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windofbloom · 3 years

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The oldest democracy in Latin America is killing its citizens

Photo Source || Why we are protesting?

Cúcuta is anti-uribista and anti-pathriarcal.

Colombia has been badly named the oldest democracy in Latin America, the most steady. Reality is that Colombia has been living a long cruel dictatorship posing as democracy.

After a week of demonstrations against the abuses of our country, the government led by President Iván Duque, who follows the orders of the criminal, ex-president, and ex-senator, Álvaro Uribe Velez decided to kill Colombian citizens, to allow disappearance, rape, and sexual abuse against those who peacefully demonstrate their discomfort, even attacking those who simply pass by and hadn't involved themselves in the demonstrations.

Today, I'm accusing the New York University and IVY: The Lifelong University of supporting the vile crimes the Colombian Government had committed against the citizens. Not only they had given a platform to President Iván Duque and the criminal Álvaro Uribe Velez but also after multiple responses from colombians with what has been happening here, they didn't apologize not even take a chance to talk against these atrocities, instead they delete the tweet where they sponsored such criminals.

This is not a matter of free speech, you are giving a platform to murders. You are giving them a platform to lie to the world about the atrocities happening here following their orders.

1443 cases of police brutality, 77 cases of weapon used against unarmed civilians, 31 homicides committed by the police force, 814 arbitrary detentions, 10 victims of sexual abuse by the police.

More videos about what is happening in Colombia.

The New York Times reports 1 and 2

Just an hour ago of writing this post, Colombian's government already passed the letter which they ask to retire the tax reform that, as I posted in a previous post, was the got that spilled the glass in a country where inequity and violence have been part of our daily lives.

In days before Minister Carrasquilla, the man in charge of designing such terrible tax reform pass his resign.

Even if those things can seem like a victory the problem it's not over. President Iván Duque had refused to meet with the protestor and the opposition parties to resolve the fiscal gap, instead, he had met with the traditional parties and plans to pass another tax reform made in only two days.

In addition, a possible candidate to replace the past Minister is Oscar Iván Zuluaga, a man well known to be a strong follower of Álvaro Uribe, a man against the previously sign peace process and who's involved in the Odebrech corruption case.

Women's bodies are still a war zone

With ten victims of sexual abuse officially registered, shooting, hitting, and disappearance aren't the only things to fear in this country when it comes to demonstrating.

A 12 years old girl was raped by a policeman during the demonstration on May 3 who threatens the family not to speak about it.

ESMAD members were caught in the video telling each other to let a group of women pass, to later corner them, and do 'whatever they want to them.' One of them even jokes asking if one of them would 'ride them.'

While I was walking alone in La Hoja square, a group of policemen cornered me and sexually harassed me. They told me 'if this is how the protesters are, how good to gas them. You don't know how scared I was thinking I wouldn't be able to come back home. Fucking police."

Today I came to tell you I participated in the peaceful demonstrations. Today I was in the demonstration on Sameco at the Romboy, how a lot of you know, I always show my respect to the police force since my father belongs to it, I always believed the police force acted by citizen provocation but today I was the victim of an act that made me lost my respect for the ESMAD. I was standing with raise hands telling them I wasn't armed and I didn't have intentions of doing something, they lunged at us, separating us our group with gasses and stunners.

They let me in a small group of ten or fewer people, men were hit and taken, women were separated. At that moment one of the ESMAD members sexually abused me, in front of all his comrades including a woman, to whom I show my discontent. Being a woman I told her she was trash to allow that abuse. I started a live to let people know their faces and numbers of them but, just at that moment, someone called me and live cut off. In the middle of the call they approached me again and one of the ESMAD members who was with by four more, take me by one of my arms, bent it to submit me hurting me without me doing anything. During the call, I could tell my father the data of this agent. I told him I was going to press charges against him.

This is to let you know, even if I protest or specifically demonstrate they don't care, join us, this isn't going to stop me. Stronger than ever!

Another group of women said how they got trapped in a scrub when the ESMAD illegally intervene in the demonstration and were abused by them.

In 2017, 2018 and 2019 members of the police force sexually abuse 241 women. There's the probability the numbers are higher since there's silencing around sexually abused victims.

Another thing that worries us is the health reform known as Law 010 of 2020 that pretends to privatize more the health system in Colombia, close hospitals, reduce the number of health services, and letting Colombians with bare access to health depending on how much they can afford.

In addition, we have been demanding the dressing of President Iván Duque, the current Ombudsman, and legal actions against the police officers, ESMAD, and military who had been attacking, abusing, disappearing, and raping civilians.

The Centro Democrático party has blood on its hands

The local political party, Centro Democrático, those who blindly follow Álvaro Uribe, the one President Iván Duque belongs and the same people who have been constantly accused of corruption, make sure to make impossible to reform the police force in Colombia last year voting against the reform, in 2021 it is impossible to ignore how the ESMAD must be dismantled and the police must be reform. We cannot forget or ignore the responsibility of General Zapateiro who has been controlling the military forces attacking civilians.

Even some representatives of the Government have made public how they wished to banned social media and the Internet to avoid gatherings of what they called 'terrorists.'

Álvaro Uribe gave the order

On May 3, the ex-president and ex-senator Álvaro Uribe Velez, a man that hasn't been charged by his crimes against Colombia because of the corruption and his actual power inside the country, the man that has ordered and allow genocide, the one that found and help paramilitary, and has links to drug trafficking even to the dead Pablo Escobar Twitted:

1. Strengthen FFAA, weakened by equating them with terrorists, La Habana and JEP. And with narrative to override their legitimate actions. 2. Recognize: terrorism greater than imagined; 4. Accelerate the social; 5. Resist Dissipated Molecular Revolution: prevents normality, scale, and cup.

The previous ones are concepts to talk about 'communism.' Every single of these words had been previously used and teach by the fascist and extreme right Alexis López, media director in Chile who was recently in Colombia and to the day of writing this post even interview by the local radio WRadio as an 'expert.'

In February of this year, 2021, this fascist visit the Military University to teach how to deal with social demonstration, naming them 'Dissipated Molecular Revolution,' under the same way Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and of course we know how the Chilean government abuse and violently tried to repress demonstrations.

This way of action is neo-fascism doctrine. What people initially considered the tweet of a senile man was, in fact, the order of a genocidal to designate demonstrations as terrorism. On the same exact day during the night, police forces, ESMAD attacked with guns and fire-gun civilians in the city of Cali, Colombia.

(1) We have obtained conversations between high officials of the Colombian government where they ask to generate fear and create false tendencies that the "guerrillas" are in the cities of Colombia, that is totally false, they want to generate fear. We keep working.

(2) The government plans to create a strategy to block roads to prevent food from entering cities such as Cali, Medellín and Bogotá if protests persist. We keep working.

(4) Conversations affirm of an order to attack and not let the human rights verification commissions pass in the city of Cali - Valle del Cauca, this is extremely serious.

Tweet number (3) mentioned USA Government, how they tell the Colombians Government about their fear of a coup. To the hour of writing and publish this post, Twitter forced to delete that tweet.

While Colombians are being butchered, on May 3 a group of the big bankers, those who pay literally no taxes and are the cause of the fiscal gap, have the audacity to call the retirement of the new tax reform 'another waste opportunity.' Saying this was caused by some politician without serious, constructive debate.

It wasn't politicians who made retire the tax reform. It was Colombian people.

It wasn't a waste of opportunity. It was another detrimental to Colombians who would, with no doubt, drown Colombia into severe poverty.

It didn't need serious and constructive debate. It needed, you ANIFF, Banco AV Villas, Grupo Aval TO PAY YOUR GOD DAMN TAXES.

You have blood on your hands.

Anonymous video

Thank you to every single person inside and outside Colombia who's been fighting, thank you to those who are not with us, for those we are looking for. Thank you to those who even at home have been twitting, sharing, filming, and helping those in need. Thank you to every single K-pop fan Colombian and not Colombian, because you have given the best 'shut the fuck up' to those inside this country who, even seeing the atrocities committed by the government, support their actions and the crimes committed by the police and military forces.

#colombia #soscolombia #national strike #feminisim #el paro no para #radical feminism #signal boost #this is what's happening in colombia #colombia is not giving up #blog

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Saturday, October 24, 2020

Migration has plummeted during the pandemic (Economist) If there is one thing that people remember about the covid-19 pandemic, it is the experience of sheltering in place. Those looking to move abroad have had little choice but to stay put, too. A new report from the OECD, a think-tank, shows that travel restrictions introduced in response to the pandemic caused migration to rich countries to fall by half in the first half of the year, compared with 2019. The sharpest declines occurred in East Asia and Oceania. Rich countries there have succeeded better than most at stopping the spread of covid-19. This is in part because they were quick to recognise the threat and institute strict travel restrictions. Some countries in the region, including Japan, South Korea and New Zealand have just about stopped accepting new immigrants entirely.

Couples doing fine (Washington Post) While lots of the early pandemic and quarantine led to speculation about a spike in divorces that would ensue following couples being crammed into close quarters for extended periods, couples are actually doing pretty okay according to the latest edition of the American Family Survey: 58 percent of married men and women aged 18 to 55 said the pandemic made them appreciate their spouse more; while 8 percent said that the pandemic weakened their commitment to one another, 51 percent said it’d deepened it. The numbers bear it out too: five states report divorce stats in real time, and on balance filings are down for 2020. Year-to-date, divorce filings are down 19 percent in Florida, 13 percent in Rhode Island, 12 percent in Oregon and 9 percent in Missouri. Only Arizona, as of now, is up.

Faulty password security (Foreign Policy) A Dutch “white hat”—or ethical hacker—claims to have logged in to the Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump … simply by guessing his password. Victor Gevers, a security researcher, discovered the vulnerability last Friday before alerting U.S. security authorities. Gevers allegedly gained access using the password “maga2020!” but did not succumb to the temptation of tweeting to the president’s 87 million followers. Gevers attributes the lack of account security to Trump’s age. “‘Trump is over 70—elderly people often switch off two-step verification because they find it too complicated. My own mother, for instance.”

IMF concerned over post-COVID social unrest across Latin America (Reuters) The International Monetary Fund is concerned that social unrest will make a comeback in “lots of countries” across Latin America once the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, a top IMF official said on Thursday. Economies across Latin America and the Caribbean are forecast to contract as a group by 8.1% this year, with an uneven 2021 bounce at just 3.6%, and most countries are not seen returning to pre-COVID output levels until 2023, the Fund said earlier on Thursday. “Some of the determinants of social unease are going to worsen and that generates our concern for the region, for lots of countries in the region,” Alejandro Werner, the Fund’s director for the Western Hemisphere, said in an interview with Reuters. “Coming out of the pandemic, we will have a level of economic activity and employment that will be much lower than before, a level of poverty and income distribution that is worse,” he added. Protests that sometimes turned violent rocked countries including Chile, Ecuador and Colombia even before the pandemic hit, fueled by anger over inequality, corruption and government austerity policies.

In hard-hit Peru, worry mounts over both COVID-19 and dengue (AP) PUCALLPA, Peru—Two of Lidia Choque’s close family members had already gotten sick with the new coronavirus when the mosquitos arrived. The 53-year-old woman lives in a wooden house near the airport of a Peruvian city in the Amazon rainforest. City fumigators usually visit several times during the rainy season to eliminate the pests, but this year, because of the pandemic, they were absent. When she went to a hospital after coming down with a fever and body aches, doctors delivered a double diagnosis: COVID-19 and dengue. “I couldn’t even walk,” she said. As Peru grapples with one the world’s worst SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, another virus is starting to raise alarm: dengue. Health officials have reported over 35,000 cases this year, concentrated largely in the Amazon. The rise comes amid an overall dip in the number of new daily coronavirus infections, though authorities worry a second wave could strike as dengue cases rise.

French PM says 2nd virus wave is here, vastly extends curfew (AP) French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday a vast extension of the nightly curfew that is intended to curb the spiraling spread of the coronavirus, saying “the second wave is here.” The curfew imposed in eight regions of France last week, including Paris and its suburbs, is being extended to 38 more regions and Polynesia starting Friday at midnight, Castex said. It is likely to last six weeks before a review, he said. The extension means that 46 million of France’s 67 million people will be under 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfews that prohibit them from being out and about during those hours except for limited reasons, such as walking a dog, traveling to and from work and catching a train or flight.

Putin: Russia-China military alliance can’t be ruled out (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday there is no need for a Russia-China military alliance now, but noted it could be forged in the future. Putin’s statement signaled deepening ties between Moscow and Beijing amid growing tensions in their relations with the United States. The Russian leader also made a strong call for extending the last remaining arms control pact between Moscow and Washington. Asked during a video conference with international foreign policy experts Thursday whether a military union between Moscow and Beijing was possible, Putin replied that “we don’t need it, but, theoretically, it’s quite possible to imagine it.” Russia and China have hailed their “strategic partnership,” but so far rejected any talk about the possibility of their forming a military alliance. Russia has sought to develop stronger ties with China as its relations with the West sank to post-Cold War lows over Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other rifts.

China hopes for change if Biden wins, but little likely (AP) Chinese leaders hope Washington will tone down conflicts over trade, technology and security if Joe Biden wins the Nov. 3 presidential election. But any shift is likely to be in style, not substance, as frustration with Beijing increases across the American political spectrum. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and their constituents seem disinclined to adopt a softer approach toward China, possibly presaging more strife ahead, regardless of the election’s outcome. U.S.-Chinese relations have plunged to their lowest level in decades amid an array of conflicts over the coronavirus pandemic, technology, trade, security and spying. Despite discord on so many other fronts, both parties are critical of Beijing’s trade record and stance toward Hong Kong, Taiwan and religious and ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the ruling Communist Party has detained Muslims in political re-education camps. The American public is equally negative. Two-thirds of people surveyed in March by the Pew Research Center had “unfavorable views” of China, the highest since Pew started asking in 2005.

Myanmar’s second lockdown drives hunger in city slums (Reuters) After the first wave of coronavirus hit Myanmar in March, 36-year-old Ma Suu closed her salad stall and pawned her jewelry and gold to buy food to eat. During the second wave, when the government issued a stay-home order in September for Yangon, Ma Suu shut her stall again and sold her clothes, plates and pots. With nothing left to sell, her husband, an out of work construction laborer, has resorted to hunting for food in the open drains by the slum where they live on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city. “People are eating rats and snakes,” Ma Suu said through tears. “Without an income, they need to eat like that to feed their children.”

