#we had a literal white australia policy

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

No, you're right. They're a graceless metaphor with a conclusion that makes what they were representing into apologism rather than condemnation. It's badly done and shouldn't be defended.

I don't think Americans are ignorant, though, just maybe as blinkered about the nation in which they live as we can all be (Australians are hardly better). But it came across that way and I probably do have biases that need unpicking afterall. I'm sorry.

The Seanchan are ImperialismTM, and especially American Imperialism in all its aggressive social conditioning and slave-owning ugliness. There's a reason the Seanchan culture is a mash up of China and America particularly. It's deliberate. It's also a wonky metaphor written by a well-meaning Southern white man in the 90s, so it's far from perfect. Ultimately the Seanchan are no more or less evil than Americans during most of the USA's colonial history. That is to say they are and they aren't. Some swallow their conditioning wholesale, others fight against it, some relish the power the system gives them over others, others are uneasy about the cruelty expected of them yet continue to comply regardless, some break away altogether in an exceedingly painful process. Any dissenting information is buried, any outward revolt is squashed brutally, but it does exist. Of course it exists.

Maybe it's because I'm not American but I find irony in Americans especially being absolutist about the Seanchan because it feels like they're either condemning themselves or blind to how the USA has operated globally and historically. That might be a poor way to see it though, idk.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

average Australia moment

Black muslim woman: talks about having cans and bottles thrown at her and being called a terrorist and not being able to leave her house safely not even 20 years ago.

Me: O_O THEY DID WHAT TO YOU

(Bear in mind this is the sweetest lady I’ve ever met)

also average Australia moment

Me: man Australia sure is racist

someone: what.. what do you mean.

Me: um, sorry to tell you this but Australia had a “whites only” law that they only got rid of in the 1970s btw.

Someone: … what

[claraameliapond]

For Australia, 26th January is invasion day, and that's literally it.

Today is a horrifically sad day in Australian history. Invasion day.

That's literally all it is.

Please please please do not join in the chorus of racism wishing anyone a "Happy Australia day" on the 26th of January

We can, have and are moving forward together as a country,

But we cannot truly do so if a celebration of our country and identity is held on the literal anniversary of the brutal and long-standing invasion, massacre and occupation of Australian aboriginals, the first peoples of Australia.

This invasion and subsequent violent Colonisation was full of many horrors that lasted well into the late twentieth century, and the long-standing repercussions of which have lasted to this day.

The stolen generations , in which generations - multiple generations of young aboriginal children were literally stolen by white colonists from their families, sent to missions, (detention boarding "schools ") , in which they were converted to Christianity and prepared for menial jobs, punished if they ever spoke their own languages, and subsequently put into the service of white families, with the intention to be bred out, never to see their families again. Never to be educated about their home, their families, their land, their culture, their languages, their history; they are the oldest continuing culture on earth. The last of these missions were in effect until 1969. By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation that allowed the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy and guise of "protection".

The indigenous health, longevity and poverty gaps still exist. Access to medicine, medical care, healthcare, a western education, all things we deem human rights by law, are not accessible to many rural communities still. They are provided, but in western ways, on western terms, with a gap of understanding how best to implement those services for an entirely different culture , that we do not have a thorough understanding of - that was what the referendum was about: , how best to implement the funds that are already designated to provide those services, because it's not currently working or usable by those communities. Our aboriginal communities are still not treated equally, nor do they have the same access we all enjoy to things like healthcare services, medicines and western education.

It is horrific and insensitive to therefore celebrate that day as our country's day of identity, because it's literally celebrating the first day and all subsequent days of the invasion, the massacres, the stolen generations, the subjugation and mistreatment, the inequalities that still persist today. It celebrates that day, that act committed on that day, of invasion , violent brutal massacres of Aboriginal people, as a positive, 'good' thing. As something that defines Australia's identity and should define an identity to be proud of.

That's nothing to be proud of.

Our true history is barely taught in our school curriculum, in both primary and secondary school. Not even acknowledged.

It needs to be.

We cannot properly move forward as a country until that truth is understood by every Australian, with compulsory education.

January 26th is Not 'Australia day'. It's Invasion day. It's a sorrowful day of mourning.

Please do not wish anyone a "happy Australia day " today.

It's not happy and it's not Australia day.

Australia day should be at the end of Reconciliation week that is held from the 23rd May to 3rd June.

A sentiment that is about all of us coming together as a shared identity within many identities, accepting and valuing each other as equal, a day that actually acknowledges Australian aboriginal peoples as the first Australians - because they are.

This is literally about acknowledging fact - that is the truth of Australian history. Aboriginal cultures should be celebrated and embraced, learnt from, not ignored, treated as invisible and especially not desecrated by holding celebrations of national identity on anniversaries of their violent destruction.

Australian aboriginal peoples, cultures and histories, should be held up as Australia's proud identity of origins, because it literally is Australia's origins.

That's a huge, foundational integral part of our shared identity that must be celebrated and acknowledged.

Inclusivity, not offensive exclusivity. Australia day used to be on 30th July, also 28th July, among others. Australia Day on the 26th January only officially became a public holiday for all states and territories 24 years ago, in 1994. It's been changed a lot before. It can certainly be changed so it can be a nonoffensive , happy celebration of our shared Australian national identity for everyone, that respectfully acknowledges and includes the full truth of our whole shared history, not just the convenient parts.

There is literally no reason it can't be changed, and every reason to change it.

#Always Was Always Will Be

[soup-mother]

this is just me being fucking pissed and won't make any sense but i genuinely fucking despise Australia and our entire cultural identity as a nation. i barely have words.

our culture of militarism and hiding that behind "the Anzac spirit" (fucking joke) and whinging that we keep dying in someone elses war and then signing up for the next one. after ww1 we were straight back into the middle east at the behest of mother England.

massive nation of racist whingers.

STOP JOINING THE ARMY THEN CUNT. you're mad America sucks to be friends with then stop being friends with them. it's not like it'd be better if they were out wars either. stop whining when you fucking volunteered to join our racist fucking army. christ. you had a choice there you could have just not fucking joined the institution that exists to kill people. like you fully cannot get it through your fucking skull that soldiers kill people and joining the army puts you in harms way and a gun in your hands. fuck

or like i can't even stand looking at the eureka stockade flag it's like "aussie union spirit" for the fucking gold rush. fucking settler extraction colony since day fucking one. especially turning it into some fucking patriotic symbol some cunt will fly on a ute next to a "fuck off we're full" sticker.

we're super multicultural so *everyone* can take part in the Australian dream of being a massive cunt, don't you want to feel proud of the country that put your family in a detention centre for years? we've got lamb!

only one female Prime minister ever and every PM has been white btw.

the people who see some of those issues and then just fucking act like it'll be fine if we make a couple changes and become an *independent* asshole settler with a president who can be a white Christian man instead who enforces harsh border policy and keeps supporting fucking wars. fucking hell. can't believe anyone fucking believes this shit what a joke.

i can never find it but that post like "Australian larrakin culture wants to distract you from the fact we're a nation of bloodthirsty bootlicking hyperfascists" lives forever in my mind. fucking literally.

oh btw did you know our cops have their own thin blue line flag? and we have our own "woopsie daisy there's Nazis in the army" scandals? we can be just like the US just with more of a sunburn and more mullets.

oh yea did you know bluey the kids show bluey had an episode where someone's dad was in the army? to make kids feel represented for having army parents? even dog Australia is killing people in far off countries! doesn't that make you feel seen? that even dogs have warcriminal cunts in their family just like your mum and dad?

racist joke of a country that shouldn't fucking exist.

ok i think I've gotten that out of my system. fuck.

[foxglovepng]

Race Headcannons 🥀🌼

Requested: Nu uh I just felt like it

CW: Race, Rook Slander, Ortho spoiler Idia's part.

Characters: NRC students

These are my Race Headcannons for the NRC men. Some of these I just went by feeling a lot of these I did research about the movie setting although with the fishes + beast men I went by geography.

Some of these I'm unsure of (Heavy on Sebek) If anything is incorrect or you want to share your thoughts go ahead I'm always open to corrections and hearing others. (PROOFREAD FOR ONCE)

(Updated Epel on 5.12.24)

🌼

Heartslabyul

Riddle (British)

I don't really have an explanation for this one other than the Red Queen in Tim Burton's version she was British and had a big goofy forehead (I have not seen the animated one help)

Trey (German)

Would you believe me if I told you I whipped out a map closed my eyes and threw a dart and it landed on Germany??

For this one I went with somewhere in Europe and I picked Germany because it just made sense to me I was gonna say Polish, but his Green hair was telling me German.

