#only half iranian but still iranian at core

[yourfavepookiebear]

There's nothing like putting one of your favorite iranian songs and belly dancing/dancing to it

#yourfavepookiebear #pookie bear rants #pookie talks #pookies #pookie bear #belly dancing #dancing #vibing #iranian songs #only half iranian but still iranian at core #french #half french #confusing identity #confusing nationalities #when you have a turk dad and an iranian mom but you're french: #Spotify

[nation-of-bros]

They both have sexy circumcised cocks and a language that sounds like Klingon. Israel is the only reason why hatred grew between them despite this relationship.

Is religion enough to justify a state?

Another problem I have with Zionism is the claim that Jews are a self-contained ethnic group justifying its own nation state. In fact, Judaism is just a closed religion whose followers come from many countries, especially Central and Eastern Europe, therefore cannot possibly be viewed as ethnically uniform. Moreover, none of them spoke Hebrew, but either the local language or Yiddish, a Middle High German dialect. In addition, as I have already explained, these Jews, referred to as "Ashkenazis", are not original Jews in the Bible's sense, but merely converts from the Central Asian people of the Khazars. The real Jews are black Africans or have long since mixed with the Arabs and adopted Islam.

There are countless different religions on earth and absolutely none of them is the only religion of a country or unique to a particular country. The most I can think of is Japan's Shintoism, but even this religion is strongly interwoven with Buddhism, a belief that is also shared by many nations and different people. For example, Buddhist groups have demonstrably existed in Germany for over a hundred years; and at least since the Christian schism caused by Martin Luther, there has been no uniformly Christian faith either. In addition, there have always been atheist people too, although not as much in the past as there are today.

Furthermore, different religious groups can be found even in countries like Iran. Ultimately, the Iranians define themselves through their common language, common history, common traditions, which, although influenced by Islam, still contain a large, originally purely Iranian core. Likewise, neither Afghans nor Pakistanis define themselves exclusively by their religion. So why should Jews have the right to their own state if they do not form a unified ethnic group; and especially build their own state at the expense of others? There are thousands of religious communities on this planet that do not enjoy the same privilege as the Jews. So why this exception for “Khazar converts”?

In addition, Jews with Western citizenship can now move absolutely freely throughout the world (apart from Muslim countries because of their hatred of Israel). Especially in the USA, Jews enjoy all freedoms; and even in the country of the former Nazis, Jewish citizens are given special protection. So, apart from purely ideological reasons, there is no justification for the state of Israel.

Zionism is the greatest threat to Jews

Ironically, Israel itself is the reason why anti-Semitism is growing; In fact, anti-Semitism is the ultimate tool that Zionism has always used to separate Jews from society so that they do not assimilate in the long term. It is therefore not surprising that Zionism itself fomented hatred of Jews. I even believe that such nonsense like the Nuremberg racial laws reflected the wishes of the Zionists rather than that of the vast majority of Germans, since there were only 500,000 Jews in Germany at the time anyway; only half a million, facing 80 million non-Jews. Therefore, it seems absurd to speak of a "genetic threat" to the German "Volkskörper"; especially since the many Jewish academics were not among the population with the largest number of children. So was Hitler secretly just serving the Zionist cause?!

Israel is an exception, and a pretty stupid one at that

Israel is the only modern state on earth that explicitly uses religion and an artificial language called "New Hebrew" as justification for its existence, because they simply cannot claim a common ethnic origin. In the early years of Israel, newspapers regularly printed lists of new Hebrew words so that the former liturgical language, which was as dead as Latin, would become useful for today. And they are so bold that they seriously claim: "If Moses were to return, Israelis would be able to communicate with him without any problems." Zionists really believe that they have "reconstructed" a language that was supposedly spoken by "their ancestors" thousands of years ago. You definitely can't talk rationally with people like that…

Instead of such a questionable Semitic Klingon, Theodor Herzl, the protagonist of political Zionism, suggested in his book "Der Judenstaat" [translated "The Jewish State"] that German should become the official language, since most Ashkenazis had access to the German language through Yiddish. Herzl even considered purchasing land in South America as an alternative, but this sensible idea never continued in the ideological blindness that only saw occupation of the "holy land" as an option. The Zionists could have created their own paradise in peace in the sparsely populated areas of South America instead of fighting with Palestinians over a dusty desert. Since reading “Der Judenstaat,” Israel appears to me not just as a crime, but as something fundamentally stupid.

For the sake of their own state, they make others stateless.

In order to support their claim and maintain the absolute Jewish majority, Israel refuses to naturalize the Palestinians, who represent the original population of the land occupied by the Ashkenazis. Imagine if the USA or Brazil treated their indigenous population as non-citizens and refused any naturalization. It would be a scandal sparking protests and civil movements! But as far as the Palestinians are concerned, this stateless condition is still tolerated by the UN today, even though belonging to a state, or rather citizenship, is considered an important human right to gain legal status and things like the right to vote.

You can't really call Palestine a state, since it is just a patchwork of small areas around Israel where the remaining Palestinians are kept like in Indian reservations. Accordingly, the Gaza Strip is nothing more than an open-air prison into which Israel pushed most of the remaining Palestinians. The current escalation is the result of these years of politics. One cannot expect that young Palestinians in this huge refugee camp will not become radicalized, but will watch with love in their hearts as Israel advances further and further with its settlement policy. And in contrast to the Jews, the Palestinians, as an Arab nation, represent a closed ethnic unit who, even in worldwide exile, feel Palestinian and will never accept the state of Israel in its current form. For them there is only one option: Israel must burn and the Ashkenazis be driven out. And I don't blame them, because as a Palestinian I would feel the same way in the face of Israel's aggression. Therefore, Hamas's atrocities are a merely logical consequence of the pent-up loathing generated by Israel itself.

Go under the madness or change!

I see only two ways in which the conflict can be resolved: Either the Ashkenazi leave the Middle East, or they completely change their policy towards the Palestinians, gradually naturalize them and establish places of residence for them where they can be considered normal Citizens can live and work. Then there will no longer be any reasons for Palestinians to develop hatred of Israel. But I doubt that Israel will ever take this path in order not to lose its own Jewish majority or to shed its own delusion of being chosen. Just as Israel incapacitated its own citizens during the Corona years and punished them draconianly, one can assume that the Zionist leadership will act even more mercilessly against others. So there is no hope for a future for them! And just like in other conflicts, it would be best for us to stay out of it as a neutral party and instead of pumping Israel full of weapons, provide humanitarian aid FOR EVERYONE!

#politics #essay

[mariacallous]

Women, life, freedom. These words have become the rallying cry for protest that has erupted in the wake of the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s feared morality police. They are shaking the Iranian regime to its core.

Unlike past movements, this uprising cuts across generations and social classes. For young Iranian women, Amini’s death ignited an explosion of pent-up fury at the regime’s suppression of women’s rights. For older activists like me, it has reopened the scars from previous uprisings and breathed new life into the decades-long struggle for freedom.

Demonstrations began in Tehran on 16 September soon after news of Mahsa’s killing broke. Within hours, women appeared in the streets, burning their hijabs and calling for justice. Within days, the protests spread. In towns and cities across Iran, schoolchildren have abandoned their classrooms to join the masses thronging the junctions and blocking streets.

The regime’s violent response has been brutal. Killings of protesters began immediately and hundreds have already lost their lives. Last Friday in the south-east city of Zahedan, as many as 91 people were killed when state forces opened fire, including five children. Doctors certified that they had been shot from behind. Despite the regime shutting down the internet across the country, videos of police violence continue to leak out, further fuelling public rage.

Universities that have acted as staging posts for protests are now under attack from regime forces. Last Sunday, police fired on peaceful protesters at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology and at least 40 students were blindfolded and taken away in vans. Like so many parents in Iran, their families have no idea where they are. After 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami’s battered body was returned to her family by police after she disappeared at a protest, many fear the worst.

The roots of this uprising that Iranians are already calling a revolution can be found in a collective anger that has been suppressed for half a century. I became politically active soon after the Islamic regime took power and introduced its sexual apartheid laws. In 1982, I was arrested and taken to Joint Committee Interrogation Centre where I was tortured.

After hours of beatings, I was left paralysed for weeks, leaving me unable to shower or use the bathroom alone. The prison was so crowded I slept in a corridor for a month with dozens of other prisoners. We were blindfolded 24 hours a day, even eating and sleeping in darkness. Later, a guard bashed my head against the wall so hard I developed a brain tumour, an injury that troubles me to this day.

While the regime sentenced me to death, my sentence was commuted and I was eventually released in 1990. Soon after, I realised I was no longer safe, and fled to the UK. Since settling here, painting and writing have provided much relief, as has therapy from the organisation Freedom from Torture. But I am not “cured”. I still see the faces of my friends who were executed.

Ten years after I fled Iran, the regime turned the centre where I was interrogated into the Ebrat Museum. The torture chambers were preserved, with the regime claiming that they were used only by the forces of the shah, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution. But as the protests across the country demonstrate, the people have not forgotten. This is not just a burst of anger from a young and idealistic generation, but the accumulated trauma of generations of Iranians struggling for freedom.

Today, the regime is not just fighting to maintain its power but its very survival. Facing such anger from every section of society, it will kill or jail anyone who opposes it. But the people have come too far to turn back. If they give in and go home, there will be another massacre. They are fighting for their lives.

A nationwide day of action has been called for Saturday 8 October. I fear for the safety of my people. But I remain hopeful that they will sweep away the Islamic regime and realise the dreams of generations of Iranians who came before them.

Nasrin Parvaz is a women’s rights activist and torture survivor from Iran. Her books include A Prison Memoir: One Woman’s Struggle in Iran, and the novel The Secret Letters from X to A

[project1939]

Day 49- Film: Affair in Trinidad 

Release date: July 29th 

Studio: Columbia 

Genre: Noir 

Director: Vincent Sherman 

Producer: Vincent Sherman, Rita Hayworth 

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Alexander Scourby 

Plot Summary: Chris Emery is a nightclub singer living with her painter husband in Trinidad. One night at the club, the police come to tell her Neil has died. At first it seemed a suicide, but on greater investigation, the police suspect murder. One of Neil’s friends, the rich and mysterious Max Fabian, may have something to do with it. Chris agrees to help the police find out more information about Fabian. Then Neil’s brother Steve suddenly arrives, complicating everything. Especially when he and Chris start falling for each other. 

My Rating (out of five stars): *** 

This is a hard film to rate and discuss because everything is so mixed. There were things I liked about it, but lots of things I didn’t. Some things worked, but a lot didn’t. It was kind of a muddle. This was Rita Hayworth’s big return to Hollywood after four years of being married to an Italian Iranian Prince, so no stops were pulled trying to advertise this as her big comeback as a sex goddess. 

The Good: 

The sophisticated classy noir feel. This is probably the first noir on my list that falls into that more rare category. Most noirs are gritty and take place in dark dirty realistic places. But some noirs take place in exotic wealthy worlds, and this is one. I love gritty noirs, but the classy ones are a lot of fun too. 

The mystery at the core of everything. We learn in smaller bits and know there must be some political intrigue, but it still takes awhile to put everything together. (I think they did give one piece of information away a little too soon when we discover one of Fabian’s cronies did research on V2 rockets.) But the foreboding sense that something consequentially awful was at the center of everything was effective. 

Rita Hayworth’s body type again proving that Hollywood used to look at curvier women as the ultimate objects of desire. She’s not overweight, but she is definitely thicker than sexpot hotties today. And I love it. I find her body type much more attractive than the stick thin Hollywood types today. 

Valerie Bettis as Veronica Huebling. She was sassy and hilarious and about the only bright spot of light and life breathed into the film. 

The Bad: 

None of the main actors really captivated me. Rita Hayworth is of course gorgeous, but her acting was kind of all one-note. Glenn Ford is also lovely to look at, but he lacked charisma for me. Even Max Fabian as “the baddie” wasn’t that interesting. There wasn’t any character that really pulled me in. 

The lip synching. I hate dubbing in films where it’s really obvious, and this unfortunately was. It’s just distracting when it isn’t done well. 

The dancing. What was some of that stuff Rita Hayworth was doing? I’m no dance expert, but some of it was almost comedically weird. I think it was supposed to be wild and sexy, but it didn’t really come off for me. 

The romance between Hayworth and Ford as in-laws! I don’t really care that Chris was never really in love with Neil, it’s still off-putting to just start shacking up with his brother only a week or so after he died! 

Why did they name a major character Max Fabian only a year and a half after All About Eve swept the Oscars? When I watched this film I kept thinking, “Max Fabian... Max Fabian... wasn’t that the theatrical producer character in All About Eve?” It was. I just thought it was kind of weird to use the same character name from such a high-profile film. Maybe they didn’t realize it, I don’t know. 

#project1952 #1952 #project1952 day 49 #100 films of 1952 #rita hayworth

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Keeping Me Alive

Chapter 10: Get Out Alive

by @dracusfyre​

    Now

“Save who you can,” Tony said to himself as he splashed water on his face.

He blindly grabbed for a towel and dried off, meeting his eyes in the mirror for what felt like the first time in years. “Don’t look back.” He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, and went out into his bedroom. He picked up the photo that sat on his bedside table and took it out of the frame, tucking it into the pocket of his pants. Glancing around his bedroom, he nodded once, and went down to his workshop. He saluted the painting of Howard on the wall then dug out the photo of the Winter Soldier from his desk and set it on fire, dropping it to the concrete floor and watching it burn.

 “Ready, JARVIS?” he asked. He ground the last bit of embers into the concrete to put them out.

 “Are you ready, sir?”

 “Yep,” Tony lied. “Let’s rock and roll.”

“Let it Burn Protocol initiated.” As JARVIS spoke, Tony felt the first explosion rock the house, rumbling through his feet as he stepped into the matte black suit in the gantry in the middle of the room. The facemask closed over his face as cracks appeared in the walls of the lab, and as the ground fell away from his feet he was already in the air.

