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irenedubrovna · 4 years

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A post regarding Euphoria for the benefit of myself and basically no one else

So, it really bothers me when people say Euphoria is groundbreaking, progressive media. Here’s a dissection of why I don’t think it is, because this is what I feel like doing at work:

The character of Rue is objectively great. She by far receives the least overt sexualization, and is treated neutrally in terms of active sexuality. She’s treated like a normal teenage girl with mental issues and an addiction to drugs. She falls in love with a girl who she pines for and places on a pedestal. The reason I think she is written this way is because she is a Sam Levinson proxy. She written with gender ambiguity and with little regard to the experiences she’d go through as a black gay female, probably because Sam Levinson has no insight to that aspect of life. Her performance is heightened of course by Zendaya, who breathes unique life to the Sam Levinson’s artistic extension, and without her performance this show would not get even half the acclaim it gets. Attribute that to Zendaya of course, because the director has done little to deserve this acclaim.

The rest of the females, sans Lexi, are pornified to a disgusting extent, not only due to the fact that they are supposed to be underage, but also because their existence as people is treated as being absolutely secondary to their sexual appeal. They are foremost presented in terms of their relation to sex. Cassie, Maddy, Jules, and Kat cannot be removed from their sexuality without disrupting the plot or their journeys in relation to the plot. Why are the females so intrinsically linked to uber fetishized versions of female sexuality, or uber fetishized versions of blossoming female sexual identity?

Maddy is presented not only scantily clad 90 percent of the time, but also dressed in a precariously unattainable sexual fashion. At any given time she is styled to look straight out of, simultaneously, a high fashion editorial, and a “barely legal” porno. She is airheaded and profane, and promiscuous, her mannerisms dictated by the adult films she’s “studied” in order to project an image of perfect hyper sexual femininity. She’s complacent in becoming a prototypical housewife because it will earn her a comfortable place as a trophy wife. She has no aspirations beyond that. So, let’s unpack all of that. Maddy’s role in the show is mostly passive. The most active thing she does in the plot is revenge fuck a man in the pool of a party. Nearly everything else she does in the show that is plot relevant is of someone else’s volition. Even less of what she in the show is related to anything other than a man. She is abused and then pressured into framing another man for said abuse. She has no agency as a character. The only notable difference to this rule is when she takes drugs at a carnival, knocks a pot of chili over, and calls her ex’s mom a cunt. Removed from her active sexual life and carefully cultivated aesthetic, she’s a trite stereotype of an unambitious girlfriend who gets treated poorly. I see people call Maddy iconic, but if she wasn’t gorgeous and well dressed, I doubt anyone would even think twice about her, let alone create fancams and Instagram pages dedicated to her. She exists as a plot device, and as pretty set dressing to build up the shows aesthetic. Her emotions are not well explored, her motivations are sexist, and she is often there to be demeaned, objectified, or to say a bad word. The most damning part of her involvement in this show is her episode where it is stated that she, as a fourteen year old girl, lost her virginity to an adult man, and it is stated she was in control of the situation. This is a dangerous thing to say about a character, to any audience, but especially a young one. To imply that a precocious young girl was in control during her first sexual encounter with a much much older man implies things that frankly border on rape apologist ideology. This show states this unflinchingly and with no further elaboration. If there’s one thing that tells you that Euphoria is a bad show, let it be that. Also, if there’s one thing that tells you about Sam Levinson as a person, and the way he views girls and women, let it fucking be that.

Jules is a young trans girl. She also likes to have sex with men as a means to “conquer femininity”. Scratch that, she likes to have degrading sex with older men in order to “conquer femininity”. This mindset is shown to be toxic, of course, but I think the problem with this idea in general is that there’s no deeper exploration for what this mindset means. It implies that she believes women are the sum of their intrigue and degradations. This mindset I can only assume would be a cultivation of dysphoria and internalized misogyny, which this series is absolutely not prepared to address in a tactful manner. Jules is a teenager with mental illness, trauma, and is undergoing an identity crisis. There’s something powerful in her character, something worth saying, however we only get trimmings of those meaningful things, and are ultimately left with a hurtful depiction of a trans girl because all of her musings on womanhood and identity are incomplete, and they fail to reach beyond the surface of their thesis statement. She wears colorful clothing, is overtly feminine and artistic in her presentation. Everything about her screams insecurity over her own womanhood. That is the crux of her character. Now, I think we should ask ourselves, is trans person who is insecure about their identity peak representation? Is this what trans people deserve? Is it “groundbreaking “? If this show was run by someone else, I might be inclined to say that there’s nothing insidious about this, but this is the guy that made Assassination Nation, so I think we know what he thinks of young women, the way they should be portrayed (that is, for the capitulation of a man) and realize his inclusion of a trans woman in his cast is no more meaningful than the inclusion of any other woman. Women to him are made to be categorized and should, at the end of the day, be easily palatable for the capitulation of a man. The device of having Jules being interested in older men and rough sex for identity reasons is transparent. Trans women are exploited and objectified with a similar fervor to cis women, the caveat being that they are “a forbidden fruit” of sorts to straight men. Jules is sissified, her presentation fetishistic. Her role in the plot is more involved. Her relationship with Rue is sweet, though toxic on both sides. She is ultimately betrayed, blackmailed, and snowballs into something of a manic episode, all well portrayed by Hunter Schafer, but I don’t think her inclusion in the show absolves it of any of its many sins.

Let’s talk about Cassie. Cassie is the Eurocentric beauty standard exemplified. She is the blonde haired blue eyed girl next store, and her boobs are of course always on display. She is notably promiscuous, something I say right off the bat because that’s how she’s introduced, as a so called slut through the words of the devil (Nate Jacobs). She is a girl with daddy issues, which we are all familiar with at this point. Her sexual boundaries begin and end at the whim of her partner. The terms of her consent are much like the terms of consent of many young girls brainwashed by society and the rising tide of degradation porn: everything is alright as long as you provide them comfort and affirmation afterward. You can touch them roughly without asking, you can use them as a tool to affirm your masculinity. This is the way men prefer their women now: just broken enough to say yes to anything they want. It’s become a joke at this point. Men like girls with issues, but only the ones that will feed their own desires. Cassie Howard is meek. Her inclusion in the plot I suppose ties to themes of drug addiction and how it divides and destroys the people you love. It doesn’t show what it does to her beyond shaping her sexual encounters, which is no surprise. Overall I’d say Cassie is in this roster of females as the most traditional categorically, in relation to how men view women and further how they sexualize them. She has a relationship with someone who doesn’t really love her. That mostly what she does here. Gets used. Doesn’t drive the plot or conflict much. More pretty set dressing. More aesthetics. How this show consists of so many women but is driven so much by men is unsurprising, and, again, very enlightening in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly we touch on Kat. I’d like to begin with the fact that self actualization through sexual exploration, in a show run by a man, is just a cloak for a woman to gratify the audience with her sexuality. Regardless of whether or not she is plus sized, this is overt objectification. She is on this show to be sexy. Beyond that, the fact that a minor using sex work as a form of liberation is disgusting. Whether or not she is portrayed as “owning” her sexuality is negligible, and speaks to the same mindset discussed with Maddy. Minors cannot fucking consent to sex, sexual acts, or anything within the confines of such. It’s crazy that this occurs with two different characters in such a similar way. It has echoes of “Well, she looked older..” and “Well, she wanted it..” or “She’s advanced for her age”. Never, not once in the events of the series is there meaningful introspection on what doing this kind of thing does to a minor. Moreover, these acts are explicit, and made clearly for sexual gratification. None of these things are absolved by the fact that she’s plus sized. If anything, her body type is fetishized in this context. It’s also another case of a “good girl to bad girl” transformation, which are archaic and, of course, sexist. With the rise of adult websites targeting minors for explicit content, this is even more reprehensible. Once again, in terms of representation, is this really what speaks to you as progressive? Groundbreaking? A girl gains control of her own narrative by having sex with lots of men. She gains control by being sexy. She gains control by dehumanizing and objectifying herself. No she doesn’t. Media controlled by men will tell this story to you thousands of times, don’t listen because she’s bigger than a size four.

ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE UNDERAGE. ALL OF THEM HAVE EXPLICIT SEX SCENES, EVEN THE SEXUAL ASSAULT IS MADE CINEMATICALLY PORNIFIED. THESE SHOTS ARE MADE TO BE OBJECTIVELY SEXY. THIS IS NOT A CASE OF SOMEONE CREATING SOMETHING FOR THE SAKE OF REALISM. IT IS ABOUT MAKING SCENES THAT SPEAK TO A MALE AUDIENCE. THAT CATER TO THE MALE GAZE. ARGUE WITH THE WALL.

I won’t go further into the plot, other characters, or the structure or the episodes for sake of brevity, but I felt compelled to air my thoughts on this to the void. I can only hope I was critical enough that Sam Levinson will one day see this and cry because another bad feminist thinks something that he made sucks

#euphoria #I don’t even think anyone will read this but #it’s just not good #sorry #anti euphoria #anti Sam Levinson

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girlactionfigure · 4 years

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Historian of the Ghetto

“Let the world read and know”

Emanuel Ringelblum, the “historian of the Warsaw ghetto,” compiled an extensive archive of documents depicting the everyday life of the ghetto’s doomed inhabitants. The Ringelbaum Archive is the most important eyewitness accounting of the Holocaust to survive the war.

Born in Buczacz, Poland (now Ukraine) in 1900, Emanuel was a bright child and a top student. His native language was Yiddish and although he learned several other languages, he had a special affection for his native tongue and a lifelong interest in Yiddish literature and theater. Emanuel attended Warsaw University, where he studied history, completing his doctoral thesis in 1927 on the Jews of Warsaw during the Middle Ages.

Emanuel worked as a history teacher in multiple Jewish high schools and in 1923 he co-founded the Young Historians Circle, an influential organization that brought together Jewish history teachers and students to advocate for Jewish causes. Two years later he joined YIVO, the preeminent organization for the study and preservation of Jewish European culture. Emanuel published 126 scholarly articles and was recognized as the world’s foremost expert in the history of the Jews of Europe.

As the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930’s, Emanuel started working with international Jewish relief organizations to help refugees by collecting and distributing funds, as well as providing emotional support. The American Joint Distribution Fund sent him to Zbaszyn, a Polish town near the German border where 6000 Jewish refugees from Germany were being held. Germany had expelled them and Poland didn’t want them so the Jews were stateless. Emanuel spent five weeks there, passing up his own opportunity to escape from Europe so that he could help his suffering Jewish brothers and sisters.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Emanuel described it as “a wave of evil rolled over the whole city.” He became the leader of Aleynilf (Self Help), a group that provided Jews with tools to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. In 1940, Emanuel and his family – his wife Yehudit and small son Uri – were forced into a squalid ghetto, along with all the other Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw. Every city with a Jewish population soon had its own ghetto.

As the days, weeks, and months passed, conditions grew steadily worse. Emanuel wrote, “No day was like the preceding. Images succeeded one another with cinematic speed.” The necessities of life became increasingly scarce – running water, electricity, medical supplies and most critically of all, food. Every day people died of starvation or illness, and there was no way to bury them. Rotting bodies, many of them children, lay in the street.

Emanuel decided to write about life in the ghetto. It was the most important story he would ever tell. He encouraged other inhabitants to write their own testimonies, recording history as it happened. During the day Emanuel wandered the ghetto collecting information, stories and data, and he wrote at night. Emanuel defined the mission: “It must all be recorded with not a single fact omitted. And when the time comes – as it surely will – let the world read and know what the murderers have done.” He knew that the archive would likely be the only testimony about what had happened to the Jews of Poland. It was especially important for him to preserve documents in Yiddish as he feared there would be nobody left to speak his beloved native tongue.

Contributors included writers, rabbis, teachers, social workers, artists, children, and Jews of all ages and backgrounds. They knew they were doomed and the pain was even sharper because all their friends and family were also doomed – leaving nobody behind to remember them. Emanuel’s project was a chance to not be forgotten. The material submitted included essays, diaries, letters, drawings, poetry, music, stories, dark humor, recipes and more. It was an extensive chronicle of ghetto life.

