#where is the condemnation for the senate that ACTUALLY chose to use them as their army?

[antianakin]

Well, for one, this post asked for bad Anakin Skywalker takes, not bad Jedi takes. This entire thread started because I had to see a bad Jedi take, so thanks for this, this is totally helping my fandom experience right now.

This is an EXHAUSTING conversation to have to keep having over and over again. I've definitely addressed it before, as have a few other people within the anti-Jedi community on Tumblr, but fine. Let's go through it again.

Generally when this topic comes up, there's a few follow-up questions it's helpful to try to answer.

If the Jedi refused to lead the clones from a moral standpoint, what is the alternative for the clones now, and is it better or worse for them in the long run?

Were the clones INTENDED to be seen as slaves or (also) closer to a draft and the writing of their situation is just done very messily and in a way that's very uncomfortable due to how close it seems to slavery? Follow-up to that, if it's uncomfortably close to slavery, perhaps this is where we discuss how close a draft is to slavery which brings up some interesting discussions about the Jedi having also been drafted and how much power the Jedi truly have in this situation.

Let's start with the first one because it's honestly just easier.

So the scenario is that the Jedi choose to refuse to fight in the war at all (because presumably fighting WITH the slave army is equally as bad as LEADING the slave army so long as we do not see the Jedi as slaves themselves because it still means they're supporting the use of the slave army). What becomes of the clones? Well, they still have to fight the war. The Jedi refusing to fight won't save the clones from that. But who will lead them now?

If your answer is "a bunch of fascist pricks who are probably in Palpatine's pocket," you'd be right! It'll just be a lot more people like Tarkin or Yularen.

How does this change the clones' experience? It means there's no longer a superior officer with heightened reflexes and instincts on the ground with them anymore, standing in front of them and blocking fire so that more men can survive. It means there's no longer a superior officer whose primary priority is going to be to preserve as much life as possible and will choose to surrender a fight to save more clones rather than push forward to victory regardless of the cost. It means there's no longer a superior officer whose teachings and morals allow them to inspire and encourage individuality amongst the clones, so it's entirely possible that all of those beautiful armor designs and different hair styles wouldn't even happen if the Jedi weren't leading them.

So I'm going to say that it's entirely canon that the Jedi leading the clones makes life better for them overall. If the Jedi refused their draft entirely the way you argue they should've on moral grounds, it leaves the clones in a way worse place overall. We can probably assume the Jedi are least SOMEWHAT aware of this, which means they're left with the choice of choosing to go along with the draft to do what they can for the clones even if it goes against their own morals, or they dodge the draft to try to adhere to their morals and ultimately leave the clones to fend for themselves against people less capable of protecting them and less willing to care for them. Which, once you look at it that way, sounds pretty selfish doesn't it? It's kind-of a lose/lose situation for the Jedi where they're damned if they do (support the slave army) and damned if they don't (abandoning people they could help for the sake of their own well-being).

The argument from the anti-Jedi crowd on this always seems to be just "well they shouldn't have done it" and never seems to actually address what the Jedi should've done INSTEAD. And I imagine that this is because the options there are pretty slim on the ground. "Dodge the draft!" Cool, how does this help the slaves you're so worried about? What does this allow the Jedi to actually DO to help the clones instead? Is this actually making life BETTER for the clones overall or is it actually making life WORSE? "The Jedi took down the Zyggerian slave empire in canon!" Yes, with the support of the Republic we must assume. Something they will NOT have in this case if they try to free the clones. So now we're just heading into "the Jedi should've destroyed the Republic themselves because it was basically a lost cause" and oh whoops now we're just saying Dooku was right and look at where that led.

I recognize that you say above you don't really give a damn about how kind the Jedi were to the clones and that it doesn't matter to you at all, so this was all probably a huge waste of time on my part, but it DOES matter to me on this topic and, I'd argue, it seems to matter in canon to the clones.

So that's the Watsonian analysis I have. In universe, the Jedi are faced with a nearly impossible lose/lose situation and they choose what is arguably the lesser of two evils by putting themselves in the position to actually do some good for the clones and save as many as they can.

Now let's hit that second point and dive a little deeper into a more Doylist analysis. Does the writing support the interpretation of the clones as slaves or is it just really badly written in the most uncomfortable way possible?

Now, this is where I will readily admit that the writing sucks, it's definitely racist, and I don't support the way they've chosen to depict the clones and their situation. But this is also where I will point out that there is a major difference between "the writing of the clones isn't done well and it has some perhaps unintended implications about the Jedi that the writers never meant to come across that way" and "the Jedi are intended to be viewed as slave owners and I am going to critique them based on that." Because I don't personally believe the second one and land way more in the realm of the first.

To begin with, I don't think that Lucas intended to write the clones as fully sentient beings. The dialogue we hear in Attack of the Clones about it when the Kaminoans are talking to Obi-Wan about them seems to imply more that the clones are sort-of sub-sentient, somewhere between a droid's programming and full sentience. What the fuck that means is anyone's guess, we're definitely in space magic bullshit territory here. But the implication IS THERE that the clones are perhaps not actually entirely sentient. So the reason that Cody seems perfectly friendly with Obi-Wan one moment and then immediately happy to shoot him down the next moment isn't because he's been mind controlled, but because he's just... not entirely sentient and he's just going to do as ordered, whether that means being loyal to the Jedi or killing them all. It's left a little unclear within the films, but that's the implication I got based on that dialogue from Attack of the Clones.

Which means that when TCW decided to make them fully sentient and sort-of change the narrative there, it's faced with a few difficulties. It's one thing to have an army of droids, or human-like men who are perhaps not fully sentient anyway. Can they truly be slaves if they aren't really sentient? Star Wars obviously faces this same question about the droids themselves, and the general consensus is that absolutely nobody intended the droids to come off like slaves because this would make Luke and Leia slave owners and that seems like a really obviously wrong interpretation doesn't it? Star Wars is by no means advocating for slavery by making two of its primary heroes droid owners. Subsequently, we can make the same argument here. Star Wars is not advocating for slavery by making the obvious good guys slave owners via leading the clones. That is not and never has been the message of the prequels, part of which is helped by making the clones less than human.

This is where the godawful racist writing bit comes in, obviously, and like I said earlier, I'm not denying any of that. It's absolutely fuck off racist to have written the clones this way, especially given who they chose to cast in the role. But if we choose to believe that Lucas was NOT intending the Jedi to be seen as slave owners in the prequels just because they led the clones in war, then it follows that the clones are NOT intended to be seen as slaves.

And this continues in The Clone Wars, despite the fact that the clones are now fully sentient. Granted, this is ALSO a really uncomfortable writing choice because while we could sort-of write off the fact that the clones weren't fully sentient and so the morals behind using them as an army is kind-of gray and nebulous, once the clones BECOME fully sentient, you lose that argument. You definitely do. And once again, I'm not denying that this was an absolutely terrible writing choice to have made given that they don't address it enough within the show to really dig into the morals behind it. Because all of the other characters still sort-of act like the clones are somewhere between droid and sentient in terms of them being in an army.

I will point out here that the ONLY characters who we see regularly advocate for the clones are the Jedi. So from a more Doylist standpoint, even if we are intended to see the clones as slaves (which I'm not convinced of), the Jedi are the only ones who we see doing a damn thing about that at all and arguing back about the clones' rights. Shaak Ti has an entire line where she tells Lama Su that the clones are people, not objects and fights for the Domino Squad to not just be "cast off." She practically bends over backwards to help Tup and Fives as much as she can.

And yes, the Jedi accept the explanation they're given about the "aggression inhibitor" chips, but we also see the Jedi actively looking into the creation of the clones and they discover that the clones are a literal Sith trap for them (even if they don't know how). When they don't have any further information to go on, they end up deciding that the clones are sentient people who have earned their trust. You could condemn that choice, obviously, call them idiots for not looking further or not assuming mind control I guess. But the Jedi ARE looking into things canonically, and when offered the choice between abandoning the clones for their own self preservation and trusting the clones enough to keep working with them, they choose to trust the clones. I'd argue the bigger issue here is not "The Jedi chose to ignore the chips that are a human rights issue regardless of whether they're mind control chips or not" but that the Jedi are now canonically given WAY too much information, making it seem a little silly that they don't connect things together that seem fairly obvious. Narratively, they obviously are incapable of connecting things completely since they need to be caught by surprise and all killed in Order 66. But once they know a chip EXISTS that had at least SOMETHING to do with a clone murdering a Jedi and then find out the clones are a Sith trap, it stops being quite as understandable that they didn't put those pieces together and look further into the chip issue.

Regardless, the reason they accept the "aggression inhibitor" explanation and don't look further is because the narrative prevents them from doing so. They CAN'T look further into the issue because they'd inevitably figure everything out and then the story doesn't happen. They're literally just prevented by the writing from doing the thing you want them to do. That's not the writers intending to make the Jedi out to be cruel and uncaring, it's just the writers of this show being kind-of stupid about how much information they're giving the Jedi and how unrealistic it is that they DON'T look into it more.

All of that tells me that even if we as the audience are expected to interpret the clones as slaves, we're NOT expected to interpret the Jedi as slave owners who should be condemned for their treatment of the clones.

Which brings us to Slick. Yes, Slick explicitly calls them slaves and condemns the Jedi for it. But do you recall what ELSE Slick does in that episode? He teams up with Asajj Ventress (someone who you could argue DOES enslave people quite a lot by virtue of being a Sith working for the Separatists) to help MURDER a bunch of his own brothers for money. So by no means does the narrative present Slick as a reliable source of information. He's a traitor who is basically in this for himself and that's it. He tries to excuse his actions with some grandiose cause, but Rex and Cody themselves see right through it. Neither of them seems to agree with Slick and they're both far more reliable and trustworthy characters. If we were meant to know that Slick was right, we'd have heard Rex and Cody say something similar to back it up, and we don't.

The best parallel to make here is to Anakin's comments about the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith. Anakin says he should've known the Jedi were plotting to take over and that from his perspective the Jedi were evil. We have literally watched the Jedi trying to arrest Palpatine because HE'S plotting to take over, so we know Anakin's LYING. Anakin says he's brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new Empire, but we've seen what the Empire does, we saw how Anakin just murderred children, so we know that Anakin's LYING. Anakin is making excuses for his own atrocities to justify them to both himself and Obi-Wan (and Padme).

Slick's comments about the Jedi enslaving the clones aren't intended to be taken as true. He's just betrayed EVERYBODY and caused the deaths of hundreds of clones because Ventress (a Sith who works with the Separatists who we know are ACTUAL enslavers of innocent Republic civlians) promised him money in return. He's making up excuses for his actions to justify them both to himself and to the people around him (Anakin, Obi-Wan, Rex, and Cody). And you'll notice that nobody in that scene is buying what he's selling. This is why this comment really never has any follow-through, they never discuss the clones as slaves in any other episode really, even when it would make sense to do so (like Umbara or Zyggeria). You as the audience are supposed to just automatically recognize that Slick is LYING, so there's no real follow-up needed to this acccusation.

The problem here is predominantly that the change to the clones' level of sentience leads to them feeling a LOT more like literal slaves, so Slick's accusation doesn't seem as obviously inaccurate as Anakin's accusations do. In fact, it starts to ring as entirely true because, well, I don't know what ELSE you'd call sentient human beings who are considered products (something we know the Kaminoans call them, even though the Jedi themselves disagree). And this is an issue I am placing squarely at the feet of the writers for not recognizing. There is no way a more adult audience isn't going to hear Slick call the clones slaves and think that that's a lie when everything we're seeing says it's true. That's an issue, and I'll never deny that it isn't. But I still don't think that it's what was INTENDED to be understood by this scene.

The final piece of evidence I'll use to back that argument up is Cut Lawquane. The episode he shows up in is called "The Deserter." Not "The Escapee" or "The Runaway" or "The Freedman" or anything that might bring to mind slavery, but "Deserter" which is a lot more indicative of a DRAFT. Cut himself does condemn the Republic and some of the ways the clones were treated in general, but as I recall, Cut has exactly nothing negative to say about the Jedi specifically nor does he ever really refer to the clones as slaves. All of which tells me that the clones were being used as a metaphor for a DRAFT, but the writing was done so clumsily that what they ended up writing instead was a slave army. And that now comes with a ton of really unfortunate implications that are never addressed because the writers didn't recognize it enough to address it.

The point of the narrative is not to condemn the Jedi, it never has been. The Jedi are placed in an impossible situation with nothing but lose/lose options of evil and lesser evil. Who are we to condemn them for doing the best they can to keep choosing a lesser evil? Condemning them for being forced to make an impossible choice IS propaganda because that's literally what Palpatine intends to do by putting them in that situation to begin with. If the Jedi had refused to fight, refused to lead the clones, I imagine people who hate the Jedi both in universe and in fandom would be calling them cowards who abandoned their responsibility to the galaxy, selfish elitists who prioritized their own morals over people's lives. They can't win. And that's the whole fucking point. That's the tragedy of the prequels. The Jedi can't win, it doesn't MATTER what they choose to do or not do, they'll always lose. And if you missed that, you might have missed the entire point of the narrative.

I'm in the mood for bad faith Anakin Skywalker takes today, so if you have any of those to share, please do!

[witch-of-letters]

Alliances don’t come cheap - Part I

I’ve decided to (almost) completely rewrite the series ‘cause I felt that something was off about the story (the way it sounded, the descriptions etc.) This time though, the details should be well-written and the characters well-described. I’v also taken the liberty to add the actual scenes and dialogues from AC: Brotherhood here. Hopefully, the description of things is better this time.

P.S. The feedback is always appreciated. Don’t only tell how much you’ve liked it, say how well the characters were written, what do you think of the main character (i.e. the Reader) and what do you think will happen next?

Synopsis: Arriving to Rome was not what you had imagined. Some painful memories are brought up, but that doesn’t make you lose your focus. The Apple is safe in the Assassins’ hands, but for how long?

Theme song: The Seccession - One Hundred Strings

Bold italics - Spanish/situation/places

Italics - thoughts/Italian/emphasizing

Previously on ADCC:

“Promise you’ll come back.” You looked at him. You didn’t want to leave him either but duty called, and you’d be a fool if you chose to ignore the threat the Borgia posed.

“I cannot, Aguilar. The Borgia must be brought down. It’s now or never.” with that you stabbed the map, right on the spot that you’d be visiting next. Rome.

Rome, 1500

Roma. The city of long gone centurions, senators, and gladiators, looked captivating as though it was built by the God himself. Ancient structures were still standing, now but a shadow of their former selves. You, now a ‘respectable’ ambassador (the title of which you earned through shrewd manipulation of people and well-thought tactical plans), were currently looking at the horizon, watching as the sun was slowly descending down the sky and illuminating everything with its orange glow.

Everything was as you had predicted. The forces of the Borgia were stationed throughout Rome, terrifying its citizens into submission; Corruption was running rampant among the ranks of both nobility and priesthood; The presence of the Assassins was weak - and nothing was being done about that. It would be up to you to find the solution to all of the above. With or without the local assassins’ help.

Stepping down from the roof, you walked all the way to the port in silence despite receiving strange looks from some of the passerbys. It was a known fact that Italians looked down upon the Spanish, demeaning them in almost everything, be it fashion, commerce, or the way of ruling over the something. And you chose to ignore it - for their own sake.

It didn't take long for you to find the exact spot where the messenger would intercept you and give you a letter with the most recent updates on the current situation. You let out a quiet but amused hum as you once again realized how used you were to carrying out the duties of an assassin while disguised as a seemingly harmless bureaucrat, whose persuasiveness could rival any of the diplomats'. ‘What would mother say about this?’ A tinge of sadness struck your heart at the mere mention of her. You were still heavily mourning her, as though she died only a week ago...but in reality, it has only been eight years since it happened. Neither you nor your father, who disappeared after your twelvth birthday, were ever the same after her initial disappearance when you a three-year-old. But while you were on duty here in Rome, you refused to let your mind be consumed with these thoughts. They would only interfere with your life and make you lose yourself.

“Signorina, signorina!” a shout was heard from behind your back. ‘Finally.’ you thought. The young man, wearing only a pair of pants, boots, and green rags, handed you a sealed letter as he tried to manage his breathing. You looked at the sky once more. He was fast, you’ll give him that.

“Grazie, I assume no one followed you?” This type of questioning was always necessary in this line of work, so that no lose ends would be left to tie up. At your words, he looked around, trying to make sure he was indeed not being followed.

“No, signorina, I was alone all this time. Even if anyone followed me here, they’d be no match for you. Everyone in the Thieves’ Guild knows that.” he whispered last bit excitedly. Indeed, if anyone dared to go against you, physically or with words alone, they would instantly regret doing so. They didn’t call you a Spanish Mentor and Master Assassin for nothing.

“Bene. If you see La Volpe, be sure to extend him my thanks. I really appreciate his help.”

“I will.” The young man left your presence in a hurry, as though carrying the message to its current receiver was a matter of life and death. The thief in question though, was even more elusive than ever. While he has responded to a letter you had sent him from home, so far, he still hasn’t met up with you to discuss various important things. How could you reorganize the underworld network without the Master-Thief and a long-time friend of yours at your side? You hoped you would receive an answer to that question soon, before everything crumbles beneath the heavy feet of the Borgia.

The Vatican Vault, in the meanwhile

Ezio was confused by Minerva’s words. Who was she? Who were ‘Those who came before’? What were the Apples made for? Why did she call him ‘the Prophet’? And who was Desmond? She showed him various things through her projections that he couldn’t make sense of, and then disappeared abruptly, leaving him with many unanswered questions. But he didn’t have time to ponder on that, the Apple and the Papal Staff had to be dealt with, so he left the secret chamber, only to find that the Staff was still standing in the center of the platform. He tried to pull it out, but the mechanism clicked, and it was quickly pulled down and sealed off. So much for trying to get it out. Suddenly, the platform started to lower down, and bringing forth the walls, making the circle Ezio was standing in even smaller. Mario appeared up on the edge of the Vault.

“Better in the hands of the Earth, than in the hands of man.” Ezio didn’t expect him to appear there.

“Uncle?”  

“What can I say?” Mario continued while gesturing with his hand, “We sent a single man against an entire army. I was worried. Quick, climb up. We have to get out of here.” Ezio did as he was told. There was no time to waste. Once he was finally up, he turned back to his uncle.

“You would not believe the things I have seen, Mario,” he began but was quickly cut off.

“Then be sure to stay alive, that I might hear of them!”

“I expect opposition.”

“And I expect the Borgia to mourn the loss of many lives tonight.” With that, they quickly left the room, running through the illuminated halls, only to stumble upon a big group of monks standing near the exit. One of them exclaimed: “Che cosa fate qui? (What are you doing here?) Assassini. God will see you pay for your crimes!” Another one said: “You have desecrated the sanctity of this holy place." Ezio was quick to respond.

