#it just goes on and on and on the wars and the embargos and trade bans and the pseudo green bullshit to excuse themselves | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lyledebeast · 1 year

Text

Fathers, Sons, and Imperialism in Turn and The Patriot

It’s interesting that between these two narratives about the American Revolution there are three British characters from three different social classes, with three different problems that all, somehow, have the same solution: military service. And in each case, the British Army provides for the character in a way his father could or would not. William Tavington joined the army because his father “squandered” the wealth he was meant to inherit. Edmund Hewlett joined because the trade embargo the Continental Congress enacted in 1775 nearly bankrupted his father. Ensign Baker never knew his sailor father, grew up in an orphanage, and joined up because the Army needed healthy young men even if no one else wanted them. That military service is treated as a catch-all solution goes to show how imbued with imperialism 18th C society was at every level.

Of course, it turns out to be a very poor solution for all three characters. Tavington and Baker are both dead by the ends of their stories, and Hewlett comes near death many times, often at British hands, and is forced into one morally untenable situation after another, which nearly breaks him. Their similarities end here, though, because while Baker and Hewlett are presented as sympathetic men who are doing their best to do what they see as right, Tavington is presented as the ultimate evil. For a movie that is just under three hours, it has an extremely brief resolution. Benjamin Martin stabs Tavington to death, delivers a voice-over monologue that fast forwards to the end of the war when he and his new bride/old sister in law find the house Tavington burned being rebuilt. Martin’s job is much easier than Turn protagonist Abe Woodhull’s. While Martin only has to kill one man and fix what can be fixed of the problems he caused, Woodhull has to uproot the effects of imperialism, including in his own father’s beliefs and values.

Of course, Turn has more room for nuance in four seasons than The Patriot has in three hours, but there is a deeper difference at work here. The reason Turn can afford sympathetic British characters is that it presents imperialism itself as the ultimate evil. Part of the reason Richard Woodhull clings so stubbornly to the British empire is that he recalls a time when it did defend his community from the Dutch and the Iroquois. Abraham has no success in convincing his father until the community, and Abraham himself specifically, come under British attack in the form of Captain Simcoe.

The major antagonist of the series, Simcoe is also the character who most effectively represents the evils of imperialism: While Tavington and (presumably) Baker are from England and Hewlett is from Scotland, Simcoe has never been to Great Britain. He is the son of a British surgeon who suffocated in the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. By far the most enthusiastic soldier in the series, he sees it as his personal mission to “remind” colonials throughout the empire that their homes “belong to our king,” in Ghana and the Caribbean before he was stationed in Long Island. As much as he is an advocate of imperialism, though, Simcoe is its victim as much as Hewlett and Baker. In Simcoe’s final scene in the series, General Clinton offers him an appointment in upper Canada, citing the effects of the wound Simcoe received in his last encounter with Woodhull as preventing the wartime appointment he wants. Violence has been such a staple of his life that he is deeply bewildered by the thought of operating in a British colony where the only enemy to be subdued is the weather.

Regardless of narrative length, presenting Simcoe as an agent of imperialism, the true evil, makes more sense than presenting Tavington as the main enemy to be defeated, not least because no one man could possibly have all the power The Patriot attributes to him. The movie’s original tagline invites the audience to see Martin as having no choice but to take up arms against the British in response to Tavington’s actions, and the movie’s producer describes General Cornwallis as “a victim” of Tavington’s seduction. The idea that only Tavington has any volition in this story is ridiculous. Cornwallis has the ability to restrain him and does retrain him for the entire middle of the movie. Martin has the ability to take his grievances against Tavington to Cornwallis before he massacres the British soldiers in the woods, and even after that he has a militia full of trackers and “excellent marksmen” who could eliminate Tavington. They choose to not do these things. There are numerous Watsonian and Doylist explanation for this, but the one I’m most interested in here is that the story needs a villain, and that villain cannot be imperialism because the movie’s protagonists have spent too much time enforcing and benefitting from it themselves.

While Turn is a story about children pushing back against the patriarchy of imperialism--both figurative and, in Abe’s case, literal--The Patriot is a story about fathers. A number of the fathers in The Patriot are also veterans of the French and Indian War, known as the Seven Years War in Europe, a global conflict between the British and French Empires. While Abe’s freedoms are palpably restricted--he can’t even have an extramarital affair in his own home without the British walking in!--The Patriot’s fathers chafe against what they see as ingratitude for their service in preserving Britain’s empire. “I lost a leg fighting for King George, and now he cuts off my other leg with his taxes!” Mr. Howard complains near the start of the movie. Of course, he has more to complain about when Tavington arrives and visits the same brutal treatment on him and his family that colonial forces under Benjamin Martin had visited on the Cherokees during the last war. Well, not quite the same. Tavington does not use pieces of his victims as bargaining chips or incentivize murder with a scalp bounty.

The narrative seeks to balance Martin’s past actions with his current feelings about what he has done, but those feelings do not diminish the concrete rewards he continues to enjoy owing to the exact same set of actions. Gabriel Martin tells us that all his life, men have bought his father drinks because of Fort Wilderness; he does not mention his father refusing to drink them. Men choose to fight for Benjamin Martin because of Fort Wilderness. His house is being rebuilt for him on land he took from the Cherokees by committing atrocities at Fort Wilderness. The wages of imperialist violence have served him well.

It seems worth noting that while Martin’s arc ends with him killing a British soldier, in some respects, Abe Woodhull’s begins in the same way. He makes several attempts to resist or give up spying in season one, but Baker’s death is the action from which there is no going back. When his wife Mary asks him if Baker’s death meant nothing, he replies, “It meant everything!” He ends his explanation to her by declaring “I will not stop until every king’s man goes back to England.” His choice of words is interesting here. He took no pleasure in killing Baker and he does not want to kill British soldiers in the future; he just wants them out of his home. Obviously, his views evolve a great deal over the next three seasons, but ultimately he does not lose sight of what the real enemy is. Whether it is Baker’s untimely sense of honor or the best chance he ever gets to kill Simcoe, Abe is not going to let one British soldier stop him from doing what he believes is right.

There is a degree of understanding for British soldiers as people in the young patriots of Turn that is completely foreign to the fathers of The Patriot. One pervasive example is that the preferred moniker for such soldiers in Turn is “bloodyback.” Having lived in British-occupied Long Island, the young patriots are all too aware of how that term originated, and as the audience we see several floggings of British soldiers administered by British officers. Imperialism harms its enforcers, not just those whom it subjugates. Meanwhile, the moniker used in The Patriot is “redcoat:” ironic given how many characters have donned “red coats” themselves in the not so distant past.

The fathers in both stories are afflicted not so much by poor memories as by short-sightedness. Like Benjamin Martin, Richard Woodhull is a supporter of imperialism until it threatens the life of his son, but he catches a lot more criticism for his choices throughout the series than Martin ever does. “You’re a businessman, and you think the British are a safe bet,” Mary chides him before encouraging him to prioritize his family over his politics, as she has done. He only takes her advice when Abe has a rope around his neck, having clung so tightly to the benefits of imperialism that he very nearly loses his only son. In this story, it is the children of independence who guide their imperialist fathers, showing them that change is possible. Meanwhile, the valorization of Martin’s gains through imperialist violence in The Patriot assures the audience that no change was necessary to win the fight for independence. Small wonder that movie came to enjoy such popularity during the second Bush administration.

#the patriot #turn: washington's spies #imperialism #fathers and sons #abraham woodhull #benjamin martin #edmund hewlett #ensign baker #william tavington #john graves simcoe #jesus so many characters in this meta!#richard woodhull

24 notes · View notes

lesewut · 11 months

Text

'A textbook about Law of Nations shall not forget, that it would be unfaithful to its task, if it would serve under politics.'

Franz von Liszt, criminologist (cf. Theory of criminal justice), jurist and reformer for international law and his book "International Law- Systematically Presented", was originally published in 1888. This edition is the eleventh edition from 1918 and was published "the second time against the backdrop of a war" as Liszt had written. Still not lost his enthusiam, he defines the Internation Law as the mechanism to prevent wars, the outbreak of war as the proof, that the contention between the states should have been mediated in a way, that the armed conflict could have been prevented. The (re-)building of International Law is the (re-)building of Right to Peace.

It is not just the Right of War, which takes part in the theories of International Law, but it is the primary drive behind the rising and fall of states.

The Law of Nations, how it was called from former times, is not an invention of modern times, it is not just the utopian dream of a single enthusiastic pacifist.

Just war traditions can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, the ethics with the three main ideas: Cosmological role of the Pharao as divine office and executor of the justification of war, which would be considered as 'God's Will' or the Universal Principle of Maat. In the Confucian culture, we can also find massive body work of warforce, especially in the Zhou Dynasty (~ 1122 BC). Here a similarity to the defined necessety or justification of war: Only as last resort (ultima ratio) and by a rightful souvereign (the requirements for sovereignty are still today the prerequisite for legal actions, also war is technically just a conflict between two sovereign states, in our sanity and reason we would include all violent confrontation..). Even in India, we should not lead ourselves to believe in all ascetical will-denial and yoga exercises, can theories of Just War be found (cf. dharma-yuddha ~ rightous war). In this very first written discussion, criterias like proportianlity, just means, just causes, fair treatment of captives and wounded, are stated (cf. Hague Convention of 1899). Not to forget the Ancient Roman legal system and the concept of jus gentium and later in Christian world, the Augustinian teaching of civitas dei, lead also to restrictions of warfare. Essential are also the theories formed in the period of enlightment, Bentham (by forming ideas for foreign policy, the term international was coined by Bentham by critizing the idea of "Law of Nations", as one central aspect of his Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace is the sacrifice of national self-interest [giving up colonies and armies, that are not necessary protecting] in order to establish global peace) and his codification of international law, Kant with several state theories and ways to guarantee perpetual peace, in the main consideration is the formulation of ius cosmopoliticum and that the Handelsgeist (spirit of trading) can achieve peace worldwide.

It is an usual represal that still today sanctions and embargos are used to put other states under (economic) pressure, which can be fatal in a highly globalized world and often tends to effect the civilian population rather than the ruling elite... Economy and trading is indeed an essential part in international legal relation, as the first international laws and regulation emerged through private law and the merchants demand for freedom of trade throughout history. So freedom of movement goes hand in hand with freedom of trading, just think of postal service (Universal Postial Union 1874) and the difficulties if the operating range would be limited or the process of translating and publishing foreign literature, all those aspects fall into the regulations of international law.