Cater (Scottish)

It's his ginger hair tbh.

Ace (Japanese)

A lot of people headcannon him as Filipino, but me personally I wanted to be quirky and different /j

This one doesn't really have any evidence I just went by feeling. I also headcannon it that he would love Jojo and Junji Ito.

Deuce (Mexican)

As a fellow Mexican I KNOW ONE OF US WHEN I SEE ONE OF US. He is Mexican and I WILL DIE ON THAT HILL.

Savanaclaw

Leona (Kenya)

I actually googled it and Lion King takes place in Kenya which is a country in the eastern part of Africa. For obvious reasons since he is based off Scar it made sense to make him Kenyan.

Ruggie (Multiracial)

I may get a lot of heat for this one, but this man got blonde ass hair and blue eyes, HOWEVER for the geography of spotted Hyena's I feel he is light skinned. He's got some Kenya in him but he also got some white genes. Geography wise I believe he is also part Arab since there are Arab countries in Africa. So therefore I believe he is white, black, and Arab.

Jack (Bircial)

Another one I may get a lot of heat for.

From what I remember Jack is from the same country as Vil? So, I believe Jack is part black, but also part European. It also isn't explicitly stated what movie he is from we just know he is a wolf.

Pop off Jacob Black (not sorry)

Octavinelle

Azul (Cuban) + The Twins (Filipino)

I googled Coral Sea locations and I came to these conclusions.

There are different Coral reefs going from Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Maldives. With the Twins I thought how funny would it be to make them Australian, but Filipino just kind of felt right like a gut feeling. The Carribean sea also has coral reefs so I made Azul Cuban. I was going to make him Venezuelan however I ended up going with Cuban, but I feel like both fit him in a way.

Scarabia

Jamil + Kalim (Arab)

I don't really think this one needs an explanation Aladdin quite literally takes place Agrabah which was based off of Baghdad, Iraq (source: Google)

HOWEVER

There is an article that says the Architecture is based on the Taj Mahal which is Indian.

There is also a mention of Allah in the animated version BUT because I don't fully understand religion in general (And also Disney back then was kind of racist) I don't want to use religion as a justification to where specifically they are from. So I will simply just say they are Arab.

Pomefiore

Vil (German)

Snow white was based in Germany. (I have nothing more to say :Skull:)

Rook (French)

Self explanatory

Epel (Sami)

The Sami People are people who are indigenous to Sapmi which is in Northern Europe. (Todays Russia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway).

From doing a bit of research the Sami people seem to be dying out and their language too. (If you want to feel free to Google the Sami people there's a lot to learn about them and it's really interesting. There was basically a bunch of policies put in place to kill them and mistreat them it's really sad)

So in short Epel is Sami Indigenous (If I'm correct he's the first Indigenous character we got so far which is nice representation) (I also hope my research was correct please correct me if not)

Ignihyde

Idia (Greek)

Based on where Hercules takes place and because Hades is quite literally Greek Mythology he is Greek.

Ortho is just a robot, but when he didn't drop dead he was Greek.

Diasmonia

Malleus (German/French)

I am not really getting a clear answer as to where Sleeping Beauty takes place so I made him a French German. He slayed tbh

Lilia (Romanian)

Dracula's castle is in Romania that is the only explanation you are getting

Silver (French/German)

I am being told he is based off Sleeping Beauty so I am making him the same race as Waka Sama.

Sebek (Biracial)

When I first was thinking of a race for him I was thinking Slavic kind of fits him (atleast to me) or possibly Asian. However I had a really hard time guessing so I made him SlavicAsian. Maybe possibly Slovakia and Vietnam?

If you enjoyed Likes and Reblogs are very much welcome. If you want to request something go ahead just read my rules first. <3

[kiunlo]

Image description: Screenshot of an email from Tumblr support that reads "Hello, we've removed the following content, along with any associated reblogs". A link to the deleted post is added into the email, and the end of the link reads "anyways-being-racist-towards-white-americans". The rest of the text reads "As per the policies you agreed to when creating a Tumblr account, we do not allow hate speech on Tumblr." End ID.

Anyways, I am pretty certain that THIS was the post in which I said "being racist towards white americans is literally not possible". Which tumblr decided to remove for "hate speech". lmao. lmao. lmao.

Alright. He's the goddamn context of the ENTIRE post, because this goes past just myself getting angry at white people for the usual bullshit.

A while ago, I got interested in reading about animals. This is actually what got me interested in bird watching, but I started out by reading a book that we already owned and had in our house: It was a book about "reptiles and amphibians of the world" which I though was pretty neat. Except it wasn't actually "reptiles and amphibians of the world" like the title suggested, it was more like "reptiles and amphibians of North America and sometimes also South America". There was not a single reptile or amphibian to be spoken of outside of North or South America, so the title was already misleading and somewhat annoying since I did believe at some point we were gonna be learning about reptiles and amphibians....of the rest of the world.

Anyways, moving past that, I kept reading about the cool animals and just accepted that this (most likely American author) had mislabelled their book for whatever reason and just assume this was indeed a book about mostly North American reptiles and amphibians, and as I continued with reading the book I was able to still enjoy it.

And then the Cane Toad entry showed up.

This is what made me absolutely certain that this author was American, because I could not believe for a second that anybody outside of America who supposedly knows shit about reptiles and amphibians could actually be so wrong about Cane Toads.

The Cane Toad entry was of course, in the book, because they are native to Central and South America, but if you know anything about Cane Toads, you might know that they were introduced into Australia many many years ago, and are considered to be pests here in Australia.

This author, who I am very certain was American, and who I'm very certain had never been to Australia before in his life, wrote about the details of the Cane Toad. I'm sure he got the regular details of the Cane Toad correct, but the moment he started talking about Cane Toads being a pest in Australia (which is true), he started to get things kinda wrong. I should also mention that I am Australian.

I will write down exactly what was written in this book that pissed me off.

Apart from beekeepers, conservationists and the public at large have become concerned about the presence of the cane toads [in Australia]. Some of the fears are unjustified. In 1959 one commentator in Florida wrote: "monstrous toads which threaten housewives in their backyards, seize dogs by the head, and hang on with a death-resulting grip, or attack and kill with their virulent poison the innocent neighborhood cats." There is no doubt that cane toads produce virulent poisons that can easily kill a dog or a cat. However, they do not go out of their way to do so, nor (as far as we know) do they seize dogs by the head! The biggest problem they pose is that they eat and compete with indigenous species of amphibians, many of which are unique to Australia. Having said that, the lifestyles of Australian toads vary so much that competition may be limited to a few breeding pools. The appetite and sheer size of the cane toads must take a toll on local populations, but again surveys seem to show that they do not appear to have had a serious affect. Predators that attempt to eat them, including several species of snakes, often die. Much of the reaction against [cane toads] may be prejudice: Humans do not much like large toads that eat the food they put out for their pets.

This is what pissed me off. I will go on a small tangent here to just air my grievances fully with this book that I didn't get to previously since today is the day of dumb bullshittery that I thought I was finished with, but we will move on after I'm done complaining about this author lmfao.

Yes, some of the information above is correct, however some of it is blatantly false, and the data provided downplays the existential threat that Cane Toads exhibit to our unique Australian environments and ecosystems.

Some of the above sentences also include comments from some fucking guy in FLORIDA in the 1950's who talked about the Cane Toads in Australia. Here's why this also pisses me off.

old ass fucking source (aka very much not relevant anymore)

it's a comment from some fucking guy in FLORIDA. No offence to any Floridians out there but a fucking Floridians opinion on how the Cane Toads affect the Australian ecosystem is not wanted, needed, or relevant to somebody who actually lives in Australia, and Australian's opinion is much more valuable in this instance

The author tries to use this (obviously stupid comment) as evidence that the "public at large" (in Australia) are over-exaggerating the threat that the Cane Toads actually exhibit, when this is, again, an old ass fucking comment from some guy in Florida, a comment which is not the majority of AUSTRALIANS opinions or thoughts about the Cane Toad.

Here is some more accurate information from the NSW Australian government about Cane Toads:

Cane toads have no natural enemies and their spread could have a devastating impact on our native animal species and ecosystems. Cane toads are a threat to biodiversity because they are poisonous, predatory, adaptive and competitive. Cane toads compete with native species for both food and habitats. They have a voracious appetite and can eat a wide variety of foods, depleting the food source for other animals. Native frogs are particularly vulnerable to the threat of cane toads both as a food source for the toad and as a competitor for other food sources.