“You condemn what you do not understand.”

“We must go, Ezio. Now!” Mario sternly reminded. They ran through the group, pushing a couple of monks aside, and once outside, Mario voiced his concern over his nephew.

“Did Rodrigo manage to hurt you?”

“Barely, my armor blunted his attack.” Again, another group of religious men was mumbling amongst themselves ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.’

“Be ready to fight.” When they opened the doors, they were met with a bunch of Borgia guards. They attacked them immediately on sight.

“What are you doing?!” exclaimed Ezio while running a sword through a guard’s gut.

“Saving you, from the look of things,” replied Mario.

“Not bad for an old man.”

“Agreed. You still have some skill.”

“Buona questa. (Good one.)”

“Excellent!” They kept fighting them off, one by one, untill all of them were dead and bleeding. When Mario started running away, Ezio was quick to follow him, climbing up the crates and portruding beams. On their way, they were again met with some guards, who were dumb enough to unsheath their swords. They were dead within moments.

When Mario finally stopped, Ezio found himself standing at the edge of the tower, overlooking the Tiber river, and holding the Apple in his hands. He was hesitating to throw it into the river below.

“This decision is yours alone to make, only do so quickly.” Ezio kept holding the Apple over the edge, but he couldn’t unclench his fingers. Something didn’t seem right about just throwing it away. Seeing his hesitation, Mario offered a solution: “Give it to me. You can do with it as you will later.”

“Bene.” He handed the Apple over to his uncle.

“Jump!” They jumped off the ledge. It was time to go home.

Later, in the evening

It was getting dark. Torches were burning with a golden glow, not only attracting moths to themselves but also illuminating the way to your new residence, courtesy of your another long-time friend, Niccoló Machiavelli. If you were honest with yourself, you had quite the strange relationship with him. While you knew each other almost like the back of your hands and you still kept secrets, it felt as though he knew what they were. Knew how heavily they weighed upon your shoulders. Even so, he was a very good friend - one that would never dare to betray you (despite a certain fox thinking otherwise in the nearest future).

Once you stepped through the front door, you immediately went upstairs, taking off your clothes, and subsequently drawing yourself a hot bath. It was a privilege to have one, since not every person could afford buying one, and frankly, some people were apparently still believing the superstition about washing their own body being bad and sinful. Idiots.

Allowing yourself to relax in the water, you heard a knock coming from downstairs. ‘A guest? Now? *sigh* Can’t you let a woman enjoy the relaxation time?.’

“Come in!” you shouted. While the nightly visit was a surprise for you (you never expected guests so late), you were thankful for it being done before you went to bed. The footsteps were getting louder and louder, and soon enough the door opened, revealing the Niccoló Machiavelli himself, without a stain of dirt on him. The bastard. You gave him a look. He threw a sincere apologetic smile your way.

“Couldn’t let me scrub myself clean, amigo? I’ve never pegged you for being that kind of man, Nic.” you velvety voice sounded sweet but with a hidden tone of annoyance and warning in it. He produced a paper from beneath his red robes.

“I only wanted to give you this letter with instructions, Y/N. Besides, you would never kill me, I’m your friend.”

“So you are saying but don’t let my calm voice and facial expression fool you, I’m still pissed off about you coming here at night. I prefer to receive visitors in the daytime. And besides,” you mocked him, “you could’ve sent that letter with a messenger. I received one from Volpe today.” You began washing your long hair, applying an almond-scented oil, which according to the merchant you had bought it from, would make your hair shiny and soft. He wasn’t lying when he said that - that much you knew.

“Really? What did it say?” he stepped closer to the window. “I assume those were the updates on Roma?” Your silence was an answer enough.

“Then you know that he has to do it as quickly as possible. This city hasn’t been in a good state for quite a while now, and I fear the situation will become even worse.”

“That much is clear. The Borgia have always been up to something. If they want power, they will stop at nothing to achieve that. The unrests in Madrid and Barcelona were handful enough after the end of Torquemada’s Inquisition eight years ago. He was a fool. The king was a fool. I was a fool, Niccolo.”

“There’s nothing wrong with-” you swiftly cut him off.

“You don’t know what happened in there! It…It was a mess. No, worse, un montón de mierda (a pile of shit)! If things were different…maybe all of the Borgia would already by lying deep beneath the earth, forever trapped in the darkness…” you stood up from the bathtub, not caring if your current visitor saw you naked. He focused on something in the distance, allowing you to cover yourself with a simple white nightgown. Once you were done, you approached him.

“I will start gathering the intelligence myself tomorrow. Preparations will take time but as always, it’s better to be ready than making up everything as you go.

“I will take my leave then. Buona notte, Y/N.”

“Buona notte,” you whispered back once he closed the door. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, that much you knew. But before laying down under the warm covers, you went towards your writing desk and sat down. For days now, Cesare has been gathering his forces near Castello Sant’Angelo. While his motives were somewhat unclear to you, you knew that nothing good would come out of this. If you were correct - and with those things you usually were - he would set his sight on Monteriggioni, since just earlier today, you heard of Ezio defeating Rodrigo in the Vault. And now his son would try to get the Apple back...If Mario doesn’t receive the letter you’re about to send him, you fear Ezio will experience a great tragedy once more. As if the man hasn’t gone through enough.

Taglist: @sassenach-on-the-rocks, @kisstheassassins, @creednight, @assassins--and--hidden--blades, @thelastemzy, @tarjanisfrye, @iceboundstar, @thebgassassin, @undertastic-dork, @mavrisfanfics @, @ermergerd517, @galaxycat-1459, @clara-oswhy, @peanutbutter-kitz, @kittitt, @sazula, @writingsofawaywardnerd

[maswartz]

“

Bernie Sanders suffers from Great Man syndrome. It afflicts all white men, some worse than others and it can’t be cured. In Bernie world Hillary’s popularity was only “because she was a woman.” Bernie’s followers lap up this hogwash because they don’t know any better, because they too have been conditioned to believe what the Great Man says no matter what. But Hillary, of course, was speaking up for the Obama coalition, that was black mothers of shooting victims (she was criticized for this, of course), women and children all over the world and here in the US (and criticized for this). She offered practical solutions to difficult problems that were actually workable. She didn’t make false promises like a false prophet, like a god. Hillary had a great plan for dealing with college debt, and wanted to extend and improve the Affordable Care Act. Hillary actually knew she could do the job well but like so many of us women know, not only aren’t we trusted to do the job, no one believes we CAN do the job.

I’m sorry that Bernie said what he said about Hillary and women. It fed into the warped frenzy of misogyny that overtook his so-called revolution. He still thinks, and his followers think, that he would have beaten Trump. He couldn’t even win in the primary. There was no rigging, there was no collusion. She won four million more votes that he did. The people chose HER and not him. All Bernie did was help Trump win. He knows this, which is why he’s now on a desperate speaking tour to not become Ralph Nader in he public’s eyes. Blame Hillary, blame the democrats. Do anything BUT blame Bernie. And Bernie is exactly who deserves much of the blame for what he’s done, what he is still doing, to ensure the democrats lose and lose again in four years.

Would Bernie have beaten Trump? The answer is no one can say for sure but I would guess that absolutely no, he could not have. Here are the reasons why.

But first, you might be inclined to say, “we’re fighting a fascist, why aren’t we uniting against Trump?” he reason is that we can’t unite because we are deeply and sharply divided still. 2.5 million more votes than Trump is what Hillary Clinton will have had by the end of the election. He won but just barely. He won the electoral college by going after the Bernie voters and counting on third party voters to sabotage Hillary’s lead and it worked. Bernie Sanders must take responsibility for his part in this or there will be no moving forward. You can’t lie to people when the evidence is right in front of them.

Historically speaking, this election was always the Republican’s to lose. The pendulum swing of American election cycles is maddeningly predictable: Both parties find it hard to hold onto the White House for more than 2 terms in a row. Reagan did it. But he’s really the only one in recent history. JFK and FDR both died in office and that’s the only way we ever got a successor elected, since the 1800s. We had one shot to win for the Democrats and that was to make the case that the last eight years were working for Americans, that Obama’s policies and presidency had been a success, and that we wanted four more years to finish what he had started, to overcome the obstructionist roadblocks, and buttress the Obama legacy with a Supreme Court that would work to uphold his great strides. But Bernie Sanders ran a campaign as a newly minted Democrat against the Democrats! With that reckless miscalculation, he lost this election for himself and for Hillary before it even started. His entire campaign became a beta test commercial for Trump’s candidacy, as Trump noted which Hillary attacks had traction and adopted every single talking point (minus the free college and free healthcare) that Bernie had hammered her with. Bernie helped Trump immeasurably. Bernie knew could not have beaten Trump unless he’d been Obama’s chosen successor and be handed the baton to continue Obama’s policies. Since that wasn’t happening, Bernie’s only option was to tell voters that nothing about the past two terms was good enough for the American people. He made that case that the Democrats had fallen short. A ridiculous claim, but several thousand people in key states fell for it. Sure, after he lost the nomination Bernie tried to change horses mid-stream but it never really worked for him. By then, he had convinced a few million voters in his flock that Hillary was too corrupt to deserve their vote. 3 or 4 million of his most fervid supporters could never snap out of their brainwashing. If anything, some felt doubly betrayed, and many of them turned on Bernie, called him a “sellout” when got behind Hillary.

The Republicans had major opposition research ready to launch on Bernie Sanders that would have made his numbers drop quickly significantly in the polls. But Bernie was never attacked by Hillary’s team, nor by the GOP. Ask yourself why and the reason is obvious. The GOP wanted to run against Bernie. They knew they had far more volatile stuff to dump on him that the whimpering “emails, emails, emails” chant that had lost all its pizazz. Their strategy was to leave Bernie alone because the better Bernie looked, the worse Hillary looked. Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald laid out some of that oppo research and this is what he found:

Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it — a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.

Then there’s the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words “environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.

Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system. His pitch for universal health care would have been used against him too, since it was tried in his home state of Vermont and collapsed due to excessive costs. Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, “Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,’’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned “state terrorism” by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was “patriotic.”

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone reallyattacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

Unfortunately, Sanders supporters think he’s god-like and thus, they rely solely on those inflated poll numbers. Nate Silver would tell them that you can’t really trust polls until you’ve seen the candidate “punched” completely by the opposition party. Silver thinks now it was a mistake for Hillary not to attack him because now no one will ever believe he could have been attacked the way she has been for decades. To them, Hillary had it coming but the truth is Bernie has never been considered a threat enough TO ATTACK in the first place.

3. Bernie is Jewish (as am I in case you want to start blamesplaining). He’s a socialist. And he’s an atheist. Do I need to explain this one? Obama might have been black but he was Christian. A man of faith. And though he was accused of being a socialist he is not. Bernie actually is! Has always been a socialist, bragged about being one, has expressed an affinity for Fidel Castro on video, and hates the Democratic party for not being leftist enough. The Jewish part is a touchy subject, but we have to be realistic about the American “heartland.” Is flyover America ready for a Jew in the White House? Let’s ask Joe Lieberman. Or how about ask voters in 40 states who have never sent a Jewish senator to Washington D.C. Ever. 40 states. Never Elected. A Jewish Senator. In 230 years. Are Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, suddenly ready to see a Jew in the Oval Office? I do not believe they are. Not in the America that just elected Donald Trump. They aren’t even ready for a woman. The Bernie people don’t seem to know this other half of America exists. To Bernie and his supporters all those people who just voted for Trump are did so because Bernie wasn’t on the ballot. Seriously, that’s what they think.

4. Bernie Sanders promised to raise taxes on just about everyone, even a small amount on the middle class. If you think any politician can win a national election by saying they are going to raise taxes on the middle class, you have another think coming. Yes, Bernie’s ideas on trade, and certainly on the climate, are appealing to most but his platform was predicated on making the government pay for everything. When you put together his own history of never having a job for his first 30 years as an adult, never really earning a paycheck that wasn’t from the government, you can fill out the bubbles from there, right? You can visualize the Republican TV ads, yes? Please tell me you can.

5. He couldn’t win the primary. In the Land of Nod , the sad fable is that Bernie was cheated by the DNC. That’s what the Republicans wanted the Berners to believe, that’s the story they seeded, nurtured and harvested, and so it was! The most hardcore Berniacs threw one hissy fit after another, stoned Wasserman-Schultz, threatened to bust up the convention all because Hillary Clinton won more votes. He lost. Not by a little, by a lot. 55% — 43%. But for a huge number of his sullen supporters, if Bernie couldn’t have the prize, the no one could. That was their attitude. But the fact is Bernie’s supporters simply didn’t vote in large enough numbers. They didn’t even vote down ballot during the primaries. They didn’t vote for any of the progressive candidates Bernie had anointed, like Russ Finegold and Zephyr Teachout. For all their demonizing of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, they couldn’t even be bthered to vote for her Bernie-certified opponent Tim Canova. The “revolution” was failing at every level, all across the country. The giddy crowds showed up at rallies but apparently standing in line to vote wasn’t exciting enough. Maybe no one ever taught these people about government. They certainly don’t seem to know much about safeguards the three branches help ensure. Bernie Sanders lost so badly in the South he never could have won the general election with those kinds of numbers even with Hillary out of the way. His excuse? “Oh, they’re just too deeply conservative in the south.” And worse: “Oh, they’re not educated about the issues.” Great way to connect with black voters, there, Professor Sanders! Dismiss them as being too ill-informed to know what’s good for them. Charming. Perhaps if Bernie had one more year of campaigning to strengthen his weaknesses, he might have got a better toehold. But he didn’t. The theory is that good reasonable Democrats would shunned him the primaries would have come ‘round and voted for him in the general. But I’m betting many would have fled altogether and voted for Trump, for the three following reasons.

6. a) Isis. If you didn’t get that Isis was a big part of this election you were living in a bubble, a fantasy bubble where your biggest fear is fracking. But the news that most people watch like CNN or Fox News? It’s all Isis all the time. Fear of Isis is pumped into their living rooms around the clock and it’s become ingrained in our national reality. These voters aren’t staring at Facebook and reading biased boutique news sites that tell progressive liberals what they want to hear (gluten free water cures cancer!). They’re looking around at the world from their own homes and they’re scared. Whether Bernie and his minions thought Isis was a threat is irrelevant. The voters clearly did and they thought it in a big way. It’s an issue much more important to a truckdriver than free college. And there are millions of longhaul truckdrivers. Trump and Hillary Clinton both mopped the floor with Bernie Sanders on Isis and terrorism and foreign policy. Remember the Daily News interview? Bernie forgot to study for that exam. 6. b) Economy. Trump pretended to be Bernie’s best friend because it made Hillary look bad. He used Bernie like a bar rag, sopping up the stale foam of angry white dudes, hipster or otherwise, who could not believe their Feel-the-Bern icon of virtue had been beaten by a girl. 6. c) Immigration. See 6a) and 6b) Because the greatest trick Trump ever pulled was convincing a stunningly large swath of white Americans that all their terrorism fears and the economic woes would magically evaporate if we could only Build That Wall. So it was all about Isis, the economy, and immigration. It was in the beginning, it was in the end, and it is now. Trump would have crushed Sanders on those key points alone and it wouldn’t have even been hard.

7. Bernie is in it for Bernie. He probably would have chosen Cornel West as his running mate, but it’s pretty clear he would not have chosen anyone he would want to share the stage with, because he didn’t like sharing the stage with anyone, not even his poor wife. (“Don’t stand next to me!”) So his veep would have been… who knows. Certainly not dynamo Elizabeth Warren. She would have swooped in like Bernie’s charismatic caregiver. Although in the dreamland of liberal utopia it would have been Sanders and Warren. But even that duo would have lost and lost badly to Trump. Outside the major cities where most of us dwell, the majority of Americans saw Trump and Sanders as different species of outsiders. That’s both funny sad, because Bernie only seemed like an outsider, because nobody in 49 states had ever heard of him before last year, despite his decades in public office. So given that choice, to those voters, Trump would have been basically Bernie except glitzy capitalism instead of scary socialism, Trump was Bernie except with a strong hand against terrorism instead of weak one. Trump was Bernie except with the sultry MILF by his side. None of this would have sat well with a man as vain as Bernie Sanders. Bernie would have been pressured by his all-or-nothing followers to pick a progressive veep so now you’ve got the Bernie progressive vote, you’ve got some of the loyalist Democrats, but you’ve lost ALL of the moderates who are too freaked out about taxes and Isis to take a chance on a radically left ticket.

8. Change in America is incremental and slow. It does not come quickly. After two terms of a Democratic president, the American people have never and will never move farther to the outer reaches in the same direction of the party in power. America is populated by mostly moderates who care more about paying taxes (or not) than just about anything else. Whatever Bernie is offering, this is an electorate that could barely accept Obamacare because they thought it was socialism — what kind of a crackpot does one have to be to think Americans would be ready to veer all the way to 100% government-run health care? They wouldn’t. They won’t. Not yet. I’m so sick of having this conversation with people and if Bernie Sanders runs in 2020 then and only then will they understand, just like the McGovern supporters learned and the Nader voters. You learn that ugly lesson once. For those of us who have lived through people learning that lesson, to watch it learned over again is not just frustrating, it’s tragic. All the left seems able to do is put republicans in power, until they get a clue about what America is and what America isn’t.

9. Liberals were living in a bubble of illusion, including and especially the Berniecrats. They were following what the media kept saying and the media focused entirely too much on Sanders — only when he hurt Hillary. They never focused on his policies. They didn’t want to talk policy. Policy is boring. Let’s watch the scrappy senator take down the powerful woman. Let’s watch Trump take Hillary down. That’s what they were invested in. And they lulled Americans into falsely believing the democrats had it in the bag. This is true now and it would have been true if Bernie won. The only difference is that now Bernie would have to find another scapegoat to explain what would have been a landslide loss for him. But the polls, they would cry, the polls! Because the polls were all they had and the polls were wrong when it came to Trump. They were wrong. Liberals need to break out of that bubble because the joke is on us. America is laughing at us and our hysteria and in order to save the environment, fight for civil and LGBT rights we have to get smarter about it and getting smarter about it does not include living in a deluded fantasy that “Bernie would have won.” No, he wouldn’t have.

10. You can’t lead the democratic party and focus only on the white working class as Bernie did. You can’t lead the democratic party by not acknowledging the success of its two term president, Barack Obama. You can’t lead the democratic party by perpetuating the false notion that Hillary Clinton was only where she was because she was a woman. The democratic party is not the party of the white working class. It stands for a bigger, broader group than that. Bernie writes it off as “identity politics” but it’s bigger than that because America, and the world, are changing. Hillary has more of a record of action than Bernie ever had in 30 years. To discount that is to tell a lie. If you tell enough lies sooner or later they catch up with you and Bernie’s would have caught up with him. He should never have divided the democrats the way he did. He should never have influenced so many young people not to choose pragmatism.

