#people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified'

[hussyknee]

Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001

“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”

Why America must stop the war now.

By Arundhati Roy

Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •

-------------------------------------------

As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.

The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".

After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.

Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.

Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.

Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.

Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."

So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."

Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.

Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.

What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.

Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate ­ usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.

The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.

The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.

Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.

Young boys ­many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.

Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.

They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.

With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony ­ every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.

One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.

By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)

On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.

Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.

Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)

Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.

As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.

Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.

First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.

Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.

Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?

Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.

Where will it all lead?

Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.

Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.

(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)

It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.

People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.

But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?

Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)

The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.

Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.

The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?

Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.

Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.

President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.

Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.

Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper ­The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.

He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.

Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?

Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?

#if you read nothing else today read this #i wonder how many people know that Afghanistan was also an oil war #people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified' #but the Iraq War wasnt #Arundati Roy was just saying what people already knew – this was a war machine sniffing after oil and guns #an industry coalition of which the Republican establishment were major stakeholders #the obscenity of dropping food packets with bombs #this is why you have no future in your country USAmerican Gen Z #this is why the entire globe adopted anti-Muslim ethnonationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for the next 20 years #this is how the global wave of fascism began #because they sold weapons to the wrong people‚ and then chose a scapegoat to sacrifice in revenge #world history #september 11 #geopolitics #us history #afghanistan war #usamerican imperialism #cold war #taliban #violence #terrorism #colonialism #capitalism #genocide #arundati roy #pacifism #anarchism #knee of huss

[decolonize-the-left]

Not sure if you're aware but tlou was written by a hardcore zionist...I haven't watched it but palestinians online have been saying the show is making them v uncomfortable with the zionist messages encoded in it. Just thought you might wanna know

After a quick Google search it doesn't look accidental.

This article immediately shows up. And a search for TLOU Zionism on Tumblr we see this article pop up over and over.

Here are some key points in the article (the whole thing is good tho and I still definitely left important parts out).

Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son.

"That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.

[...]A "cycle of violence" is a tempting way to interpret this conflict, or any conflict, because it signals careful nuance while quietly squashing more difficult conversations. By suggesting that since both Wolves and Scars are equally implicated and equally in pain, we are free to stop thinking about the problem. All parties include both good and bad actors. We're all human. Both sides.

This common, centrist position on violent conflict, while better than absolute dehumanization, is not coincidentally a world view that allows conflicts to drag on forever. Suggesting moral equivalence and a symmetry in ability between sides also invites us to throw up our hands and give up on better solutions because of implied and unexamined perceptions about "human nature." Indeed, the game is unrelentingly cynical, and this cynicism animates most of the 30-odd hour experience. Whereas Abby and Ellie find interpersonal resolution at the end, the game seems content to leave the question of community-scale cycles of violence as a regrettable fact of human existence. Even if the Wolves and Scars meet their mutual end, the game leaves us with the knowledge that a resistance group from the first game, the Fireflies, and other groups, are regrouping and gaining strength. The cycle continues.

[...]But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo.

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

[...]The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we've seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It's clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Critically, by not asking these questions, and by masking its point of view as being evenhanded, it perpetuates the very cycles of violence it's supposedly so troubled by.

I think is a very good criticism and I'll say that even giving characters "good" reasons to carry on with their very hateful goals seems doubly malicious in that context.

Like I could type out a long response justifying specifying character actions by saying "oh it's trauma" or "loyalty" or something but like the article says none of those reasons are really good enough when you look at the scale of conflict or what's it's actually a commentary on.

The logic Druckmann uses also dehumanizes the characters themselves in a way that removes their free will. Their trauma happened, it shaped them, and now everything else is just a domino effect of that. Everyone is a victim of unavoidable sets of circumstance. Circumstance made them who they are, they didn't have a choice in the people they got to be. Which means they have no choice in their actions.

Predeterminsm. And that may be literally true as a player of the game or watcher of the show since we cant change the course of those things or the characters themselves.

But real life doesn't lock us into stories or dialogue or behaviors that we can't walk away from. Ever. Even people "just doing my job" have a choice to lie down their guns in real life.

....within this context I feel like, if nothing else, the game serves purpose as a litmus test. It puts you through an emotional roller coaster fraught with bad intentions, awful deeds, and selfish acts and then it asks you: Was it worth it? Was it just a game? Would you do the same?

And what does that say about the kind of person who says yes?

It says you easily fall for genocidal and fascist propaganda, for starters. And who says you haven't already fallen for it if you're already sympathetic to Joel or Ellie's unjustifiable homicidal behaviors.

Because they are unjustifiable. Most people eat too much, depend on friends/family, or go to therapy when they're suffering a loss. They don't go on elaborate murder sprees. That's not the behavior or reaction of a person who's emotionally sound at all.

#TLOU #The last of us #decolstw #asked #answered

[thebusylilbee]

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." [...] More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. [...] “I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son. [...]

But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo.

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves [two opposing factions] hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism. As Rob Zacny wrote in his review and again in his closer examination of The Last of Us Part II's ending, at the end of the day Ellie's journey of revenge seems especially cruel, even idiotic, because we are never given a good reason for why she keeps recommitting to it. Acts of cruelty along the way, like Ellie's torturing another character to get information, are presented as inevitable.

This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles. But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It's certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it's horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn't "Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people," as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world. There are many other ways to react to that video: compassion for the victims, compassion for the killers, questioning why these soldiers had to drive into the West Bank in the first place, questioning what would drive a mob to this kind of violence. Revenge and hate is just one option.

The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we've seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It's clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Critically, by not asking these questions, and by masking its point of view as being evenhanded, it perpetuates the very cycles of violence it's supposedly so troubled by.

#I cut a huge chunk of that article it's very long and worth a read ! #this helps me understand better why this story does not feel convincing to me unlike part 1 #the last of us part 2 #tlou 2 #the last of us spoilers #bee tries to talk #video games #the last of us

[zuko-always-lies]

So I am going to be very honest about something that’s been worrying me.  In the last few months, within Western discourse, I’ve noticed a massively increased attitude of aggression toward all potentially hostile or unfriendly foreign countries. Negotiating at all with any country that is not a “Western-approved” “liberal democracy” seems to be denounced more and more as “appeasement” that will only “encourage hostile governments to become bolder.” Maximum sanctions, maximum confrontation, even war seem to be put forward as the only sensible way of interacting with any country with competing interests.

I find this a dangerous attitude, likely to increase the chance of conflict, devastation, and war.  The assumption that all non-liberal democratic, or at least non-democratic countries and regimes are essentially alike is extremely questionable.  Cuba is not Putin’s Russia which is not the People’s Republic of China which is not Vietnam which is not Iran which is not Saudi Arabia which is not the Taliban which is not Kazakhstan which is not Burundi which is not Myanmar which is not Thailand which is not Sudan which is not Hungary which is not Turkey which is not Ethiopia. But we find a situation where, for instance, the military aggression displayed by Putinisc Russia is used to justify a policy of maximum confrontation toward China, even though the governments, societies, and diplomatic issues of those two countries are extremely different.

In fact, the denouncement of any negotiation whatsoever with unfriendly countries as “appeasement” has its own sordid history, and has rarely been born out by events.  Nazi Germany was in fact very unusual not only among authoritarian regimes but also even among fascist and quasi-fascist ones in its commitment to violently remake an entire continent in its interests and ideology. Very few non-democratic regimes behave anything like Hitler’s regime did internationally.

When we deal with a country or countries with conflicting interests to our own, the ultimate alternative to negotiations is war. I think that that might be necessary and justified in some cases(for instance, I support continuing and even expanding military aid for Ukraine), but far from all. And whenever I hear the statement “the only thing [anyone with significantly different ideological principles than our own] understands is force,” I wince.*

*Ironically, the common belief that the Taliban were a bunch of “terrorists” incapable of anything but reflexive, instinctive hate played a massive role in the American defeat in Afghanistan, because it caused us to fail to take the ideological threat and strategic thinking of the movement seriously.

#musings

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

Out of all the Avengers it Tony who the war never really ended for

Ok I'm going to try and be sympathetic to a character I hate...