Anyways. The point is, this book pissed me off. I wrote a post about the book here on tumblr complaining about the book, and complaining about the clearly-American author's lack of education and research about a species of toad that was invasive in a country he most likely had never been to. This is something that I would never expect anyone in any other country to do except for an American, which is something that has been observed time and again in all sorts of different scenarios and situations. I was an Australian complaining about yet another fucking seppo talking about shit in another country that he actually has no clue about.

And then, a day later or some shit, an American found my post, and said, and I quote "this post reeks of racism" because I dared to criticise and complain about an American author's lack of research on a species of animal that was invasive in Australia. This lead to me going to his profile, seeing he had "landlord" in his bio (LMAO), me making fun of him for being a landlord, telling him that as a landlord his opinion is worthless, and then subsequently blocking him.

I then went on to create another post, the post that was removed in the screenshot, about how being "racist" towards White Americans wasn't real or something you could actually do, and that the landlord that said that I was being "racist" was literally wrong and also stupid. The landlord may or may not have reported that post, but either way, that post, my friends, was removed for hate speech. Which boils my goddamn piss.

Seriously. What's next? Saying that being "straightphobic" against straight people isn't real either is gonna get my fucking post taken down too? Tumblr staff realise that White people have privilege, right? Do they get that? Do they realise racism against White people, especially in countries like America, Australia, England etc. is not fucking real?????? Like, the whole reason I MADE that post was because the landlord insinuated that me criticising an American author for BEING an ignorant American writing about shit that he didn't know about was "racist", which it CLEARLY FUCKING ISN'T.

Mind you, my post had basically NO NOTES. There are other way more fucking harmful posts about Indigenous Australians and other minority groups that have thousands of notes that are just. out there. having not been removed whatsoever even though people have reported them a bunch of times, and yet it's MY fucking post that gets removed? Lick my fucking ass.

[ultramaga]

"Hi, Canadian here: someone with universal healthcare"

Oh yes, the Canadian Health System. The Australian government has been talking about copying that here, to kill the sick and the elderly - I mean, to gently ease the suffering of their existence. Forever. And make a tasty food snack you just can't beat! "It does work." So long as the United States is subsidising it by paying for your defence. But I can tell you we have it here too, and it works less and less. For example, I know an octagenarian diabetic. Suddenly the blood testers they used were not available. They've been registered with the government for twenty years, but someone in the beauracracy decided to stop access to them. The person in question had to desperately re-submit paperwork. They were told they would have a two week wait to see a GP, then it would have to be sent up to the government again to be re-evaluated, resigned, resent back to the chemist, filed and forgotten. These things cost a few dollars and had no possible non-medical use I can conceive of, but the government blocked access, because ... When you depend on the government you are a liability, a drain, expendable, undesirable. You are Soylent Green Fodder. The government forces you to pay for medicare here, but it gives less and less.

Doctors locally largely quit. It just wasn't worth it. This literally kills people. Pensioners, the disabled and the elderly, had to move here when mass migration drove up the housing prices. We had to move out to semi-rural locations with neither the benefits of country or suburb or city. But all the medical experts hate it here, and they move to the cities, which are a minimum of two buses, then possibly another, then a train, then a train, then a taxi to get to - and all that trip back again. Growing up, medicare was great, but as Thatcher said: Socialism is wonderful until other people's money runs out.

And it did. The money took to house the poor? It's gone. The waiting list was five years. Reached five. They changed it to ten. Reach ten. They put a plus next to the ten. Turns out the housing is allocated according to intersectional Feminism. ABC AUSTRALIA, the government broadcaster, boasted that an aboriginal woman had a maximum of a two year wait for such housing, and when they showed it, I could have wept. It was like a mansion. The stuff they give white people, well, it's slums if you are lucky, I can tell you from experience. Leftism is in power, and that means everyone is taxed, but services are allocated on the basis of sex, race, and sexuality. If you are a trans lesbian aboriginal, presumably they just carry you about on a ruby throne or something. Because when the government takes your money - it becomes THEIR MONEY - and they will spend it as they please. They don't have to keep promises. They will tell you to vote for the opposition if you don't like it - and by some strange coincidence, the opposition has exactly the same policies. And between them, no other party is allowed. The media colludes to crush true opposition. The Oligarchs remain in power, always. And they absolutely will kill you if they can get away with it.

"“We’re at the point where clients on these programs are telling us they’re considering medically assisted death or suicide because they can’t live in grinding poverty anymore,” she said in the Maclean’s report. ���A client in our Food Bank 2 Home delivery program told one of our staff that they’re considering suicide because they’re so tired of suffering through poverty. Another client asked if we knew how to apply for MAID (medical assistance in dying) for the same reasons.”" Tell me again how the Canadian Health System just works. Hey, did you know the Nazis did the same thing? They loved killing the cripples, it wasn't just Jews, it was anyone considered a burden.

[diabetesnscoliosis]

white Aussies literally think they're more progressive and left and Israelis are demon right wingers like we didn't have a referendum on whether our indigenous people could vote, like we didn't take their children away, like we didn't deny them a voice to parliament, like we haven't spent decades demonising immigrants, like we didn't come up with our own slurs for immigrants after both world wars, like we didn't turn refugees away, like we didn't lock refugees in detention centres in squalor, like we didn't have the architect of the policy made to turn away refugees to leave them to die at sea become our prime minister, like we haven't had a series of christian fundamentalists in the top job, like we didn't have prayer rooms full of extorted sex workers, like we didn't have women raped in our own parliament house, like we didn't have far right protesters piss on historical sites, like we don't have people in the highest offices of the country ensuring people can't eat, be housed, and shifting the narrative to blame economic migrants.

Australia is a pit of human rights failures. I didn't even talk about Ben Roberts Smith and all the international war crimes we've participated in. If all israelis are responsible for their gov then so the fuck are we.

Same goes for palestinians, iranians, afghanis, indians, pakistanis, chinese, russians, us americans; every state and territory under the sun.

If people are their governments, you better act like it.

[commanderogerss]

god, i made my mistake of going on twitter last night, but like i saw someone i follow retweet a post of a tiktok where an indigenous australian person is like making a joke about how her dad didn't give her any black genes (her dad is indigenous australian, i don't want to assume aboriginal australian because she could be torres strait islander who knows).

and like the tweet is like "who's gonna tell her?" and the amount of braindead americans responding do my head in.

blackness in australia isn't the same as in america. AMERICA'S VIEW OF RACE ISN'T UNIVERSAL! and like the amount of racism FROM BLACK AMERICANS was insane. and like sure, if you've never met or you didn't know about our first nations peoples and how we had a racist program called the white australia policy, where one of the programs within it was breeding out the black. and where they literally stole aboriginal and torres strait islander children to try and assimilate them into "australian culture". i'd understand.

but the people doubling down is just so disheartning.

unlike america, australia doesn't care for "blood quantum" levels. we have a saying, no matter how much milk you put in it, it's still coffee/tea. basically saying that regardless of your parents hreitidge, you're still aboriginal australian and/or torres strait islander.

[feralphoenix]

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: The View Myla Grants Us Of Hallownest’s Moths

hello again hollow knight fandom, i am back with my picante takes and ready to discuss two things i love: myla hollowknight and the moth tribe! Let Us Be Sad About Them Together.

as with my previous essay i’m going to be putting this fellow up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. this time i’ll be attaching that in a reblog to avoid this post getting eaten by the dread tungle algorithms.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses colonialism and genocide both in real life and the fictional depictions in Hollow Knight, as well as racism in the zombie horror genre and in fandom.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: THE VIEW MYLA GRANTS US OF HALLOWNEST’S MOTHS

In this house we are all love Myla.

Well, in all fairness, there are probably plenty of Hollow Knight fans who aren’t interested in her character, since which fictional characters one attaches to is always a matter of personal preference. But she’s still well-loved for a minor NPC and inspires a high level of devotion in her fans. There’s nothing that whips folks into a frenzy like a cute character you can’t do anything to help, and unlike some other characters in Hollow Knight Myla’s fate leaves no room for ambiguity. Once you pick up the Crystal Heart you’re left with only two choices: Avoid her, or kill her.

A lot of Hollow Knight’s world is designed to make you care about it so that it will hurt more when Ghost’s violent skillset proves too limited to save something or someone. The consequences of Hallownest’s founding and policies have directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to everything, and chief among those consequences with massive damage and a wide splash range is the Infection. Much has been said elsewhere by other people about Hollow Knight’s predominating mood being a struggle against futility, with Ghost arriving at the eleventh hour and every new tragedy designed to make the player more desperate to find something actionable, only finding out by trial and error what’s beyond your personal ability to save.