The theories of Just War firstly expanded beyond the borders of one nation around the 16th century, particularly during the discovery age (cf. theories of Suárez & Vitoria) and the Thirty Years' War (Hugo Grotius, who also devided positive and natural law, father of the Theory of Extraterritoriality; Successors of positive law: Zouch, Pufendorf, C. Wolff and his student Vattel [...] Later the School of Postive Law succeeded over the School of Natural Law: In particular by Bynkershock, later followed by J. J. Moser and G. F. v. Martens), affirming other principles like the territorial claim, the areas and rules of traffic (from maritime law to regulation of coastlines) and which legal consequences come into force, when a state is breaching treaty obligations.

The International Law had to built and strenghen itself as the diplomacy took over armed conflicts. First and foremost, the League of Nations is instructed to develop and expand the court of arbitration, also to limit armament and therefore the endangerment of piece. Part of the international diplomacy are also embassies and consuls, guaranteing constitutional jurisdiction.

It is deplorable, that the period of colonialism merged into imperialism and that the politcal efforts excluded the inhabitants of conquered areas. Law has also the paradoxy that it can be unjustly: By defining the terms (when can an area be considered as a sovereign state? Which subjects are authorized for legal capacity?) even unfairly acts can be legally protected.

International Law is a huge topic and it would be interesting to present treatise and the consequences after ratification, as every act is the answer of long and often armed conflicts, resulting into negotiations. It will stay a continuous process to establish an effective International Court of Justice, a balancing act between the sovereignty of a state and the endangerment of human rights, which sadly can't be ensured for the most parts of the world.

#theories of law #international law #just an impression #literature #book cover #19th century literature #law of nations #the dream of the pacifist #eternal peace #universal justice #book #Franz von Liszt #theories of states

0 notes

gary232 · 2 years

Text

Crisis Economics, Free Flow of Commerce 1. Oil, housing, transportation, and communications must be addressed to where the consumer benefits and not the market profits. Supply is better than demand with free trade and choices for the consumer. 2. Credit crisis. If the government gets on us about public debt, why don't they set the example? 3. Insurance must be covered like banks so they do not fail, insured insurance is covered by the government. 4. Tech bubbles are dangerous. To much hype and price testing. 5. Living beyond needs. Domestic spending goes further than foreign policy spending. Diplomacy spends less than war, war is the last resort 6. Markets are regulated by supply and demand and consumer, leave it alone, no subsidies 7. Crisis will come and go, such to with economic bubbles. 8. Gold is hyped too much, it's like oil, but both will see their future dwindle with time. 9. Inflation is when we try to control the flow of a product or services, over-regulation, union,s nationalistic greed for the nation-state, over-taxed corporations and people, embargoes, sanctions, wars, Deflation is great for the consumer, creates sales, etc. Interest rates should react to inflation and deflation after the fact. 10. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) vs WTO, USA, and the EU. Can't we all just get along? Let the market free flow and give the global consumer what they want. We do not need a war, nationalism, isolationism, extremism, fanaticism, price gauging, subsidies a free-trading world, a consumer-driven without government interference to protect industries and services, 11, Bring back subprime mortgages. Why? Because when there are more houses on the market than homeless people, Houston! We have a problem. We can bail out a bank, but we can't bail out the common citizen. 12. Moral hazards. What are morals? Societal regulation for a majority who are self-righteous. Let society change through freedom and social flow and the economics of it will set the morals. 13. Global markets should be free flow, unregulated, non manipulated. 14, Taxes should be reduced, and government spending should be not spent on wasteful wars, but on people, social security, maintaining a person from falling through the cracks to where they are homeless, and food for those who cannot eat. Societal preventative maintenance. 15. The G20 should work together with the UN to establish the stability of the world and not just the nation-state. 16. I think the Chinese have the right idea of mixing capitalism with socialism .numbers in GDP do not lie!

0 notes

suratan-zir · 2 years

Text

Just some of my unrequested thoughts in bad English about doing business with Russia. Long post.

I know that over time, Ukraine will be perceived by many people from other countries as an inconvenience. Even now, with half-assed sanctions imposed on Russia, gas and oil prices are rising. If a full embargo is imposed, prices will skyrocket. And it's easy to be "for all good and against all evil" when it doesn't require you to actually pay a real price for it. If you are one of those amazing people who is willing to pay that price no matter what, I am eternally grateful to you. However, I know there will be many people who aren't ready. And the longer it goes, the more people will be angry with this whole situation.

I know what it's like to be poor, to count every penny. Both me and my husband came from poor families, and only the last couple of years we have a decent income. At some point, we were so out of money that instead of sugar in our tea, we had to use old hard candies "Барбарис" found in the depths of the kitchen cabinet. Because we couldn't afford to buy sugar. We sometimes laugh about it now.

Only when you know the true value of money in a human's life can you really understand that there are still other things that are worth much more. But it is still your choice - to support cutting off all trade with Russia, or to put your own and your family's well-being above the lives of some foreigners from Eastern Europe. Either way, I don't blame you.

I blame European and American leaders almost as much as I blame Russia. Not even because they still didn't close the sky or given us fighter jets. Year after year, they turned a blind eye to the crimes committed by Russia, by Putin's regime. Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia… Nothing was done. It was too convenient to trade with Russia. After all, the troops of modern Russia didn't shell Berlin or London. Russian oligarchs invested billions and billions of dollars in the UN ans US economy, despite powerful anti-Western propaganda in Russia itself. So now it's funny to watch how they arrest those yachts and bank accounts of Putin's henchmen as if they just now found out about it all.

Putin realized that he remains unpunished for his crimes. Then he annexed Crimea and turned part of eastern Ukraine in a warzone with some lame excuses about infringement of the Russian-speaking population. Nobody in their right mind bought it, yet Russia still remained unpunished. Thousand of lives taken and hundreds of thousand of people who lost their home and everything they had. People had to flee from their homeland, leaving behind all their belongings. Others couldn't flee and were forced to live under Russian occupation, in a war zone, without any human rights.

Yet for the world this wasn't enough to cut ties with Russia. Putin punished Ukraine for our pro-Western, pro-European choice, for our desire for freedom and independense. Europe and US were "deeply concerned." Some useless sanctions were introduced, but Putin clearly won more that he lost.

His men happily continued committing war crimes in Syria and Ukraine, his propaganda continued dehumanizing certain population groups. Ukrainians = khokhols worthy of elimination or at least training on how to be a proper russian. LGBTQ = sick people who have to be ashamed of their very existence, officially illegal, in some Russian regions (like Chechnya) they are kidnapped, tortured and killed on a regular basis.

The opposition and the free press completely wiped out. And I'm not talking about Navalny now. Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov are the most famous examples, but there are many more.

The West kept fueling his killing and propaganda machine with cash. Putin's war games and ass-licking "journalists" cost HUGE money. The money he makes by selling Russian natural resources to the west. And the west gladly buys it. Why bother actively switching to renewable energy sources, why spend so much money on it when you can just buy everything from the fascist Russian regime without any problems? Besides, Russia is a pretty good export market. Why not export weapons to a country that is actively invading other sovereign states? Sounds like a damn good deal!

The world hand-fed this monster that is Russia we see today. Not their mentality, of course, it has been that way for centuries. But they couldn't afford to act on it if they didn't have the money for that. Everything could have been different not only for Ukraine, but also for Russia. If only Russians were forced to face the consequences of their imperialist actions back in the USSR days, maybe now they would live a happy rich life on their own land without stealing it from others.

I don't know what to conclude here. I don't know why the world needs to see the deepest depths of horror inflicted on my people in order to do something. Humanity really fucked up.

#long post #russian imperialism #ukraine #fuck putin #russian fascism

32 notes · View notes

rosethornewrites · 3 years

Text

Why does the Cuban Embargo exist?

I’ve seen people asking this question due to the amazing vaccine Cuba managed to produce despite it, and there’s a lot that goes into the reasons for the Cuban embargo.

The story basically starts with colonialism and imperialism. The poet and warrior Jose Marti is a Cuban hero for fighting against Spain to win Cuban independence. Unfortunately, that didn’t end the scourge of colonialism in Cuba. You see, Spain had given huuuuge tracts of land as plantations to certain rich loyal subjects. And so the poverty of the general populace continued largely as it had under colonialism.

The United States helped Cuba win independence, but it was low-key a land grab. Walt Whitman, famous American poet, dreamt that Cuba would become a US state. But Cuba didn’t want to become a state, which is where imperialism comes in.

Ultimately, Cuba became a playground for the rich and famous and the American mafia. Resources were owned by American corporations. Land was still owned by colonizers. The “president” was a man who lost an election and then came in from Florida and orchestrated a coup, and he upheld American interests because hm, I wonder why. *eyeroll* It was a military dictatorship, one installed by the US, basically a puppet.

And this environment gave birth to Fidel Castro, who famously failed at his attempt to overthrow the government the first time and was exiled. He met Che Guevara (The Motorcycle Diaries is a fab movie if you want deets there), an Argentinian doctor who may have grown up wealthy but despised the poverty in Central and South America. They had similar ideals. Notably, those ideals were specifically anti-imperialist.

As you might imagine, this didn’t make them popular with the imperialist United States.

But they won. They took the nation, starting in Santiago de Cuba and driving the imperialist forces from the island.

Folks expected that it would just be business as usual. That Fidel and his cohort would just adhere to colonialism/imperialism and be excited to get money.

Nope.

They started nationalizing industries. Kicking out the imperialists. Then they passed an agrarian act, which finally took the land from the old colonizer families that still held it, with the goal of having that land be for the people.

The US, obviously, was not happy with this. How could Cuba be a playground for organized crime and the rich and famous if the status quo wasn’t maintained? How dare!

It turned into a tit-for-tat. The US retaliated against Cuban reforms via trade, and Cuba responded by kicking out more imperialists and taking back their oil production lol.

And then the US cut its sugar quota. You see, once upon a time, most of our sugar came from Cuba. This was a fuckton of sugar. And that could break an economy.

Except the USSR stepped in and picked up the sugar quota. And so Cuba became a pawn in the Cold War.

Mind, we also didn’t like that they fought against apartheid in South Africa, sending aid to the struggle, and fought against imperialism across South and Central America. Famously, Che Guevara was executed and his body desecrated in Bolivia. They eventually sent his hands back to Cuba, and the CIA has his belongings on display like trophies.

