#to form the radical political opinions she would have otherwise. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

derekfoxwit · 3 years ago

Text

Doctor Dorpden’s Critical Tips of Prestige

Note: This post was made with satirical intentions in mind. I’m only emphasizing because I’ve had a couple of comments on previous joke posts I’ve did take it seriously. With that said, here we go.

Tip 1: For starters, remember that when looking at the work, if the Mystic Knee twitches fast enough to punch a hole in a wall, this suggests that the work should be near the lowest of the low. No further development of opinion is needed.

Tip 2: For an equal degree of sophistication, give the warm comfort of nostalgia at least 5 times more chances than the new thing that MAY seem actually poggers.

Tip 3: If you have the anecdote of encountering shitty fans, then use them as a scapegoat for the show they flaunt over being shitty. Clearly, they’re always making the show the way it is.

Tip 4: If you haven’t heard much about a newer film or show you’re yet to watch, there’s an 85% chance that film or show is actually not worth your time. The Father (2020) isn’t as widespread as Joker (2019) for a reason.

Tip 5: At this point, just go for the Asian Artist Dick. I’m actually in the mood to see merit in that because I want to look edgy against cute doodles. Stop attacking Uzaki-Chan, you cowards!

Tip 6: Avoid the electronic tunes. They’ll make you smell like a bum, for there’s no structural in a music album that’s nothing but wubs.

Tip 7: If you see a Tweet that looks dumb, use it as a means of generalizing all the fans of a work as sharing that same opinion.

Tip 8: If the cartoon I’m given doesn’t provide me with mature ideas such as slicing an Arbok in half or fake boobs, then the cartoon might as well be on the same level as Teletubbies.

Tip 9: You know the music is (c)rap when it brings up drugs, regardless of lyrical context.

Tip 10: Raw mood is the indicator of quality cartooning. If you’re quick to assume the worst in the newest HBO Max original cartoon, then you got thyself a stinker. Same thing if you were super bummed out when watching a new thing, regardless of anecdotal context.

Tip 11: When you’re not given continuous throwbacks, ensure you’re as reductive and over-generalizing about the works shown as possible.

Tip 12: If your hazy and imperfect as hell recollection of a children’s film, whether it’s Wall-E or Lilo & Stitch, would describe said film as “too sugary” or “key-waving schlock”, then that HAS to be the case. No meat on that bone whatsoever.

Tip 13: Simpler, more graphic style that isn’t as realistic as old-school Disney or Anime? You got yourself a lazy style with zero passion put into it.

UPA? Who’s THAT?!

Tip 14: Don’t trust anyone saying that western children’s cartoons had any form of artistic development after 2008 (with, like, TWO exceptions). If it did, why didn’t we go from stealing organs in a 2001 cartoon to showing opened stomachs in a 2021 cartoon?

Tip 15: Big booba is always important to the strong female character’s quality.

Tip 16: Only MY ships count, for they provide me with a feeling of intelligence.

Tip 17: “PG-13″ and “R” rating just simply mean you’re not caring for expressing themes in a sophisticated manner. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 18: In this age of smelly radicals, “Death of the Author” is more important than ever. Without it, this’ll imply that a classic like The Matrix was secretly toxic, due to what the Wachowskis have to say about it being an “allegory of trans people.”

Tip 19: Turn the fandoms you hate into your torture porn. Ask in Tweets to Retweet one sentence that’d “trigger” them. Go out of your way to paint all of them as blind consoomers. That’ll show them, and it’ll show how much more intelligent you are compared to those clowns.

Tip 20: Whatever the Mystic Knee dictates upon the first viewing of a work is what shall indicate the full structural extent of the film.

Tip 21: The mindset of a 2000s edgelord is one that actually understands the artistry of the medium of animation. Listen to that crazy but ingenious man.

Tip 22: Because sheer ambition makes me feel manly, the high pedestal you bestow upon a cartoon work should be based mostly on the mere mention or mere suggestion of serious topics. This means that pure comedy is smelly.

Tip 23: Is the new work tackling subjects that you’ve loved a childhood work of yours for covering? Just assume it’s super bare-bones in that case compared to the older case, for there’s nothing the older work can do to truly prove itself otherwise. Seriously, Letterboxd. Stop giving any 2010s cartoon anything above a 4/5

Tip 24: If the Mystic Knee is suggesting that the work is crummy, then consider any explanation off the top of your head for why the work in question is crummy.

Tip 25: Sexual and gender identity is inherently political, so don’t focus on them in the story. It’s no wonder why Full Metal Alchemist has caught on more than the She-Ra reboot.

Tip 26: Since I got bothered by a random butt monkey type character in a crummy cartoon, I’m now obligated to assume that having a butt monkey will only harm the writing integrity of the cartoon.

Seriously, Mr. Enter....what?!

Tip 27: We’re at a point where pure comedy for a kids’ cartoon is doing nothing but dumbing down the children. Like seriously...... I doubt Billy and Mandy would ever use farts as a punchline, unlike these newer kids comedies.

Tip 28: The difference between the innuendo in kids’ cartoons I grew up on and the ones Zootopia made is the sense of prestige they give me. Just take notes from the former instead.

Tip 29: Wanna make a work of artistic merit? Just take notes from the stuff I whore out to. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 30: Always remember this golden rule: If the newer work, or a work you’ve recently experienced the first time, was truly great, why isn’t it providing the exact emotions from your younger, more impressionable years?

Tip 31: If the Mystic Knee aims to break the bones of a character doing certain things (.i.e. having body count of thousands; lashing out to character; etc.), that means the character is bad and deserves no redemption.

Tip 32: If you want me to believe there’s any intrigue or depth in your antagonist, give them redemption, for I am in need of that sorta thing being spelled out. Looking at you, Syndrome. Should’ve taken notes from Tai Lung.

Tip 33: In a case where you’re going “X > Y” (.i.e. manga compared to western comics), ALWAYS CHERRY PICK! Use the recent controversies of the “Y” item while pretending that the “X” item has never had anything of the sort.

Tip 34: BEFORE you bring up those comments that shat on the original Teen Titans cartoon back when it was new, whether for making Starfire “more PC” or whatever.......the DIFFERENCE between them and me is that THEY were just bad faith fools that couldn’t see true majesty out of blind rage. I, however, am truly certain that calling any western TV cartoon from 2014-onward a work that transcends its generation suggests a destruction of the medium.

Tip 35: Based on fandom growth, it shows that any newer show isn’t being watched much by kids, but rather loser adults that act like children. Therefore, there’s more prestige in what I grew with.

Tip 36: The focus on children is bad at this point since the children of today have attention spans that flies would have.

Tip 37: A select few screenshots (or even one) of either a less elaborate attacking animation, less realistic game graphics, or a less on-model image in a cartoon indicates EVERYTHING about the work’s quality.

Tip 38: Consuming or writing media where characters go through constant suffering is little more than gaining pleasure out of it. YOU SICKOS!

Looking at you, Lily Orchard!

Tip 39: Whether it’s a sexual awakening story or just simply a romance, focus on a character being lesbian, trans, bi, etc., then it shouldn’t be in a kids’ work. It’s too spicy for them by default. Kids don’t want romance anyway.

Tip 40: The very idea of a western cartoon with no full-blown antagonist (i.e. Inside Out) is a destruction of animated artistry. Sorry, but it’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 41: Unless it’s my fluffy pillow, such as Disney’s Robin Hood, it should be obligated to assume the inserting of anthros is only there to pleasure the furries. Looking at YOU, Zootopia!

Tip 42: With how rough and rash The Beast was, it shows that he was more of an abusive lover. Therefore, I refuse to believe that Beauty and the Beast has any of the meticulous moral writing that most of Disney’s other 90s films has.

Tip 43: When you suggest one work should’ve “taken notes” from another work in order to do better, BE VAGUE! Those who agree will be shown to be geniuses.

Tip 44: Remember how morally grey Invader Zim was? That really goes to show how little the Western Animation scene has been trying since that show. Really should just be taking notes from that series (and of course anime).

Tip 45: Even if I have a radar that clearly indicates such, hiding the item I look for inside an enemy is always bad, for I refuse to believe it would be inside the enemy.

Goddamn it, Arin!

Tip 46: People struggle understanding your gender identity or pronouns? All there is to see in that is a giant cloud of egotism that reads “My problems” zapping another smaller cloud that reads “other people’s problems”. Seriously, kids are starving, so WHAT if you identity confused someone. Grow a spine!

Tip 47: Stop pretending that adaptations should colorize how a story or comic series should be defined. No way in FUCK can a cartoon or film incarnation become the definitive portrayal of my precious superhero idol.

Tip 48: Enough with your precious “limited animation” techniques, YOU WESTERN HACKS! All you’re doing is admitting to sheer laziness and lacking artistic integrity. Now if you excuse me, I’ll be watching more anime, since that gives me a sense of prestige.

Tip 49: If getting five times more detail than the 2D animated visuals have requires someone getting hurt, so be it. No pain, no gain after all.

Tip 50: Yes, I genuinely struggle to believe there’s this majestic level of layered material without having the most immediate yet still vague re-assurance practically yelling in my face. But that’s STILL the work’s fault, not mine.

Tip 51: Every Klasky-Csupo cartoon has more artistic integrity than any of them cartoons with gay lovers such as Kipo or the Netflix She-Ra show.

Tip 52: If Sergio Pablos’ Klaus is anything to go by, we have no excuse to utilize those smelly as fuck digital animation “styles” found on Stinky Universe, Suck-Ra or Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds.

Tip 53: Stop projecting your orientation onto works of actual talent. Seriously, how does Elton John’s I’m Still Standing expel ANY rainbow flag energy?

Tip 54: Hip hop and electronica have been the destruction of music, especially the kind that’s actually organic and not farting on the buttons of a beeping or drumming gadget.

Tip 55: The audience for cartoons has become significantly less clear over the years. We should just go back to Saturday mornings of being sold toys or shit kids actually want.

Tip 56: PSAs for kids shouldn’t be about ‘woke’ content. They should be actual problems such as doing drugs; not playing with knifes / outlets / matches; or acceptance.

Tip 57: The instant you realize a detail in a childhood work that’s better understood as an adult, you’re forced to paint that work as the most transcendent thing in the world. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 58: Before you lash out on ALL rich people, remember this: #Not All Rich People.

Tip 59: There’s nothing to gain out of the (c)rap scene other than becoming a spiteful, gun-wielding thug that sniffs weed for breakfast.

Tip 60: Since the Mystic Knee told me to get anal about prom episodes in several gay cartoons, this shows that writing about one’s younger experiences just makes you look pathetic.

Tip 61: Another smelly thing about Zootopia is how it was painting a police chief as stern and exclusive. #Not All Chiefs

Tip 62: Me catching a glimpse of Grave of the Fireflies as a kid and turning out fine shows that you may as well show kids more adult works without worry. No amount of psychological questions being asked will suggest otherwise.

Tip 63: There’s a reason why the Mystic Knee keeps leaning more toward the 90s and early 2000s than most decades. That knee KNOWS where there’s a sense of true refinement.

Tip 64: The BIG difference between rock and electronica? Steward Copeland actually DRUMS. All that the likes of Burial, Boards of Canada, Depeche Mode and several others did was push drum buttons.

Tip 65: One exception to the golden nostalgia is when the work in question doesn’t stuff your face with fantastical, bombastic stories. At which point, there can only be rose-colored blinds covering Nickelodeon’s Doug. Nothing of merit or personal resonance to be found.

Tip 66: Remember that the sense of nuance in the work comes down to there being everything including the kitchen sink, whether it involves multiple geographic landscapes; giving us hundreds of characters; etc. Only through the extremes will I be able to tell there is nuance.

Tip 67: Once you see a joke that has an involvement with sexual or violent content, just ignore the full picture and just reduce it to having nothing to it but “sex, violence, gimme claps.”

PKRussel has entered the chat

Tip 68: With all the SJWs messing up the art of comedy, lament the times where you could be called a comic genius, NOT a monster, for shouting out the word “STAB,” calling a gay weird, painting Middle Easterns as inherently violent, etc.

Tip 69: Guitar twang will always win out over (c)rap beats. There’s a reason your grandma is more likely to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Kendrick Lamar.

Tip 70: Once the Mystic Knee notices a lack of squealing at the video game with linearity, that shows there’s more artistry in going full-blown open world.

Tip 71: Related to Tips 66 and 68, ensure your comedy gets as much information and mileage out of each individual skit as possible. EMPHASIZE if you need to. Continuously spout out your quirky phrase of “STAB” if needed.

Tip 72: Based on the onslaught of TV shows with many seasons and episodes, animated or otherwise, it shows that there’s more worth going for that than simply having a miniseries or a 26-episode anime.

Tip 73: Building off of the previous tip, you’re better off squeezing and exhausting every little detail and notable characterization rather than keeping anything simple and possibly leaving a stone unturned, especially if there’s supposed to be a story.

Tip 74: Playing through the fan translation of Mother 3 made me realize how much some newer kids’ works just try too hard to get serious. Why even make the kids potentially think about the death of a family member?

Tip 75: The fear I had over Sid’s toys from the first Toy Story and similar anecdotal emotions are the be-all indicators of what kind of show or film is fitting for the children.

Tip 76: Seeing this British rapper chick have a song titled “Point and Kill” just further exemplifies the fears I’ve had about rappers being some of the most harmful folks ever.

Tip 77: The problem with attempting to make a more “relatable” She-Ra is that kids aren’t looking for relatability. They want the escapism of buff fighters or something similar. This is why slice-of-life is so smelly.

Tip 78: Based on seeing the rating of “PG-13″ or “R,” I can tell that the dark humor is little more than “hur dur sex and guns.” Given the “TV-Y7 FV” rating of Invader Zim, the writers should’ve taken notes from that instead just so I can sense actual prestige.

Tip 79: The original He-Man has more visual intrigue in its animation than any of those smelly glorified doodles found in the “styles" of the 2010s and early 2020s.

Tip 80: It’s always the fault of the game that my first guess (that I refuse to divert from) on how I have to go through an obstacle won’t work.

Tip 81: Zootopia discussing prejudice ruins the majestic escapism I got from my precious childhood films from 1991-2004. Them kids might as well be watching the news. Now to watch some Hunchback after I finish these tips.

Tip 82: There is no such thing as an unreasonable expectation, and there’s especially no wrong way to address the lack of met expectations! For example, if you expect some early 2010s cartoon on the Disney Channel to be a Kids X-Files, yet you get moments such as some girl getting high on stick dipping candy, you got the right to paint the worst out of that show for not being “Kids’ X-Files.”

Tip 83: Related to my example for Tip 82, if you get the slightest impression of something being childish, you know you got yourself a children’s work that does little than wave keys and has basically nothing substantial for them. In this situation, those malfunctioning robots found in Wall-E are the guilty party.

Tip 84: Without the extensive dialogue that I’m used to getting, how can one say for certain there was any amount of characterization in the title character of Wall-E?

Tip 85: Ever noticed yourself gradually being less likely to expect an upcoming work or view a work you’re just consuming as “the next best thing”? That’s ALWAYS the fault of smelly “artists” (hacks really) and their refusal to give a shit.

Tip 86: It’s obligatory for your lead to be explicitly heroic just so there is this immediate re-assurance that they’re a good one.

Tip 87: Without the comforting safety net of throwbacks, one cannot be for certain that there has been an actual evolution of a series or the art of animation and video games.

Tip 88: Don’t PSA kids on stuff they give zero fucks about. That means no gender identities or pronouns, race, etc.

Tip 89: Don’t listen to Mamoru Hosoda saying that anime women tend to be “depicted through a lens” of sexual desire. He’s just distracting from the superior prestige found in anime women.

Tip 90: If you’re desperate to let others know that your talking points are reasonable, just repeat them over and over with little expansion on said talking points.

Tip 91: 7 or more seasons of art is better than 26 episodes of art. EVERY TIME!

Tip 92: Always remember to continuously talk up the innuendo and mature subject matter of the childhood work as the most prestigious, transcendent thing of all time. With that in mind, there’s a high chance that your favorite childhood work will be better known than Perfect Blue (1997), and there’s likely a reason for that.

Tip 93: An art style that gives many characters relatively more realistic arm muscle details will always shine through more than any sort of art style done for “simplicity” (laziness, really).

Tip 94: Seeing a few (like, even VERY FEW) people show more enthusiasm for Steven Universe over Invader Zim really shows the lower bar that has been expected out of the western animation scene compared to anime.

Tip 95: Electronic music makes less conventional time signatures cheap as hell. REAL music like rock makes them the exact opposite.

Tip 96: If your Mystic Knee suggests that the 90s cartoon being viewed doesn’t showcase a vague sense of refinement or artistic integrity, then every related assumption of yours is right. EVERY TIME!

Tip 97: Doing everything and the kitchen sink for one series or movie shows a better sense of refinement and prestige than any form of simplicity. THIS includes character design as well.

Tip 98: The advent of that Star Wars: Visions anime really shows just how stinky western cartoons have become.

Tip 99: For those wondering, no, Europe isn’t being counted in my definition of “western animation”. Doing so is a complete disservice to prestige.

Tip 100: If even less than half of these tips aren’t being considered, you can kiss that prestige badge goodbye. After all, I SAID SO!

8 notes · View notes

tinyshe · 4 years ago

Text

Viewpoints

Opinion: A Mom’s Research (Part 1): Nordic Countries Are Not Socialist Paradises

Jean Chen

February 12, 2021 Updated: February 14, 2021

As the mother of a 17-year-old in a deep blue state, I am often asked questions about socialism and communism. Not always being able to answer them, I have to do extensive research. I guess this is the situation many Epoch Times readers encounter: having to discuss these topics with family and friends.

One comment I received: “Yeah, I know communism is bad. But I want socialism, like the kind in Sweden or other Nordic countries.”

Indeed, Nordic countries are often used as models of “good” socialism by leftists, like Bernie Sanders, the Clintons, and Barack Obama. In 2010, National Public Radio praised Denmark as “a country that seems to violate the laws of the economic universe.” Although having high taxes, it had “one of the lowest poverty rates in the world, low unemployment, a steadily growing economy, and almost no corruption.”

In 2003, Sweden’s social democratic former Prime Minister Göran Persson used a bumblebee as an example to illustrate his country’s economy: “With its overly heavy body and little wings, supposedly it should not be able to fly—but it does.”

Dr. Nima Sanandaji, a Swedish researcher and author, wrote the book “Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism,” which provides a very good explanation of the realities in Nordic countries. Let me summarize the book for you in case you don’t have time to read it.

Culture—Not the Welfare State—Lead to Nordic Countries’ Success

“A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman (American economist, 1976 Nobel Prize laureate in economics): ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty.’ Milton Friedman replied: ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either.’” —Quoted by Joel Kotkin, Chapman University professor

The welfare state is not the reason for the Nordic countries’ success. The Scandinavian societies had achieved low income-inequality, low levels of poverty, and high levels of economic growth before the development of the welfare state.

Before the implementation of welfare state policies, between 1870 and 1936, Sweden’s growth rate was the highest among industrialized nations. However, as the welfare state was gradually adopted between 1936 and 2008, the growth rate of Sweden fell to 13th.

According to Dr. Sanandaji, “High levels of trust, a strong work ethic, civic participation, social cohesion, individual responsibility and family values are long-standing features of Nordic society that predate the welfare state. These deeper social institutions explain why Sweden, Denmark, and Norway could so quickly grow from impoverished nations to wealthy ones as industrialization and the market economy were introduced in the late 19th century. They also played an important role in Finland’s growing prosperity after World War II.” (All quotations in this article are taken from Sanandaji’s book unless otherwise noted.)

The book indicates that religion, climate, and history all seem to have played a role in forming these special cultures. These countries have homogeneous populations with similar religious and cultural backgrounds. Protestants tend to have a very strong work ethic; a very hostile natural environment make Scandinavia a difficult place to survive unless a farmer works exceptionally hard; many farmers own their own land and have complete control over the fruits of their labor, so it has been financially rewarding to work hard.

Culture matters. It is the culture, free-market capitalism, and the rule of law that has made the Nordic countries prosperous, and made it possible to implement welfare policies without serious adverse consequences. It is also the culture that has fostered the success of the descendants of Scandinavian immigrants to America. Most of those migrants came to America in the 19th century before the implementation of welfare state policies. They were not elite groups, but their descendants are more successful than their cousins in Scandinavia, which suggests that the welfare state policies have impeded the growth of economy.

Southern European countries, such as Italy, France, and Greece, have adopted similar welfare state policies as Nordic countries, but have had much less favorable outcomes. Again, this strongly suggests that culture really matters.

Welfare State Policies Weaken the Nordic Cultures and Values

“It took time to build up the exceptionally high levels of social capital in Nordic cultures. And it took time for generous welfare models to begin undermining the countries’ strong work ethic.” —Dr. Nima Sanandaji, Swedish researcher

Policies help to shape the character of a society. As Scandinavians became accustomed to high taxes and generous government benefits, their sense of responsibility and their work ethic gradually deteriorated.

When asked during a 1981–84 survey if “claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled is never justifiable,” 82 percent of Swedes and 80 percent of Norwegians agreed. But in a similar survey in 2005–08, only 56 percent of Norwegians and 61 percent of Swedes agreed with the statement.

Generous welfare benefits reduce the incentives for taking a job or working hard. It also weakens parents’ incentives to teach their children to work hard. More and more people have become dependent on government welfare payments. And the dependency would pass from one generation to the next. This growing population in turn voted to support more welfare and bigger government, and therefore higher taxation, which has pushed the Nordic countries toward more extremes of socialism.