The archive was called Oneg Shabbos – “Pleasure of Shabbat” – because the contributors met on Saturdays to share their writings and discuss their progress. Journalistic ethics were important to Emanuel. “Many-sidedness was the main principle of our work. Objectivity was our other guiding principle. We aspired to reveal the whole truth, as bitter as it may be.” The Oneg Shabbos documents were kept in large milk jars and buried in three different places.

The first document was a poem by Wladyslaw Szlengel called “Telephone” about his apartment building’s last working phone. “With my heart broken and sick/ I think: let me ring/someone on the other side…/and suddenly I realize: my God there/is actually no one to call….”

Hunger was ever-present in the ghetto, and a common theme in the documents is the desperate yearning for food. Leyb Goldin wrote, “It’s you and your stomach. It’s your stomach and you. It’s 90 percent your stomach and a little bit you… Each day the profiles of our children, of our wives, acquire the mourning look of foxes, dingoes, kangaroos. Our howls are like the cry of jackals…The world’s turning upside down. A planet melts in tears. And I – I am hungry, hungry. I am hungry.” (August 1941)

“What we were unable to cry out and shriek to the world, we buried in the ground.” – David Graber, 19

“Sometimes I worry that these terrible pictures of the life we are looking at every day will die with us, like pictures of a panic on a sinking ship. So, let the witness be our writing.” – Rachel Auerbach

“I do not ask for any thanks, for any memorial, for any praise. I only wish to be remembered. I wish my wife to be remembered, Gele Seksztajn. I wish my little daughter to be remembered. Margalit is 20 months old today.” – Israel Lichtenstein

The Oneg Shabbos archive ended in 1943, when the ghetto was liquidated and its inhabitants sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka. Emanuel, his wife Yehudit and son Uri managed to escape before the deportations started and went into hiding. However, in March 1944 their hiding place was discovered. The family was forced outside at gunpoint and executed.

Only three of the 60+ contributors to the Oneg Shabbos archive survived the war. Rachel Auerbach led the search for the buried archive, and her team was able to discover two of the caches, which became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls of the ghetto. The third cache has never been found.

For making sure the murdered Jews of Warsaw would not be forgotten, we honor Emanuel Ringelblum as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Explore the Ringelblum Archive

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citrineghost · 4 years

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Humans Are Historically Known for Being Terrible

Hi I’m here with an opinion today. Let’s see how many words it will take for me to adequately get it across on this very fine 15th of January

I personally believe canceling things from the past* is fruitless, pointless, and accomplishes about as much as censorship does

*We aren’t talking about shit like nazi Germany, let me elaborate further

So, as I occasionally do, I have seen a post on my dash today criticizing something historical that people are ‘problematically partaking in.’ That thing today was the wellerman sea shanty due to its ties with colonialism, slavery, and so forth.

I’m not going to dive into this specific example, because I don’t know enough of the details and am not interested in going to find them out because I’m not planning to defend it or its history, so there’s no point. I learned what I needed to know from said callout post and it’s enough to work with.

To me, it is important that we remember that people, in general, have been historically pretty terrible.

There’s colonialism, there’s slavery (of all kinds, including chattel), there’s thievery, murder, genocide, sexism, the murdering of queers. There’s lying, manipulation, propaganda, and so many more things that I couldn’t possibly list them all. I’m not saying that everyone was equally shitty. I am aware that, especially in the most recent couple hundred years, white people, especially Western Europeans and Americans, have been pretty Shite.

Am I excusing them for their actions? Absolutely not. I think it is always important to bear in mind the way they played a part in cultures’ growth, death, and, ultimately, development from one year to the next.

The reason I’m pointing this out is because the result of people being historically shitty is that most, if not all, of our historical content, our history, is steeped in horse manure.

There is not one thing you can enjoy from centuries - even decades - passed that is not here because of something inhumane, unjust, or otherwise terrible.

The only thing keeping us from canceling every other historical thing that we enjoy is our lack of awareness of how each thing ties into the whole mess.

So, we’ve learned that wellerman was sung by slavers and thieves and colonialists. What about that nice little folk song from uh, idk, Ireland or something? Let’s take this metaphorical song and ask the question, “who wrote it?” The truth is, for many folk songs, we just don’t know. There is a very very good chance that 90+ percent of nice, soft folk songs about lying in the grass or feeding chickens or baking bread for your spouse were written by racists, sexists, abusers, homophobes, and so forth.

Does that make it wrong to enjoy that song about lying in the grass and looking at the stars? I don’t think so. No one is profiting off of you listening to it, regardless of who wrote it. It’s hundreds of years old. Do you even know the name of who wrote it?

Remembering that times were different may not absolve something of its wrongdoing, but it does provide us context.

We have to allow ourselves to admit that most, if not all, historical things, came from or benefitted from atrocities or injustices that we would not stand for today. That’s just how human progression works. Frankly, if people 200 years from now don’t look at US, CURRENTLY, and think we’re terrible assholes, I am actually very concerned by that.

The nature of humanity is to get better and better over time and to build a world and a society where we don’t feel the need to be controlled by greed or to consume unethically. The problem is, it takes time. It takes lots and lots of time. Would it take less time if certain people weren’t terrible, terrible people? Yes it would. But they are, and so it doesn’t.

The fact is, human progression and improvement will never reach its end because, as things improve, our perception of our past actions will change as well and we will begin to realize that what we were doing wasn’t acceptable and is no longer necessary nor excusable.

Hate Jeff Bezos? Look around and see that 90% of people still buy from Amazon, because it provides the only affordable source of many products for people who don’t make enough money under capitalism to buy from a small business.

Hate Bill Gates? How many of us are willing to switch to Linux to quit using Microsoft? Speaking of Microsoft, they own Minecraft. Do we stop playing Minecraft?

Think Steve Jobs is a terrible person? Why are people still buying iphones, ipads, and macs? Why don’t we stop buying those so that he and current CEO, Tim Cook, quit making billions of dollars?

These are just a tiny amount of examples, using big names. We also must consider, if you have 100 books on your bookshelf, how many of the writers of those books are racists, homophobes, sexists, or abusers? I guarantee you it’s a non-zero answer. The thing is, an author who’s relatively nobody is not someone who gets canceled. No one knows anything about them but that they wrote a neat work of fiction and it’s a good book.

The question is, should we be expected to quit buying, consuming, and enjoying things made by problematic people?

In some cases, the answer should be yes. If someone is currently profiting massively from people consuming their media or products and people are ignoring their atrocities, that person could end u making millions or billions of dollars despite being terrible, which is something that undoubtedly affects all of us, economically.

In the other cases, the answer should be, do you want to? If you’re not comfortable with something, you should, of course, stop consuming it. If you can ignore the thing, you might not need to bother. And, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re excusing it.

If we look at all of humanity, even in the present day, mathematically speaking, 50% of people are more bigoted and terrible than the rest. There’s no other way for it to be. Less than 50% would be a mathematical fallacy. Does that mean we only consume content from the better 50%? Does that mean we rigorously research producers and creators and their personal lives only to decide it’s not worth the risk of ‘contributing’ because they have no trace online except for a private Facebook account? Is them having a Facebook account enough of a ‘sin’ that it’s not worth it to buy their book?

This brings us to the censorship point

If you know your history, you know that censorship is a nasty thing. When one person decides who or what is unethical to consume from, they sometimes seek to get rid of that thing so that no one has a choice - so that no one is Allowed to consume that thing.

This has led to book burning, the destroying of decades and centuries of research about sexuality and gender. It’s destroyed religious texts. It’s destroyed content created by women that painted any single man in a bad light. It’s destroyed progression.

“But I only want to get rid of the bad thing that everyone agrees is bad!”

It doesn’t matter. If you open the door to censorship for yourself, those who wish to use it for worse reasons will become just as justified, in their own eyes, to do the same. You’ll have Christians saying it’s okay to get rid of gay content because it’s objectively wrong according to the bible. You’ll have conservative parents burning books with complicated topics like abuse and assault because they don’t want their children to have access to anything controversial or complex like that.

You cannot open the door to censorship for one group without opening that door for everyone. And that is why we do not censor things.

The question then becomes, but what of the people consuming that media? Even if it’s not censored, consuming it still makes someone bad, right?

Not necessarily. People consume problematic stuff all the time - things considered objectively bad. However, people don’t always consume said media because they support it being normalized in the real world. For example, fanfiction or books with rape in them may be something a victim reads to cope with their own past or present. A book with abuse depicted may actually make a young teen aware that what they’re going through is abuse. Content largely seen as ‘problematic’ can often play a part in solving the problem it portrays.

Then there’s historical, problematic media. Now, this is an area where I feel things have actually been OVER complicated.

Because everything historical has some tie to injustice, there is no ethical way to consume it.

There is no ethical consumption under passed time.

So, how do we judge whether something should or shouldn’t be consumed? It is my opinion that something historical should stop being consumed and become shunned when its meaning is well-known enough and its message is still pervasive enough that it is actively causing problems.

For example, we generally try not to consume content when it is made by someone who is a known nazi. This is because nazis are still a problem in our society, presently. We have antisemitism all over the place. Therefore, we cannot let the message become that it is okay to be a nazi by way of us treating nazis like normal people and allowing them to succeed in society without consequence.

However, there are certain problems that are no longer particularly prevalent or which are agreed to be terrible on a large enough scale that consuming the content does not necessarily imply you believe it is okay. For example, if you look at literally any media from the 1800s or which is placed in the 1800s, you will see a lot of casual sexism and gender roles. Should we despise that time period because sexism was readily available at every turn? Should we refuse to enjoy 19th century fashion or culture because it had problems? I think not. I think it would be pointless to refuse to consume, read about, or otherwise engage with the 19th century. It wouldn’t change the past and it isn’t going to somehow undo the progress we’ve made on women’s rights.

As a matter of fact, if someone merely suggested that perhaps the people of the 19th century were right for forcing women to wear long dresses and darn socks all day, they would be laughed into oblivion and called a shitty, sexist incel (which would be correct).

Does enjoying media from or placed in the 19th century mean you support sexism? I certainly hope not, since I enjoy it very much and know a lot of progressive people, women especially, who do enjoy that kind of thing. It is common sense enough, at this point in time, that people don’t generally believe that the sexism of the 1800s was acceptable. I am not going to see someone watching a period drama and assume they desire for our present-day social laws to be like what’s portrayed. That would be a ridiculous assumption. However, I could not assume the same about someone I saw watching openly antisemitic content. I would quickly wonder if they’re an antisemite/nazi/white supremacist.

So, what about that one thing I heard had a sordid past?

Listen, if we’re being honest here, most things from history have a sordid past. Sea shanties? You bet. But then when we talk of sea shanties being steeped in colonialism, we have to look at the bigger picture. What about pirates? Pirates were, by and large, a huge contributor to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder. Does that mean enjoying media with pirates is glorifying or contributing to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder?

(I’m about to talk a lot about pirates but this can be applied to anything that was historically bad but is no longer prevalent)

Pirates of the Caribbean is only a movie, but pirates did once exist and they did kill people. They did raid ships of merchants and tradesmen and they killed them and stole their goods. They took many good men from their families and even killed working children aboard the ships. Does that make enjoying pirates in media a contributor to these things? No. It doesn’t. We are looking at a dramatised, cleaned up version of the original piracy. I think most people are aware that pirates, in the real world, are bad and harmful and should not be supported. That doesn’t make pirate media any less fun in theory, and under our own terms.

Then we arrive at our perception - because most of this does come down to perception. When you watch pirate media, should you enjoy that, are you able to divorce yourself from their actual history enough to enjoy the media? If you can, you might enjoy it a lot. If you can’t watch a movie about pirates without thinking the entire time about how terrible they were and how much damage they did, then pirate media just isn’t right for you. But, it doesn’t mean you should attempt to take it away from others. Your opinion and perception of pirate media is not the global perception.

I have to ask, do you think others view it the same way you do?

When you read that question, you may be wondering what exactly I mean. What I’m asking is, do you believe others view that media with the same “clarity” that you do? Do you believe they understand the atrocity of real pirates and Feel that the entire time they watch the media and still enjoy it anyway?

Perhaps that’s why your response to someone enjoying something you feel guilty partaking in is, “these people all must not care about the real-world damage pirates did. The fact that they can watch this (despite sitting here and feeling the same things I do) makes me sick.”