36 days ago

Once he was sure that Stane was gone for good, Tony went down to his work shop and said, “Wake up, JARVIS, we have work to do.”

Sitting down at his workstation, he opened up the master file with the suit schematics and eyed the hologram critically. The hardest part of the suit to master was going to be the flight system, so he isolated and magnified that part from the diagram, studying the repulsors built into the gauntlets and boots with stabilizers along the back. “Start machining the parts I’m going to need for these,” he said. “Circumstances have changed and we are going to need to hit the ground running, so to speak."

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said, and the whirring of machinery became a low hum, punctuated by sharp bzzts as parts were cut and de-burred. Tony studied the prototype, exploding the diagram, moving it around, and after a while came up with a short list of non-critical design items he could spoon feed to Hydra to show his ‘enthusiastic’ cooperation. An hour later, the whirring stopped and the sudden quiet broke Tony out of his concentration. He sat up and stretched, wincing as his back popped. Standing, he went over to the coffee maker and started a new pot, then dug under the counter for his emergency stash of scotch, splashing a fingers worth in his mug while he waited for the coffee.

He had realized two very important things today. The first was that the Soldier needed saving even more than Tony did; the knowledge that the man was Hydra’s slave, kept ignorant and locked up until Hydra needed an attack dog, had shifted Tony’s world view like a kaleidoscope, shaking up everything he thought knew and making an entirely new pattern. The second was that he couldn't keep waiting around for a chance to escape, he was going to have to make one.

This suit, he knew, was the key to both of those realizations. But this half-baked, insane plan to rescue the Winter Soldier was going to kick the anthill big time and Tony also knew he needed to have some kind of plan for dealing with Hydra in the aftermath. This wasn’t going to be like Afghanistan, where he thought he was out and got pulled right back in again. The stakes were way too high this time.

With that thought in mind, when the coffee was done, he filled up his mug and went back to his desk. He pulled up the operating program for the suit and created a subroutine to overload the reactor, ignoring the flash red warning that said that this would result in a critical core breach and an uncontrolled chain reaction, and set the activation code as “Last Resort.”

One way or another, he thought as he sipped on his doctored coffee, this suit would be his way out.

  32 Days Ago

Tony stared tiredly at the news as he took a swallow of stone-cold coffee. The breaking report was about the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Iran was already blaming Israel, who was of course denying it, but in response Iran was threatening to pull out of the treaties against nuclear enrichment and swore they could split the atom within the year. Political and military analysts were seeing storm clouds on the horizon unless someone backed down and talking about how another war would tax America's already overstretched military. Tony, meanwhile, could tell that this assassination had Hydra's fingerprints all over it, and knew that this was almost certainly the work of the Soldier. "JARVIS," Tony said, muting the television. "I need you to break into Hydra’s servers and find everything you can on the Winter Soldier. Cross reference it with the name James Barnes.” There was a chance that Stane had made the name up, but it seemed unlikely – from what he could tell, the Soldier would have responded to anything, and ‘James Barnes’ was a lot more specific than a simple ‘John Smith’ or ‘Joe Blow.’ “Actually, while you’re at it,” Tony said, having a sudden thought, “I want all of Hydra’s files. Copy them to one of SI’s remote servers.”

Hours later, Tony was just finishing up the wiring assembly for the repulsor system when his computer dinged. Setting down the soldering gun, Tony rubbed his eyes tiredly and turned on his monitor to see what JARVIS had found. To his dismay, there were thousands of files on the Winter Soldier; as he scrolled down the list, he realized that they went back decades. “Fuck,” he said aloud as he looked at the dates and the file names, most of which were a string of letters and numbers that no doubt made sense to someone in Hydra but gave no clue as to what the file contained. He buried his head in his hands and tried not to cry at the enormity of the task in front of him. He was so tired that his eyes were blurry and his head was pounding, but every time he tried to close his eyes he kept seeing James’s body arching with pain and hearing his screams.

“Sir, it has been twelve hours and thirty-six minutes since you last ate,” JARVIS said. “And you’ve made four mistakes in the past fifteen minutes. You need to rest.”

“I have?” Tony pulled his magnifying glass back over to the circuit board and saw what JARVIS was talking about. “Shit. Alright, fine.” He pushed away from the desk and went to the bar sink next to the coffee pot and ran his head under cold water for a second. He came up and wiped his face and the back of his neck, shivering as water dripped from his hair down his back, and went upstairs to look for food. Leaving his work shop felt like he was crossing into hostile territory, like he could be attacked at any moment. And he could, he thought as he opened the refrigerator. Stane had made sure that he always had free access to Tony’s home, because a locked door meant secrets and the only secrets Hydra allowed were their own. He wished he could just walk away from this place, blow it up and find a place to live that Hydra had never stepped foot in, a place that would feel like it was his –

He froze with a jug of orange juice in his hand. He stood there, thoughts racing, for so long that the chiller on the refrigerator came on with a hum. Then Tony said “Huh” to the boxes of leftovers and absently shut the fridge door, OJ still in hand.

25 Days Ago

“JARVIS, this doesn’t make sense,” Tony said, rereading the file for the fifth time. “This thing is saying that the first Winter Soldier was James Barnes, but the current Winter Soldier is James Barnes.” It was hard to think that it was a clerical error, since the earliest files went back to the 1940s and consisted of paper files that had been scanned into a computer sometimes in the 80s. “Is it an alias? Are all Winter Soldiers called ‘James Barnes’ as a security precaution?”

“Facial pattern analysis indicates that it is the same James Barnes,” JARVIS said, and it flashed up an image that looked like a scanned-in polaroid; in it the man was unconscious on an operating table, face dirty and bloody and pale. Next to it JARVIS pulled up an image from Hydra’s own security footage of what the Soldier looked like without his goggles and mask on. There was a vague resemblance to Tony’s eyes, but as the facial recognition algorithm measured the features in each photograph, the conclusion was mathematically precise – there was a 99.7% chance that it was the same man in each photo.

Tony’s face went slack with shock. “How is that possible? He’d have to be almost 100 years old!”

“That part I don’t know, sir.”

“Holy shit.” Tony went back to the original file, reading it more carefully. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he read. “Born 1917. American POW.” He paused at that and sat back in his chair. “Why does that sound familiar?”

In response, JARVIS pulled up a Wikipedia page on Tony’s screen. As he read it, Tony was speechless; for a long moment, he flipped screens between the dead-eyed man from Hydra’s surveillance footage and the smiling man with his arm around Captain America, but this time he didn’t need JARVIS to tell him that it was the same man. The implications made his stomach turn, and as he stared at the screen he exhaled shakily and covered his mouth with his hands. 80 years. James Barnes had been in Hydra’s clutches for 80 years.

He stood suddenly, sending his chair rolling backwards. “We’re doing another flight test. Right now.” 80 years was already far too long, and Tony wasn't going to let it be one more day longer than it had to be.

19 Days Ago

“Tony!” Ms. Potts said with surprise. “I didn’t expect you in the office today.”

Probably because Tony had been dodging Stark Industries for a while now, only coming out of his lab long enough to get her to leave him alone before burying himself in work again. It had occurred to him as he got in his car to go to SI headquarters, blinking in the bright sunlight, that this was the first time he had been outside of the house since Stane’s forced excursion. “Yeah, I wanted to meet with you,” Tony said, shutting the door behind him.  He set a stack of papers in front of her as he sat down.

“What’s this?” She said, flipping through the papers. There was a line of confusion between her eyebrows which only deepened as she started reading them.

“I’m making you CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said. “Effective two weeks from now. Should be an easy transition, you do most of my job anyway.” He grabbed a pin from her desk and clicked it, the sound loud in the sudden silence. “Sign on the highlighted line, please,” he added, holding the pen out to her, and despite everything he had to smile at the stunned look on her face.

  11 Days Ago

Tony put a hand on Rhodey’s arm and met his eyes, willing him to understand. “I’m saying that Afghanistan wasn’t a random attack,” he said urgently. “I think I was being targeted, and I think whoever did it might try again.” He palmed a thumb drive from his pocket and slid it across the table. In the Hydra files, JARVIS had found that a senator named Stern had been behind the Afghanistan attack, apparently trying to get Tony out of the way so that his good buddy Justin Hammer and his company Hammer Industries could take over SI's lucrative military contracts. There was all of that and more on here, just enough information that if Rhodey put all the threads together he would start getting the bigger picture. Pierce, the STRIKE teams, all of it. “If anything happens to me, I need you to finish what I’ve started.”

“Tony, if you are afraid for your life-“ Rhodey started, still looking dubious but starting to get alarmed.

“Not just me. You. Ms. Potts. Anyone I'm friends with. I can’t do anything to make these people suspicious,” Tony insisted. It was strange to feel like he was lying even though every word he’d said was true. “No unexplained bodyguards, no sudden trips, and absolutely no cops.”

“I don’t like this,” Rhodey said emphatically. “You’re asking me to sit back and wait to see if someone kills you!”

“I know what I’m doing,” Tony said. That part was a lie. He had a plan in the broadest definition of the word; mostly he was making it up as he went along and praying he could handle the fallout. “I need you to trust me.” Rhodey’s mouth was a grim line and his jaw was tight, and Tony knew he wasn’t convinced so he pulled out his trump card. “I can’t do this unless I know you are safe,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “I won’t risk you.” It took a long minute, and Rhodey looked like he was swallowing something unpleasant, but he finally nodded and put the thumb drive in his pocket. Tony exhaled and sagged with relief. “Thank you."

“When this is over, you better have a good damn explanation,” Rhodey said threateningly, and Tony barked out a humorless laugh.

“You won’t even believe me when you hear it.”

  8 Days Ago

After Tony hit save on the final design of the suit, he stumbled over to the couch and landed on it face first, exhausted. He was laying on the couch, eyes drifting shut as he went over his plan for the hundredth time trying to figure out if he’d missed anything when the lab went dark. “What the hell, JARVIS?”

“Sir, it’s been 56 hours since you last slept,” JARVIS said. “I’m turning off your systems for a minimum of twelve hours.” The light in the stairwell going up to the main floor turned on, its glow just enough to let Tony get from the couch to the door without running into anything.

Tony stayed stubbornly on the couch. “We don’t have twelve hours to waste,” he said. “Turn my power back on.”

The lights stayed off. “Sir, you are a hazard to yourself and others.” Tony scowled and wondered if he had actually programmed JARVIS like this or if he was channeling the man himself. "Also, there's nothing for you to do while I assemble the suit."

“Fine. Ten hours.”

“Ten hours," JARVIS repeated. "I will be monitoring the situation while you sleep,” he added, and Tony knew that he meant not just monitoring Stane and James, but also Tony’s vital signs to make sure he actually slept.

“You’re insufferable,” Tony accused as he made his way up the stairs.

“Yes, sir.”

 2 Days Ago

“Sir, there’s something you should see.”

Tony looked up from the fine-tuning he was doing on the suit’s shoulder-fired weapons to look at the computer screen. JARVIS had maximized the window where he was constantly monitoring Pierce’s communications and highlighted a text that had just been sent. It was to an unknown number and all it said was lvl 10, CovJer10131973 nlt 200810162200Z. The first part was clearly a target identifier and Tony knew enough about the military to recognize the latter as a date time group, set for five days from now. “Bring up the camera feed,” Tony said, and sure enough when Tony looked at the video surveillance of the room where James was kept, he could see that the lights in the room were on and a technician was already in the room powering on computers. They’d found out a while ago that what Tony had taken for a hyperbaric chamber was in fact a cryostasis chamber, which partly explained why James was almost a hundred years old but looked younger than Tony.

“Shit." Tony exhaled long and low, feeling his heart rate spike with nervousness. "How long it takes to thaw him out? Was that in his files?”

JARVIS was silent for a moment. “Evidence suggests approximately 24 hours from the time the procedure is first initiated,” he said.

“Right,” Tony said grimly, turning back to his work with a new urgency. “Guess it’s time.”

 Now

Tony flew north along the coast as his house collapsed into the Pacific Ocean behind him, throwing billowing clouds of dust and smoke into the air as carefully placed explosives reduced it to a smoking ruin. It was thrilling and terrifying to know that for all intents and purposes Tony Stark was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He'd become a dead man after all, and now the only thing left was this suit and his mission: rescue the Winter Soldier then burn Hydra to the ground.

“Pull up James' video feed for me," Tony said as he flew. Since he was over water, he set the suit to autopilot and shifted his attention to the small window at the corner of his HUD.  James was out of the cryostasis chamber, sitting on a chair as a medical assistant appeared to be taking his vitals. Every now and then he shivered, still shirtless. Other technicians were milling around, tending to the computers, and standing guard were was two members of the STRIKE team, hands on their weapons as they kept an eye on him. His records had indicated that he was prone to ‘erratic violent outbursts,’ which Tony figured was code for “periodically tries to fight back.” Tony had actually been happy to read that, because it meant that Hydra hadn't managed to break him completely. Right now, though, James just seemed willing to numbly submit to whatever the technicians were doing, his long hair a curtain in front of his face as he stared at the floor.

“Sir, we are approaching the facility,” JARVIS said, and minimized the video. Tony flew lower to the water, navigating around the giant cargo ships at dock. Even for a twenty-four hour facility it was late, and there were only one or two ships that had people still unloading shipping containers. He landed close to the Hydra facility but out of the line of sight; he had managed to camouflage the suit to the best of his ability, but he couldn’t hide the bright lights of the repulsors so he made the rest of the approach on foot.

JARVIS’s scanners found four total guards around the building, patrolling in pairs. By sticking to the deep shadows cast by the stacked shipping containers and the orange-yellow glow of the sodium-vapor security lights, Tony got within hearing distance and hit them with a pulse of high-pitched wave frequency. They both stiffened and fell over, paralyzed, helmets bouncing off the pavement hard enough to knock them unconscious. Tony bound them with their own zip ties and hid them out of sight, then used his backdoor access to the security system to unlock the doors and set all the surveillance cameras on a one hour loop. As he strode through the door into the lab, all eyes turned to face him, and before anyone could even speak there was a brrrt noise and they fell to the floor, killed by the precision targeting system Tony had built into his suit.