Myla, in that sense, is a typical example of that worldbuilding. She’s a particular kind of stock character in the zombie horror genre, the innocent who falls victim to the plague and cannot be saved, wrenching audience hearts and demonstrating the stakes.

But Hollow Knight plays with the trappings of zombie horror in a very unusual way, one I find thematically fascinating.

For a quick overview, the “zombie” as we know it in popular culture is an appropriation of a voudou (the Black American spiritual practice) concept that deals with the fear of slavery killing one’s spirit. (People more versed in/with roots in voudou culture can give a much more comprehensive overview than this simplistic one.)

The zombie horror genre, especially in Western media, is part of the great white fragility stock plot trifecta (the other two being alien invasions and robot uprisings). Zombie horror in particular expresses white fears that marginalized ethnic groups will rise up violently in revenge for their mistreatment and destroy white society. The fear of “that which is human, which ‘humanity’ is not” (to borrow mecha visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine’s pithy term) and the extreme levels of violence towards human-but-not bodies typical of zombie horror are often an expression of such bigotries. This is, again, a subject that’s been discussed in greater depth and with more nuance elsewhere.

But what Hollow Knight does is take the ugly metaphors and it makes them literal, makes it harder to ignore the toxic subtext of the genre. The Infection is literally a native god’s revenge on the settlers who committed genocide* against her people. How the Pale King’s colonization of the crater negatively affected the preexisting groups of bugs underpins every level of the worldbuilding, as does Hallownest’s cruelty towards its neighbors.

Hollow Knight is a game that is about the tragedy of Western imperialism. It is one of the work’s central themes. There are a lot of conversations that need to be had about the ways these themes manifest and, on a real-world level, about fandom’s predisposition to avoid the subject.

But, for now, let’s get back to Myla. If she fits such a stock zombie horror archetype, and Hollow Knight uses zombie horror tropes to underline the conversation it attempts to have about colonialism, then what has Myla got to teach us about the overall worldbuilding?

There's two topics I’d like to broach here: First we’ll get into how the circumstances of Myla’s infection fit in to the implied role of Crystal Peak in pre-Hallownest society. Then let’s take a long look at the lyrics of Myla’s song and what it implies.

MYLA, THE CRYSTALS, AND THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you think about it, Myla is an interesting outlier compared to the other NPCs we encounter on the verge of succumbing to the Infection. Both Bretta and Sly are unhappy: Bretta is a lonely, anxious bundle of abandonment issues yearning for someone to sweep her off her feet; Sly misses his pupils and loved ones who’ve left him in death (we never learn who Esmy is or what they were to Sly, but we sure can tell they’re not around anymore). The temptation to dream away those sadnesses seems to play a part in their vulnerability to the Infection, and also why Ghost’s interruption brings them back to reality.

Not so Myla. She appears to be blissfully unaware of her fellow miners’ fate, and most of her dialogue prior to her infection (besides the song - we’ll get to that later) is about how much fun she’s having at her job and how much she enjoys Ghost’s occasional company.

Yet she still winds up infected when Ghost’s back is turned. Why?

Not to discard the possibility that Myla’s got her own issues too, but in her case there seems to be another likely cause at hand: The crystals. If hit with the Dream Nail before infected, she mentions that she can hear them “singing” and “whispering”.

Under the The Hunter’s Hot Takes section of the Hunter’s Journal entries on various Crystal Peak enemies, we can learn more about the crystals - particularly in the entries for the Husk Miner and Crystallized Husk.

Crystal Peak’s crystals were thought of as particularly precious in Hallownest and harvested en masse for use in luxury items and the like. To do so, the mining operation was set up throughout most of the mountain, though the area around its peak still remains largely untouched. However, there’s more to the crystals than just that. Like Myla, the Hunter notes that the crystals can be heard to sing very very softly if one listens closely enough.

Perhaps of even more interest than that is this particular comment he gives us, from the Crystallized Husk journal entry: “There is some strange power hidden in the crystals that grow up there in the peaks. They gleam and glow in the darkness, a bright point of searing heat in each one.”

I don’t think it’s a particularly revolutionary idea to point out that there’s some connection between the crystals and Radiance’s power; this is something many players have intuited just based on Myla’s dialogue. But, in order to understand what Myla is demonstrating about the game’s world I think it’s important to think about what that connection is.

Speaking of which, the local Whispering Root has two important clues for us: The phrases “light refracted” and “energy contained”.

The very top of Crystal Peak is one of the only places in the crater where the moths’ architecture has escaped Hallownest destroying it, and is the only place in the entire game setting where their religious iconography remains fully intact. There are stone monuments covered in their language (which has been destroyed with the rest of their culture) and the statue of the Radiance - this is easier to see in the Wanderer’s Journal tie-in book, but the huge stone arches upon the Crown represent Radi’s halo and its rays and encircle her when viewed head-on or from a distance instead of the side view we get in the game.

The crystals grown here were used by the moths to store and cultivate Radiance’s light. It’s impossible to know what sort of architecture/infrastructure existed inside the mountain before Hallownest stole it from the moths. But between the massive scope of her statue and all the texts at the Crown, and the fact that the moths were working with their literal actual god’s freely given power here, it can be safely asserted that Crystal Peak was a holy ground to them.

Hallownest didn’t care about the mind-boggling level of spiritual significance Crystal Peak must have had to the natives, though. To the Pale King and his people, the crystals are just a natural resource to be harvested for personal profit.

This is unfortunately a conflict that still plays out in colonized countries today. If you’re American, #NoDAPL probably comes to mind; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these sorts of horror stories too. Settler disrespect for indigenous sacred grounds is a huge problem that needs addressing. If you’re looking at the story of Crystal Peak and thinking it’s very on-the-nose... maybe it needs to be.

Anyway, Myla is nowhere near as miserable as Bretta or Sly, but she still notices that something’s up with these crystals. She hears the voice coming from inside, and she’s curious, and she tries very very hard to listen to it... so she DOES end up hearing Radiance’s voice. Radiance’s real voice, not the songs and whispers inside the crystals: The voice of a frightened, angry, grieving god who knows there’s a new vessel running around in Hallownest, and doesn’t want any part of that. A voice that’s pleading for someone, anyone to kill this dangerous creature, and save her from the threat Ghost poses.

Between how freaked out Radi is to know Ghost is poking around, the tendency we see in her boss battles for her to panic and kneejerk blast things at full volume/vibrance when she’s panicking, and the way her dream broadcast seems to be only a one-way communication line while she’s in the Black Egg... naturally this spells disaster for poor Myla.

Similar to the Moss Prophet, this small tragedy is a demonstration of the eleventh-hour state the conflict is in: The Pale King has escalated this situation so far, and Radiance is so traumatized and isolated, that bystanders who might in a kinder timeline have become Radi’s allies instead get caught up in her AOE. Myla’s definitely not as aware of the overall situation as the Moss Prophet, since she’s a Hallownest bug and not an indigenous one the way they are. But she noticed things were not as they seemed, and she was curious. Who knows what new possibilities could have opened up, if Radiance was able to truly communicate with bugs in the outside world?

Small side note before we move on, but I’ve noticed a tendency among some folks who notice the missed connections to come down extra hard on Radiance and chalk Myla’s infection/Moss Prophet’s death down to deliberate cruelty on her part. I’d like to gently push back against this.

Living in a post-colonial world we all absorb some level of prejudice from our surroundings, and it’s important to take a look at our first assumptions about people (or, in this case, fictional characters lol) to examine whether these prejudices we’ve inherited have influenced those assumptions.

So, if your first instinct is to look at this situation and say the problem is that Radiance is being too harsh and too angry where she should have stepped back and softened her emotions for others’ benefit to gently persuade them to her side... Please think about how when people of color and non-Christians express anger or hurt at our treatment, or even so much as calmly assert our boundaries, white/Christian viewers often view us as much more aggressive and threatening than we actually are. The “angry black woman” trope is a good example of this stereotype. You may want to look up the HuffPost article “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” and its discussion of white fragility to further understand this phenomenon.

It is absolutely essential to remember the complex power dynamics in play in Hollow Knight and that the Pale King deliberately imprisoned Radiance (who had at this point already gone through an extreme amount of trauma) in a way that would compromise her ability to communicate with others. If you can extend compassion to characters like Ghost or the Pale King and empathize with their motives/feelings when their actions cause harm, but you are not willing to do the same with Radiance... it’s important to sit down with yourself and examine why that is.

THE MEANING BEHIND MYLA’S SONG

Okay, let’s switch gears and take a look at the lyrics to the song Myla sings, since it’s got some interesting things to tell us too.