I understand Stark had a rough upbringing and a good chunk of it is usually ignored or forgotten when we see all the wealth and the privilege, which is not fair because all the money in the world can't help when your family is dysfunctional and you have emotional needs that are not met. It's what we say about Loki, he might have been a prince raised in a palace but that didn't take away from his suffering.

And the attack and subsequent kidnapping in Afghanistan must have been hard, and it didn't seem like once he returned to the US he was offered any kind of psychological help. Then, he got betrayed by a man he had considered a father figure & the invasion happened and he almost died.

That's messed up in the extreme and the guy suffered from PTSD in IM3, still no help. He should have gotten it, we all know he could afford it, but his refusal to get help can be explained I'm sure (arrogance, insecurities, fear, who knows).

He had been terrified since the invasion and made many bad choices but it's not so much the fact that he makes mistakes, the dude is flawed and human, he's going to be wrong several times, it's his refusal to listen and change & realize other people are suffering too. He was advocating for control, violation of human rights and illegal internment with no right for lawyer or trial... because he felt guilty over the death of one American kid.

Like your ask here talking about wars. Steve fought in WWII. He has PTSD too, flashbacks, I'm sure nightmares as well and he got no help after the ice either. Natasha? After all the shit in the Red Room and her psychological conditioning it must have taken years to get her to sleep well again, and she was betrayed when she found out Hydra had infiltrated Shield. Clint worked for Shield and in his series we hear it from him that he always felt like a weapon and nothing else, Shield just pointed him at the "right" people but he doesn't see himself as anything more than a weapon. Bruce and his childhood and pos of a father? The gamma radiation? Ross and Abomination? He's pretty clear in AoU that he doesn't see himself as a good guy, he thinks he's a monster. And Thor had it rough in Asgard as well being the golden child of a narc parent in a heavily dysfunctional family living in a realm fully indoctrinated by Odin.

They all have wars that never ended for them, they all had horrors that would probably haunt them their entire lives, it just so happens that the only one who had his portrayed and justified was Stark.

That's a different whole story though, and it's Marvel's fault. Stark in-universe made way too many mistakes, some of them can be explained by his past and pain and certainly a few personality disorders that can't be blamed on him but it's not about blame, it's about accountability and he was never held accountable for anything - not just by others, not even by himself.

#I tried not to be an anti but I guess it didn't work lol

[quercus-queer]

hey, what’s up with tlou 2? I keep seeing comments mentioning how it’s related to zionism but I can’t find info on it

Im not someone who gets very interested in creators of the media I enjoy (idk what my fave band looks like or their names) and I was only a very casual watcher of tlou adaptation and gameplays. I only recently found out Neil Druckmann is a Zionist and that tlou2 was “inspired by the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

This is to say Im not the most informed and have no desire to watch the podcasts this Vice article gets quotes from, the article was more than enough information for me. There’s some reddit threads out there too but I digress.

Some excerpts that I think sum up the article, Druckmann’s bias, and explains the criticisms people have always had about tlou’s writing.

But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism.

…

This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles.

But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It's certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it's horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn't "Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people," as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world.

…

The trouble with [the story/writing/themes], and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Personally, I’ve come to understand that people who cling to the Cycle of Violence as human nature, especially concerning community/global conflict have an deep misunderstanding of humanity.

This post details an article that requires an account to access, but elaborates on a certain mentality about Landback movements:

Additionally, the casting for tlou2 adaptation has come out and it’s a shit show:

Dina (the only Jewish character in the series + her fam) will be played by a very skinny conventionally attractive Hispanic non-Jewish woman who is allegedly a Zionist

Abby will be played by a very skinny conventionally attractive 5’2” woman who is also allegedly a Zionist

Also worth noting since some redditors misunderstood: the author is NOT saying Palestinians are literally like the Scars, the entire point is that Neil created the Scars to parallel how HE (biased) sees the conflict.

#palestine #tlou #tlou2 #tlou hbo #in conclusión #creators a Zionist #neil druckmann #show has Zionist themes #he casted zionists who regardless of that are unfit for the characters

[frankterranella]

It's time to turn the 911 remembrances down a notch

This week we noted the 22nd anniversary of the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. For those of us who were in close proximity to the attacks, it's a day we will never forget. But there comes a time when the remembrances have to transition from public to private. I think that time has come. The attacks are now as far in the past as Pearl Harbor was in 1963. As someone who was in school in 1963, I can tell you with certainty that America was not still dwelling on Pearl Harbor in 1963. We read about Pearl Harbor in our history books. And of course there were ceremonies in Hawaii, but they were not televised the way they are with 911 remembrances. There was no front page story about the Pearl Harbor attack in 1963. The country had healed from that wound. But for many Americans today, 911 remains an open wound. I will never forget the horror of seeing the World Trade Center collapse from five miles away uptown. I will never forget hearing that the subways weren't running and the Lincoln Tunnel was closed, and wondering how I would get off the island. I will never forget crossing the Hudson on a Day Line cruise ship packed with people who had walked the five miles from downtown to 42nd Street. I will never forget the soot-covered Wall Street workers wearily boarding a train in Hoboken looking like they were in shock. And I will never forget the signs in Grand Central desperately seeking information about missing family members. I don't need large public ceremonies covered on every television station every year to help me remember. It's seared into my brain forever. Frankly, I don't think the people who lost their lives that day would want us to continue to wallow in our grief. We can honor them in many other ways such as community service or charitable donations in their name. I think that just as the terrorists hijacked planes to do their evil, the 911 tragedy was hijacked by neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Irving Kristol to justify senseless invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that took more American lives than the terrorists did. And it was hijacked to justify erosions of our civil rights such as the Orwellian-named Patriot Act. And it was hijacked by the military industrial complex to justify increased defense spending under the guise of fighting a "war against terror," a name as meaningless and hopeless as the "war against drugs" and the "war against poverty." So it seems to me that keeping the terror alive with these nationally-televised remembrances of a very real and tragic event now serves political purposes. In fact, at 22 years and counting, I think that these televised memorials are more about keeping fear alive than the memory of those wonderful people lost. I say this because while the commemorations of December 7 were muted to a great extent after the Japanese were defeated, the full-blown commemorations of September 11 continue even though Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are long gone. For too many people, 911 remains an open wound. That's unhealthy and dangerous for the future of the country. For the health of America, the country has to move on from treating the September 11 attacks as if they happened last year. They happened a generation ago. While we must never forget, we can do that without dwelling on a day that (like Pearl Harbor) will live in infamy. The dead have been properly honored.

[antoine-roquentin]

“The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on,” Mitchell wrote. This banker, Jeff Courtney, put that figure closer to just 51 to 63 cents.

Now, for a private lender, like a bank, this projected shortfall would indeed be a ticking time bomb. The bank might be in danger of insolvency (unless, of course, it was rescued by a federal government that could give the bank an emergency cash infusion and take those bad loans off its hands). But there’s no real danger of a federal Cabinet-level department becoming insolvent. The Treasury Department is already in the habit of making up the Education Department’s budgetary shortfalls.

So what is the problem again? Typically for a news outlet like the Journal, the story describes this potential shortfall as what “taxpayers” would be “on the hook for,” but obviously, we all know that that is not how federal budgeting works. Taxes could rise for certain people for certain reasons, but no one will receive an itemized bill for this uncollected debt. And as for that large, catastrophic number ($500 billion!) that might never be paid back, it amounts to less than one year of a national defense budget that “taxpayers” are similarly “on the hook for.” (The Journal’s editorial board recently complained that the Biden administration’s proposed 2022 $715 billion Pentagon budget, while an increase in real terms, nonetheless represents an unconscionable decline in the defense budget as share of gross domestic product. “Taxpayers” are not mentioned in the editorial.)

Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report.

The story, then, is that the government might not collect some debt, even if it currently pretends, for budgetary reasons, that it definitely will, and, as a result, the deficit may rise to levels higher than the current estimates predict. For a committed conservative, such as DeVos, that situation is inherently scandalous. For everyone else, that could only ever become a problem in the future, and only if that future deficit has some negative effect on the overall economy, which is not very likely considering the entire recent history of federal deficits and economic growth.