When JARVIS confirmed they were all dead, Tony took off the helmet and looked down at one of the bodies; the one closest to him had been here a month ago, monitoring James’ vitals as they wiped his mind. This was the first time Tony had killed anyone and he expected to feel..something, sad or upset or even vindictive, but he didn’t really feel anything. It all felt too easy, and Tony knew it was because he had designed a suit that had made it that easy. All the more reason that Hydra couldn't be allowed to get their hands on it.

James was still sitting in the chair, watching Tony as he approached; he hadn’t even gone for cover as everyone around him had died. Tony wondered if it was out of surprise or indifference. “Do you know me?” He asked, coming to stand in front of him. James studied his features for a moment and shook his head. “My name is Tony Stark. You are James Buchanan Barnes, and I am here to rescue you.” Tony offered him a hand to get to his feet, but James didn’t move, he just stared at Tony with those glacier blue eyes. There wasn't blankness in them now, only a narrow-eyed look of consideration. “Come on,” Tony tried again. “We’re escaping. We have to hurry before more people show up.”

James didn’t move. “There is no escape from Hydra. The only way out is-”

“Death, I know.” Tony kept his hand out but gestured expressively around the room with the other. “But they never said whose death.”

James studied him again, then turned his gaze to the dead bodies. Finally, after a long moment, he took Tony’s hand and let him pull him to his feet.

#tony stark #Bucky Barnes #tony x bucky #winteriron

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Incumbent President Loses (1900 to present)

1912: the Republican ticket was split between progressive Teddy Roosevelt running for a third non-consecutive term and incumbent conservative William Howard Taft running for re-election.  Roosevelt acted as a spoiler, giving the presidency to Woodrow Wilson, only the second Democrat and the first southerner to win the White House since the Civil War.

1932: Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover single-handedly drove the country into the Great Depression, refusing to distribute federal aid in part because he thought it was a matter for the states to decide, but mostly because “people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they don’t want handouts!”  His challenger Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal platform were so popular that Democrats in Congress considered amending the constitution to declare him king before he even took office, everyone was so fed up with Republicans at the time.

1976: Republican incumbent Gerald Ford had lost all credibility after pardoning Nixon for the Watergate scandal.  He was selected as VP in 1973 because his predecessor Spiro Agnew had just resigned amidst a bribery scandal, and the Republicans needed to pick a politically neutral candidate to pass the Democratic controlled congress.  Ford, the House Republican leader had a reputation of honesty and bipartisanship, he was the perfect candidate, beloved by Republicans and Democrats alike; when Nixon resigned, he chose the party over the country and pardoned him, tanking his reputation overnight, all but guaranteeing a Democratic victory in 1976.  Democrats didn’t want to take any chances, this was their election to lose, so they put up a completely inoffensive and politically insignificant former governor of Georgia, peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.  This was an intentional walk with the bases loaded, the republicans handed them this on a silver platter.

1980: Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter showed just how non-presidential he was by fumbling not one but three Iranian crises.  The Iranian Revolution saw the overthrow of the American puppet king by by a fundamentalist theocracy (this was Eisenhower’s fault for overthrowing the democratically elected government in the 50s to install said king, but Carter inherited it); the 1979 Oil Crisis saw a drop in oil production as a direct result of the revolution, causing a worldwide recession and inspiring the Mad Max franchise; and the Iran Hostage Crisis saw revolutionaries storm the US embassy and hold 52 people hostage for a year and a half, only releasing them after Jimmy Carter was voted out of office by former California governor and old movie star Ronald Reagan.  The Republicans gave ‘76 to the Democrats, and the Democrats responded in kind by giving them ‘80, ‘84, ‘88, and quite possibly ‘92 were it not for Ross Perot.

1992: Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush was floundering after failing to live up to the legacy of his former boss Reagan.  He wasn’t nearly as popular as Reagan was, and cared more about foreign than domestic policy, breaking a ton of campaign promises by raising taxes and starting a war with Iraq.  The Gulf War was his attempt to reverse his image and cement is victory in 92; in 1990 Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait to take control of their oil, so the United States mounted a huge coalition invasion force to push the Iraqis out.  It was built up on TV for months, it essentially created the 24 hour news cycle, it was supposed to be an easy victory for the US to revitalize the military and wash away the sour taste that Vietnam had left in the country’s mouth 15 years ago.  The Iraqis retreated immediately instead of putting up a fight, torching the oil fields as they went, ending the war in days, and instead of advancing into Iraq to topple Hussein, Bush overthrew the KUWAITI government!  The war was a pointless stalemate.   The Democrats nominated a young charismatic cartoon character from Arkansas who had the same teflon attitude that made Reagan untouchable, and the nedia was so fed up with the to party system that they turned third-party challenger Ross Perot of Bush’s own Texas into a viable national candidate.  Perot qualified for the presidential debates, turning it into a legitimate three-way race and winning nearly a fifth of the national vote, acting as a spoiler for Bush and giving it to Clinton.

2020: Republican incumbent Donald Trump was the single most divisive president in modern American history.  Other presidents at least pretended like they wanted to be bipartisan, but he made no illusions that he was a president for Republicans first and foremost.   The Republicans didn’t expect to win in 2016, and were surprised when he eked by with an electoral college victory, so they decided to put all their eggs in his basket, transforming into the party of Trump.  They didn’t bother changing their platform between 2016 and 2020 because they figured that they didn’t need new voters to win; they eked by with a minority before, they could do it again, democracy was no longer a priority to them.  Trump was also corrupt to the core and made no attempts to hide it; it became his brand, Republicans loved him because of it, he could do anything he wanted and there was nothing anybody could do to stop him.  He fumbled the COVID pandemic, killing hundreds of thousands of people and driving unemployment to near Great Depression levels because he cared more about his image than the safety of the country; if he treated the threat seriously, it would mean he allowed something bad to happen in the first place, so he instead denied there was a threat to begin with.  He was an unpopular idiot who never had majority approval; his diehard base represented only 35 - 40% of the country, and more Republicans voted for Biden than Democrats voted for Trump.  The party is still reeling from his tremendous defeat, losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate, but securing conservative majorities in the courts, so it’s still a major win for them.

#1912 #1932 #1976 #1980 #1992 #2020 #Elections #politics #political #incumbent #challenger #campaign #history #american history #electoral history #taft #hoover #ford #carter #bush #trump #fuck republicans #fuck conservatives #fuck trump #fuck donald trump #losers #loser #fail #failure

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

Fawley Family - History, Head-canons, and other stuff

I’ve been delaying this post for far too long, so let’s talk about the Fawleys. This will not be canon to Remembrance, (Though I might mention spoilers from the fic, so be warned.) as I’m working on a Ravenclaw AU for Luca (Spelled “Luka” in this timeline.)  that is as of yet going to remain unfinished because I want to know the full story of HPHM before I finish it - Mainly concerning Rakepick and R.

Politics 

So, The Fawleys are part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. I’m inclined to think they don’t really care about their status in the Pureblood Directory, even though it’s an inherently racist document. As opposed to the Malfoys, who pride themselves on their inclusion, and the Weasleys, who can’t stand that they were put in. The Fawleys have never properly declared for one side of history or another. They never supported the Death Eaters, but they also didn’t join the Order of the Phoenix. They’ve never been hostile or dismissive to muggles, but they also mingle with the more racist pure-blood families. They keep their options open, and as a result, most people tend to enjoy their company, but don’t fully trust them. It helped that they were usually sorted into Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, and were therefore able to keep out of the school-age rivalry between the Lions and the Snakes.

Reputation

Of course, The Fawleys aren’t entirely popular either. People tend to avoid them in general, particularly if they’re superstitious and believe in things like the Grimm. This is because, for countless generations, The Fawley Family has been...well, there’s no simpler way to put it, than horribly unlucky. Misfortune seems to follow them wherever they go. It doesn’t usually affect those close to them too directly, although it can. Fawleys are known for madness, as a great number of them go off the deep end over time, even if there were no warnings signs. Far too many have committed suicide. The history of this family is a trail of blood and tears. People have noticed over time, and rumors grew that the family is cursed...and they actually are not wrong. A curse does indeed live in the blood of the Fawleys, and is unfortunately passed down genetically. It doesn’t strictly cause bad luck or anything, but the rumors are still true. 

Lineage

Being one of the oldest pure-blood families in the U.K, they can trace their heritage back hundreds of years. The oldest notes about the family tree suggest that the children of Merlin and Morgan Le Fay, were in fact the Fawley’s original ancestors. There is no way to verify this, of course, and unlike some of the more pompous Wizarding families, they see no need to parade it or make any claims. If it’s true, great. If not, whatever. (In my head, this rumor is definitely true, but it doesn’t change much about them either way. It’s just fun to think about.) On the other hand, it seems to be fact that many generations of the Fawleys were hunters who lived in the woodland and caught their food, sometimes doing odd jobs for hire - this is where the name Fawley (roughly translating to “fowl”) comes from. 

Signature

Several pure-blood families have some kind of motto or sigil. The Malfoys and the Blacks both have a crest, and the Fawleys do too. You might be expecting a bird, but this is not the case. During the War of the Roses, the Yorkshire muggles received some unexpected help from mysterious advisors, who became infamous for their abilities to control people and arrange the deaths of enemy soldiers before they even set foot in battle. Many were grateful for the aid, others voiced doubt, fearing and mistrusting the advisors. They seemed to vanish after the wars ended, having earned the nickname, “The Black Roses.” Sometimes derisively, sometimes approvingly, depending upon who was asked. Within the Wizarding community, however, the Fawleys never hid that they and some of their closest friends had been the Black Roses. It became their symbol.

Darkness 

As stated, the Fawleys have never been Anti-Muggle, not have they favored blood supremacy. But whether or not they stand against the Dark Arts tends to vary between the generations - the Black Roses definitely used dark magic in their efforts, for example. Rarely do any of them go full-out and cross to the dark side. Most of them favor unicorn wands. Rarely do any of them turn completely evil. But a wizard who can employ both light and dark magic is a versatile one, which is advantageous in multiple ways, particularly when it comes to exploring magic itself. What is consistent across centuries of the family is that they like to experiment, they push the study of magic to it’s limits. Some of them became spell inventors. Others travel all over the world in pursuit of greater powers and secrets. More than once, a Fawley has gone off the grid and simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. 

Friendships

The Sacred Twenty-Eight is composed of the core families that often inter-marry, either due to coincidence or to intentionally keep the blood pure. In the Fawleys case, it was the former. There was no rule about avoiding marriages to Half-bloods and Muggles, and sometimes these would even happen - but the number of premature deaths that occurred in this family unfortunately cut off any branches that might have formed. Most consistently, the Fawleys seemed to associate with the Burkes, the Greengrass’s, and especially the Blacks. They had a consistent, ongoing friendship and occasional rivalry with the Black family. They would explore the boundaries of magic together. Sometimes they would be mortal enemies, at others they would protect each other. Many Fawley-Black marriages occurred, and present day, Tonks is distantly related to Luka and Gail. 

Abilities 

The Fawleys have frequently become Healers and either worked at St. Mungos or started smaller practices and apothecaries of their own. Some say this tendency to heal is born of the anguish the family regularly faces. After all, many say the kindest people are those who have suffered the most. Others say that learning these skills became a necessity with how many tragedies there were. But regardless, they usually have talent in the Healing Arts. Typically a Fawley will be gifted in either Charms, Potions, Herbology, or some combination of the three. They are also natural fliers, despite having little interest in Quidditch itself, most of them know their way around a broom. On an unrelated note, I like to imagine the Fawleys, ever-neutral, generally keep themselves out of Quidditch culture, but would be fans of the Montrose Magpies. Finally, we know from canon that MC and Jacob are Legilimens’, so I’d say natural talent toward this magic runs in the family.

Home 

In the Remembrance timeline, the Fawleys live in a small cottage off the coast of a place called Dulcimer Beach, always cloudy and with black sands. However, I like to imagine that at least one branch of the Fawley family grew up in Godric’s Hollow, perhaps just outside the cemetery. I don’t know, there’s something about growing up literally next to a graveyard, that kinda suits them in my opinion. Plus. the whole idea of them being nearby when James and Lily died, even if they weren’t at all connected to it. Not sure where I’ll put the twins in the AU, I might have each of them in one of these two places. All I know is, they have a garden with a bed of black roses, that have magical properties and are used in their potion making. 

The Curse

If the Fawleys have one fatal flaw, that is consistent across the vast majority of them...it’s curiosity. This is why they’re usually in Ravenclaw. It’s why Jacob went after the vaults.They don’t thirst for knowledge but when presented with the idea of a secret they don’t know...they want to know it. This family has done terrible things over the years in their journey to learn the darkest secrets imaginable. They don’t crave power, they just want to see how powerful they can actually become. While they often use that power for good...it always comes with a price. The Curse...was their own doing. Despite spreading rumors that it was the Fault of the Blacks, the Fawleys placed the curse in their blood on themselves, centuries ago. Present day, the current inheritors of the curse don’t even know this to be true. 

Heirlooms 

Just one. A set of thick, fur-lined robes that are white and lined with black, as well as having a black rose emblazoned on the side, usually concealed when the robes are bundled up. Supposedly, these belonged to one of the “Black Roses” but there’s no way to know if that’s true. They could have been made years later, as a simple reference. But Luka’s father Arik had them, and his father before him. Other than that...I suppose there is the Wizard’s Chess set that they have? But it’s only a couple of generations old. 

The Cabal

I’ll get straight to the point. No matter what R winds up being, no matter who they are or what they want, my personal theory or head-canon is that MC’s family has been connected to them, or at least to the Cursed Vaults, for longer than we initially thought. That Jacob and MC being sought out by them was no accident or coincidence. I believe the Fawleys are deeply involved with the Cabal, and have been all along, perhaps going back many generations. Perhaps Dumbledore or the Aurors already know this, and simply keep it from MC. This could also play in to how they never sided with the Death Eaters or The Order - they already had a faction they had pledged loyalty to. 

