#did all those motivational slogans lie to me? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brazenautomaton · 2 years

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As a foreigner who was not that well versed on US politics and only looking at events from the outside, I certainly assumed at the time that the Iraq war was a case of "trading blood for oil", but in retrospective, it certainly couldn't have been that. But the US genuinely believing they were going to be regarded as liberators is chilling and reminds me of the rhetoric that Putin is using to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

I think it is deeply different because there is ample evidence that Putin does not believe what he is saying, but Bush did both of them had other reasons to want to invade (Saddam tried to kill Bush Senior and Bush Junior was not a fan) but that pales in comparison to repeatedly saying Ukraine is not a country and has always been a part of Russia and also the Soviet Union was abolished illegally (???).

And the slogan to oppose the war once it started was "Bush Lied, <Iraqis / Children / Soldiers/ Etc.> Died." And it's true, he did lie, and that's bad, that is some dirty, shady shit. The administration lied with all the talk of Saddam having WMDs and "we can't let the smoking gun come in the form of a mushroom cloud." And the people they were lying to were themselves, and then repeating the lies to us. They didn't manufacture a false-flag attack from Saddam that would have given us a clear casus belli to invade. They held up an aluminum tube and said "See? See? This is a nuclear aluminum tube! Oh God, can't you see how dangerous he is?"

the Bush administration was making justifications and rationalizations for the thing they wanted to do anyway, which was "liberate Iraq and make it a democracy and make everything great forever and prove neoconservatism is the best." Putin is making justifications and rationalizations for what he wanted to do anyway, which is "conquer Ukraine."

And while the US lied to us and lied to itself about justifications for getting into the war, very importantly it did not lie about what it was doing. That's super important and how we know they sincerely wanted to make Iraq a stable democracy and not just loot it -- they were constantly talking about how they were going to do that, and constantly making excuses for why they failed, and constantly trying it again and again! We knew there was a campaign to "win hearts and minds!" We saw them doing it! It didn't work, but they tried! They actually cared about the result of their actions.

We know Putin doesn't care about the results of his actions or the stated goal he has because he is lying about everything he does. The Bush administration did not stage fake elections where they said 99% of the Iraqi populace voted that our invasion was cool and good. The Bush administration didn't lie about where it was getting soldiers from and it didn't lie about what its military had accomplished. They didn't install a military junta. They didn't create some kind of vassal state. They actually tried to the best of their very limited ability to let Iraq make an independent Westernized democracy. Putin is lying about everything. He's not exaggerating, he's not spinning, he's not biased, the things he says about the campaign in Ukraine do not intersect reality in any meaningful way. His army isn't capable of doing what he says it's doing, they do not hold the territory he says they hold, they have not accomplished the goals he says they have, and if you ask to check his statements he arrests or kills you.

That's really the biggest factor. Bush and company were sincere about their motives because they were willing to show everyone what they were doing to carry out those goals. They did not think they needed to hide the process of democratizing Iraq and "winning hearts and minds!" Putin is hiding everything because he knows his words have nothing to do with his actions and doesn't care.

The Iraq invasion wasn't good. It wasn't even defensible. It was a horrible horrible horrible fucking idea that was obviously going to lead to death and ruin and instability on a huge scale and I was one of the people back then saying so, although not that loudly or usefully because I was in high school. But it's not the same thing as the invasion of Ukraine and you can't blame the invasion of Ukraine on the Iraq war, because Putin has done none of the things that let the Bush administration get away with the Iraq war. Putin did this because he thought he could do it fast enough to get away with it. The thing he learned from was the annexation of Crimea, not the Iraq war, and he didn't learn how to do that from the Iraq war either.

None of the assumptions he had going into this war were things he could have learned from the Iraq war, fuck, he was counting on his forces securing all of Ukraine in way less time than it took the vastly superior US military to secure all of Iraq, he was completely unprepared for the concept of any resistance once he was there, he did not appear to have paid attention to the Iraq war at all!

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nicklloydnow · 3 years

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Moloch of Totalitarianism (Levashovo Memorial Cemetery, Saint Petersburg, Russia)

“'As you lie there,' said O'Brien, 'you have often wondered you have even asked me -- why the Ministry of Love should expend so much time and trouble on you. And when you were free you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question. You could grasp the mechanics of the Society you lived in, but not its underlying motives. Do you remember writing in your diary, "I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. You have read the book, Goldstein's book, or parts of it, at least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?' 'You have read it?' said Winston. 'I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it. No book is produced individually, as you know.' 'Is it true, what it says?' 'A description, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge -- a gradual spread of enlightenment -- ultimately a proletarian rebellion -- the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that that was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletarians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know it already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent insurrection, you must abandon them. There is no way in which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is forever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.' He came closer to the bed. 'Forever!' he repeated. 'And now let us get back to the question of "how" and "why". You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak,' he added as Winston remained silent. Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew in advance what O'Brien would say: that the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore-'

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said.

'You should know better than to say a thing like that.

’He pulled the lever back and continued:

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'”

Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer.

"You are thinking," he said, "that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigor of the organism. Do you die when you cut your finger-nails?"

He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and down again, one hand in his pocket.

"We are the priests of power," he said. "God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan 'Freedom is Slavery." Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone-free-the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body-but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter external reality, as you would call it-is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute."'

For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.

"But how can you control matter?" he burst out. "You don't even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death-"

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of the hand. "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn-by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation-anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature."

"But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them yet."

"Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world."

"But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny- helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited."

"Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How-could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness."

"But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals-mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of."

"Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing."

"But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach forever."

"What are the stars?" said O'Brien indifferently. "They are bits of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.

"Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:

"For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometers away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?"

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind-surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false. Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.

"I told you, Winston," he said, "that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing; in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,"' he added in a different tone. "The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always-do not forget this, Winston-always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever."

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O'Brien went on:

"And remember that it is forever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands-all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live forever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon- and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken-up, contemptible-and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it."

Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. "You can't!" he said weakly.

"What do you mean by that remark, Winston?"

"You could not create such a world as you have just described. It is a dream. It is impossible."

"Why?"

"It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure."

"Why not?"

"It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide."

"Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The Party is immortal."

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helplessness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.

"I don't know-I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you."

"We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside- irrelevant."'

"I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces."

"Do you see any evidence that this is happening? Or any reason why it should?"

"No. I believe it. I know that you will fail. There is something in the universe-I don't know, some spirit, some principle-that you will never overcome."

"Do you believe in God, Winston?" "No." "Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?" "I don't know. The spirit of Man." "And do you consider yourself a man?"

"Yes."

"If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are nonexistent."”

#orwell #George Orwell #1984 #power #party #moloch #totalitarianism #fascisim #nazism #communism

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kissestothesky · 4 years

Text

Physical compensation

This is my first time writing fanfiction ('cause writing on Wattpad at twelve years old doesn't count, right?) so take it easy on me, pls. Also, wanted to point out that English is not my first language, you are most likely going to find thousands of grammar errors here, I apologize.

Pairing: Taehyung x OC

Summary: Taehyung and Florence spend some quality time together before meeting Jimin and Gabin.

Word Count: 1696

Warnings: Smut, oral sex, voyeurism, intercourse, creampie, aftercare

OoOo (오넷) - Closer

⏮⏸⏭

Florence checked her reflection on the mirror before opening the door to Taehyung. He smiled at her. It had been a week since they last saw each other and her heart raced at the sight of him as if that was their first date.

“Hey, you!” Tae said, wrapped in Len's arms. "I didn't expect such an effusive greeting" he continued, bending down a little to press his lips against hers.

"It's. Been. A. Week. Since. I. Last. Saw. You" Len explained, giving him a peck after each word. “Besides, I'm going to meet your best friend and his girlfriend for the first time. I’m freaking out, ok? Anxiety does weird things to me”.

"Waaa, Len-ah! You should have told me before that getting nervous would make you throw yourself into my arms and kiss me so much" He said speaking in satoori.

Florence punched him on the arm jokingly and pulled him into the apartment, not even letting him take off his shoes. Determined to spend some quality time alone, Taehyung had arranged to meet Jimin and his girlfriend Gabin an hour later. There was no denying that he had missed her. Much. But his trip to Japan with the members had been great, even ARMY commented on how happy he looked lately.

“How did it go?” Florence asked, guiding him toward the small sofa.

"Great. But I already told you that." Taehyung replied, taking off his shoes. "How was your presentation?"

"Well... Amazingly well actually" She said straightening her back. Strands of her long, wavy brown hair fell forward as she placed her arms between her crossed legs to lean toward him."Sunbae is delighted with my idea. Any day now, my banner and my - well our - slogan will be everywhere, I feel it."

"It's all yours," Taehyung muttered, gently tucking Len's hair behind her ear. "The slogan, I mean"

The girl smiled. They hadn't been together for too long, yet she felt closer to Taehyung than she had ever felt with any of her ex-boyfriends. They hadn't even said "I love you" to each other. Florence could have told him, she had fallen in love with him quickly and passionately —like all artists do or at least that’s what her mother would have told her — but she had decided to wait until she was completely sure and that it was not a temporary infatuation.

It wasn’t.

Taehyun looked at her as she looped one leg over his, sitting on his lap. "What a relief" she said slowly. "I couldn't have paid you the royalties".

"Lucky you," Tae replied, dragging his hands from her knees to her waist. "However, I wouldn’t object some physical compensation"

“I see”

Their lips met, Len moved her lips slowly against Taehyung's, in the same rhythm as her hips rocked back and forth brushing their crotches.

“Bed” She murmured, getting up from his lap. Her room was only separated from the living room / kitchen by a small white bookcase that wanted to give the feeling of separation between those spaces.

Len went to the desk in front of the bed, and left her phone there playing some soft and sensual music. Taehyung came closer, as she set it up. Resting his lips on the girl's neck and the tip of his nose brushing her earlobe.

"So pretty," he said running his hands from her shoulders to her collarbones and down, between her breasts. "So fucking sexy" he continued as he cupped them on his big hands.

Florence took a step to the side, exposing the two of them in front of the mirror that covered the small space between the corner of the room and the window. It hadn't taken her long to realize that Taehyung liked being able to see what he was doing to her, almost as if he was watching an erotic movie. And she couldn't lie, being able to see made her even more horny.

"What do we have here" his voice deep and slow as he unfastened the buttons of her crop top and lower the cups of her bra, leaving her breasts exposed beautifully held by the piece of clothing.

“Whatever you want, I can make it happen” Taehyung sang completely covering the sweet and slow voice of the singer.

His hands roamed her breasts, stroking them, squeezing them, playing with her nipples. Florence closed her eyes, feeling the tips of his fingers. His lips found her neck again, leaving little wet kisses. Her skin got goose bump, feeling his lips, his breath... She moaned and pulled her arms back, combing his now long black hair.

“You wanted physical compensation, didn't you?” Florence said before guiding Taehyung's head towards her and bringing their lips together.

He pulled away for a moment, fixing his big dark eyes on her. "I thought that was what I was getting right now" he said with a smirk.

Florence smirked back at him and pushed herself away from his body. "Not at all," she replied, making Taehyung take a few steps back, "Just games". The back of his knees hit the bed and Taehyung flopped down on it.

“Just games?”

She leaned down and brought their lips together again. "Yup, just games."

Florence knelt in front of him, slowly. His bulge was visible through his black pants. Her mouth watered, it had been too long and Len longed to be able to please Taehyung with her mouth. It wasn't often that he let her take the lead, which she didn't care too much about, but when her mouth was on him... she just loved having total control over him, make him feel good.

Her hands stroked from his knees to the inside of his thighs, almost touching his bulge. Taehyung gasped, following the girl's hands with his gaze. Her index finger ran up his crotch agonizingly slow. He moved looking for more contact.

"Stay still, Taehyung-ah" Len said moving her hand away. Their eyes met and she lowered her head, still with her eyes on him, and kissed him over his pants. "I'll have to stop if you move".

He didn't say anything, but threw his head back, trying to control himself. Florence's hands soon found the button on his pants and she pulled them off along with his underwear. His cock broke free, hitting his toned abdomen to lend towards her right after at the height of her mouth.

"What do we have here" She repeated what he had said to her earlier. “I've really missed your cock”

He grabbed a pillow from the bed to put under her knees so she could be comfortable. Once in a good position, Florence reached up into his lap and started to jack him off.

“Fuck, Len”

Her mouth started to leave a little kiss trail on the inner part of Taehyung's thighs, getting closer and closer to his balls. When she was close enough she put one in her mouth, sucking and playing with it with her tongue. He pushed her hair out of her face so he could see what she was doing to him and groaned. Then she switched to the other one, still stroking his cock.

“God, babe. You feel so fucking good!”

His eyes half closed, his mouth parted, the blush on his cheeks. Florence could feel how turned on he was, yet he was able to speak too much still. Starting at the root, Len worked her way up to the sensitive underside of his cock, right under the head. She gave that area some licks and then teased him a bit with some long slow licks up and down the shaft.

“Babe… Oh, babe please”

"Don't wanna play?" Florence said with her lips resting on the head of his cock. "You just want me to fuck you with my mouth?"

"Please"

She put her lips around the whole head of his cock and started to gently suck him off. She had always liked giving blowjobs, she felt so powerful and desirable. Taehyung seemed to particularly like them and that motivated her even more. He groaned loudly and began to move his hips up and down as Florence lowered her mouth over his cock, getting it deep inside her mouth.

“I want to fuck you, oh… babe”

Len pulled his length out of her mouth and gave him one last lick looking into his eyes. Taehyung picked her up by her armpits and laid her on the bed. They kissed sloppily, before he kisses down her body to the waistband of her denim skirt.

He pulled her skirt up to her waist and pulled her tights off along with her thong.

“So pretty” He murmured, stroking her warm and wet pussy with his fingers. “Did sucking me off get you this horny, love? I would slide right in, and I haven't even touched you that much”

“Fuck me then”

Taehyung lowered himself and sucked her clit a couple of times as he fingered her before he positioned himself in front of her entrance.

“How do you want it?”

"Rough. Be rough, Tae. Make me cum"

He slid into her with a push, they both moaned and brought their lips together. Strands of saliva linked them each time their mouths parted to see the point where their bodies met.

"Look how I bury myself inside you" moaned Taehyung "You're so wet".

He kept moving inside her, brushing her sweet spot with the head of his cock every time he slid inside her. Florence moaned and began to move her hips, very close to orgasm.

"I'm going to come, baby" she said against his lips. "Please touch me, make me come".

Taehyung rubbed her clit eagerly, feeling himself closer and closer to his orgasm.

"Come for me, babe. Clench around me".

"Taehyung!" she moaned loudly.

Taehyung hide his head in the crook of her neck as he fell her clench around him. Unable to stop himself, he cum sharply inside her with her still shaking from her own orgasm.

“We should get going" Florence said after a long kiss.