That state of affairs may explain why articles like the one in the Journal so often invoke “taxpayers,” as if everyone would have to write personal checks to cover the Department of Education’s shortfall: because without imagining taxpayers as victims of government deficits, it’s hard to point to anyone actually harmed by a government department giving unrealistic estimates of future revenues.

Except in this story, there are actual victims: the people who hold debt that the government doesn’t realistically expect to collect in full but who are bled for payment regardless. As Courtney’s report found, because of the importance of these loans to the department’s balance sheet, the government keeps borrowers on the hook for the loans even if they will never be able to repay all of the money they owe, often by placing borrowers on a repayment plan tied to their income. (As the economist Marshall Steinbaum has explained, the “income driven repayment,” or IDR, program is framed as a means of helping borrowers, but in reality, it “exerts a significant drag on their financial health, to no apparent purpose” by forcing them to “make less-than-adequate payments for many years before their debt is finally cancelled.”) The victim of such a scheme isn’t taxpayers, it’s debtors.

There’s one particular portion of The Wall Street Journal’s story that the public should treat as a moral and political scandal (the emphasis here is mine):

One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.

A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.

But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”

To explain this more plainly, Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report, because CBO scores are more real to senators than flesh-and-blood people.

This is the sort of depravity that deficit obsessions produce. The Iraq War needed to be “paid for” with the future earnings of students who, lawmakers imagined, would eventually be rich, even as many of the same lawmakers voted to cut taxes on already-rich people. Now the debt of the still-not-rich students can’t be forgiven because of its importance to the federal government’s predicted future earnings. And politicians and commentators in thrall to deficit politics still paint the situation as a morality tale, in which the borrowers are irresponsible for having the debt and the government would be irresponsible to forgive it. After all, think of the poor taxpayers.

The early days of the Biden administration led some to believe we were finally free of this incoherent political mode, where dubious predictions in CBO reports dictate the limits of the politically possible and determine who will be arbitrarily punished for the sake of limiting the size of a program in a speculative 10-year budget projection. The proof that Democrats had learned their lesson was one major piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, designed to respond to a unique emergency.

More recently, the administration, and some of its allies in Congress, have signaled strongly that they’re returning to the old ways. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has reported that the White House is determined to “pay for” its infrastructure plans, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is apparently leading the charge to ensure the infrastructure spending is “offset.” This will have the likely effect of limiting the scope of the plan, once again sacrificing material benefits for the sake of estimates and predictions from the CBO.

The Biden administration seems to be determined to go about this without violating its pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 (a threshold meant to define the upper limit of “middle class” despite being comically higher than the Obama administration’s similar $250,000 limit for tax hikes). It has floated increasing IRS enforcement and raising the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans. Both are fine ideas. But the best thing about taxing the rich is not that you can use their money for infrastructure, it’s that doing so reduces their political and economic power. That’s also the reason why it’s so difficult for Washington to do it.

The complete incoherence of the current Democratic position on spending and deficits is summed up well in another Wall Street Journal story, where Montana Senator Jon Tester was quoted saying, “I don’t want to raise any taxes, but I don’t want to put stuff on the debt, either.… If we’re going to build infrastructure, we have to pay for it somehow. I’m open to all ideas.”

“Open” to “all ideas” but unwilling to tax the rich, and unwilling to allow a CBO report to show a larger deficit as a result of needed spending: This is more or less precisely the dynamic that led student loan debt to explode in the United States, and it’s the zombie worldview that threatens any chance of this government averting a multitude of political, economic, and ecological disasters.

[septembriseur]

I want to come back to this article, which I reblogged a post from (after seeing it reblogged by loads of people on my dash). I recommend reading the article if you haven’t done so. Its central argument revolves around the idea that “modern liberal democracy presents itself as non-ideological beyond ideology,” and that ideology itself is always presented in literature/media as unacceptably violent— villainous. (I would argue that, in fact, any sort of cultural “accretion,” in the sense that culture is perceived as "on top of” and obscuring universalized western ideology,  is tolerated only insofar as it is not really taken specifically or seriously. That’s why even characters who are presented as deeply religious (think of Matt Murdock or Rogue One’s Baze and Chirrut) are portrayed as religious in a way that is broad, universal, flexible, and vague. 

One issue that the article doesn’t really delve into is that supposedly “ideologue” villains are actually profoundly anideological, except insofar as their ideology is, like, anti- modern liberal democracy’s lack of ideology. A really interesting example of this is in Iron Man: Tony Stark gets held hostage by a group of extremists whose extreme belief is... well... even the MCU wiki seems unable to provide any detail on this beyond “destroying world peace.” The film employs a weird move where it obviously relies on the Afghan setting of the villainous Ten Rings to suggest associations with radical Islamism, yet also provides evidence that the Ten Rings are not Islamists. On the one hand, it provides a sort of generic Western specter of radical Islamists— brown men speaking foreign languages and living in Afghan caves— and on the other hand it coyly removes all potential religious, political, or cultural motivation for their actions. These guys aren’t impoverished tribesmen who’ve been subject to tumultuous centuries of imperial warfare, and they’re not religious extremists living out masculine power fantasies. They’re just a group of dudes who kind of look vaguely Middle Eastern and kind of sound vaguely Middle Eastern (since Arabic and Persian are the languages we hear the most). 

Of course, there’s a real-world explanation for this: Marvel wants to be able to tap into that specter of radical Islamism without offending Muslim consumers. But the textual effect is to create a picture of the world in which terrorism in Afghanistan is evacuated of all meaning. Don’t get me wrong: terrorism in Afghanistan is unbelievably destructive and to a large extent nihilistic, in that it benefits no one and spreads only despair and suffering. But at the same time, it arises out of a historical, political, economic, and religious-cultural context, and if you refuse to understand this context, then you will fail to understand why people make the choice to become terrorists (or how to stop them).

That’s the real problem here: the creation of a world in which the only rational choice is modern liberal democracy, and all other choices are nonsensical. 

Marvel is a great site at which to explore this, simply because there’s so much of it. (You could also easily look at Star Wars, as MacQuarrie does in that article— why does the First Order want power? New extended universe writers have fleshed this out more in their web of liminally canonical texts, but on screen the answer seems to be, in the words of the also-manifestly-guilty-of-this-and-guilty-in-other-ways Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible: “the world is a mess, and I just need to rule it.”) 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a wildly characteristic example of this. It has the thankless task of trying to engage with the effects of the canonically almost effect-free (cf Spider-man: Far From Home) blip, and pieces together a weirdly nonsensical storyline in which the blip enable border-free mass migration, which was revoked when the other half of the world’s population reappeared. The plot revolves around a group of super soldier refugees/displaced persons who want to stop borders from being reimposed on the world. Sam Wilson refers to the refugees as “people who have been welcomed into countries that previously kept them out with barb wire,” and indeed it's hard to imagine any version of this narrative in which the “migration” we’re talking about is the migration of Global South nationals to the Global North. There’s a really plausible specter here: the Global North does source its manual and domestic labor from the Global South while, whenever possible, keeping Global South nationals out with barbed wire. It does make sense that the Global North would import laborers and then attempt to deport them when their presence was no longer convenient. That is, in fact, literally what has happened/is happening in the UK to foreign healthcare workers during the pandemic.

However, as in Iron Man, Marvel wants to mobilize a specter while also evacuating it of all meaning. None of the displaced people we see in TFATWS bear any resemblance to real-world displaced persons. In spite of their United Colors of Benetton racial diversity, they display no marks of culture, religion, nationality, or indeed poverty. They even have British and American accents. They are completely neutral in every way.