On top of our deep sense of sadness (and yes, everlasting anger) over the way this election was manipulated by the FBI, by WikiLeaks, by Putin, by news media both slanted and fake — it’s just exhausting two weeks later to have to listen to Bernie’s simplistic lectures about the Democrats “failure to connect” with the white working class, and scolded for not seeming to know what people in America care about. It has become depressing and tiresome to watch Bernie continue to blame Hillary even now. Had he ever tried to discourage the character assassination against her early on, we would have had a chance. But Bernie could not stand it that Hillary was beating him. He still can’t stand it and he still can’t believe it. It’s time for him to stop already. Just stop.

“

[pastperfect-online]

September 1, 1807 - Aaron Burr acquitted of Treason

"Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

Aaron Burr, born into a prestigious New Jersey family in 1756, graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the age of 17. He joined the Continental Army in 1775 and distinguished himself during the Patriot attack on Quebec. A masterful politician, he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1783 and later served as state attorney. In 1790, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1796, Burr ran for the vice presidency on Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican ticket (the forerunner of the Democratic Party), but the Federalist John Adams won the presidency. Burr left the Senate and returned to the New York Assembly.

In 1800, Jefferson again chose Burr as his running mate. Under the electoral procedure then prevailing, president and vice president were not voted for distinctly; the candidate who received the most votes was elected president, and the second in line, vice president. Jefferson and Burr each won 73 votes, and the election was sent to the House of Representatives. What at first seemed but an electoral technicality–handing Jefferson victory over his running mate–developed into a major constitutional crisis when Federalists in the lame-duck Congress threw their support behind Burr. After a remarkable 35 tie votes, a small group of Federalists changed sides and voted in Jefferson’s favor.

Burr became vice president, but Jefferson grew apart from him, and he did not support Burr’s renomination to a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists, who had found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson, sought to enlist the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Burr’s old political antagonist Alexander Hamilton campaigned against him with great fervor, and he lost the Federalist nomination and then, running as an independent for governor, the election. In the campaign, Burr’s character was savagely attacked by Hamilton and others, and after the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton to a duel, or an “affair of honor,” as they were known.

Affairs of honor were commonplace in America at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to a resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton’s “second”—his assistant and witness in the duel—Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. Burr’s second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine. Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon.

Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.

In 1805, Burr, thoroughly discredited, concocted a plot with James Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, to seize the Louisiana Territory and establish an independent empire, which Burr, presumably, would lead. He contacted the British government and unsuccessfully pleaded for assistance in the scheme. Later, when border trouble with Spanish Mexico heated up, Burr and Wilkinson conspired to seize territory in Spanish America for the same purpose.

In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an immediate U.S. investigation. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. In February 1807, Burr was arrested in Louisiana for treason and sent to Virginia to be tried in a U.S. court. On September 1, he was acquitted on a technicality. Nevertheless, the public condemned him as a traitor, and he went into exile to Europe. He later returned to private life in New York, the murder charges against him forgotten. He died in 1836."

- History.com

This week in History:

August 29, 1876 - Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the electric self-starter, is born August 30, 1983 - Guion S. Blueford becomes first African-American to travel to space August 31, 1897 - Thomas Edison patents the Kinetograph September 1, 1985 - Wreck of Titanic Found September 2, 1945 - Japan surrenders, bringing an end to WWII September 3, 1783 - Treaty of Paris signed September 4, 1951 - President Truman makes first transcontinental television broadcast

This engraving of Aaron Burr can be found in the online collection of the Fraunces Tavern Museum. 

[veliusthewanderer]

My Most Rage-Filled Rant EVER!

As I’m writing this, nearly a month has passed since the Capitol Hill riots which took the lives of 5 people, injured dozens more and very likely contributed to the greatest Covid-19 spread in the new year, I feel a need to make my feelings known. I also have to make clear that not everyone who is a conservative is going to get the full fury of my rant. Hence, I decided to break this down into two sections. The first will be addressed to those conservatives who might’ve supported Trump until the Riots happened, then turned their backs on him. I’ll even address those who may have abandoned Trump well before the events of January 6. I will be dignified, respectful, and compassionate. The second part will be broken down for three groups, and here I will not be so merciful, so if you offend easily, you may wish to stop reading now.To the first group, now that you’ve seen how Trump behaved during the last four years, and up to the dreadful day where 70,000 people stormed the Capitol on his orders to stop the election certification, do you have any regrets backing him back in 2016? You likely have turned your back on him and even denounced him. The first step to handling any problem is acknowledging that you have a problem, and its never easy to do so, especially in a time where emotions continue to run high as a result of the most contentious election that this country ever had. You no doubt have family, co-workers, friends, lovers who have all but ostracized you for your decision to abandon ‘the cause’. As hard as this will be to read, at this point these people should be considered lost causes. No matter how much factual information you try to provide them, they will never accept it. Instead of trying to rehabilitate them, its better to cast them adrift and let them stew in their disgust. You may feel like you need to keep a line of communication open-and that’s certainly your choice-but you run the risk of inflaming the resentments to a point in which the outcome will not be a good one, so if you choose to keep a line open, always approach the topic slowly. For many in my own inner circle-family mostly, there may never be a way to bridge the gulf of misunderstanding. As much as I would love to open their eyes to the damage Trump has done, its never going to break the hypnotic trance he’s put them in. For you, its enough to know you aren’t alone in not knowing how to handle the division. You took a big chance in condemning Trump even if only because of his role in the Insurrection and for that you have my never-ending admiration and respect. I personally will not shame you for the prior support you gave to Trump because you honestly didn’t know what kind of person he truly was. I will apologize if I have put you in the crosshairs with your colleagues who still adore Trump, but you needed to know that I do not hold a grudge against you for whatever prior support you showed him.Now that I’ve addressed the first group and offered them my moral support, its time to address the lost causes out there. I must insist again that if you’re easily offended by the slightest truth, then you need to stop reading because the gloves are about to come off. I will be addressing three particular groups in this second half: the rioters (assuming they haven’t been arrested already), the co-conspirators in Congress (all GOP, by the way) and lastly, the people who while not directly involved in the Insurrection continue to espouse the Big Lie that Trump was cheated. I will be sure to break my rage-rant down, but all will start with the same opening line. I will also remind you that as my identity has not nor will ever be revealed, there is no point in posting death-threats. However, if you insist on doing so, I WILL report them to Tumblr and the police.

- To the rioters who have yet to be arrested:

HOW DARE YOU!! How dare you attempt an insurrection against a lawfully elected government on the basis of a BS claim by your ‘Great Leader’ Trump. You claim to be fighting against ‘communism’ yet you’re willing to enact a fascist dictatorship because you’re frightened of the alternative. This is a DEMOCRACY, and in a democracy there are winners and losers. Those who lost have an opportunity in four years-unless they’ve already had two presidential terms-to run again. Had Trump not incited 70,000 people to storm the Capitol with calls to hang Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, then half-heartedly attempted to stop the rioting, he could’ve had his chance again in 2024. Because of your actions and his role, he will very likely NEVER run for political office again. The fact that many of you who participated in the Insurrection were military veterans is the most damning thing about this situation. You fought against fascism, you were on guard against communist insurgency, you defended this country from Islamic extremism, yet you were willing to march in lockstep with a soon-to-be ex-President Trump to install a dictatorship because you bought into the Big Lie. You should not only be ashamed of yourself, but you should be stripped of any medals and commendations you earned in your career. Another point to make, and one I will repeat throughout the rest of this rage-rant, the fact that 5 people died during the insurrection. 5 people that shouldn’t have had to die. Four of the deaths were rioters and at least one of them was a military veteran. One police officer who did his duty to hold off the mob also died. You may think you did your patriotic duty by making your outrage known, but that is no consolation to the families of the people who died. They died because you wanted Trump to seize power and stop a legal election process. If the very thought that their families will now have to celebrate birthdays, Holidays, anniversaries and other happy occasions without them doesn’t make you feel guilty and ashamed, then you are not patriotic at all, only cold-hearted and stupid

-To the GOP traitors who abetted the Trump Insurrection:

HOW DARE YOU!! How dare you aid a would-be dictator to overturn the results of a legal election. You not only bought into the Big Lie, you promoted it within your offices. You even ran on the Big Lie and-somehow-won. Case in point is Marjorie Taylor Green, the woman known for her QAnon videos. She was on record as suggesting execution of Democrat leaders would be the only way to end the ‘pedophilia ring, Deep State system’ that she claimed was working against Trump. But its not just Green. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas were the loudspeakers for the Big Lie, and even after the Capitol had finally been cleared of the rioters, insisted on objecting to the electoral results even knowing the objections were based on false claims and would not be considered. Even now, they remain committed to the Big Lie and have already begun their effort to obstruct President Biden’s agenda which can help ALL Americans regardless of political views, particularly where the pandemic is concerned. They would rather see Americans suffer with disease, loss of jobs, foreclosure, eviction because they still believe Biden is illegitimate and Trump is the rightful winner, than to assist in improving the conditions the pandemic has left and continues to leave in its wake. I make this warning clear: we will remember what you did when 2022 comes and you’re up for re-election. This goes for the other 137 House GOP and 13 Senate GOP who participated in Trump’s attempted coup and in some cases (Mo Brooks of Alabama) even fired up the rioters just before the Insurrection began. I should also remind you that the blood of 5 people coats your hands, and that the families of those 5 souls lost on that terrible day will never forgive you for your role in it. Shame on you and may you rot in eternal damnation.

-Finally, to those who still believe Trump won:

SHAME ON YOU!!

You, who spread the Big Lie around social media. You who couldn’t be bothered to actually research some new claim before spreading it around because it came from a ‘trusted source’ such as a family member, close friend, co-worker, fellow churchgoer, even ‘news’ outlets like F*X News, OANN, and Newsmax. You like to tell those who challenge your information that they refuse to question ‘facts’ and buy into whatever CNN or ABC News says. The cold truth is, it is YOU that refuse to fact-check. Whether its because you believe the source or because the idea that the alternate fact is in fact a bald-faced lie scares you doesn’t matter. It was because of you that 70,000 people went to Washington DC, listened to the fiery orations of Trump, Don Jt., Giuliani, and Brooks, then marched with the intention to take hostages, even execute government officials all for the purpose of making sure Trump won his second term. It’s because of you that Marjorie Taylor Green is now a congresswoman and still-despite her claims otherwise-attached to QAnon. It is because of you that there is division in this country that may or may not ever be truly healed despite the best efforts of the new POTUS. Worst of all, it may very well be you that keeps us locked down in a pandemic that your so-called ‘saviour’ had the power to defeat but instead chose to sit on his butt and dismiss as a novelty that would magically go away. If you’re already thinking of sending hate posts in response to this, I can only see it as your continued refusal to come to reality and accept that your Great Leader lost the election, lost his numerous court battles to save his legacy, and ultimately failed to forcefully overturn the legitimate results of an election that was already contentious before Covid-19 changed the rules. You are a lost cause and should henceforth be treated as such. And if you went to Washington DC to participate in the rally-turned-insurrection and have found yourself hence without a job, ostracized by friends and family, then you deserve it. You cannot blame the “libtards” for costing you your job, costing you your love life, costing you respect. You ultimately have only yourself to blame. You might as well hide in the basement, stick your fingers in your ears and hum as loud as possible for the next four years because like it or not, Biden is now the POTUS

[julianlapostat]

Populism in Shakespeare and ASOIAF: Crisis of Institutions

This will be the last of my ASOIAF/Shakespeare metas/juxtapositions. I hope to return again with more, but in so far as I want to expand our understanding of Shakespeare and how ASOIAF connects to it in expected and unexpected ways, and expanding outside the usual plays, this is a stopping point, one from which I might begin again at some later date, or others might do so. This post considers populism and how GRRM represents it and how it compares it with Shakespeare’s take on the subjects.  (ABOVE playbill showing a RSC production of Coriolanus, below the Roman General’s westerosi “ son semblable, — son frère! ” Victarion Greyjoy).

In ASOIAF we have two elections represented on page. One is the Night Watch election in ASOS, and the other is the Kingsmoot in AFFC. Both of these are elections but neither can be considered democratic by 20th Century definitions. The Night’s Watch elections is restricted to the Watch only, and the Kingsmoot elections is restricted to men, noble lords, captain, and there’s no secret ballot whatsoever. William Shakespeare’s plays are generally considered monarchical in setting. Two of his plays however are set in the Roman Republic: Julius Caesar, most famously, and the other is Coriolanus. The Roman Republic is not democratic by contemporary standards either. The parallel between Caesar and the Night’s Watch Story Arc of AFFC/ADWD is I think quite obvious. The parallel of Coriolanus, I argue is with the Kingsmoot and that’s what I will consider.

From Shakespeare’s plays, despite some arguments and support by a few critics, there is very little sense that the author was attracted to a democracy or a republic. Most of William Shakespeare’s plays are set in monarchies, duchies, and aristocratic settings.The exceptions including the Venetian Plays (merchant of Venice/Othello) which is set in the slaveowning oligarchical city-state. Then you have the Roman histories which chronologically arranged (Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra) shows the decay and fall of the Roman Republic and Birth of Empire. Some of Shakespeare’s history plays represents Parliament, but the two prominent instances feature Parliament used as an instrument of usurpation -- Richard II (where the King is deposed by Bolingbroke in a scene that was apparently censored) and Richard III which has the famous scene of Parliament legitimizing the villain’s usurpation with the acclamation: “God bless Richard, England’s Royal King”. In Shakespeare, charismatic authority subverts institutions, subverts norms, and legitimizes abuses, and the latter are shown weak to accommodate the former. 

In contrast, ASOIAF, from the very beginning has an institutional focus and in so far charismatic authority exists in the series it is shown critically and parodically. The Long Decade of Peace of Robert’s Rebellion is credited not to King Robert, but to Jon Arryn, and the Small Council. As Hand of the King, Ned Stark is aghast at Littlefinger’s report on the crown’s debt. Shakespeare being a man who lived in a late-medieval-early-modernizing Kingdom i.e. between the old and the new still believed in the concept of “King’s Two Bodies” since he passed his life as a subject of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, but ASOIAF is written by a 20th Century American in the Neoliberal ‘90s. @racefortheironthrone​ made a similar point when comparing Tyrion post-Blackwater and Henry V. The focus on institutions in ASOIAF becomes stronger in the books that follow, especially ASOS - AFFC - ADWD. It is in these books that the focus of ASOIAF shifts away from families, from houses to institutions: we have The Sparrows, the Brotherhood without Banners, the Citadel, the Golden Company, the Night’s Watch, the Brazen Beasts, the Windblown. Even the Small Council, the institution from Book 1 sees changes under Cersei, the offices are renamed and given new titles, the Hand is made into a Rump in place of the Lady Regent.

The moment that signals this shift in focus can be summarized in a simple phrase, “No moot but the kingsmoot”. In the second chapter of the Book (THE PROPHET):

“The iron king is dead! Yet a king will come again! For what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!” “A king shall rise!” the drowned men cried. “He shall. He must. But who?” The Damphair listened a moment, but only the waves gave answer. “Who shall be our king?” The drowned men began to slam their driftwood cudgels one against the other. “Damphair!” they cried. “Damphair King! Aeron King! Give us Damphair!” Aeron shook his head. “If a father has two sons and gives to one an axe and to the other a net, which does he intend should be the warrior?” “The axe is for the warrior,” Rus shouted back, “the net for a fisher of the seas.” “Aye,” said Aeron. “The god took me deep beneath the waves and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. I was not made to sit upon the Seastone Chair . . . no more than Euron Crow’s Eye. For I have heard the god, who says, No godless man may sit my Seastone Chair!” The Merlyn crossed his arms against his chest. “Is it Asha, then? Or Victarion? Tell us, priest!” “The Drowned God will tell you, but not here.” Aeron pointed at the Merlyn’s fat white face. “Look not to me, nor to the laws of men, but to the sea. Raise your sails and unship your oars, my lord, and take yourself to Old Wyk. You, and all the captains and the kings. Go not to Pyke, to bow before the godless, nor to Harlaw, to consort with scheming women. Point your prow toward Old Wyk, where stood the Grey King’s Hall. In the name of the Drowned God I summon you. I summon all of you! Leave your halls and hovels, your castles and your keeps, and return to Nagga’s hill to make a kingsmoot!” The Merlyn gaped at him. “A kingsmoot? There has not been a true kingsmoot in . . .” “. . . too long a time!” Aeron cried in anguish. “Yet in the dawn of days the ironborn chose their own kings...Listen! Listen to the waves! Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says, We shall have no king but from the kingsmoot!”

There is a crisis in the Iron Islands, and in that crisis, the main source for relief is directed to institutions, in this case the traditional Kingsmoot.

To return to Shakespeare, institutions generally don’t do well in Shakespeare. Some of Shakespeare’s works can be read as being overtly or covertly anti-authoritarian (Measure for Measure certainly) but a good many others can be read as anti-institutional. This mix of anti-authoritarianism and anti-instiutionalism makes Shakespeare quite susceptible to being co-opted by the wide spectrum of political groups. Coriolanus is the only Shakespeare play to be banned in a democracy. It was banned in the French Third Republic in the ‘30s (Though keep in mind that women didn’t have the vote in the 3rd Republic and it was a colonial power moreoever, so this is not a complete democracy we are talking about) because French fascists co-opted it. During the ‘30s, the likes of TS Eliot also praised Coriolanus and called it Shakespeare’s best tragedy and while Eliot is not exactly a fascist (that would be his pal Ezra Pound), he was a conservative tory Anglican and an anti-semite. The first major left-wing artist to re-appropriate Coriolanus was Bertolt Brecht in ‘50s Stalinist East Germany, which suggests that something about Coriolanus appeals to people on what contemporary political science considers to be on the political extremes, i.e. authoritarian right/authoritarian left. 