"Yeah" he muttered. "I clean you up"

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chavire · 4 years

Photo

We answered a few questions about the band during quarantine, for the spanish fanzine Face The Lie. As we were pretty excited about the questions and thought it could have some interest, here it is in its english version.

(photo : Manon Monjaret)

Hi guys! How are you doing? Before starting maybe we should put ourselves in a situation. Who are Chaviré? In which other bands do you play or have you played? What motivates you to tour, make songs?

Hi, thank you for giving us some space to talk about CHAVIRÉ and what we put behind this band. As a presentation, we could say that the band started at the end of 2013 and that we played our first shows at the end of the next year, in 2014. We previously played — or still play — in A.S.T.R.O., COLD HEART DAYS, DÉDALE, GHOST FRIENDS, HOMESICK and WATERTANK to name some of our other bands. We started to play together as some friends, convinced by our love for the same songs and the desire to bind them with some politics we felt connected with. Six years later, it is still those three main reasons that hold us together, writing songs and play them live.

Last summer you released your new album, titled Maintenant Que Les Flammes Sont Partout ("now that flames are everywhere"). What did you wanted to express with this title? And what can you tell us about this album?

We tried to give this record a title that would be the testimony of the era that surrounded its creation. We think it's pretty clear for everyone who looked at the world around us that we couldn't possibly spend three months without seeing the people from a country rising up against their leaders and taking the streets against them. We wanted to dedicate the album to those involved in the increase of those flames all around the world and sing for their constant multiplication.

The lyrics of this album seem to me a bit more convoluted than those of your previous albums, you have to give them more readings to understand them. Did you wanted to change your way of composing the lyrics or was it an involuntary evolution?

As usual, our lyrics are very influenced by the books and authors that go with the writing process. You are right saying that maybe it is a bit different from the previous records. We always said that the lyrics were very influenced by some texts and that we stole a lot to put it in our songs. This time it's still the case but we tried to give some more space to poetry and theater. As time goes by, we were a bit scared to look like those anarchist bands that repeat slogans song after song... We are glad to hear that you noticed this change of things, it is obvious to say that there is politics everywhere but it is better to show it, by using an unexpected extract of a anthropologic book or some lines from a poem. For the first time with this record, we tried to quote most of the references so maybe it will give some ideas and things to dig in.

What is the story or background behind "Alice, 1977"?

Radio Alice is an Italian radio from the end of the 1970s located in Bologna. It's closely linked with the italian autonomous movement from the same era and more precisely the A/Traverso collective. The quotation «Le pouvoir n'est pas seulement là où se prennent des décisions horribles, mais partout où le discours enlève le corps, la rage, le hurlement, le geste de vivre» comes directly from an A/Traverso leaflet. Overall, the song was written in opposition with some of the quirks of the communities that surround us, where it is more valuable to look radical, rather than actively trying to change the world. At some point in the italian movement, there was this turning point where it didn't make sense for some of them to claim their worker identity, their women identity, mostly because all of these categories were those of the power, of this world, and these communities wanted to split up with this world and its categories.

With “Alice, 1977”, the idea was to put this era to the attention of people who perhaps don't know it, allowing them to find some inspiration in it. Most of the questions we're passing through are obviously not new, and it was in our opinion a political sequence where these questions found some interesting treatment.

What does CHAVIRÉ mean?

It could be translated in english as “capsized”, it refers to the moment right after a boat has overturned. We won't lie, this name is at first the result of a joke, more or less.

One of the things that surprised me in a good way when I first knew about you was that you didn't have Facebook, but instead you have a Tumblr page with, in addition to information about the band, a lot of political texts. Do you just don’t care about Facebook and those networks? Why did you chose Tumblr?

We “chose” to make a Tumblr page at first because it seemed to be the easiest thing to put something a bit more “personal” than just a Bandcamp page. Moreover we were so unable to manage a website by ourselves, and none of our close friends seemed able to build one that we could manage easily... In fact, the way we decided to be visible on the Internet has been very determined by our poor capacities and the fact that we decided, since the beginning of the band, that we preferred to make us visible only when we had something to say rather than just be here to be here — it is pointless to try to tackle professional rock bands in this game, doesn't it? And yet, we recently created an instagram account... We also wanted to upset some diehards from the other side!

What do you think of the term emocore? For you, when does a group cross the hardcore barrier to enter emocore? Is it a matter of lyrics, sound, attitude,...?

Well, it's just a subgenre doesn't it? The barrier is just crossed when the one who makes the poster decides to call a band this way. It has been historically a way to gather bands that were playing at the same time from the same area (for the Revolution Summer it basically works like this), but at some point, it is a way to play punk music.

It was said about you that you take music too seriously, belittling those who play only for having a good time without sending a message. Don't you conceive how someone can do it or is it simply not your thing? Do you have friend bands like that?

Well, if music obviously contains a game aspect — who would deny it? —, we would rather play it with smart people. It's not about any kind of content or attitude, it is mostly about having the feeling that we share more with some bands than some chords or shirts. We are still sorry for those who felt judged by us, we couldn't fill the lack of interest they seem to have for themselves, and at some point we still can't understand why they needed our approval so much.

Do you conceive a hardcore scene without politicizing? And a DIY without a political background?

We have to be careful with this sentence that repeats to anyone who would listen that “personal is political”: the recent history proved us that it led us to believe that we just had to buy at organic stores and not to say swear words to become a potential ally for an ongoing revolution, to simplify. But music contains this interesting idea that it can't be undone from its whole production process: its material production obviously (from gear to electricity), but mostly because its production is tied in a network (people who play, who release, who book to make it easy), under technical and aesthetically pleasing considerations (how do we want to sound? do we play well enough? does the interpretation fit to the idea?). At some point, the choices and the answers to those questions imply to get you into some positions that translate political views about the world. Depending on how they fit with others, it can create friendships and even “scenes”. In order to answer your initial question, we could say that obviously we do conceive a scene without politicizing (but it is even more than that, we'd rather say “with views about the world that are radically different from ours”), the question consequently becomes “do we have something to share together then?” and it is immediately easier to answer.

In Maintenant Que Les Flammes Sont Partout you included a song about May 68, something that lately interests me a lot. How influential is this and the situationist movement today?

There is a very tenuous link between the uprising of May 68 in French universities and the Situationist International, as you may already know it. It is hard to fully understand why, but a part of this relation seems a bit forgotten today in the official history, one of the main reason is to be found in the fact that Situationists refused to be represented as leaders, as opposed to some figures at this time. Fortunately, Kristin Ross relates this incomplete story in her fascinating book May '68 and Its Afterlives, talking about how this political sequence has been erased and captured by the freshly reshaped neoliberalism to present it as a liberal and individual revolution. As we already said for the autonomous movement that took place in Italy during the second part of the '70s, these moments are very inspiring and rich in lessons. They refer to insurrectionary times when the power could really be overthrown.

In the case of the Situationist International, it's important to understand that since the late '50s the group theorized and wrote about the reconfigurations of the post-war capitalism, and the advent of the consumer society which really arose at this moment. It was a moment of radical artistic avant-gardes: Antonin Artaud just died ten years before, the surrealist and lettrist movements were still recent experiences for the situationists, the Beat Generation was experiencing overseas and this artistic emulation gave them paths to explore and to renew the forms of art without separating it from the revolutionary horizon.

With these months that have passed since the appearance of the Mouvement des gilets jaunes, what balance do you make of it?

We lived something that could be considered as the most unsettling political event of the decade or even more, with the appearance of this gilets jaunes movement last year. Still today, it is hard to gauge the political and existential impact created by the outbreak of these yellow vests on some roundabouts in the November dawn. We're not overplaying it by saying that they helped to re-draw the lines of the political division, in that they opposed the revolutionary action to the revolutionary posture and bliss, and proved us that revolution was a question of desire instead of a rational one. For a part, they were people that never took part in radical politics as we can understand it, that never attended a demonstration or organized a strike, etc. In some areas they created what could be considered as communes, existing as a community in a world — this unbearable fiction — that had always made them existing as individuals.

It seems that in the whole world people are waking up and taking back the streets seriously. Either in Chile, Venezuela, or in France itself. Have we reached the maximum pressure point for people to explode?

We took so long answering this interview that in the meantime Lebanon went up in flames too, and while most of these countries were facing some major representation crisis with the whole institutional politics, a virus sent us back in our respective homes as separated individuals. We're insisting on the concept of “individual” because it's fundamental to understand that this category is a pretty recent one that has emerged with the modern definition of “society”. It's very clear now that both the “individual” and the “society” have emerged in order to defeat communities that were an ungovernable model for the powers, or at least less easily governable in that they were indivisible entities. We have to consider the return of this hypothesis after two hundred years of capitalism, the need of community (this is basically what communism is all about) comes back to the point, by every means, and the people go out, fight the police, and take the streets.

I read that in your first concerts you distributed sheets with the lyrics and explanations. Do you keep doing it? What was the reason, make clear parts that were open to various interpretations, expand information on the subject or try to make people really listen to what you have to say?

We distributed our lyrics for quite a long time, but to be honest we haven't done it for a while. This move was influenced by some bands before us, mostly from this first french emo wave with band that used to do so. The idea was to put the lyrics right in front of the audience, as something we could claimed but also as a starting point to talk about. One of the reason that led us to stop was also the idea that there are other ways to “talk”: gesture, music and intensity that can become languages when we start to take them seriously and make a good use of it, they can convey things that words sometimes cannot.

Do you read / do fanzines? What importance do you give them in the hardcore / anarchist scene? Lately I have heard more than one person saying that it isn’t coherent to continue to make fanzines on paper and contributing to the environmental impact having such powerful networks which reach as many people as the Internet. What do you think of this?

Some of us used to write fanzines back in the days, and we also have to recognize that after have been serious fanzine-readers we're less curious these days. Because of it, we are tempted to say that there are less issues than a few years ago, which is probably wrong and mostly influenced by the fact that we don't really dig in. We talked above of this idea of “network”, and fanzines do participate from this idea that autonomy should be earned everywhere it is possible. At some point, we could say that there is victory everytime a fanzine can bypass the traditional plan established by the music industry.

About the fact that 200 printed zines could possibly contribute to the environmental impact, well... maybe some people should try to think about how “green” their online datas are, in fact it really is a stupid accusation. Once again it mostly lies on the idea that politics is an affair of separated individuals doing their own parts more or less, which is the one of the lies of the liberalism. We can continue to pee while taking a shower and turning the lights off when leaving a room, it's pointless if we don't take seriously the idea of overthrowing economy and industries.

Related to the previous question, what is your opinion of the Internet? Does it make us better or worse?

Do you really think that four guys who have a hell of a job creating a Tumblr page could have any useful opinion on this internet thing?

A few days ago a friend told me that if one day I go to France I must go to Nantes, because it is the best city in the state. What happens in Nantes to have earned such fame? Is it really that cool? Because one of the things that you talk about on your album Interstices is about the feeling of apathy generated by living in a gentrified and clonic city, isn't it? What good things happen in your city?

With Interstices, we wanted to summarize what creates this unified feeling from one metropolis to another, from almost every gentrified city center. This is the fascinating thing with the metropolis paradox: on this captured-by-control-dispositives territory, there are at the same time desertion acts and zones that try to re-think autonomy and rooms of manoeuvre. What makes Nantes pretty specific at some point is this relation between the city center and its countryside. In fact we can't fully understand what makes this city special without talking of the well-known ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes right? Everybody knows it for the resistance against the airport that was supposed to be built there (and that will never be) but the thing is that the ZAD was, and still is, a territory fighting for its material autonomy, which tries to bind metropolitan resistances with the experience of building a form-of-life from the community: an attempt to build a commune for real.

Three of us have lived in Nantes for almost ten years now. Is the city really hype these days? It is hard to tell in our cases, we're living there and cannot really take this stance to measure the impact from elsewhere. Let's just say that this is a city with many secret stories, artistic and political ones, and since we're living in Nantes we felt connected to some of them and tried to take part of. I guess this is what holds us here. In concrete terms, we could talk about La Dérive which is a bar and a community canteen we're involved in. It's a place where you can drink, eat, attend a book presentation or a movie or just come to play chess with a friend. There are places like Les Ateliers de Bitche where you can attend nice shows, and La Commune de Dalby Football Club to play football on Sunday afternoon with some friends.

In your Tumblr you include a very interesting text about the pros and cons of the free price. It attracts me a lot, because besides allowing anyone to feel excluded based on their economy, it empowers you in the process and makes you abandon the role of passive consumer, but I share the opinion that if it becomes institutionalized and becomes something systematic it can lose the critical and anti-capitalist background. Have you set or have you considered putting your albums and merch at free price?

When we first read this text about donation in Maximum Cuvette (a french zine from Grenoble), we thought it was smart enough to practically ask the question of the economy inside a microcosm that tends to get rid of it, to examine the institutional process always contained in economy and at the same time how this “name your price” thing could bypass the rigidity always contained in standard economy. You're absolutely right and the text says so, at some point donations can feed the illusion that we got rid of the economy which is obviously a lie, it is just an attempt to manage with its rigidity but under a re-institutionalized form: this is never enough and it is important to be aware that donations are just a way to make the best of the situation.

Since we started CHAVIRÉ, our merch as always been on donation. It was at first the easiest way to manage with selling merch to us. We talk about it together from time to time, we sometimes evoke the idea to sell merch at a flexible-fixed-price, like “a record costs 10€, if you really can't afford it, well, less is fine too”. For now we keep it this way, also because it became a kind of a habit, but to be honest this donation thing is so ritualized around us that it often works as a disguised fixed price, and does not really empowers anyone at the merch table because almost everyone there can afford what you sale. To be honest, we're more and more lax with our whole merch stuff and barely see the point in having five different shirt models and buttons and patches and so on mostly because we're not really into it anymore...

Many times I feel frustrated in some way by trying to explain the operation and ethics of DIY to people who are not involved in it. How would you explain this?

Well, we would point at the fact that the ethics behind the whole DIY thing in punk community is mostly based on the increase of a practical autonomy. This is mostly about what DIY should be all about, the growth of a network that could exist by itself, for itself without depending on any power or institution. This idea of a proper existence is important, because it implies some requirements with ourselves trying to build something that is not just an “alternative”, a counter-model based on a mirror effect from the cultural institutions, because this just reinforces the legitimacy of it, putting us back to the margins. When this is said, we didn't say much, but let's keep in mind that the operation led by DIY is one of the many attempts where autonomy is experienced (we talked about the ZAD and the late '70s Italy already, there are many examples). These autonomous experiences can be sometimes hard to translate with words, most of the time they are understood when they're lived, when they overtake the words to become perceptible, incarnate. In fact, the words can't describe the mixed feelings of joy, mutual requirement, friendship of these autonomous attempts that hold people together, how can it be explained as something else than the promise of a fast-track life?