Bloated public salaries at heart of Iraq’s economic woes (AP) BAGHDAD—Long-time Iraqi civil servant Qusay Abdul-Amma panicked when his monthly salary was delayed. Days of waiting turned to weeks. He defaulted on rent and other bills. A graphic designer for the Health Ministry, he uses about half his salary to pay his rent of nearly 450,000 Iraqi dinars a month, roughly $400. If he fails to pay twice in a row his landlord will evict him and his family, he fears. Iraq’s government is struggling to pay the salaries of the ever-swelling ranks of public sector employees amid an unprecedented liquidity crisis caused by low oil prices. September’s salaries were delayed for weeks, and October’s still haven’t been paid as the government tries to borrow once again from Iraq’s currency reserves. The crisis has fueled fears of instability ahead of mass demonstrations this week. The political elite have used the patronage system to entrench their power. A major part of that patronage is handing out state jobs in return for support. The result has been a threefold increase in public workers since 2004. The government pays 400% more in salaries than it did 15 years ago. Around three quarters of the state’s expenditures in 2020 go to paying for the public sector—a massive drain on dwindling finances. “Now the situation is very dangerous,” said Mohammed al-Daraji, a lawmaker on parliament’s Finance Committee.

Israel warms to Sudan (Foreign Policy) An Israeli government delegation visited Sudan on Thursday, in the latest sign of warming ties between the two countries. Israeli officials reportedly met with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s head of state during its transitional government. Reuters reported on Thursday that Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is ready to normalize relations with Israel as long as the country’s parliament approves the move. That approval may be some time in coming, as Sudan has yet to form a transitional parliament.

Gunfire and barricades in Guinea as President heads for third term (Reuters) Gunfire rang out across Guinea’s capital Conakry on Friday and security forces dispersed protestors after results showed President Alpha Conde winning re-election in a poll that the opposition says was unconstitutional. Conde won around twice as many votes as his nearest rival, opposition candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo, with 37 of 38 districts counted, preliminary results from the election commission showed on Thursday night. The president’s decision to run for a third term has sparked repeated protests over the past year, resulting in dozens of deaths, including at least 17 in skirmishes since Sunday’s vote. Conde says a constitutional referendum in March reset his two-term limit, but his opponents say he is breaking the law by holding onto power. Diallo’s camp said it has found evidence of fraud and will contest the result in the constitutional court.

Resentment, smoke linger in Nigeria’s streets after unrest (AP) Resentment lingered with the smell of charred tires Friday in Nigeria’s relatively calm streets after days of protests over police abuses, as authorities barely acknowledged reports of the military killing at least 12 peaceful demonstrators earlier this week. President Muhammadu Buhari in his first comments on the unrest didn’t mention the shootings that sparked international outrage, instead warning protesters against being used by “subversive elements” and “undermining national security and law and order” during a national address Thursday night. Soldiers remained in parts of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, on Friday. A 24-hour curfew had not yet been lifted. The protests turned violent Wednesday after the shooting as mobs vandalized and burned police stations, courthouses, TV stations and a hotel. Police battled angry crowds with tear gas and gunfire. The looting, gunfire, and street blockades continued Thursday.

#headlines #news

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nightcoremoon · 4 years

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I don't like the song amazing grace or what it stands for in the context of african post-slavery cultural genocide juxtaposed with white western european colonialist christian values.

so like, african cultural heritage is what it is, right? it's heavily important to world history and obviously every ethnic group is valuable in its own way because humans are worthy of respect and stuff. that's a given.

so when slavery happened and the africans were stripped of their individuality and heritage and nationality and basically underwent mass cultural AND ethnic genocide. that fuckin sucks because a) slavery is bad and b) genocide is bad and c) being denied your birthplace and stuff is bad. I can't simplify this any further.

so what happened in history? many african slaves found solace in christianity and the bible because it gave them hope and distracted them from the hellish existence that is slavery. that continued throughout the generations past abolition through the civil rights movements and continues today. black christianity derived from slavery is the root of 90% of music we listen to today; it's heavily influential on today's cultural climate and the contributions of the black american cannot be denied. even now a significant portion of christianity in america is heavily attributed to african descended black people.

there's just one thing about that that really bothers me:

american christianity is heavily rooted in white western imperial european colonialism. oh no.

there are so many black christians with no idea where their ancestors lived or what cultural heritage they're derive from. they were robbed of their history. while white europeans have the privilege of being able to know so many things about their great great great etc grandparents. in this context white americans count because we're here because of european invasions. we can trace our lineage back for generations. so many of us know that we're 17% Italian or 17% Irish or 17% French or 17% Swedish n shit like that. most black americans don't know if their parents are part Kenyan or Ethiopian or Congo or Sudanese or whatever. that's why they refer themselves as black because all they have to go by is the color of their skin, because the people who owned their great great grandma sure as fuck didn't write down what country their slave came from because they didn't care because they treated black people as property because life was a godawful hellhole back then for most people. they don't get to know what country they're from like most white people do.

so when they turn to not only christianity but a specific form of christianity, protestant sects, it's like another step of cultural genocide. by embracing a religion created by white people to control minorities and women, regardless of how much they change it to make it their own, it's still rooted in the same bloody soil. they turn further from their own roots in the many different varying mythologies i can't talk much about because society values the mythology of nonblack people so much more: Greek, Norse, Egyptian (well the Egyptians were black but society loves to ignore that fact and whitewash them), Shinto, etc.

now I'm not saying that all black christians are directly responsible for participating in their own cultural genocide. that's an asinine claim. there are plenty of black jews, black muslims, black atheists, black pagans, black greek/norse/egyptian/shinto/etc followers, and surely there are lots of modern black euroamericans who still keep in touch with their cultural roots. the religious decisions of every individual are their own through mental autonomy and the ownership of their own consciousnesses.

what I AM saying is that christianity is a lot more insidious and evil than it appears to be on the surface. it was used as a defense of owning slaves- "africans deserve to be slaves because they're sons of ham, descended from the son of noah god cursed because the bible". it was used to protest abolition. it was used to uphold segregation. it was used to protest black votes. it's used to defend cops who kill unarmed men. it is, always has been, and always will be used as a weapon by white people against black existence. and the fact that throughout all of that, the exact same failed system of belief [speaking from a historical perspective of course because white christianity in the 16th century and beyond is massively poisoned by the bloated and corrupt papacy further than what it already was during the medieval and dark ages] was embraced so readily by the people that it oppressed...

it's just really concerning to me.

& it's not even a black thing. the prevalence of catholicism in mexican and other latin american culture is the same way. east asia is ripe with larger cultural superpowers eating the smaller ones and pretending they don't exist, just like china with taiwan, except not in a religious way. the holy roman empire did the same thing. and don't even get me started on the armenian genocide committed by the ottoman empire. and the fucking holocaust: hitler was christian. people say he wasn't a good christian since a good christian wouldn't try to kill the jews, the romani, the black, but are you sure about that? looking at all of history are you ABSOLUTELY SURE that white western imperialist european christian colonialism wouldn't try to murder everyone who didn't conform? naziism is on the rise again and it's masquerading as christianity. the president is a nazi and a christian.

no, this has nothing to do specifically with african and black populations and everything to do with christianity. except through "amazing grace" and its prevalence in that community.

also the man who wrote it manned slave ships. he was conscripted into it, became a slave in sierra leone for a while, and eventually became an abolitionist, but still :/ imagine if rommel the kraut of africa wrote a song and a hundred years later it became a celebrated jewish hymn. that would be incredibly fucked up and wrong.

but whatever, maybe I'm looking too far into this, maybe there's no illuminati boogeyman trying to erase black and jewish culture from world history, maybe it's all just a big goddamn coincidence that the victims of colonialism embraced the religion that the imperials used. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe just maybe it's a fucking fluke.

anyway black people can like the song if they want. they can be christians.

I just hate the song and won't be a christian. you do you and I'll do me and we'll all get along happily.

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everyoneprotector · 5 years

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So, no one asked for this, but I’m doing it anyways because I want to write stuff with the JSE egos and I need a place to put my current headcannons and i strive on validation, so screw you I’m putting it here.

How I view/headcannon the egos under the cut

Chase Brody Chase is a good Dad, loves his kids and (ex)wife and is the second youngest Split with Stacy due to financial strain and how much time the channel took up verses how much time he spent with her and the kids He has half custody, shared with Stacy. They swap who has the kids every week. They get together each easter and Christmas to make sure the kids have both parents then He loves his ‘brothers’ so much. Like, he sees them and goes ‘yes, they are my brother now and i will give that much love to them’ (except JJ, JJ is his son) He went through a very rough period but luckily Schneep helped him out of it. Now he knows he’s in a safe environment and he is (slowly) coming out of his depression, although there are still bad days His bad days can be very different. Sometimes he can’t get out of bed, sometimes he can’t eat or drink, sometimes he relapses into suicidal and self harm urges, but Schneep can generally tell when he needs to keep an eye on Chase. Chase may be the second youngest, but get him mad and you WILL be grounded and have your tv/phone/magic/patrol/coffee/book privileges taken off you (he’s looking at you Jackie) He found Jack after ‘Say Goodbye’ and was waiting outside the ER during KJSE He is single handedly maintaining Jacks youtube channel

Marvin the Magnificent Marvin is a relatively famous street magician, who does stage shows on occasion. He is the second eldest He is probably the most responsible out of all of them, especially with money. He has a strict budget and will stick to it, because he doesn’t want them to be out on the street, especially when their creator is in a coma. He specialises in defensive and offensive magic, but when Chase was created he started to learn some ‘stupid parlour tricks’ to impress him (though he wont admit it) You know the stereotype of ‘protective older brother’? Yeah, he and Jackie wrestle for that title. When he does stage shows, it’s all stops out. His brothers always go to the first one, and Chase and JJ generally try to go to the second one as well. When Jack went into a coma in KJSE, he was away on a tour. When Chase disappeared during Observation he was performing a stage show, one that Chase had been to the night before. He feels like its his fault both of those times. He is a dork. Like, you have to get to know him but he is the biggest dork. He learnt latin because he thought he would need it but when he found out that he didn’t he’d just say nice stuff about his brothers in latin so they would think he’s doing spells. With his powers, he knows a lot of ways to use cards. One way is that he uses them as shields via a reenforcement hex, or uses them to locate his brothers. His card that helps him find Chase was torn in half after Chase disappeared, only making him more fearful for his younger brother. He is currently looking after the channel and trying to find where Chase is. He was the one that told his brothers, and Stacy and the kids.

Jackaboyman, or Jackie The eldest ego is also the most rebellious. He constantly puts his life on the line and gives everyone grey hairs. His brothers all want him to ‘please calm down’ and ‘stop throwing yourself into battle’ and ‘you don’t get an immunity to bullets you dumbass’ Being the eldest, he remembers when the house was so quiet and alone, and when his patrols end later than normal, and Chase and Schneep aren’t awake to reprimand him for being out so late, he normally goes on patrol again, because he hates the silence and the darkness, as it reminds him of [redacted] He point blank refuses to back out of a fight. He has the stupidity and bravado of pre-serum Captain America but with powers Speaking of powers, his powers include: Being able to tell when someone is distressed, x-ray vision, keen hearing, superior agility, and tentative hacking/coding skills (these are cannon powers), super strength and flight. This boy is so self sacrificial that if it weren’t for Schneep, he would have ended up dead by now. No one knows how he managed without Schneep. During ‘Say Goodbye’ he was on patrol. During KJSE he tried to stop Anti, and put up a good fight too, until he was knocked out by Anti. He was on patrol when Chase went missing during Observation. He holds the guilt, because he thinks that if he was there and was stronger for ANY of them, he could have saved them.

Henrik von Schneeplestein Henrik is the middle ego, older than Chase and JJ but younger than Marvin and Jackie, although unlike most middle siblings, they don’t expect him to be like Jackie or Marvin, and they don’t expect him to dot on Chase and JJ. Henrik is very caring, even without the standards they try not to put on him. He might not be the best at budgeting, but he is the best at making sure that they have enough food/water/medical supplies. Henrik is a doctor who used to work in a children’s hospital, but he currently works in a base hospital. He still wears the bright coloured shirts to any appointment’s with children though! He became Jacks personal doctor after he went into a coma, due to him being the only doctor in their family. He is this close to throwing hands with Jackie. He can’t fight for shit, but he will throw hands if that hero steps through the door AFTER 3am. He blames himself for Jack’s coma, because he feels like he should have been able to fix him before Anti came in, but he doesn’t blame himself for Chase disappearing. He was in an operation at his work, and he knows he can’t fight Anti, so he would have made things worse for Chase if he had of been there. After the 9 months he was away, he refused to talk about it to anyone. They all pressed for answers, especially Chase, but he still refuses. He still gets nightmares from it. He hopes that what happened to him wont happen to Chase, but he refuses to get his hopes up, he knows that it will most likely happen to Chase too.

---TUMBLR I HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS POST FOR LITERAL WEEKS WHERE ARE THE FUCKING LINE BREAKS---

Jameson Jackson This boi is pure, he is the youngest and so fricken pure It took a long time for him to be trusted by the other egos, due to him being born during Jack’s coma. Chase is the first to trust him after the essential baby almost set himself on fire trying to make himself dinner without waking up or upsetting the others. Because he was corrupted by Anti when he was ‘born’, he doesn’t have many actual memories of what happened, but he knows that Jackie saved him. Chase named him, but it was Marvin who gave him the speech cards. He is so naive. Like, tell that boy anything he’ll probably believe you. On the flip side though, he is terrified of Anti. He blames himself for Anti kidnapping Chase, thinking that if he was there he could have saved him, or traded himself for Chase. His brothers all feel kinda bad for how they treated him when they first met him, but he has long since forgiven them. If Anti were to become good (something that i do not feel comfortable with, but that is up to Jack) JJ would probably be the first to accept him, but the last to trust him His meetings with his brothers were, let’s just say, less than pleasant. I would go into more detail but the post is long as it is. You can ask for their meetings i wanna go into detail and write them out anyways.