Like Julius Caesar, Coriolanus is an adaptation by Shakespeare of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. It’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of Plutarch’s biography, but the difference is that Plutarch is far more critical of Coriolanus than Shakespeare is. Shakespeare is more sympathetic to Coriolanus. A good example is the case of the “Tarpeian Rock” scene. This was the famous cliff on one of Rome’s Seven Hills by which the people could vote to throw of people they don’t like. In Plutarch there is only one mention of this, when Caius Martius Coriolanus, the titular character is condemned by the tribune,

Upon this, Sicinius, the boldest of the tribunes, after a brief conference with his colleagues, made formal proclamation that Martius was condemned to death by the tribunes of the people, and ordered the aediles to take him up to the Tarpeian rock at once, and cast him down the cliff below. But when the aediles laid hold of his person, it seemed, even to many of the plebeians, a horrible and monstrous act; the patricians, p163 moreover, utterly beside themselves, distressed and horror stricken, rushed with loud cries to his aid. Some of them actually pushed away the officers making the arrest, and got Marcius among themselves; some stretched out their hands in supplication of the multitude, since words and cries were of no avail amid such disorder and confusion.

LIFE OF CORIOLANUS, Translated by Dryden

This passage by Plutarch is apologetic but it is apologetic on behalf of the tribune and the Roman mob. 

In Shakespeare’s play, there are five mentions of the Tarpeian Rock. Now of course bear in mind that Shakespeare is adapting this for drama, and not writing an essay like Plutarch was. Not remotely the same medium. But even then Shakespeare’s change is clear, dramatic, and visible:

SICINIUS

He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands: he hath resisted law, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial Than the severity of the public power Which he so sets at nought.

First Citizen

He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people's mouths, And we their hands.

Citizens

He shall, sure on't. ACT ONE, SCENE THREE

In Shakespeare’s play only the Senators defend Coriolanus and none of the populace or the aediles dissent. The people blindly follow the tribunes which contradicts what Plutarch mentions. CORIOLANUS is the only Shakespeare play to actually represent an election campaign and a working republic. The plot of the play concerns a soldier Caius Martius, a General who defeated the Volsciian Tribe and captured the capital of Corioli from which he got his title Coriolanus. He’s a great general who loves Rome and the army, but he hates the citizens. His skills on the battlefield don’t translate to politics. Eventually Coriolanus gets banished from Rome, at which point he joins the Volscians and raises an army to fight the very Republic he once defended. He becomes a renegade in other words. 

There are parts of Coriolanus the Character that are contradictory. He is on one level anti-democratic, but he’s also on account of his martial glory and prowess, strangely anti-imperialistic. During the conquest of Corioli, in both Plutarch and Shakespeare, he condemns some of his men for war crimes and treats the Volscian well. Today, one can plausibly co-opt Coriolanus as an anti-populist, or a victim of populism, given the criticism he voices about electioneering in the play, described his opponent, the Tribune Brutus (an ancestor to the famous Assassin):

BRUTUS

I heard him swear, Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i' the market-place nor on him put The napless vesture of humility; Nor showing, as the manner is, his wounds To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

But of course Coriolanus swings from one extreme to the next. He is anti-populist but he’s also anti-institutional (aiming to curb and ruin the Tribune of the Plebs), and he’s both counter-revolutionary to his people and revolutionary to the Volsciians among whom he serves. The character in ASOIAF who mirrors Coriolanus’ character and contradictions best is VICTARION GREYJOY. 

The institution of the Kingsmoot in AFFC is shown to be quite modern in its intricacy complete with campaigning, electioneering, canvassing, and sloganeering. As noted by Asha Greyjoy who mentions it to her uncle Victarion (THE IRON CAPTAIN):

“Some men look larger at a distance,” Asha warned. “Walk amongst the cookfires if you dare, and listen. They are not telling tales of your strength, nor of my famous beauty. They talk only of the Crow’s Eye; the far places he has seen, the women he has raped and the men he’s killed, the cities he has sacked, the way he burnt Lord Tywin’s fleet at Lannisport . . .”

“I burnt the lion’s fleet,” Victarion insisted. “With mine own hands I flung the first torch onto his flagship.”

Victarion hates electioneering, and he insists only on his military prowess and record and resents Euron for claiming credit. At the Kingsmoot, this is Victarion’s entire speech (THE DROWNED MAN).

“I was a loyal brother,” Victarion went on. “When Balon was wed, it was me he sent to Harlaw to bring him back his bride. I led his longships into many a battle, and never lost but one. The first time Balon took a crown, it was me sailed into Lannisport to singe the lion’s tail. The second time, it was me he sent to skin the Young Wolf should he come howling home. All you’ll get from me is more of what you got from Balon. That’s all I have to say.”

Coriolanus hates the people of Rome with pride and he refuses to speak and pointedly refuses to make much of his scars.

CORIOLANUS

Your horror's pardon: I had rather have my wounds to heal again Than hear say how I got them.

[...]

When blows have made me stay, I fled from words. You soothed not, therefore hurt not: but your people, I love them as they weigh.

ACT2, SCENE2

Coriolanus is generally considered among Shakespeare’s dumbest tragic heroes. Victarion also swings from one extreme to the rest, only he does it stupidly hence ADWD where he becomes a devotee of both the Drowned God and Rhllor, and his idea of abolitionism (a la Dany) is hilariously offensive in its parody and satire. Aeron Greyjoy, who revived the institution of the Kingsmoot ultimately blames Euron’s victory on the people. But he also seeks to oppose Euron by going among the people and starting a revolution and resistance movement, a la General Coriolanus. He failed as is obvious in the Forsaken.  Victarion as GRRM argued elsewhere is a dullard. He has none of Coriolanus’ virtues. 

But who does Martin ultimately blame for Euron’s election? Should we agree with Aeron and condemn the mob, should we condemn the institution of the Kingsmoot, or should we condemn the weakness of effective opposition and unity against Euron. Because Coriolanus and Shakespeare cuts both ways. It’s possible to stage and read Coriolanus as the story of a General done in by a corrupt blood-thirsty mob, but we can also see in Coriolanus, the populace, mobilized effectively by the Tribunes Sicinus and Brutus to counter the Senate and the war hero Coriolanus from a Consulship that he believed he was entitled to, and which he likely would have used to abuse and limit their powers.

In AFFC, there was no united opposition to Euron. Euron won by charismatic authority, he won by magic, by subversion, but also by putting on a pretty good campaign. Euron is a cosmopolitan who hates the ironborn, who as @poorquentyn notes is a monster in a pirate suit, and he subverted the institutions of line of succession, of religion, and conventional morality. His chief opponents was Aeron’s religious authority, Victarion’s military record, and Asha’s own brand of charisma, and political skills. Together they could have combined as Coriolanus’ opponents in Plutarch and Shakespeare did to deny his consulship. Euron is a better and smarter candidate than both Victarion and Coriolanus but there wasn’t anything inevitable in him becoming King. The small reign of terror, the killing of Baelor Blacktyde, the purges and exile of Asha, the torture of Aeron Damphair, his chafing under the questioning of Rodrik Reader at Shield Islands, shows a man aware of real institutional levers against him. His canny subversion of feudal patronage and grants which he gloats to Aeron in Forsaken, shows a man who understands power and its limits. Proof of this can be seen in Samwell Tarly in ASOS, where Sam the Slayer manages to get a third party candidate to the LC Post, opposing the reactionary Alliser Thorne, by mobilizing and unitied Cotter Pyke/Denys Mallister and their men to throw their weight against Jon Snow. Sam Tarly behaves as a man who knows and understands his institution thoroughly and how to make it work to his advantage. Damphair, Asha and Victarion both knew and failed to appreciate it. 

Coriolanus can also be compared to Stannis Baratheon who is also an anti-populist (and anti-democratic) but who is also legalistic and institutionalist at the same time, and Stannis arguably mirrors Coriolanus’ trajectory the most in the way that his personal code and virtues is at odds with the values of his society. But fundamentally, Stannis is a more rounded and intellectual and introspective character than General Coriolanus, and Stannis is not without his populist appeal and support. The whole issue of mob violence can be compared to say, the Walk of Shame as well, but the religious movement of the Sparrows has no real parallel in anything in Shakespeare. 

This is as far as my SHAKESPEARE and ASOIAF Meta will go. At least for now. Maybe someday I will return with more stuff. But I doubt I will immerse myself as deeply into this. My next meta ASOIAF/Literary Compare Contrast series will be coming December-Jan anyway. 

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 6/19/2019

Good MORNING  #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Wednesday 19th June 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT), Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) or by purchasing a Midweek Nation Newspaper (MWN).

OK FOR LAND TAX PAYMENTS IN 4 PARTS – The people voiced their concerns about land tax payments, and the Government says it listened. Barbadians, many fuming over the hike in land tax, will now be allowed to pay their bills in four equal instalments by March 31 next year, and still earn a five per cent discount.  In addition, some property owners, especially pensioners, have also been advised they can apply for relief through the Land Tax Relief Board, to show that payment of increases may bring about undue hardship. The changes were announced yesterday by Prime Minister Mia Mottley in the House of Assembly, as she revealed initiatives aimed at easing the burden on taxpayers. (MWN)

LAND 'LAYAWAY' – After hearing the “cries of the people”, Government has implemented a four payment instalment plan, inclusive of a five per cent discount, for taxpayers.  In addition, those who own vacant property valued under $450,000 will get a ten per cent rebate. The announcements were made by Prime Minister Mia Mottley as she delivered a Ministerial Statement on the land tax payment issue in the House Assembly today. The Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment repeated the call for Barbadians to stay the course. Mottley told the House: “This Government, my Government has taken the time to listen to the cries and to act where we can. In my 2019 Budget Speech I asked that we as a nation stay the course. “We all knew it would not be easy but my Government is determined that we should all share the burden fairly and that no group would be unduly affected by the measures which we implemented.” She said that taxpayers who enter the instalment arrangement can benefit from the five per cent discount once they do so before July 26. “We have created a framework to allow Barbadians to pay their land tax bill over a longer period of time. We will be facilitating payments in instalments. We have entered into an arrangement with the Barbados Revenue Authority which allows a taxpayer to pay the bill in up to four instalments. This would allow people to better plan and be able to pay over a longer period of time.” The Prime Minister said there would be relief, too, for owners of vacant lots. She explained that 1,870 vacant lots will not benefit from the discount with nearly 35,000 benefitting from it. But the discount is not available to owners of commercial lots. “Any person owning vacant property which is valued under $450,000 will now attract a ten per cent discount on the amount of land tax they would have to pay to the Barbados Revenue Authority. In a case where the land tax has already been paid, and a credit exists such a credit will be applied by the Barbados Revenue Authority to your next land tax bill.” The Prime Minister, who interrupted Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds to deliver the Ministerial Statement, explained that the increase in land tax is only on properties valued more than $450 000. “For most property owners the decrease income tax will be significantly larger than any increase in land tax charge to any person owning a property over $450,000. The decrease in the amount of income tax being paid will be more than what Government is asking persons to pay in land tax.” Mottley said the early issuing of the land tax bill was to allow people more time to get their house in order. “There has also been an outcry about the early issue date of these bills and the comparatively shorter discount periods for taxpayers to take advantage of. That has not been the case. I would like to remind the public that the land tax payments are always due before March 31 of the financial year in which they are issued. “Once you pay before March 31, 2020, you will not be subject to any penalty or any interest. The due date has not changed. Previously, land tax bills would have been issued in September which would have actually given you a shorter period of time to pay your bill between September and March 31,” she said. Mottley continued: “We took the deliberate decision to be able to issue the bills by the end of May to give you a full ten months to be able to make way to being able to pay the bills rather than being forced to do so within that six-month period. We acknowledge that there was a five per cent and ten per cent discount if paid 30 days and 60 days after the issuance of the bill. We chose only to offer the five per cent discount this year instead of the ten per cent discount as well.”  (BT)

FORMER AG TO MARSHALL: RESIGN – With Barbados four killings shy of its highest ever murder tally in a given year, and with six months still to go in 2019, Attorney General Dale Marshall has been told to quit the post by his predecessor. Former Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite, in calling for the resignation of his successor, has declared that Marshall is now learning that the job is more difficult than it appeared from the outside looking in. In 2017, Marshall, who was the Opposition spokesperson on legal matters, called for Brathwaite to be relieved of duty following a wave of shootings, including brazen gunplay on Kadooment Day in which a man was killed and 22 others injured. Marshall said then: “I think the time has come when the Prime Minister [Freundel Stuart] needs to relieve the Attorney General of the portfolio that he gave him to maintain the peace and stability of our country. He’s failed woefully. “The Attorney General has failed us. He has failed the country. He’s failed, I’m sure, his constituents. And the time has come for the Prime Minister to relieve him of that responsibility since I’m sure that he would not resign.” But with the tables now turned, the former AG is making the same demand. Brathwaite told Barbados TODAY: “I used to say to the present Attorney General that even though opposition politics is difficult, it doesn’t mean that you say things that are not true. “If you go back to 2017, you would see that [Marshall’s] position was that I was doing such a poor job and my party was doing such a poor job that we should resign. Now, of course, we have an unprecedented level of murders in this country.” Brathwaite, who served in the Freundel Stuart administration which was ousted from power in the May 2018 general election, argued that Marshall, by his own standard, has been a failure as the Government’s top legal advisor and should therefore vacate the position. Said the former attorney general: “I think he should resign. Having taken the position that he did over the last couple of years in particular with respect to my job as Attorney General. “Given his performance, in any serious Westminster system, no one should have to call on him to resign, he should just resign. He should say that I have failed and therefore I resign.”  The former AG expressed the view that Government has failed to comprehend that the murder-rate is merely a manifestation of a systemic problem and unless steps are taken to address the problem from the root, the vicious cycle will continue. Brathwaite was referring to plans for dealing with at-risk youth who he said are often neglected until they end up in the justice system. Brathwaite declared: “They were so opposed to the [Democratic Labour Party administration] that they refused to see the challenges that we were having. I have always said that it is not an Attorney General’s problem to solve the crime in this country. “It is not his alone. The problem actually begins at inception… These youths who are often fleeing abuse, are condemned as criminals before an attempt is made to help them. “Unless we have a holistic approach to crime and criminal behaviour in this country, then pointing to criminal statistics does not help. So, we focus on the ones that commit crime, but we do not focus on the other challenges within society. We need to go back to basics”.   (BT)

BWA BE WARNED! – Top management of the state-run Barbados Water Authority (BWA) and its engineers are caught up in a standoff over the manner in which the latter claim they are being treated by company officials. And a source close to the issue, has told Barbados TODAY that nothing has gotten better since their bargaining agent – the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) –  sent a “warning” letter dated May 20, 2019 to general manager Keithroy Halliday regarding “the degree of psychological battering” to which the engineers are being subjected. In the correspondence – a copy of which has been obtained by Barbados TODAY – BWU General Secretary Senator Toni Moore told Halliday the water works company should count itself fortunate not to have been severely dislocated by strike action. “You should note that based on the degree of psychological battering which your engineering staff reported from their meeting with the Minister [of Water Resource Management] on Friday, 3rd May, 2019, there may well have been a fully publicized and gravely embarrassing work stoppage on Monday, 6 May, 2019,” Moore wrote. The union boss said her organisation met with the workers as it has been trying since February to “bring respect and decency” to the work environment at the water authority. She informed the BWA GM that the thrust of her strongly-worded letter was intended to identify national interests rather than personal pique or individual departures from acceptable courses of action. And Moore assured Halliday that the union was not closing the door on their relationship. “This organisation is still willing to meet with you and fully detail its concerns regarding those hostilities which continue to be a source of tremendous unease among your staff, including Mr Nathan Hart [an engineer] whose treatment still remains an untreated industrial relations abscess poisoning our labour management landscape,” the BWU leader wrote. Senator Moore told the water company’s general manager that if he continued to seem oblivious to what was going on, it could only be due to his failure to follow his own communications channels. “The terms of our meeting and our establishment of an acceptable way forward, are clear. Your answer should not be in seeking to coerce or to disarm by using individual approaches. Let this past period be confronted squarely, the issues properly bled and a new way forward embraced. We await your response,” the union boss said. However, inside sources told Barbados TODAY that up to this afternoon, there had been no response to the letter.. And tonight general manager Halliday said the BWA was not in a position to comment on the issue because they are in discussions with the union. “Based on what was presented, we are not in a position to comment at this time. As you know, once we are engaging in discussions with the union, we respect those boundaries. So we would not be able to respond at this time,” he told Barbados TODAY. (BT)

YOUNG PEOPLE NOT WORK READY – Employers across Barbados are generally dissatisfied with the level of readiness for the workforce among young people leaving secondary and tertiary learning institutions here. This is according to Chief Executive Officer of Pinelands Creative Workshop Sophia Greaves-Broome, who pointed out that research carried out in 2007 and again in 2011, showed that there were several barriers that prevented more graduates finding a job. Those research findings identified males and females between the ages of 15 and 24 as being most at risk, with most of the barriers to them finding gainful employment being poor basic education, poor work ethics, lack of marketable skills, and lack of work experience. Greaves-Broome pointed out that between 2017 and 2018 the Ministry of Labour carried out a similar survey funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) through the Skills for the Future programme. “The research findings revealed that employers in all sectors were generally still unsatisfied with the skills displayed by school leavers whether secondary or tertiary,” said Greaves-Broome. “Concerns were with the inadequate level of adaptability, the ability to collaborate, poor communication and conflict resolution, poor customer service, decision-making and time management skills and work ethics. Overall the soft skills of secondary school leavers were of high concern. It was also suggested that this type of personal and professional development gap can be of a significant barrier to employment,” she explained. Greaves-Broome was addressing the Pinelands Creative Workshop’s 19th annual Career and Life Management (CALM) programme at the office of the IDB on Monday. The ten-day event, which will see sessions continuing at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus in The Pine, St Michael in coming days, is being held under the theme Employ-Ability, and will engage students from secondary schools in high-level discussions on varying angles related to the labour market and the preparation for the world of work. Greaves-Broome called for attention to be redirected to developing skills in the areas of problem solving, critical thinking, team work, communication and conflict resolution, adding that it was the collective duty of civil society, and the private and public sectors to ensure quality education was provided to young people. “The world will continue to shift, but in the interest of our children, are we keeping up, are we aligning our education with the demands and creative industries, blue and green economies and other new and emerging areas that could be avenues for economic sustainability at the individual and national levels?” she asked. She welcomed Government’s decision to move away from the 11-plus examination system, adding that she hoped the new system would look to an education from a sustainable development angle and an international perspective”. Minister in the Ministry of Investment Marsha Caddle insisted that for individuals and the country to experience sustainable growth and development, there would be need for more engagement with young people in “the things that matter to them”. As such, she said the Mia Mottley-led administration was focused on seven main pillars to achieve a growth strategy, which included investing in areas that would benefit the youth. These, she said included “reinvesting in education and skills, reinvesting in public health, investing in climate resilient infrastructure, resetting fiscal policy, reinventing Government, reforming our financial system . . . and reengaging with CARICOM (Caribbean Community)”. Caddle said for the next 50 years Barbados should have an education system that “has a certain level of flexibility”, while welcoming the planned move away from the 11-plus examination. “Education is not just about employability. It is education for life. It is about being able to live meaningful lives and create agencies so that you understand why you are making decisions and how those decisions are important to you and the people around you. It is really about being able to live a life that we all value,” she said. Project Manager at the Maria Holder Memorial Trust Ruchelle Roach said there was need for more education and awareness among parents about the new and emerging sectors, as she called on individuals here to move away “from the doctor, lawyer, bank manager mode of thinking”. “We are seeing a trend where more and more young people are moving into the non-traditional areas of employment and we have to prepare the youth for the changing dynamics,” she said. Meanwhile, IDB representative Juan Carlos De La Hoz Vinas urged students to be bold and ask all the questions they could about career options they were interested in as they prepare to enter the world of work. (BT)