The tit-for-tat ended with the Embargo, but the US didn’t stop there.

In 1996, the US passed the Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened the embargo and claimed that (at that point nearly 40 years later) the colonizer-descended families still owned the land that had been redistributed by the Cuban agrarian reforms. Furthermore, if any company in the world was discovered to be using land or resources claimed in Cuba under this act, "trafficking" in property supposedly owned by US citizens (because Cuba is a commodity, not a nation, you see), they would be penalized. This also covers property owned by Cubans who left and became US citizens.

The Helms-Burton Act is still in place, in 2021.

I’m admittedly biased. I’m a US citizen born and raised, but I am anti-imperialist and lean strongly toward socialism. I was able to study abroad in Cuba during a brief window in 2004 when educational programs were permitted to travel to Cuba (directly from Miami, even!).

We traveled the reverse path of the Revolution (Havana to Santiago de Cuba), and studied at the Agrarian University of Havana. At that university, while speaking to students, we noticed one of the buildings was unfinished and had been left to molder. We asked why, and learned that the USSR had been building it, but then the USSR fell and Cuba entered the Special Period, wherein they had to learn how to survive without subsidies from the USSR, with the embargo still in place.

The Special Period was the period of boat people, where people across Cuba were literally starving to death. And the US saw it as just in the name of imperialism, while also trying to gaslight Cuba. Of course, the US picked up the boat people, and there’s even a law that gives any Cuban who steps on US land citizenship. It’s all part of the abuse.

Despite this, Cuba has discovered many life-saving drugs it tends to refuse to patent, preferring to make them available to the world. Cuba has renowned programs to train doctors, and sends doctors world-wide.

TLDR; Cuba is anti-imperialist and the embargo is a 70-ish year-long punishment.

#cuba #embargo

68 notes · View notes

the13colonies · 3 years

Note

Hey why was the 1807 embargo shitty? I'm not as informed as I should be about Jefferson or his presidency (I only just started researching a week or so ago) but it doesn't really seem negative

Jefferson enacted the embargo of 1807 due to the impressment of American sailors from France and Britian, who were fighting a war at the time. Impressment means that they were taking American sailors, turning them into British/French, and imprisoning them into their own armies and forcing them to fight for either France/Britian at the time. They gained a lot of soldiers this way.

The embargo of 1807 essentially ended ALL trade with the rest of the world. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. He did this to stop the impressment of the sailors, which was the upside.

The downsides, in my opinion, were worse.

The first thing to go was the merchants for across sea trade. They were also usually members of the federalist party, which was dying out by the time Jefferson was in office. They couldn't do trade anymore and it hurt them directly.

Jefferson was a big advocate for the "agrarian society," which essentially means that everyone should own a farm, live on the land, and make everything themselves. He hoped that the embargo would encourage this type of society; since the country no longer relied on goods from Britian (mostly), he hoped that the agrarian society could become the norm. However, instead, industrialization picked up instead.

Textile mills were starting to pop up all over New England, because citizens were missing their finished goods from Britian, specifically finished tailored clothes. Textile mills became the new norm of industrialization, and since they demanded cotton to keep them running, the south also ramped up cotton as their main export to the north, causing it to become number one and increasing the slave trade within the states. Jefferson's "agrarian society" was not going to be achieved with the new demand for industrialization and factories in the north.

This embargo also increased crime and smuggling. The merchants had no one to trade with anymore, meaning they resorted to back room deals with the British and French to ship out exports anyway. Jefferson actually used the insurrection act (first implemented during the Burr conspiracy which is a whole other can of worms) to try and stop these smugglers.

TL;DR, the embargo of 1807 though stopped most impressment of sailors ended up increasing crime on a widespread scale, was not logically enforceable, and increased the slave trade in order to produce cotton for industrialization in the north.

#thomas jefferson #embargo of 1807

106 notes · View notes

three-fulm-thaumaturd · 3 years

Text

FFXIV Write Prompt #6: Avatar

So many good possibilities for this prompt, this is just the one of three that I want to work on! Thanks to @krahka for letting me borrow some headcanon; ‘The Reverend’ is their Kleskizhae.

“What have you got?”

Strix looked up from a thick stack of pages in a crudely stitched pasteboard binding. “I’m editing a galley proof for a colleague before it goes to print.”

Raubahn craned his head in over her shoulder to view the text, and she leaned down to cover it like a mantling hawk.

“Trade secret, hmm?”

“When it’s fit to be seen, you’ll be the first to know. We can read it together, if you like.” The general went to war with a mountain of intelligence briefs, personnel files, and sundry memoranda when he wasn’t swinging a sword, and rarely had time or inclination for recreational reading. Instead, Strix read aloud to him to pass the hours during overland travel or in the hazy, lamp-lit few minutes between taking to their cot and being claimed by sleep.

He indicated assent with a low rumble and a warm, stubbly kiss pressed to the curve of her neck.

Reverend Biggus Dickus, High Priest of Menphina and alleged author of the Vitae Duodecimum, had birthed a monster. Apart from a pen-name that was impossible to pronounce without snorting, he handled the very few agreed-upon facts in the diversity of lore on Eorzea’s patrons with the subtlety of a 20-ponze sledge and the reverence of a small child at play with a tin of dry beans. The text had vital, rhythmic, (detractors would say ‘pornographic’) drive, and was stunning to declaim aloud, either from the lyrical beauty of the prose itself or from the likelihood that the reciter would face a hail of improvised missiles in return for a recitation.

The gods’ attributes, their deeds, and their relationships to each other were reshuffled, seemingly at the author’s whim. Their manifestations often appeared in recognizable shape. Some few proponents insisted that the Vitae was a secretly brilliant work of social satire that Eorzeans would come to appreciate with the benefit of time and distance. Others were rather less sanguine. A prior volume had grievously offended Admiral Bloefhyswyn when she and her unerring aim with a musket were “cast” as a caricature of the Spinner of Fate, rather than the Lominsan patroness Llymlaen. In consequence, the latest manuscript had achieved the enviable feat of receiving an embargo before it was even set to print. Strix had taken on the job of suggesting corrections that would not fundamentally change the narrative, but give it a fighting chance to see publication.

Strix was fond of the work in spite of the editorial headache. The sheer surreality of the plot was a welcome change from her own pile of clerical obligations and the bloodless, formulaic declarations of civic piety that dominated official discourse. Most of all, and largely the reason that she saved this work until the dead of night when no one was likely to see her blushing while she wielded her pen, she loved that, in place of the hoary, forbidding longbeard magus, Dickus’s Rhalgr was a battle-scarred swordsman, capable of ferocity when called upon but equally given to gentleness and deliberation. And, while this particular telling preserved his traditional fealty to Nymeia (and managed to skirt some of the less-savory Ala-Mhigan-historical implications of that relationship), this Rhalgr was utterly besotted with a small, sharp Azeyma.

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxivwrite #Strix Athene

6 notes · View notes

bigfrozenfan · 4 years

Text

The future of Frozen - “Some big thoughts...”

Recently I had posted a short idea of mine in a reblog to a post, but since then this thought not let me go and I just have to deepen this further as follows:

Still big spoilers ahead! It's about the fate of Elsa and Anna in the future.

In Frozen II Elsa has found herself and her destiny, was chosen as the fifth Spirit and feels free as never before in her life. She can now unfold the full potential of her magic without hesitation and use it for the well-being of the Northuldra, the Spirits, the balance of nature and for Arendelle. Anna, the new Queen of Arendelle, on the other side of the "bridge" ensures that there will never again be an incident like in the times of her grandfather and that the modern achievements of civilization do not destroy the newly won balance.

A great responsibility is thus placed on the sisters and to anticipate one thing, this is a very good reason that both see each other more often than just for the weekly charade game at Arendelle Castle, especially in the beginning, when everything is still new for Anna as queen. In Frozen II she proved that she can deal with the people of Arendelle and that she is very close to the people and also has leadership qualities (scene with Grand Pabbie after the nightly incidents in Arendelle). As far as the handling of the other royal tasks and the contacts to the dignitaries of the allied countries are concerned, it's a different story and Elsa will have to help her a little. Kristoff, as Prince Consort, most likely would have the most problems in that period and his time as royal ice harvester is over forever.

Frozen II has, as I said elsewhere, opened a new door and let's be honest: Disney has something with "doors" in the Frozen franchise. There's a new potential here for a very grown-up story that I think is worth telling. Many of you don't believe in a third part or simply think it's unnecessary. But there some of you hold on to old values and don't see the new possibilities that are opening up here.

In the beginning both sisters will have a lot to do in their new roles and it will not be easy, especially in terms of unifying both (three) worlds. Magic and civilization, the Northuldra and city dwellers, that will only lead to new conflicts, but Elsa and Anna will find solutions. But there is another problem, because after a while the allies of other countries will wonder what is going on in Arendelle and in the far north of the country. As soon as details come to light it will arouse covetousness, jealousy and desires for this power will be born and first plans will be made to abuse it for profane purposes. A new enemy could one day try to infiltrate the royal house with intrigues, trade embargoes, perhaps even a kidnapping and blackmail.

I know this is no longer a topic for children, but cleverly told it is an exciting story for teenagers and adults alike. Frozen has proven with the sequel that it has grown more mature and can appeal to a new audience. Very successful when you look at the scores after only a few days. If the Oscar is also awarded for parts of the film, then nothing stands in the way of the franchise's continued success. The merchandising is already running at full speed. Like many of you I want Frozen to go on and here on Tumblr we are all adult fans who deserve adult stories about the franchise. As for the kids, there's still a lot for them to tell, in books, in upcoming shorts, or as a series on Disney+.

In my opinion Frozen has too much potential to simply give this chance away. Before a live version of the movie with an already long ago told story comes out, I prefer a full-length movie series like other blockbusters like Marvel, Star Wars or other FSK 16 movies (PG-13/R in USA, PG-15 or higher in other countries). A trilogy would be the minimum and it would definitely sell very well. Disney has proven that they can produce animated films photorealistically and credibly, the technology is there and will continue to evolve. Most of the CG models can be adopted and refined. The growing animation team would certainly like to be able to participate in a true cult in the future. The songs and the score are first class and the ideas for emotionally sung lyrics are guaranteed thanks to the Lopez couple. As far as financing is concerned, it is always a topic and a risk in principle, but due to the new streaming service and what will be earned in the coming years through merchandise and licensing etc., this should also be on safe ground.

