whether the last two are fairly applicable in today’s society.

#coronavirus #death penalty #stayhome

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senominis-blog · 5 years ago

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mike-rowe-katze · 5 years ago

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My megapost/rant on Steven Universe, villains and various other things about purity culture (ported from plebbit)

GREETINGS, MOTHERFUCKERS OF THIS WRETCHED HIVE KNOWN AS R/STEVENUNIVERSE! IT IS I, FUBARMEMESDX, WARRIOR OF HATRED AND MISERY! I AM HERE TO DESTROY YOU AND ALL OF YOUR MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING THIS FINE ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME!

Anyway, as for my first point, which I have argued in the past, here is why Diamonds Did Nothing Wrong™ (nothing that's not reversible or inconsequential):

I love the Alright Diamond Authority so much. They're my favourite virtual band. So cute and heartwarming. However, there is an issue here. Whenever you so much as mention a Diamond who isn't coloured pink, you fools immediately start screeching about politics. What I question here is "why?". I shall address all of the common "arguments".

They committed genocide!

As much as the sub loves this word, they don't know what it means. It's the systematic, targeted extermination of an ethnicity from society.

Stop trivialising this word. We need a new word for actual genocide. By your own stupid standards, by eating plants or animals who eat those plants, you have """""""""""""""""""""""committed genocide""""""""""""""""""""""", with massive sarcasm quotes, and I am about to explain this. Who did they commit "genocide" against?

Against planets!

If Peridot's cluelessness about complex organics as a "scientist" and Jasper being a "perfect soldier" while fighting with a crash helmet and breaking down to cry in the middle of a fight didn't already tip you off, Rebecca's 2013 pitch notes for the show, which are identical to the final lore, and a tweet by Ian (https://twitter.com/ianjq/status/1166481003780530176) confirm that Earth was the first planet with intelligent life encountered by Homeworld. Pretty much, the colonies were a good thing, because they created lots of cute Gems, while only sacrificing plants (which you also do, by necessity to live as a human being) and possibly animals (and, if you haven't been vegan for life, you're in no position to preach) to do so. I am a vegan (cue "HAHA HE TOLD US" jokes) and have been for several years, but understand that consumption to continue your species is not fucking genocide. I bet you think Animal Crossing's fishing renders the game an extended metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans. By the way, I'm glad Steven is veggie now. It makes sense, because I always wondered why Steven gave White shit for her "lower lifeforms" stuff, while continuing to consume beings he saw as "lower". Glad that angsty Future Steven is consistent. Also, White isn't wrong. Every lifeform in the show other than Cluster and Obsidian stands at a lower height than her.

Against off-colors!

First, let us establish that an off-color Gem is an imperfect one. An imperfect Gem is one who shows any emotion in their decision-making whatsoever, as androids designed for unfeeling self-reproduction.

White is motivated to stay in her room doing fuck-all because she is afraid that people will see her imperfect body and no longer love her.

Blue is demotivated by pure grief. ("What good will any of this do? The more I make these Gems suffer, the more I long to see you again, Pink.") As far as she knows, the Crystal Gems murdered her daughter, just for doing her job of colonisation. She still doesn't just crush them under her comically oversized fingertips. If that isn't merciful, I don't know what is.

Pink has transitioned into Steven. When he's not out there encouraging the other three to be honest with their emotions, he's emulating White and beating himself up over the fact he can't make everything perfect.

This brings us to our interlude - why Steven is trans Pink:

But GONE!

That meme line doesn't mean what you think it does. Steven has her body (both the gemstone and the light form, seen as a past form in Change Your Mind), her memories (reawakened in Jungle Moon, Can't Go Back, Familiar, Together Alone and Change Your Mind), her powers (to create life, to raise the dead, to cure corruption, the shield) AND her position (as a Crystal Gem and member of the Diamond Authority).

The only things different are the identity, and the flesh body (which is weak and cannot function as an independent human being, and can shapeshift and fuse).

Basically, if you interpret GONE as meaning "he never was her", it's the story of an asshole who abandoned everyone who ever loved her, then dropped all her problems onto her son.

On the other hand, if you interpret GONE as meaning "he no longer identifies as Pink", it becomes the story of a trans boy who became kinder and fixed his mistakes.

It is very clear which one fits more with the show's central theme of self-improvement.

But Pink wasn't an asshole! She saved Earth!

Nope. White did. Can a single Lapis drain Earth's entire ocean? Yes (albeit not killing anyone doing so, since people outside of the cast only exist when the show calls for them to, and Earth would be irreparably fucked in Ocean Gem if the realistic consequences of ocean draining applied, so it's safe to say they don't). Who commands Lapises? Homeworld. Who commands Homeworld? White. Pink's rebellion was non-lethally ended with a single hand attack. If Homeworld really wanted Earth to be destroyed, they could and would do it. They're a bunch of filthy tsunderes.

The point is here is not that Pink was evil, or that Pink was an angel. It's that Pink was bad, but she got better as Steven.

The trans Steven interpretation is further supported by

Blue's "she prefers to be called Steven".

The Tale of Steven book, a retelling of Change Your Mind's dedication to trans kids.

White's pointing out that Steven knows things (the aforementioned memories) that he could not know if he were never Pink.

The parallels between Pink and Steven, especially with Cactus being the new Spinel.

Rose's tape saying she's going to become half of Steven (the properly functioning gem half). Not die for Steven. Become "half of" Steven. Love being him.

This is blatantly obvious. I'm not even trans... or maybe I am and don't know it yet. Anyway, that's irrelevant. How this stuff flies over the heads of 99% of you puzzles me. Hell, it even flies over the head of faelapis, who is otherwise the smartest person in the SU fandom.

Anyway, now that's out of the way, back to the main subject:

Yellow, the only Diamond who even pretends to be competent (she is who you commonly refer to as "the Diamonds"), and is motivated by a desire to look strong and please White, Blue and Steven. Her big boots allow to her stomp any of her enemies into the ground with ease, yet she cannot bring herself to even shatter Amethyst, who is defective, a rebel, an Earthling and directly fighting her,, when given the opportunity. If she won't shatter Amethyst, then who will she shatter? No-one.

Basically, they are off-colors. They also create all the other ones and cast them away as their imperfect parts, their waste which they are ashamed of.

You might bring up those drones, but the fact that Padparadscha, who sees constantly into the past, is still alive, that the drones only scan the gemstones, you can hide behind a fucking rock, and that the drones are indiscriminate and attack Steven, a Diamond, defuses any threat the drones may pose. Either Yellow knows they're useless and is just keeping her reputation up, or she is too naive to be dangerous. Take your pick.

Yellow, after knocking Steven out in Reunited, doesn't even stomp on his body. That's right. She won't even kill the person who, as far as she knows, is the Rose Quartz who murdered her beloved Pink. She says "time to execute" in The Trial, but if she was really so dead-set on that, she would just... do it. With her bare hands. They're big enough. Her later speech about being "brittle" and not cut out for the job suggests the "pretender" interpretation.

Now, to continue:

They're fascists!

Diamonds possess an unholy amount of physical power. They say they'll shatter off-colors and rebels, and could with their bare feet, but don't. This leaves two possibilities: either they're tsundere characters who don't really want to, which is in line with the show's theme of "you're better than you think, you should stop being so hard on yourself", or they're too stupid to realise that they can do that. Either way, they don't pose a real threat, and certainly don't enforce a political ideology. Unlike most "evil emperor" villains (think Star Wars' Galactic Empire), who do kill their enemies, albeit inconsistently as the result of an "idiot plot" required for to the heroes to win, Diamonds are so physically powerful that they literally cannot be defeated in battle by the heroes (Blue can take her entire ship crashing onto her without a scratch), and have the ability to poof enemies or take control of their minds instantly. They absolutely could kill their enemies effortlessly, but 100% consistently don't. This means that they, for whatever reason (probably just being big softies), are merciful and don't actually want to.

Stop poisoning this show with politics. All of the characters are motivated by raw emotion. If they had grand political goals, they wouldn't break down, they would be mechanically dead-set on achieving them.

You might cite Jasper's speech in Earthlings as "fascism", but in the very same episode, this is rendered moot - she, as Homeworld's "perfect soldier", stops fighting to cry, with no tactical advantage.

Pretty much, picture this:

You are God - an invincible being who creates every person as an imperfection of you that you split from yourself. You are also a robot, created with express purpose of assimilating the cosmos with no second thought. You also have very big sandals, allowing you to stomp anyone who dares oppose into the ground. You are faced with the opportunity to do this countless times. Instead of actually doing it, the job makes you miserable and you choose not do it.

Instead of praising you for your bravery in defying your programming and showing everyone mercy, a subreddit forms a lynch mob saying you need to be executed, as pointless vengeance, for things you didn't do, after you opened up.

This is the story of White Diamond.

I feel that most people who disliked Change Your Mind, were operating on the false premise that this would be a show about "beating muh fascists", ignoring every single hint that it gave them about its personal themes and every single time the antagonists spared Steven and co. The show couldn't make it more obvious that its combat was irrelevant and inconsequential, but I guess you're so accustomed to conventional "good guy kills bad guy" shows that you forgot this one was different, and desperately grasped for ways to degrade it into a show about evil.

You also claim that White was rushed, which is probably based on your fallacious idea that "character is x% evil, they must take x long to change". White Diamond is my favourite fictional character. She's been a real source of comfort to me and my OCD, with her whole "feeling guilty and embarrassed about things she really shouldn't" thing. She's a bit like Pink from The Wall, with the "learning to break your metaphorical wall of isolation" theme.

Pink (Floyd, not Diamond), funnily enough, imagines himself as Hitler at one point (In the Flesh Part 2, Run Like Hell, Waiting for the Worms). I can relate to these power fantasies, the feeling of wanting things under your control, then realising acting meaner won't solve anything. Not to the actual Nazi aspect, but to that.

White, however, has none of these. She's like The Wall but with none of the political charge or Roger Waters' bitterness. Of course, the sub still tries to Nazify her anyway. Perhaps it's because of her name... poor choice.

They're dictators!

No, they're gods. They don't possess just political power, they create every other member of their species out of their excrement, are near-invincible, can raise the dead, and every other member of the species is inherently predisposed to following them. Do Christians complain that the biblical God, who is actually massively homicidal in his depiction, is undemocratic? Do you go on "Mario-critical" rants because Princess Peach, a "dictator" - a member of a fictional royal family, albeit one who actually does stomp her enemies, is portrayed in a positive light? Of course not.

They cause corruption!