MORE SHIP BERTHS COMING – Plans to develop several berthing areas off the south, west and north of the island are in motion. Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds said the request for proposals for the repairs on the Speightstown jetty and development of “several other landings for maritime transportation” have recently gone out. He said officials have identified several sites including Speightstown in the north, Holetown and Fitts Village in the west and Accra and Oistins in the south, and “one or two in between” where some vessels could dock. He explained that the vessels to use those berths would be yachts and small luxury vessels with 1,500 and less passengers. He first outlined this plan back in February after meeting with local tourism officials and representatives of the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA). At that time, Symmonds said as Government prepared the island to receive larger cruise vessels, the highly-touted Sugar Point Cruise Terminal that was earmarked for the location between the Bridgetown Port and the Bridgetown Fishing Complex was to be reviewed so that larger vessels could be accommodated there. Presenting a resolution for the final report of the National Cruise Development Commission in Parliament on Tuesday, he expressed concern about the island’s capacity to handle larger vessels as cruise lines prepare to introduce bigger ships carrying more passengers adding that the former administration had signed contracts in this regard. “The Bridgetown Port on its best day in homeporting can turn around 10,000 people . . . but on any given day during a weekend period you will find four ships or more berthed at the Bridgetown Port,” he said. “We can do and do or fail to do until they dump us from the itinerary as they have dumped other people . . . So the ships that are coming are going to be carrying 5,000 people or more, but the maximum capacity we have is to carry 10,000 and we have an itinerary that tells you that you will have four ships homeporting. “It is in writing, they signed the contract. Richard Sealy [former minister of tourism] signed on behalf of Government, on November 29, 2013. And nothing was done, and we come to a point therefore where the capacity is the issue,” said Symmonds. However, he gave the assurance that while the $400 million development was now the subject of court proceedings, it was still very much a plan on the table but some changes would have to be made. “Discussions are ongoing. I give the House that assurance, but two things have to be looked at, one, a complete redesign of the concept, and a scaling down of the concept from the US$200 million enterprise that it was first mooted to be,” he said. (BT)

SAVING BELFIELD – Prime Minister Mia Mottley has announced that the former home of National Hero, the Right Excellent Samuel Jackman Prescod, which was demolished on Friday is to be rebuilt. The declaration came amid assurances by Mottley that her administration will do its best to preserve the island’s historic buildings. She told the audience at a reception, which included,Sir Henry Fraser, that Government has indicated that the property should be rebuilt to respect its heritage.     “The truth is that we will not always be able to save everything that we want to save. But we have determined as a Government that we will try, that is why the new planning development legislation has been drafted… and that is why we are working and will continue to work with all of the relevant entities to either restore or repurpose where possible, those aspects of our heritage that we want to be able to keep.”    The abandoned Belfield, Black Rock mansion, which was on the premises of the Nightingale Children’s Home, was bulldozed last Friday, a move which Sir Henry described as “a tragic and dramatic event”. He also charged that it was a “callous disregard for its history, our National Hero the Right Excellent Samuel Jackman Prescod, the generosity of a brilliant black Barbadian benefactor and its overall history of service to the children and people of Barbados”. But Mottley said while the demolition of the 200-year-old structure was “a difficult moment” for her, reports and recommendations from the engineers on the site was that restoration of the property would be difficult. “And that in circumstances where children were on that property, I have a responsibility with respect to the legal liability that would flow from Government … should children be injured.” Mottley made the comments at a reception on Monday night at Friendship Plantation in Hothersal Turning, to mark the 30th anniversary of Carib Rehab.  She also highlighted the need for repurposing plantation houses around the island in a bid to reduce the number of derelict properties. She said: “We believe that whether it is being able to facilitate enterprises such as this that don’t necessarily have to be in the centre of town, or whether it is international business offices as we see at Woodlands, that across Barbados we need to repurpose our plantations and… across the board, so that there [are] less derelict buildings across Barbados. “And I hope and pray that we can work with persons from St Lucy to St Philip to be able to do so.” (BT)

SBRC ON FIRE – Clouds of thick black smoke surround the Sustainable Barbados Recycling Centre at Vaucluse, St Thomas. Work was brought to an immediate halt around 3 p.m. when piles of garbage caught a fire. More details as they come. (MWN)

MINISTER CONFIRMS PRISON SCABIES-FREE – Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson has confirmed the existence of at least one case of scabies at HMP Dodds Prison in St Philip so far this year. However, Hinkson explained that the most recent reports of an infestation of the disease among prison officers turned out instead to be a fungal skin infection which affected six inmates last month. “In May 2019, which is probably the information that you have now received, six inmates were diagnosed as having a fungal skin infection, which, I am informed by the medical doctor, is not contagious and is not scabies,” the Minister told Barbados TODAY this morning. He was responding to a story published in this paper on Friday which quoted an unnamed prison officer as saying there was an infestation of scabies at the prison and that the officer who transports inmates to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) contracted it from an inmate and had to be treated at the QEH. It was also reported that a close family member of the prison officer also had to be treated. But the Minister said management of the penal institution has not received any reports from any staff of them being infected by scabies. He revealed though that in February this year, one inmate was diagnosed with the disease and had to be quarantined. “In February this year, one inmate revealed signs of having suspected scabies. A doctor was notified [and] the inmate was quarantined. Inmates who shared housing quarters with that inmate were also isolated. As you would appreciate, it would be in conformity with proper protocols. They were not allowed to have visitors or attend classes or have interaction with anyone during that period,” Hinkson said. “When he was further examined by a dermatologist, it was confirmed that he was carrying scabies,” Hinkson told Barbados TODAY. Hinkson however stressed that right now, the prison was free of scabies. He reported though that in October 2017, five inmates were isolated as a result of suspected case of scabies. “Two of those inmates were confirmed by one of the medical practitioners assigned to the prison as carrying the scabies virus They were treated and remained isolated for one week. A week after that, they were reviewed and discharged back into the general population with the medication and personal hygiene instructions,” Hinkson stated. He contended that the prison was just a microcosm of the wider Barbadian population and that there was nothing magical about the prison “at that time” having two cases of scabies. The Minister disclosed that  measures were being put in place to reduce the incidence of any fungal skin disease inside the St Philip jail. “In an effort to reduce this fungal skin infection, which is not contagious, recurring in the prison, the management and staff have increased their sensitization programme to both staff and inmates,” Hinkson said. The programme was being conducted through oral presentations by the staff of the medical unit and by way of distribution of leaflets on the issue. “These bacterial skin infections which would have been revealed last month among six of the inmates are mostly seen during the warm periods…and this is what we have been experiencing. You would concede [these] are mainly due to heat rashes, which is also due to poor hygiene practices…and hence the sensitization being given to the prisoners as well on this particular issue,” the Home Affairs Minister added. (BT)

REMAND INMATES GET DAY – A week after Justice Randall Worrell suspended High Court trials in an attempt to deal with the list of remand prisoners who wanted to plead guilty, the first set, 17 men, were brought down from HMP Dodds yesterday. Interestingly, one man declared he had no intention of pleading guilty and was given a date for trial. The status hearing in the No. 2 Supreme Court was the brainchild of the High Court judge after he had dealt with two men, one on remand for ten years, who told his court they had been waiting to plead guilty for a number of years.  At the time, Justice Worrell said he would be setting aside a week to deal with such men and matters and would not be hearing any more trials. (MWN)

COPS CHECKING GUN TALK VIDEO –The Cyber Crime Unit and detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department are examining a “disturbing” video by a group threatening revenge. The same day after Commissioner of Police Tyrone Griffith addressed a press conference in which he talked about revenge killings, the video surfaced on social media of the men boasting about attacking their opponents anytime or place, even during funeral services or school graduations. In response, Griffith said he had already directed the unit and detectives to investigate the matter thoroughly. Meantime, church leaders insisted they would not be intimidated into not conducting funeral services for any individuals dying through gun violence. (MWN)

MURDER ACCUSED REMANDED – Twenty-seven-year-old Romell Akeem Cummins, of Vauxhall # 2, Christ Church appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant in the District ‘A’ Magistrate Court this afternoon. He is accused of the murder of Dave Archer, 32, West Terrace, St James on June 10 on board the MV Dreamchaser. Cummins, who is being represented by attorney-at-law Angella Mitchell-Gittens was not required to plead to the indictable charge. He was remanded to Dodds until July 16. (BT)

CONVICT: WEAPONS FOR MY PROTECTION – Navy Gardens, Christ Church resident Ewing Anderson Forde today explained that he was on his property when police found him in possession of two weapons. “I had the weapons, I ain’t telling no lie,” the 27-year-old unemployed man told Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant today. He pleaded guilty to possession of a cutlass and a broken bottle while on Navy Garden Road, a public place. When police responded to a dispute at Old Navy Road around 7:40 a.m. today they found Forde armed with a cutlass in his right hand and a broken beer bottle in his left on the roadway. Asked to account for this, he allegedly told police, “I got these to protect myself, nobody ain’t gong to unfair me and get way so.” In an explanation from the dock to the magistrate this afternoon Forde said he was in an altercation with his cousin’s boyfriend who was telling him “all sorts of things”. “He asking me if I want to fight and poking me in my face. That is how I end up with all this types of things,” Forde said as he pointed to a swollen right eye. He added that he was talking to family members while holding the weapons when police arrived. “I was still on my property with the weapons but I had the weapons I not telling no lie,” he said before being placed on a bond for six months. If he breaches the order imposed in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court today he will we have to pay a $750 forthwith fine or spend four weeks in prison. (BT)

FIRST BATCH – More than a dozen prisoners on remand for murder, theft, drugs, gun and ammunition declared their intentions as the status hearings got underway before Justice Randall Worrell in the No. 2 Supreme Court this morning. There are reportedly 57 people on remand to appear before Justice Worrell this week alone. The status hearings are being held to clear a backlog of accused persons on remand at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds following the appearance of a prisoner who was forgotten and left to languish in jail for a decade. Seventeen men, two of them from St Lucia, appeared before the High Court judge today in the first of a series of status hearings. Today’s sitting comes just a week after Justice Worrell suspended sittings in his court and cleared his calendar for the week to get the status on accused persons on remand and their intentions with regards to their offences. The judge took the decision following recent guilty pleas from 52-year-old Joel Mckenzie McDonald Springer, of Hope Road and Northumberland, St Lucy and 50-year-old Winston Adolphus Agard, of 3rd Avenue, Licorish Village, St Michael. Springer said he had not been before a High Court since 2016 and that there were 17 other inmates in his building who were also desirous of pleading guilty. Agard, who the court heard had “fallen through the cracks”, appeared before a judge two weeks ago for the first time in seven years, after being on remand for close to a decade on a theft charge. Among those who stepped off a prison bus today and into the Whitepark Road, St Michael Supreme Court complex was Jamel Ashby, 28, of 4th Avenue Skeetes Road, Ivy, St Michael. He told the judge he had been on remand for nearly five years and wished to plead guilty to a firearm charge. But his case has not been indicted and prosecutors told the judge they are hoping to rectify that by Thursday. David O’brien Best of Thornbury Hill, Christ Church is currently serving a five-year sentence but told the judge he intends to plead guilty to a burglary charge. He however has to return on July 10 for another status hearing as the filed pertaining to him has to be “sourced”. When it was Jeffery William Chandler’s turn in the dock, the 56-year-old of Block E, The Ivy, St Michael told the judge he had been on the remand block at Dodds for the past 32 months. “All I want to do is to plead guilty,” the accused man, who returns to the No. 2 Supreme Court on July 10, and is charged for possession of a firearm and six rounds of ammunition declared. Vauxhall, Christ Church resident Renaldo Carter who lives at 1st Avenue has an attorney in charge of his case but put his name on the list. But when he appeared before the judge, attorney-at-law Angella Mitchell-Gittens, who is standing in as a friend of the court for those who are unrepresented, said Carter was “not sure what his position is.” His matter was therefore adjourned so his attorney could appear before the court and address his situation. Four-murder accused also put their names on the status hearings list and appeared before Justice Worrell this morning. Among them, 44-year-old Kendrick Davis, of Dodds Land, Church Village, St Philip who is charged with murder but wants to plead guilty to manslaughter and has been on remand since 2017 awaiting his day in court. Akil Grant, 33, of No. 2 Blades Hill, St Philip, who is facing a charge of the unlawful disposal of a body and has been on remand for the past three years, also stated his intentions. “I would like to plead guilty,” he said. But it was quickly realised that while his matter had been committed there was no indictment on his case. He will return on July 10. Some of the men at today’s hearings have not been in the system for years but said they were ready to have their cases dealt with. One such accused was Michael Anthony Brathwaite, 47, of Reed Street, St Michael. He was remanded in March for possession of two rounds of ammunition but insisted: “I ready to plead guilty. I am not wasting anytime.” He was given a July date since his matter has not been committed but he was not satisfied that Worrell had understood his position. “I want you to understand I pleading guilty, Sir,” he again stated to which the judge answered: “You have made that pellucidly clear, Mr Brathwaite”. Taking his leave, two men from the south of St Lucia also said they wished to enter guilty pleas to charges of possession, importation and trafficking of 238. 3 kilogrammes of cannabis. The two – Tyron Belhomme, 30, and Jack George, 39, both from Vieux Fort, have been on remand at Dodds for the past ten months. After getting adjournment dates to either return to enter their pleas or a further hearing to find out the status of their indictments, the men excited the docks to make way for another 20 fellow prisoners who are expected to appear for the status hearings tomorrow. Senior Crown Counsel Olivia Davis and Crown Counsel Oliver Thomas were the prosecutors at today’s sitting. (BT)

‘YOU DON’T OWN HER’ – A woman who was beaten by her boyfriend of ten years wants nothing more than for him to stay away from her. That was the woman’s tearful request when she appeared in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court today. She made the plea after she declined compensation via the court from her former boyfriend. It came after Nicholas Ethan Jordan, of Upper Clevedale Development, Black Rock, St Michael pleaded guilty to assaulting her on June 16 occasioning her actual bodily harm. He was warned to stay away from the woman and placed on a bond for 12 months. If breached he will have to pay a forthwith fine of $1,500 or spend eight weeks in prison. Police constable Kenmore Phillips said the two were involved in an argument in which Jordan accused the woman of being unfaithful and proceeded to beat her about the body with a belt. She escaped and sought refuge at another house. Thinking the coast was clear she ventured outside only to be told that Jordan was in the area. She tried to escape but he pounced on her and started to beat on her, going as far as to kick her while she was on the ground. Jordan told Magistrate Kristie-Cuffy Sargeant that he found out that the woman was cheating with two people. “I am very sorry that my feelings got the best of me,” he said. But the magistrate made it clear to Jordan: “You don’t own her!” He responded: “Yes I understand that but I love her so much. We have been together for ten years.” That revelation did not move the magistrate. “Not to the point that you hit and kick her. That is very degrading,” she said before imposing the bond and warning Jordan to stay away from the woman. (BT)

COURT CHALLENGE – Government could soon be facing a lawsuit from some public service vehicle (PSV) owners. Barbados TODAY investigations have revealed that a group of owners is considering taking Government to court over its decision to grant several concessions to PSV operators who joined the recently rolled out Transport Augmentation Programme (TAP). The disgruntled owners are upset they were not offered similar incentives by Government, despite repeated lobbying for almost two decades. Participants in the TAP programme are reportedly being allowed to pay their permit fee over a 12-month period, instead of the usual one-time payment. Permit fee for minibuses is $12 000, while for route taxis (ZRs) it is $7000. Additionally, a $1000 fee charged to register a vehicle as a PSV has been waived. The main bone of contention however, is the decision to allow them to purchase duty-free vehicles. The main bone of contention however, is the decision to allow them to purchase duty-free vehicles. The group of PSV owners has engaged the services of an attorney-at-law to determine if they have a strong enough case. One source told Barbados TODAY it was unfair Government was willing to offer those PSV owners duty-free vehicles, when that offer was not extended to them during initial conversations about joining the TAP programme. Furthermore, the source said they had been asking Government to grant them duty-free concessions on vehicles for 20 years, to no avail. “So how is it that these new players in the business, because some of them now have to go and purchase vehicles, how is it that Government can allow them to bring in duty-free vehicles? “PSV owners have been asking Government for duty-free vehicles for the longest time and even though this particular Government hasn’t been in office for the whole time, it is not fair that some of these guys will be able to bring in duty-free vehicles and we are still here battling with our old vans,” the source complained. The source contended that all PSV operators were critical to the island’s transport sector and should not be disadvantaged. Furthermore, the source pointed out that taxis and ZM owners were already allowed to purchase duty-free vehicles, which meant they would be the only ones in the transport sector exempted from doing so. The source said PSV owners had also previously asked for the $1000 transfer fee to be waived, but that has also not been granted. The source said they were also required to pay the road tax in one lump sum. And while he admitted PSV owners had never asked to be able to pay it on a monthly basis, he claimed Government was giving the new players an unfair advantage. “Some PSV owners have been in this industry for over 15 years and have gotten little to no benefits from Government. “It can’t be fair for these new players to sign onto a programme and just because it is a Government initiative they are going to get all of the perks. What about the PSV owners who have been providing invaluable service transporting Barbadians for the past 20 years? What is happening to us isn’t fair at all,” he complained. TAP was initially conceptualized to supplement the Transport Board’s diminishing fleet. Back in April, Prime Minister Mia Mottley explained that the programme would see public service vehicles (PSVs) integrating with the Transport Board in an effort to help move commuters. However, some PSV owners have chosen not to sign onto the programme. They claimed that some of the terms and conditions of the programme, such as Government’s requirement of them to pay 12.5 per cent of gross revenue were “particularly onerous”. (BT)

NEWBURY STARS BACK IN DIV.1 - Newbury Stars will be glittering in Division 1 netball in 2020. The St George club earned passage back to the top flight after defeating Brydens Stokes 51-46 at the Netball Stadium on Monday, completing a sweep of the Division 2 play-off battle.  The teams had ended tied at the end of the regular season after Stars had defeated Brydens but dropped a game to St Barnabas. In Game 1 of the play-offs, Stars edged Brydens 56-55, and on Monday night the match seemed to be following a similar script, with close quarters of 15-13, 27-26 and 38-36. (MWN)