Are Scandinavians More Tolerant of High Taxes? No.

“Fiscal illusion distorts democratic decisions and may result in ‘excessive’ redistribution.” —Jean-Robert Tyran, Swiss economist, and Rupert Sausgruber, Austrian economist

Scandinavians have not been fully aware of the cost for a bigger government. Politicians have created a “fiscal illusion” in which a large portion of taxes is indirect or hidden, like those in effect before wages are paid, in the form of employers’ fees or employers’ social security contributions, and those included in the listed price of goods, like VAT. These taxes eventually fall on all people, but they are not aware of them.

Dr. Sanandaji described a survey conducted in 2003: “The Swedish public was asked to estimate the total amount of taxes they paid. The respondents were reminded to include all forms of direct and indirect taxation. Almost half of the respondents believed that the total taxes amounted to around 30–35% of their income. At the time of the survey, the total tax rate levied on an average income earner, including consumption taxes, was around 60%.”

According to a database of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Dr. Sanandaji’s calculations, from 1965 to 2013, all Nordic nations’ tax burdens have increased significantly, but most of their visible taxes have decreased, except in Denmark.

This has successfully created an illusion that government expansion would not cost much. So why not elect politicians that expand government size and increase welfare?

A Failed Socialist Experiment in Sweden

“Sweden is the world champion in ‘jobless growth’.” —Headline of a 2006 article in the Swedish business daily Dagens Industri

From the beginning of the social democratic era in the 1930s until the 1960s, Nordic countries had remained relatively free-market-oriented, and had similar tax levels as other industrialized nations. It was at the beginning of the 1970s when radical social democratic policies were adopted, and the fiscal burden and government spending reached high levels.

Sweden went the furthest toward socialism among Scandinavian nations since the late 1960s. The basic idea was to replace free markets with a model closer to a socialist planned economy. “Not only did the overall tax burden rise, but the new system also discriminated heavily against individuals who owned businesses. As politics radicalized, the social democratic system began challenging the core of the free-market model: entrepreneurship.”

According to Swedish economist Magnus Henrekson, in 1980, “the effective marginal tax rate (marginal tax plus the effect of inflation) that was levied on Swedish businesses reached more than 100 percent of their profits.” This means that a private entrepreneur would actually lose money if he or she made a profit. Henrekson draws the conclusion that the tax policies were “developed according to the vision of a market economy without individual capitalists and entrepreneurs.”

The result of the policy is obvious: the establishment of new businesses dropped significantly after 1970. In 2004, “38 of the 100 businesses with the highest revenues in Sweden had started as privately owned businesses within the country. Of these firms, just two had been formed after 1970. None of the 100 largest firms ranked by employment were founded within Sweden after 1970. Furthermore, between 1950 and 2000, although the Swedish population grew from 7 million to almost 9 million, net job creation in the private sector was close to zero.”

As for the jobs in the public sector, they increased significantly until the end of the 1970s. At that point, the public sector could not grow larger because taxes had already reached the highest possible level. “When the welfare state could grow no larger, overall job creation came to a halt—neither the private sector nor the public sector expanded.”

At the beginning of the 1980s, “employee funds” were introduced in Sweden. It was to take away a portion of companies’ profits and transfer them to funds controlled by labor unions. The purpose was to achieve socialism moderately by gradually transferring the ownership of private companies to the unions. “Although the system was abolished before it could turn Sweden into a socialist economy, it did manage to drive the founders of IKEA, Tetra Pak, H&M, and other highly successful firms away from the country.”

The dreadful policy of “employee funds” was finally abolished in 1991, which is around the time that Sweden faced its most severe economic crisis since WWII. It took almost two decades for the employment to reach its pre-1990 level. As a comparison, it took only seven years for Sweden to recover, in terms of employment, from the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Finally, Welfare Reform

“Sweden was the more socialist of the Scandinavian countries a few decades ago. It is also the country that has reformed the most.” —Dr. Nima Sanandaji, Swedish researcher

Beginning in the 1990s, almost all Nordic nations realized that welfare reform is inevitable, except Norway. In 1969, one of the largest offshore oil fields in the world was found in Norwegian waters. The oil wealth makes it possible to sustain its generous welfare systems. Since Sweden and Norway are quite comparable in many ways except for welfare reform, it is a great experiment to see the impact of the reform.

The reform in Sweden includes reducing welfare benefits, lowering taxes, liberalizing the labor market, and implementing gate-keeping mechanisms for receiving sickness and disability benefits. After the reform, from 2006 to 2012, the population supported by government benefits decreased from 20 percent to 14 percent in Sweden. In comparison, the population supported by government benefits in Norway decreased by only less than 1 percent in the same period of time.

For young Norwegians, there is very little incentive to work hard. Employers are therefore turning to foreign labor, including from Sweden. Between 1990 and 2010 the number of young Swedes employed in Norway increased by more than 20 times because of higher wages in Norway brought by oil revenues. According to a survey of Norwegian employers, three out of four answered that Swedish youth work harder than Norwegian youth.

After the reform, during the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, Sweden showed impressive economic performance. The reforms lead to greater economic freedom, stronger incentives for work, and less reliance on government welfare.

Denmark and Finland also reformed their welfare systems. Even in Norway, some market reforms have been made. More are likely to come.

A Caution to Americans

The Nordic nations are returning to their free market roots. They have learned their lessons through their forays into welfare states or even tentative socialism, and have turned around from a dead end. We Americans should not fall for leftist propaganda and rush into a future that is doomed to failure.

Jean Chen is originally from China, and writes under a pen name in order to protect her family in China.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

2 notes · View notes

thegorydamnreaper · 6 years ago

Text

Long Post! the rest of the ask & my answer below the cut!

Hi! I have a few more words to say than the alloted 500 characters of an ask, hope you don’t mind.

I wanted to disscuss with you if you have time, the fact that Pierce Brown managed to get full control of writing for the RR tv show. I know it’s too early to say something, but in the light of recent events (awful finales and so), I became more aware of how amazing it is. I really think our high hopes will be paid off handsomely.

I don’t know about you, but…when I look back at what my favorite RR characters have done in the series, I think that I am so bloodydamn grateful that Pierce Brown is the writer for the tv show.

Simply because, if we look at what the writers have done to Daenerys Targaryen, we can conclude that purity police would have wank material for decades to come.

I mean, all of the Gold characters (and Darrow) killed an innocent in the Passage. In Iron Gold Darrow burnt a slaver (who was also a genocidal maniac and according to Apollonius, not that repetant about it either). In Morning Star Virginia comdemned and killed her own twin brother (another genocidal maniac). Sevro keeps in mind the number of people he killed with his razor alone inventarized by Color. Victra forsakes everything when it comes to saving her kids, even morals or the benefit of the doubt. The Telemanuses are not on friendly terms with demokracy and they let vengence cloud their judgement. Cassius facilitated the death of a comrade and of his liege (although, they deserved it) and killed Fitchner and put his head in a box.

By that logic, we should have all these people go mad at the sound of bells and start attacking people at random. All that in order to justify their deaths (preferably by a ‘pure-hearted’ loved one). Awful right!

Thing is, Pierce Brown has established over and over again that 1. Revolution is necessary by any means (and Golds aren’t the type to just accept that, it’s not in their culture or DNA) and 2. You have to destroy (old ways) so you can rebuild (a new world).

What he also made very clear was that everyone has their sins, every character can be the villain is someone else’s story and…basically nobody is perfect. Nothing is black and white. Human souls are made out of shades of grey.

This stupid idea that revolutions always need to be peaceful, otherwise they are evil, is just that. Stupid! If the status quo is inherently wrong from its roots (even for the class it benefices), it should be radically changed. And if force is necessary (and it is, the author established that and reinforced it over and over again every change he got and in a way that it felt natural), then it should be used. Even Cassius, who protected the status quo despite the fact that it took his away his twin (indirectly), realised that it should be changed.

Demokracy is radical change for the status quo. But you cannot make it without the proper tools - power to destroy the symbols of the old world. Virginia installed demokracy because she (with the Rising and all the allies) conquered Luna first. And they all did it using force and manipulation. Otherwise it couldn’t have been done.

And she tried! Tried to change the status quo without demokracy. Tried to make conpromises. First, she tried to back up rights for lowColors and interColor couples. She joined the Reformist current. We all know how frowned upon they are in Gold Society. And how that never really worked in the midst of Civil War (although she is presented with a chance - Nero called the Reformists to ally with him, but he planned to kill them after he was done using them).

Then she compromised when she thought Darrow dead for months, Sevro wasn’t answering her, she lost the battle at Deimos against Roque and the only thing standing between Adrius and her son was some asteroids and the secrecy of his birth. She negociated with Octavia and asked to be ArchGovernor of Mars so her son could get the chance to live. I mean…the Rim forces were in theters and it was only so long until Octavia gained the Rim back. And she led the rebels. Of course, she would have gotten a death sentence or prison and her son would have been taken hostage or worse. Thing is, she was desperate. Otherwise she wouldn’t have done it.

Point is, in terms of revolutionary themes, morally grey characters, grey morality in general, the RR series cannot be adapted as anything else, but what it actually is if it has any hopes of being well-done. And the fact that the author who created this series in the first place will write full-time for the tv series is a blessing. Simply because, we know that we won’t wake up with ��burning slavers was bad all along and is a sign of madness’.

I know it is a low bar to set, but given that a show of such magnitude did that, I kinda have to.

Of course, the books aren’t perfect, but the show can capitalise on that and improve things.

Thing is, I don’t want some purist approach to this series in any way, shape or form. It causes bias and messes up the entire story. And even the smallest chance that we’ll get the adaptation we deserve really makes me happy.

What so you think, though? About PB’s approach to revolution and grey morality? Would he be able to pull it off in the show as well? (I do think he can if he isn’t inpedimented).

Also, do you also have high hopes for the RR show?

Sorry for the long rant, I just need to get it off my chest ( I don’t take well to my faves being disposed off for the sake of some centrist garbage).

–

Hi darling!!! I love all of this! I’ll do my best to answer and expand on your thoughts, but it might get a bit ramble-y at times. Also idk why but the format is all screwed up BUT! here we go:

Firstly, and this is something I’ve said before and will keep on saying: THE CREATOR OF A STORY WILL ALWAYS KNOW MORE ABOUT IT THAN MOVIE/TV STUDIOS. They are the ones that created a world that became successful in the first place. Why anyone would want to deviate from something that has already been proven itself to an audience is beyond me. So good for PB, because at the very least we can trust that the end product will be truer to the books than any other failed shows/movie we’ve seen in the past.

Now some thoughts on books involving revolutions and revolutionaries:

1. They are inherently bloody, brutal, and violent. It’s the victors (the revolutionaries OR the old regime, depending on the story) that get to write the story of what happened, and they often gloss over their own crimes to portray themselves as heroes. Truth is hard to find, because it’s all perspective. THAT BEING SAID, revolutions are not inherently bad. In RR, even the Golds are harmed by the Society, though they’re supposedly at the top. Remember Julian? Or any of the other Golds that died at the Institute? Or how the Institute was rigged in favor of the Jackal, even if he didn’t deserve to win? The ONLY reason that happened is because the Society was inherently toxic. Sacrifices will have to be made in order to bring about a new, better, world - otherwise it’s just not a realistic story.

2. How does Red Rising differ from GOT on this? (Brace yourselves for a lot of salt here!) With GOT, Daenerys Targaryen, arguably the greatest revolutionary thinker for the duration of ASOIAF, experienced a fatal case of bad writing at the very end. But, looking back to what the real character wanted, it’s clear that she never punished those who were undeserving, even if it was brutal at times. Those that betrayed her were afraid of the change she would bring, because it meant they would those their power. In my opinion, Dany never would have set KL on fire on purpose - that’s a lot more Cersei. When faced with enemies, Cersei is brutal and utterly callous when planning their destruction. I think it’s far more in character for her to have set KL on fire by blowing the wildfire caches, than it is for Dany to hear bells and go “mad.” I can talk more about this, but let’s look to RR characters now.

All of your points on Darrow/Mustang/Sevro/Victra/Cassius are all spot-on. None of them are blameless. But I want to point out what might possibly be one of Darrow’s greatest “crimes” and a great analogue to the burning of KL- the burning of the Docks of Ganymede.

The death count was mind-boggling, the people innocent - and still, Darrow made the choice to burn them. Yes, Victra gave the order, but it wasn’t her call to make. He annihilated them, because he wanted to prevent further destruction. It was a calculated move, but that doesn’t make him “mad,” nor does it mean he view the people who died as lesser creatures (as Cersei or a different Gold might have). It was a measured choice that put his character in conflict and THAT is what made that scene good writing. He had to make a decision that went against his core beliefs, because it allowed the Rising to rid themselves of a future threat.

3. Okay, now about fandoms. People who read books like GOT and Red Rising are looking into a world that is similar to our own, but far enough away from us to feel safer (by that I mean the choices of Sevro or Jon Snow have zero impact on our real world politics). But because of that similarity, they can critique the world we actually live in. And I think that’s why so many people are upset with Thrones - the ending showed that no matter how much we dream of a different, better world, ultimately things never change. Whereas with RR, Darrow wins! They have a Republic, they have the start of a new world! Iron Gold and the ensuing books show the reality of fighting to maintain that dream - because again, it wouldn’t be realistic to just magically have a perfect world - but I think that it’s a good balance between hope and realism to make it worth reading.

So those are my thoughts! Moral purity is unrealistic and can stay the hell away from my beloved books and cheers to PB for (hopefully) maintaining creative control. I think if the show is on the right network, with the right creative team it could be done really well, and stay true to the heart of the series.

My hopes are high, though only time will tell if I regret that statement 😅

#red rising #iron gold #pierce brown #darrow au andromedus #sevro au barca #darrow of lykos #howlers #sons of ares #mypost #submission #ask #astrea #darrowsrising ‘s ask

19 notes · View notes

hazzabeeforlou · 6 years ago

Text

11 questions

Yes I did this a bit ago but @helloamhere (thank you, ily, have fun bussing around Europe, did that once, had to follow apple maps to know where to get off ‘cause I speak ZERO German...) tagged me and I’m an anxious mess waiting for medical news today so WHY NOT!

Rules: answer 11 questions then pose 11 of your own.

1. What do you think fanfic does better than published fiction (if anything?)

Okay obvious answer and not very high brow, but SMUT. You will not see me perusing the gay aisles of Barnes and Noble romance novels :) For various reasons :)

2. What do you think it does worse

I think (maybe it’s just this fandom) overall it’s quite a bit more sanitary than novels, both in morality and subject matter. I hate to think what the purity police would say about some of the books I’ve read... especially the old ones? But then I usually come here looking for fluff and happiness too so perhaps that’s just the major draw of fanfic, idk.

3. What’s something another fandom has or does that you wish your fandom had or did?

To be honest I’m not well versed in other fandoms, but I’m going to go with I wish this fandom didn’t have constant infighting. Seriously in all my born days I have never seen a group of people claim such a similar goal and yet devour each other so viciously. Hence I usually avoid anything incredibly explosive or triggering here; I deal with and confront radical people (religious extremists, right wing extremists) in my everyday life and I cannot bring myself to turn my escapism into that same vortex of endless arguing, though I appreciate and support those who fight the fight. I often have very sharp opinions and fall to one side or the other of the fault line, but I draw a personal boundary at a point.

4. Do you consider yourself a “fandom” type of person in general, or committed to only one, and if so, tell me more about what this means to you.

I have been a HUGE fandom person my entire life, though this is the first time I’ve ever been in a community for it. Star Wars and Narnia consumed most of my adolescence, along with Lord of the Rings. I briefly dabbled in Dr. Who and Merlin (as one does) but because I didn't read HP until nearly the end of college, I kindof missed out on that one. Basically anything geeky or fantasy driven I have always loved, and I can’t really explain how I ended up here? But this is the only fandom I’m active in socially. The power of HL I guess...

5. I’m trying to get through writing a first draft right now and it’s a slog. How do you stay motivated for long projects, writing or otherwise?

Ah. A call out question! Like any good Aries, I love starting new things! And then letting them to languish unfinished. I have, however, trained in classical music, and thus I’ve programmed myself to just keep doing the thing because pieces take months and months and months to perfect and if you can’t stick with a project, you go nowhere. I also operate on a reward system, as in writing is the reward for practicing, then when I’m sick of words I go back to music, and so the turn tables. I have learned to ignore (I’m great at ostrich-ing) the crushing self doubt of creativity and just bulldoze ahead and do the thing, which results in very messy first drafts and often bad habits in my musical technique and a tendency to overplay, which wastes energy, but rehearsals wait for no one. I also thrive on last minute deadlines!

6. Tell me about what you read as a kid. Favorite book? Or if you weren’t into reading then, favorite TV show, etc?

I HAVE SO MANY. Narnia was my first love. I also adored George MacDonald (At The Back of the North Wind is a fucking masterpiece). My mom hardly let me read Redwall (see: hints of magic) but when she caved I devoured all of those. Anne of Green Gables. American Girl stuff (lots of it, yes Josefina and Kaya were my faves). I read far too many Star Wars expanded universe novels (New Jedi Order shaped me as a person, esp Traitor). I remember reading all the Eragon series, though these were dubiously approved... and I read various classics, as one is supposed to. In high school I printed out the entire Beowulf in Old English, got a CD of a dude reading it, and proceeded to memorize the first several lines. I can still recite Anglo Saxon but I have no clue what it means (see: I’m a good mimic). Everything non-Christian-magic-related I read during or after college, sigh.

7. Have your tastes changed?

This sounds bad but not really. I rarely read non fiction, oops. Biographies are a slog for me. I dislike historical fiction and I don’t have a good reason for that. I do love a good mystery, but usually not in book form (audio or visual Agatha Christie is my mana). I do adore socio-policial books, though (The Better Angels of our Nature a good example) or books doing a deep dive into a historical topic. These days I enjoy a good satire more than much else, and since I started on Terry Pratchett in 2016 I haven’t looked back.

8. I’ll steal your question above--tell me about a fic that changed you, or became a “touchstone” fic that you go back to!!

I didn’t read fics period when I entered the fandom, and stubbornly maintained that for a while, but the fic that changed my mind was (Take Me Home) Country Roads by @a-writerwrites (Awriterwrites). I read it during a drive through the very parts of the USA it’s set in, and I couldn’t put it down, spotty internet be damned. From there @horsegirlharry birthed me into the gay 1D world, though I can’t for the life of me remember which of hers I first read! (Does it matter? They’re all so beautiful...)

9. Tell me about a WIP, if applicable. How’s it going?? It sounds great.

I’m plodding along on The Garden, it’s going well, but urgency isn’t a priority. It’s going to be one of those things that I finish and then go in and make matter because right now my ideas are half formed and I know I’ll eventually know where I’m going but it’s a case of blind trust in instinct at this point!

10. What’s your favorite place to read and sitting position?

Like a true gay I cannot sit normally in a chair, coupled with my pain issues means I’m usually draped over the back of something with a cushy lumbar support, massive pillow, or propped sideways lying down. I love reading outside, but have a tendency to attract bugs, also I’m very light sensitive so my eyes hate the sun, especially if I’m reading from a screen.

11. Do you feel like fic reading and writing is social for you? E.g. do you share with friends (in or outside of fandom), or are you a lone wolf seeking out your fics in the dead of night??

I LOVE the social aspect of fic reading and writing within fandom! I have shared PITS with only two real life friends though; I am very tight lipped about the fact that I write fic. People are cruel and musicians are judgmental arseholes and if I prefer to spend my days dreaming up love stories for my OTP instead of pouring over scores, that’s my fucking business.

Alright, 11 from me (I wanted to include artists too so!!):

1. Are you a start small-work larger type creator, or map everything out then attend to detail?

2. What style of art/writing has most influenced your creative choices? (Genre, time period, muse)

3. How long have you been writing/arting? Is this something you knew you’d do your whole life?

4. What is your favorite thing about creating for your fandom? (reception, excitement, newness, etc.)

5. Have you met any recent creative goals that you’re really proud of?

6. What is your creative baby; what work do you want stamped on your proverbial gravestone as I MADE THIS (or have you made it yet?)

7. Do outside forces (politics, culture, hegemonies) play into your creations? Do you intentionally or subconsciously subvert norms or explore ideas?

8. Your creative mind is a garden. Describe what kind it would be and what it would contain (i.e. rock garden, palace garden, wildflowers, rose... etc.)

9. Do you believe that creative art has power and if so, how do you hope yours impacts others?

10. I’m double stealing this question: what’s a fic or fan art that changed your life or was a touchstone for you?

11. If you could pick any hero of yours to read/look at your creations, who would it be and why?

TOTALLY only if you want to, but @13ways-of-looking @twopoppies @alienfuckeronmain @prettytruthsandlies @pattern-pals @newleafover @disgruntledkittenface @lesbianiconharrystyles @lululawrence

#writing stuff #about me

11 notes · View notes

transhawks · 6 years ago

Note

dabi, ochako and shinsou!

Thank you for the ask! I got caught up with catching up with frens and leaving the city for school so its a bit late...

Dabi

1: sexuality headcanon

He’s bi!!!!

2: otp

Dabihawks, lol

3: brotp

Him and the LoV (though I think shigadabi is a nice ship)

4: notp

him and any kids, this includes Toga. Anything that might be seen as incestuous once the reveal happens!