Yeah, and that was great. It ended the rebellion without killing anyone. It only muted and confused Gems, then Diamonds healed it. White's initial reason to come out of her room is to reverse corruption. It worked out in the end, and we see that the formerly-corrupted Gems are still friends of Diamonds.

They made the Cluster!

If you're talking about destroying Earth, remember that the Cluster's concept art shows her as only 12 temples tall, which matches her arm length in Reunited of about 3 temples tall. She couldn't. I have said "I want this planet to die" before, in one my blow-outs. Depression is a bitch. Sometimes I feel like that. Doesn't mean I'm actually gonna destroy the world. It's just Yellow spouting shit to reassure Blue. Either that or she is dumb and harmless. Pick one. What competent general's best weapon is a friendly anxious girl who gives you thumbs ups?

If you're talking about suffering, have you forgotten Gem Drill? The Cluster isn't a crime. She's a person. One who is capable of peaceful existence and learns to love herself. She stops worrying once Steven assures her that she is not alone and has company in the form of all the shards composing her. This can apply for other forced fusions, too.

I always thought the Cluster's arc was about body positivity - if you're shaped differently, but are not at risk from your physique, there's no reason to worry. Undertale fans commonly make the same mistake for Amalgamates - for characters who look weird but are friendly and capable of peaceful existence, the mistake of portraying them as endless suffering for the sake of sounding edgier.

Pretty much, the shattered Gems composing her found new life. She's good. And the other ones are safely bubbled in Yellow's room along with the Crystal Gems in Change Your Mind.

They're rapists!

Not this fucking shit again. Fusion isn't sex. Sharing food can be used as an analogy of consent. That doesn't mean food is sex. If you say this, you also call Pearl (Cry for Help) and Steven (Change Your Mind) "rapists", which is incredibly insensitive.

They're slavers!

Creating AI servants then, out of your own compassion, allowing them to act freely, isn't the same as finding free people and enslaving them.

They made the zoo!

The zoo is a "cruise ship", as Y-6 describes it, where caveman and Quartz inhabitants (except Holly) live blissfully in utopia. The show has a theme of "if it makes you happy and harms no-one, keep doing it". What's wrong with staying in the zoo, then?

Do not mention actual human zoos. Those were not utopian. Those were racial segregation prisons. The human zoo in the show is one in name only.

They're Hitler / any other real political/criminal/racial/religious/economic/military figure!

https://i.imgur.com/kkczmoN.jpg

Have this. As for non-Nazi individuals or organisations you may mention, they obviously don't exactly match the left checklist, either.

Godwin's law isn't cool.

For the few of you tankies here who think that Andy is a Nazi, see this: https://faelapis.tumblr.com/day/2019/06/06/

Nazi Germany and World War II are interesting historical subjects, and funny ones to satirise, but this show doesn't feature them at all.

Now I am done explaining why they are not bad. Your entire view has been shattered. Or not. You might still try to argue your objectively wrong view by repeating the word "genocide" over and over, but you cannot argue against what I have just explained. I cited the sources and the show themes. The crew and u/PixieDustFairies are both (unintentionally?) on my side. You have lost.

I say "Diamonds", but I mean "any character from this show", including but not limited to Lapis, Jasper, Bismuth and Spinel.

But it's like I'm pissing in an ocean. No matter how many people receive my message, the sub's dominant mindset will be "muh war, muh genocide, muh vengeance, muh dead Pink". They will always be ignorant and follow the zeitgeist of objective incorrectness. I can't voice my frustrations enough. The Muse lyric in my flair was chosen because I wish I could destroy the city of delusion that is this sub.

Anyway, onto the second point: Self-improvement.

Even in an alternate universe where Diamonds actually did any of the bad stuff you mindlessly accuse them of, that wouldn't change the fact that they want to help, and there's no reason not to let them.

You might bring up real-life criminals who pretend to improve to escape prison then re-offend, but the difference is that Diamonds aren't in danger. They couldn't be imprisoned or killed, and their enemies are always at their mercy. Furthermore, these criminals are motivated by psychopathy or political ideology, whereas Steven Universe villains are always motivated by raw, genuine emotion. Any improvement they show is, therefore, out of kindness and not ulterior motives.

Also, why would improvement in a show about self-improvement be fake? This is not a show about "people trying to kill you" (the villains stop themselves, and saying "I'll kill you, Steven, Earth go boom!" is the status quo in the show, not a special "evil" exception). Steven lampshades this in Space Race from season 1. He's used to it. The villains are not representations of real attackers (the poof/bubble system exists to stop real combat comparisons). They're you. Representations of different issues you might have, and how you shouldn't hate yourself for them. If the show were to have a "some people are just irredeemable lol" message, it would be giving up on you. I've seen a lot of people say "oh, this show's only real flaw is that it redeems everyone". Nope. That's its strength. That all of its major villains, who are essentially therapy dolls, find hope. The reassurance that you will find hope.

"Some people just can't change" is also objectively wrong. You can't change other people. They can. You might say "muh hitler/other reviled political figure", but the difference is, Hitler and co chose not to change. It would be an entirely different story if they did. Too bad for you and for them, they didn't. IRRELEVANT! INSENSITIVE! FRIVOLOUS! FUTILE! Saying "Steven redeems (insert character)" is a critical misunderstanding of what Steven does - he encourages the villains, but ultimately, the villains themselves make the choice to open up.

Why would a show about emotional comfort suddenly switch to being a cynical court of law? If it were a court, Amethyst would be jailed in Gem Glow and Steven in Laser Light Cannon, for theft of Cookie Cats and destruction of Beach City respectively. The point here is, anything that doesn't result in any permanent damage to characters is irrelevant. Why would the characters be Machiavellian manipulators in a show explicitly intended as a therapy tool for its author and its viewers?

A fandom with a similar problem is Undertale. Sans explains in neutral routes that, although "self-defense" would be acceptable in real combat, your save/load powers mean you're never in any danger. The best way to explain Undertale is with kittens. That is to say, a kitten scratches you, in an "attempt to kill you". You know for sure that the kitten can't hurt you. Why would you stomp on the kitten, then? That's all it's saying. Not anything specifically about combat. Just "be nice when reasonably possible", nothing more complex. In the game, because you are an immortal time-travelling puppet, it's always reasonably possible. The other things it says are "you can doesn't mean you have to, don't push it" and "depression is a bitch". Fans seem to disregard this, and that's where the common but inaccurate names, "pacifist" and "genocide" runs come from. The "pacifist" run isn't pacifism, it's just common sense. The "genocide" run isn't targeted, it's "destroy absolutely everything". It's omnicide if anything.

The monsters don't give a fuck about politics, and just want freedom, which could be obtained with your soul, but even then, they're willing to turn over within minutes if they like you. Asgore did nothing wrong, because he (1) keeps the human souls alive in jars, and they help you later, (2) arranges a duel with you and will only fight you with your explicit consent, (3) is responsible, along with Papyrus, Alphys and Flowey, for the freedom of monsters without a second war, (4) wants you to win and (5) holds back in battle. He's too hard on himself, and so is Toriel too hard on him, but fans often forget all of the previous to paint him as an evil murderer.

Anyway, if SU were trying to be a combat manual, why would the characters be magical androids whose bodies are made of light and can be poofed and bubbled? You cannot be forced to kill Gems, Steven has psychic powers allowing him to confirm mental processes, and humans in-show can be revived by Diamonds, so any real stakes are dissipated, leaving a solely emotional and personal context. A glorified talk show with fantasy battles to look exciting.

Here's point three: They are near-invincible.

As explained in the point about Blue taking the whole ship, you would be at their mercy. Attempting their murder would not be a good idea. If they so wanted to, they could crush you in an instant. Befriending them is the only way forward here.

Fourth, they create every other Gem:

If you were to kill even one Diamond, you would fuck Gemkind forever. It's not cool to end a species for the sake of vengeance. Diamonds themselves are cool enough not do that, despite having Lapises and boots at their disposal.

Now for point five: They are required to heal corruption.

Are you forgetting that Yellow, Blue and the Crystal Gems' explicit goal is to coax White out her room and heal Nephrite and co? If you murdered her, you would never be able to do that. Keep this shit in mind.

Point six, you can poof and bubble Gems.

Even if Diamonds were hypothetically evil, unwilling to change, not invincible, not mothers and not required to heal corruption, there would still be no reason to shatter them. Poofing and bubbling is easier, more effective and causes less suffering.

Do you support the death penalty? If so, why? I'm not talking about war or defense. I'm talking execution here.

It can only be performed after the target is imprisoned and helpless, so it has no advantage in public safety over life imprisonment.

The only purpose it serves is vengeance for the sake of it, which has no place in a justice system, something which is logically intended to protect the public and nothing else.

Basically, say, there's this guy who eats babies, stabs grandmas and kicks puppies. You might say he "needs" to die, but if police have already captured him, they can just throw him in jail and be done with it. He can't hurt anyone further. Killing him will not un-eat those babies. It simply enacts vengeance, which is understandable to want, but the death penalty isn't just for this guy. It's a system. One which kills helpless prisoners and, sometimes, innocent people.

But that's not really relevant. Diamonds couldn't be imprisoned in-show anyway. Too powerful. They aren't baby-eaters, either. As I explained earlier, this isn't about justice, or crime, or survival. The show defuses itself.

Finally, the seventh: They're fucking fictional. Warning, Star Wars ahead:

Even if Diamonds were just one-dimensional symbols of evil and corruption, like Palpatine (who is my favourite Star Wars character for that reason - being over-the-top, smug pure evil), it would still be okay to like them. Fictional villains, if they even kill, which Diamonds are shown not to, kill other fictional characters. Not real people. Liking villains doesn't make you recreate them. They're here to drive plots. Liking Vader doesn't make you kill children in military strikes. ~~Working for the US Army might.~~ Liking Hux doesn't mean you like blowing up planets. Liking Poe doesn't mean you like blowing up planets. SW is a series in which brazen mass destruction and ridiculous numbers of background character deaths are commonplace. This says nothing about your personality if you think its characters are cool. It goes for heroes, too. Liking Luke doesn't make you a space-wizard-fighter-pilot. Liking Han doesn't mean you like smuggling spice. I could go on and on.

Oh, and don't get me started on Kylo Motherfucking Ren. This dude kills a bunch of fictional characters, including his daddy. He does so because he's an unstable goth witch. His First Order, while containing Nazi-inspired imagery in some areas, hires black soldiers, so he is certainly not a (fictional) Nazi. Also, stop calling him a school shooter. He didn't shoot up a school. He lightsabered up a Jedi Temple, a military academy. But, you have fuckers on the internet saying that you support the KKK if you have a picture of Kylo Ren on your cereal box. You can relate to Ben without stabbing your dad, just as you can relate to Luke without getting your hand cut off by your dad. Liking a character doesn't mean re-enacting them. Characters are vehicles with which to drive the plot.