RICHILD SPRINGER PASSES – Barbados’ standard-bearer in dance, Richild Springer, has passed away. The 73-year-old died this morning after a brief illness in Paris, France, where she lived for more then 40 years. The daughter of former governor general of Barbados Sir Hugh Springer and his wife Lady Springer, Richild attended Queen’s College and began dance studies in Jamaica under Rex Nettleford, Neville Black and Lavinia Williams. She earned a degree in dance from Bard College of New York and danced her away from the United States to Europe and back. Her chosen career allowed her to appear on television in France and England and she worked with some of the biggest names in choreography at the time, including Donald McKayle, Molly Molloy and Yannis Kokkos. She went on tour with Sammy Davis Jr and played the role of Josephine Baker in the last Josephine Baker’s Review in Monte Carlo. Richild also taught dance and was a choreographer. She was the godmother of Prime Minister Mia Mottley. In offering condolences to her family, Granville Garner, who danced with her at the Barbados Dance Theatre Company, remembered the impact she had on the troupe in the 1980s. “We would have all benefitted from her skills as a teacher and her choreographies which were revolutionary at the time when she came to Dance Theatre,” he said on Starcom Network this morning. “Over those years, Richild was always a phenomenal talent. This was a person if you were in dance and you were fortunate to meet Richild, you would have had an experience beyond anything else you would have experienced in Barbados.” Garner said she was very well-respected, both locally and internationally. (MWN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 196 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[qttalkpdx-blog]

This is Why Queers Protest by Grace Piper

I am sitting in the Cinebar in West Salem watching a $6.50 matinee of “Rogue One” on the day that Carrie Fisher died and I am feeling heavy, I am holding back tears throughout most of the movie, not just for Carrie, but for me too. I remember being young and my whole family gathering on the couch in piles and we would stuff the VHS  in and watch in awe with a dialogue to follow. This is still common practice for us when we get together. Growing up, this made my first hero the bad ass herself, Leia Organa, who literally killed fascists, was a well trained activist and strategist, and really carried the rebellion (in my opinion more than Luke, but that’s a different article). As each new movie set comes out, we are presented with a femme doing the emotional labor of the movement (seriously though, Padme), as well as making the strides and helping us move on to restoring balance to the force (Thanks Jyn and probably Rey). I was inspired by their bravery, their tenacity, and most importantly, by their action. My youth connected me to Star Wars and to my activism. In watching “Rogue One,” I couldn’t help but cry because I could feel it, the way the film shows the growing fascist regime, the work they are doing to build the Death Star with the sole intent of destroying entire planets and wiping out entire groups of people-aliens-what have you. And I can’t help but feel like we are headed therein some way too. 

This cold year has housed a number of protests, particularly in Portland as well as nationally, and worldwide. State sanctioned violence against marginalized people is still rising (Huffington post reported that over 250 black people have been killed by police officers in 2016), world wide, transgender people are being murdered (click here to read about it), basic rights like if you can use a bathroom are still in question, the DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) is being unlawfully built despite being condemned by the Obama Administration late last year. And this is just what we can see. We know that people are being crushed by a violent system of oppression, that people are dying because they don’t have access to resources to survive. In the past couple of years, I have personally participated in various protests. At one point in time I had on a date where we went to a #DisarmPSU protest and debriefed afterwards over chai in a dirty coffee shop. I am not at every protest, but I believe in the change that they can create and I am cautious to criticize the ways in which marginalized people deal with their anger. Following the election, following the deaths of innocent people, following the massacre in Orlando, so many of us have found one another and called for action by taking action. In doing so, I have personally been asked “what does protesting even actually do?” “but why do they have to be violent?” or simply “protesting never works.” I am personally exhausted with this (by that I mean tired of being tokenized as a vocal QTPoC), but putting it in writing, sorting it through analysis, is how I can bring it to light, the reasons why queers protest.

We are not represented in the dominant paradigm. There are less than 10 out queer or trans (like every single possible LGBTQIA+ identity) representatives in congress. There are 535 total representative in the House and the Senate and there are seriously less than 10 queer and trans reps. I applaud the bravery it takes to be there and I applaud the bravery it takes to be outed and remain a minority in government work. Even though I feel for these people and I have so much tenderness for our little bit of representation, how can this handful of people possibly put our needs out there and get it through? How can those few people get ⅔ of the congress to believe us? In terms of statistics, it is really not probable. (Special shout out to these trans women who ran for office this year, y’all are amazing.) When traditional forms of change don’t work, we have to make our own means of change. This is why we protest.

Protests are a place in which the work of femmes can be recognized. In the academy, in government, in traditional forms of change or creations of knowledge, masculinity and men are celebrated. In protests, women and femmes carry us (kind of like how I mention that stuff about Star Wars), and particularly trans femmes and women of color. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major, Storme DeLarverie, the women leading the Women’s March following inauguration day, Molala, literally any of these women, I could go on. This kind of representation does not happen in traditional forms of change because money can’t be made unless someone is exploited, because white supremacist patriarchy is not powerful unless someone is suppressed, even when femmes do the work, men are often finding ways to masquerade it as their own. Femmes carry our world’s emotional labor and then still are not allowed in public domain, but in protesting, it is their domain.

Protest are on the cutting edge of a radical and progressive politic and that pushes the mainstream movement. They spread the word to the crevices of your town, of your country. To clarify, when I am discussing radicals, I do not mean TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), I mean, as Angela Davis says “grasping things at the root.” Radicals are think deeper and search for the source of problems and of oppression. Liberals and often mainstream democrats are searching for the bandaid fix for the problem (like how do we make more people profit from capitalism, rather than how do we find a system that does not exploit people to create profit). What I mean is that radicals are so indepth and thorough in the think and activism, that they pave the way for new knowledge. Even when that new way of thinking does not catch on right away, it does eventually, it get’s adopted and employed in general progressive thought over time. Radical ideas pull us forward immediately and eventually.

#FunFact protests and rallies work. Here is a casual list of 7 protests that worked that I thought of off the top of my head in less than 2 minutes. In all of these, marginalized people unified, organized, planned an action (rally, civil disobedience, protest), and it accomplished one of their goals. The thing about protests is that a goal can be to completely overthrow a system, it can be to create a policy change, and it can also be to spread a message. These people were loud and someone listened. I want to add that I include violent protests/riots in this list because they have been effective forms of activism. Like I said earlier, I am cautious to critique the ways in which marginalized people chose to voice their anger, such as through destruction of property, when mass amounts of people are being overtly and covertly murdered in a dominant paradigm of normalized violence and state sanctioned violence (like Banana Republic probably made it just fine with a cracked window, y’all).

There are people in our country and worldwide who feel completely isolated, invisible, or unheard. There are people who do not have a wealth of community to lean back on. There are people who rely on the internet or the news to find any source of support. If you were not aware, since the election of Donald Trump, calls and texts on all major suicide hotlines have reached all time highs, particularly for queer and trans people. As queer and trans people, we often feel scared, and it is recent events (also such as HB2), that are affecting our safety in a multidimensional way. I do not know everything about what is going on for these people, but I do know that having community and support can make a person feel safer. When I do not know what to do, I reach out for community, and the creation of rallies and protests can create a community among the people who are there, but I can’t help but hope there is someone who needed it sees it too on the news or online somewhere. I can’t help but hope that the rural queers, that the black and brown kids, that the children of immigrants, that anyone who is afraid can see that there are thousands of people there for them, that are rooting for them, that are fighting for them, that hear them. That is why I protest. I am scared, but I am still there, for me and for them.

Following watching “Rogue One,” my family went home and put in “A New Hope” and began playing card games. “A New Hope” is pretty immediate after “Rogue One” and leads us into the bravery and strength of taking down the Empire’s oppressive government system in the “Star Wars” universe. As I watched the badass Leia herself take Luke’s blaster following his terrible rescue, she shoots open the vent to the garbage chute, and says to Han, “somebody’s got to save our skins,” I got a text from a friend that said “be like Leia in 2017. Fight on the front lines. Strangle fascists with the chains they would have you wear. Be a motherfuckin’ general.”

Next month keep an eye out for a follow up to this article as I head out to Washington DC to participate in the Women’s March on Washington following the inauguration of Donald Trump.

This piece was written by Grace Piper, a QTPoC Portlander with an interest in cheese and education.

[totalconservative]

New Post has been published on Total Conservative News

New Post has been published on http://totalconservative.com/house-democrats-block-measure-to-condemn-sanders-castro-remarks/

House Democrats Block Measure to Condemn Sanders’ Castro Remarks

House Democrats managed to block a resolution on Thursday that would have officially condemned Bernie Sanders for his praise of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Following in the shameful footsteps of other occasions in which Democrats have united to protect the uglier members of their movement, left-wing lawmakers united to keep Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) from bringing to the floor a condemnation of the Vermont senator.

The resolution would have addressed remarks Sanders made on “60 Minutes” last weekend, where he told host Anderson Cooper that while, sure sure, the dictatorial aspects of Castro’s regime were to be frowned on, hey, the dude sure knew how to get his people a-readin! Normal Americans like Diaz-Balart, who know just how reprehensible and lethal the Castro regime has been, find it disgusting that Bernie could suggest that we look beyond the thousands of deaths and brutal oppression to focus on literacy rates.

In a statement explaining why she voted down the resolution, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell tried to have it both ways.

“This afternoon House Republicans attempted to use an underhanded maneuver to derail an important public health bill to protect our children from a vaping epidemic. It is shameful that they attempted to create a false choice between standing with the Cuban community and a generation of children whose health is at risk,” she said. “Instead, I co-sponsored a resolution to stand with the Cuban community and voted to advance a measure to protect our kids.”

Well, actually, your bill – which aims to ban all flavored vaping juices – is garbage and will be vetoed by President Trump if it even manages to get through the Senate. So there was no false choice here; you chose to vote for a bad bill that has no hope of becoming law and against an important stance against authoritarian communism – a FAR greater threat to our kids than friggin’ Juul pods.

The resolution condemned “the comments of Senator and Democratic Socialist Presidential Candidate, Bernie Sanders (I-VT), disregarding the history of systemic human rights abuses, forced indoctrination, and authoritarian actions of the literacy and education policies of the communist Castro dictatorship in Cuba.”

The next time Democrats try to act like they are distancing themselves from Sanders’ radical themes and his unacceptable fondness for murderous, tyrannical regimes, remind them of this vote. They decided it was more important to pass a meaningless nanny-state bill against vaping than to make a stand against the sickness eating their party alive. Sometimes the smallest gestures say so much.

@media screen and (min-width: 650px) #ld-5846-1086 width: 50%; float: left; #ld-2134-8771 width: 50%; float: left;

(function(w,d,s,i))(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

(function(w,d,s,i))(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

(function(d) var params = id: "9fde72a7-4446-472a-9ade-2b9f00400ac9", d: "dG90YWxjb25zZXJ2YXRpdmUuY29t", wid: "224324", cb: (new Date()).getTime() ; var qs=[]; for(var key in params) qs.push(key+'='+encodeURIComponent(params[key])); var s = d.createElement('script');s.type='text/javascript';s.async=true; var p = 'https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https' : 'http'; s.src = p + "://api.content.ad/Scripts/widget2.aspx?" + qs.join('&'); d.getElementById("contentad224324").appendChild(s); )(document);

[megacircuit9universe]

Wake Up and Smell the (Ro) Java

TUE OCT 22 2019

So... I think I’m starting to see where things may be going here, with Trump’s impeachment, the impending 2020 elections, and the information imparted by the bot who (according to my theory) composed the Bear Stearns Bravo message that Pronunciation Book presented on 9-24-2013.

Two entries ago I talked about how, “Dalton,” anagrammed to, “Donal T,” and that “Bear Stearns Bravo,” anagrammed to, “Arab Voter Base NSR,” with the NSR in that anagram standing for, “Northern Syria Rojava.”

Okay, so, back in the present, even though House Democrats are building an iron clad case against Trump for extortion of Ukraine, holding back badly needed military aid (that was already approved by Congress) to try and get President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden... Congressional Republicans are still heavily resisting the legitimacy of the Impeachment Inquiry.

However...

Republicans have now all become fairly outspoken about Trump’s pulling out of Syria... calling it a disgrace, and a huge mistake that will have consequences for decades to come... on par with pulling out of Vietnam.

And they’re right about that.

But I now believe they are also telegraphing, to Trump, to his supporters, to the Democrats, and to the general public that this is the issue they are comfortable removing him over.

In other words... if there were some way for the Syria matter to make its way into the final counts of impeachment, before the Senate holds their trial... they just might convict him.

The clearest bellwether on this is Lindsey Graham, who in the space of one week, both publicly castigated Trump for pulling out of Syria, but then today, defended Trump for tweeting that the impeachment inquiry was a, “lynching.”

Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, did not have anything to say about the, “lynching,” tweet, but did pen an op-ed in the Washington Post this past week condemning the decision to get out of Syria... after saying last week that he would not try to delay any Senate Impeachment hearing if it came to that.

So, my theory here is they want their own, face-saving excuse to convict Trump in the Senate when that Democratic Impeachment gets done in the House.

They want there to be a count of Impeachment having to do with grave incompetence in foreign affairs... such that it threatens national security.  Call the charge what you will... dereliction of allies... gross military endangerment... all that matters is the language be acceptable to die hard Republican voters who do not wish to think of themselves as giving in to the Democrats.

So, what this would look like is... the House handing over counts of impeachment which include, say, obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress, emoluments violations, and... reckless military incompetence.

Then, all or most of the GOP senators can exonerate Trump on the first three counts, but just enough of them can convict him on that final count, for Trump to be removed... yet still allowing them to go to their home states to campaign, and say, “I vehemently opposed what the Democrats were trying to do, but when it came to the one count of military incompetence, all I could think of were those brave Kurdish soldiers who helped us defeat Isis, and how Trump betrayed them.  And now, as you see... Isis threatens us once more!”

Now, I’m not saying this is how it will all play out.  All I’m saying is, this is how the GOP currently would rather it play out.

They hate Trump just as much as the Democrats, for the most part, but they’d like a face-saving excuse to convict and remove him... and Syria is that face saving excuse... if it can be shoe horned into the counts of impeachment... not specifically... but symbolically in some generalized charge of incompetence they can spin to the public as being about Syria.

Clearly, they should be (and probably are) as worked up about Trump abandoning the Ukrainians, as they are about the Kurds, but... politically they can’t do that, because... well the Democrats beat them to that one, and now it looks bad to side with Democrats.

Billy Bob Trump supporter doesn’t care if Russia is trying to take over Ukraine, because Putin is white.

What does Billy Bob fear?  Isis!  They’re Islamic!  They’re brown, and they worship a different god!  Also... that name, “Isis,” is the name of a female Egyptian goddess... and what do Trump supporters hate more than brown people?.. Women!

Okay, so... I think that’s the GOP plan of the moment, but... this current shit storm is only one month old.  And in those four weeks... holy God has it picked up steam!

We have no idea where we’ll be by the time the actual impeachment trial gets underway.  Thanksgiving and Christmas are staring us in the face.  The Iowa caucuses will happen right after that... and the bombshells have not stopped falling... either from the inquiry, or from Trump himself, making one horrible decision after another as he slowly unravels.

Trump chose, randomly, to pull out of Syria in the days AFTER the whistle blower scandal and impeachment inquiry began.  It came out of nowhere, and never needed to happen... just like the tariffs on China... which was the last thing (inverted yield curve) that threatened to turn the GOP against him.

What I’m saying is, as more damning testimony comes out of the House inquiry on the Ukraine scandal (and it keeps getting worse, and swallowing up more of his cronies every day) Trump himself is probably going to continue making moves that shake his powerful defenders (in the corporate sphere, Congress, and even the SC) to their core.

He tried it just before the weekend, in fact, by announcing he’d hold the next G7 summit at his Doral Florida hotel and golf course... but was force to walk it back a few days later... as he was forced to walk back his threats of higher tariffs on China (at least for the moment).

But he can’t walk back the troop withdrawal from Northern Syria.  

And he’s likely to make more desperate, self defeating moves like that, which cannot be reversed, or waved away, as this shitstorm progresses at breakneck speed.

We could well see a day, in the very near future where Republicans cannot even pretend to be giving him the benefit of the doubt about anything anymore. 

And, as with Nixon, it’s gonna come down to the GOP power base telling him, “resign, or we’ll remove you.” 

And Trump will refuse, because he’s on the hook for state crimes in NYC that will put him in jail, and he’s got nowhere to flee into exile.

Such a standoff could get extremely ugly... with GOP Senators and conservative SC Justices having to side with House Democrats in a big hurry to convict him in the middle of the night, and swear in Pelosi, so that she can take over command of the Military and Justice Department, in order to do battle with a small army of armed mercenaries protecting Trump in his bunker.

 That doesn’t even sound crazy anymore, after all we’ve been through with this asshole over the past three years.

So, while in this moment, in late October of 2019, the GOP is still daydreaming that they might be able to find some face-saving way to neutralize Trump... they need to wake up and realize, the time for that is over.

[sallysklar]

Janresseger: What If Policymakers Stopped Condemning Poor People and Considered their Real Needs and Circumstances?

Janresseger: What If Policymakers Stopped Condemning Poor People and Considered their Real Needs and Circumstances?

In 2012, Mike Rose published Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education, a book about the potential of community colleges to help people discover their interests, widen their experiences, and perhaps change the direction of their lives.  He begins: “This is a book about people in tough circumstances who find their way, who get a second… or third.. or fourth chance, who in some cases feel like they are reinventing themselves.  Education can play a powerful role in creating that second chance…  One of the defining characteristics of the United States is its promise of a second chance; this promise is central to our vision of ourselves and to our economic and civic dynamism. When we are at our best as a society, our citizens are not trapped by their histories.” (Back to School, p. xiii)

But we live in an age when work requirements—and participation in sometimes endless workplace training programs—have been added as conditions to qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and when some states have made eligibility for Medicaid and even SNAP (food stamps) contingent on working or participating in basic and overly generalized training programs.  What does it mean when education ceases to be seen as a second chance and is instead conceptualized as a punishment for the those we disdain as dependent.  What if our society were to recover our belief in second chances?  What if we were to begin to consider in human terms the people who care for our grandparents or our children or pour our coffee or change the beds after we leave our hotel rooms—people whose employers may not regularly assign them enough hours to qualify for social program work requirements—people who never know their work schedules in advance—people working at minimum wage?  And how does our opinion of the people struggling to find jobs that pay so little affect the programs we design supposedly to provide that second chance?

