#I get my news from the Guardian US and from Democracy Now

[bopinion]

2023 / 47

Aperçu of the week:

"Anyone who wants to save money for the future these days also believes that standing still is the most energy-saving way to reach the goal."

(Sascha Lobo, German media personality and columnist)

Bad News of the Week:

Western democracies have always been able to come to terms with right-wing political currents. Even when they have established themselves. Marine LePen from the Rassemblement National, for example, repeatedly makes it to the run-off for the office of president. It seems fundamentally impossible that she would win. After all, there is always a solid majority of upright democrats who stand together and would never accept that a right-winger could actually take a seat in government.

And now that is exactly what has happened. A right politician at the head of state. In a western democracy. In our immediate neighborhood. In the Netherlands. Geert Wilders and his Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) won the elections there by a clear margin. He is laying claim to the office of Prime Minister. And has a good chance of forming a coalition with a solid parliamentary majority.

Wilders has made a name for himself over the years primarily as an enemy of migration - although that's what always gets me most excited about former colonial powers. Closing borders, banning the Koran, deporting asylum seekers. He has refrained from using these harsh tones in this election campaign. Certainly more out of tactical considerations than out of an actual change of opinion. And was therefore probably elected after 11 years of Mark Rutte as a contrasting program to "business as usual".

A look at Italy provides some hope. There, Georgia Meloni from the right Fratelli d'Italia became head of government for the first time in the West just over a year ago. And is proving to be much less radical in day-to-day politics than in the election campaign. "The office is stronger than the person" is often said. If that is the case, our democracies will be able to withstand it.

Nevertheless, I am increasingly worried that right-wing extremist ideas are becoming more and more acceptable in society. Elections will be held in several eastern German states next year. And the far-right (officially listed as such by the constitution protection agency) AfD is leading all the polls. Next year's European elections could also see a landslide to the right. Whereby the right-wing parties of the EU actually stand for the exact opposite of European ideals. That leaves me stunned.

Good News of the Week:

When Germany's political parties disagree on whether a law complies with the constitution, they appeal to the "Federal Constitutional Court", our Supreme Court. These guardians of our fundamental law then interpret it in a non-partisan way and the discussion is settled. So far, this has always worked excellently, the judges have always lived up to the claim and can be regarded as an absolutely neutral supreme authority.

Now they have once again did justice to this responsibility by literally upholding a decision made by the last "grand coalition" of conservatives and social democrats in 2020. It was about electoral law reform, an issue that directly affects the parties and the basis of their political activity - free elections. And therefore unsurprisingly met with little approval from the opposition parties at the time. In essence, the issue is whether a candidate for a seat in the Bundestag who wins in his or her constituency gets a seat in the parliament even if the party to which he or she belongs would actually be entitled to a lower percentage of seats nationwide. And if so, whether the other parties are then entitled to compensation. The latter was limited by the reform, the former was not.

In my opinion - and I have no legal interpretation skills whatsoever, but I do have a healthy sense of justice - this is absolutely fine. For two reasons. Firstly, according to the constitution, MPs are only bound by their conscience in their work. And therefore theoretically not to any party (not even their own). This premise has been strengthened. Secondly, every vote must be worth the same. If a candidate who has clearly won their constituency does not get a seat in parliament, their votes would no longer count. And no one in that constituency would have the representation to which they were entitled.

I am aware that the regulation - which, by the way, is being called into question by the at the moment ruling coalition in the current legislative period - mainly benefits the small parties CSU (Christian Social Union) and Die Linke (The Left). I am largely unconvinced by their programs and positions. But that doesn't change the fact that I defend their right to exist in parliament. If they are elected, they are elected. Period. In this respect, I am once again very satisfied with our political system.

Personal happy moment of the week:

On Sunday, I remembered boiling hot that I had overlooked a task from work. The shock was huge. Especially when I realized that I wouldn't be able to iron out this lapse on my own. So I dropped my pants in front of my co-workers. And I had a wonderful experience of collegiality: four (!) colleagues put their own plans for the start of the week on hold to help me out of the mess. It feels good. Thank you very much!

I couldn't care less...

...about black week. Because Germany experienced its very own kind of black week: the budget plans for 2023 were retroactively thrown out the window. And the German national soccer team saw its slight hopes of an improved performance dashed by losing matches against Turkey and Austria - what hurts us especially.

As I write this...

...winter has come to Bavaria. And it really did. Unfortunately, due to scheduling problems with the dealership, we haven't received our winter tires yet. As a result, I'm riding my bike to the station in snow flurries and minus 5 degrees Celsius (which always seems colder to me at the beginning of winter than minus 15 in February) to wait outside for a winter-delayed train. But winter is still beautiful. I bravely remind myself of that.

Post Scriptum

90 years ago, the Holodomor occurred in what is now Ukraine. The term Holodomor ( Голодомор - 'killing by hunger') stands for the famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s. An estimated three to seven million people fell victim to famine during this period. Since independence in 1991, the Ukrainian government has been seeking international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide. This assessment is gaining increasing support, but is being criticized by the Russian government in particular. This is hardly surprising.

After all, it was Joseph Stalin who pursued the political goal of suppressing the Ukrainian desire for freedom and consolidating Soviet rule in Ukraine. In the spirit of Russification, Ukrainian culture was to be eradicated. This included the murder of around 10,000 clerics, the deportation of more than 50,000 intellectuals to Siberia - and the death of millions of the largely peasant population. No wonder that people in Ukraine tend to get scared when the current Russian tsar dreams of good old Soviet times.

#thoughts #aperçu #good news #bad news #news of the week #happy moments #politics #sascha lobo #democracy #netherlands #europe #geert wilders #far right #afd #germany #supreme court #elections #constitution #co workers #black week #bavaria #winter #ukraine #holodomor #joseph stalin #soviet #budget #soccer #migration #saving money

[a-mellowtea]

Why is it that so many people immediately grabbed onto the fascist terminology when it came to Ironwood? I hate to ask to have it explained like I'm five, but... I sincerely do not get it, and was hoping maybe you'd have some insight.

[deep breath] Are we doing this? I guess we're doing this.

Buckle up, folks, because I am about to drop a light academic paper's worth of frustrated analysis on your dashboards. I have been asked similar questions before—that is, to explain what makes James Ironwood not a fascist character—and it is never not a little... distressing, to see such terminology used so carelessly, but I’ve not been able to get my emotions in check and thoughts in order long enough to speak to it thoroughly. I hope I can do so now. 

And please, nonny, don't worry; this isn't specifically aimed at you, but if I'm going to have any hope of answering your question properly, we need to delve into the broader scope of things first.

To begin, any discussion of fascism and its potential portrayal requires an at least loosely agreed upon definition, and here, clean out of the gate, is where we encounter our first hurdle. For as surely as there are stars in the night sky, there are varying definitions of how broad or narrow the term “fascism” is and how it manifests. To quote George Orwell, the democratic socialist author of famously anti-authoritarian works “Animal Farm” and “1984″, 

“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”...In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning” (Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946).

Indeed, as with the word “democracy”, if we try to nail down a definition of “fascism”, no matter how close we think we have gotten to arriving at a concrete version of its meaning, there will inevitably be those who raise their noses to declare their own definition; one that suits their own personal beliefs and biases and, though not always to mal-intentioned ends, one that they uphold as true in so far as it is comfortable for them. As Orwell posits, if there was one meaning for these charged political terms, we would not be able to apply them so liberally and frivolously, and we would have to make some uncomfortable admissions.

However and despite this, for the sake of discussion and debate, let’s try. With the first meeting of Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan in 1919, Benito Mussolini coined a new mix of dangerous pre-existing authoritarian ideals and laid the foundations of fascist ideology (or, perhaps, anti-ideology). He believed firmly that democracy was a failed system, and that anything that might impede national unity, including individual freedoms, had to be gotten rid of through violent means. Wrote journalist Stephen Moss in a short piece for The Guardian in 2002,

“Fascism is essentially oppositional: it opposes Marxist materialism, Tolstoyan determinism, economic liberalism, Enlightenment individualism. It is founded on nihilism, irrationalism and social Darwinism: nations must be perpetually at war, men must be tested, the state is the source of truth, individual liberty counts for nothing” (Moss, Beware The F-Word, 2002).

While fascism is fluid in variation through its regimes, certain elements tend to remain the same. Its core principle is always the strength of the nation, which lends to its expansionist and purely nationalistic principles. To achieve national unity and mass enthusiastic support, sophisticated propaganda and democratic censure are used to discourage and punish dissenting voices and alienate those who do not align with the desired image of the nation. Individual rights, civil liberties, free enterprise and democracy are rejected; there is often violent exclusion of a particular group or groups (ex. Jewish and Romani people, the Bolsheviks); militarism, state security, corporatism (that is, state protection of corporate power) and conservative economics are brought to the fore; and one leader, typically male, is uplifted into the role of national savior and showered with vigorous praise.

The definition of fascism seems then, as per these common elements, to only truly be described as a melting pot of radical -isms, with the ultimate goal of national superiority via those violent means.

Additionally, the term is generally applied with heavily charged historical connotations to those who are credited as creating the violently authoritarian ideology, and perpetuating some of the most despicable acts in modern history under its banner. Very rarely does one apply the terms “fascist” or “fascism” without the likes of Mussolini and Hitler in mind, and the vague notion of what one intends in referencing these figures follows into a similarly broad understanding of what is meant without having to define it. That broad-strokes understanding is ill-advisable in practice, but it bears mentioning that the word in modernity has quite a lot of baggage associated with it.

Since we now have something of a working definition, we can begin looking at the crux of this, and the original underlying questions: do these elements apply to James Ironwood as a character, and why do people in the fandom space believe that they do? 

The answer to the former is simply and resoundingly ‘no’, but it’s not entirely for the narrative’s lack of trying. The Kingdom of Atlas as a setting has a frankly startling veneer of fascism, but one that does not go beyond a paper-thin front of smoke and mirrors that dissolves upon so much as a second glance. 

Certainly, we have Atlas’ staunchly-portrayed nationalism and militarism. Whereas the rest of the world relies on Huntsmen and volunteer militias in times of conflict post-Great War, Atlas is stated to be the only one that maintains a standing military. Not only that, but where other Academies encourage students to follow their own paths, Atlas Academy is said to “indoctrinate” (in quotations to indicate wording used in the writing, not to criticize its use) students into joining the Special Operatives division of the military. Strength of arms as an Atlesian ideal and its criticisms are a consistent talking point within the show; the line “there will be no victory in strength” and its variations are restated almost ad nauseum. There is the discussion of military reach, appropriate or not, in so far as early Volumes with the Atlesian fleet’s presence in Vale, to consider, though this in and of itself is not indicative of nationalist expansionism. Cordovin is a character clearly designed to be a caricature of staunch fascist nationalism, through vocalized ideals and violent action. Moreover, when we first begin to get a look at the Kingdom itself, in an episode rather pointedly titled “The Greatest Kingdom”, the classist and conservative economic divide—favoring the wealthy elite over the middle and working classes—that has also been repeatedly referenced in Volumes prior is clear.

However, this handful of elements and their lean towards fascism are swiftly undercut by a lack or flat-out counterbalance of others. In Volume 7, there is an entire subplot (arguably main plot) about the democratic Council elections in Mantle, which are influenced not by Atlas or any internal authority that would seek to make them irrelevant, but by corporate and malicious external meddling. Corporatism as it applies to Atlas also bears mentioning, as the Schnee Dust Company is demonstrably favored and has quite a bit of power unto itself but is not protected by the state, nor is it a nationalized asset. There is no control of mass media or propagation of propaganda, nor is there a violent push for national unity, and the scapegoating of a selected group is notably absent. There is racism, and the Faunus seem to make up the majority demographic of those living in squalor in the slums, but that is very different from the historical precedents that have informed that oft-genocidal element of fascist practice.

By all measures it seems as though there were recognizable parts of fascism, or the loose notions of them, that were intended to be applied to Atlas as a broad-strokes swath of classism, inequality, militarism and nationalism; yet were not taken to the extreme required to truly categorize them under the ideology. Were Atlas a fascist Kingdom, it would have looked quite different, but enough of the aesthetics are there to give it an uncomfortable air of almost-familiarity.

And so, we are left with Ironwood himself and, contentious a character he has become, the term “fascist” cannot, in equal measure, be applied to him either; not even in Volume 8. He never espouses any hyper-nationalistic ideals or goals towards Atlas’ superiority as a Kingdom, much less through violent means. The cult of personality that is such a staple of fascist leadership does not hold true either and, despite the imagery presented through “Hero”, it is never reinforced as anything more than an internal savior complex, rather than an external one imposed on the populace. Ironwood is clearly stated to be fully cognizant that the people do not view him favorably and, in opposition to fascist principles, this is not a factor for his character. The fascist principles of glorification of violence and war are directly countered by his support of unmanned technology on the battlefield and opposition towards wasting lives.

As with the broader setting of Atlas, cherry-picked elements that are, together, uncomfortable, such as the inherent classism in his view of Mantle; firm militarism, violent silencing of dissent specifically in Volume 8, and expectation of loyalty; and the aforementioned personal savior complex accomplish much the same thing—an almost-familiarity, a tug on that vague understanding of what fascism is generally agreed to mean without having to say it.

Though his actions in Volume 8 are reprehensible and as a character he has many flaws, including the treatment of Mantle, none of these elements make Ironwood’s character fascist. It is, with as much objectivity of definition as we have established, not an ideology that the character held, espoused, nor fulfilled the requirements for serious consideration of from an analytical standpoint.

All that remains is the initial question, and the latter half of this broad analysis: if Ironwood is not, by definition, a fascist character, then why has the terminology of that ideology been so liberally applied?

When otherwise well-informed people in the RWBY fandom apply the term “fascist” to Ironwood, and in equal measure to those who criticize the writing around and / or actively defend the character, they are not doing so from an analytical perspective, but rather using it as a catch-all condemnation. To once again quote George Orwell, this time from his writings on fascism itself,

“By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class” (Orwell, What Is Fascism?, 1944).

By this definition, there is a sudden degree of clarity to its application in the fandom space. It is synonymous with “bully”, with “someone to be disagreed with”, and it becomes altogether less confusing and far more innocent in what it’s meant to be saying in these contexts.

As clear as this makes its true meaning, however, this is dangerous. We have become so diluted in our modern thinking so as to twist loaded terms to our benefit, to be deployed when so ever it suits us. Indeed, in many situations, “fascism” is used more often as a political insult than as a historically-informed analytical term, but it remains a very specific thing. It is not a name for someone you simply disagree with, nor ought it to be used whenever an authority figure acts incorrectly.