You have made some very cool ripoffs of Orchid, Embrace, Portraits Of Past, ... for stickers and merch. Do you have any more in mind?

Let's say we have already done way too much of them for just one band. So everyone knows that we have great tastes and that we're not too bad at Photoshop (s/o to our best ripoff that you did not mentioned which was a Chanel one), but it has to stop now!

In addition your flyers, covers, "logos" like the (A) made of flowers are very worked up and for me they have very good taste. Do you take care of this or do you entrust it to friends? Which graphic artists inspire you the most?

For sure this whole artwork thing is something that matters to us, we wouldn't deny it. But it is pretty clear that it has evolved a lot since the moment we started the band from things more “traditional” — not to say expected, such as the combo of typewriter font and linocut drawings which is the perfect example — to more personal artwork: since the last record, the Atelier McClane duo took care of the whole graphic thing to tie the images with the sound and the words. Some of us have an interest in visual arts and we have friends who consider that any revolutionary act will need to find its own form, which implies to think about its graphic one. Let's just mention the work of the Atelier McClane obviously but the Capital Taboulé collective from Rennes too, the Super Terrain collective from Nantes, Bonjour Grisaille and the Atelier Summercity from Brest, Marine Le Thellec from Marseille to talk about our friends and favourite ones. We couldn't end this list without also mentioning Hugues Pzzl who made the artwork of Interstices and our split with BASTOS, and who contributed a lot to renew the visual forms of the punk scene in France — a renewal that was so much needed.

Which situations, books, movies, people, actions, bands have inspired you the most, both to do things with Chaviré and to do things on your personal life?

This is always a touchy question, fortunately we left as much references as possible in the whole interview that could be used as a part of the answer. And obviously we'll be happy to develop if anyone wants to know more, our mailbox is always open!

What are you most keen on to lately? What do you like to do in your free time? What frees you from everyday boredom?

Since we are, as a large part of the world population, currently cloistered home while answering this interview, we have plenty of this free time you're talking about. Here in France, it's been a month of quarantine and we mostly spent it separated from each other but with friends and families. We tried to take advantage of the situation writing new songs, sharing playlists and movie recommendations, keeping in touch together. We don't know when the zine will be out but this moment is very decisive and we have to be really attentive, in order to act as soon as it will be possible. A few weeks ago, an absolutely incredible text entitled “Monologue du virus” has been published in the French media Lundi Matin and has since been translated in various languages (https://lundi.am/What-the-virus-said). Recently we also discovered the Leftove.rs archives (https://leftove.rs) which is an incredible database about autonomy with many leaflets, zines and books from pretty much everywhere around the world.

Future plans?

Improving dad skills.

Doing more muay thai.

Getting degrees.

So far, thank you very much for the patience of answering all this! Anything else to add? See you, hugs!

Thanks again for sending this absolutely fascinating interview, which is hands down one of the most interesting we've ever answered to. Hope we've been precise enough, feel free to write us if it's not the case in these troubled times.

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abdulrehman9-blog · 5 years

Text

Accountability

Opposition Jailed in Pakistan: Across-the-Board Accountability or Military-Backed Victimization? (By Abdul Rehman, a freelance writer from Pakistan)

Pakistan’s ex-prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif has recently been arrested, or re-arrested to be precise, in a new graft case from the jail where he was serving a jail term. Although the NAB references against him were being framed since the beginning of General Musharraf era, the drive picked up after the famous Panama Leaks. He was first removed from the office of Prime Minister and then was convicted and arrested before the general elections along with her daughter. But after the suspension of that verdict, he was soon convicted and arrested in Al-Azizia case, whose jail term he is still going through with his bail plea denied and appeal pended. [1]

His dauther Maryam Nawaz Sharif was arrested by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in early August on account of graft charges. This was not the first time she has faced detention in the recent past. Earlier on, she was convicted by an accountability court before the general elections last year and was arrested on her arrival in Pakistan, but was released later after suspension of the verdict by Islamabad High Court. [2]

His brother, Mian Shehbaz Sharif, had also been facing all this through the years, but in the recent legal drive he has been parallelly targeted and was arrested in an alleged Ashiana Housing Scheme case, where he is still on bail with the case going on. This volly of the legal cases during the current regime of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is not limited to the Sharif family and has also involved NAB cases against most of the active leaders of the major opposition parties, namely Mian's Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PMLN) and Benazir's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). [3]

Of course the NAB Chairman, along with the much-telecasted spokesmen of the ruling party, call all this unbiased accountability or across-the-board accountability and boast taking the elite people to task, but is it really so, specifically if this campaign of cases starts giving visible one-sided look? [4]

All the major opposition parties do not agree to this claim and have a general consensus that they are being targeted. Mian Nawaz Sharif has repeatedly said that it is victimization in the guise of accountability, which is of course not acceptable. His brother Mian Shehbaz Sharif, who has been more cautious in his word-selection earlier, now explains this recent campaign as emerging from an "unholy alliance" between the ruling PTI and NAB who seem to be working in tandem. [5-6]

Mr Bilawal Bhutto Zardari from PPP, the only and young son of late Benazir, is more expressive and openly declares that the institution of NAB was formulated by Musharraf regime with the actual purpose of "political engineering" or the crooked manipulation of the political field [by the powerful military establishment]. Attributing all this recent campaign of cases to behind-the-scene military masters also, he and Maryam Nawaz are very vocal in calling PM Imran Khan as a "selected PM" or a mere "puppet" very often. Though not being that blunt, most opposition leaders have similar sentiments about the current accountability. [7-8]

Unfortunately, the ground realities are also visibly undermining the credibility of the on-going accountability process. The legal drive is very intense against both the major families of Pakistan politics, namely Sharif family & Benazir family, with a barrage of cases against them, which does give a reflection of Musharraf's dictatorial era. Along with the two families, many of their active, supportive or vocal affiliates are also taking the brunt of these cases and have been jailed recently, causing others to recede to more cautious stances. [9-10]

On the other hand, NAB's treatment of those affiliated with ruling PTI is much different and most of case files against them lie closed. Critical cases against the party itself, including those with allegations of party receiving illegal foreign funding and the party maintaining secret bank accounts, have effectively been pushed under-the-carpet. Case against PM Imran Khan himself for the alleged misuse of official helicopter has also been put to silence. Proofs of undisclosed properties owned by Imran's sister Aleema Khan surfaced and were accepted by her too, but she was allowed to go free, while Maryam Nawaz was sentenced in a similar but lighter case. Similarly, probes against some other major PTI players like Pervez Khattak lie conveniently suspended. [11-15]

Apparantly, all this recent accountability drive against Sharif family was started by surfacing of Panama Leaks, which contained the names of Nawaz's sons as owners of offshore companies. But irony in Panama case is that it contained names of above 400 Pakistanis, yet none of them has even been prosecuted against other than Nawaz Sharif. Some of them, including Zulfi Bukhari and Aleem Khan as an example, are among the close affiliates of Imran Khan himself, but are seemingly enjoying complete immunity from the on-going accountability drive. [16-17]

Other irritating fact about this accountability is its alleged use for horse-trading or switching loyalties, as often complained by opposition. Apparantly, some of the cases are whehemently pursued against some known figures, but are put to pending status if they join, or agree to join, the "favourite" PTI. Information Minster Fidous Aashiq Awan from PPP was facing such charges, which were dropped around the time she joined PTI. More visible is the Nandipur Power Plant case filed against some of the PPP leaders some times back, where the recent verdict absolved the main accused Mr Babar Awan who is now in PTI, while indicted his other fellows. [18-20]

Although all this accountability game is not without the involvement of the courts, yet the major courts have also been showing concern on NABs partial attitude. Last year Supreme Court admonished NAB for having double-standards and being politicized in its treatment of cases, where some are pursued forcefully and others are grossly neglected. In another comment couple of years back Supreme Court had blamed NAB for destroying the country [by its policies]. [21-23]

In some of the cases included in this accountability drive, higher courts have openly criticized NAB for targeting the family of ex-PM. In an earlier Hudaibia Mills reference, Supreme Court did conclude last year that its only motive was to pressurize [blackmail] Sharif family. In another Saaf Paani case against Shehbaz Sharif, Lahore High Court also observed this year that it was selectively made by NAB with mala fide intentions of targeting him. [24-25]

Another disturbing reality in both of the Nawaz's convictions by the Accountability Court verdicts is that no corruption against him could be established and the punishment was on "assets beyond means", a charge which is apparantly preposterous in the case of a long-time wealthy industrialist. Due to this, the verdicts have been duly condemned from within the legal fraternity too, including a Supreme Court judge seeing disparity in accountability decisions. Also important to note is that Interpol, when asked for the repatriation of Nawaz's sons to Pakistan this year, declared the proofs in the case to be "insufficient", and refused to act on them. [26-28]

Involvement of powerful military establishment in these cases has also been often alleged. During July last year, Justice Shaukat Siddiqui of Islamabad High Court openly gave details of him being pressurized by ISI officials for keeping Nawaz Sharif in the jail and the Chief Justice being pressurized to make favourable benches for related cases. This was denied by military spokesman, but recently another case of judiciary manipulation happened when judges on the the major opposition cases got abruptly transferred, while one was allegedly close to the end of case. Additionally, Maryam herself recently released a video evidence showing the accountability court judge who convicted Nawaz Sharif, apparantly admitting that he had been blackmailed [by intelligence] to give guilty verdict against the accused. [29-31]

Another troubling fact of ex-military officials placed at the key posts in NAB has also been highlighted time and again, giving more evidence of the military's dominent role in the accountability process. One of the earlier Chairmen of NAB, who was also a close affiliate of Musharraf, openly admitted that Musharraf used to manipulate the accountability cases being investigated one way or other, as per his [or military's] desires. [32-34]

The alleged hidden coordination between the military-backed ruling PTI and NAB is even verified by some of the statements of their own dignitaries too. Chairman NAB, in a May 2019 interview to an eminent journalist Javed Chaudhry, himself admitted of not arresting government affiliates [during accountability] in order to avoid instability. After an uproar about it from opposition, NAB sposkesman later denied it. But he is not the only one; recently Senior Minister Fawad Chaudhry has also boastingly admitted that it is PTI, and not NAB, who is in control of this accountability drive. [35-36]

A rather disturbing irony of this accountability drive is its contrast with the on-ground data. Global watchdog Transparency International, in its report on the three previous regimes, has concluded that Musharraf's time was the worst in terms of corruption and Nawaz's time was the best, and also that corruption normally drops when PMLN comes to power. But here, in total disregard to all this, maximum thrust of accountability is focused on the same PMLN, while the Musharraf's close affiliates are not only immune to this, but many are enjoying the government positions too. [37-38]

Thus, considering all these hidden painful facts behind the much-touted slogans of unbiased accountability, it can easily be seen that all these are mere beautiful coats on the face of a largely one-sided and bitter persecution or silencing campaign against the political rivals. And thusforth, the government unleashing such campaign against its opponents can only and justifiably be categorized as a military-backed dictatorship, whatever democratic on-the-face name it may possibly be claiming. [39-41]

[1] “Nawaz’ bail plea in Al-Azizia case rejected”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/436706-al-azizia-case-verdict-on-nawaz-bail-plea-today

[2] “Nawaz, Maryam, Capt Safdar released after suspension of Avenfield sentence by IHC”, https://tribune.com.pk/story/1807039/1-ihc-commences-hearing-sharifs-suspension-plea/

[3] “Shahbaz granted bail in Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing, Ramzan Sugar Mills cases”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1463815

[4] “NAB believes in across-the-board accountability”, https://dailytimes.com.pk/166639/nab-believes-across-board-accountability/

[5] “Nawaz slams ‘political victimisation’ disguised as accountability”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1438060

[6] “’NAB and PTI are in an unholy alliance,' Shahbaz says in parliament”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1439586

[7] “NAB was established for political engineering, says Bilawal after interrogation”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/446484-ppp-workers-throng-nab-headquarters-as-bilawal-appears-before-anti-graft-watchdog

[8] “Bilawal calls Imran Khan puppet prime minister, vows to resist govt 'pressure'”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/396828-bilawal-calls-imran-puppet-prime-minister-vows-to-resist-govt-pressure

[9] “Corruption charges against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_charges_against_Benazir_Bhutto_and_Asif_Ali_Zardari

[10] “Former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi arrested in LNG case”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/500227-former-pm-shahid-khaqan-abbasi-may-be-arrested

[11] “PTI foreign funding case: ECP scrutiny panel again fails to make progress”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/416984-pti-foreign-funding-case-ecp-scrutiny-panel-again-fails-to-make-progress

[12] “PTI operating 18 undeclared bank accounts: SBP report”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1456646

[13] “PPP leaders to NAB: where is helicopter case against PM?”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/465178-ppp-leaders-to-nab-where-is-helicopter-case-against-pm

[14] “Aleema Khan given 'Mother of NRO' award by PM Imran: Marriyum Aurangzeb”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/429885-aleema-khan-given-mother-of-nro-award-by-pm-imran-marriyum-aurangzeb

[15] “NAB summons Khattak in land scam probe”, https://thefrontierpost.com/nab-summons-khattak-land-scam-probe/

[16] “Over 400 Pakistanis to be named and shamed in new Panama Papers list”, https://www.geo.tv/latest/104698-Over-400-Pakistanis-to-be-named-and-shamed-in-new-Panama-Papers-list

[17] ” PTI's Aleem Khan, Imran's friend Zulfi Bukhari named in second set of Panama leaks”, http://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/335891-PTIs-Aleem-Khan-Imrans-friend-Zulfi-Bukhari-nam

[18] “PPP's Firdous Ashiq Awan joins PTI”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1336332

[19] “NAB drops probe into 14 mega corruption cases”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/222905-NAB-drops-probe-into-14-mega-corruption-cases

[20] “PTI’s Babar Awan acquitted, Raja not, in Nandipur case”, https://dailytimes.com.pk/418766/ptis-babar-awan-acquitted-raja-not-in-nandipur-case/

[21] “Why NAB getting politicised, asks SC”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/384691-why-nab-getting-politicised-asks-sc

[22] “Supreme Court bench slams NAB for its 'double standards'”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1440858/supreme-court-bench-slams-nab-for-its-double-standards

[23] “NAB has destroyed Pakistan, turned nation into a laughing stock: SC”, https://tribune.com.pk/story/1588700/1-nab-destroyed-pakistan-turned-nation-laughing-stock-sc/

[24] “SC’s detailed decision: Hudaibiya seemed a tool to pressurise Sharifs”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/264970-sc-s-detailed-decision-hudaibiya-seemed-a-tool-to-pressurise-sharifs

[25] “Saaf Pani scam: NAB selectively proceeded against two accused”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/429590-saaf-pani-scam-nab-selectively-proceeded-against-two-accused

[26] “No ‘bright evidence’ of corruption found against Nawaz: AC”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/338572-no-bright-evidence-of-corruption-found-against-nawaz-ac