#egos #fan works #fandoms #JSE #MayHem 2019 #Chase Brody #Jameson Jackson #JJ #Antisepticeye #Marvin the Magnificent #Marvin the Magician #Dr. Schneeplestein #Henrik von Schneeplestein #Jackieboy Man #headcannons #my head cannons #youtube #jacksepticeye

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brazilianism · 6 years

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Brazilian Elections - Let’s talk about Fernando Haddad

Alright, so. Elections this year and we’re in a big mess, right? The new plot twist to our ever changing political scenario is Fernando Haddad, who happens to be one of the only politicians I actually like, so i’m gonna use this post to talk about his work so y’all can get to know him better since he’s not that famous outside of São Paulo. First of all, for all of you who have no idea what i’m talking about, let me catch you up: Lula (our ex-president) is still, ya know, in jail. For corruption and stuff. We can debate that more thoroughly in another post. Problem is, he wants to run for president again (he wanted before he was arrested already), and technically by some legal standards he might, cause his sentence hasn’t really been contested in every possible court, which is to say that even though his chances of them being overthrown are VERY small, it could still happen and therefore there’s a legal breach there that could allow him to run for president. And bOY is he popular at it - he was leading all the polls around the country these past few months, he was at the lead with nearly 40% of the votes at the last poll (published on the 21st/august). But there has been a debate for months now on whether he’d appoint someone else as a candidate in his place in case the most likely thing happens and he can’t run... And we kinda got the answer a few weeks ago - he didn’t appoint someone else, but he picked his vice president: Haddad, from his own party. Which is to say, in case he is barred from running, Haddad will likely be taking his place. [in the very surprising scenario where Lula DOES run Haddad would not be vice president anymore cause they have a deal with another party and then Manuela D’avila, another ex-candidate for the presidency gets the job cause she’s now supporting Haddad as kinda vice-vice president but that’s a whole other matter). So let’s talk about Fernando Haddad.

Quick background: Haddad is the son of a Lebanese immigrant and graduated in law school (and is a certified lawyer). He's also got a masters degree in economy and a doctorate in philosophy, all at USP, which is like, one of the best universities in Latin america. He’s also a teacher there in Social Sciences and currently a teacher at another private university. In public office, he has been the Minister for Education for 6 years of Lula’s government and Mayor to Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, from 2013 to 2016. I’m not saying you need any of those titles to be any good at the job (I mean, just look at Lula I guess) but we sure have to say Haddad came prepared for the fight talking about ground knowledge.

As the Minister for Education Haddad invested mostly in making the access to universities broader - it was his government that created ProUni (a program that provides government scholarships to poor students in private universities), and re-designed FIES (the financing and credit system for poor students to pay for universities) making it easier for people to pay (less interest rates, more time). During his time we also got 14 new public (free) universities and other kinds of educational centers making the number of available spots go from about 140K to 218K. He was also responsible for reformulating ENEM so that it could start to become a sort of brazilian SAT, now accepted as an entrance test to several universities that all had different tests (and you had to take all of them and pay for all of them if you wanted to apply to multiple places). When he started, Brazil invested about 3,9% of our GDP in education. At the end of his run, we were investing 5,1%. The PISA results showed Brazil among the 3 countries that had evolved the most in education during those years (yeah, we were still pretty low on the rank, but we can’t say it wasn’t working). So education is quite his thing, but that’s not all.

As a Mayor, Haddad had a clear vision for the city that involved making it more livable - his slogan said “more human”. The ideia is based on studies that say once the citizens have a sense of personal relationship with the place they inhabit the whole area starts to become safer (and also better taken care of, obviously). And that seems obvious but São Paulo had some MAJOR problems of livability.

Imma list some of my favorite projects. For starters, Haddad changed the lightning of a big part of the city to LED lamps (they’re way brighter so the sense of safety is enhanced cause no dark alleys and stuff AND they’re more efficient so we also started saving energy) [x]. Then he created bike lanes and more bus corridors to make public transport faster and so that people could actually use BIKES in the damn city without too many risks (the number of people who use bikes here grew over 60% in a couple of years, who could have guessed it [x]). He then reduced the speed limits for several streets and speed lanes. That was MASSIVELY impopular, but he said he didn’t care if people hated him as long as it worked in the long run - and, lol, it did. With all of that he reduced accidents and deaths on traffic in the city by 15% overall and by half in specific areas [x] [x], and most interestingly: São Paulo dropped over fifty fucking places on international traffic ranks (which is over 10 times what ANY other brazilian city varied in the ranks those years so there’s no blaming it on any external factors) [x] . Yeah, Haddad started to solve traffic, which is arguably the thing everyone hates the most in this city. People spending less time in traffic start spending more time at leisure - no matter, he closed important avenues on Sundays so that people could use that space, public space, for fun, and anybody who’s been at Paulista on a Sunday nowadays will have seen how damn awesome that place became. He also regulated and stimulated Carnaval as a street party that is now country-famous (do y’all remember how nearly nobody ever considered spending Carnaval in São Paulo a cool thing before 2012? yeah. and people come to the city now just for that and spend a whole lot of money here cause of it [x]). Then he created our very first fucking city tour program with buses and all (man, biggest city in the country and we didn’t have a city tour bus for tourists, what the fuck). He did the first actual Floods Tackling project that involved actually mapping the floods and acting directly on them with more cleaning of the streets and even smart-monitored sewers and trash cans at some places [x]. He created LGBT support centers and was responsible for putting the São Paulo Pride Parade (one of the biggest in the world) on the official government calendars (and as minister for education he was responsible for trying to implement an anti-homophobia program involving educating and orienting teachers to deal with these situations) [x] . He tackled the drug problem (especially the crack-cocaine problem) downtown by offering support (food, housing, medical and psychological assistance, and actual jobs) to addicts - a lot of people were against “giving money to drug addicts”, but again, it worked, and I have a whole post about this here. He created a program to stimulate recycling food at the big open markets and to ensure that organic food was served in the local schools every week. He helped open several tech centers that allowed for people to take tech and coding courses and use 3D printers and other stuff for free or at low prices [x]. Still want more culture? He created public cinemas at poor areas (that showed all kinds of movies, local ones, international ones, all in theaters as good as the paid kind) and created a whole institution to stimulate film making in São Paulo, SPCINE [x] [x]. Oh, and he started a project to take the names of our previous dictators and torturers off the street names (cause yeah we had that) and replace them with, well, decent people [x].

Not enough to have some cool ass projects? K, we can discuss his economy as mayor. Cause not only Haddad was innovative as fuck as said above, he also made the city’s finances as good as ever - and I mean it, cause he renegotiated our historical debts to the federal government and reviewed several contracts to companies AND created an agency to investigate corruption scandals regaining several millions into our vaults [x] [x], in a way that by the end of his government we had over 40 billion less in debt [x], 2-3 billion in store and had our investment rate (you know the thing that Brazil kept being lowered at? by international agencies? those grades and stuff?] raised. Oh yeah, and he got like 95% of what he promised in his campaign done [x].

And I said all of this so I can exemplify why I like Haddad - it’s not about one or two individual projects, it’s about the way he thinks as a whole. He thinks ahead and he thinks based on actual science - without forgetting a human side of it all. All of his unpopular and polemic measures had positive results - they went miles away from common sense, but it didn’t matter for him cause scientific studies had showed it would work (and it did! what a fucking surprise!). Of couse, that made him the most hated mayor by some people cause all he does is just so weird, right? and he never cared, multiple times he mentioned he didn’t mind being unpopular if it was the right thing for the city. And he was in fact unpopular cause of that (and cause of his party, obviously). He left office leaving contracts signed for about 7 years ahead. He didn’t even have high hopes of being reelected by then, but he left stuff ready to work for the next government (likely an opposition one) anyway. Cause that’s what you do if you’re a decent politician, but it’s so damn rare to see this kind of attitude here. Haddad looked at cold hard facts, saw a city that could use a lot of change in several areas, made a plan and went ahead with it knowing that a lot of people would hate him for it but that in the end it could actively change how we live - and he was right. By the end of it, people did have a different relationship with the city.

Haddad showed me in both his public offices that he doesn’t have the small mind of most our politicians that seem to only be able to think about things that can happen every 4 years, nor only about things that will be popular for the sake of being popular without being right. And that’s just what I want from a politician. Seems so simple, and yet it’s nearly impossible to find. So that’s why he’s a politician i’m not afraid to support.

To close this off i’m gonna leave y’all with links to articles from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (portuguese here) and The Wire complimenting his time as mayor too so english readers can get some more opinions AND here an Haddad article (in portuguese) that I like if you want to see more of him (especially his views of Brazilian politics), cause this doesn’t even cover all his interesting projects. Here’s also an interview with him in english, and here here and here some in portuguese for people who want to get a better sense of him and his government plan. Feel free to ask more questions about his projects, I’ll try to get to them when I have time.

#brazil #brazilian #haddad #Lula #fernando haddad #eleições 2018 #eleições brasileiras #politics #brazilian politics #luis inacio lula da silva #brasil #br #sp #educação #são paulo

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alwaysbewoke · 6 years

Link

The Royals’ roots date to Chicago’s North Side in 1952, when two violent white “greaser” gangs – the Ashland Royals and Simon City – guarded Simon Park turf as Puerto Ricans moved in.

Early greasers were immigrants, often Italian, maligned by wealthier whites for greasing machines in blue-collar jobs. In 1968, the greasers united as the Simon City Royals, often rumbling with the nearby Latin Kings as well as the white supremacist Gaylords. (Their rhetoric is familiar: a Gaylords nostalgia website called Latino gangs “storage bins for illegal immigrants”.)

The Royals were one of the biggest and most violent street gangs in Chicago by the 1970s, when they joined the Folk Nation alliance with the Black Gangster Disciples, began admitting Hispanics and, later, women and black members.

But by the 1980s, the gang had weakened after its leadership got locked up or killed.

Strength shifted to prisons, and the brand spread to midwestern and southern states like Mississippi, where the Royals are now one of the largest and most violent gangs in the state.

Surveys of young Americans have shown that 40% identifying as gang members are white, but police tend to undercount them at 10% to 14% and overcount black and Hispanic members, says Babe Howell, a criminal law professor at City University of New York who focuses on crime and race.

“Police see groups of young white people as individuals, each responsible for his or her own conduct, and hold young people of color in street gangs criminally liable for the conduct of their peers,” she says.

How law enforcement labels specific gangs may also obscure white membership, a 2012 study published in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law posited.

Jordan Blair Woods researched how the feds had applied the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) to various gangs. Congress passed Rico in 1970 to target the mafia as organized “criminal enterprises”. In the early 1990s, the attorney general, Janet Reno, started using Rico to charge criminal street gangs.

Woods explains that law enforcement typically splits gang activity into three groups: white supremacist prison gangs, outlaw biker clubs and criminal street gangs. He concluded that systemic racism often keeps white gangs categorized as prison and biker groups instead of street gangs – the category drawing the toughest charges and sentences.

This means white gangs are not typically policed as stringently, he writes, and their members can miss interventions sometimes offered to more publicized gangs of color. That help can include job and life skills training, or interaction with trained “violence interrupters”, who are often former gang members.

Woods blames the media for underreporting white gangs. He backs up Ivey’s point about this lack of attention, writing that media may be more prone to cover black and Hispanic gangs “because of consumer demands for stories of sensationalized racial gang violence”.

“How can you help [with a problem] if you don’t recognize it’s there?” Ivey says. “A lot of white kids, 15, 16 years old, look at white gangsters as rock stars.”

Mississippi has recently named the majority-white Royals and the Bandidos – a biker “club” started by a white marine later convicted of murder – among its largest criminal street gangs in annual assessments over the last decade. The Mississippi Association of Gang Investigators often points to violent white gangsters to push for tougher enforcement, telling media that 53% of verified gang members in the state are white.

But despite the growth in white gangs, Mississippi public defender André de Gruy says from 2010 to 2017, all 97 people prosecuted under current state gang lawwere African American.

youtube

#communities #gangs #society #mississippi #chicago

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iwasalotofthings · 6 years

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Regarding the ‘legal’ defense of the actions of the United States Government toward immigrant/refugee families

Laws are not inherently just. If you look through our history and the stories we tell, the ones who are often celebrated as heroes are the ones who are willing to break the law to do what is right.

The Founding of the United States, for example, was an illegal act in the eyes of Great Britain. Had we lost the revolutionary war, every one of those responsible would have been hanged for treason.

By contrast, the actions of Nazi Germany during the second World War were legal, because the corrupt ones in power at the time passed laws that made 'the final solution' a state policy.

If we look at our celebrated fictions (flawed as they might be) we can see the story of rebellion against unjust laws being the ones celebrated, crossing past political lines.

The Rebel Alliance of Star Wars was breaking the Empire's established laws to oppose the their authoritarian hegemony across the galaxy.

And with the United States' recent policies and international actions, isolating itself and using its resources as threatening leverage against our former allies, the United States is beginning to look a lot more like an evil empire.

In these situations, it is not only just, but morally important that the law be broken. When laws are utilized as excuses for the suffering and punishment of others, they must be abolished.

Democracy is important and valuable, but it can not exist if we allow those who are elected to represent to wield power against regardless of any sort of check or balance.

We must do whatever, and I mean whatever, we can to stop the separation of children from their families at the border. We must also stop this insane policy of treating immigrants as criminals. They are refugees.

That reminds me of another time that the United States refused refugees. In the 1930s, when Germany's first attempt at removing the Jewish people from Europe was forced emigration.

And we, the United States, largely denied them refuge. And 6 million of them died. Every time we deny someone crossing the border refuge, it may effectively be a death sentence, with the violence and corruption in Latin America, and especially Mexico.

Think about that.

#united states #refugees #immigrants #family seperation #us border

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studentstime · 3 years

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GENDER BAISNESS IN LEADERSHIP FORMATION IN BANGLADESH

written by

ISRAFIL HOSSAIN

INTRODUCTION:

Bangladesh is undergoing phenomenal changes/reforms in its economy, governance, women empowerment, human resource development, poverty reduction, health, education, etc. Its economy is moving at quite a good pace, given the spurt in export earnings, mainly due to private entrepreneurs, and high remittance earnings mainly coming from the Bangladeshis working in the Middle East, Europe and America. Bangladesh has huge potentials, as the experts predict, even to reach to the middle income group of countries, given some more momentum in terms of improving governance, eradicating corruption and ensuring political stability. As is known, Bangladesh is often battered by natural calamities which cause substantial damage to its infrastructure, and its effort to eradicate poverty, not to speak of the loss to human lives. Bangladesh has certain advantages like homogeneity in terms of ethnicity, religion and a culture of tolerance which play a great impacting role in its integration process. It has a huge population, which may be called a comparative advantage that can be converted into competitive advantage like turning them into human resources. If the huge population can be turned into more literate, skilled, semi-skilled manpower, and utilized domestically and exported to developed countries then the country would greatly benefit economically and socially. Given the limited space of Bangladesh that finds it difficult to sustain such a huge population, this is one of the most feasible and pragmatic options left for Bangladesh. Otherwise Bangladesh’s human security will be in jeopardy.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP TRAITS

Transformational Leadership is the latest and most promising phase in the leadership spectrum. “Here the focus is on leader behavior during periods of organizational transition and on processes such as creating visions of desired future state and obtaining employee commitment to change.” Transformational Leadership is a kind of leadership that can transcend the normal boundary management of an environment. It aims to walk an extra mile, or take a bit more risk, or take more responsibilities instead of passing the buck in undertaking a task. It should be able to improvise, if required, to reengineer or reinvent. Stagnancy or maintaining status quo is the job of a routine manager or a transactional leader but creating a new context in order to be more productive is the goal of a transformational leader. It should be able to take the team along who strongly upholds the visions, values and objectives of the leader to be their own and inspires them in such a way that they would carry out the tasks enthusiastically even at the peril of their life. They would not necessarily turn into rabble rouser. They should, as far as possible, reflect charisma, be able to inspire the subordinates and should be able to intellectually stimulate the subordinates or the stakeholders.