The unfortunate thing is that the people who use it so frivolously are unlikely to stop, regardless of how distressing it can be to have it applied to something or someone it has no business acting as a label for. Language is everchanging, and terminology that carries very serious connotations can be watered down into drivel. So, I leave you, nonny, with one last quote from Orwell, who seemed to have a decent grasp on the whole affair,

“All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword” (Orwell, What Is Fascism?, 1944).

Sources: 1. Orwell, What Is Fascism?, 1944 2. Moss, Beware The F-Word, 2002 3. Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946 4. Weisberger, What Is Fascism? (LiveScience), March 2022 update 5. Paxton, The Five Stages of Fascism, 1998 6. Waxman, What Is Fascism? (Time), 2019

#rwby #rwby analysis #james ironwood #fascism #lord almighty this took me four hours to write #and i could summarize with a tl;dr of 'people stopped applying this term correctly ages ago' #i look forward to my inbox imploding with the hottest of counterarguments

[tomorrowusa]

Some people just can't quit Twitter despite it having become a far right dystopia ruled by a filthy rich narcissist. The Twitter of the past is dead. It's time to mourn and move on.

For journalists, who moved onto Twitter early and helped define it as the premier digital location for news to be made and broken, the death of Twitter would be big – the end of an era. That’s especially true for journalists like us, who entered the profession after Twitter’s 2006 launch and built our careers at digital outlets, where Twitter defined the stories we covered and the rhythm of our days. [ ... ] Now, Twitter is handing us another assignment: how to write a eulogy for a platform that generated so much hope and harm.

Several journalists at The Guardian shared their thoughts.

@kari_paul, tech reporter, joined Twitter in May 2011 As a young news intern, I obsessively searched the platform to gather information about what was happening on the ground, trying to prove myself and make it in my career while believing wholeheartedly in the power of free information to change the world. Like many others, in the years since, I have watched with dread as the internet has instead facilitated the slow and painful destruction of democracy, attacks on safety, and a dissolution of our trust in one another – and in reality itself. In many ways, Twitter’s fall from grace coincided with my evolution from a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed journalism intern to a jaded tech reporter, all too aware of the ways in which unbridled surveillance capitalism has been allowed to destroy and divide us.

@loisbeckett, LA correspondent, joined Twitter in February 2009 By late 2018, it was already clear that the platform was on a dangerous trajectory, and that the place I had wasted the first decade of my adulthood would soon become a place where it was no longer safe to go. There had been neo-Nazis in the bar for a long time, and increasingly therewere more of them, and it seemed likely, one way or another, that the brownshirts would take over the place. As Twitter becomes a failed state, I’ve ducked my head inside a few platforms, but the decor is tacky and the ideas are stale. I expect I will find my way instead to some new placid digital garden, where elderly media professionals like myself can trade memories of the amazing dunks and main characters of years past and avoid talking too much about the present.

@JMBooyah, Senior tech reporter, joined Twitter in 2011 Today, Twitter is a ghost town. The spice, the joy, the pressure to be funny has gone. Many users are mad. Paid subscribers get top billing – their tweets are pushed to the tops of people’s feeds, they get to tweet more characters. People who no one would ever question whether they are who they say they are have their accounts verified, you know, just in case. Twitter always had a tendency to be an echo chamber, but you got to choose the one you wanted to be in. Today it’s still an echo chamber, but the main voice you’re hearing is Elon Musk’s.

One of them understands that it is now a digital Titanic but refuses to get into a lifeboat.

@abenewrites, gun violence reporter, joined Twitter in 2010 I am here to pre-mourn the messiest place on the net. [ ... ] My journey with Twitter has been long and strange and I am not yet ready to jump from the sinking ship.

Nostalgia and hopium does still keep a lot of people there. But as Twitter descends even further into hate speech, conspiracy theories, far right fanaticism, and capricious rule changes, you increasingly become associated with its public meltdown.

As Amanda Silberling and Alyssa Stringer put it in TechCrunch...

"Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter, where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter."

#eulogy #twitter #elon musk #digital dystopia #hopium #social media #the far right #disinformation #conspiracy theories #hate speech #leave twitter #don't feed the trolls

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/9/2023

Fifth Place: Ann Coulter

Did you know that The New York Times is plotting against Ron DeSantis? If not, then you didn't read Ann Coulter's new column, where she writes:

Right now, nothing would help the Democratic Party more than somehow blocking Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida from becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

The Democratic Party doesn't have to block DeSantis, the Republican base has already done that for them. As established, DeSantis has been polling a distant second to Trump the entire race--and even that's starting to get rather difficult for DeSantis to maintain. The New York Times doesn't need to plot against him anymore than they needed to plot against Bill Weld in 2020.

Fourth Place: J. Michael Luttig

The retired right-wing judge was on CNN today, where he said the following:

Frankly, I don’t care about the Republican Party at all, except to the extent that the two political parties in America are the political guardians of democracy in our country. American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties. So, today, in my view, there is no Republican Party to counter the Democratic Party in the country. And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.

This notion that we somehow have to bail out the Republican Party because having two parties is needed for democracy is utter nonsense. It would be no different than somebody making the same comment about the Whig Party, the Federalist Party, or the Democratic Republicans. The Anti-Masonic Party dissolving did not turn us into a one party state, nor did the end of the Know Nothing Party.

In truth, we already have multiple political parties outside of the main two--the Libertarians could take a chance in Congress, as could the Green Party, and the Reform Party, and the Right to Life Party, and the Socialist Party, and tons of others. The end of the Republican Party will not mean perpetual Democratic rule, it will mean a new party will finally have the chance to rise from the ashes.

Third Place: Mike Pence

Did you know Joe Biden launched a war on gas? That's what Mike Pence declares in a new video where he badly attempts to look like he's filling a pickup truck. Of course, the rise in gas prices since 2020 has to do primarily with the fact that people are--you know--actually driving now and weren't back then, the COVID-19 pandemic caused people to travel much less. (One person told me the roads were so clear a previously hour and a half long car trip took them fifteen minutes.) It's this thing called supply and demand, when demand increases and supply doesn't prices go up because the amount people are willing to pay goes up.

Oh, and if Biden is declaring some kind of war on energy, somebody should really consider telling the President given he has approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public land than Trump--wrongfully in my opinion.

Second Place: Nick Akerman

If you're like me, you think the Donald Trump trial should be televised--that is not the opinion of Nick Akerman, who wrote an article from The New York Times with headline of "Why Televising the Trump Trial Is a Bad Idea." You see, although the media has felt the need to televise every trial it thinks it can sensationalize that it comes across, it seems like the one which would actually change the lives of the American people needs to be behind closed doors. Public transparency is only for OJ Simpson, not for the former President.

Actually, the article mentions the OJ trial, and Akerman says:

A major lesson from the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which gripped the nation when it was broadcast starting in 1995, is how the impact of television can undermine a trial when the judge, the lawyers, the defendant and the witnesses play to the viewing audience, as they did then. This turned a grave murder trial, with Mr. Simpson’s guilt or innocence hanging in the balance, into daily entertainment.

Given how OJ Simpson is now one of the most hated men in America as he had been since the start of the trial, it seems rather surprising that Akerman is saying televising this trial would somehow help Donald Trump.

Winner: Matt Walsh

White people are not going extinct, despite what Matt Walsh will tell you. A recent article in The Hill did find that white people might not be a majority in this country come from twenty years from now, but that does not mean we will be losing white people. In spite of that, Matt did a long rant on his show today about how white people could be going extinct in the near future.

I will not be reprinting that rant, because it is nothing short of the rantings of a deranged racist--but I will say it is based on a total misunderstanding of data, one I do not believe was unintentional.

Matt Walsh, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

#ann coulter #j michael luttig #mike pence #nick akerman #matt walsh

[nataliesnews]

politics and demos 26.3.2023

>

Date: Sun, Mar 26, 2023 at 6:35 AM

Subject:

To:

My first question is whether the BCC is working or are you getting the whole list of whom I am sending to.

But  before that this juicy piece of gossip

Netanyahu dines at non-kosher restaurant in London over Shabbat

Opposition slams PM for 'hypocrisy' after clip shows him and his wife at Gordon Ramsey eatery, as his coalition advances law to let hospitals ban hametz on Passover

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-dines-at-non-kosher-restaurant-in-london-over-shabbat/

Secondly, many questions about the various arrests. So first of all we have returned to the days of Balfour when suddenly one person is chosen, often for no valid reason and dragged away. See the Pdf on undercover police. Also the incessant photographing of demonstrators....but we are not allowed to photograph the police.

Quote from Ha'aretz: Israeli police are sending undercover police officers to pro-democracy protests against the government's constitutional coup, according to eyewitnesses and police sources.The practice is widespread at protests in Tel Aviv andJerusalem, and involves officers, clad in Israeli flags  and protest shirts, taking an active part in demonstrations, all while transmitting real-time information to their commanders. Besides that at a neighborhood demonstration a man was walking amongst us...very, very friendly and polite and photographing us all. Obviously not one of us.I know I have a one -track mind but I wondered if he was marking members of the neighourhood who would have to be kept an eye on for the future. Swarmy was the word for him. Guy Hirschfeld. who defends the shepherds and is often a target for settlerss, police and the army was released a short time ago, at the end of a hearing at the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court, even though the prosecutor  asked for an extension of detention.

Although videos were presented to the judge that unequivocally prove that Guy did not attack a soldier as the police claimed, and on the other hand, the police prosecutor failed to present videos that he claimed to have in his possession and/or any other evidence, which document and prove the attack that Guy supposedly committed....the judge restrictions, mainly exclusion from the Zaatra junction (Taf) for 14 days.

Besides that he was confined to house arrest as I read somewhere for three days. In other words it does not matter if there is proof that no offense was committed and the word of the police is always taken over that of the citizen.

Also the arrest of Shikma Bressler, one of the leaders of the demonstrations ...and here too the pretexts for her arrest are so vague. I have no more information about this than what has been written in the media. The government more and more is attacking those whom they feel are the leaders.

And teachers, security guards, bus drivers are all making themselves the guardians of public decency/morality, consensus. A teacher who was called to task for daring to compare education and

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-735290

I think you will enjoy Bibi's welcome to London///with the emphasis on the Dick

And Nofim was out again today in the rain.

Last night again the demonstration but this time I was surprised and did not understand at first what was happening.

In the middle of the street and with thousands of demonstrators going past were several prams and cots with babies and young people calling on us to go and demonstrate somewhere else as we are ruining their lives. I felt so sorry for them but this is the nearest we can get to Netanyahu's residence. He now lives in one of the main arteries of the city while the "royal" home is being renovated.....a mansion must be being built there to suit the requirements  of Sarah Antoinette. Even without our demonstrations the lives of all those who live in that street have been damaged....the whole street gets closed off and also all the side streets leading to it.

And for light amusement....my friend, Varda Levy, not the Varda who goes with me to demonstrations and I years ago at Purim. I dressed as a dos (religious woman) and she as a nun and even when we exchanged our costumes in the middle no one noticed.   But last night I was amazed at the demonstration when I bumped into her. She had rarely gone to  demonstrations and that she was there just shows how deeply this affair has entered the soul of the nation.

So we enter another week and the plot thickens as one of Netanyahu's main supporters calls on him to rethink his steps.

ard

#politics and demos 26.3.2023

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Time to sip some coffee and write. It’s that quiet time of the morning I love. Let’s get to it.

This week has been a split in my various timelines; Mastodon, Twitter, and RSS Feeds between the war in Ukraine, Elon Musk bungling management of Twitter, and the mid term elections in the United States. It’s been quite a week.

The Guardian

“In extraordinary scenes, crowds of jubilant residents greeted Ukraine’s armed forces as they reached the centre of Kherson, as Russia’s retreat from the key strategic city appeared to have descended into chaos.”

Let’s go Ukraine! 🇺🇦

Vox

“Democrats outperformed history and expectations with a surprisingly strong midterm elections performance Tuesday, with the promised red wave nowhere to be found.”

This is a real relief. Democrats may lose the house but it looks like the Senate may remain in control of the Democrats and leaves me hopeful we can still save Democracy.

One more term for Biden should keep TFG away from running again.

Platformer

”Everything went from bad to worse at Twitter on Thursday. Today let’s talk about a truly chaotic 24 hours at the company, and the mounting fears over what it means for the service that still serves as the heartbeat of the global news cycle.”

There are so many wonderful hot takes I could post so I’ll probably do another Elon/Twitter hot takes post.

What a complete mess. Either Twitter will go down in a great ball of flames or it will be the most masterful recovery in tech industry history.

Possible outcomes, ranked by likelihood (high to low) 1) Twitter is sold for pennies on the dollar. 2) Bankers foreclose and Twitter goes bust. 3) Servers fail and Twitter goes dark. 4) Divine intervention saves Twitter. 5)Musk's plans somehow work.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 11, 2022

Anna Nicholson

“In a complete departure from my usual meanderings, I’m going to present an in-depth comparative review of eight iOS Mastodon/Fediverse apps.”

So, right, Mastodon. The growth on Mastodon has been huge since Musk took over Twitter.

I’m following folks like crazy! I’m up to 465 and I now have 307 folks following me. That is absolutely insane and I never thought I’d see if happen. It’s been so refreshing. The mood on Mastodon has been extremely hopeful and folks are getting along rather well. It’s fun to be there!

If you decide to join take your time finding an instance that’s right for you. There are so many to choose from.

If you’re adventurous consider starting your own! There are hosts out there who make it easy to maintain your instance. Just pay them a few bucks a month.

Alex Suzuki

“My mind is not a sponge anymore. I still love learning, but it does not come as easily as it used to. Take programming languages, for instance. I’ve come to accept that after almost two decades of writing code, I am not really an expert in any single one.”

I have never been as bright as Mr. Suzuki but I worked really hard at my craft and got decent at Windows programming in C and C++. I’ve worked in other environments like C#/.Net, Linux, and finally landing at home on iOS with Objective-C and Swift.

I’m still capable of learning new stuff but I’ve always been extremely slow to do it. I eventually get there it just takes time.

I relate so much to ”my brain is no longer a sponge.” Mine is not. I used to keep a lot of stuff in my head as I was coding. It was easy for me to keep code flow and logic all stuffed in my brain as I was adding new features. Not anymore. It hasn’t been that way for a very long time. Now I have to refresh my findings often and when I step away from code I’ve written it can take a while to get back in the swing of things. Why do you think Stream development takes so long? 😁

I can still do the work it’s just not as easy, or quick, as before.

Becoming an Engineering Director has been really good for me. I get to build up wonderful people and client relationships. I still get to solve technical problems and make recommendations but I no longer have to code them. It’s been a wonderful challenge in ways I never imagined.

Rolling Stone

“Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn [Roe v. Wade.”