Miscellaneous 

I’ve always pictured them as Iranian, at least for the past several generations. I also think having twins is not unusual for them, since it seems to happen more consistently in certain families. However, still-born babies and miscarriages, not to mention infertility, are all the more common. As for family traits, I see the Fawleys typically having large dark brown eyes, thicker, longer hair, and smaller, button-like noses. Luka is lactose intolerant, Gail is dyslexic. As I alluded to, they love Wizard’s Chess and probably don’t like Gobstones very much. They generally don’t believe in superstitions and many will claim the Fawley Curse is a hoax, even if they know this not to be true. I also have always imagined them as being Jewish, and if I ever write a reboot fanfic of the Ravenclaw AU, I’d like to incorporate that into the story more. 

Damn if you actually read all of my nonsense you deserve a cookie ☺️ If there are any questions about the Fawleys or head-canons for your own OC's family, please share them!

#Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery #HPHM Headcanons #Hogwarts Mystery OC #HPHM Jacob's Sibling #The Fawley Family #HPHM Jacob #Luka Fawley #Gail Fawley #The Fawley Twins #Harry Potter OC #Harry Potter

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: A Confederacy of Dunces

Author: John Kennedy Toole

Rating: 1/5 stars

John Kennedy Toole's novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces," is one of those books that, for all that it has many virtues and charms, seems to have had, and still has, a huge and permanent, detrimental influence on me. It is a book whose impact is to make me feel, if only in a vague and almost imperceptible way, a sort of "industrial sickness" that penetrates my very bones.

I was too young to read To Kill a Mockingbird, but I was troubled young and I read it because my mother was very proud of being able to "have the last word" in literature class (she thought it was Ulysses, which was the book she always got the worst grades on) and we went through a lot of books at once, so I had to read everything in the class at once. Once, while I was reading it (I think I was reading it in English class at my grammar school) my brother, then only five years old, sat down on a bench in the corridor near the front of the classroom to talk to me. Apparently he knew all about Don Quixotes new girlfriend and her horrible, heinous, adulterous, Satanic, bed-wetting, worldly life from Don Quixotes uncles and aunts and and and and and and and and and and and and and and, like an awkward adolescent with a massively complicated meaning-language at their disposal who cannot become a verb. I know, I know, I knew. Everybody knew, everyone knew.

This was 1977, as I recall. The book in question is, uh, a sensation. Interminable, turgid, groping brushstrokes evoking, with varying and often uneasy effect, the subtler hues of mediocre, chaotic minds. There is sex and violence and swearing and language to make the reader cringe. It is an almost redemptively self-indulgent book in the sense that it is responsive to the author's own preoccupations, which range fairly widely but at certain points take the form of an insistent fantasy about the glory and allure of grand, aristocratic history, the Great Dynasty Buildings, the great, novel history, that tends to be the province of thing writers and the platonic ideal of a Romantic mind.

John Kennedy Toole arrived at the conclusion that churches need updating to be based on "the lifestyle of the day," and sought out the "great democracies" that were standing in the way of this endeavor (the USSR, China, particularly the Iranians). Toole worried about where he was going to find boring churches in the unlikely event he happened to encounter them on his doorstep, and how he was going to synchronize all of this with the narrative and the specific artist's vision for a given building, since people weren't "doing any plotting anymore." Many of his ideas are terribly crafted, are clearly family traditions around the Toole household, and would seem strange even to other members of his tribe, and he wouldn't understand why they would do them, but that's fine, that's just the core of the Vivid Dream that WOW!'s us.

His connections to disaffected past cultural workers, not just from his white-boy hippie background but even stuff like "hypnotism" or privation relief work, really counts because half of the essay topic I first began to get the vibes from is basically this sort of pulp-nerd fantasy about acting on deep, unthinking and undeserved impulses that are available to us all and that sometimes provide remarkable victories to the stronger and more robust and more energetic.

These actually exist to be "scripted," and often Michael Crichton, the Elvis of literary fiction, commands an audience that recognizes the illusion. (To some extent, too, it obviously did, which is why I tried for so long to get over Michael Crichton with a straight face. "Does this look like the work of a man who values book-reading?" "Does it not strike me as rich with implausible elements and subject matter and displaying a cynical indifference to ... ")

(If I found The Lost World hard to read because I had to do it properly, it's because, at bottom, I feel that it offers nothing that will appeal to most people, whether they're faint of heart or not; it's not the kind of book that people share anecdotes about. And yet, that's real literature, and that's beautiful as well; for Orestes, it is enough that he and his friends cannibalized some hero, ....)

Getty just points at the solution as the authors do; read them for a few days, and you'll see the webs of illusion that stick coiled round the ideas and thoughts of the authors. And you wont need to bend over backwards, going backwards in time just to adhere to the plots intended to arrive at, even with some petty adherence, in 19th-century Europe. See the flow of ideas that crisscross the book for long stretches; free yourself from the misleading effects of nostalgia for anti-arbitrary wrists-breadth novels with shaky plots.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the  absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone 

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ -  like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

#the books i read #long post

[mariacallous]

One ought to expect the unexpected in post-revolutionary Iran. Still, one month ago, few experts could have imagined that Iran would be the cradle of a women-led movement demanding gender equality and inspiring the world. Few, inside or outside the country, could have envisaged that the arrest and death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, by Iran’s so-called morality police would trigger a massive protest movement, considered by many to be the early signs of a revolution.

Although the morality police—equipped with violence, clubs, and batons to harass, terrorize, discipline, and even murder women—still performs its hypermasculine authority, women are burning their headscarves, displaying them on tree branches, poles, and canes as well as in defiant hands. They burn their mandatory head coverings as a relic of the past or billow them in the breeze as flags of a new future order.

Young women dancing and chanting have replaced bearded, angry men stressing the differences between Iran and the rest of the world. Life-affirming slogans—such as “Women, life, freedom”—have replaced cries of “death to” this and that.

The streets of Iran are no longer the monopoly of men. They display a youthful, desegregated Iran; more than half of the country’s current inhabitants were born after the 1979 revolution. It is a gentler Iran, tired of dictatorship and violence. It is a digitally literate Iran, transformed by its computational know-how and its virtual contact with a borderless community. It is a global Iran, in touch and in tune with an interconnected, interdependent world.

It is thanks to this young generation of women and men that the country, an isolated and pariah state, is igniting a worldwide celebration of democracy and gender equity.

And this audacious celebration of democratic aspirations is being led by Iranian women—who have so often been represented as voiceless, powerless, and oppressed in the West.

The core tenet of Iran’s 1979 Islamic  Revolution was to put women back in their place and erase them from the public sphere. The ruling elite wanted to resegregate and keep women in their designated spaces. They quickly canceled laws protecting women’s rights and human dignity. Soon, the turban—outlawed by former leader Reza Shah Pahlavi—became the supreme leader’s insignia. It replaced the crown just as “the King, the Crowned Father” became “the Supreme Leader, the nation’s Guardian and Father.”

The ruling elite wanted to reestablish traditional modes of governance, reinstate the patriarchal family, and realign gender relations within it. Unsurprisingly, the very first decree of the Islamic Republic—which occurred on Feb. 26, 1979, before the compulsory veiling act and even before the ratification of the constitution—was the repeal of the 1967 Family Protection Law, which had implemented greater freedoms for women in the realms of divorce, polygamy, and child custody laws.

An Islamic society could only be reborn if the nuclear family could be reformed. The clerical regime legislated new restrictive laws. They resorted to bullying, publicly shaming, and imprisoning any woman who tried to reassert her rights, her choices, and her identity. The directive to women soon after the 1979 revolution was loud and clear: Disappear from public places, and if you need to be there, hide yourself under a mandatory hijab—a mobile home, a portable closet, a walking wall. Cover your body. Cover your voice. Erase your presence. Make yourself invisible.

Women, however, refused to become invisible, voiceless, and powerless. They challenged the regime at every step and emerged as vibrant catalysts for change. They fought exclusion. They claimed the streets and struggled for the freedom to move about freely, to be part of the public world, to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged as equal citizens. They refused to be deleted. Now, they are on the way to shattering the hardest and highest ceiling: national leadership.

Iranian women are now at the forefront of a vast and transformative movement to reverse a backlash against their earlier gains and attain equal rights. They are fighting the government’s morality police—self-assigned arbiters of morality and women’s bodily integrity. They are rejecting the obligatory hijab, invisible walls and veils, institutionalized repression, and legislative humiliation, which considers a woman’s worth, testimony, and inheritance half that of a man’s.

The young women leading the uprising are the daughters and granddaughters of women who risked life and limb to pave the way for democratization and desegregation. Forty-three years after the ruling elite’s obsessive attempt to resegregate Iranian society, they are making unprecedented history inside and outside the country.

Women writers, always at the forefront of social justice movements in contemporary Iran, brought the struggle for democracy and gender equity inside the home, into kitchens and bedrooms. They demanded its implementation in interpersonal relationships. Without shedding a drop of blood, they prepared the way for a smooth transition to a more democratic, desegregated society.

Segregation establishes complex interconnections between bodies and borders in a physical, literary, and symbolic sense, and women writers and poets, having suffered its impact on their bodies and voices, know desegregation is central to their literary enterprise. They know they have to trespass walls, boundaries, borders, and ancestral silences.

If we accept that good art knows more than the artist, then women writers and poets are the harbingers of future political trends in Iran.

If earlier, a “world ruled by women” was the distant and unattainable dream of Zari—the female protagonist of Iran’s first major novel by a woman, Savushun by Simin Daneshvar—the younger generation, within the country and in the diaspora, is assuming the role of rulers and even prophets.

“I must be King, even if I don’t have a crown on my head,” writes the female narrator of the prize-winning novel My Bird by Fariba Vafi. The young and sassy protagonist of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Persepolis, goes even further and declares herself the first female prophet in a long line of male predecessors.

Iranian women have emerged as seasoned survivors and a formidable civic force to be reckoned with. They offer a promising alternative to lead a country in deep and swift decline out of its current crisis.

The prescient chronicler of seismic moments of transition in Iranian history, Bahram Beyzaie, in his masterpiece The Death of [King] Yazdgerd, puts the crown on the head of his formidable female protagonist and these words in her mouth: “I have been waiting for liberation for a long time.”

This is the dawn of a new era in Iran.

Farzaneh Milani is Raymond J. Nelson Professor of Iranian literature and Gender Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of several books, most recently The Literary Biography of Forugh Farrokhzad and Unpublished Letters. She is currentlyworking on a book about Iranian women writers.

[un-enfant-immature]

The coronavirus has hastened the post-human era

Mario Gabriele Contributor

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Mario Gabriele is an investor at Charge and the editor of The Generalist.

In the mid-1970s, Professor Fereidoun M. Esfandiary decided to change his name. From then on he would be legally called “FM-2030.”

“Conventional names define a person’s past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago … The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal,” he offered in explanation.

It didn’t hurt that by 2030 he would be 100 years old, an age he was sure he would reach.

Already in his forty-odd years of living, FM — which some speculated stood for “Future Man” — defied easy categorization. The son of an Iranian diplomat, he’d lived in 17 countries by the age of 11 and would go on to represent his country’s basketball team at the 1948 Olympic Games before beginning an academic career. He was educated at Berkeley and UCLA, later becoming one of the first professors of futurology at the New School. It was there that he would begin to espouse his “new concepts of the human,” discussing the steps necessary to transition to the age of post-humanity. FM described this as an epoch in which Homo sapiens became “post-biological organisms,” transcending the limits of their body through technology.

  FM-2030 (Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new window) under a Flora Schnall (opens in a new window) license)

Much of the 21st century has seen us hurtle toward a post-human future, fulfilling predictions FM made half a century earlier. Over the course of his career, he foresaw the creation of 3D printers — which he referred to as “Santa Claus machines” — along with the advent of telemedicine, teleconferencing, teleshopping and genetic editing.

Though that suggests the process of post-humanization is well under way, we may look back on 2020 and the coronavirus crisis as a crossing over. A time in which our relationship to core aspects of our humanity is fundamentally remade. In particular, I believe we are seeing meaningful recalibrations of our relationship to identity, labor, health and love. In short, the post-human era is beginning in earnest.

Identity

The shift to a locked-in world has accelerated the acceptance of identity as distinct from physical body or place. We still want to communicate, socialize and play during this time, but have only a digital version to offer. Those constraints are forcing new expressions of selfhood, from the Zoom background used to express a personal interest or make a joke, to the avatars roaming rich, interactive metaverses. Nintendo has seen millions turn to Animal Crossing to socialize, trade virtual assets and host both weddings and conferences, while Travis Scott’s surreal performance inside of Fortnite attracted 12.3 million concurrent views, and 27.7 million unique attendees. We are showcasing even the darker aspects of our nature via these platforms, with some on Animal Crossing bullying and torturing villagers they deem “ugly.”

Tools like Pragli illustrate how this development manifests in the workplace beyond Zoom backgrounds ripped from “Tiger King” or “Love Is Blind.” Rather than hopping onto a video call with co-workers, Pragli offers the ability to connect with anime-style avatars of your officemates. Changing one’s appearance on the platform is determined by the options the company rolls out, with a recent update showcasing the ability for men to sport a bun, braid or ponytail. Set “happy” or “sad” expressions blur the lines between real and performative feelings.

All of this is in stark contrast to the masked, distant, de-individuated person we show outside our homes, something a little less than human. There are indications that this redacted version of ourselves is becoming something of a style. G95’s “biohoodie” features a built-in face-cover, while creative studio Production Club showed off a hazmat suit designed for socializing. Even once the worst is over, we may see a new cautiousness and implied distance expressed in fashion.