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

He has piercings we can’t see... ;)

He suffers dizzy spells often, in addition to his nausea, and maybe chronic pain, but given everything, I’d like to believe he has an incredible pain tolerance at this point. I don’t think he’s a very healthy person, even I wonder if the fandom is too quick to exaggerate his ‘weakness’

6: one way in which I relate to this character

I think it’s clear from my posts that I’m quite radical in my political opinions, and also personally don’t believe non-violence should be the only tactic used in protest, especially since states never hold themselves to the moral standards protesters do. I think ideology-wise, Dabi and I would find a few points of agreement (ideology-wise, not exactly implementation!!)

I, too, look good in dark jackets and never got over my resentment for my abusive father.

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character.

He fucking T-posed on live national television just to flex on his father. I’d say it’s fucking iconic but then he like ran three feet and threw up just to get the fuck out of there.8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Problematic fave, he’s AND a dumbass. At least he’s hot.

Ochako

1: sexuality headcanon

I think she might be pan!

2: otp

I don’t know if I have an OTP. I’m still hoping for traitor!uraraka so I can make my Tochako ship sail, but otherwise I think Tsuchako is kinda cute? Izuocha isn’t bad either, nor IzuIiOcha, but I’m really prepping my sails for Tochako/Ochatoga.

3: brotp

Her and most of the kids! Like Izu x Ocha x Iida friendship? I live for that. I love her and the girls being friends, especially Tsuyu and Mina!!! She’s also really perceptive about Katsuki so I wouldn’t mind them forming some sort of friendship. Speaking of perceptive, if she isn’t the traitor, I’d like to see more Aoyama x Ochako friendship.

4: notp

any adults. oh, and ...mineta.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

She was really nervous about speaking to everyone; UA is the Tokyo Metro Area and people have opinions about people who speak Kansai-ben, but while she doesn’t use it as often as she has all her life, when it does come out, no one really poked at her for it.

6: one way in which I relate to this character

She’s very intuitive and perceptive, and I try to be those things?

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

Her crush on Deku, tbh. It’s cute and I love Deku, but he can’t even talk on the phone to her.8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Cinnamon roll for now - but I’m hoping for a more problematic cinnamon roll in the future.

Shinsou

1: sexuality headcanon?

idk? Bi? I sometimes think he might be Demi, too.

2: otp

Shindeku! Shinkami! And, screw it, Shinoma!

3: brotp

Aizawa and Shinsou, except it’s more dadtp! And just all the kids, 1-A and 1-B, I want him to have friends, I want him to be happy and accepted!!!!!!!

4: notp

no shinzawa, he’s a teenager and that’s his mentor.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

He actually doesn’t have cats yet, despite loving them, so he either goes to cat cafes as a treat or feeds some strays.

6: one way in which I relate to this character

Hnngh, insomnia is the devil.

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

”I’m not here to make friends”

Shinsou, by the time you leave this field, you’ll have like 3 best friends for life. It’s the Shounen law.8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Cinnamon roll-flavoured coffee and maybe a few melatonin pils.

#asks #shinsou #dabi #ochako #trans-hawks

11 notes · View notes

pimaryblog240-blog · 6 years ago

Link

Heritage or Hatred? How a Mountain in Georgia Has Split Public Opinion

Written by Steven Murray

The dialogue about what to do with confederate monuments found across various states in the USA has created a substantial rift in the social and political fabric of our society today. Those who oppose the existence of monuments and statues that portray key figures or carved and constructed snapshots of battles that occurred during the Civil War claim that the existence of these monuments glorify a dark time in the history of the United States where white supremacy reigned as the ultimate doctrine. These opponents support, and in some cases, demand the removal of what some consider to be historical landmarks in order to acknowledge the hatred and vitriol that these monuments represent. Another ideological camp exists in regard to this issue that claims that by removing such monuments, we are attempting to rewrite history or make disingenuous amends for the mistakes of others from the past. These proponents of keeping these statues and memorials standing say that by acknowledging their existence, we will always be faced with a remembrance of history in such a way that will translate to future generations understanding what the Civil War and the fight for the abolishment of slavery and equal rights for African Americans truly entailed. While these opposing views have staked their cultural and political claims on statues in metropolitan and urban areas primarily, the state of Georgia is faced with the decision about what to do in regard to a 400-foot-tall carving of Confederate generals that has been etched 42 feet deep into the side of a 15-million-year-old mountain face, known as Stone Mountain.

A closeup view of the carving itself.

The New York Times recently covered a story that involved the gathering of 2,000 Evangelical Christians at the base of Stone Mountain in an attempt to “depoliticize and bring restoration and healing to [the mountain].” This congregation was led by Reverend Ferrel Brown, whose family has a deeply rooted history in the racial oppression and segregation of African Americans in the South. Brown descends from a confederate general who founded the Ku Klux Klan that wreaked havoc upon African Americans nationwide in an attempt to instill fear and a coerced understanding of supposed White supremacy. Brown met here with his congregation in an attempt to denounce his familial legacy and bring about healing to a place that the New York Times refers to as a “carving [that] is explicitly protected by state law, and is the centerpiece of Georgia’s most visited tourist attraction…[that was officially] opened to the public on…the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.”

In a state that has desperately attempted to rebrand and rebuild itself in the wake of a vast history of racial violence and oppression, local Georgians like Brown are “impatient to turn the page.” However, this sentiment is not shared by all residents of Georgia.

The Smithsonian writes that a Democratic candidate for Governor of Georgia, named Stacy Abrams, tweeted that “…the visible image of Stone Mountain’s edifice remains a blight on our state and should be removed”. This public denouncement of Stone Mountain by a key figure in Georgia is historically at odds with the arguments of those who supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. The same Smithsonian piece cites a statement from 1914 by John Temple Graves of the “Atlanta Georgian”, which reads, “Just now, while the loyal devotion of this great people of the South is considering a general and enduring monument to the great cause ‘fought without shame and lost without dishonor,’ it seems to me that nature and Providence have set the immortal shrine right at our doors.” This same writer had also written that "the negro is a thing of the senses…[and] must be restrained by the terror of the senses.” Brian Kemp, candidate for the position of Governor in Georgia made a statement cited in the New York Times where he said that Stone Mountain must be “[protected] from the radical left” and that “We should learn from the past – not attempt to rewrite it.” Regardless of the intentions or motivations for rallying for the removal or maintaining of the carving in Stone Mountain, the fact that is this particular piece of Confederate memorabilia maintains a certain scale and magnitude that would make its removal or alteration an undertaking that would be vastly more complicated than the removal of other such memorials in other locations.

A picture showcasing the size and scale of the memorial.

AJC writes that the removal of the monument is unlikely due to state laws and the financial constraints that it would bring to the overall project. However, the writer consulted with geologists who were asked to put their political views aside to objectively examine whether or not it would even be possible to remove this carving. AJC discusses how Ben Bentkowski, president of the Atlanta Geological Society, said that “removing a gigantic sculpture off the side of a mountain is not a trivial undertaking”, however, he and other geologists have claimed that “removing it is an achievable, if costly, engineering feat.” This same piece outlines how the use of explosives would be the quickest and most efficient way to tackle the huge undertaking. Regardless of the economic and engineering feasibility of the removal of the Stone Mountain monument, there still remains a debate as to whether it should even be removed at all.

The Guardian quotes Michael Thurmond, an African American board member of the Stone Mountain Parks, as saying, “ “[The carving] presents an opportunity to teach this generation and the next generation how movements based on racism, based on bias and prejudice are ultimately defeated.” Thurmond’s stance is that the monument should remain intact in order to teach about the history surrounding racism and the motivations for the Civil War. The Guardian continued on to quote a visitor to Stone Mountain whose great-grandfather had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, as she asked "What’s the point? Someone spent a lot of time. It’s an artistic piece. So I don’t see the point in making a big deal out of it.”

A snapshot of the 2018 National Confederate Memorial Day meeting at the base of Stone Mountain.

Historian Joseph Crepino, professor at Emory University denounced the monument in the Guardian piece and provided yet another perspective to this ever-complicated issue of Confederate monuments. “As a historian, I’d like to see it preserved as a historical artifact, so that future generations can remember how deluded older generations were. And how different the past has been,“ says Crepino, who also stated that he’d like to see a change in state law immediately that would allow for the removal of the Stone Mountain memorial.

So where should the country stand on this issue? Should we all take an objective stance against the doctrine of racism espoused by the individuals who erected this monument by removing it from existence entirely? Should it be relocated and preserved in a museum where residents of Georgia and abroad can visit to bear witness to the deluded deception and tribal groupthink that allowed for its construction in the first place? Or, should it remain untouched and acknowledged as a representation of history that would otherwise be impossible to remove due to its scale and size? These questions pose many intricate problems that should be confronted and dealt with immediately.

However, it is this writer’s opinion that physical representations of the doctrine of the Confederacy in the Southern United States should in no way, shape, or form be kept in such an overtly public space where they can be misinterpreted as symbols of the preservation of hatred and violence in America today.

The Gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams who was referenced earlier in this piece who called for the removal this monument has been urged by other political figures in Georgia to back off of her concerted stance against Confederate monuments. She has since been quoted as saying that it is no longer an issue that is at the forefront of her campaign. The New York Times quotes former Democratic lieutenant governor Mark Taylora as saying that "It is not a good issue for democratic candidates.” It is in my opinion that this type of thinking is reflective of the problems that we face in regard to political action when cultural issues such as this are at stake. The removal of the monument at Stone Mountain shouldn’t be a political talking point that is deployed in the hopes of garnering votes, but it should be a key issue in the development of dialogue that questions what kind of society the United States wishes to be. In order to firmly establish and reinstate ourselves as a nation of freedom, unity, and empathy, the monument of Stone Mountain should be removed from its location immediately. Whether it should be completely destroyed or preserved in a museum remains to be established. And besides, this is not the issue that should even be at the forefront of this discussion. Before Georgia decides what do with the remains of the monument, we should unite as a nation and urge, or perhaps even demand that this monument be taken down from the mountain face found in The Stone Mountain Park in Georgia effective immediately.

A photoshopped picture of Outkast replacing the Confederate generals, as posted by a clever Reddit user.

#stonemountain #confederacy #racialtension #civilwar

1 note · View note

blackkudos · 6 years ago

Text

Assata Shakur

Assata Olugbala Shakur (born JoAnne Deborah Byron; July 16, 1947), whose married name was Chesimard, is an activist, member of the left-wing Black Liberation Army (BLA), who was convicted of murder in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984, gaining political asylum.

Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was charged with several crimes and was the subject of a multi-state manhunt. In May 1973, Shakur was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, in which New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster was killed and Trooper James Harper was grievously assaulted; she was charged in these attacks. BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur was also killed in the incident, and Shakur was wounded. Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was indicted in relation to six other incidents—charged with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping. She was acquitted on three of the charges and three were dismissed. In 1977, she was convicted of the first-degree murder of Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the shootout.

Shakur was incarcerated in several prisons in the 1970s. She escaped from prison in 1979 and, after living as a fugitive for several years, fled to Cuba in 1984, where she received political asylum. She has been living in Cuba ever since. Since May 2, 2005, the FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist and offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. On May 2, 2013, the FBI added her to the Most Wanted Terrorist List; the first woman to be listed. On the same day, the New Jersey Attorney General offered to match the FBI reward, increasing the total reward for her capture to $2 million. In June 2017, President Donald Trump gave a speech cancelling the Obama administration's Cuba policy. A condition of making a new deal between the United States and Cuba is the release of political prisoners and the return of fugitives from justice. Trump specifically called for the return of "the cop–killer Joanne Chesimard."

Early life and education

Assata Shakur was born Joanne Deborah Byron, in Flushing, Queens, New York City, on July 16, 1947. She lived for three years with her mother, a school teacher, her Aunt Evelyn, a civil rights worker, and retired grandparents, Lula and Frank Hill. In 1950, Shakur's parents divorced and her grandparents moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, where she then spent most of her childhood with younger siblings, Mutulu and Beverly. Shakur moved back to Queens with her mother and stepfather after elementary school, attending Parsons Junior High School. However she still frequently visited her grandparents in the south. Their family struggled financially, and argued frequently, so Shakur was rarely ever home, exploring the street life. She often ran away, staying with strangers and working for short periods of time, until she was taken in by her aunt Evelyn to Manhattan. Here, Shakur underwent personal change. She has said that her Aunt Evelyn (Williams), her mother's sister, was the heroine of her childhood, as she was constantly introducing her to new things. She said that her aunt was "very sophisticated and knew all kinds of things. She was right up my alley because I was forever asking all kinds of questions. I wanted to know everything." Much of her time with Evelyn was spent in museums, theaters, and art galleries, and the conflicts that did rise between the two were typically due to Shakur's habit of lying.

Shakur dropped out of Cathedral high school to get a job and live on her own but later earned a General Educational Development (GED) with her aunt's help. Before dropping out of high school, she attended a segregated school in New York, which she discusses in her autobiography. As the only black student or one of a few in her classes, Shakur said that the integrated school system was poorly set up, and that teachers seemed surprised when she answered a question in class, as if not expecting black people to be intelligent and engaged. What she learned of history was sugar coated, because students were taught a version that ignored the oppression suffered by people of color, especially in the United States. As a child she performed in a play about George Washington's birthday, and said that she was to repeatedly sing “George Washington never told a lie.” In her autobiography she later wrote: “I didn’t know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew up and started to read real history” (Pg 33).

Shakur attended Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), when she was introduced to the Golden Drums and then the City College of New York (CCNY) in the mid-1960s, where she was involved in many political activities, protests, and sit-ins. Shakur spent most of her time reading and learning from other activists. She was arrested for the first time in 1967 with 100 other BMCC students, on charges of trespassing. The students had chained and locked the entrance to a college building to protest a curriculum deficient in black studies and a lack of black faculty. In April 1967 she married Louis Chesimard, a fellow student-activist at CCNY. Their relationship was damaged by Louis’s marriage ideals, including a wife to properly cook and clean. Shakur would not conform, so a year into the relationship they decided to just be friends. They divorced in December 1970. Shakur devotes one paragraph of her autobiography to her marriage, and attributes its termination to disagreements related to gender roles.

Political activism and Black Panther Party

After graduation from CCNY at 23, Shakur became involved in the Black Panther Party (BPP), which had been founded in Oakland, California and had a branch in New York. She eventually became a leading member of the Harlem branch. Before joining the BPP, Shakur had met several of its members on a 1970 trip to Oakland. She had coordinated a school breakfast program to support students in need. She soon left the party, disliking the macho behavior of the men. She did not claim, as did other female Panthers such as Regina Jennings, that she had suffered sexual harassment.

Shakur believed that the BPP lacked knowledge and understanding of United States black history:

"The basic problem stemmed from the fact that the BPP had no systematic approach to political education. They were reading the Red Book but didn't know who Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, and Nat Turner were. They talked about intercommunalism but still really believed that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. A whole lot of them barely understood any kind of history, Black, African or otherwise. [...] That was the main reason many party members, in my opinion, underestimated the need to unite with other Black organizations and to struggle around various community issues."

That same year Chesimard changed her name to Assata Olugbala Shakur; In Arabic (related to the Muslim tradition in West Africa), Assata means "she who struggles", Olugbala means “love for the people”, and Shakur means "thankful one." (In addition, 'Abd Allah II ibn 'Ali 'Abd ash-Shakur was the last Emir of Harar in Ethiopia.) Her motivation behind this transition was because her life was now a part of African culture, all but her name. Joanne no longer represented her, as she wrote in her biography, “It sounded so strange when people called me Joanne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t feel like no Joanne, or no negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman”. As for the last name Chesimard, it was most likely a slave given name. Shakur joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), described by The Guardian in 2013 as “a radical and violent organization of black activists.” Joy James said its "primary objective (was) to fight for the independence and self-determination of Afrikan people in the United States."

In 1971, Shakur joined the Republic of New Afrika. This black nationalist organization was formed to create an independent black-majority nation composed of the present-day states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, which had many black-majority areas and a history of slave societies and strong African-American culture.

Allegations and manhunt

On April 6, 1971, Shakur was shot in the stomach during a struggle with a guest at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. According to police, Shakur knocked on the door of a room occupied by an out-of-town guest and asked "Is there a party going on here?" to which the occupant responded in the negative. Shakur allegedly displayed a revolver and demanded money, and a struggle ensued, during which she was shot by the revolver she had shown.

She was booked on charges of attempted robbery, felonious assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of a deadly weapon, then released on bail. Shakur is alleged to have said that she was glad that she had been shot since, afterward, she was no longer afraid to be shot again.

Following an August 23, 1971 bank robbery in Queens, Shakur was sought for questioning. A photograph of a woman (who was later alleged to be Shakur) wearing thick-rimmed black glasses, with a high hairdo pulled tightly over her head, and pointing a gun, was widely displayed in banks. The New York Clearing House Association paid for full-page ads displaying material about Shakur.

On December 21, 1971, Shakur was named as one of four suspects by New York City police in a hand grenade attack that destroyed a police car and slightly injured two patrolmen in Maspeth, Queens; a 13-state alarm was issued three days after the attack when a witness identified Shakur and Andrew Jackson from FBI photographs. Atlanta law enforcement officials said that Shakur and Jackson had lived together for several months in Atlanta, Georgia, in the summer of 1971.

Shakur was one of those wanted for questioning for wounding a police officer attempting to serve a traffic summons in Brooklyn on January 26, 1972. After a March 1, 1972 $89,000 Brooklyn bank robbery, a Daily News headline asked: "Was that JoAnne?"; Shakur was also wanted for questioning after a September 1, 1972 Bronx bank robbery. Based on FBI photographs, Msgr. John Powis alleged that Shakur was involved in an armed robbery at his Our Lady of the Presentation church in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on September 14, 1972.

In 1972, Shakur was the subject of a nationwide manhunt after the FBI alleged that she was the "revolutionary mother hen" of a Black Liberation Army cell that had conducted a "series of cold-blooded murders of New York City police officers." The FBI said these included the "execution style murders" of New York Police Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones on May 21, 1971, and NYPD officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie on January 28, 1972. Shakur was alleged to have been directly involved with the Foster and Laurie murders, and involved tangentially with the Piagentini and Jones murders.

Some sources identify Shakur as the de facto leader and the "soul of the Black Liberation Army" after the arrest of co-founder Dhoruba Moore. Robert Daley, Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Police, for example, described Shakur as "the final wanted fugitive, the soul of the gang, the mother hen who kept them together, kept them moving, kept them shooting."

As of February 17, 1972, when Shakur was identified as one of four BLA members on a short trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, she was wanted for questioning (along with Robert Vickers, Twyman Meyers, Samuel Cooper, and Paul Stewart) in relation to police killings, a Queens bank robbery, and the grenade attack. Shakur was announced as one of six suspects in the ambushing of four policemen—two in Jamaica, Queens, and two in Brooklyn—on January 28, 1973, despite the fact that the assailants were identified as male.

By June 1973, an apparatus that would become the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) was issuing nearly daily briefings on Shakur's status and the allegations against her.

According to Cleaver and Katsiaficas, the FBI and local police "initiated a national search-and-destroy mission for suspected BLA members, collaborating in stakeouts that were the products of intensive political repression and counterintelligence campaigns like NEWKILL." They "attempted to tie Assata to every suspected action of the BLA involving a woman." The JTTF would later serve as the "coordinating body in the search for Assata and the renewed campaign to smash the BLA," after her escape from prison. After her capture, however, Shakur was not charged with any of the crimes for which she was the subject of the manhunt.

Shakur and others claim that she was targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO as a result of her involvement with the black liberation organizations. Specifically, documentary evidence suggests that Shakur was targeted by an investigation named CHESROB, which "attempted to hook former New York Panther Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur) to virtually every bank robbery or violent crime involving a black woman on the East Coast." Although named after Shakur, CHESROB (like its predecessor, NEWKILL) was not limited to Shakur.

New Jersey Turnpike shootout

On May 2, 1973, at about 12:45 a.m., Assata Shakur, along with Zayd Malik Shakur (born James F. Costan) and Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Squire), were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick by State Trooper James Harper, backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle (Car 820), for driving with a broken tail light. According to Col. David B. Kelly, the vehicle was also "slightly" exceeding the speed limit. Recordings of Trooper Harper calling the dispatcher were played at the trials of both Acoli and Assata Shakur. After reporting his plans to stop the vehicle he had been following, Harper can later be heard to say: "Hold on—two black males, one female." The stop occurred 200 yards (183 m) south of what was then the Turnpike Authority administration building at exit 9, the headquarters of Troop D. Zayd Shakur was driving the two-door vehicle, Assata Shakur was seated in the right front seat, and Acoli was in the right rear seat. Trooper Harper asked the driver for identification, noticed a discrepancy, asked him to get out of the car, and questioned him at the rear of the vehicle.

It is at this point, with the questioning of Zayd Shakur, that the accounts of the confrontation begin to differ (see the witnesses section below). However, in the ensuing shootout, Trooper Foerster was shot twice in the head with his own gun and killed, Zayd Shakur was killed, and Assata Shakur and Trooper Harper were wounded.