However, if that is the case, you must remember that for a lot of people, the awareness of real world consequence is suspended during dramatised depictions of it. It doesn’t mean they have forgotten about the real-world consequences of piracy or that they don’t know it at all. It just means they are choosing not to think about it in that light while consuming media.

There is also the assumption that people must not know about something when partaking in it. You may think, “How can they enjoy this media? They wouldn’t be able to stomach it if they realized what really happened with pirates.”

In many instances, you would be correct. A lot of people are ignorant to what pirates have done in the real world. If you told every ignorant person the truth, maybe 5% of them would then become turned off by pirate media, and the other 95% would keep the truth in mind and then divorce themselves from it to continue enjoying said media.

There are realities that it is safe to divorce yourself from, and there are those that are not.

Is allowing yourself to enjoy dramatizations of pirates making you ignorant to present day conditions? Not largely. There are still pirates today, but not nearly enough for the average Joe to need to take them seriously. Those who need to know about them and do something to stop them are aware.

However, it is not safe to divorce yourself from, for instance, the holocaust. Divorcing yourself from the holocaust and seeing it as merely a dramatic setting with dramatic events and not a present-day real-world problem is exactly the kind of thing that leads to young teens being sucked in by white supremacy and naziism as well as what leads to many average conservatives believing the rise in white supremacy isn’t actually real or is not a big deal. They have distanced themselves so far from the real-world atrocity of the holocaust that they have forgotten it was real and that real people, like them, were contributors. They don’t want to believe that everyday people had any power in it and that it was tiny acts of willful ignorance that made concentration camps so successful.

All in all, there is a different answer for everything we consume.

Want to know if something you’re consuming is okay to consume? Ask yourself: is this produced by someone who is contributing to present-day conditions? If the answer is yes, quit consuming it. If the answer is no, ask yourself, does this media make me uncomfortable because I’m aware of its roots? If the answer is yes, stop consuming it. If the answer is no, it’s probably fine. You are most likely not doing any damage, so long as you are aware of what is wrong with the content and are not using it as grounds to perpetuate harm.

If, when thinking about something problematic in an old piece of media, you cringe? You’re on the right track. If you feel inclined to make excuses for it or justify the wrong in it, it’s time to step away and reevaluate why you feel the need to do so. If you’re doing so because you feel guilty for consuming it, you need to realize that it is actually more harmful to make excuses for the wrong in order to justify your consumption than it is to admit, “Yeah, this media is problematic and contains a lot of sexism, but I still enjoy it for its other qualities.” It is better to admit that you enjoy something problematic than to spread the message that what is happening in it is okay.

Some of you may be thinking, “Or, just stop consuming problematic media.”

I think in many cases, especially recent media, where your consumption has an effect on production, this is true. However, for media that is no longer being produced, I will remind you that most things have something wrong with them - yes, even pretty recent stuff.

Supernatural kills off women constantly, queerbaited the fuck out of its viewers, and sent a huge character to fucking mega hell for confessing his love.

Scrubs has no end to its sexism, transphobic and homophobic slur usage, and other problematic content.

V for Vendetta glorifies and shines a heroic light on a character who kidnaps and tortures a woman for what appeared to have been weeks or months so that she would be forced to understand his trauma and “no longer be afraid.”

Star Wars has incest, the producers/directors abused Carrie Fisher and sexualized her as a young teen, and probably a lot more that I’m not aware of because I haven’t seen the movies nor read the books.

I don’t even need to start on shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Community, That 70s Show, and so many more. Almost every popular piece of media has something worth canceling in it. There is no point trying to curate your media consumption to only unproblematic content, because it simply can’t be done.

Curate where it makes a difference. Sigh heavily the rest of the time. Make yourself aware what and how things are problematic. Put critical thought into how your consumption is capable of supporting or perpetuating a problem and how it is not. Make informed decisions.

Do not feel guilty if you are unable to flawlessly live up to the standards of purity culture. None of us can - not really.

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wisccamping-blog · 5 years

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How Bear Canisters Fail

At any rate more often than not, hard-sided canisters, similar to the BearVault BV500, shield nourishment in the backwoods from bears and "smaller than normal bears" (mice, squirrels, dark jays, and other little searching creatures). Be that as it may, for reasons unknown, they're not 100 percent bear-or idiotproof.

As of late, I glanced through a spreadsheet consented by the National Park Service that recorded 199 nourishment related bear occurrences with explorers in Yosemite between July 2012 and July 2017. The genuine number of occurrences in Yosemite and the bigger High Sierra is likely more prominent (perhaps a lot more prominent), in light of the fact that numerous episodes are not detailed and in light of the fact that mountain bears occupy most corners of this world-class wild.

The sheet depicts contextual investigations on different disappointments of canisters (from organizations like Bearikade, BearVault, Garcia, and Lighter1 in addition to the Ursack bear sack) that were expected overwhelmingly to human blunder just as plan or auxiliary blemishes. It additionally gives narrative help to Yosemite's nourishment stockpiling guidelines—for each bear-canister disappointment there are a few instances of bears acquiring nourishment or scented things that were hung in a tree, covered, or left unprotected medium-term . These capacity "systems" may work somewhere else however not in Yosemite, which is home to ostensibly the best-prepared camp burglars in North America. I dove into the information and concocted these takeaways.

Land Concentration

One striking example in the spreadsheet was the land centralization of the occurrences. Of the 199 reports, 142 (or 71 percent) occurred in only four spots:

Snow Creek

Little Yosemite Valley

John Muir Trail

Lyell Canyon

While it's sensible to expect more episodes in high-use backwoods territories, the recurrence still appears to be lopsided—I question that on some random night, seventy five percent of all hikers in Yosemite are stayed outdoors in simply these four areas.

These focal points present a solid defense for choosing campgrounds all the more purposely and staying away from high-use spots and passages. Like a berry fix in August, bears have discovered that a few destinations are dependable wellsprings of calories.

It's additionally worth referencing that these four regions will in general pull in numerous tenderfoot explorers, who by and large won't be as taught in boondocks matters like appropriate nourishment stockpiling and bear conduct.

Disappointments

Bear canisters are more defenseless against disappointment than I suspected, however for the most part because of human mistake. A more critical take a gander at the episodes uncovers that disappointments fall into five containers:

#1. Flood

Case #5 (July 31, 2012): "Troop of boy troopers couldn't fit all their nourishment into their 14 bear canisters, so they hung two stuff sacks with nourishment from a tree. The bear climbed the tree and hauled the nourishment down and ate it. There was roughly 5 to 10 pounds of nourishment. Troop pioneer got an obligatory appearance reference."

For a canister to carry out its responsibility, all nourishment and scented things (like toothpaste and sunscreen) must be put away inside. This can be a test toward the beginning of long excursions, in light of the fact that the commonplace limit of a full-size canister is around six days of nourishment, contingent upon your day by day consumption and the measure of room those calories take up (i.e., bagels versus Snickers, canned soup versus dried soup blend).

In any case, justifiably, you might be hesitant to convey two canisters and twofold the weight and unwieldiness. All things considered, what are your choices? Until the majority of your nourishment and scented things can fit in one canister, consider:

Remaining in set up boondocks campgrounds with perpetual nourishment storage spaces. In Yosemite, discover them in Little Yosemite Valley and at High Sierra campgrounds like Glen Aulin. In Sequoia-Kings, allude to this guide.

Outdoors in zones where noncanister stockpiling strategies (e.g., a hanging Ursack Major) are allowed. Canisters are required all through Yosemite however just in the most elevated use regions of Sequoia-Kings and the national timberlands (e.g., Mt. Whitney Zone in Inyo). In lower-use territories, there will in general be less bear movement.

#2. Opened

Case #3 (July 20, 2012): "A bear came into the campground and broke into an inappropriately shut carbon fiber canister. The bear had the option to eat a pack of trail blend before it was frightened off. Beginning verbal shouts and shakes didn't stage the bear. In the wake of shouting uproariously the bear fled. The guest was reached and unveiled that just one of three fastens on the canister were hooked appropriately. The bear pried the top off and sheared the single shut fasten to acquire the nourishment. The canister was not crushed."

Case #61 (July 25, 2013): "The bear canister was in a bad way shut however not past the locks on the cover. The canister was opened however not broken. The bear tore through plastic sacks and got nourishment. Nourishment eaten incorporates hotcake blend, salami, control bars, Gu gel, saltines, and nuts."

This would appear to be an undeniable one, however there were in any event ten instances of bears getting into opened canisters. Bears are brilliant and constant and have astoundingly solid and handy hooks. Due to past victories, they will endeavor to contort off the highest points of BearVaults and pry off the highest points of Bearikades and Garcias.

The answer for opened canisters is simple: lock them! Set up the twofold checking of canisters as a component of your daily practice. In certain gatherings, it might merit doling out a canister csar who regulates this duty.

#3. Open

Case #157 (August 29, 2015): "2 bear jars in camp, one was shut the other was open. Explorers were cooking soup. Bear strolled up behind a log and stood up on its rear legs to peer at the climbers cooking soup. Explorers hollered and stood up and got posts to blast together. Explorers wound up frightened and thought the bear was getting to be forceful so they moved in an opposite direction from their open canister. Bear moved toward canister, snatched it by its opening, and left. Canister was unrecovered. Bear got trail blend, bars, and drugs from a medical aid unit."

A few bears in Yosemite show amazingly audacious conduct, since they've discovered that it regularly brings about nourishment. Once in a while they get shot with elastic projectiles by officers or hit by shake tossing hikers when they get excessively close, however they additionally experience frightened people and gatherings who penance their canister for individual security.

That response is justifiable, yet it doesn't support the explorer or the bear. In the event that your canister is open, never be in excess of a stage away from it. Furthermore, on the off chance that a bear enters camp, promptly lock your canisters and afterward start tossing things at its body. (Rocks, sticks, pine cones will all do.) In bear language, this protective conduct says, "Leave. There are simpler calories somewhere else."

#4. Rolled Away

Case #122 (June 2, 2015): "Campers at Snow Creek scaffold had bear canister taken. Second time in 2 years at a similar territory. Couldn't discover canister in encompassing territory. No proof of bear. Model of holder is Bear Vault 450."

Case #123 (June 5, 2015): "Two bear canisters were folded into Snow Creek medium-term. Indeed, even in the wake of playing it safe. Additionally the bear bit on some outdoors rigging like our table material and plastic pack presumably because of modest measures of nourishment buildup."

In any event 30 canisters went "missing" after a bear moved it away in the center of the night. This was outstandingly basic along Snow Creek—canisters get folded into the brook (which has enough volume in pre-summer and late-spring to divert a canister) or off the close by bluffs. NPS never again allows outdoors at the highest point of the bends because of the bear movement. The NPS disclosed to me that the Snow Creek occurrences were "brought about by one especially brilliant bear that has taken in this conduct just at this particular area."

The recreation center suggests putting away canisters outside camp for security reasons. In any case, pick the spot carefully. Actually, I keep my canister around 20 feet away and leave my (perfect) cook pot on top, so I will be woken up by the upheaval.

#5. Basic Failure

Case #21 (August 3, 2012): "Bear got nourishment from IGBC affirmed 'Lighter1.com' brand canister by breaking the equipment that keeps the top on. The guest revealed the bear at 2300 and depicted it as being 'dark.' The bear got the total substance of the compartment including: 2.5 sacks of blended nuts, a large portion of a salami, 2 packs of triscuits, 6 'Zoneperfect' bars, a large portion of a pack of vita-light squeeze blend."

Case #57 (July 18, 2013): "Bear removed rental Garcia canister from a spot in the shrubs around 1:40am. I got out and pursued the bear away. I put the canister more profound in the hedges. We were wakeful for one more hour-90 minutes. We didn't hear it once more, however in the first part of the day it was no more. On our climb out we found the unfilled and broken canister without top mostly down the [Snow Creek Trail] bends."

Case #114 (August 10, 2014): "Bear shuffled and tossed bear canister until it popped open. Bear devoured all substance: oats, rice, shot squares, precipice bars."

At the point when utilized appropriately, just a couple of canisters level out fizzled. Much of the time, they were crushed open in the wake of being moved off a precipice, for the most part along—you got it—Snow Creek.