Charisma entails providing vision and mission to the stakeholders so that the team moves along the path the leader has foreseen. He should be able to instill pride and gain respect and trust from the subordinates or his constituency. Charisma reflects his personality, knowledge, wisdom, sense of justice and commitment. One may argue this is a born quality- a gift from God. This argument is largely not tenable since - many scholars term it as a myth – such qualities can be acquired through rigorous exercise, given a deep commitment. Next point is about inspiring the stakeholders in undertaking even the arduous jobs. The leadership is about understanding the environment, adapting to the environment and be able to communicate the contingencies commensurate with the environment to the stakeholders. Now the leader should be able to communicate the high expectations expected of the team members in a simple and understandable language. He may use different symbols at his disposal. Gandhi and Mao Tse Tung inspired the whole nation to fight for freedom and emancipation in such a way that hundreds and thousands of them were even ready to die for the cause at their every beck and call. However, such historical examples may not appropriately apply to every level, tier or environment of leadership. But one can always draw lessons from such examples.

A leader should be able to intellectually stimulate his team members. He should understand the context, environment, rationality of his cause or vision, and that would need deep intellectual exercise. He should be able to provide careful and creative problem solving techniques to his team members. All great leaders of the world are generally men of knowledge and wisdom. Henry Kissinger called Mao Tse Tung one of the greatest teachers of mankind. A leader must pursue knowledge-based critical thinking, especially in this globalized intelligent world. Practical knowledge has no substitute for a leader in order to inspire his subordinates with ideas, values, attitudes, perceptions, visions, missions and objectives. The subordinates are unlikely to accept one as leader if he cannot provide rational and creative problem solving techniques. Without such course, a leader might become redundant in the society.

The last point the author would like to make is personal touch a leader provides to his subordinates. This aspect of leadership practice is seriously lacking in Bangladesh environment. A leader has to give personal attention, and treat all his subordinates individually. He has to counsel and mentor his members, if possible. A leader has to care about the welfare, mental or health state, family problems of his subordinates. This works marvel in Bangladesh environment. Mere patting makes a lot of difference to an employee in the Bangladesh environment. Maslow’s Theory of Needs does indicate such directions in order to upgrade the motivation levels of the employees.

A leader should be an innovator apart from being an administrator only. He should be able to inspire trust than merely relying on control. A leader, depending on the tier he is holding in the hierarchy, should generally have a long range perspective and an eye on the horizon apart from having an eye on the bottom line. A leader should not ask how and when an event took place; he, however, would do better if he asks what and why of the incident. He challenges the system or status quo, of course not unsettling the environment. Conflict management is a good technique but that should not destabilize the system one is holding. In a nutshell, transformational leaders are seen as change agents, courageous, believing in people, having a strong set of values, life-long learners, capable of coping with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity and visionaries.

BANGLADESH BUREAUCRACY IN PERSPECTIVE:

Max Weber, the chief architect of bureaucracy, provides certain features of bureaucracy like hierarchy, promotion based on professional merit, development of a career service, reliance on and use of rules and regulations and impersonality of relationships among career professionals in the bureaucracy and with their clientele. To a commoner, taking cue from Max Weber, bureaucracy would appear to be something to do with red tapism, inefficiency and abuse of power in the context of official-client relationship. It develops a system of authority, which is indestructible and an entrenched bureaucracy that can serve any interest. It shows allegiance only to the authority above it even if political changes have taken place. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines bureaucracy as a system that is narrow, rigid and formal, depends on precedent, and lacks initiative and resourcefulness. The essence of traditional public administration tends to be rigid, rule-bound, centralized, insular, self-protective and profoundly antidemocratic; and such traits often collide with the contemporary paradigm of bureaucracy that “allows qualified voters an efficient instrument through which the will of the people may be expressed; makes officers both responsive and responsible,” and thereby ensures common welfare.

Theorists and practitioners would like to emphasize bureaucratic paradigms like fairness, representation, participation, accountability, responsiveness, political neutrality, efficiency, rationality, and expertise. But the very nature of public administration poses problem to such value. The bureaucrats have a tendency to rely more on expertise and knowledge than over accountability, participation and democratic control. Now, therefore, a pertinent question arises: are the bureaucratic traits legitimate in terms of democratic principles. In this regard, David Rosenbloom opines that the legitimacy of bureaucracy occurs when bureaucratic policy making is subject to direct popular control. If bureaucracy is isolated from public accountability, bureaucracy can in no way be responsible to public interests and desires.

Again Merton, an American sociologist, goes deeper into the pitfalls of bureaucratic system. Bureaucracy’s adherence to rules originally conceived as a means, turns into an end-in-itself, thereby resulting in the displacement of goals. “In Bangladesh, the bureaucracy, to a large extent, conforms to the Weberian model....... Bureaucrats are not always assigned specific positions on the basis of their specialization or expertise but rather on the basis of belonging to a particular civil service cadre. Rationality is conceived in a narrow sense. It is primarily equated with administrative efficiency and economy both of which are considered ends in themselves rather than means to an end- the effective delivery of public service.”

Bureaucracy’s strict adherence to regulations induces timidity, conservatism and technicism. Bureaucracy’s avowed norm of impersonality and its dependence on abstract rules put it in conflict with the personalized consideration the members of public and clientele would expect. Bureaucracy’s entrenched corporate interests, which may be called espirit de corp, totally negates the concept of transformational leadership traits.

Given the traits as shown, bureaucracy, theoretically speaking, goes against the grain of transformational leadership. However, such theoretical branding may not always find true reflection in the practical application by an individual bureaucrat. He may have the charisma, vision or personalized consideration like that of a transformational leader and he may exert to establish his leadership, but the environment of the boundary around which he is operating may not permit him to realize his full potentials. Initiative of an individual bureaucrat is greatly circumscribed in decision making process; there may be ten tiers, in the Central Government, to be crossed, when the final decision is made. However, in most of the cases, all the ten tiers may not have to be crossed. Anyway, a kind of timidity thus sets in such a process. Initiative, dynamism, and creative and innovative thinking, the sine quo nonefor transformational leadership that should be undertaken by a bureaucrat are lost, at best diluted. Risk-taking is one of the hallmarks of real leadership. In a scenario like this, a bureaucrat will not take any risks since he has somebody above him.

It is reportedly known that a Secretary to the government puts forward a file to his Cabinet Minister seeking sanction of a paltry sum of Tk. 25,000 (equivalent to US$350) to be disbursed for the repair/maintenance of a small building in a remote village of Bangladesh. Now this brings to the fore another predicament where the authority is so much centralized that such a simple decision has to be taken by the Central Government located in Dhaka. ADB Country Governance Assessment (Draft), Bangladesh, May 2004, under heading ‘Centralization’ observes, “An additional constraint to good governance at the local level is the extremely centralized form of government now in place. Union Parishads (UPs) derive their authority and a substantial portion of their funds from national ministries whose effective reach to the level is constrained by intervening levels of government. For example, Union Parishads (UPs) must submit their budgets and work plans for review and follow-up action by several appointed officials at the Upazilla and district levels. As a result, the UNO and the Chairman of the Upazilla Development Committee have more de facto power over development projects in Unions than do the UPs themselves.”

Although Bangladesh is a unitary system, there are three administrative tiers and local government structure which could have easily taken care of such problem. Even for posting of foundation level officers like lecturer/teacher of a college/high school or a medical officer at Upazilla (Sub-district), the Central Government, where again so many tiers may have to be crossed, gets involved. Here again, timidity sets in and that delays the decision making process. This also gives rise to more probability of corruption and sufferings of the employees. Motivation, which is conditioned more by intrinsic factors than extrinsic ones, gets badly affected and the overall productivity of the government definitely suffers. However, the probability of corruption still remains valid even if decentralization in relatively important decision making is done at the administrative levels. Federalism is, however, a far-fetched idea at the moment since basic structure of the Constitution has to be amended and for that political consensus has to be reached.

Even if an individual bureaucrat would like to exert his dynamism, creativity or initiative, the system would not permit it. The system constraint has become a serious problem in transforming the officers. Delay in the system is unwarranted and is a recurrent phenomenon. This author learnt about a case where a simple clarification on a point, pending for last about six years, asked from the higher office of the Republic to a functioning ministry took about six months, that too after several reminders. Such delays are caused both vertically and horizontally. Horizontal delays (reasons for vertical delays are already pointed out) are caused mainly because of consultation or opinion seeking with the other line ministries. In the horizontal plane also files have to again move up and down the tiers as mentioned. And if there is a disagreement, the matters get further complicated. It further delays the decision making process. This author was shocked to learn a state of affair where an important appointment case remained pending in a functioning ministry for three years. The case could have been processed to the appropriate authority for his approval. As a matter of fact, the incumbent continued functioning presumably without lawful authority for three years. When, on the eve of a ceremony, it was discovered that the appointment was not validated and hence the subsequent actions that followed could be questioned, the Pandora’s Box was opened. How and why it happened was not looked into. The accountability and transparency, which are so much essential for good governance, were totally lacking in this case. The matter was, probably, somehow patched up. Even in a transactional leadership spectrum, the status quo is at least maintained. In this case, even the status quo or routine functioning was not maintained, let alone challenging and changing the status quo. So the creative or innovative ideas cannot be expected that are so critical in this globalized, intelligent 21st century world.

Transformational leaders are supposed to be intellectually sound, so that they can transmit to their followers their wisdom; and it results in two-way traffic. A leader has to command the respect through his personality, values, wisdom, and long-range view and make them think the way he thinks. Only then can the leader take the team along with him. He has to capture some of their styles or traits in order to be successful in his domain. And his own domain is to have contemporary and up-to-date knowledge and the ability to apply those in the field he is handling. If he is handling WTO matters, he should be a reasonable expert on the subject so that he can communicate, negotiate and be able to enter into agreements, keeping the country’s interests above everything, with his expert counterparts coming from both developed and developing worlds. This is a knowledge-based world, but sad enough Bangladesh has turned out be a knowledge starved society.

If our bureaucrats could be armed with more technical and appropriate knowledge, then the Government would not probably have signed the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) where 72% of the revenue earnings are given to the IOCs in foreign currencies. Gas is stored in the territories of Bangladesh but it only gets a paltry 28% percent of revenue earnings. Again, because of the lack of adequate technical and appropriate knowledge or realizing the urgency Bangladesh, as yet, could not place its case before the United Nations regarding the maritime demarcation of the Bay of Bengal, although it ratified the UNCLOS in 2001. Bangladesh has not yet carried out necessary survey to decide about the extent of its continental shelf. The control points of its base line, both in the western and eastern sectors, have been contested by both India and Myanmar. Bangladesh is likely to get ‘zone/sea locked’ and if serious negotiations are not undertaken immediately with the actors concerned, mostly applying the equity theory as against equidistance theory, much of Bangladesh’s life sustenance resources and maritime freedom might get jeopardized. It is to be especially mentioned here that the neighboring countries like India, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia have settled their scores of maritime boundary demarcation.

There is a big question: is Bangladesh prepared for such serious negotiations with its neighbours in order to protect its interests? Or it is going to surrender its interests as it did during the last Hong Kong round of WTO negotiations because the Bangladesh team did not carry out enough home work for such negotiations? There can be a further question: is the person who is supposed to carry out his homework has the requisite ability and the right attitude to do so? There is a concern about it. The answer is simple: the person may not have the requisite expertise and the positive attitude that would take care of the national interest.

This author learnt about a case where a summary for an appointment to a very high office was placed in the higher office in such a way that the constitutional provision apparently got violated. When someone pointed out such violation, the reply given to him was that there was such a precedent earlier. To that officer, what was important was the precedent not the Constitution. It also shows lack of knowledge of the Constitution both by him and his predecessor. It could be also attitudinal tendencies to show what they did was right, not what the Constitution stipulates. It can be surmised that it was more of a lack of adequate knowledge of the Constitution. Superficial knowledge on such critical issues could be disastrous for the nation and on occasions national interests might get violated. Even a transactional leader is expected to have enough knowledge on a subject he handles in order to maintain the status quo; otherwise atrophy would take over. In a globalized interdependent world, specialist knowledge by the bureaucrats in their respective field of activities is essential even if we presume they are not transformational leaders. Intellectual stimulation is sine quo non for someone to be a transformational leader.

It is generally believed that the bureaucrats, especially officers from the Administrative Cadre, probably, acted as a pressure group (there could be other pressure groups also) to block the separation and independence of the judiciary and Anti-Corruption Commission. It also did not work favorably to institutionalize the local government system of Bangladesh. The Supreme Court, through its twelve point directive in 1999, asked the Government to completely separate the judiciary, especially the lower judiciary, from the executive. But the successive governments started dilly-dallying the process, presumably also at the behest of the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats might have apprehended that their power could get greatly curtailed by such action. This could also be true in the case of the local governments, as already pointed out. However, the local political leaders also had their vested interests in not institutionalizing and strengthening the local government structures.

Be that as it may, bureaucrats would not like to part with the control and superintendence they have on different aspects of the local government. Bureaucrats both at the local tiers and also at the central level have varying degrees of control over the local governments. It is a well nigh difficult task to meaningfully direct, control and monitor the activities of the local governments, from the capital city, spread in every nook and corner of the country. Personalized consideration would be totally lacking in such a scenario which goes against the concept of transformational leadership. Innovativeness, creativity and emotional attachment are essential in transformational leadership styles but sad enough such inputs may be absent in a scenario like this.

RESPONSE:

A thorough overhauling of the bureaucratic structure, span of control, style of work, motivation, values, attitudes, and mindset may be necessary in the context and environment of Bangladesh. There may be a necessity of strategic planning for this. Donor assistance, both in terms of money and expertise, may be necessary.

Firstly, flatter organization system, which generally goes with the modern management concepts, as against many-tiered vertical organization in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Central Government, may be thought of. It could be brought down to four to five tiers that would facilitate better and faster decision making. However, the number of streams, dealing with limited subjects, within a Ministry/Division may be increased. This will help in faster decision making and specialization.