Labor

“Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it,” said Stephen Hawking. Whether that is an assessment you agree with, much of our conception of ourselves is tied up in our labor. COVID-19 is accelerating a shift away from humans and toward machines, doing so at a time in which we may actually feel grateful for cyborg usurpers as they keep critical services running and spare us from disease. Neolix, a Chinese manufacturer of driverless vans, has seen a spike in demand since the outbreak and has been trusted to ferry food and medical supplies, and to disinfect streets. Suppliers like AMP, UVD, Nuro and Starship have experienced a similar surge, while the order books of industrial behemoths like Harmonic Drive and Fanuc suggest more universal demand. The latter saw orders increase 7% between Q4 and March.

This insinuation is not limited to manual labor. With customer support and moderation offices closing down, many companies are aggressively employing AI solutions. Facebook and Google have expanded automated moderation, while PayPal used chatbots for 65% of customer inquiries in recent weeks, a record for the firm.

Those lucky enough to retain their jobs may face a very different work environment in which they are forced to collaborate with robots and be treated as an increasingly mechanized system themselves. Walmart greeters will stand side-by-side with automated floor-scrubbers, and McDonald’s cooks may soon be joined by a kitchen full of bionic sous-chefs. Amazon warehouse workers — old-hands at human-robot collaboration thanks to the company’s acquisition of Kiva Systems — must adapt to being managed more like their pallet-ferrying co-workers, with temperatures monitored by thermal cameras. That is just a small part of the broader surveillance blitz being undertaken around the world and across industries. China is installing more cameras to monitor the comings-and-goings of citizens, while companies dip into budgets to purchase “tattleware,” software designed to surveil employees. Among the beneficiaries are companies like InterGuard, which provide minute-by-minute breakdowns of how workers spend time online. Sneek takes photos of workers as often as once a minute. The company’s CEO joked that the “sneeksnap” command came in particularly handy when a colleague did something embarrassing like picking their nose.

Health

Much of our waking life is filled with health-related ruminations. As we become more aware of our vulnerabilities, we are turning to technologies to extend corporeal limitations, treating our bodies more like software with which we can experiment. Consumers are turning to immunity-boosting supplements such as Vitamin C and zinc, which have soared in sales, in addition to courting riskier treatments like “rectal ozone insufflations,” peddled by influencers. Spurred on by world-leaders like Trump and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, demand for hydroxychloroquine has grown rapidly, with prescriptions increasing ~500%.

Whatever your opinion of the president or the treatment in question, this represents a rapid, iterative model of medicine more akin to the Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” than a considered FDA approval process. Biohacking communities, a group with high-tolerance for health-related risks, are teaming up online to research COVID-19 vaccines on their own time. “Biohacking used to be a fringe space, but I think this is becoming a kind of breakout moment for things like DIY biology and community labs and hackerspaces,” one contributor noted.

Beyond immediate experimentation, we are looking to extend the limits of our bodies in order to accommodate changing plans for the future. Reports suggest that men have turned to at-home sperm collection companies like Legacy during quarantine, motivated by fears of diminished fertility and perhaps the acknowledgment that with life on hold, children may have to wait. That certainly seems to be the case for 1,894 women surveyed by Modern Fertility and SoFi: 31% noted that the pandemic had affected their fertility plans, while 41% stated they are delaying childbearing because of the coronavirus.

​Love

“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single,” novelist Charlotte Brontë once wrote, “but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”

The current state of affairs does not offer many ways to amend that state of misery, prompting some to turn to AI companions. Created in 2015, Replika provides a sympathetic texting partner, designed to serve as a digital therapist. But for many of the company’s 500K monthly active users, Replika is too charming to resist: up to 40% consider the bot a romantic partner. The coronavirus may serve as the ideal catalyst for relationships between humans and artificial personalities to deepen. There are signs we may already prefer their company: research on Microsoft’s XiaoIce indicated that conversations with the chatbot last longer than human-to-human interactions.

For those committed to finding love among creatures of blood and bone, the pandemic has forced a recalibration of what it means to date. Interactions take place almost entirely online, through chat or video calls, changing the necessary criteria for a match. Location matters much less now than availability and responsiveness. When the desire for touch, or “skin hunger” as it is gruesomely called, becomes too much to bear, interested parties must navigate a meeting. In the process, we treat partners as potential threats, owners of a corpus that may endanger us, despite best intentions. In doing so, we view the individual as distinct from their body, a separate being in possession of a liability with which we must negotiate. Depending on the length of the pandemic, we may see this fear harden into an unconscious aversion, reviving the disgust for the corporeal felt by more puritanical eras. These mores may take time to correct.

The self, as we know it, is being decimated. That may not be a bad thing. As identity moves online, as work is stripped from us, as our physical bodies are optimized like an OS, as love sheds its carnality, new opportunities will emerge. Humans will find meaning in new modes of self-expression, discover purpose beyond work (or reclassify what work means), reengineer physical limits as “biology eats the world” and find affection in new beings. We are undergoing a period of Schumpeterian “creative destruction,” felt at the anthropological rather than industrial level. Great things may come of it.

For FM-2030, the future was something at which to marvel, where “people will belong to no specific families or factions … we will free-flow across the planet and beyond. Highly individual yet universal.” Though the changes wrought by the coronavirus appear bleak, some of FM’s vision feels true: We are united as a world, fighting against a common enemy, more connected than ever before. Perhaps, in time, the rest of FM’s dream will be made manifest.

For all of his prescience, however, FM-2030 got one prediction very wrong. He did not make his 100th birthday, dying of pancreatic cancer in 2000. He was just 69. If he has his way though, he may still have a role to play in the creation of the future. Though dead, FM’s body remains frozen in a state of cryonic suspension in Scottsdale, Ariz. Perhaps he is waiting for the world to catch up.

#TechCrunch

[garudabluffs]

The Eerie Parallels Between COVID-19 and the Plague

One of the earliest things you talk about in this piece is the remarkable parallels between what happened back in the 1300s, a virus that started in Asia, that spread to Italy and other places that really parallels what we’re seeing today.

Parag Khanna: “Yes, that’s exactly right, it is truly uncanny. If you change one letter of the province where the plague broke out in Northwestern China, that was Hebei, and you change it to Hubei, that’s where Wuhan is the capital where the current virus broke out. They’re obviously in the same country, the plague spread westward along the Silk Road, it reached Iran and devastated more than half the population of Persia, which at the time was, so it’s called a connate, a protector of the territory of the Mongol empire. It reached Genoa, entered Italy in the year, I think 1341 through the port of Genoa.                 Parag Khanna: “You have of course today the main clusters of this being similarly China, Iran, Italy, and it’s not necessarily a coincidence, as I point out in the article. Iran and Italy are two of China’s major trade partners along the Belt and Road Initiative, which you mentioned at the outset. There are really these eerie parallels around how travelers and traders have enabled the spread of this virus. Given the long incubation period, it’s very difficult for us to know how many people are genuinely effected and obviously the weaknesses in these countries’ health systems that have been revealed. And by the way, it did spread from Italy back in the 14th century northward and decimated so much of the European population and of course so many Chinese people died as well.”

“This is really the core thesis of my Future is Asian book. I did not call the book The Future is Chinese, I called the book the Future is Asian for a good reason because China has never been number one in the world and it’s never been number one in all of Asia, because Asia, inherently, is so diverse. You have the Indian civilization, Japanese civilization, Russia is actually an Asian power, Persia, I mean Iran, Korea, Australia. India, the United States is still a major military presence, there are many balancing powers to contain China’s rise, so the notion that has taken hold over the last 20 years, that China is inevitably destined to be number one, and the prominent global power on the planet Earth was always a complete myth, it was always wrong. I think that this will just be one more nail in the coffin of that very bad and dangerous idea. It doesn’t mean that China isn’t powerful, I make very clear that China is a superpower. You know, 15 years ago I started saying China is definitively a global superpower. I was even writing about Chinese influence in Latin America and all across Africa, so there’s no question that China is a global power with a very significant influence worldwide. That does not mean that China will be number one in the world and it will not even be number one, necessarily, will not even dominate Asia.”

“I live in Singapore and you’ve probably seen that, whether it’s the Harvard study or many other, Goodwill Health Organization and experts like Laurie Garrett at the council on foreign relations, they’ve all said, “If the whole world had a public health system like Singapore’s, we would have a small fraction of the outbreaks.” This is the first country that became a poster outside of China because it’s not far from China, you have a huge amount of travel every single day, dozens of flights arriving from Chinese cities. This was the first country outside of China to reach a hundred cases of the virus and zero people have died, and I’m living here right now. I’m speaking to you while looking out the window at a very calm and peaceful landscape of palm trees and so forth.

Life continues as normal, not a single Singaporean person who’s died, and let’s bear in mind this is the fastest aging country in the world with the most lopsided aging demographics, just like Japan. This is a small version of Japan, so according to the demographic map of this virus, a hell of a lot of old Singaporeans should be dead right now, and instead the answer is zero. That’s just a fact, this is a place I’ve come to live the last few years and you have to admire the transparency of the system. They published on the front page of the newspaper every day what to do if you feel sick. They made a virus test absolutely free and open so that no one fears that they can’t afford it or that they wouldn’t be able to afford quarantine. Everything is completely free, they had videos made to air on television and everyone will know what to do if you don’t feel well and they encourage people to self quarantine, if you’ve been infected.

Just every possible sensible, commonsensical thing you would expect.

Just every possible sensible, commonsensical thing you would expect. If you and I as nonpublic health experts were to make a list of the 20 things you would want to do to contain a virus, they’ve done all 20 of those things. Again, they lived through SARS 15 years ago, so they learned the lessons, they embedded the best practices. Again, this is probably the only country that’s getting the credit now for having contained it, but it is a very small country. But it doesn’t mean that larger countries can’t do it.”

READ MORE   Full Text Transcript: https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/03/16/the-eerie-parallels-between-covid-19-and-the-plague/

More than Just a Virus                                        March 16,2020

“Italy was the only G7 country to sign on to the Belt and Road initiative with Sister-City Agreements throughout Italy.  Some of those sister cities have been the hardest hit by corona.  Iran has also suffered with increased infections as government officials have been especially affected, as if they were specifically targeted.  Iran has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016 and in defiance of US sanctions, Iran has continued to import embargoed products from China while selling its oil to China.

The question arises why, out of 175 countries in the world, that those two countries, in particular, have specifically experienced the strongest coronavirus presence than any other. It can be expected that the ‘coincidence’ has not escaped the notice of the Chinese, Iranian or Italian governments.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a recent video revealed massive corruption at the CDC and WHO with both in the vaccine business rather than as regulatory agencies conducting oversight on Big Pharma and protecting the public health.  Kennedy reported that with an $11 billion annual budget and a revolving door with industry, the CDC owns its own vaccine patents and collects millions in profits each year.   Identifying the WHO  as a ‘sock puppet’ for Big Pharma and Big Money, Kennedy said the WHO  is controlled top to bottom by the pharmaceutical industry which provides half of the WHO’s budget.

Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, molecular biologist and former researcher with the National Cancer Institute, blew the whistle on contaminated virus being used in human vaccines.  When she refused to renounce her study, she was fired and arrested  in 2011.  Here are her comments on the efficacy of the coronavirus as “part of the plague of corruption.”

Man Made or Mother Natural

While the origin of coronavirus is yet to be definitively nailed down, whether it might be a military bio-weapon, whether the virus leaked out of a lab through human error or whether, it was deliberately released into the public realm.  Two experienced scientists (including a former NSA counterterror analyst) are suggesting that the Covid-19 appears to be man made while their research paper, which has been withdrawn from internet circulation, concluded that

“In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

“With an estimated 250,000 Americans hospitalized with the flu/influenza since December,  how many of those were misdiagnosed?   How many sick people believe they have the coronavirus when they are only diagnosed with the flu?  With no testing in the US, how accurate are any of the statistics, globally or domestically, confirming the number of infections or deaths attributed to corona or the flu/influenza? “

“If we have learned anything since 1963, it is to question everything that Big Government, Big Media and Big Money tell us as there is always more than the ‘official’ story. With too many unknowns still to be answered, there is no doubt that a bio-critter of uncertain nefariousorigins, perhaps electro magnetic 5G oriented, is loose within Earth’s atmosphere.  

As we are all collectively, as One Universe, experiencing the potential of a coronavirus infection, we have been assured that the outbreak originated in a fish market in Wuhan, China’s eighth largest city with a population of 11 million.  That is the largely unchallenged conclusion since China is well known for its extensive network of high tech labs and since the SARS virus began in China last year.

At first glance, it seems a passing curiosity that the next two most extensively affected countries with corona infections, each disparate from China and each other, have extensive trade relations with China.  In defiance of science, why would Italy be the most infected country outside of China?

Italy was the only G7 country to sign on to the Belt and Road initiative with Sister-City Agreements throughout Italy.  Some of those sister cities have been the hardest hit by corona.  Iran has also suffered with increased infections as government officials have been especially affected, as if they were specifically targeted.  Iran has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016 and in defiance of US sanctions, Iran has continued to import embargoed products from China while selling its oil to China.

The question arises why, out of 175 countries in the world, that those two countries, in particular, have specifically experienced the strongest coronavirus presence than any other. It can be expected that the ‘coincidence’ has not escaped the notice of the Chinese, Iranian or Italian governments.

With the complexity and uncertainty of the coronavirus. it would not be the first crisis where TPTB have misled a trusting public. It would, however, be wise to treat the virus with respect as a potent pathogen of consequence.  In case you had not noticed prior to the corona, there has been a titanic struggle for global dominance underway with the US, Israel, Russia and China as its sovereign representatives.  The most current manifestation of that struggle, through happenstance or not, being the coronavirus outbreak.

While there are references to the virus spreading considerably through increased exposure, getting worse before it gets better, it is another curiosity that there is no optimism as the US flu season  (December – February), peaks and  winds down in March.  So why the panic? If the coronavirus is a ‘normal’ virus, it should already be peaking just as it is in China and South Korea. If it is not a ‘normal’ virus, if it is mutated to reappear in the future or if it is man made or a bio-weapon, then we have a different problem. All of which begs the question which Federal agency is currently testing the virus to determine its origin, when will we know the results of that test and when will the virus peak?