According to initial police statements, at this point one or more of the suspects began firing with semiautomatic handguns and Trooper Foerster fired four times before falling mortally wounded. At Acoli's trial, Harper testified that the gunfight started "seconds" after Foerster arrived at the scene. At this trial, Harper said that Foerster reached into the vehicle, pulled out and held up a semiautomatic pistol and ammunition magazine, and said "Jim, look what I found," while facing Harper at the rear of the vehicle. At this point, Assata Shakur and Acoli were ordered to put their hands on their laps and not to move; Harper said that Assata Shakur then reached down to the right of her right leg, pulled out a pistol, and shot him in the shoulder, after which he retreated to behind his vehicle. Questioned by prosecutor C. Judson Hamlin, Harper said he saw Foerster shot just as Assata Shakur was felled by bullets from Harper's gun. Harper testified that Acoli shot Foerster with a .38 caliber semiautomatic pistol and then used Foerster's own gun to "execute him." According to the testimony of State Police investigators, two jammed semiautomatic pistols were discovered near Foerster's body.

Acoli then drove the car (a white Pontiac LeMans with Vermont license plates)—which contained Assata Shakur, who was wounded, and Zayd Shakur, who was dead or dying—5 miles (8 km) down the road at milepost 78 across from Service Area 8-N (the Joyce Kilmer Service Area), where Assata Shakur was apprehended. The vehicle was chased by three patrol cars and the booths down the turnpike were alerted. Acoli then exited the car and—after being ordered to halt by Trooper Robert Palentchar (Car 817), the first on the scene—fled into the woods as Palentchar emptied his gun. According to Palentchar, Assata Shakur then walked towards him from 50 feet (15 m) away with her bloody arms raised in surrender. Acoli was captured after a 36-hour manhunt—involving 400 people, state police helicopters, and bloodhounds from the Ocean County Sheriff's Department—the following day. Zayd Shakur's body was found in a nearby gully along the road.

At the time of the shootout, Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and no longer a member of the Black Panther Party. According to a New Jersey Police spokesperson, Assata Shakur was on her way to a "new hideout in Philadelphia" and "heading ultimately for Washington" and a book in the vehicle contained a list of potential BLA targets. Assata Shakur testified that she was on her way to Baltimore for a job as a bar waitress.

Assata Shakur, with gunshot wounds in both arms and a shoulder was moved to Middlesex General Hospital, under "heavy guard," and was reported to be in "serious condition"; Trooper Harper was wounded in the left shoulder, in "good" condition, and given a protective guard at the hospital. Assata Shakur was interrogated and arraigned from her hospital bed, and her medical care during this period is often alleged to have been "substandard." She was transferred from Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick to Roosevelt Hospital in Edison after her lawyers obtained a court order from Judge John Bachman, and then transferred to Middlesex County Workhouse a few weeks later.

The Pontiac LeMans and Trooper Harper's patrol car were taken to a state police garage in East Brunswick. Following the incident, on May 11, the State Police instituted two-man night patrols on the turnpike and Garden State Parkway, although the change was not made public until June.

Criminal charges and dispositions

Between 1973 and 1977, in New York and New Jersey, Shakur was indicted ten times, resulting in seven different criminal trials. Shakur was charged with two bank robberies, the kidnapping of a Brooklyn heroin dealer, attempted murder of two Queens police officers stemming from a January 23, 1973 failed ambush, and eight other felonies related to the Turnpike shootout. Of these trials, three resulted in acquittals, one in a hung jury, one in a change of venue, one in a mistrial due to pregnancy, and one in a conviction; three indictments were dismissed without trial.

Turnpike shootout change of venue

On the charges related to the New Jersey Turnpike shootout, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Leon Gerofsky ordered a change of venue in 1973 from Middlesex to Morris County, New Jersey, saying "it was almost impossible to obtain a jury here comprising people willing to accept the responsibility of impartiality so that defendants will be protected from transitory passion and prejudice." Polls of residents in Middlesex County, where Acoli had been convicted less than three years earlier, showed that 83% knew her identity and 70% said she was guilty.

Bronx bank robbery mistrial

In December 1973, Shakur was tried for a September 29, 1972, $3,700 robbery of the Manufacturer's Hanover Trust Company in the Bronx, along with co-defendant Kamau Sadiki (born Fred Hilton). In light of the pending murder prosecution against Shakur in New Jersey state court, her lawyers requested that the trial be postponed for six months to permit further preparation. Judge Lee P. Gagliardi denied a postponement, and the Second Circuit denied Shakur's petition for mandamus. In protest, the lawyers stayed mute, and Shakur and Sadiki conducted their own defense. Seven other BLA members were indicted by District Attorney Eugene Gold in connection with the series of holdups and shootings on the same day, who—according to Gold—represented the "top echelon" of the BLA as determined by a year-long investigation.

The prosecution's case rested largely on the testimony of two men who had pleaded guilty to participating in the holdup. The prosecution called four witnesses: Avon White and John Rivers (both of whom had already been convicted of the robbery) and the manager and teller of the bank. White and Rivers, although convicted, had not yet been sentenced for the robbery and were promised that the charges would be dropped in exchange for their testimony. White and Rivers testified that Shakur had guarded one of the doors with a .357 magnum pistol and that Sadiki had served as a lookout and drove the getaway truck during the robbery; neither White nor Rivers was cross-examined due to the defense attorney's refusal to participate in the trial. Shakur's aunt and lawyer, Evelyn Williams, was also cited for contempt after walking out of the courtroom after many of her attempted motions were denied. The trial was delayed for a few days after Shakur was diagnosed with pleurisy.

During the trial, the defendants were escorted to a "holding pen" outside the courtroom several times after shouting complaints and epithets at Judge Gagliardi. While in the holding pen, they listened to the proceedings over loudspeakers. Both defendants were repeatedly cited for contempt of court and eventually barred from the courtroom, where the trial continued in their absence. A contemporary New York Times editorial criticized Williams for failing to maintain courtroom "decorum," comparing her actions to William Kunstler's recent contempt conviction for his actions during the "Chicago Seven" trial.

Sadiki's lawyer, Robert Bloom, attempted to have the trial dismissed and then postponed due to new "revelations" regarding the credibility of White, a former co-defendant working for the prosecution. Bloom had been assigned to defend Hilton over the summer, but White was not disclosed as a government witness until right before the trial. Judge Gagliardi instructed both the prosecution and the defense not to bring up Shakur or Sadiki's connections to the BLA, saying they were "not relevant." Gagliardi denied requests by the jurors to pose questions to the witnesses—either directly or through him—and declined to provide the jury with information they requested about how long the defense had been given to prepare, saying it was "none of their concern." This trial resulted in a hung jury and then a mistrial when the jury reported to Gagliardi that they were hopelessly deadlocked for the fourth time.

Bronx bank robbery retrial

The retrial was delayed for one day to give the defendants more time to prepare. The new jury selection was marked by attempts by Williams to be relieved of her duties due to disagreements with Shakur as well as Hilton's attorney. Judge Arnold Bauman denied the application, but directed another lawyer, Howard Jacobs, to defend Shakur while Williams remained the attorney of record. Shakur was ejected following an argument with Williams, and Hilton left with her as jury selection continued. After the selection of twelve jurors (60 were excused), Williams was allowed to retire from the case, with Shakur officially representing herself, assisted by lawyer Florynce Kennedy. In the retrial, White testified that the six alleged robbers had saved their hair clippings to create disguises, and identified a partially obscured head and shoulder in a photo taken from a surveillance camera as Shakur's. Kennedy objected to this identification on the grounds that the prosecutor, assistant United States attorney Peter Truebner, had offered to stipulate that Shakur was not depicted in any of the photographs. Although both White and Rivers testified that Shakur was wearing overalls during the robbery, the person identified as Shakur in the photograph was wearing a jacket. The defense attempted to discredit White on the grounds that he had spent eight months in Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane in 1968, and White countered that he had faked insanity (by claiming to be Allah in front of three psychiatrists) to get transferred out of prison.

Shakur personally cross-examined the witnesses, getting White to admit that he had once been in love with her; the same day, one juror (who had been frequently napping during the trial) was replaced with an alternate. Like the first trial, the retrial was marked by the defendants leaving and/or being thrown out of the court room for periods of varying lengths. Both defendants were acquitted in the retrial; six jurors interviewed after the trial stated that they did not believe the two key prosecution witnesses. Shakur was immediately returned to Morristown, New Jersey, under a heavy guard following the trial. Louis Chesimard (Shakur's ex-husband) and Paul Stewart, the other two alleged robbers, had been acquitted in June.

Turnpike shootout mistrial

The Turnpike shootout proceedings continued with Judge John E. Bachman in Middlesex County. The jury was chosen from Morris County, which had a far smaller black population than Middlesex County. On this basis, Shakur unsuccessfully attempted to remove the trial to federal court.

Shakur was originally slated to be tried with Acoli, but the trials were separated (before jury selection was complete) due to Shakur's pregnancy, and hers resulted in a mistrial in 1974 because of the possibility of miscarriage; Shakur was then hospitalized on February 1.

Attempted murder dismissal

Shakur and four others (including Fred Hilton, Avon White, and Andrew Jackson) were indicted in the State Supreme Court in Bronx on December 31, 1973 on charges of attempting to shoot and kill two policemen—Michael O'Reilly and Roy Polliana, who were wounded but had since returned to duty—in a January 28, 1973, ambush in St. Albans, Queens. On March 5, 1974, two new defendants (Jeannette Jefferson and Robert Hayes) were named in an indictment involving the same charges. On April 26, while Shakur was pregnant, New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne signed an extradition order to move Shakur to New York to face two counts of attempted murder, attempted assault, and possession of dangerous weapons related to the alleged ambush; however, Shakur declined to waive her right to an extradition hearing, and asked for a full hearing before Middlesex County Court Judge John E. Bachman.

Shakur was extradited to New York City on May 6, arraigned on May 11 (pleading innocent), and remanded to jail by Justice Albert S. McGrover of the State Supreme Court, pending a pretrial hearing on July 2. In November 1974, New York State Supreme Court Justice Peter Farrell dismissed the attempted murder indictment because of insufficient evidence, declaring "The court can only note with disapproval that virtually a year has passed before counsel made an application for the most basic relief permitted by law, namely an attack on the sufficiency of the evidence submitted by the grand jury."

Kidnapping trial

Shakur was indicted on May 30, 1974, on the charge of having robbed a Brooklyn bar and kidnapping bartender James E. Freeman for ransom. Shakur and co-defendant Ronald Myers were accused of entering the bar with pistols and shotguns, taking $50 from the register, kidnapping the bartender, leaving a note demanding a $20,000 ransom from the bar owner, and fleeing in a rented truck. Freeman was said to have later escaped unhurt. The text of Shakur's opening statement in the trial is reproduced in her autobiography. Shakur and co-defendant Ronald Myers were acquitted on December 19, 1975 after seven hours of jury deliberation, ending a three-month trial in front of Judge William Thompson.

Queens bank robbery trial

In July 1973, after being indicted by a grand jury, Shakur pleaded not guilty in Federal Court in Brooklyn to an indictment related to an August 31, 1971 $7,700 robbery of the Bankers Trust Company bank in Queens. Judge Jacob Mishlerset set a tentative trial date of November 5 that year. The trial was delayed until 1976, when Shakur was represented by Stanley Cohen and Evelyn Williams. In this trial, Shakur acted as her own co-counsel and told the jury in her opening testimony:

"I have decided to act as co-counsel, and to make this opening statement, not because I have any illusions about my legal abilities, but, rather, because there are things that I must say to you. I have spent many days and nights behind bars thinking about this trial, this outrage. And in my own mind, only someone who has been so intimately a victim of this madness as I have can do justice to what I have to say."

One bank employee testified that Shakur was one of the bank robbers, but three other bank employees (including two tellers) testified that they were uncertain. The prosecution showed surveillance photos of four of the six alleged robbers, contending that one of them was Shakur wearing a wig. Shakur was forcibly subdued and photographed by the FBI on the judge's order, after having refused to cooperate, believing that the FBI would use photo manipulation; a subsequent judge determined that the manners in which the photos were obtained violated Shakur's rights and ruled the new photos inadmissible. In her autobiography, Shakur recounts being beaten, choked, and kicked on the courtroom floor by five marshals, as Williams narrated the events to ensure they would appear on the court record. Shortly after deliberation began, the jury asked to see all the photographic exhibits taken from the surveillance footage. The jury determined that a widely circulated FBI photo allegedly showing Shakur participating in the robbery was not her.

Shakur was acquitted after seven hours of jury deliberation on January 16, 1976, and was immediately remanded back to New Jersey for the Turnpike trial. The actual transfer took place on January 29. She was the only one of the six suspects in the robbery to be brought to trial. Andrew Jackson and two others indicted for the same robbery pleaded guilty; Jackson was sentenced to five years in prison and five years' probation; another was shot and killed in a gun fight in Florida on December 31, 1971, and the last remained at large at the time of Shakur's acquittal.

Turnpike shootout retrial

By the time Shakur was retried in 1977, Acoli had already been convicted of the murder of Foerster (on the theory that he fired the bullets), and a total of 289 articles had been published in the local press relating to the various crimes with which Shakur had been accused. Shakur's trial, along with Acoli's, would end up costing Middlesex County an estimated $1 million.

Shakur again attempted to remove the trial to federal court. The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey denied the petition and also denied Shakur an injunction against the holding of trial proceedings on Fridays (the Muslim Sabbath). An en banc panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed.

The nine-week trial was widely publicized, and was even reported on by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). On March 25, 1977, back in Middlesex County, Shakur was convicted as an accomplice in the murders of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and Zayd Shakur and possession of weapons, as well as of assault and attempted murder of Harper. During the trial, hundreds of civil rights campaigners demonstrated outside of the Middlesex County courthouse each day.

Following the 13-minute opening statement by Edward J. Barone, the first assistant Middlesex County prosecutor (directing the case for the state), William Kunstler (the chief of Shakur's defense staff) moved immediately for a mistrial, calling the eight-count grand jury indictment "adversary proceeding solely and exclusively under the control of the prosecutor," whom Kunstler accused of "improper prejudicial remarks"; Judge Theodore Appleby, noting the frequent defense interruptions that had characterized the previous days' jury selection, denied the motion. The prosecution contended that Shakur shot and killed her companion, Zayd Shakur, and "executed" Trooper Foerster with his own weapon.

The next day, the jury listened to State Police radio tapes while being provided with a printed transcript, an arrangement that resulted from "hours of haggling" between the defense and prosecution. The "climax" of the tape came when Trooper Ronald Foster, the State Police radio operator, shouted into his microphone "They just shot Harper! Be on the lookout for this car!" and "It is a Pontiac. It's got one tail light" after the wounded Harper entered into the administration building near the site of the shootout. As the tapes were played, Shakur was seated "calmly and without apparent concern" wearing a yellow turban and brightly colored floor-length dress over a white turtleneck sweater.

On February 23, Shakur's attorneys filed papers asking Judge Appleby to subpoena FBI Director Clarence Kelley, Senator Frank Church and other federal and New York law enforcement officials to testify about the Counter Intelligence Program, which they alleged was designed to harass and disrupt black activist organizations. Kunstler had previously been successful in subpoenaing Kelley and Church for the trials of American Indian Movement (AIM) members charged with murdering FBI agents. The motion (argued March 2)—which also asked the court to require the production of memos, tapes, documents, and photographs of alleged COINTELPRO involvement from 1970 to 1973—was denied.

Shakur herself was called as a witness on March 15, the first witness called by the defense; she denied shooting either Harper or Foerster, and also denied handling a weapon during the incident. She was questioned by her own attorney, Stuart Ball, for under 40 minutes, and then cross-examined by Barone for less than two hours (see the Witnesses section below). Ball's questioning ended with the following exchange:

"On that night of May 2[n]d, did you shoot, kill, execute or have anything to do with the death of Trooper Werner Foerster?""No.""Did you shoot or assault Trooper James Harper?""No."

Under cross-examination, Shakur was unable to explain how three magazines of ammunition and 16 live shells had gotten into her shoulder bag; she also admitted to knowing that Zayd Shakur carried a gun at times, and specifically to seeing a gun sticking out of Acoli's pocket while stopping for supper at a Howard Johnson's restaurant shortly before the shooting. Shakur admitted to carrying an identification card with the name "Justine Henderson" in her billfold the night of the shootout, but denied using any of the aliases on the long list that Barone proceeded to read.

Defense attorneys

Shakur's defense attorneys were William Kunstler (the chief of Shakur's defense staff), Stuart Ball, Robert Bloom, Raymond A. Brown, Stanley Cohen (who died of unknown causes early on in the Turnpike trial), Lennox Hinds, Florynce Kennedy, Louis Myers, Laurence Stern, and Evelyn Williams, Shakur's aunt. Of these attorneys, Kunstler, Ball, Cohen, Myers, Stern and Williams appeared in court for the turnpike trial. Kunstler became involved in Shakur's trials in 1975, when contacted by Williams, and commuted from New York City to New Brunswick every day with Stern.

Her attorneys, in particular Lennox Hinds, were often held in contempt of court, which the National Conference of Black Lawyers cited as an example of systemic bias in the judicial system. The New Jersey Legal Ethics Committee also investigated complaints against Hinds for comparing Shakur's murder trial to "legalized lynching" undertaken by a "kangaroo court." Hinds' disciplinary proceeding reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Ass'n (1982). According to Kunstler's autobiography, the sizable contingent of New Jersey State Troopers guarding the courthouse were under strict orders from their commander, Col. Clinton Pagano, to completely shun Shakur's defense attorneys.

Judge Appleby also threatened Kunstler with dismissal and contempt of court after he delivered an October 21, 1976 speech at nearby Rutgers University that in part discussed the upcoming trial, but later ruled that Kunstler could represent Shakur. Until obtaining a court order, Williams was forced to strip naked and undergo a body search before each of her visits with Shakur—during which Shakur was shackled to a bed by both ankles. Judge Appleby also refused to investigate a burglary of her defense counsel's office that resulted in the disappearance of trial documents, amounting to half of the legal papers related to her case. Her lawyers also claimed that their offices were bugged.

Tensions and dissension existed among the members of the defense team. Evelyn Williams felt that she was a victim of male prejudice stating that "for the second time in (her) legal career (she) became aware of the disdain with which men perceive women." She expressed "amazement and contempt" for the actions of her fellow lawyers as she watched their "infighting for center stage" during the trial. Other members of the team were concerned that Williams was overly aggressive during her sole cross-examination to the point of passing her notes that read, in part, "You're antagonizing the jury" and "Shut up and sit down."

Witnesses

Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur, Trooper Harper, and a New Jersey Turnpike driver who saw part of the incident were the only surviving witnesses. Acoli did not testify or make any pre-trial statements, nor did he testify in his own trial or give a statement to the police. The driver traveling north on the turnpike testified that he had seen a State Trooper struggling with a Black man between a white vehicle and a State Trooper car, whose revolving lights illuminated the area.

Shakur testified that Trooper Harper shot her after she raised her arms to comply with his demand. She said that the second shot hit her in the back as she turned to avoid it, and that she fell onto the road for the duration of the gunfight before crawling back into the backseat of the Pontiac—which Acoli drove 5 miles (8 km) down the road and parked. She testified that she remained there until State Troopers dragged her onto the road.

Trooper Harper's official reports state that after he stopped the Pontiac, he ordered Acoli to the back of the vehicle for Trooper Foerster—who had arrived on the scene—to examine his driver's license. The reports then state that after Acoli complied, and as Harper was looking inside the vehicle to examine the registration, Trooper Foerster yelled and held up an ammunition magazine as Shakur simultaneously reached into her red pocketbook, pulled out a nine-millimeter weapon and fired at him. Trooper Harper's reports then state that he ran to the rear of his car and shot at Shakur who had exited the vehicle and was firing from a crouched position next to the vehicle.

Under cross-examination at both Acoli and Shakur's trials, Trooper Harper admitted to having lied in these reports and in his Grand Jury testimony about Trooper Foerster yelling and showing him an ammunition magazine, about seeing Shakur holding a pocketbook or a gun inside the vehicle, and about Shakur shooting at him from the car. Trooper Harper retracted his previous statements and said that he had never seen Shakur with a gun and that she did not shoot him.

Jury

A total of 408 potential jurors were questioned during the voir dire, which concluded on February 14. All of the 15 jurors—ten women and five men—were white, and most were under thirty years old. Five jurors had personal ties to State Troopers (one girlfriend, two nephews, and two friends). A sixteenth female juror was removed before the trial formally opened when it was determined that Sheriff Joseph DeMarino of Middlesex County, while a private detective several years earlier, had worked for a lawyer who represented the juror's husband. Judge Appleby repeatedly denied Kunstler's requests for DeMarino to be removed from his responsibilities for the duration of the trial "because he did not divulge his association with the juror."

One prospective juror was dismissed for reading Target Blue, a book by Robert Daley, a former New York City Deputy Police Commander, which dealt in part with Shakur and had been left in the jury assembly room. Before the jury entered the courtroom, Judge Appleby ordered Shakur's lawyers to remove a copy of Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley from a position on the defense counsel table easily visible to jurors. The Roots TV miniseries adapted from the book and shown shortly before the trial was believed to have evoked feelings of "guilt and sympathy" with many white viewers.

Shakur's attorneys sought a new trial on the grounds that one jury member, John McGovern, had violated the jury's sequestration order. Judge Appleby rejected Kunstler's claim that the juror had violated the order. McGovern later sued Kunstler for defamation; Kunstler eventually publicly apologized to McGovern and paid him a small settlement. Additionally, in his autobiography, Kunstler alleged that he later learned from a law enforcement agent that a New Jersey State Assembly member had addressed the jury at the hotel where they were sequestered, urging them to convict Shakur.