Secondly, similar types of Ministries/Divisions could be clustered together within which the officers/employees would generally rotate. Example could be the Ministries/Divisions of Finance, Planning, Commerce, External Resources Division, Expatriate Welfare Division could be clustered together, something like Strategic Business Units (SBUs), as practised in the business world, where the officers from their foundation level to even up to highest level would rotate during their stint of staff appointments. Another example could be the Ministries/Divisions like Foreign, Home, Defence, Disaster Management, Chittagong Hill Tracts, etc could be clustered together. The specialization that would accrue in such clustering would better take care of areas like WTO, maritime or land boundary demarcation, counter-terrorism, etc. where there are tendencies of faltering. This is given merely as a suggestion; one may not be sacrosanct about it. In a similar vein, Zafarullah’s categorization of ministries/divisions merits consideration, may be with certain adjustment. Those could be categorized, as he prescribes, like Executive (President’s Office, Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Division), Regulatory (Establishment, Finance, IRD, Local Government, Commerce, Home, Jute, Civil Aviation and Tourism, Shipping, Lands, etc), Service-orientated/Welfare (Relief, Special Affairs, Health and Family Welfare, Railways, Post and Telecommunication, Social Welfare, Women’s Affairs), Food, Labour and Manpower Developmental (Agriculture, Rural Development and Cooperative, Irrigation, Water Development and Flood Control, Roads and Road Transport, Industries, Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Works, Fisheries and Livestock, Jute and Textile), Promotional (Primary and Mass Education, Education, Science and Technology, Environment and Forest, Information, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports, Religious Affairs), Advisory (Armed Forces Division, Planning, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Parliament Secretariat), Research (Statistical and Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division), and International (Foreign Affairs and Economic Relations).

Thirdly, Strategic Management Planning, along with Management by Objectives (MBO) technique, as practised in the business world, dovetailed to the culture of public service may be adopted for the Bangladesh Civil Service. Vision/Mission, long term objectives, strategies, yearly objectives, policies, feedback system for each Ministry/Division, Corporation and Department should be clearly spelt out in a realistic, achievable, time bound benchmark. This is not to say that broad objectives are not spelt out in the yearly /three yearly/five yearly planning processes. Bangladesh has a good macro level planning, but what it lacks is the micro level planning and implementation. It also lacks feed back loop which helps in further planning. Objectives are not set out in a realistic and achievable manner; as such Bangladesh generally falters in implementing the Annual Development Plans or in utilizing the foreign assistance. Strategic planning involves all segments, spectrum, activities, cohesion, top down and bottom up approaches, etc. It also involves participatory planning. All stakeholders should be consulted before deciding about an objective. Each Department/Tier/Local Government should be given their yearly achievable, tangible and intangible (to be quantified as much as possible) objectives that would, in totality, meet the yearly objectives of a particular Ministry/Division. Our foreign missions, as part of economic diplomacy, could be given the yearly objectives like export to the target country be increased by say 10% or so many skilled/non skilled manpower be exported to that country. Such objectives could be decided realistically based on past experiences and future trends. Management by objectives, although an American concept not fitting into our culture, may be followed at least in its spirit. Now any player who fails to meet a reasonable expectation of the objectives may be made answerable. Such lapses may be reflected in his yearly performance appraisal in clear terms which would ultimately impact on his career advancement. An independent team has to work out the details of modalities, in case the Government decides to implement the concept.

Fourthly, in order to attract the better graduates of the universities (private sector is now a better destination), their pay, perks and privileges should be greatly enhanced. ADB Country Governance Assessment Bangladesh (Draft), May 2004 acknowledges that the Civil Service no longer attracts the same calibre of entry- level officials that it did in the past. It prescribes salary reform, “mindful of the need to balance the prospect of competitive salary increases with the corollary need to reduce the overall costs of public administration”. If necessary, a portion of the Annual Development Plan may have to be diverted to the Revenue Budget in order to cater for the extra expenditure involved in salary increases. In the long term, it would prove to be more cost-effective. If the actors are not efficient, output would be always problematic. One cannot be expected to be efficient, if his/her physiological needs are not adequately met, when he is de-motivated.

Fifthly, since the quality of Bangladesh University education has deteriorated to a great extent, especially in relation to communication skill in English and latest developments around the world, there is a dire need for an exhaustive, realistic, up-to-date training package programme to be developed in the training institutions. This is borne out by the observations made by Shawkat Ali, a former career civil servant, “various studies have drawn attention to the deficiencies in the training of civil servants, specially post-entry and pre-entry training. Some of these deficiencies are as follows: lack of qualified and well trained staff arising out of posting unwilling civil servants in the training institutes and such postings do not take into account the qualification and experience of the civil servants which result in low quality of training and lack of motivation; the post-entry training and in-service training courses are not well integrated and scheduled to provide and continuously update the level of training and knowledge of civil servants. …Questions have already been raised about relevance of training, utilization of training and incentives for training. Training should be both class room and field based. Exhaustive training programme generally for greater duration than what is done today, especially at the foundation level would pay rich dividends in the long run. Training in the form of case studies, seminars, group projects especially at the field levels, presentations, research papers, In Basket Exercises, visits and orientation with varied types of installations, institutions, corporate world, NGOs, local government, industries, etc may be given more emphasis. Field trips and exercises, something similar to military system, could be given a consideration. For such extensive training system foreign advisory team from countries like Singapore, Japan, UK, and Australia as also from the Bangladesh Armed Forces may be sought.

Sixthly, for career advancement, successful field level appointments like Upazilla Nirbahi Officer (UNO) and Deputy Commissioner (DC), an independent assignment in a foreign mission may be given more credence. One who performs poorly in such appointments may not be given further enhancement in career. Based on the performance reflected in the Annual Confidential Reports, the officers in the promotion chain, at different tiers, may be required to go through the Assessment Centers where they would undergo various group exercises and individual tasks as well as psychometrics and interviews. Only the successful candidates would qualify for further promotion. This practice is followed in the U.K. Civil Service. This has relevance to military system of promotion as well. It is heartening to note that Bangladesh Government is already thinking of introducing similar system.

Seventhly, there is generally a degeneration of values in Bangladesh. Corruption is rampant in all segments of the society. Such situation should be arrested through greater transparency and accountability. Parliamentary standing committees may be more assertive to make the bureaucrats more accountable. Even the courts of law may, if not already doing, attempt to go into greater details of a case that involves the government projects and functionaries and make the public servants accountable. Higher bureaucracy may regularly visit the field level projects and offices to ensure better accountability and transparency.

Eighthly, E-governance or Digital Governance should be given especial priority. E-Governance has to be seen as a tool for good governance and human development. Good Governance occurs when Electronic Governance is able to enhance the “Public Value” of information supplied. The Civil Service members may be made aware of the necessity of E-Governance and be thoroughly armed with necessary competencies. Chandra Babu Naidu, a former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, could be a role model for our system.

Lastly, as long as necessary expertise, required of a particular Ministry/Division, is not developed, a core committee of experts drawn mainly from the civil society, universities and research institutes may be formed, as a stop gap measure, to assist the concerned Ministry/Division in handling the technical/complicated matters that involve vital national interests. Of course, this has been done many a time. This now needs to be made more structured with definite terms of reference.

CONCLUTION:

In conculation, we presented a proposition of the transformational stage in the administration, bureaucracy, and state. In fact, it is emphasized here that all other organs and structure of the state are poised for change. Partisan polity in the transitional stage is about to introduce reforms after a huge paradigm shift. The quality of leadership in all spheres – politics, business, profession, bureaucracy – is in question and calls deeply for reform.

In the current reformist and transformational scenario, the bureaucracy has a critical role in enabling an orderly transition to provide the prerequisites for democracy and development. For achieving this, the bureaucracy may help establish the rule of law. Without this, the arbitrary and capricious decision making of the past could reappear.

Leadership in Bangladesh is definitely at a critical juncture and, needless to say, standing at the threshold of the 21st century, Bangladesh has to discard the old perception of it. In this regard, the author considers this phase of history as transitional and transformational. Whether we like it or not, the coming generations will complete the full circle of change that is needed to move from one level of development to the next and thank us for “beginning the beginning”.

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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

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Oliver Stone tackles the drugs war in America's backyard

A man steps across the floor of what seems to be a basement or dungeon, on a film shot by a wobbly, handheld camera. Blood, sticky underfoot, runs beneath his boots – and the camera catches what seems to be a severed head. The scene is being played on a computer screen, watched by an intense young man, transfixed. A beautiful girl looks also, over his shoulder. "Is that Iraq?", she asks, squirming at the degenerate and apparently gratuitous cruelty. "Mexico," replies the man with a grunt, clearly terrified himself. Welcome to the latest film by Hollywood's – even America's – heretic-in-chief, Oliver Stone. Unsurprisingly, this brief exchange is charged with greater meaning than it appears at first sight, and the film's director has come to elaborate.

The physical presence of Oliver Stone is not unlike that of his impact on cinema over the last four decades. He is immediately contrapuntal: tanned leathery skin, khaki waistcoat and black boots in the seamless, breezy tranquillity of a grandiose hotel in Berlin, answering waiters' questions in polite German with a growl, complimenting the pretty-prim waitress on her looks with a gravelly chuckle. And when he gets down to the business of explaining his new film – sleeves rolled up, hair like that of an old rocker (which he is) – there is no polite prologue to the heresy. "Yeah, this is one of America's wild wars that never ends and ain't going anywhere: the war on drugs." After all, this is the man who has – famously or infamously, depending on who you are – subverted and scorned every norm, rhyme and reason on which the narrative of the US political establishment (and America's strut in the world) is premised, his canon thereby so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were pivotal contributions to America's attempt at reckoning with its own self-generated catastrophe in Vietnam; JFK, Nixon and W. retold and revolutionised received wisdom on the death of one president and the lives of two others. World Trade Center rescued the human story of 9/11 from that manipulated by Washington for its own reasons.

Perhaps most cogently of all, with hindsight, Salvador, from 1986, was among very few films or mainstream expressions of any kind which looked at the dirty war that ravaged the Americas during the 1980s through a Latin American lens, repositioning President Reagan's role as more that of jackboot than sponsor of the freedom he claimed to be spreading, through alliances with dictators and death squads. And more recently, South of the Border stood and stands as the only attempt of its kind to document a new dynamic across the hemisphere, and the rise of newly confident leftwing leaders in the Latin Americas, unbowed by the colossus, the US. Stone's latest, Savages, is to be seen in that vein – only the story concerns the country that is a mere 20 minutes walk from Texas across the Rio Grande, and just south of the border from the golden beaches of San Diego. It addresses the first war of the 21st century (which gives us a glimpse of what the rest of it may well look like), the narco cartel war in Mexico.

Of course Stone is drawn to this: Mexico's war – if that is what it is – has claimed 50,000 lives, and has done so with striking and baffling cruelty. "A lot of these people have died slowly," says Stone, approaching his theme. "I didn't want to show people being dissolved in acid, and there are plenty of other things we could have shown but didn't, or had to cut."

Indeed there are: in his hypothetical but meticulously researched film Stone does not detail the sewing of a flayed face to a soccer ball, or the decapitated bodies left dangling from bridges, mutilated corpses strewn along highways or filling mass graves. Strangely, though, the US media seems as keen to avoid mention of the daily litany of death across its underbelly as it is to cover it; even less does the American establishment want to understand why all this is happening, and consider the possibility that there may be deep-rooted economic causes of at least aspects of Mexico's agony for which the US bears some responsibility, quite apart from its insatiable need to consume drugs and welcome the profits they generate through its banks.

High time for a major film about all this, in an America which, as Stone says, "doesn't give a shit" – even though the violence is next door and spilling over the US government's fence through the desert, in defiance of Washington's militarisation of the sieve-like border. America wants there to be a wall along the 2,000 miles it shares with Mexico, like the one that once ran beneath the window at which Stone sits in Berlin. But that is not going to happen when the border is also the busiest commercial frontier in the world, crossed by a million people every day.

At first sight, Stone may seem to have flinched from making this badly needed film. Savages is not for the most part set in Mexico, not is it overtly about Mexico, as it might have been. It is an adaptation of a novel by the great American writer on the border and drug war, Don Winslow, about two men: Chon, a traumatised veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Ben, a karmic botanist par excellence. Their combined experience and knowledge enables them to grow marijuana of unrivalled potency and quality. It also helps them secure the devotion of lovely blonde O, whom they share as a narcotic-erotic ménage à trois.

Stone's generic Baja cartel, led by a matriarch called Elena, is set on acquiring the seed if not its growers, and kidnaps O in pursuit of this aim. The boys react heroically, and set out to rescue their woman. In the background is an aspirant deus ex machina, Dennis, a corrupt agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who works alongside not only Don and Chon, but also the cartel's vicious enforcer on the US side, Lado.

There is detail in the film which Stone is the first – and only one, north of the border – to grasp, and the detail is important in reading not only this narco war, but also what it means to modern capitalist society. First is the perverse innovation in the cruelty, for its own sake and its recreational aspect. Stone treats us to the execution of a suspected snitch, hung by his wrists and whipped until he confesses (even though he is innocent), after which he is incinerated alive with a tyre around his arms and torso, running in wild circles to his death. During the scene, there's a moment of mastery: the soundtrack, the cackling laughter of those watching. It takes Stone to work that out. Yes, in Mexico's war, this is fun. "It's getting crueller out there," muses Stone. "It's gone up a level."

Another insight is the cartels' mastery of the internet and along with it their satanic sense of humour. The tit-for-tat over kidnapped O is conducted largely through cyberspace, and at one point the cartel sends our heroic duo an animated cartoon of the decapitation of their girl. And there is this about the real-life cartels: unlike the Bosnian Serbs or even al-Qaida, they do not need to speak to us, to the media or politicians, except on their terms. They control their message, they do so through their own mantas or banners, sick but funny notes pinned to the more illustrious victims' mutilated corpses, but above all through the internet – and in doing so they laugh at us. They have no cause to proselytise, nor is there any retort to them – that is their sick genius, and that is why they laugh. "Yeah – that humour thing," says Stone. "It's something else. It takes someone who knows what's going on to understand it, the humour and the cruelty. I was scared of it, but I wanted to make sure I could keep time with what is going on."