To consider this question, in 2013, Rose published a piece in Dissent Magazine, The Inner Life of the Poor, an article he later added as a new chapter in the revised and expanded 2014 edition of his extraordinary Why School?   Rose republished the article last month on his personal blog.  Here’s why: “I reprint it now, for I think it is especially relevant in these times of brutal social policy and the day-to-day dehumanization of vulnerable people both within and at our borders.”

Here is what Rose asks us to consider as he profiles the woman who served as the primary caregiver for his own father: “Officially, there are close to two million home health care workers in the United States, and who knows how many more off the books.  It is one of the fastest growing occupations in the country.  Most are female.  Many are immigrants, particularly in larger cities… Their average wage is $9.70 per hour, and their annual income is $20,500.  But the majority… do not have regular employment and move from one home or facility to another.  It is hard work work with limited, if any, benefits, and it is unsteady.”

Rose writes: “I’ve been interested in the psychological diminishment of poor people for a long time.” “The poor are pretty much absent from public and political discourse, except as an abstraction—an income category low on the Socioeconomic Status index–or as a generalization: people dependent on the government, the ‘takers,’ a problem.  Neither abstraction nor generalization gives us actual people waking up exhausted, getting kids off to school; trying to make a buck; or, in some cases, past the point of trying. And if we lack images of living, breathing people, we doubly lack any sense of the inner lives of the poor… We don’t know them.  And because we don’t know their values and aspirations, the particulars of their daily decisions, and the economic and psychological boundaries within which those decisions are made, they easily become psychologically one-dimensional, intellectually, emotionally, and volitionally simplified, not quite like us.  This fact has huge implications for public policy, education and work, and civic life.”

Rose describes the implications of public policy created by the powerful for people they see as “the other”: “If we are separated from a group not only physically but psychologically, then it becomes all the easier to attribute to them motives, belief, thoughts—an entire interior life—that might be deeply inaccurate and inadequate.  And it is from those attributions that we develop both our personal and public policy responses to poverty. Because the invisibility of the poor is ultimately a sociological and political phenomenon, I am interested in places or occasions where poor people become more fully present, actors on the societal stage, and their thoughts and feelings play out in ways that can have a positive effect on the direction of their lives.” “If they are truly public… our institutions should be run with a deep knowledge of the motives, aspirations, cognitive capacity, and inner and outer barriers of the full range of the people they serve.”

Certainly the considerations Rose describes are missing from too many of today’s policies like the ones that condition food stamps, Medicaid, and cash welfare on a prescribed number of hours of workforce participation or participation in workforce training programs that may or may not relate to people’s needs. Such programs have reduced the number of people receiving assistance, but they haven’t diminished poverty.  In a recent column in the Washington Post, Amy Goldstein describes what has happened in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker and the legislature imposed workforce participation requirements as a condition for food stamps: “Since the requirements began, the number of people getting FoodShare across the state has fallen from more than 800,000 to fewer than 650,000.  Nearly 29,000 FoodShare recipients who have been in employment and training programs have gotten jobs, state figures show.  But more than 100,000 people have lost their benefits when they used up their three-month time limits, nearly half of them in Milwaukee.”

SNAP, the federal food stamps progam, is part of the Farm Bill, whose passage has posed an enormous conflict all year between the House, which wanted work requirements added, and the Senate, whose version of the bill did not mandate federal work requirements.  On Wednesday, December 12, Congress finally did pass a Farm Bill that omits any added federal work requirements for SNAP recipients.  The federal bill does not preclude punitive sanctions at the state level like the ones already imposed in Wisconsin, but we must be grateful that Congress chose not to punish the poor by adding federal work requirements to the new Farm Bill.

There is additional evidence, however, about the danger of sanctions for the poor added to social programs.  After more than twenty years since “the end of welfare as we know it,” the evidence about the replacement of Aid to Families with Dependent Children by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) should alarm us all.  A November 2018 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains: “Some policymakers have pointed to TANF as a model for other programs—most recently, proponents of taking away SNAP (formerly food stamp) benefits, Medicaid coverage, or housing assistance from people who don’t meet rigid work requirements.  But states’ experience with TANF shows why it should not be held up as a model.  There is strong evidence that TANF’s work requirements and block grant structure exacerbate, rather than reduce, deep poverty (that is, incomes below half of the poverty line).  The federal government has a critical role in ensuring that low-income families have access to a minimum level of support to meet their basic needs; block grants hand that responsibility over to states, which—with no national standards to hold them accountable for assisting families in need—have acted in their own self interest, not in the best interest of the most vulnerable members of society… The decline in access to TANF benefits has left many of the poorest families without resources to meet their basic needs.  TANF has failed to maintain the standard set by AFDC in reaching families, particularly those with children and those in deep poverty.  TANF benefits are not sufficient to lift families out of poverty in anystate, and while AFDC lifted more than 2.7 million children out of deep poverty in 1995, TANF lifted only 349,000 children out of deep poverty in 2015… Evidence shows that the drop in direct financial assistance receipt under TANF is a main driver of rising ‘extreme poverty,’ a measure the World Bank uses of the number of households surviving on $2 or less per person per day.” (emphasis in the original)

While this week Congress protected SNAP recipients, there is reason to worry that America’s promise of second chances is in jeopardy.  In his 2014 book, Why School?, Mike Rose defines the meaning of opportunity—the second chance that seems to be threatened in so many of our welfare, healthcare, and immigration policies today. Rose, of course, considers opportunity in an educational setting: “(T)he creation of opportunity involves a good deal of thoughtful work on the part of the provider, and, as well, demands significant effort on the part of the recipient…  In this regard, I’m especially interested in what opportunity feels like.  Discussions of opportunity are often abstract—as in ideological debate—or conducted at a broad structural level—as in policy deliberation. But what is the experience of opportunity?  Certainly one feels a sense of possibility, of hope.  But it is hope made concrete, specific, hope embodied in tools, or practices, or sequences of things to do—pathways to a goal. And all this takes place with people who interact with you in ways that affirm your hope.” (Why School? pp. 13-14, emphasis in the original)

elaine December 31, 2018

Source

Janresseger

Janresseger: What If Policymakers Stopped Condemning Poor People and Considered their Real Needs and Circumstances? published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

[theconservativebrief]

“Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?”

Christine Blasey Ford said she asked herself that question this summer, when she decided not to come forward publicly to say that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.

She ultimately reversed her decision, speaking to the Washington Post about her allegations (which Kavanaugh denied) and then testifying at a hearing last week. But throughout that process, her question to herself has resonated. After the hearing, Katie McDonough of Jezebel wrote of “the sensation of Ford receding from view — her hours of testimony, another woman publicly reopening wounds out of a sense of responsibility and a fragile belief that it might actually mean something — obliterated by the rage of powerful men.”

“Ford,” McDonough wrote, “had predicted that future and called it by its name: annihilation.”

Valerie Ploumpis watches the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford on Capitol Hill on September 27, 2018. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ford is a careful speaker. In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, she spoke with the precision of an expert — she is a psychology professor — and the thoroughness of someone who has been forced to go back over her memories again and again and again. It’s significant, then, that she chose the word “annihilation,” and not mockery or stigma or threats or harassment, all things she’s faced in the weeks since she came forward.

Christine Ford was afraid of being reduced to nothing.

Now, after a few days of testimony and investigation, during which survivors took to the streets and the halls of Congress to add their own stories to Ford’s, the Senate voted 50-48 on Saturday to send Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

It’s a story that has played out again and again over the past year, as Americans — most of them women — open up about some of the most painful events of their lives in the hopes that maybe, finally, something will change. In this case, the cost has been immense: a woman forced to relive her trauma on a national scale, only to be mocked by the president of the United States. Others have come to lend her support, only to be condemned by senators as bullies or children. Women have bared their souls, and in return have been scoffed at, threatened, insulted, and disbelieved. And now, a man accused of sexual assault has a lifetime appointment to the country’s highest court.

Christine Blasey Ford is greeted by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), left, during a break in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018. Andrew Harnik – Pool/Getty Images

It’s not surprising that Ford feared annihilation. Every day we see high-profile men climbing back to positions of power and influence after a few token months out of the public eye, almost as though women had never come forward to report that those men had groped and hounded, assaulted and abused them. Almost as though those women never existed.

But they do exist. One of the most striking things about the #MeToo movement has been its longevity. In a time when our attention span for news seems as short as the blink of an eye, our national sickness around sexual harassment and assault has come to the fore again and again. This won’t be the last time.

In the last week, Ford and many others have added their voices to a growing chorus of Americans calling those in power to account for the sexual harassment and assault of those less powerful than they are. That chorus is growing louder, not softer. It will not be reduced to nothing.

“I am here today not because I want to be,” Ford said as she began her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I am terrified.”

She was right to be afraid. Senators treated her with more respect than the judiciary committee had shown Anita Hill in 1991, mostly ceding questions to Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, who focused on minutiae. But in the days leading up to the testimony, she and her family were forced to leave their home due to death threats — the home that, Ford testified, she had remodeled with a second front door to help her cope with fears stemming from her assault. Media outlets and congressional staffers began digging through her past, bringing up references to drinking and sex in her high school yearbook in an attempt to discredit her.

Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018. Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images

After she testified, the digging continued. Then President Donald Trump mocked Ford for being unable to remember certain details in her testimony.

“Where’s the house? I don’t know. Upstairs? Downstairs? Where was it — I don’t know. But I had one beer, that’s the only thing I remember,” he said as a crowd of thousands laughed and cheered.

Trump also appeared to call Ford and her supporters “evil people,” blaming them for leaving Kavanaugh’s life “in tatters.” Later, Trump insulted the assault survivors who had confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) in an elevator after he announced he would vote to advance Kavanaugh’s confirmation out of committee, tweeting, “the very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad.”

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described assault survivors and others opposing Kavanaugh’s confirmation as bullies who didn’t care about facts: “I want to make it clear to these people who are chasing my members around the hall here or harassing them at the airports or going to their homes, we’re not going to be intimidated by these people. There is no chance in the world they’re going to scare us out of doing our duty.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told a group of protesters to “grow up.”

Messages like these are what keep so many women from reporting sexual assault when it happens: They’re justifiably afraid of being smeared, shamed, and disbelieved. For Ford, that happened on a national scale.

This is the cost of #MeToo: A woman had to relive a moment during which, she testified, she feared for her life — a moment that she says has affected her for decades, contributing to symptoms of anxiety and PTSD. And once that was done, she had to submit to public shaming by none other than the president of the United States, and watch her supporters endure the same.

It was a more public version of what too many survivors still have to go through when they report assault or harassment: the shaming, the blame, the disbelief, the character assassination. And, under all of it, the fear that nothing will really change.

The Monday after Ford and Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, about 1,000 people were arrested by Capitol Hill police while protesting Kavanaugh, according to organizers. That same day, as Vox’s Tara Golshan reported, women around the country held a national walkout in support of Ford and Deborah Ramirez, who has said that Kavanaugh thrust his genitals in her face without her consent when they were in college. The protests dwarfed those held against the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee to the court.

Hundreds of protesters rally in the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda while demonstrating against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill September 24, 2018. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Kavanaugh was historically unpopular before Ford’s allegations became public, and many Americans were already protesting his confirmation because of fears that he could cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But since Ford came forward, the protests have grown in scale and become more personal, as survivors spoke not just about the nominee, but about their own experiences.

“I had not planned to share my story,” wrote Ana María Archila, one of the women who confronted Flake, in an op-ed in USA Today. “I hadn’t shared it for three decades because I wanted to protect my parents from my pain. But Christine Blasey Ford told her story to protect our country and, in solidarity with her and as a way to thank her, I decided to tell mine.”

Archila knew the cost of speaking up about her assault. The potential cost to her family had kept her silent for decades. She had seen what happened to Ford when she agreed to testify. And yet Archila decided to add her voice to Ford’s anyway.

This is the power of #MeToo — it’s baked right into the name. Nearly every time someone has made the difficult decision to open up about harassment or assault, others have been there to say, “We support you. We believe you. It happened to us, too.”

Women who come forward about sexual misconduct have always been at risk of, as Ford put it, annihilation. They have always faced the possibility that their words will be disbelieved, their pain disregarded, their lives upended — that they will be reduced to a mere footnote in a man’s life.

What’s different now is that, more than ever before, Americans are coming together to resist this annihilation. It may be easy to erase one woman — it’s a lot harder to erase thousands.

Ford’s testimony didn’t stop Kavanaugh from being confirmed. But what she started when she agreed to speak to the Washington Post won’t end today. The midterm elections are coming, and with them the possibility that Republicans at all levels of government will have to reckon with the Senate’s vote. More broadly, a time is coming when powerful people and the institutions that support them are no longer insulated, as they once were, from the voices of those whom they’ve assaulted or harassed. That time has been a long time coming — since 1991, at least, if not before that — and maybe it’s not quite here yet. But it’s closer than ever before.

Protesters rally against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building October 4, 2018. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Original Source -> Christine Ford’s story isn’t over

via The Conservative Brief

[go-redgirl]

Media Choose To Defend MS-13 Instead Of Acknowledging Misleading Reporting On Trump

Trump was criticized for referring to members of MS-13 as 'animals.' This is a violent gang with the motto 'kill, rape, control.'

May 18, 2018 By Joey Wulfsohn

News outlets including the Associated Press and The New York Times took comments from Trump regarding MS-13 gang members out of context Wednesday, misleading readers to believe he referred to immigrants generally as “animals.”

When these outlets and journos were called out for their extremely misleading reporting, many of them chose to defend MS-13 rather than walk back their criticism of Trump. This is a gang with the motto, “kill, rape, control.”

Let’s take a stroll down the walk of shame, shall we?

First we have CNBC journalist John Harwood who was responding to conservative columnist Bethany Mandel, who called the misleading reporting “disturbing.”

however repugnant their actions, MS-13 gang members are human beings IMHO

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) May 17, 2018

Then we have MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell who insisted that Jesus Christ would “condemn” President Trump for calling MS-13 “animals” and that other Christians who don’t condemn him “don’t understand their own religion.”

Trump: “These aren’t people. These are animals.”

No one would condemn these words more than Jesus Christ.

Christians who don’t condemn these words don’t understand their own religion. https://t.co/VJwrbYdKne

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) May 17, 2018

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went further, saying “Even if he was referring to the tiny percentage of immigrants who commit crimes,” calling any human being an “animal” to her is “repulsive.”

Even if he was referring to the tiny percentage of immigrants who commit crimes, his efforts to conflate criminals with all illegal immigrants is repulsive, as is calling any human being an “animal.” https://t.co/rgoY34lfxh

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 17, 2018

CNN commentator Keith Boykin blasted the president for using a “dehumanization tactic” and linked him to “slave traders and slave owners” who justified the oppression of black people for centuries.

Trump referring to human beings as "animals" is the same dehumanization tactic used by slave traders and slave owners to justify the oppression of black people for hundreds of years. https://t.co/6LY6XJwFH4

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 16, 2018

Vox correspondent Dylan Matthews insisted MS-13 members are “still human” and that it’s “bad” to call them animals.

What if MS-13 members are still human and it's bad to call them animals

— Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt) May 17, 2018

Will Wilkinson, who is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a columnist for Vox, believes “every member” of MS-13 is “human” and that they have “dignity that demands respect.”

"But Trump was talking about MS13!" is evil.

Why does he talk about MS13? To identify immigrants with criminals. The point of calling them "animals" is to identify immigrants with animals.

But every member of MS13 is human. Every human has dignity that demands respect.

— Will Wilkinson 🌐 (@willwilkinson) May 17, 2018

Social justice advocate and author Amy Siskind accused President Trump of “dehumanizing” MS-13 and hinted to Congress that he should be impeached.

“These aren't people. These are animals.”

This story needs to get more attention. When you can dehumanize this way, you are a danger to us all. He should not be in leadership Congress! #notnormal https://t.co/Ew7p3qel5a

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) May 17, 2018

Even Democratic lawmakers stuck their necks out for MS-13. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) denounced how Trump views the MS-13 and called on “vigilant citizenry and the rule of law” to protect these murderers and rapists from deportation.

Murderers, rapists, and animals. This is how the President views undocumented immigrants. These degrading words are also how despots around the world dehumanize those they persecute.

The only protection? A vigilant citizenry and the rule of law. https://t.co/hSATf0OxCV

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 17, 2018

His colleague from the same state, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), tweeted to his followers that if they are a “decent person” and were in a meeting with Trump, they would denounce him immediately.

IF you are a decent person and were in a meeting where @realDonaldTrump called immigrants “animals,” you will denounce him NOW. Otherwise, what makes you any different?

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 17, 2018

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tweeted that our “great-great-grandparents” weren’t animals when they came to America, and members of MS-13 “aren’t either.”

When all of our great-great-grandparents came to America they weren’t “animals,” and these people aren’t either.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 16, 2018

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) also believes MS-13 gang members are not “animals” and that Trump’s remarks were “deeply offensive and racist.” She added that these thugs are “our family and friends” that “make significant contributions to our country.”

Immigrants are not “animals.” The president’s statement was deeply offensive and racist. Immigrants are our family and friends and they make significant contributions to our country.

— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) May 17, 2018

You can’t make this stuff up.

Let’s pause for a moment. Are we expected to believe that all these anti-Trumpers are actually defending the criminals of MS-13? No, but by their standards for how they described Trump’s remarks about violent illegal immigrants, the tables can easily be turned on them.  And that’s a tactic neither the left nor the right should embrace.

It’s one thing to vehemently oppose this president, but to be brainwashed by your own hatred for Trump that you’re purposefully manipulating his remarks about MS-13 so that it appears that he was referring to all immigrants is truly appalling and absolutely shameful.

Joseph Wulfsohn is a writer and columnist for Mediaite. His work has been quoted by Fox News and FoxNews.com.

[anchorarcade]

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

http://ryanguillory.com/obama-trump-and-saudi-arabia-devastated-yemen-congress-is-acting-slowly/

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. House voted, 366-30, on Monday night to pass a resolution condemning civilian deaths, starvation and the spread of disease in Yemen, admitting that much of the responsibility for that humanitarian crisis rests with the U.S. because of its support for a Saudi-led military intervention and noting that the war has allowed al Qaeda, Islamic State and other groups to thrive.

The resolution, which passed with the support of several normally reliably pro-Saudi members of Congress, has no practical consequences. The U.S. will continue refueling Saudi and United Arab Emirates planes bombing Yemen and providing the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence, a policy launched by former President Barack Obama and continued under President Donald Trump.