Back to my introductory words...

Frozen II came out six years after the first movie and the plot takes place three years after the events in the first part. But that doesn't mean that the plot of a third part takes place in a "similarly short distance".

Just imagine the following situation, some of which has already been taken up in Fanfics. Elsa and Anna have become "old" and Anna now has two sweet children who are eager to learn every little story from the past of the two sisters. One child showed special abilities shortly after birth, which are clearly magical in nature (and I don't mean to say it would be the same as Elsa had them). In the beginning it was a shock for Anna, but Elsa with her experiences in magic and because of what both sisters had to experience in their childhood, both agree that something like this must never happen again and that they would not repeat the "mistakes" of their parents. It is clear to both of them, that Ahtohallan and the Spirits have chosen Anna's child to succeed Elsa as their fifth Spirit and that it is a gift for Anna's deeds in liberating the Enchanted Forest. Elsa can convince the Spirits that it is in their own interest that it is neccessary that she spend more time in Arendelle for the child's instruction, so that later the transfer of the role as Fifth Spirit will go smoothly when she herself once becomes too old for the task.

What happens in the course of this story and how it goes together with the idea described above would still have to be worked out. However, several things are certain: the sisters would have been reunited in Arendelle and would have an exciting new task, namely the education of two children, one of whom is gifted with magic. The "bridge" and the connection to Ahtohallan and the Northuldra could be further deepened, including the elaboration of the new characters from Frozen II. The third storyline would then be a threat situation from outside the country, maybe a threat for one of the children. Both, technological topics of this time, as well as political or social topics could be taken up and processed. It would certainly not become boring.

I'm already thinking whether I should pass this on to the WDAS team, as it might be helpful for their ideas drawer. The only problem with this story would be that Disney wouldn't take it seriously enough and mess up the plot.

What do you think about my thoughts? I'd like to talk about it.

But what would also be great would be, if fanfic would develop from it, or new fanart. As long as it goes on...

#frozen #frozen2 #frozen3 #idea for a new plot for a sequel to the sequel #thoughts #reblog #fandom #frozen 2 spoilers #answers appreciated

51 notes · View notes

nabulos · 4 years

Text

Ramadan on Cybertron

(Lifted from my Twitter)

I think I've just figured out a way to put Ramadan in Transformers?? So get this, imagine early in the war, Autobots are just a fragment of the population and particular to wherever Optimus' team is (let's say Iacon). Their beliefs of Freedom don't quite jive with others.

Freedom being the Right of All Sentient Beings, as it were, might not be such a good look for Functionist or other oppressive systems (like Decepticon's Might Makes Right belief). So when other nations or other such groups find out about this war-tiding group, they’re not about it

So they decide to embargo the Autobots, wholesale. After-all, they bring war. "Anyone calling themselves an Autobot is barred from trade." Thus they rely on rations they can salvage or barter from less strict or more understanding peoples.

This, unfortunately, goes on for months. With their supplies low, Optimus is forced to make a difficult choice: restrict intake until they can do something about the growing list of groups embargoing them. It's tough, but Autobots have faced oppression before. They'll make it.

Well, that's what they'd hope, but it gets tough after a while. Being harassed is one thing, but being starved is another. Some of them start wondering if it's worth being an Autobot after-all. What if they just say they aren't? Register as something else until it gets better?

Morale is low and it gets tough. Elita counsels Optimus and is on the side of lying so they can at least get some rations. "It'll be temporary and it's much needed." But Optimus, the philosopher that he is, rejects the idea, softly. "If we let this crack us, we will be broken."

So the forced fasting becomes an opportunity to show others what Autobot belief is about. Helping others, enabling freedom, and being honest. Optimus rallies everyone and builds their hope up. "We're all in this together" kind of stuff. And it works, just enough.

Eventually they're able to negotiate, they're able to show the others they are peaceful and are simply defending themselves, and the embargoes are lifted. The celebration is marked with a large feast and much much joy. Their first Eid.

So from then on, Autobots partake in a voluntary fast in observance of that time in which their faith in their fight was truly tested, using it as an opportunity to reflect on why they are Autobots and how to grow into better people.

#maccadam #transformers #ramadan #cybertron #I'll actually throw this into my #FictionalMuslims #tag #talkin bout bots

7 notes · View notes

fakenigel · 6 years

Text

The Domestic Cold War and Reagan’s California (1967-1975)

It got by George Washington

The ideas of justice, liberty, and equality

. . .

Ronald Reagan, it got by him

Hollyweird

Acted like a actor

Acted like a liberal

Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California

Now he acts like somebody might vote for him for president

-Gil Scott-Heron, “Bicentennial Blues,” The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (1975)

Reagan’s California

Ronald Reagan is associated with many of the most fundamental changes that have taken place in American politics over the last five decades. The “Reagan Revolution” (along with Thatcherism, the UK’s counterpart) is often seen as being responsible for the neoliberal turn that American politics and economics have taken since the 1980s. Reagan ushered in anti-union and pro-business policies that fall under the banner of supply-side economics, or more euphemistically, “trickle-down economics.” Reagan also did his part to revolutionize the American security state. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan administration officials were caught selling arms to Iran (who was under an arms embargo) in order to fund the Nicaraguan anti-communist Contra fighting forces, went a long way in institutionalizing the use of private military contractors and defense companies.[1] Reagan accomplished all of this as the president of the United States, an office he held from 1981 to 1989.

A less examined portion of Reagan’s political career, but one in which he and his political associates also affected extensive political change, is his tenure as the governor of California. Reagan served two consecutive terms as the governor of California, from 1967 until 1975. The Watts riots in Los Angeles occurred two years prior to his first term in 1965. Thus, as a Republican, law-and-order governor, Reagan presided over some of the most tumultuous moments of California and the United States’ history. These include, but are not limited to:

1967 - Summer of Love; thousands of youths migrate from around the United States to California’s Bay Area to be a part of a burgeoning counterculture movement

June 6, 1968 - Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; occurs roughly five years after his brother’s, John F. Kennedy’s assignation, three years after the assassination of Malcolm X, and just over two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 17, 1969 – Black Panther shootout with rival United Slaves (US) organization; shootout left two Panthers (Bunchy Carter and John Huggins) dead, US and their leader Ron Karenga believed to possibly be opportunistically working with state and federal security apparatus to neutralize the Black Panther Party.

August 9, 1969 – Manson Family murders Sharon Tate and four others; Charles Manson and his white youth followers lead to association of the psychedelic, hippie and drug counterculture with violence.

December 9, 1969 – LAPD instigates an early morning shootout by initiating a surprise raid on the Los Angeles Black Panther Party headquarters; raid comes only 5 days after Fred Hampton was assassinated in Chicago by a similar early morning unannounced “raid”; Panthers survive shootout by shooting back and holding their ground until media and the public arrive to scene.

August 7, 1970 – Jonathan P. Jackson killed in attempt to kidnap and take hostages from a Marin County, California courtroom, which he planned to trade for the release of his brother and their transportation to a county supportive of the Black Panther Party;

August 21, 1971 – George Jackson, probably the most well-known face of California’s revolutionary prisoner movement, is killed by guards in San Quentin prison during an alleged escape attempt; controversy exists over the facts surrounding the escape attempt, particularly how he supposedly smuggled in a pistol without the guards seeing, as well as the circumstances of the guard’s gunshots that took his life.

December 16, 1971 – California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA) in conjunction with Attorney General Evelle Younger’s office attempt to frame Soledad psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Rundle (a self-ascribed “New Republic liberal”[2]) for two killings of Soledad guards after he publicly advocated for prison reform, especially for prisoners in need of mental health treatment; conspiracy is discovered because the prisoner (Tony Pewitt) who was used by the state to frame Rundle refused to go through with the plan and alerted him, at which point Rundle contacted private detectives and media.

1973-1975 – Rise and demise of the Symbionese Liberation Army; a Maoist group led by an escaped black convict, Donald DeFreeze, and comprised of majority white student radicals goes on a highly publicized string of violent acts in the name revolution, including the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, the college-aged heir to the Hearst family fortune.

This small list of political violence during Reagan’s governorship is by no means exhaustive, but it does comprise many of the better known incidents. One trend that is clear is that as time went on, the radical left became associated with greater amounts of violence, both as the supposed aggressors and as recipients of state violence. All of this contributed to the sentiment that many participants in the 1960s and 1970s radical left today hold themselves, that America’s radical left was predisposed toward counterproductive and self-destructive violence. This violence soured the view of the radical left in the eyes of the general American public and led to defeat of the movement. The trend of increasing violence applies to all sects of the radical left—the black power movement, the youth student movement, hippies, Maoists, radical prisoners, and even “defectors” from wealthy families who ended up involved in radical left activities (like Patricia Hearst). The combined effect of all of this violence was the delegitimation and sundering of radical left politics.

Charles Manson was associated with the hippie youth counterculture.[3] His crimes marked a shift from the initial, positive, psychedelic Summer of Love to the mood after the Manson murders and into the 1970s which was much darker. By the time Manson was arrested, the psychedelic positivity associated with LSD in the late 1960s had been replaced by a heroin and amphetamine fueled paranoia and pessimism. In the case of the Black Panther Party, it is more evident that authorities were attempting to eliminate the organization and that instigating violence against the Panthers (such as the LAPD shootout) was a method toward this end.

The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) came along in the mid-1970s and seemed to synthesize these separate currents into one organization. The SLA was a self-described Maoist insurgency group headed by a black escaped prisoner (Donald DeFreeze) and composed of radical students from multiple ethnic backgrounds (but primarily middle class whites). The group kidnapped Patricia Heart and forced her to commit crimes with the organization, such as bank robbery and car theft. The SLA provided the final proof to the public that the radical left had devolved into something unnecessarily violent, shortsighted, and counterproductive. These are ideal circumstances for a conservative law and order governor to prosper. And prosper Reagan did. Reagan won two elections and chose not to run for a third term before eventually becoming the country’s president in 1980.