One of Stone's hallmarks, in films such as JFK and W., is that he make you suspend disbelief so thoroughly that you can be forgiven for thinking you're observing the real thing, not a dramatisation. In Savages Stone has mercilessly captured the horrific details of Mexico's war and it is tempting to ask why he opted for an action movie with rather annoyingly gym-cut Colgate Californians and a Barbie-blonde stoner as its central characters, instead of something that gets us inside Mexico. Inside, if not the Tijuana cartel, which is now, as Stone himself admits, "dealing with small pocket change", then a film about those others who are redefining what a narco cartel – indeed, criminality – is in the new world and global economy. The paramilitary Zetas, for example, are an entirely new breed of syndicate, utterly ruthless, apparently unstoppable. It seems a shame that even a film by America's most irreverent director (who has looked at the US through a rare Latin American eyepiece) must be centred on the United States. One would like Stone's take on the world's most wanted criminal, Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, fugitive leader of the Sinaloa cartel, or his nemesis, who has overtaken even him for savagery, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, founder of Los Zetas.

But actually I am missing the point completely, thinking this way. Stone has a terrifying and convincing thesis as to why the film has to be set in America, with American characters: "The point," he says, "is that wars come home, they come home to roost. And there are connections: one of the two main guys has come home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he's brought all that with him, what I think are new levels of cruelty and combat technology we have out there."

He drives his theme: "Of course, humankind has always been cruel – the Third Reich and so on. But I think there are new levels of cruelty, new technologies now, a new ball game. Maybe I'm wrong, but the cruelty level in the world just went up in these recent wars. We get a lot of information about what's happening in Iraq, the Middle East and Afghanistan, which comes back to America with this guy. And who knows how this may influence what's happening in Mexico – I think it probably does."

It's a shocking but cogent point about the nature of the violence, and its arrival into our public domain. Stone cut his teeth in Vietnam, where images of violence (the famous girl on the bridge burned by napalm; and scenes from Stone's own films and past as a veteran) were supposed to shock us – and did. Now, in reality, all that has volte-faced: the Zetas relay their own atrocities on the web as recruiting posters, and in Stone's film, to parley with their proposed business partners. It has been posited before that the Zetas got their ideas for torture and execution videos from al-Qaida, who in turn respond to souvenir photos taken by American troops of their own abuses in Abu Ghraib. Stone, typically, hurls us to the logical, heretical, conclusion.

"This Middle East thing brought it to another level. The barbarism came back in a big way, and it was Bush who started that. It all began with Afghanistan and Iraq. The guy in the movie brings it home; and the cartel brings it home."

There are cinematic considerations too: "It's based on Winslow," says Stone, "and we've made it into a thriller. No, I don't think the cartels would work that way with independent marijuana growers in California. No, there aren't any IEDs going off in the Californian desert – but," and he grins with inimitably Stoneian mischief, "I like the idea!"

Another subtlety is Stone's depiction of the fall of Elena, the matriarch. This occurs as the result of a mutiny by Lado, who has switched sides to a rival, El Azul, and because she comes to California to visit her daughter. Her collapse – and with it, by implication, that of her cartel – could signify the arrival of a greater power, a new cartel led by El Azul. This has happened in real life: Guzmán has defeated the Tijuana cartel, which was led by one of the first female capos, Enedina Arellano Félix. It could be because "it's tough taking orders from a woman", observes Stone of Lado. But it could also be seen as Elena's weakness of character, or at least her old-fashioned view of what a cartel's code should be. As Stone puts it: "She's a good traditional woman. She's proud of the fact that her daughter is ashamed of her. And her fall is the fall of the don. Elena was weak because she had a thing for her daughter and wanted to rescue her." This is exactly it: the mutation of Mexico's cartels from the don of old, with his (or her) attachment to family and codes of honour, however criminal or perverse they were, and the transfer of power to those whose only code is raw ruthlessness – like Guzmán or, to an even greater degree, the Zetas.

In Savages, the DEA agent Dennis is corrupt and credible. He protects Chon and Ben for money, takes a bribe to deliver them Elena's daughter, and gets to strut and moralise at a press conference when Elena is finally felled – having himself switched allegiances to El Azul along with his contact, Lado. The role is in part shaped by a former DEA agent Stone hired called Eddie, who had "30 years experience. He was in the Middle East and he knew the scene in Mexico. I got into the DEA that way – Eddie took care of us; and getting that kind of insight into the DEA is a big deal."

Lado is a credible character who "wants to be an American", says Stone. "He takes his kids to little league, his wife worries that he's out last thing at night with his 'gardening business' – his cover, and of course he has other women. He comes in one night, and she can smell a woman on him and he takes her apart, he rapes her – but we had to let that scene go."

Lado "also has eight or nine chihuahuas at his feet", observes Stone, and it is a detail to relish though the scene was cut: "I've been to a couple of these drug lords' places", he says, "and it's like ocelots to them. They've got all these hairless chihuahuas, proud of the fact that 'they cost me a fucking fortune'."

Stone's conclusion focuses less on the economic backdrop in Mexico than the failure of the war on drugs. Stone of course takes this further, entwining his themes. First: "That border is going all day and all night long. And it's 2,000 miles long. There's no way they're going to stop this. Dammit – they tried to build a wall across Berlin!" He gestures out of the window towards Starbucks, where no-man's land used to be: "Walls don't work, period." And second: "I don't see anything coming out of this so far as the war on drugs is concerned. It's been 40 years now, and its just become a method by which more money can be generated to fight what they now call narco-terror." And here's the crux, the entwinement again: "Drugs and terror, they couple them together, and the drug war becomes part of the war on terror that never ends. Part of the total terror that is overcoming our lives."

Apart from connections to the Middle East already made, it is impossible to continue in this vein without invoking South of the Border – indeed it is impossible to discuss any Stone film in isolation from the others.

South of the Border is a documentary series of interviews with those who are bringing Latin America to a new critical mass, a shift in power vis-a-vis the United States. All of them are elected, leftwing presidents of countries that have been, as Stone puts it, "in Uncle Sam's backyard", but which now brandish a new self-confidence, after decades of American puppet regimes: Néstor and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inácio da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo and, famously, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

In January 2008, Stone's audacious recent history on the theme of South of the Border began in this newspaper, with an interview he gave the Observer in Bogotá in which Stone refused to condemn the Farc guerrillas, with whom he was trying to negotiate the release of three hostages. With him were Néstor Kirchner and Hugo Chávez. "I remember it well!" he half-laughs now. "I was on a mission. I wanted to stay low key. Néstor was there, and Hugo, and the American Red Cross, flying into this shithole of a town. Anyway, the Red Cross helicopter arrives, and, well, it was called off. The Farc people are always wary of the CIA, and I think the Americans just couldn't have Hugo involved in anything that would be a success – the hostages were released shortly afterwards, after Hugo had gone."

He reflects now on the wider theme: "The numbers don't lie. These are countries which have seen growth and real improvements after being failed by neo-liberal economics. The US took the side of the bad guys constantly – the media covering up so many of the abuses, in Argentina, Chile … But now, for the first time, these countries have thrown off the stranglehold of the International Monetary Fund and US treasury, which made loans the terms of which were those of what they call the 'neo-liberal Washington consensus' – [to] not only pay back the loans, but conform their economies to the privatisation of the kind we have here: hospitals, military, prisons. Well, in South America, privatisation did not work, it had disastrous consequences.

"And what they essentially did in the last 10 years was to throw off that tyranny. Their people have suffered so much, and they voted in new leaders. But even after they were elected, these people were resented by the US. I've never read one positive word about anything these people have done in the US media – let's face it, the Americans don't accept the idea of the election of leftwing leaders in their own backyard."

Accordingly: "Each one of these leaders has been picked off, one by one, by the United States … Disunite them, break them off from each other. But they've stood firm, and I think this is an important moment. They've done good for their countries, and I hope they last."

There is a connection between Savages and another Stone film, in fact two of them: Wall Street and its recent sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Chon and Ben have a money-launderer, a finance geek who has left the big bank for whom he worked. In real life, however, we now know that this would be no freelancer; this would be the man from the bank itself, in suit and tie, protected all the way to the top. The scandal and outrage of major high street banks laundering Mexican drug cartel money has made headlines recently: American Wachovia and British HSBC were the first to be named and shamed – with more on the way – but the typical fines in such cases fall well short of proper punishment.

The banks' direct connections to the cartels' bloody war and the misery of drugs inevitably causes Stone to reflect on his two films about what was once his father's business, in those distant days when, he says "a bank was something that you saved with, and gave you a loan". He says of the money-laundering: "You kind of get a sense of where the real power lies. Gekko [his character in Wall Street] was an 1980s creature. But by 2008-9, the banks had changed. What Gekko was doing in the 1980s, everyone was doing – rigging things, fixing things – the outsider Gekko had become the system. Look at them! Making money with the money they took from the public, and gambling with it! You have these huge settlements, with AIG underwriting Goldman Sachs – and it's all over New York, that level of confidence, that level of arrogance and impunity. You go to the Hamptons, and you feel it." And there is an inevitable connection between this financial elite and the corporatisation of government.

"The United States," he says, "has been a corporate-controlled country increasingly since world war two. The concept of a national security state plays into that concept of us as a mega-corporation. I view the Pentagon as essentially a huge corporation. The United States has moved into corporate gridlock, and the gridlock controls us – the power of the lobbyists, banks, oil companies, pharmaceuticals … After Reagan triumphed in 1980, we had this embrace of the free market. But it's not a free market really, it's fixed. Because monopolies tend to dominate it, they come to the fore and push everybody out of the way. So it's a rigged playing field, like we saw in 2008 – the banks getting bigger and bigger.

"And you know the weird thing?" he asks, as if to the street below, those around the Brandenburg Gate. "Everyone wants to buy into that shit! The people take their cue from whoever has the power and the money! Go into the Four Seasons in New York, and power is the hero! No one wanted to talk about the poor Vietnamese when this all started, or the poor people in Latin America – no, we embrace power!"

He goes on: "I don't think Americans give a shit about out there. They don't understand why in the Middle East everyone hates America. They don't understand the 'backyard'. JFK did, and so did Henry Wallace when he was vice-president. They both tried to turn it round – and what happened? As soon as JFK was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson said he'd crank it up in Vietnam. In Latin America it was: 'Enough of this Alliance for Progress' shit, what about the $9bn we've got invested down there?'"

Which brings Stone to another subject he wants to talk about; for it never rains, it only pours with this tempest of a man. As Savages premieres, get ready – at the end of this month – for the publication of his book and thereafter the 10-part television series (to be shown in Britain next year) on which it is based, The Untold History of the United States. Working with the American University historian Peter Kuznick, Stone has compiled a series which, he says "is inspired by your British series The World at War – pure narrative, no talking heads and actors to portray some of the players. Ten one-hour programmes; everything's been fact-checked and now CBS has a copy. It's an unorthodox, true global story about America. About how Truman did not have to drop the atomic bomb that all the kids get taught was dropped to save lives and stop the war. That isn't why it happened, it was so that the world would become a huge amphitheatre for America. It's about the true origins of the cold war, which we all think was started by the Russians when they invaded eastern Europe (he gestures towards the window again, sun glinting off an S-Bahn train trundling through the glorious iron-and-glass station at Friedrichstrasse – not long ago, the overground platforms were in East Berlin; the underground ones were an interchange for the West Berlin U-Bahn system).

"It's about Truman after the war, a small man, a cold warrior and a political hack. After the war, we tried to demobilise, but it didn't last long. They created this legacy of rightwingers who pulled at this alarm that we were falling behind the Russians. But the Russians never achieved anything like parity – maybe at the end of the 1970s, but it broke them."

This is not history for history's sake, however – this is the history of our present and future, long beyond cold war, into war on terror, war on drugs: "It's the history," says Stone, "of our building the national security state, which is interested in nobody's security apart from that of the state. Always supposedly falling behind the enemy, so there would be no end to it. It's a legacy thing," he pleads, almost. "The American history our kids are reading is all upside down. Everything is the opposite to what you think." With Stone, a conversation can only return to the beginning – in the best sense – "because it is all interconnected", as are his films. But there is not time – though he does afford himself a valedictory thought that sends a shiver down the spine.

"This terror that we're supposed to be so terrified of … What the fuck is it? Why should we all be so scared? Well, there's big money in it, for sure. So now we have every form of technology at the disposal of the government and its war on terror – but who are we supposed to be terrified of? Why must we be so terrified?" For want of any further answers to his terrifying rhetorical question about being terrified of terror, Stone affords himself a joke, for like all good heretics, he is a jester too, at the court of America: "Jeezus!" He swallows a small bowl of salad dressing, neat, and rises from his chair. "The idea that the government is doing all this to protect me from marijuana!?"

-Ed Vulliamy, "Oliver Stone tackles the drugs war in America's backyard," The Observer, Sept 22 2012 [x]

#oliver stone #savages #drugs #the war on drugs #mexico #latin america #marijuana #Ed Vulliamy #the observer #the guardian

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newstfionline · 6 years

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WhatsApp is upending the role of unions in Brazil. Next, it may transform politics.

By Marina Lopes, Washington Post, June 11, 2018

SAO PAULO, Brazil--When Lazaro Rutino needs a break from hauling beef across Brazil in his truck, he swipes on his phone and is instantly connected to dozens of other truckers. Rutino, 59, is a member of eight trucker groups on WhatsApp, the messaging service that has become a staple for Brazilians of all walks of life.

“It’s a relief from the daily loneliness,” said Rutino, 59, who spends more than a month at a time away from his wife and three children. Rutino uses WhatsApp to secure work, learn about traffic jams and avoid dangerous stretches of highway. But recently, along with thousands of other truckers, he also used it to participate in a 10-day strike that crippled Latin America’s largest economy.

Disparate bands of truckers turned to the messaging app to organize thousands of drivers in the largest and most effective truckers strike in the nation’s history. In two weeks, they squeezed $2.5 billion in concessions from Brazil’s president, prompted the resignation of the CEO of Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant, and won the support of the majority of the country.

“We tried to do this many times before WhatsApp, but it has never been so successful,” said Rutino, who has been driving trucks for 40 years.

Nearly two-thirds of Brazil’s 200 million people use WhatsApp to share memes, set up meetings and, increasingly, to vent about politics. Now, the messaging app is helping Brazilians undermine established power structures, injecting a level of unpredictability and radicalization into a country beset by economic and political crises.

WhatsApp is particularly suited to organized movements. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, which often provide information to wider audiences, WhatsApp requires users to be invited to participate in groups, which leads to increased intimacy and secrecy, according to researchers. The platform’s voice messaging and photo sharing options enable users of varied educational backgrounds to take part in discussions. And it is free. Disgruntled Uber drivers, feminists and hard-line conservatives here use the app to share ideas and plan get-togethers.

In the United States and France, nontraditional candidates have been winning elections. In Brazil, WhatsApp is helping outsiders gain power by replacing enfeebled traditional brokers such as unions.

The truckers strike began in mid-May. Fed up with rising fuel costs and fruitless negotiations with Brazil’s government, thousands of drivers agreed to halt their trips and park their trucks along highways, halting deliveries of goods. Within days, gas stations ran dry, supermarkets began rationing fruit and airports started to cancel flights for lack of fuel.