China’s National Health Commissioner reports that the coronavirus has ‘peaked’ in Wuhan with only single digit new cases and no new cases in the Hubei province.  The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees with that assessment.  While South Korea closed its borders in early February, it also believes that the Covid-19 has peaked.  Russia closed its borders in January and has reported 28 cases with no fatalities.

Big Media is portraying the Covid-19 as if it is   here to stay in perpetuity rather than a flu that will run its natural course.  Before the virus peaks, TPTB must move quickly if it is intent on institutionalizing those initiatives to tighten control and censorship; to destabilize what remains as a ‘normal’ environment withmandatory medical martial law and mandatory vaccinations.   In other words, not unlike 911, any crisis can be used to create a new collectivization of society with a centralized global control as the new reality,

The Governor of California has suggested a  ban on public gatherings of 250 people with the CDC Director suggests a 50 person ban.  The real possibility is that, once adopted, the ban will never be lifted.  The NY Fed Bank moved quickly to approve a $1.5 Trillion in ‘short-term loan’ to the banks for ‘unusual’ disruption of services during the corona virus smells more like a backdoor bailout for Wall Street during the recent downtown

WHO and CDC and Mandatory Vaccines

An out-of-control pandemic encourages the public to rely on the  CDC or  WHO (World Health Organization) as  definitive ‘medical experts’’ on public health concerns. While both are thoroughly unscrupulous in their compromises to Big Pharma’s dominance, the CDC has no reliable test kits for coronavirus and is conducting no tests to determine the source of the virus.  True medical agencies would be encouraging the public to strengthen their immune system and natural antibodies with doses of Vitamin C to ward off a head cold or respiratory infection.

Coronavirus Outbreak, a Global Public Health Emergency?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a recent video revealed massive corruption at the CDC and WHO with both in the vaccine business rather than as regulatory agencies conducting oversight on Big Pharma and protecting the public health.  Kennedy reported that with an $11 billion annual budget and a revolving door with industry, the CDC owns its own vaccine patents and collects millions in profits each year.   Identifying the WHO  as a ‘sock puppet’ for Big Pharma and Big Money, Kennedy said the WHO  is controlled top to bottom by the pharmaceutical industry which provides half of the WHO’s budget.

Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, molecular biologist and former researcher with the National Cancer Institute, blew the whistle on contaminated virus being used in human vaccines.  When she refused to renounce her study, she was fired and arrested  in 2011.  Here are her comments on the efficacy of the coronavirus as “part of the plague of corruption.”

Regarded as the UN’s public health leader, the WHO director generalDr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “We have made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic” without providing convincing infection or death rate statistics,  More recently, Ghebreyesus  refused to consider when  the virus might peak with “this outbreak could still go in any direction” – whatever that means.

Man Made or Mother Natural

While the origin of coronavirus is yet to be definitively nailed down, whether it might be a military bio-weapon, whether the virus leaked out of a lab through human error or whether, it was deliberately released into the public realm.  Two experienced scientists (including a former NSA counterterror analyst) are suggesting that the Covid-19 appears to be man made while their research paper, which has been withdrawn from internet circulation, concluded that

“In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

in addition, the Biondt.org published a paper with the findings that the coronavirus was engineered with ‘key structural proteins” identifying “four inserts of amino acid sequences homologous to amino acid sequences in HIV 1.” This paper was also withdrawn with the publisher warning that its conclusions should not be regarded as ‘conclusive.’

The Gates Foundation, the WHO and the European Commission are benefactors of the Pirbright Institute which owns the  bio-safety lab-level 4 lab (BSL-4) in China which owns the coronavirus patent. The US patent application was filed in 2015 and granted in 2018. It is worth noting that the Fort Detrick bio weapons lab in Maryland with a history of violations, was shut down in August, 2019 due to ‘safety concerns related to a ”loss of pathogens.”

Event 201

In what might be considered another coincidence, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the John Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum to conduct a five-hour simulated exercise specific to a coronavirus pandemic. The simulation was held in NYC on October 18thand was referred to as Event 201.   The event, which included American business, public health, government leaders and military officials, occurred  six weeks before the outbreak occurred in Wuhan although there are now unconfirmed reports of earlier exposures elsewhere.

In another coincidence, the 2019 Military World Games began in Wuhan on October 19th with 300 American military athletes in attendance.  It has been reported that five unnamed athletes were hospitalized during the game with an unidentified infection.

As if on a dry run, Event 201 addressed how the world should respond to an coronavirus outbreak – with a special focus on how to control ‘conspiracy’ news with  a Pandemic Emergency Board formed to manage the pandemic. The Chinese government was not invited to participate in the simulation.

READ MORE https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2020/03/16/more-than-just-a-virus/

#conoravirus the Plague

[preciousmetals0]

Five Countries Where Crypto Regulation Changed the Most in 2019

Five Countries Where Crypto Regulation Changed the Most in 2019:

One of the impediments to the adoption of blockchain and crypto technologies in the world are the regulations governing their introduction into the world of business. The constantly changing nature of the legal framework and the fear of being caught up in legal disputes with regulatory authorities, especially the tax ones, is forcing most small- and medium-sized businesses across the globe to work with blockchain from the shadows.

Nonetheless, many experts believe the year 2019 has seen a significant improvement in many countries in regard to blockchain regulation, with the attitude toward digital money shifting dramatically in recent years. This observation is shared by Alina Kiselevich, a communication specialist at Enigma Securities — a crypto market broker-dealer — who told Cointelegraph that:

“Some countries now consider them legal tender, while many viewing cryptocurrencies as commodities. Governments around the world are keenly aware of the problem that the technology is rapidly outpacing the laws that govern it.” 

China

Blockchain adoption is being accelerated, but crypto can be only referred to as a national cryptocurrency.

When it comes to crypto regulation, the relationship with blockchain in China could compete with a Shakespearean romance. On one hand, the Chinese central authorities are introducing blockchain technology in some of their mainstay powerhouses, such as the Agricultural Bank of China and other financial institutions, for tracking transactions and introducing transparency. However, on the other hand, they are still cracking down on cases in which the technology is used among the population.

China’s leading social media platform, Weibo, recently banned leading Chinese crypto platforms Binance and Tron due to a violation of its rules. In November, Shanghai regulators ordered a search of all local crypto exchanges and formed reports on their findings to the People’s Bank of China for further action.

Regardless of the bans, The Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress in China ruled that a new law on the regulation of cryptographic technology will come into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. The law aims to set a regulatory framework for blockchain applications in light of President Xi Jinping’s calls for accelerating the adoption of blockchain technology in the country.

According to Steve Tsou, global CEO of RRMine — a distributed Bitcoin hashrate asset management and trading platform — 2019 has been a year of laying down the regulatory foundations for Chinese crypto. He told Cointelegraph:

“Various regions have passed a series of policies to support blockchain companies and set up innovative pilot areas. Among them, the core directions are AI tech based on computing power and blockchain, IOT networks, and offshore digital financial innovation.”

Speaking about the future development of crypto regulation in China, Tsou added that, “With clearer supportive attitude and more restrictive supervision, there can be a process of trial, which has at least found an exit and clear direction for the entire crypto world.” Similar expectations were shared with Cointelegraph by Sukhi Jutla, the co-founder of MarketOrders — a blockchain-based platform for the gold and diamond jewelry industry:

“With over 1 billion population in China, this looks like the perfect testing ground to see mass adoption taking place. China is already the leader when it comes to mobile payments and creating their own dedicated cryptocurrency was the natural next step. China is the home to thousands of blockchain startups so I wouldn’t be surprised to see China leading the way and making even more gingiva advancements in 2020.”

France

Crypto-to-crypto trades are not taxable.

The land of high arts and couture has been on the sidelines of blockchain integration, until François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Bank of France, announced that the institution is ready to launch a pilot project for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, in the first quarter of 2020.

The new instrument will be based on a digital euro format and will be available only to financial institutions, excluding retail customers. The move has already been regarded as a counteract to the threat posed by Facebook’s Libra stablecoin, considering that France is aiming to become the first country to issue a CBDC with blockchain-based settlements and is currently the biggest adopter of Bitcoin payments, with over 25,000 sales points accepting it across the country.

In another, even more crypto-friendly move, French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire stated on Sept. 12 that crypto-to-crypto trades will no longer be subject to tax. However, sales of cryptocurrencies for fiat will still be taxable with the nation’s treasury.

Germany

Banks are allowed to work with cryptocurrencies.

Rational and calculative as ever, the German government has been biding its time in releasing any manner of clarification regarding its stance on blockchain technologies. At present, the German financial industry, one of the main engines of Europe’s largest economy, is prohibited from having any dealings with cryptocurrencies.

However, the German government passed a bill in November that allows banks to sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as grant custody over them, by the end of 2020.

Though the law is still at the draft stage, it has been met with significant enthusiasm from local businesses, as it would allow banks to streamline crypto operations and give them the authority to safeguard user assets on the basis of their experience and established risk mechanisms.

The United States of America

Digital assets are regulated just like fiat money.

The U.S. is seen as a trendsetter in terms of blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption, and most other countries in the world act in hindsight to the economic giant across the Atlantic. Though still fragmented on regulation at the state level, the U.S. is coming to terms with the need to adopt new technology as individual state authorities pass crypto-friendly laws.

Related: US Crypto Review: Top-5 States With Welcoming Regulations

The state of Wyoming passed a bill in 2019 that came into effect on March 1. The law divided digital assets into three categories: digital consumer assets, digital securities and virtual currencies.

All assets from the category of virtual currencies will be equated with fiat currencies and subject to the same tax and supervision procedures. The law also allows banks to provide custodial services for digital assets, making the ownership of cryptocurrencies both legal and equal in status to fiat currencies.

Iran

Crypto mining is legal but needs a license.

Introducing new technology in a land so harshly pressured by Western sanctions is a tricky deal. Notably, Iran is becoming one of the main hubs for cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption, spurred on by its long-standing sanctions. Both the Iranian government and citizens are increasingly turning to decentralized technology for circumventing the economic blockade.

Related: US Sanctions on Iran Crypto Mining — Inevitable or Impossible?

In what can be described as a bold move, the Iranian government passed a law in July 2019 that endorsed the mining of cryptocurrencies, equating it to industrial activity. The Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade has already started issuing licenses for the activity, and demand is surging. The activity will be subject to taxation like in any other industry, and miners who create their own mining farms will get support from the government.

To encourage the trend, the Iranian government is offering subsidized electricity rates at half a cent per kilowatt for mining activities, a trend that has started attracting mining companies from China and even the U.S. to Iran. However, despite the seemingly libertarian approach and progressive attitude toward blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies are banned as a means of settlement in Iran.

Honorable mentions

As the leading countries’ stances on the crypto market have changed in 2019, other regions also have a part to play in impacting cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption. Among them is the United Kingdom, according to Galyna Danilenko from Smartlands, a U.K.-based digital securities issuance and investment platform: “UK has made a significant breakthrough in 2019: with the legal paper issued in November, digital assets were recognized as property.”

Jessica Renden, head of operations at cryptocurrency exchange Cointree, referred to Japan and New Zealand as the main countries that are setting trends in the crypto regulation market in 2019. She explained her view to Cointelegraph:

“The New Zealand tax authorities have confirmed that bitcoin and several other coins are approved as salary payment alternatives, subject to employment contracts set out by employers. Earlier this year the Japanese government passed a bill to incorporate cryptocurrency into regulation and to date have 21 approved registered crypto exchanges.”

Russia is another country that made the most promising breakthrough in cryptocurrency regulation, according to Evan Luthra, a Forbes “Top 30 Under 30” tech entrepreneur and blockchain expert holding an honorary Ph.D. in decentralized and distributed systems. He told Cointelegraph that although legislation on cryptocurrencies has not been formed yet in Russia, a lot has changed throughout the year:

“The authorities changed their initial radically negative position and are now interested in developing new technologies for the benefit of the state, financial system, welfare, and convenience of citizens. The main achievement, I guess, was the Russian Federal Law ‘On Digital Rights’ release.”

According to MarketOrders’ Jutla, the United Arab Emirates is one of the leaders in crypto regulation when it comes to the Middle East. He said:

“This year, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) in the United Arab Emirates drafted a resolution on regulating crypto-assets, providing greater clarity for crypto-related projects in the Middle East nation. By drafting this resolution, the UAE is sending a positive sign to the world. This can be seen as a signal that they are open to exploring this area and by creating guidelines they are giving more reassurance, confidence and stability to businesses owners who may want to enter this field.”

Cryptocurrency regulation trend moves on

Experts predict that in the next couple of years, more countries will make significant changes in their crypto regulation. In regard to this, Renden told Cointelegraph that the first country-backed digital currency should arrive in the next one to two years, potentially from China. She added:

“This will open the floodgates as regulators become more comfortable and organizations around the globe realize the benefits digital currencies provide, such as low transaction fees and instant payments. Within five years, we expect all first-world countries to have released, or to be working on their own digital currency if they aren’t already.”

While sharing an opinion on this matter to Cointelegraph, Kiselevich said that he sees numerous countries around the world making big steps toward launching and implementing both crypto and blockchain technologies, adding that, “It looks like a trend that might be followed by a lot of countries later.”

[goldira01]

One of the impediments to the adoption of blockchain and crypto technologies in the world are the regulations governing their introduction into the world of business. The constantly changing nature of the legal framework and the fear of being caught up in legal disputes with regulatory authorities, especially the tax ones, is forcing most small- and medium-sized businesses across the globe to work with blockchain from the shadows.