Due to the high security of the trial and the sequestration, Shakur's trial, along with Acoli's, cost Middlesex County an estimated $1 million combined. In September 1977, New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne vetoed a bill to give the Morris County sheriff $7,491 for overtime expenses incurred in guarding Shakur's jury.

Medical evidence

A key element of Shakur's defense was medical testimony meant to demonstrate that she was shot with her hands up and that she would have been subsequently unable to fire a weapon. A neurologist testified that the median nerve in Shakur's right arm was severed by the second bullet, making her unable to pull a trigger. Neurosurgeon Dr. Arthur Turner Davidson, Associate Professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, testified that the wounds in her upper arms, armpit and chest, and severed median nerve that instantly paralyzed her right arm, would only have been caused if both arms were raised, and that to sustain such injuries while crouching and firing a weapon (as described in Trooper Harper's testimony) "would be anatomically impossible."

Davidson based his testimony on an August 4, 1976 examination of Shakur and on X-rays taken immediately after the shootout at Middlesex General Hospital. Prosecutor Barone questioned whether Davidson was qualified to make such a judgment 39 months after the injury; Barone proceeded to suggest (while a female Sheriff's attendant acted out his suggestion) that Shakur was struck in the right arm and collar bone and "then spun around by the impact of the bullet so an immediate second shot entered the fleshy part of her upper left arm" to which Davidson replied "Impossible."

Dr. David Spain, a pathologist from Brookdale Community College, testified that her bullet scars as well as X-rays supported her claim that her arms were raised, and that there was "no conceivable way" the first bullet could have hit Shakur's clavicle if her arm was down.

Judge Appleby eventually cut off funds for any further expert defense testimony. Shakur, in her autobiography, and Williams, in Inadmissible Evidence, both claim that it was difficult to find expert witnesses for the trial. Not only because of the financial expense, but also because most forensic and ballistic specialists declined on the grounds of a conflict of interest when approached because they routinely performed such work for law enforcement officials.

Other evidence

Neutron activation analysis administered after the shootout showed no gunpowder residue on Shakur's fingers; her fingerprints were not found on any weapon at the scene, according to forensic analysis performed at the Trenton, New Jersey crime lab and the FBI crime labs in Washington, D.C. According to tape recordings and police reports made several hours after the shoot-out, when Harper returned on foot to the administration building 200 yards (183 m) away, he did not report Foerster's presence at the scene; no one at headquarters knew of Foerster's involvement in the shoot-out until his body was discovered beside his patrol car, more than an hour later.

Conviction and sentencing

On March 24, the jurors listened for 45 minutes to a rereading of testimony of the State Police chemist regarding the blood found at the scene, on the LeMans, and Shakur's clothing. That night, the second night of jury deliberation, the jury asked Judge Appleby to repeat his instructions regarding the four assault charges 30 minutes before retiring for the night, which led to speculation that the jury had decided in Shakur's favor on the remaining charges, especially the two counts of murder. Appleby reiterated that the jury must consider separately the four assault charges (atrocious assault and battery, assault on a police officer acting in the line of duty, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault with intent to kill), each of which carried a total maximum penalty of 33 years in prison. The other charges were: first-degree murder (of Foerster), second-degree murder (of Zayd Shakur), illegal possession of a weapon, and armed robbery (related to Foerster's service revolver). The jury also asked Appleby to repeat the definitions of "intent" and "reasonable doubt."

Shakur was convicted on all eight counts: two murder charges, and six assault charges. The prosecution did not need to prove that Shakur fired the shots that killed either Trooper Foerster or Zayd Shakur: being an accomplice to murder carries an equivalent life sentence under New Jersey law. Upon hearing the verdict, Shakur said—in a "barely audible voice"—that she was "ashamed that I have even taken part in this trial" and that the jury was "racist" and had "convicted a woman with her hands up." Judge Appleby told the court attendants to "remove the prisoner" and Shakur replied: "the prisoner will walk away on her own feet." After Joseph W. Lewis, the jury foreman, read the verdict, Kunstler asked that the jury be removed before alleging that one juror had violated the sequestration order (see above).

At the post trial press conference Kunstler blamed the verdict on racism stating that "the white element was there to destroy her." When asked by a reporter that if that were the case why did it take the jury 24 hours to reach a verdict Kunstler replied, "That was just a pretense." A few minutes later the prosecutor Barone disagreed with Kunstler's assessment saying the trial's outcome was decided "completely on the facts."

At Shakur's sentencing hearing on April 25, Appleby sentenced her to 26 to 33 years in state prison (10 to 12 for the four counts of assault, 12 to 15 for robbery, 2 to 3 for armed robbery, plus 2 to 3 for aiding and abetting the murder of Foerster), to be served consecutively with her mandatory life sentence. However, Appleby dismissed the second-degree murder of Zayd Shakur, as the New Jersey Supreme Court had recently narrowed the application of the law. Appleby finally sentenced Shakur to 30 days in the Middlesex County Workhouse for contempt of court, concurrent with the other sentences, for refusing to rise when he entered the courtroom. To become eligible for parole, Shakur would have had to serve a minimum of 25 years, which would have included her four years in custody during the trials.

Nelson murder dismissal

In October 1977, New York State Superior Court Justice John Starkey dismissed murder and robbery charges against Shakur related to the death of Richard Nelson during a December 28, 1972, hold-up of a Brooklyn social club, ruling that the state had delayed too long in bringing her to trial. Judge Starkey said, "People have constitutional rights, and you can't shuffle them around." The case was delayed in being brought to trial as a result of an agreement between the governors of New York and New Jersey as to the priority of the various charges against Shakur. Three other defendants were indicted in relation to the same holdup: Melvin Kearney, who died in 1976 from an eight-floor fall while trying to escape from the Brooklyn House of Detention, Twymon Myers, who was killed by police while a fugitive, and Andrew Jackson, the charges against whom were dismissed when two prosecution witnesses could not identify him in a lineup.

Attempted robbery dismissal

On November 22, 1977, Shakur pleaded not guilty to an attempted armed robbery indictment stemming from the 1971 incident at the Statler Hilton Hotel. Shakur was accused of attempting to rob a Michigan man staying at the hotel of $250 of cash and personal property. During the incident Shakur was shot in the stomach and subsequently arrested, booked, and released on bail. The prosecutor was C. Richard Gibbons. The charges were dismissed without trial.

Imprisonment

After the Turnpike shootings, Shakur was imprisoned in New Jersey State Reception and Correction center in Yardville, Burlington County, New Jersey and later moved to Rikers Island Correctional Institution for Women in New York City where she was kept in solitary confinement for 21 months. Shakur's only daughter, Kakuya Shakur, was conceived during her trial and born on September 11, 1974 in the "fortified psychiatric ward" at Elmhurst General Hospital in Queens, where Shakur stayed for a few days before being returned to Rikers Island. In her autobiography, Shakur claims that she was beaten and restrained by several large female officers after refusing a medical exam from a prison doctor shortly after giving birth. While imprisoned on Rikers Island, Shakur filed a § 1983 suit related to the conditions of her confinement; she was unsuccessful in persuading the federal courts to order that the legal aid paralegals assisting in her claim be granted attorney-like visitation rights.

After a bomb threat was made against Judge Appleby, Sheriff Joseph DeMarino lied to the press about the exact date of her transfer to Clinton Correctional Facility for Women for security reasons. She was also transferred from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women to a special area staffed by women guards at the Yardville Youth Correction and Reception Center in New Jersey, where she was the only female inmate, for "security reasons." When Kunstler first took on Shakur's case (before meeting her), he described her basement cell as "adequate," which nearly resulted in his dismissal as her attorney. On May 6, 1977, Judge Clarkson Fisher, of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, denied Shakur's request for an injunction requiring her transfer from the all-male facility to Clinton Correctional Facility for Women; the Third Circuit affirmed.

On April 8, 1978, Shakur was transferred to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia where she met Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón and Mary Alice, a Catholic nun, who introduced Shakur to the concept of liberation theology. At Alderson, Shakur was housed in the Maximum Security Unit, which also contained several members of the Aryan Sisterhood as well as Sandra Good and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, followers of Charles Manson.

On March 31, 1978, after the Maximum Security Unit at Alderson was closed, Shakur was transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey. According to her attorney Lennox Hinds, Shakur "understates the awfulness of the condition in which she was incarcerated," which included vaginal and anal searches. Hinds argues that "in the history of New Jersey, no woman pretrial detainee or prisoner has ever been treated as she was, continuously confined in a men's prison, under twenty-four-hour surveillance of her most intimate functions, without intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, and exercise, and without the company of other women for all the years she was in custody."

Shakur was identified as a political prisoner as early as October 8, 1973 by Angela Davis, and in an April 3, 1977, New York Timesadvertisement purchased by the Easter Coalition for Human Rights. An international panel of seven jurists representing the United Nations Commission on Human Rights concluded in 1979 that her treatment was "totally unbefitting any prisoner." Their investigation, which focused on alleged human rights abuses of political prisoners, cited Shakur as "one of the worst cases" of such abuses and including her in "a class of victims of FBI misconduct through the COINTELPRO strategy and other forms of illegal government conduct who as political activists have been selectively targeted for provocation, false arrests, entrapment, fabrication of evidence, and spurious criminal prosecutions." Amnesty International, however, did not regard Shakur as a former political prisoner.

Escape

On November 2, 1979 she escaped the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, when three members of the Black Liberation Army visiting her drew concealed .45-caliber pistols, seized two guards as hostages and commandeered a prison van. The van escaped through an unfenced section of the prison into the parking lot of a state school for the handicapped, 1.5 miles (2 km) away, where a blue-and-white Lincoln and a blue Mercury Comet were waiting. No one was injured during the prison break, including the guards held as hostages who were left in the parking lot. Her brother, Mutulu Shakur, Silvia Baraldini, former Panther Sekou Odinga, and Marilyn Buck were charged with assisting in her escape; Ronald Boyd Hill was also held on charges related to the escape. In part for his role in the event, Mutulu was named on July 23, 1982 as the 380th addition to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, where he remained for the next four years until his capture in 1986. State correction officials disclosed in November 1979 that they had not run identity checks on Shakur's visitors and that the three men and one woman who assisted in her escape had presented false identification to enter the prison's visitor room, before which they were not searched. Mutulu Shakur and Marilyn Buck were convicted in 1988 of several robberies as well as the prison escape.

At the time of the escape, Kunstler had just started to prepare her appeal. After her escape, Shakur lived as a fugitive for several years. The FBI circulated wanted posters throughout the New York – New Jersey area; her supporters hung "Assata Shakur is Welcome Here" posters in response. In New York, three days after her escape, more than 5,000 demonstrators organized by the National Black Human Rights Coalition carried signs with the same slogan. The image of Shakur on the wanted posters featured a wig and blurred black-and-white features (pictured right).

For years after Shakur's escape, the movements, activities, and phone calls of her friends and relatives—including her daughter walking to school in upper Manhattan—were monitored by investigators in an attempt to ascertain her whereabouts. In July 1980, FBI director William Webster said that the search for Shakur had been frustrated by residents' refusal to cooperate, and a New York Times editorial opined that the department's commitment to "enforce the law with vigor—but also with sensitivity for civil rights and civil liberties" had been "clouded" by an "apparently crude sweep" through a Harlem building in search of Shakur. In particular, one pre-dawn April 20, 1980 raid on 92 Morningside Avenue, during which FBI agents armed with shotguns and machine guns broke down doors, and searched through the building for several hours, while preventing residents from leaving, was seen by residents as having "racist overtones." In October 1980, New Jersey and New York City Police denied published reports that they had declined to raid a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn building where Shakur was suspected to be hiding for fear of provoking a racial incident.

Political asylum in Cuba

Shakur fled to Cuba by 1984; in that year she was granted political asylum in that country. The Cuban government paid approximately $13 a day toward her living expenses. In 1985 she was reunited with her daughter, Kakuya, who had been raised by Shakur's mother in New York.

In an open letter, Shakur has called Cuba "One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) that has ever existed on the Face of this Planet." She also referred to herself as a "20th century escaped slave." Shakur is also known to have worked as an English-language editor for Radio Havana Cuba.

Books

In 1987, she published Assata: An Autobiography, which was written in Cuba. Her autobiography has been cited in relation to critical legal studies and critical race theory. The book does not give a detailed account of the events on the New Jersey Turnpike, except saying that the jury "Convicted a woman with her hands up!" It gives an account of her life beginning with her youth in the South and New York. Shakur challenges traditional styles of literary autobiography and offers the public a perspective on her life that is not easily accessible to the public. The book was published by Lawrence Hill & Company in the United States and Canada but the copyright is held by Zed Books Ltd. of London due to "Son of Sam" laws, which restrict who can receive profits from a book. In the six months preceding the publications of the book, Evelyn Williams, Shakur's aunt and attorney, made several trips to Cuba and served as a go-between with Hill.

In 1993, she published a second book, Still Black, Still Strong, with Dhoruba bin Wahad and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Extradition attempts

In 1997, Carl Williams, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, wrote a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to raise the issue of Shakur's extradition during his talks with President Fidel Castro. During the pope's visit to Cuba in 1998, Shakur agreed to an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza. Shakur later published an extensive criticism of the NBC segment, which inter-spliced footage of Trooper Foerster's grieving widow with an FBI photo connected to a bank robbery of which Shakur had been acquitted. On March 10, 1998 New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman asked Attorney General Janet Reno to do whatever it would take to return Shakur from Cuba. Later in 1998, U.S. media widely reported claims that the United States State Department had offered to lift the Cuban embargo in exchange for the return of 90 U.S. fugitives, including Shakur.

In September 1998, the United States Congress passed a non-binding resolution asking Cuba for the return of Shakur as well as 90 fugitives believed by Congress to be residing in Cuba; House Concurrent Resolution 254 passed 371–0 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The Resolution was due in no small part to the lobbying efforts of Governor Whitman and New Jersey Representative Bob Franks. Before the passage of the Resolution, Franks stated: "This escaped murderer now lives a comfortable life in Cuba and has launched a public relations campaign in which she attempts to portray herself as an innocent victim rather than a cold-blooded murderer."

In an open letter to Castro, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Representative Maxine Waters of California later explained that many members of the Caucus (including herself) were against Shakur's extradition but had mistakenly voted for the bill, which was placed on the accelerated suspension calendar, generally reserved for non-controversial legislation. In the letter, Waters explained her opposition, calling COINTELPRO "illegal, clandestine political persecution."

On May 2, 2005, the 32nd anniversary of the Turnpike shootings, the FBI classified her as a domestic terrorist, increasing the reward for assistance in her capture to $1 million, the largest reward placed on an individual in the history of New Jersey. New Jersey State Police superintendent Rick Fuentes said "she is now 120 pounds of money." The bounty announcement reportedly caused Shakur to "drop out of sight" after having previously lived relatively openly (including having her home telephone number listed in her local telephone directory).

New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther, has called for the bounty to be rescinded. The New Jersey State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation each still have an agent officially assigned to her case. Calls for Shakur's extradition increased following Fidel Castro's transfer of presidential duties; in a May 2005 television address, Castro had called Shakur a victim of racial persecution, saying "they wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie." In 2013 the FBI announced it had made Shakur the first woman on its list of most wanted terrorists. The reward for her capture and return was also doubled to $2 million that year.

Cultural influence

A documentary film about Shakur, Eyes of the Rainbow, written and directed by Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando, appeared in 1997. The official premiere of the film in Havana in 2004 was promoted by Casa de las Américas, the main cultural forum of the Cuban government. The National Conference of Black Lawyers and Mos Def are among the professional organizations and entertainers to support Assata Shakur; the "Hands Off Assata" campaign is organized by Dream Hampton.

Numerous musicians have composed and recorded songs about her or dedicated to her:

Common recorded "A Song for Assata" on his album Like Water for Chocolate (2000) after traveling to Havana to meet with Shakur personally.

Paris ("Assata's Song", in Sleeping with the Enemy (1992), Public Enemy ("Rebel Without A Pause" in It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back(1988), 2Pac ("Words of Wisdom" in 2Pacalypse Now (1991), Digital Underground ("Heartbeat Props" in Sons of the P, 1991), The Roots ("The Adventures in Wonderland" in Illadelph Halflife, 1996), Asian Dub Foundation ("Committed to Life" in Community Music, 2000), Saul Williams ("Black Stacey" in Saul Williams, 2004), Rebel Diaz ("Which Side Are You On?" in Otro Guerrillero Mixtape Vol. 2, 2008), Lowkey ("Something Wonderful" in Soundtrack to the Struggle, 2011), Murs ("Tale of Two Cities" in The Final Adventure, 2012), Jay Z ("Open Letter Part II" in 2013), Digable Planets, The Underachievers and X-Clan have also recorded songs about Shakur. Shakur has been described as a "rap music legend" and a "minor cause celebre."

On December 12, 2006, the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, directed City College's president, Gregory H. Williams, to remove the "unauthorized and inappropriate" designation of the "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center," which was named by students in 1989. A student group won the right to use the lounge after a campus shutdown over proposed tuition increases. CUNY was sued by student and alumni groups after removing the plaque. As of April 7, 2010, the presiding judge has ruled that the issues of students' free speech and administrators' immunity from suit "deserve a trial."

Following controversy, in 1995 Borough of Manhattan Community College renamed a scholarship that had previously been named for Shakur. In 2008, a Bucknell University professor included Shakur in a course on "African-American heroes"—along with figures such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, John Henry, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis. Her autobiography is studied together with those of Angela Davis and Elaine Brown, the only women activists of the Black Power movement who have published book-length autobiographies. Rutgers University professor H. Bruce Franklin, who excerpts Shakur's book in a class on 'Crime and Punishment in American Literature,' describes her as a "revolutionary fighter against imperialism."

Black NJ State Trooper Anthony Reed (who has left the force) sued the police force because, among other things, persons had hanged posters of Shakur, altered to include Reed's badge number, in a Newark barracks. He felt it was intended to insult him, as she had killed an officer, and was "racist in nature." According to Dylan Rodriguez, to many "U.S. radicals and revolutionaries" Shakur represents a "venerated (if sometimes fetishized) signification of liberatory desire and possibility."

The largely Internet-based "Hands Off Assata!" campaign is coordinated by Chicago-area Black Radical Congress activists.

In 2015, New Jersey's Kean University dropped hip-hop artist Common as a commencement speaker because of police complaints. Members of the State Troopers Fraternal Association of New Jersey expressed their anger over Common's "A Song For Assata."

In 2015, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza writes: “When I use Assata’s powerful demand in my organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about Assata’s significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what its political purpose and message is, and why it’s important in our context."

The Chicago Black activist group Assata's Daughters is named in her honor.

Terrorist list

Assata Shakur was moved to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List on May 2, 2013, the 40th anniversary of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster's murder.

Wikipedia

#Assata Shakur #07-16

5 notes · View notes

mood-report · 6 years ago

Text

The September Vogue Mood Report

Don’t shoot the messenger.

For the second year in a row, Vogue has turned political and I must discuss it in order to do an accurate mood report. I dislike politics and rarely discuss the subject, so for the second year this was not a fun report to write.

I was so saddened by last year’s issue that I barely spent any time on it, focusing mainly on the cover which I labeled “Sunset Of Liberty.”

If it’s true that “Democracy Dies In Darkness,” I very much wanted to be wrong, but it does not appear so. Not with the emergence of Shadow Banning and Search Engine Manipulation against political opponents, or land confiscation in South Africa based on skin color (which, like Europe’s Migrant Rape Crisis, is deemed racist to even discuss).

Shadow Banning and Search Engine Manipulation is repugnant to a free society. It is otherwise known as censorship.

This year I’ve left emotions at the door and have instead followed the rabbit hole. My job is not to judge. My job is to analyze content through the lens of social mood . . . while it’s still permissible to do so.

On second look, it turns out that there was a familiar political theme in 2017 that morphed into this year’s edition.

This year seemed to be a consistent strategy of repetitive political talking points.

This is important to be aware of because whether it’s propaganda, advertising, or politics, the strategy is always the same: repetition.

Messaging and persuasion is achieved through repetition.

Keep repeating it and it sticks.

Get it?

It’s an insidious process if you’re not paying attention. It’s happened to me. During my tenure at Condé Nast reading over two dozen magazines cover-to-cover each month because my job required it, my sensibilities were drastically altered. I didn’t notice it until I left the city and my new attitudes were wildly apocryphal, quite incompatible with real life. It was bizarre how subtly it occurred.

“I love journalism. My dad was an editor, my brother is a political editor, it is just a world that I am steeped in.“

~ Anna Wintour

It is not a conspiracy theory to illustrate Anna Wintour’s connection to politics.

In 2008 she was appointed to the Order of the British Empire.

In October 2009, President Obama appointed her to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

In 2011 she was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In 2013 she was named Artistic Director of Condé Nast.

In October 2016, Vogue made its first political endorsement in its 124-year-history, calling Hillary Clinton “optimistic, forward-looking, and modern.” (Remember that word “forward.”)

In 2017, for her service to British journalism and fashion, she was named Dame Commander (DBE) of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

With her new role as Artistic Director, Dame Anna Wintour now controls the editorial vision not only for Vogue, but every title published by its parent company, Condé Nast.

Wintour is therefore at the nucleus of powerful ecosystem that intersects with a vast array of companies and, according to The Business Of Fashion, operates as an “unofficial, behind-the-scenes consultant to CEOs, designers, politicians and movie stars in America and beyond.”