[27] “Strict liability not applied universally, argues Justice Isa”, https://tribune.com.pk/story/1734643/1-strict-liability-not-applied-universally-argues-justice-isa/

[28] “Interpol declines to arrest Hassan Nawaz”, https://nation.com.pk/13-May-2019/interpol-declines-to-arrest-hassan-nawaz

[29] “Pakistan's ISI dictating judiciary, doesn't want Nawaz out of jail, alleges High Court judge”, https://zeenews.india.com/world/pakistans-isi-dictating-judiciary-doesnt-want-nawaz-out-of-jail-alleges-high-court-judge-2126573.html

[30] "ANF court judge stops hearing midway in Rana Sanaullah case after being repatriated to LHC", https://www.dawn.com/news/1502171

[31] “Maryam releases alleged video of Al-Azizia case judge claiming he was 'blackmailed'”, https://www.geo.tv/latest/242386-maryam-releases-alleged-video-of-al-azizia-case-judge-claiming-nawazs-innocence

[32] "Army officers still calling the shots in NAB", https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/113321-army-officers-still-calling-the-shots-in-nab

[33] “Ex-khakis rule the roost in NAB”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/102569-Ex-khakis-rule-the-roost-in-NAB

[34] "Musharraf stopped probes, says ex-chief of NAB", https://www.dawn.com/news/851664

[35] “PML-N demands probe into NAB chief tape leaks”, https://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=25_05_2019_001_001

[36] “Fawad credits PTI for accountability; NAB seeks action against minister”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1489544

[37] “Present PML-N govt least corrupt: TI”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/14371-present-pml-n-govt-least-corrupt-ti

[38] “‘Most corrupt govt of last 19 years excluded from PTI govt’s probe’”, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/505942-most-corrupt-govt-of-last-19-years-excluded-from-pti-govt-s-probe

[39] “Imran Khan's first year in office: U-turns and oppression”, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/imran-khan-year-office-turns-oppression-190726091846779.html

[40] “Pakistan Imprisons Opposition To Silence Dissent”, https://gandhara.rferl.org/a/pakistan-imprisons-opposition-to-silence-dissent/30120923.html

[41] "Glimpse of the face of a fascist regime", https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/opinion/glimpse-of-the-actual-face-of-a-fascist-regime/

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ecgraphics-blog · 2 years

Photo

So usually, I would post a vacation that I feel like one or more of you may be interested in. Today, I wanted to introduce/reintroduce myself, cause I don’t think I actually did that. My name is Emerson Adrian Cotton. I prefer to go by Adrian but I answer to both. I’m 41 years old and I’ve lived in the area all my life. I have a beautiful wife and two amazing children (boy 15 and a girl 10). I like to write and I have two (soon to be three books) available on Amazon that are about professional wrestling. I feel like I’m a creative person and I love to use those use those talents to…create. The reason I got into the travel business was to be honest, money. But the more I’ve studied, I’ve found that it’s actually quite fun. I love trying to help people and I feel like sending people on a vacation is a really big help to people. I chose to name my company, Motivational Vacations, because I don’t just want to send people on vacations, so they can forget their problems, I want them to get away and get in touch with themselves so they can solve their problems. That’s why my slogan is, “Sometimes you have to lost to find yourself.” I have some big ideas in mind and I hope to be sharing those ideas with you all soon. Also, if you own a business, I'd like to talk sometime because I have some ideas, I'd like to share with you that could possibly benefit both of us. So, if you or someone you know is in need of some vacation help, send me a message and get in touch with me and let's talk. Also, while I do enjoy what I am doing, I can’t book everyone’s travel by myself. So if you or someone you know wants to get into the travel business, send me a message and get in touch with me today. No lie, since I’ve started doing this, I’ve learned a lot and I’d love to have a conversation with you about it. Finally, if you do want to go on vacation, but you don’t want or need my help, that’s no problem either. All I ask is that you sign up and register today so that you can use my website, emersoncotton.inteletravel.com instead of one of those other travel sites. Thank you for your time and I wish you all happy and safe travels. Let’s Go Baby!!! (at Worldwide) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfkmbs2u9tl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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valentinahart · 7 years

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3 March 2018

EXCLUSIVE: Milk writer talks agents closeting LGBTI actors, 'bullshit' excuses producers say and the changing landscape of Hollywood

Dustin Lance Black revealed agents and managers were the most resistant to casting their clients in LGBTI roles.

Surprisingly, it was the gay agents and managers who were the most resistant.

His advice to agents and managers? ‘Open your eyes,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do that to your talent. It doesn’t take an act of bravery to let your actor be who they are.’

In an exclusive interview with Gay Star News, Dustin Lance Black revealed how far Hollywood’s come but just how far is left to go.

The Milk writer also wants to see an openly LGBTI actor or actress green light a major motion picture of television series ‘based on their name alone.’

Read the full interview:

What motivated you to start talk about agents deliberately closeting actors?

I’ve been working on gay projects since the late 90s. Ones where we had a budget of some sort and we were casting and hiring and it’s changed a great deal in that time. I think when I was casting my early student stuff, if you’re going for anyone who’s LGBTI, the actors basically felt like they had to write-off the rest of their career.

That was a huge concern they had. Or be the ‘gay actor’ and it wasn’t even really discussed, it was just understood. It felt brave and it did feel cool but there was an understanding that there was probably a sacrifice there. Then as I moved into projects at major studios with big budgets in things like Milk, I would say one of the things me and Gus Van Sant, Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks all wanted to do was to cast as many openly – in that show – gay and lesbian and bisexual characters as possible, in that show.

That was the first time I hit a real wall.

The wall was not at the studio level – Focus Features were perfectly happy having gay actors either the gay or straight roles – it didn’t factor as anything to them. It was the managers and agents who when we went to them and said ‘Who do you have who is willing to be in this with this in its subject matter and be open about who they are?’

We didn’t want closeted actors to be in a movie about an openly gay icon and hero. It’s also just often helpful to have people who have experienced what it is to be LGBT playing these roles. It might bring something to it that’s unexpected and might deepen it. They also have to be great actors. So we went to great agents, great managers and asked who they had who’s out and is willing to be openly gay. The conversations seemed absurd, because at the time I knew that they had clients who I knew were gay who I thought were openly gay and it was a flat denial that any of their clients were openly gay. And that’s when I first saw where the wall was.

It didn’t feel like it was at the studio or network level, it certainly wasn’t at the directorial level. It was with the managers and agents.

So you start to ask why. What is that all about?

It quickly reveals itself and you just follow the money. These are agents and managers who have probably put years into developing young actors or actresses – time, energy, money – and they just don’t want anything to hurt that actor’s chances or their ability to recoup or make money.

At the time, they thought being gay was a real disadvantage to getting cast, to being seen as marketable and to make money. We got the most resistance from gay agents and managers. There was a reason to this and that was a real internal homophobia there, which I can empathise with. Most of these agents and managers were of a certain generation that had experienced a Hollywood where it really was a detriment to be out or outed and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.

It’s certainly not the courageous thing to do but they had made a decision to keep their gay clients closeted – acting out of their own fears, their own insecurities and their own pain. We actually found a little more of an open attitude from the straight agents and managers.

What we then discovered beyond that was when we went to the theatre agents, we didn’t get much resistance at all. There, we were able to start finding openly gay actors and actresses who would come and audition. And then we were thankfully able to cast a good many. It just ended up being a rather surprising cast.

Most of the homophobes and straight people in Milk were played by gay people and most of the gay people were played by straight people, but not all. So that was where it was then [in 2007/8]. Then there’s been a sea change since then and some of that is just again, following the money. Have actors and actresses been able to come out and continue to make money and continue to be profitable? Have they continued to dispel the misconception that being out is going to hurt the bottom line or hurt their chances of a career? And then you just have to look at the careers of people like Matt Bomer and Neil Patrick-Harris and Colton Haynes.

I’ve known Colton [Haynes] for a long time, even when he wasn’t out. And I was very, very proud of him when he did come out. And I know he’s struggled with that decision. But that is the question: It is that heartthrob leading man or woman who can continue not just gay roles, but straight roles that they’re suited for and be out. Have we reached that moment? I think we’re very close if not already there.

What will be, to me, a real achievement is when we have an openly gay actor or actress who based on their name alone gets a major motion picture of television series greenlit. We’re not quite there yet.

Why are agents doing this?

I think it’s all business. I never met an actor or actress who wasn’t out who was enjoying being in the closet. It’s not a happy place. It was not a comfortable place.

I’ve known many, almost all of them have come out now, and it’s soul-crushing. Every day you stay in the closet, every day you have to, if not lie, avoid the question and it’s like a little micro-injury to your soul and we’re talking about how and who you love. Everyday you deny that, you’re crushing yourself.

And by the way, for actors, that part of your soul is critical. That is what people are tuning in to see. They want a window into that soul. So if you’re being told daily to crush it, how well are you going to perform? How good is your performance going to be?

I saw many closeted actors improve once they came out because all of a sudden, they weren’t smashing the thing that was a part of what we liked seeing the most.

In certain roles, we want to experience love through these actor’s abilities to bring these characters to life. And I do think, not always, but often, you can tell there’s a lid on something. It didn’t feel genuine. But then other actors can transcend it and have it be believable but I do think it hurt performance.

I also think there’s a certain self-confidence that comes with being comfortable with who you are and being able to share that publicly in ways you choose that creates charisma.

If you’re having to closet and lie and you’re dealing with shame, well I don’t think that’s going to read very charismatic. That’s a lot to carry.

[...]

What role do LGBTI audiences have in embracing LGBTI actors?

First and foremost, LGBTI people have to support LGBTI art. That doesn’t always happen.

Even the films like Brokeback Mountain, I am Michael and King Cobra didn’t make much money. I’m not sure how many people liked them – I didn’t actually see them. But we have to get out there and watch gay cinema and tune into LGBTI films and participate in LGBTI art. I feel that there’s an ebb and flow to that. Certainly around the time that Brokeback Mountain came out and Milk, there was huge interest. And it wasn’t just LGBTI people showing up. It was straight people as well.

And you’ve seen a wave of that in Hollywood with trans stories and characters. I worry right now that we’re in a bit of an ebb in that perhaps it’s a new generation or perhaps folks are exhausted and don’t want anything.

We don’t like having our lives brought before the public for examination. Trump rolling back protections for trans people. Sometimes we just want to turn away and not deal with it.

So I think with the LGBTI community, more than any other minority, visibility is the key to civil rights success.

We’re not always immediately identifiable. Many are – some of my favorite queens are very identifiable, but not everyone is. We have to have visibility – our lives have to have visibility in order for us to continue to make progress. That’s only going to continue to happen if LGBTI people and our allies show up to our art exhibitions, our television shows and our movies and participate in that way.

We don’t have a box office if we don’t have people watching movies. You just have to look at the most extreme example of the AIDS crisis, where invisibility equals death was one of the slogans. We have to keep showing up for our LGBTI shows, movies and art because then there’ll be more roles available for LGBTI people.

Do you feel a personal pressure to create these types of movies?

[...]

Not everything I do has gay people or gay storylines in it. Those things have been very successful over the past seven years. Before that, I was writing about Mormon stuff and I’m doing that again right now. My responsibility to do LGBTI stories is more about my responsibility as an artist. Which is to try and bring my perspective to the screen as an LGBTI person.

I hope it’s helpful. If it’s any good, it should be helpful.

What about when casting for When We Rise?

I’ve never stopped to see what proportion we ended up with on When We Rise with LGBTI actors. It’s pretty high. Here’s how I do it. I have a conversation with the casting director and say I would like to find as many LGBTI actors and actresses [as] you can. And then audition them.

But I don’t want you to only audition gay people for gay roles. Or only straight people for straight roles. Have at it. It then comes out in the wash. I do want to cast as many LGBTI people as I can in what I do to give them that shot. It’s just a personal preference of mine. But they have to be good. And they have to be the best.

I’m not going to cast someone who’s not as good, just because they’re LGBTI.

[...]

Eventually, do you believe the issue of closeting actors will resolve itself?

We don’t have a choice. Here’s the real thing. Social media is going to change Hollywood. So social media creates a record. So what used to happen is it’s not like these actors and actresses who were going to become closeted gay stars have been living these lives without relationships. These loveless lives. No, they were going on dates and experimenting and doing all of that sort of stuff. Well, they’re still doing all of that today.

These talented young actors and actresses have Instagram and Facebook and they’re coming out. You can’t put someone back in the closet now. Hollywood used to be able to put someone back in the closet. You have a very talented young actor and you’re going to sign them. You find out that they’re going to gay bars and dated someone of the same gender – you would just closet them and say ‘Prove it.’ There’s no pictures and there’s no record.

But now, there are pictures of everything. There’s a record of everything.

Frankly, this generation is not allowing themselves to not put themselves back in the closet. There’s a strength, a resolve, a lack of shame – mostly because they never knew it. I really admire that in this generation of actors at the moment. I give them props for having that strength to deny their agents and managers.

It’s like when I talk about that older generation of agents and managers and I don’t approve of what they do – I actually feel sorry for them. They come from a generation that was taught daily the shame of who they are. To feel shame. There is that self loathing that goes in there, even people who were able to come out still lived with that.

You have a generation of kids now who from the day they were born, you have Queer As Folk and Will & Grace out on TV. And by the time of their adolescence, they have openly gay stars and they’re not growing up with the same shame. So you try to tell them they can’t be who they are.

They’re going to push back in a way that someone in my generation or earlier doesn’t want to.

[...]

You previously said agents need to ‘grow a spine’ and let LGBTI actors come out, do you still think that?

The world has changed. In the 10 years since I’ve been out there in the world casting, a lot of agency managers have retired and new ones have come up.

We’ve had plenty of evidence that openly LGBTI actors and actresses can make a lot of money. And it’s not the problem that they thought it was. I would probably change it from ‘Have a spine’ – I would now say to any agent suppressing gay actors, ‘open your eyes.’

It’s not 1995 anymore, it’s not 2005 anymore, it’s not even 2015 anymore. Open your eyes, you don’t have to do that to your talent. It doesn’t take an act of bravery to let your actor be who they are.

#interview #gsn #dlb #hw bs

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thelawyerthatwaspromised · 7 years

Text

Tyrion’s Season 7 Arc - Wrong about Almost Everything

And how it affects the dynamic between Jon and Daenerys and the audience’s perception of political!Jon.

Tyrion Lannister has been built up by the show to be a character that survives on his wits and can out-think everyone in the room. His track record in Season 7 was....not good.

There are those that believe Tyrion is being set up for a betrayal in favor of the Lannisters. I believe this is incorrect as my theory is that Tyrion, who was previously projected as an intelligent and perceptive character, is having the rug ripped out from under him in terms of Daenerys’ belief (and the audience’s belief) in him as a wise character in order to drive Daenerys away from what he “believes” in.