This matters for several reasons. First of all, it allows the viewer to differentiate between the migrants on-screen— Western-looking, English-speaking, non-religious— with migrants off-screen: [perceived to be] too religious, non-English-speaking, culturally and racially “other.” Secondly (again as with Iron Man), it removes all context from the act of migration. Why did these people become migrants? Uh... because of the blip, I guess? Beyond some vague references to suffering, it’s never addressed. This allows the viewer to completely detach the question of migrants/displacement from any of its structural context. Why do people migrate in the real world? Because their countries have been completely devastated by warfare, often proxy warfare carried out by imperial states. Because climate change has completely devastated the regions where they live, with or without triggering devastating warfare. Because they belong to ethnic, political, and/or religious groups that are being systematically destroyed by state governments. Because colonialism and neoliberal capitalism have completely devastated the economies of the regions where they live. This is why the stakes of migration are high. 

If, as the show suggests, people just migrate for various personal reasons that really aren’t that important, then the stakes are not high, and we don’t have to feel bad about the behavior of our governments. This is a huge problem at a time when Denmark is shipping Syrian asylum-seekers back to Syria because it’s apparently fine now, Joe Biden is failing to make good on campaign promises about increasing refugee quotas, the UK is housing asylum seekers in situations that violate human rights law, migrant drownings in the Mediterranean Sea have become a regular feature, and the United States has systematically resisted fulfilling its promises to Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives working for US forces in exchange for visas.

But, like, above and beyond the specific political issue of migration: what is the Flag Smasher ideology? “One world, one people.” I accept that there might be some viewers (mostly those with no knowledge or experience of immigration) who oppose this on principle, but it seems pretty obviously... good. So the bad part is... that they’re fighting for it? (According to people in my notes, this is Bad.) It’s possible to read this as another example of what the MacQuarrie article discusses: personal violence good, ideological violence bad. However, once again we have an example of an ideology that is not ideological, an ideology that is a specter cleaned out of any possible substance. The nonsensical choice here (the one beside which modern liberal democratic norms are obvious) is the choice to commit violence when there is no urgency that justifies this— none of the urgency that, in fact, exists in the real world, and explains why people regularly sacrifice their lives in desperate attempts to escape their homes. 

This is a really good example of how capitalism— a force with no real agency or subject, no evil committee planning its deeds— ends up enacting a project that systematically enforces its ideology. Attempts to render narratives apolitical are themselves profoundly political, even when justified in terms of appeal to the consumer. This is one of the most dangerous aspects of media, IMHO. 

#just me sayin stuff honestly #tv: tfatws

[scope-dogg]

Really not sure what to feel about the prospect of military action in Ukraine

I actually do think defending Ukraine, if they want NATO’s help, would be justifiable the same way the coalition’s move to protect Kuwait in the first Gulf War was. It’d be the first justifiable war fought by Western powers since then.

But at the same time the debacle in Afghanistan is fresh in people’s minds and it’s understandable that there’s no appetite for yet another failed military adventure overseas except in the most hawkish cults at the seat of power, doubly so when you consider that the Russian military is no joke and will be fighting on their front doorstep. You’ve got to take into account the fact that the fighting would be brutal even before you consider that there’s a non-zero chance that it escalates into an all-out nuclear exchange that could kill us all.

IMO the best thing to do would be for a massive deployment / show of force that convinces Putin that invading Ukraine won’t be worth it and forces him to back down. It would really sour the waters politically but it’d be preferable to actual open conflict no matter what. That will require action right now though. It's most likely too late, troop deployments take time and it’s looking like the Russians are set to invade at any minute. I do actually think Biden will try to do something. He’s a neocon at heart and understands that a big foreign policy success would be the shot in the arm that his tanking approval numbers need ahead of the midterms later this year, though if he does something and it ends up failing (this seems like a sensible bet given that he’s such an incompetent dipshit) then obviously that’s worse for him than doing nothing, though his approval is so low that maybe it’s a gamble worth taking for him.

2022′s turning out to be yet another “interesting” year. I fucking hate it

[st-just]

Hey, Cuba-anon again with a slightly different question. Less about Cuba, more about foreign policy and ethics in general. I am interested to know what you think about Nationalism and it’s place in the modern world. How should one view their relationship to their country versus their relationship to the global community?

To give my point of view, I think I am a pragmatic nationalist? I am not gung-ho about America because “it is the best nation ever and the president is never wrong, uwu”, but rather because I live here, my parents and grandparents live here, and if something in the world negatively impacts America it will by extension negatively impact me. I don’t think other countries are beneath me or anything, but I also know that the feeling is not always reciprocal. So, to me, putting the well being of Americans first and everything else second is similar to putting on your air mask first before helping others in the event of a plane crash.

Either way, would love to hear your point of view and see how others tackle the question.

(sorry for the delay in response, got halfway through writing this then saved it to drafts and completely blanked on it)

But okay, interesting question, and worth breaking down.

So, you know how through the '90s and early 2000's there was this just utterly overpowering narrative where the last chapter of every history textbook ended with a chapter about how national borders were less and less important and how through the magic of The Internet young people were more connected and cosmopolitan than ever, with the strong implication that the weight of history was pulling us inevitably towards a post-national utopia of frictionless exchange and understanding. Call it the Star Trek ideal.

Hasn't exactly worked out, of course. And to a large degree was bullshit even at the time (or the optimism of academics expecting all of humanity to think like they do, being charitable). But in my heart of hearts, that's still how I think things should work.

But okay, to get a bit less abstract, a bunch of barely connected thoughts-

- Nation-states (and states generally) are, at best, convenient administrative divisions of humanity. They have no value outside the services they provide to their residents, and certainly no rights or moral worth outside that. America doesn't deserve your loyalty or life anymore than the state of Ohio or city of Baltimore do (replace with wherever you live.)

-If you accept the basic idea of humans having equal moral worth (or anywhere close to it), then the entire idea that someone's entire life should be defined by what side of an imaginary line on a map they were born on seems obviously absurd as soon as you start thinking about it?

-Nations - in terms of borders, whose included, what characteristics are 'national', etc - are also both contingent and a great extent artificial, defined by state and cultural elites via a standardized language, a mythologized national history, patriotic holidays, nationalizing and creating traditions and rituals, national education and entertainment, etc, etc. There's nothing primordial or inherent there.

-Unfortunately, people really, really like having teams to identify with, and like excluding people from those teams and/or treating them like shit for not belonging to them even more. (People talk a lot about x or y horrible thing being fundamental to human nature, but I really think this is one of the places where human nature really lets us down.)

-Nationalism is an extremely easy and powerful way of dividing the world between us and them, and across the world there has been massive success using it as a locus for identity formation and to organize populations around basically every sort of project imaginable, from funding public education and welfare to genocide.

-Nationalism is, as mentioned, inherently exclusive - and no matter what it's proponents say, in practice there's always someone within the borders of the nation who doesn't quite fit (in the European context, Romani and Jewish people are the most obvious examples). Cases where the nationalist imagination doesn't perfectly overlap with state borders, or with the identity of some subset of the 'national' population also tends to go, uh, badly.

-However, within the national population, appeals to national solidarity or theoretically shared ideals can often be (to a limited degree) useful in transcending or working to ameliorate regional, ethnic, class, etc divides.

-While it's true that large chunks of the American (Canadian, British, French, Japanese, etc) populace benefit quite a bit from their position in the current international system, it's almost universally the case that what foreign policy elites consider 'the national interest' extends far, far, far beyond anything that provides concrete benefits to the average citizen - I'll just gesture vaguely towards Afghanistan, here. Or World War 1 - and quite a lot of death and misery is inflicted for the sake of a narrow slice of the elite's material interests and entirely meaningless concerns around national glory and prestige.

-To be frank, in specifically America's case, putting the interests of co-nationals first and everyone else second is less putting your own air mask on first and more launching a life boat at half capacity to make sure you have leg room.

-But, again, the fruits of pursuing the national interest really, really aren't evenly spread. Does the US government's tireless and vicious championing of stringent IP laws, regardless of how many needless deaths result from the constraints on the drug supply they create, really do much for the average American?

-Which, to go back to the air mask analogy, brings up the awkward point that very often it's not so much putting your own mask on first as tearing the masks off people around you so you have extras, just in case. How much less is the life of someone on the wrong side of the border worth? Half as much? A tenth? A thousandth? The pursuit of America's national security and national interests has a death toll well into the millions.