“Wintour is indeed more like a head of state than a mere editor-in-chief, a position which gives her a unique, bird’s-eye view of the fashion industry, emanating outwards from Vogue and Condé Nast to the wider ecosystem that sustains this $2.4 trillion industry.”

~ The Business Of Fashion

In short, she is in a position to sway millions of opinions and trillions of dollars. And with a keen eye for politics and a nose for power, she’s taking advantage of it.

“One of the initiatives I have here in my role as artistic director is that I have regular Editorial Task Force meetings, or ETFs, where we invite leaders from other worlds to come in and talk to the editors-in-chief and the digital leaders and a few other people about what they see happening in their industries, whether it be media or Silicon Valley — we pull them from everywhere.”

~ Anna Wintour

Yet even if there was a deliberate political messaging strategy at work in this year’s September Vogue, the message itself is largely irrelevant for this analysis.

Yes, irrelevant.

Instead, the task for Mood Report is to answer the larger question: What does it mean when the world’s preeminent fashion magazine indulges in political messaging in the first place?

Is Vogue, to use a word of the moment, colluding with others to project a unified voice?

Or, is Vogue simply reflecting (caught up in) a social mood extreme, much like when a non-financial publication such as Time magazine features the stock market on its cover? At such times the trend in focus may be ending just as it’s being celebrated (or denigrated).

The originator of the Magazine Cover Indicator, the late Paul Macrae Montgomery, reviewed 3,000 magazine covers and found an 80% probability that if there was an investment related story on the cover of a non-financial magazine such as Time, Life, Newsweek, etc. that within three to four months the market would move in the opposite direction of that suggested on the cover.

For example, November 2, 1987, just days after Black Monday, and yet the market hasn’t looked back since:

June 13, 2005, Home $weet Home, right before the peak of the housing market:

Or this one just recently. Highly unlikely that The September Issue is dead, but with readership and ad revenues down, perhaps a stern warning regarding the current editorial direction:

What might appear as editorial collusion might simply be like-minded people seeking to be “Stronger Together” (to use a slogan from 2016) as a form of political resistance.

In other words: a herding impulse.

During times of extreme polarization and uncertainty, people naturally seek to align themselves with others of similar persuasion while being certain of only what they’re against. Repeating the same phrases and points has the comforting benefit of reflecting back their own beliefs which adds confidence and reassurance.

As political ideologies spread further apart, the effort to message one’s viewpoint takes on greater importance, even if it means filling the world’s most iconic fashion magazine with political talking points from cover to cover.

Again, the intent is not to judge the politics but to analyze the mood. By getting the “mood” right we can predict the politics. That is why, from a social mood standpoint, the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election was to be expected.

It is quite likely that the current polarization results in part from a monetary extreme: unprecedented stimulus and accommodation by like-minded central banks also seeking to be “Stronger Together.”

“The IMF was part of rebuilding the global economy — we all cooperated in the same endeavor: Rescue the system. That system was severely tested at the beginning of 2008. And that system was rescued and improved thanks to international cooperation, thanks to the belief that we could be stronger together.”

~ Commencement Address by Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director Claremont, California May 12, 2018

Extreme monetary policy may have yielded equal and opposing emotional extremes.

While Wall Street is giddy with excess, Main Street senses something is deeply wrong but can’t quite put a finger on it. Divergent opinions then lead to polarization. As Wall Street cheers, Main Street fractures into opposing sides, each seeking an object onto which it can project its angst.

Behold the Donald.

If he espouses Americanism, they want GLOBALISM.

If he wants a wall, they want NO BORDERS.

Behold the two core themes of this year’s September Issue.

As we begin the read through, these themes are abundantly clear. (my comments are lower cased in parentheses. anything in CAPS or bolded is for emphasis).

Repetitive patterns that emerged in order from the front cover to back cover were:

FALL GOES GLOBAL (main cover line sets the stage for the entire issue. also a possible double entendre warning of falling global markets soon)

“EVERYONE’S VOICE COUNTS” (unless you’re Alex Jones, or someone else that Amazon, Google, Instagram, Twitter, or the Facebook doesn’t like. more on this when Beyoncé has her say later on)

Vogue Forces Of Fashion promotion:

MEET THE TRAILBLAZERS PUSHING THE WORLD FORWARD

198, Letter From The Editor:

“September, for us, always starts in March. That’s when we return home from four weeks of shows and start planning what has traditionally always been our biggest issue of the year. Yet the fall 2018 season didn’t feel like it was business as usual, just as life these days doesn’t feel that way either. In all my time editing Vogue, this period is like no other I’ve experienced before, and for good reason: If fashion is radically different, it is because our world is so radically different. As we sat in meetings after the shows, we spent most of our time talking about how what we wear needs to reflect the times it’s being created for. We barely discussed trends -- in fact, trend is now pretty much verboten in the office because it seems such an outdated way to calibrate fashion. Thanks in part to digital technology and social media, we share a growing sense of global citizenship and kinship, not to mention how so many of us are increasingly looking far and wide for labels to better enhance our sense of personal style. Sally Singer, our Creative Digital Director, coined a phrase for it -- “fashion without borders” -- and it is the perfect representation of what this September is all about.

“You’ll find, then, a celebration of the designers who prefer to dispense with the notion of boundaries all together.

“As I read the story that accompanies the portrait of Virgil Abloh, the young Rockford, Illinois-born creative director behind the label Off-White who just made a terrific start with his Louis Vuitton menswear this past June, something Virgil said seemed emblematic of what we wanted to do. ‘It’s like I’m walking down different streets all at the same time, seeing, smelling, and breathing diversity,’ he said, ‘and realizing that things you grow up with -- race, religion, gender, or anything else -- tend to disappear once you’re embedded in a global community.’

“When it came to thinking about who should be on the cover of this September issue, there was really only ever one choice: Beyoncé. It’s not just because her fame redefines what it means to have a global presence; it’s the way she uses that status to challenge herself -- and us, too.

“More important, Beyoncé is intent on challenging the status quo, drawing out attention to society’s imbalances and injustices -- something that many of our current politicians seem intent on maintaining (or, worse, taking us backward).” (again, keep that word “forward” in mind)

Vogue Insiders.com promotion:

A POINT OF VIEW IS MEANT TO BE SHARED. JOIN AND SOUND OFF

Vogue.com promotion:

SHOP THE WORLD

“From museum-worthy boutiques in Tokyo and Milan to rare beauty finds tracked down from halfway around the globe and delivered right to your door, our style is now truly -- and effortlessly -- international.” (“effortlessly” is the tip-off that we’re experiencing a positive mood extreme)

Maybelline ad:

GLOBAL ROMANCE

Cover Girl ad:

I AM WHAT I MAKE UP (ironic given the current “fake news” environment)

254 Taking Flight:

On Vogue.com ==> “The Wing gears up to go GLOBAL” (women-only co-working club with $2350-2700 a year membership fees)

322 Off The Map:

“E-commerce site Ssense is championing the idea that fashion can come from absolutely anywhere.”

“For Ssense, GLOBALISM ISN’T JUST POSITIVE, IT’S PROGRESSIVE.”

334 BAND TOGETHER

356 Star Spangled:

“While knitwear label Alanui is based in Milan, its foray this fall into dressing us head-to-toe embraces a glittery, glam-rock Americana.” (everyone seems to be focusing globally this year)

380 L’Oréal promotion:

BEAUTY BEYOND BORDERS

“Pinging around the globe at the speed of Instagram.”

499 NEW HORIZONS:

“This odyssey is all thanks to the GLOBALLY MINDED designers who simply refuse to see borders.”

500 ALL AROUND THE WORLD

501 HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE:

“Fashion has never been more celebratory of GLOBAL DIVERSITY and influence as the best fall looks -- and a visionary group of BOUNDARY DEFYING designers -- ably prove.”

506 FIT TO PRINT

(comment: an ironic nod to the daily, front page, hiding-in-plain-sight, bold-faced admission of censorship by the New York Times: “All the News That’s Fit to Print” -- in other words, what’s “fit” is something only they decide. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT ironically appears as a caption on page 585)

519 Demna Gvasalia:

“This stars-and-stripes jacket, which represents the States, is my favorite -- because American culture is what I loved when I was growing up.” (another designer with his eyes fixed on distant shores, who now lives in “clean, calm, safely neutral Switzerland” while spray-painting NO BORDERS graffiti on the set of his latest show. the irony is that Switzerland is clean, calm, and safe because it is neutral and has some of the strongest borders in the world)

522 Gosha Ribchinskiy:

“If you’re not thinking GLOBALLY, your thinking is out of date.”

526 Stella McCartney:

“Climate change, of course, knows NO BORDERS.”

Beyoncé In Her Own Words:

“If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighborhoods they grew up in, they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own. They will hire the same models, curate the same art, cast the same actors over and over again, and we will all lose. The beauty of social media is it’s completely democratic. Everyone has a say. Everyone’s voice counts, and everyone has a chance to paint the world from their own perspective.”

(comment: the most powerful words in the entire magazine. in direct opposition to the Shadow Banners and to Vogue as well for waiting 126 YEARS before an African-American (23-year old Tyler Mitchell) was allowed to shoot its cover, and only when Wintour granted Beyoncé complete control of the cover story and shoot. also notice not one peep of GLOBAL and NO BORDERS talking points in her words)

580 THE GLOBAL TABLE

582 Age Appropriate

“Stories of burnout -- and worse -- are rife in a modeling industry filled with vulnerable mid-teens. So isn’t it time for the fashion world to commit to working with models old enough to vote?”

(another story that is decades too late. but no mention of the European Migrant Rape Crisis against girls (and even boys) as young as twelve. Due to its NO BORDERS policy, Sweden now has the heartbreaking distinction of being labeled the “Rape Capital” of Europe, while victims and their families are labeled racist for speaking out)

586 “Cover Story”

“Is there seduction in concealment? Safety in charade?”

“The incognito chic of the new coverings speaks equally to our desire to conceal -- and that eternal wish to stand out.”

“This predilection to disappear in plain sight is not limited to the catwalks.” Both Rihanna and Beyoncé sported the look during live shows.

(this was probably the only leading-indicator-style, fashion-inspired social mood alert in the issue, and it was all about the trend toward concealment, which is a negative mood characteristic. could also be an unintended consequence of the #MeToo movement as well as the European Migrant Rape Crisis)

=== end of editorial ===

Here is the result when all the noise is stripped away and the thematic messages are linked together in repetition:

FALL GOES GLOBAL, EVERYONE’S VOICE COUNTS, TRAILBLAZERS PUSHING THE WORLD FORWARD. We share a growing sense of global citizenship and kinship, fashion without borders, a celebration of the designers who prefer to dispense with the notion of boundaries all together. Things you grow up with -- race, religion, gender, or anything else -- tend to disappear once you’re embedded in a global community. Fame redefines what it means to have a global presence. A POINT OF VIEW IS MEANT TO BE SHARED. JOIN AND SOUND OFF. SHOP THE WORLD. From museum-worthy boutiques in Tokyo and Milan to rare beauty finds tracked down from halfway around the globe and delivered right to your door, our style is now truly -- and effortlessly -- international. GLOBAL ROMANCE, I AM WHAT I MAKE UP. Taking Flight, Off The Map. Championing the idea that fashion can come from absolutely anywhere. GLOBALISM ISN’T JUST POSITIVE, IT’S PROGRESSIVE, BAND TOGETHER, BEAUTY BEYOND BORDERS. Pinging around the globe at the speed of Instagram. NEW HORIZONS. This odyssey is all thanks to the GLOBALLY MINDED designers who simply refuse to see borders. ALL AROUND THE WORLD, HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE. Fashion has never been more celebratory of GLOBAL DIVERSITY and influence. A visionary group of BOUNDARY DEFYING designers. FIT TO PRINT. If you’re not thinking GLOBALLY, your thinking is out of date. Climate change, of course, knows NO BORDERS.

Analysis:

Before we jump to the conclusion that this was an intentional messaging strategy, we had better get a few things straight.

First a definition:

Social mood is a shared mental state among humans that arises from social interaction. It is unconscious, unremembered, and endogenously regulated.

~ Socionomic Theory

Therefore, counter-intuitively, what appears as an intentional messaging strategy is likely unconscious.

But the question remains: what does this shared mental state say about current social mood?

We may find the first hint in Anna’s editor’s letter: “If fashion is radically different, it is because our world is so radically different.”

According to the Socionomic Theory of Finance, “humans herd because they evolved to conform to others’ behavior in uncertain situations as a primal survival tactic.”

In my opinion, the Vogue content flagged above is an example of herding as a form of political survival.

“We’re totally integrated here on one floor. It’s total integration and we meet, we discuss, we talk all the time.”

~ Anna Wintour

While caught up in the negative urge to RESIST the current administration, maybe all the ETF meetings, the discussions, and total-integration-all-the-time have resulted in a sort of unconscious groupthink that has allowed Vogue to get swept up in the same positive social mood extreme that has driven the markets to record highs, by unconsciously embracing the same giddy animal spirits fueling Wall Street.

In other words, groupthink may have undermined Vogue’s own message of resistance. GLOBALISM and NO BORDERS are radically extreme aspects of positive social mood.

William H. Whyte Jr. derived the term "groupthink” from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and described it as “rationalized conformity.”

A recent study may have proved its existence. “How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect,” by Lorenz et al.,¹ found that social interaction among participants produces convergent opinions, less accurate opinions, and higher confidence in those opinions.

“Convergent opinions” may explain the rampant repetition cited above that essentially blurs into a long stream of social mood conformity. “Less accurate opinions” may explain the embrace of GLOBAL/NO BORDERS ideology that was rejected in America and is steadily being rejected throughout Europe, even though the embrace of these ideologies may have resulted from conformity to the same mood underpinning the raging bull market.

Yale psychologist Irving Janis, who pioneered the initial research on the groupthink theory, wrote:

“The main principle of groupthink is this: The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making ingroup, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against outgroups.”

Irrational actions directed against outgroups sounds a lot like how Shadow Banning can happen without realizing it is censorship.

Irrational actions directed against outgroups might explain how Search Engine Manipulation happens -- why, when you type in the word “idiot” into Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Google respectively, this is what you get:

Irrational actions directed against outgroups might explain the embrace of NO BORDERS even as Europe is overrun by its Migrant Rape Crisis and No-Go Zones to the point that far-right voters are surging from Norway to Greece and most everywhere in between.

Irrational actions directed against outgroups might also explain how throughout history the word “forward” gets used as a rallying cry for progress even when ideologies linked to it result in regress. Case in point: Venezuela.

In Latin American slang, Pa’lante is a contraction of "para adelante" or "forward."

“At Vogue, we’re not much given to looking backward, reasoning that life only goes in one direction -- forward -- and therefore, so should we.”

~ Anna Wintour’s 2017 Editor’s Letter

Zuckerberg’s latest project:

Complete with “Sunset Of Liberty.” (now pulled from site. had to use the Wayback Machine for it from August 30, 2018.)

“Forward” to more voters:

“Demonizing immigrants weakens our country. Fighting against hate crimes makes us grow stronger together.”

~ George Soros

In summary, GLOBALISM and NO BORDERS are positive mood manifestations. Constant, effortless travel and a miche mache of global styles reflect an expansionist mood peak at odds with growing angst against income equality resulting from extreme monetary policy.

The irony is that income equality is often blamed on capitalism when a central bank and a progressive income tax are two of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto.

And here’s what all that miche mache global style looks like: not very coherent, like a bunch of “convergent opinions.” Anna even referred to it as the “creativity of chaos . . . everything all sort of jumbled up and looking like it came from different countries and different identities.”

GLOBAL/NO BORDERS, effortless travel, pinging around the world at the speed of Instagram . . . this is what maximum mood expansion sounds like.

Incidentally there is so much demand for air travel lately that JetBlue and United have just raised checked bag fees, again.

And this is what maximum mood expansion looks like:

Here are some other examples:

S&P 500 revenues at record highs.

S&P 500 earnings at record highs.

S&P 500 profit margin at record highs.

GDP revised up to 4.2%.

US consumer confidence at 18-year highs.

Highest job satisfaction reading since 2005.

Lowest unemployment rate in almost 50 years.

Recent headlines:

Luxury Lounge Wars Heat Up as Airlines Vie for High-end Passengers

Luxury Housing is Hot, Hot, Hot

Personal Loans Surge to a Record High

A record 95% of American manufacturers recently declared themselves optimistic about the economy

The Art Fair where $20 million Impulse Buys are the New Normal

At $9.7 Million a Pop, Private Jets are Luring Buyers Again

Home Price Insanity: $2.6 Million for 900 Square Feet

But probably my favorite dead-simple, long-term forecasting tool is the S&P/Case-Shiller 10-City Composite Home Price Index. This has me looking for another bump in the road before a run to final highs in possibly 2021-2022 which should coincide with further highs in stocks.

Thus, the march “forward” will likely be slow until we reach a depression when it will once again be a rallying cry for the “economically oppressed.”

Sadly, then capitalism will likely get the blame for our day of reckoning even though it was central banking (central planning) that created the imbalances that needed to be corrected.

The negative mood forces that ushered in Trump’s victory have given way to euphoria, but angst is still smoldering here and abroad as evidenced by Europe’s far-right resurgence with anti-immigration as its core ideal. Since we are all now riding the same liquidity wave, we should pay close attention to other markets as well.

Therefore, the observations made in last year’s September Vogue Mood Report still stand: authoritarianism may still be on its way as countries “crack down” on loose borders.

Socialism in America will probably have to wait until after the excesses have been purged from the system and the jackboots fill the streets. Then, “forward” might seem like the only way for many.

Vogue is warning us of a potentially significant mood peak and thus the potential for a significant market peak. But it is still possible that higher highs can be made based on pure momentum, even after another period of adjustment.

Positive social mood can also feed on momentum, so expect higher until it flames out. You can always check with Mood Report for market timing.

On the other side, social mood is sky-high even as negative aspects of it continue to build beneath the wave.

This is most likely because of the degree of the potential peak at hand. Like a cresting tidal wave, the crest itself may take a long time to form, but meanwhile below the surface the energy is building for the wave to roll over and crush the unexpecting. Likewise with social mood. As with the interplay of yin and yang, excesses in one yield excesses in the other as the opposing forces remain in flux at all times.

I have tried to avoid making this report a political diatribe, but instead have attempted to show that we are at the whims of social mood. The best we can do is identify it and try to either accept it or align with it as best we can. Social mood dictates the mode of events, not the events themselves. We can only control our reactions.

Thanks for reading.

References

¹ Lorenz, J., Rauhut, F. Schweitzer and D. Helbing, “How Social Influence Can Undermine the Wisdom of Crowd Effect,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011.

1 note · View note

hypexion · 4 years ago

Text

Can The Zygon Inversion fix all of its first part’s problems and deliver a satisfying ending? Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking the question. As it turns out, one good scene can’t save a story that’s already off the rails.

Really, there’s not much to write about The Zygon Inversion that I haven’t already ready written about The Zygon Invasion. Everyone continues to act like idiots so the plot can move along, the analogies are still bad (but in a new, worse way), and not much really happens until the climax. Like, Clara is back, but all she does is provide an out for the cliffhanger, snark at Bonnie and exposite things to make the episode move along.

What is worth noting, however, is the episode’s attempt at a “non-evil“ Zygon. Which falls over because said Zygon kills at least two people, and attempts to kill the Doctor. Generally, if you want a character to be sympathetic, it helps if they’re not a murderer. I don’t think this is a particularly high bar to overcome, especially when your story is meant to be about radicalization. It would help the point if instead of the Doctor and Osgood finding some piles of zapped people whose relatives will never have closure, they instead encounter some angry humans yelling about the monster. Then they can talk to the Zygon, and find out his name, perhaps, and then when he zaps himself it’s actually sad. Instead of a relief because the trigger happy murder alien is dead.

Of course, when people talk about The Zygon Inversion, they really only care about one scene. The Big Doctor Speech, War Edition. And I can see why. Peter Capaldi brings the whole thing to life in a masterful way - you can hear the Doctor’s anguish and rage over all the horrors he’s seen and done. The core idea - that he wants no-one else to feel that kind of pain - is great. For a moment, the quality of The Zygon Inversion shoots through the ceiling.

The problem is that it proceeds to plummet through the floor, because the Doctor doesn’t stop when he should. Once he’s explained how the Osgood Boxes have a genocide button, because war is bad, he says that everyone ultimately comes together to talk. So far, so good. Then he declares that Bonnie is a child having a tantrum, and that she has no actual motivation or goals. And Bonnie agrees. What, and if you’ll pardon my English, the absolute fuck?

What makes The Zygon Inversion not just bad, but uniquely awful, is its complete and utter misunderstanding of why terrorism (and war) occurs. Generally, terrorist groups, whether they are Islamic extremists, dissident republicans in Ireland, or right-wing terrorists in the United States (and elsewhere) have goals. They have an idea of what society will look like when they win. And they have to these goals, because otherwise they wouldn’t be commiting terrorism! The entire point of terrorism and war is to achieve political goals through violent means. Not only is this a complete failure to actually write a well-formed character, it completely torpedos whatever theme the episode was shooting for by massively misrepresenting the problem it’s supposedly about. That Peter Harness apparently can’t write a decent story without hammering us over the head with his stupid theme and that he can’t write characters who aren’t terminally stupid, while dire, is not even the tip of the iceberg here.