From what I can accumulate, when utilized appropriately, there were no announced instances of broken Bearikades or the Ursack Major (once in the past S.29 AllWhite), and only one BearVault. The Garcia canister flopped frequently, yet you'd expect that since they are the most widely recognized rental canister. Without a doubt the NPS verified that "rental Garcia compartments were not being appropriately kept up, thus the covers were free." For more in-depth information I highly recommend bear bag cord.

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confrontingbabble-on · 6 years

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“On a Sunday afternoon, humanist chaplain Greg Epstein stands in front of about 90 people in an MIT auditorium. It’s an eclectic group, with young kids and college students, thirty-something parents and gray-hairs all attending because of a shared disbelief—no one here has faith in God.

“People who don’t happen to believe in a god, or affiliate with a traditional religion, still want to support one another in living out our positive values.”

”Religion isn’t just fading from campus, though—all throughout the city, faith is dying out. It’s a notion that once seemed unthinkable. Not so long ago, religious institutions permeated city life, forming communal centers for the pious and the profane alike; they simply were the community. Increasingly, though, religion’s power is giving way to the church of scientific inquiry. Religion’s importance in people’s lives is on the decline across the country, but the Bay State is on the trend’s leading edge, tied with New Hampshire for the official title of least religious state, according to the Pew Research Center. Massachusetts is tied for third in what statisticians call “religious nones,” people who say they’re not affiliated with any religion, at 32 percent of residents. Compare that to the 33 percent who said religion is “very important” in their lives. Or the 40 percent who told Pew in 2014 that they’re “absolutely certain” they believe in God—the lowest among the 50 states. Or the scant 23 percent who attend a religious service every week.The result of all of this is that Boston—the cradle of Puritanism in Colonial America, known as the most Catholic city in the nation during the 20th century—has become a secular town in the 21st. Many people, young and old, are concluding that religion doesn’t fit their ethics or their lives. They judge religion for the times it’s created conflict rather than bridging divisions. They believe in equality for women and LGBTQ people, and they won’t join patriarchal or anti-gay religions. New belief systems now dominate the city: higher education’s critical thinking, science’s demand for evidence, technology’s drive for results, liberal politics’ notions of progress and social justice. Some of this is a reaction to national politics—an expression of Boston’s sense of itself as a besieged liberal bastion—but it’s also a rejection of the Old Boston, the Irish-Catholic city on a hill.

“Prior to 2002,” ...“the archbishop of Boston had a direct line to any Massachusetts politician he wanted to talk to.” That time is long gone, says Margaret Roylance, vice president of Voice of the Faithful, a group of lay Catholics formed in 2002 to press for church reforms. “I don’t think the church is the 800-pound gorilla that it was. Politicians are not afraid to support something the church opposes...”

There was a time, of course, when religion and the church taught Bostonians morals and how to treat one another. Scripture, from the Bible to the Koran, provided foundational guidelines for humanity and social justice, not to mention the basis for the Golden Rule. Church leaders also taught us the value of hard work and kept us in line. Not so much anymore. “Catholic church leaders used to have a kind of moral force in Massachusetts,” says Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University. Big civic debates in Boston, such as whether to host the Olympics, would have included the Catholic leadership’s opinions. Now they don’t.

“In the olden days, you’d always go to Catholic leadership,” Prothero says. “Nowadays, I just don’t see why you would. They used to matter. I just don’t think they matter anymore. I think the moral capital has been spent.”

Even many Catholics who’ve stayed in the church don’t much care what the leadership thinks anymore. “Catholics, whether on the progressive or conservative end of the scale, none of them really trust the bishops to do the right thing,” Roylance says. The sex-abuse cover-up “made us look at them differently...”

The sex-abuse scandal may have hurt all churches in Boston, not just Catholic ones, says Stephen Kendrick, senior minister at First Church Boston, a Unitarian Universalist congregation. He recalls talking about Catholic clergy sex abuse in one of his first services after taking over First Church in 2001. “I said it’s going to affect us, because it makes a whole generation of people feel distrustful of authority and particularly religious authority,” he says. “I think that’s a particular challenge in Boston. That is a wound that is not healed. And it affects every religious institution in this city.”

As shattering as the sex-abuse scandal has been, it’s hardly the only reason people are leaving Catholicism—in one national survey, only 32 percent of former Catholics named the scandal as one of the reasons they left. In fact, among the religiously unaffiliated in general, 60 percent said they left their childhood faith because they simply stopped believing in the religion’s teachings.

Friday night comes as a time to relax instead of attend Shabbat services, and Sunday brunch beckons the family instead of a 9 a.m. service. In other words, Kendrick says, “What happened to the Catholic Church in the last 20 years didn’t just happen to the Catholic Church.”

They’ve seen the surveys that show the number of religious nones exploding and the number of professed Catholics declining. “The power of the Catholic Church to move a civic agenda or political agenda is much reduced...”

From...https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2018/12/11/boston-given-up-on-god/

#nonreligious #atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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kabuwu · 3 years

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7 and 10 of the art ask game? :3

artist ask game

7) Favourite works of all time excluding your own?

AH OK lets go

- that one Artemisia painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes . i wont show it here since it's pretty bloody/kinda gore-y, but that's part of why I like it, and it's the painting that really got me to appreciate baroque art in general. The lighting in that piece is phenomenal, as well as the expression and just.. you can feel it. you can feel judith's strength with the knife.

- Van Gogh's Starry Night. Yeah yeah its something everyone knows but i do really like it, and just the texture in van gogh's stuff. when i was in a painting class we were made to take a small section of a painting of our choosing and practice the way the brush strokes looked. I remember the repetitive motion feeling very therapeutic and bc this was actually during the worst of stay at home regulations it brought me a kind of comfort.

- Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise .. my gateway into appreciating impressionism haha. impressionism is a style that's kinda stuck with me bc i've never been one for hyper rendered/detailed stuff, so finding out there's apparently a whole thing that's just about catching the impression of the subject rather than like, getting literally Everything down was nice ^-^ I have way more probably but these are off the top of my head 10. What's that one thing that inspired you to make drawing your consistant hobby?

This is gonna sound stupid. But uh .. it was youtube.

I think I've mentioned this before but I'm a bit of an art youtube nerd.. to the point that i've been able to give out lists of youtubers based on what someone might want -_-'' (want in depth anatomy talks? sycra and sinix. Want someone talking in depth about other popular artists' styles and what exactly works in them? srish creates. want a kinda weird guy who's entertaining but gives some genuninely good art hacks/advice? xabio arts. i think you get it ,)

The reason I'm like that is because I spent (and still sometimes spend) a shit ton of time going through art youtube videos .. that's really it I didn't actually learn too much in art classes a good 90 percent i learned from youtube and it's kept me going for this long ,, lol

Though nowadays what also keeps me going even now is like. this constant need to see more art that depicts people like me. I could go super into that but maybe not here -_- tho if thats like. something anyone wants me to talk about i can. (and i might just do it on my own lollll)

#ask game #momo asks #poetic-underscore-cinema

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders

On the blustery morning of November 26, 1983, a beachgoer spotted a still-warm body in Half Moon Bay, California. The victim, who looked about 20 years old, had been stabbed more than 20 times and left in the sands near Pillar Point Bluff. Their wrists were slashed, their face bruised and swollen. (Out of respect for the victim’s unknown gender identity, Motherboard is using they/them as a pronoun.)

At their time of death, the person was presenting as a stylish, slender woman. They were 5-foot-10 inches tall, wearing an auburn pixie cut and casual clothes: yellow capri pants and a turtleneck over a foam-form bra, fishnet hose, and two pairs of feminine underwear. A Madonna-style white metal crucifix hung around their neck.

When taken to a medical examiner, the victim's body was misidentified as male, and nobody ever came to claim it. In an effort to identify the individual, cops dubbed them “John Doe #83-26” and released a crime sketch depicting a man. It failed to convey their gender identity or expression, including that they were likely wearing makeup and going by a woman’s name.

The case of Pillar Point Doe soon went cold and their identity remained a mystery for 35 years—until two genealogy sleuths recently cracked the case. The trans couple, who specialize in cold cases involving trans and gender non-conforming people, found the forgotten victim’s birth name through an online DNA database, reviving the hunt for their killer.

“I would work until I passed out”

Lee and Anthony Redgrave traced Pillar Point Doe’s relatives from Wales to Utah using the family history site GEDmatch, known for its role in finding the notorious Golden State Killer. The search was close to home for the Redgraves, who toiled obsessively for months without pay.

“I would work until I passed out. I’d cry myself to sleep at night, and have dreams where I was woken up thinking that [the victim] was telling me their name,” said Anthony, who along with Lee, ran a small team for the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit that identifies deceased people through forensic genealogy.

Lee added: “There are a lot of factors—and homicide detectives have absolutely no idea how to do this.”

The Redgraves were inspired by personal tragedy to help solve the case. In January 2018, a transgender friend of theirs, Christa Steele-Knudslien—a beauty pageant organizer and trans activist—was beaten and stabbed to death. The attack, which came after another friend’s suicide, sent Lee spiraling into a depression.

“It really tore my brain up,” said Lee, 41, a non-binary night owl with arms full of tattoos. “I got depressed, and when that happens I usually throw myself into a project.”

Anthony and Lee Redgrave

When a true crime-loving friend recommended they volunteer for the DNA Doe Project, it seemed like a good distraction.“Partially, I’m sure, it was her being like, ‘You have to stop being in a funk,’” Lee said. “We both felt really helpless about Christa—and this was something we actually could help with.”

They had plenty of experience with genetic genealogy, but they knew the limits of DNA and family tree matches for transgender victims. Database searches often lead to “dead names”—birth names victims no longer use, and aren’t known by in their communities. And most law enforcement systems don’t allow searches across sex marker categories, blinding them to some gender non-conforming folks.

A “trans-informed” perspective could shed some light, considering trans people are more likely to be the target of violent, unresolved crime. “Being a trans person, I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate not to have had a bunch of horrible things happen to me,” said Anthony, 38, a soft-spoken Civil War buff with a long ginger beard. “That was a driving force.”

When the Redgraves first heard about the Pillar Point Doe case in July 2018, they knew almost immediately it was ripe for a genetic gumshoeing.

An Unlikely Partnership

The victim, who was carrying no identification, had been found only two hours after they were stabbed in the neck and chest, allowing cops to collect a piece of blood-soaked blotter paper known as a “blood card.” This meant Pillar Point Doe’s DNA didn’t have to be extracted from bone, a longer and more expensive process. And yet it would likely show a complete picture of the victim’s entire genetic makeup, one that could be extracted in a lab and uploaded to GEDmatch, they said.

But the couple still had to convince the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to hand over the blood sample—and to team up with them on the investigation.

The Redgraves had a hunch cops would be willing. Their request came on the heels of the Golden State Killer’s arrest a few counties away, and in a section of northern California that tends to be queer-friendly.

“The thought was it was a good case because it was the Bay Area. We expected there would be more friendly law enforcement and a LBGTQ liaison in the Bay Area,” said Anthony. “We had to give an elevator pitch to the department, like, ‘This is why we want this specific case, and this is how it will benefit you.’”

The cops, it turned out, were game. The Redgraves signed non-disclosure agreements and— in a rare move—police released Pillar Point Doe’s private case files, including the blood card along with crime scene and coroner photos.

The Redgraves agreed to do the genetic sleuthing, then pass off next of kin matches to police, who would talk to relatives, collect DNA samples and handle the investigation from there.

It was an unlikely partnership. Many trans people refuse to work with cops since law enforcement has routinely targeted the community, trans activists and experts said. According to a 2015 survey, at least 57 percent of trans respondents said they would be afraid or uncomfortable going to police for help.

“It comes from being abused or not taken seriously by officers who historically have been disrespectful or dismissive of trans people,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, a policy expert for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “There’s a real stigma. Sometimes just being visibly trans in public is enough to get stopped or harassed by police on suspicion of being a sex worker—whether or not you actually are.”

Cases with trans victims have long been de-prioritized by cops, who assume victims are sex workers, living a “high risk” lifestyle or are “disowned” by their families, Heng-Lehtinen said.