-Honestly, even if you don't care at all about foreigners, in terms of domestic policy it's just a useful heuristic to instinctively distrust anyone who relies too much on nationalist rhetoric to justify themselves. I mean, the music's almost always bad and anyone who actually gets invested in the symbolism of their flag is reliably a complete killjoy, but even beyond that - they're just very reliably the worst people. This is admittedly unkind and not always true. But, well, see that quote about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, which applies wonderfully to both people and organizations. If someone's trying to sell something by wrapping it in the flag, that usually means they don't want you looking too closely.

-Viewing the world through a nationalist framework and caring about zero-sum issues of national prestige also make it incredibly hard to coordinate around issues that don't care about national borders, or are going to disproportionately hurt people without rich and powerful nation-states defending their interests. Like, I don't know, global pandemics. Or climate change.

-Anyway, in conclusion, borders bad, nationalism bad, and also any officially codified 'Patriotic' culture is instantly cringe. Hopefully some of this makes sense.

#reply #anon #in this essay i will #this is theoretically a writing blog #nationalism #political theory

[kawaiijellymonster]

I remember when civil war first came out and my family was wholeheartedly team cap because like of course, hes captain fucking america, he’s always been the kid from brooklyn not afraid to walk away from a fight, he's always seemed to have peoples best interests in mind...right? But holy shit recently I’ve been staring at walls just thinking about it and Tony was so right its not even funny. First of all, Steve has always seemingly been all about preventing people in power from going unchecked. that is, until he was the one in power. he didn’t want to have any kind of accountability outside of the avengers, nobody “telling him what to do.” He found a fight in everything because he was that kid from brooklyn and he thinks everything is a personal attack. Tony has always been about accountability. He stopped selling weapons and started trying to become a “beacon of clean energy.” He literally says “it’s time for some transparency.” And its’s not like team cap ever treated Tony very well either, they used him for his money constantly while insulting and teasing at his PTSD all the time. Cap pushed for wanda on the team after she borderline mindraped him and brought up every fear and guilt of his entire life. They say he’s arrogant, too egotistical and doesn’t work well with others. But he’s constantly looking for people smarter than him: Harley, Bruce, Peter, Dr. Strange. He’s filled with curiosity, he wants to learn with and from people. Maybe he seems arrogant but it’s to hide the trauma that is his entire life, the last time he trusted someone he was shipped to afghanistan and nearly died. His walls are sky high, he wraps himself in machines, the one thing he can trust, that’s never failed him before. Not signing the accords would be declaring that he is a dictator, that he doesn’t play by the rules, that all he wants is power, it would allow the government to take his tech and start selling weapons again. It would mean that everyone was right about him, that he was a monster seeking unchecked power. 

But really it was the little guy from brooklyn that said “the best hands are our own,” who said that we can’t trust the government and so it’s better to work outside the law. That the ends justify the means. Nobody expected that from America’s golden boy. 

Cap is stuck in the past, when everything is a government conspiracy and the best way to go about facing it is to punch it hard and fast. The world got complicated, it’s not so easy anymore, it requires finesse, sacrifices, teamwork. And most of all, it requires a hope for the future. Cap just wants what he had back, he wants Peggy and Bucky, he wants a purpose. Tony is already looking at the next generation, he recognises that he didn’t do well, he doesn’t think he should be an icon, he knows that humanity always has room to improve, to do better, to be better. He recognises that “with great power comes great responsibility,” and he acknowledges that they should be held accountable for the damage and deaths they cause. They don’t have the right to be judge jury and executioner. 

#team iron man #captain america civil war #marvel #tony #tony stark #iron man #captain america #steve rogers #anti team cap #the accords #marvel cinematic universe #mcu meta #captain america meta

[proudlylost]

My 6+1 favorite SPN fics: AU

After the SPN finale I kinda got sucked back into the fandom. The excessive amount of fanfiction reading ensued (I re-read all of my SPN fic favorites and then some) and I realised I have actually read quite a lot of them. So I thought I could share them, to highlight all the talented authors there is and also to gather all of my favorites into the one place. This post contain my favorite AU fics, the SPN universe edition of this fic rec can be found here.

Ninety One Whiskey by komodobits

“In the spring of 1944, the 104th Medical Battalion of the United States Army is disbanded, and its men reassigned to various infantry companies in preparation for their invasion of occupied France. For First Lieutenant Novak, this is less than helpful, as he has so far met his platoon’s designated medic a grand total of twice, and has both times found Sergeant Winchester to be the optimum combination of reckless, arrogant, and downright insufferable so as to make cohesive platoon function near impossible. When the time comes to move out, however, Castiel has to reconcile himself to the fact that men are going to go down and trust that Dean Winchester may well be the only person who can put them back together again. WW2 ETO infantry AU. “ 

READ! THIS! Well, there is some really disturbing war related and time period related stuff, but if you can stomach that, read it! Along with the Angel’s Wild, this is my favorite fanfiction. This fic is heart wrenching and so, so good.The characterization is on point. Historical accuracy is on point. Slow burn is on point. Everything is just perfect. However, as I said, this fic is heavy stuff. There is some serious angst (I cried. I almost never cry when reading) and trauma. But there is glimmers of hope, even if sometimes it feels hopeless. Expected recovery time: at least two weeks. Word Count:  401,183. Explicit

Angel’s wild by LimonadeGaby and riseofthefallenone

“But that’s the whole reason he’s here, isn’t it? He’s not out here hunting Humans. He’s not even hunting deer, or bears, or anything else that featured in Bambi. He’s out here, freezing his nuts off every night, because he’s hunting Angels.

Sometimes Dean wishes that Angels were like how they’re described in the Bible. How people from time too old for him to care much about thought Angels were messengers and warriors of God, protectors of Humans. He knows that how they’re really described in the Bible is actually pretty terrifying, but at least they were told by God that they’re supposed to love Humans, right?

That’s a thousand times better than what Angels really turned out to be.”

This was first longer fic that I read from Supernatural fandom and I fell in love. So this is “the fic that got me into the fandom” but I have read it multiple times since and it is still very, very good. I love everything about this fic. It is very original and the lore is amazing. I love how Dean and Cas are both quite young (in Cas’s case, relatively speaking) and how their love develops (slow burn! <3) I love how Cas is described and I love how he communicates (unintentionally) with flowers. You can also read this without having any knowledge of supernatural series (like I did) which is always impressive for a fic. Wor count:  389, 271. Explicit

For All You Young Hockey Players Out There, Pay Attention by thursdaysfallenangel

“Dean Winchester knows two things about hockey, two things his dad made sure he knew. One, hockey is a guy’s sport, and two, hockey is family. Hockey meant Sam and Bobby and Benny and Victor and Gabriel and hell, his entire team. So when Victor gets traded, Russian-star-turned-new-teammate Castiel Krushnic becomes a threat. As much as Dean hates him for that, the longer he sticks around, the more he begins to threaten that first rule too. Dean’s been taught his whole life that those who play hockey should not be captivated by deep accented voices and the way a guy handles his stick, so how the hell is he supposed to justify what he’s starting to think about Cas? All Dean wanted at the beginning of the season was to win, and now all he wants to do is figure out how he feels about Cas and how to deal with it without ruining his career and tearing his family apart. “

Ah, three of my absolute favourite things smashed into the same fic: sports, slow burn and enemies to lovers. This fic has lots of cameos from supernatural characters, because hockey teams require lots of players. So it is easy to spot your favorite character in this fic. This fic is probably one of may favorites, because of the sport environment (Outside the fandom, I have been super into sports. Like so much I have several national championships medals from my sport. Anyway, not a point here): also the sexual tension between Dean and Cas is so good, especially when they are pumped with the adrenaline. You don’t really need to understand sports to enjoy this fic, though. Word count:  143,592. Explicit

Formula Won by cardinalwrites

“Of all the places Castiel Novak thought he would take in his career, an internship as a Formula One Paddock Correspondent (or journalist, for short) was most definitely not one of them for a few reasons. One: He had no clue what the hell Formula One was. Two: He knew nothing about sports in general. And Three: He should not fall in love with the people he’s supposed to be asking hard-hitting questions to, least of all the head driver of one of the oldest and most well-renowned teams in the sport’s history.