In my opinion, the way The Zygon Inversion presents its antagonist’s motivation is not just bad writing, but an outright dangerous way of thinking. The idea that people just become radicalized out of nowhere is wrong. Terrorism happens for a reason, and it’s an incredibly “end-of-history“ way of thinking to suggest that those reasons don’t exist. Terrorists are capable of rationality and long-term planning. This is why extremist groups are so dangerous - a well organised one is capable of doing immense damage. And even the “tantrums“ aren’t exempt. The 2021 US Capitol Riot, while ultimately ineffectual, had a specific goal, and was incited by not by people who were angry, but by people who wanted to overthrow the democratic process of the United States because it suited their own ends. Terrorism happens for a reason.

Beyond that, what else is there to say? The Osgood Boxen are empty, because the Doctor wouldn’t actually give anyone a genocide button. Then he says something about fifteen times with implications that are incredibly alarming. So much for the “perfect peace treaty“.

The Zygon Inversion is bad. The characters are idiots, it’s no less xenophobic that the first part, and the only good scene is immediately ruined because Peter Harness doesn’t understand terrorism. We’ve found the worst epidoe of Series Nine, everyone.

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #the zygon inversion #doctor who rewatch

1 note · View note

thinktosee · 5 years ago

Text

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, SLAVERY AND MILITARY CONSCRIPTION – BEHAVIOURAL MANIPULATION AND CONTROL THROUGH COERCION and FEAR

“I think a lot about him especially when it comes to my writing or what kind of teacher I want to be. David was fearless and uncompromising of his values in everything and that only pushes me to do better, because I can practically hear his signature critique otherwise.”

- Zylph, U.C. Undergraduate and David’s friend from St. Joseph’s Institution International High School, singapore

A. INTRODUCTION

Image courtesy picturequotes.com

Military conscription, slavery and hostage-taking are immorally coercive processes designed to oppress, disorient, intimidate, disenfranchise, affect, subjugate, manage, re-orientate and control the victim’s behaviour and actions. Their basic premise is FEAR or the overwhelming ability or threat by the bully, criminal or aggressor to inflict unimaginable physical or psychological pain/distress or both on the victim. These criminal acts originate from a personal desire by the bully/aggressor/criminal for social, political and or economic advantages. These crimes go against the public interest, and yet, they were and still continue to be framed by the bully as mutually beneficial - “cooperate and nothing will happen to you.” Or “It’s for your own good. You will like it”

B. DEFINITIONS and CONTEXT

1. Stockholm Syndrome

Poster for the 2018 movie, “Stockholm.” Image courtesy www.imdb.com

“A psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.” (1)

On Aug 23, 1973, two criminals’ attempt to rob a bank in Stockholm, Sweden led to the taking of 4 hostages. They were only released on Aug 28. However, the victims refused to testify against their kidnappers (2). Perhaps the words of Natascha Kampusch, a victim of another tragic kidnapping may explain this phenomenon :

"I find it very natural that you would adapt yourself to identify with your kidnapper," she says. "Especially if you spend a great deal of time with that person. It's about empathy, communication. Looking for normality within the framework of a crime is not a syndrome. It is a survival strategy.” (3)

“Stockholm Syndrome” could essentially be said as a coping or survival mechanism by the victim, in the light of the prolonged ordeal which she encountered.

"It's some kind of a context you get into when all your values, the morals you have change in some way." – Kristin Ehnmark, a hostage in the 1973 Stockholm bank robbery (4)

2. Slavery

Image courtesy www.independent.co.uk

“A condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.” (5)

Slavery is as ancient as human civilization. In Exodus 9:1, the Lord commanded Moses to tell Pharaoh to “Let my People go….” From the 16th to the 19th centuries, we learned that Africans were abducted and traded as slaves by the millions to the New World of the Americas. (6) Perhaps unbeknown to many of us, the European colonials were also actively slave-trading in the Dutch East Indies. (7) Slavery’s connection to colonialism, be it European-imposed or localized (8), is undeniable. It was a system of exploitation and discrimination of the human worth in the worst possible way. Slaves were denied their rights to freedom and dignity. This institutionalization of slavery was possible through an elaborate system of governance, laws, customs, education, and other forms of physical, social and psychological coercion, manipulation and restraint. It ensured the total submission of the slave. What was considered immoral or abnormal in one place, was legalized and normalized in another. The slave felt trapped, disenfranchised and helpless. His identity, his very existence, was violently crushed. A new identity was imposed – a tradeable and replaceable product - a slave. Fear, once again was the underlying tool. This time it was wielded by the slave owner and supported by the state.

The American Civil War of 1861-65 was about slavery. I like to highlight an example - the basis for the decision by the State of Mississippi to leave the Union :

“[O]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-the greatest material interest of the world... A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization….” (9) (10)

This statement should always be remembered, particularly since slavery continues to exist in its various tragic manifestations today, as this title of an Oct 2018 report by the United Nations attests :

With 40 Million Forced into Modern Slavery, Third Committee Expert Urges States to Protect Rights of Women, Girls, Companies Must Remedy Violations (11)

A slave may also be someone we know – an abused live-in partner, worker, child, or hostage. Fear, that potent tool of a criminal, is the favoured modus operandi.

Our family’s copy of a classic. A great dramatic tale of Southern plantation life, (built and sustained by slave labour) during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. Hollywood made this into a movie in 1939, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in the lead roles. (12)

3. Military Conscription

Image courtesy abc.net.au “Why Australia said no to conscription.”

“Conscription, also called draft, compulsory enrolment for service in a country’s armed forces. It has existed at least from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (27th century bce), but there have been few instances — ancient or modern—of universal conscription (calling all those physically capable between certain ages). The usual form — even during total war — has been selective service.” (13)

Compulsory enlistment or mandated militarized public education is slavery. It presupposes the state, that is, the ruling few, has a claim on the life, freedom, choice and dignity of a citizen, for the public good (I have not encountered any instance where this so-called public good is reasonably and satisfactorily justified. We should thereon read the term “public good” broadly. I submit that in reality, it means for the “good of the self-serving ruling class.”)

Modern conscription may be traced to the Prussian state in the 19th century. (14), (15). This was a period of wars and carnage, including the Napoleonic campaigns, in feudal Europe. (16) The Prussian kingdom deemed it necessary to introduce universal conscription for the security of the “fatherland.” Military expenditure then was said to be as much as 75% of the state’s budget, far above the average of 25% across Europe. In most respects, Prussia could be said to be a militarized kingdom. (17) The French statesman, Count Mirabeau was believed to have said, “Prussia was not a country with an army but an army with a country…” (18) This is a weighty distinction, and it still applies to this day, especially among us who wonder about the youthful soldiers who are shipped far away to another continent to engage in wars in “defense” of their home and country. Or just as curiously, youth who are conscripted and still not allowed to vote or voice their opinion on the matter.

Conscription, especially in peace-time is harmful to the conscript. It is designed to upend the conscript’s identity, with a corollary to establishing a new one, with an affiliation to the military-state apparatus and its agenda. It may be further expressed as follows :

“The tactics of a thought-reform program are organized to:

1. Destabilize a person's sense of self,

2. Get the person to drastically reinterpret his or her life's history and radically alter his or her worldview and accept a new version of reality and causality,

3. Develop in the person a dependence on the organization, and thereby turn the person into a deployable agent of the organization.” (19)

C. CONCLUSION

Image courtesy cnn.com

Slavery, abduction and conscription have a common feature – the power dynamics overwhelmingly favour the criminal or offender. The methodologies employed are also similar – fear, threat, harm, disenfranchisement, anxiety, intimidation, inducements/rewards and the like. The objectives too coincide – to control, oppress, induce conformity, empathy and helplessness, with a view to “own” the victim. That’s right – a conscript is a slave and a victim too. Abduction is obviously illegal. Slavery, within its traditional definition, is no longer legal. Time also to call out conscription for what it truly is – brain-washing-cum-slavery.

Slavery exists so long as we live in fear.

Image courtesy Amazon.com

“Fear is the greatest weapon in God’s arsenal. It is why the church concocted Hell.”

- Cardinal Franklin, played by F. Murray Abraham, in 2018’s “Robin Hood.” (20)

In the Spirit of David Cornelius Singh

By David’s father

https://thinktosee.tumblr.com/

Sources/References

1. https://www.britannica.com/science/Stockholm-syndrome

2. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22447726

3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/11/natascha-kampusch-interview

4. “Promises to Pay (Vol. 1) : Banks, Battles and Bellies”, p235. Rezvi, Masood. 2018. Published by K.M. Rizvi

5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology

6. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3

7. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/10/05/two-centuries-slavery-indonesian-soil.html

8. “Race and Slavery in the Middle East. An Historical Enquiry. Lewis, Bernard. 1994. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1.

9. https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/five-truths-about-black-history

10. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

11. https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/gashc4244.doc.htm

12. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gone-with-the-wind-1939

13. https://www.britannica.com/topic/conscription

14. Ibid.

15. http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=3895

16. https://www.britannica.com/event/Napoleonic-Wars

17. Ibid.

18. Chap 7, “The Prussian Military State.” Showalter, Dennis. “Early Modern Military History, 1450-1815.” For readers who wish to learn more, we also suggest separately exploring the connection between Prussia and Imperial Japan.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230523982

19. https://culteducation.com/cults-in-our-midst2.html

The reference here is based on the research findings of Prof. Margaret Thale Singer and originally published in her tome, “Coercive mind control tactics.” Prof. Singer performed extensive research studies on trauma experienced by POWs and cult members. She was the leading authority on the subject. A brief overview of her research is also available via this link :

http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/coercive-mind-control-tactics.htm

20. https://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/robin-hood-2018/

0 notes

ana-sola-deactivated081518 · 7 years ago

Text

Communist Profiles: Angela Davis

Spirituality is an important part of many people's lives; it forms their moral upbringing, gives them a place of safety, and provides a place of acceptance and love within a certain community. Stephen Mack's post concerning "The Cleric as a Public Intellectual" highlights the political importance of devoting yourself to a message and a movement.

Living in Birmingham, Alabama as a young black American in the mid-century was no small task. The neighborhood Angela Davis and many other black political activists and intellectuals lived in as children was wrought with terror. White supremacy groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) would run amok in the streets at night: bombing, murdering, raping, and burning crosses on people's lawns on "Dynamite Hill". One such bombing took the lives of Davis' friends in their childhood church. The First Congregational Church was a place of solitude, solidarity, and safety for Davis and many of her peers. It then became a symbol for activism and political and social change. Davis' public intellectual journey has certainly been sparked, ignited, and fueled by her spirituality. However, her spirituality is not illustrated as a worship of a "Higher Power", but rather, it is demonstrated through her determination to her cause of --mainly--black liberation, especially in the United States, but also worldwide. Her life has been a constant devotion to a cause in which she sees people become connected with each other and liberated through her radical political activism and thought.

Before delving into the meat of spirituality being an important aspect of public intellectualism and activism, it is important to address the concerns of bringing theology, religion, and spirituality into public activism and thought. A common, but often misguided and misinformed criticism of religion or spirituality is that it isn't rooted in facts, reason, or evidence--that religion is solely blind faith and hope. Apparently, spirituality isn't commonly known as a grounded and stable practice. Peter Beinert, as mentioned in Mack's post, criticized religion as a basis for political knowledge and discourse, because

"...when you make public arguments, you have to ground them...in reason and evidence, things that are accessible to people of different religions, or no religion at all...there must be a common political language, and that language can't be theological."

What Beinart fails to acknowledge is that sometimes reason, evidence, jargon, and cold, hard facts are too confusing or convoluted for the general public to understand the significance. Additionally, hard facts and knowledge do no convey feelings, emotions, morality, or empathy. Religion and spirituality are the common language for weighing the importance of issues for many people. The point of a public intellectual is to make public issues "accessible to people" through easy-to-understand language, straightforward discourse, and also convey the importance of those public issues. For some people, delivering the message within a religious context makes discourse more accessible to those who wouldn't otherwise understand or acknowledge the significance of an issue.

If you don't buy my argument, then you also have to acknowledge there is unlikely to ever be a "common political language" either. There are myriad of ideologies (religious, political, social, economic, etc.) and as a result of those ideologies, varying degrees of discourse surrounding important issues from the truths on the prison-industrial complex and institutional racism to the dangers of globalization and capitalism. Depending on who talks within the discourse bubble, it will be difficult to create a "common language". For example, a socialist can explain to a capitalist why they think a monied system is detrimental to humans, but the capitalism won't be able to understand much of the ideology because they believe money, business, and laissez-faire are the true freedoms of people. It is unlikely the two could ever meet in the middle--not because of difference of opinion, but difference in relationships to those sources of marginalization. The two will not have a common language, because their life experiences and their relationship to power structures are unlikely to align. Contrary to Beinert criticisms, there will likely not be "common political languages" due simply to individual experiences in relation to varying power structures.

Despite the bleak projection, there is still possibility for social change for those at the fringes of society--especially because of activists and thinkers like Angela Davis whose spirituality guides their moral ideology. Understanding how davis became active in the public sphere, we have to understand why the First Congregational Church was bombed. Davis recalls

"...there were bombings and burnings all the time...I was the member of an interracial study group [at the church], and [it] was burned as a result of that group. We grew up in an atmosphere of terror. And today, with all the discussion of terror, I think it's important to recognize that there were reigns of terror throughout the 20th century."

Since her early teenage years, Davis has been an activist for social change. Her early activism--as well as the black community's activism as a whole--threatened white supremacists throughout America. The KKK terrorized and victimized and brutalized black communities; wanting them to submit to white ideals of black subservience. Davis' and many of her friends' and family's spirituality and race were constantly threatened. Not even the most sacred haven could protect them from the KKK's sexist racism and hate crimes. The black community--and many other marginalized communities--were subject to the KKK's whims and domestic terrorist activities. For black Americans living in the United States, they have always been victims of white terrorism.

Although Davis' activism isn't necessarily coming from a point of spirituality in the sense that most people would recognize it, her spirituality was threatened as a young woman and she decided her passion laid with liberating the black community;

"I think [the church bombing] fueled this fire of anger and must made me determined to fight injustice with all of the energy and strength I could muster."

Davis recognized the KKK's attack on her spirituality as a direct attack on the black community as a whole, because the church is a safe haven from the racist pressures outside of the church. Later, during her graduate studies, Davis joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers. After realizing their highly patriarchal and black-women exclusionist policies and attitudes, she joined the Che-Lumumba group instead. Davis has worked most of her life committing herself to movements and issues bigger than herself: she has been an activist; a grassroots organizer; a writer; a prisoner; a revolutionary; and has fulfilled many more roles throughout her young adult and adult life. Davis admits her life does not belong to her, but rather fighting injustice;

"...I decided that I was going to devote my life primarily to the struggle for the liberation of black people and to the struggle for socialism. I decided at that point, I suppose, that my life belonged to that struggle and to my people."

Davis' religious and spiritual experiences have certainly molded her thoughts on what a just society looks like and that religious and spiritual background beckoned her to give her life to that cause. As Mack writes, it would be

"...absurd [and] unfair to ask religious intellectuals to disarm their political speech of its fundamental moral rationale."

Davis' spiritual education fuels her sympathy for marginalized groups and her religiosity encouraged her devotion to such a tall order of justice for all social groups.

I do disagree with Mack, however, when he says

"...Americans... are a people defined not by race, not by ethnicity, but by moral purpose."

The American pursuit for social justice and liberty has always been coated in an air of "otherness" due to race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, class, and myriad of social prejudices. Spirituality has always guided American social ideals, but they have always been coated in undertones of prejudices and exclusionary policies. These specific exclusions are the reasons why intellectuals, such as Davis and her peers, have sought to dismantle the current power structures the define American race and ethnicity. White scientists invented eugenics "science", believing they were serving the "moral purpose" of saving the white race, but that eventually led to WWII and the events of the Holocaust. You can always say people are fueled by moral purpose, but that doesn't mean much. it's what they do with their "moral purpose" that defines whether or not they are doing it under prejudiced and selfish contexts.

Davis has certainly not been on of those individuals who have moral purposes for prejudiced or selfish reasons. For example, she was implicated in the 1970s as an accomplice for a court-room break-out that resulted in the deaths of 4 innocent people. She went underground to avoid persecution, but she was placed on America's 10 Most Wanted List, was apprehended within the year, and the Free Angela Movement had been born and spearheaded by her younger sister. Once Davis had been acquitted of all charges, she took charge of the Angela Movement, renamed it the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression to protest the abusive power of the criminal justice system, especially in the context of how it treated black people in the system. Her organizational work motivated her to start a national lecture tour speaking about civil rights, prison reform, and social change. Her lectures sparked international debate, especially in the context of prison reform and prisoners' rights. She inspired international governments to rethink their criminal justice systems and identify issues of social justice within those system. Because of her work and dedication to political causes, Davis was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize and was given an honorary doctorate from Lenin University of Leipzig. Since there, Davis worked for the National Political Congress of Black Women, served on the board for National Black Women's Health Project, and formed the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Davis' life has been a full-on dedication to social justice for black communities, publicly and privately, domestically and internationally, and for all classes, religions, education levels, and many other intersections of marginalization and disenfranchisement. Although she doesn't work as an activist anymore, she has written many books; "Women, Race, & Class" being her most popular and recent work. She lectures at various universities within California, and continues to teach and inspire younger generations to continue pressuring the government for more social justice, protections, and reformations of each institution. Although I don't share the sense of spirituality that she gained when she was a young adult, she has certainly inspired myself to be revolutionary in my ideals, my thoughts, my actions, and what I say. Her spirituality has taught her an enthusiasm that can never be quashed and her enthusiasm inspires millions of young adults in her legacy.

#anarcho-socialist latina #angela davis #communist profile wednesday #prison abolition #anti-capitalism #communism

1 note · View note

scifimagpie · 5 years ago

Text

Political Oroboros: Why Marx Is Not Enough

First of all, I realise the title of this piece is inflammatory, so let me lay out some caveats.

I am absolutely not conservative. (One of the first things to know about leftist fighting and discussions online is that 'liberal' has two different meanings; the broad sense in which conservative commentators use it, and the more specific and technically correct sense that leftists sometimes use it - as well as the tertiary sense of, "anyone who isn't quite radical enough.')

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a liberal in the sense of condoning a capitalist system; I do find the most common ground with proponents of democratic socialism. However, some elements of communist ideology do seem solid, although I tend to like many of the ideas I've seen from anarcho-syndicalists more.

Confused by those terms? You're not alone, but some of the hippest trends among the youth of today are not just trap music and street wear - it's political and philosophical discourse. Different streams of communism and anarchism and debating the concepts of idealists through the ages is pretty great, but treating those ideas as a firm road map and, perhaps, the only acceptable solution or map, is not so excellent.

After several weeks of careful surveillance and investigation, I also came to some unsettling and unsavory conclusions.

Source

There's a weird and disconcerting mix of progressive and regressive ideas in this new wild west of a political movement; using "gay" and "retard" as insults in this year, and talking about second-wave feminist gender concepts (Penis = man! Vagina = woman! are not scientifically validated ideas anymore, even if they have held sway for a long time) as though they're based on reality is...a special kind of confusing, frankly. The person mentioned below isn't actually the "leader" of Antifa (antifacism is a general belief and approach, not an organization; the Black Bloc is something different) but the points they're making shouldn't actually have to be made. And yet, here we are. (To clarify: this person's opinion is, as far as I'm concerned, correct, because it's a summary of historical facts.)

We can try to tweak the perspective on things and change the way someone is seen, but facts have this tendency to assert themselves. And when those facts take the form of thousands of dead bodies, politely covering them up or scootching them out of the way is a bit harder. In the case of leaders such as Winston Churchill, it's been easier to laud their successes and forget the death toll because they were victorious, but it doesn't erase his contributions to the Bengal Famine and his decision to test gas weapons on Kurdish villagers.

Yet even when we debate the value and leadership of dictators, history tends to reassert itself.

“History isn’t like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve.” ― Terry Pratchett, Mort

Nobody is good enough

Of course, just because someone agrees with history (!) and is willing to unflinchingly consider mass murderers as guilty of their crimes doesn't mean they'll avoid participating in the cannibalistic discussions of leftist politics. A particularly difficult issue has been criticism of the Youtuber Contrapoints, who has both been lauded for her very real effects in de-radicalizing extremists, and criticized for fumbling her way through understanding non-binary genders (and struggling to deal with the flood of online criticism afterwards.) But merely liking a figure who is problematic (or worse, Trash, if they have failed one time too many) can be grounds for a friendship breaking up or the sort of extremely tense, stressful discussion that keeps one awake for hours afterwards.

As I said on Facebook one night, "Whiny comment of the night: it would be easier to unite the left if the radicals weren't so dead-set on everyone just converting to their beliefs as much as possible.And Seems like you can learn about Marxism, cultural history, feminism, and all of that...but it's impossible to unlearn American cultural hegemonic approaches and seeing violence as the default/best option." But to clarify, this isn't speculation without sourcing. I did a bit of an investigation into a few leftist pages, and it was really unnerving to see the number of pro-gun and "eat the rich" and "fetch the guillotines" sorts of remarks and posters. The thing is, we've all done that dance before, and it's going on in other countries at the moment. Riots and protests are excellent when they work, but sometimes, they don't - and we don't talk about what happens when they don't.

The risk of small government

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, smaller governments are still governments. People who think some military junta of kids with guns can replace all the architecture and organizational levels of "the state" are welcome to try working in a city planning office as an admin assistant some time. Having done that myself, I would welcome anyone who wants to just replace and rewrite all those land laws, which by the way exist for reasons, to maybe take a civil engineering course or two.