Since Tyrion was united with Daenerys, he’s presented an idealized version of what we HOPE Daenerys would turn out like. He counsels caution. He tries to keep innocents alive. He believes his wits can prevent disasters.

Because Tyrion is associated with Daenerys, we also assume that Daenerys believes in this “new world”. She repeats some of his better lines. She knows he’s an articulate man or a “charmer” as Davos put it.

“Articulate men are right just as often as imbeciles.”

~ Tyrion, 5x09

(Wow did Davos have Tyrion pegged IMMEDIATELY upon just reading the scroll sent for Jon).

I believe it was intentional that Davos and Tyrion didn’t really interact much as Davos is significantly better at reading people and Davos’ expositions would reveal too much of Tyrion’s deficiencies in understanding Jon’s intentions.

So Tyrion was wrong almost all of the time. But for the first half of the season, Tyrion and Dany are still the Dream Team in the eyes of the audience. Yet we are shown bits and pieces that make us doubt Tyrion.

PHASE 1: TYRION’S WAR PLANS OPENLY DOUBTED AND THEN FAILING

“That’s very nice to hear [...] but Margaery was loved and now what’s left of her? Just ash.”

~ Olenna, 7x02

We have the first scene with Olenna where she dismisses the “Not here to be Queen of the Ashes” slogan by Daenerys.

Fans love Olenna...but Olenna doesn’t care about the game at this point. She wants revenge and destruction of House Lannister. We have Daenerys giving Olenna a look - yet I believe it’s also a look for Tyrion of “this better work!”

Daenerys agreed to this plan. She relied on Tyrion’s wits and he convinced her this was the way to win the Iron Throne. The plan failed when Euron attacked the Iron Fleet and Jaime abandoned Casterly Rock to take Highgarden.

Daenerys publicly shames Tyrion on the beach at Dragonstone, like any great leader would. The audience is left thinking Tyrion is a bad battle strategist.

PHASE 2: TYRION IS REPEATEDLY SHOWN MISREADING OTHER CHARACTERS

Tyrion has previously been very good at anticipating character’s moves by identifying their intentions. But Season 7 saw his track record flipped spectacularly when it comes to this skill.

Bronn

Tyrion makes an assumption that Bronn is all prepared to switch sides and that he arranged Tyrion to meet with Jaime at his own risk. Tyrion is HALF right. There was some risk for Bronn, but Bronn is also exactly right when he says he delivered two traitors in Tyrion and Varys right to Cersei’s front door. Tyrion didn’t really consider this angle. Bronn has found a way to out maneuver Tyrion in the event that Cersei decides that she will simply kill them.

I also will note the look Varys gives when Tyrion mentions switching “loyalties”.

After Bronn gives his little speech about how he can remain self serving, Varys gives a smirk and Tyrion realizes Bronn is in a much better position than he first thought. Tyrion essentially concedes, saying “it’s good to see you again”. It’s a nice fun moment for the audience and an example of Tyrion misreading a situation.

It’s a small moment...but again Tyrion is bested.

Cersei

Tyrion found out after the fact that Jon Snow had bent the knee. He had just lectured Jon about learning how to lie. I think that’s important...but that’s for another day.

Tyrion has to tell Cersei he didn’t know Jon Snow bent the knee. So now Tyrion isn’t even plugged into what’s happening in his own camp. The audience says “wow, he’s doing terribly at his job!”

He’s also completely misreading Cersei and falling into her trap.

Even before Tyrion walks into the room with Jaime, he assumes Cersei will murder him. No, Cersei is laying a trap for him and murdering her little brother would serve absolutely no purpose in defeating her enemies. It would only guarantee her destruction. But Tyrion thinks Cersei only wants to kill him and that he’s significantly more clever than she is. Tyrion’s biases against Cersei's intellect ultimately are what cause Cersei’s ruse to be believed.

He has no great answer for her when she asks why he supports Daenerys.

“She’ll make the world a better place”

"You said she’d burn the Red Keep”

Tyrion didn’t anticipate a debate and clearly hasn’t really thought a lot about WHY he should be following Daenerys.

Then Tyrion thinks he makes some great insightful observation.

He tells Cersei he knows she’s pregnant. To Tyrion, it’s the key to getting the ceasefire. For Cersei, it’s simply the last piece to the puzzle for her betrayal.

Jon Snow

It’s my belief that Tyrion significantly misread Jon Snow.

“There’s more to Foreign Invaders and Northern Fools than meets the eye.”

“[Jon Snow] is in love with you.”

So why did Daenerys not believe him?

“Jon Snow’s not in love with me.”

She hasn’t ever really dismissed that someone is in love with her before like this. Not so outright. But I actually believe Daenerys has read Jon better than Tyrion. The irony is that he has observed Daenerys longingly staring at Jon. He basically convinces her to act on HER feelings while also completely misreading Jon and his ultimate goals. He’s basically shifted his influence directly to Jon.

That’s why we got this look:

Tyrion sees his influence slipping away. To a man he underestimated and fully believed was acting with 100% honesty.

So why does Tyrion’s arc in Season 7 matter?

Tyrion proclaims he’s an excellent judge of character in 7x02 and we chuckle along because we believe him. He’s leading the audience along into believing that Jon Snow is a simple Northern Fool who can be convinced to join their side by simple methods.

His initial misread of Jon is extremely important. He thinks Jon will join their cause because he hates Cersei. Jon doesn’t like Cersei, but he does not care about the Iron Throne or the people fighting over it.

Jon shocks them when he essentially tells them he doesn’t care about any of their politics.

So Tyrion tries to figure out what Jon wants:

He concludes it’s only Dragonglass because that’s what Jon tells him.

BUT JON WENT TO DRAGONSTONE FOR DANY’S ARMY AND HER DRAGONS

“But if the Army of the Dead makes it past the Wall, do we have enough men to fight them?”

~ Davos, 7x02

This is the key to the entire Jon arc...and Tyrion misses it. He thinks Jon just wants to mine worthless rocks and then he’ll be good to go to join Daenerys. Jon certainly needs the Dragonglass...but that is NOT his priority.

“Give him something by giving him nothing.”

Tyrion is, again, half right. She’s giving Jon “nothing” in the grand scheme of things. He needs more than the Dragonglass. He has all the glass he needs by 7x05 when he’s ready to leave Dragonstone yet he knows it’s still a futile fight:

So if the Dragonglass didn’t satisfy him...what would? Daenerys’ entire army. Tyrion didn’t see this coming. He now sees that Jon’s goals are not his goals and are not Daenerys’ goals.

How did this deal end up working out for Jon? He just added:

Dragonglass

Dothraki horde

Unsullied army

2 dragons

To his fight for the North. Sansa’s last update puts his forces at 20,000 fighting men. That is absolutely the maximum he could contribute to Daenerys and that’s assuming he loses NOTHING to the Night King.

If everything went exactly as planned, there is no way Daenerys comes back South for Cersei with anything close to her original force when she departs for the North.

He just negotiated the most lopsided political deal in GoT history because he was willing to bed her and tell her she’s special.

Tyrion told Daenerys not to leave to rescue Jon and the Magnificent 7 North of the Wall because he can see how Jon is completely altering their plans and how he is using it to his advantage.

So Tyrion’s progression with Jon Snow goes from:

Happily inviting him and extolling his virtues to:

Actually helping (unknowingly) Jon start to manipulate Daenerys to:

Being angry that Jon didn’t lie to Cersei and Jon bending the knee and not following his plan (note also that Jon wrote to WF saying he bent the knee, and Tyrion didn’t know???) to:

Outright suspicion of Jon’s motives and his impact on Daenerys’ campaign for the Throne.

Tyrion is becoming an outsider again.

Tyrion was given a great set of cards to work with at the beginning of Season 7 and squandered it by not understanding his enemies or “allies”.

Tyrion didn’t magically become stupid though.

He simply made mistakes in anticipating how other characters like Jon, most specifically, have changed since he last saw them.

Tyrion’s track record will undermine him when he tries to communicate with Daenerys that he doesn’t believe Jon Snow necessarily has her best intentions in mind.

Daenerys could completely alienate herself from Tyrion because Tyrion has been wrong so many times recently, yet on THIS, his observation of what Jon is gaining and Daenerys is losing, he will be EXACTLY RIGHT.

The audience will be confused. If Tyrion is wrong so many times, how can he be right about the most honorable guy everz!?

Further, this has led soooo many Daenerys fans to agree with her extreme measures which have systematically been at odds with what Tyrion has cautioned almost every single time.

Viewers think that Tyrion is wrong about stuff, Daenerys has seen some limited success using dragons, therefore Tyrion’s beliefs in preserving life must also be disbelieved. It will also make them disbelieve Tyrion’s conclusions about Jon.

The only other person firmly in Daenerys camp is also suspicious of Jon but will also be disregarded because he must simply be “jealous”:

The show is creating suspicion around every other character that surrounds Daenerys, as far as motives go, except for one:

The humble, Northern Fool, who knows nothing. They’ve created an environment where the smarter characters will be completely disbelieved when they identify Jon’s plans. It will also create an even more extreme reaction from Daenerys once some form of fracture develops between herself and Jon and she will eventually find out that her betrayal for love already happened: Jon loves and serves the North and his entire odyssey to Dragonstone was built around him doing whatever necessary to bring her army and her dragons North.

In order to make that story line happen, characters like Tyrion had to be completely deconstructed in terms of their credibility to shield the one character from doubt that Daenerys and the audience should have suspected all along.

#jonsa #jon x sansa #political jon #political jon meta #political jon theory

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dalyunministry · 4 years

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Min. Olusola Babarinde Nigeria

💎

Praise the Lord. It is time for study. Thanks be to God and the leadership of this platform for the grace given me to share with us weekly. I pray God will keep us growing through his words in Jesus name.

Let us pray: Father we thank you today for another grace to eat to eat from you. We plead that you will help us to capture your mind as you reveal it to us today in Jesus name.

May we not disappoint you Lord. Thank you for answering us. In Jesus name. Amen

Text: Romans 8:35,38,39. What am about to share, is peculiar to our standing in the last days. I pray we all shall be blessed in Jesus name. It is end time. Surely things will be getting harder and harder on our faith.

Because Satan knows he has a very short time. It's end time, complacency will be costly.

This is because just as rain started suddenly when the ark had been locked by God and people were busy playing, partying, marrying, eating, shopping etc, so will Jesus appear suddenly in heaven...

Many of us need to be weaned from terrible habits of:

1. Opening Bible when we like

2. Praying when we like

3. Going to church when we like

(This number 3 started recently for some Christians due to covid but for some it had been their perpetual habit). But it is not even the aspect of spiritual laziness or lethargy that today's teaching is focusing, It is something else. But even if we don't proceed, and I stop here, am sure many of us had gained something..Haven't we?. Surely we have.

The topic as announced to us is: Won't you forsake Jesus?

It is coming like a question to us but a very serious question that is calling for deep sober reflection. Please think and think deep. The alarming rate at which professing believers are forsaking the faith even in the countries that God had once used to spread the gospel globally is calling for we the remnants that are standing to still ask ourselves this pertinent question and sincerely answer it.

Won't you forsake Jesus?. That is the topic.

Some people who are conversant with media will know that a lot of allegations are been laid against ministers of God these days. So surprising even against men of God that I as a person respect.. Sorry to say but pls let me mention one. Just for you to know how serious Satan is coming after our noble faith

And he is using Christians to attack not just preachers but Christianity. Who has heard allegation against Dr. D.K Olukoya? (A great denomination leader in Nigeria). Am not hear to say whether what they said about him is true or false. But my point is this, you as a person, won't you forsake Jesus if the media published something about your pastors with verifiable proofs that he really did those things?. Think deep on this.

Many things had been said against that man and other ministers of God, and like I said,

some may be true. while many may not true.

More things will still be said. And may be true or not true. But won't you forsake Christianity when such news come out against your leader or any prominent believer that you know? Don't hastily say yes, think deep

God forbid your leader will not backlide.

But if it happen or if the news is false, what will be your fate as touching faith?

What will happen if you hear that your Pastor impregnates 3 choir members?

Won't join the company of people whose slogan is; there is no pastor anywhere..

No purity anywhere

No holiness anywhere

No godliness anywhere

No need of going to church

Just have faith in God, u can serve him alone even in your house.

What if they come with proofs that your pastor used church money for his personal affairs?

Some people, even just because the children of their upright pastors are not upright, they have started compromising, how much more if it is now that there pastor that compromise? Such will abandon Jesus..

Are you solid in Christ?

Are your convictions rooted in him or in man of God?

It will be pathetic if the man you put faith in fail or people lie against him..

Your Christianity can become history. God forbid. With many Muslims apologetics, who are giving wrong interpretation to the Holy Bible, won't you be persuaded to forsake this noble faith (Christianity)? Don't just say NO. Many said NO both in UK and US but they are now praying 5 times in the mosque. So pathetic. The present day Turkey was the Ephesus of old. It was predominantly Christian country but today you can hardly see the traces of Christianity in that country. Won't you also pick offence from Jesus and abandoned him at the slightest chance or opportunity?

Romans 8:35,38,39. (KJV); 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Can we all hear from one man of deep and great conviction in the finished work and love of Jesus?. From the text above, the man Paul the Apostle even put us inside his own personal conviction..He said, what shall separate us. He did not say what shall separate me. He spoke for all true believers in Christ not just for himself only. With his deep knowledge of what true salvation is, he knew and opined ahead even on our behalf that nothing should, could, would separate us from the love of Christ. For a true believer, even fake message even when delivered by angels can't move him or her out of the love of Christ.

News about failure of a minister or ministers should not destroy your conviction in Jesus is you are a normal Christian. Only a tomato believer forsake faith when he hears the news of the misbehaviour of another believer....A time is coming and very near. When the hatred of the world for the church will be vehemently revealed and exercise through the media...At that time, what will happen to your faith? Even presently, this terrible media who don't pick news of pastors healing mad men, raising the dead, engaging in charity, but get good time to tell the world about a pastor (he may not even be pastor), who raped 7 years old girl..

Or pastor that bought jet. The same pastor that bought jet because of the great expansion of his work that will not make it easy for him go and que at airport and still meet up with his meeting in another country where he will still leave to go to another conference in another country. Hence for easy mobility, bought jet for his God given assignment.

Meanwhile, that same pastor sent relief materials to the poor in many villages, but the media are blind to that. No time for good news about the church but they are busy with spreading of bad news, with the intention of painting the church black before the world.

Haven't you because of news published by media about pastors buying this and that stopped paying tithes and offering in the church? Haven't online pastors poisoned your mind against giving to God's servant?. "They are enriching themselves with your heard earned money they said" and since then you stopped giving to God. What a pathetic backslider you are!

Let me tell you, if you give faithfully to God in Church with pure motive, the reward you would have received from God will not allow you to be questioning how what you gave was spent. Because you would be busy counting your blessing, so you won't have time to be investigating the way what you gave was spent.