This is a love story told around the world through the eyes of the person that knows the least about where he has found himself in. Come follow a 20-race season finding love in the lost, learning the truth, and figuring out what the hell Formula One is along the way.”

Another sports fic with a slow burn. This is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, because there is quite a lot information about formula one, and the reading experience is more enjoyable if already know about formulas/do your research. Don’t let it stop you though, because this fic is very good. The friendship between Dean and Cas is very natural, and later the romance as well. The plot is very engaging and the drama inside the formula one organization is so good. This fic is also not so “heavy” as the other ones in my list (of course, there are problems along the way, but even the fic’s tags say there will be fluff). The rating is T, which is kinda surprising, because I did not notice it until I already had read the whole fic. Word count: 123,777. Teen

Have Love, Will Travel by squeemonster

Castiel Novak is a reclusive writer with a childhood so tragic it's left him terrified to leave his home—until his overbearing brother, Gabriel, drags him out for a night on the town full of booze and strip clubs, and he encounters Dean Winchester, a mesmerizing and mysterious stripper with secrets of his own. Both men find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other, and soon Dean's private dances for Castiel become much more, as both men confess their troubles and find solace in each other's company. But neither can seem to find the courage to take their relationship further than the intimacy of the club's VIP Room—and just when Dean's own brother gives him the excuse he needs to finally admit his feelings, Dean discovers something that brings it all crumbling down. Will they find a way past their demons and their trust issues, and back to each other?

This is one of the fandom classics and quite rightfully so. Both Dean and Cas have issues, in other words: what’s new? The sexual chemistry between them was so good and well written, but there is also angst and mental health issues (mostly Cas). Sam is quite young in this fic, but manages to be very much a little brother. I honestly loved this fic when I was a bit younger, but I think it is still very good and deserves its place in this list. Word count  94,054. Explicit

Pick It All Up by thepinupchemist

Army veteran Castiel Novak is a wreck after his tour in Afghanistan, brought home to his brother's apartment in Lawrence, Kansas with scars both mental and physical. He copes poorly, and during one night of bad decision making, meets somebody just as much of a disaster as he is -- a prostitute named Dean Winchester. And suddenly, two damaged men might not be as irreparable as they believed.

Ah, it seems that I’m incapable of picking nice, fluffy, happy fanfics. This certainly is not one of them. There is full warnings in the tags, because there is some triggering stuff: PTSD, mentions of past abuse, alcoholism etc. But, this is also very healing story in its own way (It has happy ending. I guess I can spoil that because it reads in the tags) . I avoided this fic for a long time, because the prostitute!Dean tag scared me away, but this was so worth of reading (as I said, happy ending)! Gabriel is super supportive and sweet brother and Dean and Cas are dysfunctional but they work so well despite all the trauma they have endured. Word count:  126,611. Explicit

Bonus: Twist and Shout by gabriel and standbyme

What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.

Well, I don’t think this fic needs any introductions. This is the fic, the most popular in SPN fandom and one of the most popular ones in the whole ao3. I thought that I could read this, because I don’t generally have many triggers, despite all the warnings. I was a wreck during reading. And I have managed to read it once and I can’t make myself read it again. But it is good and amazingly written. This fic plucks every emotion out of you and does anything it pleases with them. You have been warned. Word count:  97,556. Explicit

(When I wrote this fic rec I also realised I have a serious problem with long fics. Like, most of my favorites are at least 100,000 words. At this point I think I don’t even consider a fic to be slow burn, unless it takes several days to complete the fic. Oops)

#supernatural fic rec #destiel fic rec #supernatural fanfiction #destiel fanfiction #destiel slow burn #supernatural #destiel

[as-if-and-only-if]

(I’m sorry to post this. A lot of obvious negativity and despair and worrying here at 6:30am. It’s not particularly insightful or useful as far as i can tell; it’s things we all know. I just need to get it out of my head right now. I would absolutely put this under a read-more, but I’m on mobile. Feel free to scroll. Sometimes the weight of the world’s problems—and your own problems—just grinds these feelings out of you and doesn’t relent.)

i am really feeling despair as a member of the world right now. and the worst part is that it feels justified. For one, covid isn’t going away and has long term effects even when vaccinated, which, by the way, isn’t even very effective (even with a booster, after a few months!) at preventing infections of the variant that makes up 99% of cases and which is second in infectiousness/transmissibility only to measles. and infection is all it takes to be subject to the chance of getting one of these disabling cognitive impairments. (as if I needed another brain problem to worry about potentially acquiring!) meanwhile places I’m the US are unmasking, the CDC apparently changed its risk assessment under people’s noses to show what would be high risk as now low risk (need to double check), vaccination rates have plateaued at far too low a value and there seems to be no hope of getting a vaccination mandate.

and that’s just Covid. and I didn’t even get to all of the reasons.

so then what else have we got? anti-trans laws in Idaho and Texas and more. anti-abortion laws even for ectopic pregnancies. these laws are death sentences (and would be even if they didn’t extend that far). and, the worst part: people who unreservedly support these things. people who are firmly rooted in their harmful beliefs and, when presented with a ballot for “suffering” or “way more suffering”, check the box for “way more suffering” proudly and safely every single time. South Korea just elected a president who ran on an explicitly anti-feminist campaign and promises to worsen the lives of poor people. reactionary conservatism seems to be a virus spreading parallel to Covid.

and, okay. climate change. climate change. climate change. climate change. that’s existential. and what changes have we actually enacted? nearly none, relative to what needs to be done. I can’t do this justice. there really is so much. and there are so many more environmental and planetary-stewardship concerns, even beyond climate change—ocean pollution, air pollution, land pollution, animal cruelty, preparation for another pandemic, preparation for a coronal mass ejection or an asteroid, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, deforestation and derainforestation, etc.

oh, did I mention the suffering due to war? the senseless death and destruction in the service of empire? right now, most saliently, the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin? So many have died. So many have lost their homes or a loved one. And for what? For the whims of an autocrat who saw Ukraine slipping away from his imagined future empire, and decided to try to stop that by force. For nothing. All of this death and all of this loss.

and that’s “just” Ukraine. Look at Syria, look at Palestine, look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at so many more. And imperialist invasion per se has not been their only strife. There are, of course, knock-on effects that persist and evolve as a result. The Taliban are unequivocally evil, and now they’re in power as a result of the USA’s invasion after all. and then, of course, there’s the endpoint of the arms race: the threat of nuclear weapons, ever-evolving and ever-growing.

and what else? I don’t think we covered healthcare enough but I’m too tired to do it justice. and that’s tied to capitalism, of course, which is tied to…I mean, just so much struggle and suffering. I feel like everyone here is pretty well aware of the modes of injustices I’m referring to when I gesture to “capitalism” all at once, though. you get it.

ok and have we done government enough either? what about voting rights? or gerrymandering? or the courts in the US? what about abuse of power in general and the way it can be used to self-perpetuate? what about the complexity of modern day finance that entrenches that economic power? what about the fact that economic power gives you governmental power through lobbying? what about the way governmental and financial power thrives off of violence via the military-industrial complex and our militarized police forces? what about police brutality?

hey, what about racism? you know, one of the core vices of our society here in the US, something that’s shaped countless aspects of our government, society, and people’s lives. And while we’re looking at the world’s problems through the lens of personal categories of oppression, what about another, parallel “core vice” which has a similar-in-magnitude systemic entrenchment and breadth of impact: sexism and misogyny? what about queerphobia and homophobia and transphobia? what about anti-semitism? what about ableism? what about all of the ways people can be terrible to each other which have been etched into our society’s frameworks and enshrined in its institutions?

what about the fact that I’m tired, but unable to sleep. I’m in a comfortable bed, blanketed by layers and layers of troubles woven tight and too heavy for me to move. Am I only able to toss and turn as I wait for the sun to rise?