But a lack of trans awareness is bad for police, too. Detectives who are ignorant about the community are more likely to use a transgender person’s dead name because it was printed on a government-issued ID, or to seek outdated information from estranged family members who knew them pre-transition, he said. It keeps those investigators from understanding the whole picture.

“If you’re an officer who’s asking around for Mark Smith and everybody in the neighborhood knows her as Marcia, that’s not helping anybody,” Heng-Lehtinen said.

Lee chalks it up to lack of education and training. “If you look at popular media over the past 20 years, the characters that are dressing opposite of what they’re ‘supposed to be’ are usually trying to trick somebody or get away with something—the end of ‘Ace Ventura’ is a classic example, or ‘The Crying Game,’” Lee said. “You get a lot of that mentality still in law enforcement, just because they haven’t had an alternate education.”

Identifying Doe

The Redgraves quickly got to work on creating a more gender-accurate forensic sketch of Pillar Point Doe. In the 80s and 90s, at least three drawings had been made of them, all wildly different.

One showed a “partially-Asian goth” guy with boxy slicked-back black hair, Lee said. Another depicted a shaggy-haired Val Kilmer look-alike with almond eyes. All were of men, and none were quite right.

“It seemed like [police artists] were trying to make this person look male,” Lee said. “Considering they had natural hair, not a wig, and were wearing pants with multiple layers of hose and underwear, it’s likely that they were tucking to have a more female appearance,” Lee said, citing details about the victim's outfit.

“They were probably attempting to pass as female as opposed to someone who was [a] drag performer or engaging in prostitution while cross-dressing.”

Based on those clues, the male sketch on fliers would have likely been lost on Pillar Point Doe’s queer “chosen family”—or anyone who saw them the night of the murder, the couple said. So using crime scene and coroner photos, the Redgraves and an artist came up with a new sketch that depicts the victim with a more feminine look, a yellow outfit and natural-style makeup.

In March 2019, Pillar Point’s blood card came back from the lab. It showed Pillar Point Doe’s entire genome sequence on a huge hard drive.

From their cozy home office in central Massachusetts, the Redgraves and a small team plugged those chunks of genetic code into GEDmatch, which compares DNA from testing sites like 23andMe and ancestry.com to find possible relatives with similar genetic makeups. Unlike law enforcement’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the site can pinpoint distant ancestors, not just immediate family members.

It works like this: Say you find a painting in a park with no signature and you want to learn the name of the artist. If you could somehow scan the piece’s complex colors and brush strokes into a massive database of art, you might be able to match it to the person who made it. Other paintings by the artist with similar patterns—a distant cousin, in this analogy—may also pop up.

In general, DNA evidence is only as accurate as the people who collect and analyze it. Technicians have been known to misinterpret samples, and police have submitted tainted or mixed genetic material. But Pillar Point’s blood card appeared to be a solid sample, the couple said.

The search led the Redgraves to a small town in Wales, where Pillar Point Doe’s distant relatives once worked at a glove factory. “We kept finding people who descended from this really specific family, but then finding the right branch turned out to be really hard,” Lee said.

Scores of unwed mothers hailed from the town for unknown reasons, leading to frustrating genealogy dead-ends. “It happened over and over again in this one little town,” Lee said.

The couple built a massive family tree and cross-referenced names with public records. They traced that to a group of relatives to a Utah pioneer community with roots in the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “When you work on someone’s genealogy, you get to know them in a really intimate way through their ancestors,” Lee said. “You know you’re getting close when they start looking like who you’re looking for.”

The couple soon discovered Pillar Point’s cousins belonged to an intermarried clan of families. Some men had multiple wives and children, amounting to a genealogy headache. “It’s a problem that’s common in isolated religious communities. The fancy word is endogamy,” Lee said. “You end up with a whole lot of half-relations and unreliable predictions.”

Setbacks

Then a fiasco unfolded. The arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018 had sparked privacy fears from critics who claimed GEDMatch could be used for nefarious reasons. When a criminal case centering on a minor stirred up more controversy on the site the next year, the owners abruptly purged the “law enforcement matching” section of it in May 2019, according to the Redgraves.

With no warning, it left the couple with only about 20 percent of the genetic clues they’d had before. “Think of it as the number of letters turned around on your ‘Wheel of Fortune’ puzzle. [Afterwards] there were 80 percent less letters, and we still had to guess the phrase,” Lee said.

The setback forced them to get creative. They sought uploads from people who descended from early settlers in Utah, along with the Mormon church, and mapped out “clusters” of potential relatives.

Anthony spent hours tinkering with DNA Painter, a tool that helps genealogists make sense of matches. Eventually, it led to Pillar Point’s possible great grandfather.

During an all-nighter in October 2019, they had a breakthrough. When they got to one of the possible great grandfather’s relatives, they checked records for proof of the person’s life after 1983, and found none. Lee pulled out Pillar Point’s crime scene photo and checked it against a high school yearbook photo of the grandchild.

It all added up: Here was the long-forgotten face of Pillar Point Doe.

They both burst into tears. “There were periods of crying and shaking for a few days afterwards. It was really intense,” Lee said.

The team then sent Pillar Point’s birth name to cops, who collected DNA from a relative to confirm the match, reinvigorating the investigation.

San Mateo County police have since declined to release Pillar Point Doe’s birth name—or to allow the couple to—saying it could hurt their hunt for the killer. “This homicide is actively being investigated. Unfortunately, disclosing information about the details may hinder our investigation,” Sergeant William Young, from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, told Motherboard.

Cold Case, Close To Home

Now, the Redgraves want more answers. “Ideally, police will find the perpetrator,” Lee said. “[Cops] definitely want to tell us something but they can’t. It makes us feel hopeful.”

Not long ago, Lee got a tattoo of poppies in Pillar Point Doe’s honor. It was inspired by the California flower bloom that could be seen from space in March 2019, the week the couple began searching for the victim's identity. “I am absolutely forever changed from working on this case,” Lee said.

Ultimately, the Redgraves hope Pillar Point Doe will be remembered for who they were—a complex and loved person, not a forgotten John Doe. “Hopefully someone who loved them will carry on their memory,” Lee said.

The couple now runs the Trans Doe Task Force, a research group that helps police and medical examiners with transgender and gender-expansive cold cases. Recently, they launched a database that allows for DNA comparisons across sex marker categories. They also founded their own firm, Redgrave Research Forensic Services, and Anthony has helped train law enforcement departments on five continents.

These days, the couple has a small framed high school photo of Pillar Point Doe in their home, near portraits of other people from cases close to their hearts.

“Pillar Point has become part of our family. I feel like we are basically like their foster parents,” Anthony said. “I’m going to feel that way until I know exactly how this case ends.”

Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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fuckyeahbelleandrumpelstiltskin · 7 years

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Emilie de Ravin returned to Once Upon a Time Friday for an emotional gut-punch hour comparable to the heartbreaking opening montage of the Pixar animated film Up — and that’s no coincidence.

After Rumple (Robert Carlyle) gave Belle (Emilie de Ravin) her very own travel book in Storybrooke, the duo set out with their young son, Gideon, to travel the world. But Rumple also confesses to searching for a way to be free of the Dark One dagger so he could live as a mortal and grow old with Belle.

After Belle discovers a fairy prophecy that sends them to the edge of realms, where time moves differently, she grows old in an Up-style montage that will absolutely break you. (If you haven’t watched it yet, prepare yourself.) On Belle’s deathbed, she reveals she purposefully misinterpreted the prophecy — it’s her death that will show Rumple the path that will lead him back to her. And thus, Belle dies. EW caught up with De Ravin to get her thoughts on the end to Belle’s tale:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Wow, this episode is so emotional. EMILIE DE RAVIN: Yeah, it’s so nice to hear that. That’s the best word for it, right? If you want to sum it up in one word: emotional.

What was your first reaction when you learned Belle’s fate? With everything with this show, and for that matter with Lost, I never take anything as finality, because there’s always this revolving door of things. I was so excited to be able to bring their story to the fans and to bring their later years in love, and to be able to play that was really beautiful. They’ve had quite a tumultuous relationship, so for them to be able to get to a place of such acceptance with each other and themselves, and with life, and this inner peace that has washed over them. They’ve been able to now show everyone maybe you can come to a point — whether it’s with someone else or with yourself, or with both — of just having that, having life be life, an acceptance of what it is, an acceptance of living, an acceptance of dying. Her acceptance of mortality is shining a lot brighter than his acceptance or non-acceptance of immortality, which you’d expect to be the reverse in a way. That’s quite beautiful and was lovely to play. I’m going on and on, but just because able to bring full-circle their story was a blessing and I was really happy when they said they were going to do this.

What was your reaction to reading the script, or at least hearing about thisUp-esque montage? I had been briefed slightly on what the story was going to be. I’ve been reading these scripts for nearly seven years. I love reading them and always enjoy them, some more than others, but never had a reaction like this. I couldn’t stop crying. I challenged myself, like, “Okay, the second time I read it, [it’ll be easier], maybe I was just having an emotional day.” The second time I read it, I was supposed to go out to lunch afterwards. Nope, can’t do it. I called Bobby and said, “I can’t read this without crying,” he said, “I know, I’m the same way.” We’ve both had instances where our significant others were like, “Are you okay?” [Feigns crying] “Yup, just reading the script.”

What were some of those conversations like with Bobby knowing that this, in certain ways, is the end for them? The initial one was just about how beautiful this was written. Reading this script was both of our — if I can speak for him as well — favorite reads of really hitting the nail on the head with the emotion and the sensibility of these two characters, where they’ve been, where they’re going, and more to the point, the present-ness is played so [well]. It’s written such in the moment. A lot of this show is, “What’s going to happen? What has happened?” Our pasts and our futures and we’re all living in 10 different moments instead of just, “What is in front of you right now?” That really stood out to me as being so special and so lovely. As I was saying before, it’s really a big shift for them to be able to get to a place of, “We’re just going to live our life and,” in essence, “screw everything else. Let’s just be.”

What was it like filming that final scene between them as Belle comes clean about purposefully misinterpreting the prophecy before dying? Especially with that makeup and prosthetics. Oh no, I just laid out in the sun for a few days. It was all me. [Laughs] From now on, I will only be playing grandmas. Just putting that out there. [Laughs] That was the hardest day of work, that scene. It was really emotional. The feeling and vibe on set was so special and so respectful and loving and warm. It brought out a lot of feelings for a lot of the crew and cast. I suppose it was really just me and Bobby and the crew that day, but we were so lucky to have Mick Garris as our director, who is a lovely guy and such a sensitive man. He did a beautiful job with the episode. It’s such a safe — safe is probably the best word. I felt very safe and respected that whole day. But it was sad, we were crying. It was very hard to stop crying between takes. It was hard for me as I was trying to, as Emilie, not cry watching Bobby — not as the characters. I really wanted Belle to be, in essence, the strong one of accepting her moving on to whatever she believes is the next chapter after mortal existence, and being the strong one for him as well as for herself, and not breaking down. You can’t have her breaking down and crying all over her prosthetics. [Laughs] That was probably the biggest challenge because Bobby’s performance was so beautiful to watch. Yeah, definitely a difficult night to go to sleep after that as well, when you’re so enveloped in doing something that’s that intense, and that you’re dying, so it brings up a lot of personal feelings and emotions.

There is obviously a prophecy of how Rumple can find his way back to Belle, so is there any chance you’ll come back to the show for whenever that does happen? If the prophecy figures itself out, I’m sure Belle will be there. I would think. You know, as she says so beautifully, they’ve come back to each other many, many times. I love that she keeps her sarcasm until the end too, it’s pretty cute. From the get-go of their relationship, it’s been a coming and going, a push and pull of “Are they together or are they not?” Are they going to figure things out? They always do. There’s always been that incredibly strong bond and connection that they have, so I don’t think a realm is going to get in the way of that. But who knows?

With all those exits at the end of last season, we didn’t get to hear too much from you about how it feels to leave the show. Is there anything else you wish you had gotten to do with Belle on Once Upon a Time? I still wish I got to ride a horse. [Laughs] I do! It was the one thing I remember saying in season 1 or season 2 to the question, “What would you like to do?” “I’m such an animal lover, I had animals growing up, I’d love to ride a horse. Everyone else is riding horses!” Cut to season 5, they write me in that Gaston episode, “Her Handsome Hero,” riding on a horse, but by that episode I was seven months pregnant. They wrote most of the horse riding out and then used a double. But as far as character-wise, I do wish we would’ve been able to delve more into Belle’s past as a child, as a teenager, or even as a younger woman and learn a little bit more about her family dynamic and her early life, and what shaped her into the young woman that we met in “Skin Deep.”