The first verse, which you can hear from Myla the first time you meet her/before you acquire Vengeful Spirit, goes:

Bury my mother, pale and slight Bury my father with his eyes shut tight Bury my sisters, two by two, And then when you’re done, let's bury me too

There’s not much particularly story-related going on here except foreshadowing that Myla may in fact wind up dying. Most of what we get here is that a) this is a song about burying the dead and b) it’s morbid as fuck.

Curious, a new player might think of the mention of burying the dead; there are a lot of corpses just lyin’ around all over the ground - something that might lead one to believe Hallownest didn’t have such a custom. Later players will discover the Resting Grounds, confirming Hallownest did bury its dead... and that the gravekeepers are all dead too.

Let’s look at the second verse, which Myla remembers and will sing after you pick up Vengeful Spirit:

Bury the knight with her broken nail, Bury the lady, lovely and pale Bury the priest in his tattered gown, Then bury the beggar with his shining crown

This right here is where it gets interesting. The first verse describes the singer’s family as dead or dying, but the people we’re burying now sure do have some parallels to Hallownest's ruling body, don’t they?

Among Hallownest’s Great Knights, three of them - Dryya, Isma, and Ze’mer - were women. They are also very dead or might as well be: Dryya was killed by Traitor Lord’s resistance, Isma is a tree spreading acid through the kingdom’s waters to cut off access to the City of Tears, and Ze’mer hung up her nail after her mantis girlfriend’s death and only lingers on as a revenant.

While there aren’t any characters who are described in-text as “priests” in Hallownest, the idea of a tattered gown might bring Lurien the Watcher to mind, or perhaps the Soul Sanctum’s magicians before they went rogue.

The lovely, pale lady in the song can only refer to the White Lady, Hallownest’s queen. And there’s only one man in the game who has a shining crown: The Pale King. The lyrics are particularly derisive towards him in a way they aren’t to any of the other figures listed, too.

So, it seems like whoever came up with this song didn’t think much of Hallownest. With that in mind it’s hard to think that it originated from any sort of faction loyal to the king.

We’re missing a line from the third verse, which Myla sings after you’ve beaten Soul Master and she’s beginning to become infected. But what we do see of it is Huge in terms of lore:

Bury my body and cover my shell, [...] What meaning in darkness? Yet here I remain I’ll wait here forever ‘til light blooms again

So. The “protagonist” of this song’s family has died, and they expect to die as well, but even unto death they're waiting for Hallownest to fall and the light to return.

The moths became Hallownest’s gravekeepers after the Pale King forcibly assimilated them. Under the Pale King’s light, the moths forgot Radiance and most of their original culture, but Seer tells us in her final monologue that a few individuals remembered just enough to pass bits and pieces down through the generations. This secret resistance among the moths was what kept Radiance alive and prevented her from being sealed away entirely.

This song Myla sings comes from that moth resistance.

Code songs amongst oppressed ethnic groups are very much a real thing, especially when groups have to communicate or signal each other within hostile parties’ hearing. Since I’m American (and had a big ol crush on Harriet Tubman as a little kid lmao!) the first thing that came to mind for me when I made this connection was the working songs escaped Black slaves used in the Underground Railroad.

These have another point in common with the moth gravedigger song Myla sings, in that they enter the general cultural consciousness through out-group people who don’t know the true context. If you ever pick up a book of American baby songs, you’ll probably find some Underground Railroad code songs in there - often because generations ago white kids heard these songs from Black slaves or servants, and went on to sing the same songs to their children with zero awareness of what the songs were really for.

So some Hallownest bug somewhere probably heard the moths’ song and liked it and sang it in a context totally divorced from its original one, and it got spread around and passed down to become one of Myla’s old favorites, with her seemingly not realizing the meaning behind the lyrics. The moths’ song of devotion to their lost god survived them as a people.

This is some VERY realistic and layered worldbuilding. There is so much to glean from just one NPC’s dialogue when put together with other clues. Of course all of it is SAD and DEPRESSING, but Hollow Knight is a tragedy with a super unsubtle point to make about the unsustainability of Western imperialism.

What happens to Myla is awful, and upsetting, and unfair. So was what happened to the moths and their sacred ground, and to Radiance too. It’s important to understand the scope of the conflict that led to all this happening, trace it to its roots, and lay it at the feet of the ones responsible for engendering all this tragedy in the first place: Hallownest and the Pale King.

*A NOTE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

This is a tangent, but since there’s some debate about whether it’s appropriate to define the Pale King’s actions towards indigenous bug nations as genocide, allow me to cite the official definition of genocide here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention for short) defines genocide like this:

Genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group

B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Among the abovelisted, Hallownest is guilty of A (Deepnest and the moths), B (Deepnest physically/the moths vis a vis brainwashing), C (the mantis tribe and the hive), and E (the moths, which we know from Marmu, and possibly the mosskin also - Isma is mosskin).

Then there is cultural genocide, i.e. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group's way of life. Let’s look at the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) and how it defines cultural genocide:

A) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities

B) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources

C) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights

D) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures

E) Any form of propaganda directed against them

Hallownest is guilty of every item on this list. A: The moths, attempted with Deepnest. B: The moths, the mantises, the flukes, the mosskin; also attempted with Deepnest. C: The moths, the mantises, the flukes. D: The moths; attempted with the mantises and Deepnest. E: The mantises and Deepnest.

Any sort of discussion of the wide-reaching harm Radiance caused MUST include the context that the Infection is her response to multiple levels of genocide. Discussion that does not include this context loses nuance and simplifies the conflict and power dynamics portrayed in the game in ways that reflect real-life racism and Christian supersessionism.

Now, this is NOT some sort of holier than thou Fandom Purity dunk to say that it’s Bad or Wrong to care about Hallownest’s nobility. Like, one of my favorite characters in this dang game is the White Lady, who spent a long ass time enabling her husband’s actions before she finally walked out on him over the mass infanticide thing. You can, and it is okay to, love TPK and want rehabilitation for him while acknowledging that the dude has done objectively bad things.

I just feel that it’s important to keep things in perspective so that we don’t wind up stirring a bunch of real-world bigotry into our fandom funtimes. A lot of us don’t have the luxury of turning our brains off and simply Not Seeing It, because these same sorts of dynamics are behind a lot of the hardships that threaten our everyday stability.

It’s pretty hard to have conversations about those things in real life if one can’t even recognize them in fiction. So, this might be a good opportunity to start practicing anti-racism so we can better utilize that ideology in real life, where the stakes are much higher.

[duran-duran-less-official]

100 years ago in Australia, a program specifically to encourage smart, beautiful and healthy people to have more children would absolutely have walked hand-in-hand with the policies that enabled the cultural erasure we now call the Stolen Generations.

All of the abovementioned qualities would have been seen as the exclusive domain of White Christians, and the 'education' of the Stolen Generations was intended to literally turn Aboriginal children white through indoctrination.

Not only is it a bad policy, as written it is arguably the worst policy my government has ever had, and a perpetual blight on its history.

Please reblog for sample size.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

I couldn't help but take a peek at twitter to see what the discourse was. Needless to say, I don't feel better for it...

The Internet can be a wonderful thing when it comes to the exchange of ideas and being able to engage with people and experiences we otherwise might never encounter. It can also be a shitshow, particularly when we're inclined to believe we all share the *exact* same frames of reference, and are determined to express our views in pithy soundbites and put downs.

So far as I read through the tweets (which wasn't much since it was quite maddening), it seemed to be Americans defining Irish Travellers in terms of their whiteness, disregarding (or oblivious to) the long history of the persecution of the various traveller communities throughout Europe (including genocide). Thing is, this would make total sense in terms of the *American* experience. Of course, part of the issue is that America isn't the world.

Whiteness, Blackness and the (fallacious) hierarchy of races was, however, invented *by Europeans* in order to justify colonisation, imperialism, genocide and the enslavement of Black people. Xenophobia has always existed, but this new paradigm shifted things, so that in the context of the Americas, disparate European communities could, eventually, be brought together under the umbrella of 'whiteness'. The same is also true of Australia and New Zealand. We're talking about countries that very literally had policies explicitly encouraging migration from right across Europe in order to counter the perceived 'threat' of being 'outnumbered' by Black, indigenous and Asian people.

Within Europe, the exact same racist hierachy still holds, but with more 'bigot nuances' regarding the different white communities. So, Traveller communities absolutely experience discrimination based on their ethnicity within Europe (in a way that they might not in the Americas). I find it hard to imagine anyone in Europe saying otherwise, unless they were being deliberately disingenuous.