This message is preparing us for the time of intense persecution of the Church and ministers of God through by the media, so that when that time comes for what is in us to be tested by challenges, we won't fail Jesus...

Listen to this as I close, anybody who discuss the sin and error of the church on Facebook or other media is not sent by God but been used by Satan to fault the Church and Jesus..

Except if it is in a very closed group which is only for Christians.

Never join such. Don't encourage their evils.

Even any pastor preaching on air ( YouTube, radio, Facebook, television etc) against other pastors is not doing God's work but possessed by Satan to destroy the faith of people in both Church and Christ. Avoid them..

On air we are to preach repentance and salvation to sinners..

While in conferences or church programmes, we address the inadequacies of the church.

By the time you speak ill of the church before the world, why should the world repent and join the already sick and terrible church that you have painted with very dark oil? If we paint and present church to be sinful, how will the world see a need for repentance? Instead, they will justify their own sinfulness with the error of the church we have given to them.

The message here is that, you don't give the message meant for the growth and perfection of those who have accepted Jesus already (Church) to sinners who are in the world. To such people, we preach repentance and faith in Christ Jesus. Such message will be okay for them. But if we dabble into talking about the error of the church before the world, we will be ignorantly sending men father away from the cross. And God won't take it lightly with us. Finally, the admonition is this: don't forsake the Lord because of news of compromise of ministers or churches either true or untrue. Hold the forth. The Lord will keep us safe in Him.

1. Lord keep me rooted deeply in you no matter what happen to your church and in your church. Thanks for joining the study. God bless us. Till next week. Shalom.

Closing prayer..Lord we thank you for the grace to study your word for our edification. We pray that you will keep us strong in you no matter how Satan tries to dissuade us. We beg you to keep us faithful to the end. Help our heart to resist the false news, and also help us to react positively to the backsliding of believers, so that Satan will not use such news to make shipwreck of our faith. Thank you for answering our prayers. In Jesus mighty name we pray...Amen..

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sanctferum · 7 years

Text

Dangan Ronpa V3 Chapter 2 Trial Part 2!

Last time, Maki may or may not have lied, but if she’s telling the truth, Kaito has a potential motive for having done it again. Potentially.

Monokuma & Cubs theater: Voting time edition! The Monokubs start to freak out over having apparently missed the second part of the trial. (They haven’t.)

...Are the Monokubs making fun of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? Is that what this is?

A little after midnight, Ryoma visited Maki at her research lab. He wanted to see the motive video...perhaps, since he had Maki’s video, he assumed she would have his? Maki didn’t look at her video, as she said back when the videos were first distributed, so we don’t know if that’s true.

Did someone know who had whose videos? Kokichi perhaps, but did he have time to watch the motive videos before returning to the Entomology Lab? But no one else would know, so it has to be...

So Ryoma went to Maki’s room, since she had told him it was unlocked. That’s where the pad would have been. Ryoma offered to trade motive videos, but Maki didn’t want to see hers.

Maki didn’t bring it up because she knew if she brought it up, people would suspect her...

Did Kokichi tell Ryoma about the motive video? If so, Maki’s story gains more credibility.

Kokichi confirms it. But he didn’t watch the whole thing - he just checked who had whose video.

Still, we can’t be absolutely sure Maki is telling the truth...even if it’s likely, it’s not certain.

Lie bullet time! Shuichi and Kaito never met last night...but no one but us two know that! Shuichi spins a story, basing it off the truth - him and Kaito did exercise together at one point. And in this story, Shuichi and Kaito heard two people talking. Maki, and someone else. Ryoma.

Everyone ends up buying it. Except Miu. And Kokichi...

When was Ryoma placed in the piranha tank? During night-time, it has to be. But how? I think I know.

Seems people can’t decide when the body was placed. During night-time, or not during night-time? Monokuma interferes at this point, and activates the morphenomananana...the scrum debate setup.

Exact same cutscene for it, too, including showing all the Monokubs in the background...despite the fact that Monokid is dead. You fucked up there Spike Chunsoft.

A corpse could enter the gym at night-time...The blackened moved the body from the pool area to the gym using the window, like I’ve been saying.

They didn’t use the ladder, because it isn’t tall enough. And how would they have replaced it in the gym in between night-time and the show without anyone noticing?

How did the body get placed in the tank without the pane shifting?

“Tell ‘em Shuichi”,the spiritual successor of “Tell ‘em Makoto”

gg Kaito

Where was Ryoma killed? It’s gotta be the stone sink in his lab, right?

Wait, the culprit steered the topic away from the actual murder scene...I can’t remember who got us onto this topic, though...was it Kirumi?

Where did Ryoma drown? Can’t be the pool. Sirens didn’t go off. It’s definitely the sink.

And the handcuffs are proof of that.

Ryoma could’ve used the Shukuchi method to avoid capture. Was he ambushed by the blackened?

Kokichi knows something...again. And isn’t telling us.

The lab is parallel to the gym...if you use the window.

Psyche taxi!

I don’t like this minigame. Also I got a hidden Monokuma through it, somehow?

The blackened used the tennis nety wire...we know it can reach, if it’s 50 feet or less. Kaito told us. Which doesn’t look good for him.

No...it’s the rope! The rope in the puddle!

Last night, the rope was on stage. And the next morning it had been moved backstage.

50 feet between the lab window and gym...50 feet. I know that number. I just don’t know how it factors in yet.

Gonta says it would work if there was another rope...that must be how the tennis net wire factors in.

But how did they carry the body over the ropes? It would have been all the person’s weight, plus Ryoma’s body’s weight.

Miu has an idea! It’s probably nonsensical and lewd.

Hmmm. Miu has a decent idea, but it wouldn’t quite be precise enough. If you handcuffed Ryoma’s body and slid it across the rope via the handcuff, how would it land in the piranha tank?

Kokichi says the culprit put the body in the piranha tank with their own hands. But then he says that it probably isn’t possible. What’s he trying to tell us?

Kaito...what’s up with you? I’m really not sure whether to trust you or not, man...

what could have been used with the rope to move the body between the windows? The inflatable tire thing, perhaps?

What’s the Hangman’s Gambit trying to tell me?

Ropeway?

A vessel for the ropeway...the inflatable tire has to have been it.

So they stood on the inner tube as it crossed the gym via gravity, put the body in the tank without putting themselves into the gym, and left.

But how did they not enter the gym if they put their foot on the windowsill?

The blackened asked the Monokubs if putting their foot on the windowsill was allowed...

Monokuma is less than happy that Monosuke slipped up and admitted a crucial detail...

Monodam tries to calm things down between the Kubs, and Kokichi points out that if the Monokubs were asked such a thing, Shuichi got the method of transportation right after all.

The culprit got rid of the ropeway by dropping one part of it in the gym and the other in Ryoma’s lab, which is where they reeled it up from after depositing the corpse.

While cleaning up, the inner tube fell into the pool and the culprit was unable to retrieve it without breaking the rules.

Almost the perfect crime? A bold and cunning plan? Not Kaito, then, he’s an idiot.

The culprit...Shuichi says he’s got a good idea of who it is.

Someone who was in the gym beforehand...but who?

Someone who went to the gym beforehand. Kirumi, Himiko, and Angie were in the gym. And the person who shifted the debate away from the real murder scene was Kirumi.

Looks like we’re right...

Why would she kill Ryoma? The only thing I can think of is that she fulfills all requests given to her. Could Kokichi have requested a killing to spice things up?

Kirumi spent those five minutes in the gym completing the preparations? Tying the rope to the window and placing the partition in the piranha tank?

The abrasions on the window frames must be from the rope being weighed down by the weight of two bodies.

Wh...for everyone? Is she lying, or?

A duty to serve and protect everyone...and if she surrenders, they won’t forgive her. Is the “they” she’s talking about someone else besides the Ultimates?

Kaito gets it. “everyone”. But that phrase isn’t referring to the Ultimates.

Kokichi is smart. What other “everyone” is it likely to be? Why, whoever is in her motive video, of course.

Kirumi says that “everyone” is referring to the Ultimates. I ain’t buying it.

Everyone’s taking Kirumi’s side. She was so kind and good to everyone. But...to just drop this now would be turning away from the truth...right?

Insufficient proof. It’s true, we don’t have enough proof. Hmmm. What can we use as proof?

Maki or Kaito as suspects...I dunno...I’m mighty suspicious of them, but you too, Kirumi.

YES. Shuichi made a promise to seek the truth. He promised Kaede not to be afraid of the truth anymore. So he can’t back down.

The final clue...it’s the scrap of cloth in the water, right?

It was used to control the inner tube? How?

By using their hands for friction...which means that the person with black gloves is very suspicious, Kirumi Tojo.

I’ll prove it with this Argument Armament!

She’s wearing gloves now...but that’s because there’s spare gloves in her room.

Closing Argument!

We’re starting out with Act 5 of the incident.

And that’s the truth of this case...but why did Ryoma agree to meet with Kirumi alone at night? And why did Kirumi kill someone in the first place?

Kirumi’s pride as a maid makes her take on any request she receives...did someone request that she kill Ryoma, or what?

Voting time!

Everyone voted for Kirumi. Except herself, she voted for Shuichi.

Once again, we got the back route path.

And we ended up being correct. Kirumi was the killer.

Shuichi thinks Kirumi still cares about us...but no one can deny that she just tried to kill us all, so...

The request Kirumi accepted, that lead to all this...was it a request from her motive video?

Kirumi watched the motive video on the Kub Pad she received. Somehow, the Kubs gave her the fight video...her own.

Everyone was supposed to get their own videos, but the Kubs screwed up.

Monokuma pretends that redistributing the videos was what he intended all along. Monosuke is absolutely done with the whole mushy crap between Kubs and other Kubs and his pops. Monodam is silent about that, probably because he plans to push Monosuke into the way of the next execution.

Kirumi received her own video, but why? Bad luck, nothing more.

We’re gonna watch Kirumi’s motive video and something about it is apparently hard to believe...

Kirumi was suddenly summoned by the Prime Minister of Japan one day. Told to serve her country. Told to SAVE her country.

“Make this country great again”, he said, in a clear reference to Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Well OK, probably not in-universe. And then...the prime minister gave his authority away. To Kirumi.

Kirumi is, in all but name, the Prime Minister of Japan. And the most important people in her life...are her fellow countrymen and countrywomen. Every Japanese citizen. And an unfortunate event will soon effect all of Japan...and every man, woman, and child in it.

Kirumi didn’t even remember her role as Prime Minister until watching the video...but she still doesn’t remember what she was supposed to save the country from...

Could the unprecedented crisis facing Japan have anything to do with the Ultimate Hunt?

Kirumi was devoted to everyone in Japan...and weighed the fate of a country with the weight of the fate of 12 fellow students, and found the country needing her more. Even if it meant her classmates would die...

Kokichi thinks they should have let themselves die. If it means everyone in the country dies but you live, it isn’t worth it.

Miu brings up a good point. What does Monokuma plan to do with the rest of humanity?

“I am the ruler of this world. Nothing is beyond my power.” The words “this world” in yellow...hmmmm.

Kirumi killed Ryoma because Ryoma was easy to kill. Someone without a good reason to live....She summoned him to his own lab, revealed the motive video...and Ryoma turned his back on her to clean up the tennis balls in the court...in all likelihood, Ryoma knew he would be killed if he did that by that point. But having no reason to live, and having met someone with such a strong reason to live...he did nothing to stop his own demise.

Ryoma likely made things that easy because he saw his motive video...sapping him of any reason to live. The reason he wanted his motive video was that he had no reason to live...no one important to him to escape to. He figured by watching the video, he might see who Monokuma thought was most important to him, and that person could give him the will to live.

His motive was empty. Nothing. No one. Just Monokuma taunting him about how there was no one in the entire world that was important to him.

No reason to live. But Kirumi was the opposite. She had too many reasons to live. And that’s why she killed.

Gonta and Tenko would both rather sacrifice themselves if it meant Kirumi could keep living...because what value is there in their own lives compared to hers?

Once again, Shuichi revealed the truth and it lead to hopelessness...

But Kaito won’t let people give up. No one’s life is more or less important than another’s. Because life is priceless. You can’t compare two lives to one another like it’s some kind of math problem. Life’s purpose is simple - to be lived.

Kirumi had been desperately hoping to live. Hoping that someone would volunteer to be sacrificed in her place. And if not for Kaito’s speech, it might have worked.

Or maybe, she wanted to try and get everyone to rise up and defend her. While the Exisals eliminated them, she could try to escape.

So says Kokichi, at least. And Kirumi confirms that he was right...

Even after losing, she refuses to give up. What is her plan...?

To save her country, she’d debase herself and give up all pride, do anything, kill anyone...and then she runs for it.

Monokuma is busy laughing at the very concept that she can escape. Everyone urges her to run and get away...but Monokuma is already preparing a punishment.

Ultimate Maid execution: Strand of Agony.

Kirumi finds herself boxed in on both sides by silhouettes representing the people of Japan, with protest signs. A vine falls down, covered in sharp thorns. Kirumi climbs it, willing away the pain of the thorns. Chainsaws start to pop out of the wall. Kirumi climbs, as her clothes and flesh is shredded. She finally reaches the top, to find that the sky she was climbing to was a mere drawing. Then, letting loose a scream of utter frustration, she realizes the vine is breaking, which it does, and she falls to her death.

Meanwhile, Monodam pushes Monosuke into the vine. He loses his glasses in the confusion and blindly searches around for them. As he’s about to find them, Kirumi falls onto his body, destroying him and killing her.

Monotaro and Monophanie are freaking out and vomiting. Monodam claims Monosuke was getting in the way of the Monokubs getting along...just like Monokid.

Nothing will stop Monodam from getting along with his two remaining siblings...not even Monokuma himself. And with that, Monodam issues forth a proclamation...the Monokubs are in charge of the academy now. Monokuma finds it adorable and amusing that Monodam threatened him. He’s so amused he sneezes...and blows up. Hope you got another spare, dude.

Everyone is sick of the killing game. Utterly sick of it. Afraid for themselves. Afraid of themselves. Willing to let themselves stay trapped forever if it means no one else dies. But as long as they’re trapped, they have no way of knowing whether the motive videos are true...

Kokichi is still thinking about how Kirumi regained memories from watching her own video...but everyone’s decided that if their lost memories would make them want to kill, it’s for the best that no one watch the videos.

Maybe, facing the truth won’t be enough...at least, not alone. Maybe running is a valid option too. Didn’t work for Kirumi, but still...

As everyone leaves the shrine of judgement, Gonta says something strange. The stars are beautiful in the sky, but...they aren’t the stars Gonta knows. Wherever this place is located might not be Japan after all.

Everyone starts to leave again, but Kokichi warns that there’s someone in the group who is a liar, an even worse case of compulsive lying than his. Maki.