Amidst this period of sustained political violence and turmoil Governor Reagan greatly increased the power of domestic police and intelligence in the state of California. To be more specific, it appears that Reagan (with assistance from Richard Nixon’s presidential administration) ran a counterinsurgency program designed to neutralize and delegitimation the radical left opposition throughout the state. The term counterinsurgency, a term primarily associated America’s foreign military operations, is important here. While domestic police are, in theory, not supposed to care about private citizens’ political beliefs, military counterinsurgency doctrines are precisely concerned with the political beliefs of their targets. In fact, in a counterinsurgency warfare, elimination of an ideology may be seen as more important and vital than elimination of particular individuals and leaders.

This reality is ignored because of an American exceptionalist attitude and bias that tends to whitewash the nature of domestic intelligence practices and operations. This whitewashed view says the government security apparatus (from the federal agencies to local police) operates by different rules domestically than it does internationally. One way this manifests itself is in the idea that anyone who is victimized or killed by the domestic security apparatus deserved such treatment on some level, even if the public still widely condemns the action. It is understood that in modern warfare, beginning primarily with Vietnam, the United States and its allies assassinate important enemy officials outside of direct engagement and that these assassinations are carried out to hamper the enemy’s effectiveness (a macro consideration)—not in response to particular actions carried out by the individuals (a micro consideration). For example, the 2008 joint Israeli and U.S. car bomb assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, known to be a particularly intelligent and effective military tactician, did not come in the course of combat, it was carried out clandestinely away from an active battlefield. The assassination received condemnation from some Western allies,[4] but the methodology was clear. Mughniyah was killed for simply being a highly skilled leader for the enemy. In the academic literature on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, such tactics are vividly referred to as attempts at “leadership decapitation.” There is hesitation from domestic observers within the United States to ascribe such simple and undemocratic motivations for the repression (via assassination and incarceration) that the Black Panther Party and others faced, but the facts of the situation suggest that the Panthers faced a concerted leadership decapitation effort from the United States government, and much of this was executed by and through Reagan’s gubernatorial administration.

I argue that the sustained counterinsurgency operations against California’s radical leftists in the 1960s and 1970s have more in common with the American intelligence community’s counterinsurgency efforts overseas in theaters like Italy, Latin America, and Indochina (where the Vietnam War was raging) than they have in common with more sanitized narratives that take the purported actions and statements of groups like the SLA at face value. Historical investigation has shown that the Western powers, as well as lesser powers like the authoritarian Latin American regimes of the era, operated under the same general counterinsurgency doctrine. This doctrine was developed by a myriad of anti-communist hardliners from a variety of countries, but British, French, American, and former-Nazi intelligence and military personnel seem to have been key in the intellectual development of the doctrine. Declassified documents and information gathered from governmental and non-governmental investigations have revealed that a key element of this doctrine was that Western intelligence operatives ought to implicate communists (and the wider radical left) in terrorism and indiscriminate violence. The function of this violence would be to strengthen the existing status quo by discrediting the left and driving a scared and disoriented public into the arms of the state and its security apparatus. The existence of such activities in the so-called Second and Third Worlds are well established (Operation CONDOR in Latin America and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and Indochina), but irrefutable evidence of similar tactics was discovered by Italian parliamentary investigators in the early 1990s. Italian investigators concluded that neo-fascist elements of the Italian state and security apparatus committed terrorist attacks in the 1960s through 1980s that were wrongly attributed to anarchists and communists, as well as clandestinely encouraging other terrorist attacks and forms of political violence.

There is an immense value to this type of inquiry. There is an obvious and inherent value in gaining a deeper understanding of how modern states (and private organizations) engage in repression and stamp out dissent. This ought to interest anyone with even a passing interest in radical, left, or anti-capitalist politics. Further, these tactics were deployed against non-revolutionary liberal reformists, not just radical leftists. Thus, this research should give anyone who is interested in genuine democracy, representative or otherwise, serious pause. This research also challenges existing narratives of the decline of the American radical left. By challenging the basis of California’s political violence of the 1960s and 1970s and suggesting that the state played a more prominent role in committing and encouraging violence than is commonly understood, one challenges the narrative that the radical left caused its own downfall by sliding toward violence. Such an investigation into American political violence of the 1960s and 1970s is overdue. I hope to spur such an investigation and conversation.

The American security apparatus invests in public relations perpetuate the myth that organizations like the FBI and CIA operate within the confines of the law domestically. Juan Bosch, the democratically-elected president of the Dominican Republic who was deposed in a coup orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson’s administration, argued that America had developed a government with power and decision-making bifurcated along domestic and international lines.[5] Bosch argued that the Pentagon (he uses the term as a catch-all for the American security establishment), what he saw as the ultimate power in the United States, had accepted to stay out of domestic affairs as long as it was given absolute supremacy in international affairs. But incidents like the Watts riot (and the other urban ghetto uprisings), as well as growing radicalism in America’s middle class white youth, led the American security establishment to conceive external and internal “insurgency” as one and the same. Churchill quotes Lawrence from The New State Repression (1985) concerning this conceptual shift in security and intelligence:

[I]nsurgency [was no longer viewed as] an occasional erratic idiosyncrasy of people who are oppressed and exploited, but a constant occurrence—permanent insurgency, which calls for a strategy that doesn’t simply rely on a police force and a national guard and an army that can be called out in an emergency, but rather a strategy of permanent repression as the full-time task of security forces.[6]

Churchill presents the quote from Lawrence in the context of domestic politics, but this shift in counterinsurgency strategy was taking place globally, in part because the United States (after World War II) was in a position of power and coordination over the rest of the world’s capitalist countries and their security agencies. The shift was simply that insurgency was no longer viewed as an episodic threat. The threat of insurgency, specifically communist, was constant, and thus required constantly active repressive forces to combat it. Reagan takes control of California amidst conceptual shift. The individuals that Reagan goes on to appoint to various position within California’s security apparatus reflect this conceptual shift as well as its international scope. California’s security apparatus under Reagan employed many international Cold Warriors. They brought their counterinsurgency expertise from theaters of “hot” war back home; not enough attention has been paid to how this expertise was deployed domestically. If there is an “American exceptionalist” conception of domestic policing, then these activities would be precisely the type that would be missing from, or obscured within, the mainstream historical record and popular consciousness. These are a few of the Cold Warriors and intelligence veterans that worked in California within Reagan’s administration:

Evelle Younger. Younger served as California’s Attorney General from 1971 until 1979. He began his career as a promising young FBI Special Agent under J. Edgar Hoover. He joined the precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), at the age of 24. Prior to his appointment to the position of California’s Attorney General, Younger was Los Angeles’s District Attorney and presided over the prosecution of Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Younger was directly involved in the establishment and operation of governmental programs like the California Organized Crime and Intelligence Branch (OCCIB) as well as LAPD’s notorious Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS).

Louis Giuffrida. Giuffrida was chosen by Reagan to head the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), a program established by Reagan during his final gubernatorial term to develop and disseminate

effective methods of neutralizing California’s then-vibrant radical left and to ‘train police forces from all across the U.S. and from many other countries in counterinsurgency . . . tasks that could not, at that time, be conducted at FBI headquarters or the International Police Academy, or other federal police training institutions.’[7]

Giuffrida had been an army counterintelligence officer, and according to Churchill, had long been “associated with organizations on the extreme right.”[8] For a thesis he wrote while attending the US Army War College, Guiffrida discussed and planned for “the establishment of concentration camps to imprison potentially millions of black Americans in the event of a revolutionary uprising in the United States.”[9]

William Hermann. Herrmann is a mysterious figure. He served as the primary counterintelligence advisor for Reagan while he was governor, but he held a multitude of positions over his shadowy career. According to Schreiber, Hermann also worked for the System Development Corporation, the Stanford Research Institute, the Rand Corporation, and the Hoover Center on violence.[10] Hermann also worked with another Reagan confidante, Dr. Earl Brian (Reagan’s Secretary of Health), at the controversial Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, a behavior modification program hosted at UCLA.[11] Hermann was publicly opposed to the kinds of social protest that were taking place within California’s black and youth populations at the time.[12]

Dr. Earl Brian. Brian was Reagan’s Secretary of Health. Brian was a proponent of behavior modification (what Schreiber suggests is a euphemism for mind control which was something of an obsession for intelligence agencies during the 1960s) in the pursuit of crime prevention.[13] Under Reagan’s securitized California, open advocates for racial and economic equality were essentially criminals, not to mention the actual radical prison reform movement that was taking place.

Colton Westbrook. Westbrook is unique. Unlike the other characters listed previously, Westbrook did not have a personal relationship with Reagan. He was also black. But Westbrook is important because of his background and role that he played within California’s security and intelligence apparatus. Westbrook appears to have been the undercover handler of Donald DeFreeze prior to his escape from formation of the Symbionese Liberation Army and escape from prison. This occurred while Westbrook was creating and running the Black Cultural Association (BCA) at Vacaville Medical Facility. Schreiber describes the BCA as

ostensibly an education program designed to instill black pride in Vacaville inmates. In reality, it became a cover for an experimental project to explore the extent to which unstable or susceptible prisoners could be controlled for the purpose of infiltration of Bay Area radical groups.[14]

Westbrook is alleged to have been a CIA agent, though he denied this charge. Other aspects of Westbrook’s known employment history suggest that he was employed with the CIA in some fashion. From 1967 to 1969, Westbrook was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Police Special Branch. Westbrook’s cover was that he was working for the Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E), a known CIA front corporation. Westbrook’s time in South Vietnamese overlaps with the time period when the Phoenix Program was active. The Phoenix Program was a Vietnam War-era clandestine American counterinsurgency, assassination, and psy-ops program designed to weaken the Vietcong through methods like assassination. If overseas methods of counterinsurgency were transmuted back to the domestic front, then individuals like Westbrook would have been the personnel capable of completing such a transportation.