There's a whole lot of subtlety to this that most people won't have the time, experience or inclination to deal with eg: as a Black person, I've definitely experienced racism at an interpersonal level from Travellers utilising their 'whiteness'. On the other hand, as a settled person, I can often (though not always...) benefit from the institutions that are structurally discriminatory towards Travellers

Anyway, bottom line is that if you want to blame anyone for this, blame all the crazed eugenicist imperialist maniacs who invented an evil social construct simply to flatter their own egos and justify an otherwise unjustifiable expansionist project. Race is a complete fiction that has profound, real world consequences

I really appreciate your persepective on this, and the time you’ve put into it.

I would just also add that Travellers are still at risk of forced assimilation, in a way that I don’t think applies to any other culture in the UK. There are (lots?) of politicians who would really like Traveller culture to cease to exist, and few I believe are absolutely working towards it (Douglass Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives) for example.

I’m willing to be corrected on this, but I don’t think other minority cultures in the UK are under threat in quite the same way? I know there is a lot of pressure on immigrants to assimilate, though. And it’s not that long ago that traveller children were actively removed from their parents and placed in the care system, but equally I’m sure this happened to children from other minority groups, and I’m just not aware of it.

I also think that Travellers face systemic barriers in a way that other groups don’t, in that the assumption in e.g. higher education, is pretty much that Travellers won’t be present in the room. During my PGCE, I had a friend who was an English Traveller, and she found it really hard to listen to discussions of GRT children that assumed no GRT people were present. And she often had the difficult decision of “outing” herself in front of people who were clearly racist, or staying silent and denying her own identity.

I also think the OP of the original tweet lives in Ireland, and my understanding is that discrimination against travellers is still fairly active in Ireland- that it wouldn’t be unusual to see shops or pubs, for example, which explicitly bar travellers, in a way that wouldn’t be allowed with other groups.

I absolutely agree that Travellers can benefit from being “white passing” and do sometimes leverage that in racist ways, but I think it’s really important to acknowledge that Travellers are also marginalised in ways which I don’t think apply to other groups (but I am more than happy to be corrected on this).

I wonder if it would help people from the US to consider it as travellers being essentially a displaced indigenous people?

[xtruss]

Recounting 'Seven Sins' of the US' Alliance System

— Bu Wuwen | June 4, 2021 | Global Times

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Alliance is the evil weapon of hegemony. This is a common consensus reached among most countries, and one of the founding missions of the United States of America.

George Washington, the founding father of the United States of America, had repeatedly warned the American people to prevent the country from copying its European allies' pursuit of hegemony. In his farewell address in September 1796, Washington reinforced the idea that it was their 'true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

The US, driven by its irresistible greed for power, is now ironically what its founding father forewarned of and the world abominates. American geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that the supremacy of the US in the world is supported by a fine system of alliances that covers the whole world.

The US is now desperate to find its few remaining nickles, being the over-spender it is, after being struck by financial crises and the COVID-19 pandemic. As an incurable addict of hegemony, the US cast its eyes on its allies. The US has created a gang out of the alliance system, whose trail is full of partisanship and fratricide.

We shall now recount the seven sins of this gang. '7 sins' of the US' Alliance System Infographic: Wu Tiantong — Global Times

1. Concealment

Those who chase profits are often entangled together — Old Chinese saying

Japan has recently declared that it would directly discharge the radioactive wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, which has raised worldwide concern. Surprisingly, the US, a self-proclaimed shining beacon of environmental protection, human rights, and justice, betrayed Asian-Pacific countries and the Earth, and expressed "appreciation" in response to Japan's decision, exposing its hypocrisy.

None of this comes as a surprise. The US was always known for its double standards, where fairness and justice are nothing more than arbitrary fig leaves.

In Sharpeville of South Africa, during the apartheid era, the government opened fire on black demonstrators, killing 69 of them in the Sharpeville Massacre. In order to contain the former Soviet Union's influence in the Third World, the US could not accept losing an anti-communist ally. In the end, the "leader of the free world" cravenly defended the all-white government in South Africa without hesitation.

In fact, the standard criteria for the US' decision-making process are ideological confrontation and geopolitical interests. To serve its purpose, it stages nasty Faustian deals at any cost; it sells its soul to the devil in exchange for its gains.

2. Lying

We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. - Michael Pompeo

In the past two decades alone, the US-led Multinational Coalition and Coalition of the Willing caused countless tragedies by fabricating lies.

Using a tube of detergent as evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the US launched the Iraq War that killed 250,000 civilians in the Gulf country. Jessica Lynch, a female private in the US Army was injured in the war and saved by Iraqi medics. CNN, however, falsified the story and said that Lynch was tortured as a prisoner in Iraq, and was a witness for human rights abuses. In 2007, Lynch testified in a congressional hearing that the US Army made false claims about her capture.

A decade later, the US replicated the Iraq lie. It fabricated footages of Syria using chemical weapons on civilians, which was a convenient excuse for the US to launch air raids on another country. From 2016 to 2019, the recorded number of civilian deaths in Syria was 33,584. Half of the 3,833 victims killed by bombs dropped by the US-led coalition were women and children.

Fortunately, the truth is beginning to reveal itself. Recently Vice President Kamala Harris blurted out: "You know for years and generations wars have been fought over oil." This matches the American magazine Foreign Policy's comment that "safeguarding human rights" isn't the driving force for US' external warfare, but a means to seek interests.

Hegemony monopolizes absolute power and dehumanizes the US into moral bankruptcy. The historically flaunted promised land of progression and idealism has now fallen. All is lost.

— Wu Tiantong | June 4, 2021

3. Violence

The Americans of the United States have achieved this double result with a marvelous ease, calmly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, without violating a single one of the great principles of morality in the eyes of the world. You cannot destroy men while better respecting the laws of humanity. - Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

Hegemony is by nature coldblooded. Throughout its 245 years of history, the Americans enjoyed as few as 16 years without war. From the end of WWII to 2001, the world had seen 248 armed conflicts in 153 regions, and 201 of them were started by the US.

In 1989, the US invaded Panama to depose the de facto Panamanian leader. In 1999, the US-led NATO forces, without authorization from the United Nations Security Council, bombarded the former Yugoslavia and "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese journalists. Since 2001, the US has started wars or military actions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, leaving more than 800,000 dead and tens of millions of refugees.

The US military dragged its allies to wars that caused unprecedented refugee crises. Statistically, the number of refugees reached 11 million in Afghanistan, 380,000 in Pakistan, 3.25 million in Iraq and 12.59 million in Syria. About 1.3 million Afghans went to Pakistan and 900,000 to Iran. Of the Iraqi and Syrian refugees, about 3.5 million fled to Turkey and 1 million to Iran.

The US military always hit the headlines for its ruthless prisoner abuses. In addition, Australia proved to be a reliable lackey, allowing its soldiers to slaughter civilians in Afghanistan.

4. Plunder

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. - Samuel P. Huntington

In the US' alliance system, war is the most immediate way to plunder. The US, the world's top war machine, writes the word "plunder" on every page of its history of more than 200 years.

Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded his presidential term by warning the US about the increasing power of the military-industry complex. Michael Brenes, professor of history at Yale University, in his To Defeat the Radical Right, End American Empire pointed out that the American military has long been fertile ground for the far right and they together built the warfare state.

After unpegging the US dollar from gold in 1971, the US shaped a USA-US military-US dollar trinity to support its hegemony. In collaboration with its allies, the US grabbed control over the oil resources in the Middle East to prevent its dollar hegemony from falling apart, and also opened the door to plunder the region's wealth.

The US profits from every global crisis, such as from the crises in Russia and Eastern Europe when the former Soviet Union collapsed; from the Balkan Peninsula when the former Yugoslavia broke up; from the Four Asian Tigers and Southeast Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis. During the 2008 financial crisis, the whole world had to pay the American debt. Now, the US has brought out a $1.9 trillion stimulus package which, in fact, means massive amounts of banknotes will be issued to tamp down the exchange rates of foreign currencies, and consequently take advantage of the rest of the world.

Relying on its financial hegemony, the US has robbed tens of trillions of dollars from other countries. The victims, though filled with anger, are so afraid of the American military alliance which is armed to the teeth, that most of them choose to keep silent.

5. Infringement

The judicial system leaves you no room to have faith in it. It's like peeling layers and layers of onion skin. Every layer that you peel, your eyes get more teary to the point where you can't peel anymore because your eyes are so watery. You're literally weeping, and the Bible talks about this, until you have no more strength to weep. - Emmett G. Price III, host of WGBH, a public radio station located in Boston

The American alliance system expertly manipulates international rules. Power trumps justice in the pursuit of self-interest. The US chooses which international laws to enforce based solely on its convenience. In recent years, the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treaty on Open Skies, and the INF Treaty, revoked the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, and handled the renewal of the New START Treaty passively. It is addicted to breaching treaties.