This guy cannot get near any government office ever again. He’ll destroy democracy.

Horror Hound

“One such monster maker is Mexican director, producer and author Guillermo Del Toro.”

This piece is about Cabinet of Curiosities. Kim and I just completed it. I really enjoyed it, each episode was around an hour in length, and ended without the possibility of each episode having a part two. It was refreshing and I hope we get another season of new stories. Yes, think Twilight Zone, or Stephen King’s Creep Show.

My favorite episodes were:

Episode 1: Lot 36 Episode 3: The Autopsy Episode 5: Pickman’s Model Episode 6: Dreams in the Witch House Episode 8: The Murmuring

Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good, but those stand out in my mind. Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House really stood out.

Check it out.

Facebook

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”

Who’d of thunk Mark Zuckerberg would handle massive layoffs so well. Yeah, it terrible to see 11,000 folks out of work but at least he didn’t do it by sending them an email signed by Twitter. He put his name to everything.

Scripting News

“But as a writer, I can’t use a system that doesn’t do inbound RSS. It’s the inverse of the silo problem.”

At first I didn’t understand what Dave was after. I thought he wanted RSS to be used to thread a conversation like Twitter.

Dave just wants to populate his Twitter, Mastodon, and other social sites with an RSS feed. That’s a nifty idea especially if he could work with some of the smaller players to agree to a standard way to connect it. Basically the sites need a way to point to the feed, read the feed, parse, and display it. Done and done.

I like it.

The Grug Brained Developer

“big brain type system shaman often say type correctness main point type system, but grug note some big brain type system shaman not often ship code. grug suppose code never shipped is correct, in some sense, but not really what grug mean when say correct”

I love the Grug, whatever that is. If you’re a developer and need some levity this is the place to go.

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022

Ya think?

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."No Signs of ‘Red Wave’ as Race for Congress Remains Tight” (New York Times)

“Congress hangs in balance as Democrats defy expectations” (Washington Post)

“‘Red wave’ fails to materialise as Fetterman clinches crucial Senate seat for Democrats” (The Guardian)

“Control of Congress Remains at Stake as Democrats Fend Off Anticipated ‘Red Wave’” (The Wall Street Journal)

I’ve checked my inbox and so many of you have written to me through the night. So many of you who worked hard over these last months to prevent the bloodbath. A fascist takeover by a full slate of election deniers and voting suppressors. 

And now we know there will be no bloodbath. Not today. And it’s because we and millions of others erected a force field around the haters and bigots to stop them in their tracks. And that is what has happened. Sometimes you have to lose a battle or two in order to win the war. 

I love how you all knew that if for some reason we couldn’t create a blue tsunami on Election Day, our second best choice was to make sure there would be no red wave.

And that is where we are at as America wakes up on The Day After. As Election Day 2022 came to an end, the Republicans last night were in a state of shock as they found themselves, at least for now, in control of neither the House nor the Senate! They were unable to throw a single Democrat out of the United States Senate. In fact just the opposite happened — the Democrats were able to flip control of their Pennsylvania Senate seat from a Republican to a Democrat. In stunned disbelief, the Democrats instantly went from a 50-50 Senate to a 51-49 Senate in their favor. Georgia and Nevada are still too close to call, but the Democrat in Georgia holds a small lead, and the Democrat in Nevada has played see-saw all night with the Republican. To be clear, they’ll be counting these votes for days, if not weeks, and so it’s anybody’s guess what could happen.

As for the House, you need 218 seats to hold a majority, to be able to pass (or defeat) a bill. Right now they are 20 seats short of that and that is why none of the networks nor the AP nor the New York Times have called the House for either Party. 

The looks on the faces of Fox News are glum. This was not what they — or we — have been told for months would happen. Back in the spring, Republican leadership predicted that the Trump Party would pick up nearly 60 seats in the House. It looks like they’ll be lucky to get 10. Commentators on Fox called it a “disaster.” One scenario suggests they could end up with just a one vote majority. 

“The real winner tonight” said one Republican, “is Joe Biden. He’s got a big smile on his face right now.”

There was so much heartening news coming out of last night. Abortion rights measures passing in Vermont, California, Michigan, and Kentucky — with Montana poised to follow suit. Marijuana was made legal in Maryland and Missouri. Record midterm turnouts by young people occurred in many states. 

I will go into more detail when we next talk (after more votes are tabulated). For now, let me just say this:

We were lied to for months by the pundits and pollsters and the media. Voters had not “moved on” from the Supreme Court’s decision to debase and humiliate women by taking federal control over their reproductive organs. Crime was not at the forefront of the voters “simple” minds. Neither was the price of milk. It was their Democracy that they came to fight for yesterday. And because of that drive, we live to fight, and hope, for another day…

Once again, massive thanks to all of you for helping all of us build a Blue Wall that stopped an ugly red wave."

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

A Humid August in the Catskills

(Self-reflection of a Malcontent)

Stephen Jay Morris

7/30/2022

©Scientific Morality

My inner child believes that Pamela and I have guardian angels. Knock on wood, we escape of the ravages of the pandemic, prosperity of a rich economy, the Climate catastrophe, and the political soap opera of Donald Trump. Though this safe place is not perfect, it does have its up and downs—like humidity. Damn, I hate it! It sticks to my skin like gum on the soles of my shoes. I get rashes on every region of my body. We have an air conditioner in our bedroom, but it is loud and keeps us nowhere near a restful sleep. It is a lose-lose proposition. But at this point in history, it sure beats living in California.

This article is being written via stream of consciousness. I don’t know what the next sentence will bring. So...am I homesick for California yet? Sure. Well, kinda. Naturally, my memories are rich and very selective. The weather was almost perfect. Politics were commercial and plastic. The fucking Conservatives tried to make California out to be the former Soviet Union, while the Liberals wanted you to believe that California is the utopia of Social Democracy. I think not on either count. They turn a blind eye to the homeless and the ghettos, but they remain concerned about their wealthy donors’ happiness. That’s nice.

California is the birth place of social justice warriors and other reminiscences of the politically correct past. Conservatives think they’ve got the market cornered on satirizing this minuscule sect which looms largely in the Right wingers’ imaginations. Whoever they’re making fun of don’t realize that it’s because of their low IQ and low-T. Its called the “New Age Left.” They’ve been around since the 70’s. You know who was making fun of them from the get go? We of the New Left were, in the 70’s. Really, dude! You think that you are comedic geniuses because you’re making fun of pacifists and political correctness?! Not so fast, sunny boy! Conservatives have always been ignorant of current fads. During the Hippie phase, they were making fun of Beatniks!

California has always been an idiosyncratic state. If you are a Conservative, then you were a “special conservative,” that is. In Texas, kids’ history books are no longer using the word “slaves” to reference those who were actually slaves. Because of conservative correctness, they are now referred to as “involuntary relocation laborers.” I guess all of the Texans who are into S&M and B&D will have to relabel their services as, “The Involuntary Relocation Dungeon.” If you ask me, it don’t have a good ring to it, like this oldie: “Hell’s dungeons for Disobedient Slaves!” Just doesn't have the same bite. California Conservatives would never do that. In fact, California was the place where Gay Conservatism got its start.

Sometimes, Mexico would send its monsoon to Southern California and, man, did it get humid there! A monsoon was one illegal alien the Conservatives couldn’t stop! The California conservative would say the cause of Homosexuality was the monsoon and Disco music. The monsoon made So-Cal humid as Florida. You stupid Right wingers that are taking refuge in Florida think that you’re going to a Conservative promised land! Ha, Ha! When it gets humid in California, it lasts just a few days or less. In Florida, it’s like that all fucking year ‘round, you stupid assholes! Yeah, your air conditioner will be on 24/7 and the power company will charge you more than your ex-wives’ alimony! It is so bad in Florida, that Cuban exiles want to swim back to Cuba!

Man, do I hate humidity!

#it’s so humid #stephenjaymorris #poets on tumblr #american politics #autobiography #fuck humidity #weather

[favoniuscodex]

royalty au headcanons [xiao, ningguang, keqing, childe]

prompt: royalty au headcanons for my most recent follower event characters: xiao, ningguang, keqing, childe a/n: this type of stuff makes me wish i had pretty graphics to give you all for each character haha

NINGGUANG

her opponents would describe her as “cold and ruthless, a bloodthirsty woman who desires nothing but power”, “a bedeviling witch who preys upon the sins of man”, and a “fearsome enemy both upon the battlefield and within the game of politics”.

to anyone with half a brain, however, ningguang only strikes fear into the hearts of the vile and repugnant elites who take advantage of their status in order to prey upon beautiful women of lower societal status.

enter stage left: ningguang, a political outsider to the monarchy of liyue and arguably one of its most well-respected members. she heads the qixing, the emperor’s most trusted royal council, despite being of noble birth.

ningguang frowns upon those who think of themselves as being at a higher level than her and believes that status in society should be achieved through passion and determination and not through the genes which flimsily tie you to the great heroes of the past.

if you think of yourself as above the qixing’s tianquan, she’ll use her geo vision to assert herself to your level. she desires not to go above you, deciding that fear can best be struck into the hearts of the corrupt through an even-keeled gaze, especially with irises as piercing as her crimson ones.

her economic stances are harsh, yet carefully cultivated with the wellbeing of liyue in mind, even if they might raise eyebrows as yearly taxes continue to increase.

with no current blood heir to the throne, rumor has it that ningguang has been designated as the next empress, should the current ruler of liyue fall. ask her about such gossip and the tianquan will simply wave your concerns off with a flick of her hand and a sharpening of her gaze. 

i’m here to discuss business, not unfounded rumors, she’ll declare dismissively, yet one can’t help but notice the way her eyes gleam like precious rubies and the way no declination of the news ever falls from her lips upon their inquiries.

KEQING

a woman born of noble blood, a perfect lineage to set her on a path destined for greatness, keqing has never been satisfied with what has been given to her.

why settle with the meagre lot the world gives you when you can lurch forward and seize the universe yourself?

keqing desires not for power, but for reformation. to change the world, you must become one with the world, or in keqing’s case, the liyuean government.

since her first day in politics, keqing has been concerned with one thing: abolishing the monarchy in place of a democracy, in which the people of liyue pick their own leaders, in which nobility is decimated and everyone can decide their country’s fate, not just a select few.

she’s never been one to settle for silence, even as those around her nervously told her to keep her mouth shut in fear of the emperor. an electro vision was quickly awarded to her in response to her ostracization amongst other nobles, one in which she does not wear out of pride, but only necessity.

making waves in the tides of liyue’s political realm had always been keqing’s goal, yet the purple-haired woman had been utterly shocked to be invited to tea by the emperor himself, someone who should view keqing as a political rival, a threat.

despite shaking knees and haywire nerves, keqing accepted the invitation and entered the tea room with her head held high, only to be greeted with the presence of both the tianquan and the emperor.

rather than admonishing keqing for her actions, the emperor praised her for her visions of liyue being guided by those who cared and not those who were merely born into it. fascinated with her ideas, the emperor offered her the title of the qixing’s yuheng.

if one asks why keqing became a member of the government she once loathed, she’ll simply smile and tell you what she’s said a hundred times over.

the world cannot be shaped to your desires if you are not willing to adapt to its whims as well.

XIAO

once one of the five heirs to the liyuean throne, xiao is the sole survivor of the legendary esteemed group of the guardian yakshas who assisted the emperor

now, the unofficial prince of liyue looks not to protect liyue by being its next leader, but to defend those who can’t defend themselves.

the elusive prince resides at wangshu inn and his residence is a well-kept secret, both amongst the staff and wangshu inn’s typical residents. he cares not for the life of a castle, having thrown away his metal crown in favor of a jade spear.

he cares not for mortals and finds them foolish, yet respects the emperor’s decision for the next heir to the throne to be a mortal, even if he does not necessarily agree with it.

after all, should xiao ever demand of it, he knows that the emperor who once freed him from the chains that bound him would also gift him the ability to lead liyue in the event of the emperor’s death.

the prince much prefers to eat almond tofu in peace on the roof of wangshu inn. if he’s feeling zesty, he might kill a few hilichurls in the process.

he’s wary to the presence of others, deciding that those who want to get close to him only desire him for his power. after years of torment, xiao isn’t too keen on getting close to anyone who might hurt him further, whether it be through political means or through their deaths.

if you’re determined to earn his friendship, bring the angsty prince a note from the emperor himself and a perfectly crafted bowl of almond tofu and even he will cave to your demand of just a few minutes of his time.

i am not disrespectful enough to shut out those the emperor deems worthy, especially in tandem with such a well selected gift.

CHILDE

eleventh and last in the direct line for the tsaritsa’s throne, childe has always been a genuinely kind individual. the downside to him? he has a penchant for fighting and a bloodlust that nearly consumes him whole.

he’ll greet you like the perfect gentleman and is usually straightforward about his intentions, no matter how nefarious. he’s always preferred to meet his opponents head on, ignoring the art of deception.

described by his fellow heirs as “more trouble than he’s worth”, childe often finds himself thrust outside of snezhnaya and into the affairs of other nations, his charm often overshadowing is blatant deceit.

the prince has close ties with liyue’s northland bank, a pseudo-embassy established by the tsaritsa herself to assert snezhnaya’s international dominance as the world superpower within liyue.

this means that the prince is consistently meddling within the affairs of the elite. for the smart ones, they avoid anything with even the smallest hint of fatui involvement, but for the dumb ones, which is an astonishing amount of nobles, they fall prey to childe’s saccharine smile and alluring personality.

this control over the financials of others allows childe to obtain political power -- specifically access to high class liyuean galas and parties, in which he can toy with those who evade his financial grasp through false platitudes and promises of a better future for liyue-snezhnayan unity.

the prince flaunts his political relationships and liyuean interactions with glee, such as the time he duped even the judicious ningguang (who insists that the snezhnayan is most certainly lying) and the way he funded keqing’s flamboyant, revolutionary ideas, only for her to turn on him and become a member of the qixing.

the only relationship the prince fails to flaunt is his enigmatic connections to the liyuean emperor. at any event, the two are never seen talking, yet the glances the two exchange leave everyone baffled. some say that they are illicit lovers, while others claim that they are sworn enemies who only avoid fighting due to the political downsides it would bring their nations.

if confronted about the situation with the emperor, childe’s carefree smirk will drop and he’ll meet your eyes with narrowed ones devoid of their previous happiness.

my relationship with the emperor is no more and no less than a professional one. are you implying i should feel a different way?