Here are some handy things to remember before you spout politically loaded terms about cheesy villains: did your character shoot up a school? If not, they're not a school shooter. Is your character an anti-Semite? If not, they're not a Nazi. Does your character pass up an opportunity to kill their enemies when they feel like it? If so, they're not a fascist. Does your character believe that the state should control all resources? If not, they're not a communist. Is your character a military agent? If so, they're not a serial killer. Did your character sexually violate someone? If not, they're not a rapist. Is your character an adult attracted to prepubescent children? If not, they're not a paedophile. Is your character fighting for Islam? If not, they're not a jihadist. Is your character fictional? If so, it's okay to like them regardless of their in-universe status. https://dingdongyouarewrong.tumblr.com/post/187991068090/yall-have-gotta-stop-using-words-like-abusive is a post that summarises my feelings here.

Kylo Ren is perhaps the character with the most obsessed hatedom of all time. He does bad stuff, they all say "HES EVIL KILL HIM". He decides to stop doing bad stuff, they all say "REEE HES NOT ALLOWED TO BE GOOD". He can't catch a break either way. If you're looking for an asshole Star Wars character who has no conflict within him and relishes in pure demonism, see Palpatine. If you're looking for a court of law, if you're looking to see a lynching, don't watch Star Wars, a series whose original trilogy stars technically a terrorist as its protagonist. That's right. If SW were a court like you wanted, rather than an adventure film, Luke would be executed. The Empire is the government, remember. Is this what you want?

I wish SU's fanbase was as chill as Final Fantasy VII's. FF's fanbase overall is split as fuck, to an even greater degree than SW's, but let's talk VII specifically. Everyone likes Cloud, Rufus, Sephiroth and whoever. In-universe, one is an ecoterrorist, one is a corrupt businessman, and the other is an arsonist. The fans seem to understand, for the most part, that these characters are just driving a fictional plot - didn't hurt any real people, aren't in a court, and it's okay to like them and even ship them.

I hate your "anti-improvement" attitude. If this fictional edgelord wants to become kinder, why not let him? That's what I don't understand. Your obsession with "justice" doesn't protect anyone further, it just tries to make sure bad never becomes good. I say Vader's redemption is "deserved", because you get the right to be less shitty, by, well, being less shitty. Who cares if he killed children? So did Obi-Wan and Yoda. It's Star - it's fantasy, and it's Wars - it's massively destructive in-universe. It's Star Wars, not Real Isolated Incidents of Violence. Do you say Luke is irredeemable because he killed 1.2 million background characters in a terrorist attack? It's not about the actions. It's what they represent. The younglings represent Anakin killing his innocence, whereas the Death Star represents Luke beating the odds, stopping the doomsday weapon. What matters is that Anakin showed his ability to care, reawakened by Luke. That Luke was right in saying Anakin wasn't completely fucked.

Anyone can improve. This is an objective fact. If you strive to be the best you can, that's enough. Some people, like the politicians and criminals you always bring up, choose not to. If the real Hitler hypothetically decided to stop the Jew-killing thing and join the Allies, why stop him? Of course, he didn't. This disqualifies him as a comparison here. The desire to improve is what, fictionality aside, separates characters like Anakin and Ben from MUH POLITICS. The obsessed antis are all like, "y u ship rey with dad killuh?", which is like saying "y u ship leia with drug smuggluh?" - they're fictional - explorations of concepts and personality, not criminal records. As soon as you're space, you're not Hitler. I am sick and tired of all these useless and often asinine comparisons. If you try to equate fantasy villains 1-1 with real figures, you're gonna have a bad time.

I also find it very insensitive to put fictional villains on the same level as real depraved criminals. Someone who kills fictional characters to drive a plot of entertainment versus someone who destroys real lives for no purpose. I like playing as Bowser in Mario Kart. I don't like kidnapping princesses. I like Radiohead's Knives Out. I don't like cannibalism. Town of Salem is my favourite online game. I don't like witch hunts.

On a related note, emphasis is everything. Luke Skywalker might have more kills than a slasher villain. That doesn't mean he's more disturbing than one. It's all about focus and narrative purpose. Luke is no sadist or pervert. There is no emphasis on the pain and visceral suffering he might cause. This is also why, for example, I am more comfortable with Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 than I am with, say, a screamer shock site. Ravenholm may be more "graphic" (screaming zombies, dismemberment and whatnot), but it serves its purpose as part of a whole - a good game, with a specifically and effectively spooky part. The hypothetical screamer, on the other hand, is a cheap one-trick pony with no greater purpose or tonal merit. Anakin burning is more disturbing than the destruction of Alderaan, because despite being zero deaths vs. countless, the former has emphasis on pain and desperation, whereas the latter is simply a depiction of a big rock exploding. I like Town of Salem, but I probably wouldn't like it if its lynchings were less comical as a gameplay mechanic and actually tried to depict suffering.

Finally, this is why your government is probably less despicable than a terrorist organisation. Your country's government might have killed greater numbers, but it is probably less targeted and ideologically extreme, and serves a purpose other than to destroy. This is also why despots are less viscerally disturbing to discuss than serial killers. It's why Waiting for the Worms has more artistic value, and is less disturbing, than actual neo-Nazi propaganda - it serves a tonal purpose within its greater work, rather than simply being a glorification of Nazism. Depiction and advocacy are two different things.

But, enough Star Wars (and real wars). Diamonds and co don't even do anything like that.

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed the complete absolution of Diamonds. You probably won't listen. You will probably ignore all of the evidence and citations I have provided, and will counterargue with politically-loaded words whose usage I have already debunked.

In summary:

Actual show's Diamonds:

A group of four people, who learn to understand each other and realise they're not that different.

Can be a bit scary sometimes, and absolutely have the power to wipe you out, but never do so because they are soft pushovers.

Created every other Gem as an extension of themselves.

Are motivated by a feeling of inadequacy, desire to cheer up the others, sadness and all three of the previous, respectively.

Created the Cluster, a revival of the shattered as a being capable of love and healing, under the guise of blowing up Earth (which it would only take a single Lapis to do).

Haven't a clue about alien biology.

Are walking disorders, but trying their best.

VERSUS

Sub's idea of Diamonds:

A single person named "The Diamonds", who is pure evil and not like the heroes at all.

Always shatter their enemies with no second thought.

Took over Homeworld, and should be overthrown.

Are motivated by a lust for power and political ideology.

Created the Evil Cluster, a horrible abomination of eternal suffering that is beyond help.

Enslaved several other sapient alien species.

Are pure evil and all their help is fake.

Now, which one seems more in line with the therapy show? The top, of course.

Appendix on Kevin and Average Dickery:

You may ask why Steven has more sympathy for Diamonds than Kevin. Other than the fact that no-one here is that bad, as explained previously, here's why:

Major vs Minor: All four Diamonds are major characters. Kevin is a minor recurring character. Of course Diamonds are going to be given more attention than him. If you're looking for a character who initially acts like Kevin (an average "jerk"), but is major and warms up to Steven, see Lars. On a related note, Kevin himself seems to be hiding some kind of affection when he comments on how genuine Stevonnie is. This is like asking why Luke Skywalker has more sympathy for Darth Vader than, say, Ponda Baba, or why Mario goes racing with Bowser and not some random Goomba.

Emotional discharge: Steven is about helping people in need of comfort and encouraging self-love. Whereas the show's "serious antagonists" (eg Jasper, three Diamonds, Lapis) show deep insecurities and flaws, Kevin is simply there to teach Stevonnie a lesson about obsession - Stevonnie is willing to give Kevin the benefit of the doubt, with his lying "little brother" story, but he's just being a heel, some dude who lives for the haters, rather than an actual mess. This is like asking why I like Thom Yorke, who frequently threatens to kill me in song lyrics, over some random dude harassing me in the street.

Necessity (Banana Co.): Befriending the Diamonds, healing corruption and not starting another war are the goals of the Crystal Gems. Central plot. Kevin, on the other hand, is some dude occasionally harassing/partying with Stevonnie.

Status quo: Saying "Imma kill you, Steven, planet is boom" is the status quo for new major characters - engaging in inconsequential magical fights, singing and crying. On the other hand, mundane creepery/dickery is something uncommon for the show.

It's great if Kevin helped you stop being creepy or obsessed, and I think he's cute, but obviously him and (more majorly) Lars' thing is less important in the show's context than the central theme of emotional difficulty, and getting over it, presented with Crystal Gems, Diamonds et cetera.

Other Appendix on how White/Yellow/Blue are no worse than Crystal Gems and this is intentional because it's about sobbing messes who find comfort in each other and not good guys versus bad guys:

Threatened to kill Steven/Garnet/whoever!

Garnet threatens to permanently bubble Lapis and Peridot, simply for not being on her team, essentially threatening to kill them. Also, the Crystal Gems have seemingly endangered Steven's life or directly fought him in many situations.

Forced fusion!

Pearl tricks Garnet into fusing with her. Steven also fuses with the other Crystal Gems to awaken them from poofing.

Called fusions they don't like abominations!

Garnet called the Cluster an abomination, and said she wanted her destroyed. Blue's "fusion police" attitude also spreads to Garnet when she's anal about Sardonyx and the mutant fusions. Funnily enough, the Cluster is probably a healthier relationship than Garnet. Ruby and Sapphire can split, but are left helpless without each other. The Cluster's components, on the other hand, necessarily stick together and never separate, to feel whole. That is to say, Cluster is symbiotic, whereas Garnet, although contented, takes away the autonomy of two Gems who could function separately.

Threatened to destroy humanity!

Bismuth threatened to destroy the Diamonds, and thus Gemkind which is kept alive by them.

Killed (insert being here)!

Didn't happen, see earlier analysis.

Pretty much, it's just the term "Crystal Gem" that instantly marks a character as "good" for you. Perhaps. Or maybe the star. If you're going to judge "the Diamonds" as one entity, at least be consistent and judge "the Crystal Gems" as a single entity, too.

I very strongly disagree with people who say that the show "needs" an "irredeemable" villain. While pure evil villains are fun, this show is not about this kind of person. It's not saying that psychopaths don't exist, it's just not about psychopaths. The point with this show's every major character is that they all represent different temper and self-worth issues, and how to overcome them and be loved in spite of them.

Saying this show is bad because it doesn't try to be a combat manual and isn't about Machiavellianism is like saying The Dark Side of the Moon is a bad album because it doesn't have any death metal songs on it. Alternatively, it's like asking "why doesn't my yoga class teach me how to operate a tank?". Man, I wish my therapist gave me a licence to operate M249 SAWs. "Why doesn't Animal Crossing let you go to hell and slay demons?" "Why doesn't Doom let you relax and build a town?"