Desperate to get the economy moving again, President Michel Temer met with leaders of eight unions. They quickly struck a deal to temporarily clear the highways in return for temporary cuts to fuel prices. But most truckers rejected the deal.

Meanwhile, the truckers used WhatsApp to win the support of their fellow citizens. Drivers sent voice messages explaining their plight and linking their demands with general frustrations about the government. Eight days into the strike, 87 percent of Brazilians supported the truckers, according to one poll.

As the strike gained steam, its demands morphed from lower fuel prices to the resignation of Temer. Markets started to panic, and the Brazilian real devalued vs. the U.S. dollar.

Marcos da Costa, president of the Sao Paulo chapter of the Brazilian Bar Association, watched the episode unfold with trepidation. When Temer called out the army to deal with the remaining strikers, the attorney decided to intervene. Da Costa and his colleagues were able to highlight 15 truckers who had emerged as representatives of various factions on WhatsApp groups around the country.

“The president had identified the traditional leadership to sign a deal, but it didn’t reach the base. We had to identify the leadership at the base of the movement, which had been started through WhatsApp,” Da Costa said.

Da Costa called these leaders in for a meeting and transmitted their requests to the state governor. Skeptical about how much sway these representatives held, the governor asked them to order truckers on WhatsApp to temporarily unblock a highway outside of Sao Paulo. Within one hour, it was clear, according to Da Costa.

The governor struck a deal with the representatives for lower state vehicle taxes and tolls, and mediated an accord with Temer to slash the cost of diesel. The truckers relayed the negotiations to their base, which accepted the concessions to effectively end the strike.

“Society will have to find ways to understand and address movements of this nature, that are horizontal and can’t be tackled by institutional channels,” Da Costa said. “Today, it happened in Brazil with the truckers, but tomorrow it can happen somewhere else.”

The instant gratification and polarization that characterize social media are making people more impatient with traditional politics and compromise, according to academics. Four months ahead of Brazil’s presidential elections, WhatsApp groups are becoming virtual soapboxes on which Brazilians are calling for more drastic solutions to the country’s woes.

With the government, “It takes 40 years to make a decision, things are slow to change. But software changes very fast. Social networks are more responsive and people want faster answers,” said Yasodara Córdova, a researcher at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, who studies the relationship between government and technology.

Brazilians are growing especially restless. A stunning 96 percent of them do not feel represented by their government, according to a February poll .

WhatsApp has become a depository for outrage against the political elite in a country with 35 political parties, where the line between corruption and compromise can be especially thin. Calls for the overthrow of the government and a return to military dictatorship are routine.

There is a lot to be angry about. Brazil is struggling to revive its economy after its worst recession on record. Meanwhile, a sprawling corruption investigation has ensnared the country’s top political leaders. There were a record 61,000 violent deaths in 2016.

“The country is a pressure cooker. Social networks increase the pressure and allow it to be organized pragmatically,” said Francisco Bosco, a philosopher who wrote a book about social media and political culture in Brazil.

#Brazil #WhatsApp #Brazil truck strike

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ericfruits · 4 years

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How Joe Biden might change policy towards Latin America

Bello How Joe Biden might change policy towards Latin America

Less confrontation, more co-operation

“FOR THE first time in history, you can truly envision a western hemisphere that is secure, democratic and middle-class, from northern Canada to southern Chile, and everywhere in between.” So said Joe Biden in a speech at Harvard University in 2014. Much has changed since then, not least the destruction of lives and livelihoods wrought by the pandemic. Even so, were Mr Biden to be elected president of the United States in November, for many Latin Americans he would offer a vision that is reassuring and familiar compared with the unpredictable sound and fury of Donald Trump.

Mr Trump won in 2016 in part because he promised to build a wall to keep out Latin American immigrants, declaring that Mexico was “not our friend”. Nevertheless, he has developed relatively good relations with the most important governments in the region. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, used Mr Trump’s success as a template for his own campaign in 2018. He has closely aligned Brazil’s foreign policy, normally independent, with the Trump administration’s views. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on his only foreign trip in 21 months as Mexico’s leader, last month went to Washington and praised Mr Trump’s “kindness and respect”. To keep the border open for trade, Mexico’s government has collaborated in shutting it to asylum-seekers.

Wary of Mr Trump’s threats of tariffs and sanctions, many governments have fallen into line “out of necessity and especially out of fear”, says a Latin American official. Ordinary Latin Americans are not impressed: the percentage who express a favourable view of the United States fell from the high 60s in 2015 to around 45 in 2017, according to the Pew Research Centre.

Mr Trump’s Latin American policy has centred on a (so far) failed bid to overthrow what John Bolton, his former national security adviser, called “the troika of tyranny”—the leftist dictatorships in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. In his recent memoir Mr Bolton blamed the failure to oust Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, despite swingeing sanctions, on Mr Trump’s lack of constancy and foot-dragging inside the administration. As important, the administration underestimated the difficulty of prising the army away from Mr Maduro. Its critics say its Latin American policies are based on the president’s need to win Florida, home to large Cuban and Venezuelan diasporas, in November. “Domestic politics always figures in policy towards Latin America, but never before to this degree,” says Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington.

Were Mr Biden to win, his priorities would be the American economy and dealing with China. But Latin America might not be at the bottom of his to-do list. He knows the region far better than recent presidents. In Barack Obama’s second term Vice-President Biden took on responsibility for the Americas. “He dedicated time to it, set out to learn about it and talked to a lot of people in the region,” says the Latin American official.

Juan Gonzalez, who advised Mr Biden on Latin America back then, stresses that the region and the world are not as they were in 2016. “The challenges are much greater,” he says. But he thinks there are opportunities for the United States in the region, not just threats to be managed. American firms that bring supply chains back from China could benefit Mexico and Central America. Mr Biden has long supported immigration reform. As president, he would be likely to resume his previous policy in Central America, with an aid programme aimed at fighting corruption and deterring migration through economic development.

On Venezuela, Mr Gonzalez says that sanctions should be part of a broader policy that would include seeking negotiations for free elections. A Biden presidency would revert to Mr Obama’s Cuba policy, which saw engagement as more likely to weaken the communist regime than Mr Trump’s intensification of sanctions. It would press Mr Bolsonaro on his failure to protect the Amazon.

An immediate issue concerns leadership of the Inter-American Development Bank. Breaking with a 60-year understanding that its president is a Latin American, the Trump administration wants the job for Mauricio Claver-Carone, an official at the National Security Council and an architect of its Venezuela policy. He may get it at a meeting of the bank’s governors next month. A Biden administration would probably force him out in favour of a less polarising figure. To do that, Mr Biden must win.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Beyond the troika of tyranny"

https://ift.tt/3klgfWD

#IFTTT #Feedly

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victoriousscarf · 7 years

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1920-1930's AU fic vs 1940-1950's AU fic. Pros and cons on writing it?

Oh man. Oh man.

Well, it really depends on what you want from the fic. I’d be hands down willing to go for any decade there (as well as 1900, 1910s, and the 1960s). But each offers a bit of a different setting. (Which I’m gonna be focusing on the USA here unless otherwise specified)

Like, the 1920s are great for a glittering elite, for the razzle and dazzle of art deco contrasted sharply with the race riots, growing immigrant community organization and discontent, corrupt police forces being even more obviously corrupt, the highest watermark of the KKK based on numbers and political influence, and the influences of WWI being felt throughout society alongside prohibition. So you have so much potential there, you have the early days of Hollywood where women were scriptwriters and directors, you have massive class differences and worlds, you have the start of truly organized crime and federal responses to it. You have African Americans who went to war (if they stayed in the US military chances are they were used exclusively as support in segregated units, but to get around that some enlisted in other armies like the French and became fighter pilots and if you don’t think I’m gonna use exactly that for Sam Wilson at some point you don’t know me at all) and who are being murdered in their uniforms after returning home. You have Harlem producing amazing works for white artists to appropriate. There’s so many axis’ of conflict and disunion, and so many cracks for illegal activities.

Then there’s the 1930s, a time where that glittering, insane facade crashes down like so many beautiful cards. You have the dust bowl sweeping the middle of the country and covering it in dust and hopelessness. You have the government new deal programs, be they the civilian conservation corps or sending authors to gather oral histories from former slaves. You have the growing threat of facism here and abroad. You have a decade coming down from a high and heading straight into war, when people lost their entire life’s savings and sometimes had to uproot entirely to make a living for themselves. In the meantime there’s increasing radio use in everyone’s homes, and Hollywood is still full of glitz and glamour and the rich are still rich but briefly cowed. It’s not quite the same obvious divisions and conflicts you see in the 20s but most of those are still there. The great migration is in full swing, as black people move out of the South and up North, often in the dead of night or without packing or telling anyone where they were going. You have camps of the poor and camps of young men trying to build new dreams and new hope around the country (honestly why aren’t there like more CCC aus? Isn’t it perfect for that first stirring of love, thrust together in the middle of nowhere? Building what you hope is gonna help that better tomorrow to come?)

Then there’s the 40s. A decade obviously of war and the immediate boom of the post war world (at least in America). (In Europe you obviously have the potential for a truly devestating au, especially immediately post war where for two years Europe was in a state of total chaos and desolation as about 50% of homes and the vast majority of roads had been destroyed in many countries during the war, let alone the lack of communication and displacement so many people underwent and then the expansion of communism that sometimes separated other families) And for a war sure it’s a “good war” but you have an awful lot of death and destruction and lost worlds along the way. There’s the Holocaust and concentration camps and while I personally am leery of tackling that doesn’t mean one shouldnt–carefully of course. And you have the vast mobilization of many different countries to support the war. I mean there’s obviously a lot of war stories so people find this fertile land. It’s a time when divisions were shoved under the carpet but didn’t disappear. Again, the African American men who came home for the war and were lynched in their uniforms. Conflict never really disappeared. And after the war there’s the boom, completely shaking off the depression and the start of what we culturally consider the 1950s.

And the 50s! The decade where I spend so much freaking time. The decade of abundance for many Americans who had never had so much before. But also the decade of the civil Rights movement, where in 1954 Brown v Board was decided after years and years of careful groundwork. Where one Virginian county closed all their public schools rather than comply. Where the rhetoric of prosperity was only for some. But also when the “good neighbor” policy with Latin America (which was always bullshit) completely went batshit and collapsed with the coup in Guatemala. The decade that ended with Castro in power in Cuba but not yet a dedicated Communist. When the Cold War is shimmering and the Soviets have their own nukes. It’s hard for me to describe the feel I have for the 50s, the hope and prosperity and the violence and the fear and the race riots.

So like… Obviously all decades are fun to write aus for, you just gotta figure out what corner of history you want to hunker down in and pry open. Obviously I write an excessive number of 1920s aus so there’s something about that I love. But each offers their own unique circumstance and perspective.

Edit: the con I can think of is that its certainly worth it to research whatever you're going to write about. I tend to over research in some ways because i study history and so have a broad range of research. I also like watching movies and listening to music from a time period and look at a lot of photographs.

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progressiveparty · 5 years

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The Democratic Office Boy Machine

A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. Of course the DNC will do it again. The fact that anyone considers that they will play fair is hopelessly out of touch with their history. They will try to thwart the will of their voters through continued reliance on second vote superdelegates and the use of slanted support that will be extended to corporate-friendly candidates. They did it the last time around, and less known…they did it back in 1944 (more about this later). The only way this will stop is through a fear of becoming completely irrelevant and going the way of the Whigs. A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. My guess is the Democrats will try to steal the primary again for their corporate candidate who will lose, and the DNC will become bankrupt (fiscally after the moral) and a new party will have to rise. If the fascism continues on the right from a blown opportunity by the Democrats, these predictions become more weighted with terrifying possibilities. A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. Henry Wallace (no relation that I know of) was a bit of an anomaly. He was a left- leaning Iowa boy who hated imperialism. He absolutely loathed the British Empire and its abuses. He was able to understand the needs of and advance the rights of workers. He even went against the United Fruit mode of intervention in Latin America and was able to find common ground with the people there, all without the use of right-wing juntas. This may be a bit of a simplification, but overall, Henry Wallace was a friend to the working men and women across the globe. He served as FDR’s vice president until a fateful convention in 1944. He had the backing of the voters—they appreciated that he had done more in that vice president’s office than others before him and they felt he had a kinship with them—that he would work in their favor. He was not popular with Southern conservative politicians or the corporate factions and they wanted nothing of him and his common man appeal. FDR made overtures and indicated that he was still behind Wallace being his vice president. Eleanor was a staunch supporter as well…but whether FDR was simply too ill by that time to exert his will or just plain feckless regarding Wallace, the Pendergast political machine of out Kansas City was able to insert their “office boy” as the vice president.