What’s been your favorite moment on the show? I’m kind of torn now, because I really love this episode [“Beauty”]. I’ve always said my favorite episode is “Skin Deep.” I love that episode and it’s a perfect depiction of these characters. We learn so much in one episode. I have two favorite actual moments now, and one is from that episode that’s repeated in this episode. It’s not even a scene, it’s literally a moment when she falls from the curtains in “Skin Deep” and he catches her, because it’s such a pivotal moment, it’s such a turning point for their relationship. It’s not just a pretty shot or a cool visual, which I think it is, but it just changes everything. That’s mimicked in “Beauty,” which is just heartbreaking, but another pivotal moment for them.

As an actress, what do you think is your biggest takeaway from your time on Once Upon a Time? Is there anything you learned about yourself over the last six years or so? I always like to learn. I always think there’s no cap on learning. That just goes on and on. Everything I do, I try to take something from. I’ve learned so much. I’ve been blessed 1,000 times being able to work with Bobby. I’ve been a fan of his work for so long, he’s an incredibly talented man. Being able to do probably 90 percent of my work with him has just been a dream. As an actor, I’ve learned so much from him. In regards to playing Belle, it’s given me insights. I think I have a little more of a questioning attitude with myself like, “Am I being honest with myself? Am I doing this for myself or for someone else?” I think that’s something Belle has asked herself many times and has had to work through herself as well. “Am I in this relationship? Am I doing this for me?” Not that everything has to be self-centered, but, “Is this good for me? Or is this actually really toxic to me and I’m doing it because I feel obligated?” Finding that balance that she’s had to find is something I’ve taken away personally as well.

What’s next for you? There are things in the works right now, but I’ve taken the last few months off to be a mom, because I’ve been working since I had my daughter a year and a half ago, so I was just very excited to be able to do that. That’s what’s happening right now. And at this second, I’m on the way to the airport to meet some awesome Once Upon a Time fans in Atlanta for a convention. It’s been pretty cool and really nice. A lot of us have been doing these conventions and it’s been so nice to be able to hear from people firsthand of how much they like the show or how it has affected him. The coolest thing is how people are being brought together by this truly lovely family that watches together. It’s very heartwarming.

What do you want to say to the OUAT fans on the night of your exit? First, I hope you enjoy it. I love all you guys, and the fans are why we do this show, and why it’s still on. The episode tonight is really, really special and close to my heart. Bring a box of tissues or two, not just for sad tears, for happy tears. It’s really beautiful. And let me know what you think! Write me on Twitter or Instagram. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks. Snuggle up and enjoy, and I love you.

#Emilie de Ravin #rumbelle #belle #Belle French #Interviews #ouat spoilers #7x04 Beauty

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cannonalise92 · 4 years

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What Does A Cat Spraying Look Like Unbelievable Cool Ideas

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#What Does A Cat Spraying Look Like Unbelievable Cool Ideas #How To Remove Cat Spray From Wood Furnitu

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yasbxxgie · 7 years

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The Legend of the 52 Blocks

I don’t know how I first heard about the 52 Blocks. Like much of New York City’s urban mythology—such as the Decepticons gang, the tunnels under Alphabet City, or the albino alligators and alligator-sized rats in the sewers—the legendary hand-to-hand combat style seemed to always hover just outside my conscious knowledge, a whisper from an unclear direction.

Certainly, though, I heard references to the 52 scattered in lyrics by rappers such as Nas protégé Nature and Wu Tang affiliate Killa Sin. The Wu-Tang Clan, in particular, seems to have an affinity for the 52. GZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and various Killa Bee affiliates have all rhymed about the 52. The most memorable lyric about the 52 is probably Meth’s line from his and Redman’s “1,2,1,2”: “52 cops/ Can’t withstand the 52 Blocks/ Unless they bust like 52 shots.”

While working as a night security guard in Manhattan several years ago, I got into a conversation with a guy on the maintenance crew. The man bragged about the various fighting styles he’d studied in his lifetime, swinging his mop handle like a Japanese bō. Considering that he had spent his youth in a reform school in the Rockaways in the ‘70s, and was ostensibly an expert in various fighting forms, I asked him if he knew anything about the 52 Blocks.

“52 Blocks?” he sneered. “That’s ghetto shit. It’s nothing.”

A few minutes later, a buddy of mine who was also on the maintenance crew came upstairs. He was less of a martial arts aficionado, but was a tough guy and had spent some time locked upstate in the ‘90s, so I asked him the same question.

“Yeah.” he said. A smile spread across his face. “Yeah.” He quickly directed me to bring up YouTube on the security computer and search for round five of Judah vs. Mayweather. He knew the exact round of the fight off the top of his head. Chapter and verse. We watched the clip in silence. Mayweather dominates for the first couple minutes, landing several punches, and driving Zab Judah into the corner. Then, a switch flips, and Judah steps forward into the center of the ring. He pulls his elbows in tight, and his arms pivot back and forth across his face like a butterfly flapping its wings.

“You tell me what this is,” an announcer says in disbelief. Mayweather steps backwards—his infamous cockiness drained away—and Judah lands a righteous combination. So this was the 52 Blocks. It was something after all. And it was beautiful.

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Even the name of 52 Blocks is shrouded in mystery. Some say it describes a catalogue of individual moves with fanciful names like the “skull and crossbones.” Others dismiss this, and say that the name is a metaphor for a general style, coming from the game of “52 pickup,” where cards are allowed to fall where they may. Still others say that that the “block” in question is a specific cellblock. Indeed, an alternate name for the 52 is “the Comstock Shuffle,” a reference to The Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.

Whether it’s 52 Blocks or Comstock, the term refers to a purported codified New York prison system-specific style of Jail House Boxing, aka Jail House Rock. This is held in contrast to related styles in other prison systems, like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which are rumored to vary, be less codified, and go by different names. The moves themselves supposedly reflect the prison environment. The idea is that the tight stances, lack of far-ranging movement, and emphasis on survival and defense were designed to function in in the confines of a prison cell than a ring. Rumors abound online about a predatory gay 52 Blocks prison master named Mother Dear—and the authoritative Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia even implies that he originated the style himself at Rikers. There is no record of this man’s actual identity.

The first reference in print to this type of fighting style apparently came in a 1974 issue of Black Belt magazine, in a feature on prison karate. Most of the article focuses on the clandestine practice of traditional karate in prisons in New York State and elsewhere, but the conclusion focuses on the more interesting “In House Arts.” Black Belt treats the prison fighting styles as “impromptu” variations on hand-to-hand combat styles used by incarcerated military veterans, and refers to them by facility-specific names, such as “Coxsackie variation” and “Comstock style.”

Amazingly, the afroed-man photographed demonstrating the Comstock style is Miguel Piñero, the famous poet and playwright of the Nuyorican arts movement. Black Belt could not have found a more appropriate model. In his, “A Lower East Side Poem,” Piñero describes himself as, “a street fighting man.” He goes on to explain that he is, “a dweller of prison time/ a cancer of Rockefeller's ghettocide/ this concrete tomb is my home/ to belong to survive you gotta be strong.”

The first direct journalistic reference to 52 Blocks does not seem to have come until the late date of 1999, though, in Douglas Century’s Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse, an immersive account of a Crown Heights gang in the early ‘90s. Century followed up two years later with an eye-opening article about the 52 Blocks in the recently-shuttered fashion magazine, Details. In his book, Century describes “fifty-two hand-blocks” as “a style of hand-to-hand combat developed in the New York State Penal system and widely practiced amongst gang members on the streets of Brooklyn in the ‘70s and ‘80s.” This is as good a definition as any (though some folks from the Bronx or Harlem might object to the geographic specificity). In the Details article, Century quotes Dennis Newsome, a well-known Capoeira master and martial arts scholar, providing his own definition of the 52 Blocks: “Basically it’s an artistic butt-whuppin’ … It’s just part of Black aesthetics.” Newsome goes on to argue that the racially-segregated nature of prison meant that only African American inmates learned the style.

Lore has it that the 52 Blocks worked its way down from the prisons to the streets in the ‘70s. This is plausible; street style has always reflected prison culture, and moves that would work in the confines of prisons would work just as well in the confines of the similarly-designed housing projects which had come to dominate New York City’s ghettos in the era of urban renewal. Because any effective fighting style would essentially be contraband, an illicit weapon smuggled in and out of prison, it would have had to remain underground. Whether it referred to legend or fact, the name 52 Blocks was restricted to argot. This secrecy is part of what makes it so difficult to trace or verify much of this history.

Through a shared association with the prison system, the 52 Blocks came to be connected in many people’s minds with the self-mythologizing Nation of Gods and Earths, more commonly known as the Five Percenters. The history of the Five Percenters is too complex to get into here, but it is a fascinating movement which was founded by a former Nation of Islam minister named Clarence 13X, aka Father Allah, in Harlem in the ‘60s. The Five Percenters’ unique approach to language has had a profound impact on Hip Hop, and modern American slang.

The Five Percenter lessons—themselves an enumerated code of arcane knowledge often learned in prison—could be seen as a mental parallel to the 52 Blocks, just as many Eastern practices have both a spiritual and physical aspect. In his book, Tao of 52, self-declared expert Diallo Frazier writes: “52 was called God Blocks because in the science of Supreme math, the number 7 is the number of GOD. When you add 5 and 2 you get 7 …” Narratives of receiving esoteric transmission of religious and martial instruction behind bars have a strong appeal for many people have been incarcerated, as they allow the years spent in prison to be viewed as time spent gaining knowledge, rather than simply wasted.

+++

In the early 1970s, perceptions of Asian martial arts began to influence New York street culture through the popular imported Kung Fu movies. Aficionados had long traveled to movie theatres on Canal Street in Chinatown, but the explosion of martial arts film screenings in midtown meant that a wider, non-Asian audience was exposed to the genre. A 1974 article in the film journal Cineaste proclaimed:

In a little more than two years, kung fu (also known as Chinese boxing), the centuries-old Chinese martial art, has caught the fancy of the American public and literally become the ‘fist of fury.’

As the 2013 documentary The Black Kungfu Experience depicts, some African American fans of Kung Fu movies were inspired to actually train in Chinese and Japanese martial arts. Ron Van Clief, a Brooklyn native, became a martial arts champion after surviving a lynching down south in the early ‘60s, and serving in combat as a Marine in the Vietnam War. He was given the name “The Black Dragon” by none other than Bruce Lee, and eventually moved to Hong Kong to star in a plethora of Kung Fu movies. These movies, in turn, inspired a whole new generation of African American martial arts practitioners.

Van Clief was the fight choreographer for the 1985 Berry Gordy-produced film, The Last Dragon. The Last Dragon, which features a showdown between two black martial arts experts in Harlem, represented the confluence of Kung Fu cinema and New York street culture. Jim Jarmusch would build on the trope fifteen years later, in Ghost Dog, a movie scored by Wu Tang’s leader, RZA. Considering that The Wu-Tang Clan’s imagery draws so heavily from both Five Percenters and Kung Fu movies, it’s no surprise that their lyrics contain so many 52 Blocks references.

The influence of film does not mean that the ‘70s martial arts trend was solely about play acting; street gangs like the Black Spades, the Nomads, and the Ghetto Brothers were actively engaging in hand-to-hand combat. Examples of this can be found in the excellent recent documentary, Rubble Kings, which chronicles the events leading up to the 1971 Hoe Avenue gang truce in the South Bronx. The film features an influential figure named “Karate Charlie” Suarez. Suarez—a Marine-turned-gang leader-turned-activist-turned-martial arts instructor—literally made a name for himself as a karate practitioner, and inspired a myriad of imitators.