Moreover, it feels glorified instead of being ashamed, and starts to advocate the "rules-based international order" in which the "rules" refer to its alliance's own rules and unequal terms.

The US and its allies challenged the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Freedom of Navigation. They attempted to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from investigating its crimes committed in the Afghan War at all costs, which included threatening the ICC investigation staff that they would be subject to retribution.

In the information sphere, the US is a hackers' empire. Early in the Cold War, it organized the notorious Five Eyes alliance to monitor electronic communications worldwide. The US blames others for information theft and cyber-attacks while it covertly obstructs cyber security.

In 2013, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden brought to light the PRISM program operated by the US, which was a surveillance program targeting both citizens and political figures on a global scale. Also in 2013, Der Spiegel disclosed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had installed spyware or modified hardware in the computers before they were delivered for foreign diplomats' use.

In 2017, WikiLeaks released thousands of confidential documents that exposed how the CIA was hacking the world. In 2020, it was revealed that since the end of WWII, the CIA has been controlling a Swiss encryption company to intercept top secrets of many countries, including its allies.

6. Destruction

Moral depravity defines US politics. The United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace. - Noam Chomsky, US philosopher

The US and its allies have long been the fallen angel that wreck foreign regimes and regional peace.

According to Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War by Assistant Professor Lindsey O'Rourke at Boston College, in the 42 years between 1947 and 1989, the US had 64 covert subversions and six open operations. The US seems to show more excitement and enthusiasm for overthrowing foreign regimes than it does for celebrating Christmas.

After the Cold War, the US has turned into an even more unscrupulous interventionist. Its frequent attempts to export the Color Revolution brought the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, it only brought an Arab Winter and an Arab Disaster.

In his On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, Noam Chomsky sorrowfully wrote, "This relatively short period has arguably seen the greatest number of massacres in human history. Most of them were performed in the name of lofty slogans such as freedom and democracy."

The US boasts its grandiose offshore balance strategy with its soft power and smart power when in reality, it is merely thick black theory full of schemes. In contrast to the Eastern tradition of valuing harmony and peace, the Anglo-Saxon world (the US and the UK) believes that disagreements and conflicts equals opportunity.

The US manipulated NATO to squeeze Russia's geo-space, and undermined the EU-Russia reconciliation and oil pipeline program. It supported Brexit to cripple the EU and reinforce US' control over Europe. It sowed discord in the Middle East in order to control the oil resources and made Iran an enemy of the region.

When it comes to China, the US spares no effort. The US rocked the boat in the South China Sea and made provocations, which led to turbulence in regional stability. It casts controllable tension on the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Straits to hinder peace progresses. At the China-India border, it fanned the flames of conflicts and mediated in favor of India. It also used the Quad to lure India into confronting China, intending to cause a lose-lose fight between the two developing giants.

Recently, the US obstructed the passing of a joint statement on ceasefire and cessation of violence and the protection of civilians at the Security Council despite the ongoing escalation of the Palestine-Israel situation and the overwhelming majority of UNSC members' call for an immediate ceasefire. Rather than taking proactive measures to promote peace, the US stands ready to fuel tension.

Time and time again, history has proven that the US and its allies always bring with them trouble and turmoil.

7. Disunion

In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times. - Winston Churchill

Forty years ago, the US forced Japan to sign the Plaza Accord to secure its economic supremacy. The Japanese hi-tech industry was dismantled and the Japanese economy crippled for decades. Today, it turns to South Korea and Chinese Taiwan, threatening to relocate their semiconductor industries back to the US.

From 2009 to 2017, the US imposed its long-arm jurisdiction on Europe, whereby it collected US$190 billion in penalties, monopolized massive quantities of personal information, and forcefully took over European enterprises that were sanctioned. In an attempt to reap profits, the Wall Street recently tried to overturn the century-old European football world by forming an independent European Super League, which was widely resisted and disgracefully aborted.

The COVID-19 outbreak put the US in the spotlight. The egomaniac that it is, the US selfishly fed itself even at the cost of its allies. The mask war between the US and its allies is indeed an abomination.

Ever since they have developed the COVID-19 vaccines, the US has ranked its allies. It is generous to Anglo-Saxon purebreds like the UK and Australia, lukewarm to Europe and other common allies, but haggles over ounces with Japan and South Korea.

Japan, challenged by the upcoming Olympics and the worsening pandemic, received no vaccines from the US. The Japanese Prime Minister had to beg American vaccine companies. The vaccination rate is 1 percent in Japan, which is only one fiftieth of the US. The South Korean foreign minister also begged the US for help but heard a resolute no.

At the early stage of the pandemic, India offered the Trump administration large quantities of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Now that India is in the midst of a severe pandemic, it has received neither the vaccine raw materials that the US promised, nor any American oxygen or inhalators.

The US is an octopus and its allies are its tentacles. It uses them to try and rule the world but stay alert to prevent them from growing too strong. Once its interests are threatened, the octopus won't hesitate to cut off one or more of the tentacles or even feed on them.

So how could such an egoist and a corrupted alliance system take on global governance? How could they shamelessly claim to represent the international community?

After the Vietnam War, former Senator J. William Fulbright expressed his deep concern about the aggrandizement of the Arrogance of Power that would incur immeasurable destruction, and excessive expansion that would result in the nation's decline.

Recently, renowned American scholar Joseph Nye rang the alarm again: more and more countries are beyond the control of the US. It is extremely dangerous to believe the US is invincible.

What goes around comes around, and where vice is, vengeance follows. There will be severe penalties for the seven sins committed by the US. Justice may be served later, but it will never be absent.

[citizen-zero]

There’s a lot of good reasons to vote for Biden, who is the candidate in the best position to beat Trump. Like, I’m sorry third partiers, but your candidate doesn’t have a chance at this point. I wish we had the voting system Australia did where we could vote by preference but sadly we have a broken system that does not afford people a chance in hell if they don’t run on the Democrat or Republican ticket.

Anyway, on a purely emotional level that has nothing to do with policies, I think the most compelling reason to vote for the left wing candidate with the best shot is the mere shred of a possibility that we get to watch Tr*mp be forcibly, physically removed from office.

I would vote Biden purely for the chance that I might get to watch that ugly orange little man be dragged out of the White House literally kicking and screaming.

[robotslenderman]

Why don’t ferrets come in more fur patterns? They have a variety of colors but basically just one main pattern (and the absence of a pattern) without much variation. Why haven’t breeders started isolating genes for, say, striped ferrets or something?

(Not like I *want* ferrets to become super inbred by irresponsible breeders looking to make extra special ferrets to charge exorbitant amounts for. That just seems to be something humans always want to do, but haven’t yet accomplished with ferrets?) 

They actually have quite a few patterns!! It’s just that the predominant patterns and colours -- masked sable and white -- take up, like, 90% of all ferrets. Plus a few patterns are variations on those two patterns (eg champagnes and chocolates can be mistaken for sable by an untrained eye).

Here is a chart on the types of ferrets you can get:

((C) Weaselwomancreations on deviantART)

Note that the chart here differentiates between patterns and colours -- a “bibbed” ferret is very, very rarely actually all dark like that. You can also combine patterns -- Komachi, who passed away two years ago, was both blaze and bibbed. Komachi was also slightly a “mitt” -- she only had the mitt on her fingers and not up to her wrists like most mitts do. (”Socks” if you’re used to cats.)

The majority of ferrets are sable/chocolat,e dark eyed white (or black eyed white -- DEWs or BEWs) or albino, with a full masked pattern. There’s obviously no way to tell if an albino is an albino BEW or an albino sable or an albino anything else. Albinos are very common in the ferret world.

Next most common pattern is blazed and bibbed. If a ferret isn’t albino/BEW/sable mask, 99% chance it’s blazed and/or bibbed. 99% of the other 1% are probably hooded ferrets or pandas, and then everything else.

There’s also angora ferrets -- beautiful fluffy buggers they are! Google them, they’re amazing.

As for breeding... IDK about in the US, but in Australia we have a very limited gene pool. And I mean VERY limited. Our ferrets are smaller than American ferrets, but also live longer (I’ve seen some American males that look like the size of small cats) because we desex them later.

But we can’t expand the gene pool. We can’t import ferrets. We can’t even import sperm or eggs. Ferrets are seen as a pest in some states (QLD I’m looking at you) and our environmental policies are only conservative when it comes to money -- when it comes to places they can’t make money, such as ferrets, it’s really, really strict. That’s both good and bad, for reasons I don’t have time to go into here. Ferrets are a domestic animal (exception: black footed ferrets) despite looking identical to a wild species (polecats) and can’t survive in the wild because they literally have no survival instincts whatsoever.