Death metal is cool. Pure evil villains are cool. But, just as Pink Floyd is not a metal band, Steven Universe is not a good-versus-evil show. TDSOTM, as an introspective album, would not benefit from a death metal song. SU, as a hurt/comfort show, would not benefit from a psychopath character. The villains might be you. That is, they're not representing enemies you will face so much as problems and quirks you might have.

On a related note, I despise the "appeal to worse problems"/"children in Africa" fallacy. Just if you're sociopolitically sound doesn't mean you're personally sound. It conflates "X is bad" as a statement with "X is the most globally important issue". It's like saying "You've been shot? Don't complain! You could be on fire!". Radiohead's Palo Alto sums it up (I'm OK, how are you? Thanks for asking, thanks for asking! I'm OK, how are you? I hope you're OK too!). You get rich, or maybe you have a nice life on paper. You have to pretend you're fine because that would be "spoiled" to be honest with your feelings. MGMT's Time to Pretend also does it well, as does Yellow Diamond's character in the show.

Different things have different subjects. That's it. You might like a cold political drama on a massive scale. That's cool. It tackles societal and political issues. But SU isn't that. It's about personal issues. A different kettle of fish entirely.

That is all I have to say about Diamonds.

Now for an interlude, a different point: Stop calling people paedophiles and rapists over a show.

I will make the point if you are attracted to Steven, Connie or whoever else, this does not make you a paedophile, because:

Paedophilia is the primary sexual attraction to prepubescent children.

Steven is a teenager, a point at which sexuality is natural.

Steven is drawn in such a way that he does not resemble a real person, so attraction to him for whatever reason does not mean attraction to any real age group. Amethyst, Peridot, Ruby, Sapphire and Spinel are all shorter, less mature and higher-pitched than him. I don't any crusades against liking those five.

You might say "bUt hE's 17!", but that's just an informed attribute in-show. The form of Ame/Peri/Ruby/Sapphy/Spinel means your objection is not appearance-based. If wanting to fuck Steven meant you wanted to fuck real children because 17-year-olds are children, then wanting to fuck Jasper or whoever would mean you want to fuck mummified corpses, because that's what real 6000-year-olds are.

It would also mean you're calling Rebecca Sugar a "paedo" for having drawn Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy smut as a teenager.

They don't look like real children, so nothing deeper is meant by that. Hell, even Pearl looks more like a real child than Steven does. That is, still not at all similar in any meaningful way.

Also, it's okay to ship anyone.

Don't give me the "ShEs 6000 and hEs 17" bullshit. Gems don't age, so the physical time they've been around has nothing to do with their maturity or feelings, unless you're going to argue that Peridot, Amethyst and Spinel of all people are intended to be like old women.

FUCKING STOP CALLING RULE 34 ART "CHILD PORNOGRAPHY". SERIOUSLY, ARE YOU PUTTING HEAVILY STYLISED FICTIONAL DRAWINGS THAT DON'T ACTUALLY HURT ANYONE IN WHICH THE AGE IS SIMPLY AN INFORMED ATTRIBUTE ON THE SAME LEVEL AS ACTUAL CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? THIS IS THE MOST TRIVIALISING AND SENSATIONALIST SHIT I'VE EVER HEARD.

Also, for the few of you who call Steg "child porn", FUCKING STOP. Not only does Steg look more like Freddie Mercury than he looks like an actual child, so, even less realistic than Steven, no children were sexually exploited to produce him.

Stop harassing real people over the rights of drawings. You may say they "normalise" CSA, but that's the "Doom makes people shoot each other" argument verbatim. Cartoons don't look real. Shooting stuff in Doom doesn't feel real. I'm saying real harassment causes more harm than a picture of a cartoon Steven's little wiener.

Even in the case of real child abuse, you still shouldn't want people murdered over it. If you do that, if you celebrate the murder of imprisoned child molesters, you're still celebrating murder. Murder of helpless people who are incapable of doing any more harm, and usually didn't even kill anyone.

Here's a disclaimer: I'm ace. I'm not attracted to any characters or real people, nor do I have any ship I particularly like other than generally "every Gem loves every other one".

I am not defending Nazism or child abuse, just telling you to stop fucking TRIVIALISING those terms and explaining why this show and its fandom are neither.

Anyway, now my three controversial points are fully argued, have one that's a bit more minor but still pisses off this contrarian sub:

Spinel did nothing wrong.

Whenever I view this sub, the top post is always about how Pink is a pure angel and Spinel is evil, saying "oh, neglect doesn't excuse Spinel's doing nothing of consequence but it does excuse Pink's ruining of Spinel". Fuck off.

I have already explained how Pink became Steven, so he's out the way now.

Anyway, let's get to Spinel.

She's literally Bismuth 2.0.

She was screwed over by Pink/Rose for 6000 years. She lashed out and said she would destroy Earth/the Diamonds (and, by extension, humanity/Gems), but a single girl with a drill couldn't do that. She decided, ultimately, of her own accord, not to kill anyone despite the vast physical power she possessed. She's a big sobbing pushover. She worried that no-one would love her, but Garnet/White, Amethyst/Yellow and Pearl/Blue proved her wrong.

The movie is basically Made of Honor but longer.

This sub upvotes literally anything that shits on Spinel, but not the same for Bismuth.

Why?

It's just contrarianism, isn't it? In September, we were all gushing over her.

She was tricked and abandoned by her "best friend", only find out after patiently waiting for six fucking thousand years that Pink had lived a life without her and replaced her with "real" friends. I'll say it, Spinel's rage is completely justified and understandable. The Crystal Gems, Rose cared for them. But she didn't care about Spinel. Those other friends stole everything away from her. And then, you know what? Who stopped Spinel? Spinel, you fucking imbecile. Not Steven. He says things, but it's ultimately her decision to break down crying, not kill anyone, smash the distinctly non-ocean-destroying machine, and admit that she needs help. That's brave.

And you know what? When Steven lowers his shield, Spinel could use her giant fists that have the power to break the injector with a single punch to uppercut Steven's fucking head off. But she chooses not to. She doesn't have it in her.

The sub says "tRiDe tA kaMMet jingledinglecide!". Well, guess what: it's not fucking genocide if there is no target ethnicity, and it's not fucking "trying" if you stop yourself. That's like saying being a misanthrope is racist.

So, what are her "crimes", in the end? Just being upset. That's literally it. But you think she should be killed for thoughtcrimes because she had one bad day. Apparently, all her hurt and anxiety doesn't "justify" being upset. She's "evil" because she even did the status quo for the show, consider destroying Steven and Earth. And, before you starting ranting about property damage, Ctrl+F Laser Light Cannon.

Picture this:

You were created to love someone.

That someone leaves you and says she'll return.

You wait six fucking thousand years, patiently, for her.

Turns out, as far you know, she's dead. She lied to you. No-one ever loved you.

Now, her "son" and his friends, celebrate "everyone getting a happy ending", while leaving you high and dry, when you were the one literally created to be her friend.

One of those other friends remembers you. She still doesn't tell anyone about you.

You have a "planet-destroying" injector. Fuck that planet. It's full of worthless, ignorant scum. Scum who ruined your life and gloat about having a happy ending.

You, naturally, snap. You slam the stupid-ass drill into the planet. Literally anything you do would be understandable at this point.

Bastard son cuts you in half, after stealing your weapon from you. This isn't self-defense, it's vengeance.

You regenerate without your memories.

You regain them, revisiting that garden you were left in.

Son sings song about how you'll feel found again.

Then, he basically admits that he only cares about his "real" friends, and only needed you to turn off the drill and nothing else.

Alright, fuck that guy. He knows exactly what your issue is, abandonment. He still thinks abandoning you will be a good idea. Selfish prick. Wilful ignorance. He claims the be the saviour of the universe, yet only cares for a few people. Some of those few people - the water one and the rainbow one, they have the exact same issue as you. He wanted to help them. Why not you?

Turn drill back on, fight him.

He finally realises that his previous understanding and care is what led him to his "happy ending" in the first place.

He lets down his shield.

Your fist, which can grow to infinite size and break your entire comically oversized drill with one punch, could blow his head off.

You choose not to, because you're nice. You're sad, not a psychopath.

He's probably ready to abandon you again for his "real friends", although he says he won't.

Three nicer Diamonds come and adopt you.

That's Spinel. This sub has the idea that, because Rebecca said the word "toxic", Spinel "deserved" her abandonment and crippling self-esteem issues - the idea that she's "evil" and Steven is the perfect victim who can do no wrong. "Toxic", God, I hate that word. It usually avoids explanation for a predefined good/evil mindset. The whole point of the movie is that Steven improves himself, just as Spinel does. He realises that he's not being as helpful as could be, and decides to change that. You might "oh, he has no obligation to help her", but if he's helped people like her before, there's no reason for him not to continue doing so. Are you content with regression? What Steven does before his realisation is the equivalent of throwing a firework display in front of someone who you know is a PTSD-riddled ex-marine, knowing what will happen but doing it anyway, for the pleasure of your "real friends" - reassuring her worry that no-one really cares for her.

Don't tell me you wouldn't snap if the above sequence of events happened to you. Hell, that's a good benchmark. "Would I feel this way if x happened to me?" If the answer is "yes", it's justified. I'm not talking politics here, I'm talking emotional breakdowns. Not justified in a court, but in terms of understandability. If I had a fist that big, I would have almost certainly murdered at least one of you by now. I'm not saying I want to, I'm just saying I don't think I could manage that level of restraint with such great power. That, as discussed earlier, is why Diamonds are exceptionally merciful and patient characters. If you were a robot, literally created for the express purpose of managing quarries and producing more robots, but then choose not to use your massive physical power to crush your opponents anyway, what did you do wrong? Why do people call you "HITLUH"? That's the greater Diamonds. When people say White, Yellow and Blue "abused" Pink, they don't seem to realise that Pink was literally engineered for the things White and co. made her do. It's use as intended.

With Spinel, it's special needs. You don't seem to understand this. If you feel no sympathy for Spinel, either you don't feel from fiction (in which case, I admire that, but why are you watching Steven Universe?), or you're heartless. You're like one of my brothers. The one who knows I self-harm, and jokes about it at my expense. Someone who thinks upset people are just "acting" and are "unjustified" - they need to "man up". Fuck off. The central message of this show is that you shouldn't suffer alone, you're worth it and you should love yourself. I've seen some of you say the characters "deserve" their self-hatred. FUCK OFF. You're not helping anyone this way. You might end up driving someone to suicide one day, and that person, I fear, might be me. You make me feel awful for liking these completely innocent and uplifting characters.