A fair rebuttal to concern over the presence of foreign intelligence operatives finding employment in Reagan’s administration is that domestic law enforcement is a perfectly logical career for any veteran of the armed services. If one looked at the demographics of individuals in high ranking domestic law enforcement officials across the country during this era, one would find many veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. But Schreiber poignantly describes the likelihood of someone like Colston Westbrook ending up as the head of the Black Cultural Association:

Of all the “outside guest coordinators” that could have been chosen for the Black Cultural Association, such as people with experience in social work, criminal justice, or organizations advocating prisoner rights, Vacaville wound up with Colston Westbrook, undercover liaison for the CIA during the Phoenix Program. And he was handpicked by former psy-ops officer William Herrmann, then advising Governor Ronald Reagan on counterintelligence. And it happened at the height of the black prisoner reform movement, right after the CIA’s Operation CHAOS provided funds to Vacaville, which was an ongoing MKULTRA and MKSEARCH site for experimentation on prisoners.[15]

Several of these individuals continued working with Reagan during his time as POTUS, indicating that these were actual relationships, and not disinterested political appointments. In 1981 Reagan appointed Guiffrida to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Brian and Hermann were both also given positions in Reagan’s White House administration, but both would end up marred by scandal.[16] Given these individuals roles in America’s foreign military and intelligence apparatus, and given Lawrence’s suggestion that insurgency went from being conceived of as an episodic problem to a constant threat during this time, the presence of such counterinsurgency experts in close proximity to one of the “ground zeroes” of America’s radical left and left counterculture is striking. Clearly Reagan’s gubernatorial administration prioritized the black power movement (generally represented by the Black Panther Party) and largely white, student, youth radical movement (personified by Students for a Democratic Society and the hippies) as threats to state and national “public order.” The backgrounds, skills, and expertise of individuals who held security and intelligence positions during Reagan’s tenure reflect this prioritization.

Belew discusses the way that many right-wing, anti-communist paramilitary organizations during this time were populated with Vietnam veterans who wanted to continue the anti-communist effort at home in the United States.[17] If Belew’s convincing analysis is correct, then it is reasonable to suspect that law enforcement may have been seen by some superpatriotic veterans as a way to continue the war against communist subversion at home. While civilians tend to see a clear distinction between the purpose of (and tactics utilized by) domestic police and the military when its engaged in conflict overseas, the domestic law enforcement personnel with overseas military and intelligence anti-communist backgrounds may have seen their purpose as a continuation of their overseas efforts, just with a different set of constraints and rules of engagement, rather than as a distinctly different activity.

[1] Erik Prince, perhaps America’s (and the world’s) best known private warrior, learned much of what he knows from Oliver North, the Reagan official who supposedly masterminded the Iran-Contra strategy.

[2] Don Jelinek, “The Soledad Frame-Up,” The San Francisco Bay Guardian, June 22, 1972, 4.

[3] Despite Charles Manson espousing racist beliefs and the notion that he hoped to start a race war with his murders, Manson and his crimes were associated with the white youth counterculture.

[4] Meron Rapoport, “Italian FM Says Mughniyah Killing in Damascus Was Act of ‘Terror,’” Haaretz, February 22, 2008, https://www.haaretz.com/1.4994953.

[5] Juan Bosch and Helen Lane, Pentagonism: A Substitue for Imperialism (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1968), 51.

[6] Ward Churchill, “The Security Industrial Complex,” in The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 47.

[7] Churchill, 48.

[8] Churchill, 48.

[9] Matthew Cunningham-Cook, “Contingency Plans,” Jacobin, Spring 2018, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/contingency-plans.

[10] Brad Schreiber, Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

[11] Schreiber

[12] Schreiber

[13] Schreiber

[14] Schreiber

[15] Schreiber

[16] “Eventually, both Brian and Herrmann worked with Reagan when he became president. In a highly complex and internecine case, Brian was accused by former Attorney General Elliot Richardson of stealing software from a company called Inslaw. Brian was also an alleged accomplice in the Reagan attempt to undercut President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free Americans kidnapped by Iran. Brian was never indicted on either charge. Herrmann, who was later affiliated with the CIA and FBI, also participated in the aforementioned Iran arms-for-hostages deal, the “October Surprise,” on behalf of Reagan.” (Schreiber)

[17] Kathleen Belew, “Theaters of War: Mercenaries, Paramilitarism, and the Racist Right from Vietnam to Oklahoma City” (Yale University, 2011), 13.

#hopefully this is how my dissertation starts

8 notes · View notes

gravitascivics · 3 years

Text

GOOD FEELINGS TURN SOUR

As the story goes, the War of 1812 began as mostly a reaction to Great Britain’s restrictions to American trade and the young nation’s ambition to expand westward. In the way of this last aim was British colonial lands. In the last posting, it was described as a short war, if any war can be short. It lasted from June 1812 to February 1815. And its conclusion led to a relatively unified time in the US, the Era of Good Feelings. But one cannot say it was completely unified. One region, New England, was not too happy with the war.

So upset were New Englanders that representatives of the five states (Maine was not yet a state) met in secret at was called the Harford Convention. On the agenda was the following:

· concerns over the three-fifth compromise – the provision in the Constitution that allowed the southern states to count slaves as three-fifth a person for determining the South’s representation in Congress,

· the requirement to have a two-thirds vote of agreement to admit new states, declarations of war, and establishing trade restrictions (seen as weakening the central government),

· the Louisiana Purchase, and

· the Embargo of 1807

While generally the Federalist Party favored a strong central government, in terms of these issues, the Federalist attendants at the conference felt Washington was exerting too much power. Ironically, that power was inordinately in the hands of the South, a region that supported strong state government. But then fate played a nasty turn on these delegates.

Down in New Orleans, Andrew Jackson captured the imagination of his countrymen/women with a decisive victory over the British and the fact the peace treaty ending the war had already been signed did not diminish the battle’s romantic hold. This reaction was so strong that it led to discrediting what the Federalist dissent and helped mightily to end that political party – or so the story goes although that simple assertion is questioned as being an exaggeration.

For the purposes here, though, the end of the Federalist Party is the relevant fact. And one can dig a bit closer to what was going on with these malcontents in New England. They were so upset over their concerns that talk of succession was common among them. When word of such talk got out, one can say that with the peace treaty all that successional sentiment was judged unpatriotic and even seen as traitorous. After all, in terms of the war, it gave Americans its national anthem and that cannot, by association, hold the war too negatively.

If nothing else, the war gave Americans the sense that they could successfully fend off any attack from Europe. That fact put the fact that Americans did not accomplish any of the aims they sought in fighting the war, as not even being relevant. In addition, it gave them two heroes, Jackson and William Henry Harrison, the former would establish the Democratic Party (more or less an outgrowth of the Democratic-Republican Party), and the latter helped establish the Whig Party.

The Whig Party would become the second major party. Its viability extended from the 1830s to the 1850s. And its initial impetus was an opposition to Andrew Jackson. It drew its members from the National Republican Party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and Democrats that did not follow the general’s politics (some being former Federalists who fell into the Democratic Party as being the only viable party during the years following the War of 1812).

What finally set them off was during Jackson’s Administration and its policies – anti-national bank and low protective tariffs (tariffs protecting domestic manufacturers that were just getting started and the importation of cheaper goods). The election that convinced them the Whigs had to nationally unite occurred in 1836 when four of their candidates earned electoral votes but could not deprive Jackson’s vice-president, Martin Van Buren, his victory.

Since Van Buren was Jackson’s picked successor, his term was seen as Jackson’s third term. In 1840, the Whigs united under the candidacy of William Henry Harrison and defeated Van Buren’s attempt at a second term. But fate would then play its part in steering the new party in a bazaar fashion.

First, due to the longest inaugural address in history given in inclement weather, the aged Harrison became ill and died one month into his term. His vice president, John Tyler took office and shortly found himself at odds with the other prominent Whigs in Congress. That would be Henry Clay among other Whig leaders and their point of contention was over the reestablishment of a national bank.

Jackson had terminated the first national bank, 1791-1811, that Alexander Hamilton initiated during the Washington Administration. The contingency of Whigs led by Clay wanted to reestablish such a bank and were able to pass through Congress various attempts to do so. Tyler opposed such efforts.

This proposed bank provision reflected not a dual sense of federalism, but a cooperative sense. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, a present-day federal government entity funded by federal dollars, makes a distinction in one of its publications.[1] That is the difference between a dual vision of federalism and a cooperative vision one can detect in American history.

The dual vision holds to a federal model in which each level of government – the central government and the state government – mostly operate in different areas of governance, each respecting the other in its realm. Of course, local areas of concern would be the province of the state and national areas of concern would be the province of the central government. Cooperative vision sees both levels overlapping and cooperating among the various realms from local to national.

Using this distinction, Tyler had a dual vision and Clay, in terms of banking, had a cooperative vision. Everyone agrees that up until the New Deal in the 1930s, a dual vision prevailed, and since then, the cooperative vision has over-taken the American approach to federalism.

This account’s concern over this history can look at this structural debate as telling. Both antagonists, along with Harrison, were originally Virginians (although Clay represented Kentucky) and both were previously either Democrats or Democratic-Republicans. The split between Tyler and Clay started with the Nullification Crisis, 1832-1833, that spurred from an antagonism toward a national bank proposal and South Carolina’s reaction to it.

There, in opposition to a national bank, their legislature passed an Ordinance of Nullification, 1832, stating that a state had the right to nullify federal law within its borders. Tyler sided with the nullifiers, Clay did not. President Jackson, by the way, opposed this notion and threatened hangings for those who attempted to implement the policy. Again, this debate reflected, to a highly antagonistic level, the difference between the dual view, the pro-nullification position, and the cooperative view, the anti-nullification position.

President Tyler took on a strict interpreter’s posture of the Constitution – what is called a strict constructionist – and he felt the bank, especially as it was to be structured, offended the federal character of the Constitution. He especially objected to the law’s provision for the bank to have branches in several states.

As President, therefore, Tyler’s vetoes of Clay’s bank bills and Clay’s obvious support of them were in line with their respective positions and either began or heightened the tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War. Most of the rhetoric that heated up the divisions within the US was mostly targeted over this contention of states’ rights to govern their affairs. It wasn’t until the Civil War began that the verbal barbs identified slavery as the main point of contention.

But this account’s review of this national divide is still at the initiating stages. And the next posting will further describe the role the Whig Party played. This posting ends with Tyler and Clay at odds and Clay setting himself to displace Tyler as the Whig candidate in 1844. This will prove to be unhelpful in establishing the young party on solid ground.

[1] The Federal Role in the Federal System: The Dynamics of Growth (Washington, DC: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1981).

#War of 1812 #Andrew Jackson #William Henry Harrison #John Tyler #Henry Clay #Nullification Crisis #Whig Party #Democratic Party #strict constructionism #civics education #social studies

1 note · View note

xtruss · 3 years

Text

Global Opinions

Opinion: God’s Fucked-up People’s Zionism Cannot Produce a Just Peace. Only External Pressure Can End the United States’ Illegitimate Child’s (Isra-helli) Apartheid.