Nonetheless, many experts believe the year 2019 has seen a significant improvement in many countries in regard to blockchain regulation, with the attitude toward digital money shifting dramatically in recent years. This observation is shared by Alina Kiselevich, a communication specialist at Enigma Securities — a crypto market broker-dealer — who told Cointelegraph that:

“Some countries now consider them legal tender, while many viewing cryptocurrencies as commodities. Governments around the world are keenly aware of the problem that the technology is rapidly outpacing the laws that govern it.” 

China

Blockchain adoption is being accelerated, but crypto can be only referred to as a national cryptocurrency.

When it comes to crypto regulation, the relationship with blockchain in China could compete with a Shakespearean romance. On one hand, the Chinese central authorities are introducing blockchain technology in some of their mainstay powerhouses, such as the Agricultural Bank of China and other financial institutions, for tracking transactions and introducing transparency. However, on the other hand, they are still cracking down on cases in which the technology is used among the population.

China’s leading social media platform, Weibo, recently banned leading Chinese crypto platforms Binance and Tron due to a violation of its rules. In November, Shanghai regulators ordered a search of all local crypto exchanges and formed reports on their findings to the People’s Bank of China for further action.

Regardless of the bans, The Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress in China ruled that a new law on the regulation of cryptographic technology will come into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. The law aims to set a regulatory framework for blockchain applications in light of President Xi Jinping’s calls for accelerating the adoption of blockchain technology in the country.

According to Steve Tsou, global CEO of RRMine — a distributed Bitcoin hashrate asset management and trading platform — 2019 has been a year of laying down the regulatory foundations for Chinese crypto. He told Cointelegraph:

“Various regions have passed a series of policies to support blockchain companies and set up innovative pilot areas. Among them, the core directions are AI tech based on computing power and blockchain, IOT networks, and offshore digital financial innovation.”

Speaking about the future development of crypto regulation in China, Tsou added that, “With clearer supportive attitude and more restrictive supervision, there can be a process of trial, which has at least found an exit and clear direction for the entire crypto world.” Similar expectations were shared with Cointelegraph by Sukhi Jutla, the co-founder of MarketOrders — a blockchain-based platform for the gold and diamond jewelry industry:

“With over 1 billion population in China, this looks like the perfect testing ground to see mass adoption taking place. China is already the leader when it comes to mobile payments and creating their own dedicated cryptocurrency was the natural next step. China is the home to thousands of blockchain startups so I wouldn’t be surprised to see China leading the way and making even more gingiva advancements in 2020.”

France

Crypto-to-crypto trades are not taxable.

The land of high arts and couture has been on the sidelines of blockchain integration, until François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Bank of France, announced that the institution is ready to launch a pilot project for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, in the first quarter of 2020.

The new instrument will be based on a digital euro format and will be available only to financial institutions, excluding retail customers. The move has already been regarded as a counteract to the threat posed by Facebook’s Libra stablecoin, considering that France is aiming to become the first country to issue a CBDC with blockchain-based settlements and is currently the biggest adopter of Bitcoin payments, with over 25,000 sales points accepting it across the country.

In another, even more crypto-friendly move, French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire stated on Sept. 12 that crypto-to-crypto trades will no longer be subject to tax. However, sales of cryptocurrencies for fiat will still be taxable with the nation’s treasury.

Germany

Banks are allowed to work with cryptocurrencies.

Rational and calculative as ever, the German government has been biding its time in releasing any manner of clarification regarding its stance on blockchain technologies. At present, the German financial industry, one of the main engines of Europe’s largest economy, is prohibited from having any dealings with cryptocurrencies.

However, the German government passed a bill in November that allows banks to sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as grant custody over them, by the end of 2020.

Though the law is still at the draft stage, it has been met with significant enthusiasm from local businesses, as it would allow banks to streamline crypto operations and give them the authority to safeguard user assets on the basis of their experience and established risk mechanisms.

The United States of America

Digital assets are regulated just like fiat money.

The U.S. is seen as a trendsetter in terms of blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption, and most other countries in the world act in hindsight to the economic giant across the Atlantic. Though still fragmented on regulation at the state level, the U.S. is coming to terms with the need to adopt new technology as individual state authorities pass crypto-friendly laws.

Related: US Crypto Review: Top-5 States With Welcoming Regulations

The state of Wyoming passed a bill in 2019 that came into effect on March 1. The law divided digital assets into three categories: digital consumer assets, digital securities and virtual currencies.

All assets from the category of virtual currencies will be equated with fiat currencies and subject to the same tax and supervision procedures. The law also allows banks to provide custodial services for digital assets, making the ownership of cryptocurrencies both legal and equal in status to fiat currencies.

Iran

Crypto mining is legal but needs a license.

Introducing new technology in a land so harshly pressured by Western sanctions is a tricky deal. Notably, Iran is becoming one of the main hubs for cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption, spurred on by its long-standing sanctions. Both the Iranian government and citizens are increasingly turning to decentralized technology for circumventing the economic blockade.

Related: US Sanctions on Iran Crypto Mining — Inevitable or Impossible?

In what can be described as a bold move, the Iranian government passed a law in July 2019 that endorsed the mining of cryptocurrencies, equating it to industrial activity. The Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade has already started issuing licenses for the activity, and demand is surging. The activity will be subject to taxation like in any other industry, and miners who create their own mining farms will get support from the government.

To encourage the trend, the Iranian government is offering subsidized electricity rates at half a cent per kilowatt for mining activities, a trend that has started attracting mining companies from China and even the U.S. to Iran. However, despite the seemingly libertarian approach and progressive attitude toward blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies are banned as a means of settlement in Iran.

Honorable mentions

As the leading countries’ stances on the crypto market have changed in 2019, other regions also have a part to play in impacting cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption. Among them is the United Kingdom, according to Galyna Danilenko from Smartlands, a U.K.-based digital securities issuance and investment platform: “UK has made a significant breakthrough in 2019: with the legal paper issued in November, digital assets were recognized as property.”

Jessica Renden, head of operations at cryptocurrency exchange Cointree, referred to Japan and New Zealand as the main countries that are setting trends in the crypto regulation market in 2019. She explained her view to Cointelegraph:

“The New Zealand tax authorities have confirmed that bitcoin and several other coins are approved as salary payment alternatives, subject to employment contracts set out by employers. Earlier this year the Japanese government passed a bill to incorporate cryptocurrency into regulation and to date have 21 approved registered crypto exchanges.”

Russia is another country that made the most promising breakthrough in cryptocurrency regulation, according to Evan Luthra, a Forbes “Top 30 Under 30” tech entrepreneur and blockchain expert holding an honorary Ph.D. in decentralized and distributed systems. He told Cointelegraph that although legislation on cryptocurrencies has not been formed yet in Russia, a lot has changed throughout the year:

“The authorities changed their initial radically negative position and are now interested in developing new technologies for the benefit of the state, financial system, welfare, and convenience of citizens. The main achievement, I guess, was the Russian Federal Law ‘On Digital Rights’ release.”

According to MarketOrders’ Jutla, the United Arab Emirates is one of the leaders in crypto regulation when it comes to the Middle East. He said:

“This year, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) in the United Arab Emirates drafted a resolution on regulating crypto-assets, providing greater clarity for crypto-related projects in the Middle East nation. By drafting this resolution, the UAE is sending a positive sign to the world. This can be seen as a signal that they are open to exploring this area and by creating guidelines they are giving more reassurance, confidence and stability to businesses owners who may want to enter this field.”

Cryptocurrency regulation trend moves on

Experts predict that in the next couple of years, more countries will make significant changes in their crypto regulation. In regard to this, Renden told Cointelegraph that the first country-backed digital currency should arrive in the next one to two years, potentially from China. She added:

“This will open the floodgates as regulators become more comfortable and organizations around the globe realize the benefits digital currencies provide, such as low transaction fees and instant payments. Within five years, we expect all first-world countries to have released, or to be working on their own digital currency if they aren’t already.”

While sharing an opinion on this matter to Cointelegraph, Kiselevich said that he sees numerous countries around the world making big steps toward launching and implementing both crypto and blockchain technologies, adding that, “It looks like a trend that might be followed by a lot of countries later.”

#Timor Invest

[artlessictoan]

I dunno if this is too mich but: 3, 26, 43, 46 and/or 49 +Sand sibs 2.0

holy fuc k okok dw i got this yallbetter go get yourselves a cuppa this is gonna take a while

Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do theydespise about their siblings?

well obvs all these kids love the hell outta each other! Theyhave a very close bond, almost on thesame level as the Sand Sibs Classic Flavour, there’s a lot of unspokencommunication between them and understanding that even their bestfriends/partners/dad don’t have with them, bc of their shared history

none of them really have a ‘favourite’ sib, they all likeeach other equally, but in very different ways; while Araya and Yodo are thetwo who hang out more often and do more stereotypically sibling stuff, that’smostly bc Shinki just isn’t interested in those sorts of things, he’s happy tojust sit and watch as he’s working on a puppet or something, generally though,Araya is the best at comforting, Shinki gives great advice and Yodo is always ready to give bullies a goodass-kicking

as for what annoys them.. well Yodo does love her pranks andcan be quite exhausting bc she’s so much more hyper than her bros, Araya is abit of a forgetful ditz, so he’ll often need to be reminded about a promiseseveral times and Shinki still has some trust issues – even with his sibs whohe trusts more than anyone else – he’ll often try to solve his problems withoutgetting them involved which can cause arguments between them. fights betweenthe three don’t usually last long though, as soon as someone apologises they’llforgive each other pretty much immediately

What does your character’s home look like? Personaltaste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

the sand fam home is mostly quite simply decorated, the sameway it was when it was first built, but the few rooms that are actuallyused tend to be a terrible clash of Every Style Under The Sun, with each personhaving a small area of the main rooms that’s basically all their shit clusteredtogether, from Gaa and Shinki’s minimalist practicality, to Araya’s cutesy nicknack’s, Kank’s Paint It Black and random puppet limbs everywhere and Yodo’s chaotic mess of video games, electronics and band posters (after so long nobody even notices how weird it looks anymore, visitorsare always very alarmed/amused though)

Shinki: don’t let his ninja outfit fool you, this boyis a Fashionista to the core, while he favours neutral colours he LOVES avantgarde shit, especially the look of mixed textures and bold, postmodern silhouettes,neo-punk is so much his thing it’sridiculous….. unfortunately he also has hypersensitive senses due to his autism,which makes certain textures and types of clothing physically uncomfortable forhim to actually wear, he’s a bit annoyed by that, but he’s into dressmaking andembroidery, so he just makes things for his sibs and lives vicariously throughthem

Araya: PASTEL PRINCE! loves anything cute, bright and feminine,he wears lots of ruffles and glittery makeup, loves over-sized jumpers and sweetpatterns (especially animals and plants!), sometimes he’ll ask his bro to do areally detailed piece of embroidery on a plain jacket, which he always wearswith so much pride! experiments with hair and makeup a lot, with help from hisuncle Kank, his ninja gear is totally different to his preferred style – so muchso that people often don’t recognise him when they first see him out of it –but that’s just bc he doesn’t wanna ruin his nice stuff during battle

Yodo: punk rock to her soul, she loves grungy,distressed, androgynous clothing and goes to great efforts to look like she’s not put in any effort at all. shelikes a lot of variety in colours, while most of her outfits are built aroundblack staples, she’ll throw all sorts of different colours on top (her favesare dark/rich shades of purple and blue though) and she loves bold,intimidating makeup, she mimics Gaara’s eye-rings bc she’s such a fuckingdad’s girl and rocks the heck outta dark lipstick

Does your character have any secrets? If so, are theyholding them back?

Shinki: he does have secrets about his past beforeending up at the orphanage, secrets that not even his siblings or dad knowabout, though they all have their suspicions, but he would rather not talkabout that time in his life and they all respect him enough not to go digging. ingeneral he’s a very open and blunt person – perhaps a little too much, but since he doesn’t talk oftenit’s not a huge issue

Araya: cannot keep a secret to save his life, if askeda question, he will almost immediately cave and tell the truth (unless it’s somethingsuper important, like.. national security level important), he’s not allowed inon pranks and surprise party organisation anymore, he’s honest person bynature, he just really doesn’t like feeling that he’s deceiving someone, or withholdingsomething from them

Yodo: has a metric shitton of secrets, of varyingimport, from exactly how all thosebiscuits went missing, to some of the more illegal things she had to resort towhen living on the streets, mostly kept bc she finds it difficult to trustothers, or bc she’s a forward-thinking person who doesn’t want to be dragged downby the past, so, outside of her family and closest friends, she doesn’t sharemany secrets. unlike her bros, she is a practiced and enthusiastic liar; thougha little clumsy at it as a child, she quickly learns how to hide them once shestarts living with Gaara and Kank (much to their dismay) though she mostly justuses the skill to get out of trouble

Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight?Posture? How do they feel about their physical body?

Shinki: average height and weight, he wouldn’t standout much in a crowd. he holds himself quite straight and formally though, in asimilar way to Gaara actually! he doesn’t have many thoughts about his body,either positive or negative, so long as it can get what he needs done done hereally doesn’t give a fuck

Araya: TALL! TOO TALL! he was always a little on the lankyside as a kid, quite skinny and with those awkward spider limbs, but he didn’tget really tall until his late teens(the day that Kank realised Araya was taller than him now, he locked himself inhis room for a whole week), he used to be very self-conscious about himself,but as he grows into his body and stops feeling so gangly he starts to quitelike it! he tends to slouch a lot though and habitually bends over slightlywhen he’s indoors (after one knocked head too many)

Yodo: an utter fuckin short arse. she was short and skinny as a kid, she was short andskinny as a teen and she’s short and skinny as an adult (though she’s stillsuper buff and toned, just built more like a sprinter than a weight-lifter), afact which she loathes, her only comfort is that she’s still taller than herdad by like.. half an inch (a fact that she lauds over him at everyopportunity). even though she wishes she weren’t so short, she still loves thefuck outta her body and will show off her muscles constantly when around hergf, she also tends to stand and walk in a way that makes herself look biggerthan she is, all wide stances and swinging arms

What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm ofspeech? Pronunciation? Accent?