One last thing: This show isn't political.

It never says anything about how to handle war, race, religion, economy or crime. Is it that many of the characters are LGBT+? That's not an ideology. People call this show "feminist" and "essjay woowoo", but it never advocates a political system or says anything about "men vs women". LGBT+ is just identity and comfort. Religions, parties and feminist/racial groups feature a set of laws and codes, whereas mental conditions and gender/sexual orientations are purely personal. I, unlike many, perfectly understand non-binary people, because, like hugging a pillow to bed, or having essential oils diffused through your bedroom, it's just something you do for personal comfort. Not an ideology you enforce, or a gross physical habit you perform, just an identity, something you prefer to be called. Why do you give a fuck?

Now, just as I was writing this essay, I discovered that the show was ending in March. Fuck. It was my iron lung. I'm chained to it. I probably would have killed myself due to a severe bout of depression and self-harm about 1.25 years ago, if it wasn't for this show. That's how White Diamond made me feel. Loved. The depressing thing is that everything dies. Either your show dies young, or it lives long enough to become stale. It's like the end of Off. If you side with the Batter, the world ends. If you side with the Judge, the world continues to suffer. It raises the question of what is preferable: oblivion or suffering? This show took the former route. I'm excited, with worm Steven and whatnot, but also dreading it. Petscop, my other favourite show, ended back in November. No more new episodes to think about and overanalyse. Maybe I'll write a fanfic. I have had dreams about SU characters, after all. At least it's not Pokémon, where greed and complacency turn you to shit.

What's next? "Radiohead disbands!". Probably. "Everything ends, broken. Why can't you forget?", they said, in Planet Telex. That's true. Everything, from shows to relationships, ends in either disrepair or death. I just can't cope. I wish I could just not get attached to things. I wish I could distance myself, and not care when they go away or turn bad. I wish I could be the sun, and not care when the stars go out. I don't know what to do. The sky is falling in.

That will be all.

#rant #fuck you all #i'm a piece of shit #purity police #anti-anti

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

Text

Hong Kong Protests: How Does This End? https://nyti.ms/2rSYDLn

Hong Kong Protests: How Does This End?

A bill before Congress would put the United States squarely on the side of the protesters, even as the demonstrations seem to spin out of control.

By The Editorial Board | Published Nov. 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 17, 2019 |

After nearly six months of escalating protests, Hong Kong is a mess, its reputation for efficiency in tatters, its economy in recession, its roads and rails often blocked. And there is no end in sight.

That poses a quandary for those who admire and support the protest movement, but who recoil at the notion of such a unique and vibrant enclave self-destructing. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the movement has no leadership, no coordinating committee to advise, to cheer or to warn.

In the end, however, there is no choice for those who cherish freedom but to support the protests, as a bill pending in the United States Congress does. The protests may be counterproductive, destructive, leaderless and even futile, but for these same reasons they are an altruistic, self-sacrificing and genuine demonstration that people who have known freedom, even in a limited form, refuse to surrender it.

It is doubtful that Xi Jinping, the authoritarian Chinese leader, understands the resistance or the longing. Those who rise to the pinnacle of a secretive, authoritarian, coercive system like China’s are molded to believe that you can control all the people all the time, if you can only find the right combination of sticks, carrots, lies and information filters. To them, any dissent must be a political plot hatched in dark foreign corners.

What Mr. Xi does instinctively understand is the threat posed by Hong Kong while he is waging a global propaganda offensive, backed by the lure of China’s enormous market. A Tiananmen-style crackdown, he knows, would be disastrous for China’s standing and image. But letting the protesters have their way, he believes, would show weakness and potentially encourage repressed minorities in China, such as the Uighurs, Kazakhs or Tibetans, to push for their rights.

Lacking any means for winning the Hong Kongers’ hearts or minds and unable to give in to their demands, leaders in Beijing and their loyalists in Hong Kong, including the administration led by Carrie Lam, see no alternative to exerting ever greater police force. And that serves only to further inflame the demonstrators.

Foreign governments, too, confront a dilemma. On the commercial side, overt support for the protests could lead to a loss of Chinese business. President Trump, for one, has stayed largely silent on the latest protests, even while grappling with Mr. Xi on trade, evidently seeking not to trammel the chance of a deal. There is also the problem of supporting demonstrations in which protesters have sometimes resorted to violence, even if police violence has been far greater and more systematic. Nothing justifies setting an opponent on fire, as one protester apparently did.

These incidents of violence must be noted and condemned. But they are inevitable in confrontations with police that have been escalating over many weeks. One thing remains incontestable: In this protracted and painful confrontation, the people of Hong Kong hold the moral high ground in their determination to decide their own fate and to reject the animal farm that China would put them in even before the transition to full Chinese control in 2047, the date established in the agreement that ended Britain’s control over its former colony.

There is no way to predict how long the protests will continue, or what will be their outcome. But the people of Hong Kong deserve support, and Mr. Xi should be left with no doubt that violent intervention will carry an immediate and heavy price.

The bill before Congress, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which accuses the Chinese government of creating more chaos and warns of new sanctions, has the support of both parties, and should be brought to a vote without further delay. Painful as it is to observe, this is a struggle that the free world must support.

🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

Can Hong Kong’s Courts Save the City?

Don’t count on it.

By Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, Ms. Eu is a barrister and former legislator in Hong Kong. | Published Nov. 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted Nov 17, 2019 |

HONG KONG — It both comforts and depresses me, as a lawyer who has practiced for four decades, that every day over the past few months I have been besieged on Facebook by anxious Hong Kongers urging me to take legal action to help protesters.

I have been asked to demand investigations into mysterious deaths, allegations that people have been raped while in police custody and claims that police officers have been impersonating protesters. Some people seek redress for police brutality. Others want to pre-empt the routine use of tear gas in crowded public transportation, old people’s homes, shopping malls, universities or the central business district.

That people come to me is comforting: It suggests that even though the government and the Legislative Council have failed us, Hong Kongers still believe in our judges. It is depressing because I fear that they will be disappointed.

Initiating litigation against the government, particularly in very political cases, is an uncertain and very expensive endeavor at any time. The government has unlimited money — the taxpayers’ money — to hire a large legal team, and so even if it loses a case in the first instance, it can appeal it all the way to the final court. You, the citizen, might have found lawyers to represent you for free, but should you lose, you may have to foot the government’s legal bill — in some cases, risking bankruptcy.

The odds are also stacked against you. Judges are conservative by nature and trained to give the establishment a wide margin of appreciation. They are not the ones fighting protesters on the streets; they are not the ones making the tough political decisions. They should be slow to criticize those in the hot seat for getting something wrong.

More ominous, in 2014, the Chinese State Council issued a white paper about governance in Hong Kong, which required, among other things, the city’s judges to be “patriots.” Way back in the summer of 2008, Xi Jinping — then China’s vice-president, now its president — called on the three branches of government in Hong Kong to “cooperate.”

For China’s leaders, law is a political weapon; they routinely refer to governing the nation “in accordance with the law.” This may sound like the same thing as “the rule of law,” but it is nothing like that: It merely justifies the rule of those in power and ensures that they are above the law.

If judges in Hong Kong issue a decision with political consequences that the Chinese authorities deem unwelcome, it can always be overruled by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which is vested with the ultimate authority to interpret Hong Kong’s Basic Law, or mini-constitution. Let us not underestimate the tremendous pressure many of our judges have faced dealing with the highly sensitive and politically charged cases that have come to them in recent years.

Earlier this week, the police and anti-riot squads attacked the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, firing hundreds of cans of tear gas and rubber bullets, and spraying parts of the campus with a toxic blue liquid. By Tuesday night, the university gym had been turned into a makeshift hospital, as though on a wartime battlefield. Joseph Sung Jao-yiu, a former vice chancellor of CUHK and a gastroenterologist, came with a team of doctors to help treat the injured — more than 110 people.

The police did have reason to take action that day: The CUHK campus is connected to a public footbridge that hangs over a major highway, and the footbridge was occupied by protesters who were throwing bricks and petrol bombs, blocking traffic and endangering the public.

Whatever the protesters were doing did not justify the authorities’ disproportionate response, however. Even CUHK’s current vice chancellor, Prof. Rocky Tuan, wasn’t spared being tear-gassed: He tried to defuse the situation with the police, but was told that he could not control his students and now was no time to negotiate. The clashes lasted for hours. Black mushroom clouds hung high above the campus and could be seen from a great distance.

Late Tuesday night, at the height of the confrontation, I was approached by Jacky So Tsun-fung, the president of the CUHK student union. He wanted to apply for an urgent injunction to stop the police from breaching the campus without a warrant and bar the use of crowd-control weapons without the assent of university authorities. Some students had become very emotional; word was circulating that one of them (and perhaps more) was considering suicide. But the judge declined to hear the application that night and wanted the police to be notified.

I met Mr. So the next morning. He has a shy, boyish face, delicate features and a mat of hair like a K-pop idol. The first thing I did was give him a big hug. His shoulders felt too small for the large burden he was carrying. I don’t mean just the burden of litigation; I mean the burden of being young in Hong Kong these days and daring to stand up or speak out. Young people are targeted, stalked and at risk of physical attack. Even secondary-school students in uniform have been stopped on their way to school, searched and harassed by the police.

There is no denying that violence has been committed by the protesters, too. But during our hearing on Wednesday, while the police’s lawyers wouldn’t tell the court how many tear-gas canisters officers had used at CUHK, they were quick to say how many petrol bombs had been thrown at them.

Never mind, apparently, my argument that at times as difficult as these, there is all the more reason to hold authorities accountable for any abuse of power. And that we, the public, are looking to the courts as our last safeguards. The judge dismissed our application.

And yet the Hong Kong courts have readily granted the police sweeping injunctions. There was one last month, cast in broad and vague terms, that barred anyone from “unlawfully and willfully” disclosing the personal information of police officers or their relatives. Naturally, no one was there to argue against the measure: Why did the court find it necessary to enjoin putative and nameless defendants from breaking the law?

Also last month, the government issued a regulation banning face masks at gatherings. Even as it insisted that Hong Kong was not in a state of emergency, the administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam ordered the mask ban by invoking outdated, colonial-era emergency legislation — paving the way for more draconian measures in the future. Several legislators have challenged the regulation in court. A ruling is expected Monday.

Whatever the outcome of that case, it would be naïve at this stage to think that a few lawyers and judges can defend the rule of law in Hong Kong. Once the city’s pride, the rule of law cannot survive under the pressure of a government that does not respect fair play, freedom or democracy.