A man wearing a kippah attends a rally themed "solidarity with Israel and against antisemitism" in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Thursday. (Filip Singer/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

— Opinion by Raphael Mimoun | May 20, 2021 | The Washington Post

Raphael Mimoun was born in Bordeaux, France, and lived and studied in Israel. He is based in Los Angeles and works with human rights defenders around the world.

I grew up in a Zionist household, spent 12 years in a Zionist youth movement, lived for four years in Israel, and have friends and family who served in the Israeli Defense Forces. When that is your world, it’s hard to see apartheid as it’s happening in front of you.

I grew up in France, in a Jewish community where unconditional love and support for Israel were the norm. The term Zionism, the movement for the establishment and support of a Jewish state in present-day Palestine, wasn’t even used because that’s all we knew. Jews had been nearly wiped out by pogroms and repeated holocausts, and a Jewish state was the only way to keep us safe. Antisemitism wasn’t just a fact of history; we all experienced it in our daily lives.

Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It’s about survival and love for the Jewish people. But like any other ethnic nationalism, Zionism establishes a hierarchy: It’s about prioritizing our safety and well-being, even at the expense of others. It relies on an alternate historical narrative that justifies the occupation and rationalizes the status quo. And it cannot produce a just peace on its own.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is, by every definition, apartheid: two legal systems for two ethnic groups. If a Jew and an Arab commit the exact same crime in the West Bank, the Jew will face a civil court; the Arab, a military court. But most Israelis can’t fathom this as unjust. They fight the term “apartheid” because they genuinely believe that the discrimination is legitimate and a matter of self-defense.

My Jewish community was fed a historical narrative divorced from reality: That Palestine was a largely uninhabited piece of desert before we settled it. That during what we call Israel’s War of Independence, Palestinians were not expelled by Jewish militias but instead willingly left their homes to make room for Arab armies to “push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive.” That Arab leaders were never interested in compromising, turning down peace offers from Israel and the United States one after the other. The list goes on.

Those assertions have long been debunked — for example, by a former Israeli prime minister recounting his role in expelling Palestinians during the 1948 war, and by historians showing that most of the land in Palestine was cultivated by Arab farmers before Zionist migration. But when your entire world buys into that narrative — friends and family, the media you consume, the organizations you join and, if you grow up in Israel, your educational system — that is your reality. It’s a false one, disconnected from historical facts, but it is yours.

Compounding this alternate reality are more than a hundred years of conflict that have dehumanized Palestinians in the eyes of Israeli Jews. When the IDF bombs Gaza and kills large numbers of civilians, including children, Israelis think that Palestinians should blame themselves: because they didn’t accept past peace offers, because they tolerate armed groups in their midst, because they “teach their children to hate Jews.” We tell ourselves that at the end of the day, Israel is merely defending itself and that there is simply no alternative.

The same thought process justifies the Gaza blockade, the military checkpoints in the West Bank, the separation wall and the bulldozing of homes in Palestinian communities. Palestinians’ pain is either fake or self-inflicted; it is not as real as ours.

Of course, some Israelis reject these narratives and actively campaign for Palestinian liberation. But those make up a minority. The average Israeli doesn’t contend with what it means to live out an occupation on a daily basis: having to submit to foreign troops at checkpoints, requiring a permit for any and all matters from a government that doesn’t represent you, knowing that soldiers can invade your home or seize your property with no accountability.

The only thing that can bring about Palestinian liberation is if the cost of the occupation begins to outweigh its benefits to Israel. That would require, as it did for other apartheids and occupations, massive external pressure. In South Africa, international sanctions, an arms embargo and a global boycott forced the collapse of the racist regime. The brutal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia was ended by a global solidarity movement and international pressure. In the American South, it was legislation and Supreme Court decisions that imposed equal rights and ended the racial segregation of Jim Crow.

In all those cases, the dominant group was so entrenched in its own historical narrative and so disconnected from the humanity of their “enemies” that only outside coercion could move them to a just solution. This is true of Israel as well.

To end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that coercion could take the form of consumer boycott of Israeli goods, corporate boycotts of Israeli technology, and sanctions by Israel’s main trade partners and political supporters, the United States and the European Union.

An apartheid state will not willingly change itself. Outside measures are the only ones that can meaningfully push Israel toward ending the occupation.

Rafael Mimoun!

0 notes

perfectirishgifts · 3 years

Text

Disasters And Investing

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/disasters-and-investing/

Disasters And Investing

What financial history can tell us about the Post-Covid era

Hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, large-scale fires, pandemics and environmental catastrophes – There is no place and no one in the world that hasn’t been affected by at least one of these natural disasters. Acts of Mother Nature have shaped civilizations past or present. In fact, pandemics have been credited as a key factor in the decline of the Roman Empire.

In the case of global epidemics, there have always been concerns a super bug outbreak (like Covid-19). In June 2006, Forbes had a front-page article titled “Killer Germs – Scary Superbugs Kill 100,000 People a Year.”

How did investors react to these tragedies?

Listed below are 11 major natural disasters in the US history which led to the destruction of 3 major cities and the deaths of thousands of people.

Disaster Table

While the financial market reactions to these destructive disasters vary. The common pattern is a knee jerk correction not exceeding (3.4%) in the stock market over the following week, followed by annual advances in both equities and real estate. In fact, stocks and home prices combined have advanced 3.7% within one-year of these acts of Mother Nature. Bond yields posted moderate increases.

Deadly pandemics and the environmental nightmare of the 3-year “Dust Bowl” didn’t faze investors with investment prices advancing 44% on average throughout these events with single digit increases in interest rates.

As we close the books on 2020, Wall Street is optimistic that we will have the same market advances as the past epidemics of 1918 and 1957.

Although I hope we have another “roaring 20’s”, I’m not so sure.

Investors would be wise to take a hard look at the 1970’s poor economic backdrop as an investment guide for the next five years.

Today’s Covid world vs. the 1970’s

As the old saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat, it just rhymes”. I think this holds true for any comparison to the financial world after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, but the similarities to today’s situation are easy to spot:

1. Unexpectant Economic Jolt Coming After a Strong Stock Market Run.

· When the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced in October 1973 that they would no longer supply oil to nations who militarily support Israel, global crude oil prices quadrupled immediately, and stocks fell over 20% in 6 weeks.

· Last March, as the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak shocked the world, stocks corrected 33% and mainly rebounded after a massive stimulus package from the Federal Reserve.

1973 DJIA

DJIA 2020

2. Falling US Currency & Increased Consumer Prices

· The jump in oil prices ushered in a bear market in the US dollar and a dramatic increase in inflation that took nearly a decade to defeat with tightened liquidity and 22% interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.

· Today, the U.S. dollar index has hit a multi-year low and the price of many commodities used by business and consumers alike are increasing rapidly.

1973 US dollar Index

2020 US Dollar Index

3. Large Government Debt After Expensive Multi-Year Wars

· The eight-year Vietnam War costs $844 billion (in 2019 dollars) ended in 1972.

· The 20-year War on Terror fought in Afghanistan and Iraq cost has costs $2.4 trillion.

4. High Taxes on Investment Profits

· During the 1970’s the highest capital gains tax was 40%

· President-Elect Biden wants to increase the capital gains tax on high income earners to 40%.

5. Mis-guided Government Polices

· In the 1970’s the government instituted wage and price controls and the rationing of gasoline

· Today, we are debating the effectiveness of the trillions in economic assistance frantically given out to businesses and individuals.

Investment Strategies Might Need to be Revised by Adding Commodities

With its subpar investment results, the 1970’s was not looked upon fondly by buy & hold stock investors as the market traded sideways for years or coupon clipping long bond holders as interest rates dramatically went up during this inflationary time.

The clear financial winner in the 1970’s was commodity trading with the CRB index climbing 111% from 1973 – 1979.

70’s DJIA Chart

70’s CRB Index

As we finish this crazy year, I think the best investment advice is, “Hope for the Best but Plan for the Worst”. Changes in investment strategies might be needed to be profitable in the Post-Covid world.

More from Investing in Perfectirishgifts

0 notes

theothermovember · 3 years

Photo

His face is mostly unknown, his business destroys lives all around the world. Jaroslav Strnad is a billionaire who is making fortune by selling guns to dictators and totalitarian regimes. Arms from Czech Republic kill in Syria, Azerbaijan, Belarus or Saudi Arabia. They are exported, with government approval, to countries where approach to human rights is questionable but where no ban has been imposed so far. But they are also sold to places where such ban is in place as a result of human rights breaches and war crimes. How is it possible? Leery businessmen like Strnad can, for example, buy old military parts and then refurbish and rebuild them into functioning military vehicles and weapons. Then they ship them through Israel to the hands of dictators. Investigative reporters have proof that this is happening - but the business goes on uninterupted. Czech Republic in notorious for its hostility towards refugees. Prime minister Babiš and president Zeman are saying that we won't let refugees stay - not even a single one. We won't even help other EU countries that are far more humane and welcome displaced people fleeing war, persecution or poverty. Zeman is friends with many arms dealers who make money selling guns that, in the hands of oppressors, set people in motion. When the people fleeing death and destrucion arrive at the borders of this safe country, the politicians fuel racism and hate towards refugees and, with strong support from the public, refuse to let anyone in. In Czech Republic, arms trade is not really a political topic. The commercial success of Czech-made weapons is seen as a proof of our unique craftsmanship. And if we don't sell guns to dictators, the Chinese will. After all, it's better if the profit is made by such a great democracy as ours and not by some authoritarians from Asia. This is, of course, not just a Czech issue, many European countries as well as the US allow this to happen as well. Profit is more important than protection of human rights. Organizations like @nesehnuti in Czech Rep. and @amnesty internationally are doing invaluable and important work by exposing these practices and fight to end the lethal business of war.