Ryoma was blackmailing Maki to get the motive video. HMMMMM. Is she really not the Ultimate Child Caregiver, then?

Kokichi seems to think her true identity is something else, all right. But what?

Kokichi has known Maki’s true identity the entire time. Even if he’s lying, the look on Maki’s face confirms that she has deep secrets to hide...and then Maki rushes Kokichi and starts to choke him.

Kill from the shadows? Is she the Ultimate Assassin?

Oh fuck, she is! I wonder if her backstory up till now, with children liking her and being an orphan, was entirely made up?

And thus ends chapter 2, and we get Kirumi’s gloves as a present.

#Dangan Ronpa V3 #Danganronpa V3 #Dangan Ronpa

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goodshitpostedhere · 4 years

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Bernie's Defeat Shows Why Socialism Doesn't Work

Senator Bernie Sanders, berated his staff, forced female staffers to sleep in the same rooms as men, exposed them to sexual harassment, spread hate, allied with terrorists, all to win two elections he lost. The only thing the socialist got out of his failed campaigns was membership in the 1 percent. That and memories of flying around the country and the world on private jets, and his three homes, and bulging bank accounts paid for by an army of gullible idiots who believed in his cause more than he did. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could be locking up the Democrat nomination right now. Instead they wasted $300 million and lost to a crooked senile hack who can barely complete a sentence. The two socialist candidates had raised the most money directly and through PACs, $182 million for Bernie, $151 million for Warren, had the most passionate supporters, and the best media coverage. Why then did these two sprightly septuagenarian socialists lose? Because they’re socialists. Socialists believe in redistributing other people’s things, but fiercely cling to their own. The greediest people in the world are lefties. The two socialist senators were full of big ideas for what to do with other people’s money, but don’t touch their homes and their millions. And don’t redistribute their voters. When other Democrats dropped out and united behind Biden, Bernie and Warren couldn’t make way for each other. Even when Warren dropped out, she refused to endorse Bernie, dooming him to defeat. Bernie and Warren were running on the same basic issues. When Warren refused to endorse Bernie, it was a suicide bombing that not only blew up his campaign, but took down her own platform with it. It wasn’t about the issues. Bernie and Warren were really motivated by greed and ego. Neither Warren nor Bernie could do what all the other candidates in the race did, drop out and endorse somebody else. The socialists stayed in and doomed each other in a political suicide pact because they were too petty and greedy to overcome their differences for a higher cause. That’s how socialism dies. Socialists pretend that they want everyone else to sacrifice for the greater good, but they never do. The Soviet Union’s Communist leadership reacted to Chernobyl by moving radioactive dairy products away from Moscow and to other parts of the country. China’s Communist leadership dealt with the coronavirus by lying to their people and to the rest of the world to maintain their regime’s credibility. The EU has descended into infighting in every crisis, from Muslim mass migrant invasions to the coronavirus, over who has to make the sacrifices. New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted on going to the gym, with an NYPD detail, while others were told to practice social distancing. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot decided to get her hair cut even as the city’s small businesses were being closed down. It’s easy for politicians to tell ordinary people to sacrifice while they live it up Masque of the Red Death style during a plague. But what happens when a trolley problem of two top socialist politicians arrives, and they have to decide which of them makes the sacrifice for the greater good? The answer is deeply revealing. Socialist leaders won’t sacrifice for each other. Not for the sake of their cause. Or for anything. Ideology didn’t unite Bernie and Warren. Instead, one by one, the two socialist politicians were forced to drop out, leaving both of them alone with nothing. Socialism doesn’t unite us. It divides and isolates us. Like the Chinese Communist virus. Socialism doesn’t work because instead of the noble altruistic leaders the ideology calls for, it actually attracts meanspirited and greedy control freaks who use it to set up their own private fiefdoms. Once implemented, actual socialism never turns into a utopia of angels, disdainful of materialism, but descends into a hell of demons who fight each other over the last stale cookie on a tarnished plate. That’s why idealistic revolutions end in cycles of purges fueled by ego, malice, and greed. Bernie and Warren couldn’t put each other up against a wall, so they had to settle for the next best thing. He brought down her campaign and then she brought down his campaign. Neither would serve in heaven and won’t even have the opportunity, like Milton’s Satan, or Stalin and Mao, to rule in hell. Before the two of them become footnotes in electoral history, there is a question they should answer. How dare they demand that everyone else sacrifice for the greater good, when neither of them would? Where did these two socialists get the chutzpah to lecture Americans on everything from how much deodorant they use to how much taxes they pay? Where is their commitment to redistribution? Bernie Sanders quadrupled his net worth since he began plotting to run for president in 2012. He made his millions from his national profile. And he also used that profile to funnel money to family members. Every time he ran for President on a platform of taking away everyone’s money, he came away richer. Why did Bernie take so long to drop out? Because even ActBlue idiots wouldn’t go on paying for his private jets if he dropped out. It took a pandemic and the effective shutdown of the election for the scam to end. If it wasn’t for the Chinese Virus, Bernie would have dragged it out to the last million. But there’s no private jet flights paid for by ActBlue donors to the Vatican in a pandemic. Bernie’s campaign slogan, “Not Me, Us”, was the biggest lie since, “Hope and Change.” It was always about “Me”. It was about Bernie, his book deals, his houses, his private jets, his interviews, and his fame. At his age, he knows that he will probably never run again and never cash in again. None of that makes Bernie a hypocrite. Worse. It makes him a socialist. Bernie Sanders has spent his entire miserable life figuring out a way to make money without working. The socialist lifestyle of collective farms wasn’t for him. He wanted to get into politics because he’s lazy, narcissistic, a control freak, abusive, greedy, and incompetent. Those character traits left him with two options: Hollywood and Washington D.C. And Bernie is a bad actor who can only memorize a few lines. His career was built on pandering to the same radicals when he first got into politics and when he tried to crawl into the White House. Along the way he completely changed his views on any number of issues from immigration to gun control. But he never stopped figuring out how to cash in on his politics. And now he’s done it. Bernie leaves his great socialist crusade as a 1 percenter, a millionaire with three homes, despite accomplishing absolutely nothing. Socialism isn’t real for ordinary people, but it’s real for socialists. “Not Me, Us”, Bernie claimed. What have the “Us” gotten out of the Bernie campaign beyond the opportunity to pay for all his stuff? The same thing anyone gets under socialism: the privilege of paying for the lifestyles of their leaders. Socialism isn’t about helping people. It’s about helping socialists. Between the two of them, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, brought down the socialist cause. But nobody destroys socialism like socialists. It was the Communists who really brought down the USSR and if the EU and Communist China’s leadership fall to the pandemic, it will also be entirely their own doing. Lefties have always been the great destroyers of their own movements. Bernie and Warren followed in that proud tradition, sacrificing their own movement to their greed and egos, and leaving the dumpster fire of their campaigns with millions in book payments from the very corporations that they condemn. And if you think they were a grifting disaster, wait until Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez runs for president.

SOURCE:: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2020/04/bernies-defeat-shows-why-socialism.html

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terryblount · 5 years

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The Outer Worlds – Review

With a resumé that includes South Park: The Stick of Truth and, of course, Fallout: New Vegas, do I really have to introduce Obsidian Entertainment? Their unapologetically wacky and satirical developmental style has cemented several memorable titles into our libraries, and with The Outer World’s they finally get to unleash their unique style on the wild frontiers of space colonisation.

I have a dirty confession to make: I never played Fallout 3. I was just too deep into all the fantasy stuff at the time. However, I did give New Vegas a shot and the game’s writing, characters, and overall devil-may-care tone made me play it in big, greedy chunks at a time. Needless to say, I expected The Outer Worlds to scratch that same itch since this game is something like a homage to New Vegas.

I know a lot of people have been playing this game but I will stick to screenshots I took from the opening sections to avoid spoilers.

After spending my time with Obsidian’s latest RPG, there is no doubt that The Outer Worlds wears its developmental pedigree on its sleeve. There is something delightfully ‘old-school’ about how it handles itself, and even with a few minor grievances, The Outer Worlds has a truly special experience on offer.

Getting starstruck

I don’t get why so many previews had branded The Outer Worlds as a space opera. Mass Effect (1,2,3 and that crappy one) is a space opera because you have all the intergalactic politics, personal drama and aliens from different races mashed into one. The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, is quite obviously more casual in that you are essentially a space cowboy thrown into the set of 1960’s sci-fi B movie.

After once again spending a little too much time with the surprisingly decent character creator, the adventure begins and I discover I am part of a stranded cargo of colonists in stasis onboard a ship that experienced a malfunction during light speed. A shady-looking fella named Phineas Welles then unexpectedly lands on board and essentially kidnaps one of the pods – namely you – before making a quick getaway from the authorities.

“Noooothing compares… no-THING compares… TO YOU!!!” Don’t worry I didn’t end up saving the colonies as a young Sinead O’Connor

Turns out old Welles has got a bit of the (mad) scientist thing going on because while most people who spent this much time in stasis pop like microwaved egg upon revival, this guy figured out a way to bring people back safely. He only had enough ‘chemicals’ for one person though, and there is still any entire crew floating back on board, so he abruptly sends the player down to the nearest colony to get more.

Originally, it was supposed to be a quick trip down to Edgewater colony, hooking up with a smuggler, and returning to Welles so you can get to work on the rest of the colonists. Yet from the moment you stumble from your escape pod, things immediately turn sour since the ship needed to take you back to Phineas is missing a crucial component, which implies it has all the flying power of a very big paperweight.

Oh, and you kind of crushed your contact with your landing pod so you are basically on you own. Like, completely smooshed him, and just like that, you are Clint Eastwood – the gunslinger lone ranger – finding himself just passing through a little town but inevitably getting dragged into the bigger scheme of things.

So you do what any resourceful space cowboy would do: Befriend the locals and help them out with a few mundane favours on their neglected little deep space colony in the hope that they will give you the parts you need. You gain a few weapons, make some bounty hunting money, convince a tyrannical mayor to be nice and pick up a few stragglers who eventually become your crew.

This has got to be the best ship name EVER, and I am being dead serious.

Before you know it, you and your band of misfits have fixed up the ship, leave Edgewater in your rearview mirror, and the frontier of space is now your oyster. Of course, Phineas Welles wells has moved the goalposts by now. Turns out his motivation for defrosting the crew is to take on a deep space colonisation conglomerate named the Halcyon Holdings Corporation, and he has just found his newest lackey.

Spacing out

If I were to describe what you do in The Outer Worlds, it would probably read like a gameplay review of nearly a hundred other RPG’s. This is a testament to how Obsidian have thrown together something that plays it safe, and opts for a tried and trusted formula that worked in New Vegas, and gives The Outer Worlds a familiar but solid foundation.

For the most part, this works as well as you’d expect.The Outer Worlds uses the old routine of you needing something from NPC’s and they are willing to offer it to you in exchange for a small favour which usually involves your guns doing all the talking. It is the old, ‘I’d do it myself, but reason X prevents me so would you kindly’?

Obsidian even went for the whole talking head thing against a blurred background from New Vegas, and I swear they simply extrapolated the same lip-sync technology from Bethesda’s older games. Why is there no anti-aliasing on their teeth though? Did they copy the goddamn actual teeth from New Vegas too!? Ew!

Anyway, from the moment you have control over you own ship, the goals of Phineas Welles’s beef with Halcyon become the broader aims of the gameplay looming in the background. However, as the player moves between the handful of colonies that represent the areas you can visit, and once they get involved with the humdrum of the settlers, Obsidian goes ahead and does their thing.

From the conversations you have with NPC’s to the world building at large, everything in The Outer Worlds is wholeheartedly steeped in a sardonic, black humour. You see, in the era of space colonisation Halcyon Holdings did what any corporation would do if they had monopoly over settling on other planets, namely capitalise everything, including their employees.

As a result, the game acts as a satire on the preposterous corporate legalese that I am sure the working gamer will be able to relate to on some levels. Many reviews have mentioned the grave digger you encounter as you enter the first colony who explains that inhabitants of Edgewater literally have to lease their own graves (as a commentary on how the bureaucracy cannot be avoided even after death).

An early personal favourite was chatting to an NPC in a factory where they put something called ‘saltuna’ into cans (apparently it’s not fish). I was supposed to pick up a grave fee as a favour to the grave digger, but during our conversation I figured out she was sad over a bunch of paperwork. Seems she is the closest living relative to a person who had just committed suicide.

Was it her brother or something? No, she informed me, she was the closest living person relatively speaking when this worker shot himself. Considering that the factory basically owns him, she has to fill in a report on vandalism to an asset.

It’s Spacer’s Choice!

This little interaction is emblematic of the general tone that Obsidian have endowed upon their game, and it is supported through some utterly superb writing. You can see it in the quirky messages found on random terminals scattered through the environment, or the ridiculous culture of capitalism that has taken over the colonies. “It’s not the best choice, It’s Spacer’s choice!” is actually one product chain’s slogan.

Yet the writing shines at its brightest in the dialogue between the player and the NPC’s. Their lines have been written in a very immediate and engaging format, and they have been executed by great voice acting that never tries to be overly dramatic. I could often have a proper chat with certain characters in the world, and I even returned to the suicide lady at one point because I couldn’t wait to tell her when I discovered something about her co-worker’s suicide. She was genuinely thankful for the news too.

Furthermore, most RPG regulars would notice that The Outer Worlds often presents an above-average number of dialogue responses when you engage with NPC’s. You can be the kind and caring paragon type of captain that always speaks with gentility, or you could basically be Bender from Futurama as you mock the misfortune of others or talk down to people. I even gave a space station engineer the finger once… with both hands!

A space station independent of Halcyon Holdings named Groundbreaker

What’s really nice in all of this chitchat is that the game is willing to offer the player both ways without the cost of the overall experience. I could often lie my way out of all the times NPC’s caught me stealing, or you can intimidate people which might radically change how you can complete a quest. For once, the XP points invested speechcraft actually amounted to something!

The black hole

If you read my stuff, you know that I glorify the Unreal Engine 4 to a point where most would think I am sort of undercover shill. However, my admiration has hit something of a rupture with The Outer Worlds as this game needs some TLC in the optimisation department.

Visually, the game is above average. Obsidian have really committed to this spaghetti western meets 1960’s budget sci-fi movie (including the shrink ray!), so the styling of the levels is very palpable. Aside from those jaggy teeth, the characters have also been rendered with surprising detail, and The Outer Worlds manages to feel distinct enough to set itself apart from most RPG’s that have gone this route.

All I need now is some alien tumbleweed rolling by

Technically, the game needs some work. The frame rate could/should certainly be higher which tells me Obsidian needs economise by culling assets not rendered on-screen, and this is combined with some really terrible texture pop-in. In some areas I would often just wait in one spot for all the surfaces to finish rendering, only to find more pop-in once I started walking forward.