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Hong Kong Protests: Activists Clash With Police Near Besieged Campus

The multiday siege escalated on Sunday, a day after unarmed Chinese soldiers stirred fears by staging a choreographed photo op.

By Mike Ives, Tiffany May and Katherine LI | Published Nov. 17, 2019 Updated 9:50 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted November 17, 2019 |

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong police on Sunday clashed for hours with antigovernment activists who were staging a siege-like occupation of a university campus and blocking an adjacent cross-harbor tunnel, the latest escalation in a monthslong crisis gripping the city.

The standoff on the fringes of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in which a police officer was hit in his leg with an arrow, shattered a fragile calm that had returned to the Chinese territory after a workweek marred by severe transit disruptions and street violence.

Schools across Hong Kong were canceled for Monday. And on Sunday evening — after protesters set fire to two bridges near the harbor tunnel and police officers appeared to surround them — the force threatened to use “lethal force” to arrest those who did not surrender.

The Hong Kong protests began in June over legislation, since scrapped, that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, and have expanded to include a broad range of demands for police accountability and greater democracy.

Here’s the latest.

A FIERY CAMPUS STANDOFF

The police on Sunday fired gas and sprayed water cannons at young demonstrators who were continuing a multiday occupation of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and blockading an adjacent tunnel that connects Hong Kong Island with the Kowloon Peninsula.

Ensconced above the Kowloon streets in fort-like enclosures, some of the protesters spent hours throwing gasoline bombs, some from improvised catapults. Others were armed with bows and arrows, and the police said an officer had been hit in the calf with an arrow.

After nightfall, the protesters set fire to a flyover near the tunnel and a pedestrian bridge leading to the campus, forcing an armored police vehicle to retreat and setting another on fire. A riot police officer warned that protesters were surrounded and that the force would use lethal force against them if they did not surrender.

“Time is running out,” the officer said on a loudspeaker.

Dozens of hard-line protesters also clashed with riot police in Mong Kok, a working-class neighborhood, apparently to divert the force’s energies away from the campus.

The PolyU campus, which sits beside the harbor tunnel and a Chinese military barracks, is one of several that young protesters had occupied days earlier, turning them into quasi-militarized citadels. Most of the other sieges gradually tapered off.

The Sunday clash came on the heels of a particularly intense week of transit delays, street scuffles and flash-mob-style demonstrations across the city. The unrest was prompted in part by the police shooting of a young demonstrator at point-blank range. He survived.

A RARE PROPAGANDA STUNT

On Saturday, Chinese soldiers jogged out of their barracks near Hong Kong Baptist University and cleared bricks from streets that had been swarmed days earlier by young demonstrators.

The soldiers wore T-shirts and basketball jerseys, rather than military uniforms, and carried brooms instead of weapons. Their appearance threatened to inflame tensions in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, where many are deeply sensitive about what they see as Beijing’s growing influence over their lives.

The Hong Kong garrison of the People’s Liberation Army is based in 19 sites once occupied by the British military before the former colony returned to Chinese control in 1997. But even though Chinese troops have been stationed in Hong Kong for years, it is highly unusual for them to venture into the city.

Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution says that P.L.A. forces “shall not interfere” in local affairs and that the local government may ask for the army’s assistance for disaster relief and maintaining public order. The Hong Kong government said in a statement on Saturday that the soldiers’ cleanup had been a self-initiated “community activity.”

The cleanup, which was lauded in China’s state-run news media, prompted a torrent of criticism from local residents. On Saturday, 24 lawmakers from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislative minority issued a joint statement saying that the local government and the P.L.A. had ignored restrictions imposed on the troops by local laws.

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him-e · 7 years ago

Note

hi i’m really confused why people who hate ben say the first order/ben is/are nazis? like ???? how does that even exist or work in this story? am i just dumb and don’t ~see it~? i hope you don’t think this is me baiting you into something else (regarding your last ask) that’s what made me ask this since it mentions nazis in the article. i really am just confused since i loved tlj and didn’t see any problem with it.

It’s okay, don’t worry. First off, don’t let the discourse get in the way of your enjoyment of fiction, especially when it’s comprised essentially of guilt-tripping, manipulative buzzwords.

Now. The nazi coding in the First Order (and the Galactic Empire in the OT) is there—from the uniforms to the insignia to Hux’s speech to the troops in TFA, everything screams “evil space nazis”—but it’s mainly for the aesthetics. It’s window dressing. It’s a literary trope.

It’s make up, essentially, a shortcut to help the audience identify easily the bad guys as, indeed, Bad Guys. It’s the equivalent of dressing up your villains as monstrous, stinky orcs in tolkienesque fantasy. That’s because Star Wars is a mash up of different literary and cinematic genres, and one of those is classic WWII movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s, the ones that established the trope of nazis as action/adventure/historical drama villain material. The original trilogy in the late ‘70s was targeted to a young audience, an audience entirely born after wwii, who grew up with the imagery of nazi as fictional villains rather than present, tangible real world threat.

So basically the nazi imagery in Star Wars is a homage to a certain movie genre and its tropes and trappings more than a political statement. And the sequel trilogy deconstructs those tropes, which adds an extra layer of distance from actual political discussion of *real life* nazism. (please note that both TFA and TLJ were written before Trump’s election and before alt-right became a pressing matter in the us political scene).

This doesn’t mean Star Wars doesn’t have a political message. It absolutely has one, and it’s powerful precisely because it’s universal, not necessarily localized to this or that specific ideology or political climate: it’s a statement against imperialism, militarism and antidemocratic oppression, which applies to WWII nazi Germany just as much as it does to other (present-day) dictatorships or to the current rise of populism across the world, BUT most of all it refers (in its original intent) to post-wwii US’ politics. In fact, despite the undeniable pseudo-nazi-fascist aesthetics, George Lucas conceived the Empire as a parody/criticism of the united states’ imperialistic politics in the 60′s–70′s and of the Vietnam war, with Palpatine as a Nixon-like figure.

The superficial nazi metaphor, decontextualized from the other influences and taken in isolation as the only possible real world parallel to the First Order, is neither a particularly deep nor an accurate political reading of it. I would also add it comes from a shallow, imprecise idea of what makes nazism different from other fascist ideologies. Consider this: the most defining aspect of the nazi party—the belief in a superior race and the systematic extermination of Jewish people through the Holocaust—has no recognizable in-universe equivalent neither in the Empire nor The First Order ** (we can guess both are sorta racist—the term would be speciesist—towards non-human species, given the fact that you can’t see a single alien among their ranks, but it’s never a Plot Point, and in any case I hope nobody is under the impression that alien, aka non human or subhuman, creatures can be an acceptable metaphor for Jewish people. Right?).

** and by the way: no, the destruction of Alderaan or the Hosnian System is not an equivalent to the Holocaust. The intention there was to wipe out a political/military target, not an entire race because of their race. The real life equivalent to the death star and starkiller would be the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Guess who dropped those?

So what makes a nazi analogy effective, exactly? Just generic imperialism and world domination? Evilness™? War crimes? The use of weapons of mass destruction? Aren’t other real life ideologies and military superpowers guilty of those things too? How do you strip a fictional representation of nazi ideology of its most important and atrocious aspect, antisemitism, and still expect the audience to take that metaphor literally?

Spoiler: it isn’t supposed to be taken literally.

It doesn’t have to, in order to speak to the heart of the audiences all over the world. The nazi coding might be superficial, but this doesn’t mean that the First Order as presented by the new trilogy isn’t absolutely, unequivocally bad. Why is it bad? The narrative doesn’t get too specific about it—in fact many criticized how vague the politics both in tfa and tlj are—but we know they’re bad: they have a rigid militaristic structure, they blow up planets and entire solar systems, they oppose democratic-looking entities called the Resistance and the Republic (names are important just as coding is), they summarily execute prisoners. We just KNOW that those things are bad—we aren’t sure what their political vision is (beyond obvious galactic domination. To quote GRRM, what is the First Order’s tax policy?), but if they do those things, it must be bad, period. That’s all we need to know to understand this story.

The nazi aesthetics help broadcasting this evilness to the audience loud and clear, because we’re all children of the same culture that (thanks to the aforementioned movies and tropes) taught us to instantly recognize those black-dressed, seriously-looking guys marching in lines and swearing allegiance to an ominous-looking red-and-black symbol as evil incarnate (except we fail to recognize fascist and nazi ideology when it manifests in other, less obvious forms).

BUT here’s the thing that antis constantly get wrong, like abysmally wrong. While the First Order is portrayed as bad and unsympathetic, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo isn’t.

Kylo Ren being made of a different cloth was clear since TFA (you cannot deny the truth that is your family) and insisting to claim otherwise at this point is willfully misinterpreting canon and loudly communicated authorial intent.

Aside from the stormtroopers (who were groomed into their role and are used as cannon fodder by the Order, and who I think will be eventually liberated by Finn), Kylo is the one part of the First Order who is clearly REDEEMABLE, because his nature is essentially extraneous to it. He’s a Skywalker. He’s the last of a breed of wizard-warriors who worship the Force and whose political views, for better or worse, will be always secondary to the way they perceive this energy in the galaxy and their role in it. His enormous power might be dark, but it’s not evil, and right now he’s misplacing it in the hands of an evil organization which he erroneously considers as a chance to bring “a new order” to the galaxy.

Is Kylo a nazi, or at least is he as superficially nazi-coded as the rest of the first order is? Let’s see:

there is no indication of Kylo being racist (or speciesist). Classist? Hell yeah, you can see it mostly in his interactions with Rey (which are, however, complicated and in part contradicted by the fact that Kylo seems to respect and value force users more than “regular” people, including those on his own side). Racist? There’s zero reason to believe that. Or at least there’s no satisfying in-universe equivalent of real world racism emerging in Kylo’s character.

the only group of people Kylo wants to exterminate (like Snoke, and like Anakin before him) is the Jedi order, but the Jedi aren’t an ethnicity or a species. You aren’t born a Jedi. You become one. Destroying the Jedi order is a purge, not a genocide. It’s like killing all the members of a political party, or the supporters of a religious heresy. STILL BAD! (and definitely something nazism, as many other dictatorships, did.) But not steeped in racism or eugenetics. It’s interesting that upon meeting Rey and discovering her force powers, Kylo proposes to teach her. He doesn’t have a problem with force sensitive people per se, he has a problem with those who adhere to the Jedi order. This grudge against the Jedi exists in the context of the eternal hostility between lightsiders and darksiders in star wars canon. It’s not the first time that one side of the Force tries to completely destroy the other, and yes, the Jedi have tried to exterminate the Sith too.