I really have a dream of being able to have my own place and be able to breed ferrets and expand the gene pool. That’s how I found out we can’t even import sperm. :/ So our ferrets are much more likely to be inbred. Any serious breeders start isolating genes here they’ve got a bottleneck on their hands.

As for other places -- I can only imagine it’s because ferrets aren’t as “serious” as dogs and cats are. I think they do show ferrets in some places, but it’s not like dogs where people are really making an effort to cultivate breeds. Working dogs are bred for all kinds of tasks and so have a wide variety of genes and breeds to suit those tasks, but working ferrets only have one job -- flush rabbits out from warrens. So there’s no impetus to breed ferrets for specific tasks.

Note that this is all stuff I’ve picked up via osmosis, so if anyone who knows ferrets better has anything to add please do so.

[tanadrin]

CHRIS HAYES: We all understand that a country that stops its people from leaving, say North Korea, is just definitionally tyrannical. You can leave if you want to go, right? But then there's like, "Well, okay, well, if you leave you've got to go somewhere, right?" There's also embedded in that document the right to petition for political asylum. There isn't quite the right to go anywhere you want. Should it be the case that it is a universal human right to pick up and move to the country of your choice?

SUKETU MEHTA: But that's the question of open borders. Does the nation have the right to control who comes in, how many they let in? It's a very complex issue. I'd like to first point out that this whole question of borders and passports and visas is only about 100 years old. In the long history on the planet, we human beings have only started thinking about these questions about a century ago. Before that in the age of mass migration from the middle of the 19th century to around 1914, fully one quarter of Europe up and moved to the United States. What happened? The Republic did not collapse.

CHRIS HAYES: No, in fact the opposite. It was part of what converted it from sort of a colonial backwater into a super power.

SUKETU MEHTA: Exactly, the U.S. eclipsed Europe at the pinnacle of world wealth and power because of it had an open border policy.

CHRIS HAYES: Not only that. This is my favorite fact, and you write about this in the book. When people say, "Well, my ancestors came legally." It's like we had open borders. They came legally because literally there was one rule: no Chinese.

SUKETU MEHTA: Right.

CHRIS HAYES: It's called the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it had a quota on the Chinese and everyone else, it was like, "Come on down."

SUKETU MEHTA: Yeah.

CHRIS HAYES: That was the legal posture of American immigration policy for decades.

SUKETU MEHTA: So, in my book I also considered these arguments by serious philosophers, not just crackpots, who say that any kind of collective has the right to define rules for membership, or there's this lifeboat here. The United States is a lifeboat in an ocean, and there are lots of people swimming around. If too many people get on the lifeboat, then everyone sinks — both the newcomers on the lifeboat and people who've been there before. And so, I've considered these arguments, but I really can't find any evidence that, if tomorrow we were to suddenly open up our borders, and there's a lot of people who'd like to move to the United States.

Well, first of all, GDP would increase enormously. There's a statistic that if the world had open borders, then world GDP would increase by $78 trillion a year. When people move, everyone benefits. If the United States were to adopt a policy, let's say, short of open borders. For every one million people that we bring in, the GDP will increase by 1.15 percent. So, there's just no doubt that immigration benefits the countries that the immigrants moved to, particularly the rich countries because we're not making enough babies, and we need young motivated immigrants to work because the United States by the middle of the century is going to be a nation of geezers. As the baby boomers retire, there's not enough working age adults to pay for the pensions of the old people.

CHRIS HAYES: If you want to see the future of America, go to a big facility for seniors, particularly in a metro area like New York, assisted living where it is like old white folks being cared for by 30-year-old immigrants and people of color. That's it. That's it. That's the future of the country in many respects.

SUKETU MEHTA: That's it. Look, the replacement rate is 2.1 babies per woman. The United States' replacement rate stands at 1.7 babies per woman. You see this around the world, Japan. Under 4 percent of the Japanese population is foreign born. It's ridiculous.

CHRIS HAYES: It's one of the most closed off society to immigration of any, probably it is the most closed off to immigration of any First World country.

SUKETU MEHTA: Exactly, yeah, because they want to keep their culture pure. As a result, the economy has stagnated, and in the villages of the north, there's only old people left because all the young people have moved to the cities in the south. They've been invaded by wild boars from the mountains. So, it's a common sight to see these old men and women being chased by wild boars in the villages. The Washington Post had this fascinating article about this, where old Japanese people are being menaced by wild boars because there's not enough young people to chase off the wild boars.

Is this what we want for our country? Wild boars chasing our old people? Bring in the immigrants. Well, the Japanese also have realized that they need more immigrants because they need labor. So, they're actually very cautiously opening up their doors. They're trying to recruit high-skilled immigrants, but not enough people want to move there because they feel it's a hostile atmosphere for them.

CHRIS HAYES: But I have to say that the economic argument always leaves me a little cold, right? It just sort of feels like it's a hard thing to persuade people of. It always feels a little like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is trying to sell me on something when I hear this argument, which I think is backed up by the vast majority of economists and wonks with a small dissenting group of economists and wonks.

SUKETU MEHTA: Yeah, there's basically one man, George Borjas at Harvard.

CHRIS HAYES: George Borjas, who's the famous contrarian on precisely this. He's the guy that you will see cited in every bit of literature and pamphlets from this anti-immigration coalition. I guess what I'm trying to get back around to is the basic moral principle. There are times when I think to myself it seems possible to me there's two things I feel it's about, eating meat and immigration, where it seems possible to me that in 100 years people will look back on the current policies as like obviously barbaric.

That it just makes no sense that just the natural lottery of where you happen to be born essentially determined all your life outcomes, and like if you're born in a slum in Bangladesh, like, "Too bad. Got to stay there. Can't go to the United States, because you’re SOL buddy." At some level it's like that's morally indefensible. Why is that the case? It shouldn't be that way, and yet it's crazy and radical to say like, "No, they should be able to come here because then where we have a billion people who move to the U.S., right?" There's all these sorts of catastrophizing thoughts we have about what that would look like. But I don't know, maybe that's right. I don't know.

SUKETU MEHTA: The central point of my book is a moral argument that all these people, and you're right, the greatest inequality in the world today is the inequality of citizenship, a disadvantaged lottery. I can predict a person's life depending on the passport that he or she holds. But the question I ask is, "Why is it that Bangladesh is in the state it's in right now?" The nation that's caused Bangladesh's misery, the United Kingdom and Europe, and the United States because of climate change.

Why is it that these Bangladeshis have to endure what they're enduring, which is the possible extinction of their country by the end of the century because of climate change. It's not their fault. They are coming here because we were there. The British went into South Asia, stayed there for 200 years, and destroyed the economy. When the British arrived in India at the beginning of the 18th century, by India I mean all of South Asia, India's share of world GDP was 23 percent. By the time they left, 200 years later in 1947, India’s share was four percent of world GDP.

So, basically the colonial empire will run for the benefit of England and France, who together made the 40 percent of all the borders in the world. Bangladesh is in its current condition, because first, the British looted it, prevented it from building up its industries. Now, we're worried about four million Syrians going into Germany because of the law. What happens when Bangladesh get flooded, and 400 million Bangladeshis have to find dry land? Where are they going to go?

...

CHRIS HAYES: But the level of migration between developing countries and refugee populations at developing countries are constantly asked to take in, and the burden they bear from Jordan to Colombia to India to all across the developing world, for the First World to be like, "No, this is outrageous," it's crazy. It is crazy.

SUKETU MEHTA: Exactly. The vast majority of world migrants, 85 percent, moved from a poor to a slightly less poor.

CHRIS HAYES: That's right.

SUKETU MEHTA: We think that there's always the right wing — if you're to look at Fox News you'll think, "Oh, my God, we're so generous. We let in a million migrants.” We rank 23rd in the world in terms of how many immigrants we let in as a percentage of our population. If we tripled our intake, we won't even be in the top five. Even among developed countries, Australia, Canada, they take in far more immigrants than we do. Germany takes in far more immigrants than we do as a percentage of the population.

...

Look, New York City's exhibit A in showing that immigration works: New York City is now at historically unprecedented levels of number of immigrants it takes, even as a percentage of its population is approaching the highs of the early 20th century. Two out of three New Yorkers are immigrants. New York has never been richer. New York has never been safer.

There's no evidence that these alleged waves of immigrants are actually disturbing the peace, or else making people poorer.

(x)