#i hope i did ningguang right hghsjkdsdkfjkfdsk #zhongchi crumbs ??? its more likely than u think #genshin impact #genshin impact headcanons #xiao #childe #tartaglia #ningguang #keqing #xiao headcanons #childe headcanons #ningguang headcanons #keqing headcanons #//1.5k event #//headcanons #//xiao #//childe #//tartaglia #//ningguang #//keqing

[arcticdementor]

By now, the spectacle that is South Africa’s insurrection has been dominating the attentions of just about every political junkie on twitter, drawing the best minds from every corner of the world to bear witness to the fall of the rainbow nation into a predictable quagmire of irresolvable chaos. At home, the pessimism comes in many flavours, and the denialism in many, many more.

The brute facts are now well-known. After dodging prosecution for extreme corruption for over a decade, the former president Jacob Zuma was finally arrested for the relatively minor charge of contempt of court, for not appearing when summoned. While he held out for several days as his supporters (who comprise about half the ruling party including several senior cabinet ministers) picketed outside his palatial compound (bought with the UK foreign aid budget of 2017) and blocked police from entering, he eventually handed himself in. So concluded a long factional battle between Ramaphosa and Zuma that claimed hundreds of lives in burned freight trucks, assassinated councillors, and billions of Rands in legal fees, patronage and PR. Or so it appeared.

On the 8th of July, the president disbanded the Umkhonto weSizwe Veterans Association, essentially the continuation of the old military wing of the ANC, and fiercely loyal to Jacob Zuma. The next day, together with assistance from elements within state intel and security, they deployed to major transport routes, food depots, retail outlets, police stations, power stations, water treatment plants, and ports, to shut down and burn what they could, crippling the Johannesburg-Durban trade artery that carries 65% of our trade volume and half our economic capacity.

After encouraging looting targeting white-owned businesses or “white monopoly capital”, the MK vets could watch as riots burst out to take advantage of the chaos and everything was stripped to the bone by opportunistic looters. In the shadows, organised and disorganised elements blurred together, as even the wealthiest elements of black society got in on the fun of looting, packing luxury sportscars with groceries and appliances before watching the flames tear down the shops and factories.

The police and the military did nothing, and the president was silent, paralysed. Soon the violence spread to the suburbs, and residents cobbled together militia to guard their homes. Proof of address was required to buy groceries. This received wails of agony from the press class and black social media. Slogans calling for the slaughter of Indians (who form a large minority in Durban) and whites became common, and soon the newspapers were joining in on the scapegoating, accusing the citizens’ militia of racism.

…

Everyone here saw this coming, but for decades now, it has been an unacceptable thing to do, to remark upon the inevitable future we find ourselves in. Why it came to all this, and why it matters to Americans and Europeans, is the point of this essay. It will be uneasy to stomach, but it must be swallowed. We live on the brink of barbarism, and the West is following us every step of the way.

A nation may have a lot of ruin in it, but a poor nation has less ruin in it than a wealthy one. When a state collapses or undergoes revolution in the distant reaches of Africa or Asia, there is a certain social distance which prevents Westerners directly apprehending the significance of the social dynamics, the closeness of the dangers, the universality of the lessons, the pain and the tragedy of the loss.

But South Africa is different. South Africa is at once Western and alien to Westerners. Our constitution is Western. Our revolutionaries and our reactionaries and our racial cosmology is Western. Our highest aspiration is that of the West at large – a universal state which recognises no difference of class, race, or creed. And that is why when we observe South Africa, we stare into the abyss of Western civilisation and its global future. Each Westerner sees himself reflected in that void, from the national-socialist, to the anarcho-communist, to the black-nationalist and the bleeding-heart liberal.

And they are right to.

…

Watching any graph of any indicator in South Africa sees every resource drying up, every indicator of health taking a nosedive, and the population booming beyond control, kept in check only by the enormous and perennial pandemic of AIDS and tuberculosis that take many times the number of victims supposedly taken by the SARS-CoV2 virus, every year. We are the rape capital of the world, have seen over half a million homicides since 1994, and the state has not replaced any of the infrastructure built by the Afrikaner nationalist government. The graphs just spell doom in their trend lines, and have for years now, as the Centre for Risk Analysis’s I-told-you-so’s often repeat.

When they came to power, the ruling party was a coalition of communists, black nationalists, organised criminals and common thugs. However, their patrons in the Soviet Union were disbanded, and the Western state apparatus was still composed of law-abiding institutions and competent civil servants. So they purged the minorities, and placed party members at all key posts throughout, to ensure ideological and partisan loyalty – this was called cadre deployment. This crippled the institutions. When the last of the old guard experts were ushered into the wilderness in 1998, they made several systematic departmental reports, which declared the need for replacing infrastructure immediately, to cope with the increased dependent population. This was ignored, largely because the experts were white.

…

While many see the doom as setting in after 1994, it in fact began much sooner. The means by which the ANC gained power was not through civil disobedience, but through a long and sustained campaign of totalitarian violence called the Peoples War, which raged from 1979 until 1993. Black wage increases increased faster than white until this period (51.3% vs 3.8% since 1970), economic growth was over 5%, inequality was falling and blacks enjoyed the highest standard of living of any black population on the continent.

The addiction to cheap black labour meant that industry was irritated with state policies, and in the end, it was the local plutocrats like Harry Oppenheimer and the old secret societies like the Afrikaner Broederbond who opened secret negotiation to end apartheid. And while SA may have had a robust economy once, nothing survived the People’s War. It aimed to “make the country ungovernable”, and largely succeeded. Controlling migration from the black homelands became impossible, and maintaining law and order as the bodies piled up became harder and harder.

…

But the liberal establishment could not bring themselves to believe there were systemic reasons for this state of affairs beyond “corruption” or “inequality”, and the struggle to blame the status quo on the previous regime became ever harder. So they blamed Zuma. The lost decade, they called it. So when Cyril Ramaphosa, a man largely blamed for the Marikana massacre, finally took the party leadership in 2017, after a long, expensive battle of assassination, bribery and skulduggery, he billed himself as a liberal reformer and anti-corruption campaigner, and the international community fell for it hook line and sinker, and local liberals worshipped him like the coming of a new Mandela. He promised the 4th Industrial Revolution. He promised the reigning in of BEE. The Economist endorsed him over the liberal DA.

But he was lying.

…

There are only three sources for non-socialist print media coverage of politics in South Africa. Politicsweb, where all the old senior analysts go when they become persona non grata, the Institute of Race Relations (a venerable old classic-liberal institute with a daily paper, the Daily Friend, and a consulting business, Centre for Risk Analysis), and Maroela Media, an Afrikaans-language publication run by Afriforum, the civil rights activist organisation which sprung from the Afrikaner-national Solidariteit movement.

Aside from this, every other publication leans further to the left than a man with his left leg blown off, and due to a hangover of apartheid-era Cold War politics, “left and right”, terms only applicable among the educated classes, roughly align with a black-vs-white friend-enemy distinction. The Mail & Guardian, for instance (indirectly owned by the Open Society Foundation), has refused to cover any rural homicide committed against a white victim in nearly a decade, despite a global magnifying glass being placed on the barbaric torture and murder spree that has slowly been smouldering across our rural hinterlands. When a white person commits a crime, it is milked dry every day until the journalists get carpal tunnel. But against the ocean of violent depravity committed by the racial majority, which has taken half a million lives since the fall of apartheid, we receive virtual silence. Swaziland, seeing the same kind of violent uprising as KwaZulu Natal is, is treated as a democratic revolution against a tyrannical absolute monarch, despite the opposition being mainly violent communists receiving support from South African parties like the EFF.

…

I was a communist when I was at university. I was delivered a faithful belief in progressivism, nonracialism, revolution and universal democracy, through the national curriculum in South Africa.  I was introduced to Marx and Mill as an A Level student in the UK, and when I returned to my native country, I was exposed once more to the poverty and desperation and racial tensions. I assumed all the positions one would expect. More democracy, more repudiation of Christianity and white people, more redistribution, more socialism. But the political waters were calm in those days, and this was mere posturing. Then in 2015 my friends began a campaign to topple the statue of Cecil Rhodes overlooking Cape Town from the university his will founded.

#RhodesMustFall mushroomed rapidly, and became the romantic darling of not only us horny little revolutionaries, but leftists worldwide, who exported the new iconoclasm to Oxford and South Carolina. It is now remembered as #FeesMustFall, a campaign to make tertiary education free (for blacks). But I watched it grow from the inside, and partook in the occupation of admin buildings, touring other college protests in the Cape out of solidarity. But it became clear that it was first and foremost about racial hatred and the purging of Western influence, under their holy trinity of Steve Biko, Franz Fanon and Kimberlé Crenshaw – segregation, national-socialism and a metaphysical racial hierarchy, in new nation called Azania, synonymous with the basketcase fictional nation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Black Mischief.

This movement, while it began as nonracialist, soon became openly genocidal. Student leaders who called for genocide went unpunished, even praised by the VC of the University of Cape Town. This movement spread to every single university in the country, and despite prominent student leaders praising Adolf Hitler and calling for whites to be swept into the sea, singing genocidal songs at every protest, white students still offered themselves as human shields before police. Dining halls were segregated, classes were violently shut down, nonparticipants in some universities were beaten in their dormitories, staff were chased with buckwhips, buses were burned, paintings were burned, even security guards were burned, and more recently, so was the continent’s largest library. But no big newspaper offered moral criticism, just worries about whether the tactics were effective.

These young people defined a new era, and a new consensus – all struggles are one, and all are about black vs white, and whites must hand over everything and beg for their lives. The only lecturer in the entire country who stood up in public against this cultural revolution was the antinatalist philosopher David Benatar. All others kept their heads down, dithered, or joined the fray, calling for the heads of their less enthusiastic colleagues. Now the Fallists’ ideology is the official pedagogy of the entire university system. But this agitation had been the nature of political life at the poorer “bush colleges” for years now, just without the presence of minority students to trigger resentment or the ideas to build ideology: shut down every exam season to extract more lenient standards and increases in student grants.

And much like the explosion of violence seen at the national level today, South Africa’s poorer areas have been an unremitting hell for all those living in it below a certain class divide. 15% of all women are prostitutes, and the homicide rate is among the highest in the world, and some areas experience permanent civil war level violence. The old apartheid era town planning meant that black areas and minority areas were clearly separated, and this has meant a geographical buffer, where violent protest, which is again among the highest in the world, has largely left the middle classes out of it, even while it occasionally diverts traffic. Protests flare up constantly, as rival factions of the ANC, hamstrung by a corrupt internal promotions process and forbidden from dragging out dirty laundry in public, instead mobilise violent protests to contest wards and civil service posts, often burning down public infrastructure while the mob on the ground chants for “service delivery”.

…

Whatever else Nick Land writes, the lasting impact he had on me was in the very first essay at the opening of Fanged Noumena. He wrote it in 1989, when nobody beneath the highest reaches and darkest recesses of the Atlantic power structure had any awareness that South Africa was about to change forever.

Apartheid still seemed undefeatable to outsiders. The NP had recently smashed the heart of the ANC’s military campaign, creating a bloody hurting stalemate that observers at the time had no expectation would result in any pleasant outcome. Tens of thousands had already been massacred in the Peoples War to give the ANC a monopoly over the black liberation movements, but they seemed to be running out of steam. And so did Pretoria – influx from the Bantustans was unstaunchable, dependence on black labour was firm, and confidence in local cultural hegemony collapsed in 1976.

Nick Land, watching this, noticed something peculiar.

For the purposes of understanding the complex network of race, gender, and class oppressions that constitute our global modernity it is very rewarding to attend to the evolution of the apartheid policies of the South African regime, since apartheid is directed towards the construction of a microcosm of the neo-colonial order; a recapitulation of the world in miniature. The most basic aspiration of the Boer state is the dissociation of politics from economic relations, so that by means of 'Bantustans' or 'homelands' the black African population can be suspended in a condition of simultaneous political distance and economic proximity vis-a-vis the white metropolis. […] My contention in this paper is that the Third World as a whole is the product of a successful - although piecemeal and largely unconscious - 'Bantustan' policy on the part of the global Kapital metropolis.

…

When the British seized the Boer republics in 1900, they drew up the limits of control of the native African tribes where they already lived, and displaced a few thousand of them to tidy up the borders. These eventually became the Bantustans. Immediately, a long slow trickle of immigration was encouraged, not just from the Bantustans, but from British possessions in Asia. The migrant labour created a dense network of diffident ethnicities who demanded fences between them and their neighbours, while attempting to pursue economic exchange.

Black men, who could achieve far greater material wealth from working in the white economy than raising cattle and sorghum in the homelands, flowed steadily into white farmland areas and mining towns. In 1922, the South African Communist Party launched a general strike to demand the enforcement of a colour bar – “CPSA for a white South Africa!”. They were put down in a hail of gunfire by Jan Smuts, the architect of the unitary constitution, which allowed no devolved powers for regional self-governance.

Smuts was a member of Cecil Rhodes’s Round Table club, and shared Rhodes’s ambition to create a grand state where all literate English-speaking men and women south of the Zambezi would have the vote regardless of colour, and all the resources would belong to one grand cartel controlled by a British-American elite of enlightened natural aristocrats. Rhodes used money from his diamond empire and loans from Nathan Rothschild to fund the Jameson Raid and other means to instigate war with the Boer republics, which eventually resulted in the second Boer War and the creation of the Union of South Africa.

…

Smuts, architect of the Union of South Africa, also had a grand philosophy not unlike Nick Land’s – Land treats all matter and life as being ontologically the same, driven by “machinic desires” – all tendencies to motion and behaviour, whether in living or non-living material being fundamentally the same. All matter seeks more complex and integrated forms over time as a result of the force of entropy. Smuts’s grand philosophy, of which he wrote at length in Holism and Evolution, envisaged a means of looking at the world in which all of nature and society could be apprehended and governed as a single holistic system – all organisms, all cultures, all individuals, were destined to evolve into a greater whole, in which each part had its natural place, and that the common teleology of all matter and spirit was the global state, embodied in the League of Nations, the constitution of which he penned himself.  Together with his extensive biological knowledge, Smuts and his London interlocutor Arthur Tansley gave birth to the modern systems theory of ecology, and hoped to see a central global technocracy overseeing a holistic ecological management system.

The aims of the United States since the Second World War have some remarkable similarities in approach. The post-war order saw the US employing a philosophy of “defence in depth,” controlling a defensive frontier from the China Sea in the East to the very edge of the Warsaw Pact countries, to ensure freedom of trade throughout this entire region. But this extended beyond military control. The use of embedded CIA operatives meant that those democratic representatives who resisted the grand plans of Atlanticism were swiftly dealt with under insidious operations like Gladio.