Kylo’s outfit marks him as different than the rest of the First Order, and specifically different from Hux (who is, in many ways, the epitome of the “evil gay nazi” trope, which in turn is a bastardization, mostly for the lulz and/or for fictional purposes, of nazism). Kylo doesn’t wear an uniform or display any official first order insignia indicating that he is, indeed, a believer of that ideology. His TFA costume is reminiscent of a monk or a knight templar (see also how his saber is essentially a red cross shape) while also evoking the classic image of the Grim Reaper (when he’s in full cowl+mask attire), while his TLJ one, while not very different from its earlier version, gives him a dark prince vibe, with the long, willowy black cape and the elegant shorter tunic resembling a medieval/renaissance doublet. Not a lot of nazi coding here, and believe me, how a character looks is very, very important to convey this sort of messages.

So.

What makes a(n allegedly) nazi-coded character convincing, aesthetics aside?

His politics.

Do we know what Kylo’s politics are?

No.

If the First Order’s political vision is vague because it works essentially as a stand-in for “evil organization” and we don’t need a lot of details about it, Kylo’s political views are more than vague, they’re non-existent. That’s because Kylo isn’t a political figure, at all. He got involved with this organization because his dark side master was the Supreme Leader, but we have no way of knowing whether his political ideas really align with those of the First Order, or if he has any at all. We believe they must align, to an extent at least, because why would he stick with them for so long if they don’t. The problem is that Kylo is too fucked up to discuss him this way. We actually see in TLJ how he keeps doing things that “split his spirit to the bone” just because his master asked, and because he sees no choice. He just keeps rolling like a wrecking ball towards complete (self) destruction. He’s a mess. He’s the opposite of a political thinker.

Antis insist to see Kylo as the embodiment of the first order when he’s actually (probably) the seed of its destruction. He exists at the margins of the organization, as a scary, but essentially extraneous presence, who follows his own rules and whims (proof of this is Hux’s seething hatred and distrust for him). We now see him rise as its Supreme Leader, but he, like Snoke before him, is an outsider, a custodian and wielder of an ancient magic/religion that the First Order is very willing to use for their own profit, but seems to be inherently skeptical of. And this conflict is 100% going to come to fruition in IX, make no mistake.

Framing Kylo as a nazi is such a massive misunderstanding of how his character is constructed, his role in the story and what he’s meant to represent to us. And of course it creates a VERY unfortunate dissonance in the fact that we’re EVIDENTLY meant to sympathize with him and root for his redemption.

This is a character who isn’t meant to represent a political allegory, but an existential one. He’s an archetypal figure—the prodigal son, now become the Usurper. His political views remain largely unexplained and unexplored because they don’t matter. What matters is the archetypal ball of negative, destructive energy he represents, as well as the psychological horror of his personal and familial drama, which is the bulk of his motivation in everything he does. Kylo lashes out because of his unresolved trauma with his family and with Snoke, not because he knows what he’s doing or because he wants to achieve a specific goal. Even at the end of TLJ, he’s using the First Order war machine as a weapon to enact his personal, and deeply masochistic, vendetta against Luke, who tried to murder him, and Leia who (in his mind) rejected and betrayed him for the Resistance. He’s also externalizing the blind terror, the hurt, the confusion of having just killed his mentor and long time abuser to save someone who (from his point of view) only used him and then dropped him like a sack of potatoes (yeah, that would be Rey).

There’s no sound military strategy or even logical thinking in his almost delirious attack on the resistance base on Crait, to the point that even Hux is appalled. This isn’t a man who is pursuing a political ideology. This is a deeply broken individual who is fumbling to deal with some major unresolved issues from his past and childhood and who for some reason believes that burning everything to ashes is the only way to achieve some sort of peace. The “order” he wants to restore is more on a personal scale than on a galactic one. The galactic scale is always a byproduct of the personal, as it’s always the case with these thrice damned Skywalkers, tbh.

so to summarize

the nazi aesthetic is superficial and is meant to convey that the first order is Evil

the political message of sw is more universal than “fight the nazis”, not because the nazis aren’t bad, but because the nazis aren’t the only form of political evil people should fight against, and depending on where and when you are in the world, there might be more immediate forms of imperialism and oppression that the local audience might want to see reflected in the First Order (note that the current nazi discourse is incredibly westerncentric and especially us-centric, because that’s where we’re unfortunately experiencing a resurgence of these ideologies, but other parts of the world might have their own oppressive powers to fight that have nothing to do with nazism)

the First Order is 100% evil but Kylo isn’t integrated within it, and even as the Supreme Leader he represents an outsider

Kylo’s relevance in the story is broader than his affiliation with the First Order

in fact, the main themes of his character aren’t political at all

Kylo matters as an archetypal and tragic figure, the continuation of the very archetypal and tragic familial saga of the Skywalkers

Kylo is neither a “literal” nazi nor nazi-coded

insisting that Kylo is a nazi makes you (not you, anon, those who propose this interpretation) look stupider and stupider as it becomes increasingly clear that he’s a HUGELY sympathetic character who is on a redemptive (and romantic) arc

seriously, disney ain’t gonna “normalize” nazis

stop saying that

stop worrying about that

this is the least of your problems

the first order will eventually be destroyed as it should be. Kylo, who is not a nazi, will not

end

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eyecache · 4 years ago

Text

K. Muthukumar’s Letter

Below is a four-page statement by K. Muthukumar (1982-2009) in protest against governmental inaction in the Sri Lankan Tamil war-genocide, before his self-immolation. Translation originally from TamilNet.

Dear hardworking Tamil people...

Va'nakkam! I am sorry at having to meet you at this juncture when you are hurrying to work. But there is no other option. My name is Muthukumar. I am a journalist and an assistant director. Right now, I am working in a Chennai-based newspaper. I am also one like you. I am just another average person who has been reading newspapers and websites of how fellow Tamils are daily being killed, and like you I am unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to sleep and unable to even think. While his ancient land of Tamils lets anyone coming here, like the Seths, to flourish, our own blood, the Tamils in Eelam are dying. When we lend our voices to say the killings should be stopped, Indian imperialism maintains a stony silence and does not give out any reply. If India's war is really a justifiable one, they can wage it openly... Why should they do it stealthily?

The Indian ruling class is eager to annihilate a very large population by using the hollow excuse of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in order to satisfy the vengeful and selfish goals of a few individuals. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were not the only ones charged with the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. The Jain Commission Report held that the people of Tamil Nadu were also guilty of this murder. If so, are you also the murderers who killed Rajiv Gandhi?

They say the British killed people in Jallianwallahbagh, but what are they doing in Mullaiththeevu and Vanni? Look at the children being killed there. Aren't you reminded of your children? Look at the women being raped? Don't you have a sister in that age? When Rajiv Gandhi was killed why where frontline leaders of the Congress not with him? Why did Jayalalithaa, an alliance partner, not go to take part in such a massive rally that Rajiv took part in? Such questions are not being raised, and they are not being answered by them either. People, please think. Are they your leaders? What is the guarantee that these people--who indulge in politics through their money and muscle power--will not target us tomorrow? If they turn against tomorrow, who will be on our side?

Kalaignar [Karunanidhi]? Even at that point of time, he will make an announcement that the members of parliament will resign. Then, he will understand (?!) the Central Government. Then, he will once again request for a right decision, and pass a resolution in the Legislative Assembly--like actor Vadivel's comedy in the film Winner where he claims that no one has touched him until a particular month, a particular week, a particular time. People! A paper will not achieve anything! Now, the Election-time Tamil Kalaignar, who wants to be the leader of the worldwide Tamils and who desires to transfer all the money in Tamil Nadu to the coffers of his family, has hidden himself in the hospital afraid of bearing the brunt of people's anger. This paper tiger staged such major fights in order to get the required cabinet portfolios for his ministers, but truthfully, what has he done for Tamil or for the Tamils? He has himself admitted once, "Will the honey-gatherer remain without licking the back of his hand?" If we look at his puppet-shows, it looks as if he has done a lot of licking...

Law college students who have entered the field through your hunger strike...

As a fellow Tamil, I wish you all success. I also regret that I am unable to join you. Not only the Eelam Tamils problem, but even the protests seeking water for Cauvery, any protest in support of Tamil Nadu, you, and lawyers, are the first ones to fight. Even this time, only these two sections were the first to voice their protest even four months back. I have a suspicion that only in order to destroy your Tamil feeling, the Indian intelligence would have systematically instigated caste-feelings among you and paved the way for the skirmish that occured at Ambedkar law college. It is the caste of students that takes the initiative in people's revolutionary struggles all over the world. Likewise, even in Tamil Nadu, an earlier generation of students in similar circumstances took to the streets before the Indian repulic day and chased away national parties, including the Congress from the Tamil land.

So, an historically important juncture has again reached your hands. Normally, such things don't take place in world history. Like it happened last time, don't let selfish people steal the fruits of your labour. The DMK that came to power riding high on the efforts of your struggle, first made a law that students should not take part in politics. After capturing power, it blunted Tamil feelings, and turned the entire Tamil population into a petitioning tribe. Smash that tradition. Don't believe anybody who asks you to submit a petition. This is the juncture when we should burn the differences of caste and religion between us. Throw away your fasting and enter the field. In reality, the Indian military's role in Sri Lanka is not just against the Tamils. It is against all Indians. They tried the sexual techniques they learnt from Sinhalese soldiers with innocent Assamese women! They learnt the strategies of how to crush the Tamil Tigers from the Sinhalese and they applied it to crush the fighters in the north-eastern states! As if this were not enough, what do we learn from the fact that the Indian and Sri Lankan peacekeeping forces were deported from Haiti because of sexual misdemeanour? That the India-Sri Lanka alliance is not an ideological alliance, but a sexual one! So, because the alliance between the Indian and Sri Lankan armies is against the fundamental human rights of the Indian people, try to rally students and democratic organizations towards your cause on a national level.

It is possible for people to do all this. However, they lack the right leadership. Make leaders from among yourselves. Change this protest from law college students, to students of all colleges. Let your frenzy and people's fury change the history of Tamil Nadu. Thrash and throw away muscle power, money power and power craze. This is possible only by you. "We are Tamil students, we are the life of Tamil Nadu. If Tamils are allowed peace, we will read magazines. Otherwise, we will surge like volacanoes." Convert these lines of poet Kasi Anandan into your intellectual weapon. The police force will try to lay my body to rest. Don't allow them to do that. Capture my dead body, don't bury it, and use it as a trump card to sharpen your struggle. Students of the Tamil Nadu medical colleges who will treat me, or conduct my post-mortem, I should have done some virtuous deed to be cut at your hands. Because, while upper-caste medical students in the rest of India were fighting against reservation, you were standing alone and fighting in support of reservation in medical education. What you do to me can remain aside. What are you going to do for our brothers, the Eelam Tamils, from your side?