Henry Wallace Truman was a haberdasher from Kansas City (failed haberdasher, actually) and he came across the corrupt Pendergast group through that connection. Suits for brutes, I guess. Truman was encouraged to go into politics by the Pendergast political influencers and that he did, owing his start to this machine. It sounds like Truman struggled with the alliance having physical symptoms of stress from a bit of cognitive dissonance, but he never did anything that truly rocked their boat or made him a less of a favored candidate in their eyes. Truman was a natural to be handed the vice president slot in 1944 as he looked to be the office boy of choice for the disparate factions that were not representing the progressive appeal of voters. These things have consequences. We are now in an “anything but Trump” era. Older Democrats would probably vote for an Amazon delivery drone if it had the mark of the DNC on it in the general election because it feels right to vote against the melon-hued Mussolini. Trump is, of course, that calamitous of a human, but this “lesser evil” thing ends up with an effect. We need to not get to that point where your choice is not simply death by a malignant cancer like Trump versus a slow descent through dysentery, offered up by a centrist Democrat. But back to Wallace. By August of 1945, it was clear that Japan had lost the war. The common refrain is that atomic bombs were dropped on two civilian cities because the US “was going to have to send our boys to invade”. But is this true? A land that had already lost needed to be invaded and/or nuclear bombed right away? What happened to a little patience and isolation? Internal Japanese factions would get sick of the isolation and most likely force a surrender, wanting to join the world again. They weren’t a threat to the US by that time. But even discussing this around the “greatest generation” members is dangerous. I know by experience. I had a friend in high school who wrote an opinion paper stating the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes. My parents didn’t even want her to come over to visit after they heard that! Strong feelings aside, there is even stronger indication that the real purpose of dropping the bombs was to scare Uncle Joe Stalin shitless with the death that could be meted out by the US. What would have been the harm to wait a bit for a full surrender? At least try for that? America solves everything with violence, or in this case violent science. The choice is framed as this: atomic bombs or every young man in America will be killed by Japanese grannies on their shore with weapons. This jingoistic framing should be a red flag to anyone that the truth is probably going to be a bit more nuanced. Illogical horror descriptions that are built to scare should be analyzed for veracity. (Babies being thrown out of incubators etc.). Not that the world doesn’t have ample evil for certain, but don’t get played is what I’m saying. They are masters at this and always have been. Manufactured consent and all. Another consideration: anyone who can think of the atomic bombing in sterile ways should be forced to read the accounts from survivors. But ”they” attacked Pearl Harbor…I didn’t sodomize anyone at Abu Ghraib, but that line of thought brings you to retribution in ways you might not want to consider when you begin to view all civilians as being directly responsible for the actions of their “leaders” or their military. This is why old school anarchy considerations feel like common sense truth to me. How can you be responsible for what a psychopathic “leader” did? I wasn’t asked for my feedback. Not to mention a war that was for all purposes over—well, that’s the time these bombs were dropped! My circuitous thought is this: Truman was the office boy to do it. If Wallace had been vice president, then he would have been our subsequent president when FDR died. I don’t know what the end result would have been, but I have a hunch he wouldn’t have dropped bombs to scare someone. Patience and good judgment might have ruled the day. So the results would have been very different for the citizens of the US, multiple Japanese civilians, as well as perhaps not staining the US as the only nation to own that quote : “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” as Oppenheimer famously repeated from the Bhagavad Gita . You can’t see yourself as the paragon of goodness when you knee-jerk use nuclear fission to solve your problems. So we are pretty far down the destroyer of worlds path. Regime change are US. A drastic realignment is necessary. Characters like Biden and Cop Harris won’t cut it, and those types are the DNC’s favored candidates. When Warren becomes favored, you know her sell-out with the Sith lords is complete. These things sound like petty squabbles over a group of similars until you think about Strummer’s pregnant mention of an unwritten future. What consequences will come from the continued use of corporate office boys/girls for the job? Can we write a future that is better, that is decent? There are a lot of individuals like me who find Bernie Sanders to be a compromise, not far enough to the left. But even his middle-of-the-road-in-Europe notions scare the crap out of the machinery. I was furious last time that he didn’t simply run as a third-party candidate. We won’t survive much more of this nonsense. The threats of being a spoiler…well I say spoil it all. It’s rancid. That milk you put back in the fridge that smells isn’t going to rehabilitate itself. Trump won anyway–even with Bernie hitting the road for Clinton last time. And don’t get me started about her. Are they even trying to win? She was needlessly caustic, much like Biden. He has a huge problem with younger voters, so he goes on the road and when he is asked about environmental concerns by a young voter, he says “Look at my record, CHILD!” to an adult woman! Is he even trying at all? Is he just campaigning so he can smell new shampoos around the country? I don’t have high hopes that Bernie will fight back this time when they screw him over again. I hope I’m wrong or at least I hope his campaign leaves the threat of it there to create a known moral hazard for the DNC if this is the path they take. The younger voters are showing that they are basically a bit more decent than the “pragmatic” Boomers and X’ers. There is evidence that they have…empathy. I am so relieved by this and feel this is an indication that a progressive party can win because they have some massive numbers they could draw from. And there are X’ers like me as well as Boomers who aren’t totally evil. We kind of want the world to survive. We will be there for this change. The tepid centrist Democrats will not help with this imperative. Considering all this though, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to believe that to many corporate/centrist Dems, a loss to Trump is preferable to ceding to the progressive arm of the party. This is a moment like the situation with Wallace in 1944. If the party can’t get rid of things like superdelegates (the Republicans have even done that!) and they continue to use media connections to ignore the true state of support that candidates have (oh, oh, the excitement for Biden is palpable per CNN)…well, the party will vanish and sadly our descent into Republican-style fascism will probably accelerate without a needed safety valve. A true change in the Democratic party would be required, a change to reflect the views of all the adults out there who came of age after things quit being better than their parents had it. A tree does get stronger in the wind (if it survives) and perhaps things were just too easy to breed strength for some of those with comfortable health care and a guaranteed retirement. It will take some strength of character for those older Americans to care about those coming after them and call for change accordingly even if they personally feel they are safe. But ultimately their support will not be required, time will march forward with or without them. The decent thing to do is be part of the change. The younger generations are especially suffering at the hands of unfettered capitalism. Our globe is even suffering. The middling better than Trump Obama types will not cut it. They will simply slow the descent and make it more comfortable for the well-heeled older centrists on the way down. They might be less overtly embarrassing than Trump, but that’s not enough, My elderly malignant narcissist mother who endorses aggressive nudity is less embarrassing than Trump. That’s a low bar. What we have now, well–this is not just, and this is not good. To only care about your 401 K but not care about someone else’s DKA is a sign of being a shitty person (explainer: DKA is Diabetic Ketoacidosis. It’s what you get when you can’t afford your fucking insulin and it is killing young Type 1 diabetics as we speak). But Sanders can’t just bow down to Biden or Warren if that is who the machinery wants for the office position when the time comes. A new party and movement needs to be built at that moment with no hesitation because you can’t fight fascism and climate destruction with polite adherence to rules set up to keep you down. This Piece Originally Appeared in LA Progressive Read the full article

#anythingbutTrump #corrupt #Democrats #DNC #HenryWallace

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772venezuela-blog · 5 years

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Podcast Script

[Intro Music]

Rachel: Hello and Welcome to “exploring populism” a podcast brought to you by Cmn 772 at UNH. I’m Rachel Netson and the country I choose to look at over the course of the semester is Venezuela. I’m joined by Taylor Dupere, a fellow student looking at Brazil for her capstone.

Taylor: Hi Rachel, another day another MRP assignment

Rachel: Always a great time with you <3!

[Intro Music]

Rachel: Over the course of the semester we have learned about, examined and written individual assignments and created media projects about populism, media, and the current situations in both Venezuela and Brazil along with the other countries in the world. Today we will be examining how the media has changed Latin America. We’re gonna be taking a look into the ways the media has shaped and influenced populism and democracy in Venezuela and Brazil, along with hearing from fellow students about their opinions on where they get news, and source credibility.

Taylor: We decided to make this podcast as an addition to our media portfolios because we felt that is was important to look at, not only how the media helps populist leaders come to power in our own countries, but also how over time, the media has shaped the way we perceive the world around us.

Rachel: Before we begin, Taylor would you like to give a quick rundown on the current situation in Brazil for those listeners who might not be following the news as closely? I understand that there was a recent election of a candidate who was drastically different from Lula?

Taylor: Yeah, so in the 2018 election, far-right populist, Jair Bolsonaro was elected. It’s been interesting to say to least to see the ongoing changes being made in the country today. For those who may not know Brazil was under Military dictatorship for 20ish years, ending in 1964. We’ve seen a steady rise in economic power, and Brazil has managed to become one of the worlds largest democracies. Ever since the restoration of democracy after the military coup’s, Brazil has been ruled by left-wing presidents, due to the fear of returning to an authoritarian style rule. Which is what makes the 2018 election such popular talk these days. From what I’ve heard Venezuela is in a slightly more off balance place right now with the situation evolving every day, correct?

Rachel: (include a source somewhere in this) Yeah the people of Venezuela have been in a weird limbo with determining who the current leader of the government is. Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy has been in meltdown from a combination of insane inflation levels leading to a humanitarian crisis. It’s also been a country with a lot of political difficulties. President Nicolas Maduro is being accused by a growing number of political opponents of mismanaging the economy and eroding democratic institutions. The combination of economic conditions has resulted in a lot of violence after last years protests calling for direct and immediate elections. The entire country is split between opposite sides. Some are siding with Guaido, while the military is mainly siding with Maduro, but even that is starting to change.

Taylor: Thanks Rachel

[Outro Music]

Rachel: This episode is about the media and how that's been playing a role in the recent events in these countries along with the broader idea of how media influences the way we perceive events.

Taylor: What's the current media landscape in Venezuela? How do most people in your country get their news?

Rachel: Well Venezuelan’s have a broad way of getting their news with lots of potential sources. Chavez and Maduro’s actions have severely limited more traditional media like television and radio and newspaper to the point that it has been a criminal act or physically attacked for saying negative things about their presidencies. Since 2010 with the rising popularity of social media in Venezuela, Maduro has managed to even control those sources by literally blocking out the internet during certain pivotal moments in time. Juan Guido has really rallied people with his use of social media because traditional media outlets aren't giving him a platform.

What about Brazil’s media landscape?

Taylor: Here’s a quote I started thinking about as you were talking: “The lack of democracy, institutional corruption, high levels of censorship, and social disparities have marked Brazil’s past and have had a significant impact on the press in the country and the journalists’ perception of their role for decades.” (Weiss, 2015, pg. 78). Another major factor in the media sphere in Brazil is that the constitutional rights towards media journalism are not being upheld, and that has caused a lot of mistrust in traditional style media outlets. However, I am also seeing that Bolsonaro is extremely active on social media, using specific platforms to his advantage. Did you know he himself paid millions of dollars for fake news sources to spread through Brazilian’s social media apps about his presidential opponent?

Rachel: Wow. That seems ridiculous but he wouldn't be the first. What kind of restrictions on the media are you seeing in Brazil? Is it the same as Venezuela where the actual media outlets are being controlled or is it more subtle?

Taylor: It's being restricted in a different way than in Venezuela. What's happening in Brazil, similar to what we’ve discussed in class, is that large media conglomerates own a large portion of the media and are able to direct the message they are putting out there through that. These conglomerates overwhelmingly supported Bolsanaro in the most recent election so there was biased coverage by a lot of large media sources, and the people who spoke against him often faced threats and other acts of violence.

Rachel: Do you think that has impacted the way people view news and the Brazilians trust of the media?

Taylor: Absolutely, actually check out this clip that emulates that really well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP8uT-bZhPY (3:16-3:38)

Taylor: While doing the research on this we were curious to see what others thought about this situation so we conducted some street interviews asking people, “ Do you believe what you hear in the media? How do you differentiate what you believe vs. what you don't believe? Here’s what some people had said:

[INTERVIEW RESPONSES]

Person 1: I believe what I read on social media depending on the source it’s coming from. So I get most of my news from buzzfeed news on Instagram or daily mail on snapchat, rather than watching CNN or FOX news

Person 2: Alright, I do not believe everything I hear on the media, it depends on the source it’s coming from and what the information is. For example, if there is a lot of evidence to support it and it seems legit then I would probably believe it

Person 3: Ok when im looking at news or stories that are breaking I tend to not trust the bigger news sources as much, such as Fox news or CNN... um because I feel like they rush to get stories out and maybe don’t get all the info so I tend to, I can’t think of any specifics but I tend to do a little more google searching and looking for like some smaller name journalist and journalism and I tend to trust those a little more, because they seem to have the fuller scoop

Person 2: So, if I have a set belief and I hear something that aligns with those beliefs i’ll be more likely to believe that, because nowadays if I hear something negative about Trump for example, I automatically just believe it because something negative about Trump to me, just seems very realistic.

Rachel: I really like some of the points that people made here, like social media being more palatable for the masses, which gets me thinking about fake news as a media tool in Latin America.

Taylor: Hannan illustrates an example of looking at media as a technology and as a medium. I think understanding this can better explain how people fall for fake news and corruption that is delivered through media on a daily basis. Hannan continues to talk about how the way media is understood varies from culture to culture. In the U.S television is looked at as amusement and entertainment. However, you can also look deeper at the type of discourse that entertainment is promoting. (Hannan, 2018, 216).

Rachel: Ohhh so sort of like how in Brazil and Venezuela, Whatsapp, a texting app used in the U.S is viewed as a news source for people in Brazil?

Taylor: Exactly! And in Venezuela, they do the same, including organizing protests around the presidential elections this past year.

Rachel: Yeah, I think that sometimes we think that social media is actually very democratic in the sense that every person has a voice that has equal opportunity to be heard. But in reality, social media is just another large bubble that is controlled by outside sources, that it can be even harder to see that traditional media outlets.

Taylor: Totally! I feel like with TV and radio and newspapers you know more about who’s behind it, it almost feels more transparent. With social media, at least to me, and I guess to some of the interviews we have conducted on campus it seems that social media feels more authentic and fair.

Rachel: I feel like overtime we have seen so much of it come out as biased, or corrupted I think that we perceive it as a more Government influenced while social media and exchanges on places like WhatsApp which is popular in our, or any other platform we feel like they are maybe not more accurate on a case by case basis but if we see something enough we start wondering, hey is this true?

Taylor: Yeah sometimes I catch myself thinking - if it’s everywhere it must be true and I think other people might do the same? This ties into what we talked about in class where we feel like its not “fake news” or it feels plausible so we feel like it must be true because it makes sense but in reality platforms and the internet are just as controllable by outside sources . I think that what happened with Trump and Russia is a good illustrator of this.

Rachel: This makes me think of the reading by Moffit about mediatization that discussed how the media wants to capture people’s attention. The way that something is reported on is purposefully framed to get people’s attention. While the news is supposed to be objective can it ever truly be if it needs to make money? (Moffit, 2016, 75)

Taylor: I agree, outside forces always have to have incentives, whether it be money or power.

Just to wrap up, I think that what we’ve seen is that in both of our countries the media feels to be heavily biased, controlled, and untrusted and even though the political ideologies of their bias are different it's important as a society to understand that it’s hard for media to ever be truly free.

Rachel: I think the lingering question in my mind after this podcast and the entire class will be “Is there a way that the media can ever be truly unbiased while giving people a high level of freedom of speech or is the only way to have true media is to instill a higher amount of power to an authority to control it. Is there anything that can be done to keep the media from being influenced?

Taylor: As we’ve seen in both our countries and others when we allow certain groups power over the media it quickly can lead to a loss of democracy. So our remaining question is, is there a way to balance both: democracy and power?

Sources:

Weiss, A. S. (2015). The digital and social media journalist: A comparative analysis of journalists in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. International Communication Gazette, 77(1), 74–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048514556985

Hannan, J. (2018). Trolling ourselves to death? Social media and post-truth politics. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 214-226. doi:10.1177/0267323118760323

Moffitt, Benjamin. “Stage I: Populism and the Media - University Press Scholarship.” Stage I: Populism and the Media - University Press Scholarship, Stanford University Press, 15 Jan. 2017, www.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.11126/stanford/9780804796132.001.0001/upso-9780804796132-chapter-005.

Capetillo-Ponce, Jorge, "Venezuela in the Times of Chavez: A Study on Media, Charisma, and Social Polarization” (2007). Sociology Faculty Publication Series. Paper 8. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/sociology_faculty_pubs/8

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