#there are things to be done and actions we can take. there IS hope. it is just so collectivized that it’s hard to know one’s part in it. #obviously we can only do what we can do. but I am so incapable. #i can’t even make my own life work. #i want more than anything to be able to help. but I’m just too terrible at doing things. (really bad ADHD is the diagnosis.) #i want things to be ok too. i want to play games with my friends and learn and create and have a happy life. #but this feels impossible. #i know it’s not. i know it’s not but I just need to despair for a bit #because any of what I want is only possible with a great deal of work #and I’m trying. I’m putting the work in. I’m working with an adhd coach. I’m doing my best but I’m still so slow at making things better. #I’ve been trying for ten years under the assumption I had just OCD. which I did (and do). now the ADHD has finally been identified #and it feels like I’m starting from scratch. #how long? #i can only wade so far before I have to catch my breath. #but will the river of time swallow me up as I’m standing still?

[arcticdementor]

Other possible Holocausts: why pro-lifers are lying to us, and why thats a good thing

…

Ive had a running argument over the past few years that the raw lack of anti-abortion terrorist action proves no one really thinks abortion is murder, ie. intentional 1st degree murder of a life equal to yours or mine.

Ive always gotten pushback to quote WillyWang:

The "revealed preference" of those that oppose abortion but don't firebomb clinics and kill doctors? It won't help, you'll be made an example of in the negative sense, and civilized norms are more important than a useless symbolic point. One clinic destroyed won't end abortion, after all.

From which this Effort-post got its Genesis:

Would you say the same about those who participated in the french resistance or Warsaw Ghetto rising to Nazi Germany?

Everyone of those claims applies there: they were likely to be made examples of, they were damaging civilized norms, and any given action had relatively little to no impact.

Yet the same people who insist abortion is murder, and thus that America is committing a holocaust, yet denounce any of the people who employed violence against abortion doctors or clinics, and can’t distance themselves fast enough from any call for violence... none of those people apply the same logic to the first holocaust. None of them say the frenchmen who bombed german police stations where dangerous terrorists who deserved their executions, none of them denounce the Warsaw ghetto rising as an attack on civilization.

…

If anti-abortion advocated genuinely believed a fetus was a equivalent human life to yours or mine or the little kids they see walk to school, and that this was an ongoing holocaust of American Children at a scale possibly 10x or more what was done to the jews... they wouldn’t need to come up with ad hoc reasons why they don’t resort to violence, their mind would be screaming at them to take bloody vengeance 24/7 in righteous outrage, demanding that oceans of blood and fire be unleashed that it might wash clean the horror, that nuclear fire would be be an acceptable emergency shut off to end such wanton and cruel slaughter... and if thinking through all the logic they concluded that no violence wouldn’t help and they must pursue some peaceful negotiation to stop the slaughter, then their minds recoil and call themselves cowards and the moment of coming to that conclusion would be an ongoing trauma they’d carry with them for the rest of their life, even if they knew they were 100% right. They would meet the “pro-choice” and barely be able to conceal their desire to see them dead or imprisoned... they would meet women who had had abortions and scream bloody murder at them and tell them they deserve the death penalty, the way many of the same people react when presented with women who’d murdered their children, but after their children had left the womb.

The people who were jailed for assassinating abortionists, or fire-bombing clinics would be folk heroes lionized in songs and crowd funded hagiographic documentaries and folk traditions, like John Brown, or John Wilkes Booth, or Louis Reil, or Saco and Vancety, or Huey Newton, or Malcolm X, or David Koresh, or Levoy Finecolm... or hell even just Jesse James, or Killdozer.

Americans abort on average 1 million plus babies a year... that means if abortion is murder and those are human lives, then the 50 years since Roe vs.Wade has been a worse crime than the holocaust, slavery, or the crimes of Stalin, and we’d have to consult a historian to see if they were worse than Mao (on a per capita basis, certainly)...

This would be the worse crime ever commited, the greatest mass slaughter ever perpetrated in human history, and 50 years later our society would remain committed to repeating it in the next 50 years.

If that does not demand violence, then nothing in human history ever has, no even defensive war has ever been justified, and only Jainists and Jehovah’s witnesses are morally acceptable actors. An extreme unexceedable pascifism we know the vast majority of anti-abortion advocates do not endorse, since they overwhelming supported or at-least did not conspicuously oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (over a mere 3000 Americans dead, and a less than a years abortions worth of Iraqis killed by Saddam) and continue to conspicuously “Support our troops” troops that exist to carry out violence, despite their moral commitments saying they can apparently never in human history be justified.

.

When i say this proves “Pro-lifers” clearly do not believe a fetus is an equal human life, thats me being incredibly charitable. That is me extending a overwhelming large olive branch, that is me expressing a stupendous care and concern and sympathy and brotherly love to rival the best 19th century dinner host, the dearest of friends, a benevolent older sibling, a lover, a parent, a mother who on hearing the taped confession of her son to serial murder, doesn’t hesitate once before screaming “you monsters you’ve drugged and tortured him! What threats have you made to my grandchild! He would only say such things to save his daughter’s life!”

My claiming they are full of shit and lying to themselves, to you, and to me, is an expression of love and faith in my fellow man which until now I did not realized I possessed nor was capable of...

Because if I merely took them at their word? If I believed that they believed what they say they believe? They would be monsters.

.

Lets play a game called “Other Possible Holocausts”. Approximately 800,000 babies where aborted this year.

Lets imagine the US government has just announced that crime has gotten to cumbersome and that over the next 3 years it plans to execute every single one of the 2.4 million people in US prisons jails and Jeuvenile detention centres.

Lets imagine that to reform education, the US resolves to kill the bottom 1% of all 80 million students in the country based on an age adjusted standardized test every year.

Lets imagine hatred of the obese takes off, and a policy is passed to resolve America’s 30% obesity rate by the mass instituting of bounties on hunting and killing the obese... that every year 800,000 to 1.5 million tags will be issued for a fee to allow the hunting of the obese in return for monetary rewards on successful hunts and getting to keep the carcasses for meat base animal foods and the manufacture of fuel, or fat based household products. These bounty hunters become known a “whalers”.

Lets imagine the US announces its done with African Americans... if the problem hasn’t been solved since 1619, its not going to be... and so they’re going to genocide all 40 million African Americans at a rate of 2% a year, for the next 50 years.

Lets imagine opposing extremists get in charge and decide the racists rednecks have to go, and so they’ll be forming death squads to roam the South, Appalachia, and the rust belt, with the objective of killing 800,000 poor whites a year, “until the problem is solved”... with many happily stating 50 years of this would be acceptable, while others state it’d be perfectly fine to renew it another 50 years after that.

…

These are all American lives, and according to pro-lifers of equal moral value to the babies aborted every day, no better, no worse.

By saying this and by saying violence is not and cannot be justified to resist it, they are saying that their reactions to any one of the above eventualities would be to continue to live their lives as they have lived the past 50 years.

I do not know how to respond to that. Even if Abortion is truly murder of an ensouled equal human life... The Pro-choicers committing the murders don’t think it is... hell the Nazis murdered 6 million jews and a further 5 million undesirables, but they didn’t think of them as human, they thought they were monstrous and “life unworthy of life”, like a burning man begging you to shoot him so he doesn’t suffer or hurt his fellows... a mercy in a way.

Pro-lifers on the other hand claim these are equal viable human lives of equal status to yours or mine or perhaps even greater.... They’re Children.

And their reaction to the greatest mass slaughter in human history, the reaction of almost half the electorate, who regularly talk about the need to resist tyrrany and defend the weak (as both left and right in the US do, in their way), their reaction is to vote every 4 years, and have it perhaps not even be the #1 issue if the economy seems bad, they have the opportunity to vote for the first black president, or the Orangeman says something crude about Mexicans... they won’t be single issue voters even when it comes to the greatest crime ever committed in human history?

.

I refuse to believe it. Even I, cynical as I am, have to believe we are not that far gone, and the age of men has not come crashing down... i would believe the US capable of such a crime, but to believe that a double digit percentage of Americans could look at that, recognize the victims as their fellow humans,recognize their state and society as committing mass murder of their neighbours, future friends, and relatives...to recognize that they have a moral imperative to act on this... and then just go “welp them’s the breaks, gotta be civilized” because 9 people in black robes said it wasn’t murder?