But for the handful of lawmakers trying to end 2½ years of U.S. support for the Yemen war, and the antiwar activists and humanitarian groups aligned with them, it’s a seminal moment — a sign even the most reluctant in Washington can be pushed to consider Yemen, where close to 21 million people need some form of aid, and acknowledge the ugly truths about Saudi and American actions there.

“The shift in our foreign policy is not going to happen overnight,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has led the House fight against the U.S. role in the war, told HuffPost prior to the debate. “I think that this debate has made many more members of Congress aware that we are engaged in refueling, made them aware that there is a civil war going on in Yemen. If I’m looking at something from a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of shifting U.S. foreign policy, maybe this is a 2. But it is a 2.”

To Khanna, the vote is important for two reasons: It is the first time the House has acknowledged the U.S. role in the conflict, and it notes that U.S. involvement against parties in the Yemeni civil war is not permitted by either of the two military force authorizations Congress passed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Activists spotted another win in the hourlong debate before the vote: Hawks, particularly Republicans, not only spoke in favor of the resolution but also began to echo some of the criticisms of the U.S.-backed coalition.

“The purpose of this resolution is to pressure the Saudis to take those steps to reopen access to those ports,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the reliably pro-Saudi chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said of the Saudis’ decision last week to block all humanitarian and commercial transport to Yemen, where more than 20 million people need some form of aid, and then only partially lift the ban Monday. “That is what we’re doing.”

Royce swiftly moved on to criticism of the Houthis, who have their own record of tampering with aid. And the resolution extensively comments on those rebels’ ties to Iran, a favorite bogeyman for Saudi and U.S. leaders. But he said what he said.

The resolution is the product of a long fight for Khanna. In September, he launched an effort with Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to force a House vote on the U.S. role in Yemen using the War Powers Resolution — a move that could actually compel the executive branch to pull out of the conflict and would at the very least force lawmakers to consider the war in high-profile, high-stakes fashion. The plan attracted support from a range of bedfellows: liberal darlings like Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and actor Mark Ruffalo came on board with the conservative powerhouse FreedomWorks. But it was too radical for House leaders wary of appearing weak, particularly toward Iran, or of highlighting questions about potential U.S. culpability in war crimes.

“The Republicans at the outset… had an agreement among themselves to bury this, and they weren’t clear about how to do it,” a senior congressional aide told HuffPost.

GOP House leaders pushed back the binding vote scheduled for the resolution in October and began negotiations with Khanna, top Democrats and others. As the next date for a vote, in early November, neared, internal frustrations became public. One advocate of the measure told The Intercept that Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland was working with the GOP to discourage lawmakers from becoming co-sponsors of the effort. Hoyer’s defenders, Khanna among them, say he and others, including Republicans, simply had different interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and whether it applied.

Activists were less convinced of good faith in the talks. The War Powers Resolution had to apply to Khanna’s original effort because it compels congressional approval when U.S. forces help coordinate or move foreign forces, Kate Gould of the Friends Committee on National Legislation wrote in an email to HuffPost. She called claims that it did not apply “outrageous.”

Eventually, the GOP scored its win. In a largely empty chamber on Nov. 1, the House Rules Committee decided that the War Powers Resolution did not apply and rendered Khanna’s legislation just one more proposal that might never come to a vote.

But leadership promised Khanna his debate and a new resolution ― while the old one stayed alive and even attracted more co-sponsors once it became clear it was only symbolic. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, signed on the same day.

“The goal was to have a debate on Yemen because we have never had a debate on Yemen,” said the senior congressional aide. “We knew that there would be a price to pay for that, and not everyone was going to get what they wanted.”

Even watered down, the effort was successful enough to spook the Saudis and their supporters. The senior aide and another source familiar with congressional deliberations told HuffPost that Saudi-linked lobbyists passed talking points to friendly House members before Monday’s debate; a sample provided to HuffPost included points Republicans raised in the session, such as the idea that Iran wants to turn Yemen’s Houthi group into another version of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization.

And it has left skeptics of the war energized for more. Multiple supporters of Khanna’s original resolution voted against the compromise measure to signal that they would like to see stronger legislation, Khanna and Gould told HuffPost. Those supporters included prominent figures in the House Progressive Caucus, which Khanna belongs to, including Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).

Activists are now turning their attention to the Senate, where they hope to see a measure similar to Khanna’s initial effort. Senators have already signaled their growing disapproval with the Saudi-led coalition’s actions with votes on arms sales and other measures.

The U.S. has helped the Saudis do this. All this horror happens with our endorsement. We could end this nightmare if we chose to. https://t.co/SSr2Rb65Ww

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 14, 2017

“My message to activists would be let’s get more people,” Khanna told HuffPost, referring to both co-sponsors for his original bill in the House and senators. “Look at what we’ve achieved in three months.”

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

Source link

[awesomefelicitylewis-blog]

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

http://ryanguillory.com/obama-trump-and-saudi-arabia-devastated-yemen-congress-is-acting-slowly/

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. House voted, 366-30, on Monday night to pass a resolution condemning civilian deaths, starvation and the spread of disease in Yemen, admitting that much of the responsibility for that humanitarian crisis rests with the U.S. because of its support for a Saudi-led military intervention and noting that the war has allowed al Qaeda, Islamic State and other groups to thrive.

The resolution, which passed with the support of several normally reliably pro-Saudi members of Congress, has no practical consequences. The U.S. will continue refueling Saudi and United Arab Emirates planes bombing Yemen and providing the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence, a policy launched by former President Barack Obama and continued under President Donald Trump.

But for the handful of lawmakers trying to end 2½ years of U.S. support for the Yemen war, and the antiwar activists and humanitarian groups aligned with them, it’s a seminal moment — a sign even the most reluctant in Washington can be pushed to consider Yemen, where close to 21 million people need some form of aid, and acknowledge the ugly truths about Saudi and American actions there.

“The shift in our foreign policy is not going to happen overnight,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has led the House fight against the U.S. role in the war, told HuffPost prior to the debate. “I think that this debate has made many more members of Congress aware that we are engaged in refueling, made them aware that there is a civil war going on in Yemen. If I’m looking at something from a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of shifting U.S. foreign policy, maybe this is a 2. But it is a 2.”

To Khanna, the vote is important for two reasons: It is the first time the House has acknowledged the U.S. role in the conflict, and it notes that U.S. involvement against parties in the Yemeni civil war is not permitted by either of the two military force authorizations Congress passed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Activists spotted another win in the hourlong debate before the vote: Hawks, particularly Republicans, not only spoke in favor of the resolution but also began to echo some of the criticisms of the U.S.-backed coalition.

“The purpose of this resolution is to pressure the Saudis to take those steps to reopen access to those ports,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the reliably pro-Saudi chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said of the Saudis’ decision last week to block all humanitarian and commercial transport to Yemen, where more than 20 million people need some form of aid, and then only partially lift the ban Monday. “That is what we’re doing.”

Royce swiftly moved on to criticism of the Houthis, who have their own record of tampering with aid. And the resolution extensively comments on those rebels’ ties to Iran, a favorite bogeyman for Saudi and U.S. leaders. But he said what he said.

The resolution is the product of a long fight for Khanna. In September, he launched an effort with Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to force a House vote on the U.S. role in Yemen using the War Powers Resolution — a move that could actually compel the executive branch to pull out of the conflict and would at the very least force lawmakers to consider the war in high-profile, high-stakes fashion. The plan attracted support from a range of bedfellows: liberal darlings like Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and actor Mark Ruffalo came on board with the conservative powerhouse FreedomWorks. But it was too radical for House leaders wary of appearing weak, particularly toward Iran, or of highlighting questions about potential U.S. culpability in war crimes.

“The Republicans at the outset… had an agreement among themselves to bury this, and they weren’t clear about how to do it,” a senior congressional aide told HuffPost.

GOP House leaders pushed back the binding vote scheduled for the resolution in October and began negotiations with Khanna, top Democrats and others. As the next date for a vote, in early November, neared, internal frustrations became public. One advocate of the measure told The Intercept that Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland was working with the GOP to discourage lawmakers from becoming co-sponsors of the effort. Hoyer’s defenders, Khanna among them, say he and others, including Republicans, simply had different interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and whether it applied.

Activists were less convinced of good faith in the talks. The War Powers Resolution had to apply to Khanna’s original effort because it compels congressional approval when U.S. forces help coordinate or move foreign forces, Kate Gould of the Friends Committee on National Legislation wrote in an email to HuffPost. She called claims that it did not apply “outrageous.”

Eventually, the GOP scored its win. In a largely empty chamber on Nov. 1, the House Rules Committee decided that the War Powers Resolution did not apply and rendered Khanna’s legislation just one more proposal that might never come to a vote.

But leadership promised Khanna his debate and a new resolution ― while the old one stayed alive and even attracted more co-sponsors once it became clear it was only symbolic. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, signed on the same day.

“The goal was to have a debate on Yemen because we have never had a debate on Yemen,” said the senior congressional aide. “We knew that there would be a price to pay for that, and not everyone was going to get what they wanted.”

Even watered down, the effort was successful enough to spook the Saudis and their supporters. The senior aide and another source familiar with congressional deliberations told HuffPost that Saudi-linked lobbyists passed talking points to friendly House members before Monday’s debate; a sample provided to HuffPost included points Republicans raised in the session, such as the idea that Iran wants to turn Yemen’s Houthi group into another version of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization.

And it has left skeptics of the war energized for more. Multiple supporters of Khanna’s original resolution voted against the compromise measure to signal that they would like to see stronger legislation, Khanna and Gould told HuffPost. Those supporters included prominent figures in the House Progressive Caucus, which Khanna belongs to, including Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).

Activists are now turning their attention to the Senate, where they hope to see a measure similar to Khanna’s initial effort. Senators have already signaled their growing disapproval with the Saudi-led coalition’s actions with votes on arms sales and other measures.

The U.S. has helped the Saudis do this. All this horror happens with our endorsement. We could end this nightmare if we chose to. https://t.co/SSr2Rb65Ww

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 14, 2017

“My message to activists would be let’s get more people,” Khanna told HuffPost, referring to both co-sponsors for his original bill in the House and senators. “Look at what we’ve achieved in three months.”

Obama, Trump And Saudi Arabia Devastated Yemen. Congress Is Acting. Slowly.

Source link

[samepersonalitytypeasbjork-blog]

“Reggaetón: an underground scene, or authentic música boricua?”

Everybody has heard a reggaetón song before. Even if they couldn’t name a specific artist, they’d be more than likely to know the hook to Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina. My father is Puerto Rican, so regardless of this fact that everybody hears it on the radio, I grew up listening to Reggaetón. I chose to study San Juan’s music scene, because my family is from a small suburb called Villa Nevarez, just 15 minutes outside of the heart of the city. My abuelos weren’t wealthy, but the suburb was fairly safe, calm, and well-kept. Based on its three large sources of income (tourism, manufacturing, and services) and its fun hip-hop played on the radio, like Gasolina, one might begin to believe that San Juan’s citizens, as a whole, are well-off. So when I listened to reggaetón with violent, crime-filled lyrical content (as opposed to the songs they played at white parties in New York) while driving down the streets of San Juan as a child, I always wondered if it was problematic that there was a portion of Puerto Rican people that were basically being excluded from the popularized idea of “Puerto-Rican-ness”; that is to say, I couldn’t understand why I felt such tension between the conceptualized Puerto Rican identity and the identity presented and seemingly glorified in this music. This “conceptualized” identity is a dangerous somewhat of a dangerous idea, as it excludes the majority of both the capital’s and the country’s citizens: the working class. Listening to the artists of caserios of San Juan actually helped me realize the reason for this tension; the working class, a majority of which are not white people, has been condemned as “underground” because of an idea called “blanquismo” caused by both Spanish and American colonialism. Since Puerto Rican history has never escaped colonialism (it was a Spanish territory until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris granted it to the United States as a territory), the concept of “Puerto Rican identity” is highly debated, especially in terms of racial background. A surprising majority of people would may view the “original” Puerto Ricans as Spaniards, as they used Puerto Rico for its “rich port.” As a matter of fact, some streets in the city of Old San Juan are comprised entirely of blue cobblestones that were discarded from Spanish ships and no longer had any use. The relevance of Puerto Rico’s relationship with colonialism, then, colors the territory as historically white (until the arrival of Black Americans)1. The result of this historical inconsistency is referred to in San Juan as what I mentioned before; “blanquismo,” a systematic racial exclusion of non-whites from the Puerto Rican identity because of the American, colonial context1. There is, then, a number of communities within San Juan replete of working class, non-white citizens that are essentially estranged from the country’s conception of identity. Best known as “barrios” (“slums”) and “caseríos” (housing projects), they have developed an urban culture that is viewed as “underground,” and some of the best reggaetón hits originated right within and as a result of the “underground.” The paradox here is that the idea of “underground” roots from a completely invasive and conceived white identity that ignores Puerto Rico’s non-wihte native history. My interest in this only grew as I became interested in the band “Calle 13.” Since reggaetón’s spread to the United States, (on which I will elaborate further) this “underground” music has evolved into one that is slightly more politically-astute; it critiques gender and race inequality without the employment of “violent” references. A current group that exemplifies this evolution is Calle 13, named after a road that is actually within the outskirts of Villa Nevarez. The duo’s first album, “Calle 13” was released in 2015 and did provide heavy social commentaries, however its lyrical content was highly sexual and aggressive. Its hit song “Atrévete Te, Te!” alludes to the middle class’ fear of the urban poor using the narrative of seducing a middle-class woman through mockery:

Yo se que a ti te gusta el pop-rock latino (I know that you like latino pop-rock) Pero este reggaetón se te mete por los intestinos (But this reggaetón will blow up your intestines) Por debajo de la falda como un submarino (From under the skirt, like a submarine) Y te saca lo de indio taino (And take away from you that of the taino) Ya tu sabes, en tapa-rabo, mama (You already know, on the cover, mama) En el nombre de Agüeybana (In the name of Agüeybana) No hay mas na', para na' que yo te vo'a mentir (There is no more, no reason for me to lie) Yo se que yo también quiero consumir de tu perejil (I know that I also want to consume your parsley) Y tú viniste amazónica como Brasil (And that you came Amazonically like Brazil) Tú viniste a matarla como "Kill Bill" (You came to it kill like “Kill Bill”) Tú viniste a beber cerveza de barril (You came to drink draft beer) Tú sabes que conmigo tú tienes refill (You know that with you, you have a refill)

The message being conveyed here, informally, is that the woman is a “bougie” middle-class citizen who just wants to eat her parsley and doesn’t understand the the “underground,” working class community/scene; however, the vehicle of portrayal is somewhat reminiscent of sexual harassment. Most of their first album, though socially and politically astute, fell within the same category of vulgarity that was rejected by the San Juan middle class. As the years have gone by, their lyrics departed from such content. They recently collaborated with Panamanian salsa artist, Rubén Bládes, on a salsa-inspired reggaetón hit called “La Perla” (on the album Los De Atrás Vienen Conmigo, 2008). It alludes to a slum on the coastline of San Juan. This slum is famous for its disengagement with the government and clashes with the police; crime and murder rates are extremely high, and the slum is quite literally physically removed from the rest of the city. The central-most city (formally known as Old San Juan) is elevated from the shore by a tall, protective wall; however, La Perla exists directly beneath and on the other side of this wall. Their hit song, then, refers to its citizens and their lovely way of life, portraying a slum commonly recognized as not only “underground,” but dangerous, as a beautiful community of San Juan. Their direct employment of salsa (through Blades) into the genre shows the divergence of classical conceptions of Puerto Rican culture and “underground” culture without alluding to violence, sex, guns, etc. Identity-driven anxieties within Puerto Rico created a resistance and ignorance of the scene for years, and frustration from such communities persisted within their art. Today you can’t walk down the streets of Old San Juan at night without hearing reggaetón bumping from pubs, bars, dance clubs, apartment buildings, etc. As a person raised in New York, those anxieties tension never felt personally tangible; I only felt them through the musicians’ incorporation of cyclical entrapment in their “underground” music. This is where my interest in identity politics, especially in regard to American colonialism, collides deeply with my interest in Puerto Rican music; as far as musical identity is concerned, some people think that the affects colonialism only goes as far as fusion of two cultures. My point here is that the “white” nationalism got so deeply rooted into this natively non-white island that a very important and present class of people- the working class- became somewhat socially degraded to a culture that was “underground.” Most of what I’ve talked about alluded to the more present reggaetón, and while currently boasting international commercial recognition, earlier, pre-Daddy Yankee reggaetón took a very long time to break the ice in terms of acceptance within its own place of origin. The scene began in the late 80s and early 90s with the distribution of “mixtapes” within the caseríos; teens would sample excerpts from hip-hop, rap, and Jamaican dancehall music popular within the U.S. (tourism in San Juan lends itself to American pop-cultural familiarity), and would rap about themes such as sex and parties. American-sounding music coming out of an underground scene, then, did not sit well with the capital’s middle class, especially considering the “vulgar” subject-matter and tendency to address controversial content such as racism and classism1. Reggaetón was, at first, swept aside as “inauthentic,” and when it began to rise in popularity around 2002, senator Velda González set out on an “anti-pornography” campaign with intentions to strip all media of content that could corrupt the middle-class youth; her target, of course, was the distribution of reggaetón. This wouldn’t be the first time reggaetón was targeted, for in 1995 the Drugs and Vice Control Bureau of the Police Department of Puerto Rico raided six record stores, confiscating all CDs that were seemingly “underground” or “reggae” for their “incitement to violence and drug use”2, such as sex, pot, and guns. Its rise to international success, in sum, can be indebted to Daddy Yankee and New York’s Puerto Rican communities. Formally known as Ramón Ayala Rodriguez, Daddy Yankee is a hip-hop artist from the caserío “Villa Kennedy” in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was deeply involved with the trend of sampling jamaican dancehall, reggae and hip hop tunes, and rapping over them, as well as the mixtape-distribution scene prevalent in caseríos5. Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina became so popular within Puerto Rican neighborhoods of New York City that it could be heard all over the city by the end of 2004, and New Yorkers, who were already listening to the music that inspired its creation, loved it. In 2004, 25 stations in Houston, Miami, Atlanta, and other huge urban landscapes switched from themes such as classical rock to 24-hour reggaetón. Authenticity is tricky in terms of Puerto Rican music, because there has been so much outside involvement infringing on its artistic exposure and inspirations. Technically, authenticity may be an an inapplicable term to Puerto Rican identity, because of all of its involvement with colonialists taking over certain infrastructure. There can be countless discussions about what authenticity entails, but the recent situation in Puerto Rico has involved the systematic idea that the working class is “underground,” which is classist and racist in its theory and exclusionary of the working class in its assumption of “authentic.”