Text: Barbora Votavová

https://www.facebook.com/bara.ink

CZ:

Jeho tvář možná neznáte, jeho byznys přitom ničí životy po celém světě. Miliardář Jaroslav Strnad vydělává na vývozu zbraní diktátorům, totalitním režimům a pachatelům zločinů proti lidskosti. Zbraně z Česka se objevují v Sýrii, v Ázerbajdžánu, Bělorusku nebo v Saúdské Arábii. Se souhlasem vlády se vyváží do zemí, u kterých je dodržování lidských práv sice sporné, ale na které nebyly uvaleny sankce. Zbraně se ovšem prodávají i tam, kde už embargo kvůli porušování lidských práv platí. Jak je to možné? Vychytralí byznysmeni jako Strnad postupují třeba tak, že repasují starší, relativně nenápadně vypadající vojenskou techniku, kterou následně na Slovensku s překladištěm v Izraeli kompletují ve funkční zbraně a české stroje na smrt pak právě z Izraele putují do rukou diktátorů. Investigativní novináři a novinářky podobné jednání zbrojařských magnátů dokazují, obchod ale pokračuje dál. Česká republika je proslulá tím, jak vehementně odmítá lidi na útěku. Premiér Babiš i prezident Zeman se opakovaně vyjadřují, že na našem území nechtějí ani jednoho uprchlíka. Naše solidarita je naprosto nulová i ve vztahu k ostatním zemím EU, které jsou k lidem, utíkajícím před válkou, perzekucemi a bídou mnohem vstřícnější. Prezident má mezi zbrojaři také dobré přátele. V Česku se tak vydělává na prodeji zbraní, které následně v rukou utlačitelů ženou lidi na útěk. Když se pak lidé na útěku dostanou na hranice bezpečné země, její političtí představitelé, zhusta sponzorovaní právě zbrojaři, začnou rozdmýchávat nenávist vůči uprchlíkům a za nadšené podpory velké části veřejnosti nikoho nepřijmou. V Česku přitom obchod se zbraněmi není politickým tématem - ostatně, úspěch české vojenské techniky dokazuje práci zlatých českých ručiček a když diktátorům zbraně neprodáme, udělá to Čína. Lepší přece je, když vydělá tak demokratická země, jako ta naše, a ne autoritáři bůhví odkud. Nejde jen o český problém, totéž se děje v mnoha dalších evropských zemích i ve Spojených státech. Profit dostává přednost před ochranou lidských práv. Organizace jako @nesehnuti nebo @amnesty odvádí neocenitelnou práci, když na podobné praktiky upozorňují a bojují za ukončení obchodu se smrtí.

Text: Barbora Votavová

https://www.facebook.com/bara.ink

#jaroslavstrnad #michalstrnad #czechoslovakgroup #theothermovember #mariekraus #toxic masculinity #guns #weapons #nesehnuti #amnesty international

0 notes

mixlunar · 7 years

Text

Time to play “What’s Wrong With Trump’s “Issues””

So I decided to go through every policy on the new WhiteHouse.org site and point out problematic language I’ve found.

"An America First Energy Plan"

"For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry."

Ding ding ding, first problem and only a paragraph in. We've heard time and again from Republican figureheads that "regulations" are the reason that the U.S. economy is bad and that's simply not the case. While the Obama administration wasn't exactly as aggresive as I'd like, they certainly weren't curtailing them either. By 2016 the Obama administration had added 20,642 regulations, yet the economy was still on an upswing. Now I'm not as well versed in economics as I'd like to be, but if regulations were an actual problem for the economy, I'd think that 20,000+ regulations would cause a bit of a problem for us.

"President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule."

The very next sentence and oh boy. Simple put, the CAP is a plan put into place in 2008 by the Obama administration to deal with the rising worry of global warming. It aimed to lower carbon dioxide emissions and attempted to "preserve forests, encourage the use of alternate fuels, and increase study of climate change". Somehow, this is harmful to the U.S.

Now the Waters of the U.S. is a different beast. It redrew what lines the Clean Water Act touched and apparently upset quite a few people. The CWA used to only affect "navigable water" but the WotUS act made it so a large portion of wetlands, tributaries, and streams were affected by it as well. There was some clapback from R's for this because they were worried the EPA would start fining people when a cow walked through a stream. I don't know of any cases of this happening, but I can at least see how it could be "harmful". If you wanna dig through all 300 pages of it, here it is

"Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years."

This is interesting, the economy has been growing since Obama has taken office yet these very harmful practices will somehow increase wages of all American workers. I don't know how they came to that conclusion at all after the historic nature of businesses. I'm almost positive that any money they would save would just be funneled back to the top as per usual.

"Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own."

What this reads as to me is, expect a lot more DAPL-esque attempts. Get your chains ready, because we're going to have to protest even more shitty pipelines.

"The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America’s coal industry, which has been hurting for too long."

Clean coal doesn't exist. Clean coal is simply a scam from coal companies to try to trick the American public into accepting shitty air to produce arguably worse energy.

"Lastly, our need for energy must go hand-in-hand with responsible stewardship of the environment. Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority."

After reading the previous policies, I highly doubt this is the case. Removing the CAP and WotUS alone will destroy hundreds of acres of land. Not to mention the "clean coal" bullshit they're putting forward.

First policy down, 5 to go.

America First Foreign Policy

"Peace through strength will be at the center of that foreign policy. This principle will make possible a stable, more peaceful world with less conflict and more common ground."

In other words, expect even larger swaths of the budget to be dedicated to the military.

"Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority. To defeat and destroy these groups, we will pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations when necessary. In addition, the Trump Administration will work with international partners to cut off funding for terrorist groups, to expand intelligence sharing, and to engage in cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable propaganda and recruiting."

Here we go, expect a lot of micro-wars and cold war-esque operations. Probably overthrowing of leaders that we, economically, dislike. Also, woo, the U.S. is finally focusing on cyberwarfare. Don't be surprised at Blackbloc and Antifa sites getting shutdown left and right if hosted in the U.S.

"For too long, Americans have been forced to accept trade deals that put the interests of insiders and the Washington elite over the hard-working men and women of this country. As a result, blue-collar towns and cities have watched their factories close and good-paying jobs move overseas, while Americans face a mounting trade deficit and a devastated manufacturing base."

Sorry America, your manufacturing jobs are never coming back. If they do, they'll be done by computers and robots. Manufacturing is dead in 1st world countries because to make it profitable, they have to sacrifice the workers safety. If you look at the factory work in poor countries, you'll see a large amount of people being hurt and killing themselves due to poor pay and disgusting working conditions.

"This strategy starts by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and making certain that any new trade deals are in the interests of American workers. President Trump is committed to renegotiating NAFTA. If our partners refuse a renegotiation that gives American workers a fair deal, then the President will give notice of the United States’ intent to withdraw from NAFTA."

While this could turn out well, if it goes poorly we're probably going to get nailed by either losing trade deals or, very unlikely, embargos. In other words, our economy tanks overnight, people lose their jobs, and we're fucked money-wise. With Trump's historically inept business deals, I don't see this turning out well.

Well that was helpfully short. Onwards Comrades!

Bringing Back Jobs And Growth

"The plan starts with pro-growth tax reform to help American workers and businesses keep more of their hard-earned dollars. The President’s plan will lower rates for Americans in every tax bracket, simplify the tax code, and reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the world."

So, we're increasing the budget to pay for massive military upgrades, lifting restrictions that make money for the government, and lowering the tax rates for every American? I'd like to see where this money is coming from, maybe we'll find out later! Also, while they're correct in saying that we have one of the highest corporate taxes in the world, we're also one of the richest countries in the world and corporations aren't exactly hurting when it comes to profits.

"That is why the President has proposed a moratorium on new federal regulations and is ordering the heads of federal agencies and departments to identify job-killing regulations that should be repealed."

Alright, so no new federal regs for awhile with no specific limit and identifying "job-killing" regs. Once again we see a broad stroke of a policy without any actual actionable words.

My my, another very short section. Well, let's see what else is in store.

Making Our Military Strong Again

Apparently explaining this plan in the foreign policy section wasn't enough.

"Our military needs every asset at its disposal to defend America. We cannot allow other nations to surpass our military capability. The Trump Administration will pursue the highest level of military readiness."

More money coming from apparently nowhere.

"We will also develop a state-of-the-art missile defense system to protect against missile-based attacks from states like Iran and North Korea."

I wonder if it'll be in space. Nixon tried that one once.

"Cyberwarfare is an emerging battlefield, and we must take every measure to safeguard our national security secrets and systems. We will make it a priority to develop defensive and offensive cyber capabilities at our U.S. Cyber Command, and recruit the best and brightest Americans to serve in this crucial area."

If ya'll don't know anything about InfoSec you should probably get on it. Any gov't that starts focusing this heavily on techwar is dangerous. Protect your privacy even if you have nothing you feel is worth protecting.

The rest of this policy is dedicated to Veteran's Affairs stuff. While I'm not exactly a fan of militaristic intervention in any sense, I do hope if anything in these plans come to pass it's the VA stuff it speaks about. No matter what, most of those people signed up to help protect a country and that country fucking them over time and time again with benefits and the like is a fucking joke and honestly disgusting.

Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community

Before this starts, I should probably point out that I'm a big fan of the saying ACAB. Take that as you will.

"The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it."

That... is quite honestly terrifying to me. How will they end it? Nothing else in the policy says. It reads like a dystopian novella.

"The Trump Administration is committed to reducing violent crime. In 2015, homicides increased by 17% in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years. In our nation’s capital, killings have risen by 50 percent. There were thousands of shootings in Chicago last year alone."

I'll just come out and say it. Yes, violent crime is indeed on the rise from last year. However, crime is still at a historically low point as seen here.

"Our country needs more law enforcement, more community engagement, and more effective policing."

Awesome, big brother here we come. By more law enforcement I sincerely doubt they mean increasing the number of police small communities like mine have but probably instead mean dishing out military hardware to any station that asks for it. If that's the case expect more poorly trained idiots holding even more dangerous weaponry.

"Supporting law enforcement means supporting our citizens’ ability to protect themselves. We will uphold Americans’ Second Amendment rights at every level of our judicial system."

Expect gun control to get stripped.

"President Trump is committed to building a border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities. He is dedicated to enforcing our border laws, ending sanctuary cities, and stemming the tide of lawlessness associated with illegal immigration."

The Obama administration was certainly no stranger to deportation of our brothers and sisters but I have a feeling this administration will be even more aggressive and incredibly more ruthless about it.

It's the last one ya'll, thanks for sticking around this long!

Oh... I'm sorry... it seems that Trump's administration is a complete failure on an I.T. level as well. See, if you go back and look at "America First Foregin Policy" you'll see discussions about NAFTA and all that. Turns out, they just copy and pasted that section and put it under a different title? I don't know, I'm tired and this is a clusterfuck. Good luck, God bless if you're into that, and stay safe Comrades.

#long post #politics #trump #antifa #teardown #please oh god please read this #i worked so hard #not really tho #good luck

2 notes · View notes