And if you DON'T want to replace all that architecture, just get rid of the bad stuff - congrats, that's actually just reformism, which is still a far cry from "just accepting things the way they are."

As a fan and casual scholar of cults, I've had many opportunities to see examples of small, ideologically-driven communities turn rotten. Frankly, I wouldn't trust my own town to just secede and govern itself, even though I'm very pleased with our mayor's decisions. I know too much about white people and sociology and Christianity (as well as other religions and groups) to trust that small, self-governing, autonomous groups will be fine on their lonesome. We're kinda in a globalized society with many, many supply chains. If you don't like that, get working on a time machine.

Yet even if one were to travel back in time, we've always had international trade and whatnot, and isolationism has never worked especially well. Also it's how you get fascism in the first place, so...history says it's how you make the exact monster you're trying to fight. Worst of all, these defenses of fascists and murderers do nothing but divide us along sectarian points of conflict.

Sometimes I worry the Revolution will just be online and never actually get offline

— 🏴🛡Justin🛡🏴 (@sharkle82) July 19, 2019

What do we do?

Honestly, my approach lately has just been to ignore Leftbook and debate spaces and not engage. Trying to discuss theory and concepts has led to some arguments over the applications of violence that have, honestly, made me stop trusting and just lose certain friends altogether. One otherwise brave and locally committed person said, "violence is neither good nor bad. It's a tool." Although I agree that self-defense actions are not exactly violent, I just don't think we should glorify aggression, or be eager to shed blood. It tends to lead to bad results, and it's uncomfortably similar to the stance we're opposing. My take?

Personally, I don't trust anyone who thinks the problems will all be fixed if we just kill a few of the right people.

The people who sit around day-dreaming about 19th century revolutionaries aren't necessarily the ones helping to, say, actually fight the battles that need fighting here and now. It may seem ridiculous to say, "hey, watch out for this," and also, "but you can basically ignore it," but frankly, that approach has worked extremely well for me in real life.

The key is this. What do you want to accomplish, in practical terms? Forget about "praxis" and "theory"; what are the concrete, fundamental changes you want to see, and the results you want in society and your community? Every change comes incrementally. Evolution is unavoidable. However, we have an existing system that we can use - and dare I say it, that we can apply our strength to if we're determined enough.

How to change the world

Writing actual letters to politicians in my city, province, and country, engaging in the community fight for preservation of a local Safe Consumption Site, signing petitions for various environmental protection causes, and applying pressure to politicians, as well as keeping an eye on actual local white supremacists, fascists, and extremists has done more and had a greater impact than anything in my decade or so of arguing with people on the internet.

My only regret is that I didn't start using my skills in the real world much, much sooner. It turns out that all the people who insist that those in power won't listen to "us" are, unequivocally, wrong. And while I do have white and cis privilege to thank for some of my results, I would also argue that we on the left must not presume our own helplessness and confine ourselves to training arenas online. Get out there. Talk to politicians. Stay up to date on the news and follow multiple sources, rather than reading 150-year-old essays. And above all, embrace the power of both individual actions and solidarity.

I have more to say about this topic, but instead of creating another series, a few essays may be cropping up. Until then, however, I have real work to do, both in the political world and out of it. For one thing, books aren't going to finish themselves!

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

#politics #discourse #tactics #leftism #liberal #how to #debate #activism

0 notes

txteo · 8 years ago

Text

Steven Lukes (1974) Power: A radical view - Summary

Summary: In the 1960s Dahl and the other pluralists proposed a view of power, wherein a person has power over another person, if the first person can get the second person to do something she or he would not do otherwise. They generally focused on the exercise of actual power, at who brought up and supported which alternatives, at the actual disagreement, and at which alternatives were finally adopted. Their prototypical situations are decision-making processes in groups. This view of power, the 1D view, is a liberal view, it focuses on issues, on how those issues are decided, and on which observable conflict of interests exists. In 1962, Bachrach and Baratz criticised this view as superficial and self-serving, as America celebrating its pluralism. There is another side to power, the power to prevent issues from being discussed or decided upon. In political organisations, some issues are foregrounded, others are hidden from view, benefiting specific groups in a systematic way. In this sense, non-decisions, that is suppressing challenges to the interests of those making decisions, are themselves decisions. This view, the 2D view, is a reformist view, it focuses on potential issues, determined by observable conflicts of interest, and how they can be prevented from becoming actual issues. But I believe this is still not enough: Agenda-setting and exclusion of potential issues, ultimately influencing what another person thinks, wants, and desires may be the height of power. In this sense, socialisation, mass media, and controlling the information flow are forms of thought control: The most effective form of power is preventing conflict. If agenda-setting is successful, the political public is prevented from even hearing minority opinions, which thus remain minority opinions. This view, the 3D view, is a radical view, it focuses on agenda-setting, and includes covert and latent conflicts over real interests, which may differ from self-perceived interests. Talk about real interests always opens one up to charges of paternalism. But Gramsci realised one can learn from how people behave in abnormal situations, where the apparatus of power is less strict. In such situations, the words and effective actions of persons may not fit, and one can learn something about their real interests, about what they would do in the absence of power. This is a really hard problem to overcome, but it is not inherently impossible.

Source: Steven Lukes (1974) Power: A radical view. First published as a small 64page-volume. New York: MacMillan, 1974. Second edition includes the full original text, supplemented by two new chapters. New York: MacMillan, 2005.

(Full text [PDF, 160kb] at chula.ac.th, English)

This summary is licensed CC:BY-SA.

Detailed Summary

[1] The way of identifying power I am going to propose is theoretically and politically radical.

This way is necessarily evaluative. It is always contested.

It can be applied empirically.

In describing power, I will deal with methodological individualism, behaviourism, and the roles values play in explanation, false consciousness, and the bias of pluralism.

In the 1960s Dahl and the other pluralists championed a view of power that traces its roots back to Weber.

In 1962, Bachrach and Baratz criticised this view. It was both superficial and it was self-serving, America celebrating its pluralism.

The pluralists attacked Bachrach and Baratz in return.

I believe Bachrach and Baratz were essentially right, but they did not go far enough.

In the following, I will present three views.

I will call the view of the pluralists the one-dimensional view of power.

I will call the view of Bachrach and Baratz the two-dimensional view of power.

I will present a third view, which I will call the three-dimensional view of power.

[2] I believe calling Dahl, Polsby, Wolfinger, and their colleagues pluralists is mistaken.

They do want to show that power is pluralist, but this is just the conclusion they are aiming for.

Their methods and approaches can be employed for other projects, and can lead to other non-pluralist conclusion.

Dahl: A person has power over another person, if the first person can get the second person to do something she or he would not do otherwise.

Dahl mentions both ability and success, potential and actual power. But the pluralists generally focus on the exercise of actual power.

Dahl looks at who brought up and supported which alternatives and which alternatives were finally adopted.

The observable or reconstructed behaviour of participants is the object, from which power can be measured. Their prototypical situations are decision-making processes in groups.

Power, influence, control, and other related terms are often used as synonyms by the pluralists.

The pluralists believe open conflicts to be best-suited, as it is easy to see who backs which alternative, and which alternative wins out in the end.

For Dahl, "actual disagreement in preferences" is a necessary condition for power research.

Dahl, in one case, mentions the possibility of a proposal encountering no opposition.

However, the framework of the pluralist can not handle this possibility.

Without an observable conflict between conscious preferences manifested in behaviour, they see no power.

For pluralists interests are preferences, conflicts of interests are conflicts of preferences.

Pluralists reject the idea that people can be unconscious or mistaken about their interests.

Polsby: If the researcher can know the objective interests of a class, and the class disagrees, the researcher can call this "false class consciousness". This method can never fail, it is metaphysical, not empirical.

The 1D view of power focuses on how those issues are decided, on which observable conflict of interests exists.

[3] Bachrach and Baratz, in contrast, believe there are two sides to power.

The first side is analogous to the 1D view of power.

The second side considers the power to prevent issues from being discussed or decided upon.

Schattschneider: "Organisation is the mobilisation of bias." In political organisation, some issues are foregrounded, others are hidden from view.

B&B: Values and institutional procedures benefit specific groups, often but not always an elite minority, in a systematic way.

Power is control over another person's behaviour.

Coercion is power by means of threats.

Influence is power without any threat.

Authority is power by means of values held by the controlled.

Force is power by removing the choice of non-compliance.

Manipulation is force, without the controlled noticing control.

According to B&B, the 1D view of power is too focused on conscious behaviour.

Non-decisions (conscious or unconscious) are themselves decisions.

A decision is "a choice among alternative modes of action".

A non-decision is a decision suppressing challenges to the interests of those making decisions.

Dahl: The attention of the political class is necessary for something being a political issue.

There are potential issues, which are not actual issues due to non-decisions.

B&B: A key issue is an issue challenging the power, authority, or the decision-making process.

B&B also focus on observable conflict, though it may be overt.

B&B: Without conflict, the presumption should be consensus. Political science is unable to determine how this consensus came about.

Conflicts are found by observing grievances, overt or covert. Thereby the interests of those outside the political system can be considered.

The 2D view of power is a critique of the 1D view's focus on behaviour.

Decisions on potential issues, determined by observable conflicts of interest, can be prevented.

[4] The 2D view is much better than the 1D view, as it includes agenda-setting into its considerations.

However, the 2D view of power is still too limited.

The 2D view is still too behaviour-focused.

The bias of the political system is not simply the result of individual decisions and actions.

Agenda-setting and exclusion of potential issues are often the result of group behaviour.

Weber: Power is "individuals realising their wills despite the resistance of others".

A group can act in a certain way, and the action is not the action or decision of particular individuals.

The specific form of organisation of a group may itself have effects.

Marx: "Men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."

The 2D view is still too focused on observable conflicts.

Even some of B&B's own concepts (manipulation and authority) can do their work without conflict.

Influencing what another person thinks, wants, and desires may be the height of power.

Socialisation, mass media, and controlling the information flow are forms of thought control.

Dahl: "leaders also shape preferences"

The most effective form of power is preventing conflict.

The 2D view seems to believe that an absence of grievances points to an absence of contrary interests.

It is not quite clear what a grievance actually is.

It is possible to shape thoughts and preferences to make the status quo appear natural, beneficial, unalterable, or without alternative.

There may be latent conflicts between the interests of those making decisions and the "real interests" of the excluded, of which they may or may not be conscious.

1D view: behaviour, decision-making, issues, conflict, interests. participation

2D view: critique of behaviour focus, (non-)decision-making, (potential) issues, (covert) conflicts, interests, grievances

3D view: critique of behaviour focus, decision-making, agenda-setting, (potential) issues, (covert) (latent) conflicts, (real) interests

[5] Power is "ineradicably value-dependent".

How to look at power is always disputed, and this dispute is already politics.

The most basic idea is someone affecting someone else in a significant way.

We thus need to think about what makes a way of affecting significant.

All three views share the idea that "A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests."

Parsons connects power to institutionalised authority and consensus and disconnects it from force and coercion.

Parsons: Power is "a facility for the performance of function in and on behalf of the society"

Arendt: Power is a feature of groups, of people's coordinated action. Power is consensual, it is "the very condition enabling a group of people to think and act in terms of the means-ends category."

Madison: "All government rests on opinion."

In both cases, violence, conflicts, and struggles for power are re-defined as not being power at all.

Arendt: "Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent."

Both see power as an ability, not a relationship. Both definitions exclude what is most interesting to students of power.

Everything that Arendt or Parson can express about power, can also be expressed by the 3D view of power.

In my opinion, cases of persons or groups affecting one another without conflict of interests qualify as influence, but not as power.

I am unsure whether rational persuasion counts as power and/or influence. One person significantly affects another, but the resultant behaviour is caused by the autonomous decision of the second person to accept the reasons of the first. This may well be related to the Kantian antinomy of causality and reason.

Is it possible for one person to exercise power over another, thereby advancing the other person's real interest?

We could think of short-term power as self-destroying once the second person recognises their real interests. This can be abused in the form of paternalism.

We could also think of the second person's autonomy as their supreme interest, which means a violation of autonomy can never be in their interest. This will lead to most cases of influence becoming cases of power.

If we can find an empirical way of finding a person's real interests, I prefer the first view.

[6] Interest is also inherently evaluative.

Liberals tend to identify interests with what people actually prefer, as seen by political participation.

Reformists agree, but allow for indirect and concealed preferences.

Radicals believe preferences can result from a system contrary to people's interests. Thus real interests are what people "would want and prefer, were they able to make the choice."

The 1D view is broadly liberal, the 2D view broadly reformist, and the 3D view a broadly radical view.

[7] The pluralists, in their 1D view of power, "studied actual behavior, stressed operational definitions, and turned up evidence".

Their studies mirror the biases of their object of study.

Dahl shows us diversity, different people making decisions regarding different issues.

Dahl: Voters use elections as an indirect kind of influence on politician's decisions.

Dahl: The dissatisfied will find another political representative.

If power can really set the agenda, this diversity is an illusion.

Pluralism in decision-making is consistent with unity in agenda-setting.

The 1D view is unable to recognise this possibility.

Dahl only studies successful interventions by the dissatisfied, and concludes the dissatisfied can intervene.

If a powerful group can not accept an issue, there might be indirect cases of agenda-setting.

The 2D view can show cases of systematic bias, but only in cases where observable grievances are prevented from becoming issues.

B&B's study on poverty and race in Baltimore is superficial, because it focuses on individual decisions and actions.

The real exclusionary forces at play are inaction and institutional inertia.

The 3D view can give a sociological explanation of how demands are prevented from being voiced or from becoming dangerous.

How can we study what does not happen?

Polsby: For any event, there are an infinity of alternative non-events. Which are significant and which are not?

Polsby: We should only accept answers which refer to the desires of community members.

Wolfinger: If we apply an external theory of expected behaviour to such non-events, we can not distinguish between actual exercises of power and errors in the theory.

These counterarguments claim difficulties to actually be impossibilities.

In everyday understanding, an exercise of power is a conscious, intentional act of individual persons.

I believe we can speak of "exercise of power" even in the case of groups, or if it happens unconsciously.

The operative sense of "exercising power": If two agents are both exercising power, they both affect another person simultaneously, and the person really does change behaviour, this behaviour is overdetermined. Both exercised power, but neither of them individually made a difference.

The effective sense of "exercising power": If there is no other force intervening, one person exercises power over the other, if the other person really does change their behaviour as a result. The exercise of power makes a difference.

A person may change the behaviour of another person in many different ways, with only some of them being what the first person actually wants. Only in such cases is an exercise of power successful.

How can we find an exercise of power?

An exercise of power is conceptually reliant on comparison with the counterfactual situation of what would have happened without the exercise of power.

In observable conflicts, where the alternatives are publicly spelled out, the counterfactual is obvious.

If there is no observable conflict, we need to justify the counterfactual in another way. This will not be easy, but it is not, in principle, impossible.

A good example is Matthew Crenson (1971) The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decisionmaking in the Cities. This book operates in between the 2D and the 3D view of power.

Crenson assumes "the proper object of investigation is not political activity but political inactivity." He compares two communities in Indiana, similar geographically, demographically, and pollution-wise.

Crenson shows that the town with a single company and a strong party took 13 years longer to act on air pollution. The company, US Steel, without ever becoming an overtly political actor, at first successfully prevented pollution from becoming an issue, and then influenced the resulting decisions.

The company did nothing, and in verbally agreeing that air pollution was a problem, they even prevented a political conflict from arising.

In comparative studies, Crenson shows that an industry reputation for power, combined with their silence and inaction on the problem, greatly decreases the likelihood of air pollution becoming a political issue.

Clean air is a diffused common good, with no direct benificient. However, the costs of maintaining clean air mostly fall on industry. There is thus only weak and diffuse support, but strong opposition.

Crenson further shows that issues do not arise independently, but are connected: If one collective issue arises, other collective issues are much more likely to also arise.

Decision-making is directed by prior non-decision-making.

The Crenson study basically takes a 2D approach.

It surpasses B&B's 2D view by looking at inaction, by looking at institutional power, and by looking on how raising an issue can be prevented.

Crenson: "there is something like an inarticulate ideology in political institutions [... promoting] the selective perception and articulation of social problems and conflicts"

If agenda-setting is successful, the political public is prevented from even hearing minority opinions, which thus remain minority opinions.

Crenson succeeds in presenting the counterfactual: We can assume that people would rather not be poisoned by the air they breathe, even if they do not publicly state so.

Crenson also shows how the inaction of institutions prevents the matter from becoming a political issue.

[8] Identifying the right counterfactual is a problem specific to the 3D view.

The 3D view also needs to show how power is exercised in such cases of inaction.

It seems hard to decide whether an injustice is accepted due to an exercise of power or whether it actually reflects a consensus based on a different value system than ours.

But in some cases, we can find evidence for a consensus being the result of power silencing dissent.

Gramsci notes that sometimes the words and effective actions of a person do not fit.

Gramsci: If the masses show such a mismatch between words and actions, this is the expression of a social contrast. The masses see the world one way, and sometimes, in special circumstances, act accordingly. But the masses also see the world another way, the way of their oppressors, and they talk and normally act according to this other way.

One can learn from how people behave in abnormal situations, where the apparatus of power is less strict.

Gramsci: The church is constantly influencing its adherents. If this connection is interrupted, e.g. during the French Revolution, the church loses its influence.

When, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the apparatus of power was relaxed the people acted quite differently than before.

The reaction of people to perceived opportunities of advancement in hierarchies can also tell us a lot.

Some people consider the Indian caste system to be consensually accepted, even by the lower castes.

Srinivas: While it is theoretically forbidden for a lower caste to emulate Brahmins, this has happened frequently. If a lower caste succeeds in adopting a vegetarian diet and Sanskritizing its rituals, it can change its position in the hierarchy.

If a caste is economically successful, it often tends to do this, in order to increase its status.

If there is a possibility to rise in the caste system, it is often taken.

In theory, the positions of the castes in the hierarchy are unchangeable. But in effective action, castes attempt to change their position.

The introduction of universal suffrage changed the acceptance of the caste hierarchy by the lower castes.

The lowest caste, the Untouchables, have often used conversion to other religions as a way to escape the caste system.

This evidence is always, by its very nature, indirect and thus non-conclusive. But using such evidence, exercises of power, and the counterfactuals needed, may be identified.

According to the 3D view, an exercise of power can be a case of inaction, it can be unconscious, and it can be exercised by groups. All of these present problems for the 3D view in identifying such exercises of power.

If inaction leads to a potential issue not arising, this is a double non-event. But a non-event may still leave traces. Those who refrain from acting may still have considered acting and its consequences.

In a Freudian fashion, people may be unconscious as to their motives for action. This is not specific to power analysis, and it is a widely discussed problem.

Alternatively, people may be unconscious of the perception and interpretation of their actions by others. This, however, does not obscure identification of an exercise of power.

Still alternatively, people may be unconscious of the results of their actions. This is the real problem for analysis of power.

If people are unable to know what the results of their actions on others will be, it seems wrong to classify these as exercises of power.

However, if people do not know the effects of their actions because they did not try to find out, these might well be exercises of power.

If people could have taken steps to learn about the effects of their actions, but did not, and are thus ignorant about the effects of their actions, they might well exercise power.

It seems also quite hard to determine whether an institution is exercising power or whether observed effects are due to structural determination.

In Marxism, this is the fight between voluntarism and determinism.

For Althusser and Balibar the capitalist totality and its structure determines its elements.

Poulantzas: Miliband sees class, the state, etc not as objective structures, but as reducible to interpersonal relations. He is looking at subjects as social actors, he is, in the end, simply doing sociology.

Miliband: Poulantzas sees the structure as so strict, individual persons, even heads of state, are doing nothing but executing what is already determined by the system. He is thus unable to understand the dialectical relation between the state and "the system".

There are other possibilities besides structural determinism and methodological individualism.

Social research has to look at the relations between individual actors and structures.

Individuals act as part of groups, and not just due to their individual motivations.

Individuals act within the limits of structures, but they have at least some autonomy, they can at least somewhat act differently from how they actually do.

"The future, though it is not entirely open, is not entirely closed either (and, indeed, the degree of its openness is itself structurally determined)."

A system that is totally determined by structural relations is a system without power.

One could redefine power alternatively, as Poulantzas did.

Poulantzas: Power is "the capacity of a social class to realize its specific objective interests"

Power then becomes an effect of structure on the practice of class struggle.

I believe this to be misleading.

If we call something an exercise of power, we believe the person exercising power could have acted differently, or the group could have organised differently and thus acted differently.

Saying something is an exercise of power is also saying the person/group exercising it is at least partially responsible.

Responsibility is the result of the action or inaction of a person or group.

This is not the place to discuss the boundaries between structural determination and exercises of power.

C.W. Mills: Sociological fate refers to events that can not be controlled by an identifiable group with the power to decide and able to predict the consequences of their decisions.

Those who can change the world to the benefit of (large parts of) society, but do not, exercise power and can be held accountable for their (in)actions.

[9] The 1D view of power reproduces the bias of the system it studies.

The 2D view of power can critically reflect this bias, but it sees it too narrowly.

The 3D view of power understands that latent conflicts can be suppressed. It has a number of serious difficulties, but it can overcome them.

We can understand power in a deeper way.

#power #lukes #pluralism #liberalism #liberal #behaviour #interests #real #gramsci #agenda #bias #government #masses #public #opinion #elite #conflict #issue #politics

2 notes · View notes