+++

Many 52 Blocks proponents argue that the true inspiration for the form does not come from Asia, but from Africa. 52 Blocks scholar Daniel Marks, who first learned of the form from street savvy recruits while in the Army, refers in a brief monograph to the southern African American fighting style of “Knocking and Kicking.” Frazier similarly connects Jail House Rock back to a “Virginia Scufflin” boxing style practiced by slaves in the 1800s. The existence of enslaved bare knuckle boxers—like the famous Tom Molineaux—who were forced to fight for their masters’ entertainment, is documented in other sources, including the foundational early-1800s prize fighting account, Boxiana. Marks and Frazier both connect Southern African American fighting styles back to African martial arts, such as Hausa Boxing (also known as Dambe) in Nigeria.

Within the martial arts community, there are many detractors who question if the 52 Blocks even exists at all, let alone possesses a history stretching back centuries. Considering that martial arts is a field filled with both Orientalist frauds and blustering bravado, and that there is so little hard evidence on the history of the 52 Blocks, some measure of skepticism is certainly warranted. That being said, much of the derision for the 52 Blocks goes well beyond careful critical appraisal. A typical attack is articulated by the right-wing writer Phil Elmore:

the system simply doesn’t exist […] we are asked to believe that a people sold into slavery and shipped across the ocean to serve as slaves in the United States somehow managed to transmit the coherent body of a complex, technically diverse martial arts system to their children, their children’s children, and their children for generations, all under the watchful eye of slave owners who would not be eager to have their property learning to fight.

Elmore’s essentially racist argument not only dismisses the 52, but the very idea that African American culture builds on traditions brought over from Africa. Apparently the man has never heard of blues music, or any other African Diaspora art form. And if he doesn’t believe that martial organization could happen under “the watchful eye of slave owners,” then someone should tell him about Nat Turner.

+++

The crack epidemic of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s brought an unprecedented level of violence to the streets of America’s cities. During this era, hand-to-hand street fighting gave way to gun violence. Those who posit that the 52 Blocks was a tradition passed down through generations point to this disruptive historical moment as the end of the form’s practical use and transmission. In the song “Cold World,” GZA raps about the inefficacy of the 52 Blocks in a burgeoning gun culture: “But with iron on the sides, thugs took no excuses/ Therefore, your fifty-two hand blocks was useless.”

As the 52 Blocks became a relic of the past—historical or mythic—some people began to preserve and honor it as part of African American heritage and culture. Constellation 52 Global, a group which includes Marks and Kawaun Adon Akhenoten7 (aka “Big K” of Street Kingdom fame), works to document and perpetuate the tradition. Marks writes that he values the 52 Blocks, “as a testament of our struggle as Black people in the Diaspora fighting for equality.”

The idea of the 52 Blocks has also gradually taken more of a presence in sports, entertainment, and popular culture. Some boxing fans speculate that in addition to Zab Judah, other boxers like Mike Tyson may have incorporated elements of the 52 into their fighting styles. This theory is rooted in the fact that Tyson received much of his fighting education in the streets of Brooklyn and in a New York State juvenile detention facility. After hearing tell of the form’s fabled efficacy, some martial arts students are seeking to learn the 52 Blocks in more formal settings. This phenomenon was mentioned in a 2009 New York Times article which, in addition to Marks and Akhenoten7, focused on Lyte Burly, a trainer who teaches a version of the 52 Blocks as a business. The Times article also discussed a meeting between Marks and UFC Champion Rashad Evans, and Evans’ interest in 52 Blocks techniques.

The 52 Blocks is finding its place on the screen as well, just as Kung Fu once did. Because of its speed and flash, the 52 Blocks is made for the medium. Indeed, many people now receive their first glimpse of the 52 in YouTube videos, just as I did. Strangely, the first mainstream use of 52 Blocks-style moves was by Mel Gibson in the 1987 film Lethal Weapon. The Australian learned his moves from Dennis Newsome. More recently, the 52 Blocks mythology plays a prominent role in the BET series Gun Hill. Larenz Tate’s character, Bird, is an ex-convict posing as a law enforcement officer, so his knowledge of the 52 is somewhat logical to the plot. Though Tate’s fighting technique—coordinated by Diallo Frazier—may very well be flash designed for TV, rather than an authentic reflection of a prison and street fighting tradition, its central use in the narrative demonstrates the continuing popular appeal of the legend of the 52 Blocks, two decades after the Wu-Tang era.

Despite the lights and cameras, the 52 Blocks remains, in its essence, an art form of bare hands, operating behind concrete and steel. Not too long ago, my girlfriend’s work took her to Harlem early in the morning, just after dawn. Passing through Marcus Garvey Park, she saw a lone man in his fifties—with the weathered look of an ex-con—training inside the playground jungle gym, down the hill from the old fire tower. His half-century-old arms flashed in front of his face, cutting through the morning air.

“Was that 52 Blocks?” she asked me when she got home. “It was like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”

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“… Iam God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand ….”—Isaiah 46:9-10

The history of the Holy Roman Empire—and the truth that it was created, led and exploited in each manifestation by the Catholic Church—is beyond dispute. It is proven true by recorded history, thorough scholarship, and museums and archaeological excavations full of relics and artifacts.

It is now time to consider more thoroughly what the Bible reveals about the Holy Roman Empire.

In Chapters 1 and 2, we considered the Apostle John’s dramatic vision described in Revelation 17. In particular, we concentrated on the woman, or church, of Revelation 17, who was “sit[ting] upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (verse 3).

This church was riding—she was guiding, empowering, leading—a “beast” that had seven heads and 10 horns.

The following verses show that under this woman’s inspiration and leadership, the beast performed many cruel and mighty works. This beast was the woman’s instrument of destruction, her main vehicle for expanding her power, her chosen weapon for conquering and subjugating great portions of the Earth.

The “beast” mentioned in Revelation 17 is the Holy Roman Empire, which, as we have seen, was comprised of seven consecutive resurrections, or seven governments—or “seven heads”!

Can you believe the Holy Roman Empire was prophesied? Will you?

The Bible contains a lot of prophecy, much more than people realize. One third of the Bible is prophecy, and 90 percent of that prophecy pertains to our time. But remember, the entire Bible was completed nearly 2,000 years ago. Some of the Bible’s earliest prophecies were written 1,400 years prior.

Think about that: God forecast the major events and trends unfolding in today’s world between roughly 1,900 and 3,400 years ago. For what purpose? That is simple: to prove He is real.

Fulfilled prophecy is the greatest proof we have of God’s existence!

But think further about the audience God is especially trying to reach with fulfilled prophecy. It can only be observed and accepted by people who have seen evidence of its fulfillment. And most prophecy pertains to our time today. Many biblical prophecies have only begun to be fulfilled in the last century, especially in the last three decades.

Human beings today, more than at any other moment in history, have seen Bible prophecies fulfilled. There has never been more evidence of fulfilled prophecy. And evidence of prophecies being fulfilled is piling up weekly.

The point is, mankind today has more proof than at any other time in human history of God’s existence!

Yet sadly, mankind’s belief in the true God is practically bankrupt. Belief in the Bible has dwindled epically. Concerning God and religion, humanity is more ignorant, more confused and more hostile than ever. Humanity has almost completely lost sight of God.

The Bible is literally full of prophecies serving the same function as the Holy Roman Empire. These prophecies are clear, vivid and detailed. And they were written millennia before they were due to be fulfilled. Moreover, they exist to prove to you—right now—that God exists, that He reigns supreme, that the Bible is His Word, and that He has a plan for mankind.

Bible prophecy is truly one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind. It is proof of God’s love for mankind, and for you.

The Image of Daniel 2

Before we study further into specific prophecies about the Holy Roman Empire, we must put human history into broader prophetic context.

Daniel 2 is the key to unlocking world history. As Gerald Flurry wrote in Daniel Unlocks Revelation, “The Daniel 2 image gives an overview of history and prophecy like nothing else in the Bible. It is the main tool God uses to unlock the book of Revelation!”

In Daniel 2 we read about a detailed and riveting dream King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had in the seventh century b.c. In it, he saw a great image, or statue.

Verses 32-33 show that the statue Nebuchadnezzar saw was made of four distinct materials: “This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”

This image was standing tall and menacing, when suddenly, a stone from outer space came hurtling down and collided with it, annihilating the image and grinding it to dust. Then this stone became a great mountain that covered the whole planet (verses 34-35).

King Nebuchadnezzar was confused and disturbed. He called in his magicians and soothsayers, and demanded that they tell him what he had dreamed and then give its interpretation. The magicians had no idea what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was about, let alone what it might have meant.

Residing in Babylon at the time was a Jew named Daniel, a young prophet with the God-given talent to interpret dreams. Through Daniel, God explained to King Nebuchadnezzar that his dream was actually a prophecy of future world events.

“Thou, O king,” Daniel began, “art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. … Thou art this head of gold” (verses 37-38). How clear: King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian-Chaldean Empire, which we can read about in history books, was the head of gold.

Daniel continued: “And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken” (verses 39-42).

Daniel was prophesying the succession of four world-ruling empires. The first, symbolized by the head of gold, was Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian-Chaldean Empire of the seventh century b.c. The second, symbolized by the chest and arms of silver, was the Medo-Persian Empire, which lasted from the sixth century to the mid-fourth century b.c. The third, symbolized by the belly of bronze, was the Greek Empire, which emerged in the fourth century b.c. The fourth, symbolized by two legs of iron—picturing two distinct regions, east and west—was the Roman Empire, which began in 31 b.c.

Now, check your history. You will find that the succession of these empires is recognized and chronicled in detail in history books the world over. Of course, other civilizations and peoples, many of them influential and impressive, existed concurrently, but these four were the dominant civilizations of their time.

What is amazing is that you can prove the fulfillment of this biblical prophecy by checking the contents page of most Western civilization textbooks!

Daniel’s Beasts

The four successive world-ruling empires identified in Daniel 2 are also identified in Daniel 7. But here God uses different symbolism. In Daniel 7 the four empires are pictured by “four great beasts.” The first, the Babylonian-Chaldean Empire, is “like a lion, and had eagle’s wings” (verse 4). The second, the Medo-Persian Empire, is typed by a bear (verse 5). In verse 6 the Greek Empire is symbolized by a leopard with four wings, depicting a kingdom with terrific speed and agility. (Remember how fast Alexander the Great blazed across Asia Minor and the Mideast?)

Now notice how Daniel 7 describes the fourth beast. It is totally unique. Verse 7 says, “behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.”

The beast depicting the terrifying Roman Empire isn’t symbolized by a known animal, like a lion, bear or leopard—but by a unique-looking beast, unlike any normal animal. Notice too, this beast has 10 horns. These horns represent 10 successive administrations, or resurrections, of the Roman Empire.

Next we come to a pivotal truth.

In verse 8, Daniel continues describing the fourth 10-horned beast that symbolizes the Roman Empire. “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” Clearly this “little horn” is separate from the 10.

But notice: This powerful little horn comes on the scene after the first three horns, or administrations. In fact, this “little horn,” this administration, plucks up—it overcomes and destroys—the first three horns. In verse 20, Daniel explains this prophecy: “And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.”

The Hebrew word translated “stout” means “captain, chief, great, lord, master.” This “little horn” is clearly a powerful and commanding institution. And it begins ruling over the last seven horns after it destroys the first three.

The identity of this “little horn” is obvious: It is the Roman Catholic Church, which began leading the Holy Roman Empire after the demise of the three Goth tribes that dominated Rome in the fifth century.

“God reveals so much in this one scripture,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “This verse depicts the 10 horns that grow out of the fourth beast—the Roman Empire. It depicts a ‘little horn’—a great false church—coming on the scene after three horns are plucked up. The church directed the violent uprooting of the barbarians. The three horns picture three governments (the Heruli, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths) that came and went, and then suddenly the whole configuration changed from that point forward: The great church guided every succeeding resurrection of this Roman Empire, in an unprecedented church-state relationship” (Daniel Unlocks Revelation). If you are interested in really proving this prophecy and understanding it deeply, request and read this free booklet.

Notice what Mr. Flurry wrote next: “God revealed to Herbert W. Armstrong that this verse was the key to European history. So European history is tied to Daniel’s image. The last seven horns comprise a church-state relationship, which began in a.d. 554—led by Justinian. Once you understand that, it is much easier to see where it is. Europe was ruled by a church-state relationship and is unique in this way. That is a super-critical key to understanding its past. This combine is called the Holy Roman Empire. It has produced the most destructive church-state relationship in human history!” (emphasis added).