Shinki: low and surprisingly soft, he doesn’t talkmuch, but has the kind of voice that draws attention when he does! his speech tendsto be quite halting and slow though, since he likes to think very carefullybefore saying anything, doesn’t outwardly emote much, has a typical Suna accent,as do all the kids (which i generally imagine as like.. Iranian-ish, orsomething??)

Araya: he has a very sweet and gentle voice, not very high,but not low either, just a relaxed mid-level tone, it’s the kind of voice youcould easily fall asleep to bc it’s just so calm and soothing! whether it’sfast or slow depends mostly on Araya’s mood, he’s very expressive, so when he’shappy/excited he talks quicker and when he’s sad it slows down, even though hepretty much never shouts, you can tell when he’s really mad when he starts giving very short, abrupt sentences

Yodo: in the words of Shikadai, ‘Yodo sounds like whatyou’d get if you gave a hamster speed, put it in a blender and then put theblender in a washing machine’ (Yodo cackled about that analogy for three hours),her voice is high, squeaky and generally pretty grating, though how much of thatis natural and how much is put on to annoy everyone around her is debatable,she does speak in a much lower, calmer way when she’s relaxed and around herfamily though. talks super fast and loud, sometimes with a song-like rhythm andif she’s feeling something, you’re gonna know about it

#ictoan answers #shinki #araya #yodo #team shinki #naruto #boruto #sand fam is best fam #MY PRECIOUS KIDSSS #thank you for asking! #Anonymous #ask meme

[newstfionline]

The Trump era begins

Peter Grier, CS Monitor, January 20, 2017

Buckle up and brace yourself: Here comes the Trump swerve. After eight years of President Obama there’s a new chief executive entering the Oval Office, and he’s eager to grab the reins of government and steer the United States in a sharply different direction.

The G-forces created by this coming turn might be intense. Seldom in American history have the policy disagreements between a president and his predecessor been so great. Consider that the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement, is high on President Trump’s most endangered list. Mr. Trump is pushing the GOP Congress to repeal the ACA (also known as “Obamacare”) and replace it with something else as soon as possible. And ASAP in this case may mean “days.”

Trump’s likely to sweep away a number of Obama-era business and environmental regulations before inaugural balls get going. The new president’s approach to foreign policy--from Day 1--promises to be transactional and unilateralist, whereas Obama’s was more alliance-oriented.

The incoming and outgoing presidents seem to get along on a personal level about as well as could be expected for two people with wildly different personalities and political views. So Transition 2017 won’t be awkward on that level. That’s not always so: In 1933, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt so despised each other that neither spoke a word as they rode from the White House to the Capitol for F.D.R.’s swearing-in.

On policy substance it’s another matter. The change from Obama to Trump might not constitute the U-turn of Hoover to F.D.R., when a tight money approach to the Depression gave way to an expansionist New Deal overnight. But it may be at least as consequential as, say, the switch from Democrat Harry Truman to Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, or from Ike to Democrat John F. Kennedy eight years later. Both those transitions produced real change in how the US approached the world.

One caveat: Trump himself is a big variable. Allegations about his connections to Russia could morph into a story that consumes his time. And it remains unclear how many of his campaign promises should be taken literally. As a novice politician he has little ideological record. How will he adapt to being president, as opposed to running for office? Are his tweets real policy signals or just noise?

And Trump, like some other president-elects before him, will find it’s harder than he thinks to send the government careening off on a new tangent. The federal bureaucracy is skilled at absorbing and diffusing presidential orders. Congress and the courts have a lot to say about what happens in the District of Columbia. “Continuity” may be more Washington’s watchword than “change.”

But Republicans now control both chambers of Congress and the presidency. After eight years of Obama there’s a lot of pent-up demand on the right for GOP-led initiatives.

“I think [Trump] can be transformative not just because of himself but because the conditions are pretty good right now for an aggressive Republican administration,” says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

Like most modern presidents, Trump has already produced a list of things he vows to do in his first 100 days in office. That’s a benchmark that dates back to F.D.R. of course. In his first 100 days F.D.R. pushed 15 major pieces of legislation through Congress. This unprecedented burst of activity established federal insurance of bank deposits and--for the first time--regulated Wall Street. It created US agricultural supports and the Civilian Conservation Corps. It laid the foundation for today’s federal government structure.

Trump’s list is neither that sweeping nor, needless to say, that liberal. It includes potentially big changes nonetheless.

Some aren’t likely to actually take effect--for instance, Trump said in October that he’s going to propose a constitutional amendment to put term limits on Congress. The process to approve that would be lengthy and complex.

But others can be done easily. Trump has promised that he’ll immediately terminate what he terms Obama’s “illegal amnesties” for unauthorized immigrants. That would include the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows unauthorized immigrants brought to the US as kids to stay in the country. He’s said he’ll withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal Obama officials have worked on for eight years.

Presidents have lots of power to levy tariffs on imports of specific products or from particular countries, as Trump has threatened to do. They have plenty of leeway on foreign policy as well. In that regard Trump has vowed that on Day 1 he’ll go after China by labeling it a currency manipulator--a move that may have little actual effect but will annoy Beijing. And he insists that at the earliest possible moment the US will begin working on Trump’s Great Wall for the southern border (a barrier Obama has called “half-baked”).

The new president has not changed his position in regard to where the funding for this project is coming from.

“Mexico will pay for the wall,” insists Trump’s website still, highlighting the vow in red type.

In some ways obama’s legacy is uniquely vulnerable to reversal or alteration by a new chief executive. That’s because a substantial portion of it is built on a foundation of executive orders and other direct manifestations of presidential power.

Obama did not feel he had much choice. In his first two years in office he enjoyed safe congressional majorities, and he was able to get Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill through Congress. But in the 2010 midterm elections Democrats lost control of the House and barely held onto the Senate. After that the route through Capitol Hill for Obama’s legislative agenda was pretty much blocked.

So he turned to executive actions. DACA is a case in point: There was no way Obama could get a bill through Congress allowing unauthorized immigrants brought here as youngsters to stay in the US. Instead, he invoked his authority as the boss of federal law enforcement and ordered US prosecutors to use their discretion to leave such people alone. Republicans fumed (and sued) but now that’s a moot point.

“The great thing about executive power is that you can use it with efficiency and speed. The bad thing is that the next president can attack it with the same efficiency and speed,” says Mr. Zelizer.

The Iran nuclear deal is another example of this approach. It’s not a treaty approved by the Senate and enacted into US law. Instead, Obama used his presidential authority to lift Iranian sanctions, his ability to strike political international agreements, and the US vote in the United Nations Security Council to stitch together an accord aimed at curbing Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.

Trump could reverse much of that. During his campaign he vowed he would, saying that his “No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal” and extract more concessions from Tehran. Whether he’ll fulfill this promise is an open question.

Whoever follows Trump into the Oval Office may have the same sort of leeway on other important matters. Heavy reliance on executive actions has become a feature of the modern presidency, says former Senate historian Donald Ritchie. Given the GOP’s current hold on the House and Senate, it might be hard to foresee a day when Trump finds the legislative pathway blocked. But disputes can be intraparty as well as partisan. And the American electorate seems to have become used to punishing the party in power in midterm elections.

For now, though, the US government is in united Republican hands. And the congressional GOP is more ideologically unified than ever. The party has moved to the right on many overarching domestic issues such as government spending and taxes. The few moderate Capitol Hill Republicans that remain could caucus in the back of a compact car.

It’s almost certain that Congress will move a tax cut bill, probably shaped along lines long favored by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

It’s also virtually certain that lawmakers will repeal Obamacare and enact some sort of GOP health plan in its place. It’s likely that they’ll also try to substantially alter Medicaid and perhaps Medicare.

Trump continues to talk about an infrastructure bill, but that seems to be dropping on his list of priorities. Transition officials say it is no longer “core” and is likely to be addressed only after the Trump administration’s initial burst of action.

On most of these issues Democrats will be involved only on the margins. The US isn’t entering an era of bridge building. It’s continuing a period of partisan divide and rule in government.

Trump won’t transform Washington as a Republican who builds a new coalition with Democrats, says Zelizer. “He’ll transform it as a Republican who might achieve what his Republican predecessors were unable to do in terms of cutting down a lot of government and in some ways using the military more aggressively,” says the Princeton professor.

But there is a wild card here, a known unknown, an X-factor. That’s Donald Trump himself. As president, Trump is singular. Some historians compare him to Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, a man whose supporters the elite felt to be uncouth.

But Jackson had been a state governor and a general. Trump’s the only US chief executive in history who has never held political office or been a military officer. He’s the first to use social media to attack his adversaries. His blunt campaign style has been unique and refreshing to some, and horrifyingly transgressive to others.

What will he actually do? That remains an open question. Some of his recent tweets, if serious, have vast policy implications. In December he tweeted that the US “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability,” for instance. That implies he will propose a large new atomic weapons program, perhaps launching a new arms race. Unless the tweet was just a random musing thought, the kind all presidents probably have but haven’t previously made public.

Trump’s also tweeted that flag burners should face loss of US citizenship or some other sort of legal punishment. That would likely run afoul of First Amendment protections. Is he serious? He often complains about unfair media treatment and labels particular newspapers or TV programs “failing.” He’s talked about loosening libel laws. Will he use legal powers to go after the press?

David Greenberg is a professor of history and journalism at Rutgers University. “People worry that Trump will govern the way he has campaigned ... [that] he will show the same contempt for norms that he has throughout the campaign.”

In that sense the transition from Obama to Trump will involve more than just a change in policies, says the Rutgers historian.

It’s also possible that Trump is less a breaker of Washington’s crockery and more a rookie politician who hasn’t yet figured out how to translate his business experience into presidential leadership.

If that’s the case, the best comparison might not be Nixon, but Jimmy Carter. President Carter was an outsider who knew little about how to get things done in the nation’s capital. To some extent, he never did figure it out. Carter, a former Georgia governor, treated Congress as if it were the Georgia state legislature--something you could go around via direct appeals to voters. That just did not work on the national level after he won the presidency.

“He had huge Democratic majorities and didn’t make the most of [them],” says Ritchie, the former Senate historian.

For now, the GOP congressional leadership appears willing to accommodate Trump’s tweets and other eccentricities to get his presidential signature on long-sought conservative legislation. But this accommodation has shallow roots. Remember that back in June Mr. Ryan called Trump’s complaints about a Hispanic judge a “textbook definition of a racist comment.”

“Who is going to check [Trump]? It might be his own party in Congress,” says former House historian Raymond Smock, director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education.

Reality might check Trump’s policy ambitions, too.

The US government isn’t actually a Ford Mustang (American made!) that a new president can whip into a tight slide and turn. It’s more like a container ship, a behemoth of the seas that has lots of inertia and takes miles to stop. Not exactly maneuverable.

All presidents come into office wanting to make an immediate impact. But that is harder than it looks.

“There is a lot more continuity than people think,” says George Edwards III, a presidential expert and distinguished professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

For one thing, the bureaucracy resists. This is a matter of procedure as much as obstinacy. It’s easy for a new president to sign an executive order undoing a predecessor’s executive order. But will there be a new regulation replacing an old one? Does it need to be published in the Federal Register for public comment? What’s its effect on the budget? And so forth.

For another, existing laws and/or regulations usually develop constituencies. Take Obamacare. Republicans might want to go back to the era prior to the ACA, but doing so would involve taking health insurance away from millions of Americans. It would mean insurers could again deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. Whatever its faults, the Obama health effort has moved the goal posts on the issue. Trump and the GOP need to take that into account.

Congressional Republicans are struggling with that right now as they try to put together an Obamacare replacement as quickly as possible. “You might make some adjustments, but they’ll provide health care to those millions of people,” Mr. Edwards predicts.

Nor do American interests in foreign policy change just because the nation held an election. A new president, taking office, often finds that there are good reasons the US has taken the international positions it has. The Iran deal might be a good example of this. If Trump rips it up, what will he do next? Lots of other nations had a say in its creation and aren’t eager to return to what existed before. That will greatly lessen US leverage. Meanwhile, Iran will demand changes of its own.

North Korea remains one of the biggest problems facing US diplomacy. Trump has already vowed that North Korean development of an intercontinental ballistic missile “won’t happen.” But as it happens, China is a huge influence on North Korea. It’s Pyongyang’s biggest neighbor and only friend. Will plunging into a trade war with Beijing help the US control Kim Jong-un?

Finally, presidential honeymoons are short. Trump is working with congressional majorities, which is good news for him, but he is also not particularly popular with voters for an incoming president, which is bad news. That will lessen his ability to get difficult things through Capitol Hill.

“Once he does things that really irritate people and there is pushback--’here is the guy who wants to make the air dirty’ or ‘business leaders say this will be bad for jobs’--he is going to be even less popular,” says Edwards.

All presidential transitions are uncertain. The new president and the new executive branch team are untested. Other countries (Russia?) may see the transition period as a time to prod and test the US. Others (Israel?) may see it as an opportunity to get on better terms with the American administration. “But this one seems more uncertain. Trump has never held public office and he doesn’t have a long history of opinions in public policies,” says David Clinton, chair of the political science department at Baylor University.

Today’s situation might be comparable when Eisenhower took over from Truman in 1953, according to Mr. Clinton. Eisenhower had vowed during the campaign to go to Korea, then the theater of a shooting war. He hinted there would be a dramatic change in US strategy. He also instituted Project Solarium, a famous discussion in which three groups argued for three different US grand strategies in the developing confrontation with the Soviet Union.

In the end, Ike made tweaks in the US approach in these areas, but they were minimal. Containment remained the White House watchword for the cold war. “As it turns out, there wasn’t as much change as people thought there might be,” says Clinton.

That’s the way it has often been with transitions, he says. New presidents discovered that the US ship of state has so much inertia, and takes so much energy to change course, that it is best to single out priorities and work hardest on those.

“They just focused on a few issues, on a few things they thought they could handle. And that’s what happens with most presidents,” Clinton says.

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