…

As these ideas bled into the old left, who were increasingly disillusioned from the failures of the Soviet Union. They turned, as Laclou and Mouffe did, to the notion of using sectional grievances to deconstruct the nation state, leading to the birth of intersectionalism under Kimberlé Crenshaw. The very foundations of nationhood and capitalist Christian civilisation could be toppled if only we united our struggles by leveraging our historical grievances, creating acrimonious divisions in the body politic on the basis of sex, sexuality, race and religion. Thus, the universal loyalties of the nation state that supposedly upheld capitalism would fall, and revolution would arise. This fell right into the plans of the American ruling class.

However, when the social morality of the postwar American colonial project in Europe met the plans of the military and the Malthusian tendencies of the RAND corporation, everything took on a far more ambitious character, with the help of a concept called “environmental security”. The first reference to ES in the sense of protecting the natural environment comes from the US EPA Technical Committee in 1971, as part of an ambitious attempt to quantitatively measure total social wellbeing. This EPA committee was the first to make environmental regulation part of a comprehensive plan for social wellbeing, driven by Holism and cybernetic ecology. They were exceeded in scope by the UN’s 1972 Stockholm Conference, where the idea of “comprehensive” (today, “human”) security emerged, and further, the Palme, Brundtland and Brandt Reports.

…

Under these new umbrella concepts came “human security” and environmental security, the Social Sciences Department of UNESCO and the SSRC found the unifying principles and programs they had sought since the 1950s, and pushed a proselytising program grounded in cross-discipline application of avant-garde ideas to seek “new ways of knowing”, promoting not scientific objectivity, but a synthesis of diverse perspectives. A wholesale transformation of the rules and discipline of social sciences followed, in service of global governance (see the works of Perrin Selcer).

UNESCO even deliberately set about creating a new world religion, in the words of its founder Julian Huxley, and formed the United Religions Initiative, to mould the world’s spiritual beliefs in line with international Anglo progressivism. Feminism and sexual libertinism formed a crowbar against the community cohesion that couldn’t be attacked by means of anti-nationalism, and into this soup of value inversions (erosion of disciplinary distinction, inter-subjectivity [i.e., truth-by-consensus over objectivity], and utopian welfare ideals like “freedom from fear”; “freedom from want”), dropped three wonder pills: Poststructuralism, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Global Warming. Now the great power-narratives of the Atlantic empire were consolidated – Malthus-by-proxy, anti-traditionalism, international diversity-and-inclusion, and the free-trade, open-borders paradigm of the 90’s.

In the same moment as de Klerk gave up on apartheid, the West gave up on the nation state, and handed control to the internationalists, under hegemony of the Atlantic community. A new empire was being consolidated from the territories captured by the Allies in WWII. Thirty years later it is becoming transparent –  the new centralised global tax regime has cemented it. Just as the ANC funds the influx of black voters into urban minority areas to build shacks on squatted land, the West welcomes mass migration from the third world, total open-borders, to transform the electoral system against the interests of the native population who might have their own desires, against the grain of global empire. Every corporation and state in the Western world discriminated against whites in hiring. The CIA peddles Critical Race Theory and actively recruits sexual minorities. Colour revolutions can be spotted whenever the rainbow flag or black fist makes an appearance.

Today, the Democratic Party in the US openly looks to South Africa for inspiration in dealing with what Yarvin called the “outer party” – all conservatives are being purged from every institution, in a vast cadre deployment program to ensure the core of the establishment becomes forever untouchable. On the streets they have even begun to use the same tactics for control – deploying huge mobs to destabilise cities when election season is approaching.

Minimum wage rises funnel employment into companies in public-private partnerships with the state, like Amazon, who is part of the Enduring Security Framework partnership of the CIA (which includes Facebook and Google). The analogies between their experimental management strategies and collectivised central-planning are no accident – any company that aims for a total retail monopoly through state-subsidised negative-profit growth is merely another route to total control.

And as the nation and the state are decoupled, the liberal-democratic institutions are being geared toward the concentration of power and wealth, and a strategy of divide-and-rule, to create a cannibal economy. Only a few, like Denmark, have realised what they have gotten themselves into.

…

Much as Aristotle said, a democracy can only function beneficially when steered by the middle class, as it was in Rhodesia and the old Cape, which restricted the vote to property-owners of all races. The middle class’s needs are the core of the productive community, and as Marx observed, they are loyal to the requirements of productive industry and local trade. With the combination of the proliferation of the welfare state and globalisation, the middle class has been whittled away in the West, just as it has here in southern Africa.

Reliance on the state for services means they can’t be sacrificed – in the UK, the NHS has become essentially a religious cult, feeding the civil service, medical contractors, immigrants and the poor alike, in a financially unsustainable way, for decreasing returns. As Philip Bagus observed, the democratic pressures to maintain institutional support via this sort of patronage forces modern western states to take on ever more debt and expand taxation to the limits. This then must be offset by QE, which must be guaranteed by the central state at a rate that benefits the most fragile provinces of any empire so that the whole system does not collapse.

…

What Robert Mugabe did was pursue the universal extension of a first-world welfare state to every peasant in the hinterland, praised by the global left. This required taking on an enormous amount of national debt. Once the IMF tried to impose austerity, Mugabe found this politically unsustainable – his support depended on the handouts, corrupt and legitimate, that he was delivering. So he had to switch to printing money to pay the debts. When inflation became too much to handle, they replaced the core of the economy with dollars, and only elites could survive, much like Venezuela today. As the national treasury ran dry, the military and the civil service became restless. To placate them, they were fed the farms and businesses of the remaining white minority, as well as many areas formerly occupied by black peasants. The state had to cannibalise itself to sustain the predatory ruling class.

During this time, Mugabe attempted to control every aspect of the environment and economy through price and capital controls, suffocating every aspect of social life with red tape. It only accelerated the process. While the vast global network of UN subsidiaries extract compliance from the US client states

In South Africa today, the state coffers are empty. Even the ruling party is feeling it, as their headquarters Luthuli House was attached by the court to pay for a crooked PR contract they refused to deliver on. We have since taken out an IMF bailout, which is being poured into infrastructure, mostly Durban’s port, which is now choked by smoke and looting. Our president’s advisors are pushing for land reform, and remarkably, one of them, Ruth Hall, was advising Robert Mugabe how to liquidate his pale kulaks back in 2002. Other advisors, like Thembeka Ngcukaitobi, call for the fulfilment of the genocidal prophecy of Makhanda, and have whites deprived of all land and all moveable and liquid assets. This is deliberate Zimbabwefication.

The same economic dynamics are present in the world at large – the share of GDP spent on welfare keep increasing, as does the debt-GDP ratio. Capital formation has been falling for decades, and chronic inflation is treated as a static phenomenon, which nobody dares reign in, because the entire system is dependent on low interest rates to keep the constant corrosive consolidation of the global market going full steam ahead. This arrangement results in the inflation of property prices as along term hedge against inflation which, when the plebs followed suit resulted in the 2008 bubble, when they tried to play the elites’ asset accumulation game with borrowed money.

…

What has America been doing these past 18 months? It has been printing money so fast that it has kept pace with the plummenting Rand, and allowed Cyril Ramaphosa to tell investors that his economy is relatively strong – the Rand has “stabilised”. Error of parallax. Nor is it even just America printing money. While they certainly can afford to, as the holders of the world’s reserve currency, China is attempting to do the same, only they are directly funnelling the cash into commodities, rather than spreading it around a financial elite over which they have minimal control.

And yet their leverage is far worse than America’s – Kyle Bass, who has been shorting the Chinese market for years now, insists that the historically unprecedented levels of leverage in the Chinese economy are unsustainable, and that they cannot, even under miracle conditions, correct their shrinking population trends sufficiently to turn this ship around. But what many forsee in dreams of revolution and revolt, the breakups of massive crumbling empires, is not going to happen as they hope.

Instead, the state will protect the stability of the ruling class and its control over the levers of power at the core, bleeding everyone dry and terrorising them into submission. What happened to Zimbabwe is a warning, but it only happened the way it did because half the population could leave and send home remittances. The iron fist of a “democratic” government capable of rigging its elections and gagging the press and the courts is only as tyrannical as the cost of a bus ticket to the next country. After 900-member Zoom calls and election “fortification”, I shouldn’t need to gild the lily any more.

As many observers of China remark, an economic collapse of a country of its nature will not result in a breakup or a massive reform, but in the shrink-wrap tyranny of North Korea, an eternal sclerotic stagnation, fed by government dependency, held in place by state security. The West is losing control of its ability to provide the kind of total state security required for this however, and has been reaching for a far more sinister method of control – the financial system.

And this is where all analogies break down, because what is about to happen here is unprecedented. The international Bank of Settlements has recently announced that they intend to use Central Bank Digital Currency to control the spending of all global citizens, and have the tech and the power to control each and every expenditure, and to shut anybody out of the ability to feed themselves if they so choose. But this movement to kick away the ladder and consolidate total control follows the same logic as Zimbabwe’s – the poor can only be fed for so long, but the ruling elite must be fed forever, or else the whole house comes down.

…

The twin systems of China and Atlantis are both attempting to consolidate total control over their economic and social environment. And in order to achieve the kind of reforms that he wishes to, Ramaphosa has reached for the help of both power blocs. China has colonised our northernmost province, and receives special treatment from law enforcement that must learn Mandarin. Chinese are registered as black, to benefit from the racial privileges blacks enjoy under Black Economic Empowerment. While the government’s reports usually look like a dog’s breakfast, their reports on the UN sustainable development goals are always crisp, professional, and detailed. SDG 10 justifies the expropriation of property, according to their logic.

…

The erosion of the middle class, the working class, the institutions of law and order and even the substance of the informal economy was dry tinder to the Zuma-faction’s firebrands. To fulfil his mandate to end corruption, Ramaphosa had begun prosecutions proceedings into the Zuma faction – tentatively of course, since any too-wide-ranging investigation would unearth the corruption of all. But lawfare isn’t enough. They were cut out of party patronage systems as big figures like Ace Magashule were expelled from the party. Judges ruled that the state would not cover their defence costs anymore.

When the Umkhonto we Sizwe veterans association was disbanded and cut off from “pension” money, they finally put into action something that they would have had up their sleeve for months. Police armaments caches had been going missing for months. Firearms training for youths had been going on at the local branches for years. Every storage depot and major highway was targeted, petrol stations, power stations, water treatment plants were hit. They needed to make the country ungovernable, and they did. But this time they didn’t have the support of the Swedish, the Russians or anybody else.

Complicit elements are even inside the SSA, our central intelligence agency. What it will take for Ramaphosa to clear the state and party of seditious elements will give him the power of a modern dictator, cheered on my the press and everybody else, who despises Zuma and his people for what they’ve wreaked upon us. But with three months left of military deployment, all of the military capacity in one province, and the president fearing wielding lethal force on black mobs for fear of his Marikana ghosts coming back to haunt him, the rebels have three months to decide whether to act.

That leaves three months to see whether we become a black-nationalist disctatorship, or a new Yugoslavia. The Zulu, who form the backbone of the rebellion, have cheered for Zulu independence before, though their forces are split – the Zulu nationalist/traditionalist party the IFP have stood firmly against this chaos. Zuma’s people are still pushing black identity over tribal. Zuma may have been a traditionalist, a defender of the Swazi royal house when in crisis, an expander of chieftains’ rights, but his time in head of the ANC death squads in Zululand in the 1990s makes Zulu solidarity impossible.

So chaos it is.

#robert duigan #substack #read the whole thing #south africa

[padawanlost]

Hey! I was wondering, how much power did Palpatine have over the Jedi before episode 2? And how much power did he get over them after the emergency powers? I always hear arguments about how the Jedi tried to fix/do things (even before Ep 2), but weren't allowed to so couldn't. Like, for example letting Palpatine have access to Anakin. It's never really sat right with me, and seems like making excuses, but I'm unsure. Sorry if this is worded weird!

Hey! Short answer is no. The fandom in the last couple of years created this twisted narrative that no one had control over anything but Palpatine. and that’s simply not the case. I don’t know how it became so widespread, considering this particular trend started with people trying to justify slavery, child abuse and corruption. Regardless, it’s revisionist history. If you pay attention to the arguments you’ll notice they are not backed by sources, it’s mostly something akin to ‘it’s not a war crime because *I* don’t believe it’s a war crime’.

Anyway, I won’t get into right now because I’m short on time so I’ll give you some *facts* and let you make your conclusions:

How much power the Palpatine had over the Jedi before episode 2?

It depends on what you mean by ‘power over’. It’s like asking how much power does your country’s president have over a police officer? They are bound by rank and authority but it’s not like the present have control over an individual’s personal choices. They had to follow the law, anything  beyond that was their own responsibility. 

According to the Republic’s law, the Jedi order operated under the Judicial Department. In turn, the Judicial Department was subordinated to the Chancellor’s office. However, the Jedi order had far more independence than the rest of the department, being able to chose which missions they would accept and how they would proceed. 

Though not formally bound by the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi Order made fundamental changes as well. The Jedi gave up the bulk of their forces, from ground vehicles to warships and starfighters, and became part of the Judicial Department, reinforcing the fact that they answered to the Senate and were ideally counselors and advisers, not warriors. To decrease the chance that far-flung academies might stumble into dangerous explorations of the Force, Jedi training was consolidated in the Temple on Coruscant. And Jedi trainees would now be taken into the Order as infants, before they could be exposed to the temptations of the material world. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

Again, because the Order wasn’t an army at the time no one could *force* them do to anything, in terms of armed or even political action. To keep it short, being part of the Judicial Department didn’t put the Jedi Order in a position where they *HAD* to allow the Chancellor to spend some alone time with a 12 years old boy. That kind of rhetoric is, imo, pretty disgusting because it puts the blame of the all the abuse Anakin suffered on Palpatine’s shoulder and on his main victim who also happened to be a little boy at the time.

The Jedi Order had a choice.

Each time civilization threatened to topple into ruin, the Jedi faced a momentous decision: Did the Republic’s survival require the Order to intervene directly in its affairs? At various points in galactic history, the Jedi reluctantly decided such intervention was necessary. They stepped in to prevent the young Republic from annihilating the Tionese, plotted in secret to overthrow the Pius Dea chancellory, and served as chancellors while directly ruling large swaths of Republic territory in the chaotic centuries before Ruusan. Each time, the Order surrendered the powers it had assumed, returning to its guardian role. But as the Republic decayed and the Separatists gained strength, the Jedi began to once again debate whether a more activist role was required. By 22 BBY matters had reached a crisis point. This time it was the Supreme Chancellor himself who ASKED the Jedi to assume a new role: A powerful army awaited Republic command, but the Judicial Forces were ill prepared to lead them. Mindful that the Separatists were led by the Jedi apostate Count Dooku, the Jedi AGREED to lead the Grand Army to Geonosis in an attempt to short-circuit the Separatist threat. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

They had such independence from the Chancellor they felt justified in lying to his office and withholding information:

The Jedi Master rubbed a hand over his forehead and looked to Yoda, who sat with his eyes closed. Probably contemplating the same riddles as he was, Mace knew. And equally troubled, if not more so. “Blind we are, if the development of this clone army we could not see,” Yoda remarked. “I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.” “Only the Dark Lords of the Sith know of our weakness,” Yoda replied. “If informed the Senate is, multiply our adversaries will.” For the two Jedi Masters, this surprising development was troubling on several different levels. [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

To make that even clearer, we have the Naboo crisis where Qui-Gon and Obi-wan���s involvement was the result of the Chancellor personally *requesting* the Council to investigate the situation.

“Under normal circumstances, the Council wouldn’t have subverted the authority of the Senate by honoring Valorum’s request to send Jedi to Naboo. But for Yoda, Mace Windu, and the rest, Valorum is a known quantity, whereas Senators Antilles and Teem and you have yet to disclose your true agendas. Take you, for instance. Most are aware that you are a career politician, and that you’ve managed thus far to avoid imbroglios. But what does anyone know about you beyond your voting record, or the fact that you reside in Five Hundred Republica? We all think that there’s much more to you than meets the eye, as it were; something about you that has yet to be uncovered.” Instead of speaking directly to Dooku’s point, Palpatine said, “I was as surprised as anyone to learn that Master Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi were sent to Naboo.” [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

If the Chancellor’s office, ddin’t have the power to force the Jedi Order into accepting a slave army, preventing a planetary invison or turning themselves into soldiers I highly doubt they would have the power to force them to give up a child a few hours a week. It doesn’t make any sense.

Here what the lore has to say about how the Jedi viewed Anakin’s relationship with the Chancellor. 

Sate Pestage showed Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, into Palpatine’s temporary office in the Senate Building. Both Jedi were wearing light-colored tunics, brown robes, and tall boots. Facsimiles of each other. “Thank you both for accepting my invitation,” Palpatine said, coming out from behind a broad, burnished desk to welcome them. “Sit please, both of you,” he added, gesturing to chairs that faced the desk and the large window behind it. [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

Yoda stared at the floor, both hands grasping his gimer stick. There was no easy answer to that. Yes, he was concerned by Palpatine’s attachment to the boy. No matter how well-meaning, no matter how genuine and heartfelt, the Supreme Chancellor’s care for Obi-Wan’s apprentice was problematic. The root cause of all young Skywalker’s difficulties was his need for emotional connections. His friendship with Palpatine only complicated matters. But the man was Supreme Chancellor. And he meant well. Sometimes politics had to take precedence.[Karen Miller. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space]

I would think that Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine could be of use to us in this—he has the kind of access to Palpatine that other Jedi might only dream of. Their friendship is an asset, not a danger.” [Obi-wan Kenobi in Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith]

As for this comic, it’s not part of the original lore but I’ve talked about it in detail here if you’re interested. But the gist remains, the had a choice and saying the jedi shouldn’t have done anything more to protect Anakin is a pretty gross take. Anyway, I don’t know about you but this doesn’t read to me like ‘we tried everything we could to keep this child away from Palpatine’. 

Because I know people will twist this into ‘ShE haTeS thE jeDi’ allow me to clarify that this, all of this, is a good thing. It shows the Jedi had free will to make choices and the fact the made mistakes is what makes them such human, relatable characters. Also, it fits perfectly with the themes George set out to explore. 

The prequel trilogy is based on a back-story outline Lucas created in the mid-1970s for the original three “Star Wars” movies, so the themes percolated out of the Vietnam War and the Nixon-Watergate era, he said. Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate. In ancient Rome, “why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?” Lucas said. “Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler. "You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody’s squabbling, there’s corruption.”

The story being told in ‘Star Wars’ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.” George Lucas

“All of these things that are wrapped up in Ahsoka’s story, which ultimately make her realize what the audience realizes. “I love the Jedi Order. They’re very important to me, I’ve always respected them. But there’s something wrong here, and I need to walk away from it to assess it.” It all feeds into Revenge of the Sith when the chancellor says, “The Jedi have just made an attempt on my life.” When you see these four episodes, I think you have a better understanding of how he gets away with all of that, because you see how compromised the Jedi Council is.” Dave Filoni

Because on a certain level, you have to accept that the Jedi lose the Clone War. So there is something that they’re doing that’s wrong.” Dave Filoni 

Holding the jedi accountable for their actions is not about hating them, is about recognizing the story George was trying to tell with these human characters and their very, very human flaws. Saying they should’ve done more to help Anakin, the slaves or the clones is not the same as saying they are as evil as Palpatine or simply bad people. Heroes makes mistakes, and the Jedi mistakes don’t make their actions less heroic or their deaths less tragic. The same way that Anakin’s crimes as Vader doesn’t erase the good he did as Anakin. if we can admit Anakin killed a lot of innocents *AND* that he was a great master to Ahsoka, I really can’t understand why some fans have such hard time accepting the same is true for all the characters. We all make shitty choices sometimes but that doesn’t necessarily makes shitty people. that truth, that very human truth is at the core of this issue.  Same people can accept this, others can’t.

#ask #anon #gffa politics #sw meta #meta: fandom #jedi order #jedi politics #txt

[warninggraphiccontent]

16 July 2021

Food for thought

At last week's Data Bites, I noted how 'Wales' is a standard unit of area. This week, along comes a map which shows that all the built-up land in the UK is equivalent to one Wales:

The map is from the National Food Strategy, published yesterday (and the man has a point).

It has divided opinion, judging by the responses to this tweet. I understand where the sceptics are coming from - at first glance, it may be confusing, given Wales isn't actually entirely built up, Cornwall made of peat, or Shetland that close to the mainland (or home to all the UK's golf courses). And I'm often critical of people using maps just because the data is geographical in some way, when a different, non-map visualisation would be better.

But I actually think this one works. Using a familiar geography to represent areas given over to particular land use might help us grasp it more readily (urban areas = size of Wales, beef and lamb pastures = more of the country than anything else). It's also clear that a huge amount of overseas land is needed to feed the UK, too.

The map has grabbed people's attention and got them talking, which is no bad thing. And it tells the main stories I suspect its creators wanted to. In other words, it's made those messages... land.

Trash talk

Happy Take Out The Trash Day!

Yesterday saw A LOT of things published by Cabinet Office - data on special advisers, correspondence with parliamentarians, public bodies and major projects to name but a few, and the small matter of the new plans outlining departmental priorities and how their performance will be measured.

It's great that government is publishing this stuff. It's less great that too much of it still involves data being published in PDFs not spreadsheets. And it's even less great that the ignoble tradition of Take Out The Trash Day continues, for all the reasons here (written yesterday) and here (written in 2017).

I know this isn't (necessarily) deliberate, and it's a lot of good people working very hard to get things finished before the summer (as my 2017 piece acknowledges). And it's good to see government being transparent.

But it's 2021, for crying out loud. The data collection should be easier. The use of this data in government should be more widespread to begin with.

We should expect better.

In other news:

I was really pleased to have helped the excellent team at Transparency International UK (by way of some comments on a draft) with their new report exploring access and influence in UK housing policy, House of Cards. Read it here.

One of our recent Data Bites speakers, Doug Gurr, is apparently in the running to run the NHS. More here.

Any excuse to plug my Audrey Tang interview.

The good folk at ODI Leeds/The Data City/the ODI have picked up and run with my (and others') attempt to map the UK government data ecosystem. Do help them out.

Five years ago this week...

Regarding last week's headline of Three Lines on a Chart: obviously I was going to.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Vax populi

Why vaccine-shy French are suddenly rushing to get jabbed* (The Economist)

Morning update on Macron demolishing French anti-vax feeling (or at least vax-hesitant) (Sophie Pedder via Nicolas Berrod)

How Emmanuel Macron’s “health passes” have led to a surge in vaccine bookings in France* (New Statesman)

How effective are coronavirus vaccines against the Delta variant?* (FT)

England faces the sternest test of its vaccination strategy* (The Economist)

Where Are The Newest COVID Hot Spots? Mostly Places With Low Vaccination Rates (NPR)

There's A Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes To States' Vaccination Rates (NPR)

All talk, no jabs: the reality of global vaccine diplomacy* (Telegraph)

Vaccination burnout? (Reuters)

Viral content

COVID-19: Will the data allow the government to lift restrictions on 19 July? (Sky News)

UK Covid-19 rates are the highest of any European country after Cyprus* (New Statesman)

COVID-19: Cautionary tale from the Netherlands' coronavirus unlocking - what lessons can the UK learn? (Sky News)

‘Inadequate’: Covid breaches on the rise in Australia’s hotel quarantine (The Guardian)

Side effects

COVID-19: Why is there a surge in winter viruses at the moment? (Sky News)

London Beats New York Back to Office, by a Latte* (Bloomberg)

Outdoor dining reopened restaurants for all — but added to barriers for disabled* (Washington Post)

NYC Needs the Commuting Crowds That Have Yet to Fully Return* (Bloomberg)

Politics and government

Who will succeed Angela Merkel?* (The Economist)

Special advisers in government (Tim for IfG)

How stingy are the UK’s benefits? (Jamie Thunder)

A decade of change for children's services funding (Pro Bono Economics)

National Food Strategy (independent review for UK Government)

National Food Strategy: Tax sugar and salt and prescribe veg, report says (BBC News)

Air, space

Can Wizz challenge Ryanair as king of Europe’s skies?* (FT)

Air passengers have become much more confrontational during the pandemic* (The Economist)

Branson and Bezos in space: how their rocket ships compare* (FT)

Sport

Euro 2020: England expects — the long road back to a Wembley final* (FT)

Most football fans – and most voters – support the England team taking the knee* (New Statesman)

Domestic violence surges after a football match ends* (The Economist)

The Most Valuable Soccer Player In America Is A Goalkeeper (FiveThirtyEight)

Sport is still rife with doping* (The Economist)

Wimbledon wild card success does not disguise financial challenge* (FT)

Can The U.S. Women’s Swim Team Make A Gold Medal Sweep? (FiveThirtyEight)

Everything else

Smoking: How large of a global problem is it? And how can we make progress against it? (Our World in Data)

Record June heat in North America and Europe linked to climate change* (FT)

Here’s a list of open, non-code tools that I use for #dataviz, #dataforgood, charity data, maps, infographics... (Lisa Hornung)

Meta data

Identity crisis

A single sign-on and digital identity solution for government (GDS)

UK government set to unveil next steps in digital identity market plan (Computer Weekly)

BCS calls for social media platforms to verify users to curb abuse (IT Pro)

ID verification for social media as a solution to online abuse is a terrible idea (diginomica)

Who is behind the online abuse of black England players and how can we stop it?* (New Statesman)

Euro 2020: Why abuse remains rife on social media (BBC News)

UK government

Online Media Literacy Strategy (DCMS)

Privacy enhancing technologies: Adoption guide (CDEI)

The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset is now available in the ONS Secure Research Service (ADR UK)

Our Home Office 2024 DDaT Strategy is published (Home Office)

The UK’s Digital Regulation Plan makes few concrete commitments (Tech Monitor)

OSR statement on data transparency and the role of Heads of Profession for Statistics (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Good data from any source can help us report on the global goals to the UN (ONS)

The state of the UK’s statistical system 2020/21 (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Far from average: How COVID-19 has impacted the Average Weekly Earnings data (ONS)

Health

Shock treatment: can the pandemic turn the NHS digital? (E&T)

Can Vaccine Passports Actually Work? (Slate)

UK supercomputer Cambridge-1 to hunt for medical breakthroughs (The Guardian)

AI got 'rithm

An Applied Research Agenda for Data Governance for AI (GPAI)

Taoiseach and Minister Troy launch Government Roadmap for AI in Ireland (Irish Government)

Tech

“I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Go Back”: Return-to-Office Agita Is Sweeping Silicon Valley (Vanity Fair)

Google boss Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom (BBC News)

The class of 2021: Welcome to POLITICO’s annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution (Politico)

Inside Facebook’s Data Wars* (New York Times)

Concern trolls and power grabs: Inside Big Tech’s angry, geeky, often petty war for your privacy (Protocol)

Exclusive extract: how Facebook's engineers spied on women* (Telegraph)

Face off

Can facial analysis technology create a child-safe internet? (The Observer)

#Identity, #OnlineSafety & #AgeVerification – notes on “Can facial analysis technology create a child-safe internet?” (Alec Muffett)

Europe makes the case to ban biometric surveillance* (Wired)

Open government

From open data to joined-up government: driving efficiency with BA Obras (Open Contracting Partnership)

AVAILABLE NOW! DEMOCRACY IN A PANDEMIC: PARTICIPATION IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS (Involve)

Designing digital services for equitable access (Brookings)

Data

Trusting the Data: How do we reach a public settlement on the future of tech? (Demos)

"Why do we use R rather than Excel?" (Terence Eden)

Everything else

The world’s biggest ransomware gang just disappeared from the internet (MIT Technology Review)

Our Statistical Excellence Awards Ceremony has just kicked off! (Royal Statistical Society)

Pin resets wipe all data from over 100 Treasury mobile phones (The Guardian)

Data officers raid two properties over Matt Hancock CCTV footage leak (The Guardian)

How did my phone number end up for sale on a US database? (BBC News)

Gendered disinformation: 6 reasons why liberal democracies need to respond to this threat (Demos, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung)

Opportunities

EVENT: Justice data in the digital age: Balancing risks and opportunities (The LEF)

JOBS: Senior Data Strategy - Data Innovation & Business Analysis Hub (MoJ)

JOB: Director of Evidence and Analytics (Natural England)

JOB: Policy and Research Associate (Open Ownership)

JOB: Research Officer in Data Science (LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science)

JOB: Chief operating officer (Democracy Club, via Jukesie)

And finally...

me: can’t believe we didn’t date sooner... (@MNateShyamalan)

Are you closer to Georgia, or to Georgia? (@incunabula)

A masterpiece in FOIA (Chris Cook)

How K-Pop conquered the universe* (Washington Post)

Does everything really cost more? Find out with our inflation quiz.* (Washington Post)

[autumnblogs]

Day 32: Through the Looking Glass

https://homestuck.com/story/4116

So right out of the gate, we learn a few things about the Scratched version of the universe, aside from the obvious fact that the new heroes are the previous guardians. Everyone is a little more mature, and identities are a little more fully-formed.

Jane’s name is already set in stone. Notably, the definition between the audience and Jane is also a little clearer here than usual - the Narration implies a distinction between us and Jane. Could be because we’re not controlling her yet - but as we get into Act 6, we will find a lot of cases where audience participation happens as part of the mechanic of narration, and this distinction will be called to a lot more.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4117

So let’s unpack Jane’s interests and relation to pre-established parts of the Homestuck Universe, and see if we can’t start making guesses about Jane.

First thing’s first is that while we could read Jane’s affinity for these mustachio’d funnymen as being purely an attraction, she roleplays like John does - as a bit of a prankstress herself, and one who dons a fake mustache for one of her disguises, Jane roleplays as these men immediately suggesting to us that she looks up to them, and wants to be like them, rather than that she’s attracted to them.

(Though she certainly could be.)

Second thing is that Jane’s position as the Heirress parallels her not to John, but to Feferi. Like Feferi, Jane is a sweet girl who is the heir to a position of abominable power, and because she is beholden to the shape of that power, as long as she remains wedded to that shape, she will not only struggle to do anything productive with it, but in the course of the story, be subverted into a villain, at least for a little while, and it’s clear from the way that Crockertier Jane’s situation is communicated to us that she is an accomplice to her own brainwashing, and that the actions she takes in that form are meaningfully hers.

On another note, I think it’s interesting that on this side of the scratch, the Condesce has reimagined her empire as a megacorporation.

https://homestuck.com/story/4120

What do we learn about Jake right out of the gate? He likes movies - adventure movies. Jake, like Tavros, the other page, loves to bluster about subjects that he actually has relatively little affinity for - and in both cases, their lack of affinity can largely be described as performing their culture’s ideal of public personhood - warrior virtue. While Jake has all of the outward signifiers of masculinity, and is actually a pretty brave and technically skillful fighter by the standards of the real world, up until the Hopesplosion, he is outclassed by a lot of his friends, and ultimately, the cases where he most embodies warrior-manhood, Jake is being forced into it by someone who wants to take advantage of him.

We benefit from most of this knowledge with hindsight. It’s not actually there in this opening section, but the main thrust of Jake’s interests is his love of adventure and his love of wrestling, and I’m principally interested in Jake’s physicality in addressing his interests - he’s a very physical kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/4121

We’re hot off the heels of Terezi’s fake choice, and a lot of conversation about free will and fake choices in Act 5 - and here we’re presented with one almost immediately. We can pick either option, but the outcome will be the same whatever we do.

https://homestuck.com/story/4124

I’ve always thought the Condescension’s relationship with Jane is deeply fascinating. There is something about the prospect of cultivating an heiress, someone to take over her legacy, that brings out something tender and maternal in her, I think, even if it only manifests in a twisted way. She’s a bit of an enigma to me.

https://homestuck.com/story/4126

Well, Jane is certainly interested in Foxworthy, so I rescind my earlier comment.

We’ve barely been introduced to her and she pretty much immediately starts showing off her paternalistic disdain for rural and vulgar people through the narrative’s language, and her nostalgia for Problem Sleuth characterizes her enjoyment of its sequel.

Jane has an aristocratic mentality, and conservative leanings in the media she appreciates, and the way that she appreciates it. If Andrew’s commentary that he continued to examine the themes he started with Feferi in Jane, I think what we should take away is that Feferi’s concern for the lowly comes with a heaping helping of...

Wait for it.

Wait for it...

Condescension.

B)

https://homestuck.com/story/4127

Jane’s disdain for the vulgar - low culture, low classes - also shows itself pretty quickly. In stark contrast to the other two leaders - John and Karkat - Jane isn’t much of a movie watcher at all (Jake gets that attribute in his session) and her attitude toward’s Jake’s movies is one of snobbery. Both of the other two movie watchers have a playfully self-deprecating attitude toward their own bad tastes in movies, but they still enjoy those movies sincerely.

Her relationship of passive-aggressive one-upsmanship also distinctly recalls Rose’s relationship with her mother, suggesting that Jane shares some of the underlying pessimism and mild hostility that Rose struggles with.

Also, as a symbol Swanson is a representative of the sort of anti-government animus that characterizes the politics of Trans-Mississippi America outside of the heavily populated West Coast, where the wedding of big business and state planning have created a lot of disaffection toward the distant and disinterested corporate landlords and bureaucratic apparatuses that govern huge tracts of federal land and private property in the west. Pawnee Indiana may not actually be on the other side of the Mississippi from Washington, but having grown up in Montana for at least a part of my childhood, Swanson’s politics are immediately recognizable.

Unfortunately, this anti-state animus has manifested not in the form of a renewed commitment to emancipation, but to the uniquely American, get-off-my-lawn form of Right-Wing populism practiced by the short-lived Tea Party, and smug “It’s just basic economics” Reagan-worshipping conservatives.

What I’m trying to say is, Jane would probably be a Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder fan in the modern day.

https://homestuck.com/story/4136

Jane’s skepticism prevents her from listening to her friends when they tell her about the extraordinary things that they do, but it’s also not exactly a kind of scientific skepticism, and more of a dogmatic realism - she has a narrow vision of what the world is like, and is dismissive of ideas that are outside of her bubble.

Quick Note that while Jake makes only an off-handed remark about it here, he is sensitive to the hostile, toxic relationship between the AR and Dirk in a way that neither of the girls really is, and while that may seem uncharacteristically emotionally intelligent of Jake, I think he’s a lot more aware of his surroundings than he lets on.

https://homestuck.com/story/4142

Now as long as we’re talking about Right Wing Populism and comparing Jane to John there is an extremely potent assertion.

The USPS, and the idea of privatizing it, is as much a symbol of the war of corporatists and authoritarians against social democracy as anything is, and because of the way John is associated with Mail in general as a Hero of Breath, Jane is almost immediately setting herself up as a foil to John.

https://homestuck.com/story/4144

Calliope is so cheery that it’s easy to take everything she says in stride, and yet, with all the horrors Sburb has to offer, in terms of the way it destroys planets, and traumatizes its players, her optimism toward the game is at least disquieting.

Sure, the Null Session isn’t going to destroy the kids’ session, but her language is contrasted against both Kanaya’s and Karkat’s when they berated Aradia and Jade respectively. Both Karkat and Kanaya rue the effects of the narrative on their lives, but Calliope is a superfan.

https://homestuck.com/story/4156

I know I’m spending a lot of time ragging on her here, but like, as long as I am; Jane is sure openly hostile to her best friend, in a way that comes as kind of surprising even given the precedent that we have to work with.

https://homestuck.com/story/4160

Poirot is from Belgium.

I wonder if Andrew or Jane is the one committing that error?

https://homestuck.com/story/4168

Jake is full of little contradictions like this. Likes Adventure, terrified of monsters. Not even ambivalent about them, certainly not excited by them. It’s like the opposite of how little kids are usually super into Dinosaurs.

https://homestuck.com/story/4171

So what is the deal with Jake and his fascination with Blue Women? Aside from the metaphysical connection with Vriska and Aranea (and to a lesser extent, Jake), like... what’s the meaning of it?

I think a possible answer to the question lies in the process of the initial portraits becoming blue - leaving them out in the sun to fade - and the relationship between that, and the way in which he likes mummies and suits of armor, and so on and so forth - and even his stuffed trophies.

Maybe this suggests that Jake is, on principle, far more comfortable with the idea of a thing, than with the thing itself. Jake’s Blue Women are comfortably static. They have ceased to change a long time ago, and now exist, preserved in perpetuity, without the need to worry about adapting to suit them.

https://homestuck.com/story/4175

While a lot of Jake’s guesses are incorrect, he’s still clearly spending a lot of time pondering over the mysterious time shenanigans - he just hasn’t quite put it all together.

https://homestuck.com/story/4177

The same way that Dirk’s fastidious organization is equated to his complicated and demanding modus, and the way that John being a big impulsive himbo is equated with his inability to manage his fetch modus, constantly getting distracted from his goal by the card on the surface, Jake’s Modus has an enormous capacity, but most of it is preoccupied inefficiently.

https://homestuck.com/story/4184

The Autoresponder continues the conversation that Andrew has with the audience about the distribution of the self - Dirk does this more generally, but the particular thread the AR tugs on is the question of where a person’s self really stops - just as the question lingers in the air because of John’s disposition toward Davesprite, the question of whether the AR is really a separate person from Dirk, or a part of him, is posed continuously just by the fact that it exists.

https://homestuck.com/story/4192

To be fair to Dirk, who I will have a lot of kind-of-sympathetic-antipathy for, I had forgotten that it is, in fact, the Autoresponder who sets up this particular challenge for Dirk.

The parallels between Dirk and English are nevertheless being set up through this conversation nevertheless - by sending him the parts and getting him to assemble the robot, Dirk makes Jake complicit in his own humiliation, even as he attempts to build Jake up into an ideal partner.

https://homestuck.com/story/4196

Already we’re seeing indications that this segment of Homestuck will deal with different themes of growing up than the first half. Which is already kind of obvious, but we’ve moved decisively out of Part 1: Problems, and into Part 2: Feelings. The second half has moved out of the territory of other humans and their emotional situations as somewhat idealized problems (somewhat) and into this situation where everyone is a moving body, complicated and the characters are each others’ biggest obstacles, and their own biggest obstacles. That’s a bit of a reductive way of describing it, but I think it rings true.

https://homestuck.com/story/4256

While I am willing to concede that Dirk is not literally responsible for siccing the Brobot on Jake today, he more or less assents to AR’s sexual harassment and physical abuse of Jake.

In addition to his vicarious physical abuse, Dirk’s persona as the Prince of Heart calls him to suppress the uniqueness of the people who are around him, moulding them like clay into shapes that better resemble him. Jake and Jane need to be more like each other in his eyes - which is to say, they both need to be more like Dirk.

We also get some insight into Dirk’s sense of humor here - it’s not just about the irony. I think there is an extent to which at the base of the thing, Dirk’s sense of humor is about simultaneously denying and affirming a thing’s meaning - making fun of it while cherishing it. Having a thing be incredibly silly - while also being incredibly serious business. He cherishes the absurd.

I wonder if he’d like Kojima’s stuff.

https://homestuck.com/story/4257

The way that Dirk identifies with logic and reason recalls the sort of “enlightened by my own intelligence” New Atheist jerks who were known to prowl the internet in the early half of the decade, and to some extent, still do. Like Libertarians, these folks have often in the present day gotten caught up in Right Wing Populism. Maybe it’s something about the way that Right Wing movements increasingly identify as a part of counter-culture even though they advocate reactionary policies.

https://homestuck.com/story/4273

This is extremely silly, but Jake is in mortal peril all the time, and I expect even at the best of times he might be uncomfortable being touched.

https://homestuck.com/story/4284

Here we shall pause.

Sorry for the late post. Early work was quite busy, and once the rush was over, it was already quite late.

So the first Act of Act 6 has been very informative! Compared to the first Act of Homestuck, we’ve been introduced already to all our Dramatis Personae!

Tune back in tomorrow to here Cam Say,

Some variation on Alive and Not Alone.

#commentary #liveblogging

[newstfionline]

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Rash of mass shootings stirs US fears heading into summer (AP) Two people were killed and at least 30 others wounded in mass shootings overnight in three states, authorities said Saturday, stoking concerns that a spike in U.S. gun violence could continue into summer as coronavirus restrictions ease and more people are free to socialize. The attacks took place late Friday or early Saturday in the Texas capital of Austin, Chicago and Savannah, Georgia. In Austin, authorities said they arrested one of two male suspects and were searching for the other after a shooting early Saturday on a crowded pedestrian-only street packed with bars and restaurants. Fourteen people were wounded, including two critically, in the gunfire, which the city’s interim police chief said is believed to have started as a dispute between two parties. In Chicago, a woman was killed and nine other people were wounded when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in the Chatham neighborhood on the city’s South Side. In the south Georgia city of Savannah, police said one man was killed and seven other people were wounded in a mass shooting Friday evening.

Summer camps return but with fewer campers and counselors (AP) Overnight summer camps will be allowed in all 50 states this season, but COVID-19 rules and a pandemic labor crunch mean that many fewer young campers will attend, and those who do will have to observe coronavirus precautions for the second consecutive year. “Camp might look a little different, but camp is going to look a lot better in 2021 than it did in 2020, when it didn’t happen,” said Matt Norman of Atlanta, who is getting ready to send his 12-year-old daughter to camp. Even though most camps will be open, reduced capacity necessitated by COVID-19 restrictions and the labor shortage will keep numbers well below a normal threshold of about 26 million summer campers, said Tom Rosenberg of the American Camp Association.

Mexico says COVID-19 has affected a fourth of its population (Reuters) About a quarter of Mexico’s 126 million people are estimated to have been infected with the coronavirus, the health ministry said on Friday, far more than the country’s confirmed infections. The 2020 National Health and Nutrition Survey (Ensanut) showed that about 31.1 million people have had the virus, the ministry said in a statement, citing Tonatiuh Barrientos, an official at the National Institute of Public Health. According to Barrientos, not all of the people in the survey’s estimate necessarily showed symptoms. The survey was based on interviews with people at 13,910 households between Aug. 17 and Nov. 14 last year, and confirmed preliminary results released in December.

Peru on edge as electoral board reviews result of disputed presidential election (Guardian) Peru was on a knife-edge on Friday as its electoral board reviewed ballots cast in the presidential election, after a challenge to the tally by the losing candidate Keiko Fujimori. The final tally gave the leftist teacher Pedro Castillo a razor-thin 50.17% to 49.83% advantage over his rightwing rival Fujimori, which amounts to about 60,000 votes. However, the country’s electoral authority has yet to confirm the win, and Fujimori, the scion of a controversial political dynasty, has refused to concede. She alleges fraud, even though national and international observers said the vote was clean, and has called for up to 500,000 votes to be nullified or reexamined, forcing the electoral board to conduct a review of ballots.

For Cornwall, G7 summit brings disruption (AP) Towering steel fences, masses of police, protests on the beach: The Cornish seaside’s turquoise waters and white sandy beaches are looking decidedly less idyllic this week as leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies descend for a summit. U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan are arriving for three days of talks starting Friday at the tiny village of Carbis Bay, near St. Ives in Cornwall. The region is a popular holiday destination in the southwestern tip of England. Locals may be used to crowds and traffic jams during the peak summer tourist season, but the disruptions caused by the summit are on another level. A naval frigate dominates the coastline, armed soldiers guard the main sites and some 5,000 extra police officers have been deployed to the area. Authorities have even hired a cruise ship with a capacity of 3,000, moored offshore, to accommodate some of the extra officers. A main road is closed for the whole week, and local train lines and bus services have been shut down. A 3-meter (10-foot) tall metal fence nicknamed the “ring of steel” has been erected around Treganna Castle in Carbis Bay, where world leaders will stay. Security is also tight in the nearby town of Falmouth, the main base for international media covering the summit.

World leaders are in England, but beautiful British beaches have stolen the show (Washington Post) When President Biden shared a photo to Twitter on Thursday of him standing alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and gazing out onto an unspoiled, sandy white beach from the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall, England, the post was supposed to be a tribute to the “special relationship” between the United Kingdom and the United States. But to many, it was the image of the picturesque coast that stood out. It looked somewhat suspicious. Too good to be true. Others questioned the authenticity of the scene, wondering whether it was photoshopped. Although it is true that some of Britain’s beaches have a reputation for pebbles, angry seagulls that steal food from unsuspecting tourists and diapers that float in murky waters, the county of Cornwall boasts some of the country’s best seaside destinations—complete with calm, clear waters that are perfect for swimming in and long stretches of soft sand that attract families from around the world. Carbis Bay is one of several beaches that make up St. Ives Bay, which, according to the Cornwall tourist board, is considered by the “Most Beautiful Bays in the World” organization to be one of the world’s best. The bay is described as being “surrounded by sub-tropical plants and lapped by turquoise waters.”

Ransomware’s suspected Russian roots point to a long detente between the Kremlin and hackers (Washington Post) The ransomware hackers suspected of targeting Colonial Pipeline and other businesses around the world have a strict set of rules. First and foremost: Don’t target Russia or friendly states. It’s even hard-wired into the malware, including coding to prevent hacks on Moscow’s ally Syria, according to cybersecurity experts who have analyzed the malware’s digital fingerprints. They say the reasons appear clear. “In the West you say, ‘Don’t . . . where you eat,’ ” said Dmitry Smilyanets, a former Russia-based hacker who is now an intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company with offices in Washington and other cities around the world. “It’s a red line.” Targeting Russia could mean a knock on the door from state security agents, he said. But attacking Western enterprises is unlikely to trigger a crackdown. The relationship between the Russian government and ransomware criminals allegedly operating from within the country is expected to be a point of tension between President Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin at their planned summit in Geneva on Wednesday. The United States has accused Russia of acting as a haven for hackers by tolerating their activities—as long as they are directed outside the country.

Pandemic relapse spells trouble for India’s middle class (AP) India’s economy was on the cusp of recovery from the first pandemic shock when a new wave of infections swept the country, infecting millions, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing many people to stay home. Cases are now tapering off, but prospects for many Indians are drastically worse as salaried jobs vanish, incomes shrink and inequality is rising. Decades of progress in alleviating poverty are imperiled, experts say, and getting growth back on track hinges on the fate of the country’s sprawling middle class. It’s a powerful and diverse group ranging from salaried employees to small business owners: many millions of people struggling to hold onto their hard-earned gains. The outbreak of the pandemic triggered the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s and as it gradually ebbs, many economies are bouncing back. India’s economy contracted 7.3% in the fiscal year that ended in March, worsening from a slump that slashed growth to 4% from 8% in the two years before the pandemic hit. Economists fear there will be no rebound similar to the ones seen in the U.S. and other major economies.

‘Xi Jinping is my spiritual leader’: China’s education drive in Tibet (Reuters) Under clear blue skies, rugged peaks and the spectacular Potala Palace, one image is ubiquitous in Tibet’s capital city Lhasa: portraits of Chinese President Xi Jinping and fellow leaders. China is broadening a political education campaign as it celebrates the 70th anniversary of its control over Tibet. Civilians and religious figures who the government arranged to be interviewed on the five-day trip pledged loyalty to the Communist Party and Xi. Asked who his spiritual leader was, a monk at Lhasa’s historic Jokhang temple named Xi. “I’m not drunk ... I speak freely to you,” said the monk named Lhakpa, speaking from a courtyard overlooked by security cameras and government observers. “The posters [of Xi] coincide with a massive political education programme which is called ‘feeling gratitude to the party’ education,” said Robert Barnett, a Tibetan studies veteran scholar at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Long overlooked, Israel’s Arab citizens are increasingly asserting their Palestinian identity (Washington Post) Growing up in an Arab village in northern Israel in the 1990s, Mahmoud Abo Arisheh was sure of at least two things: He was Israeli, and he was not allowed to talk politics. “Be careful, or the Shin Bet will get you,” his parents told him, referring to Israel’s domestic security service. Decades later, much has changed: Abo Arisheh is a lawyer, a poet and a theater director in Jaffa. He attends protests and talks politics freely—in Arabic, Hebrew and English. And while his citizenship may remain Israeli, the identity most dear to him is that of a Palestinian. “I didn’t know anything about being Palestinian,” said the 32-year-old, “but then I opened my eyes.” And now, it seems, so are many others. In just the past month, Palestinian citizens of Israel—also known as Israeli Arabs—have risen up in mass, nationwide demonstrations to protest Israeli evictions and police raids. They have been arrested by the hundreds following some of the worst communal violence between Arabs and Jews in Israel’s post-independence history. For a community that is often overlooked despite numbering nearly 2 million people—or about 20 percent of the Israeli population—these are momentous days indeed.

Nigerian police fire tear gas to break up protests over rising insecurity (Reuters) Police fired tear gas and detained several demonstrators in the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Abuja on Saturday during protests over the country’s worsening security situation, Reuters witnesses said. Anger over mass kidnappings-for-ransom, a decade-long Islamist insurgency and a crackdown on protesters in Lagos last October has fueled demands for the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to do more to tackle violence and insecurity. Reuters witnesses in Lagos and Abuja saw police shooting their guns into the air and firing tear gas into the crowds to disperse the demonstrators, who held placards and chanted “Buhari must go”. Officers were also seen smashing mobile phones confiscated from protesters, who also denounced the country’s 33.3% unemployment rate.

#headlines #news

[grandhotelabyss]

Speaking of his comparatively small output, Ishiguro said: “I don’t have any regrets about it. In some ways, I suppose, I’m just not that dedicated to my vocation. I expect it’s because writing wasn’t my first choice of profession. It’s almost something I fell back on because I couldn’t make it as a singer-songwriter. It’s not something I’ve wanted to do every minute of my life. It’s what I was permitted to do. So, you know, I do it when I really want to do it, but otherwise I don’t.”

Giles Harvey, “Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us”

(A long New York Times profile to crown the publicity campaign for Klara and the Sun, which I will read and review just as soon as it arrives, though I have a foreboding that it won’t add much to Never Let Me Go. 

We here at Grand Hotel Abyss are interested in what we have elsewhere called “esoterica in the literary press”—what in other genres of writing would just be called themes or subtexts but which demand a more menacing appellation in the field of journalism, where writing is supposed to be transparent as glass. The undercurrent in Harvey’s piece is dolce far niente, which you can see if you compare how Harvey characterizes Ishiguro’s writing practice—as inspired laziness—to the way it’s described as an almost spiritualized martial art in the Guardian profile [“a process he compares to a samurai sword fight”]. 

Why this cryptic defense of the indolent? It accompanies an attempt to reinterpret the politics of Ishiguro’s fiction for the present, even though the first novels belong to the early triumphalist neoliberal moment in their skepticism of all organized politics. Never Let Me Go extends this skepticism to the organizations that have taken the place of politics and therefore breaks through into a true critique of neoliberalism. Never Let Me Go speaks to so many on a nearly forbidden channel because it is, more specifically, a critique of the feminine modes of domination that our era brings to the fore [e.g., as I’ve mentioned already, “why won’t men go to therapy?”]. 

We’ve discussed Nancy Armstrong before in these electronic pages; she wrote the book on the realist novel as a feminine mode of domination, and when she turns to Ishiguro’s science fiction—noting, as did the late Swedish Academy secretary Sara Danius, his odd resemblance both to Jane Austen and to Franz Kafka—she seemingly gets the message:

That is to say, as Kathy verbally replenishes her biologically depleted emotional life by describing all the connections she has made by means of this ruthless logic, what can only be called positive affect pulses back through the web of pathways which end in death. As it does so, her story converts the deaths of individual students into the form of life in common shared even by the dead in Walter Benjamin’s poignant lament for the passing of the traditional village storyteller. As it thus converts loss into connection at once banal and unavailable to normal individuals, Kathy’s story, I would argue, proposes a model of community that does not hark back to a bygone pastoral world, as Benjamin’s does, so much as open up the possibility that even individuals who consider themselves irreplaceable can and must acknowledge the continuous biological substratum on which they are already inscribed.

But Armstrong’s dense theoretical disquisition on a new post-novelistic model of community, as much as Harvey’s journalistic portrait of the artist as neo-social-democrat, doesn’t penetrate to the real Ishiguran esoterica. The author presents himself as a genial bumbling Englishman, a very decent liberal, a kindly multi-genre humanist like Gaiman or Mitchell—see his Amanda-Palmer-quoting daughter—who lacks even the grit in the eye you get from Amis or Rushdie. This is the softer book-club version of what Harvey and Armstrong are selling. Harvey writes,   

Ishiguro came of age as a writer in the early 1980s, when market fundamentalism was sweeping Britain and the West, a development that caught him entirely off guard. “I never wanted revolution,” he said of his younger self. “But I did believe we could progress towards a more socialist world, a more generous welfare state. I went a long way into my adult life believing that was the consensus. When I was 24 or 25, I realized that Britain had taken a very different turn with the coming of Margaret Thatcher.” Although his books never explicitly address Thatcher’s neoliberal project, they reflect its dismaying human consequences. For Ishiguro’s characters, not working is not an option, or even a proclivity. 

So much in his work is “not an option.” I think of the doomed clones torturing the fly in Never Let Me Go, the pianist enacting his great performance only when thinks he’s alone in The Unconsoled, the painter becoming a fascist because he sympathizes with the poor and oppressed in An Artist of the Floating World. The temptation is to recuperate this for a progressive politics in some watered-down Adornian reading that would show his works’ negativity to subtract from the world the very shape our hopes ought to take so that they become handbooks for utopia once you reverse the writing [I weakly lapsed into this at the end of my essay on Never Let Me Go]. His post-Nobel insistence on his genial liberalism points this way as much as does Armstrong’s summary of his work’s purpose as “provid[ing] a glimpse of what it might be like to live without the misbegotten notion that being a self-contained subject is the best and only way of being fully human,” or Harvey’s quiet argument for social democracy as a system that will allow us to be productively lazy just like the author. 

The theme, the subtext, the esoterica is something else, though, something less like socialism in cipher and more akin to a philosophy of quiet retreat, inner exile, beneath the posture of conformity, something like Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith or Jünger’s Anarch, though let me finish Eumeswil before you quote me on the latter. 

The 20th century is dying more slowly than Onegin’s uncle, but it’s still clear what the future holds: corporatist biosurveillance city-states, which will come in “woke” Zuck/Bezos forms with democratic-socialist veneers and “based” Thiel/Musk versions that are more frank, but which will be the same in the end. Why else does even the present political left’s theory of “equity,” as encapsulated in this genuinely disgusting meme, imply the coerced correction of inherent biological inequality? This is the point I’ve been making since my essay on Spike Jonez’s Her in 2014: what the woke and the based want is basically the same thing—the juridical and biological extermination of the human being. Some will advertise this state of affairs as the expansion of humanism and the alternative to neoliberalism Ishiguro says he was hoping for. They will buy and sell our information and our atoms and tell us it’s freedom, they will bribe us a pittance to be serfs and call it socialism, and like Kathy and Ryder we will do our best to play our part with pride and decency. It is to this future that Ishiguro’s best novels offer a guide.

Further reading: check the Kazuo Ishiguro tag over at the main site for me on A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant, and a first response to Ishiguro’s Nobel. Confession: I’ve never read When We Were Orphans; I should have by now, but I know so little about its historical setting and am always intimidated by the word-problem aspect of detective novels, so I’ve put it off.)

#kazuo ishiguro #giles harvey #nancy armstrong #neoliberalism #fiction #literature #science fiction #english literature

[ahnsael]

George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton:

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good Luck — George

Bill Clinton to George W. Bush:

Dear George,

Today you embark on the greatest venture, with the greatest honor, that can come to an American citizen.

Like me, you are especially fortunate to lead our country in a time of profound and largely positive change, when old questions, not just about the role of government, but about the very nature of our nation, must be answered anew.

You lead a proud, decent, good people. And from this day you are President of all of us. I salute you and wish you success and much happiness.

The burdens you now shoulder are great but often exaggerated. The sheer joy of doing what you believe is right is inexpressible.

My prayers are with you and your family. Godspeed.

Sincerely, Bill

George W. Bush to Barack Obama:

Dear Barack,

Congratulations on becoming our President. You have just begun a fantastic chapter in your life.

Very few have had the honor of knowing the responsibility you now feel. Very few know the excitement of the moment and the challenges you will face.

There will be trying moments. The critics will rage. Your “friends” will disappoint you. But, you will have an Almighty God to comfort you, a family who loves you, and a country that is pulling for you, including me. No matter what comes, you will be inspired by the character and compassion of the people you now lead.

God bless you.

Sincerely,

GW

Barack Obama to Donald Trump:

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on a remarkable run. Millions have placed their hopes in you, and all of us, regardless of party, should hope for expanded prosperity and security during your tenure.

This is a unique office, without a clear blueprint for success, so I don’t know that any advice from me will be particularly helpful. Still, let me offer a few reflections from the past 8 years.

First, we’ve both been blessed, in different ways, with great good fortune. Not everyone is so lucky. It’s up to us to do everything we can (to) build more ladders of success for every child and family that’s willing to work hard.

Second, American leadership in this world really is indispensable. It’s up to us, through action and example, to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend.

Third, we are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions — like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties — that our forebears fought and bled for. Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.

And finally, take time, in the rush of events and responsibilities, for friends and family. They’ll get you through the inevitable rough patches.

Michelle and I wish you and Melania the very best as you embark on this great adventure, and know that we stand ready to help in any ways which we can.

Good luck and Godspeed,

BO

Donald Trump to Joe Biden:

Why does the Fake News Media continuously assume that Joe Biden will ascend to the Presidency, not even allowing our side to show, which we are just getting ready to do, how badly shattered and violated our great Constitution has been in the 2020 Election. It was attacked,..

If there is a dispute, by all means investigate it. But with Zero evidence presented, the burden is on Trump to prove his allegations. And so far he has presented nothing but twitter rants.

I welcome investigations. I want this to be a free and fair election.

But with zero evidence, my only worry is that Trump refuses to transition his power despite SO MANY decades of this being the norm. We could be entering a Constitutional crisis, and our only hope may be a mostly-conservative Supreme Court upholding Constitutional ideals rather than play party politics. And that MAY happen -- but I really hope they will hold the Constitution as valid. That’s their job, but I’m just not sure they will do so.

#this election is not over yet #it's still scary #DESPITE the people waking their will clearly known