The combat was also rather insipid. Naturally, there is a decent selection of guns, heavy weapons, melee weapons, and armour all of which have stats that players can modify or enhance at workstations. You can tell whoever was the designer lead on combat plays a lot of games like Destiny or Borderlands or Anthem. I was kidding about that last one. No one plays Anthem.

In a game like this, however, the enemies just end up feeling a little bullet spongy. You blast them with huge balls of energy from ray guns, or you zap them with crackling bolts of electricity, but their health bars barely drain. They also do that Bethesda thing where they run to a certain point, and become permanently rooted in place while the player is free to empty their entire arsenal at them.

See Obsidian, this is what I do to enemies that don’t fight back properly! He once had a head!

Space balls

These are more like irritations rather than deal-breakers, and The Outer Worlds remains a gem because it is rare to find games nowadays that invest so much in their moment to moment gameplay. The abundance of huge, open-world RPG’s show that publishers sometimes tend to fixate on the overall experience, whereas it will be the player that must work through all the meaningless little side quests to get there.

As such, The Outer Worlds is the kind of controlled and condensed RPG that I like. This game will set the average player back roughly 30 hours with some change, but there is all the world building, character development and stats manipulation that you can expect in games that are three, even four times longer. Let’s face it, Bethesda has forsaken us, and if Obsidian the kind of company that aims to replace them, the future is certainly a bright one.

Excellent writing

Black humour

Variety of environments

Character interaction

Never overreaches itself

PC optimisation

Slightly repetitive

Combat AI feels dated

Guns lack power

Useless loot

PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM

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fitono · 6 years

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10 Tips for Training Clients in Recovery

I’m a trainer who works with dozens of clients who are in recovery. I’m also a recovering alcoholic and addict who, before becoming a trainer, was one of those clients.

Since I’ve been on both sides, I can tell you two things with near-certainty:

At some point in your career, you will work with a client in recovery, if you haven’t already.

You can expect your work with this population to feel different from your work with clients who’ve never been trapped in the abject insanity of addiction.

Here are 10 ways to help these clients get the best results.

1. Abandon the Moderation-or-Bust Approach to Wellness

Addicts like me tend to take an all-or-nothing approach to everything we do. So when we leave behind addictive substances and destructive behaviors, it’s not unheard of for us to go overboard with the good stuff—exercise, healthy eating, even 12-step meetings—especially when we’re first getting sober.

As with any other disadvantaged population, you’ve got to be willing to work with us as we are.

While daily double doses of meetings, combined with two-hour workouts and strict South Beach adherence, isn’t ideal or sustainable, insisting we tone down or moderate our newfound health-focused obsessions may do more harm than good.

Instead, help us keep moving forward for as long as we can.

Then, if we burn out, help us laugh it off while we search for a more sustainable approach to this whole healthy-living thing.

2. Rethink Rewards

“Meet your cardio goal three days this week, and then reward yourself!” might sound motivating to you, but to a recovering client it makes cardio like a B.S. obligation.

Why does that matter? Because when he was still trapped in addiction, life felt like a B.S. obligation, and the reward for tolerating it was the drink, hit, or fix after all the boxes were checked.

In recovery, many of us discover that the satisfaction and pleasures of living well are the greatest reward. The same goes for exercise. Help your client focus on the mental and physical peace and empowerment he feels after a solid strength-training session. Help him notice and appreciate the deep pleasure that only exercise can bring.

Do that, and your client will have an easier time developing a fitness habit for life. (Hell, this isn’t bad advice for any client, recovering or not.)

3. Table the Long-Term Goals

Ever wonder why the recovery slogan “one day at a time” helps people stay sober? It’s because we can’t fathom making difficult, loving, consistent decisions for a week, never mind for the rest of our lives. So we focus on what we need to do today. We’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.

Trainers, of course, make our living by helping clients achieve long-term goals like weight loss or increased strength. But neither goal can be met today. Since today is the only time frame a client in recovery feels she can manage, help her focus on the goals she can meet before bedtime.

The long-term payoffs will accumulate the way everything else does: one day at a time.

4. Remind Her What She’s Capable Of

Maintaining an exercise habit can be harder than showing up for work after a Vegas weekend, especially for a client who’s juggling all the trappings of an engaged, sober life. Odds are, she can handle 30 minutes a day of training, but she may need your help to feel like that’s true.

When she starts to doubt herself, remind her how hardcore she is: Not only did she survive a life-threatening addiction, she managed to pull herself out of it! She’s a living testament to the power of determination.

And now, on top of staying sober, she’s hitting the gym every day and cooking more meals at home? How awesome can one human be?

5. If He’s Open to a Daily Habit, Support It

When an addict breaks with a destructive daily pattern, there tends to be a huge hole in the fabric of his days. Meetings, therapy, and fellowship with others in recovery all help, but may not fill the hole completely. Many of us find exercise to be the perfect daily supplement to the work we do on our hearts and heads.

That’s hard for some trainers to accept. They’re used to clients who might be overwhelmed or scared away by the thought of training every day.

But if your recovering client wants to do it, be her cheerleader. Her full, sober life is bound to get in the way at some point, and she’ll likely end up doing three to five workouts a week anyway.

When that happens, again, help her laugh it off and keep going.

6. Spell Out Your Terms, and Stick to Them

You should always discuss your cancellation policy with a new client, along with any other terms you have. That goes double for a client in recovery.

Why?

Well, hold onto your seat, but we addicts are not always the most reliable grapes on the vine.

I recommend selling sessions in packages to encourage commitment, and being crystal clear about your strict cancellation policy. (Mine is 24 hours, no exceptions.) I use language in my welcome packet that anticipates no-shows and deals with them before they happen:

“Missed sessions or sessions cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice are forfeited by the client, and will not be refunded or rescheduled. This policy is enforced 100 percent of the time, and should not be taken personally. Thank you for understanding.”

7. Be Honest

Addiction is a crash course in how to hide, lie, and manipulate. Because we’re so good at it ourselves, folks in recovery can sniff out B.S. from 100 yards away. Your client will know if you’re making promises that are too good to be true, and it will erode the trust she needs to maintain her half of the trainer-client relationship.

So instead of promising extreme weight loss, for example, talk up the sensual benefits of regular exercise—greater comfort, deeper sleep, more energy.

8. Share Your Experience, Strength, and Hope

As trainers, we sometimes shy away from revealing stories about ourselves that show our flaws. But for an addict in recovery, there’s no more powerful teaching tool than listening to someone who’s been low talk about how he brought himself back up.

If you’ve overcome your own battles—with obesity, depression, self-sabotage—don’t hesitate to open up to your client about it.

Don’t embellish (see #7), and don’t equate your disappointing semester abroad with her year in prison. But do open up about your struggles and how you overcame them. It’ll help her feel more connected to you, and inspired by you, than she might otherwise.

9. Recognize Your Own Limitations

As you get closer, your client may confide in you, and look to you for guidance, about issues beyond fitness—a relationship, a mental-health issue, or even a relapse. While you may feel honored, don’t feel you need to have all the answers.

Encourage her to reach out to her other support people, like a recovery sponsor or therapist.

10. Understand that Different Addictions Are Not Equally Destructive

Many addicts who put down the bottle, pipe, or pill turn around and pick up a doughnut, cigarette, or scratch ticket. While the latter three may be less dangerous than the crutches they replaced, they’re still not doing the addict any favors.

But this isn’t true of all addiction swaps. Getting hooked on recovery or fitness may not seem like a good idea, but the benefits are likely to far outweigh any potential problems.

If a client in recovery hires you because he wants to dive into the deep end, it’s not your job to temper his fire. Teach him the safest ways to get the best results.

Final Thoughts

I’ve done my best to share advice that I believe will apply to most people in recovery, no matter the substance they’re recovering from. In my experience, sober alcoholics and addicts tend to have a lot in common. But as with any population, you have to work with each client as an individual with unique strengths and weaknesses, using your best judgment when there’s no clear answer or path forward.

When in doubt, ask how you can be more supportive. You won’t meet many addicts who don’t appreciate the thought.

Review it again: Download and print our 10-point checklist for quick reference the next time you’re training clients in recovery (click the image below to download)

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republicstandard · 7 years

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A Citizens Primer on Propaganda: From the Third Reich to the Deep State

I saw an interesting comment earlier today, actually a quote by Joseph Goebbels, a name synonymous with the word propaganda. He said once;

"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting of their own free will."

An exhortation, if any further were needed, to be profoundly suspicious of those who are unerringly confident to the point of the instant rejection of alternative points of view. In fact, I would say in most cases, people believe Goebbels invented or perfected propaganda as a tool for Adolf Hitler. And if you think that, you’d be wrong. In fact, if you believe that, you yourself are a victim of propaganda.

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While Goebbels was an excellent student of the art and he used it with great effectiveness in Hitler’s Germany, he was in no way the inventor of the idea.

What exactly IS propaganda?

The dictionary gives the following information:

information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.: "he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda".

synonyms: information, promotion, advertising, publicity, spin, disinformation, counter-information, agitprop, info, hype, plugging, puff piece, the big lie

In thinking about early examples of propaganda I immediately thought of the Jewish leadership in the days of Jesus. Were their efforts of misinformation against Him, not propaganda? And then I thought of Adam and Eve in the garden. We know Satan as the “Father of Lies”- was his message to Eve not one of disinformation and enticement to act in a way she otherwise would not have acted? And I would be remiss if I did not remind you that Saul Alinsky dedicated his Rules For Radicals to Satan.

So, understanding that propaganda has been with us since the beginning perhaps we should have a better understanding of how it has been used in recent history and how we can combat its use against us.

To look at the modern use of propaganda we have to look before 1930s Germany. The use of posters is widely connected to early 20th-century propaganda, and this was certainly true in Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. Slogans and images were used to inspire the people and promote the efforts of the revolutionaries. Maybe this effort looks familiar, but more on that later.

In reality, what is propaganda if not advertising?

Born in Austria in 1891, Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, a fact he used to his advantage whenever possible. Brought to the US by his family at a very young age, he graduated from Cornell with a degree in agriculture. Unfortunately for the world, he would not go into farming.

Bernays had great success in both the political and commercial realms. While we will focus more on the political, his commercial successes were many. He promoted smoking as a glamorous and even healthy act for women during the 1920s- In a time of social change around women’s suffrage, it was portrayed as empowering “Torches of Freedom”, as Bernays dubbed them. While he was making Lucky Strike cigarettes appealing to the nation’s women, he was extremely dismayed that his own wife chose to smoke, destroying her cigarettes anytime he found them.

There was a highly successful campaign with the American Dental Association for public water fluoridation. We might find it hard to believe, but bacon used to be considered of little value, a cut of meat that was often discarded or the fat was rendered into lard. He made bacon and eggs a desirable meal, the “All American Breakfast”. A hairnet company hired Bernays to campaign for the “need” of hairnets and soon many government agencies required their use. Dixie cups also benefited from his campaign of disposable cups being more healthy than washing and reusing a glass. Proctor and Gamble profited from his touting the purity and floating of Ivory soap.

While we are used to advertisements that convince us we might “need” a product or service, what of government using the same methods to convince us we need and want certain behavior from our politicians and officials? As we look at the re-election of Woodrow Wilson in 1916, the slogan “He kept us out of war” and “America First” were two that swept him back into office. Obviously, we did get into WWI, so how was that received after running on a platform of peace? Did you ever hear of Bernays idea, “Making The World Safe For Democracy”? Americans were sold on the idea that it was in our best interest to become involved.

Bernays efforts would be very similar to what we might call branding today. He turned the negative connotation of propaganda to what we now call public relations. In his book Propaganda, he asserted that public relations were a necessity, not just a gimmick.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

Bernays was Jewish, so we might imagine what he thought when he learned that Joseph Goebbels was using his method and writings in Hitler’s plans for the Jews of Europe. A foreign correspondent informed Bernays in 1933 of what the Nazis were doing with his work. Bernays later recounted this in his autobiography in 1965:

“They were using my books as the basis for a destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.”

It clear from his work and personal comments that Bernays placed financial gain and personal ideology over benefits and/or harm to the people and nation. It seems his object was simply to shape public opinion without regard to the end result.

What is interesting to me is that some of the most progressive thinkers on the 1940s saw the danger of Bernays. SCOTUS Justice Felix Frankfurter warned FDR about using him in any sort of leadership role in relation to WWII, outlining how he and his colleagues were

“professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism, and self-interest.”

Joseph Goebbels was not his only student.

In 1961, Ronald Reagan warned of the propaganda that would be used to promote socialized medicine, old people dying, poor people kicked to the curb. These were some of the arguments that brought about Social Security. A few years later we were given Medicare, in 1993 the effort by Hillary Clinton to go to single-payer health care and again with Obamacare. Rahm Emanuel was famous for his “Never let a crisis go to waste” comment and with good reason; a crisis is always a time when people are more susceptible to having their thoughts managed and directed in a desirable direction.

Today, we are bombarded from every direction by propaganda, and in many cases -as it was last century- some people are becoming exceedingly wealthy in the process of manufacturing reality. For instance the Global Warming/Climate Change hoax/lie/fake news. “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.” How does this tie in with all the surveillance, data collection and data retention programs are in place to keep us safe and protect us from terrorism?

Charges of racism, homophobia, class warfare and misogyny are all terms of propaganda used and intended to marginalize and demean. It is impossible to have an honest discussion and debate on the issues when one side makes every effort to shut off the debate with false charges.

Was 9/11 a "crisis that should not be wasted"? It brought us FISA courts, The Patriot Act, NDAA added many provisions, TSA, Homeland Security -all put in place for our security and in most cases, we readily accepted it all.

If you think there is a significant difference between the left and right in American politics, you are a victim of propaganda. Both want the government to control the people, they might disagree as to what degree, but neither believes in Constitutional liberty. They’ll pay lip service to supposed wrongdoings, talk of rogue agencies and bureaucrats, yet neither side suggests arrest, indictment, and trial. And we have not addressed the memes and such that permeate social media, often intended to inspire and motivate. In this case, we do it to ourselves!

What is a citizen to do? How can we combat this insidious cancer?

Education, if you dare. If we don’t make an effort to learn, we will be treated like sheep and mushrooms, and deserve it. Allow yourself to be open to reality, facts and truth. We often are prevented from moving forward by confirmation bias...we only read and follow things that enforce our preconceived ideas. Truth has no agenda, none of us is 100% right all the time. Our bodies need physical nourishment, we don’t fast for extended periods of time, why do we fast from feeding our knowledge pool?

As you can see from the history of propaganda, we cannot simply read articles or reports and expect we have the full story, all the facts. It would be nice if we could do as Detective Joe Friday of Dragnet did and ask for, “Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts”. As a writer and researcher, I can attest that finding the truth is no easy task, but the search is well worth the effort. I encourage each of you to search and learn as if the republic depended on it- because it does.

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