Holy fuck. No that is not how people work, that is not how humans behave, I cannot accept that, and leftists who spent the summer rioting in response to fewer than a thousand police killings of black men a year, who remember the civil rights and anti-war movements, who kinda vaguely recall that they’re supposed to remember Huey Newton, or Saco and Vanseti, or those Rossen...something people... who like to imagine they’d have been abolitionists in the 19th century. They’re right to call bullshit.

They’re right to call the pro-lifers liars who don’t believe their own messaging, and instead just want to control women’s bodies, after a lie like that to their face, they’re right to treat them with scorn.

…

Pro-life is rescuable as a sentiment and an activist movement...

But not while it claims a Holocaust is going on and somehow magically no violence could ever be justified to resist it, thus lining up all the arguments that will allow the next holocaust to be committed without resistance.

There have been a double digit, perhaps even a triple digit number of mass murders and genocides in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people, since the 20th century. America is enabling its ally Saudi Arabia to commit one against the Yemenis right fucking now.

We need to be very fucking clear about what it is justified to do to members of a regime that commits such a crime, and what it is definitely justified to do to the immediate perpetrators of the murder. And That we will back violent resistance to such a horrible crime by the state even if it serves only to make the resister a martyr we’ll praise, or it degrades “civilization” (what civilization could remain in such a regime?), or it ultimately has no effect (it is on the survivor to try harder)... The major members of the House of Saud deserve the Gallows under international law for what they’re doing in Yemen , as do their American attaches and core enablers... and if that comes from a Judge in the Hauge or from a convoy of irregulars in pickup trucks, or from lone assassins who manage to get through to them, It is justice, and i will praise it.

What we cannot do is pretend that genocides and mass slaughter on unconscionable scales are occurring and then come up with excuses for why we should do nothing and anyone who does resist is a criminal. Or else those excuses will be the ones that allow the next real genocide in the west or on US soil to actually happen.

If there is a genocide or democide or whatever you want to call mass slaughter. You must recognize the justice the violent resistance to it, even if you personally do not participate, or you must admit you were lying about there being such a crime... to say otherwise, to say a state can commit such a crime and still retain its right to your loyalty, to say a people up to and including its victims must obey such a thing, a creature made of bureaucracy that has set its sights on massacring humans by the thousands if not millions... it is to side against the human race in a war of extermination.

And as someone whose pro-choice as they come, I’d much rather, if the pro-lifers really believe its murder, I’d much rather they start a bloody civil war, than for it to become the norm that that is ethically acceptable.

#kulakrevolt #reddit #the motte #food for thought

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 19, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last Friday, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command admitted that the August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that the U.S. had claimed hit ISIS-K fighters had instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. This “tragic mistake,” as he called it, at the very end of the country’s 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, opens up the larger question of the growing U.S. use of unmanned aerial systems—drones—in warfare.

Drones are a relatively new technology, and we have not yet had a national discussion about what it means to use them.

The U.S. began to develop armed drones in the early 21st century and has used them against terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. President George W. Bush used them experimentally, launching 9 drone strikes between 2004 and 2007. In 2008, he launched 34 strikes, illustrating an increasing reliance on the unmanned weapons that spared U.S. lives while disrupting terrorist camps.

When he took office, President Barack Obama followed the trend toward drone strikes, dramatically increasing their use in the war on terror. S. E. Cupp of the Chicago Sun-Times notes that compiling numbers of drone strikes is difficult but that in 2018, The Daily Beast attributed 186 drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia to Obama in his first two years and that the Associated Press and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism counted 154 strikes in Yemen during the eight years of Obama’s tenure. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank, noted 1,878 drone strikes during the eight years of Obama's presidency.

Obama did add bureaucratic restraints to the use of drones, permitting strikes only against terrorist targets that pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” His administration also provided that “[a]bsent extraordinary circumstances, direct action against an identified high-value terrorist (HVT) will be taken only when there is near certainty that the individual being targeted is in fact the lawful target and located at the place where the action will occur. Also absent extraordinary circumstances, direct action will be taken only if there is near certainty that the action can be taken without injuring or killing non-combatants.” In 2016, under pressure for more transparency on his use of drones, the Obama administration began to publish the number of civilian casualties associated with drone strikes.

Once Trump took office, his administration wrote new rules for drones, permitting strikes without a threat standard against any person deemed to be a terrorist and allowing military commanders themselves to make strike decisions. It significantly increased the use of drones and revoked the Obama administration’s rule about reporting the number of civilians killed by drone strikes, calling that rule “superfluous.” According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Trump launched 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of his presidency, a significant jump from the 1,878 launched in Obama's eight years.

Famously, Trump launched a drone strike against top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, killing him and nine other people. The UN's expert on extrajudicial killings at the time, Agnès Callamard, said the attack violated international law because the U.S. had not provided evidence that Soleimani presented an imminent threat to justify the attack. The administration responded that she was “giving a pass to terrorists.”

On his first day in office, President Biden suspended Trump’s rules and began to review how the policies of both Obama and Trump had worked. On July 21, Foreign Policy reported that in its plan to end “forever wars,” the Biden administration had brought drone use to an all-time low.  But his move away from drones got little attention compared to the August 29 drone strike on Biden’s watch that killed 10 civilians.

American presidents turned to the use of drones because they enabled the U.S. to attack terrorists without risking the same numbers of U.S. soldiers ground operations would require. But scholars note a significant downside to the use of drones. First of all, on occasion, they fall into enemy hands, transferring new technologies that could lead to military proliferation. Second, they lower the bar for military engagement, enabling the U.S. to insert itself into other countries at a much lower cost than in the past, opening the way for permanent hostilities around the world.

And, third, they kill civilians.

It is not clear what the ratio of military deaths to civilian deaths actually is: estimates of the civilian casualties from drone strikes range from 30% to 98%. But we do know that the U.S. admitted to killing dozens of civilians at an Afghan wedding in 2008 and more than 100 civilians in a strike on Afghanistan in 2009.

What seems to be different about the August 29 killing of civilians in Afghanistan is that the U.S. government has admitted the killings, taken responsibility for them, called them “a tragic mistake,” and offered “profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed.”  In the wake of the strike, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered an inquiry into “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.”

—

Notes:

Ahmed S. Hashim and Grégoire Patte, “‘What is that Buzz?’ The rise of Drone Warfare,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 4 (September 2012): 8-13.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/01/us-drone-strikes-all-time-low-biden-forever-wars/

https://www.justice.gov/oip/foia-library/procedures_for_approving_direct_action_against_terrorist_targets/download

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-war-terror-drones/567218/

https://www.rollcall.com/2017/05/31/trumps-total-authorization-to-military-gives-some-deep-concerns/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/world/asia/05iht-afghan.3.17553439.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53345885

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

* * *  * *

[from comments: 

”Peppered throughout today's thoughtful letter is the term terrorist. It has become like the hypnotist's trigger to suspend analysis or curiosity. A famous American dissident has observed, "There is no right to self defense against the empire." And those of us looking critically at our country's actions globally have long seen with clarity how we are expected to suspend judgment when "terrorist" is applied. Famous Israeli general, Matti Peled, went on a speaking tour in the US in the last century to say that US military aid to Israel was corrupting the country, creating "irresistible temptations" and that the country was losing its soul in its occupation of areas taken by force. I visited then-senator John Edwards' office with a group seeking closure of the infamous "School of the Americas" which taught torture to Latin American military officers. The CIA officer posted to Edwards' office was overjoyed in anticipation of a coming "electronic battlefield." It was chilling to hear the delight at armchair warriors pushing buttons to kill people far away, at no personal risk. We now read even in the New York Times, always ready to deliver official excuses for war, some truth about the irresistible temptations of extreme military power, and the inevitable crimes of those ready to term self defense "terrorism."

jc markatos

#drone strikes #warfare #weapons #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #history