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tumblrisweird · 10 months

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Crash Course on Lancer, the best TTRPG

I've been obsessed with Lancer lately, so I thought I'd put together a quick and dirty crash course on the key aspects of the system so people could see if it interests them.

Basics:

Lancer is a ttrpg system "centered on shared narratives, customizable mechs, and the pilots who crew them"

It is co-created by the author of the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons, who also provides some of the official illustrations

The mech design is primarily inpired by Titanfall, but there is a wide variety and plenty of options available to suit your taste.

Mechanically, it's most similar to D&D 5e, but with major improvements (imho).

The game and community are super inclusive of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people.

Lore:

Lancer takes place in our universe, but several thousand years in the future

in the near future, human society collapses due to all the shit going on. ten generation ships are sent out to colonize space, but contact with them is soon lost as everything on Earth goes tits up and humanity enters a dark age for almost 5000 years

Eventually, humanity on Earth comes back, creates Union, and returns to space and tries to contact those generation ships, a few of which have founded new civilizations in deep space. Relations with these civilizations doesn't go great.

Union also finds a weird super-robot-mind-thing old humanity built on Mars, which lets them predict the future. After about a thousand years, it ends up producing a sort of super-AI called RA (I will get into this later).

The above event also lets Union develop FTL tech (using something called Blinkspace).

In the process of expansion, humanity runs into its first (and so far only) sentient alien race. Things go bad very quickly. The people in charge do very bad things and for this end up being overthrown. This is also when mechs first start getting used for combat.

A new committee in charge of Union takes over and has a strong anti-colonial, humanitarian ethic. This however is harder to reinforce the further you are from Earth (now called Cradle by some)

Some of the still independent civilizations and mega-corporations get in some fights. Union tries to keep the peace. This is where we are now.

So there are two different types of AIs in Lancer.

The first kind are regular AIs which can act human but don't really have free will. They can be found all over the place.

The second kind are called NHPs (Non-Human Persons). These (mostly) came from that super-AI called RA I mentioned above. Their basic consciousness is "paracausal" (i.e. magic), so they have to be "shackled" to be able to even think like a regular human. They can often do really powerful things. They are hard to get and heavily regulated because they become really dangerous if they get unshackled.

Player Characters

Character creation in Lancer is incredibly fun. There's two main aspects of a character: the pilot and the mech

Pilots

The pilot is who you control during narrative scenes. While they can do combat, they generally are not suited for it, especially against mechs.

You can choose a background for your character, but this is purely flavor.

You get some "triggers", which are different skills you get bonuses in to use in narrative scenes. Default triggers include things like "lead or inspire", "read a situation", "apply fists to faces", "hack or fix" and many others. You can also create custom triggers (with your GM's permission). These are what you use for narrative scenes. You start with +2 to 4 different triggers and get another +2 at each level

You also get to choose things like armor, pilot weapons, and three pieces of equipment.

One expansion also adds a mechanic called "Bonds" which are like character archetype powers. These encourage you to roleplay more.

Mechs

You also have a certain number of "Talents" which help in mech combat. Each talent has 3 tiers and focus on things like using certain weapons or fighthing certain ways (e.g. grappling, spotting, hacking, etc.). You start with three tier-1 talents and get another tier each level.

Levels are referred to as "License Levels". You start at LL0, but this doesn't mean you can't do anything. You have access to the starter mech frame, which is a very good all-rounder. You may also have access to two more if you have certain expansions.

Mechs have two main sets of health: actual HP and "Heat". You get heat mostly by being hacked or using heat-generating weapons. Each player mech also has 4 points each of Structure and Stress, which correspond to these two sets of health. When your HP hits zero or your Heat goes above its max, you lose a point of Structure or Stress, respectively. You will also suffer other consequences like status effects or losing parts of your mech. If either hits zero, your mech gets destroyed (though this doesn't necessarily kill your pilot, and you can rebuild your mech). Also having 50% or more of your max heat means you're in the Danger Zone, which may let you do certain things.

Mechs will have a certain number of SP (system points), which you use to add different systems, equipment that gives you abilities and bonuses.

You also get to put points into 4 different "Mech Skills": Hull, which affects HP and physical stability, Agility, which affects speed and evasion (the thing enemies roll against to hit (most of the time)), Systems, which affects hacking ability and SP, and Engineering, which affects Heat management and ammo. You get another point each level.

There's other stats as well like Armor, Sensors, E-Defense, and Save Target, but I won't get into them now.

Mech's also have a certain number of weapon mounts, which determine what kind of weapons you can attach to it. The four weapon sizes are Auxiliary, Main, Heavy, and Superheavy. Most of the mount types match a specific weapon size. The only exception is Flex, which lets you mount one Main or two Aux. Also for a Superheavy, you need a heavy mount plus one other mount.

Player mechs come in 4 sizes: 1/2 (basically a suit of power armor), 1 (just big enough where a person could sit in the chest cockpit), 2 (much bigger than a person, about the size of heavier Titanfall mechs), and 3 (fucking huge, though maybe not quite as big as the mechs in Pacific Rim). NPCs can be even bigger. :)

This set of memes is a great way to get the idea behind several mechs.

While most mechs have a default appearance, they're highly customizable, and there are a couple of exceptions. Most Horus mechs have no default appearance, and the starting mech, the Everest, has no canon appearance, meaning it can look however you want.

EDIT: forgot to mention, every mech has a Core Power that you can use once per mission (usually). It typically gives you access to a really cool weapon or ability or otherwise powers up the mech for the rest of the scene.

Levels/Classes

Ever notice how in 5e, multiclassing kinda sucks unless you have a very specific thing in mind? That's not at all true in Lancer!

In addition to the stuff mentioned above, each LL you get to gain one level in the license for a certain mech! You can think of these as similar to classes.

Each level gets you two specific pieces of equipment from that license, generally either weapons or systems. Additionally, at the second level for a license, you get access to the mech frame.

Each license only has 3 levels to get, so you are very much encouraged to mix and match. Additionally, you gain levels at a more even rate than in 5e. Basically it's a milestone system I will explain later.

There are 4 manufacturers to choose from, each with a default of 7 licenses to choose from (more with expansions). ISP-N mechs are sturdy, reliable, and mundane. Smith-Shimano mechs are sleek, agile, and precise. Harrison Armory mechs are powerful and good at dealing with/using Heat. Horus mechs are extra weird and fucked-up.

Each session will generally consist of a few different "scenes", often including one combat scene. There may also be one "downtime" scene (usually at the beginning or end), which is sorta like a short rest. You can make limited repairs and change out equipment, as well as pursuing personal goals. A few sessions together constitute a "mission". After a mission, you get a level and can do a full repair, which is like a long rest. Get all your resources back and can completely rebuild a destroyed mech (or make a new one).

Action Economy

Each turn the player can take the following actions:

One Protocol (generally granted by a system, only at the beginning of the turn)

A standard movement, which can be taken in part or all at once.

Two Quick Actions or one Full Action

Quick Actions are things like Boost (take another full movement), Skirmish (attack with one weapon mount), Hack, Hide, Grapple, Ram, and Lock On.

Full actions are things like Stabilize (clear all heat or heal HP), Disengage, and Barrage (attack with two mounts or one Superheavy mount).

One Reaction, which can be taken on other characters turns when activated. The two default reactions are Overwatch (skirmish against an enemy that starts a movement in your threat range, which is 1 by default but more with some melee weapons or CQB weapons) and Brace (reduce damage from an incoming attack and be harder to hit, at the cost of losing actions on your next turn).

One Overcharge, where you take increasing amounts of heat to get another quick action.

There may also be certain systems or talents that grant certain Free Actions under certain circumstance

Combat

Combat in general is very fun, though a full round of turns may take half an hour or more. In my experience, most combat scenes are over within 8 rounds.

Using your systems and abilities in cooperation with your teammates is very important to surviving.

Of note is that getting advantage on a roll is much rarer than in 5e.

Much more common is Accuracy or Difficulty. Each point of Accuracy is an extra d6 you roll to add as the accuracy bonus. You pick the highest of your accuracy rolls to add as the bonus. Difficulty is the same except you are subtracting the number from the roll instead of adding it. For example, Lock-On lets you add an accuracy to a roll, but soft and hard cover add 1 and 2 difficulty respectively. Also points of accuracy and difficulty cancel each other out, which reduces the amount of rolling you have to do. So if your weapon has +1 accuracy but your target is behind hard cover, you roll the attack with 1 difficulty.

Resources:

you can get the core rulebook (minus npc info and detailed lore) for free here

here's the official fan-run discord server. it is very helpful for finding games that are looking for players and talking about the game.

You can use the official app called COMP/CON to build and manage characters. I fucking love making character in this. It makes things super easy and fun. You can also download .lcp files for various expansions to play around with the stuff they add as well. These are available for free for the official expansion, meaning players can play with extra stuff from expansions without needing to buy them.

In conclusion, Lancer is a great system that you should give a shot to if any of the above sounds appealing.

#lancer #lancer rpg #lancer ttrpg

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androgynousblackbox · 2 years

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Seeing so many people railing against the netflix show Dahmer because it hurts victims and exploits their suffering got me thinking some kind of way about the way America in general portrays themselves on movies, more those that either want to attribute to America especial kind of values that apparently no one else has (”freedom”) or directly reference war or militaristic actions as somehow good. This is an idea I have been cooking for a while when I saw a review, that otherwise was fine, in which the youtuber said that the Iron Giant is “anti-military” and I was so patently confused because no, it’s not. The military is literally portrayed as the good guys who did the right thing and reacted to a credible threat, rejecting the actual bad guy of the movie because they are too good to ever even think about hurting a white american child. The Iron Giant himself is a weapon of mass destruction that has the capacity of killing everyone but chooses not to because Superman, a symbol of American Exceptionalism if I ever saw one, inspires him to heroically take on a dangerous mission for the sake of saving everyone and if that isn’t metaphorically bringing to mind the way that the USA is the owner of some of the most destructive weapons in the entire Earth, but it’s fine because they are the USA and they are the good guys, then I don’t know what to tell you because it sure looks like that to me. And, like, that got me thinking... there are people out there to whom that can be traumatizing. There are people who have died on wars, or almost did, because of america exceptionalism, because of their “freedom”, because they tried to get an american taste and end up dying on a cage without knowing what happened to their children. Colonialism has a body count, slavery has a body counts, America and the military have body counts, and those can cause traumas that will probably remain on some cases with an entire family, entire communities. If you all felt something about the generational trauma on Encanto, but still argued more about Latine characters never being queer or neurodivergent, then just try to imagine for one second how it feels for the people to whom America meant pain and suffering to constantly being gaslighted into believing that they are a force of good, sometimes the only force of good that keeps the rest of the world safe from certain evil and that evil happened to be your home. Why is that trauma not talked about more? Why is that pain the one that has us stopping for a moment and consider “wait, is this right? Is this truthful? Is this something worth repreating even though we are literally rewriting history and putting on a bright smile over the dead bodies of these people”? I don’t even want to say those narrative shouldn’t exist, I mean that kinda of discussion is just never there on the first place when it comes to certain kind of victims. Why we treat “true crime” as this precious thing that has to be handled carefully because “the family of the victims could be listening” but there is never that type of care about history, especially that one that happened to affect to the “losers” of it? Pain is pain and unnecesary suffering is bad, so why it’s okay on one context in which it happened to one person or a group of person by the actions of one or more individuals but not when it’s an entire country on an entire demographic? Rationally I know why. Because that is the foundation of American Exceptionalism and to believe that they could be the bad guys for someone else, someone that is just as valuable and good as they believe themselves to be, is asking to tear down the entire fabric of what being american even means. Not to mention that it’s hard to see an statistic about the many fucks up of the CIA on Latinoamérica and realize that there were people behind those numbers, sons and daughters and everything else, a victim that didn’t deserve shit. I get that, but at the same time it kinda underwhelming when I see leftist going all out about how this or that show shouldn’t exist or it’s especially bad because it had this effect on the victims, which are valid feelings to have, don’t get me wrong, but there is still a clear distinction between who even brings those ethical questions and who doesn’t. Anyway, I don’t mean to invalidate anyone affected for the crimes of a person or the people who care about them because pain is pain and unnecesary suffering is bad, but the whole talk about how ethical or unethical true crime content can or has to be got me thinking about this. Also Iron Giant sucks. There, I said it.

#andro is venting #these are all half baked bullshit i had mulling on my brain don't pay me any mind #or do i am not your dad

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bongalways · 4 years

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Tintinizing India - A story of life

If you are a Bengali who thrived when a misguided economic well-being did not threaten your mother tongue to its core, there is absolutely no chance that you have not been a part of the love that we always showed for detectives. We had our own Byomkesh, Feluda, Kiriti Roy, we had Sherlock and his overtly British demeanour. All of them possessed certain traits that were either something we had or something we desired. But among them, was an intrepid reporter from Brussels, who, without being something resembling our desires, burst into fame and remained famous ever since. The impact was so huge that it startled the creator of the character itself. He, always proclaiming that Tintin was his soul and that the character will cease to exist after him, was shocked by the love Tintin received from this tiny part of the world.

"I receive a lot of mail from India. Here, in my office, are two letters from Calcutta. Now, what can there be in common between a boy in Calcutta and myself?"

Why or how this tryst with Tintin started, is still a mystery to me.

In fact, the whole of India has always been a big admirer of Tintin. So much so, it has been such a crowd puller that Sony decided to release Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin (2011) in India six weeks before it’s official release in USA. The movie still stands to be the highest grossing animated film in the country and also the animated feature film to receive the biggest opening ever. The comic books, adapted in Hindi around 2010, became and instant success and still remains to be one of the most sold comic series of all time.

However, that has not been the first time when Tintin spoke an Indian Language. Thirty years before it’s Hindi translation, Tintin was translated in a Bengali magazine, called Anandamela, for the first time. Aveek Sarkar, the same person who recently became famous through the comments made by our honourable CM, was the person who travelled the distance to meet Herge and ask for the rights to translate Tintin in Bengali. Till today, all the 23 translated versions released by Ananda Publishers remains to be an essential part of a Bengali childhood. Coincidentally, the first time I came to know about Tintin was not from one his stories or any news article. It was through one of my childhood heroes, the detective I have mentioned previously, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda. Ray, one of the biggest representatives of Bengali mindset, was a huge admirer of Tintin himself. His wonderfully woven brainchild Feluda, not only speaks about Tintin in several occasions, but somehow loosely resembles him in a lot of ways.

But why has Tintin always been so impactful? To answer that, we must know who Herge was, in what period was Tintin created and what were the stories trying to tell. Being born on 1907 in Belgium, George Remi a.k.a Herge was always destined to be living in midst of everything the three unimaginable decades presented the world with. Yes, Herge was there all through the world wars and was allegedly arrested for being a Nazi collaborator. Tintin was first published in 1929, but his story starts before that, when Herge started creating illustrations for the first time. Sources state Herge started creating illustrations during his school days as a protest against the German troops who occupied Belgium back then, during the First World War. However, the first notable published illustrations of Herge was about a boy-scout named Totor, who was inspired from his teen days as a boy scout. We can, therefore, safely assume that Totor, was the stepping stone that eventually lead to creation of Tintin. But that is not the same version of Tintin we all love and admire. The first three books (Tintin in the Land of Soviets (1930), Tintin in Congo (1931) and Tintin in America (1932)) were created with the initial beliefs that Herge possessed. Land of Soviets was about the ills of communism whereas Tintin in Congo, a brilliant portrayal of the diamond mining in Africa, was in itself way too racist than what is acceptable today. Tintin in America was a masterpiece though, and it was the one that perhaps cemented Tintin’s position in the world on Comics. The books portrayal of Native Americans, the Al Capone resemblances along with the attention to details makes it the most selling telling book till date.

Then, in 1934, came Cigars of Pharaoh. For the world, it introduced Rastapopoulos, Tintin’s nemesis and who’s similarity with stereotypical anti-Semitic portrayals will be talked about for a few decades. For us, it introduced India through Tintin’s eyes when the reporter’s plane crashed in a deep forest and he had to find his way out by becoming the official doctor of an elephant herd. The caricatures were what you can expect from a European of that time. The main villain is half-naked Fakir who throws darts mixed in a poison called Rajaija and makes the victim mad. The king of Gaipajama opposes opium trade and almost dies, Snowy is almost killed for abusing a holy cow. Not the ideal eh? So, anyone with the slightest idea of the rift between India and China can understand what comes next when the poppies are mentioned. But that was never the case. Why? Because in order to study the Orient, Herge was introduced to a Chinese named Zhang, the man who later became his best mate and can be credited for helping Tintin find his way.

The Blue Lotus (1936) starts where Cigars of Pharaoh ended and talks about the real China that was never talked about. Starting with the opium trade, Herge slowly shifts away to talk about Japans invasion of Manchuria and eventually, the second world war. The portrayal in so overwhelmingly wonderful, specially from an outsider, that it can be categorised as masterpiece similar to Spielberg-Christian Bale’s magnificent storytelling of Empires of the Sun.

Before WWII started and Belgium surrendered to German invasion, Herge wrote two more books (The Broken Ear and The Black Island) where the narrative primarily focused on adventure rather than politics. In 1939, just when the world prepared for WWII, Tintin saves Syldavia from a fascist leader in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But the war meant Herge would eventually work under Nazi supervision and that was the case. Tintin goes up against a rich American Jewish man in The Shooting Star (1942). However, the books that followed this, namely The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1943-44), are considered to be his best works. Soon, WWII ended and Herge became a free man of the free world. Only, he was barred from creating Tintin because of his status as a Nazi collaborator.

Have you heard of a parody called Tintin in the Land of Nazis?

Fortunately, though, the world was lenient on Herge. After few years, he was allowed to write. Then came the Seven Crystal Balls (1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (1949), where Tintin meets the Incas. Land of the Black Gold (1951) talked about oil crisis way before it’s time, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (1953-54) made Tintin walk on moon way before Armstrong, Calculus Affair(1956) showed us cold war and Tintin in Tibet (1960) was all about finding a lost friend Chang (or, should we say Zhang from China?). Herge was so magnificent with his imagination as well as realisation of the world, the none of these stories fall out of place when compared with real history. Here, in Tintin in Tibet, we see a picturization of a New Delhi bazaar, so accurate and mesmerising, that you can almost forget the pent-up anger from what you read about India previously.

So, after all this, why do we Indians still love Tintin when we are so bored to talk about the World Wars?

Maybe it is because of how we have lived over the years.

We, the modern Indians, are descendants of countless wars that waged within our boundaries for centuries and still, our recent history is all about the 200 years of colonialism and small battles for the sake of independence. In that time, towards the end of the British rule, the world wars waged from America to Turkey to Japan. We were the biggest army of WWII and yet none of the folklore reeks of India. So, like Eve’s never-ending quench for the forbidden fruit, we have always been attracted to the politics around the world that never affected our daily lives. Be it the world wars, the oil crisis or the cold war. Heck Armstrong is perhaps more popular than Rakesh Sharma today. That is what precisely Herge did to us. He talked about the biggest crisis in simplest of way. It was a mixture of satire, truth, fantasy and romanticism. We drank it all.

Or maybe it is because of what Tintin resembled.

He was not a superhero. He was a decent looking reporter from somewhere beyond kaalapani, who has no ill vices, does the right thing, dresses neatly and most importantly wander in the land of unknown without any fear. He has a job for which he earns enough money to sponsor his trips, without a father asking him about his goals in life and a mother asking him to tie the knot. Plus, he does not talk about romance, neither mentally nor physically. Isn’t he the perfect gateway to the dreams we have always dreamt for ourselves? In Bengal, he came early with the taste of wanderlust, mystery and subtle remarks about politics. The three things that catches our imagination within a second. Moreover, being an ideal representation of a Bengali mother’s perfect child helped him fly into a little child’s bookshelf. From where he never disappeared, just got passed down from one generation to the other.

Moving out of the literature, let us talk about the technicalities. With his brilliant brush and realisation of perspective, Herge talks about the society at large, it’s functions, barriers and all those hard terms an economist use in a such a simple words and pictures that makes you feel at ease while brushing through them. You don’t realise, but your subconscious does and stores it, and redirects you to that same picture over and over again. Remember the brilliant picturization of Moon, the detailed underwater see through the shark-shaped submarine, or, my favourite, the wonderfully detailed picturization of a make-believe Inca King’s Diwan-e-Aam when Tintin and co. accidentally barges in. The side characters did their part as well. Haddock was as funny as he was serious. He was honest, comical, painfully drunkard, yet something about him made you follow his footsteps. Or else, billions of blistering barnacles will head your way. Calculus was genius lost in his own life. Bianca was ever-reliable, Thompson twins were the ever-humorous.

Tintin was a mixture of everything.

He taught us politics, he taught us history, he taught us science, astronomy as well as companionship. Personally, he taught me what quarantine stands for, where llamas are found, why an elephant trumpets, why glasses break when Bianca Sings. He was also my primer to calculus.

For nation that has always aspired more than it could grasp, a small Polynesian boy became the ray of hope and continues to do so, with flying colours. For the young kids who either loved or hated to read, Tintin gave their imaginations the fuel it required.

So, as an ode to the millions who tread this path before me, and to the billions to follow after, I hereby raise my toast to celebrate yet another product of the war-stricken days. The one which made us believe.

Credits :

1. India's undying love affair with Tintin - Soutik Biswas, BBC(2011)

https://www.bbc.com/news/15680397

2. India first for Spielberg - Robin Bansal, Hindustan Times(2011)

https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/india-first-for-spielberg/story-IrjJzfKtVzn53XCfC5URAL.html

3. [VoxSpace Selects] The Boy In Blue – 90 Years Of Hergé’s Tintin - Puja Sinha(2019)

https://www.voxspace.in/2019/01/30/tintin/

4. Tintin in India: The epic that wasn't - Atul Sethi, TOI(2007)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tintin-in-India-The-epic-that-wasnt/articleshow/2094744.cms

5. All Wiki Links.

Rastapopoulos : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastapopoulos

List of Tintin media : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tintin_media

The Adventures of Tintin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin

Tintin(character) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_(character)

6. Basic Information Help : http://en.tintin.com/

7. A Tintin timeline: https://nationalpost.com/afterword/a-tintin-timeline

8. Dark Secrets Behind the Creator of Tintin : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvxC8Qf3Bw

#tintin #herge #comics #comic #india #world #world war 2

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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Ok, I'll do my best to try, because reading some of the galaxy brained takes about China and the Chinese government have cemented in my head the agonizing fact that most people prefer simple narratives and have little understanding of history, let alone an understanding of how history affects the present.

This will be long and requires some groundwork on explaining the modern Chinese mindset as a whole. Disclaimer: I am currently in Hong Kong, I hold British citizenship by birth and frequently do business with Chinese companies.

1) Big China and Collective Society.

This is something most people really don't grasp the scale of. To assign shared characteristics to fully one quarter of the human race would be broad enough to make those descriptors basically meaningless. Dividing sections of China along any non-geographical lines, economic lines, socio-political lines, this is all incredibly difficult. Despite a massively homogenous Han Chinese population, just looking at Chinese food culture would tell you just how freakishly diverse and different each section is. There are different dialects, accents, lifestyles all across China. When people say "China" it is often completely unhelpful when it comes to pinning down what they mean. For the sake of this discussion, we're assuming that we're talking about the type of Chinese person that the central government has taken pains to portray to the world. Which is, the middle class, consumerist, worldly and tech-savvy Han Chinese. Native of a Tier 1 city (e.g. Shanghai or Beijing).

Most Chinese people are aware of just how big the country is and how difficult a task it is keeping it all together, on a scale I've seen very few people outside of China appreciate. There is a real ethos of "tianxia", or the concept depicted in the Jet Li movie Hero (criticized for being state propaganda at the time, it was largely missed that most Chinese understand, if not support, this thesis). Chinese see themselves as sharing in a common destiny and collective group ethos. This can be traced back to Confucianism - a young person can have said to have "come of age" when they have fully adapted to and understood their role within a harmonious society. This both gives the common Chinese a shared purpose and skin in the game. They literally feel a stake in the collective power and status of their own country. This is not the flag-waving nationalism that the western nations consider passe, but a belief that China must hold together as a shared country and people.

…

Chinese pride is young, and very damaged. There is a sense of grievance and hurt pride that has never been resolved, and this is occasionally glimpsed in everything from their foreign policy to their mass market serialized literature. The reasons behind this can be traced back to a century of colonialism and rampant opportunism by the world powers during the 19th and 20th centuries. Chinese histories and memories are very long, and despite happening a few centuries ago this is very fresh in people's minds. An old joke about China's view of history has the Chinese waiting to see if the French Revolution is still a good idea. China has never forgotten that despite a massive population and huge amounts of territory it fell from being one of the world's oldest civilizations to becoming the "weak man of Asia", and their modern politics has mostly been about resolving this pride. There is a shared belief, or a hidden form of mass psychosis, that China has been denied its destiny as the foremost world power, either through treachery, the work of foreign powers, or other means. Even worse is the proof that the old rival Japan, a similarly impoverished nation, had managed to drag itself onto the stage of the world powers in the late 19th/early 20th century. This has caused some real complexes in the Chinese psyche.

Adding to this is the understanding of recent history. Coupled with historical understanding that ruling China is an incredibly difficult job and only people like the legendary Emperor Qin were able to unify the country in the first place, China collectively remembers the much more recent history of the Communist revolution, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and more. The fact that China's current financial power and global status is largely a result of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms and liberalism is besides the point - the defining thing that most Chinese in the older generation take away is that revolution led to some truly fucking heinous shit and a death toll enacted on its population greater than any ever seen in the history of mankind, and as a result they have no taste for another revolution. The government stays in power largely because the older generation are aware of just how much death is involved with a changing of the guard. There is also no promise that whatever comes to replace the government will be in any way better than what came before it. Sure, the kuomintang government were corrupt as sin, but was that really preferable to having everyone starve because nobody knew how to farm land for years?

…

It is no surprise that the most radical nationalist pro-Chinese are the young students sent overseas to study in western universities. The Chinese attitude towards these western academies is not great; they attend for credentials and status, but these places of study have become cultural battlegrounds and ground zero for showing Chinese students that the Western societies and arguments are fractured and impotent. Students are given courses and humanities curriculum that demonize western civilization and its achievements, and emphasize the breaking down of existing power structures. Of course this would lead to nationalist students violently attacking pro-Hong Kong protesters and demonstrations, as both sides consider each other indoctrinated suckers (and one sees the other as trying to destroy the power structure of the country). An attack on China and Chinese identity is both a dangerous attack on national and societal cohesion and stinging Chinese pride. They have been handed something that can be easily interpreted as an attempt by foreign powers to fracture the unity of Chinese society, cause chaos in their country, and stop China from achieving its destiny of world #1 power and subjugator of other nations.

…

Many people have asked me why Chinese people put up with their government being totalitarian, so many human rights abuses, this and that. Social credit system, organ harvesting. No end of horrible things we hear about Chinese government. The corruption. The dark things the CCP has done to consolidate its power. Tiananmen.

Well, the unfortunate answer is that China, as a collectivized group, wants to fuck over people who looked down on them, even if it means causing itself grievous injuries in the process. It's painful to admit, but the regular Chinese is perfectly okay with the Uighur death camps, even if the government goes to some length to pretend they don't exist. After all, surely they must be doing something to destabilize and weaken Chinese society if the government is putting them in death camps. Don't you know Uighurs can be unpredictable, barbaric, and violent? And if Chinese society is destabilized and weak, the Chinese people won't achieve our common destiny of being the #1 world power.

Chinese people don't care that there is anti-Chinese sentiment internationally. In fact, it even helps. It plays into the narrative that people hate China now because China is strong.

Privately, Chinese people will celebrate the NBA and Blizzard backing down in fear, because they equate this with power and respect. It is perfectly natural for the NBA to apologize for offending the Chinese government, because this is a display of strength. How will you be able to tell that you are stronger than someone, if they are not underneath your boot heel?

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China has gone from largely a nation of rice farmers to modern state with terrifying speed. They are now the world leader in 5G communications technology, technological integration into daily life, the world's biggest consumer market. By every single metric, logistics, travel, entertainment, living standards, Chinese life has gotten better. And they are completely aware of this. Twenty years. Thirty years?

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So there is an unspoken pact between the government and the people. In exchange for getting rich, the people have willingly given up their freedoms. Because you can't eat freedom. Many of the social problems in China are rooted in this short-term manner of business thinking; tomorrow, there may be trouble. Maybe the country would be in trouble. I'll never see this customer or client again. Why bother maintaining anything? If I can get a benefit out of cheating, why wouldn't I do it?

Chinese, especially the older generation, understand existential failure on a level the western nations don't. They don't take anything for granted, including the attitude of the government (and this has in fact driven a lot of asset flow out of China into other nations). They remember the Cultural Revolution, the societal madness that took hold when roving gangs of diehard Communists went around lynching people who wore glasses or owned books. They understand that the possibility of that shit happening again, or coming for them, is non-zero. So the attitude is to use every trick in the book to make sure that they come out on top.

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There is a recurring belief from Americans that most Chinese are brainwashed by their authoritarian government, and if they only understood democracy, knew about the atrocities of the CCP, or were exposed to the taste of an All-American cheeseburger, there would be a great awakening and China would truly "become free". While certain elements of brainwashing and information control are most certainly true, there is a certain level of arrogance in this method of thinking.

For one, this viewpoint has completely ignored the possibility that China already knows exactly how cheeseburgers taste, all about the atrocities of its own government, and about democracy.

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China's political and social state project has openly stated its intent to utilize and take advantage of what worked before, while adapting it to fit their own situation. Throwing away what doesn't work, surgically excising elements they consider dangerous or don't like. 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics'. 'China Dream'. These are adapted policies, methods, and ideals, refocused through the lens of the Party. Yes, they are stealing. They are also adapting.

Any good propagandist will tell you that the ideological battle is the first battle that must be won, and on this note America has failed utterly at defending democracy and personal freedom. This is not by Chinese design; rather, a combination of factors including financial inequality, changing demographics, chaotic governance, political point-scoring and media clickbait have done their best to demonstrate that American government is both unstable and spectacularly inept, and no longer believes in the values set down in the Declaration of Independence. America has considered the argument for democracy so thoroughly won that it has forgotten to defend it, or even the value of it. Into this void steps the Chinese government.

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It is impossible not to watch. The US is the world's only really global power, and the current measuring stick by which all global powers are compared against. China wants what the US has, but is going to attempt to do so without the mistakes the Americans have made. After all, American empire is ending, or so everyone says. The bars are equalizing. America was a leader in space travel, so China will become a leader in space travel. America was a leader in world culture and entertainment, so China will become a leader in world culture and entertainment. America has a strong military, so China will have a strong military.

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To leave with one last note, in the online kerfluffle surrounding Hong Kong's current situation, Chinese netizens think it's fair play to "support 9-11" and advocate for California seceding from the United States, as payback for a mistaken belief that the fight in Hong Kong is over independence. When confronted with the fact that edgy teenagers in America have been making 9-11 jokes barely a week after the tragedy and a non-zero amount of non-Californians in the US would also prefer it if California sunk into the ocean, they are legitimately surprised. The idea that this kind of independence would be preferred by both parties is almost completely alien to the Chinese, who wonder and are surprised at the fact that Americans apparently wish their country to be weaker.

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tajfoodpk0 · 4 years

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Race Traders

At the food industry, it really is all about trends. Foods labeled'organic' are all the rave. But, what can you know by food? Is purchasing or farming of goods a thing? Is there any any urban myths and misconceptions regarding foods?Organic versus (100-percent ) Organic -The primary huge big difference we will want to understand is that not all of organic meals in the sector is one hundred per cent natural. In identifying this difference labelling plays an crucial function. Back in India, an individual may receive a plantation certified with a complete host of certifying agencies permitted under the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), and also some other food thing may possibly abide by a or most organic certificate standards. Listed below Are the Best ten advantages of eating organic foods: #10 Natural and Organic Food Tastes GreaterAt PacMoore, we are devoted to food producing in every business. In food that is organic we support our clients and choices fulfill up with troubles. Get in touch with us to learn much more. Indeed. For starters, how we can cite three motives:Just The Way Organic is'Organic'? – screening foods for chemicals is still quite a potential. While folks are continuously devising new means of discovering pesticides and impurities in vegetables and milk, for today the only remedy to creating sure that you're eating 100 percent organic food is to... develop your food.The farmers do not make dollars. On those high fees we as consumers cover organic food. Los-Angeles-catering-Smog-Shoppe-best-wedding-vendors-LA-real-wedding-beautiful-bride-17-of-26 catering san diego wedding catering No 4 It's trendy to consume OrganicTen years ago natural and natural farming did exist in the States. Today the future of organic farming is appearing bright. With luck, this short article helped you to understand more about great things about eating natural and organic meals and looking for fixing choices. It's by no means too late to start. Additionally, it is never too late to share this short article and spread about the huge benefits of natural eating and catering!Just how do taste and appearance compare to traditional meals?The American Academy of Environmental Medicine asserts that"Several creature studies indicate acute health risks associated with GMO foods items," including resistant ailments, rapid aging, and affects in organs that are major, along with infertility.What exactly are foods?#Inch Vote With Your WalletHowever, with so much natural and organic and natural material on the marketplace, it is hard for your normal user to sift genuine organic create from something which could be just cashing in on the trend. Just just how do you be certain what we are consuming is genuinely chemical-free? Always certainly a couple checks are to do so, although it is perhaps not easy."natural compounds vary in their composition of nourishment along with other biologically relevant substances. Various cultivars of the exact crop may vary in composition, which can also vary based on other things , growing states, period, and also pesticide and fertilizer regimen. Factors such as breed and age of the creature, consuming routine, and season can likewise affect the nutrient makeup of livestock services and products. This variability in nutrient material could be further affected through the storage, transportation, and prep of the food stuffs until they attain the bowl of their user. An understanding of the factors that influence nutrient variability in crops and livestock services and products is essential for its design and interpretation of analysis on differences from the nutrient content of produced and conventionally produced food stuffs." 1#9 Natural Meals vs. ChemicalsWhen someone who grew up on a farm in MinnesotaI know all too well of the damaging impact of synthetic pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Sadly, I understood farmers that died from contact with compounds and've witnessed the chemicals impacting the local water table and pollution levels inside the soil.#8 Natural and Organic Foods Has Better Nutrition Unless the product certainly says completely natural and organic, you have to look into the certification standards of this tag on the own food to know precisely how all-natural the meals will be.blog

The worldwide caliber of announcing whatever organic takes it to function as strictly chemical and pesticide-free however India doesn't always comply with rules. The Telangana State Seed & Organic Certification Authority, for instance, recently tested a sample of food at India to find that just about all the sample contained chemical residuse.By acquiring natural foodstuff you are supporting great farmers! Scale fewer crops per nest Natural and organic farmers cover to generally meet standards and boost energy on plots of property they have room. Most of this implies more charges and hazard . Avoiding meat and Exhibiting our support on the industry is equally crucial. "Lots of people possess an opinion about whether organic food is greater (or equally or less) healthful compared to conventional food. It may be shocking to know only a very small quantity of scientific tests have dealt with this query. There are, nevertheless, quite a few studies that compare the vitamin antioxidant, anti oxidant contents of conventional and organic fruits and vegetables, or the fatty acid composition of conventional and organic milk. The reason is that it is far more easy to gauge the vitamin content of fruit than to measure in case one is fitter. As a way to quantify healthiness, one would need to have a group of individuals ingesting just organic and just another one eating only normal foodstuff, then after a little few years compare that group is fitter (this sort of scientific tests have been discussed in greater detail further below). People are hard to scientists and control inside such a study can, for example, perhaps maybe not record their own food ingestion correctly. Even more importantly: there is not any recognized method of measuring if someone is'wholesome'." 5What to perform? In short, do your homework and prepare ahead. What plants come in period? What exactly ingredients are great for your region? The further you comprehend the narrative of one's own food products, the higher you are able to serve the consumer.A 20 17 study from Penn State shows that longterm vulnerability to pesticide has serious health risks. "Suspected persistent effects from contact with certain pesticides incorporate birth defects, toxicity to your fetus, production of benign or cancerous tumors, genetic changes, blood diseases, nerve disorders, endocrine disturbance, and reproductive outcomes "Ground water pollution is just one of the main reasons for chemicals seeping into crops, increasing a big question about the way all-natural any food manufactured in India is. Rainwater harvesting can be a solution -- farms.Number 5 You Are Allergic Excellent FarmersOrganic farmers use variable harvesting techniques by optimizing what is accessible in their mind. They work with vegetable spoilage and natural animal droppings because resources of fertilizers. Also, biologically pesticides are traditionally used to battle insects off.Though the long-term effects of GMO on people is up to debate, the effects GMO meals consumed on creatures is still somewhat regarding.Licensed USDA organic foodstuff has no chemicals and hereditary tamperingthat can change the flavor of a few your favorite meals. 1 important advantage of consuming natural and natural foods is that veggies and fruits taste the direction that they were designed to style.It all started in the autumn of 2006 when beekeepers across the U.S. began reporting enormous declines for their own bee colonies. In a few reportsup to ninety percentage of those hives were also empty. It's really a serious illness frequently referred to as, Colony Collapse disor der.While investigation has indicated that pesticides on their own are not a passing threat for bees, even those synthetic compounds drastically weaken the insect's defense mechanisms and help it become vunerable to Nosema, a gut parasite which can eliminate entire extremes of bees. Research from France additionally unearthed these pesticides cloud the honeybee's brain and also alter its own behavior to work correctly over the retina.why not look here

A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that natural and natural meals develops quicker, due to fertilizersthat induces vegetables and fruits to build up better sugars and starches. The result of these vitamins and starches is your produce includes a much better taste and texture to it than non-toxic produce.Consultation-cta-300x59 catering san diego wedding catering"Intakes of fruit and veggies tend to be low in contrast with existing dietary guidelines, particularly in those of lesser levels of educational attainment and social class. Composite foods really are an important source of veggies (significantly much less importantly of good fresh fruit ) and should really be involved when picking vegetable intakes. Failure to do so might lead to prejudice in estimates of intake and of compliance with dietary principles for population groups, together with misclassification of an individual by degree of intake" 8 They're packed with nutrients and healthful for everybody. Investigation has been for more validations in contrast to food, notably about the absorption of fats vitamins, and minerals.Many studies report that natural and organic and natural ingestion is carefully linked to some other wellness insurance and life style indexes, e.g., consumers often have higher income and education, have lesser body-mass indicator (BMI), are more physically energetic, and consume healthier diets than people that do not seldom use food. However, this pattern will not necessarily apply if organic foodstuff ingestion is connected to a alternative life style that includes vegetarianism, environmentalism, or other ideologies. Studies show that ordinary organic ingestion does not stick to a regular age gradient however can be seen in both young adult (40 years) age classes also that organic consumers often belong to homes with kids than do nonorganic consumers" TwoThings to perform? The clear answer is often as easy as observation, although for foods manufacturers accustomed to a shelf lifetime that is forgiving , natural and organic food production may be hard. This means having a labeling system which clearly says day of manufacturing (or harvesting), date of birth and some other risks particular to the ingredient type. With a"first in, first out" coverage that you're better built to combat the clock and then also deliver organic food products that are safe and also appealing.M.p>"organic and natural meals have stringent rules in regards to the sum of unprocessed contaminants enabled for safe ingestion. It has also been discovered that these foods just contain small heights of these contaminants. Whether or not picking out foods that are non-organic or organic, experts concur that the perfect way to safeguard ourselves is always to rinse all fruits and vegetables under running water. Because cutting on out the rinds can bring contaminants into the generate from your rind Goods with inedible skins ought to be washed, such as melons and also cantaloupes. The information out of the studies below additionally shows no significant flavor difference in between organically grown and conventionally grown meals. Alternatively, flavor variations seem in the future in its maturity, its own growing conditions, along with the foods number and crop time. Unlike the past, many of today's organic foods compare very positively in appearance using conventionally grown food items ." 4Comprehension Certificates and expectations - A natural plantation may strive to go certified by Indian and global standards each. You are able to get many different organic foods certificates, such as for example United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) authorised bodies, EU natural standard and much also more. The further certifications, the greater the probability of the foods getting 100 percent organic and natural.Eating organic food means your food has been kept to some greater standard.more information

Organic food needed to fulfill a top amount of requirements until the FDA will announce a meals items"Certified Organic." It follows the farmer that climbed your tomato set plenty of power into ensuring their field was compound free. It can take years until the water and soil tables are free of poisons to grow organic and natural produce.A sort of food using least five percent of its ingredients coming from organic origin is called mix. Composite food items could be labeled as'organic foods'.©markbrooke.comWhat to perform? An integral grade of meals is the absence of chemical insect control at every point. Natural farmers have a different set of tools to keeping pests . Diversified crops, for instance, drive back a single crippling infestation. And Plants like cows have provided distance to move, that means no less want. Handlers are turning to pure repellents like citrus and vinegar to protect substances.Consuming natural can on occasion be a struggle, however, it's all worth every penny ; not just for your own community and also the environment, also for the preservation of our precious planet Earth.The term describes to all foods that are chosen out of organic farming, whereby organic processes instills all the uses of industrially made pesticides, fertilizers, or some other additives that encourage rapid or synthetic expansion.When purchased in the plantation, natural and organic food is more usually skinnier and not as expensive. Getting access might be difficult; rather they're offered by the supermarket. Butter Natural and organic milk, bread, pasta, leafy greens, and herbs are more expensive in comparison to poor food. But, if it is possible to spare time and effort, it pays to shop around to receive the handiest prices.Number 3 Natural and Natural and Natural Products are Nongmo Wrightwood-Guest-Ranch-Wedding-California-wedding-venues-Los-Angels-wedding-catering-best-los-angeles-catering-organic-catering-best-san-diego-catering-21 catering Hillcrest wedding catering.2. Humans are not the only people who need your food. The war between people and pests is as old as the species, plus it will not end any moment soon. However, we were given a crystal clear edge over rodents, insects, bacteria and insects by contemporary food fabricating processes. By moving in the direction of foods, we're revisiting some challenges created harder by unprecedented population development.Should you would like to get some great benefits of eating more healthy than you'd certainly be sensible to increase organic fruits and vegetables into your cart. Certified organic produce comprises higher quantities of vitamins and minerals. In fact, a report from Organic.org says that certified natural fruits and vegetables contain up to 21.1% more iron, 29.3percent more calcium, 18 percent more antioxidants, and a whopping 27% more vitamin C. All that extra nutrition better equips the body to fortify your immunity system, reduce your blood pressure, also slow down the effects of ageing.With natural and natural farming, compounds utilized as fertilizers have been traditionally used in extremely smaller quantities, in case any. Wild species do not arrive in contact harmful industrial drainage as they would with conventional farming, and mutation of species has been dramatically reduced. As such, animals and feedstock are maintained in benign and natural environments.The organic food industry has struggled hard to continue to keep GMOs out from their FDA's natural and organic certification approach. It follows that all organic and natural foods are inherently non-GMOs.The India natural and organic emblem, a bird symbol, is an equally important check within this regard. If you're dedicated enough, you could even resort to legwork and due diligence to in fact assess how a farm wherever your meal is arriving from uses water. Many organic farms are open to public and anybody can go and check their practices anytime.Inch.look at these guys

You are racing the clock. Not in all cases, however in most especially when you take into account organic and natural produce and meats. However, the components utilised in producing organic food items are more vulnerable to decay leading to fluctuations in temperature."The term"organically grown meals" finds products which have been manufactured in light of the principles and principles of organic agriculture. Organic and natural agricultural and food processing clinics are far reaching and complete attempt to boost the growth of the food production system that's socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable. The crucial principles and practices of organic foods production make an effort to motivate and enhance biological cycles within the farming strategy to keep and increase longterm fertility of soils, to further diminish all sorts of contamination, in order to steer clear of using artificial fertilizers and pesticides, to keep genetic diversity of this manufacturing procedure, to further consider the wider social and ecological effects of the foodstuff creation and processing strategy, and also to produce foods of high quality in adequate volume. Certified organic and natural fiber and food products and services are the ones that have been produced based on standards that are documented " 33. Your client foundation is grand. Before manufacturing meals have been entirely distributed locally. That is harder to complete in a civilization of commuting and online ordering."'' There are numerous distinct reasons why consumers might opt to buy natural food, for example concerns about the surroundings and using pesticides, concerns regarding intensified farming procedures, or so the understanding that natural food is safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced foods items. Furthermore, as some businesses of the population have become more thinking about wellbeing and health, there has become an greater requirement for far more'natural', less processed foods. This may have led to the greater requirement, as men and women perceive organic foods because an even 'pure' option. Though organic foods tend to be greater at price (mainly because of this decrease efficacy of organic crops)they appear to have grown to be more and more common." 9Some of the primary added benefits of eating grown organically is that you eliminate exposure to these varieties of compounds.What to do? In this regard, temperature control is critical. As important as attaining the best temperature is currently keeping it. No Thing rates rust such as a temperature swing. To adopt organic foods at a industry, invest in top-quality climate control for your motor vehicles.Once a farm becomes certified natural, a few devious farms may deceive consumers by unethically providing their manufacture under a tag by coming to a private monetary structure. To complicate matters even more, there's also the other hand. Not every UN certified foods items is rotten. Little farmers who perform the fantastic job and produce natural and organic plants regularly believe it is overly awkward or embarrassing to acquire the proper certificate.Much like almost any emerging marketplace, natural food manufacturing is confronting its own share of growing pains. Meals suppliers have grown accustomed to processes that, whereas safe and efficient, usually do not fall underneath the umbrella that was all-natural. Below are a few of the common troubles for producing and distributing quality food items that are organic.Only puta item is organic in case it is produced in a farming system which utilizes no chemical substances, fertilizers, GMOs or artificial additives. Instead it relies on biological insect controllers, plant and animal manure, and crop rotation.site link

It's good also our planet, and for us. Following environmentally conscionable Agroecology policies in growing food ensures that a far greater future for our biodiversity and is mutually beneficial for us, including, many consider, reducing the probability of most cancers.It's tricky to discover a supermarket now it doesn't have a natural produce element. This is only because the organic food industry is booming. The Organic Trade Association claims Americans now spend 4-7 billion dollars a year on organic food. That's a 3.7 billion dollar rise from the former year and now there aren't any symptoms of down it.The environment, consisting of lakes, rivers, seas and other bodies of water, also could be protected against dangerous, intensive harvesting and dangerous compounds, and ideally, our planet's fertility could be preserved for a lot of upcoming generations.Sure! I mentioned, healthier extra fat! The gain of consuming protein such as beef, chicken, porkfish signifies you are giving the human own body a greater dose of less of those cholesterol rising fats found in livestock and also these enviable efas increased thickly. Natural and organic milk has 50 percent more omega3 efas compared to milk.Organic agriculture refers to your style of farming whereby temperament is the sole way of growth. How is this done? Manufacturing is got with minimal environmental or environmental damage. Local communities have been retained safe as well as a workable source of cash flow can be accessed. The develop, can be the corn or the vegetables and fruits and the spices, daals and other foods are all organic simply due to the fact there wasn't any agro-chemicals.Certification warrants that organic foods abounds using rather significant standards of traceability; promising that compounds that are dangerous are not introduced into any of many heights of organic farming.No 7 rescue Your Bees!Are natural and natural solutions cheaper than food?One of the absolute most powerful added benefits of selecting organic foods means you are voting with your pocket. Every purchase you create non-organic farmers, grocers, GMO labs, and compound companies know that that you don't encourage the industry. This motivates conventional farmers to consider the capacity of changing to organic farming.Exploring the topic of GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms) reveals so many points of view it'll make your face damage. Some state it's going to save humankind, while some assert the contrary."throughout the world interest in organic food products has been expand fast particularly in developed nations. Requirement is fueled partly by increased client awareness of the connection between diet and health, exceptionally publicized food safety cases like the incidence of E. coli-contaminated make and also the perceived environmental advantages of organically grown foods. A growing number of individuals are prepared to pay premium costs for natural produce thanks that natural and organic products are better-tasting, clean, fitter, healthy, safe and friendlier . Accordinglythe disagreement on the quality and protection of natural and organic as opposed to conventionally grown foods items has intensified as is shared with any debate between public understanding, proponents of either side have cited scientific tests because proof in aid of their claims." 1-1Organic create in greenhouseAs stated previously, longterm exposure to tiny levels of pesticide can mount as much as and including deadly impact on living creatures. It should be no surprise that our little pollinator close friends, that have come in direct contact with vegetation and flowers coated with those pesticides on a daily basis, are falling victim to those toxic chemicals at an alarming rate. With nearly 75 percent of overall food crops inside the U.S. benefiting from pollination, getting organic create can help push conventional farmers away from those practices that are hazardous.What is food?Cost, in reality, must not be one factor. There is no real reason behind organic foodstuff to become costlier than non-toxic, also also pros agree that there is barely any gap in the expense of normal and organic farming.It is.click this link now

Are organic foods more healthy?In the United States, natural and natural foods is accredited institutionally by regularly maintaining top excellent management, in addition to verifying adherence to regulations and adequacy of organic markers. If a item is labeled as organic, an individual can make positive no synthetic sweeteners or colorings are inserted.'' the United Nations' new declaration of Sikkim because the planet's earliest natural State has brought the large organic debate right back into focus: what exactly is organic -- and also how do we differentiate a genuine organic item? "The strengths and flaws of organic food and farming since currently practiced are identified in this newspaper. Natural and organic agriculture is a more highly renewable and multi faceted system, internalizing ecological issues and also economizing resources that are normal; it has positive effects in the diversity of fields, farms, landscapes and species. Ethical values, such as humans and animals' wellbeing, are high on the schedule, and also involvement of stakeholders in addition to responsibility figure along the food series. Natural agriculture is especially suited with no recourse to trade barriers to this empowerment of regional economies. Top high quality food and sensible nutrition are intrinsic aspects of organic foodstuffs, so that natural nutrition can be still a beacon for modern day life styles and nourishment" 10"natural farming uses various approaches to boost maintain soil fertility, for example as crop rotation, tillage and cultivation techniques, protect plants, and natural compounds (for example, natural fertilizers, pesticides, and so on). The use of synthetic materials is not permitted in farming until the materials have been about the Natl. set of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. An artificial material can be understood to be a chemical substance that's formulated or manufactured by a chemical procedure or via a procedure that chemically changes a substance extracted from the plant, animal, or nutrient supply. Natural and organic farmers use botanical crop and animal wastes, biological, or non-synthetic insect controls, also enabled. Organic farmers also utilize specific procedures to cut back air, soil, and water pollution." 7"Natural environment diversity caused by landscape spacious complexity inorganic farming plays also three important roles: environmental, cosmetic and production and health functions. The environmental function is present of keeping biodiversity and homeostasis, i.e. stability and optimal species number. Natural farms create an existence foundation for plant and animal species, perhaps not merely those but accompanying species. The manufacturing function relies upon prophylaxis, i.e. the use of prevention, not control, guarding plants from germs, pests and plant disorders. This helps retain biological balance, i.e. homeostasis of whole landscape. The aesthetic and wellbeing of organic farming admits that we're an integral portion of the environment and could only exist in harmony with nature" 6"Defining natural and organic consumers and assessing organic diet plans, e.g., which sort of meals items, and also the participation of food into the complete diet are all major problems in population research studies. You'll find no methods to gauge the diet humans with no significant malfunction. Investigation describing socioeconomic and lifestyle characteristics of natural meals consumers has recently demonstrated that ingestion is a complicated phenomenon between diverse groups that do not belong in to on average defined consumer sections.Number 2 Protecting Your EarthExactly why are omega3 fatty acids therefore crucial? The University of Maryland Medical Center says that omega3 efas can decrease your risk of heart disease, minimize pain or stiffness, decrease your risk of cancer, prevent dry skin, and strengthen memory, and can help fight depression.A while back there was a fad because of the organic vegetables and fruits and also the supermarket too. Shops publicized they promote only organic. They likewise charged higher rates than the make. Might it be correct. These all-natural really are not organic. ? Exactly what are the specifications. Let's determine organic is organic?No 6 Natural Food H AS Healthy FatFactory farming is a superior polluter of our soil, rivers, and seas. Two thirds of the country's drinking water has been observed to have elevated heights of nitrates, a effect of pesticides and fertilizers . These chemicals do not just stop at our drinking tap water. They keep to stream to oceans and our food . In 2008 scientists found 405 dead zones because of this utilization of highly soluble fertilizer that is synthetic.4. Offer is constrained. With its nature, organic and natural foods requires greater resources and land. As such, it can be complicated to edge out the contest for ingredients.Even though your wallet may cringe at the price attached into your food, your heart will thank you! Some great advantages of natural catering and eating radically outweigh the slight gap in the cost of organic catering.Could it be safer to pick organic?In short, a genetically altered food is a organism that has its own DNA altered in a science lab. That is performed in order to give food beneficial properties such as brighter color, higher crop yields shorter cycles and thus on. Perhaps you have ever wondered how that thoughts is crisp? Effectively, that is because some one changed the genes of that plant to make it survive six days longer than it was allowed by character to.By supporting organic farmers by selecting an organic catering provider, you are encouraging agriculture that utilizes normal fertilizers to their plants and retains our eco system vibrant and thriving.As the prevalence of absorbing natural foods has increased, a number of studies have contrasted the nutritional quality of foods conventionally grown versus organically grown. Some studies stated under have found that conventionally improved foods talking and organically grown foods have no substantial differences within their own nutritional grade.

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The Handmaid’s Tale: Prophecy or Inevitably?

Lydia Cole-November 2018

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” It’s amazing how much the world has changed within the past decade, and even within the last few years. Eleven years ago, the first iPhone was released. Ten years ago, Obama was sworn in as the first African American President of the United States. Scientists are close to figuring out how to edit human DNA. Twenty-seven countries have legalized same sex marriage. This is truly the era of change. Sometimes, change happens so quickly that we don’t even really realize that life is different from what it was before.

The Handmaid’s Tale, a thrilling show set in a near future dystopia is all about change, big or small. The story itself isn’t new: it’s been around for over 30 years, since Margaret Atwood’s novel (by the same name) was published in 1985. Bruce Miller has done a better justice to the harrowing themes in Atwood’s novel than any other adaptation has; Atwood herself even stated that the realness of Miller’s story was too horrific to watch at times. It draws inspiration from different historical avenues: Lebensborn (a Nazi program that encouraged higher birth rates), America’s Puritan roots, and East Germany/The Iron Curtain, to name a few. The greatest accomplishment of Miller’s show is that it’s a feminist driven shock value, meant to prevent us from making the increasing anguish throughout the world our new normal. The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. The world is plagued with environmental disasters, as well as low fertility and birth rates. A religious extremist group took it upon themselves to make America great again; They made it look like their actions to abolish the government were the acts of Islamic terrorist groups. Once the religious extremists gained power, they forcibly separated fertile women from their families to create reproductive slaves or forced surrogates or ‘handmaids’. These handmaids are captives in the houses of a specific commander and his wife, who cannot bear children. Once a month, these women are held down and raped during ‘The Ceremony’. It was either this or exile to the Colonies, where these women would spend the rest of their lives cleaning up nuclear waste from the waging war.

Moss leads the cast as the protagonist, Offred, a feisty feminist trapped as a handmaid in a society where a single toe out of line could end her life. She can’t let that happen though. She has to stay alive so that she can find her daughter, Hannah, who was taken from her. Moss’s narration gives us an insight to all Offred’s snarky thoughts. Many people tend to find voice-over narration an example of lazy writing, or unnecessary exposition. But for a character who is allowed to speak very little (mostly in repeated phrases) the voice-over is a welcomed device.

We get to know Offred quite well throughout the show: not just through the narration of her thoughts, but also through flashbacks to her life before, with her family. These flashbacks allow the audience to piece together how not just Offred ended up in Gilead but also how little changes led to America becoming Gilead. . We see her and her colleagues being escorted out of the office because women can’t earn an income anymore. She can’t withdraw from an ATM or even use her debit card to pay for coffee. Flashbacks also tend to be an annoying narrative. But in this case, they work in favor of the story rather than against it.

It is not the flashbacks, narration, or dialogue, that shows off Moss’s spectacular acting. Rather, it’s the silence in between, the expressions on her face, the defiance that shows in Offred’s eyes as she is being slapped or tazed or whipped. Moss does have some of her work cut out for her because Offred is a brilliantly written character. I mean, what kind of person cracks jokes while looking at the dead bodies hanging above her? But Moss’s choice to play the character with astonishing nonchalance is audacious and sensational; her performance carries the show. You can’t have a well written protagonist without an equally enthralling villain. Or in this case, villains. We can say that the obvious villain is the patriarchy, or the system that designed the role of handmaids in the first place. But these are just ideas, mentalities. The Handmaid’s Tale is less about the patriarchy itself and more about the women who uphold it.

Acting alongside Moss is Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) as Mrs. Waterford and Ann Dowd (Compliance) as Aunt Lydia, the tormenting handmaid handler. Neither of them are inherently evil. They believe that what they are doing is for the greater good of Gilead. What makes them great villains is the fact that they aren’t far off figures, like ‘Big Brother’, or whimsical in their villainy like Captain Hook. They’re written well because they’re so real, so raw. Mrs. Waterford helped create Gilead because she believes in love and in family. All she wants more than anything is a child. Aunt Lydia, though harsh and unwavering in her punishments, truly cares for the handmaids, ‘her girls’. She is a twisted motherlike figure; she punishes but only to ready the handmaids for their divine purpose. Miller has effectively created villains that you will love to hate.

Although the show has many strong points, there are many people that argue that it’s distastefully explicit. Even if you know it’s coming, there’s something new and unnerving about watching Offred lay on the lap of Mrs. Waterford while she is being raped by the Commander. We see the handmaids casually observe the bodies of hanging men, marked by their crimes: Catholic, gay, abortion clinic worker. There is a woman who is repeatedly shamed until she believes that it was her fault that she was gang-raped. These scenes don’t show everything, but they show enough. Margaret Atwood herself said that there were a few times where she had to avert her eyes because it was a scene was so horrific. The show tells a fantastic story but the violence show on screen is what’s preventing a wider audience from tuning in. it’s not a show for the faint of heart.

The show would be unwatchable if it was all doom and gloom; American Horror Story being the example that springs to mind. But, it isn’t. Just like in every story of oppression, there is resistance. There is a spark, hope, that crackles in the darkness. Many of the handmaids come together in resistance, the taste of freedom on the tip of their tongues. In our society, women resist by speaking up: they post on social media, they petition, they protest, and they march. They make themselves known, because how else will they make change happen?. But in Gilead, resistance is a quiet whisper that is carried on the wind: Mayday. Hope. Freedom. Reunion. It is human nature to resist oppression, and the Handmaid’s Tale provides a splendid exhibition of that fact.

The most horrific part of this show does not lie in its explicit nature.. It’s the extreme similarities to the reality that we live in, even though the story is based off of events that happened 30+ years ago. Moss herself thinks that using the violent nature of the show as a reason not to watch it is a weak excuse. She said, “I hate hearing that someone couldn’t watch it because it was too scary[…] I’m like, ‘Really? You don’t have the balls to watch a TV show? This is happening in your real life. Wake up, people. Wake up.’” The show’s timely premiere, close in hand with Trump’s inauguration seems coincidental. Was it? Either way, women have started dressing up in the iconic red robes and white bonnets worn by the handmaids when attending various women’s rights marches. Trump’s new policies, especially those in favor of anti-abortion, are being perceived as threatening to women. Discrimination against working mothers and women who choose not to be mothers are still battles that women continue to fight.

This ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ wasn’t written to be some urgent prophecy, but still as a potential warning of what might come to past. Aunt Lydia, a strong believer in the ‘greater good’ said it best: “Things may not seem ordinary to you right now. But they will.” It’s a dictation of the process that humans go through when they start to numb themselves towards the harrowing atrocities happening around the world, to the point where it’s becoming normal. It’s only when we look back on ‘the good ole days’ will we realize that it’s too late.

#the handmaid's tale #prophecy #abortion #trump #elizabeth moss #review #tv show #margaret atwood #book

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pentanguine · 2 years

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Favorite Books of 2021

This list took much longer than I meant it to, partly because I wrote a mini-essay about each book and partly because I kept frantically changing my mind as to which Vorkosigan and Wimsey novels I should put on the list and in which order.

Ultimately an absurd number (almost half) of the books on this list are by either Bujold or Sayers, which maybe isn’t my finest moment as someone who wants to a) talk about a diverse body of literature and authors and b) write a post that someone else might want to read even if they haven’t read either series. But oh well!

(This is also a Top 16 because I physically could not bear to include #15 and not #16. Also these are not in reverse order. Oh well!)

1. A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold

What can I say, I loved it. Is this objectively the best book on my list? No, probably not, but it was the one I had the most unmitigated delight reading. When I had to put it down, I counted down the hours until I could pick it back up again. Unfortunately this book is hard to recommend to other people, because a lot of the pleasure is in seeing relationships develop between characters that you’ve come to know and love over ten previous books, plus it’s a very specific blend of sci-fi and comedy of manners that probably isn’t to everyone’s taste. But it’s so damn good. The best book I read this year about advertising butter.

2. Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Objectively, this is probably one of the best books I read last year, and the best Vorkosigan book. Bujold summarizes it as “Miles hits thirty; thirty hits back” and damn does it ever. It’s got one of those great Bujold plots that ends up somewhere totally different from where it started, and it’s got an exquisite balance of fast-paced intrigue and slow-paced reflection on how to live a good life, how to move on from old dreams and identities that aren’t going to work out.

3. Monstress: Awakening, by Marjorie Liu

I found this book at a used bookstore and thought “cool cover, I’ve been meaning to read more graphic novels,” and then ended up devouring it in almost one sitting. The worldbuilding is so damn good, the art is beautiful, and maybe it’s just that I’m bad at picking up visual clues in graphic novels, but I gasped in shock at the twists. It’s dark and deeply engrossing.

4. Too Bright to See, by Kyle Lukoff

I’ve never understood the phrase “the book you wish you could’ve written,” because isn’t that just any book that’s successful? But nevermind, I get it now. This book is a short, atmospheric middle grade novel about a kid coping with the death of their uncle, the start of middle school, and the discovery of their gender. It’s a ghost story that also pokes holes in the narrative conventions of stories about trans children and middle school friendships, and I loved it.

5. Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Refreshingly not overhyped! It’s a splendid twist on the classic Gothic romance, with a refreshing anti-colonial perspective and plenty of rotting corpses, mysterious visions, taciturn servants, etc. Part of the pleasure of the first half of the book is guessing whether the explanation/twist will be supernatural or not, so I won’t spoil that part, but I will say that it involves mushrooms and is delightfully disturbing.

6. Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

A short, quiet, dreamlike book about a man who lives in a labyrinthine series of Halls populated by statues, birds, and ever-shifting tides. There’s such a gentle wonder about this book, and an enduring belief that humanity is good. What I loved most about this book is that by the time you finish it, you realize it could have been a very different story if told from a different perspective, or with a different use of pacing or language, but it wasn’t, and I love the quiet story we got instead.

7. Plain Bad Heroines, by Emily M. Danforth

A deliciously creepy and queer book that layers story upon story upon story to create a lovely work of metafictional, literary horror. It flows back and forth from modern celesbian Hollywood to a girls’ boarding school in early 1900s New England, examining how a cursed book and sapphic desire link these two timelines. If you’re going to read the book I highly recommend buying or borrowing a copy so you can look at the gorgeous dust jacket, endpapers, etc.

8. Busman’s Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers

Look, this one is also not objectively the best book I read this year, or even best in its series, but I just care so goddamn much about this stubborn, traumatized couple. Busman’s has that quality of great fluffy fanfiction, where it makes the ordinariness of daily life interesting and even emotionally wrenching because it’s a couple we already care deeply about. The last chapter, all about tragedy and morality and having to face the consequences of your noble intentions, was physically painful for me to read. To quote from my journal, “all my emotions hurt and I’m in love.”

9. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

A dubious choice to read during the middle of a pandemic? Maybe. But the language in this book is gorgeous—Mandel uses exquisitely fragmented sentences to make you feel both grief and wonder, and the fractured timeline actually works with the themes and purpose of the story. It moved me to tears on several occasions. If you process catastrophic events (ie the pandemic) by diving into fictional depictions, I think this will suit your needs.

10. Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse

I’ve fallen out of the habit of reading epic fantasy, but I’m so glad I read this. There’s intricate world-building, characters with morally grey motivations, and a whole series of plots and conspiracies slowly intersecting over the course of this briskly paced novel. It’s told from four different perspectives, including that of a naïve priest, a sheltered cultist, and a damaged ship’s captain (two of whom fall in love in one of my new favorite romance arcs). For a four hundred page epic fantasy, it’s very much a page-turner, and I’m delighted that it’s a series.

11. The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers

Speaking of themes! This is a mystery novel with themes! I adore the way DLS writes about ordinary people—absent-minded vicars, cocky sixteen year olds, the local man who keeps the sluice gates and complains about the government. The village and the landscape are characters as much as the individuals, and sometimes the mystery takes a backseat to the characterization, or the themes, or someone nerding out about campanology. Again, maybe not the place to start if you’re totally new to the Wimsey mysteries, but one of the best.

12. Documenting Light, by E.E. Ottoman

A sweet and rather sad t4t romance novel about small town history, family, and the lost stories of ordinary queer people. I think this novel is part of a bourgeoning genre of works exploring the complicated subject of trans visibility in history and our relationship to archives (eg Confessions of the Fox), and it’s also one of the more accessible. I’m not usually a fan of romance novels, but this one bucked enough tropes (minor spoiler: their first date is super awkward) and had enough nerdy academic analysis in it to make me very, very happy.

13. Things in Jars, by Jess Kidd

I picked this book up totally on a whim, knowing nothing about it, and even now couldn’t tell you what genre it is. It’s some combination of historical fiction/mystery/literary fantasy, and has that great quality of Victorian pastiche that’s equal parts whimsy and horror (think fairytale creatures who also murder people; the unquiet dead, but also romance with the unquiet dead; trauma and squalor but also science and cups of tea). The writing style was like nothing I’ve encountered before. I’d happily read a detective series about Bridie Devine and her crew.

14. Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L. Sayers

This book is absolutely full of madcap shenanigans, and reading it was just so much fun. There’s a superb balance between the technical elements of mystery solving and the utter ridiculous bullshit that Lord Peter Wimsey gets up to in his spare time. In the unlikely event that you’ve read the Vorkosigan saga and are looking to jump into the Wimsey books, this would be a great one to start with. The second best book I read this year about advertising butter.

15. Komarr, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles’s character development in this one is brilliant, and his relationship with Ekaterin unfolds so convincingly, so perfectly…they respect each other as well as love each other, and the rapport they develop feels natural, endearing, and so rewarding, after watching Miles fumble his way toward a satisfying life for nine previous books. As always, I love the way Bujold balances military and political adventure with more domestic, character-driven plots. It’s just so good.

16. Strong Poison, by Dorothy L. Sayers

I’ll take a brief break from gushing about Peter/Harriet to praise this as a well-crafted mystery novel. It’s got a number of delightful escapades that leave you with clues and red herrings, and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that this one is more of a how-dunit than a whodunit. Also, this is the one where Peter meets Harriet and falls in love with her, while they banter, in prison. *collapses on my bed*

Honorable mentions: The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune; Escaping Exodus, by Nicky Drayden; The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay; The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones; Entangled Life, by Martin Sheldrake; Ace, by Angela Chen

#i use the word delightful too much #i am aware of this #an inexhaustable source of magic

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dipulb3 · 3 years

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Prabal Gurung: Anti-Asian sentiment runs deeper than you think

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/prabal-gurung-anti-asian-sentiment-runs-deeper-than-you-think/

Prabal Gurung: Anti-Asian sentiment runs deeper than you think

Written by Prabal GurungNew York

Prabal Gurung is a Nepali American fashion designer based in New York. All opinions expressed in this article belong to the author. The feature is part of Appradab Style’s new series Hyphenated, which explores the complex issue of identity among minorities in the United States.

My 75-year-old Nepali mother, who lives in New York, goes for a walk every morning and every evening. I send her out in disguise: I bought her a blonde wig, and I tell her to wear it under a hat, glasses and mask. “Maybe then, they’ll leave her alone,” I think. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s my survival instinct kicking in.

“I understand your concern and worry,” my mami, as I like to call her, told me the other day.

“But I would rather get a walking stick or a cane, just in case something happens. I can fight back,” she assured me, adjusting her wig and hat.

That’s just how she is: resilient, unafraid and a picture of grace under pressure. I admire her strength but continue to worry for her safety. I check in constantly so I know where she is at any given time.

This is what it’s come to. A fear so constant that it’s crippling.

“By using terms like “China Virus” and “Kung Flu,” Trump gave the coronavirus a face, an Asian face, and for that, we have all suffered.”

Prabal Gurung

Here’s where we’re at:

A torrent of anti-Asian hate crimes have been committed, including the brutal assault of elderly Asian men and women in broad daylight. Among them is 65-year-old Vilma Kari, who just last week in New York, was told “F**k you, you don’t belong here, you Asian,” according to the criminal complaint, before being pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly by her attacker. The shootings at three Atlanta-area spas have left six Asian women dead. Nearly 3,800 hate incidents have so far been reported to Stop AAPI Hate over the course of a year. It feels as if there’s an open season for violence against Asians.

By using terms like “China Virus” and “Kung Flu,” former US President Donald Trump gave the coronavirus a face, an Asian face, and for that, we have all suffered. While his damaging rhetoric has no doubt fueled these hate crimes, their roots are buried deep in underlying racist currents that have long impacted our communities in the United States.

They can be found in every industry. For instance, when it comes to my world — fashion — the consequences of systemic racism play out daily. And not just in the form of microaggressions.

As someone who has a platform, who has clout, I have always believed it’s my responsibility to speak out.

‘Who gets to be American?’

Fashion at its purest, simplest form, is a reflection of the world we live in. It doesn’t operate in a vacuum but instead influences — and is influenced by — music, culture, social movements and politics.

Whatever your views are, everyone engages with fashion at some level. For most of us, it’s one of the first decisions we make each morning. I believe in its greater purpose — as a tool of empowerment. But as much as fashion projects its power outwards, behind the scenes, it can be a very different story.

I was born in Singapore, grew up in Nepal and lived in India, and in these countries, you’re faced with issues such as colorism, caste discrimination and hierarchal social structures. When I started my brand 12 years ago, I wanted it to show marginalized people that they are seen, and that they matter. But until recently, it’s been an uphill battle.

“I was advised to limit the diversity of my runways because clients wouldn’t be as receptive to non White models: “‘two Black women, two Asian women — OK that’s enough.'”

Prabal Gurung

The question of who dictates style, or what we consider tasteful or chic, is still viewed through a colonial lens, shaped by centuries-old Eurocentric ideals. Unrealistic beauty standards are often elitist, discriminatory and ultimately, constructed to maintain a proximity to Whiteness that allows those in power to feel important and secure. Decision-makers are, predominantly, White.

This plays out in a number of ways.

Fashion inspired by minority cultures, or rooted in the heritage of a minority designer’s heritage, may be tokenized as “exotic” or “ethnic,” or disparaged in hushed tones as “tacky and garish.” Tone-deaf campaigns and racist garments are often created because there are no people of color in the room that feel empowered enough to stop them from going ahead.

Early in my own career, I was advised to limit the diversity of my runways because clients wouldn’t be as receptive to non White models: “two Black women, two Asian women — OK that’s enough.”

I also recall wanting to open a collection with Korean model Ji Hye Park, and it sparked such a big discussion with the brand’s other stakeholders. “Should we? Shouldn’t we? Is it cool? Does it make sense? Is this idea… luxury?”

These kinds of conversations were initially shocking. But I became used to witnessing microaggressions or blatant discrimination against the few Asian people who, like myself and other people of color, were able to break into this industry. Yes, fashion continues to make strides in the right direction, but we still have miles to go. Today, I still see Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American and LGBTQ peers being tokenized by the industry, called upon to perform inclusivity.

Models walk the Prabal Gurung runway during New York Fashion Week on September 8, 2019. Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

I’ve often been challenged about my “American-ness.” During a planning meeting for my label’s 10th anniversary collection in 2018, an investor asked me to express what I felt my brand stood for.

I began explaining that American style had always been seen through a White lens. But as a first-generation Asian immigrant, as a minority, as a queer person of color, I wanted to redefine the country’s style because our experiences have been underrepresented. The way I look at this country is an amalgamation of different cultures, races, ethnicities, religions and sizes, and that should be celebrated.

He, in turn, asked, “Well you don’t look American, how can you define American style?”

It was clear to me what he meant by his statement: I wasn’t White, therefore I had no authority to shape the American ideal. And this despite being an American citizen who owns a business in this country — one who employs Americans and immigrants, embraces a “Made in America” production ethos and pays taxes. For some people it’s just never enough.

I ended up turning that collection into a celebration of American identity and belonging, sending a diverse cast of models down the runway in denim, white short-sleeved shirts, rose prints and, during the finale, sashes bearing the question: “Who gets to be American?”

While the show had a lot of positive feedback, and started a healthy dialogue about identity, there were some who felt it was too on the nose. This is how privilege works. It was a luxury to be in the position to say that it was “too much” or “too direct.” However, when it comes to fighting for basic human rights, it is never too much. It is never too loud.

We need to tell our stories

It’s clear that the road to a more equitable fashion industry is long. Until brands genuinely diversify their decision-makers and boards — not just with token hires, but with people actually willing to strike up difficult, uncomfortable conversations that challenge biases — it won’t change. And, let’s be honest, brands’ efforts to embrace Asian culture have been motivated by the spending power of countries like China, India and South Korea, not some moral awakening.

But, cynicism aside, just like conversations brought about by the Black Lives Matter protests, the Stop Asian Hate movement is inviting renewed scrutiny of fashion’s role in perpetuating racism and discrimination — from runways and collections to workplace culture.

“We need to be in every corner and exist in every space.”

Prabal Gurung

Asian Americans in the industry should recognize that we have an important role to play. As a whole, more than 60% of the global population lives in Asia, according to the United Nations. Asians are the world’s biggest consumers of clothing, and we manufacture most of it too. Yet, told that our voices don’t matter, we’ve mostly played supporting roles, quietly and submissively catering to the needs of businesses.

It’s not enough. It’s time to speak out and step up.

Take this time to donate, build your skills by participating in harassment intervention training, and support existing social justice organizations and initiatives such as Stop AAPI Hate and Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC). Familiarize yourself with non-profit organizations like Gold House and Define American who are shaping culture, forming solidarity through intersectionality and creating impactful, sustainable long-term solutions for challenges facing our communities.

The solidarity protests over the past few weeks have been extremely heartwarming. I have demonstrated alongside my peers, activists, community leaders and regular New Yorkers, telling our truths and, between other minorities and marginalized groups, finding support and common ground.

The “End Violence Against Asians” march in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City on February 20, 2021. Credit: Robert Hamada

We need to be in every corner and exist in every space. The more that our stories are told, the more that our faces, our experiences and our humanity will not only be normalized but embraced.

We must claim our rightful seats at the table, and then use those positions to empower other marginalized groups. Visibility is key, and we must craft our own narratives and tell our own stories.

Top image caption: Prabal Gurung captured at the “Black and Asian Solidarity” march at Union Square in New York City on March 21, 2021 by photographer Robert Hamada.

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xai-irie · 4 years

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AFROPUNK - CHOPPA RISING: A HISTORY OF JAMAICAN TRAP DANCEHALL (*side note: I was of the impression that Rap is being derived from Reggae. Article says the opposite).

The era of the Bro god is upon us and the harbingers of its grimy culture come from an unexpected place on Jamaica’s musical map: Montego Bay. The fraternal order of Jamaican musical genres, forever dictated from Kingston, has had to purposely turn a blind eye to allow the young firebrands to self govern. The new generation has come armed with trap music, their own ideals and their own lifestyle to now create a sound that honestly represents a true island culture, with an intimacy not seen in Jamaica in recent years. Where reggae in Jamaica continues to have the edge in performance, branding and experience, the young trap dancehall patriots come with a personal truth, community representation, and a message that does not portray Jamaica in the best light. This is not the music of “darling, I will swim the deepest sea and climb the highest mountain,” but depictions of the scamming underbelly of rural townships, and of the tenets and effects of Choppa culture. Operating on the fringes of tradition, both musically and geographically, trap dancehall is the sound of now, carving its own place in history.

Though, of course, there are musical, historical and cultural antecedents of how the Jamaican trap dancehall sound and this chop lifestyle came about. It’s in the cyclical way that the island’s great music industry and criminal elements deal with American culture — taking what they need and remaking for self — and in the alternative economies, literal and cultural, that have always flourished in JA. Though maybe not where they are flourishing now.

Back in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, the illegal trade of choice in the Jamaican underworld was drug smuggling. It was a very lucrative business, with marijuana and cocaine the choice products, and multiple jobs needing to be filled, allowing those with access to, as Jamaicans put it, “eat a food.” Financiers of the operations made the most money, but rural farmers and packers of the product, warehousers, drivers, shippers, ‘mules’, and a whole host of bribed officials in organisation’s supply chain also profited. In its heyday, Jamaican reggae music engaged with the smuggling culture, highlighting this ‘hustling’ in both the lyrics of songs and sometimes even the demeanour of the artists. Marijuana, already synonymous with Jamaica since the earliest days of Rastafarians in music, was represented more broadly, eclipsing the prominence of cocaine smuggling, whose use was — and still is — publicly frowned upon in Jamaica. Reggae music legends such as Eek-A-Mouse, John Holt and Sugar Minott all had ganja smuggling anthems. Notably, the narrative of these songs seldom, if ever, represented the position of the financier, almost always focusing on a protagonist in abject poverty forced to traffic marijuana. The hustler represented a ‘noble profession,’ the lyrics often depicting his transporting and delivering the ganja to lawyers, doctors and police officers, playing the role of a hero of sorts. It would be extremely naive to say none of the musicians at the time were not personally involved in this business in some capacity or that the lyrics were just the work of clever imagination.

Prior to such current-event narratives and outlets for the microcosms of Jamaican culture, the island’s music had an intimate relationship with American soul and rhythm and blues. In the mid-1960’s, American music began to gain traction in Jamaica, eclipsing music from England, which Jamaica had recently gained independence from. In 1965, Britain restricted immigration from its former Black colonies, while America opened its doors. A close geographic and new immigration relationship allowed for a faster, easier exchange of music than with the U.K. Jamaicans were also present at the source of this music in Philadelphia, represented by Thom Bell, an instrumental figure in the Philadelphia Soul powerhouse of Gamble and Huff, who was born in Kingston. Inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Bell produced music for The Delfonics, The Spinners, Elton John, and a plethora of other artists and bands who were familiar voices on Jamaican sound systems and radio waves.

With soul and R&B invading the keen ears of talented Jamaican musicians, R&B engaged reggae at the forefront of the island’s pop music. Beres Hammond’s 1976 album “Soul, Reggae and More”, helped to showcase soul, R&B and reggae in Jamaica at the time in an audible mirror of styles. However, the amalgamation of the three genres became its own subculture. Jamaican producers and record collectors adopted the fetish of making and collecting rare reggae covers of popular RnB songs. This was serious business in the sound system arena and those who are serious collectors will still pay top dollar if they heard a cover of The Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” was done by The Heptones and limited to 10 vinyl copies. This new culture ran concurrently and even mixed with the reggae of culture/protest/current events.

In contemporary Kingston, metropolitan adults are encouraged to own stocks in the Jamaican and world markets, are pounced upon by banks to adopt credit cards, and drive Porsches and Ferraris, albeit at short distances on the few good strips of roads. Jagged shards of the first world haphazardly pierce the surface, while the criminal underworld has also updated itself. In an era where self-styled entrepreneurs become one-minute public speakers via instagram, it has turned to so-called lottery scamming, as it’s “grab ‘n’ go” parallel. The practice has hit its peak and is flourishing, with mostly U.S. senior citizens bank accounts and young Jamaican lives, on the losing end. Lottery scamming — scamming for short — is quite simple in theory: call a contact, dupe them into thinking they’ve won large sums of money or valuable prizes through a lottery they think they’ve entered years ago, and have them pay clearance fees to receive the cash/gift.

First made popular locally in Montego Bay and surrounding western Jamaica parishes often spoken of only as farming locations, scamming has forced itself into the criminal spotlight. It gained national notoriety around 2011-12, by which time an Anti Lottery Scam Task Force had already been formed by the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and the U.S. government opened an F.B.I. office in Jamaica to help tackle a scourge that was causing American citizens to lose their retirement funds. Scamming does not require producing/acquiring a physical product beforehand and the gatekeeping and hierarchy can be levelled by cash, so to the uninitiated the barrier to entry is almost an open gate. It can be done fairly independently, essentially with just a mobile phone, lead-sheets (contact/client background information) and phone credit.

The open arms of Jamaican music initially received a taste of scammer culture around 2012, via an honourable mention on “Reparation,” by then-recently incarcerated dancehall MVP, Vybz Kartel with Gaza Slim on hook duties. Thus, what was once considered a rural, illicit lifestyle, got its first national co-sign with a basic explanation of stakeholders, rationale, and caveats that give it a semblance of a moral code. Noticed and acclaimed by a minority, this milestone was silently placed on the back burner, because, at the time, Jamaicans en masse were consuming top of the pop artists like Drake and Lil Wayne, Kanye West, and Major Lazer. Almost every new Jamiacan hip-hop mix circa 2012 contained a pop song like Psy’s “Gangnam Style” followed by a Jamaican interpretation (Elephant Man’s “Badman Style”). Every quick-thinking producer in Jamaica was copying this style of EDM, while young adults and teenagers throughout the island were into anything touched by Lex Luger, Mike Will, Zaytoven, Clams Casino; Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Juicy J, A$AP Mob and Joey Badass.

Jamaica has always consumed hip-hop/rap culture, a borderline-uncomfortable influence as evidenced by early-2000s artists in a tropical climate donning white tees and basketball jerseys. Around 2015 those consumers started to become notable creators, at the same time that Major Lazer & DJ Snake’s “Lean On” put the pop spotlight on the music of the Global South, a favorable opportunity for Jamaica that local producers jumped on. Repeating the 1970’s, Jamaicans were again present at the studio controls, represented this time by Supa Dups and Stephen McGregor who produced and co-wrote Drake’s “Controlla” and Drake/Rihanna’s “Too Good,” songs that charted in the U.S. Top 20 in 2016. There was also no shortage of Jamaican vocal remixes of dancehall-infused smashes like Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” or Rihanna’s “Work.” Young Jamaican producers who’d been ardently listening to trap music for the past four years were put back on the path to create an amalgamation of styles native to the island with EDM characteristics for hip-hop audiences.

The music scene in Kingston had become increasingly divided for younger producers, with separate spaces for traditional reggae, neo-reggae, dancehall and soca, and an emphasis on neo-reggae/dub events. Innovation happened when younger producers put the trap elements and aesthetic into a blender with dancehall and reggae and shared their creations within their own circles — or on Soundcloud. Two of the earliest proponents of this trap dancehall in Kingston were promoters Stamma and Laty Kim. In mid-2015, they began an event called ”The Listening Party,” geared towards new projects by young producers and artists where each would present their riddims, edits, remixes and songs. This offered community for producers who needed support for their untested creative output. Recommendations for producers started coming at Stamma and Laty from attendees impressed with the first staging.

I attended the second “Listening Party” in September 2015, with Gavsborg and Shanique Marie who were asked to play a part in the show. My main takeaway was that all the young producers were making trap music, but with local flavors. They made edits with Beenie Man and Bob Marley cushioned by instruments familiar to jazz, with soft sounds, teasing playful synths on top of hard snares, punchy drums and 808s that they understood to be the sound of trap in recent years. Producers who stood out — Tessellated, JLL and KRS — have all now made their own mark, using those elements and aesthetics to develop the “ChillTrap-JazzHall” sound favoured by Kranium (produced by JLL) and by Apple for their AirPod ads (in the case of Tessellated). Others like KINGBNJMN shared in this aesthetic, sometimes including more trap elements like triplet hi-hats, which eventually landed him production credits on Future’s HNDRXX. And while all of these producers were eventually endorsed by Soulection in some way, almost none of this music made a drastic tear in the fabric of what’s known to Jamaicans as dancehall.

Around the same time, scamming, also called dialing, was in a hyperactive phase in Montego Bay and rural western communities, attracting all the collateral damage that comes with criminal territory. Murders of alleged major players, popular Jamaican DJs and producers being implicated and American Feds trying to extradite suspects by the tens. The soundtrack to this chaos was provided by Young Thug, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Juicy J, etc; but also by local artists, such as Ryme Minista, Shane E and TeeJay. Alongside StarzPlus Music, they did a lot of the musical groundwork to put Montego Bay in the spotlight, administering a litmus test for independent music in parishes outside Kingston. Support was abundant in Montego Bay, as rural areas in Jamaica provide more tight-knit, intimate communities, which also draw on the encouragement of surrounding parishes. What Montego Bay lacked was outlets for exposure to enable artists to grow and sustain careers: national radio stations, well-known events and dances, or access to other popular artists and producers, who are almost exclusively concentrated in Kingston, the hub of the nation’s music industry.

But with the rise of the scammer, a creative career could be helped within a single parish by 17- and 18-year old kids with millions of dollars in disposable income. In keeping up with their favorite music, one song in particular appeared to connect with the entire region, Lil Wayne and Drake’s “Grindin.” This was the riddim on which in 2015 TeeJay recorded the grim “Buss Head,” which shot him to notoriety beyond Montego Bay and western Jamaica. (“Buss Head” was the term then that you would address someone by when you saw them on the street.) Shortly after TeeJay’s release, another popped up out of the woodwork, with even more cultural impact. “Big Money Poppin’,” by Xklusive from St. Ann, another rural parish, had the telling chorus ‘Scamma dem deh yah!’ The controversial song instigated so much discourse, Xklusive was given a profile and interview on Entertainment Report, one of the prime shows on the national Television Jamaica network. In all interviews Xklusive cleverly and vehemently denied the song was in support of lottery scammers. Despite his denial, “Big Money Poppin’” was the first true scammer anthem.

I grew up in Savanna-La-Mar, Westmoreland, one of the rural western parishes. Around 2008 I started to witness firsthand the embodiment of a phrase popular among some of the less progressive, under-exposed Jamaicans. “Ghetto yute fi have tings,” literally means, “youths from the ghetto should have things.” In the towns of these rural parishes, you could find young men, clad in colourful Polo Ralph Lauren gear (not dissimilar to the Lo Lifes) popping in and out of a Western Union or MoneyGram offices. They drove squeaky clean, modified Toyota 110’s, most times with custom car sound systems, BMWs, and other high-end vehicles. They always showed overabundant patronage to locals, purchase multiple tickets to events, buying up all the top-shelf liquor at bars, or beers by the crate, and turning grandiose money pull-ups into an attraction. It’s not unlikely that you could turn up to an event an hour after it had begun, and the bar would have been a victim of their braff. This fast, boastful lifestyle has historically been marred by setbacks of the same scale. In a once-quiet region of Jamaica, guns were now in the hands of the young and the reckless, and murder was commonplace. The inner machinations, faculties and vernacular of this new Jamaican underworld could be best explained by a scammer — the methods of the practice mutating as quickly as investigators can keep up.

Over the years, it has become its own culture, with its own vocabulary, dresscode, vehicle choices and lifestyle. While the Grammy eyeing music industry in Jamaica was busy trying to create the next “Lean On” or “Work,” the highly impressionable youth of western Jamaica were listening to absolutely anything from Vybz Kartel or Alkaline, and hip-hop that reflected and reinforced the lifestyles around them, artists like O.T. Genasis, Bobby Shmurda and Young Thug delivering illusions of grandeur and danger, on a trap platter. This wasn’t a new phenomenon, but now those influenced by it had the means to easily act on the inspiration. While other Jamaican artists were steadily releasing songs on trap riddims with no intent to embody trap, youngsters in the western parishes were about to make it the hallmark of their sound. Tanto Blacks, and later Aidonia was evidence that, like with the jerseys in the early 2000s, this trap culture was being adopted.

With Xklusive having created a viral hit on the topic of scamming, TeeJay now a name hot on the Kingston circuit, and Vybz Kartel’s never-forgotten co-sign, artists in Montego Bay and western Jamaica were energised. Backed by unwavering support and the ability to operate locally, they gave themselves creative license to represent a culture almost exclusive to them. Since it was unfeasible to keep using instrumentals from hip-hop/trap favorites, producers staffing the Mo-Bay machine tried to reflect the American trap, and eventually even the same artwork style was adopted. Montego Bay continued to do its own thing and less than two years after Xklusive’s song went viral, Rygin King and Squash rose to prominence to defy parish boundaries. Their music was a window into their lives and the lives of members of their communities, dialers, representing their aspirations, the lavishness of their carefree lifestyle, and its bloody collateral damage. The trap-packaged songs were gaining traction in western Jamaica and one song, Rygin King’s “Learn” became familiar island-wide. It’s a tale of struggle, canonical to the Jamaican ghetto experience, broken into an ode of betrayal by friends and a dismissal of anyone standing in King’s way. Squash’s “Life Story” used the same riddim, serving as an autobiography, chronicling how the youth in volatile communities, void of opportunity, adopt scamming and the deadly consequences. By the time these singles were hitting eager listeners, Squash had already released multiple singles that were apparently loved in Trinidad.

Things started to make sense in 2017 when the fast-rising Montego Bay proponents of trap organized, defined their allegiances, and titled their movements and crews. They now represented more than themselves. In January 2017, Justin Blake Productions and A Wah Suhh TV premiered an independent ‘documentary’/profile on Squash made in his community of Salt Spring, Montego Bay, otherwise known as G City. In standard Jamaican fashion, Squash gave next-to no concrete information to the interviewer, but where his transparency failed, the documentary revealed his community, the crucial local support of family and friends, and established the identity of the now infamous 6ix. This was his proof of address and last three payslips.

Squash now represented The Six (6ix), while Rygin King claimed the Dunce Thugs, leading two different mind-states united by music and community, later revealing their personalities and lifestyles in their songs. Squash’s single of later that year, “Shooting Mood,” reflected his more dangerous persona, and was again a big deal on Trinidad’s dancehall scene; but in Jamaica the song making waves was “Lavish.” It was again recognised by the dialers, who had now upgraded from the humble Toyota 110s, with Squash opening the song by acknowledging the line of new Toyotas (Axio, Voxy, Crown, and Mark X), the literal fleet of cars now branded as work-horses of the dialers. Maturity is evident in the heavily trap-influenced riddim, a homemade hybrid of previous heaters. Shane E, now also a major Jamaican artist in Trinidad, went on to reinforce the push to use this trap packaging with “R.A.G.E,” refining the trap riddim production.

At this time, Rygin King was putting out a steady stream of singles, when he pulled a fast one, returning to his conscious roots as Magnum Kings and Queens contestant Jah B (circa 2013), releasing “How Me Grow.” By shedding the trap packaging, Rygin King grabbed the attention of the nation, verbalising his harsh upbringing. His hybrid of being both on- and off-key, as well as his earnest crooning and audible passion, were important elements in conveying this modern trope of Jamaican struggle. “How Me Grow” was Rygin King’s stage on which he presented himself and where the unforgiving gaze of Jamaica now focused. Yet he simultaneously postulated a more violent version of his upbringing with the release of ‘Paranoid’ which took listeners down his personal rabbit-hole, in trap style. It’s worth mentioning that the timing of releases by truly independent Jamaican artistes at the early stages are mostly haphazard and producer driven majority of the times.

By 2018, trap dancehall was energized and invested. Its ambassadorial roles were filled by the “One King” and the “6ix Boss” — the former as his own storyteller and chronicler of modern-day experiences in western Jamaica’s volatile communities, the latter and his movement echoing the inner machinations and exploits of the Montego Bay underworld at-large. In a move that verified The 6ix as trend-informed, Squash released “Ohh La La,” on Stefflon Don and French Montana’s “Hurting Me” riddim, and aligning his movement with music popular in the Jamaican diaspora. A few months later, Rygin King adopted the year’s lifestyle and party themes, releasing the critically acclaimed “Tuff,” the biggest song to date from the entire scene.

While the music was beginning to enjoy real success, the environment was becoming increasingly volatile — a State of Emergency was imposed in Montego Bay as a crime-reducing measure, and Squash was arrested. At the start of his incarceration ”Money Fever” was released to full “Free Six Boss” levels of support, with the 6ix movement and trap dancehall now maturing with its own professional image. Shab Don, One Time Music, Attomatic Music and Hemton Music now came to the forefront as producers championing this sound. They would command this new space in the dancehall universe independent of Kingston’s structure/policies. With no identifiable gatekeepers, the inspired rushed from other parishes as well. The young guns of Montego Bay had broken away from all safe narratives, representing Jamaica on the community-level, less generalized and macro than their neo-reggae and chill trap counterparts. Their songs blazed a trail around the island as YouTube premiers and Whats-App group-shares, distribution methods which now seemed equal to any other standard the Jamaican music business had systemised.

Other artists entered trap dancehall’s breach. Newly commissioned to The 6ix after Squash’s incarceration, Chronic Law hailed from the rural parish of St. Thomas with a lyrical profile that embodied a balance between Rygin King and Squash’s messages. Chronic Law was already familiar to the dancehall scene, and his alignment with the 6ix and subsequent release of ”Hilltop Badness” heralded his entry into the space. Yet with a mixtape and notable single under his belt, the Law Boss followed in the footsteps of Rygin King and Tessellated, abandoning the trap aesthetic and gun-toting narratives to make “Hillside,” a reflection on the need for solace. Interestingly, with this switch, artists creating “conscious music” and promoting positive ideals and idyllic peace, also instantly revert to gunman lyrics. Their duality is a Jungian thing. Chronic Law represented a life as he could afford to, which helped him gain grassroots support. He tells tales of Braffing with his Honda and Toyotas in a way even a taxi driver could identify with. Daddy1 also used this riddim to join the ranks of The 6ix, with the hit “Out Here” giving an energetic chemistry lesson on bleaching products and hyping his eclectic street fashion and lavish lifestyle. Jahvillani was also steadily on the rise, parallel to The 6ix and though having collaborated with Squash and known 6ix artists in the past, he represented his own “Wileside” crew. Jahvillani gained national notoriety with his now-infamous street anthem “Wileside Government,” but preceding that was his trap informed “Nuh Reason,” which still evokes frenzied reactions from listeners.

There were now also artists who fully represented Jamaican scammer culture. Keeping in line with the constantly morphing, confutative and simultaneously revealing scamming culture, by the end of 2018, the term “Buss Head” had been long relegated, “Bro god” became the addressing name, scamming was now affectionately known as Chopping, and the Polo and Clark’s image had additionally revealed the phenomenon of wearing rings — commonly fraudulent, Free-Masonic merchandise — given to them by obeah men and said to guard the lives of scammers. Artists like Takeova would make thematic trap dancehall representing the ‘chopper’ attire complete with the proclaimed guard rings. Ace Gawd found a viral hit by detailing his sexual exploits in the Mark X and Axios. With no validation forthcoming from Kingston, young rural Jamaican artists are successfully operating on the fringes of contemporary dancehall, representing their experiences via trap music, with Instagram and WhatsApp as proven mediums of choice. By October 2019, Montego Bay, and the rural parishes of Westmoreland, Hanover, Trelawny, St. Ann and St. Elizabeth are the United States of Chop.

Everything has come full circle. Current “mainstream” dancehall and the trap sound of the youngsters, have now combined. This sonic signatures of this hybrid can be easily broken down: Spiccato synths (strings or percussive), saw pads, scattered vocal samples, snares that have been in every “Lex Luger Sample Kit’ since 2009, and 808s with the obvious triplet hi-hat patterns. This has birthed well-received songs like Jahvillani’s ”Clarks Pon Foot” (supported by Clarks) and Vybz Kartel’s ”Any Weather”. There are currently multiple streams of dancehall in Jamaica all borrowing from each other, with trap elements being almost omni-present. The Kingston trap scene is still going strong with Stamma and Laty Kim still hosting “The Listening Party,” which is the only place I’ve been in Jamaica in 2019 and experienced producers performing with drum machines, and artistes like Iotosh making music live on stage. Tessellated juiced up another fruity blend, sticking to his rendition of Island Pop with Jada Kingdom taking vocal lead. Squash was released from lock-up earlier this year and in a powerful move, released two collaborations with Vybz Kartel. The rest is history in the making.

There is an uncomfortable truth about trap dancehall in Jamaica — besides its flirtation with the monoculture. With its originators and current viral acts acting as proponents of the lifestyles surrounding scamming, the music moves one step forward and one step back. This new genre is anchored by the shortcomings of the same forces that supported its rise and exposure. The “Cash Only” sign at each stage of production and distribution throws out the need to develop interpersonal relationships or even talent. Each new self-described “artist” procures virtually unlimited exposure but most do not continue to develop their craft or make a serious effort to record music that is more meaningful than the common topics of the scene. As Choppa lifestyle is termed “The Fast Life,” so is the career of anyone who tries to represent it, while daily chasing 15 minutes of fame. The artists champion a style of independence that does not require cooperation and where everyone is disposable. There is no physical scene, and no interdependence to bring artists, producers and audiences together. The performances by the fast rising artistes are nothing to phone home about which is where the lack of apprenticeship is seen in action. A movement like The 6ix is able to stay above the pendulum swing of the fast life by recruiting multiple dedicated artistes and producers engaging with each other

Meanwhile, the music, though often hardly impressive, represents what’s currently happening on the ground in Jamaica — in the same way that Vybz Kartel used to be its mirror image. Whatever the future holds for trap in dancehall — if there is indeed any future — it will be remembered as a music of its time, a quality which is always needed. There is only a few degrees of separation from how Jamaican artists used to incorporate Amerian soul and chronicle weed smuggling in the 70’s, complete with a representation of its own localized culture. It is a music that serves to keep Jamaicans in touch with the unnerving world outside of the safety of their homes and inside of the underbelly of how others stay alive on their own terms.

Words and photos (Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica) by Jordan “Time Cow” Chung.

Illustration by Gustavo Dao.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE https://afropunk.com/2019/10/choppa-rising-a-history-of-jamaican-trap-dancehall/

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believerindaydreams · 7 years

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Ecstasy in Cosmogone Glossary

Some borrowed, some stolen, some invented, but I have enough odd words now that I need a list. (A warning: some of these don’t adhere to Failbetter canon.)

Aich’s alloy: copper, zinc and iron, useful for underwater work.

Apotheosis: Something, someday, will happen to London.

associative trails: Neath hypertext.

Beloved blubber: when refined, the source of zee-butter, though zailors generally prefer it straight. Can be eaten either hot or cold, very popular condiment aboard the Clipper.

Blemmigan nectar: gods alone know, but it tastes awful.

blood-letting: the mechanism which lowers your stats for incautious activities in SS. Also applicable for the consumption of Bottled Oblivion.

bolegus-timber: mushroom wood.

Calgary Flames: the Innocent Spy’s favourite hockey team. Not that he has any reason to mention this in 1895.

cavern-tuna: what you feed mogs.

Celestial Welshman: Arthur Machen. Bohemian author.

change war: 1. One of SF’s first really good time wars, as recounted in various Fritz Leiber books. 2. the conflict between cats and snakes.

chiropterochronometry: er, bats and timekeeping?

collop: slice of meat.

comci: one of those artistic movements only defined by academics long after its flowering. Generally agreed to have been kickstarted by the Sickly Scotsman’s “The New Arabian Nights”, the definition brushes up against magical realism on one side, Chestertonian paradox on the other, and some kind of five-dimensional Lovecraftian horror on both.

déjà vu: the subject of much vigorous wrangling at the University, where there’s a department attempting to ascertain whether it’s some sort of psychic occurrence, a temporary displacement with one’s reflection, or something else entirely.

DDD terms: (permanent) death, dismemberment, drownification. Grounds upon which a Neath contract might reasonably be voided.

(this is getting a bit long, more beneath the jump.)

driftweed: the Underzee’s most common variety of edible seaweed, eaten by vegetarians and very, very desperate zailors.

duck tape: a dreadful anachronism. Made from zee-glue and Parabola linen duck.

DXS: Department of External Services, the Innocent Spy's former employers. Seem to take on both internal and international missions without batting an eye.

First City coin stamp: a joke.

flectere: the art of mirrors.

flexion: what reflections call us.

fungal mint cake: highly calorific foodstuff, in much demand for Neath adventurers. Sufficiently hearty to ward off the effects of UP, for a day or so.

freightage: the poor chumps indentured to private companies such as Iron and Misery, who transport the most boring of cargoes. Zee-coal from the Iron Republic, crates of mushrooms to branches of Harbour Provisioners, etc. So pathetic they travel in convoys, and no decent zailor will shame the profession by admitting they even exist.

Grand Sanction: that which has enabled the Innocent Spy to live through a twentieth century with no space bats or immortality in it. The Phoenix Foundation is responsible for it, though the Spy doesn’t actually know that part.

geas: a bit like an oath, but with more punch and narrative interest to it.

INCURSION: an unpleasant but not lethal random encounter in the Iron Republic.

Innocent Spy: current work-name for one MacGyver. Accidental time-traveller, brilliant engineer, and oh yes, also a spy.

jati: borrowed from the Hindi word for caste, appropriated by Londoners to mean something more like untouchable. That which happens in London entirely outside of the Bazaar’s remit, and officially does not exist. Examples of jati would include driftweed sellers, anybody living in a terraced house, the chap who’s next-door neighbours with The Most Boring Man in London.

knitting: something the Innocent Spy does to make a jumper. Something the Herald does to upconvert Whispering Hints and Cryptic Clues.

Kabulstan: a country in central Asia. Location of the Ammukash valley and the Mountain of Youth, better known to Neath inhabitants as Stone.

Last Night’s pudding: the flaming pudding traditionally eaten twelve days after the first lacre-fall. Society folk rather look down at this; Dockers love it.

late-reign: 1. anything that’s happened in the Neath since the Innocent Spy arrived, more or less. 2. for later historians, the fin de siecle period of the Traitor Empress’ reign. What precisely this entails is a matter of hot debate amongst the handful of academics permitted to study the matter.

Lillywhite’s: the bible of cricket.

Literary Postman: Anthony Trollope, Society author and postal worker. His last public act before a graceful retirement to Nuncio was pressing forward the decimalisation of Echoes, making London’s currency minimally less terrifying.

Norton: those who would take a Liberty. The umbrella term for a loose association of anti-Fall ideologies, ranging from those who insist that London never left the Surface, to those who insist it’s fated to return. Originally referred to a number of activists from Spite who tried to bring the Empress to court, on the grounds that she lacked the legal authority to bring their street to the Neath. You can usually find one at the Square of Lofty Words.

obscurity: 1. to posies and potential posies [every single PC], the most horrifying fate imaginable in London society, only undertaken by the maddest of Seekers. 2. to everyone else in London (of whom there’s rather a lot), an exchange in which one trades away a never-gonna-happen future of Making Waves in exchange for the safety of being Closest To a particular faction. This is how random zailors are closest to Dockers and so forth.

The Penniless Archeologist: loosely based on Eduard Glaser, the Archeologist is a late-19th century Surface scholar attempting to find the location of the Garden of Eden. His map, a hundred years later, leads the Unimaginative Assassin to start investigating a mountain in Kubulstan...

posy: a more amusing and period-appropriate bit of slang for Persons of Some Importance than POSI.

Phoenix Foundation: the Innocent Spy’s employers. Partly a do-gooding charity, partly an agency for plausibly deniable intelligence work.

Pinksaw's Guide to Edible Fungi: exactly what it sounds like.

quirks: the measure of a man.

rat extract: Neath Bovril.

red-handled knife: the Innocent Spy’s tool of choice.

reflection: that which you see in a mirror. May occasionally be sentient.

reppeljack: newly Fallen. Mildly offensive.

ritual: the Herald’s all-purpose term for anything quasi-magical, esp. for her ship-keeping prayers to Stone, Salt and Storm. (She usually refrains from telling the Innocent Spy the proper names, both for safety and to head off arguments about how silly the proper names are.)

“The Sapphire”: Fallen London’s equivalent of “The Gem”.

scintillack: that blue stuff that helps you shoot things.

secret sharing: a ritual to improve one’s stats, by offering up a secret to another party. Usually undertaken as a matched set, unless a Captain is involved (it is the duty of Captains to give, not to take).

Sickly Scotsman: Robert Louis Stevenson. Author, affiliation indeterminate (he notoriously cycled through Closest To on a regular basis.)

Slug and Mushroom: a terrible chain of pubs owned by Murgatroyd’s, found across the Underzee.

solacefruit extract: sweet substance akin to stevia, usually used to flavour Darkdrop coffee.

speaking tubes: a piece of historical accuracy! How people at opposite ends of a steamship can talk to each other.

Sporting Times: The name the Pink ‘Un is forced to trade under, in Fallen London.

suchenroman: literature dealing with Seekers. Only became popular in late-reign London, and even then only as penny-dreadful tosh, more illegal than red honey. Ironically, due to their confiscation on sight, one of the few forms of popular Neath literature available for Surface historians after the Grand Sanction.

Surfacer: 1. Someone who lives on the Surface and has never seen the Neath. 2. A Londoner stupid or optimistic enough to keep insisting they’re going to return to the Surface, one of these days...

“Tasted on the wind”: depending who’s talking, either foretold or made a lucky guess.

telesthetic: what the Student calls telepathy, cos it sounds cooler.

Tireless Mechanic: the Innocent Spy’s later work-name, after a number of as-yet undescribed events.

travel slate: the thing the Herald chalks courses on for her shipmates to follow.

trionfi: the Herald’s predictive tarot games, in which she studies the Hours.

tree-effigy: Guy Fawkes Day not being on anyone’s mind these days, there’s now a Neathmas tradition among the lower classes to make a flammable effigy of the Consort. Other popular candidates for the effigy are the Traitor Empress, especially hated zee-captains, and, if you’re feeling especially daring, one of the Masters.

tynged: Welsh version of a geas.

Unimaginative Assassin: Surface name Murdoc, the Innocent Spy’s nemesis.

Venderbight: that Tomb Colony I can never remember how to spell.

zee-code: something the Captain is constantly blathering about, and which may or may not exist.

...huh, that was more than I expected.

#fic #macgyver #fallen london #glossary #failbetter

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flauntpage · 7 years

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Thinks: Mel Potter on EthnoFeminist Art

Interview and visual essay by Lise McKean

Melissa Hilliard Potter is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer, and co-founder of the Papermaker’s Garden at Columbia College in Chicago, where she is an associate professor of Art and Art History. We began our conversation in the Papermaker’s Garden on a late afternoon in June, just after a sudden shower made the soil fragrant.

Mel Potter in the Papermaker’s Garden at 620 S. Wabash in Chicago

Lise: Since we’re starting out in the Papermaker’s Garden, let’s begin with hearing about what you are growing this year in your raised bed garden here in the Loop?

Mel: I’m focusing on a perennial bed dedicated to the idea of pleasure for women. Last year’s Papermaker Garden included the Roe v. Wade and Bosnian Magic beds. After much focus on women’s biology, I decided that the most feminist investigation I could do this year would be to investigate pleasure.

The plants I’ve selected are for pleasing the nose and eyes—and for psychotropic recreation. For example, I’m growing absinthe and burdock in my Plants of Pleasure bed. My partner in the Papermaker’s Garden, Maggie Puckett, has a bed for growing plants she discovered while investigating witches, some of whom were her ancestors. She calls it Witchcraft and Colonial Warfare.

Poster for 2017 Plants of Pleasure Garden

Lise: I’m curious about the psychotropic plants—what brings them to your garden?

Mel: I’ve been doing research on women shamans because a lot of the psychotropic vision work in traditional societies is very male-centric. I’m interested in the intersection of psychotropic recreation, visionary quests and experiences, and consciousness-raising. I’m going to explore how these plants can be turned into psychotropic materials. I’m also looking at some of them for their calming and anti-anxiety effects. Some of these plants can be recreational as well.

Lise: Being around plants is intensely sensual, engaging our senses of touch, smell, taste, sight, and even hearing. Culture shapes the experience and use of plants, too. How do the plants in the Papermaker’s Garden mesh with your work as an artist?

Mel: All my work is about female culture. It ranges from contemporary feminist practice to female ethnobotanical and intangible heritage, which is made up of traditional craft practices. I explore how these are distinct languages and forms of communication and history-making. They parallel recorded history, but are completely different ways to interpret the world. I’m always on a quest to search for practices with the potential to reveal something that could be transformative. We’re unaware of them because they’re not included in dominant narratives.

The craft practices I explore range from bio-culinary traditions and handmade felt rugs to women’s tattoo cults and hand papermaking. These are tremendously under-recorded practices that reveal fascinating narratives.

2015 Food, Sex, and Death dinner party in the Papermaker’s Garden celebrating the Hull House Wage Worker research on brothels located at garden’s site at the turn of the 20th Century

Lise: Mention of tattoo cults appear here and there in ethnography. Tell me more about the one that interests you and how you came across it.

Mel: When I was in the Republic of Georgia I saw a pagan ritual taking place on the street that I identified as similar to a film I had done in South Serbia. My colleague Clifton Meador bought the book, Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoonboxes of Daghestan in preparation for our work in Georgia. I wrote to Robert Chenciner, one of the book’s authors, asking him whether the designs I saw in the pagan ritual were the same as those in the women’s tattoo cult in the same region. He wrote back a long email and so began our friendship.

Women use similar symbols from the “book of life” for her children, her parents, her illnesses. It’s an old tradition. There are still many tattoo practices. All the symbols come down to a few basic things. Don’t mess with my crops. Don’t mess with my family. Protect me from evil and the evil eye. A lot of the designs are plant based and burdock is one of them. Some ethnobotanical designs are used over and over. A traditional woman has repertoire of images. Through color and image she can tell a specific story, just as a rug can tell a story about its family.

Ethnographer Robert Chenciner holding a rare hand-felted rug from Daghestan

Lise: These tattoo cults give women a way to record on their own bodies events in their lives that are important to them. Tattooed Mountain Women must be fascinating. Traveling back to your garden here in downtown Chicago, what happens to all the plants at the end of the growing season?

Mel: We’ve learned that a perennial garden is a year-round phenomenon. We let some of the plants go to seed because it’s good for pollinator bugs. Many of the crops are cut and cooked and made into paper to use for artwork. During the winter months, I work on making the paper at the Center for Book and Paper Arts.

Lise: How do you run the garden as a collaborative project?

Mel: We invite people as guest gardeners and community guests. The South Loop Alliance has a bed with us. We invite graduate students at Columbia. We help out each other with watering, weeding, and events here at the garden. Running a ten-bed garden would be impossible without a group of collaborators. My project with Maggie Puckett, Seeds InService is the garden’s other main project.

Flax handmade paper laminates, pulp painting, and electroluminescent (EL) wire embeds by Melissa Potter

Lise: You describe yourself as an interdisciplinary artist. Did you start out that way?

Mel: I’m the director of the Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program at Columbia. Interdisciplinarity is naturally collaborative. My personal interdisciplinary practice is ethnographic. I don’t consider myself a botanical expert.

I started in print and paper because it’s a family legacy. My grandmother was a printer and painter. My aunt was a letter press printer. My mother is a quilter, knitter, and crafter. It started there. My high school yearbook said I wanted go into anthropology. Everything I’ve done since then goes into that direction.

Lise: As an anthropologist, I’ve known some who knew from childhood that’s what they wanted to do. Where did your interest come from at such a young age?

Mel: My grandmother, aunt, and I aunt studied a lot of pre-Christian goddess cults. Women scholars were starting to write female-centered ethnography. My grandmother and I went to Crete and drew at goddess sites. She called her journal, “Melissa, the Minoans, and Me.”

Lise: How did you find your way to merging art and ethnography? Were you doing that in art school, or did it come later?

Mel: I have to credit Columbia primarily. After finishing grad school, I spent 12 years in New York City leading a traditional art life showing in alternative galleries and collaborative spaces. When Columbia hired me in the Interdisciplinary program, I was given free rein to explore curatorially, artistically, and critically the interdisciplinary space. It’s a distinctive program. It’s no accident that my strongest work comes out of my time here when I was institutionally supported to do these off the grid things like tattoo cults and paper cultures. I’ve been here now for 10 years.

Lise: From the wide world of peoples and cultures, where did your interest in Bosnia and Serbia come from? Is that your ethnic background?

Mel: My grandmother and I sponsored a Bosnian refugee in the 1990s. She was in Croatia as a refugee. Her village was ethnically cleansed and then the Serbian militia turned it into a rape camp. I was reunited with her in 2015. By then I had spent 20 years exploring the arts, culture, and ethnography of the larger Balkan region. I didn’t work in Bosnia until recently.

Poster for the 2016 Bosnian Magic Garden, dedicated to Potter’s grandmother and Zejna. View is from Zejna’s front window.

Lise: That’s an intense commitment.

Mel: It was obsessively captivating to me. I used to go two or three times a year. I’ve been there 35 times, staying up to six months at a time.

Lise: I haven’t yet had a chance to see your film, Like Other Girls Do. Congratulations on all the attention it’s been getting since it came out in 2015. You’ve told me it grew out of your interest in the custom of sworn virgins in Montenegro and Albania.

Mel: The film is a collaboration with the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. It’s 30 minutes and explores another female-centric traditional cultural practice. When there are no boys born in a family, a girl is raised as a boy to inherit the father’s property. I interviewed Stana Cerovic, the self-proclaimed last sworn virgin of Montenegro. I was exploring Stana’s legacy. She died in October 2016. The film also includes my interviews with five women in the Balkans under the age of 40, and their thoughts about personal identity and gender expression.

I’m working on a second part of the project about how to create a legacy in an environment that doesn’t record us. Stana isn’t in her family tree, even though she made the sacrifice to be a boy. In all likelihood, she was not buried as a man even though she wanted to (I am waiting for confirmation from my ethnographer colleagues in the region). I find it heart breaking that they’re not only forgotten, but if they’re remembered, it’s falsified. There’s no reward for the sacrifice.

vimeo

Lise: What does the role of virginity play in this tradition?

Mel: They’re called sworn virgins because they take an oath of virginity. They don’t marry. They usually live with their families or alone. They can’t have a heteronormative relationship.

Lise: How does the film contextualize this tradition within contemporary culture?

Mel: Like Other Girls Do is about Stana’s village and about death. The story shows her visit to the cemetery where her family members are buried and explores the issue of how she will be remembered. I asked a graffiti artist to make a tag for Stana. The film ends with her making Stana’s tag on the streets of Belgrade. I wanted the women I interviewed to connect with Stana in a two-way conversation.

Stana Cerovic with photograph of herself dressed as a man. Photo by Melissa Potter

Lise: Did they make the connection? What happened between the women?

Mel: I think they reflected on Stana’s story. They asked themselves about their own willingness to engage in traditional Balkan society and the sacrifices they’re already making. I included the queer narrative—and the way society restricts full development of an identity. This was true for Stana and the five women. The queer activist was the most liberated in some ways. To live as a queer-identified person in the Balkans is a radical act of self-assertion.

Lise: The film has been widely screened. What are some highlights of its travels over the past couple years?

Mel: It’s had a nice life. Last year it was shown in Paris at Cineffable, the world’s largest feminist film festival. It’s also traveled to around the U.S. and the Balkans and to Denmark, India, China and Slovenia. It’s been featured in some exhibitions too, including Becoming Male, a show featuring artists like Adrian Piper and Eleanor Antin at Albright College.

Making a film is a huge project. I loved every minute. My collaborator was Saša Sreckovic at the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. My editor, Jelena Jovcic is my better half. Editors don’t get the credit they deserve. Composer Aleksandra Dokic created the music for the film.

Lise: We’ve talked about your work as an interdisciplinary artist in terms of ethnography and ethnobotany, paper making and film making. What else are you working on?

Mel: I pray it’s not going to be another film. I’m going do something on my grandmother and Zejna, the Bosnian woman refugee. I recently obtained my grandmother’s O.S.S. file. The O.S.S. was the US office of intelligence during World War II. She was an O.S.S. operative. I’m curious to see where that goes. I met with Zejna twice. I started a four-part narrative, with my grandmother, Zejna, myself, and a fictional version of Zejna’s daughter. It will be a study of women and war and how women experience war in a gendered and particular way.

Lise: Am I hearing that you have another film on your hands?

Mel: Do you want to take me and shoot me right now! I’ve been doing some prints of my grandmother and Zejna and writing annotations. I’m building a visual archive. It probably has to be a film. It could be a book. I like working in film, but it’s a hard medium. I’m not wealthy enough to play in it. If you don’t have money, you have to wait for it.

Equal Pay 4 Equal Work, designed by Melissa Potter in handmade felt

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Thinks: Mel Potter on EthnoFeminist Art published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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newstfionline · 7 years

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The Syrian Side of the Story You Never Hear

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, May 2, 2017

Like a badly written series of romance novels, the plot template remains fixed while just the names of the characters and places rotate through the template. The story of Syria that Americans and Canadians ingest from the mainstream media is the same simplistic narrative of good and evil told by Washington about each new enemy. Every action committed by the Syrian government is evil and every reaction by Washington is good. Guilt can be assumed and assigned to Syria without investigation because the antagonist in the story is always guilty and can always be blamed. America is always the innocent observer who is shocked by Syrian brutality and feels compelled to respond to protect the innocent victims and defend the world.

But the story of Syria in not so simple, and history shows that the assignation of guilt should be much more judiciously distributed.

Democracy Versus Dictatorship: It Might Have Been a Democracy. Accounts of Syria’s history always include the 1970 coup because it fits the desired narrative. Air force general Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, led a military coup that overthrew the civilian Ba’ath party dictator, Salah Jadid.

But, though that was to be the last coup in Syria’s history up to now, it was by no means the first. The first coup in modern Syrian history took place eleven years earlier. But the narrative was very different.

Syrians under French colonial rule had long longed for democracy. The Sykes-Picot Agreement had given Syria to France in 1916. But, prior to implementation of Sykes-Picot, Syrians had had a brief taste of democracy. The taste was over, though, by 1920 when Syria was officially given to France in the Treaty of Sevres.

President De Gaulle resisted Syrian demands for independence and democracy, but, by 1943, he yielded to the pressure of the Syrians and the British and permitted Syrian elections. Syrians overwhelmingly elected Shukri al-Quwatli and the National Bloc with their message of independence. Three years later, after an anti-demonstration massacre, the French were out of Syria.

With France out and a democratically elected leader in, the U.S. could have nurtured democracy in Syria. Instead, they took it out. American agents Stephen Meade and Miles Copeland assisted the Syrian military in a coup that would take out al-Quwatli and install the pro-American Colonel Adib Shishakli. But for that US coup, Syria may have grown into a democracy instead of the dictatorship it is today.

That coup led to a confusing series of coups in which the US frequently changed sides. In 1956, as Syria moved closer to Egyptian President Nasser and his vision of a United Arab Republic that would be more neutral in the cold war than America could bear, Eisenhower initiated Project Wakeful, an unsuccessful covert action for another regime change in Syria. It was followed a year later by Operation Wappen in 1957. America feared that Syria’s government was leaning to the left. So, in order to “assure a pro-Western orientation on the part of future Syrian government,” in the words of a State Department internal document, Operation Wappen was initiated. It was intended to return the former right wing dictator Adib Shishakly to power. It was a humiliating failure. The CIA’s Rocky Stone took over as the Damascus station chief and initiated the plan for a coup. Syrian officers with whom Stone was working went to Syrian intelligence and turned in the CIA officers whose side they were supposedly on. The CIA agents were caught in the act, revealed and thrown out of Syria.

In 1963, the Ba’ath party would seize power in another coup. Another coup would follow in 1966 to be followed by the 1970 coup that brought the Assad dynasty to power.

Syria strove to be a democracy. But rather than midwifing the birth of democracy in Syria, America aborted it. That US coup took out the democracy and set in motion a series of coups that led, by a convoluted route, to the dictatorship that America wants to take out of Syria today.

Syria’s Dictator: Ally or Enemy? Even after the Assad dictatorship was entrenched in Syria, history could have proceeded differently. Relations between Hafez al-Assad and the west could have been different. As early as 1994, Assad had met with President Clinton for encouraging talks on a Syrian-Israeli peace. Five years later, in December of 1999, Assad let it be known that he was willing to sign a peace treaty with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

In a remarkable story told by Patrick Tyler in his book, A World of Trouble, Assad sent his foreign minister to Washington to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Clinton. But when Barak’s plane opened its doors, Barak would not come out: he panicked and told assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk, “I can’t do it.” Indyk was stunned that Barak was backing out at the last second before the meeting. Barak had changed his mind, and Assad’s attempt at a peace fell incomplete on the tarmac. The Syria dictator had been willing to attempt a thawing of relations with the west: history might have seen him become an ally, but it took the path of enemy instead.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, says that, when Bashar al-Assad followed his father as Syrian dictator, he asked for a resumption of talks with Israel. It was the Americans and Israelis who turned him down.

Two years later, in 2005, Syria and Israel began to actually draft a peace treaty. When the Israeli-Lebanese war ended, Israel felt the Americans out about continuing down that path. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush said no. Once again, it was the west that blocked Assad from coming over as an ally.

Bashar al-Assad kept trying to initiate cooperation with the States. Zunes says that, because he was anxious to receive international legitimacy, Assad was willing to give security guarantees and full diplomatic relations to Israel in exchange for a peace agreement. In his 2009 article entitled “Syria Calling,” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that then Senator John Kerry, who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and who had just met with Assad, said that Assad “wants to engage with the West . . . . Assad is willing to do the things he needs to do in order to change his relationship with the United States.” Hersh says that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar, told him that “Syria is eager to engage with the West”.

Hersh says that Israel and Syria had at other times engaged in talks. He even says that they had reached “agreements in principle on the normalization of diplomatic relations.” He says that Assad continued informal talks with Washington into the Obama administration. Zunes said in a personal correspondence that blame for the failure of those talks lays not with Assad but with ““[t]he new hard-right Israeli government that consolidated power in 2009”. Nothing could happen, Zunes said, “without the return of the Golan, which Netanyahu refuses to do”.

Syria tried to engage with the west and change its relationship with both America and Israel, but the west repeatedly pushed the Assads back into the position of enemy.

Gas Attacks: War Crime or False Flag? The latest call for regime change in Syria comes as a result of the Trump administration’s judgment that Assad crossed a red line by using chemical weapons on his own people. But, once again in the American constructed narrative, it is possible that guilt has be assumed and assigned to Syria without investigation because the antagonist in the story is always guilty and can always be blamed.

There are several reasons to be skeptical over the guilty verdict handed down to Bashar al-Assad.

The first is that for the first time, in a reversal of policy, the Trump administration had just announced that it was no longer insisting upon the removal of Bashar al-Assad. Secretary of State Tillerson said that the “status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” Also for the first time in the war, Assad’s forces are finally winning. Crossing the one clear US red line by using chemical weapons is the one way Assad could force the US to turn the tides of the war and recommit to removing him from power. Former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford says that “Assad may be cruel, brutal, but he’s not mad. It defies belief that he would bring this all on his head for no military advantage.” If Assad used chemical weapons right after finally being taken off the American hit list, then Ford is wrong, and Assad is mad.

The second reason is that, despite American and Israeli claims to the contrary, the available evidence says that Syria fulfilled its promise to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile in 2013.

The third is that the US case against Assad is that, though the extremist Syrian rebels do have chemical weapons, they couldn’t have used these chemical weapons because they were dropped from the sky and only the regime forces have airplanes. However, Theodore Postol, MIT professor emeritus of science, technology and national security, a leading analyst on military technology and former scientific advisor at the Department of Defense, says that his analysis of the evidence shows that the chemical weapon was not dropped from an airplane but exploded on the ground. Postol concludes that “. . . there is absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by munitions designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft. . . . The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane. . . . Analysis of the debris as shown in the photograph cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground. . . .”

The fourth is that Postol has shown that the crater identified by the US as being the one where the sarin gas hit the ground after being dropped from a plane couldn’t be the source of the sarin gas that killed the victims of the gas attack. He says his analysis of photographs of the crater site, the cite where the victims are located and wind and weather data reveal that the location of the victims is inconsistent with the crater cite offered up by the White House. His conclusion is that the version of the gas attack described by the White House that points to Syrian regime culpability--sarin gas dropped from a plane, landing on the ground and making a crater, and killing civilians in a nearby hamlet--never occurred. It had to have occurred in a different way. Supporting evidence comes from a photograph taken only four hours after the sarin gas release that shows a person standing by the crater that is alleged to be the dispersal cite without any protective clothing. If the poisoning happened the way the White House says it happened, the site would, at this time, be highly toxic, and the person, Postol says, “would be subjected to the severe and possibly fatal effects of sarin poisoning.” The conclusion again is that “the nerve agent attack described in the WHR [White House report] did not occur as claimed.” It had to have happened in a way different from the way that points accusingly at Assad.

What is that different way? According to former US intelligence analysts (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), in agreement with the Russian and Syrian version of the story, “Our US Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died.” Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that most of his sources--including members of the team that monitors global chemical weapons and people in the U.S. intelligence community--are also telling him that that is what probably happened.

Former CIA and Army Intelligence Officer Philip Giraldi reports that “US monitors, who had been warned by the Russians that an attack was coming, believe they saw from satellite images something close to the Russian account of events, with a bomb hitting the targeted warehouse, which then produced a cloud of gas.” Investigative journalist Gareth Porter reports that a former US official knowledgeable about the chemical weapons event said that Russia informed the US that Syria planned to strike the warehouse 24 hours before the strike. The source, according to Porter, “is in direct contact with a US military intelligence officer with access to information about the US-Russian communications.” Russia also informed the US that the Syrian military thought the warehouse housed chemicals. Furthermore, Porter reveals that “an internal administration paper circulating in Washington . . . clearly refers to ‘a regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition dump in the eastern suburbs of Khan Sheikhoun.’”

And finally, a white paper written by the White House’s National Security Council--interestingly, it was not written by the US intelligence community but by the White House (investigative journalist Robert Parry reports that a source told him that CIA Director Mike Pompeo personally told Trump that the CIA believed that Assad was likely not responsible for the chemical attack)--claims “that the chemical agent was delivered by regime SU-22 fixed-wing aircraft.” However, reporting on the weapons dropped over Syria from the SU-22 aircraft, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter says that “it is physically impossible for a chemical weapon to produce the impact IR signatures detected by the US and linked to the Khan Shaykhun attack.” Amazingly, Ritter points out that the very evidence used by the White House to prove Syria dropped chemical weapons from a plane, proves instead the Syrian/Russian version of the story that Syria dropped conventional weapons from a plane.

So, the Syrian story is not the simple narrative of good and evil offered up by Washington and the mainstream media. There is another side to the story. But for American meddling, Syria might have been a democracy instead of the dictatorship it is today. But for American indifference and neglect, today’s Syrian dictator could have been an ally. And if intelligence and investigation preceded the assumption and assignation of guilt to the current antagonist of the story, Assad may be found to be not guilty of the chemical attack for which he was recently bombed.

#Syria #Syrian conflict #Bashar al-Assad #Syrian history

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yesweweresoldiers · 5 years

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Jonathan Edwards: Founding Father of American Evangelicalism

The theme of this year’s A Founding Father of American evangelicalism, Edwards is best known for his fiery sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Like many Americans, my knowledge of Edwards was simplistic, even mythical, because Sinners was my only exposure to his theology. Edwards wrote numerous sermons, books, and pamphlets that helped start the religious revival known as the Great Awakening and according to one historian, “provided pre-revolutionary America with a radical, even democratic, social and political ideology” that influenced the American Revolutionary effort. To understand how this New England pastor can be credited with such influence required some deeper digging into his writings.

Like many students of United States history, I first learned about Jonathan Edwards in a high school English class. We were assigned excerpts of Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and taught it was a textbook example of Puritan sermons. I don't recall whether his vivid descriptions of hell and mankind's persistent vulnerability to damnation frightened or shocked any of my classmates. To me, it had the familiar ring of the many of the fire and brimstone sermons I heard on Sunday mornings at the Southern Baptist church of my youth. Not until I enrolled in a graduate class on Colonial America in Ashland University's Masters of American History and Government did I learn that Sinners' scared straight theology painted an incomplete picture of Edwards’s evangelism.

By that time, I had become interested in Edwards for reasons other than his theological doctrine. I have always been fascinated by the rogues in American history. Men like Aaron Burr, Richard Nixon, Al Capone, Jesse James, and even Benedict Arnold held my attention like an interstate pile up. When I learned that strait-laced, hellfire-and-damnation Jonathan Edwards was Aaron Burr's grandfather, I had to learn more. Burr was a mere two years old when Grandfather Edwards died, so it is unlikely, he had any direct influence on Burr's upbringing, but the family connection was sure a juicy piece of historical trivia.

Edwards, like his future grandson, was a precocious lad. He entered Yale at age 12. Fascinated by the natural sciences, he kept a notebook labeled Natural History containing entries on atomic theory, the behavior of spiders and other topics. As a product of the Age of Enlightenment, Edwards was familiar with scientific advances. But unlike the numerous contemporaries who embraced deism, Edwards saw each new scientific discovery as a vindication of God's majesty. Scientific knowledge validated his faith. As he matured as a theologian, Edwards balanced reason and emotion in his preaching, rejecting the extremism of both the radical evangelicals and anti-revivalists of the "Awakening" era.

Jonathan Edwards began his career as a Congregationalist pastor in 1727 in Northampton, MA. It was here that Edwards witnessed and chronicled a religious revival in 1733-35 that historians considered the beginnings of the Great Awakening, a period of religiosity so intense that historian Thomas Kidd describes it as "the greatest upheaval in the American colonies prior to the Revolutionary War." Edwards wrote A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton in which he described the religious conversion of nearly 300 young members of the Northampton community. The young converts were moved to seek salvation following the untimely deaths of some of their friends. A Faithful Narrative launched Edwards' career as a religious philosopher, though he continued to preach. Never a powerful orator, certainly not on the scale of that other Great Awakening figure George Whitfield, Edwards exerted influence through his published sermons and treatises on religion. They were circulated widely in the colonies and "inaugurated the evangelical movement in American Christianity." Defined by historian Kidd as "the kind of Protestant Christianity that strongly emphasizes the need for personal conversion," evangelicalism has gone on to influence social reform movements throughout US history, from abolitionism to the Moral Majority.

Because Edwards and other evangelicals emphasized personal conversion and not traditional Calvinist pre-destination as the basis of salvation, they fostered a more democratic view of Christianity. To help my students understand how this more democratic theology influenced the political ideology of the American Revolution, I would ask them, “Once you challenge the authority of the church to tell you what to think about God, how big of a leap is it to challenge the authority of a king?”

Edwards was not a minister who focused exclusively on hell. His spiritual path to conversion did not seem complete to him until he saw salvation as a mystical thing of beauty and not simply a means of escaping hell. This was demonstrated so vividly in my Colonial America class when we read A Divine and Spiritual Light. Edwards taught that "there was a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness" because "of the … taste of honey." Religious seekers must taste the honey to experience the joy of salvation. The moment we discussed that document in class was one of the most memorable moments for me in the MAHG program. From that moment on, I always assigned my students both Sinners and A Divine and Spiritual Light to proffer a more complete picture of early American religion.

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss Edwards with a scholar of religion in Colonial America, Dr. Daniel Dreisbach. Dr. Dreisbach reminded me of how Edwards, a man of science and faith, had died. At the time of his death, Edwards was the President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. A smallpox epidemic had recently plagued the town, so Edwards decided to be inoculated. Inoculation, an imperfect science at that time, was based on the theory that if one were exposed to the virus, one might survive a minor case of the disease and develop lifetime immunity. Edwards developed a severe case of smallpox and died. Who knows? If the inoculation had worked, maybe he would have bounced his little grandson Aaron Burr on his knee and put a little fear of God into that notorious character.

Jonathan Edwards: Founding Father of American Evangelicalism appeared first on Teaching American History. from Teaching American History https://ift.tt/2MY9Q5K via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Teaching American History

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rightsidenews · 6 years

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Islam, Replacement Migration & White Genocide

Ash Sharp Editor

On The Tragedy of Neoliberalism.

I do not like Islam very much. This is a dangerous thing to write these days. I do not believe that whatever benefits Islam brings outweigh the costs. I do not like that the West cannot reconcile that it too, does not like Islam very much- and pretends that it actually does, against all reason.

It is also not popular to mention that Europeans are by any measure, being slowly replaced in their own countries. Whether you wish to call it a genocide, a great replacement, or merely the natural cultural enrichment of multiculturalism, doesn't really matter now. Hard left activists openly demand the extermination of White people. This is not satire. These people want you dead.

Islam also wants you dead, or subjugated.

Our leaders bleat on about a religion of peace and diversity, all the while our newspapers avoid reporting that the Quilliam Foundation found that 84% of the perpetrators of gang rape in the United Kingdom are Pakistani.

Some of these men quite blatantly tell us that their reasoning was that they chose their white, teenage victims- who number in the many thousands- because they are white. Little white slags, they say.The British Police did nothing for many years and despite being in full awareness of these most heinous crimes. Why did the police ignore the rape of children? Because they were afraid of being called racist if they did their sworn duty and arrested these racist gangs of rapists.

This spineless mentality is now infecting most Western countries.

A failed improvised bomb attack at New York’s Port Authority Station earlier this month was yet another opportunity for a multitude of New Yorkers to prove their fabled fortitude. Ah, he didn’t stop us from going about our daily lives, this is New York. Fools!

“You got to live your life,” she said. “You got to work. You can’t stay locked up in your house all the time.” — Port Authority Bombing Witness

Yes, but what does your life mean? What is your life worth to your political masters? What is it worth to you?

The bomber, from Bangladesh, cited that the United States had recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as his motive for trying to assassinate civilians. Blue check verified Twitterati instantly took to the internet to stand in solidarity with Muslims. As we all know thanks to a decade or more of indoctrination, blowing your own testicles off while trying to murder people going to work is nothing to do with Islam.

Ah, that dastardly devil Donald J. Trump. Always at the root of everything when you look hard enough, like a Scooby-Doo Villain camped out at the old haunted White House amusement arcade.

The newspapers reported that the bomber is actually from Brooklyn. They lied.He is not from Brooklyn. He is a Muslim from Bangladesh who hates Jews.

This issue surely transcends the petty bourgeois squeals of racism that emanate from the wealthy left, who never seem to live in the areas enriched by diversity. The conflict with Islam, this centuries-old clash of civilizations- it will outlive us all.

Ignore people who say, “well, since Sept.11, it’s actually not Muslims, the far right, etc. They are liars.”

It will outlive us all because whether we like it or not, the dreaded Alt-Right has got at least one thing absolutely right. People of European descent are slowly but surely being replaced.

As we are replaced by migrants from the Islamic World, we might find ourselves asking the question; 'Why?' Why must we be replaced? Why don’t I recognize my country anymore? Why does the crescent moon of Islam rise where the Cross of Jesus stood? Where is our church? Where are our leaders? Why does the Pope lie and capitulate?

What did we do that was so wrong that we must die?

Fortunately, the advocates of unending immigration have the answers for us- Liberal elitists are here to save the day.

Colonialism

Communists and groups calling themselves ‘Stand Up To Racism’ (actually just Neo-Marxist activists) will tell you it is because of our colonial past. We must pay for the sins of our evil ancestors- but nobody says to the Turkish;

“Hey, Turk- your grandfather drove the Armenians into the desert. That is genocide. Hey Turk, the Ottoman Empire was an imperialist, conquering power for six hundred years. You must pay for those sins.”

The argument that people should make reparations for colonialism is only applied when the colonialists were White, or Jewish. That Israel today is accused of being imperialist and genocidal is nothing short of a disgrace to anyone who says it- and I have said it myself when I still thought in Neo-Marxist ways, a foot soldier of ideologies I refused to denounce. How sick it is to be a well-meaning leftist.

Motivated more by Stalin than Hitler, the Anti-Semitism is present nonetheless.

Duty

It is the responsibility of the West to allow all people to enter our nations and become citizens because we are liberal and everyone is equal. To question this means you are a racist. Other countries are poorer than us, so we must allow their peoples to benefit from our wealth. We should share with them. We should give in to them.

Why? With all due respect to the peoples of the world, why should the West, which has ascended through great hardship, merely hand others our spoils? If you are to respond like this, you will be called selfish. It is selfish to want to maintain your culture, it is selfish not to want to pay for others to live and contribute nothing.

It is not selfish to go to another country and demand they look after you, even though you are not a refugee. Even though you are in a multitude, even though you harbour terrorists among you, even though you are unable to comprehend that women are free people. Even though you find yourself having a sexual emergency and thus raping a child, or a mother, or a teenager, or an activist who works for your interests. Even when you murder her. Even when you lie about your age to gain sympathy and leniency from a nation that is altruistic to a fault.

That is not selfish. No, it is the Westerners who are the selfish ones. It is their duty to accept you all into their lands. To complain is racist.

Culture

Cultural enrichment has become a meme. Every time another truck of peace murders our children we joke with gallows humour about how we are culturally enriched. Proponents will argue that we have such great cuisine now. How dare you oppose unending, ceaseless, brutal, civilisation destroying migration.

Wrong.

You ate a curry last night so you cannot complain.

It is preposterous to think that we are unable to follow a recipe to produce food from other countries- coming to think about it, do not Neo-Marxists accuse people of cultural appropriation for doing just that? All the more reason to enliven ones’ taste buds with exotic foods, then. No, this line of reasoning makes no sense- not only this, it reveals the asinine and frankly racist belief prevalent among many that the only thing the immigrant can do is make food for us. It should not even be an argument, but here we are, discussing whether we should accept off-duty soldiers being beheaded in the street because the perpetrator comes from Nigeria, and the Nigerian migrants bring whatever food they eat in Nigeria for us to enjoy.

Don’t complain about migration. We have an international food fair.

Multiculturalism is just better.

We live in a Multiculture. This means there is no British culture. As Lauren Southern discovered, all it takes to be British is a British passport. However, it is not so that we can go to China and become Chinese. That’s ridiculous. We are told that we have always been nations of immigrants, but that is also a lie.

So prevalent is this narrative that despite not having any major immigration for nearly 900 years between 1066 and 1945, most Britons believe we are a nation of immigrants. Of course we are! Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Norse, Norman, and so on. So pervasive is the idea of an immigrant nation that the most recent article I found in the mainstream media refuting this lie is over ten years old.

The idea that a multicultural society is better than one dominated by a single culture would have merit if there was give-and-take between the cultures. Now, the leftists out there will bleat 'Ah ha! colonialism!' And I will say, no. We’ve covered colonialism. If you only care about an issue when white people do it- you are a racist bigot. In a multiculture, we have seen only that the host nation must give up parts of its culture to accommodate the interlopers. The cultures that move in have to give up nothing. We host nations will provide housing, money, education- protection. All for free.

What are we given in return? What benefit? Over 17 years, migration to the UK from outside the European Union cost the nation over £120 billion. The report that showed these statistics was effectively buried by the British Government; statistics produced in the subsequent years have been massaged to the point of irrelevancy and illegibility, to protect the only thing that matters- the narrative.

If there’s no financial benefit, no cultural benefit, no ethical or moral compulsion, and by any metric immigration from outside the West has simply made our lives worse: What argument is left?

We are getting old.

Now we come to the bones. We all know that we live in so-called ageing societies. We are told it every day, that we are getting older; so we need migrants.

“Ha ha ha ha all the whites are dead. Except this one. We keep him alive for the virtue points.”

This is a lie, brought about by an addiction to Neoliberal Capitalism. Let me explain.

Neoclassical economics -which is the underlying theory of Neoliberalism- essentially requires permanent growth. This is why we are in a Boom/Bust economy; capitalism is imperfect, and the imperfections in the economic system lead to catastrophic failures every now and then. Capitalism is still the best system we have- I contend however that Neoliberalism has outlived its purpose.

During the banking crisis of 2008, the banking cartels demanded money from nation states to pay for their mistakes. The nations, being funded by the taxes of the people, paid the ransom. That is a fundamentally socialist act. Neoliberalism was subverted to cover up the failure of neoliberalism. Under truly capitalist methods, the banks should have been allowed to fall. Yes, it would have caused chaos. Yes, it would have been hard. But we would have been freed from this sick mentality of permanent, unending expansion.

Neoliberalism cannot comprehend resources. It deals only with manpower and end product. This means that in order to deal with the demographic effects of capitalism, which are long life and low birthrate, it needs immigration. Without population growth, there will not be enough taxation raised to provide the state pensions.

The world’s governments know that the plebians will accept many things. We will not accept the disrespect of our parents, as Theresa May has found to her cost. There would be a revolution if people were taxed and worked like churls their whole lives, and then receive nothing but a raised middle finger from the tax man when it comes time for us to retire.

To avoid this eventuality, our leaders have gambled that huge migration is a better bet than fixing the system. It is better. For them. Not for you. Not for me. For them.

All that replacement migration does is kick the problem of elderly care down the line for a few years while importing the enriching qualities of the third world. The present political class cares about nothing but retaining power, right now. Not good governance or the future of the nation. Replacement migration is barely even an understood policy- it happens because these imbeciles are too dense to consider the ramifications.

But this also is not enough of an answer; if it were solely about replacing our elderly, the richer European nations could have encouraged migration from poorer ones. Spain. Greece. Poland. Italy. All of southern and central Europe suffered in the aftermath of the banking cartel’s thievery, in the form of huge youth unemployment. These people were left to rot on the workless streets of Valencia, Athens, Warsaw. The richer nations of Europe did not even think to encourage their immigration.

We could make starting families easier, through governmental policy. Most people in the West want to have children, despite being assaulted with propaganda that we are committing a planet-destroying evil if we do.

Appeals to morality from the most unethical scum of the planet. Hilarious.

Because here is a startling fact. You need money to migrate. You cannot emigrate from the ghetto while you earn a ghetto wage. So where are all these migrants coming from, and how? Money talks. Always. So the kids of Portugal did not come to London. The young Greeks did not go to Berlin.

Instead, we imported Islam.

Either our leaders did not know the consequences, or they did not care. In any case, replacement migration to prop up neoliberal capitalism is a band-aid. It can only be temporary, as the migrants, if they work and contribute, will be entitled to be cared for in their old age, just like any other citizen. So what happens then? We will need even more migrants. Every year the Germans become less German. Every year the French are less French. Every year the Britons wither. Every year the Swedes are dying out.

What number will be the tipping point for your country?

The only conclusion is that there is some other ideological reason at play, or we are being led by the most ignorant buffoons imaginable. Either we need to stop having babies to save the planet, or we need more people to support the ageing society. It cannot be both.

It is a Neo-Marxist tactic to destroy us to claim that this is so.

The betrayal of our culture by our elected leaders is why the West is lost. We can find it again. We can change the path we are on, but none of us can do it alone. It is time that we take responsibility for our future and our own minds. It is time for you to learn about what your culture is and what is happening to it. What is being done to it.

And when you see what is happening, and what is being done, will you not feel sick? Will you not feel betrayed? If you think that what is being done to Paris, to London, to New York, to Barcelona; if you think that is enriching, then we are enemies. I do not wish to live in a world where my children are slaves. I will not accept that we Europeans are worthless people who are somehow inferior to other races, and it doesn’t matter if we become extinct.

Coming soon to a city near you.

Do you see how the Alt-Right grows? It’s because people who are centrists will not engage this problem. The evidence for this to be true is insurmountable. If you want to fight the Nazis in your closet and under your bed, you have to accept that these people are not incorrect on this topic- at least in the assessment of the situation. What can you say otherwise? I await any liberal writer to prove me wrong on any of these points- to date, all I am shown are lies. No one can disprove this analysis.

I really wish someone would. I would sleep better. I would feel better about the future for our children. I wish there were some easy answers, that for whatever reason I had simply strayed down an intellectual dead end and become what the left already call me; a bigot, an Islamophobe. Still, for all the name calling, nobody can answer my question.

How are we to avoid the future certainty that we, as a civilization, are going to experience sectarian violence that will make Northern Ireland look like a street party celebrating a Royal Wedding? What kind of action we must take, I do not know. That is for all of us to decide- though time is short and getting shorter.

Slowly with time the past slips away But deep in our souls their memory stays Weapons of guilt won't conquer our minds Just strengthen our will to defy

The ignorant void ever opening wide But we keep their names and spirits alive Arrows of fear won't pierce our minds Just strengthen our will to defy ~ Rudyard Kipling

Greater bloodshed is inevitable unless we act. To save ourselves, we must Make The West Great Again.

http://bit.ly/2loKMWN

#RSN #Islam #Replacement Migration & White Genocide #Ash Sharp

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majestrosgh · 6 years

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The Not-So-Wicked Witch of the West

I had the privilege of attending Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah's fourth BBC Reith Lecture at New York University's law school (and I also took a neat selfie with him). A lot of what I'm going to talk about echoes what he has already said in his lecture, so I recommend giving it a listen. This post is more of a random smattering of my thoughts than a coherent argument, so forgive me if it zig-zags a little.

Professor Appiah argues that there is really no such thing as Western civilization (or rather, that the idea of civilization isn't contingent on geography). My perspective is that the important question about civilizational ideas isn't 'where did it come from?', but rather 'is it good?'

***

Pick up any social studies text book and I bet you'll find a reference to "Western influences" corrupting the youth. It's quite odd that "Western influence" has become something of a pejorative, usually implying moral turpitude. Taking a broader look, the real oddity is how the geographical origin of an idea or cultural practice can give any indication of whether it's good or bad. It's one thing to assume that a Gucci belt is low quality because it says "Made in China", but can we do same for more abstract things like ideas?

We take it for granted that so-called Western influences such as tattoos, homosexuality, radical feminism (*gasp!*), rap music and skimpy clothing are treated as societal ills in conservative Ghanaian culture. But not too far back in Ghanaian history, Western culture was the summum bonum of the day. During colonial times, West Africans in general aspired to the cultural ideals of their European colonizers, especially the Francophone territories where Assimilation was the gold standard for upward social mobility. Quite honestly, I can still feel the vestiges of Gold Coast-era europhilia in the Fante/Methodist community today. Fast forward to present times, and conservative Ghanaians now think of Western cultural ideals as antithetical rather than superior to local ones. I suspect that part of this face-heel turn came about during the '60s, especially since Africa's founding presidents relied on nationalistic rhetoric to unify their newly-fledged nations. And rightfully so; the colonialists had associated Africanness with barbarism for so long that it was high time that Africans rejected that label and celebrated their own cultural heritage. Unsurprisingly, the narrative logic of pro-Africanness implied Anti-Europeanness, mainly because Europe was the villain in Africa's liberation story. In any case, European writers had long described the 'dark', heathen cultures of Africa in alterity to their own 'enlightened' culture - so one could say Africa's leaders were giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Another possible explanation for why Ghanaian attitudes towards Western culture have soured is that Western culture has become more and more liberalized over the years whilst African culture has maintained the fairly conservative status quo ante. Entire books have been written on how the West is experiencing a declension in religiosity at the same time that religion is on the upswing in the developing world. In light of this, if you took a diachronous look at cultural change in the West vs. Africa, you'd notice an funny see-saw arc over the past few centuries:

Circa 1500s: Bible-thumping European missionaries arrive in West Africa to find an exceedingly libertine people — irreligious, promiscuous, skin-baring savages, with no apparent understanding of civilized behavior. "Look at this godless, upside-down society!", the missionaries said, making the sign of the cross.

Circa mid-1800s to mid-1900s: European culture is fairly uniformly diffused throughout most of Sub-Saharan Africa, so things look similar in both places.

Today: Bible-thumping African aunties watch MTV to see an exceedingly libertine American people — irreligious, promiscuous, skin-baring savages, with no apparent understanding of home training. "Look at this godless, upside-down society!", Auntie Beatrice says, making the sign of the cross.

The irony here is that when conservative Ghanaians/Africans criticize the West for not being more like Africa, they are really criticizing the West for not being more like, well, the good old West (of colonial memory).

Now to complicate things. You might notice that conservative Ghanaians cherry-pick the examples of Ghanaian and Western cultural practices that fit their narrative. In their minds, things like 'respecting elders' and 'hospitality' are epitomic of Ghanaian culture, while fornication and drug use all came from the West. I ask: what about trokosi, Female Genital Mutilation, human sacrifice, twin killing, albino killing, child marriage and witch camps? These inhumane practices, which are still extant in some rural parts of the country and/or the continent, all originated locally. If anything, the ones leading the charge against such practices are Western NGOs, just as the missionaries did centuries before them. How do you draw the Africa-is-Good/West-is-Bad battle line once you throw these facts into the calculus?

Furthermore, a lot of the things that conservative Ghanaians think are foreign influences already existed in the country from time immemorial. We had tribal marks and ceremonial body painting before we ever saw rappers with tattoos on MTV. We had dipo before the first crop-top was sewn. We had powerful female leaders like Yaa Asantewaa before 'radical' feminism had a name. Asante chiefs were decked out with gold ornaments before we heard rappers talking about 'bling bling'. The list goes on and on. Does the fact that the indigineity of such things now make them acceptable in the eyes of conservative Ghanaians? If not, then they have to admit that they are shifting the goal post.

I think a more useful way to think about ideas and cultural practices isn't 'where does it come from?' but rather 'is it good?'. To go back to my Gucci belt analogy, we should be more concerned about the quality of the belt than where it was manufactured. A quick scan of history will show that much of the world has already gotten the memo. Show me any two nations or factions that have been at loggerheads in the past, and I will show you two cultures that are borrowing from each other today. E.g., during WWII, the U.K. and the U.S. were trading bombs and gunfire with Germany and Japan. Today, Americans are studying German philosophers in college, and Japanese students are scrambling to apply to Oxford and Cambridge. The ability to absorb good ideas from many different cultures is a catalyst of progress; a good recent example is the meteoric rise of China over the last two or three decades, having opened up to the entrepreneurial and capitalist spirit of the West. Luckily, Ghana isn't as insular as hardcore Communist China back in the day, but it would do us a lot of good to be more open to good foreign ideas.

I'm aware this new mental model leads to a whole new ethical debate about what should be considered 'good'. But my aim here isn't to resolve that debate, but to make sure that it takes place in the first place when evaluating so-called foreign ideas. I wager that we'd have much more productive debates about issues like feminism and LGBTQ rights etc. if we thought of them in a vacuum rather than as "Western" infiltrations.

#western civilization #ghana

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