Tamil Eelam is not the need of Tamil Eelam alone, it is the need of Tamil Nadu also. Because of the fishermen of Rameswaram. There are laws in the world to protect goats and cows.

But, are the Tamils of Rameswaram and the Tamils of Eelam lower than cows and goats? The Indian media carries on a systematic campaign that Tamil fishermen who cross [maritime] boundaries are attacked because of the suspicion that they might be Tamil Tigers. Don't they ever read newspapers? Often, Taiwanese fishermen are arrested at Chennai because they lost their way at sea. If it is possible for people from Taiwan, which is thousands of kilometers away to lose their way, can't they believe the fact that the Tamil fisherman from Rameswaram, which is just 12 miles away from Lanka strays away from his route?

Brothers of other states who are living in Tamil Nadu...

You will have known from experience that Tamil Nadu is the only state where you can enjoy greater peace and protection when compared even with your home-state. Today, we are facing a major crisis. Our government is killing our brothers in Eelam by using our name, our Indian identity. The Indian government wants us to be isolated in this struggle. We don't want that to happen. So, please tell the Central Government that you too support our brothers who are fighting. It is my opinion that this will not only strengthen the hands of your leaders who are part of the Government at the Center, but is will also prevent the danger of a Navnirman Sena, or a Sena from being formed within Tamil Nadu in the future.

Youth belonging to the Tamil Nadu Police Force...

I have great respect for you. Irrespective of what other people did for the sake of Tamil, you are making Tamil live by using Tamil words in everyday contexts, such as calling employees as 'ayya'. I believe that you would have joined the police force with noble intentions of serving the people and weeding out anti-social elements. But, does the ruling class allow you to do that? By allowing you to commit minor mistakes, the ruling class hides its major crimes. It converts you into its trained henchmen, and makes you fight against the same people whom you wanted to serve. It is the Tamil Nadu police who guard Delhi's Tihar Jail. One of the oldest police forces in India, the Tamil Nadu police is one of the very best. But, are you given that respect by the Indian government? When Union Minister Chidambaram returned to New Delhi following his Chennai visit, Central Government security agencies have refused to handover his security arrangements at the Chennai airport to you. When asked why, they have derided your capabilities and said that they are aware of how you protected Rajiv Gandhi. While it is true that the Tamil Nadu police could not save the life of Rajiv Gandhi, it is equally true that the majority of those who died with him were only innocent policemen. Your dedication is unquestionable. But it was later exposed that this Indian intelligence had been careless even after coming to know that there were threats to Rajiv's life... Even if you have been against innocent people all this while, you are one of the pride of Tamil Nadu. At this historical juncture, only if you stand on the side of the people, you can regain the respect that you have lost among the people. Just once try to dedicate yourself to the fellow Tamils. They will carry you in golden plates. The feeling of gratitude among Tamil people is immeasurable. Because somebody spent his own money and built a dam, the Tamils on the Mullai river in Madurai built a temple and name their children after that man. All that you have to do is, when Tamil Nadu is boiling, you should refuse to cooperate with the Central Government officials, and you should reveal to the Tamil people who are the ones working for R.A.W and CBI. Do at least this. The people will take care of the rest.

People of Tamil Eelam, and Liberation Tigers....

All eyes are now in the direction of Mullaiththeevu. Tamil Nadu is also emotionally only on your side. It also wants to do something else. But what can we do? We don't have a true leader like you have... Please don't leave hope. Such a leader will emerge from Tamil Nadu only in such desperate times. Until then, strengthen the hands of the Tigers. Because the 1965 anti-Hindi agitation was placed in the hands of a few selfish people, the history of Tamil Nadu has been dragged to the stone ages. Please don't do that mistake.

Dear International Community, and our hope Obama...

We still have hope on you. But, there is no guarantee that a sovereign republic will not torture its people through ethnic discrimination. It is possible to cite instances from America's own history. After all, boxing hero Muhammed Ali said, "The little white in my community would have come only through rape..." As long as you remain silent, India will never open its mouth. Perhaps India may break its silence after all the Tamils have been killed. Until then, are you going to keep looking at India's mouth? They say that the war in Vanni is against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They say that the Tigers are using the people as a human shield. If that is true, why do they come into the safety zone declared by the Government and kill people? This one evidence is enough that irrespective of whether the Tamil people are dependent on the Tigers or on the Government, they are going to be killed for the sole reason that they are Tamils. Is this not genocide? If India, Pakistan and China are supplying arms, Japan is giving economic aid, and moreover India is bullying Sri Lanka and thus killing Tamils, why don't you realize that you are also committing the same murder by your silence and your blindness? Nobody becomes a terrorist simply by taking up arms. Our Thiruvalluvar has said: Arathirke anbucar penpa ariyaar / marathirkum akthe thunai (The ignorant say that affection is appropriate only to righteousness, but it will also inspire heroism to be restrained).

Jayalalitha says that the Tigers should lay down arms--as though the problem arose because the Tigers took up arms. In reality, the Tigers were formed because of the genocide of Tamils in Eelam, and they are not the reason for it. They are not the reason, just an outcome.

As long as Indian Government's involvement was not exposed, it kept saying that this problem was an internal affair and that India could not interfere. It also said that it was aiding Sri Lanka in order to prevent China, Pakistan and America from gaining supremacy in Sri Lanka. Yet, to kill Tamils, it joins hands with Pakistan that has killed scores of Indians and was responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament, the serial-blasts in Mumbai and the recent strikes in Mumbai. If that is so, we suspect that Pakistan's terrorism in India is a mutually agreed-upon concept created by both sides in order to exploit and squander their respective citizens. Now, they say that the LTTE is a terrorist organization, hence the war. It says they killed Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi is not a councillor or a district secretary. When a Sinhalese attempted to kill him in Sri Lanka, he was not interrogated. One of my demands is that the Sinhalese soldier who tried to kill him earlier must also be included in the list of the accused and he must be interrogated again. The Tigers might have been sad with Rajiv, but they wouldn't have been angry with him. Because Rajiv was Indira's son. Indira, is next to MGR among the small gods who populate Tamil Eelam.

It has been clearly exposed that India is opposed to justice form the fact that it often changes the explanations that it offers. In such a situation, Sri Lanka said, Why don't you directly interfere, the Tigers are making use of the ceasefire to stock up weapons. Chandrika, or Ranil, or Mahinda were not gods in the past, they have not even behaved as human beings. Just because they agreed to the ceasefire in view of their compulsions, how could it be argued that the fighters should lay down their arms, or that they should not involve themselves in reconstruction activies. Only by bringing about the faith and confidence that you will behave honestly and truthfully, you can make the fighters lay down their weapons. No government in the past has honoured their promises. For instance, Ranil-Karuna. But the Tigers have not used the ceasefire to simply acquire weapons, but they have created a governmental administrative structure. Is this terrorism in the eyes of the world? India is trying to ingratiate itself by saying that it is fighting in order to save the innocent Tamils. Only sophisticated weaponry and spy planes from India are going to Sri Lanka; can they show a single paracetomol tablet that has gone from India? In such a state, they want us to believe that the Sri Lankan government will provide all the amenities for the people of Eelam, and that India will support this endeavour.

Now, they are attacking the ambulance of the International Commitee of Red Cross, are they also Tamil Tigers? They killed 17 aid workers from France, were they Tamil Tigers? China's tanks, India's spy planes, Pakistan's artillery... not only these kill our people, but the silence of the International Community also kills them. When will you realize this--after a people who greatly desire justice are totally wiped away from the face of the earth? If you are interested in adding us to the list of Aborigines, Maya and Inca peoples, each day one of us will come in front of you and kill ourselves, as it comes in one of our myths.... Please leave our sisters and our children alone. We are unable to bear this. We are fighting with the sole hope that one day we will watch them laugh whole-heartedly. Even if we accept for the sake of rhetoric that the LTTE should be punished, we must realize that both India and Sri Lanka lack the moral ground to hand out any punishment.

Justice derailed is worse than justice denied.

The International Community must condemn India and force it to immediately withdraw its troops from Sri Lanka, and be prevented from helping Sri Lanka through satellites and radars. Even unimportant discussions between the Governments of India and Sri Lanka should take place through the International Community. India should publicly apologize before the people of Tamil Nadu and the people of Tamil Eelam scattered across the world.

Because the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is always functioning with a bias towards his homeland China, he must not be given the power to take any decision regarding Eelam.

All the countries who have banned the LTTE based on the request from Sri Lanka should immediately revoke the ban and unconditionally release all those who have been arrested because they belong to the LTTE.

Members of the LTTE should be forgiven for their passport related mistakes, and they should be immediately released.

The industries which have been banned based on the allegation that they are connected to the Tigers, should be given the licenses once again, and they should also be adequately compensated.

Rajiv Gandhi's murder should be investigated by the InterPol and the real guilty must be exposed.

Pranab Mukherjee, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Chandrika, Udayanakkara, Kekaliya Rambukawela, Basil Rajapakse, Mahinda and Fonseka should be subjected to narco-analysis.

While the International Community shall have the right to recognize Tamil Eelam which is going to be formed, only the people of Tamil Eelam shall have the right to decide under whose leadership it should be formed.

When the Tigers were weakened militarily, the Upcountry Tamils were targetted, and it is feared that in the future that area might be subjected to a major genocidal pogrom. So, a referendum must be conducted among the Upcountry Tamils to know whether they want to join Tamil Eelam. In this matter, the decision of the Upcountry Tamils shall be final.

Douglas Devananda, who was punished by the courts for firing at innocent Tamil people in Chennai under the influence of alcohol escaped to Sri Lanka before the period of imprisonment was completed. He must therefore be arrested and handed over to the Tamil Nadu police.

Everyone responsible for the murder of journalist Lasanta should be punished.

The Sinhalese journalists who have sought refuge in Tamil Nadu must be given adequate protection.

The Sinhalese couple who came as refugees to Tamil Nadu must be recognized as refugees, and the charges of passport-doctoring against them must be dropped.

The livelihood of families of Tamil fishermen shot dead should be secured.

With eternal love,

Your brother against injustice,

Ku. Muthukumar, Kolathur, Chennai 99.

Dear Tamil people, in the struggle against injustice our brothers and children have taken up the weapon of the intellect. I have used the weapon of life. You use the weapon of photocopying. Yes, make copies of this pamphlet and distribute it to your friends, relatives, and students and ensure that this support for this struggle becomes greater. Nan'ri.

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