The message of Daniel 7:8 must underpin our study of European history, and specifically the history of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a counterpart to Revelation 17, though it was written almost 600 years before the book of Revelation.

Read the remainder of Daniel 7: After rising up to destroy the first three horns, this “little horn” stays around to guide and influence the last seven horns, which represent seven resurrections of the Roman Empire. These seven resurrections—each under the spiritual and moral influence of the “little horn”—comprise the seven resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire.

Revelation 13

About 600 years after God inspired the Prophet Daniel to write these prophecies, He added to them through the Apostle John, who wrote the book of Revelation.

In Revelation 13, the Apostle John discusses two distinct beasts. The first, described in verses 1 to 10, has features similar to those described by Daniel. The first beast of Revelation 13 looks slightly different from the four distinct beasts described in Daniel 7, but depicts the same four world-ruling empires, including the 10 horns of the Roman Empire, described in Daniel 7.

Verses 11 to 18 describe the second beast of Revelation 13. Verse 11 says, “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” What powerful symbolism. This beast appears harmless and enticing, like a lamb. But when it speaks, it is terrifying and dangerous, like a dragon. The institution represented by this beast looks peaceful and altruistic, but it is vicious and cruel.

A dragon in biblical symbolism represents Satan the devil (e.g. Revelation 12). This beast is Satan’s creation. It is his primary instrument for deceiving mankind and seeking to destroy the true followers of God.

What does this second beast of Revelation 13 represent? Herbert Armstrong explains in his booklet Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast? “This second beast of Revelation 13 is also pictured in Revelation 17 as the harlot woman who rode the beast. This fallen woman, or church, is different from all other churches in one respect. She is organized as a civil government, as well as an ecclesiastical church. Nations of the world send ambassadors to her, the same as they do the capitals of other nations.”

The second beast of Revelation 13 dominates the world (verses 12-18). It violently and cruelly forces humans into submission and worship. It seeks to extinguish its opponents. It is inspired and fueled by Satan and his demons, who infuse it with the power to do “great wonders” and many “miracles.”

Revelation 17: the All-important Chapter

To understand the specifics of the Holy Roman Empire, Revelation 17 is the key chapter. The Holy Roman Empire is its theme. It is different from Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13 as it discusses only the last seven resurrections of the Roman Empire. Once again, just as He did in Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13, God reveals the truth about the Holy Roman Empire by causing the Apostle John to see a vivid and dramatic beast.

Before God revealed this image, He sent an angel who explained to John what he was about to see. “… Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication” (Revelation 17:1‑2). This image was about a great false religion that deceived the world—and, by spiritual deception, ruled kings, or governments.

Next, read for yourself what John saw in vision: “[A]nd I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (verse 3). Notice, there are two distinct parts to this image: a “woman,” or church—and a “scarlet coloured beast” with seven heads and 10 horns, upon which the woman rode.

We now know the identities of both the woman and the beast. “The seven heads symbolize the seven dynasties or historic peaks of the Holy Roman Empire,” wrote Mr. Armstrong in the January 1979 Plain Truth. “The 10 horns are 10 kings or nations comprising this empire at the time of its seventh stage.” Verse 9 explains further what these seven heads represent: “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.” In the Bible, a mountain is a symbol for a government.

Each “head” of this Revelation 17 beast represents a distinct administration, or government!

As we have proven in this book, together these seven successive governments comprise the beast of Revelation 17. The first head, or government, was Emperor Justinian and the Imperial Restoration of a.d. 554; the second, Emperor Charlemagne and the Frankish Empire of a.d. 774; the third, Otto the Great and the Holy Roman Empire in 962; the fourth, the Habsburg dynasty of the early 16th century; the fifth, Napoleon’s kingdom in the early 19th century; the sixth, the German-Italian axis ultimately responsible for World War ii.

The seventh head, or government, which is comprised of 10 horns, or 10 kings, is now coalescing in Europe!

But remember what the most distinguishing and important feature of the Revelation 17 beast is! Read it again in verses 3-5: “I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast …. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.”

Never forget that image, for it is the key that unlocks the history of Europe and future world events!

This seven-headed beast is inspired, guided and exploited by a great false religion. This false religion is the woman of Revelation 17—she is responsible for guiding each of the seven governments of the Holy Roman Empire. More than any other secular power or individual, this woman, who is under the influence of Satan the devil—the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4)—is responsible for the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Holy Roman Empire.

Also, we cannot forget the reason this woman-beast alliance exists. Revelation 17:6 says, “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus ….” In Daniel 7:25 this religion is symbolized by a “little horn” that shall “speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High ….”

This is a vital truth: Satan the devil raised up the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire as his primary weapon for destroying the true saints of God! Think about that. How can Catholicism be God’s true religion when the Bible says the Catholic Church exists to oppose and destroy the true Church?

If you want to find God’s true Church, look for a Church that is being persecuted by the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire! Look for the Church that is exposing the truth about the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire.

The Fifth Kingdom?

Before we finish, we must consider a vital component—in fact, the most important—of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2. This part of the dream is often overlooked or ignored, but it is by far the most exciting. One can be intrigued and excited by the symbolism of the image, by the head of gold and the other three materials—and the fact that these four parts explain world history—and fail to think much about this image’s ultimate fate.

Read it for yourself: “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:34-35).

There is far greater depth in those two scriptures than most people know.

These two verses discuss the entire gospel message! They show us that God has a plan for mankind!

What does the “stone” that is “cut out without hands” represent? The Bible reveals that it is Jesus Christ!

Ephesians 2:20 says that God’s Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, “Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” In 1 Corinthians 10:4 Christ is identified as “that spiritual Rock.”

This stone flying in from heaven and destroying the image pictures the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, this stone—after smashing the image and grinding it so thoroughly that the dust of iron, clay, brass, silver and gold blow away and vanish—transforms into a “great mountain” that “fills the whole earth.” Daniel explains this: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44).

When Jesus returns, after demolishing the cruel, savage kingdoms of man, He will establish on Earth the eternal Kingdom of God!

Daniel 7 describes the same course of events. After describing the four beasts—each corresponding to the four parts of the statue in Daniel 2—the prophet explains what happens after the time allotted to the Roman Empire expires. “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him” (Daniel 7:27).

The final human kingdom—the seventh resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire—will be replaced by the Kingdom of God.

This eternal kingdom will be ruled by Jesus Christ and the “saints of the most High.” In addition to Christ, there will be other God beings sitting on the throne with Christ establishing and reigning over the everlasting Kingdom of God! (Revelation 3:21; 20:4-6).

This is the very gospel message that Christ preached! (Mark 1:14-15).

The same people that the Holy Roman Empire worked so hard to destroy will be ruling in the Kingdom of God. Their victory is prophesied!

Can you begin to fathom what God is teaching us here?

Isn’t it marvelous how Bible prophecy and world history—how the Daniel 2 image and the beasts of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 and 17—how the history of the Holy Roman Empire, and the shocking truth about the Roman Catholic Church—actually prove the existence of God, and reveal the stunning, incredibly positive and hopeful truth about the coming Kingdom of God?

When you truly understand this, world events and Bible prophecy come alive. Why? Because they reveal that there is a God in heaven and the dawning of a new future for mankind.

Think seriously about this: Bible prophecy and world history—even the inglorious and frightening history and prophecy about the Holy Roman Empire—are fundamentally a hope-filled, inspiring message about the gospel of God.

More than any other, this is the great lesson we must take from the Holy Roman Empire: The history of this empire proves God’s existence; it proves the Bible is true and accurate; and it proves that the establishment on this Earth of the Kingdom of God is just ahead.

There is no more exciting, positive message than that!

The Deadly ‘Wound’

In Revelation 13, the Apostle John describes a beast that looks very similar to the fourth beast of Daniel 7. Both beasts represent the fourth world-ruling empire, the Roman Empire of 31 b.c. to a.d. 476. As John depicts it, this beast includes the most powerful characteristics of all the beasts that preceded it. It had seven heads, but the only head existing at the time John saw it was that of the fourth beast of Daniel, containing the seventh head, and also the 10 horns.

Revelation 13:3 describes “one of his heads as it were wounded to death.” The head that was wounded was that picturing the Roman Empire, which also had 10 horns. These horns, as Daniel makes clear, represent 10 successive governments of the Roman Empire that were to continue until the establishment of the Kingdom of God at Jesus Christ’s Second Coming.

What was the “wound” John described? This deadly wound was inflicted on the Roman Empire when, in its last decaying stages, the barbarians overran the city of Rome, temporarily ending its government in a.d. 476. At that moment, for the first time since its creation, the Roman Empire was not ruled by a Roman. The empire was wounded and effectively dead!

Study the history. The Roman Empire in Northern Africa was overrun by the Vandals, who sacked Rome in 455. Then in 476, Odoacer set up his government at Rome, called the Heruli. But this regime did not heal the deadly wound, for it was not a Roman government, but one of foreign barbarians. Then came the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, from 493 to 554—another foreign people that ruled in the territory. They were subsequently driven out of Italy, and they disappeared.

These three kingdoms were the first three horns, or governments. These three kingdoms sweeping into the Roman territory filled the period known in history as the “transition age” (see Ancient History by Philip Van Ness Myers). It was a transition between the wound and the healing.

But notice: Revelation 13:3 says the wound would be “healed” and the Roman Empire would continue.

In Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 7, we see another “little horn” arise and pluck up the first three horns, which symbolized those three barbarian tribes that ruled Rome (Daniel 7:8). This left seven horns to come. Of the little horn, Daniel 7 says his “look was more stout than his fellows” (verse 20). The Hebrew word for “stout” means “captain, chief, great, lord, master.”

This horn represents the Catholic Church, which completely dominated all the horns to follow.

When was the “wound” healed? It was when the barbarian tribes were ousted from Rome. This occurred in a.d. 554, when “Justinian, emperor of the East, from Constantinople, set up his government through an Imperial Legate at Ravenna, Italy, and brought about what is known as the ‘Imperial Restoration’ of the empire” (Herbert W. Armstrong, Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?) (see Chapter 2).

The 73rd Emperor of the Fourth World Empire

On that famous Christmas in a.d. 800, the pope crowned Charlemagne “73rd emperor of the fourth world empire.” Why the fourth empire? The idea did not originate with this pope. Many scholars and theologians knew at the time that the Roman Empire was the fourth world-ruling kingdom. Many even identified this fourth kingdom with the one the Prophet Daniel spoke of. In fact, centuries before, while the old Roman Empire still existed, most Jews and Christians thought it would be the world’s last kingdom because of Daniel’s prophecy.

That is why Europeans and Catholics kept trying to revive the empire: The Bible said there would only be four empires.

Though many scholars knew the Roman Empire was prophesied to be the final world empire, beyond that, they tragically misinterpreted Bible prophecies. That is what led to so much violence and bloodshed during the Middle Ages.

People falsely assumed that the antichrist would emerge on the world scene once the Roman Empire was extinguished. What the Bible actually says is that after the fourth empire passes from the scene, God’s Kingdom will be set up (Daniel 2:44).

This also was misinterpreted because people during the Middle Ages assumed the Holy Roman Empire was God’s Kingdom on Earth! That elevated their laws and aspirations for world rule above God’s. Thus, the groundwork for the tragedy of the Middle Ages was laid—not upon a holy empire, but upon Satan-inspired, gross misinterpretations of God’s Word.

The Germans, more than any other people, felt it their divine duty to preserve this “Holy” Roman Empire so that “antichrist” might not appear. So time and again, when the empire sank into decay, it would somehow muster enough strength to again raise itself—usually behind one powerful leader, oftentimes German, supported by a powerful religious head in Rome.

What the people of these empires also failed to understand was that these same Roman resurrections were themselves prophesied in the Bible!

Scripture does foretell of four, and only four, world-ruling empires. But that final empire, after it was crushed in a.d. 476, was prophesied to rise seven more times, which would be in conjunction with the papal authority in Rome as the resurrected “Holy Roman Empire.” It was that same Roman Empire, under new names and titles, that again rose up during the 20th century under German dominance, and that awaits one last resurrection, again prodded by a strong European hand, probably German.

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